As the last of the bodies have been recovered from Mike Lynch‘s sunken Bayesian yacht, a conspiracy theory expert has not ruled out foul play.
The luxury boat went down off the Sicilian coast in the wee hours of Monday August 19, after the anchor gave way during a freak tornado, known as a waterspout, battered the vessel.
15 people were rescued after they clambered into a a lifeboat, while six people on board remained missing.
READ MORE: Heartbreaking photos of Hannah Lynch, 18, shared by family as body pulled from shipwreck
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On Friday, August 24, the last victim of the tragedy was pulled from the water, believed to be the 18-year-old daughter of tech tycoon, Mike Lynch who also died in incident. Of the 22 people on board, seven people are confirmed dead.
(Image: PA)
Questions remain over how the yacht sunk, and so quickly at that. Superyachts and billionaires are fertile grounds for conspiracy theories, and corners of the internet are buzzing with possible explanations as to what happened, with some claiming Lynch was assassinated.
Sander van der Linden, a professor of social psychology at the University of Cambridge, who studies conspiracy theories, has weighed in on why people are running to conspiracy theories.
“The brain’s always trying to connect the dots,” he told The Telegraph. “It’s hard for people to deal with random coincidences, however unlikely they are.
“Social media allows for this kind of online sleuthing where people are finding their own stories and sharing with other people, which creates this vortex of unverified rumours.
(Image: PA)
“There’s a 0.001% chance they were assassinated.”
He then added however, that this theory “was not the most likely explanation”.
The assassination theory stems from a number of factors.
The 59-year-old billionaire was on his lavish boat celebrating his recent acquittal on a fraud case that could have sent him to jail for 25 years.
The 10-year legal battle was launched after Hewlett-Packard, who bought Lynch’s company Autonomy in 2013 for $11billion, accused Lynch and his vice president of finance Stephen Chamberlain, of fiddling the numbers.
Lynch and Chamberlain’s chances of winning were slim, with less than one case in 200 of similar cases end in acquittal.
(Image: BAIA Santa Nicolicchia/AFP via G)
However, both of them walked away free men, only to be struck by tragedy soon after.
Chamberlain was fatally hit by a car while jogging near his Cambridgeshire home, Saturday August 17. Lynch’s body was recovered on Thursday, August 22.
While the coincidence is too great for many to ignore, Ven der Linden said: “People should be paying attention to evidence-based explanations, which take time to develop.”
He added: “People don’t like the idea that life isn’t certain, that we don’t have all the answers, that you could die at any minute, that bad accidents could happen to you. It’s easier to believe it was all intentional and planned [rather] than somebody disappearing because a storm sank his boat.”
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