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The tragic death of "Bill Gates" Mike Lynch, along with his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, from the sinking of his superyacht in Sicily shocked the world.
The journalist of "The Times", Danny Fortson, recounts the last conversation he had with the British "Bill Gates", in an interview conducted 7 weeks ago, when he was finally freed from fraud charges brought by the American Department of Justice.
"In my more than 20 years of journalism, I have never come across such a terrifying and tragic cosmic story," begins Fortson.
"For 2 1/2 hours, we talked about his unlikely arc from the son of Irish immigrants to one of Britain's richest men and how, against all odds, he had been given a second life.
It was an interview he thought he would never get. Lynch was accused of orchestrating a massive financial fraud. US marshals had put him in chains last year and extradited him to San Francisco for a trial he was almost certain to lose. Less than half of 1% of federal criminal cases in the US end in a not guilty verdict. Facing up to 25 years in prison, the 59-year-old assumed he would likely die, far from these shores, in a federal prison. 'I have various medical things that would have made survival difficult,' he told me. Before leaving, he set everything in order for the family.
Lynch seemed in a big hurry to make up for lost time. The legal battle, and in particular his house arrest leading up to the trial, meant missing time with his two daughters, Hannah, who has just finished her A-levels, her 22-year-old sister Esme and his wife, Angela Bacares. 'I made the decision that I wasn't going to stop them from going on holiday because I couldn't travel,' he said.
The Mediterranean yacht trip – with 10 crew and 12 guests – was meant to be just that. Lynch was given a "second life". It lasted 74 days," says Fortson about the interview with Lynch.
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