Speaker 1: Yoda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is a summer special of
Speaker 2: The Front Page, the NSID Herald's daily news podcast. While
Speaker 2: The Front Page is on summer break, we're taking a
Speaker 2: look back at some of the biggest news stories and
Speaker 2: top rated episodes from the podcast in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: New episodes will return on January thirteenth. The disappearances of
Speaker 2: Ben Smart and Olivia Hope on New Year's Day nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight remains one of New Zealand's most infamous cases.
Speaker 2: Scott Watson has spent the last twenty five years behind
Speaker 2: bars after being convicted of murdering them, despite no bodies
Speaker 2: ever being found. In June, Watson headed back to the
Speaker 2: court room, four years after his case was referred to
Speaker 2: the Court of Appeal. It's his last at clearing his name.
Speaker 2: There's still no word yet on the result of his
Speaker 2: latest appeal. We spoke with Enzied Herald's senior journalist Carolyn
Speaker 2: mgyee and editorial leader Oscar Alli, who took us back
Speaker 2: to nineteen ninety nine when they both covered Watson's infamous
Speaker 2: first trial, and we ran through the evidence making up
Speaker 2: this appeal with senior reporter David Fisher. Do you both
Speaker 2: remember when the news came in that Ben and Olivia
Speaker 2: had gone missing?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 3: It was extraordinary really for a number of reasons, because,
Speaker 3: I mean, let's face it, most people remember New Year's
Speaker 3: Eve nights and going out and parting, and no one
Speaker 3: would ever think two young kids would never come home
Speaker 3: to their families and are still missing.
Speaker 4: It was massive from the start, and you've got to
Speaker 4: remember too that it was Newyear's Day they were missing,
Speaker 4: very quiet time for the news. So sometimes stories become
Speaker 4: bigger faster because.
Speaker 1: It's not a lot happening in the country.
Speaker 4: But you know, a couple of really attractive kids doing
Speaker 4: what a lot of kids of that age did, which
Speaker 4: is their first holidays with their friends, not their family.
Speaker 4: And also, to be fair to their parents, they were
Speaker 4: very vocal very quickly that you can see the concern,
Speaker 4: and obviously as the days went on it just got
Speaker 4: grimmar and Grimmar.
Speaker 3: Not to mention their surnames, Hope and Smart. You know,
Speaker 3: they were the perfect set of white middle class kids, beautiful, intelligent,
Speaker 3: their whole lives ahead of them, and I think that's
Speaker 3: what capitivated the country too, because I think if it was,
Speaker 3: you know, is some different people in a small town
Speaker 3: for example, there wouldn't have been such a huge kind
Speaker 3: of interest.
Speaker 4: So you got to remember too, this is ninety seven
Speaker 4: ninety eight, no cell phones. We all carry GPS devices
Speaker 4: now called smartphones. People didn't go missing rarely in this
Speaker 4: country back then, and you were as a kid growing up,
Speaker 4: you went out for a day and your parents know
Speaker 4: where you were. There was no phone to ring you on.
Speaker 4: There wasn't necessarily a payphone. So it was a very
Speaker 4: different age. It's more than twenty five years ago. It'd
Speaker 4: be hard to think people going missing like that nowadays,
Speaker 4: with all the technology that we have, cell phones, pinging towers.
Speaker 4: But back in ninety seven ninety eight, it was very
Speaker 4: rare for people to just disappear. Especially it's such a
Speaker 4: busy three thousand people at that party.
Speaker 1: It just didn't happen.
Speaker 2: It took about six months for Scott Watson to be
Speaker 2: arrested and charged with the case. Now, how was he
Speaker 2: portrayed in the public eye over that time.
Speaker 3: Well, in my opinion, I think he was portrayed as
Speaker 3: quite a villain from the outset and certainly from the
Speaker 3: police's perspective. At the time, there was such a huge
Speaker 3: pressure for the police to convict someone for these two
Speaker 3: kids going missing, and Scott, you know, given his background
Speaker 3: as a young teenager, was always in trouble. He was
Speaker 3: actually in balls Staal and from memory when he was
Speaker 3: in borll Staol as a teenager, he we covered a
Speaker 3: story at the time for sixty minutes stabbed the padre
Speaker 3: and the eye with a big spike. So he was
Speaker 3: a bad egg from a young age. But to be honest,
Speaker 3: I think that he was probably unfairly the lined at
Speaker 3: the artset. He was on his own at the time.
Speaker 3: At the party, he was very drunk, very obnoxious, hitting
Speaker 3: on women, being really inappropriate, So he didn't portray himself
Speaker 3: in very good light in those circumstances.
Speaker 4: I think it's been pretty well established now that police
Speaker 4: were leaky and while it took six months to arrest
Speaker 4: Scott Watson, they pulled his boat The Blade, out of
Speaker 4: the water on January the twelfth, and every TV camera
Speaker 4: and newspaper photographer knew to be there for that. And
Speaker 4: once that happened in broad daylight with an audience of media,
Speaker 4: it was pretty obvious that Watson was a significant person
Speaker 4: of interest. It got reported that he had forty eight
Speaker 4: previous criminal convictions. And you've got to understand when there's
Speaker 4: a six month gap between people going missing and someone
Speaker 4: being charged, it's a long period of time where the
Speaker 4: media can report about people there's no subject to say
Speaker 4: because no charges are being laid or are about to
Speaker 4: be laid. And that had a lot of consequences when
Speaker 4: it came time for the trial and people giving evidence
Speaker 4: as witnesses in the High Court who'd been interviewed by
Speaker 4: media days after it happened. It caused a lot of complications.
Speaker 5: And there are a lot of people who are happy
Speaker 5: to say and you heard this so much at the time,
Speaker 5: you know, well, we're maybe a little unsure whether he
Speaker 5: did it or not, but he's not a very nice guy.
Speaker 5: Does it really matter? Yes, it matters a lot, because
Speaker 5: if we can do that for him, we can do
Speaker 5: it for anybody.
Speaker 2: Going forwards to nineteen ninety nine. That trial went on
Speaker 2: for about three months. Like you say, it would have
Speaker 2: been quite hard to find a jury who didn't know
Speaker 2: anything about this case.
Speaker 1: Hey, that's right, and that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: it was shifted.
Speaker 4: Dwellington and also Chelsea you could remember in those days,
Speaker 4: there was no social media that's on Facebook, There was
Speaker 4: barely cell phones. Everyone consumed mainstream media through television and newspapers.
Speaker 4: News websites were just sort of starting, and there was
Speaker 4: so much information about this case. It took eighteen months
Speaker 4: to get to trial that already been what's called a
Speaker 4: deposition's hearing and Blenheim and we don't do that anymore,
Speaker 4: but that's basically a dry run of the key bits
Speaker 4: of the evidence for a judge to decide if there's
Speaker 4: enough evidence to stand trial. So everyone had already heard
Speaker 4: most of the evidence against Scott Watson by that case,
Speaker 4: not all of it, and there were certainly a lot
Speaker 4: of dramatic revelations at the trial. But the whole country
Speaker 4: was talking about this like it sounds not very nice
Speaker 4: to say, but this case was New Zealand's ij Simpson case.
Speaker 4: Just this case that just captivated the country for eighteen months.
Speaker 3: For a lot of reasons too, because of police procedure
Speaker 3: or their lack of it, or their lack of transparency
Speaker 3: in terms of evidence, in terms of using his photographs
Speaker 3: and showing witnesses different photographs of him looking into several
Speaker 3: who looked nothing like that on the night. Even drawings
Speaker 3: m of the drawing of them looking scruffy. So people
Speaker 3: kind of already made up their minds in a way,
Speaker 3: I feel.
Speaker 2: And early on as well, Ben and Olivia's parents were
Speaker 2: quite vocal in the media. Hey, how do you think
Speaker 2: that helped or perhaps hindered the case in those early
Speaker 2: days because now they don't speak it.
Speaker 3: No, Well, I think Gerald Hope was very vocal, and
Speaker 3: he obviously and then you know, later became the mayor
Speaker 3: of Blenham, But also because they were very credible. I
Speaker 3: think people were captured by these families. The Smart family
Speaker 3: were less vocal, but Gerald certainly, he was pretty much
Speaker 3: a spokesperson for both families. And you're right, like I
Speaker 3: think like nowadays you would very really subdue to say
Speaker 3: anyway to talk before a trial, but he was very
Speaker 3: vocal from the out.
Speaker 2: Yet the case has become pretty notorious as one of
Speaker 2: New Zealand's most controversial cases. Was there that feeling during
Speaker 2: the trial that this was going to be quite contentious?
Speaker 4: There were certainly some big surprises at the trial. The
Speaker 4: whole country was watching, so I was covering it for
Speaker 4: the Dominion newspaper, and we set aside whole pages with
Speaker 4: no ads for all of the evidence every day, and
Speaker 4: I was there for every day of three months. The
Speaker 4: interest was enormous. It just led TV news every night.
Speaker 4: People just couldn't get enough information. And I think, Chelsea,
Speaker 4: you could feel the pressure. You could feel the pressure
Speaker 4: on everyone, the jury, the judged, the lawyers. And this
Speaker 4: might sound really silly, the media, we felt it too.
Speaker 4: Because your bylines on the story, people realize who you are,
Speaker 4: and every party or social interaction you have they're talking
Speaker 4: about this case. That's what I make the OJ comparison.
Speaker 4: It just captivated the whole country, and I think Carra
Speaker 4: is right. People had largely made up their mind about
Speaker 4: Scott Watson, and in terms of the justice system, because
Speaker 4: it's twenty five years and we're still talking about this,
Speaker 4: and I look at these things and I think, what
Speaker 4: if he didn't do it? What if he's been in
Speaker 4: prison for all this time. I don't lose any sleep
Speaker 4: about the verdict, and I haven't followed really closely the
Speaker 4: appeal stuff, but what I would say is that Scott
Speaker 4: Watson had two excellent defense lawyers for his trial, Bruce Davidson,
Speaker 4: who's now judged and Mike and Tanovic they really believed
Speaker 4: in his innocence. They fought tooth and nail, and a
Speaker 4: lot of what the Appeals is now considering is the
Speaker 4: great work that they did at trial, probing witnesses, finding
Speaker 4: out about problems with evidence that the Appeal as stands
Speaker 4: on the shoulders of the work those two did at
Speaker 4: the trial.
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty well with the stafablished that a lot
Speaker 2: of this evidence in the case is circumstantial.
Speaker 1: Hey, DNA was brand new in ninety nine.
Speaker 4: You know, it's very hard because there was so much
Speaker 4: publicity of this before I got control and everything that's
Speaker 4: happening now be really clear.
Speaker 1: This was a big deal in nineteen ninety nine. This
Speaker 1: was contentious.
Speaker 4: Then the ESR evidence about supposedly Olivia's hears on the
Speaker 4: blanket on Scott Watson's boat, that was absolutely damning at
Speaker 4: the time because there was no evidence that they'd met,
Speaker 4: unless you believe he was in the water taxi and
Speaker 4: offered for bedding Olivia to sleep on their boat, but
Speaker 4: there was no sightings of them together. So for a
Speaker 4: jury and for the public, how do hears get on
Speaker 4: someone's boat of someone you've never met and there was
Speaker 4: all this evidence about secondary transfer and you're at a
Speaker 4: party and you bump into someone and here goes on you,
Speaker 4: and they bump into someone else and here goes on
Speaker 4: someone else. Quite far fetched but powerful evidence, right, And
Speaker 4: this is what the appeal is about now, is Yeah,
Speaker 4: there were serious problems with the way that evidence was
Speaker 4: tested and collected. That happened at the time that Essi
Speaker 4: Hunters got absolutely grilled on the stand eras were made
Speaker 4: not to mention.
Speaker 3: What is it called the hatch. There was scratches on
Speaker 3: my hat on his boat. Now that was proven that
Speaker 3: was false. And I've actually been on the blade twice.
Speaker 3: Not long after the trial ended and the verdict came up,
Speaker 3: we interviewed Watson's family, his mother Bev and dad Chris,
Speaker 3: and we actually went sailing on the blade and we
Speaker 3: went back again sailing, you know, for the twenty year podcast.
Speaker 3: And it was quite chilling actually being on the blade
Speaker 3: because it was so tiny. It's really noisy, and all
Speaker 3: I could think about was at the time was like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, imagine if they were there, you know,
Speaker 3: they could look out, but no one could look in.
Speaker 3: And if they were actually in there, trapped in there.
Speaker 3: I just thought, God, how terrifying those Bool kids must
Speaker 3: have felt.
Speaker 4: So at the trial that was very powerful evidence that
Speaker 4: the crown case was that Olivia was fighting for her
Speaker 4: life to get out of the boat. And that's powerful evidence,
Speaker 4: and when it's presented in the context of Olivia's hairs
Speaker 4: were on the blanket on the boat. And then a
Speaker 4: lot was made of Scott Watson's behavior after the kids
Speaker 4: went missing. The entire boat had been washed down, cassette
Speaker 4: tapes had been wiped well, and made a big deal
Speaker 4: of that. The defense explained nearly all of that there'd
Speaker 4: been water on board, rough sailing crossing cooks straight. That's
Speaker 4: why things have been cleaned, because saltwater gets in the
Speaker 4: damaged things. Much was made of Scott Watson painting his
Speaker 4: boat in the following days. He ordered the paint weeks earlier,
Speaker 4: so it all looked sinister. And they talk in criminal
Speaker 4: trials about each piece of evidence to strand, and the
Speaker 4: strand builds a rope.
Speaker 1: That's the way judges explained it.
Speaker 4: There were a lot of strands that knotted together and
Speaker 4: made quite a strong rope. But the jury were made
Speaker 4: to ask some quite big leaps of faith in the
Speaker 4: crown case.
Speaker 2: What do you think swayed the jury in the end.
Speaker 4: What I learned from this trial, Chelsea, was the pressure
Speaker 4: on juries to come up with verdicts as enormous. What
Speaker 4: swayed the jury the his the two prison witnesses who
Speaker 4: claimed that Scott Watson confessed to them that was a
Speaker 4: truly horrific day. And what the jury didn't know was
Speaker 4: both of those guys had to come and give evidence
Speaker 4: in front of the judge with no jury present, because
Speaker 4: the judge had to make a rolling on whether what
Speaker 4: they were going to say would be admissible. So we
Speaker 4: were in court for that, the jury weren't, so we
Speaker 4: actually saw two runs of that evidence that was very powerful.
Speaker 4: The other thing, too, is Scott Watson is guilty of
Speaker 4: being a drunken asshole that night and heading on anyone,
Speaker 4: particularly blondes.
Speaker 1: He was very badly behaved and a lot of people remembered.
Speaker 4: He made one horrific comment to a young girl and
Speaker 4: she gave evidence and they were talking and she explained
Speaker 4: that I think a relative had cancer and Watson stead
Speaker 4: of had a crack at her and she rejected him,
Speaker 4: and he just looked at her and said I hope
Speaker 4: your mother dies of cancer.
Speaker 1: And the jury gasped in the public.
Speaker 4: Gallery gust he's a very introverted, hard to read kind
Speaker 4: of guy.
Speaker 1: And like I say, the strands just kept building.
Speaker 2: Well, the fact that matter is you can be an asshole,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't make you a murderer.
Speaker 1: Correct, that was real? Was that a real issue here?
Speaker 3: Well, because he was a dodgy character by nature, and
Speaker 3: I think and also just his previous convictions, which were,
Speaker 3: as Oscar said, you know, forty eight convictions, so already
Speaker 3: in the public's mind. He was guilty in my opinion
Speaker 3: because his parents weren't like the Hopes and Smarts. They
Speaker 3: weren't middle class people. They're working class people. His father
Speaker 3: was a boat builder, his mother worked at the pub
Speaker 3: behind the Bard. Kind of when you build that picture
Speaker 3: of Scott Watson and the fact that Borstal all you
Speaker 3: know his anti social behavior, you know you are building
Speaker 3: a picture. The one thing we haven't talked about to
Speaker 3: Oscar is Guy Wallace, you know, because he was a
Speaker 3: crucial witness to the connection and then he changed his mind.
Speaker 3: And when we interviewed him, what four years ago, he
Speaker 3: regrets that he feels very guilty sadly he's no longer
Speaker 3: with us. But there was a lot of pressure I
Speaker 3: think the police placed, in my personal opinion, police placed
Speaker 3: a lot of pressure on people and witnesses.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And when you talk about pressure, so many lives
Speaker 4: have been damaged or destroyed by this case, and not
Speaker 4: just Ben and not just Olivia. But the trial opened
Speaker 4: with evidence from Ben and Liver's parents, and it was
Speaker 4: just horrific because it was they were fun, loving and
Speaker 4: what were they doing and it was one of their
Speaker 4: first holidays away with their friends.
Speaker 1: Instead of their parents, And it was very powerful from
Speaker 1: the crowd.
Speaker 4: It really created these wonderful, well behaved, achieving young people
Speaker 4: who would never do anything silly. And it was hard
Speaker 4: to watch, was hard to be in court. They were
Speaker 4: just nice kids. And there was thousands of nice kids
Speaker 4: at that party that night. It was a pretty out
Speaker 4: of control party. It was a very powerful way to
Speaker 4: open the case. And when I say, you know, other
Speaker 4: lives damaged, Guy Wallace life never recovered from this. In
Speaker 4: the guilt that he feels about being the person who,
Speaker 4: you know, dropping these kids off at this mystery person's ketch.
Speaker 4: You know, not everyone's alive in this case, anymore. And
Speaker 4: what I would say about the Hopes and the Smarts,
Speaker 4: they were lovely people. Grief was just etched on their
Speaker 4: face at the trial, you could see it. And they
Speaker 4: sat there in the front row every day and listened
Speaker 4: to everything, and sometimes you'd hear the sobs and that
Speaker 4: would be Olivia's mum or Ben's mum. That they were
Speaker 4: lovely people. And to be fair to Chris Watson, Scott's father,
Speaker 4: he's a really nice guy too, and he is quite
Speaker 4: convinced his son didn't do it. And at the trial
Speaker 4: you'd have these people coming and going in the media gathering,
Speaker 4: and Scott Watson's dad stood there every day like a
Speaker 4: prior outside the court during the breaks. No one went
Speaker 4: up to, no one want to talk to him. He'd
Speaker 4: roll a ciggi and just all the eyes boring on him.
Speaker 4: And he's been really unwell. The grief from this case
Speaker 4: and the tragedy and the pressure has taken a much
Speaker 4: bigger toll than two young people.
Speaker 6: And I don't believe that he has it in them
Speaker 6: to do that.
Speaker 7: But I'm not going to go down the track of
Speaker 7: being the emotional parent that's going to back his son
Speaker 7: no matter.
Speaker 3: What I have enormous admiration for Chris. I've known Chris
Speaker 3: all those years. I've kept in touch with him all
Speaker 3: these years. His wife, when I first approached her because
Speaker 3: part of my job was to tie up people for
Speaker 3: you know, interviews, afterwards, spat at me, and then I
Speaker 3: kind of befriended her because back in those days the
Speaker 3: us to smoke cigarette. So I used to stand outside
Speaker 3: with her and with Chris, and then eventually we built
Speaker 3: up a report. But I cannot ever commend anyone more
Speaker 3: or actually has admiration for a father who has so
Speaker 3: much love for a son and such belief that his
Speaker 3: son is innocent. His whole life has been dedicated that
Speaker 3: you know, And as Oscar says, you know, Bev, she
Speaker 3: died of cancer a few years ago, never seeing justice
Speaker 3: for her son that she believed, of course he was innocent.
Speaker 3: But also you know, for poor Mary Smart because her
Speaker 3: husband John died and Mary Smart bumps into Chris Watson
Speaker 3: pretty much once sweet because they live impact in really
Speaker 3: close to each other. In fact, it's a really chilling
Speaker 3: reminder because Chris has the blade, Scott Sloop and the harbor,
Speaker 3: and Mary Smart lives right above the harbor and the
Speaker 3: blade is a constant reminder of her son.
Speaker 2: And just finally we're still talking about it nearly twenty
Speaker 2: five years later. Kara, you've done a podcast, The Murder
Speaker 2: and the Sounds. Why do you think this case is
Speaker 2: still sparking this debate after all this time.
Speaker 3: Because there are two people missing, nobody's have ever been recovered,
Speaker 3: No one really knows what happened, you know, people have died,
Speaker 3: are older memories fade, but it's just I guess for me,
Speaker 3: those lasting impressions of those two young kids with the
Speaker 3: whole lives ahead of them just taken. I can still
Speaker 3: see that photograph that were used every night on the news,
Speaker 3: you know, on television, newspapers, the two of them together,
Speaker 3: Olivia and Ben, and you think, nah, they would be
Speaker 3: were in their forties. They should by rights be parents
Speaker 3: for their own children, you know, sending them off to
Speaker 3: a New Year's Eve party.
Speaker 4: And we should acknowledge this is too long for the
Speaker 4: justice system to do its thing. And this partly reflects
Speaker 4: how Scott Watson is just going to keep fighting and
Speaker 4: fighting fighting, and you have to respect that. But this
Speaker 4: should have been resolved either way by now. It's been
Speaker 4: too course been to the Privy Council and I think
Speaker 4: the other issue here is that our parole system can't
Speaker 4: handle people who refuse to admit they did it. So
Speaker 4: Scott Watson was sentenced to a minimum non parole period
Speaker 4: of seventeen years.
Speaker 1: He could have potentially been released eight years ago.
Speaker 4: So if the judge considered that that's what the punishment
Speaker 4: should be for this crime, he's arguably done more than that.
Speaker 4: The reasons why no one liked him on the night
Speaker 4: are the reasons why he's not getting parole. He's got
Speaker 4: some issues and I just think, if you're in prison
Speaker 4: for this long and you didn't do it, wouldn't it
Speaker 4: drive you crazy? And one thing for me, Chelsea about
Speaker 4: Scott is how we reacted when the jury came back
Speaker 4: and said guilty.
Speaker 1: And for me, it's.
Speaker 4: The most single terrible memory of the trial was he
Speaker 4: just looked over at them and he just said, you're wrong,
Speaker 4: really cocky, really arrogant. And there was a lot of
Speaker 4: discussion right outside court after it because it was like, well,
Speaker 4: if I didn't do it, I'd be screaming buddy murder,
Speaker 4: or I'd be crying, or I'd be angry. But it
Speaker 4: was cold, cold hearted that didn't.
Speaker 1: Do many favors.
Speaker 4: But also if you don't admit that you did it,
Speaker 4: how can you get parole. So other countries have laws
Speaker 4: now where if you say with the body is you
Speaker 4: get an automatic sentence discount. And I think for ben
Speaker 4: Olivia's parents, so much of it was not really knowing
Speaker 4: the final moments, not knowing where they are, not getting
Speaker 4: bodies back. What we talk about these days is closure,
Speaker 4: which I don't think was a thing twenty five years ago,
Speaker 4: but we understand the basic concept. So why is it
Speaker 4: still in the news. Well, because it was massively controversial
Speaker 4: at the time. The Crown did a closing that invited
Speaker 4: the jury to ignore parts of the narrative that didn't work,
Speaker 4: never explaining how he got back to Shure the second
Speaker 4: time to be in the water taxi had been a
Speaker 4: living It was massively controversial then and it's a sense
Speaker 4: of fascination now.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Karen Oscar and you can listen
Speaker 2: to Murdering the Sound on the Chasing Ghosts podcast feed
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts. Two key pieces of evidence
Speaker 2: will be focused on during this appeal process. As at
Speaker 2: Harold's senior reporter David Fisher has been following this case
Speaker 2: for much of the last twenty five years. He joins
Speaker 2: us now to discuss what is being brought to the
Speaker 2: table for the first time in the way of evidence. David,
Speaker 2: the piece of evidence that led to Watson's appeal revolves
Speaker 2: around the DNA evidence from two hairs found on the boat. Hey,
Speaker 2: what can you tell us about that?
Speaker 6: So the hair evidence was really interesting for a number
Speaker 6: of reasons. One of those reasons was that police searched
Speaker 6: Blade Scott Watson's boat from top to tail, and they
Speaker 6: found about four hundred hairs. None of those were hairs
Speaker 6: that matched up with Ben Smart or Olivia Hope. Then
Speaker 6: they went back and they searched the yacht again and
Speaker 6: on this occasion they found two hairs that matched up
Speaker 6: with Olivia Hope. The difficulty is is that those hairs
Speaker 6: were identified on the same day that Olivia Hope's hair
Speaker 6: brush was present in the lab where the hair samples
Speaker 6: were being studied. And then to further complicate this along
Speaker 6: the way, there was one centimeter long slit that was
Speaker 6: found in the evidence bag that the hair obtained from
Speaker 6: Blade was being kept in. And so then there was
Speaker 6: this question, well, could it have been contaminated, could the
Speaker 6: hair from one have fallen into the other bag, or
Speaker 6: for that matter, did the hair come from the hair
Speaker 6: brush and somehow make its way into the other bag.
Speaker 6: So this has been a point of contention for quite
Speaker 6: some time, right down to whether or not the scientist
Speaker 6: that was doing the examination changed from one lab coat
Speaker 6: to another lab coat when working from one sample to
Speaker 6: another sample. It's been certainly for quite some time never
Speaker 6: really found as much traction as Watson supporters wanted it
Speaker 6: to until this Court of Appeal hearing a couple of
Speaker 6: years ago.
Speaker 2: So for those who may not know, you get a
Speaker 2: few chances at appeal, but then you cut off. Then
Speaker 2: you have to go for what's called a royal prerogative
Speaker 2: of mercy, and in order to do that you do
Speaker 2: need new evidence. Are the hairs a part of why
Speaker 2: Watson was granted a royal prerogative of mercy?
Speaker 6: The case agains Scott Watson has been challenged in a
Speaker 6: multitude of different ways. So yes, there were the Court
Speaker 6: of Appeal hearings, There was an IPCA inquiry, there was
Speaker 6: his initial denial of a rule progative of mercy claim
Speaker 6: in twenty thirteen, and then again another one in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 6: I think that was accepted. The hiss that was a
Speaker 6: part of it. But back when the original case happened,
Speaker 6: when Paul Davison QC was summing up the case on
Speaker 6: behalf of the prosecution, he had said, this case is
Speaker 6: a jigsaw made of many different pieces, sort of a
Speaker 6: similar analogy to circumstantial cases being talked about as being
Speaker 6: many strands of a rope. And so the hears were
Speaker 6: always one of those jigsaw puzzle pieces. There were a
Speaker 6: lot of pieces that went into that puzzle, and the
Speaker 6: argument has kind of been how many pieces of the
Speaker 6: puzzle do you need to knock out before the picture
Speaker 6: makes no sense.
Speaker 2: The Court of Appeal later ruled that Watson's team can
Speaker 2: also argue the so called blink photo that was used
Speaker 2: to identify him. Why has that being so controversial?
Speaker 6: So the IPCA in quiry in twenty ten that actually
Speaker 6: identified the blink photograph as being problematic, I think was
Speaker 6: the way that they praised it. They said it was
Speaker 6: highly undesirable the way that police went about showing photomontages
Speaker 6: to people, and that it fell well short of best practice. However,
Speaker 6: it was never framed in such a way as to
Speaker 6: be the one single piece of evidence that was going
Speaker 6: to either convict Watson or get him off the hook.
Speaker 6: But with the Blink photograph, the difficulty here was that
Speaker 6: police were given a description of a man who was
Speaker 6: behaving in an odd fashion at Pernolodge that night, who
Speaker 6: had hooded eyes, and this was quite a distinctive physical characteristic.
Speaker 6: Scott Watson, in this photograph called the Blink photograph, appeared
Speaker 6: to have hooded eyes, but that's because he was blinking
Speaker 6: with the photograph was taken. When you look at the
Speaker 6: other photographs of their they're not hooded eyes. And so
Speaker 6: the photograph of Watson blinking with these hooded eyes was
Speaker 6: seen as highly prejudicial by supporters of Watson, who said
Speaker 6: that what in right it should have been allowed, as
Speaker 6: I said back that up fell well should of best practice?
Speaker 6: They said, highly undesirable. At what the Court of Appeal
Speaker 6: has said, Well, if that's enough to give a miscarriage
Speaker 6: of justice, that's for the Court of Appeal to decide
Speaker 6: on the new hearing, and they gave a green light
Speaker 6: for Watson to advance that.
Speaker 8: Nicholas Chisnel became Scott Watson's lead counsel last year.
Speaker 7: Is a case that invokes strong emotions and people, both
Speaker 7: those who supports Scott and also those who feel that
Speaker 7: he's to be criticized for wanting to have his stay
Speaker 7: in court again.
Speaker 8: Chisnel says, who's spoken to Scott Watson, who is excited
Speaker 8: about the developments, although it is tempered by the fact
Speaker 8: it's taken Authorisy's just over two decades to review his case.
Speaker 2: But David Wilders isn't a part of the appeal. I
Speaker 2: understand you once tested the Crown case involving Watson's boat,
Speaker 2: the Blade.
Speaker 6: I got really interested in this pieces of a puzzle
Speaker 6: thing because there were pieces that you could look at
Speaker 6: and knock out. And one of the things that have
Speaker 6: been talked about was the Crown's allegation that Watson had
Speaker 6: dropped the body to the middle of the cook straight
Speaker 6: and then there was also evidence that was put forward
Speaker 6: in the trial that he was seen a period of
Speaker 6: time later back in Mulbra sounds at somebody's house or
Speaker 6: tied up in a bay. The thing that captivated me
Speaker 6: about this I didn't realize and yachts No, is that
Speaker 6: there's actually scientific equation that says how fast a boakud
Speaker 6: go depending on his kell length. And when you got
Speaker 6: a measuring tape out, you applied it to a map
Speaker 6: and you measured the length of the blade's kill. You
Speaker 6: could see that what's it going to happen? So Chris Watson,
Speaker 6: Scott Watson's dad, he agreed to let me test this
Speaker 6: out in the real world. So we took Blade out
Speaker 6: to the middle of the cook straight to the place
Speaker 6: where Blade was apparently cited, and we did it at
Speaker 6: the same tide as occurred at that time. It was
Speaker 6: a really carefully planned trip to try and match up
Speaker 6: the environmental conditions as closely as possible, and then we
Speaker 6: went hell for leather to this bay that Watson was
Speaker 6: apparently cited. And there's no way that you can make
Speaker 6: the journey. It just doesn't work. And it was fascinating
Speaker 6: to me because when Paul Davison summed up the case,
Speaker 6: and it was one heck of a summing up. It
Speaker 6: was thirty thousand words of closing argument. Five percent of
Speaker 6: that closing argument was about the bodies being done, and
Speaker 6: from the work that I did, it seemed impossible that
Speaker 6: that could have.
Speaker 2: Happened and what's made you so interested in this case
Speaker 2: over the years, David, those pieces are the puzzle and
Speaker 2: seeing how many you can knock out.
Speaker 6: I think the thing about the Scott Watson case, well,
Speaker 6: one thing is that the bodies have been in Olivia,
Speaker 6: we never found and the greatest evidence that exists as
Speaker 6: to who their killer is is likely with those bodies.
Speaker 6: So it then becomes a very circumstantial case. And there
Speaker 6: were pieces of evidence put forward that police would argue,
Speaker 6: we're not circumstantial. The hairs on the boat that's under question,
Speaker 6: I just testimony. Also somewhat under The main person that
Speaker 6: identified the Blink photograph were canted and died not so
Speaker 6: long ago, saying that he didn't believe that Scott Watson
Speaker 6: was the person that he identified in that photograph. I
Speaker 6: think the thing for me that's really interesting about the
Speaker 6: case is so many unanswered questions, and it came during
Speaker 6: a time when we were as a public somewhat accustomed
Speaker 6: to questions coming from old cases. There was the murders
Speaker 6: of the Swedish jurists of the Crimnal for which David
Speaker 6: Tommyhaty was convicted. We go all the way back to
Speaker 6: the Crew murders and that seat of doubt that was
Speaker 6: planted when police planted the Cartridge case. That sort of
Speaker 6: raised a question over the way that police would do
Speaker 6: that job at the time and in the decades going forward,
Speaker 6: Watson case just became another one of those I think
Speaker 6: one of the things that was really captivating about the case,
Speaker 6: and I somewhat missed this because I was out of
Speaker 6: the country for quite a number of years around the
Speaker 6: time of the murders and the following trial, was that
Speaker 6: they were kind of the perfect young summer couple. They
Speaker 6: were really lovely looking kids that came from a really
Speaker 6: nice home that were having a New Year's Eve of
Speaker 6: the sort that you would hope would be the most
Speaker 6: memorable of their lives, which it turned out to be
Speaker 6: for all the wrong reasons.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, David. For news from the Appeal
Speaker 2: as it comes through, had to ensidherld dot co dot
Speaker 2: z and for more on the Scott Watson case, including
Speaker 2: his bids for parole, check out the links in our
Speaker 2: show notes. That's it for this episode of the Front Page.
Speaker 2: You can read more about today's stories and extensive news
Speaker 2: coverage at enzidherld dot co. Dot NZ. The Front Page
Speaker 2: is produced by Ethan Sills and sound engineer Patty Fox.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio
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