Of the 22 people onboard the yacht, seven died in the sinking, including UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch.
Italian prosecutors have named James Cutfield, the captain of the Bayesian yacht that sunk last Monday, as a suspect in its manslaughter investigation into the deaths of the seven people who perished.
Prosecutors from the town of Termini Imerese in the Metropolitan area of Palermo, Sicily interrogated Cutfield for two hours on Sunday, marking his second round of questioning in the past week as part of the ongoing probe into the disaster.
The hearing lasted more than two hours, during which the authorities questioned Cutfield about several key issues: whether the tender door — separating the tender room from the engine room — had been opened, the position of the movable centreboard, and the exact timing of the events that transpired.
Uncertainty remains about the 32-minute delay between the vessel’s sinking and the launch of the signal flare alerting others to the danger.
Authorities have also sought clarification on other points, including the communication between the captain and the crew member responsible for weather warnings, the condition of the ship, and the operation of the mechanism used to seal the ship’s doors.
Cutfield was initially questioned as a witness, but his status has now changed to suspect following other witness testimonies and a review of underwater images of the wreck.
More crew members may also be investigated in the coming days.
Autopsies to begin on Tuesday
The autopsies of the seven victims of the shipwreck are set to begin at the Palermo Polyclinic on Tuesday, with the examinations expected to continue until Thursday.
Currently, two of the bodies are being held at the forensic medicine institute of the local university hospital, while the remaining five are at the local Rotoli cemetery.
A total of 22 people were on board, counting both crew and passengers. While 15 managed to escape onto a lifeboat when the yacht went down, seven others perished: British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah; Lynch’s New York lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Nada; Jonathan Bloomer, president of Morgan Stanley International, and his wife Anne Elizabeth; and Thomas Recaldo, the ship’s chef.
The group was said to be celebrating Lynch’s acquittal in a decade-long fraud investigation in the US linked to the sale of his software company Autonomy to tech company HP in 2011 for $11 billion (€9.8 billion).
A San Francisco jury found Lynch not guilty of multiple fraud and conspiracy charges in June.