Ralph Hendry and his wife, Kathy Brandel, from Falls Church, Virginia, disappeared last week from their yacht, which was docked in the waters off the southern Caribbean nation of Grenada, according to Hendry’s sister, Suellen Desmarais.

“It’s a phone call you hope you never get — shock, fear, anger,” Ralph Hendry’s son, Bryan Hendry, told ABC News.

Hendry and Brandel were last seen alive by their boating neighbor at the dock on Feb. 18, according to Desmarais.

The next morning, the neighbor said the couple and their yacht, Simplicity, were gone.

The three escaped prisoners allegedly stole the boat before heading to the nearby island of St. Vincent, where they arrived on the yacht on Feb. 19, police said.

“While sailing from Grenada, the suspects committed several criminal acts, including bodily harm, to the couple,” Junior Simmons, head of the public relations and complaints department at Royal St. Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force, said in a video statement Monday.

“Based on the investigation thus far it is presumed that Ralph Hendry and Kathy Brandel are deceased,” Simmons said.

St. Vincent police processed the scene on the yacht and found signs of violence, Simmons said.

“Several items were strewn on the deck,” Simmons said, and in the cabin was “a red substance that resembled blood.”

The three suspects were arrested on Feb. 21 and are cooperating with investigators, police said. They appeared in a St. Vincent court on immigration-related charges and pleaded guilty, police said. Sentencing was scheduled for March 4, police said.

Ralph Hendry and Kathy Brandel have been married for 27 years. They’ve been living on their boat since they sold their home in 2013.

“They were very risk-averse people, so they were extremely meticulous in their preparations and not willing to take this trip until they were 100% confident in themselves,” Bryan Hendry said.

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The visit by Whitney Wright as Iran imprisons Nobel Peace Prize laureate and women’s rights activist Narges Mohammadi sparked heated criticism of the country’s crackdown on women since the 2022 death in police custody of Mahsa Amini and the nationwide protests it sparked.

Wright filmed herself throughout Tehran despite her work in pornography exposing her in theory to criminal charges that carry the death penalty.

Wright did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press. But in remarks on social media, she described the U.S. Embassy as a place she “HAD to visit.” Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard now runs it as a museum.

Iranian students backing Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overran the compound after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Embassy staff members taken hostage were held for 444 days. A direct line can be drawn between that crisis and the tensions between Iran and the U.S. today.

“I’m sharing exhibits from a museum that are never seen,” Wright wrote on Instagram. “It’s not an endorsement of the government.”

Wright has previously shared pro-Palestinian information online, including material supporting armed militancy against Israel.

As a U.S. citizen born in Oklahoma City, she would need a visa to visit Iran. Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not respond to questions about the actor’s trip.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani was asked about Wright during a Monday briefing and said he had no information about her.

The semiofficial Tasnim news agency, believed to be close to the Revolutionary Guard, quoted an anonymous official claiming the government issued Wright a visa while not being “aware about the nature of her immoral job.”

The presence of a performer from the U.S. adult film industry immediately drew attention.

Iranian actor Setareh Pesiani cited Wright’s visit to criticize Iran’s hard-line government for its mandatory headscarf policy, which led to the 22-year-old Amini’s arrest and death.

“You punish people of this country in various methods for removal of hijab but you allow a porn actress to come here for tourism!?” Pesiani wrote on Instagram.

Masih Alinejad, a U.S.-based activist who has faced assassination and kidnapping attempts by Iran, also denounced Wright’s visit.

“We the women of Iran want be like Rosa Parks and not Whitney Wright,” Alinejad wrote, referencing the U.S. civil rights icon. “The true warmongers are the agents of the Islamic Republic who will execute you if you be true to yourself.”

In 2016, a British porn actor known as Candy Charms traveled to Iran, prompting immediate criticism. But there’s been no media coverage of Wright’s visit inside Iran, likely a sign of how tightly controlled journalists are after the 2022 demonstrations.

Then there’s Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iranian state media have seized on the U.S. support of Israel to criticize the U.S. and opponents of its theocracy. Abdolreza Davari, a media adviser to former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has as well.

“Israel is absolute evil and filth,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in October. “We will stand by anyone who fights against Israel, even if that person is Mia Khalifa, a former porn star who has cleared her record of cruelty and corruption by openly supporting the oppressed Palestinian nation and fighting Zionist crimes.”

Asked about Wright’s visit, the U.S. State Department told the AP in a statement that it has warned Americans to avoid travel to Iran and “exercise increased caution due to the risk of wrongful detention.” Americans and those with Western ties can find themselves detained and convicted in secret trials to later be used as bargaining chips in negotiations with Washington.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is a primary driver of instability across the Middle East region, and it has been since 1979,” the State Department said. “If Iran actually cared about peace and stability in the Middle East region or the welfare of the people there, it would cease its support for terrorist organizations.”

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador suggested U.S. officials should apologize for what he called baseless allegations, and said it would be hard to sit down and talk about some of the most pressing issues in bilateral relations until that happens.

“I don’t accept this, what I want is for the U.S. government to take a stand,” López Obrador said at his daily morning press briefing. “If they have no proof, they have to apologize.”

“President (Joe) Biden has to find out about this,” López Obrador said. “How are we going to sit down at a table and talk about fighting drugs if one of their agencies is leaking information and damaging me? How are we going to talk about migration, how are we going to talk about fighting drugs or fentanyl?”

The Biden administration has relied for some time on Mexico’s willingness to accept the return of migrants from third countries as a way of quickly returning migrants and asylum seekers at the U.S. southwest border.

It would be a political problem for Biden if Mexico refuses to continue doing so, or loosens up on its already weak efforts to control the flow of deadly opioids made in Mexico and smuggled into the United States.

López Obrador — who pointedly called former president Donald Trump “my friend” later in the briefing — did not specify who he wanted to apologize, but suggested that the U.S. State Department should say something.

“Don’t the state department, the justice department, have any information?” he said, calling the media reports “interventionism” in Mexico’s domestic affairs.

López Obrador has denied old allegations that drug traffickers may have given about $2 million to his first, failed bid for the presidency — he lost in 2012 and finally won in 2018 — and called the reports a U.S. attack on his government and his Morena party before Mexico’s June 2 presidential election.

Claudia Sheinbaum, the presidential candidate for López Obrador’s Morena party, holds a commanding lead in opinion polls for the June 2 election. But Mexico’s continued high rates of violence — and Sheinbaum’s pledge to continue López Obrador’s policy of not confronting drug cartels — are one of the governing party’s most vulnerable flanks.

According to reports by ProPublica, Insight Crime and Germany’s Deutsche Welle, in 2010 the DEA investigated claims by a cooperating drug trafficker and a former campaign adviser that leaders of the Beltrán Leyva drug cartel gave the money to close confidants of López Obrador in 2006.

But a wiretap of a conversation between the DEA informants and one of López Obrador’s top aides didn’t really confirm the donations, and U.S. officials later ordered the politically sensitive case closed.

Mike Vigil, former head of international operations for the DEA, feared that the latest dispute could damage U.S.-Mexico cooperation on fighting drug trafficking, in much the same way as the 2020 U.S. arrest of a former Mexican defense secretary, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos.

López Obrador has long complained about the actions of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Mexico, and following the arrest of Cienfuegos, he imposed restrictions on U.S. agents in Mexico.

“It’s just terrible, it’s going to mean more drugs heading to the United States and more violence in Mexico,” Vigil said. “It’s worse than when Cienfuegos was arrested.”

“This is a direct attack against him. Secondly, he views it as an impact on the presidential campaign or the presidential elections that are coming up,” Vigil said. “Now, if we thought the relations with Mexico were bad, they are going to go from worse to almost nonexistent.”

López Obrador has long been angry at perceived American interference. He claimed that the U.S. arrest of Cienfuegos, the former defense secretary, was part of a DEA plot to weaken Mexico’s armed forces and allow U.S. agents free reign in Mexico.

Cienfuegos was arrested at a Los Angeles airport in 2020, accused of participating in an international drug trafficking and money laundering network.

Mexico demanded Cienfuegos’ release, reportedly threatening to expel U.S. agents unless he was returned. The United States dropped the charges and returned him. Mexico quickly absolved Cienfuegos of any wrongdoing and later held up visas for U.S. agents and restricted the work they could do in Mexico.

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And that’s good news for the Democratic incumbent: Biden holds a slight lead over Trump in Wednesday’s 2024 presidential election poll, 50 percent to 44 percent. The same matchup was “too close to call” just a month ago.

More women said they would support Biden over Trump in this latest survey, with 58 percent backing Biden and 36 percent backing Trump. Last month, the Quinnipiac poll found 53 percent of women supported the incumbent Democrat, compared to 41 percent for the Republican challenger.

The numbers were relatively unchanged for men — 53 percent of men said they’d vote for Trump and 42 percent chose Biden in the latest poll, compared to 51 percent for Biden and 41 percent for Trump in December.

“The gender demographic tells a story to keep an eye on,” Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy said in a statement. “Propelled by female voters in just the past few weeks, the head-to-head tie with Trump morphs into a modest lead for Biden.”

It’s a different story for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who trails far behind Trump in the Republican primary. The poll found Haley would do better than Trump in a general election, with 47 percent of respondents supporting Haley and 42 percent supporting Biden.

Haley’s support comes largely from independents, with 53 percent saying they’d vote for her. Another 37 percent would back Biden. In the same poll, 52 percent of independents said they’d support Biden over Trump, who’d have the support of 40 percent of respondents.

“In a head-to-head matchup against Biden, Haley outperforms Trump, thanks to independents,” Malloy said. “Add third party candidates to the mix and her numbers slip in part because of her weakness among Republicans.”

The poll surveyed 1,650 self-identified registered voters nationwide from Jan. 25 to 29, with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 2.4 percentage points. Surveys conducted by Quinnipiac University are based on random sampling.