A corpse has been found floating in the sea about 500 meters from the port of La Guaira on the Venezuelan mainland, according to Venezuelan newspaper El Universal.
Reports today linked the body to missing designer Vittorio Missoni but officials later denied it, identifying the body as a long-missing fisherman in “advanced stages of decomposition.”
Missoni’s twin-engine plane, a 44-year-old Britten-Norman Islander, vanished after taking off from an airport on Los Roques islands on January 4.
Days after the Italian fashion icon’s plane vanished, a mysterious new development suggested that the designer may have been kidnapped.
Telecom Italia Mobile confirmed to the press earlier this week that the mobile phone of fellow passenger Guido Foresti sent an SMS to his son late Sunday night (Jan 6) that read, “Call now, we are reachable.”
Subsequent calls to the number were not returned, but the family is now hopeful that the group that included Missoni and five others may not have perished.
Had the corpse found today been identified as one of the members on the missing aircraft, it would end speculation on the kidnapping theory.
Nearly 400 rescuers have searched an area of 1,700 square miles for a fifth day from the air and in the sea off the Venezuelan coast. The area has been described as the “new Bermuda Triangle” because there have been at least 15 accidents there since the mid-1990s.