Mike Lynch: Captain of Bayesian yacht ‘under investigation’ for manslaughter

A lawyer who died after a yacht sank off the coast of Sicily wrote a haunting post on LinkedIn two months before he joined the doomed voyage.

In one of his only posts on the site, Christopher Morvillo, 59, thanked his legal team after they helped British tech tycoon Mike Lynch win a fraud trial and discussed living “happily ever after.”

Graig Graziosi and Mike Bedigan report:

Officials said the superyacht had been hit by a downburst and the Italian officials said they would be looking at how it could affect one vehicle and not other nearby vessels, according to the translation of the conference.

A downburst is an intense burst of wind at ground level emenating from the strong downdraft of a thunderstorm; the wind often blows radially from a point source, as opposed to the rotating winds associated with a tornado.

Downbursts usually last just a few minutes, and can be particularly dangerous for aviation.

They have been blamed for a number of air crashes over the years, although the risk tends to be well forecast by meteorologists allowing pilots to avoid them.

A court-appointed armed guard, tasked with ensuring Mike Lynch did not abscond while facing fraud charges, has paid tribute to the tech mogul, saying the security team “became less of a detail and more like a family”.

Rolo Igno also described “the memory of a beautiful soul” in Mr Lynch’s daughter Hannah.

Mr Igno said he had the “privilege” of spending “almost every waking moment” with Mr Lynch while he was in custody in San Francisco, describing the detail as unlike any other he had ever worked and one that was “life changing”.

“As an executive protection agent, the number one rule is simple, don’t ever get close to the principal,” he said.

“They aren’t your friends, they’re a client and the relationship is strictly professional. But with Mike, that didn’t fly with him and for me that rule quickly dissolved.”

Autonomy, the software firm which Mike Lynch sold in a £8.64bn deal in 2011, was a pioneer of business data analysis, using machine learning and what Mr Lynch called “adaptive pattern recognition”.

It used a statistical method called “Bayesian inference” at the heart of its software, devised by the 18th-century mathematician Thomas Bayes.

The yacht’s name, Bayesian, harks to the same model that was at the heart of Autonomy’s – and Mr Lynch’s – success.

Once dubbed the “British Bill Gates”, Mike Lynch and his wife Angela Bacares were valued at £852m in 2023 by the Sunday Times Rich List.

The 59-year-old tech tycoon is known for founding Invoke Capital and Autonomy Corporation and had been in the headlines after he was cleared of charges in a high-profile fraud case.

My colleague Barney Davis has more details:

The sinking of the 56-metre yacht Bayesian and the tragic deaths of British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his guests and boat staff have given the public a glimpse into the rarefied world of superyachts, writes Boat International’s Lucy Dunn.

From the sheer size of the mast (74 metres, roughly the size of seven two-storey houses stacked on top of each other) to the expense (Bayesian was put up for sale in 2014 with an asking price of $30m, which is around £23m), to the sheer luxury (the interiors were by Remi Tessier, the designer behind Claridge’s new penthouse), it’s a world few people normally get to see.

There are currently 12,626 superyachts on the water around the world with 1,166 superyachts in build or on order. If you have been to a Greek island this year, or maybe the Amalfi coast, you may have glimpsed them coming in and out of harbours and wondered who owns a yacht like that. Or who can afford to charter a yacht like that – which have an average price of around £180,000 a week.

While you may think of glossy influencers and A-listers, the superyachting fraternity is where millionaires are sorted from the billionaires from the centi-billionaires; the 0.001 per centers. Rarely will you find a celebrity with the financial clout to afford a yacht owned by Lynch, these are generally under-the-radar industry titans who don’t have household names.

So, what exactly makes a superyacht super? According to Boat International, where I work, it can be applied to any boat, motor or sailing yacht which is over 24 metres in length. Size, in the superyacht world, is everything – and yachts are getting bigger all the time.

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Recaldo Thomas was the superyacht’s chef and the first person whose death was confirmed.

The Canadian-Antiguan national was found by the Italian coastguard near the sunken boat. A friend of Mr Thomas, who asked to remain anonymous, said the yachting community has been saddened by his death.

She told The Independent: “He was a one-of-a-kind special human being. Incredibly talented, contagious smile and laugh, an incredible voice with a deep love of the ocean and the moon. I spoke to him nearly every day. He loved his life his friends and his job.”

James Cutfield, the 51-year-old New Zealand national who was captain of the Bayesian, is being investigated for possible manslaughter and culpable shipwreck, said lawyer Aldo Mordiglia, one of two attorneys appointed for the captain’s defence.

Mr Cutfield, who already has been questioned, will be questioned again by prosecutors on Tuesday, Mordiglia said.

Under Italian laws, being under investigation doesn’t imply any guilt, and doesn’t necessarily lead to criminal charges.

Chief prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio confirmed on Saturday that an investigation had been launched and that his team would consider each possible element of responsibility including those of the captain, the crew, individuals in charge of supervision and the yacht’s manufacturer.