Texas man disappeared from same Bahamas yoga retreat 10 years before Chicago woman

A Texas man disappeared more than 10 years ago at the same Bahamas yoga retreat where a Chicago woman disappeared last month, a retreat spokesperson confirmed.

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

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

The Royal Bahamas Police Force did not respond to multiple requests for comment from NBC News Digital over a period of nearly two weeks. The U.S. Embassy in the Bahamas did not respond to a request for comment on Bell’s disappearance.

There appears to be no evidence of foul play in Bell’s case, although police have not commented on the matter.

In a brief phone call, his father, Don Bell, said he believed his son “drowned in the water” and added that authorities “couldn’t find him.” Bell’s mother, Marie Bell, said she had not heard of Taylor Casey’s disappearance at 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.

Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat Bahamas was featured in The New York TimesGoop by Gwyneth Paltrow and HuffPost as one of the main travel destinations. From 2012 to 2019, the retreat received an annual Certificate of Excellence from TripAdvisor. (Goop seems to have collapsed its review of the withdrawal since the initial reports of Casey’s disappearance.)

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

Bell went snorkeling alone 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, everyone is having an amazing yoga experience in this beautiful place and then someone leaves.”

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

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

Ward-Packard added that she has always felt safe at the retreat and has returned 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 to 1.8 in the region throughout 2019, the agency found.

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

Casey, who is black and transgender, disappeared on June 19, halfway through a month-long yoga instructor program at the retreat site. His disappearance generated national headlines for several weeks.

Police have not indicated that there is any evidence of foul play in Casey’s disappearance. Although they discovered her phone about 50 feet deep in the ocean, they were unable to get into the device.

Several days after she was reported missing to police, Casey’s friends and family went to the yoga retreat location to meet with investigators and help with the search. They emptied the tent where Casey was staying, 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 press interviews and in public comments, the competence of the police and the actions of retreat staff during the investigation of Casey’s disappearance. On Wednesday, Collette Seymore, Casey’s mother, said retreat staff told them no one had gone missing from the site before her daughter.

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

She added that she had not heard from Bell’s family and declined to speculate on the 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 “fully cooperated with the investigation.”

Bahamian authorities responded to what Casey’s family and friends told the press in a declaration issued earlier this month, saying that “the facts, as they are now established, do not support the interpretations that are being described in the US media and advanced by various spokespeople.”

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

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

For more from NBC Out, sign up for our weekly newsletter.