PORTICELLO, Italy (AFP) – Divers searching for six people missing after a superyacht sank off Sicily, including UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch, on Wednesday found five bodies in the wreck, AFP journalists and reports said. The grim discovery, after three days of intensive searches since the “Bayesian” went down during a storm off the Italian island early on Monday morning, brings the death toll to six — with one person still missing. There was no official identification of the bodies but Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah are among those missing.
The 56-metre (185 feet) British-flagged sailing boat had been anchored some 700 metres off Porticello when it was struck by a waterspout — akin to a mini-tornado. It sank within minutes. Fifteen people were rescued, including Lynch’s wife and a woman with a one-year-old baby.
But the body of a man, believed to be the yacht’s chef, was found several hours later. Lynch and his daughter, his lawyer Christopher Morvillo and his wife Neda, and Jonathan Bloomer, the chair of Morgan Stanley International, and his wife Judy, were all reported missing. AFP journalists in Porticello saw emergency workers moving four body bags from boats returning from the sea into a tent on the quay, or into waiting ambulances.
Media reports later said a fifth body had been found but not yet brought to shore. Firefighters had earlier said that searching the yacht, which is largely intact and resting on the seabed some 50 metres down, was a “l.