Disappeared Without A Trace On A Cruise Ship

Disappeared Without A Trace On A Cruise Ship
The truth behind the idyllic façade
Drunkenness, drugs, sexual assault are everyday matters, and over 30 passengers have mysteriously disappeared from cruise ships in four years. The United States Congress is sounding the alarm.
Bones were recently found on Merry Island in Canada. The police suspected that they were the remains of Merrian Carver (40), who disappeared from the cruise ship “Mercury” on its way to Alaska in August 2004.

So the police contacted her father, Kendall Carver in Phoenix, Arizona in the hope that DNA tests would be able to give them the answer.

Merrian, the mother of one child, had left on the cruise without contacting her family. The second day the cabin attendant noticed that no one had used the bed, and reported this to her boss. He promised to tend to the matter. “Just forget it, and do your job,” he told the attendant.
Through the whole cruise the attendant therefore continued to place the customary chocolates on the pillow of the untouched bed. But no one saw Merrian again.

When the passengers went ashore in Vancouver, her possessions were packed away. No one notified the police or her family. Not until the retired businessman Kendall Carver reported her missing did the police learn of the disappearance. Carver has spent tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers and private investigators in his attempt to find out what happened.

Kendall Carver has gotten the US Congress investigate the cruise business after his daughter Merrian (pictured above) disappeared without a trace.
“It took the cruise ship company three days to conclude that Merrian had been on the cruise. By then 26 days had passed since her disappearance,” says Carver. “They confirmed that she hadn’t slept in her cabin after the first night, but hinted that this was not unusual. She could have spent the night in another cabin and gone ashore in Vancouver without having to document it, they said.

The company claimed that films from the surveillance cameras were erased after 12 days. That was a lie; they were erased after 30. But before that was known, it was too late. The trail was cold. Merrian’s case emphasizes what cruise passengers thousands of miles away from home ought to realize: At sea there are no police.
Kendall Carver has formed the group International Cruise Victims together with others who have lost loved ones on a cruise. One of them is Son Michael Pham, the son of Hue Pham and Hue Tran.

In May 2005 they took a cruise with “Carnival Destiny” which sailed between Barbados and Aruba in the Caribbean.
Not much is known about the disappearance on “Destiny” on May 12th.

The search on board yielded no result, and no traces of them have ever been found. Did they commit suicide? Hardly. Both were in good heath, and they were looking forward to a long-planned cruise back to Vietnam to see their relatives again. They were two American citizens at the happiest time in their lives, but they disappeared without a trace or any witness, declares Son Michael Pham.
24 cruise passengers disappeared between 2003 and 2006 (not including suicides and accidents due to drunkenness). Since then ten more passengers and two crew members have been reported missing. This has gotten the US Congress to investigate cruise ship security – to find out if they suppress or under-report disappearances. “A cruise ship is a small town,” says Congressman Christopher Shays. “Traveling on a cruise can be the way to commit the perfect crime.”

It is extremely difficult to solve a murder without a body, and the chances of finding a passenger tossed into the sea are minuscule. The security officers don’t always seal off the crime scene, take suspects into custody, or interrogate witnesses as they are supposed to.

From 2003 to 2005 no fewer than 178 such ship-board attacks were reported by ships owned by the 15 companies that account for 85 % of the world’s cruises. The FBI thinks the number is even higher. Royal Caribbean alone, which has 25 % of the passengers, registered over 100 complaints about sexual assaults during the same period.

Dianne’s Death
Mystery: Hue Pham and Hue Tran disappeared on “Carnival Destiny” between Barbados and Aruba in the Caribbean. Suicide seems unlikely.

Just how amateurishly tragedies at sea can be handled is shown by the death of Dianne Brimble (42), a mother of three from Brisbane. She had saved for two years for the cruise on the Australian ship “Pacific Sky.” But the first evening of her vacation in 2002 she lay naked, drugged, and dead on the floor of a cabin – ignored and scorned by her attackers.

A toxicology report revealed that Brimble, who rarely even took aspirin, had gotten an overdose of the party drug GBJ or “liquid ecstasy” – often described as a “date-rape drug.” Before the ship arrived in harbor, the attackers had cleaned the cabin.
No one has been accused of the death. Not until this year was the autopsy hearing re-opened in Australia. Eight men were identified as “persons of interest.” Before the death that night, one of them was seen running naked around on the ship. But the security guards said that naked people on deck were not uncommon.

Digital camera pictures revealed that at least one man had sex with Brimble. Pictures were even taken while she lay lifeless and naked on the cabin floor. They were planning to throw her over board, but there were too many witnesses in the corridors.

The Brimble investigation brought to light a foreign cruise culture that openly encourages senseless round the clock drunkenness, drug abuse and casual sex. An advertisement for one of the cruise companies was shown in the court room. It showed sun tanned bikini-clad women with the text: “Seamen wanted.”

Safe Travel

“Young women are especially vulnerable, especially to the crew,” declares the former English security officer Geoff Furlong, who worked for six years on two cruise ships. “The police were never involved. If the passengers complained, they were mollified with campaign and free vacations. Such complaints were not even recorded. If I came across a crew member picking up young female passengers, I would report him to the captain to be put off at the next harbor at his own expense.”
The Facts

Terror Cruises

Robert Nelson, USA: February 15, 2001, “Sovereign of the Seas,” Bahamas. Went out on a diving trip arranged by the ship on a day others cancelled because of heavy seas. Was never found.

Christopher Caldwell, USA: July 22, 2004, “Carnival Cruise,” Mexico. Last seen on deck at 3:30 AM by a bartender who said that Christopher was dead drunk after a night in the casino. He did nothing to help him.

Annette Mizener (37), USA: December 4, 2004, “Carnival Pride,” Mexico. Reported missing the last evening of a nine day cruise. Her purse was found near the railing on the lower deck. A nearby surveillance camera had been covered over.

Andrew Gready, Australia: January 7, 2005, “Pacific Sky,” Brisbane. On a cruise with eight friends. Jumped over board (for fun?) on the last evening. Life-preservers were thrown to him, but he went under and was never found. No life boats were put to sea.

George Smith, USA:  July 5, 2005, “Brilliance of the Seas,” Turkey. On his honeymoon when reported missing. Blood found on the balcony under the cabin. The case led to the first congressional hearing on security on cruise ships.

John Dresp, USA:  November 16, 2005, “Norwegian Dream,” Belize. Was snorkeling by the barrier reef in Belize with his brother Don and wife Winifred. Strong currents, poor safety precautions and supervision caused him to go under. He was never found.


Cruise passengers can end up in a complicated legal situation since ships are registered under flags of convenience from Panama, the Bahamas, or Bermuda. The companies assert that the ships are safe, considering the millions of passengers that travel each year. “Then the number of disappearances, reported sexual assaults, and robberies look good compared to the number on land,” says the director of the British cruise business, William Giddons. “When something does happen on a cruise ship, it’s always big news.”

On March 28 Kendall Carver and International Cruise Victims testified at a Congressional hearing for the third time. One of the victims, Laurie Dishman (36) was subjected to a sexual assault by a ship security officer on a Royal Caribbean cruise to Mexico in February 2006. “There were three security officers working a ship that had 3000 passengers,” he noted. “In principle it was a small town without any laws.”


Sailing from Europe

Just the threat of Dishman’s testimony forced the cruise companies to make a deal. It promises now to report disappearances, rapes, and robberies on their ships immediately to the FBI. In the USA all the bad PR has led to a large decrease in the number of cruise passengers, and ticket prices have fallen to give away levels. Several companies plan to move much of their traffic to Europe, where passengers continue to flock to the ships. Royal Caribbean, for example, transferred seven ships to Europe in March.

This year over 15 million people world-wide will take a cruise. Monster ships with stores and theaters bigger than those on land are being built. The passengers hardly notice they are out at sea. As long as no one falls overboard.

Who Killed Merete?

In the wee hours of November 18, 1994 the cruise ship “Regina Renaissance” was underway from the Greek island of Kos to the resort town of Antalya in Turkey.
The 90 passengers were dreaming of dawn and more tourist experiences. But not everyone was sleeping; parts of the crew were on their feet, doing the jobs they were paid for. In a crew cabin there was a party for Lisa Upsher, who the next day would conclude her job on the crew and fly home to England.

At the party was her old cabin-mate Merete Breiven (24) from Sörum [Norway] and six other young people. They’re drinking and dancing and having a good time. Seven nationalities are represented. Several times in the course of the night Merete leaves the party, no one afterwards will be able or want to explain why. Around 2:30 she leaves the party for the last time. She is going to the bakery to get fresh croissants.

This is the last that is seen of Merete Breiven. The police never found out what happened to her. She was just gone. Suicide is hardly likely, neither is a fall overboard (with the railing chest high). The police investigation suggests murder, but can find no clues or motive. Still the names of all on board, both passengers and crew, are present in the police records. Surely among these individuals is the one who killed Merete?

In December 2005, Congress convened its first hearing on the issue of the safety of U.S. passengers on foreign flagged cruise ships.  The hearing came about primarily due to the efforts of several families who had lost loved ones from cruise ships on the high seas, under suspicious circumstances.
George Smith's family was instrumental in bringing a great amount of much needed publicity to the issue of passenger "disappearances" and the shoddy manner in which cruise lines respond to such tragedies.  George III and Maureen Smith and their daughter Bree Smith of Greenwich Connecticut contacted Congressman, Chris Shays (R-CT).  
The Smith family joined forces with the father of a young woman who also "disappeared" from a cruise ship operated by Royal Caribbean's sister cruise line Celebrity Cruises.  Ken Carver, a former president of an insurance company in New York, lost his beloved daughter, 40 year old Boston resident Merrian Carver, who went missing under suspicious circumstances during a cruise to Alaska aboard the Mercury cruise ship.
The cruise line tried its best to cover the incident up.  It didn’t report Merrian missing to either the FBI or the Alaskan State Troopers, even though the cabin attendant reported her missing early in the cruise. The cruise line either gave her personal items away or put them in storage.
When Mr. Carver asked for an explanation, Royal Caribbean responded by lying to Mr. Carver and disposing of evidence.  Mr. Carver didn’t go away.  The story went public.  The The Arizona Republic published an excellently researched and written story, revealing the hideous manner that this cruise line acted when people disappear at sea.
Mr. Carver's situation is simply the worst conduct I have ever seen by a cruise line.
One of Mr. Carver's daughters had been an intern of Congressman Shays when Mr. Carver had lived in Connecticut.  Mr. Carver's story was featured on CNN's Anderson Cooper's show.  The  producer for the program, CNN's David Fitzpatrick (a resident of Connecticut), recommended to Mr. Carver that he call on Congressman Shays and tell him about the way the cruise line treated his family.
As a result of the convergence of tragedies suffered by the families of George Smith and Merrian Carver, Congressman Shays convened a hearing to study the problem of passengers disappearing on cruise ships and the manner that the cruise industry treated the surviving the surviving family members.  He opened the hearing by stating:
"The bottom line is we are suspicious, candidly, that there's some huge problem in the cruise industry.  We think that people are not aware of some of the challenges and some of the potential problems they encounter."  
Mr. Carver attended the December 2005 hearing.  I attended the hearing with my client Jennifer Hagel.  Mr. Carver introduced himself to me at the hearing.  He asked me if I was interested in supporting legislation making cruising safer for the public?  I saw a conviction in Mr. Carver's eyes six years ago.  I realized that he was serious.
Mr. Carver realized that he could not fight the cruise industry alone.  He thereafter created an organization called the International Cruise Victims (ICV) organization, effective January 1, 2006.   As a former executive, Mr. Carver had the leadership and management skills to create a highly effective organization.  Like the many other ICV members, Mr. Carver also had a passionate dedication to his daughter and a desire to protect other families from going through a similar nightmare.
Mr. Carver was responsible for convening four additional Congressional hearings, taking the ICV organization internationally, and organizing a team of victims who were responsible for the enactment of the 2010 Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act.
George Smith, Merrian Carver and other victims may be gone from this lifetime, as we know it.  But their legacies continue today.
The cruising public is safer for the efforts of their families.

http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1541034#.UVgyCpNmh8E
When 40-year-old Merrian Carver went missing on the second day of a seven-day Alaskan Royal Caribbean cruise, the crew didn't respond as one might expect. In fact, the crew acted as though nothing had happened.

Merrian, a former investment banker who loved to write poetry, was divorced and decided to take a cruise in August 2004. Merrian lived in Cambridge, Mass., and her 13-year-old daughter was staying with her ex-husband in England.

No one even knew Merrian had gone away, until her father, Kendall Carver, received a frantic call from his granddaughter.

"She said: 'Do you know where my mother is? I've been calling her, and I haven't gotten a response,'" Carver told "Primetime."

After several days of unreturned phone calls, Carver and his wife, Carol, filed a missing-person report. Weeks later, police learned their daughter had purchased the cruise ticket.

But when Kendall Carver called the cruise line -- three weeks after the ship had docked in Vancouver, British Columbia, officials confirmed that Merrian had boarded the ship, but they weren't sure whether she had gotten off.

"In effect, Merrian vanished from the Earth," he said.

Clothing Given Away, Purse Stored

"It seemed like kind of a rather basic thing. If you put 2,000 people on a ship, you ought to know if 2,000 people got off the ship. They didn't know that. They couldn't tell us that," Carver said.


Courtesy Ken Carver
Merrian Carver, 40, disappeared in August 2004 after embarking on a cruise to Alaska.
He became more alarmed when he said the cruise line casually explained that Merrian had stopped using her room after the second night, and that her belongings had remained in her cabin after everyone else had gotten off the ship.

Carver couldn't believe what he heard next: Royal Caribbean explained that it had given Merrian's clothes to charity and locked up her purse.

"They got rid of most of her stuff," he said. "A gold wristwatch, all her clothes were gone, vanished."

And most shocking of all, they told no one she was missing -- not the police, not the family.

"She was gone," Carver said. "And the purse had her name, Social Security number and everything. They just put it in storage, did nothing."

No Clues but Many Questions

Retired and living in Phoenix, Kendall Carver, the former head of an insurance company, went back into CEO mode and launched the type of counteroffensive the cruise line probably hadn't expected. Eventually, he would spend more than $75,000 trying to find out what happened to his daughter.

First, he hired one of the word's largest private-detective agencies.

"We wanted to talk to somebody on that boat that had seen Merrian," Carver said. "Now that seemed like a pretty reasonable request."

Tim Schmolder was the San Francisco private eye dispatched to find out what had happened to Merrian. Schmolder started asking questions, and while he said Royal Caribbean provided some answers, he said it also set up some roadblocks to his investigation.

According to Schmolder, his requests for interviews with passengers or crew were denied, as was his access to the ship's video camera system. He said cruise officials also limited the amount of time he could spend on the ship.

After a few hours, Schmolder left the ship without a single clue as to how Merrian might have disappeared.
"My report became, you know, kind of empty of content," he said. "But full of questions -- questions as to why access wasn't allowed, questions as to why the cabin attendant wasn't available, questions as to why I couldn't interview the security manager for the camera system. Question, after question, after question: Why? Why? Why?"

Was It a Cover-Up?

What was behind the silence? Did the cruise line not know or was it simply not telling? For four months, the Carvers were in limbo, waiting for answers, until, finally, they took legal action.

They demanded Royal Caribbean produce a list of other passengers from the Boston area, where their daughter had lived, in case there was a friend or someone who might know about Merrian.

Carver said that the subpoenas produced a list of the ship's 2,000 passengers, with no contact information, and a poor-quality picture of Merrian getting on the ship.

But the worst news was yet to come. When the Carvers' attorneys forced Royal Caribbean to make the cabin attendant, Domingo Monteiro, available for a deposition, Carver was crushed by what he heard.

"Domingo said he reported Merrian missing daily, and to his boss," Carver said. "And that at the end of the cruise, Merrian's things are in the room where they'd been for five days. He asked his boss, should we report this? The boss says no. He says, 'I'll take care of it. Just put all of her belongings in a bag. Put them in my locker and I'll take care of it.'"

Next they learned that since the Carvers started complaining, Royal Caribbean had held an internal hearing and fired Monteiro's boss. But for the three months that the Carvers had been asking questions, the cruise line had never shared that information with them.

"All along the way they've been lying to us, and leading us down a path. And I say it's tough to lose a daughter, let alone be dealing with a cover-up," Carver said.

Carver said that Royal Caribbean's own documents offer evidence of cover-up. One memo shows that months earlier, company officials knew Monteiro had reported suspicious circumstances to his supervisor.

Not only that, it seemed the company took great pains to make sure that "Domingo … did not speak with anybody." Carver said that one memo showed Royal Caribbean checked with 14 different employees to make sure the cabin attendant didn't speak with outside sources.

Jeffrey Maltzman, Royal Caribbean's attorney, said the memos showed no evidence of a cover-up. "What the company was trying to do was find out if he [Domingo] had talked to anybody," Maltzman said.

"If you look at the document, nowhere does it say: 'Don't talk to someone if they call you,'" he added.

That does not make the Carvers feel any better. "I still am upset," Carver said. "I mean, that was probably one of the worst days of my life, to figure out that they knew Merrian was missing. If only they had done something during that cruise, when she was reported missing daily, we would have known."

Royal Caribbean further infuriated the family when it issued a press release stating that Merrian "appears to have committed suicide on our ship."

Maltzman told "Primetime" that it was not the cruise line's responsibility to say what happened to Merrian. "They don't have the expertise," Maltzman said. "That's law enforcement's job."

Royal Caribbean put out the statement about suicide "because that's what the family has told us they believe happened," said Maltzman.
Carver said that is not true. While he concedes it's a possibility Merrian may have committed suicide, he said Royal Caribbean's handling of the case would prevent the family from ever knowing the truth.

Sympathetic Words Too Late for Family

Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., learned about Carver's case after one of his constituents complained about a similar incident.

"Merrian Carver's case just ignites me because I think of the arrogance of the industry, the cruelty of this industry," Shays said. "In the end, they acted like she was a nonperson."

Shays became so concerned about the cruise-line industry that he called a congressional hearing to look into its practices. He said he was unimpressed when Royal Caribbean's director of security expressed words of sympathy for the Carvers during the hearing.

"It would be better if you cooperated with the family," Shays said at the hearing. "And didn't make them have to seek this information the way they sought it -- having to spend literally tens of thousands of dollars. So your actions would speak more loudly than your statement, frankly, and your actions appear not to support your sorrow."

Merrian's last gift to her father was a picture frame that plays a recorded message that says: "Hi Daddy, this is Merrian. Hope you're having a great day."

It is a message that haunts the Carvers, who worry that they'll never really know how or why their daughter disappeared.