The last man to see missing British yachtswoman Sarm Heslop alive is planning to sue the BBC over a documentary which alleged he was not telling the ‘full story’ about her disappearance, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
American boat captain Ryan Bane, who met Ms Heslop on dating app Tinder and employed her as a chef on his boat before she vanished five years ago, is said to be enraged by the documentary Missing in Paradise: Searching for Sarm, which aired last September.
The programme recounted the events of the night Sarm, 41, went missing in March 2021, when she returned to Bane’s £500,000 Siren Song boat, moored off St John in the US Virgin Islands.
Bane, 49, who has not been interviewed by police, has always insisted via his legal team that he woke at 2am to find her missing, and believes she fell overboard or drowned while swimming.
But the programme, presented by journalist Tir Dhondy, included claims made by Sarm’s friends – who launched the Find Sarm campaign – that Bane ‘wasn’t telling us the full story’.
It also featured interviews with his ex-wife Cori Stevenson, who alleged she had been violently assaulted by him and choked until she ‘passed out’ – a claim Bane insisted was ‘unproven or false’ in a statement on Facebook last year.
A well-placed source in the US told the MoS: ‘Ryan feels his name has been trashed. He wants to sue both individual members of the Find Sarm team and the BBC. He’s claiming defamation and trying to find a legal firm to represent him in the UK. As well as fighting back against the allegations, he wants to draw a line under what happened and move on with his life.’
On March 7, the couple apparently returned to the boat, moored 100ft from the shore in Cruz Bay, after visiting the 420 to Centre bar on St John.
Sarm Heslop (pictured) disappeared from Siren Song, the yacht belonging to her boyfriend Ryan Bane, in the Caribbean five years ago
Sarm met Ryan Bane (pictured) on dating app Tinder and was employed as a chef on his boat
Pictured: Bane’s 47-foot, £500,000 catamaran, Siren Song. Bane allegedly refused to allow police on board to conduct a forensic search of the boat
Bane says they fell asleep at 10pm and, after being woken at 2am by an anchor alarm, he realised she was missing.
He rowed ashore to inform the police half an hour later and was advised to contact the US Coast Guard.
He did not do this until 11.46am the next day and, when police arrived to conduct a forensic search of the boat, Bane allegedly refused to allow them on board.
He has never been formally questioned about Sarm’s disappearance and the boat has never been searched.
One of Sarm’s friends, Kate, told producers that she spoke to Bane soon after Sarm vanished.
Kate said: ‘I was asking questions and his response was always a massive, long pause and then a stuttering, “Ugh, I don’t know, I was pretty smashed”. I was beginning to have suspicions that maybe he wasn’t telling us the full story.’
Speaking on the documentary, Bane’s lawyer David Cattie insisted that his client was ‘devastated’ and that Sarm was the ‘love of his life’.
