Terry Jo Duperrault Raft Ordeal
In 1961, 11-year-old Terry Jo Duperrault joined her parents and siblings on the chartered yacht for a dream family cruise from Fort Lauderdale toward the Bahamas. One night at sea, the captain, Julian Harvey, murdered her entire family and his own wife, then scuttled the yacht, leaving Terry Jo to escape onto a tiny cork raft barely 2 feet by 5 feet as the boat went under. She drifted alone on the open ocean for about four days without food, water, or shelter until a freighter ship finally spotted and rescued her near the Bahamas.
A Coast Guard inquiry later concluded that Harvey had engineered an insurance-driven murder plot before killing himself, while Terry Jo spent years living with the trauma of surviving her family’s unexplained slaughter at sea.