Good. Clean. Fun. Seminole Brighton Casino

Hi all,
This is my first post on this subreddit. I apologise if it is very long, I wanted to try and include all the facts. I am a huge fan of Unresolved Mysteries and I hope to leave more posts in the future. I wanted to start with this one because I find cruise disappearances very interesting and I couldn't find anything on this case. Do you think it is a straight forward accidental overboard or could it have been a murder? Let me know your thoughts and also any general feedback you have. For more info see links below
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_George_Smith
News Articles: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/05/nyregion/bride-recounts-disappearance-of-husband-during-cruise.html https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-closes-probe-into-vanished-cruise-ship-honeymoone
Premise: George Alan Smith IV was a 26 year old Connecticut man who went missing under mysterious circumstances while on a 12-day cruise with his new bride, Jennifer Hagel Smith. Although it is assumed he went overboard at some point during the early morning hours of July 5th 2005, how that happened remains a mystery.
Background: George Smith came from the upper-crust Connecticut town of Cos Cob, near Greenwich. His family owns a popular liquor store there, and he was the store's General Manager. He had been married to his wife, Jennifer, for 10 days. She was a teacher, who was to begin a new job teaching third-graders upon their return. The newlyweds were honeymooning on a Royal Caribbean International cruise of the Mediterranean, which departed from Barcelona on Wednesday 29th June 2005 and was due to stop in Greece, France, Turkey and Italy, among other locations. The cruise ship the couple were staying on was the MS Brilliance of the Seas and they had booked Stateroom 9062, a cabin with a balcony situated on Deck 9. By all accounts, George and Jennifer appeared to be having a wonderful time those first few days of their honeymoon. Photographs show them embracing by the pool and on the second night, after a day spent exploring Villefranche-sur-Mer in France, the Smiths’ decided to have a get-together in their room, the noise of which kept their neighbour awake until almost 3:30am. The next morning this neighbour reported the incident to the guest-relations desk and asked what could be done. If it happened again, he was told, call the desk, and they would handle it.
The Disappearance: On Monday 4th July 2005, the Smiths were half-way through their cruise and had spent the afternoon exploring Mykonos, a popular Greek island. Jennifer had reported that they had been on a high as they returned to the ship that evening, because they had spotted the actress Tara Reid, who was filming her show "Taradice" on the island. The couple had planned a romantic dinner on the ship for that night, which seemingly occurred without incident. After dinner they spent some time at the casino and all reports said they were in good spirits and seemed to be acting normally, albeit a little rowdy. As is common on most cruises, the Smiths had become friendly acquaintances with a number of other guests on the ship, mostly other couples, but also a 20-year old Californian student named Josh Askin and another group of four boisterous young Russian-American men. The four were traveling with relatives; their group, numbering eight people in all, consisted of two families, both with the surname Rozenberg. One family hailed from South Florida and the second are believed to be from Brighton Beach, a Russian section of Brooklyn. Between them the families had three sons aboard, all said to be in their teens or early 20s: Jeffrey, Zachary, and Greg. Also in the group was a 20-year-old named Rostislav “Rusty” Kofman.
Following some time spent at the casino, the Smiths met up with another newlywed couple who they had befriended and who had gotten married on the same day in June as the Smiths had. They then headed to the on-board disco, where the Smiths and their friends were joined by Josh Askin, two of the Rozenberg boys and Rusty Kofman (it is not clear whether they had all socialised prior to this night). They all sat around a table drinking absinthe, which the cruise staff reported is not sold on the ship and must have been smuggled on-board.
It was at this stage that Jennifer Smith's behaviour is called into question. Josh Askin reported that Jennifer had been very flirtatious with one of the croupiers at the casino, a South African man named Lloyd Botah. When the group left the casino to go to the disco, Botah accompanied them, staying close to Jennifer the entire time. At the disco, Jennifer continued to flirt with Lloyd and also attempted to drape herself over other men. At this point, George noticed his wife's behaviour and attempted to intervene. An argument between the couple ensued, culminating in Jennifer kicking her new husband in the groin and storming out of the disco, with Botah following after her (although this detail is refuted by others, who say he remained behind). Shortly after the Smiths’ disagreement, at about 3:30am, the disco closed, and Askin, the two Rozenbergs and Rusty Kofman became aware that George was highly intoxicated and was too drunk to walk unaided, and so they helped him to his cabin. When they arrived at Stateroom 9062, Jennifer wasn’t there and George stated he wanted to find her. George changed his shirt and then, with Askin and the three Russian boys, headed to the solarium, where the cruise ship’s younger crowd would congregate after the disco ended each night. Jennifer wasn’t there either and so the group then helped George back to his room, arriving at 4:02am—a time verified by a computerized monitoring system that tracks when key cards are used to open stateroom doors. This was the last time anyone reported seeing George Smith.
It was after this time that noises coming from the Smiths room, described by one neighbour as “loud cheering—what sounded like a college drinking game...as well as high pitched yelling”, were first reported to crew members. At one point this neighbour believes he might have heard at least one person leaving the Smiths' cabin and talking in the corridor. After this, an argument with "at least three voices" was reported coming from the Smiths' balcony. At around 4:15am, the neighbour reports hearing voices ushering people out of the room, and distinctly heard the words "Goodnight, Goodnight" repeatedly, followed by the cabin door closing. The neighbour says he then waited about 10 seconds before opening his door and looking out, where he states he saw three men, whose identities have never been released publicly. Other neighbours reported hearing three male subjects talking in the corridor at around this same time, and they stated two of the men had "accents" (the Rozenbergs?). This is where questions start to arise, it is reported that 4 men accompanied George back to his room, but only three are seen and heard leaving, so who remained behind? Maybe the group misremembered and only three men went back to the cabin, or maybe one left earlier? Either way it is unclear who is in the room after 4:15am.
It was after 4:15am that the same neighbour claims to have heard a single voice speaking in a conversational tone, followed by furniture being moved around, and he speculated the Smiths may have been cleaning up after the party. He says this "clean up" lasted around 10 minutes before the sounds moved to the balcony, and he states he heard one of the metal balcony chairs being moved. All was quiet for around a minute, and then he describes a very loud thud, which was so loud it made his bed vibrate. He states it was not the sound of someone falling off the balcony, but instead it sounded more like someone falling on the balcony, except it was so loud he didn't believe a single person falling could have created it. He thought it could have been furniture, such as a couch, falling or being thrown on the floor. He said no screams or voices followed the thud, and all was quiet after that. So presumably despite what this neighbour states, the sound he heard was George falling off the balcony and hitting the canopy below. But did he fall or was he pushed? The neighbour said he always heard the Smiths coming and going from their cabin because he could clearly hear their door opening and closing, but on this occasion he didn't hear anything. So if someone was still in the room with George, did they manage to leave silently? The neighbour says the next thing he heard were the crew members arriving at the cabin to respond to the noise complaints from the passengers. However they only knocked and didn't enter the room, as the noises had stopped.
When question by authorities, Askin indicated that he, Kofman, and the two Rozenbergs stayed with George for 10 or 15 minutes in his cabin after returning from the solarium. During this time Askin stated he used the bathroom. He says that everyone departed by 4:15am, leaving no one inside but George. Kofman disputes this, saying everything happened 15 minutes earlier, and they all left and were back in their rooms by 4am. He states he has a timestamped photo proving this. Whatever the timing, Kofman insists the last he saw of George Smith was when the boys left him on his bed; George thanked them for looking after him, kissed one of the boys and promised to buy them a round of drinks the next day. According to Askin, he went to Kofman’s room with the others and was back in his own stateroom by 5:15am.
During this entire incident, Jennifer Smith was nowhere to be seen. According to several witnesses, she was seen leaving the disco at about 3:15am—just minutes before George and his friends left. It should have taken her less than five minutes to return to her stateroom, and if she did return, might she have been there for some of the party and then left? Evidently, she was not in her room all night. From the disco it appeared she took the elevator down to Deck 9, but she must have been so drunk she became disoriented. Instead of turning right, into the long port corridor that led to their stateroom, she turned left, into the starboard corridor. From there she walked until the corridor ended in an alcove with a maintenance door. It was here Jennifer passed out and was found by crew. She claims she believes she may have been drugged and led to this alcove by someone who left her there.
Jennifer Smith was found passed out at approximately 4:30 a.m. on the floor of a lounge area on Deck 9. The crew members who found her went to look for her husband back at their cabin, but entered and could not find him, and so they put Mrs Smith in a wheelchair and she was taken back to her seemingly empty cabin just before 5am, where she was placed on the bed. The staff reported that while they did not search the room at the time, nothing looked amiss, and so they left Mrs Smith to sleep. Jennifer says she remembers nothing from that night after the group left the casino, but says she slept for around three hours and then awoke as the ship docked and let people off at Kusadasi, Turkey. She said although her husband was nowhere to be seen when she woke up, nothing else seemed amiss in the cabin and she quickly remembered a 10am couples massage she had booked earlier in the week, and so got dressed and headed two floors up, hoping George would meet her there. When he did not arrive at the spa, she presumed he was passed out himself in a friend's cabin and would return to their room when he regained consciousness. She stated he had passed out outside their cabin on two prior occasions during their trip (seems like this couple know how to party to excess!) and so she was not immediately worried.
However Royal Caribbean officials said that Mrs Smith actually arrived about an hour and a half early for her massage and was in the treatment room when crew members came looking for her. They approached Jennifer to say that the cruise ship staff had received calls that morning from passengers who, in the daylight, had noticed blood on the awning outside their cabin, and indeed blood had been found outside the cabin and on a lifeboat canopy below their balcony. They said they suspected her husband had fallen overboard in a tragic, alcohol fuelled accident. A member of the crew was allowed inside the cabin to retrieve Mrs Smith's belongings, and she reports that she was escorted from the boat along with Mr Askin (who had come forward after hearing pages for George across the intercom) and the two were questioned by Turkish authorities. She then reports that she was left behind in Turkey to make her own way home, however staff from the ship strongly dispute this, saying she insisted on leaving on her own accord. The cruise staff have also been criticised for washing away the blood found inside and outside the cabin, although they claim they washed the area only after Turkish authorities had given them permission to do so. Police also boarded the ship, photographed the bloodstained canopy, and searched the Smiths’ stateroom. They reportedly found small droplets of blood on a bedsheet and a towel inside the cabin.
The aftermath and investigation: The family reported that little was done by Royal Caribbean International or the Turkish authorities to investigate George's disappearance, instead they insisted he had been extremely intoxicated and had fallen overboard, however no body has ever been located. The FBI were soon involved and once home in Cromwell, Jennifer reported that within a week, she met with the FBI and agreed to give blood and hair samples to their agents and to take a polygraph test that she said she passed. The investigation soon seemed to focused on the group of four Russians and Josh Askin, who the Smiths had befriended.
There was a lot of reluctance on the part of the media to identify these young men, which seems very odd in itself. What was also odd was the Russian boys' behaviour throughout the cruise, which gained a lot of attention and was described as outlandish, arrogant and rude. For example, when asked by a crew member to put out a cigarette in a non-smoking section of the ship, one of the boys cursed the employee and continued smoking. Their parents were warned numerous times about their sons' behaviour, however it seems little was done to control them. After the boat left Turkey on 5th July without Mrs Smith, the Rozenbergs and Mr Kofman continued to cause trouble. Two more incidents involving them allegedly occurred over the next 48 hours, one involving arguments between the Rozenbergs and staff over the age of their son Greg and whether he should be allowed enter the disco and another involving the four boys cursing at staff members. The parents were summoned and were told that if another incident occurred, they would all be asked to leave the ship.
On Thursday July 7th, a young girl reported being raped by Rusty Kofman and the three Rozenberg boys and the incident was videotaped. Kofman was the only one identified on tape, and claimed the sex was consensual. However rumors were spreading and 13 people in total were escorted from the ship, including the Rozenberg group and the Askin family. Perhaps the most damning piece of evidence pointing to their potential involvement in Georges disappearance is a videotape found on one of the Rozenberg boys' phone that appears to show three of the four men commenting on George's presumed death in a very callous way. The Smith family attorney stated "the most incriminating statement (from the video) comes when one of them stands up at the end of the tape and sort of hunches his shoulders and flashes gang signs and says, 'Told ya I was gangsta' and in the context of the discussion about George's death, almost as if he's bragging about having done something to George."
Since then the FBI have investigated both the rape allegations and the disappearance of George Smith, but so far, no arrests have been made. There has been a lot of controversy over the Royal Caribbean's supposed handling of the crime scene and Mrs Smith in the aftermath of the disappearance, with conflicting statements coming from both sides. George Smith's family and his wife insist he was murdered and the cruise staff covered it up to avoid a media frenzy. They state they believe the FBI will make arrests in the future. But why would someone want to kill George? There’s been speculation that he spoke of having a large amount of cash in his stateroom, but no one involved in the case says any money was missing.
Alternatively a less nefarious theory is that George could have gone out to the balcony for a cigar and somehow fell overboard. Or in his drunken state he could have tried to sit up on the railings and fell overboard. I'm inclined to believe one of the latter theories, although the disputes over how many men entered George's cabin on the 5th July versus how many were seen and heard leaving does make me question the accident theory, plus the small amount of blood found inside the cabin and the statements about George made on the video.
What are your theories?