Foul Play? Bayesian analysis on the sinking of the 'Bayesian'

Deaths of Mike Lynch and Stephen Chamberlain occurred weeks after their acquittal

Last Saturday, Stephen Chamberlain was “fatally struck” by a car whilst he was out running in the UK. Chamberlain was put on life support after being taken to hospital but sadly died on Monday.

Also on Monday, a freak waterspout sunk a superyacht off the coast of Sicily. The yacht was owned by the wife of Mike Lynch, often referred to as “Britain’s Bill Gates”. Mike Lynch was one of 22 people on board the yacht and it has since been confirmed that his body was found by divers searching the wreck for survivors.

But what connects these two individuals who died on the exact same day, on opposite sides of Europe?

Only months before, Chamberlain and Lynch had just been acquitted in one of the biggest ever US fraud cases. The three month trial concerned the sale of their company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011. The deal saw HP pay $11.7 billion for the company before $8.8 billion was written off the next year and legal proceedings pursued. HP claimed that Autonomy’s team had fraudulently inflated the value of the company whilst Autonomy claimed HP’s team had undertaken sloppy due diligence.