Texas man vanished from same Bahamas yoga retreat 10 years prior to Chicago woman

A Texas man went missing more than 10 years ago from the same Bahamas yoga retreat where a Chicago woman vanished last month, a spokesperson for the retreat confirmed.

Wesley Bell was last seen alive while attending a yoga retreat on Paradise Island in Nassau on Jan. 25, 2013, according to a missing persons flyer released by police at the time. He was attending a retreat at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat Bahamas, the same site from where Taylor Casey, 42, went missing last month, according to the retreat’s spokesperson, Jonathan Goldbloom.

“After an extensive search, the Bahamian police determined that he had drowned,” Goldbloom said Wednesday. He then referred NBC News to the Royal Bahamas Police Force.

The Royal Bahamas Police Force has not responded to multiple requests for comment from NBC News Digital over a span of nearly two weeks. The U.S. Embassy in the Bahamas did not return a request for comment on Bell’s missing person case.

It appears there is no evidence of foul play in Bell’s case, though police have not commented on the matter.

In a brief phone call, his father, Don Bell, said he believes his son “drowned in the water” and added that authorities “couldn’t find him.” Bell’s mother, Marie Bell, said she had not heard about Taylor Casey going missing from the same retreat. The Bells declined to comment further and also referred NBC News to the Royal Bahamas Police Force and the U.S. Embassy.

The Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat Bahamas has been featured in The New York Times, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop and HuffPost as a top travel destination. From 2012 to 2019, the retreat received a TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence annually. (Goop appears to have taken down its review of the retreat since the initial reports of Casey’s disappearance.)

Danniel Ward-Packard, who lives in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, said she was at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat Bahamas when Bell went missing in 2013. She remembers Bell as “always happy” and having “great energy,” adding that they were acquaintances rather than friends. 

Bell walked off by himself to go snorkeling one day and never returned, she said, adding that his shoes, shirt and hat were found on the beach the next day. 

“People were pretty traumatized,” Ward-Packard said. “It’s a beautiful place, everybody is having an amazing yoga experience in this gorgeous location and then somebody’s gone.”

Ward-Packard, 58, said she believes Bell drowned and cautioned against connecting Bell to Casey’s missing persons case. 

“People are turning a coincidence into a conspiracy,” she said, referring to posts on social media. “I can’t even imagine how they would be related.” 

Ward-Packard added that she’s always felt safe at the retreat and has been back at least twice since Bell’s disappearance.

The Bahamas has one of the highest levels of unintentional drowning in the Americas, according to the Pan American Health Organization, a United Nations health agency. For every 100,000 people, there were 6.4 unintentional drownings in the country, compared with 1.8 in the region throughout 2019, the agency found. 

New interest in Bell’s disappearance comes weeks after Casey disappeared from the retreat. 

Casey, who is Black and transgender, disappeared June 19, about halfway through a monthlong yoga instructor program at the retreat site. Her disappearance generated national headlines for several weeks.

Police have not indicated there is any evidence of foul play in Casey’s disappearance. While they discovered her phone about 50 feet out into the ocean, they have not been able to get inside the device. 

Several days after she was reported missing to police, Casey’s friends and family went to the site of the yoga retreat to meet with investigators and assist in the search. They cleared out the tent Casey was staying in, which they said still contained most of her personal belongings. However, they did not find her passport. 

Casey’s friends and family have repeatedly questioned, in media interviews and public remarks, the competence of police and actions of retreat staff during the investigation into Casey’s disappearance. On Wednesday, Collette Seymore, Casey’s mother, said that retreat staff told them that no one had gone missing from the site before her daughter.

“They told us one thing, but we found out another,” Seymore said.

She added that she has not heard from Bell’s family and declined to speculate about his missing person case. 

When asked about the apparent discrepancy, Goldbloom said in an email that “Bell’s disappearance was public knowledge and well-publicized at the time.” He added that retreat staff “cooperated fully with the investigation.”

Bahamian officials responded to what Casey’s family and friends have said to the press in a statement issued earlier this month, saying “the facts as they are now established do not bear the interpretations which are being described in the U.S. media and being advanced by various spokespersons.”

“We urge those making comments, therefore, not to prejudge this investigation by making comments that are manifestly prejudicial and untrue,” the Consul General of the Bahamas in Washington, D.C. wrote in the July 14 statement.

The Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat Bahamas has also consistently defended its actions in the days and weeks following Casey’s disappearance, and a spokesman for the retreat said that “police have advised that they believe that Taylor left the ashram voluntarily.”  

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