It has been over two weeks since Sarm Heslop disappeared in the US Virgin Islands from her boyfriend Ryan Bane’s boat.
Bane has been silent since then, refusing to answer questions from the police and resisting efforts to search his boat. But now Jeff Jones, who lives in the U.S. Virgin Islands and helped search for Heslop, said he saw Bane on the catamaran on Wednesday morning.
“This morning I saw Mr. Bane on the ship, inside the hall,” Jones told America’s Newsroom on Wednesday.
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Jones also said that the timeline of the night in which Heslop disappeared is difficult for him to understand.
“We are still trying to figure out how to fill that timeline with all the empty spaces,” he said on Wednesday. “It is a puzzle. The more we dig, the more pieces we find and eventually we join, but we have to keep digging.”
The couple went to dinner on the evening of March 7 before returning to Bane’s boat, Siren Song, which was anchored about 50 meters offshore in Frank Bay.
The manager of the restaurant where the couple had dinner, 420 to Center, confirmed that they left around 10 pm due to the island’s curfew and did not notice anything unusual.
Sarm Heslop, 41, was last seen on Ryan Bane’s catamaran off the coast of the U.S. Virgin Islands on March 7.
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Bane woke up around 2:30 am on March 8 and found that Heslop was missing, when he called 911 and “traveled to meet members of the [Virgin Islands Police Department] make a statement about Sarm “, according to his lawyer.
VIPD told Bane to contact the U.S. Coast Guard, which he did about 10 hours later, at 11:46 am.
“As part of the search and rescue effort, the Coast Guard boarded the ship to interview and collect information from the source of the report,” a Coast Guard spokesman told Fox News. “The Coast Guard later returned to the ship to conduct a standard ship security check to ensure proper equipment and compliance with applicable rules and regulations for the type of ship and operation.”
The Coast Guard and local authorities found no sign of Heslop in neighboring waters or on land, despite an extensive search.
Heslop’s family and friends are pressuring the police to search the boat on which she disappeared, but her boyfriend, Ryan Bane, resisted these efforts.
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The search continues, however, and the FBI is now helping local officials in their efforts.
“We can confirm that we are supporting local authorities in their investigative efforts,” an FBI spokeswoman told Fox News on Wednesday. “All we’re doing is providing support in whatever way they need it. Most of the time, it’s just support for their investigation.”
Jones said that search efforts have recently focused on neighboring lands, using drones to map areas that cannot be reached on foot.