By NICO SCAVELLA

Tribune Staff Reporter

nscavella@tribunemedia.net

A CLOSE friend of the 25-year-old South African woman found hanging from a cellphone lanyard in an Atlantis hotel room last year insisted on Friday that her friend was not suicidal.

Lauren Burke said it was “absolutely” not like Carla Van Eeden to have taken her own life, as her friend was a “strong person” whose very personality could not “condone” such a demise.

Conversely, Ms Burke said if she had to choose, she would say Ms Van Eeden died at the hands of another person as opposed to taking her own life.

That, Ms Burke said, was because Ms Van Eeden committing suicide would not have comported with her demeanor prior to coming to the Bahamas. Ms Burke said her friend was “super excited” about coming swimming with the dolphins because she was a “massive animal lover”.

Ms Burke also said that prior to Ms Van Eeden’s death, they both spoke about her future plans and her career.

Ms Burke said: “…I was talking to Carla for the whole two days (after she checked into Atlantis) and I know what mindset she was in, and she wasn’t in a suicidal mindset. There is nothing about Carla that could ever condone that. She was there to swim with the dolphins and you know, just have fun.”

Ms Burke noted that Ms Van Eeden had broken up with her boyfriend Tom the month before, and also expressed some unhappiness in working on the yacht both she and her ex-boyfriend worked on.

Ms Burke also conceded that the break-up with Tom was one of the reasons Ms Van Eeden attributed to her unhappiness on the yacht, and suggested that it would have probably helped ease the break-up if she didn’t work and live with Tom and see him every day.

However, Ms Burke suggested that the break-up with Tom was not all that damaging, as the two continued to speak and were still friendly towards each other.

Ms Burke was the one whose persistent calls into the Atlantis resort on May 16, 2018 because of her concerns about Ms Van Eeden’s whereabouts ultimately caused hotel officials to investigate her room and find her hanging from a green and white cellphone lanyard around her neck, which was in turn hanging from a garment hook on the back of the bathroom door.

According to the evidence, Ms Van Eeden, formerly a stewardess on a private yacht, checked into the Atlantis resort on May 14, 2018. Tanackia Tinker, a front desk employee at the Royal Towers, checked her in.

Ms Burke said she had spoken with Ms Van Eeden “all day” on both May 14th and 15th. She said the last time she saw Ms Van Eeden online was around 4pm on the latter date. The last time she actually saw Ms Van Eeden was months prior in January of that year.

Ms Burke said she sent Ms Van Eeden a message on the morning May 16th, a Wednesday. At the time, Ms Burke said she was approximately six hours ahead of Ms Van Eeden, and figured her friend would still be asleep. Thus, she said she wasn’t expecting Ms Van Eeden to respond right away.

Ms Burke said it just so happened that she ended up having a busy day at work that didn’t end until 9:30pm her time. However, she said when she got back to her cabin, she realized Ms Van Eeden hadn’t responded.

Ms Burke said she and Ms Van Eeden primarily communicated via WhatsApp. However, she said she realized her message to Ms Van Eeden hadn’t been delivered, which was automatic red flag for her because it would mean that either her phone was off all that time, or she wasn’t online.

And that was out of character for Ms Van Eeden, according to Ms Burke, who said her friend was very organized and would have got back to her “straight away” had she seen her message. Thus, she said she knew right away that something wasn’t right.

Ms Burke’s testimony came after veteran American homicide detective John Buhrmaster doubled down on his previous assertions that Ms Van Eeden’s death “only happened one of two ways”, by suicide or accidental death. Mr Buhrmaster said her hanging death was “definitely” not a homicide, much less a natural death.

Mr Buhrmaster also rebuffed suggestions by South African forensic pathologist Dr Linda Liebenberg, who conducted the second of two autopsies on Ms Van Eeden at her family’s request, that the young woman was embroiled in a “violent struggle” prior to her death.

He said besides the fact that there was nothing in Ms Van Eeden’s room indicative of a fight—nothing had been knocked over, and the bedspread still being in place, Mr Buhrmaster said there was one detail that struck him as being “very much important”.

He said that if a person is strangled by someone else, their natural reaction would be to use their hands to try and remove the garrote. Thus, he said if Ms Van Eeden was in fact strangled to death, there would have been scratch marks on her neck from her trying to get her long, acrylic fingernails underneath the strangling device.

However, Mr Buhrmaster said he saw no such injuries based on the photographs he saw.

Mr Buhrmaster also testified how he was “denied” every time he requested to speak with the Royal Bahamas Police Force (RBPF) officers involved in investigating Ms Van Eeden’s death.

Based on the evidence, the officers Mr Buhrmaster wanted to interview were the investigating officer Corporal Cyril Walkes; Corporal Ashley Black; and Detective Corporal Navar Neely, a crime scene investigator, and the one who placed Ms Van Eeden’s body into a body bag.

Mr Buhrmaster said as he did not have the benefit of viewing the crime scene himself, and was retained by Atlantis to investigate the matter some 10 months later, he wanted to know “what they found, what they saw”.

Mr Buhrmaster said he first asked a former officer, Rory Saunders, to try and reach out to the officers involved so he could interview them, however, he said that never materialized. As a result, he said he went "knocking on the door", and went to police headquarters in a bid to speak to the officers, but was "turned down" at every opportunity.

Mr Buhrmaster also said his attempts at reaching out to Police Commissioner Anthony Ferguson were also futile, as he claimed the police chief never responded to an email he sent him about the matter.

“Still to this day I’ve never seen anything that the officers have done, so I don’t know,” Mr Buhrmaster said when asked what his assessment of the local investigation is. “I’ve never seen a report or anything.”

The matter continues.