ELBOW CAY, Bahamas — A bartender has cast doubt on the timeline surrounding the disappearance of Lynette Hooker, who vanished in local waters, after serving her and her husband the night before she went missing.
Ken, a 38-year-old bartender at the Abaco Inn in Elbow Cay, shared with The Post that he served Brian and Lynette Hooker as they relaxed by the pool on the evening of April 3, enjoying rum and Cokes.
He described Brian as a tall man with tattoos, giving the impression of someone who might be an ex-military veteran.
“He seemed like an old war vet or something like that,” Ken remarked to The Post.
According to Ken, the couple arrived at the bar around 4:30 p.m., with Lynette heading to the pool while Brian ordered their drinks, paying with a card and speaking very little.
Roughly an hour and a half later, Brian returned for another round. Ken recalled how grateful Brian appeared for the quick service, especially on such a bustling evening.
“He was like, ‘Oh man, thank you for getting me served kinda quick’ … because we were crowded,” Ken said.
The worker said it didn’t seem like anything unusual was going on — “not what I saw, anyway” — but noted he never laid eyes on Lynette.
“When I heard about it the next day, I was shocked, definitely. But then again, I didn’t see the lady, I didn’t get to talk to her or anything like that,” the bartender said.
Ken said the couple was at the bar and pool area for around two and a half hours and that his encounter with Brian was fairly unremarkable.
But to the native Bahamian with intimate knowledge of the country’s waterways and geography, something still doesn’t sit quite right with him about what is said to have happened later.
“It’s weird … for him to be going from here to there, then ending up in Marsh Harbour and nobody sees the lady, it’s weird,” Ken said, referring to the peninsula settlement just a few miles across the water from Elbow Cay where Brian anchored the couple’s boat, “Soulmate.”
“What catches my eye is they left here at 7, 7:30 and [her going missing] supposedly happened right after they left here, and he didn’t make it over there until 4 a.m. or something like that, in 25 mph winds,” the bartender said.
“It’s only four miles that way. It shouldn’t have taken eight to 10 hours to get there. Even if he was only floating, it should have been a much quicker time,” he said.
Lynnette has not been seen since that night, and Brian was detained Wednesday in connection to her disappearance but released on Monday when investigators failed to file charges against him.
He told police Lynette had fallen off a small dinghy as they returned to the Soulmate and has denied any wrongdoing in her disappearance.
