FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ Nearly 18 months after his wife disappeared at sea during their postponed honeymoon, Lewis Bennett is scheduled to plead guilty next week to a federal charge of involuntary manslaughter in connection with her death.
The maximum penalty is eight years in federal prison. The change-of-plea hearing is scheduled for Monday afternoon in federal court in Miami.
The anticipated plea agreement comes as prosecutors and Bennett's assistant federal public defender were wrangling about what evidence could and couldn't be used against him in his trial, court records show. The trial was tentatively scheduled for December.
Up to now, Bennett, 41, has denied having anything to do with his wife's disappearance in May 2017.
Bennett pleaded not guilty to the previously filed charge of second-degree murder and insisted he did not kill Isabella Hellmann, his Colombian-born wife. She was last seen alive when she and Bennett were spotted in the Bahamas aboard their 37-foot catamaran, Surf Into Summer.
What facts he will admit are not likely to be revealed prior to Monday's court hearing. The manslaughter charge accuses him of unlawfully killing Hellman "without malice in the commission of a lawful act, without due caution and circumspection, which might produce death." The criminal charge also alleges "gross negligence amounting to wanton and reckless disregard for human life."
Texts, tapes show motive in alleged murder of wife missing at sea, prosecutors say
Hellmann's body was never found and she is presumed dead.
The couple, who lived at Hellman's condo in Delray Beach, had a baby daughter who was with relatives when Hellmann, a 41-year-old real estate broker, went missing. Bennett later brought the girl, now 2, to live with his parents near Southampton, England.
Hellmann's family and prosecutors found Bennett's account of the circumstances surrounding his wife's disappearance suspicious and not credible.
Bennett told investigators that the catamaran was on auto-pilot with his wife at the helm while he slept below deck. Bennett said he awoke when he heard a thud. The cabin flooded and the vessel sank and he never saw his wife again, he said.
Investigators have said they believe Bennett "intentionally scuttled" the catamaran before he grabbed a backpack and hopped into a life raft.
Court documents disclosed in September show that the couple had been fighting over finances and child-rearing issues in the months before Hellmann disappeared.
Among the documents were text messages Hellmann had sent her husband.
"You make me crazy shouting, yelling, swearing," said one she sent about six months before her disappearance.
Another said: "I'm tired of you telling me I'm the MOST WORSE PERSON YOU EVER MET BEFORE, everything I do it's WRONG ... this is very pathetic Lewis."
Bennett is locked up in the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami, serving a seven-month federal sentence for transporting stolen gold and silver coins, valued at more than $40,000. The coins were stolen from a vessel he worked on as a crew member in 2016 in St. Maarten.
