Curious life of the missing tycoon and his pet theories

Mike Lynch was obsessed with probability theory and the sixth sense of dogs

- Jonathan Margolis

Just under 10 weeks ago, 59-year-old Mike Lynch was on trial in San Francisco on 17 charges of fraud. He was almost guaranteed to receive a 25-year sentence.

He was terrified that he would die in a US prison, not because he was guilty – he had spent £30m on legal fees arguing his innocence – but because it’s almost unheard of in the US to win a case against the US Justice Department. His chances of winning were put at 0.5 per cent. However, after 13 years of putting together detailed evidence to support his plea, he was acquitted and it felt like a miracle.

Once back in the UK, Lynch set about celebrating what he called his second life. Through tears, he told one interviewer how even the traffic in London seemed magical. “I’m just thinking this is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” he said.

This month, the tech tycoon took his family, friends and lawyers for further celebrations on a Mediterranean cruise aboard his luxury sailboat. It sank in a freak violent squall in the small hours of Monday. There were 15 survivors, one confirmed death – the ship’s chef – but six, including Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, were still unaccounted for late yesterday.

The chance of such a yacht being knocked flat by a weather event while anchored was minuscule because it had simply never happened before. Sailing expert Stewart Campbell, editorin-chief of Boat International, said on Newsnight, “I’ve been speaking to a lot in the industry today and they are as shocked as me – enough to disbelieve that this could happen.”

As if beating infinitesimal odds twice in a few weeks wasn’t freakish enough, it has since emerged that Lynch’s co-defendant in the US trial, his company’s former vice-president of finance Stephen Chamberlain, was killed by a car on Saturday while out running in Cambridgeshire.