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Gabe Watson's family speaks 7 years after his wife, Tina Watson, drowned on Australian honeymoon | al.com
David and Glenda Watson remained silent for nearly seven years as their eldest son became known throughout Australia and much of the world as the "Honeymoon Killer."
Gabe Watson was charged with murdering his wife of just 11 days, Tina Thomas Watson, 26, during an ill-fated scuba diving trip inside the Great Barrier Reef in 2003.
The Watsons didn't need to publicly defend him, they thought. Truth would prevail.
That's what they'd been taught all their lives.
And it did for the most part, they believe, at least in the Australian courts.
Gabe and Tina Watson's engagement portrait. They dated a couple of years and became engaged in April 2003. (Special)Gabe pleaded guilty to manslaughter for failing to carry out his duties as his wife's dive buddy. He is serving 18 months in prison abroad, set to be released in November.
But the court of public opinion is a different story.
Despite a ruling by the Supreme Court of Queensland in which a judge wrote that Gabe Watson acted stupidly but not maliciously and had no intention of harming his wife, suspicion and misconception continues to follow him. Just recently, an Australian newspaper called him a murderer in a headline and issued a major retraction.
And there's no end in sight.
Now, Alabama Attorney General Troy King wants to try Gabe for capital murder in Alabama.
King says the Australian government failed Tina, and it's up to Alabama to deliver justice. "I do believe he killed his wife," King said, "and I believe he ought to pay a penalty for that."
King acknowledges he is just at the beginning of the Alabama case. He has petitioned Australia for all of the evidence, and believes it will prove criminal. Without elaborating, King said he has some information that has not yet been made public.
"We're going to build a case and bring the appropriate charges," he said. "I think for whatever reason, they got compromised."
It's a blow to Gabe and his friends and family who maintain his innocence. There was no motive, no evidence, no logic for murder, they said.
King's plans prompted the Watson family to now break their silence.
"We feel like we've been tied to the railroad tracks and run over and over," said Glenda Watson, Gabe's mother. "In and of itself, any one thing is horrendous but it just doesn't stop. Tina would be just horrified if she could see the things that have gone on."
Tina's parents, Cindy and Tommy Thomas, and her sister, Alanda, declined to be interviewed for this article. In previously published reports, the family has claimed they never liked Gabe and described him as controlling, obsessive and sometimes abusive. Her father has said he believes Gabe, driven by an insurance policy, turned off Tina's air tank long enough to kill her, and then turned it back on. He later said obsession fueled Gabe to kill Tina.
Perhaps an Australian coroner put it best. "There are only two persons who know what in fact actually occurred," David Robert Glascow has said. "One is Tina, who cannot tell us, and the other is Gabe."
'Middle-class kid'
Gabe, now 33, graduated from Hoover High School. He was an average student who played sports and loved the water.
"I don't think he ever had a minute's trouble with anybody except maybe a poor grade and having a mom for a teacher," said his father, David Watson. "He was just your typical, middle-class kid."
David and Glenda Watson show support for their imprisoned son by posting blue ribbons signifying Gabe Watson's love of water on the porch of their Hoover home. The Watsons said dozens of their family and friends posted the ribbons when Gabe returned to Australia after being charged with murder. (The Birmingham News/Beverly Taylor)Gabe and Tina met while both were students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. After graduation, Tina was a manager of the children's department for the Parisian store at the Riverchase Galleria. Gabe worked in his father's packaging business in Birmingham.
"They laughed a lot and had a good time together," said close friend Craig Youngblood.
They dated a couple of years and became engaged in April 2003.
"Gabe wanted to get married and settle down and start a family," Youngblood said. "He loved Tina and found the person he wanted to do that with."
They asked the Rev. Craig Greer, whose daughter was a student of Gabe's mother, and his wife, Suzie, to perform the ceremony. The Greers did pre-marital counseling with the young couple.
"They were very much in love," Greer said. "It was just so much fun to watch them. There was a lot of bantering back and forth."
But there was tension with Tina's family, according to the pastor and Gabe's friends and family.
