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Teenager killed in boating accident week after high school graduation
A tragic boating accident outside Key Biscayne took the life of eighteen-year-old Virginia Bonetti on Sunday when a fire on the boat forced the occupants to jump into the ocean before the boat exploded.
The Coast Guard arrived twenty minutes after the explosion and rescued Vincent Bonetti and his sixteen-year-old son Thomas. After an extensive search, the body of Bonetti’s eighteen-year-old daughter Virginia was not recovered. She is presumed to have drowned.
The family went out for the day on Bonetti’s forty-foot yacht when, an hour after they left the dock, mechanical failure stopped the vessel. A fire started and Bonetti called the Coast Guard for assistance, but the fire spread fast and the family was forced to evacuate. Bonetti put his children on the lifeboat and pushed it off while he attempted to put out the fire, but it spread close to the fuel tank and he jumped as the boat exploded. The lifeboat capsized by the force of the explosion, and Thomas Bonetti found his father unconscious in the water. The teenager managed to right the lifeboat and pull in his father, but Virginia never surfaced.
Bonetti is currently in a medically induced coma while the doctors wait for swelling on his brain to go down.
Two weeks later, a follow-up to the article revealed that Bonetti was recovering at home and that the Coast Guard halted search efforts after a tropical storm moved in. A spokesman stated that Virginia Bonetti was presumed dead and they would send notices to all coastal agencies should they find remains. The Bonetti family set a memorial date at St. Elizabeth’s.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
“She faked her death,” I said.
“You can’t be certain—”
“I am.”
Jack was skeptical, so I continued. “There is no lapse between her high school graduation and when she started college in Texas. If she was injured, suffered from amnesia, whatever, there would have been a lag. A semester, maybe a year. But if she rolled up alive on shore, someone would have known who she was. Hospitals and police would have checked missing persons. And she’s using a completely different name. She changed her appearance. She has no social media profile, no friends. She made one stupid mistake.”
“Only one,” Jack said sarcastically.
“She used her real high school to get into college. I don’t know how she did it, maybe she created a fake high school transcript? Found a way to use the school to send it to the college? Used her own transcript to get into college, but somehow changed the name in the system? You and I both know that if someone is determined, they can disappear and take another identity. But it’s her.” I tapped Jack’s screen.
He nodded. “You’re right.”
“She needs a social security number, needs to be able to pass basic checks,” I muttered. “I wonder if Jennifer White is a real person? The best way to assume a different identity is to take an existing one.”
“Tess should be able to find the trail, now that we know where to look.”
I saved all the articles, then searched Vincent Bonetti. “Her father is a wealthy developer in Miami. Some hints of shady deals, but no big headlines, no public arrests. That’s just a cursory look.”
Jennifer White was twenty-six—Virginia Bonetti would have been twenty-six as well.
“This is interesting,” Jack said. “I’m reading the obituary—Virginia was born on February 4th. According to her employee file, Jennifer White’s DOB is January 18th of the same year. Two weeks earlier.”
“Maybe the real White was born on January 18th.”
Jack did his own search and a minute later said, “Wow.”
“What?”
He turned his screen toward me. I scanned an article from a newspaper in Orlando, Florida. The obituary of a thirteen-year-old girl, Jennifer White, who died along with her family in a house fire the day after Christmas.
Her birthday was January 18.
“No coincidence,” I said. “She took the name of a dead child. That’s creepy. Can you get the PI in Miami to find out more about the Bonettis?”
“Do you think this is important?”
“Yes,” I said. “Very important. Is there a problem?”
“No, I can justify the expense.”
“Well, Logan Monroe wants to hire me to find Jennifer West.”
“But he didn’t.”
