Scott Watson
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The old thread seems to be lost but for those that have followed this closely it was interesting to read that Gerald Hope finally had his sit down meeting with Scott Watson and came away unconvinced of his innocence.
I think Hope has been the most level headed human being I can think of through this whole ordeal of his daughter being missing presumed murdered and he seems to have gone into this meeting open minded.
Basically he say there were questions he raised about some of the circumstantial or unexplained evidence that Watson (in his view) then became very quiet or distant about as if he didn't have an answer for. Hope was judging his reactions to these questions probably more than the answers themselves.
Watson's father has now spoken up in defence of the situation claiming that Scott is very unaware of detail regarding some of the questions that have been raised as he hasn't had anywhere near the same access to theories and information that someone on that outside does. Probably a fair call and I have no idea what Watson has been allowed to read or see since being convicted.
I do think that Hope has been such a reasonable man over such a long period that he genuinely would speak out if he though Watson satisfactorily had answers. I have no reason to doubt his conclusion.
I still come back to the arguments I made in the past thread though that I really do think the prosecution story is so far off beam that Watson believes he is hard done by.
I do think Watson was involved somehow though and has something to hide. He just possibly knows that he didn't actually murder Ben and Olivia so thinks he has been wrongfully convicted. He probably thought the police case was such a fairytale that he would get off (I seem to recall reading that was the view of his lawyers) but is also unable to tell the truth without admitting being an accessory and/or seriously being in danger from those that did it.
Both the prosecution and defence stories have massive holes in them which make me think the truth lies somewhere in between (or off to the side).
Same goes with Mark Lundy, he probably truly believes he has been wrongfully convicted because he knows he didn't actually do the deed. But he also can't explain away the holes in his alibi without implicating himself. -
I've seen a few case studies on this at various courses I went on, and it leaves me with little doubt he did it. Obviously they're fairly one sided case studies, given who was running the courses haha.
For me, the salient points are:
- He and his sister cleaning the boat from top to bottom the day after they were reported missing
- The bits of squab and material having been cut from inside the boat.
- Her hair being found inside the boat (always clutching at straws when your defence is that it was planted or got there by mistake)
- probably fingernail scratches inside the hatch
- the water taxi operators original statement putting him with them.
- Watson's behaviour on the night
- Watson's leaving super early the followin morning (who does that after a night on the piss?)
- Recent psychologist report suggesting he poses threats to the community because of motivations of revenge and sexual rejection etc. Interesting for a guy who is innocent
The water taxi driver is interesting in that he gives a comprehensive statement pointing the finger at Watson when it is fresh in his memory but has since come out saying it wasn't. Human memory and therefore witness testimony is very unreliable, so the fact he had thought about it since and now isn't sure isn't really a game changer for me.
The fact that Gerald Hope believes his answers were rehearsed, having previously suggested he might be innocent is quite big for me. However Watson's supporters have brushed it off as "comments made in the heat of the moment by Hope."
I'm pretty sure Hope would have thought it through long and hard. It's his kid who was killed after all.
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I don't disagree with you AW re his behaviour but many of the evidential points you bring up are the very keys that have been disproven. The fingernails thing is rubbish. The hair is a mitochondrial match that could be from 1000s (this was early days of DNA and juries were bamboozled by it). The boat driver only said it was Watson when the photo he was shown was of the suspect and not of Watson.
I'm not saying he is completely innocent, I'm just saying this was one of those things where cops close to the situation are pretty sure they have the right guy but their case seems to have been 'proven' mainly because of incompetent defence followed by the intricacies of the legal system the make it very difficult to reverse.
I would be fairly certain that the same case brought fresh to court with everyone knowing what is now known would not get proven and possibly for good reason.
In my mind whatever went down was not the story put forward by the prosecution and the sad thing is that the families look like they will simply never know what happened. -
True, but then plenty of cases are built on circumstantial evidence. Prisons are full of people who claim they are innocent remember.
I dont disagree that the police investigation was average at best, as it was with the Bain case. That doesn't mean it was a stitch up job and a jury found him guilty. But his behaviour for me is extremely suspicious given two people had just been reported missing. I'm pretty sure the guy has significant previous history, was acting like a sex pest on the night (not unusual on new years however), left the scene straight away and cleaned his boat from top to bottom, with patches missing from the mattresses for no good reason. That's really hard to get past for me in light of the fact two people are dead.
A homicide investigation will always be tough without bodies being found, but its been through appeal after appeal and I'm still pretty happy that he is where he is. Particularly in light of a parole board psychologist (who normally make shocking decisions) saying that hes a high risk to the community.
It's worth noting that I'm fairly biased though.
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I'm not saying he is completely innocent, I'm just saying this was one of those things where cops close to the situation are pretty sure they have the right guy but their case seems to have been 'proven' mainly because of incompetent defence followed by the intricacies of the legal system the make it very difficult to reverse.
I tend to disagree that it's difficult to reverse. The appeal system is run by highly respected judges who would be well aware of what shit investigations look like. Bain and Lundy both got retrials on the back of such allegations. I trust those judges over the people who comment on the comments part of the Herald and stuff.co.nz Facebook pages any day.
I generally dont bother reading the Scott Watson stories anymore, but it would seem to me that he doesn't have a heap of law experts backing his claims of innocence like Pora, Bain etc did? I could be wrong, because as I've not read a lot on it, of course.
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I think the cries are more for wrongful conviction (which gets confused with innocence)
As I'm sure you are aware, appeals are only based on overturning certain points through permitted new evidence, they aren't retrials.
There is also a lot of circumstantial evidence toward not guilty in this case. Eg how do you murder two young people in the very confined space of a small metal hulled boat rafted to other boats in the dead quiet of night without a single person hearing anything? If you start the engines to move off and murder them elsewhere how did you not wake them when the racket would be huge?
The whole ketch thing is still not properly explained with so many witness sightings (including ones with the victims descriptions) yet the police insist it didn't even exist.
I just think that although he is a creep and fits the bill, taking everything into account I wouldn't convict him beyond reasonable doubt. That 'everything ' has never been placed together in front of a jury. -
@Crucial said in Scott Watson:
I think the cries are more for wrongful conviction (which gets confused with innocence)
As I'm sure you are aware, appeals are only based on overturning certain points through permitted new evidence, they aren't retrials.
There is also a lot of circumstantial evidence toward not guilty in this case. Eg how do you murder two young people in the very confined space of a small metal hulled boat rafted to other boats in the dead quiet of night without a single person hearing anything?I've worked on cases where people have killed other people in a house where others are in the room next door and no one has heard. Add intoxication into that, and the fact one of them was a female and I wouldn't think it adds anything to a defence.
You're right, it is about overturning points of evidence, which if substantial enough would order a retrial. For example, the stomach content stuff in the Lundy trial. Presumably all these things have been put before the highest courts and they have decided that they're not significant enough points of evidence to quash the rest of the conviction.
I'd be quite happy to see a retrial to be honest. It would shut people up one way or another so I don't have to see the guy's mug on the front page of the paper every other day. It would also give it a chance for the evidence to be aired out in court again, rather than just the lopsided arguments from either side.
I just re-read the article on the NZ Herald about Watson and Hope's prison meeting, which apparently Scott Watson had been all for. (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11766026)
Interesting that Hope felt Watson was being elusive about his movements on the 1st of January and a number of other points he was completely silent on. Really? When Watson wanted the meeting as much as Hope did. Just seems mighty fishy to me. It smacks of a guy who can have a public campaign behind him but when he is actually asked to prove it wasn't him, he can't do it.
In the end, he either killed them or he didn't. If he didn't kill them, I'm unsure why he would be elusive about it to Hope. If he got Hope in behind him saying he thought he was innocent, that would provide massive momentum to his case.
Either way, I'm definitely not as well read on this case as I am on the Bain case, so I'm probably the wrong person to be arguing the intricacies of it. My main point is, the guy seems dodgy as hell, and eluding giving the truth. If it were me sitting in there innocent, I'd be screaming to anyone who would listen, not avoiding questions.
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Resurrecting this thread as I stumbled across a long but interesting read that throws some light on something in this case that I had never heard of before.
A little background as to how I found this. You may be aware that Watson has been turned down for parole once again. He is in the catch-22 situation that with taking steps to acknowledge his behaviour and put plans around personal behaviour management on the outside he is considered a threat. To him he won't do that because he still pleads innocence.
It made me wonder why he is clinging on to this so hard when the easy way out is to do some courses and be released.
I then realised that I missed last year that his case has been referred back to the Court of Appeal.This came about after the legal eagles that helped Teina Pora reviewed the DNA evidence in Watson's case and found significant enough to get a former High Court judge to review what they found and recommend royal prerogative for an appeal.
Then I found an article that the legal team had quite a bit more than this to present to the court which intrigued me so I went looking for 'new' theories out of interest.
I found this blog/site https://free-scottwatson.com/ which among a rambling repetitive spiel and conspiratorial conclusions had actually done some digging among police records and described some quite interesting facts that I hadn't heard about.
It is a horrendous read that tries hard to paint itself as not being biased but fails.
However the facts contained within contain a fair bit of stuff that I hadn't heard before around the change of investigative tack regarding a boat of interest, and around Guy Wallace the person and how some that knew him very well quickly informed the police to look in his direction.I'm curious as to what the legal team have now discovered and what may come out in the Court of Appeal.
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Was actually talking to a high court defence lawyer friend of mine on the weekend about this case and learned a hell of a lot of stuff that I didn’t previously know and not sure how many in the public do.
Will have a read of that link you shared and see if anything matches up.
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@crucial said in Scott Watson:
I found this blog/site https://free-scottwatson.com/ which among a rambling repetitive spiel and conspiratorial conclusions had actually done some digging among police records and described some quite interesting facts that I hadn't heard about.
tl;dr version? I got to 'Was Scott Watson just an innocent bystander set-up by a relentless corrupt police force, or does it go much deeper than that?' and closed that tab.
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@antipodean said in Scott Watson:
@crucial said in Scott Watson:
I found this blog/site https://free-scottwatson.com/ which among a rambling repetitive spiel and conspiratorial conclusions had actually done some digging among police records and described some quite interesting facts that I hadn't heard about.
tl;dr version? I got to 'Was Scott Watson just an innocent bystander set-up by a relentless corrupt police force, or does it go much deeper than that?' and closed that tab.
I did warn you of that.
It’s not that difficult to pick out the factual parts though. They are referenced to police files (although we don’t know what is omitted) -
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@mn5 said in Scott Watson:
So how come Lundy got a retrial and Watson never has ?
I don’t think it’s are-trial as such but an appeal based on “new” evidence and/or disputed evidence from the trial.
The way it works though is that you don’t redo the whole trial but the points raised are looked at to see if they would have likely caused a different outcome.
Watson had a really shit defence team at his trial. So much of what has come out later they didn’t contest or didn’t see and now he has to prove he didn’t do it rather than provide doubt.
Shit thrown sticks as shown earlier in the thread where posters still refer to the scratches on the hatch which the prosecution used to paint an awful picture of some clawing in desperation to escape. As shown later the hatch didn’t even have a catch, the marks were never shown to be fingernails, the marks were made with the hatch open and witnesses had signed after Davids that their kids had done the damage earlier and Watson had hit them up for repairs.
The appeal judge decided that the defence had ample opportunities to make those points so there was no error in the trial. Also that if they had done so it wasn’t a key piece of evidence that would change the outcome.
They don’t seem to take into account that in a circumstantial case all the little things add up which is odd.
The latest appeal is around DNA because that potentially was a cornerstone of the case and knowledge on the subject has changed since the original trial.
I know some Pictonites that swear he is guilty mainly because they knew of him and he was by most accounts a jerk. He fits the bill nicely. Sounds like Wallace may have been similar.
With Watson though, he left the scene, had opportunity to dispose of the bodies etc so the argument is that he was easier to make a case against. He couldn’t prove he didn’t do something.
As I said in the OP it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if he knows something about what really happened but also knows that the story he has been prosecuted under is far from the truth. -
The more I read the more I'm convinced that there was something else happening there that night which has muddied things. Possibly it was this stuff that was the police deliberately ignored in order to get a clear line to the missing couple.
There are just too many things discovered by investigators and journos since that are unexplained but if you throw them in the mix don't clear Watson, they just cast doubt around witnesses or make their statements wrong. -
@mn5 said in Scott Watson:
So how come Lundy got a retrial and Watson never has ?
In Lundy's case, the original prosecution case was physically impossible, so eventually the courts didn't have much choice.
David Bain was another where each appeal failed, but eventually the last one succeeded on the totality of the case - basically the Privy Council said that individual appeals may not have had enough, but when all the new material and arguments were combined, they
formed Captain Planetmade it hard to conclude that the original conviction was still safe. Notably, and like Lundy, they still ordered a retrial when quashing the conviction as there was still a case to answer, just that it was not clear what the outcome would be and it should be put in front another jury to decide. -
@godder said in Scott Watson:
@mn5 said in Scott Watson:
So how come Lundy got a retrial and Watson never has ?
In Lundy's case, the original prosecution case was physically impossible, so eventually the courts didn't have much choice.
... which begs the question fo how the hell you got a prosecution.
I have a dark sense of humour, but the Lundy Five Hundy was a quality pisstake road race. Pity it got canned.
