What happened to Merrian Carver?

Merrian Carver, 40, went missing on a 7-day Royal Caribbean cruise from Seattle to Alaska in August 2004. Her ship’s steward was the last person to see her; he reported her missing several times, and his boss instructed him to “forget about it and go on with your job.” This case involves NDAs, private investigators, and a lot of cruise line negligence. Many people assume she committed suicide, while others say she was murdered or fell overboard. But what happened to Merrian Carver leaves us with more questions than answers.

Merrian Carver was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on April 3, 1964. She was a former banker who enjoyed writing and traveling. Her father describes her as an overachiever, a sensitive person who was always traveling, and a very adventurous person.

Merrian is 40 years old, divorced, and lives alone at this time. She and her ex-husband share a 13-year-old daughter who is spending the summer in England with her father. Merrian and her daughter check in on each other at least once a day.

She boarded a plane from Boston to Seattle, Washington on August 27, 2004. She doesn’t tell anyone where she’s going or what she’s doing; she simply packs her belongings and departs. She didn’t tell her family where she was going, but it wasn’t the craziest thing she’d done.

Merrian decides to embark on her own cruise. She boards the Royal Caribbean Celebrity Mercury cruise ship in Seattle bound for Alaska. The cruise she boards has 12 decks and a capacity of 2,000 passengers. This wasn’t her first cruise either.

She was staying on the 9th floor, with a panoramic deck view. While Merrian is on board, there is a party going on, complete with people, drinks, and music. Her sense of security is enhanced because she is alone. She doesn’t approach anyone on the ship and strike up a conversation with them, but people do approach her and talk to her.

She returns to her cabin to write in her journal when the ship’s steward enters, and the reason is that she had asked for some towels earlier that evening which he had provided. Strangely, the doors lock electronically, and there are no safety latches or deadbolts to hold the door shut. That is something that Merrian is frightened of.

Merrian spends the following day on the ship writing and roaming around. Her daughter had attempted to reach her the night before, but there was no cellular reception. Merrian decides to stay in her room and read a book that night because there is a party going on. On the second day, a Saturday, around 8 to 8:30 p.m., the ship Steward enters her room. And when I say walk into her room, I mean it literally because there is no lock.

And there was a formal taking place at the moment, and practically everyone on board attended. He apologized for entering the room and asked Merrian whether she was going to the formal, to which she replied that she was not.

Merrian apparently asked the ship’s steward if he could assist her in ordering room service. Merrian’s parents hired a private investigator, who stated that he did not understand the relevance of her room service order, in which she ordered two sandwiches rather than one.

That’s hardly the strangest thing; perhaps she hadn’t eaten all day and ordered the sandwich for herself. But a part of you also wonders whether she did eat and got two sandwiches to share with another person.

Merrian offers the steward a tip, but he declines, claiming that it is his duty to serve her. She finishes her meal, places the dish on the floor outside the room, and puts some money aside for the steward, which she will give to him in the morning, before going to bed. That is, if she was going to give him the tip the next morning, she was intending on seeing him again.

The steward arrives the next morning, takes the dishes Merrian left, finds she isn’t in her room, and has no contact with her that morning. The cabin steward searches the ship but is unsuccessful in finding her; he becomes concerned since she is nowhere to be found and goes to his supervisor’s office to inform him that someone is missing.

The supervisor calls the ship’s stewards to his office and asks them to sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA), which is quite troubling. If you don’t know what an NDA is, it’s a legally binding contract that ensures confidentiality between two parties. It basically says that after you sign this, you will stop talking.

Merrian’s father added that they have emails revealing the process of covering up her disappearance and in the email, there was someone asking

Did you check her onboard account, did she make any purchases they answered “No there were no purchases.

“Can I have her sea pass data and photo, which they said they already sent.” Just to know who they are looking for, and when she got on the cruise.

Have you checked the security cameras? “The security is looking into it,” they said.

It’s been a week since Merrian’s daughter has heard from her, and she is concerned. She calls Merrian’s father and informs him that she is unable to contact her mother. So Merrian’s father Ken tries to call Merrian but nothing comes through; he rings her apartment landline phone but no one answers.

They contact Cambridge police and file a missing person’s report, so the police go to Merrian’s residence to investigate, and when they arrive, they look for traces of a break-in. Nothing seemed unusual, so they took her laptop and some of her belongings to examine. They ask her neighbors whether they have seen or heard anything from her, but no one knows where she is.

Back on board, the cruise, claims operation manager and hotel operations managers meet with the supervisor, and the steward wishes to approach the manager and explain what occurred. The steward returns to the room to double-check everything. Nothing has changed when he returns; the tip money is still there.

The steward informs his boss that Merrian is not in her room, and for each day that Merrian is gone, he informs his supervisor, and the supervisor instructs the steward, “Just forget about it and do your job.” Merrian’s bed is made by the steward, who also leaves chocolate and flowers on her bed.

The private investigator stated that because she was on the 9th floor if you took the elevator and went two floors up, she’d be on the deck and near the ship’s edge. And if you took the elevator from the 9th to the 6th floor, the first thing you’d see is the deck and the edge of the ship, and you might easily be pushed overboard or fall, especially if it’s early in the morning when no one is awake and strolling around.

Merrian’s parents beg the FBI to help three weeks after her disappearance, and they continue to call the Cambridge police, but nothing happens. Police were able to access Merrian’s bank account and discovered that she had purchased a ticket for an Alaska cruise. Ken Carver contacts the cruise ship and inquires about Merrian’s whereabouts. He is told, “Yes, she was on the cruise, but they have no idea if she got off the cruise.”

“Is there any surveillance footage of Merrian on the cruise?” Ken ask. “No, there is no video; it’s been three weeks, so it’s been erased,” they claimed. Ken contacts a private investigator because the FBI and Cambridge police have no jurisdiction over the cruise ship.

Tim, the private investigator, arrives on the ship two months after Merrian’s disappearance and talks with the claims manager, but he also wants to speak with the cabin attendant, who was apparently unavailable and on another ship.

He was also informed that the supervisor was unavailable. “The only person you actually need to talk to is me because I have all the essential information,” the guest claim representative said. While on the ship, Tim discovers that the windows on Merrian’s floor, the 9th floor with the panoramic view, are latched and bolted, making it impossible to open the windows.

He asked about viewing the security cameras. They also informed him that the footage was deleted every two weeks. Tim requests to speak with the security officer, but they refuse because they are training new employees. And Tim has more questions than answers.

Ken hires lawyers from both Massachusetts and Florida in January 2005, and after months of hard effort, they are able to obtain subpoenas for the cruise ship crew. In a telephone deposition, two cruise line stewards testify, and Ken finds that they were aware of Merrian’s abduction but did nothing about it.

The cabin steward, who spent the most time with Merrian, recalls seeing her on the first day of the cruise and discovering she was missing two days later; he reports it to his supervisor several times, and the supervisor tells him to “do your job.”

The steward approaches the supervisor and asks “What shall I do with her belongings?” “Put it in a bag and put it in a locker,” the supervisor replied. They got rid of everything she owned. The captain, staff captain, and hotel director all have keys to all the rooms and can enter anyone’s room. If the top three persons on board have access to all of the keys, it’s quite likely that someone else has access to the keys as well.

An example, if you are close to the captain, he may grant you access to all of the keys onboard. The keys might be in the hands of anyone on board. A second deposition is scheduled with the ship’s manager of hotel operations. The manager stated that, despite the fact that no one on the ship acknowledged Merrian’s disappearance, the cruise line company launched its own internal inquiry and fired the steward supervisor for failing to disclose Merrian’s disappearance.

The investigation began at the end of September when a Cambridge investigator contacted the cruise operator and asked if Merrian could be reported missing. However, no one on the ship reported a missing person. Instead, five weeks after Merrian’s disappearance, the cruise line filed a missing person report with the FBI, but the FBI was unable to conduct an investigation because it had no authority over the cruise ship.

Ken Carver chooses to write to the cruise line’s chairman and board of directors, expressing his need for answers and closure over what happened to his daughter. A month later, he received a copy of the security report, the report that was filed on September 30th and written by the manager of security noted that company regulations had been violated and that the ship’s captain, the security office, and the ship’s captain should have been notified the second Merrian vanished.

According to the report, Merrian’s possessions should not have been relocated, and evidence discovered at the scene of the incident should be left alone. According to the report, the ship’s security personnel must also protect the site and safeguard the integrity of the incident scene, ensuring that nothing is moved or interfered with until outside investigators reach onboard.

Ken Carver clears out Merrians’ apartment, donating some belongings to charity and keeping the truly personal items for the family. Ken Carver continues to contact the Coast Guard, police, and the FBI, asking for an update. In addition, his lawyers contact them on a daily basis, asking the same question.

Ken filed a lawsuit against the cruise line for being careless and negligent. The legal struggle became public in August 2005, and the cruise line made a statement declaring Merrian dead. They told Ken that they checked the footage, which they claimed had been removed since the start of the investigation, and that after watching it, she jumped overboard.

The letter from the cruise line said

This appears strange since how can they write this and imply that someone they don’t know has mental problems, and how do they know she attempted suicide before? Ken Carver stated that if it was a suicide, show us evidence rather than simply writing it off as a suicide for the sake of closing a case and hoping that the family will accept that conclusion.

Ken stated that there is an issue with the cruising industry because so many individuals have gone missing while on cruises and no one knows what happened to them. He contacts four families, and together they form the International Cruise Victims, whose mission is to penalize corporations that choose to operate outside the law and fail to take necessary action when crimes occur.

They have victims of sexual assault, deaths, missing individuals, overboard events, assaults and accidents, and other crimes. They have all of the victims’ faces and names on their websites.

Their main purpose is:

To increase public awareness of the potential risks as well as the rights and protections passengers are relinquishing to travel on a cruise

ship.

To provide support for passengers who have been the victims of crime, violence, negligence, or other tragedies while on a cruise voyage.

They also provide constantly updated cruise ship news, and a podcast called the ICV podcast will be available soon.

International Cruise Victims was created on January 1, 2006, by four families who had lost loved ones on a cruise ship.

They have an increasing number of individuals from 19 nations sharing their stories as of January 1, 2014.

In 2015, a decade after Merrian’s disappearance, Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut and Senator Markey of Massachusetts introduced the Cruise Passenger Protection Act of 2015. Ensuring that improvements have been implemented since cruise lines have been held accountable for reporting crimes and crime prevention on the seas.

Ken Carver received the Ronald Regan Public Policy Award on April 7, 2017, for public policy leadership, vision, and innovation that benefits crime victims.