[Ashleigh Banfield, Hln Host:] Washed overboard sailing to the islands.
[Unidentified Male:] There are some inconsistencies...
[Banfield:] Her husband says one minute she was on deck, the next she was gone.
[Unidentified Female:] They were arguing a lot.
[Banfield:] But is he telling the truth?
[Unidentified Female:] Everything changed after the baby was here.
[Banfield:] What happened to beautiful Isabella, and why is the FBI involved?
[Unidentified Female:] Maybe there`s a miracle that is going to happen.
[Vonda Evans, Wayne County Circuit Judge:] Be quiet! Take him back. Take him out!
[Banfield:] It is never good when a judge gets this mad at you in court.
[Evans:] Take him out now!
[Banfield:] That`s a sex offender who just told the judge "F you." While his behavior could cost him, will her behavior cost her?
[Evans:] No, you
[Banfield:] She`s charged with manslaughter, though her boyfriend killed himself.
[Unidentified Male:] Ms. Carter is alleged to have strongly influenced his decision.
[Banfield:] Text after text suggesting that he do it.
[Unidentified Female:] "You just have to do it. You said you were going to do it."
[Banfield:] But when are words considered deadly weapons?
[Unidentified Female:] "And you can`t make a promise. You need to just do it. No more waiting."
[Banfield:] Will Michelle Carter go to prison for all the things she said? It`s the body slam heard `round the block. Short skirt, high heels, a sorority girl goes down, with broken bones and bruises. What happened to the cops? Not what you`d expect. A car swerves through a red light, its driver wracked by seizures.
[Unidentified Male:] I was praying that he wasn`t going to hit the gas.
[Banfield:] But a man`s leap of faith may have saved the day, and a whole lot of people.
[Unidentified Male:] I didn`t think about it. I just did it.
[Banfield:] And remarkable survival. An out-of-control car nearly kills a woman and child. How that woman`s heroic actions may have saved his life. Hello, everyone. I`m Ashleigh Banfield. This is PRIMETIME JUSTICE. Have you ever dreamed of grabbing the one you love and setting sail for the islands? It`s like the perfect honeymoon. And that is exactly what Isabella Hellman was thinking as she planned and packed and posted about her big adventure with her new husband, Lewis Bennett. They were off on a 37-foot catamaran, nothing but blue skies and a full sail and the ocean spray. Isabella could not contain herself, gushing on Facebook, "Caribbean, here I come." But somewhere between Cuba and the Florida Keys, the deep ocean blue became a dark night of terror. And it all started when Lewis put in a distress call about 1:00 AM. He said the boat was taking on water. They`d hit something in the blackness of night. Isabella was nowhere to be found. So Lewis jumped into the raft and escaped with his life. For three days, they searched for Isabella, the U.S. Coast Guard finally calling it off after 7,000 square miles. But the grieving husband did not get a comforting welcome from his in-laws. He was instead met by accusations that he killed her. Isabella`s sister recalls the last phone call she had before Isabella disappeared at sea.
[Dayana, Isabella`s Sister:] She called me and said, Oh, hi. We disconnected the phone. It`s been really hard for us to connect it because his friend told me it`s hard. And then she said, I`m in the middle of the ocean right now. We left Cuba. She didn`t tell me what time, but she said, We left Cuba. And that`s it and she said, I`ll see you tomorrow.
[Banfield:] While the Coast Guard called off the search for Isabella, the FBI is just getting started on its search for answers. I want to start with Karen Curtis. She`s the news director for WFTL radio in West Palm Beach, Florida. Karen, where does this case stand? Where is this husband right now?
[Karen Curtis, Wftl Radio:] Lewis Bennett is has not been declared an actual suspect. He`s a known person in an investigation. The FBI is involved because this happened on the high seas. It`s an accident, but if there needs to be an arrest, the FBI would be the agency to do it. So Lewis Bennett we didn`t even know the FBI was involved here in Florida until Lewis Bennett called the Bogota Police Department to go to his in-laws` apartment to get some items that he felt were stolen, and he wanted a civil assist from the police department to go with him. And when the police showed up, the sister started yelling that, you know, you killed my sister. So the...
[Banfield:] So wait go back. Wait. Go back. Items that were stolen. He came back to his home, and as I understand it, he`s now missing an iPad, clothing, handbags, an engagement ring, and he suspects that they are at Isabella`s sister`s place?
[Curtis:] Yes, he did, and he says that he has videotape to prove it. But the police said, Look, you need to leave, and that`s when they called the Coast Guard and the FBI, and the FBI said, Yes, we`re looking into this...
[Banfield:] Well, why all the suspicion?
[Curtis:] ... disappearance.
[Banfield:] Why on earth would they not think right away, My God, our sister has had this terrible accident with her newlywed husband? Why all of a sudden the suspicion that he did it, in their mind?
[Curtis:] Well, this happened, ironically enough, on Mother`s Day. And she really didn`t want to leave the 9-month-old. She had the baby. They got married in February in Atlanta, and then they went on this honeymoon a couple mounts later. And she was telling her sisters that and her friends that they weren`t really getting along, that Lewis was, you know, not letting her pierce the baby`s ears, and you know, she didn`t wasn`t able to spell the baby`s name in the Colombian way. And there were just all kinds of arguments on how to feed the baby. And he wanted to take the baby to Australia, she did not want to leave Dell Ray Beach. So there was that. But we don`t even know where he is right now, quite honestly, Ashleigh, because he did tell someone that his passport went down with the boat, but it`s possible that he`s either in England or he is either in Australia. And he did say that...
[Banfield:] So he`s left the country? He`s not in the U.S. right now?
[Curtis:] He may not be, but he did say he lost his passport, but he said he went to Cuba last week to look for her. So it`s very strange.
[Banfield:] OK. So listen, I`ve been the mother of a 9-month-old, and I can tell you firsthand that first year, there`s a lot of nasty words exchanged. You`re lacking sleep. You`re exhausted. So if there was some consternation between the two of them over the baby, it could be explained away by first year of parenting. And I look at Isabella`s Facebook, and on May 2nd from Culebo, Puerto Rico, she posted "Another day in paradise" and had this photograph where it looked as though they were really having the time of their lives. And none of her posts suggested anything was wrong. Instead, that this vacation was fabulous.
[Curtis:] Yes, he went down they had just left Cuba, and he went down about 8:00 PM to go to sleep and left her up on deck with a lifevest. But she was piloting the boat. Then at 1:00 AM, he says that the boat hit something. He went up top and she wasn`t up there. He was able to get a beacon and the lifeboat, and that`s when the Coast Guard found him at 4:00 AM somewhere about 40 miles west of the Bahamas.
[Banfield:] Is there something weird about that, Karen? I mean, he`s a sailor. I don`t know how much Isabella was a sailor, but to go down below at around 8:30 at night, I`m tired, and to be sleeping until 1:00 AM while your wife is on the helm and then mysteriously, they hit something in the darkness. The hull is damaged. She`s presumably, if you believe his story, swept off the boat. Was she a sailor who could man the helm by herself at night?
[Curtis:] They had met on line four years ago, and she would meet up with him. He was really never on Florida. She would meet up with him on the boat here and there around the world. And so there I guess she did sail with him a little bit, but it`s not been established that she was actually a mariner, you know, could sail a boat at night, which is not easy.
[Banfield:] No. I don`t want to suggest for a minute that a woman can`t do that. I sailed around
[Curtis:] You`re right. The timeframe is a little bit long because it is only 90 miles through the Florida Straits. So they were just off of the Bahamas, about 40 miles off of one of the keys there. So it`s not clear what happened and why it took them so long.
[Banfield:] OK, one other question, the damage to the hull. There is a suggestion that the authorities say an unknown submerged object came in contact with that hull. Have they forensically looked at that hull to see about the damage, whether it actually was consistent with that story or whether it was, say, perhaps man-made damage?
[Curtis:] Well, they were able to find the boat. It`s a 37-foot catamaran, and they do have it in their possession, the FBI does, in a warehouse. So they are examining it forensically to see, you know, exactly what happened, if things match up with his story. You know, it`s odd to hit something in the middle of the ocean, what it would be. It`s very odd.
[Banfield:] Well, that brings me to Steve Moore, who`s a former FBI agent and a CNN law enforcement contributor. Steve, you just heard those facts and the pattern. I can see this both ways. How do you see it?
[Steve Moore, Cnn Law Enforcement Contributor:] Yes, I can see it both ways, but one way is really concerning me. There are some things in here that are just it would each each one of these individual things could possibly have happened, but they would be unlikely. To have five or six unlikely things happen in a row plus, you have some information that`s hard to explain it makes me very suspicious. It turns on the FBI investigator switch in me.
[Banfield:] So would you be thinking right away, OK, they`re kind of newlyweds. They have a 9-month-old baby together. Let`s look for life insurance, or would you be going the other route, and that`s the forensic route? I want to see where the damage to that hull came and whether it looks like it was man-made or it was, say, maybe a container that was floating in the deep blue sea at night that no one could ever see if they were sailing at night?
[Moore:] Well, Ashleigh, as an FBI agent, I wouldn`t be called in on this unless somebody already had suspicions. The FBI doesn`t sit out at the yacht harbor. What happened here is almost undoubtedly the Coast Guard called the FBI and said, From our professional opinion, something`s not matching up here. And then when you read the story I, as an FBI agent, I`ll read his statement and he said that, We hit some submerged object. If you were down. Well, if you were down in the cabin asleep and came up and she was gone, how do you know what you hit? How do you know it was submerged? How do you know you didn`t hit something something that was...
[Banfield:] I`ll answer that question. I`ll answer that question. If you`re in real deep water and you hit something, it`s a submerged object because it ain`t a coral reef, and maybe that`s why. I feel like I have an answer to every one of his statements, but I feel like I can actually back up every one of his statements, as well. I do have this question. And I know that you wouldn`t be out there, you know, ticking away with the forensic tools on the hull of the yacht, but would you be curious as to whether there was anything in the liferaft, meaning if this was all a plot that he actually orchestrated, would he get into a liferaft in the middle of the night between Cuba and Florida and risk his life with no water, no food, nothing?
[Moore:] If he hypothetically, if the boat was the scene of a murder and he wanted to get the boat under salt water, that`s his main option. And he had an eperb. He had the tracker, so it wasn`t a low probability that he was going to be found. The other thing... No, but it no, you better have an eperb. But the fact that he knew he had an eperb would especially in good weather, would kind of ease any concern you might have about whether you are found if you had to abandon your boat. The other thing was, how hard did he hit it that she was thrown off? And if she was wearing a lifevest, why isn`t she floating?
[Banfield:] It is so mysterious! Real quickly, Karen Curtis, if you`re with me, do we know thinking about a life insurance policy? Do we know whether there was one, whether it`s been accessed or is that all silence?
[Curtis:] No, we don`t know anything in terms of any life insurance policy that he may or may not have had on her. They had only been married since February, so but he does have the baby, and the family said, Please don`t take the baby out of the country because that`s the last vestige that we have of our sister, you know, is this baby, and he`s somewhere with the baby.
[Banfield:] Well, the plot thickens, and clearly, with the FBI involved, this story is not over. We`ll keep track of the clues as they come in and we`ll update our audience. Karen Curtis, Steve Moore, thank you both. Do appreciate it. An outburst I think it`s Fair to call it an outburst in a courtroom and a judge`s response to it, and it is unlike anything you have ever heard in a courtroom before!
[Anthony Thornton, Convicted Of Rape:] I`m innocent.
[Evans:] Be quiet! Take him back! Take him out! Take him out now!
[Banfield:] Those are "F" bombs. Not just from him, from her, too. What caused this shout-down between these two? And could it possibly cost this convicted rapist at sentencing, or could it cost the judge an appeal? We`re going to look into that in a moment. Also, a jury found a former MMA fighter guilty of brutally beating and sexual assaulting his porn star ex-girlfriend. Tonight, War Machine finds out how long that`s going to cost him behind bars.