He Mysteriously Disappeared Off A Cruise Ship Last Year, With No Sign Of Him On Or Off The Ship
At 26 years old, Kevin McGrath was a U.S. Army Veteran and a father of two.
He served for six years, with deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Kevin and the mother of his children were also divorced, so the kids lived with his ex in Tennessee.
Then, on September 1, 2023, Kevin joined 43 of his friends and family members as they embarked on a three-day cruise to the Bahamas to celebrate his father’s sixtieth birthday over Labor Day weekend.
They boarded the Carnival Cruise Ship Conquest in Miami, Florida, and the voyage got off to a fine start. Yet, by September 4, Kevin was missing.
His father, Sean McGrath, last talked with Kevin on the evening of September 3.
“I spoke to him around 10:00 p.m. and just went to the [cabin] to give him his luggage tags and tell him to meet us downstairs for breakfast about 7:30 a.m.,” he recalled.
Kevin was last spotted by his twin brother in the early morning hours of September 4, at about 2:00 a.m. He was reportedly captured on cellphone footage as he danced to live music.
An hour and a half later, at 3:30 a.m., Kevin’s key card was scanned as he entered the room he shared with his twin brother, Andre. At this point, the cruise ship was heading back to Miami.
Sean reportedly stated that his son Andre thought he might’ve heard Kevin exit their room between 5:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m.
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Still, Kevin’s family met up for breakfast at 7:30 a.m., and he was nowhere to be found. And once the cruise ship reached Miami and all the passengers disembarked at 1015 North America Way, there was still no sign of him.
Kevin was reported missing to the Miami-Dade Police Department after his family exited the ship, and authorities launched an extensive search.
Police, as well as officials with the Port of Miami, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, U.S. Coast Guard, and Carnival, searched on land and in the water where the cruise had traveled before arriving back in Miami.
Additionally, surveillance footage from the cruise ship was reviewed, the ship was searched, and investigators interviewed Kevin’s family members and other travelers aboard the ship.
The cruise ship’s “overboard” alarm had not been triggered on the morning of September 4, indicating that Kevin hadn’t fallen over. His pass was never scanned to disembark the ship, either.
“As far as speculation is concerned, I guess a lot of people on the internet have all different types of ideas about what happened to him. Based on what I was told, they have no surveillance of him going overboard. The alarm system did not alert them,” Sean said.
Despite searching the cruise ship itself and the surrounding region, though, no evidence of Kevin’s whereabouts was found, and his disappearance remains unsolved.
One month after his son went missing, Sean stated that it was “not looking likely” that Kevin was still alive.
“The only thing is, we’re asking ourselves where could he possibly be? Where could the body be? You just need that to have some type of closure,” he explained.
In the wake of Kevin’s case gaining media exposure, it was revealed that he’d reportedly been on probation for assault at the time he went on the cruise and was actually not allowed to sail.
He allegedly threatened to kill the mother of his children and their two kids, pleading guilty to aggravated assault in Tennessee in September 2022. At that point, he was reportedly sentenced to six years of supervised probation.
Kevin had obtained permission to relocate from Tennessee to Florida, where he lived with his parents in Port St. Lucie prior to his disappearance. However, he reportedly didn’t get permission to go on the cruise from his probation officers.
The exact circumstances surrounding Kevin’s disappearance remain unclear, though, and his case is still unsolved.
He was five foot nine, weighed 170 pounds, and had brown hair and brown eyes.
If you have any information regarding Kevin’s case, you are urged to contact the Miami-Dade Police Department at (305) 471-8477.
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