The case of Robert Louis Piatt, the 66-year-old kayaker who went missing off the coast of Malibu in December after calling 911 complaining of chest pains, has taken a strange turn. The Los Angeles Police Department said Monday in a press release that a large motorboat was sighted leaving the area where Piatt’s kayak was later found “at a high rate of speed” and entered a fog bank just before a search and rescue helicopter arrived to respond to a 911 emergency call traced to Piatt’s cellphone. When asked if Piatt might have faked his own death, Officer Karen Rayner of the LAPD told The Malibu Times on Monday, “That’s the million-dollar question. Detectives are definitely looking into that possibility.”
Piatt, a businessman from Pacific Palisades, called his girlfriend on Dec. 29 around 1:30 p.m. from the Malibu Beach area as he prepared to go kayaking alone, according to the LAPD. Around 3 p.m., Los Angeles County emergency response personnel received a 911 cellphone call from Piatt “indicating that he was in the water and having chest pains” about 1.5 miles off of the Malibu Pier. When the emergency personnel responded, they found a capsized kayak and a life vest but no sign of Piatt. An extensive joint search for Piatt was undertaken by the U.S. Coast Guard, the county fire department and the county sheriff’s department emergency services detail. The search was called off four days later on Jan. 1. The case was then transferred to the LAPD and Piatt’s name entered into a national missing persons database.
In the press release issued Monday, the LAPD said on the afternoon Piatt disappeared a witness on shore saw a 30- to 40-foot motorboat leave the area where his kayak was later found “at a high rate of speed” and disappear into a fog bank “just as a search and rescue helicopter had arrived to begin searching the water for Piatt.”
The witness described the boat as “having a dark colored hull, white superstructure, with a ’fly bridge-type enclosure’ astern of the vessel” and “the rear stern view of the vessel appeared to be ’very wide.’”
Rayner told The Malibu Times detectives had not released any information regarding Piatt’s personal life or whether there was a potential motive for him to fake his own death.
“Some of the things are just a little unusual,” Officer Rayner responded when asked why the LAPD was now entertaining the possibility Piatt’s disappearance might not have been an accident. “He goes out kayaking in the middle of the ocean, he doesn’t wear a life vest. It doesn’t seem to add up…We don’t have a body, so we need to find it.”
The LAPD is asking for the public’s help for information about Piatt’s disappearance, especially information pertaining to the boat.
“Investigators would like to speak with the crewmembers of the boat seen in the area in hopes that they may be able to provide additional information regarding Piatt’s disappearance,” the press release states.
Piatt is described as a bald white male with brown eyes who is 5’9” tall and weighs 170 lbs. Persons with information regarding Piatt’s disappearance are asked to call the Los Angeles Police Department, Missing Persons Unit, Detective Carmine Sasso at (213) 996-1800.