Weeks Before Yacht Sank in Sicily, Missing Lawyer Shared Post About Living 'Happily Ever After'

Mar. 15, 2025

Christopher Morvillo, one of six people who disappeared after a yacht sank off the coast of Sicily in August 2024.Photo:Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty

Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty

A New York City lawyer who went missing after aluxury yacht capsizedoff the coast of Italy during a storm wrote about living “happily ever after” just weeks earlier.

Christopher Morvillo, 59, is one ofsix people who remain missingafter a waterspout hit the vessel off the coast of Sicily early on Monday, Aug. 19, a senior civil protection officer told PEOPLE on Monday, Aug. 19.Also missing areMorgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy, Morvillo’s wife Neda, as well as British tech entrepreneurMike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah.

A source close to the survivors tells PEOPLE that the group was “celebrating Lynch’s acquittal” following alengthy legal sagathat dated back to the 2011 sale of Autonomy, a business software company Lynch founded, to Hewlett Packard.Morvillo worked on the case, which ended in Lynch being acquitted on 15 fraud and conspiracy charges in June, according to theAssociated Pressand theBBC

“That’s why he took his closest friends and colleagues on the trip, to celebrate,” the source tells PEOPLE. “They had come from the Aeolian Islands, Milazzo and had arrived in Palermo.”

One week after a San Francisco jury’s “swift exoneration” of Lynch and his colleague Steven Chamberlain, Morvillo thanked to a long list of litigators for their hard work on the case in a post on hisLinkedIn page.

After noting he was “so glad to be home,” Morvillo ended his post with, “And they all lived happily ever after….”

Two months later, Morvillo, his wife, Lynch and Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter disappeared after the 56-meter yacht sank near Porticello.

Gary Lincenberg, an attorney who represented Lynch’s colleague Chamberlain in the recent court case, told Business Insider that Morvillo and his wife “are presumed to be passed away.”

Lincenberg did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

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“In the course of 48 hours, I can’t process what has happened,” Lincenberg told Business Insider.

An estimated 12 passengers and 10 crew members were aboard the boat when it capsized, according to the BBC andAssociated Press.

One person, identified as a cook from the boat, was found dead near the yacht, while authorities were able to rescue 15 people, including Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, local sources say.

Typically, tornadic waterspouts “have the same characteristics as a land tornado.” NOAA says these particular storms “can be largeand are capable of considerable destruction.”

source: people.com