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FBI scrutinizes video, railing in cruise-ship death

The FBI is sending video from the cruise liner where passenger Mindy Jordan fell into the sea to its lab to be enhanced - and also will examine the railing from Jordan's stateroom and a glass partition from the ship, a spokesman for the agency said yesterday.

The FBI is sending video from the cruise liner where passenger Mindy Jordan fell into the sea to its lab to be enhanced - and also will examine the railing from Jordan's stateroom and a glass partition from the ship, a spokesman for the agency said yesterday.

Jim Margolin of the New York FBI office said he didn't know if the glass partition was located between Jordan's stateroom and the one occupied by the couple with whom she and her boyfriend, Jorge Caputo, were traveling aboard the Norwegian Dawn.

But the original statement from Norwegian Cruise Lines said that Jordan, 46, a practical nurse and mother of two teens, who had been living with Caputo in Pine Hill, N.J., fell into the stormy Atlantic on Mother's Day while "attempting to climb from one exterior balcony on Deck Nine to the adjoining balcony."

On Wednesday, the cruise line issued a second statement saying that the vessel's surveillance cameras indicated that Jordan was alone when she went into the water. According to the tapes, she and Caputo had returned from dinner at 7:28 p.m. and he left the stateroom at 7:36 p.m. to visit the other couple.

"At 7:53, surveillance cameras from the exterior of the ship capture Mindy falling overboard from her balcony, straight into the water," Norwegian Cruise Lines said.

"Shortly thereafter, an emergency call was made from the friends' stateroom and Jorge is seen exiting to seek help," the company said.

Jordan's mother, Louise Horton, could not be reached but has said she wants authorities to continue looking into what happened. She turned down Norwegian Cruise Line's offer to fly her to Bermuda to view the security tapes.

Horton said that Jordan and Caputo, who has worked in an auto-dealer repair shop and recently underwent surgery, according to a Pine Hill neighbor, had a troubled relationship.

Horton earlier told the Daily News that Caputo called her the morning after Jordan fell to tell her that her daughter had died in an accident while they were "clowning around."

Caputo was interviewed by FBI agents in Bermuda on Wednesday and has not been seen at his Pine Hill condo, where TV trucks were gathered, since flying home yesterday, said neighbor Barbara Matthews. Caputo's condo phone wasn't answered last night.

Horton has said she feared "foul play," but Matthews defended Caputo and said he and Jordan were a loving couple.

FBI spokesman Jim Margolin quoted an FBI higher-up as stating that, so far, the agency's investigation "hasn't indicated that a crime had been committed," but that the probe was still active.

An announcement wouldn't normally be released if Jordan's death were ruled an accident, but a law-enforcement source not directly involved in the investigation said that because of the circumstances in this case, the FBI might make its findings public. *

The Associated Press contributed to this article.