Could new CCTV finally solve mystery of missing British woman in Caribbean?

New footage has been released of Sarm Heslop, just six hours before she vanished on her boyfriend’s yacht of the coast of St John island in the Caribbean (Picture: BBC/VIPD)

New footage could finally shine some light on the mysterious disappearance of a British woman in the Caribbean.

Sarm Heslop, 41, vanished from her boyfriend Ryan Bane’s yacht near St John in the US Virgin Islands on March 8, 2021.

The new footage shows the couple walking on a jetty in Cruz Bay before they board a dinghy to Bane’s 47ft, £500,000 Siren Song catamaran, just six hours before Sarm was reported missing.

Mr Bane, 49, has said that she must have either fallen overboard from the yacht or drowned while swimming as he was asleep.

Sarm with her boyfriend Ryan Bane, who was with her just hours before she went missing on his yacht (Picture: MEGA)

He noticed she was missing after being woken up by his anchor alarm at 2am.

However, he did not alert the coastguard until 11.46am the following morning.

Officers reported finding Mr Bane ‘heavily intoxicated’ and that he refused to allow them to search the boat and failed to provide paperwork.

Sarm’s family and friends have vowed to keep looking for evidence in order to ‘lay her to rest’ (Picture: PA)

He is yet to be formally questioned by police, the Telegraph reports.

The new CCTV clip will be shown in an upcoming BBC documentary entitled Missing in Paradise: Searching for Sarm, which will air on Wednesday.

Sarm’s mother Brenda and her close friends have vowed to keep searching for information in order to ‘lay her to rest’.

Sarm met Mr Bane seven months into a voyage across the Atlantic with friends (Picture: PA)

Accepting that her daughter is likely no longer alive, Brenda said she had not been able to ‘grieve properly’.

Sarm met Mr Bane in 2019, seven months into a sailing expedition across the Atlantic Ocean with friends.

The yacht owner rents out his luxury boat to wealthy clients.

Mr Bane’s £500,000 catamaran, named Siren Song, which he hired out to wealthy clients (Picture: MEGA)

While he claims the pair returned to the yacht at 10pm that night, the CCTV footage shows them boarding the dinghy for the boat at 8.45pm, a journey which would normally take just ten minutes.

Several hours passed before he reported her missing, a timeline labelled ‘suspicious’ by US Virgin Islands police commissioner Mario Brooks.

Mr Bane’s lawyer, David Cattie, who spoke to the BBC documentary, said there was no evidence the yacht owner was involved in Sarm’s disappearance and challenged any notion the sequence of events was unusual.

He said the timeline inconsistency could be explained by the stress Mr Bane was under.

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