Captain found guilty in speedboat crash that killed U.S. executive Adrienne Vaughan in Italy, lawyer says

The captain of a motorboat which crashed into a sailboat off Italy’s Amalfi coast, killing a U.S. tourist, has been jailed for more than four years for manslaughter, his lawyer said Friday.

Adrienne Vaughan, 45, the head of the U.S. branch of Bloomsbury publishing house, died after she was flung from the motorboat in the holiday hotspot in southern Italy in August 2023.

Italian skipper Elio Persico, 32, was sentenced by a Salerno judge to four years and nine months in jail after requesting a plea bargain, lawyer Liberato Mazzola told AFP.

Persico had tested positive for cocaine and alcohol at the time.

Vaughan had been on the boat with her husband and two children, aged 12 and 8, and had been sunbathing when the motorboat crashed into a sailboat carrying party-goers.

She was flung overboard and hit by the propellers. Her daughter was also thrown into the sea but was unharmed.

A video published by the New York Post showed guests on the sailboat during the collision, with one woman asking, “What happened?” 

“This boat, it collided with us,” a man responds frantically, before running across the deck.

Moments later, another guest says: “She needs help.”

“The sailboat was going straight ahead and so was the [motor]boat,” Pietro Iuzzolino, a barman who was making cocktails aboard the sailboat, told Italian newspaper Corriere del Mezzogiorno. “Then suddenly [the motorboat] veered 180 degrees: there was a collision and I heard a very loud bang.

“I saw the woman in the water being held up by her children and her husband,” he said. “It was terrible.”

Vaughan was pulled out of the water and brought to a dock but died by the time a helicopter ambulance arrived, state TV said at the time.  

When the motorboat crashed, it had been headed to Positano, one of the most popular destinations along the Amalfi Coast, Italian media said.

Vaughan was president of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc., publisher of the Harry Potter series.

“Adrienne Vaughan was a leader of dazzling talent and infectious passion and had a deep commitment to authors and readers,” said the board chair, Julia Reidhead, and president and CEO, Maria A. Pallante, in a joint statement after the incident. “Most of all she was an extraordinary human being, and those of us who had the opportunity to work with her will be forever fortunate.”