American couple whose yacht was hijacked in Grenada were likely thrown overboard and are dead, police say

The family of a missing American couple whose yacht was hijacked by three escaped prisoners in Grenada is holding out hope that they’ll be found alive even as police say they are probably dead.

🔎 What happened?

The married couple, identified as Ralph Hendry, 66, and Kathy Brandel, 71, of Virginia, were spending the winter cruising the Caribbean on the catamaran, dubbed Simplicity, their friends and family say.

The yacht was found anchored and abandoned off a beach on the island of Saint Vincent.

The couple’s sailing club, the Salty Dawg Sailing Association, said in a statement that a good samaritan who spotted the boat boarded it, “found evidence of apparent violence” and contacted authorities.

🗓️ The timeline of events

At a news conference Monday, Royal Grenada Police Commissioner Don McKenzie said that the three prisoners — identified as Ron Mitchell, 30, Anita Stanislaus, 25, and Trevon Robertson, 19 — escaped from the South Saint George Police Station in Grenada on Feb. 18, hijacked the catamaran on Feb. 19 and headed to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, where they were rearrested on Feb. 21.

“Information suggests that while traveling between Grenada and Saint Vincent, they disposed of the occupants,” McKenzie said. “We have nothing conclusive to say that the individuals are dead. We still hold out hope that in spite [of] what might be a low probability, that they would turn up alive somewhere.”

🇺🇸 What were they doing in the Caribbean?

Hendry and Brandel were veteran sailors who had sailed the yacht from Hampton, Va., to Antigua, and were spending the winter cruising in the eastern Caribbean, their sailing club said.

“This does appear to be a tragic event — our hopes and prayers are with Ralph and Kathy and the family who love them,” Bob Osborn, the association’s president, said in a statement over the weekend. “In all my years of cruising the Caribbean, I have never heard of anything like this.”

According to an annual report by the Caribbean Security Safety Net, reported crimes against yachts in the Caribbean is relatively rare but on the rise. In 2022, the report stated that overall reported crimes increased substantially from the previous year with "a significant increase in violent crimes," including assault and robbery.

↘️ What is their family saying?

Relatives of the couple had been clinging to hopes they would turn up alive.

“We are doing our best to try and get answers to find out what is next in terms of hopefully finding them safely recovered somewhere on the islands,” Nick Buro, Brandel’s son, told CNN Sunday. “But of course from the evidence that’s been found on the boat, we are concerned that there might be a possibility that they aren’t with us.”

Buro said his mother and Hendry had sold their home in 2013 to buy the boat.

“It was their home. Everything they had, they owned, was on that boat. It was their life,” he said. “[They] choose a lifestyle that most of us would never imagine could be done. And they loved every minute of it, and they saw many parts of the world and just lived a life of joy and love.”

🖥️ What’s next?

A GoFundMe page created to raise money for the couple's family noted that Brandel had recently become a first-time grandmother.

She “found immense joy in the presence of her grandson — joy that has now been abruptly taken away,” the page said.

The campaign has so far raised more than $50,000, which will “go towards recovering the vessel and belongings, covering funeral costs, and providing support to the grieving families as they try to comprehend the depth of this tragedy.”