Briton whose wife disappeared on honeymoon sailing trip faces US court over 'stolen' coins

Lewis Bennett said his wife Isabella Hellmann disappeared after their yacht hit something and started sinking between Cuba and Florida. He now faces allegations that at the time he was transporting $100,000 in stolen rare gold and silver coins

Lewis Bennett with his wife Isabella Hellmann (Facebook)

A British man whose wife was lost at sea on their honeymoon sailing trip is to appear in a US court on Friday to enter a formal plea to charges that when his yacht sank he was transporting £77,000 worth of stolen gold and silver coins.

Lewis Bennett’s court appearance will be the latest twist in an increasingly bizarre and controversial story that began when the 38-year-old was plucked from a life raft by a US Coastguard helicopter in the sea between Cuba and Florida at about 3am on May 15.

Mr Bennett told his rescuers that disaster had struck while he had been on a delayed honeymoon sailing trip with Isabella Hellmann, his wife of three months.

Mr Bennett said that at 8pm on May 14, as they sailed from Cuba, he had gone to get some sleep in the cabin of his yacht Surf Into Summer, leaving Ms Hellmann, 41, to keep watch on deck.

At 1am, he said, he was jolted awake by a collision between the 37ft catamaran and an unknown obstacle, but when he went on deck to investigate, his wife – by whom he has a nine-month-old daughter – was nowhere to be seen.

According to Mr Bennett, the yacht was now taking on water and sinking. He used his Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon to send a distress signal and clambered into the life raft.

The coastguard soon found the yacht floating upside down about 30 miles west of the Bahamas, with one of its two hulls already fully submerged. But despite an extensive four-day search, they never found Ms Hellmann.

After his rescue, Mr Bennett, a mining engineer, swiftly fell out with the family of Ms Hellman, a Colombian-born US citizen. They raised suspicions about his reaction to the loss of his wife, with local newspapers quoting a police report as saying that during a heated confrontation on May 28 one of Ms Hellman’s sisters had screamed accusations at Mr Bennett.

Days later, however, Mr Bennett, a dual British-Australian national who has lived in Dorset and studied at Bangor University in Wales, told a Mailonline reporter: “I have nothing to hide”.

His wife’s disappearance, he said had been “absolutely devastating.”

“She is my soul mate,” he added. “We have got a daughter. We were planning a great life together. I thought we were going to be together forever.”

Ms Hellman, a Florida real estate broker, had become the subject of a coastguard and FBI ‘missing person investigation,’ but Mr Bennett was adamant that no official had ever put any accusations to him.

“They haven't accused me of anything,” he said. “Nobody has put that allegation directly against me.

“But I understand why they have to investigate, and that is fair enough.”

The authorities, however, had become increasingly suspicious of items found with Mr Bennett in the life raft.

A prosecution document that has now been presented to a court in Key West, Florida, said he was found in the life raft with a suitcase and two backpacks.

The document says that when he was winched into the helicopter, he took one of the backpacks with him, leading the US Coastguard rescue swimmer to notice how it was “unusually heavy”.

That backpack was not searched, but everything left behind in the life raft was.

It is now alleged that in the life raft the authorities found nine plastic tubes containing 235 collectible silver coins worth about $4,200 (£3,250).

The rare coins were returned to Mr Bennett on May 23, but on the same day the authorities allegedly realised they had been stolen last year from a sailing vessel, the Kitty R, based on the Caribbean island of St. Maarten.

The court document alleges that Mr Bennett had been working as a crew member on the yacht at the time, and had filed a police report to St Maarten police, saying the boat had been broken into while and the owner had been away.

The court document said US officials sent photos of the coins to the Kitty R’s owner, who identified them as being from a coin collection worth a total of $100,000 (£77,000) that had been stolen in the burglary.

A search of Mr Bennett’s Florida home led to the discovery of a further 162 gold coins that were allegedly found in a small case inside a pair of deck shoes.

Mr Bennett was arrested by the FBI on Monday, and appeared in a federal court in Key West on Tuesday, accused of transporting stolen goods.

Handcuffed and wearing blue and grey prison uniform, he was escorted into court by two US marshals.

He spoke to confirm that he would be able to afford his own lawyer. The judge adjourned the case until Friday, when it is expected he will enter a formal plea and the court will decide whether he can be allowed bail.

After Tuesday’s court appearance, one of Ms Hellman’s sisters, who did not wish to be identified, told reporters: “We wish we could have some answers and we wish we could know what happened. Every day I have more and more questions, but I don't have answers to them.”