A man sentenced to 8 years for the death of his wife on honeymoon

May 28, 2019, 7:30 pm UTC

By Associated press

MIAMI – A man whose wife went missing on their honeymoon at sea was sentenced by a federal judge to eight years in prison for manslaughter.

Lewis Bennett, 42, apologized to the family of Isabella Hellman at a hearing Tuesday before US District Judge Federico Moreno in Miami. He gave up appealing.

Defense lawyers have applied for a seven-year sentence, one year less than the maximum number set in a plea agreement reached last November. Bennett had originally been charged with murder, the investigators claiming that he had deliberately attempted to sink the ship, but had subsequently dropped the lawsuits.

"It's not because I'm expecting him to commit this crime again," said Judge Moreno. "The punishment is for punishment."

Before Moreno announced his decision, Bennett, a dual Australian and British citizen, asked the judge to let him out of jail earlier so he could continue to raise the couple's daughter, who was a baby when her mother was faded away. Emelia Bennett turns 3 in July and is raised by her parents in Scotland.

"If you allow me to be with my daughter as soon as possible," Bennett said. "I want to raise her in a way that respects my wife's wishes."

But Moreno sided with prosecutors and chose eight years of imprisonment and three years of parole.

Hellman disappeared when the couple left the Bahamas in May 2017.

According to a statement from the US Attorney 's Office, Bennett had already sailed, particularly in the area of ​​emergency procedures training, and had already traveled from St. Marteen to Australia. His wife, a naturalized American citizen born in Cuba, had not been trained in emergency navigation and had less experience, prosecutors said.

The couple had been married for three months when they took the boat for a delayed honeymoon in St. Martin, Puerto Rico and Cuba in late April. After leaving Cuba on May 14, Bennett asked Hellman to take control of the boat for the night so that he could rest in the cabin of the boat, according to court documents. He did not require that she wear a lifejacket, harness, or personal locator, prosecutors said in her statement.

He said that he had woken up when the craft had hit something and that Hellman was gone.

Deputy US attorney, Kurt Lunkenheimer, said Tuesday that Bennett "did not look enough, while he was an experienced sailor".

The government maintained that it was not using the satellite phone to ask for help. Instead, he loaded provisions and stolen money on a life raft and boarded it. Prosecutors said he had called for help 45 minutes after he woke up, realizing that his wife was gone.

A US Coast Guard helicopter rescued him and took him to the Florida Keys. The authorities searched for Hellman for four days, but never found his body. A Florida state judge said Hellman died earlier this month to allow the couple's daughter to inherit his mother's estate.

"Hellman's death came as a result of Bennett's knowledge of circumstances that could reasonably have allowed him to foresee a threat to life," the US Attorney's Office statement said on Tuesday.

The FBI said that an inspection had revealed that holes in the hull had been inflicted from the inside and that hatches had been opened in order to sink the boat.

Bennett was initially arrested and charged with murder last year before reaching a plea agreement with federal prosecutors. He had already pleaded guilty to carrying $ 100,000 in stolen coins.

The defense lawyer declined to comment. A Hellman family lawyer said that his relatives were satisfied with the judge's decisions and were looking forward to seeing Emelia in Scotland soon.

"There is nothing that can or can be done to bring Isabella back," said Mitchell Kitroser, a lawyer who spoke on behalf of the Hellman family and said they were planning a visit in June. Emelia "lost her mother but that does not mean that she lost her mother's family."

An earlier version of this report had an incorrect age for Lewis Bennett.