If you are diving with people who ascend 15 metres (50 feet) in a minute, in a strong current, and stop at five metres for perhaps 15 or so seconds, before continuing to the surface, then there is something wrong with the way these people dive.
[Roger: Agreed, but I routinely see people doing this on dive boats around the world. Three decades ago, the recommended ascent rate was 2 feet a second or no faster than your bubble (bubbles travel very fast). When I joined 13 years ago, it was 1 foot a second "just to be conservative". The 2 seconds a foot guideline is a relatively recent recommendation. The more conservative profiles are by far better for the diving communities than the old, but literally tens of millions of divers over decades went up quicker than the current recommendations and quicker than Gabe did. He took 2 minutes to go 40 feet. At that rate, I'm surprised he didn't take a full safety stop.]
Gabe's ascent rates as he went through the 40 foot level was 1.5 to 2 times the recommended safe ascent rate, at the 20 foot level it was 2-3 times the rate. At some time he ascended at 3-4 times the rate. Remember he was aiming at divers he saw on the descent line with the aim of trying to get them to help.
[Roger: Going up faster the last 20 feet is almost done universally by divers, even though it is a risky thing to do. They go from hang line\bar to back of boat in a few seconds, and it happens literally thousands a times a day, and usually without incident. They should go slower, but they dodn't. How come many of the people that Gabe claims he tried to get the attention of don't remember it. Instead, his own profile shows a fairly overall slow profile. 2 minutes to go 40 feet?? I'm sorry, that's just way too slow when your wife is dying, in warm, clear, azure, relatively shallow water. No excuse. Find me another case of a similiar buddy diving accident where the buddy ascended so slow in similiar conditions. I can't remember reading one. So it's just Gabe, unique in the documented diving incident world that just happens, coincidentally, to be the guy that went up that slow while his buddy was dying?]
You may pass out in a minute, but to die you must have air cut off for longer.
[Roger: Agreed. Not contesting this.]
Remember, Tina's air was on when found, so the would have had to wait for at least two minutes before turning it back on. Therefore, the statements I have made are accurate.
[Roger: He would only have to wait as long as it took for her to pass out. Which is probably closer to 1-1:30 for a panicked diver.]
As to the dive computers, I have fully explained how I ensured that their times are synced, but I will repeat it here. Wade Singleton started the dive about 30 seconds after Gabe and Tina, so putting the graph from his computer 30 seconds after Gabe's ensures they are accurate. The date and clock times do not match, but that is because the time and date on Gabe's was the default time plus 13 minutes since he removed the battery and did not reset the time and date. The other divers from Jazz II are synced to the starting time based on three eye-witnesses who saw Gabe ascend and Wade ascend and related these times to when the Jass II divers descended.
[Roger: The 30 second gap was from human guestimation. But you, yourself, completely discount other witnesses eyewitness testimony over and over and over, tellin us how unreliable it is. But you take this 30 second attestation to be the gospel? In your recounting you seem to give Gabe every benefit of the doubt for his testimony and state as a fact any testimony given that supports Gabe, but discount almost every prosecution eyewitness' at every opportunity. When people are following each other and entering the water, to get just a 30 second separation would take that person really being reallly ready to go and jumping in quite quickly. I suggest that most people will underestimate how quickly people jump in after the former diver just as much as they overestimate knots of current. To jump in that quickly you literally have to be a foot away from them and almost jumping on top of them. In any case, your time sync "evidence" is not real evidence. You've done y our best to put it together, but it's still conjecture. If you move the timelines just another 30 seconds, then your other conjecture of events gets even harder to confirm. I'm truly not saying this to be argumentative or mean. I appreciate what you have done. Heck, I like you. But as I read your defense, these are the true feelings and thoughts I had (given that I still think Gabe is guilty).]
[Roger: Perhaps, what colors me a bit is the other evidence as well. It is too strange that Gabe didn't go over to see his wife during resusitation efforts. I was a paramedic for 5 years, and did CPR almost once a week. In every single case over 5 years, the loved one always tried their best to see what was going on and had to be led away or restrained...especially the younger the loved one and more unexpected the death was. They are there because they are expecting their loved one to be saved. But Gabe, again, a grown macho man, didn't fight to see his "living" bride. I take back the former statement, let me modify it a bit. I've seen a few people that didn't want to see the person being worked on. They were all murders. They always acted very strange while the victim was being worked on. Or perhaps I find it overly strange that Gabe heavily flirted with Tina's best friend in the days after Tina's death. When you flirt with someone just after your new wife has died, it isn't just strange and slightly out of bounds, it's sociopathic. And I'm not using that word lightly.]
[Roger: It's not any one thing that makes me believe he is guilty, anymore than it was one thing that makes me think that O.J. is truly guilty, despite the not guilty verdict. It's a bunch of little things. It's his inaction in saving his wife in clear, warm water. It's his overall slow ascent rate. It's her body position with hands out stretched. It's him not wanting to see her while she was being worked on. It's his speech to the others on the boat. It's his constant lying to the family. It's his flirtation with other women. It's his changing stories (you discount the little changes, but most direct truthful testimonie doesn't change at all). It's just little point after little point after big point. I've personally known a man falsely accused of murdering his wife, his new bride. He was actively and aggressively accused by detectives and police for years, and they would have still thought he was the murderer had some other guy not confessed a decade later. You know...he never had a different story. His story and testimony never changed. No one every claimed he changed his story. He watched his wife being worked on. He called her family before he called his own. He didn't flirt with her friends early on. I guess Gabe can just be the inexperienced rube and victim you paint him to be, and if your side is accurate, and he is innocent, it's an amazing series of his own actions that caused him the problems.
