Virginia couple feared dead after 3 escaped prisoners steal their yacht in the Caribbean

A Virginia couple is feared dead after three escaped prisoners stole their docked yacht from a Caribbean marina and fled to another island.

Ralph Hendry and his wife Kathy Brandel, who live on their yacht, Simplicity, were last seen by a boating neighbor on Sunday afternoon in St. George’s on the island nation of Grenada, as they headed to a restaurant.

The pair live on their boat during the winter and arrived on the island two weeks prior, intending to stay another week before they went missing.

“They went into town [on Sunday] to have a little bite and to walk back,” Hendry’s sister Suellen Desmarais told WPTV-Tampa. “Somehow Ralph crossed paths in this teeny tiny town with these three men. What happened after that, we’re not sure.”

‘This was their whole life,” she added. “They didn’t own another home; they didn’t own cars; they owned Simplicity.”

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‘Ralph and Kathy are the kindest people in the entire world, and I just can’t understand how a tragedy like this could happen to people as kind and nice as them.”

Hendry and Brandel have sailed the same route for the past few years, from Virginia to Massachusetts before heading down to Florida to visit Desmarais, and eventually to the Caribbean where they would island hop, according to ABC News.

They went missing the same day that three fugitives, Ron Mitchell, 30, Trevon Robertson, 19, and Abita Stanislaus, 25, escaped the South St. George Police Station. The escapees then made their way to the marina, where they fled to another Caribbean island, authorities said.

They were subsequently captured on Wednesday in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

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“The RGPF is currently working on leads that suggest that the two occupants of the yacht may have been killed in the process,” the Royal Grenada Police Force said in a press release.

“It is believed that the occupants of the yacht were American citizens.”

The suspects each face one count of robbery with violence. Mitchell, a sailor, was separately charged with one count of rape, three counts of attempted rape, two counts of indecent assault and causing harm.

The Simplicity was recovered by authorities after a Good Samaritan found it anchored off of a St. Vincent beach. When they boarded, they discovered the boat had been ransacked and “found evidence of apparent violence.”

Authorities spotted bloodstains in the interior but no sign of the couple, according to People magazine.

Desmarais, however, is holding out hope the couple is still alive.

“It feels made up, and I just can’t comprehend why someone would do this?” she said. “Why didn’t someone just take the boat?

‘What happened in Grenada was a perfect storm. It was a perfect tragedy of a perfect storm of a perfect love story.”

She also told Fox 5 DC, “Why would I presume anyone is dead with no body and DNA? I want to remain positive. I want to believe that they are alive,”

Hendry and Brandel’s two children and Hendry’s nephew traveled to St. Vincent and the Grenadines to join the search for the couple on Friday, according to reports.

“This investigation is in its infancy stage and the RGPF have dispatched a team of senior investigators and a forensic specialist to St. Vincent in furtherance of this investigation,” the RGPF said.

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