13 Horrifying Crimes That Happened On Cruise Ships

Sun, fun, adventure, booze, and all the food you desire. No one can dispute the fact that some time on a cruise ship can lead to some relaxing getaways and many fond memories. However, cruise ships have secrets that can be dangerous and even downright deadly. From the early 1900s to the 21st century, there have been a plethora of ominous disappearances of cruise ships, as well as scary crimes and suicides in the midst of the opulent splendor of seafaring adventures. 

Compiled here is a list of true stories of terrible things that happened while people were at sea. In the middle of what should have been a relaxing vacation awaited tragedy and horror. From liaisons gone bad to assaults, read on for information on the most frightening crimes committed on cruise ships.

Alicia Keir boarded the Carnival Dream cruise ship on her way to Saint Maarten in October of 2011. She was pregnant, but kept it a secret from her friends and family, possibly because she had had multiple unprotected sex partners in a relatively short period of time and didn't know who the father was.

Two days into the cruise, Keir realized she was giving birth. She did not get help and instead, delivered the baby on her own. She gave birth to a healthy, breathing baby girl, wrapper her in a towel, and hid her under one of the beds in the cabin. The child died of exposure and neglect while Keir continued to enjoy her trip. Once the ship docked in St. Maarten, a cleaning crew discovered the deceased infant and alerted authorities. After pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter four years after the fact, Alicia was sentenced to one day behind bars, including time served.

Darla and Enoch had planned a luxury cruise to commemorate Enoch’s birthday in 2009, and brought along their 14-year-old daughter, Taylor, to celebrate. The trip aboard the cruise ship Freedom was enjoyable, but one night during the cruise, Taylor was unable to sleep and went to an upper deck to write in her journal. It was then that the ship bartender, Heri Krispiyanto of Indonesia, dragged the girl into an employees only area and forced himself on her.

After an admonition to tell no one, Krispiyanto let the terrified girl return to her family. As is the case with so many victims of sexual assault, Taylor couldn’t bring herself to tell her family, and their vacation continued. It wasn’t until months later that the depression and trauma forced her to reveal that she’d been raped by the bartender who had become well acquainted with the family during their stay.

At first, Krispiyanto denied the allegations altogether, but after failing a lie detector test, he admitted to having sex with the girl and claimed it was consensual. Since Taylor was too young to even offer consent, Krispiyanto was tried for rape and sentenced to three years behind bars. 

Eric Dickerson was aboard the Carnival Sensation, headed out to the Bahamas for a four-day cruise with his wife when the two of them complained of the noise coming from the next cabin. Dickerson and his wife were moved to another cabin, but allowed to keep the keys to the first one. At some point, Dickerson ended up partying with a group of teenage boys and two teenage girls.

Unable to get alcohol on their own, Dickerson admitted to purchasing alcohol for the minors in the original room he’d had with his wife. After allowing the teens to consume alcohol in his presence, Eric Dickerson forced himself onto one of the girls as the second of the two underage girls was held in a bathroom by one of the boys. After assaulting her, Dickerson then directed the other young men to act accordingly. They took turns assaulting the victim. Once done, Dickerson allowed the young women to leave. A rape kit was done, and Dickerson was arrested by the F.B.I. in Florida. Dickerson has since been sentenced to 20 years in prison and another 15 years on probation.

O’Neil Persaud was staying at an all-inclusive resort on the island of St. Maarten in the Bahamas. He was travelling alone and was supposed to have flown back to Toronto at the end of his holiday. He had no concrete reason to be aboard the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line’s Adventure of The Seas on the evening of July 19, 2002.

The idea that the 31-year-old Guyanese-Canadian citizen would die on a cruise ship he had no reason to be on is strange. The events surrounding his death are stranger still. Persaud was seen on video boarding the ship at St. Maarten in the company of a woman in a white hat who appeared to be Persaud’s companion. It wasn’t until Persaud approached a crew member asking for food and a room that he was apprehended and placed in an isolation cell.

Shortly after, Persaud was forcibly restrained. He became violent and suicidal after being placed in confinement, and walked through three security guards and two cans of pepper spray before he was restrained by another five men and sedated. He was pronounced dead shortly after. No other drugs were found in his system. His death was ruled accidental, but Persaud's family maintains that he was murdered.

Tammy Grogan took a sorely needed vacation aboard the Imagination of Carnival Cruise Lines in September of 2006. She was traveling with her 14-year-old son, her sister, and her mother on a four-day cruise to Mexico. One day, Grogan was nowhere to be found, but her group assumed she was aboard the ship enjoying the day. It was only when they docked that they realized something was wrong. She had been missing for 36 hours. 

Investigations led to the revelation that the cruise had been paid for by a Craig Morgan. Morgan was under suspicion for having a "touchy-feely" relationship with Grogan's young son, Jimmy Fleischmann. Grogan forbid her son from meeting the older man, and when Morgan gave them the tickets to the cruise, she accepted despite her suspicion. Morgan himself was not on the cruise, but investigators discovered that a date rape drug was in one of Grogan's last-known drinks. Grogan's mother suspects foul play, but her daughter’s disappearance officially remains an unsolved mystery. 

Scott Roston and Karen Waltz impulsively got married in Las Vegas in February, 1988. The news came as a surprise to Karen’s roommate and worried her mother, who didn’t trust Roston, and thought the two were moving too fast. Misgivings aside, the newlyweds boarded the Sundance Cruises luxury ship and embarked on their honeymoon.

Nine days after their wedding, Karen Waltz went overboard and drowned. Fellow passengers recounted that the couple had argued on board, with Roston intimidating his wife on several occasions. Roston had grown angry when he saw Karen eating sweets, and had been furious with her for eating with the wrong utensils. Roston first claimed she had been swept overboard by a strong wind, but wind velocity had been no more than five miles per hour at the time.

Forensic evidence indicated Karen had been the victim of violence, including damage to her neck consistent with strangling, and cuts and scratches to Roston’s face indicative of a desperate struggle. Roston changed his story once this information came to light, and claimed that they had been attacked by Israeli assassins. Yes. Assassins. He further stated that he was knocked unconscious before they killed her. Roston was sentenced to life in federal prison for Karen’s murder, and the sentence was reduced to thirty three years on appeal. 

Schoolteacher Robert McGill and his wife, Shirley, had been high school sweethearts who decided to break up and move on. 30 years later, during a high school reunion, the two got together again and married in what seemed like a love story for the ages. The story brutally ended in July of 2009 aboard the cruise ship Elation, on a five-day cruise to Mexico for McGill's 55th birthday.

McGill had been drinking heavily the night before in Cabo San Lucas, and the drinking continued on the ship. Court documents say McGill downed at least 20 drinks in the interim and was so drunk he could barely walk. McGill claims to have no recollection of the murder and doesn't know what triggered him, but he brutally beat his wife after returning to his cabin. He then strangled her and left her broken body on the floor of the bathroom as he calmly changed clothes and went up to one of the decks to smoke a cigar.

Later, he met another couple for more drinks, and when asked where Shirley McGill was, he confessed to having killed her. McGill was taken into custody when the ship docked in Los Angeles and was sentenced to life in prison. 

Newly weds John Banner and his wife, Darla Mellinger-Banner, were both found dead in a blood-soaked cabin during their second cruise in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on April 2, 2015. Upon investigation, it was determined that Banner had stabbed his wife to death and then taken his own life with the same weapon. Oddly enough, police had been summoned to the couple’s home in Ohio shortly after they returned from their first honeymoon cruise a scant five months earlier in December of 2014.

In the 2014 encounter, the wife had sustained a stab wound to the center of her chest from the husband. The couple explained that it had occurred when the husband went to show his wife an old military dagger and tripped on a rug. The explanation, while dubious, seemed plausible enough and was corroborated by both Banner and Mellinger-Banner, and no further action had been taken at the time.

On September 24, 2002, emergency paramedics were called to cabin D182 on a P&O cruise ship bound for Noumea and other Pacific ports of call. In the bathroom of the cabin lay Dianne Brimble, unconscious, and lying in her own excretion. Half an hour later, Brimble was pronounced dead. An autopsy later revealed that she died over alcohol and drug overdose. 

The cabin in which she was found in belonged to the four men that witnesses claimed they saw Brimble with the night before at the on-ship nightclub. The men had boarded the ship with the intention to cram as much sex into the ten days and nine nights they had at sea. They were accused of harassing and offering drugs to multiple women on the ship, including teenage girls.

After the victim’s body was removed, the men launched racist, sexist tirades against Brimble for having ruined their vacation. Ultimately, the men were cleared of most of the charges including manslaughter. One of them even pleaded guilty to the vastly lesser charge of giving Brimble GHB, also known as the “date rape drug” before she died. The judge opted for no punishment in the case. 

George Smith IV had been married just days before he and his wife, Jennifer Hagel, boarded the MS Brilliance of the Seas in July of 2005. They were enjoying their trip until a very drunk Smith apparently left the casino early that morning in the company of several young men. After what has described as “very loud arguing” and the “sound of furniture being moved” in Smith’s room, he was gone, with nothing but a bloody smear twenty feet below his cabin to mark his passage.

Smith, who was very wealthy, had apparently bragged of having $50,000 in his cabin. The four men he was last seen with claimed they put him to bed and left. In 2015, the FBI announced they would be closing the case. Devastated, Smith’s family maintains he was murdered and still seeks justice. Hagel has since remarried.