Nobody was heard leaving the Smith cabin, but in the aftermath of the reverberating crash this could have escaped notice. Also, one passenger reported hearing a woman scream right after the thud. The security officers rapped firmly on the door, but hearing nothing, went away. At about the same time, a plumber found Jennifer asleep against a door at the end of a hallway on Deck 9.
A cleaner, a facilities supervisor and two security officers promptly arrived on the scene. When they got Jennifer back to at a. Even if the night air were still, a ship moving across the open sea would have created its own breeze and caused the curtains to blow about. This is a curious detail: If George had gone out to smoke a cigar, would he have closed both the curtains and the glass sliders behind him? They say they were so impressed by their mountain of food that they photographed it, with the date and time-stamp affixed though these are known to be alterable.
The apparent spurning of their calls seems to confirm this. Turkish police boarded the ship just after noon on July 5; they took blood samples off the lifeboat canopy and combed Stateroom for clues. Each spot is small, only two centimeters long, but still big enough to suggest some sort of injury.
Whose blood was it? It seems an odd coincidence that George would bleed into his sheets and fall overboard on the same night. At a Kusadasi police station that day, police questioned Jennifer, Josh and the Russians. Once again Josh Askin provokes suspicion—not about what he did so much as what he knew.
She was with another man. The casino manager, Lloyd. Back on ship, Josh continued to trip alarms. Cabin attendant Francis Isidro claimed Josh asked him whether video cameras were installed in the corridors.
Yes, they were, Isidro said. Josh asked where. Isidro refused to tell him, and Josh walked away. Two or three nights after George disappeared, Joan Cox, the head cleaner on the Brilliance of the Seas , happened to ride an elevator with Josh and his shipboard girlfriend, Corey Adams. As rumors of a dalliance swirled, the Smiths were left wondering whether Jennifer was withholding something significant or merely embarrassing.
It struck them as unlikely that she was withholding nothing at all. Blackouts and amnesia are typical effects of such drugs, which have a notorious history on cruise ships. Moreover, that terrible night was the one and only time Jennifer ever suffered a complete memory blackout, she testified in Greenwich Probate Court. It is indeed curious that both George and Jennifer deteriorated so rapidly in the early morning of July 5.
Might have been excessive drinking, but it sounds like more than that to me. What happened next on the Brilliance of the Seas gave credence to dark imaginings about the Russians. On the night of July 6 leading into July 7, an eighteen-year-old from Georgia returned to her cabin accompanied by a male friend to find her traveling companion, also eighteen, trembling and shaking.
She told us she thinks she was raped and that it might have been videotaped. I asked her who did it and she said that it was Jeff, Greg and Rusty that she knew of. The ordeal had begun with plenteous vodka in the hot tub up on Deck The alleged victim herself reported, I started to feel tipsy, so I got out of the hot tub. They took her to their cabin instead, she reported.
I was on my back and Jeff got on top of me. The young woman then describes in graphic but strobe-like detail having sex with Jeff, Greg and Rusty. Thus Greg anticipated questions of consent with the poise of an old hand: If she cried rape, the camera would show otherwise.
When Rusty began taking his turn, the young woman wrote: I believe I blacked out. Sometime later, I opened my eyes, amazed that I could see. The young woman came forward with sexual assault charges, and on July 8 Royal Caribbean officials sat down for a tense meeting with the Rozenbergs. A handwritten notation in the Royal Caribbean file reads: Rozenberg family out of control.
Russian family all screaming and talking in Russian. Suspects [in the alleged rape] are very belligerent. The following day, when the ship docked in Naples, Royal Caribbean ejected the Rozenberg and Askin parties from the cruise. Josh Askin did not have sex with the young woman, though he was in the room, she said. Italian officials briefly looked into the rape charges, and then washed their hands of the matter, claiming they had no jurisdiction.
Family members, led by Bree Smith, started a social media campaign and appeared on a national news program to put the case back in the spotlight in hopes of coaxing information from other passengers on the vessel -- especially about a group of men who were partying with Smith and his wife that night. A video of the men, three Russian-Americans, surfaced publicly in , though a lawyer for the family claimed the FBI had it for years. It was reportedly filmed on the ship, shortly after Smith went missing, and featured the men making comic and rude comments about him.
The three have denied any involvement in his disappearance. Adding to the anger expressed in their Facebook post, the Smiths are disappointed that their son's belongings from the boat might be returned to Hagel-Smith. George A. Smith IV was 26 and working at the family liquor store in Cos Cob when they married. His wife was a teacher. We would love to, but you know most important to us is getting the culprits and getting them prosecuted and getting them convicted. And making sure that they go to jail.
Because my brother is in the bottom of the Aegean sea and the culprits are walking around. Bree Smith Jennifer, according to Royal Caribbean, was accompanied in Turkey by a female guest relations manager from the ship, a U. At no time was Jennifer left without resources or contact information. And we want answers. IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Politics Covid U. The family and its lawyers are renewing their focus on a group of passengers last seen with Smith, who disappeared July 5, , while on a Royal Caribbean cruise of the Mediterranean with his wife.
His body, which left bloodstains on an exterior overhang of the ship, was never found and nobody was ever charged in his disappearance. Attorney Michael Jones , who represents Smith's family, said cruise line documents obtained in a settlement over the Greenwich man's estate and the lawyer's own questioning of the four young men who are believed to have escorted a heavily intoxicated Smith back to his room that night raise doubts about their account of events.
When questioned by Jones about Smith, Askin did not answer, instead invoking his Fifth Amendment right. After returning Smith to his cabin, the four men are said to have ordered an enormous amount of room service for their own cabin.
So large was their order that they took photos of the room service, their attorneys have said. The cruise line has no record of the massive order, Jones said. A message seeking comment from Royal Caribbean was left with a media contact.
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