The boyfriend of a British woman who disappeared off his boat in the US Virgin Island earlier this month has hired an attorney who is representing Ghislaine Maxwell in her case to force Jeffrey Epstein’s estate to pay her legal fees.

Virgin Islands-based attorney David Cattie also represented a boat captain accused of manslaughter but acquitted in 2019, The Sun reports.

The boyfriend, Ryan Bane, left the area where Sarm Heslop vanished, as CrimeOnline previously reported, sailing away on his catamaran to parts unknown. Bane has not been named a suspect in Heslop’s disappearance, and police say Bane did not give them permission to search his boat – nor have they obtained a search warrant.

U.S. Virgin Islands Police spokesperson Toby Derima told CrimeOnline on Friday that the boat had remained in Frank Bay until sometime this week. Derima was not certain what day Bane and Siren Song left Frank Bay, but multiple sources told CrimeOnline the vessel has been gone since at least Thursday.

British socialite Maxwell is in jail in New York awaiting trial on charges of perjury and sex trafficking. The longtime friend and millionaire madam for Epstein, a convicted pedophile, wants his estate to pay her attorneys in the trial, expected to start this summer.

Epstein died of an apparent suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on his own sex trafficking charges.

Bane reported Heslop missing on March 8. At that time, he reportedly told police that he and Heslop had gone to sleep at about 10 p.m. on Sunday, March 7, and he found she was missing around 2 a.m. the next morning when he was awakened by the sound of the yacht’s anchor alarm.

On the advice of Cattie, he refused to allow police to search his boat after reporting his girlfriend missing.

Derima said the investigation remains a missing persons case and not a criminal matter.

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