Who Investigates a Crime Aboard a Cruise Ship?
Ascertaining investigative authority with a cruise ship crime is more complicated than crimes committed on land. That’s because land-based crimes follow a predictable pattern: A crime comes to the attention of local police, and law enforcement in turn launch an initial investigation. But cruise ships crimes usually happen in international waters, and there is no law enforcement aboard the ships.
James Walker, a plaintiff attorney who has overseen more than 2,500 civil suits against cruise lines, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that in 49 out of 50 states, law enforcement jurisdiction automatically goes to the FBI. Florida is an exception, where local law enforcement can also have jurisdiction if the cruise line reports the crime to them. Walker says more states should follow Florida’s lead.
“There’s quite a big difference between crimes reported to the Miami-Dade Police Department and those reported to the FBI,” Walker says, alleging that “local police take cases and allegations more seriously” because the crimes that occur on cruise ships (e.g., sexual assault, familial violence) tend to more closely resemble the kind of work that police officers handle than federal agents.
Jennifer Coffindaffer, a retired FBI agent who spent 25 years with the agency, including a four-year stint where she served as the senior supervisor resident agent of the United States Virgin Islands, finds Walker’s criticism to be “ill informed.” However, she concurs that the chaos of a cruise crime can sometimes bring about suboptimal investigative results.
“When you’re talking about a cruise line that has docked in the U.S. Virgin Islands—you have to fly in a medical examiner” to perform the autopsy, Coffindaffer tells A&E Crime + Investigation. That examiner then has to conduct their work away from their usual work environments. Because they are acting as proverbial fish out of water, “there can be issues with the forensic evaluation,” she says. Also, because cruises often sail internationally, parts (or all) of the investigation might be conducted by agencies in foreign countries.
According to Jamie Barnett, that was one of the problems with the investigation into the death of her daughter, 24-year-old Ashley Barnett. Ashley died in October 2005 while aboard a three-day cruise of Mexico that departed from Southern California.
Jamie, who is now a cruise safety advocate with the organization International Cruise Victims, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that Ashley died in her cabin under suspicious circumstances while traveling with her boyfriend, Geoff Ginsburg.
The night before Ashley’s death, she and Ginsburg had quarreled. Ashley, who was feeling ill with a cold, stayed in the cabin while Ginsburg went out and partied. The following day, Ashley was found nonresponsive in her room. Ginsburg, who struggled with drug addiction, admits that he smuggled methadone onto the ship in a DayQuil bottle. After Ashley’s body was found and ship personnel were unable to resuscitate her, she was autopsied at a morgue in the port city of Ensenada, Mexico.
“It was nothing like the autopsy you’d get in the U.S.,” Jamie explains.
Ashley, who according to friends and family did not use drugs, had died from methadone toxicity. “I don’t think anybody meant to kill her,” Jamie says. “But this case is just one example of why there should be independent law enforcement on these ships.”
Determined to get a second opinion, Jamie decided to bring Ashley’s body home for a new autopsy with a privately hired forensic pathologist, but in order to do so, she had to have Ashley embalmed, further compromising the forensic evidence.
The pathologist affirmed that Ashely died from methadone but added that there was no forensic evidence to suggest that Ashley had used any other drugs, according to CBS News, bolstering the narrative that the ingestion had been accidental. No arrests have ever been made in connection with the case.
To this day, Jamie is left wondering whether Ashley took the methadone because she thought it was cold medicine or because Ginsburg or one of his friends had slipped it into her food or drink in an attempt to tranquilize her.
“If this had happened on land, it would’ve been entirely different,” she says.
What Are Other Challenges in Investigating a Cruise Ship Crime?
Time is one of the biggest problems facing a cruise ship investigation. Because the scene often can’t be fully processed until the ship is back in an American port, forensic evidence like bodily fluid “degrades,” Walker says.
It can also affect the memories of eyewitnesses, says Coffindaffer, not just because of the time lapse, but also because of their close proximity to one another.
“Typically, when law enforcement responds [on land], they’ll secure the scene and cordon off witnesses,” she continues. “Here, you have witnesses onboard jabbering with each other, and their stories are influenced by what they tell each other. It’s very difficult once this time period has gone by, as your witnesses have now been corrupted, at least to a degree.”
Coffindaffer further adds the crime scene itself is often corrupted by the cruise ship security staff, who inadvertently taint evidence through their criminological inexperience.
“No one on these ships has real training in dealing with a crime scene,” she says. “All these individuals will come through: the security, the captain, the individuals who knew the person and found the body. And anyone who enters a crime scene brings part of them and leaves evidence there: what’s on their shoes, the fibers from their clothing. They’ll leave fingerprints; they’ll cry and leave a tear. All these people, they bring something to the scene when they enter, and they take something out when they depart.”
A spokesperson with the Cruise Lines International Association, an industry trade group of which Carnival, Norwegian, Princess and others are members, said in a statement to A&E Crime + Investigation, "Cruise ships operate with robust, layered security and investigative protocols that meet international and U.S. legal requirements." The spokesperson went on to state that security teams on board the ships are "dedicated maritime security professionals," with many of them having prior experience in policing, investigating and security, and that cruise lines are "required to maintain trained security personnel onboard, preserve evidence and secure scenes in the event of serious incidents, report qualifying incidents to the FBI and U.S. Coast Guard, and cooperate fully with law enforcement investigations."
Coffindaffer says there’s also the matter of “pressure from the cruise line” to conduct investigations swiftly. “It’s money," she says. "Every minute you’re holding their boat and staff up, that’s money. So they really want things expedited.”
The CLIA spokesperson stated that "each case is taken seriously by cruise operators and authorities alike."
"Any loss of life or serious incident is one too many," they concluded. "At the same time, serious crimes at sea are rare, and cruise travel remains among the safest forms of vacation travel, with extensive onboard security protocols and systems, controlled access points, and embarkation screening contributing to a highly monitored environment."
Still, many cases remain unsolved.
Barnett says “To live a lifetime with this is dreadful."
