Mystery at Sea: Two survivors Arrested

Two men picked up in a life raft after hiring a Miami Beach charter boat whose four-member crew disappeared over the weekend were charged late Tuesday with federal crimes. Kirby Archer, 35, of Strawberry, Ark., was charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Guillermo Zarabozo, 19, of Hialeah, was charged with giving a false statement to a federal agent. Both were taken to federal prison in Miami.

Archer, a former customer service manager at an Arkansas Wal-Mart, is accused of stealing $92,000 from the store by sneaking it out in a microwave oven in January. The Joe Cool, the 47-foot sportfisher boat at the center of the mystery, was towed back to Miami Beach as well. Federal agents, who are investigating the disappearance of the Joe Cool’s crew, were mum on what Archer and Zarabozo, plucked from a life raft on Monday, have had to say under questioning.

Meanwhile, details emerging from family, neighbors and co-workers of the two men — in both rural Arkansas and a hardscrabble section of Hialeah — indicate that Archer befriended Zarabozo’s family in the mid-1990s. Then a boy, Zarabozo and his parents and sister were trying to escape Cuba, and Archer was a military police investigator at Guantánamo Bay, according to Archer’s ex-wife, Michelle Rowe.

”I can’t be 100 percent sure, but I think this is the same boy he met in Guantánamo and told me he had grown very close to,” Rowe told The Miami Herald. Archer’s current wife, Michelle Archer, said her husband knew a ”Guillermo” in Miami. Zarabozo’s mother confirmed Tuesday that her son knew Archer — and said Archer had visited their home years ago. Meanwhile Tuesday, the Coast Guard moved its search for the four crew members farther north to waters off Palm Beach County, three days after the U.S. Coast Guard found the Joe Cool in the Florida Straits, about 40 miles north of Cuba. The missing are captain Jake Branam, 27; his wife, Kelley Branam, 30; Branam’s half-brother Scott Gamble, 35; and first mate Samuel Kairy, 27, all of Miami Beach.

”Unfortunately, the clock is ticking,” cautioned Petty Officer James Judge.

Relatives of the Branams hired a helicopter Tuesday and flew a stretch of the Florida Straits. Back on land, they said the couple’s daughter was calling for her mommy and daddy.