The body of a 23-year-old yacht crew has been found floating in ankle-deep water in The Bahamas. Identified as Mason Hart, he was found completely nude and his wallet, clothes and the RIB tender he was driving at the time are still missing.
Hart, from Kay, Texas was a recent college graduate who moved to The Bahamas to spend the summer working on a friend’s sportfish yacht, Tucker Tales, in Marsh Harbour. He was found dead on Scotland Cay, nine miles from where he was staying.
According to Daniel Tucker, the owner of sportfish yacht Tucker Tales, Hart had taken the tender to go bar-hopping, stopping at Snappa’s Grill & Chill in Marsh Harbour and moving onto Nipper’s Beach Bar & Grill on Guana Cay (near Scotland Cay.)
Daniel Tucker speculates, “He may have given somebody a ride back to Marsh Harbour and that person may have been a predator”.
An autopsy was scheduled for yesterday, but Hart’s family is also requesting an independent examination and toxicology report to see if he was drugged at the time of his death.
“Right now the case is labeled suspicious death, but my personal opinion is that it will be changing to a homicide,” Tucker said in an interview with Houston news station KHOU.
Mason Hart’s parents have launched a GoFundMe page to cover the costs of “a second autopsy and toxicology tests” and to “help fund the effort to bring Mason’s body home”.
A $5,000 reward is also being offered for the recovery of the missing tender, a white Novurania RIB with a Honda outboard engine.