The “devastated” mentor of the luxury Manhattan jeweler who vanished when the Bayesian yacht sank off Sicily spoke with her protége days before the tragedy — and admitted she has little hope that the missing passengers will be found alive.
In an exclusive interview with The Post, goldsmith Cecelia Bauer recalled inviting Neda Morvillo to a luncheon with fellow jewelers on Monday, the same day the superyacht capsized off the coast of Palermo.
Morvillo, who has a fine jewelry business in Midtown, and her lawyer husband Christopher Morvillo are among the six people who went missing during the tragedy.
But officials are holding out hope they may be trapped in the ship alive, surviving on air pockets 160 feet below the surface.
“I’m totally shocked,” Bauer said upon learning her former student and Morvillo’s husband were aboard the doomed yacht.
“I’m devastated because I can’t believe she’s one of the missing. It doesn’t look good … I would find it hard to believe that anyone has survived this long.”
Bauer told The Post she trained the missing jeweler approximately 20 years ago.
A website for Morvillo — who goes professionally as Neda Nassiri — credits Bauer as her mentor.
“She was a student of mine,” Bauer said. “She came to my studio and she studied with me for many, many years, and she was able to go out on her own, and get her own studio and a place to work.
“She became a very close friend. She’s very dear to me. And this news is just absolutely devastating.”
Morvillo declined Bauer’s lunch invitation over the weekend but didn’t offer a reason why.
“She said that she wasn’t going to be able to come,” Bauer explained, adding that she had “no idea” Morvillo had been sailing the Mediterranean Sea on a superyacht.
Bauer described Morvillo as “very upbeat, very happy,” and “incredibly smart.”
“She was glad to help anybody out that she could,” Bauer said. “She was extremely generous…She was very special.”
Bauer explained that she met Christopher Morvillo only on several occasions, but recognized him as a “really nice fella” who was “very well connected.”
Christopher Morvillo was the couple’s ticket onto the yacht as they were celebrating British tech tycoon Mike Lynch‘s win in his longstanding fraud trial earlier this summer.
Lynch, the owner of the yacht, and his 18-year-old daughter are also lost at sea.
“It’s all just pretty horrible,” Bauer added. “I don’t even know what to say, it’s so terrible. I can’t imagine what her family [is going through],” the grieving goldsmith said.
Neda and her husband have two daughters, Sabrina and Sophie, who were due to fly out to Italy and spend time on the luxury boat before it sank.
“He was so excited about the trip,” fellow attorney David Oscar Markus wrote in a blog post after discovering the couple was missing.
“He couldn’t wait for his daughters to meet up with him and his wife. I am so thankful the girls had not yet arrived when this tragedy struck.”
Christopher Morvillo’s mother has holed up in her Long Island home eagerly awaiting developments, according to neighbors.
“Cathy is distraught, she is holding out hope they are still alive,” a neighbor told DailyMail.com Tuesday.
“It’s heartbreaking. We are waiting with bated breath,’ the person said. ‘It’s a wonderful family and we are all grieving along with them. His mother still has hope that there’s some chance her son and daughter-in-law are alive.”
Italian divers were exploring the sunken Bayesian late Tuesday after using jacks to smash the 1¹/₄-inch-thick glass, according to local reports.
They reached the common areas of the 184-foot luxury vessel, but have not yet made it to the cabins — where one expert theorized the missing passengers might be trapped, but alive.
The search and rescue mission could take hours. Because of the depth, divers can only stay underwater for 12 minutes at a time.
The Bayesian capsized with 22 people — 10 crew members and 12 passengers — after it was suddenly struck by a freak storm around sunrise Monday morning, officials said.
Fifteen people managed to escape before the superyacht went down.
The ship’s Canadian-born chef Thomas Recaldo marks the only confirmed death in the tragedy.
In addition to the Morvillos and Lynch and his daughter, Morgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Bloomer ad his wife, Judy, are still unaccounted for.
