Diver Indicted in 2003 GBR mishap

[docbonezz]

BackDocDiver........ I agree with you completely. My wife and oldest daughter are certified and there is no way I would ever leave the water without either one of them. Let alone see either of them drift away from me. I feel that the inconsistencies in his story show his guilt. When I saw this story on Dateline it was obvious to me what he did and how he did it. His actions after the fact are disgusting to me and I hope that justice is served in this case.

 

[ItsBruce]

I feel that the inconsistencies in his story show his guilt. When I saw this story on Dateline it was obvious to me what he did and how he did it. His actions after the fact are disgusting to me and I hope that justice is served in this case.

I can't say that inconsistencies in his story show his guilt. But, they certainly show the need for more investigation.

As far as the Dateline story making it "obvious," that was the goal of the story. I've seen other Dateline stories that make innocent people look guilty and those that are as guilty as sin, look innocent. However, if it is obvious to you how he did it, perhaps you would share that with me.

I keep seeing that the coroner thinks that Gabe turned off Tina's air until she died and then turned it back on. However, I have not seen any actual evidence of that. The one person who claims to have observed the incident did not see (at least it has not been publicly reported) Gabe either turn off the air or turn it back on. (Reports say her air was "on" when Tina was recovered.) And, there is at least some scientific evidence that death from asphyxiation takes much longer than just several minutes. So, what did Gabe actually do to kill Tina that is so obvious?

 

[docbonezz]

ItsBruce "So, what did Gabe actually do to kill Tina that is so obvious?"

He husband claimed his computer initially gave him an error message because the battery was in "backwards"... a lie, because the device actually recorded his brief initial dive and return to the boat to "fix it". ANYONE who knows electronics knows that if the batteries were in backwards it would never have given him an error message. It would have done nothing. He obviously did this to let the other divers go far enough ahead that he could be alone with Tina. So this is a lie.


Tina’s body was found 45 ft from the wreck, although if she had gone down where her husband said, it would have drifted onto the wreck itself. Another lie.

His statement, he said he abandoned his wife after frantically kicking down to get her and then "rocketed" to the surface for help...his computer shows he never went below 45 ft and took over two and a half minutes to surface from that depth! A very slow and leisurely ascent. An instructor had her dead body on another boat by the time he appeared on the original boat. And the instructor took half the time to get to the surface even though he was at twice the depth. Another lie. And some real “Rescue Diver”. Very few divers take too much time to get to the surface. Even if he followed the one foot per second…… that is 45 seconds. Not two and a half minutes.

As his wife lay dying on another boat and they did CPR on her, he never asked or attempted to go to her, even though he told her parents he "held her while she died". Another lie.

Video of her gravesite showed him removing flowers from it and throwing them away. Using bolt cutters to remove the flowers. Why would he desecrate his own wife’s grave site? He had her body moved from next to her parents burial plots, just to spite them.

He told police he physically grabbed other divers underwater to get their attention, but all other divers deny this in fact, all other divers interviewed thought he was full of crap the instant he opened his mouth. Another lie.

To date he has come up with sixteen different versions of what happened. When you tell the truth you do not have to “remember” what happened. The truth is the truth and there is not any variation.

Gabe is looking for a dive buddy……. Do you want to dive with him?

 

[Ayisha]

...his computer shows he never went below 45 ft and took over two and a half minutes to surface from that depth! A very slow and leisurely ascent.

All excellent points, docbonezz. I'm just wondering about one thing, though. I could have sworn that the report said that his computer was steady at 40 feet and showed NO dips, which refuted his frantically trying to dive down for her. You have given him the benefit of the 5 feet below where the incident apparently occurred, which could support his lunging 5 feet down for her - except his computer does not show any dips. Or was it a steady 45 feet?

In the coroner's report, it was clear that the steady 40 foot level was referring to the last several minutes of the dive. Maybe you are referring to the max depth ever reached for that dive?

If only they would print out the dive profiles of both their computers!

 

[TekISBest]

I've spent a great deal of time pouring over the transcripts of Gabe's interview (and short video of a portion of the interview) with police as well as the published results of the Coroner's Inquiry and accounts of the witness testimony at the inquiry. For me, the words that came out of Gabe's own mouth and no one else's - alone - makes me believe he is guilty. I also could not serve on a jury because of the amount of time I've spent aquainting myself extensively with the details of this case.

So, I will not apologize for my support for Tina's family here. His unbelievable lies to Tina's parents and cavalier attitude towards them in the first days and weeks after Tina's death (long before they began to feel he had something to do with it) makes my blood boil and I could not have any sympathy towards him or his family at all. The way Gabe's mother played with her fingernails as though she was completely bored during the police interview as her son talked about the moment he left Tina - the most critical, dramatic moment - just floored me. Sympathy for her? Forget it. And that's not a media report - I watched that video and saw the behavior with my own eyes. And during the same interview, the way Gabe's mother tried to say Tina was "unsanitary" because Tina had friends. Not only did it not make any sense, it was highly inappropriate. Again, there is no way I can have one single ounce of sympathy for her. And there was the surveillance video tape of Gabe Watson removing flowers from Tina's grave and dumping them in the trash - also available on-line. Sympathy for him? NO. NO. NO. NEVER.

I am reminded of the case of the woman that was beaten and raped in NewYork serveral years ago. The case where the 5 young black men confessed the brutal beating and rape. All went to prison. In 2002 all were released from prison having proven that did not do the crime. Interviews, videos, statements all released to the public. Sooo convincing. What you did not hear was the never ending tactics of the police and their skillful methods of bringing those boys to the place of making false confessions. We have all grown up to believe the police are our friends and they look out for our interest. In the world we live in today this is no longer the truth more often than it is the truth. We have to hear both sides before making a judgement. There are many who are hurt by what happened here. I am sure there are more people other than his mother who have to bear the pain of this.

 

[docbonezz]

Ayisha..... In the report I heard his maximum depth was 45 feet. of course I have never seen any print out of his dive log for this dive. I would be VERY interested in seeing that. That may change my mind on this case.

I will tell you that I would be a horrible jurror in this case. For now my mind is made up until I can see anything new that can change my mind. But this is just my opinion.

 

[K_girl]

I am reminded of the case of the woman that was beaten and raped in NewYork serveral years ago. The case where the 5 young black men confessed the brutal beating and rape. All went to prison. In 2002 all were released from prison having proven that did not do the crime. Interviews, videos, statements all released to the public. Sooo convincing. What you did not hear was the never ending tactics of the police and their skillful methods of bringing those boys to the place of making false confessions. We have all grown up to believe the police are our friends and they look out for our interest. In the world we live in today this is no longer the truth more often than it is the truth. We have to hear both sides before making a judgement. There are many who are hurt by what happened here. I am sure there are more people other than his mother who have to bear the pain of this.

Again - comparing apples to oranges. These two cases are not alike. Those boys were pressured into making a confession and were slammed into jail on the same day. Gabe received no such pressure, nor did he confess, nor was he put in jail. Yes, sometimes police do that and it is wrong. In the case you talk about, none of the confessions were recorded, only "witnessed signatures," basically to hide the wrong-doing of the police. However, transcripts of the interview with Watson and a portion of the video tape of his interview were made public. After reading the transcript of the interviews and watching the video, I did not see any such pressure in this case. Watson actually did most of the talking - and he talked way too much. It was way too easy for the police to simply ask a few simple questions and watch Watson squirm with lengthy, inconsistent answers. If you think the police don't have a right to use the methods of questioning that were used in the Watson case, we would all doomed to the criminal intent of others. I don't believe a jury would find the methods of questioning a problem in this case.

I understand the premise behind "innocent until proven guilty" and I believe in that. I could not personally serve on a jury for Mr. Watson because I do believe he is guilty. I want to see him get a fair trial with an unbiased jury. I don't want to take that away from him. I have formed an opinion - I admit that. It's not going to change.

 

[K_girl]

In one statement, Watson placed himself at 40' at the time he dipped to a depth of 54' - because (as he told police) he said that is what his computer said was his deepest depth. That is a distance of 14' sudden dip. The coroner's report states that his computer does not show this sudden dip. Watson's statements about the "dip" range from all the way from 5 feet to 30 feet, depending on who he was talking to.

Here is what I have on my sources and statements thread about the sharp decent issue.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/3676596-post16.html

 

[K_girl]

A poster sent me a private message pointing out that dive computers can be set at intervals where you might not see a sudden dip. I would like to thank this person for another issue to examine. The exact dive profile in Watson's dive computer is not available to the public.

If you read Watson's two statements below, you'll see he says the problem starts somewhere around 40+ feet. He notes that his dive computer shows his deepest depth at 54 feet. Then he says he's kicking and kicking in a valiant effort to save her. It takes an average of 20 kicks to go 100 feet (well, my average during the Advanced Class), which is five feet per kick. Meaning, he only gave 2-to-3 kicks of effort to save her. So if he is really doing as much kicking as he says he is - he would have to travel more than just 10-14 feet. That's really what will sink his story, his computer will not show the dramatic dip he is talking about - and that is what the police is focusing on. No matter what the dive computer interval is set at, it will always record your deepest depth, so they have that information. 10-14 feet is not a dramatic dip - it's only 2-3 kicks. To me, that is not the dramatic kicking-down effort that Watson described.

From his testimony:

WATSON: ..cause if we were at forty something feet and I think my computer said fifty-four you know that was just a matter of ten foot or less going down..
---
WATSON: I couldn't grab her hand because she was, you know, maybe five feet below me or something like that. I don't really know. I went down, started kicking down, and I was kicking down. But as fast as I was kicking down to go get her, she was going down just as fast..

**********

The only other argument Watson might try to make is that there was an upwelling current that he was fighting and that is why he was kicking so much, getting nowhere. But he never claimed that and if that was true - you can't explain why Tina was sinking instead of rising. Again - the dive instructor went down very quickly to retrieve Tina and brought her to the surface - so an extremely rare bottom-up current being the cause of his getting nowhere with all the kicking, just won't hold-up.

 

[ItsBruce]

Docbonezz:

Thank you for your reply to my post. You have identified a number of inconsistencies and incongruities. They may well rise to the level of lies, i.e. knowingly false statements. What you have identified would make most any reasonable person doubt anything Watson says. And, as many others have pointed out, there is evidence of motive, i.e. possible financial gain. However, we still seem to be missing a mechanism for Tina's death that gets us to murder.

I have little problem seeing that Watson may have been negligent or even reckless in taking Tina on a dive that was beyond her competence level. I have little problem seeing that Watson may have been negligent in trying to save Tina or in failing to do so. I can well imagine that he may have tried to escape liability for what he perceived as negligent conduct by concocting a story about what happened.

But, I have not seen anything showing how he killed her.

Consider for a moment the husband who is sitting on the beach and sees his wife drowning. It would be easy for the husband on the beach to rescue his wife. It would be even easier for the husband to call a lifeguard. However, instead, he decides to do nothing. Then he concocts a series of lies to explain why he did not even try to help his now dead wife.

Assume the police decide to charge the husband with murder and that they assert that he held his wife under water. Where is there evidence of this? As I see it, motive and lies do not get us there.

Am I alone on this?

Back to Watson: How did he kill her? Did he turn off her air? Did he take her regulator out of her mouth? Did he contaminate her air? Did he cause her to ascend so fast she embolized? Did he induce a heart attack? What? (And for anyone who answers, where is there evidence beyond the fact that she is dead and he is a liar with a motive?)

BTW: I would not dive with Watson if he were the last buddy in the world.