Disappearance Before Dawn

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“A little after 4 o’clock in the morning, we were awakened by what I’d call loud cheering, something like a college drinking game,” says Hyman. “This happened two distinct times.”

The deputy chief was awakened by what he thought were at least six loud voices, at the exact same time that — as Josh’s lawyer told the story— George and his drinking buddies had returned from a fruitless search for Jennifer who’d gone missing.

Chief Hyman, then a 31-year police veteran with a number of homicide investigations under his belt, reflexively noted the time, called the ship’s security office to complain about the noisy party underway and banged on the wall, to no avail.

Hyman: The voices continued. They weren’t as loud as they were during the drinking games. But then after a couple of minutes we heard voices outside the door of the Smith cabin. I don’t recall hearing the door open. I assumed they were leaving the party. But that was just my impression at the time.

For a few minutes the next door cabin quieted down, male voices in normal conversation, the chief couldn’t for the most part make out words or subjects.

Hyman: This went on for a period of time. And then we heard what sounded like arguing out on the balcony.
Murphy: Arguing?
Hyman: Yes. Several couple of male voices arguing. It wasn’t a physical confrontation. It was just like they were arguing over some type of point.
Murphy: So after you heard these voices on the balcony part of the cabin, what happened next?
Hyman: Well, then I heard a voice just repeatedly say "goodnight" and my first assumption was that someone was trying to usher these people that were arguing out of the cabin. In fact, you could hear the progression through the cabin...

Now it was about 4:15 in the morning. Chief Hyman heard the adjacent cabin door open and voices receding in the hallway.

Hyman: So, I waited for a couple of seconds and then opened the door and looked out.
Murphy: What did you see?
Hyman: I saw three younger males walking down the hallway.

Young males — but only three of them — leaving George's cabin. Then through the wall, Chief Hyman heard a single male voice moving about speaking in a conversational tone though, oddly, no one replying. Then there was more loud noise.

Hyman: It’s what I would say sounded like furniture moving. Like, again, my impression was, ‘Good! They’re cleaning up the room.’

Whoever was next door the chief says he heard them moving between the cabin and the balcony. It was now approaching 4:20.

Hyman: And then for the last, maybe, couple of minutes it appeared to be concentrated out on the balcony area. The chairs on the balcony are metal so they make a different type of sound. I heard that noise and then there was silence. It got very quiet. Heard no voice. It was just very quiet.
Murphy: Silent for how long?
Hyman: Yes. Maybe three minutes, approximately, and at that point that’s when I heard what I described as a “horrific thud.”
Murphy: Tell me in detail...
Hyman: The first thought in my mind was somebody fell on the balcony because it was the last place I had heard anyone. However, I quickly dismissed that because the noise was just too loud. There was actually a reverberation to the noise. And somebody just falling you know off their feet to something on a balcony would not cause that much noise.

Unbeknownst to Clete Hyman, Pat and Greg Lawyer on the other side of the Smiths, say they had been awakened not by the noise from the cabin but by three soft male voices— two of them accented— in the hallway before the commotion all started. They heard the cabin door open.

Pat Lawyer: I figured that this young man was drunk or inebriated. And they were calmly bringing him back to his room. In my mind, there was a young person who was saying, ‘Settle down, calm down, George.’

Pat and Greg— on almost exactly the same timeline, just after 4 a.m.— didn’t hear what Clete Hyman thought was a drinking game—but they did hear that same moving about of furniture. Where the police officer read it as the room being noisily put back in order, Pat and Greg heard violence— a room they thought, was being trashed.

Greg Lawyer: And then all of a sudden there was a lot of noise coming from the cabin next door, the George Smith cabin, and what it sounded to me like is somebody was throwing things against the wall, like throwing furniture in the room against the wall or against the floor.
Pat Lawyer: I kept saying to my husband, ‘What in the world is he doing there?’ and I did use the term ‘he’. I didn’t use the term they because we did not hear any voices.
Greg Laywer: And these there were maybe a series of shuffles and bangs against the wall. And then it ended with one big thud like somebody had picked up the couch or the sofa and threw it against the wall. And then that occurred, it was maybe a stretch of like two minutes, something like that, where these thuds took place, what I call trashing the room and then it went quiet.

After the awful thud, both the deputy chief and the couple heard a knocks— two sets of raps on the Smith cabin door about 4:30 a.m.

Greg Lawyer, curious, opened the door to see two uniformed ship personnel standing outside the Smith cabin.

Greg Layer: And I looked at them and I said, ‘Hey, you guys , you better get in there because that room is trashed.’ That’s exactly what I said and then they sort of gave me the 'hi' sign. They didn’t say anything.

The cruise line confirms they were ship’s security officers responding to the noise complaint Clete Hyman made just after 4 a.m.

With the offending loud party now over, Royal Caribbean says the uniformed men left without entering the Smith cabin.

Chief Hyman and his wife could finally get some peace and quiet and a few hours sleep.

At 7 a.m., the chief went out on his balcony to take some snapshots of the Turkish port and peeked around the partition to the Smith cabin next door. He saw cigarette butts, and the metal chairs and coffee table moved.

Hyman: I noticed that the drapes had been pulled back. That was allowing me to see in that the bed appeared to have been slept in. The sheets were in disarray.
Murphy: Did you notice if the furniture in the room had in fact been moved around?
Hyman: I didn’t want to sit there staring in the room, they could have been in there and this was just literally a quick glance. I couldn't see that far into the room.

He didn’t look down from his balcony where he might have seen Emilie Rausch at that very moment photographing a blood stain, a picture she’d show to her mother later that afternoon. The image would jog a sleepy memory in her mom.

“She remembered hearing a scream late in the middle of that night too, and we put it together and we thought ‘This might be something that might be happening. This might be bad,’” said Rausch.

Murphy: Someone has reported a scream. Did you hear it?
Hyman: Never.

Deputy Chief Hyman told the same story to the ship’s security officers late that afternoon following the early morning thud. The policeman who wanted nothing more than to cruise the Mediterranean with his family, found work following him—a mystery right next door and he had crucial details.