Cruise ship passengers disappear

Clint Van Zandt • Profile • E-mail

Last month George Smith and Jennifer Hagel were enjoying a wedding cruise in the Mediterranean.  The weather was great, the ports of call wonderful, and the travel brochure-like life aboard ship consisted of dancing, drinking, and gambling with their fellow passengers.  But on July 5 something went terribly wrong.  The new bride may now be a new widow. 

According to some of the 2,300 passengers onboard the Royal Caribbean Brilliance of the Seas, the honeymooning Smiths were heavy partiers who had drank and gambled well into the night and early morning on the day Smith disappeared.  A police officer and his wife were in the cabin next door to the Smith’s and reported that noisy parties were the rule in the Smith’s cabin, usually into the wee hours of the morning.  The officer was awakened at about 4:00 a.m. on July 5 by loud noises from the cabin next door; another party in the Smith’s room.  This time, though, the officer and his wife heard yelling and arguing, the sound of heavy items being

The International Council of Cruise Lines told me that in the last year alone at least a dozen people have disappeared from cruise ships, most of whom remain unaccounted for. — Clint Van Zandt Former FBI Profiler

moved around the cabin next door, and then more noise from the balcony area next door to them.  All of this was followed by a final loud noise, with other passengers reporting a scream, and then, for the first time in 30 minutes, nothing but silence from the Smith’s cabin.

The daylight of July 5 found George Smith missing from his cabin with blood on the cabin floor, the bed, on the rail on the balcony, and a bloody handprint on the lifeboat just below the balcony of Smith’s room.  Smith was nowhere to be found, and a missing person’s investigation was ever so slowly instituted aboard ship.  The FBI has investigative responsibility for crimes committed against Americans on the high seas, and has entered this case.  FBI Agents and the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut are now reported to be focusing their attention on a teenager from California and two Russian brothers from the East Coast, all three of whom were seen taking Smith back to his room the night he disappeared.  Another report suggests that it was three crewmen from the ship that were captured on security cameras as they took Smith to his room, and perhaps fought and killed him that fateful night.  Yet other reports suggests that Smith had won money in the ship’s casino that night, a fact that the three (or six) men were assumed to be aware of, to include some type of incident in the casino.  Jennifer Hagel, who was reported to be sleeping in a lounge area of the ship, by one report perhaps drugged, and she did not, or could not, report her new husband as missing, later assuming that he was somewhere else aboard ship with his new friends.  Now she knows better….

The saga of persons missing from cruise ships is not limited to George Smith though.  In fact the International Council of Cruise Lines told me that in the last year alone at least a dozen people have disappeared from cruise ships, most of whom remain unaccounted for.  This is a small fraction of the 8.8 million people from North America who will book passage on cruise ships this year, but to their families, these losses are just as important as that of 18-year old Natalee Holloway, currently missing from a high school graduation trip in Aruba.

Virginian Amy Lynn Bradley was 23-years-old when she vanished from the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines Rhapsody of the Seas in March 1998 while traveling with her family in the Caribbean.  Her parents still keep the emotional porch light turned on at their home, awaiting her prayed for return.  Amy left her cabin early one morning for a smoke and never returned, with some believing that she was murdered and thrown overboard, while others believe she was kidnapped and sold as a sex slave.  Then there is 22-year-old James Scavone who disappeared from a Carnival cruise ship in the Caribbean on July 5, 1999, exactly six years to the day before George Smith’s disappearance.  An elderly couple disappeared from another Carnival Cruise ship, the Destiny, while enroute to Aruba in May 2005, and Annette Mizener disappeared from the Carnival Cruise ship Pride on December 4th, 2004 while enroute to Mexico with her daughter and parents.  Mizener’s purse was found by an outside railing but no trace of her has ever been found.  To add insult to painful injury, Annette’s husband subsequently received a form letter from this same cruise line offering his missing wife a chance to win a free cruise.

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