911 call in Sarm Heslop missing person case never recorded, family says
The mother of the former UK flight attendant who went missing in the US Virgin Islands believes her daughter is dead, as the family revealed officials never recorded a 911 call tied to her disappearance.
Sarm Heslop, 41, was last seen on March 7, 2021, leaving a St. John bar with boyfriend Ryan Bane, who reported her missing to Virgin Islands police from his catamaran around 2:30 a.m. and then called the US Coast Guard to alert them to her disappearance later that morning.
But the 911 call to the Coast Guard was not recorded, her family said Tuesday, according to a Fox News report.
“Something doesn’t add up,” said mother Brenda Street in a statement, according to Fox News.
It’s the latest revelation that officials in the Virgin Islands have bungled the case since Heslop vanished with family and friends endlessly frustrated by the authorities’ inaction.
“It’s another setback,” Kate Vernalls, a friend of Heslop’s, told Fox News Wednesday. “It’s a door that was opened for us as an opportunity which has now been closed again, because a 911 call wasn’t recorded, which just feels absolutely insane. But if we’re being told that the call hasn’t been recorded, where do we go from here?”
Virgin Islands police declined to answer whether the first call was recorded and why the second call was not, according to Fox News.
The US Coast Guard told the Daily Mail the phone call was not recorded because of a “fault in the system.”
Police originally said they didn’t have surveillance footage of Heslop and Bane leaving the bar, but later reversed course and showed her parents a clip of the pair heading toward a dinghy last year.
But her parents have said the video they watched cut off before they got into it, according to a past BBC report.
Virgin Islands police officers can’t confirm if Heslop ever reached the yacht.
Bane, who worked as a sailor running a high-end Caribbean charter service at the time, met Heslop in 2020. She was working on his boat as a cook when she vanished.
Street, the heartbroken mother, told the BBC she believes her daughter is dead.
“Now after two years it’s not possible she is missing,” she said. “I don’t believe she is still alive – I wish to be able to find her and bring her home.”
“Sarm would never put her family and friends through this torment, this gut-wrenching heartache for this long,” Street said, adding. “I imagine her as a mermaid…. If she is in the ocean because she loved the ocean.”
While Bane claims the couple both returned to his catamaran, dubbed the Siren Song, he waited nine hours before contacting the Coast Guard to search for her after he initially called local police.
A full, forensic search of the boat has never been conducted, according to police.
Bane has not been accused of any wrongdoing connected to the case.
Police have not returned her phone or iPad to family, according to reports. The department told Fox News the probe into Heslop was ongoing, even as her name was spelled wrong in the statement.
“The Virgin Islands Police Department continues to send thoughts and prayers to the family, friends, and colleagues of Sarm Helsop (sic),” a department spokesman said in an email. “The VIPD Criminal Investigations Bureau continues to work this ongoing investigation and we will keep you updated on any further developments when provided.”
