Bodies of Tech CEO Mike Lynch and his daughter Hannah among four bodies recovered from the sunken superyacht, Bayesian, on Wednesday

22 people were aboard the Bayesian when it sank near Palermo early Monday during a storm

15 people survived including Lynch’s wife and nine of the ten man crew

The first body recovered Monday was confirmed to be yacht chef, Ricardo Thomas

Wednesday four more bodies were brought ashore Wednesday, including the father and daughter – making the number five recovered bodies

Two people remain missing as the search continues

Six previously listed as missing include Mike lynch and his daughter Hannah, Jonathan and Judy Bloomer, Christopher and Neda Morvillo

Two days before the boat mishap, Lynch’s associate, Stephen Chamberlain, was struck and killed by by a car while out jogging in Cambridgeshire UK, on Saturday Aug. 17

Chamberlain, 52, the former chief finance officer at tech software giant, Autonomy, was Lynch’s co-defendant in a lawsuit filed by HP after the US company bought Autonomy for $11billion in 2011

Lynch and Chamberlain were both acquitted on all counts by a San Francisco jury in June

Six previously listed as missing after superyacht Bayesian sank, include Mike lynch and his daughter Hannah, Jonathan and Judy Bloomer, Christopher and Neda Morvillo. Four bodies were recovered Wednesday including Mike Lynch and Hannah, bringing confirmed casualties to five

Four bodies found in the wreck of Mike Lynch’s superyacht have now been brought to shore – two of which were confirmed as the tech mogul and his teenage daughter Hannah. 
Search teams made the tragic discovery this afternoon while scouring through the wreckage of the Bayesian, which sank off the coast of Sicily after being hit by a ‘black swan’ waterspout on Monday morning.
The Chief of Civil Protection later confirmed two bodies had been identified as Mike Lynch and his daughter, before announcing that two more bodies were found and have now been recovered by divers. 
The bodies were lifted onto shore and taken into a tent, before being transferred into a waiting ambulance. 

The recovery team has now confirmed that sadly British Tech billionaire Mike Lynch perished along with is 18-year-old daughter Hannah, a crew member and four of his guests, when his superyacht ‘Bayesian’ sank off the coast in Palermo, Italy, early Monday morning

British tech tycoon Mike Lynch with his wife Angela Bacares were sailing Italian waters with close associates, celebrating his beating a decade of legal battles with US authorities following the sale of his tech company to US computer giant Hewlett Packard. Bacares is one of 15 survivors of the tragedy

Those still unaccounted for are Morgan Stanley boss Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy and US citizens Chris Morvillo and his jewellery designer wife Neda Morvillo. The body of one crew member, chef Recaldo Thomas, was found on Monday. 
Four other guests have been missing since the sinking, with specialist divers desperately trying to access the boat amid hope survivors could be alive in air pockets inside the vessel.
The freak incident came as 59-year-old Mike Lynch was enjoying a ‘victory trip’ to celebrate winning his US fraud trial over the $11billion sale of his tech firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard.
In a separate tragedy, Stephen Chamberlain – the former vice president of finance at Autonomy and Mr Lynch’s co-defendant – died after being hit by a car while out jogging in Cambridgeshire on Saturday. 

Emergency services personnel gather on the dock as the body of one of the victims of the disaster is brought in

Chairman of Morgan Stanley International, Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy [photo], are also missing. Mrs Bloomer is a supporter and former board member of the Eve Appeal, a charity that raises awareness and funds research into gynecological cancer

Mike Lynch’s attorney Christopher Morvillo [photo], and his wife Neda are also missing after the yacht sank

The first body recovered Monday was confirmed to be yacht chef, Ricardo Thomas

The tragic news came after a marked increase in activity at the port in the last two hours, with more boats than normal going to and from the site.
An ambulance siren could be heard threading its way through the streets of Porticello, and was believed to have joined the large group of emergency vehicles from police, coastguard and the fire service, ringing the tiny port.
At 2.58pm UK time a fire service boat bearing what appeared to be at least one body bag came into shore.

The superyacht Bayesian [photo], overturned during a severe thunderstorm on Monday morning

Divers scouring the waters near the scene where a sailboat with 22 people aboard sank in the early hours of Monday, off the coast of Porticello, Italy with 15 survivors. So far three bodies have been recovered. Four more remain missing and rescue work continue

Rescue workers bring up one of the recovered bodies

Rescue workers lined the shore as the boat drew alongside, with a coastguard vessel pulling in front to block the view of media so the body could be removed with dignity.
The body bag was then taken to a waiting ambulance in the harbor.
Salvo Cocina, the director of Sicily’s civil protection agency, confirmed two bodies were found in the wreck today and that divers have already brought them to the surface.
He said ‘On behalf of myself and my colleagues, I would like to express my deepest sympathy to the families of the victims and express our condolences and closeness to them at this difficult time.’ 
The challenging operation has been hampered by issues, including access to cabins being blocked by debris and thick silt preventing divers from being able to see inside windows.
It was revealed today that last night the captain of the superyacht, New Zealander James Cutfield, had been ‘questioned for more than two hours’ by Italian prosecutors.

The 183 foot $40M superyacht was docked off the coast of Porticello, near Palermo, [photo], when it was hit by an over-sea tornado, known as a waterspout 

Rescue personnel and divers carry out search and rescue operations on Wednesday in the area where the superyacht Bayesian sank

Emergency services and rescue work, including helicopters and surface search of the area continue

The ‘well respected’ seafarer was quizzed by the Termini Imerese Public Prosecutor’s Office as part of their investigation into what happened. It is expected they will also speak to the other passengers and crew members as part of their probe. 
Speaking in hospital the morning after the incident, Mr Cutfield told Italian journalists ‘we didn’t see it coming’.
Part of the investigation will look into whether hatches had been left open by crew and whether these caused the boat to sink in a matter of minutes.
The captain’s brother, Mark Cutfield, said he was a ‘very good sailor’ and was ‘very well respected’ in the Mediterranean. He told the NZ Herald that James is currently in hospital but is ‘okay’ and does not have injuries that are ‘too dramatic’.
According to the Giornale Di Sicilia, prosecutors questioned Mr Cutfield for several hours as they tried to reconstruct the Bayesian’s final moments before it capsized and as it sank to the seabed.
The yacht had been carrying 10 crew members and 12 passengers when it was hit by tornado-speed winds during a severe thunderstorm at 5am on Monday, August 19.

Some of the survivors including nine of the ten man crew survived, using the boats liferaft

Such was the force of the impact, the boat sank beneath the waves, completely disappearing in ‘just 60 seconds’ and leaving those on board in a race to save themselves.
While 15 people were able to make it to safety, including a British mother who heroically held her baby daughter afloat in the pitch-black waters, seven people were unaccounted for.
The body of one crew member, Canadian-Antiguan chef Recaldo Thomas who was the on-board cook, was discovered hours later as a rescue operation got underway.
The search operation has been beset with problems, with floating debris blocking the narrow corridors of the vessel, which is almost completely intact and lying on its side on the seabed 164ft (50m) below the surface.
The wreck is so deep that divers can only spend 10 minutes on the seabed before having to return to the surface for their own safety. 
Today a new team of Italian firefighters, who have special tanks that allow them to stay underwater for longer and more experience at that depth, arrived to help with the search.
Divers had forced their way into the ship by drilling a hole through a 3cm-thick porthole today, with claims they had reached the ‘master cabin’ where Mr Lynch and his wife Angela Bacares had been staying during the trip.
Italian outlet Giornale Di Sicilia reported that a remote-controlled robot has been brought in to assist the search teams.
The ‘robot’ is capable of operating on the seabed up to an altitude of 300 meters and can continue for between 6 and 7 hours.

Mike Lynch [second left], is seen in the early days of his technology firm Autonomy in Cambridge which he later sold for $11billion to HP

The device equipped with advanced technology that allows it to investigate the seabed and record detailed videos and images which will be used in the prosecutor’s investigation.
Brent Hoberman, a friend of Mr Lynch, described the ‘one in a million’ disaster just weeks after the mogul had cleared his name as a ‘Shakespearean sort of tragedy’.
Lynch was acquitted of all charges by a San Francisco jury in June alongside his co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain, who had both been fighting to clear their names for 12 years.

Mike Lynch is seen [photo], on his Suffolk farm in 2021 when he was fighting extradition to the USA. He lost the extradition battle but won the substantive case, beating the fraud allegations  

Stephen Chamberlain, [photo], 52, who died Aug 17, after being hit by a car, was Lynch’s co-defendant in his US fraud trial in which both men were acquitted following the $11bn sale of the software giant Autonomy

However, the BBC reports that Chamberlain has died after being struck by the vehicle while out running in Cambridgeshire on Saturday morning.
Stephen Chamberlain, 52, was Mike Lynch’s co-defendant in his US fraud trial in which both men were acquitted following the $11bn sale of the software giant Autonomy.
The driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene.
Father-of-two Mike Lynch OBE, read natural sciences at Cambridge and went on to obtain a doctorate in technology specializing in adaptive pattern recognition research. In 1991, he set up Cambridge Neurodynamics, which specialized in computer-based finger print recognition for the police. 
Five years later he founded data analysis company Autonomy, one of Britain’s most successful start-ups. 
He was appointed to the board of the BBC in 2006, and was later elected to then-prime minister David Cameron’s council for science and technology in 2011.
However, in March 2023 had to defend himself against fraud and conspiracy charges in a San Francisco courtroom.

Mike Lynch in his younger years before he became one of Britain’s most high profile entrepreneurs faced 25 years in a U.S. prison, if convicted on conspiracy, securities and wire fraud related to the $11 Billion sale of Autonomy to HP in 2011. Lynch denied acquitted on all counts

The 59-year-old tycoon had spent much of the previous year living under house arrest with an electronic tag attached to his ankle.
Lynch was facing to spend 25 years in a U.S. prison, if convicted on 16 counts of conspiracy, securities and wire fraud related to the $11 Billion sale of his tech company, Autonomy, to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. Lynch personally made more than $654 million [£500 million], from the sale.
HP to later wrote down three-quarters of the value of Autonomy only a year after buying it. The company fired Lynch, accusing him and other Autonomy executives of having grossly inflated its size and profits during the sale.
Lynch denied those charges and fought extradition to US for more than a decade.
In 2020 Lynch lost the first round of the legal wrangle when a London High Court ruled that HP had ‘substantially won’ the civil fraud case it filed a year earlier in the UK, – that was based on similar allegations.
Lynched found himself embroiled in a separate three-year battle to avoid being extradited to face criminal charges. He argued in court that American prosecutors were guilty of legal overreach which threatened UK sovereignty and its citizens.
After losing that fight in May 2023, U.S. Marshals Service escorted him into a San Francisco courtroom in May 2023, to face charges. Lynch denied those charges and maintained he was innocent.
Ultimately he beat those charges and on June 6, 2024, he was acquitted of fraud by a jury in San Francisco, same as former Autonomy finance executive Stephen Chamberlain, who faced the similar charges, only to be acquitted on all counts.