Banking boss and wife ‘suffocated to death in air bubble as oxygen ran out’

Four of the seven Bayesian sinking victims, (L-R) Neda Morvillo, Chris Morvillo, Judy Bloomer and Jonathan Bloomer (Picture: Getty/EPA/AFP)

Four of the seven people killed after a superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily last month suffocated in an air bubble.

Jonathan and Judy Bloomer and Chris and Neda Morvillo died of suffocation in an air bubble as oxygen ran out in their cabin on the Bayesian, Italian media reports.

Three other people, Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, and the yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas, also died.

La Repubblica reports that the post-mortems of the Bloomers and the Morvillos found no water in their lungs, suggesting they died of suffocation as the air pockets they were in ran out of oxygen and instead filled with carbon dioxide.

Recovery divers found their bodies on the left side of their cabins, despite the yacht tilting to the right after sinking – which could show they moved to seek out the last pockets of air.

There were no injuries found on the bodies of the four victims examined so far, La Repubblica added.

The final three post-mortems are set to take place on Friday, and the Bayesian is set to be raised from the sea bed as part of the investigation, Sky News reports.

15 people, including Mike Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares and mum Charlotte Golunski with her one-year-old daughter Sofia, survived the sinking.

The crew of the Bayesian said they ‘saved who they could’ and were ‘walking on walls’ of the tilted ship to try and rescue as many people as possible.

Italian prosecutors have placed the boat’s captain, New Zealander James Cutfield, and two Britons, engineer Tim Parker Eaton and crew member Matthew Griffiths, under investigation for suspected multiple manslaughter and culpable shipwreck.

The three men have been allowed to leave Sicily as the investigation continues.

Prosecutors and experts are still trying to explain what happened between the storm hitting the Bayesian at 3.50am, and the ship going down in just 60 seconds by 4.06am on the morning of August 19.

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