Two more bodies pulled from Costa Concordia

[polly7]

Angela Mulholland, CTVNews.ca
Date: Mon. Jan. 23 2012 10:06 AM ET
Two more bodies have been pulled from the wreckage of the Costa Concordia, the cruise ship grounded off the coast of Tuscany.

Divers recovered the bodies of two women from the ship's Internet café, the national civil protection agency official in charge of the search said Monday.

That brings the number of confirmed dead to 15.

Officially, there are now 17 people still missing. However, officials said over the weekend that there may have been unregistered guests on board at the time of the accident.

Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20120123/officials-weighing-approach-to-costa-concordia-fuel-removal-120223/#ixzz1kJI9d6CF

[aquart]

1. "Unregistered guests"?

Whose guests?

[polly7]

2. I know ..... I haven't figured that one out either. nt.

[jberryhill]

3. At this point, maybe some Italian organization is dumping them there at night

It's like that time an airplane crashed into a cemetery near Warsaw. Three weeks later, they were still digging up victims.

[Xithras]

4. Lots of possibilities.

While it's hard to do, it's not impossible to sneak onto a ship as a stowaway. We still hear about fraudsters flying across the country using fake tickets in American airports, even with modern TSA jackboots watching the gates. Sneaking onto a cruise ship in Europe would be cake, by comparison. Sneak on while the employees are distracted, use a fake credential to pose as an employee, pay off someone at the gate, hide in a bag if you're on a smaller liner that doesn't use xrays...there's several ways to do it.

It's also possible that the person was a prostitute. Like any other vacation destination, it's not that uncommon for a sex worker or two to be present on a cruise liner. They get access to the ships the same way they get access to any other private vacation resort...get close to someone that controls a point of entry, strike a deal with them (often a cash payoff), and use their access to sneak on board. It doesn't get discussed often, and for obvious reasons, but you can get everything from sex to drugs on many cruise ships if you ask the right people.

Then again, they might have simply been the bar dates of the bridge crew, offered a free cruise in exchange for "keeping them company" while they ran their route. That's not exactly unheard of either.