June 6, 2024 • 28 mins
The 1998 deaths of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope remain one of New Zealand’s most talked about cases.
Scott Watson has spent the last 25 years behind bars after being convicted of murdering them, despite no bodies ever being found.
Now, Watson is heading back to the courtroom four years after his case was referred back to the Court of Appeal, in what is his last shot at clearing his name.
Today on The Front Page, we’re going back to 1999 with NZ Herald senior journalist Carolyne Meng Yee and editorial leader Oskar Alley who covered Watson’s first trial, and then get a rundown on the appeal case with investigative reporter David Fisher.
For more on the Scott Watson case, listen to Chasing Ghosts: Murder in the Sounds wherever you get your podcast.
And for more on Scott Watson's trial, click here: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/double-murderer-scott-watson-to-stay-behind-bars-as-parole-board-seek-clarity-over-differing-psychological-reports/QXMO2GJ32JFRRMHF36Y77B3PS4/
A previous version of this episode didn’t include the fact hairs were found on a blanket on the Blade and two of those hairs on the blanket were found to have DNA characteristics that matched Olivia. The split in a bag containing comparison hairs was also taken from a hairbrush in Olivia’s home. Neither Police nor ESR took the hairbrush from her home.
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You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Sound Engineer: Paddy Fox
Producer: Ethan Sills
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Kiota.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and This is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. The nineteen
ninety eight deaths of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope remain
one of New Zealand's most talked about cases. Scott Watson
has spent the last twenty five years behind bars after
(00:28):
being convicted of murdering them, despite no bodies ever being found. Now,
Watson is heading back to the courtroom, four years after
his case was referred back to the Court of Appeal
in what is his last shot at clearing his name.
Today on the Front Page, we'll talk to senior NZED
Herald journalist David Fisher about the evidence that will be
(00:50):
debated during this week long hearing. But first we're going
back to nineteen ninety nine with enzed Herold's senior journalist
Carolyn Menyee and editorial leader Oscar Ali, who covered Watson's
first trial. First off, do you both remember when the
news came in that Ben and Olivia had gone missing?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Oh my gosh. Yes, it was extraordinary really for a
number of reasons, because, i mean, let's face it, most
people remember New Year's Eve nights and going out and partying,
and no one would ever think two young kids would
never come home to their families and are still missing.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
It was massive from the start, and you've got to
remember too that it was New Year's Day they were missing,
very quiet time for the news. So sometimes stories become
bigger faster because it's not a lot happening in the country,
but you know, a couple of really attractive kids doing
what a lot of kids of that age did, which
is their first holidays with their friends, not their family.
(01:49):
And also to be fair to their parents, they were
very vocal very quickly that you could see the concern,
and obviously as the days went on it just got
grimmer and grimmar.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Not to mention their surnames, Hope, and you know, they
were the perfect set of white middle class kids, beautiful, intelligent,
their whole lives ahead of them, and I think that's
what capitivated the country too, because I think if it was,
you know, as some different people in a small town
for example, there wouldn't have been such a huge kind
of interest.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
So you've got to remember too, this is ninety seven,
ninety eight, no cell phones. We all carry GPS devices
now called smartphones. People didn't go missing rarely in this
country back then, and you were as a kid growing up,
you went out for a day and your parents know
where you were. There was no phone to ring you on.
There wasn't necessarily a payphone, so it was a very
different age. It's more than twenty five years ago. It'd
(02:40):
be hard to think that people going missing like that nowadays,
with all the technology that we have, cell phones, pinging towers,
But back in ninety seven ninety eight, it was very
rare for people to just disappear, especially at such a
busy three thousand people at that party, it just didn't happen.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
It took about six months for Scott Watson to be
arrested in ch arged with the case. Now, how was
he portrayed in the public eye over that time.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Well, in my opinion, I think he was portrayed as
quite a villain from the outset and certainly from the
police's perspective at the time. There was such a huge
pressure for the police to convict someone for these two
kids going missing, and Scott, given his background as a
young teenager, was always in trouble. He was actually in
Ballstal and from memory when he was in bull stall.
(03:28):
As a teenager, he recovered a story at the time
for sixty minutes, stabbed the padre and the eye with
a big spike. So he was a bad egg from
a young age. But to be honest, I think that
he was probably unfairly maligned at the artset. He was
on his own at the time. At the party, he
was very drunk, very obnoxious, hitting on woman, being really inappropriate,
(03:50):
So he didn't portray himself in very good light in
those circumstances.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
I think it's been pretty well established now that police
were leaky and while it took six months to a
Scott Watson, they pulled his boat the Blade, out of
the water on January the twelfth, and every TV camera
and newspaper photographer knew to be there for that. And
once that happened in broad daylight with an audience of media,
it was pretty obvious that Watson was a significant person
(04:16):
of interest. It got reported that he had forty eight
previous criminal convictions, and you've got to understand when there's
a six month gap between people going missing and someone
being charged, it's a long period of time where the
media can report about people there's no subject to say
because no charges are being laid or are about to
be laid, and that had a lot of consequences when
it came time for the trial and people giving evidence
(04:38):
as witnesses in the High Court, who've been interviewed by
media days after it happened. It caused a lot of complications.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
And there are a lot of people who are happy
to say, and you heard this so much at the time,
you know, well, we're maybe a little unsure whether he
did it or not, but he's not a very nice guy.
It doesn't really matter.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
It matters a lot.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Because if we can do that for him, we could
do it for anybody.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Going forwards to nineteen ninety nine, that trial went on
for about three months. Like you say, it would have
been quite hard to find a jury who didn't know
anything about this case.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Hey, that's right, and that's one of the reasons why
it was shifted Dwellington. And also you could remember in
those days there was no social media that's on Facebook,
There was barely cell phones. Everyone consumed mainstream media through
television and newspapers. News websites were just sort of starting,
and there was so much information about this case. It
took eighteen months to get to trial that already been
what's called a deposition's hearing and Blenham and we don't
(05:40):
do that anymore, but that's basically a dry run of
the key bits of the evidence for a judge to
decide if there's enough evidence to stand trial. So everyone
had already heard most of the evidence against Scott Watson
by that case, not all of it, And there were
certainly a lot of dramatic revelations at the trial. But
the whole country was talking about this like it sounds
not very nice to say, but this case was New
Zealand's ij Simpson case. Justice case that just captivated the
(06:04):
country for eighteen months.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
For a lot of reasons too, because of police procedure
or their lack of it, or their lack of transparency
in terms of evidence, in terms of like using his
photographs and showing witnesses different photographs of him looking into
several who looked nothing like that on the night, even
drawings m of the drawing of him looking scruffy. So
(06:26):
people kind of already made up their minds in a way,
I feel, and early.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
On as well, Ben and Olivia's parents were quite vocal
in the media, Hey, how do you think that helped
or perhaps hindered the case in those early days, because
now they don't speak at all.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
No, Well, I think Gerald Hope was very vocal, and
he obviously and then you know later became the mayor
of Blenham. But also because they were very credible. I
think people were captured by these families. The Smart family
were less vocal, but Gerald certainly, he was pretty much
a spokesperson for both families. And you're right like I
think like nowadays you would really subdue to say anyway
(07:05):
to talk before a trial, but he was very vocal
from the out.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yet the case has become pretty notorious as one of
New Zealand's most controversial cases. Was there that feeling during
the trial that this was going to be quite contentious?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
There were certainly some big surprises at the trial. The
whole country was watching, so I was covering it for
the Dominion newspaper and we set aside whole pages with
no ads for all of the evidence every day, and
I was there for every day of three months. The
interest was enormous. It just led TV news every night.
People just couldn't get enough information.
Speaker 5 (07:37):
And I think.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Chelsea, you could feel the pressure, You could feel the
pressure on everyone, the jury, the judged, the lawyers. And
this might sound really silly, the media, we felt it too,
because your bylines on the story, people realize who you are,
and every party or social interaction you have they're talking
about this case. That's what I make the OJ comparison.
It just captivated the whole country, and I think Carra
(07:58):
is right. People had actually made up their mind about
Scott Waltson and in terms of the justice system, it's
twenty five years and we're still talking about this and
I look at these things and I think, what if
he didn't do it, what if he's been in prison
for all this time. I don't lose any sleep about
the verdict, and I haven't followed really closely the appeal stuff,
but what I would say is that Scott Watson had
(08:19):
two excellent defense lawyers for his trial, Bruce Davidson who's
now a judge, and Mike and Tanovic. They really believed
in his innocence. They fought tooth and nail, and a
lot of what the appeals is now considering is the
great work that they did at trial, probing witnesses, finding
out about problems with evidence that the appeal as stands
on the shoulders of the work those two did at
(08:39):
the trial.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I think it's pretty well established that a lot of
this evidence in the case is circumstantial.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Hey, DNA was brand new in ninety nine. You know,
it's very hard because there was so much publicity of
this before I got the trial and everything that's happening
now be really clear. This was a big deal in
nineteen ninety nine. This was contentious.
Speaker 5 (08:58):
Then.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
The ESA evidence about supposedly Olivia's heirs on the blanket
on Scott Watson's boat. That was absolutely damning at the
time because there was no evidence that they'd met, unless
you believe he was in the water taxi and offered
for bedding Olivia to sleep on their boat. But there
was no sightings of them together. So for a jury
and for the public, how do hears get on someone's
(09:20):
boat of someone you've never met? And there was all
this evidence about secondary transfer and you're at a party
and you bump into someone and here goes on you,
and they bump into someone else, and here goes on
someone else. Quite far fetched but powerful evidence, right, And
this is what the appeal is about now, is Yeah,
there were serious problems with the way that evidence was
tested and collected. That happened at the time that ESR
(09:41):
scientist got absolutely grilled on the stand Erarors were made
not to mention.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
What is it called the hatch there was on his boat.
Now that was proven, that was false. And I've actually
been on the blade twice. Not long after the trial
ended and the verdict, we interviewed Watson's family, his mother
Bev and dad Chris, and we actually went sailing on
the blade and we went back again sailing for the
(10:08):
twenty year podcast. And it was quite chilling actually being
on the blade because it was so tiny. It's really noisy,
and all I could think about was at the time
was like, oh my god, imagine if they were there,
you know, they could look out, but no one could
look in. And if they were actually in there, tripped
in there, I just thought, God, how terrifying those wool
kids must have felt.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
So at the trial that was very powerful evidence.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
The crown case was that Olivia was fighting for her
life to get out of the boat, and that's powerful evidence.
And when it's presented in the context of Olivia's hairs
were on the blanket on the boat and then a
lot was made of Scott Watson's behavior after the kids
went missing. The entire boat had been washed down, cassette
tapes had been.
Speaker 5 (10:49):
White wiped well.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
He painted the bar and made.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
A big deal of that.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
The defense explained nearly all of that. There'd been water
on board, rough sailing, crossing cooks straight. That's why things
have been cleaned, because saltwater gets in a damage things.
Much was made of Scott Watson painting his boat in
the following days. He ordered the paint weeks earlier, so
it all looked sinister. And they talk in criminal trials
about each piece of evidence to strand, and the strand
builds a rope.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
That's the way judges explained it.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
There were a lot of strands that knotted together and
made quite a strong rope. But the jury were made
to ask some quite big leaps of faith in the
crown case.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
What do you think swayed the jury in.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
The end, what I learned from this trial, Chelsea, was
the pressure on juries to come up with verdicts is enormous.
What swayed the jury theirs. The two prison witnesses who
claimed that Scott Watson confessed to them that was a
truly horrific day. And what the jury didn't know was
both of those guys had to come and give evidence
(11:57):
in front of the judge with no jury present, because
the judge had to make a rolling on whether what
they were going to say would be admissible. So we
were in court for that, the jury weren't, so we
actually saw two runs of that evidence that was very powerful.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
The other thing, too, is Scott Watson is guilty.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Of being a drunken asshole that night and heading on anyone,
particularly blondes. He was very badly behaved and a lot
of people remembered. He made one horrific comment to a
young girl and she gave evidence and they were talking
and she explained that I think a relative had cancer
and Watson seat of had a cracker area and she
rejected him, and he just looked at her and said,
I hope your mother dies of cancer. And the jury
gasped in the public gallery gust He's a very introverted,
(12:35):
hard to read kind of guy, and like I say,
the strands just kept building.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Well, the fact of the matter is you can be
an asshole, but that doesn't make you a murder.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Correct.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Was that a real issue here?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Well, because he was a dodgy character by nature, and
I think and also just his previous convictions, which were,
as Oscar said, you know, forty eight convictions, so already
in the public's mind, he was guilty in my opinion,
because his parents weren't like Hopes and Smarts. They weren't
middle class people. They were working class people. His father
was a boat builder, his mother worked at the pub
(13:08):
behind the Bard. Kind of when you build that picture
of Scott Watson and the fact that borstal all, you
know his antisocial behavior, you know, you are building a picture.
The one thing we haven't talked about too, Oscar is
Guy Wallace, you know, because he was a crucial witness
to the connection and then he changed his mind. And
when we interviewed him, what four years ago, he regrets
(13:29):
that he feels very guilty. Sadly he's no longer with us.
But there was a lot of pressure I think the
police placed, in my personal opinion, police placed a lot
of pressure on people and witnesses.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Yeah, And when you talk about pressure, so many lives
have been damaged or destroyed by this case, and not
just Ben and not just Olivia. But the trial opened
with evidence from Ben and Livery's parents, and it was
just horrific because it was they were fun, loving and
what were they doing and it's one of their first
holidays away with their friends of their parents, and it
(14:01):
was very.
Speaker 5 (14:02):
Powerful from the crowd.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
It really created these wonderful, well behaved, achieving young people
who would never do anything silly. And it was hard
to watch, was hard to be in court. They were
just nice kids and there was thousands of nice kids
at that party that night. It was a pretty out
of control party. It was a very powerful way to
open the case. And when I say, you know, other
lives damaged, Guy Wallace life never recovered from this. In
(14:25):
the guilt that he feels about being the person who
dropping these kids off at this mystery person's ketch. You know,
not everyone's alive in this case anymore. And what I
would say about the Hopes and the Smarts, they were
lovely people. Grief was just etched on their face at
the trial, you could see it. And they sat there
in the front row every day and listened to everything
and sometimes you'd hear the sobs and that would be
Olivia's mum or Ben's mum. They were lovely people and
(14:48):
to be fair to Chris Watson, Scott's father. He's a
really nice guy too, and he is quite convinced his
son didn't do it. And at the trial you'd have
these people coming and going in the media gathering, and
Scott Watson's Dad's there every day like a prior outside
the court during the breaks, no one went up to,
no one want to talk to him. He'd roll a
ciggi and just all the eyes boring on him. And
he's been really unwell. The grief from this case and
(15:11):
the tragedy and the pressure has taken a much bigger
toll than two young people.
Speaker 6 (15:18):
And I don't believe that he has a venom to
do that. But I'm not going to go down the
track of being the emotional parent that's going to back
his son no matter what.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
I have enormous admiration for Chris. I've known Chris all
those years. I've kept in touch with him all these years.
His wife, when I first approached her because part of
my job was to tie up people for interviews, afterwards,
spat at me and then I kind of befriended her
because back in those days, they has to smoke cigarette,
so I used to stand outside with her and with Chris,
and then eventually we built up a report. But I
(15:54):
cannot ever commend anyone more or actually has admiration for
a father who has so much love for a son
and such belief that a son is innocent. His whole
life has been dedicated for that, you know, And as
Oscar says, you know, Bev, she died of cancer a
few years ago, never seeing justice for her son that
(16:15):
she believed, of course he was innocent. But also, you know,
for poor Mary Smart, because her husband John died and
Mary Smart bumps into Chris Watson pretty much once sweet
because they live and picked in really close to each other.
In fact, it's a really chilling reminder because Chris has
the blade Scott Sloop and the harbor, and Mary Smart
(16:36):
lives right above the harbor, and the blade is a
constant reminder of her son.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
And just finally we're still talking about it nearly twenty
five years later. Kara, you've done a podcast, the Murder
in the Sounds. Why do you think this case is
still sparking this debate after all this time?
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Because there are two people missing, nobodies have ever been recovered,
no one really knows what happened, you know, have died.
Are older memories fade, but it's just I guess for me,
those lasting impressions of those two young kids with the
whole lives ahead of them just taken. I can still
see that photograph that we used every night on the news,
(17:13):
you know, on television, newspapers, there two of them together,
Olivia and Ben, and you think, nah, they would be
were in their forties. They should by rights be parents
for their own children, you know, sending them off to
a New Ye's Eve party.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
And we should acknowledge this is too long for the
justice system to do its thing. And this partly reflects
how Scott Watson is just going to keep fighting and
fighting fighting, and you have to respect that. But this
should have been resolved either way by now. It's been
two course, it's been to the Privy Council, and I
think the other issue here is that our parole system
can't handle people who refuse to admit they did it.
(17:48):
So Scott Watson was sentenced to a minimum non parole
period of seventeen years.
Speaker 5 (17:52):
He could have potentially been released eight years ago.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
So if the judge considered that that's what the punishment
should be for this crime. He's arguably done more than that.
The reasons why no one liked him on the night
are the reasons why he's not getting parole. He's got
some issues, and I just think, if you're in prison
for this long and you didn't do it, wouldn't it
drive you crazy? And one thing for me, Chelsea about
Scott is how we reacted when the jury came back
(18:15):
and said guilty. And for me, it's the most single
terrible memory of the trial was he just looked over
at them and he just said, you're wrong, really cocky,
really arrogant. And there was a lot of discussion right
outside court after it because it was like, well, if
I didn't do it, I'd be screaming buddy murder, or
I'd be crying, or I'd be angry.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
But it was cold, cold hearted that didn't do many favors.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
But also, if you don't admit that you did it,
how can you get parole. So other countries have laws
now where if you say with the body is you
get an automatic sentence discount. And I think for Ben
Oliver's parents, so much of it was not really knowing
the final moments, not knowing where they are not getting
bodies back. What we talk about these days is closure,
which I don't think was a thing twenty five years ago.
(19:00):
But we understand the basic concept. But so why is
it still in the news. Well, because it was massively
controversial at the time. The crown that are closing that
invited the jury to ignore parts of the narrative that
didn't work, never explaining how he got back to shore
the second time to be in the water.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
Taxi has been a liverit.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
It was massively controversial then and it's a sense of
fascination now.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Thanks for joining us, Karen Oscar and you can listen
to Murdering the Sound on the Chasing Ghosts podcast feed
wherever you get your podcasts. Two key pieces of evidence
will be focused on during this appeal process. As at
Herald's senior reporter, David Fisher has been following this case
(19:45):
for much of the last twenty five years. He joins
us now to discuss what is being brought to the
table for the first time in the way of evidence. David,
the piece of evidence that led to Watson's appear he
revolves around the DNA evidence from two hairs found in
the boat. Hey, what can you tell us about that.
Speaker 7 (20:06):
So the hair evidence was really interesting for a number
of reasons. One of those reasons was that police search
blade from top to tail and they fit a blanket
on the yacht. From that blanket, ESR retrieved about four
hundred hairs, and of those four hundred hairs, two of
those matched up with Olivia Hope. So the difficulty is
(20:27):
is that those hairs were being examined in the lab
on the same day that Olivia's hair samples taken from
a hair brush at her home were also being examined.
Then later at trial, the sample bag that contained Olivia's
hairs was found to have had one centimeter long slit
(20:47):
in it, and so then there was this question, well,
could it have been contaminated? Could the hair from one
have fallen into the other bag, or for that matter,
did the hair come from the hair brush and somehow
make its way into the other bag. This is to
point contention for quite some time, right down to whether
or not the scientist that was doing the examination changed
from one lab coat to another lab coat when working
(21:10):
from one sample to another sample. It's been certainly for
quite some time never really found as much traction as
Watson supporters wanted it to until this Court of Appeal
hearing a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
So for those who may not know, you get a
few chances at appeal, but then you cut off. Then
you have to go for what's called a royal prerogative
of mercy, and in order to do that you do
need new evidence. Are the hairs a part of why
Watson was granted a royal prerogative of mercy?
Speaker 7 (21:40):
The case against Scott Watson has been challenged in a
multitude of different way, so yes, they were the Court
of Appeal hearings, There was an IPCA inquiry, There was
his initial denial of a rural progative of mercy claim
in twenty thirteen, and then again another one in twenty seventeen.
I think that was accepted his that was a part
of it. But back when the original case happened, when
(22:04):
Paul Davison QC was summing up the case on behalf
of the prosecution, he had said this case is a
jigsaw made of many different pieces, sort of a similar
analogy to circumstantial cases being talked about as being many
strands of a rope, and so the hes were always
one of those jigsaw puzzle pieces. There were a lot
(22:24):
of pieces that went into that puzzle, and the argument
has kind of been how many pieces of the puzzle
do you need to knock out before the picture makes
no sense?
Speaker 2 (22:34):
The Court of Appeal later ruled that Watson's team can
also argue the so called blink photo that was used
to identify him. Why has that being so controversial?
Speaker 7 (22:46):
So the IPCA in quiry in twenty ten that actually
identified the blink photograph as being problematic, I think was
the way that they praised it. They said it was
highly undesirable the way that police went about showing photomone
montages to people, and that it fell well short of
best practice. However, it was never framed in such a
(23:06):
way as to be the one single piece of evidence
that was going to either convict Watson or get him
off the hook. But with the Blink photograph, the difficulty
here was that police forgiven a description of a man
who was behaving in an odd fashion at Pernolodge that night,
who had hooded eyes, and this was quite a distinctive
(23:27):
physical characteristic. Scott Watson, in this photograph called the blink photograph,
appeared to have hooded eyes, but that's because he was
blinking when the photograph was taken. When you look at
the other photographs set of the end, they're not hooded eyes.
And so the photograph of Watson blinking with these hooded
eyes was seen as highly prejudicial by supporters of Watson,
(23:50):
who said that what in right it should have been allowed.
As I said back that up fell well short of
best practice, they said, highly undesirable. At what the Court
of Appeal has said, Well, if that's enough to give
a miscarriage of justice, that's for the Court of Appeal
to decide of the new hearing, and they gave a
green light for Watson to advance that.
Speaker 8 (24:10):
Nicholas Chisnel became Scott Watson's lead council last year.
Speaker 9 (24:15):
It is a case that invokes strong emotions and people,
both those who supports Scott and also those who feel
that he's to be criticized for wanting to have his
stay in court again.
Speaker 8 (24:26):
Chisnel says, who's spoken to Scott Watson, who is excited
about the developments, although it is tempered by the fact
it's taken authorities just over two decades to review his case.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
David Wilders isn't a part of the appeal. I understand
you once tested the Crown case involving Watson's boat the blade.
Speaker 7 (24:49):
I'm really interested in this pieces of a puzzle thing
because there were pieces that you could look at and
knock out. And one of the things that have been
talked about was the Crown delegation that Watson had dropped
the body to the middle of the cook straight and
then there was also evidence that was put forward in
the trial that he was seen a period of time
later back in Mulder Sounds, at somebody's house or tied
(25:12):
up in a bay. The thing that captivated me about
this I didn't realize and yachtes no, is that there's
actually a scientific equation that says how fast a bok
could go depending on his kill length. And when you
got a measuring tape out, you applied it to a
map and you measured the length of the blade's kill.
You could see that and what's it going to happen?
(25:32):
So Chris Watson, Scott Watson's dad, he agreed to let
me test this out in the real world. So we
took Blade out to the middle of the cook straight
to the place where blade was apparently sighted, and we
did it at the same tide as occurred at that time.
It was a really carefully planned trip to try and
match up the environmental conditions as closely as possible, and
(25:55):
then we went hell for leather to this bay that
Watson was apparently sighted and there's no way that you
can make the journey. It just doesn't work. And it
was fascinating to me because when Paul Davison summed up
the case, and it was one heck of a summing up.
It was thirty thousand words of closing argument. Five percent
of that closing argument was about the bodies being done
(26:18):
and from the work that I did, it seemed impossible
that that could have happened.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
And what's made you so interested in this case over
the years, David? Those pieces are the puzzle and seeing
how many you can knock out.
Speaker 7 (26:30):
I think the thing about the Scott Watson case, well,
one thing is that the bodies of Been and Olivia
would never found and the greatest evidence that exists as
to who their killer is is likely with those bodies.
So it then becomes a very circumstantial case. And there
were pieces of evidence put forward that police would argue,
we're not circumstantial. The hairs on the boat. That's under question.
(26:53):
I just testimony also somewhat under question. The main person
that identified the blink photograph were caned and die not
so long ago, saying that he didn't believe that Scott
Watson was the person that he identified in that photograph.
I think the thing for me that's really interesting about
the case is so many unanswered questions, and it came
during a time when we were as a public somewhat
(27:15):
accustomed to questions coming from old cases. There was the
murders of the Swedish jurists, of the coromandal for which
David Tommyheaty was convicted. We go all the way back
to the crew murders and that seat of doubt that
was planted when police planted the Cartridge case. It sort
of raised a question over the way that police would
do their job at the time and in the decades
(27:36):
going forward, and Watson case just became another one of those.
I think one of the things that was really captivating
about the case, and I somewhat missed this because it
was out of the country for quite a number of
years around the time of the murders and the following trial,
was that they were kind of the perfect young summer couple.
They were really lovely looking kids that came from a
(27:59):
really nice home that we're having a New Year's Eve
of the sort that you would hope would be the
most memorable of their lives, which it turned out to
be for all the wrong reasons.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Thanks for joining us, David. For news from the Appeal
as it comes through, head to enzidherld dot co dot
enz and for more on the Scott Watson case, including
his bids for parole, check out the links in our
show notes. That's it for this episode of the Front Page.
(28:33):
You can read more about today's stories and extensive news
coverage at enzidherld dot co dot enz. The Front Page
is produced by Ethan Sills and sound engineer Patty Fox.
I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio
or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in on
Monday for another look behind the headlines.
Kiota.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and This is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. The nineteen
ninety eight deaths of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope remain
one of New Zealand's most talked about cases. Scott Watson
has spent the last twenty five years behind bars after
(00:28):
being convicted of murdering them, despite no bodies ever being found. Now,
Watson is heading back to the courtroom, four years after
his case was referred back to the Court of Appeal
in what is his last shot at clearing his name.
Today on the Front Page, we'll talk to senior NZED
Herald journalist David Fisher about the evidence that will be
(00:50):
debated during this week long hearing. But first we're going
back to nineteen ninety nine with enzed Herold's senior journalist
Carolyn Menyee and editorial leader Oscar Ali, who covered Watson's
first trial. First off, do you both remember when the
news came in that Ben and Olivia had gone missing?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Oh my gosh. Yes, it was extraordinary really for a
number of reasons, because, i mean, let's face it, most
people remember New Year's Eve nights and going out and partying,
and no one would ever think two young kids would
never come home to their families and are still missing.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
It was massive from the start, and you've got to
remember too that it was New Year's Day they were missing,
very quiet time for the news. So sometimes stories become
bigger faster because it's not a lot happening in the country,
but you know, a couple of really attractive kids doing
what a lot of kids of that age did, which
is their first holidays with their friends, not their family.
(01:49):
And also to be fair to their parents, they were
very vocal very quickly that you could see the concern,
and obviously as the days went on it just got
grimmer and grimmar.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Not to mention their surnames, Hope, and you know, they
were the perfect set of white middle class kids, beautiful, intelligent,
their whole lives ahead of them, and I think that's
what capitivated the country too, because I think if it was,
you know, as some different people in a small town
for example, there wouldn't have been such a huge kind
of interest.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
So you've got to remember too, this is ninety seven,
ninety eight, no cell phones. We all carry GPS devices
now called smartphones. People didn't go missing rarely in this
country back then, and you were as a kid growing up,
you went out for a day and your parents know
where you were. There was no phone to ring you on.
There wasn't necessarily a payphone, so it was a very
different age. It's more than twenty five years ago. It'd
(02:40):
be hard to think that people going missing like that nowadays,
with all the technology that we have, cell phones, pinging towers,
But back in ninety seven ninety eight, it was very
rare for people to just disappear, especially at such a
busy three thousand people at that party, it just didn't happen.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
It took about six months for Scott Watson to be
arrested in ch arged with the case. Now, how was
he portrayed in the public eye over that time.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Well, in my opinion, I think he was portrayed as
quite a villain from the outset and certainly from the
police's perspective at the time. There was such a huge
pressure for the police to convict someone for these two
kids going missing, and Scott, given his background as a
young teenager, was always in trouble. He was actually in
Ballstal and from memory when he was in bull stall.
(03:28):
As a teenager, he recovered a story at the time
for sixty minutes, stabbed the padre and the eye with
a big spike. So he was a bad egg from
a young age. But to be honest, I think that
he was probably unfairly maligned at the artset. He was
on his own at the time. At the party, he
was very drunk, very obnoxious, hitting on woman, being really inappropriate,
(03:50):
So he didn't portray himself in very good light in
those circumstances.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
I think it's been pretty well established now that police
were leaky and while it took six months to a
Scott Watson, they pulled his boat the Blade, out of
the water on January the twelfth, and every TV camera
and newspaper photographer knew to be there for that. And
once that happened in broad daylight with an audience of media,
it was pretty obvious that Watson was a significant person
(04:16):
of interest. It got reported that he had forty eight
previous criminal convictions, and you've got to understand when there's
a six month gap between people going missing and someone
being charged, it's a long period of time where the
media can report about people there's no subject to say
because no charges are being laid or are about to
be laid, and that had a lot of consequences when
it came time for the trial and people giving evidence
(04:38):
as witnesses in the High Court, who've been interviewed by
media days after it happened. It caused a lot of complications.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
And there are a lot of people who are happy
to say, and you heard this so much at the time,
you know, well, we're maybe a little unsure whether he
did it or not, but he's not a very nice guy.
It doesn't really matter.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
It matters a lot.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Because if we can do that for him, we could
do it for anybody.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Going forwards to nineteen ninety nine, that trial went on
for about three months. Like you say, it would have
been quite hard to find a jury who didn't know
anything about this case.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Hey, that's right, and that's one of the reasons why
it was shifted Dwellington. And also you could remember in
those days there was no social media that's on Facebook,
There was barely cell phones. Everyone consumed mainstream media through
television and newspapers. News websites were just sort of starting,
and there was so much information about this case. It
took eighteen months to get to trial that already been
what's called a deposition's hearing and Blenham and we don't
(05:40):
do that anymore, but that's basically a dry run of
the key bits of the evidence for a judge to
decide if there's enough evidence to stand trial. So everyone
had already heard most of the evidence against Scott Watson
by that case, not all of it, And there were
certainly a lot of dramatic revelations at the trial. But
the whole country was talking about this like it sounds
not very nice to say, but this case was New
Zealand's ij Simpson case. Justice case that just captivated the
(06:04):
country for eighteen months.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
For a lot of reasons too, because of police procedure
or their lack of it, or their lack of transparency
in terms of evidence, in terms of like using his
photographs and showing witnesses different photographs of him looking into
several who looked nothing like that on the night, even
drawings m of the drawing of him looking scruffy. So
(06:26):
people kind of already made up their minds in a way,
I feel, and early.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
On as well, Ben and Olivia's parents were quite vocal
in the media, Hey, how do you think that helped
or perhaps hindered the case in those early days, because
now they don't speak at all.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
No, Well, I think Gerald Hope was very vocal, and
he obviously and then you know later became the mayor
of Blenham. But also because they were very credible. I
think people were captured by these families. The Smart family
were less vocal, but Gerald certainly, he was pretty much
a spokesperson for both families. And you're right like I
think like nowadays you would really subdue to say anyway
(07:05):
to talk before a trial, but he was very vocal
from the out.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yet the case has become pretty notorious as one of
New Zealand's most controversial cases. Was there that feeling during
the trial that this was going to be quite contentious?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
There were certainly some big surprises at the trial. The
whole country was watching, so I was covering it for
the Dominion newspaper and we set aside whole pages with
no ads for all of the evidence every day, and
I was there for every day of three months. The
interest was enormous. It just led TV news every night.
People just couldn't get enough information.
Speaker 5 (07:37):
And I think.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Chelsea, you could feel the pressure, You could feel the
pressure on everyone, the jury, the judged, the lawyers. And
this might sound really silly, the media, we felt it too,
because your bylines on the story, people realize who you are,
and every party or social interaction you have they're talking
about this case. That's what I make the OJ comparison.
It just captivated the whole country, and I think Carra
(07:58):
is right. People had actually made up their mind about
Scott Waltson and in terms of the justice system, it's
twenty five years and we're still talking about this and
I look at these things and I think, what if
he didn't do it, what if he's been in prison
for all this time. I don't lose any sleep about
the verdict, and I haven't followed really closely the appeal stuff,
but what I would say is that Scott Watson had
(08:19):
two excellent defense lawyers for his trial, Bruce Davidson who's
now a judge, and Mike and Tanovic. They really believed
in his innocence. They fought tooth and nail, and a
lot of what the appeals is now considering is the
great work that they did at trial, probing witnesses, finding
out about problems with evidence that the appeal as stands
on the shoulders of the work those two did at
(08:39):
the trial.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I think it's pretty well established that a lot of
this evidence in the case is circumstantial.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Hey, DNA was brand new in ninety nine. You know,
it's very hard because there was so much publicity of
this before I got the trial and everything that's happening
now be really clear. This was a big deal in
nineteen ninety nine. This was contentious.
Speaker 5 (08:58):
Then.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
The ESA evidence about supposedly Olivia's heirs on the blanket
on Scott Watson's boat. That was absolutely damning at the
time because there was no evidence that they'd met, unless
you believe he was in the water taxi and offered
for bedding Olivia to sleep on their boat. But there
was no sightings of them together. So for a jury
and for the public, how do hears get on someone's
(09:20):
boat of someone you've never met? And there was all
this evidence about secondary transfer and you're at a party
and you bump into someone and here goes on you,
and they bump into someone else, and here goes on
someone else. Quite far fetched but powerful evidence, right, And
this is what the appeal is about now, is Yeah,
there were serious problems with the way that evidence was
tested and collected. That happened at the time that ESR
(09:41):
scientist got absolutely grilled on the stand Erarors were made
not to mention.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
What is it called the hatch there was on his boat.
Now that was proven, that was false. And I've actually
been on the blade twice. Not long after the trial
ended and the verdict, we interviewed Watson's family, his mother
Bev and dad Chris, and we actually went sailing on
the blade and we went back again sailing for the
(10:08):
twenty year podcast. And it was quite chilling actually being
on the blade because it was so tiny. It's really noisy,
and all I could think about was at the time
was like, oh my god, imagine if they were there,
you know, they could look out, but no one could
look in. And if they were actually in there, tripped
in there, I just thought, God, how terrifying those wool
kids must have felt.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
So at the trial that was very powerful evidence.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
The crown case was that Olivia was fighting for her
life to get out of the boat, and that's powerful evidence.
And when it's presented in the context of Olivia's hairs
were on the blanket on the boat and then a
lot was made of Scott Watson's behavior after the kids
went missing. The entire boat had been washed down, cassette
tapes had been.
Speaker 5 (10:49):
White wiped well.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
He painted the bar and made.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
A big deal of that.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
The defense explained nearly all of that. There'd been water
on board, rough sailing, crossing cooks straight. That's why things
have been cleaned, because saltwater gets in a damage things.
Much was made of Scott Watson painting his boat in
the following days. He ordered the paint weeks earlier, so
it all looked sinister. And they talk in criminal trials
about each piece of evidence to strand, and the strand
builds a rope.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
That's the way judges explained it.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
There were a lot of strands that knotted together and
made quite a strong rope. But the jury were made
to ask some quite big leaps of faith in the
crown case.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
What do you think swayed the jury in.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
The end, what I learned from this trial, Chelsea, was
the pressure on juries to come up with verdicts is enormous.
What swayed the jury theirs. The two prison witnesses who
claimed that Scott Watson confessed to them that was a
truly horrific day. And what the jury didn't know was
both of those guys had to come and give evidence
(11:57):
in front of the judge with no jury present, because
the judge had to make a rolling on whether what
they were going to say would be admissible. So we
were in court for that, the jury weren't, so we
actually saw two runs of that evidence that was very powerful.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
The other thing, too, is Scott Watson is guilty.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Of being a drunken asshole that night and heading on anyone,
particularly blondes. He was very badly behaved and a lot
of people remembered. He made one horrific comment to a
young girl and she gave evidence and they were talking
and she explained that I think a relative had cancer
and Watson seat of had a cracker area and she
rejected him, and he just looked at her and said,
I hope your mother dies of cancer. And the jury
gasped in the public gallery gust He's a very introverted,
(12:35):
hard to read kind of guy, and like I say,
the strands just kept building.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Well, the fact of the matter is you can be
an asshole, but that doesn't make you a murder.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Correct.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Was that a real issue here?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Well, because he was a dodgy character by nature, and
I think and also just his previous convictions, which were,
as Oscar said, you know, forty eight convictions, so already
in the public's mind, he was guilty in my opinion,
because his parents weren't like Hopes and Smarts. They weren't
middle class people. They were working class people. His father
was a boat builder, his mother worked at the pub
(13:08):
behind the Bard. Kind of when you build that picture
of Scott Watson and the fact that borstal all, you
know his antisocial behavior, you know, you are building a picture.
The one thing we haven't talked about too, Oscar is
Guy Wallace, you know, because he was a crucial witness
to the connection and then he changed his mind. And
when we interviewed him, what four years ago, he regrets
(13:29):
that he feels very guilty. Sadly he's no longer with us.
But there was a lot of pressure I think the
police placed, in my personal opinion, police placed a lot
of pressure on people and witnesses.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Yeah, And when you talk about pressure, so many lives
have been damaged or destroyed by this case, and not
just Ben and not just Olivia. But the trial opened
with evidence from Ben and Livery's parents, and it was
just horrific because it was they were fun, loving and
what were they doing and it's one of their first
holidays away with their friends of their parents, and it
(14:01):
was very.
Speaker 5 (14:02):
Powerful from the crowd.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
It really created these wonderful, well behaved, achieving young people
who would never do anything silly. And it was hard
to watch, was hard to be in court. They were
just nice kids and there was thousands of nice kids
at that party that night. It was a pretty out
of control party. It was a very powerful way to
open the case. And when I say, you know, other
lives damaged, Guy Wallace life never recovered from this. In
(14:25):
the guilt that he feels about being the person who
dropping these kids off at this mystery person's ketch. You know,
not everyone's alive in this case anymore. And what I
would say about the Hopes and the Smarts, they were
lovely people. Grief was just etched on their face at
the trial, you could see it. And they sat there
in the front row every day and listened to everything
and sometimes you'd hear the sobs and that would be
Olivia's mum or Ben's mum. They were lovely people and
(14:48):
to be fair to Chris Watson, Scott's father. He's a
really nice guy too, and he is quite convinced his
son didn't do it. And at the trial you'd have
these people coming and going in the media gathering, and
Scott Watson's Dad's there every day like a prior outside
the court during the breaks, no one went up to,
no one want to talk to him. He'd roll a
ciggi and just all the eyes boring on him. And
he's been really unwell. The grief from this case and
(15:11):
the tragedy and the pressure has taken a much bigger
toll than two young people.
Speaker 6 (15:18):
And I don't believe that he has a venom to
do that. But I'm not going to go down the
track of being the emotional parent that's going to back
his son no matter what.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
I have enormous admiration for Chris. I've known Chris all
those years. I've kept in touch with him all these years.
His wife, when I first approached her because part of
my job was to tie up people for interviews, afterwards,
spat at me and then I kind of befriended her
because back in those days, they has to smoke cigarette,
so I used to stand outside with her and with Chris,
and then eventually we built up a report. But I
(15:54):
cannot ever commend anyone more or actually has admiration for
a father who has so much love for a son
and such belief that a son is innocent. His whole
life has been dedicated for that, you know, And as
Oscar says, you know, Bev, she died of cancer a
few years ago, never seeing justice for her son that
(16:15):
she believed, of course he was innocent. But also, you know,
for poor Mary Smart, because her husband John died and
Mary Smart bumps into Chris Watson pretty much once sweet
because they live and picked in really close to each other.
In fact, it's a really chilling reminder because Chris has
the blade Scott Sloop and the harbor, and Mary Smart
(16:36):
lives right above the harbor, and the blade is a
constant reminder of her son.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
And just finally we're still talking about it nearly twenty
five years later. Kara, you've done a podcast, the Murder
in the Sounds. Why do you think this case is
still sparking this debate after all this time?
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Because there are two people missing, nobodies have ever been recovered,
no one really knows what happened, you know, have died.
Are older memories fade, but it's just I guess for me,
those lasting impressions of those two young kids with the
whole lives ahead of them just taken. I can still
see that photograph that we used every night on the news,
(17:13):
you know, on television, newspapers, there two of them together,
Olivia and Ben, and you think, nah, they would be
were in their forties. They should by rights be parents
for their own children, you know, sending them off to
a New Ye's Eve party.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
And we should acknowledge this is too long for the
justice system to do its thing. And this partly reflects
how Scott Watson is just going to keep fighting and
fighting fighting, and you have to respect that. But this
should have been resolved either way by now. It's been
two course, it's been to the Privy Council, and I
think the other issue here is that our parole system
can't handle people who refuse to admit they did it.
(17:48):
So Scott Watson was sentenced to a minimum non parole
period of seventeen years.
Speaker 5 (17:52):
He could have potentially been released eight years ago.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
So if the judge considered that that's what the punishment
should be for this crime. He's arguably done more than that.
The reasons why no one liked him on the night
are the reasons why he's not getting parole. He's got
some issues, and I just think, if you're in prison
for this long and you didn't do it, wouldn't it
drive you crazy? And one thing for me, Chelsea about
Scott is how we reacted when the jury came back
(18:15):
and said guilty. And for me, it's the most single
terrible memory of the trial was he just looked over
at them and he just said, you're wrong, really cocky,
really arrogant. And there was a lot of discussion right
outside court after it because it was like, well, if
I didn't do it, I'd be screaming buddy murder, or
I'd be crying, or I'd be angry.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
But it was cold, cold hearted that didn't do many favors.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
But also, if you don't admit that you did it,
how can you get parole. So other countries have laws
now where if you say with the body is you
get an automatic sentence discount. And I think for Ben
Oliver's parents, so much of it was not really knowing
the final moments, not knowing where they are not getting
bodies back. What we talk about these days is closure,
which I don't think was a thing twenty five years ago.
(19:00):
But we understand the basic concept. But so why is
it still in the news. Well, because it was massively
controversial at the time. The crown that are closing that
invited the jury to ignore parts of the narrative that
didn't work, never explaining how he got back to shore
the second time to be in the water.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
Taxi has been a liverit.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
It was massively controversial then and it's a sense of
fascination now.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Thanks for joining us, Karen Oscar and you can listen
to Murdering the Sound on the Chasing Ghosts podcast feed
wherever you get your podcasts. Two key pieces of evidence
will be focused on during this appeal process. As at
Herald's senior reporter, David Fisher has been following this case
(19:45):
for much of the last twenty five years. He joins
us now to discuss what is being brought to the
table for the first time in the way of evidence. David,
the piece of evidence that led to Watson's appear he
revolves around the DNA evidence from two hairs found in
the boat. Hey, what can you tell us about that.
Speaker 7 (20:06):
So the hair evidence was really interesting for a number
of reasons. One of those reasons was that police search
blade from top to tail and they fit a blanket
on the yacht. From that blanket, ESR retrieved about four
hundred hairs, and of those four hundred hairs, two of
those matched up with Olivia Hope. So the difficulty is
(20:27):
is that those hairs were being examined in the lab
on the same day that Olivia's hair samples taken from
a hair brush at her home were also being examined.
Then later at trial, the sample bag that contained Olivia's
hairs was found to have had one centimeter long slit
(20:47):
in it, and so then there was this question, well,
could it have been contaminated? Could the hair from one
have fallen into the other bag, or for that matter,
did the hair come from the hair brush and somehow
make its way into the other bag. This is to
point contention for quite some time, right down to whether
or not the scientist that was doing the examination changed
from one lab coat to another lab coat when working
(21:10):
from one sample to another sample. It's been certainly for
quite some time never really found as much traction as
Watson supporters wanted it to until this Court of Appeal
hearing a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
So for those who may not know, you get a
few chances at appeal, but then you cut off. Then
you have to go for what's called a royal prerogative
of mercy, and in order to do that you do
need new evidence. Are the hairs a part of why
Watson was granted a royal prerogative of mercy?
Speaker 7 (21:40):
The case against Scott Watson has been challenged in a
multitude of different way, so yes, they were the Court
of Appeal hearings, There was an IPCA inquiry, There was
his initial denial of a rural progative of mercy claim
in twenty thirteen, and then again another one in twenty seventeen.
I think that was accepted his that was a part
of it. But back when the original case happened, when
(22:04):
Paul Davison QC was summing up the case on behalf
of the prosecution, he had said this case is a
jigsaw made of many different pieces, sort of a similar
analogy to circumstantial cases being talked about as being many
strands of a rope, and so the hes were always
one of those jigsaw puzzle pieces. There were a lot
(22:24):
of pieces that went into that puzzle, and the argument
has kind of been how many pieces of the puzzle
do you need to knock out before the picture makes
no sense?
Speaker 2 (22:34):
The Court of Appeal later ruled that Watson's team can
also argue the so called blink photo that was used
to identify him. Why has that being so controversial?
Speaker 7 (22:46):
So the IPCA in quiry in twenty ten that actually
identified the blink photograph as being problematic, I think was
the way that they praised it. They said it was
highly undesirable the way that police went about showing photomone
montages to people, and that it fell well short of
best practice. However, it was never framed in such a
(23:06):
way as to be the one single piece of evidence
that was going to either convict Watson or get him
off the hook. But with the Blink photograph, the difficulty
here was that police forgiven a description of a man
who was behaving in an odd fashion at Pernolodge that night,
who had hooded eyes, and this was quite a distinctive
(23:27):
physical characteristic. Scott Watson, in this photograph called the blink photograph,
appeared to have hooded eyes, but that's because he was
blinking when the photograph was taken. When you look at
the other photographs set of the end, they're not hooded eyes.
And so the photograph of Watson blinking with these hooded
eyes was seen as highly prejudicial by supporters of Watson,
(23:50):
who said that what in right it should have been allowed.
As I said back that up fell well short of
best practice, they said, highly undesirable. At what the Court
of Appeal has said, Well, if that's enough to give
a miscarriage of justice, that's for the Court of Appeal
to decide of the new hearing, and they gave a
green light for Watson to advance that.
Speaker 8 (24:10):
Nicholas Chisnel became Scott Watson's lead council last year.
Speaker 9 (24:15):
It is a case that invokes strong emotions and people,
both those who supports Scott and also those who feel
that he's to be criticized for wanting to have his
stay in court again.
Speaker 8 (24:26):
Chisnel says, who's spoken to Scott Watson, who is excited
about the developments, although it is tempered by the fact
it's taken authorities just over two decades to review his case.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
David Wilders isn't a part of the appeal. I understand
you once tested the Crown case involving Watson's boat the blade.
Speaker 7 (24:49):
I'm really interested in this pieces of a puzzle thing
because there were pieces that you could look at and
knock out. And one of the things that have been
talked about was the Crown delegation that Watson had dropped
the body to the middle of the cook straight and
then there was also evidence that was put forward in
the trial that he was seen a period of time
later back in Mulder Sounds, at somebody's house or tied
(25:12):
up in a bay. The thing that captivated me about
this I didn't realize and yachtes no, is that there's
actually a scientific equation that says how fast a bok
could go depending on his kill length. And when you
got a measuring tape out, you applied it to a
map and you measured the length of the blade's kill.
You could see that and what's it going to happen?
(25:32):
So Chris Watson, Scott Watson's dad, he agreed to let
me test this out in the real world. So we
took Blade out to the middle of the cook straight
to the place where blade was apparently sighted, and we
did it at the same tide as occurred at that time.
It was a really carefully planned trip to try and
match up the environmental conditions as closely as possible, and
(25:55):
then we went hell for leather to this bay that
Watson was apparently sighted and there's no way that you
can make the journey. It just doesn't work. And it
was fascinating to me because when Paul Davison summed up
the case, and it was one heck of a summing up.
It was thirty thousand words of closing argument. Five percent
of that closing argument was about the bodies being done
(26:18):
and from the work that I did, it seemed impossible
that that could have happened.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
And what's made you so interested in this case over
the years, David? Those pieces are the puzzle and seeing
how many you can knock out.
Speaker 7 (26:30):
I think the thing about the Scott Watson case, well,
one thing is that the bodies of Been and Olivia
would never found and the greatest evidence that exists as
to who their killer is is likely with those bodies.
So it then becomes a very circumstantial case. And there
were pieces of evidence put forward that police would argue,
we're not circumstantial. The hairs on the boat. That's under question.
(26:53):
I just testimony also somewhat under question. The main person
that identified the blink photograph were caned and die not
so long ago, saying that he didn't believe that Scott
Watson was the person that he identified in that photograph.
I think the thing for me that's really interesting about
the case is so many unanswered questions, and it came
during a time when we were as a public somewhat
(27:15):
accustomed to questions coming from old cases. There was the
murders of the Swedish jurists, of the coromandal for which
David Tommyheaty was convicted. We go all the way back
to the crew murders and that seat of doubt that
was planted when police planted the Cartridge case. It sort
of raised a question over the way that police would
do their job at the time and in the decades
(27:36):
going forward, and Watson case just became another one of those.
I think one of the things that was really captivating
about the case, and I somewhat missed this because it
was out of the country for quite a number of
years around the time of the murders and the following trial,
was that they were kind of the perfect young summer couple.
They were really lovely looking kids that came from a
(27:59):
really nice home that we're having a New Year's Eve
of the sort that you would hope would be the
most memorable of their lives, which it turned out to
be for all the wrong reasons.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Thanks for joining us, David. For news from the Appeal
as it comes through, head to enzidherld dot co dot
enz and for more on the Scott Watson case, including
his bids for parole, check out the links in our
show notes. That's it for this episode of the Front Page.
(28:33):
You can read more about today's stories and extensive news
coverage at enzidherld dot co dot enz. The Front Page
is produced by Ethan Sills and sound engineer Patty Fox.
I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio
or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in on
Monday for another look behind the headlines.
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