Homicide probe of Italian boat captain in Adrienne Vaughan death

The skipper of the rented motorboat that crashed off Italy’s Amalfi Coast and killed U.S. tourist and publishing exec Adrienne Vaughan is being investigated on suspicion of manslaughter, Italian authorities said Saturday.

The skipper is also being looked at on suspicion of causing a shipwreck, said Chief Prosecutor Giuseppe Borrelli of the port city of Salerno at a news conference. The investigation is ongoing, and no charges have yet been filed.

Vaughan, 45, was killed and her husband and the skipper were injured in the Thursday afternoon crash when the rented motorboat smashed into a big chartered sailboat containing about 80 passengers and crew, mostly U.S. and German tourists, many of them celebrating a wedding reception.

[ NY president of Bloomsbury Publishing killed in Italy speedboat crash in front of husband and kids ]

The couple had rented the motorboat to travel to Positano, and Vaughan was sunning herself on the bow when the crash threw her into the water, where she got caught in the boat’s propeller, according to reports.

Two doctors who were passengers on the chartered sailboat dove into the water to help her. But Vaughan died before a medical helicopter or ambulance could get her to a hospital.

The sailboat was sitting still when the allegedly speeding motorboat hit its bow, its captain told Italian media. He is not suspected in the incident.

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Initial blood testing indicated the motorboat skipper may have had cocaine in his system — but the results were later found to be inconclusive, Borrelli said.

“The results are being evaluated by a consultant of the prosecutor’s office since the data per se aren’t necessarily significant,’’ Borrelli.

The skipper fractured his pelvis and ribs, and Vaughan’s husband, Mike White, suffered a shoulder injury.

Also onboard the motorboat were the couple’s two children — a girl, 12, and a boy, 8 —who were physically uninjured. They were being cared for by a grandfather who flew to Italy to help while their surviving parent convalesces, Borrelli said.

Vaughan was president of the U.S. branch of Bloomsbury Publishing, which has published novelists Sarah J. Maas and Susanna Clarke, as well as historian Mark Kurlansky.

She presided over titles such as “Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South,” by the late Winfred Rembert (as told to Erin I. Kelly), which won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for biography.

With News Wire Services