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Post by sadie1263 on Feb 23, 2012 22:08:18 GMT
(CNN) -- An Alabama judge on Thursday abruptly dismissed the murder case against a man accused in the scuba-diving death of his newlywed wife off Australia's coast, a judicial official said. The decision from Judge Tommy Nail came near the end of the second full week of David Gabriel "Gabe" Watson's trial in Birmingham. According to Ken Glass, the judge's judicial assistant, Nail dismissed the case "after the state rested its case against Gabe Watson (and) the defense filed a motion for a judgment of acquittal due to a lack of evidence." "I'm going to grant the defendant's motion for acquittal. This case is dismissed," Nail said, prompting an outburst of applause in the courtroom. Afterward, a visibly emotional Watson put his face in his hands, then began hugging people around the room. His 26-year-old wife, Tina, died October 22, 2003, while the pair were diving at a historic shipwreck off the Great Barrier Reef -- some 9,000 miles from Birmingham, where the two had wed 11 days earlier. His father, David Watson, called the entire situation "terrible, it's tragic," while expressing satisfaction with the judge's decision. "Everybody can begin to heal, get their lives back together," said David Watson, calling his son a "good kid." Prosecutor Don Valeska said "this case is over forever," since there is no appeal possible. "I strongly disagree with him," Valeska said of Nail. "I'm just extremely stunned, and I'm at a loss for words." Returning to the United States after his wife's death, Watson remarried five years later. That same year, in 2008, he pleaded guilty in Australia to criminally negligent manslaughter and subsequently served 18 months in prison in that country. He was then arrested in the United States in November 2010, after finishing his Australian prison sentence and then being held for a short time in immigration detention. Days earlier, an Alabama grand jury indicted Watson on two counts -- murder for pecuniary gain and kidnapping where a felony occurred. Those charges were based on the premise that Watson hatched the plot to kill his wife while in Alabama. In the opening arguments of Watson's U.S. trial earlier this month, Assistant Attorney General Andrew Arrington told jurors that Watson had changed his story on what happened several times. The prosecution also alleged that Watson had expected to gain about $210,000 in insurance and death benefits due to his new wife's deaths. "This whole case ... is about murder and gain," Arrington said. But defense attorney Brett Bloomston said Tina's father was the beneficiary on her workplace insurance policy. Watson filed for some expenses from a travel policy, but it was denied on a technicality, Bloomston said. His client did sue an insurance company when it denied him an accidental death benefit, the attorney said. "Gabe never stood to gain anything from Tina's death; he lost," said Bloomston. The defense argued that Tina Watson was wearing too much weight with her suit when she died, and that a strong current, her relative diving inexperience and a pattern of anxiety during dives were contributing factors. After Nail's decision Thursday, Bloomston called the entire ordeal a "nightmare for Gabe and his family (and) a nightmare for Tina and her family." "The judge determined that (the evidence) wasn't enough, and we're just very, very happy that Gabe was able to get some closure and start his life over," the lawyer told reporters outside the court. www.cnn.com/2012/02/23/justice/alabama-honeymoon-trial/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
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Post by trubble on Feb 24, 2012 9:21:46 GMT
Hi Sadie What's your take on it? I think the motive is the problem. It seems unfair if you can't claim on your insurance just in case you're accused of murder. And if the insurance company is being a tightwad then you should sue. Right? And without the insurance there's no motive. I read in the Mail that that the prosecution wanted to introduce testimony from the funeral director, saying that Watson removed his wife's engagement ring before burial. But the judge refused, saying that it would be farcical to claim that Watson bought a ring, got married, paid for an expensive wedding, and honeymoon, during which he killed his bride, just so he could get the ring back.
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Post by sadie1263 on Feb 24, 2012 14:27:24 GMT
I think he did it but I have never understood how the U.S. could go after him when the crime was committed in Australia.
She had told him that she changed the beneficiary card on his insurance to him before the trip......so he did think he was getting it......just turned out she didn't finish the process.
Also......two weeks after the "accident" he's telling people he's done grieving and ready to move on.......REALLY??? Amazing he didn't take a date to the funeral.
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Post by iamjumbo on Feb 27, 2012 14:43:07 GMT
I think he did it but I have never understood how the U.S. could go after him when the crime was committed in Australia. She had told him that she changed the beneficiary card on his insurance to him before the trip......so he did think he was getting it......just turned out she didn't finish the process. Also......two weeks after the "accident" he's telling people he's done grieving and ready to move on.......REALLY??? Amazing he didn't take a date to the funeral. the murder occurred in australia, but the planning for it was done in alabama. that's how alabama was able to try him. it's obvious that he murdered her. like you say, the fact that he didn't actually get any benefit out of it is irrelevant. he THOUGHT that he was going to benefit.
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Post by trubble on Mar 6, 2012 12:12:23 GMT
You've made me look at it a little more carefully. I'm stumped. Can't tell either way. Viewers in the US (alas, not me) can watch the full program here: Watch the full story on "20/20" - full episode.On Feb. 23 Gabe Watson, the 34-year-old Alabama man some called "the honeymoon killer" after his wife died on their scuba-cruise honeymoon, had the murder charge against him dismissed by a Birmingham, Ala., judge.
Although the judge declared there was not enough evidence to continue his trial, the cloud of doubt and mystery still hangs over Watson and the events that took his wife's life.
In an exclusive interview with "20/20" anchor Elizabeth Vargas, Watson for the first time spoke publicly and in detail about what happened that day.
Unlike the other passengers aboard the Spoil Sport, including her husband, Tina Watson was not an experienced diver. She had 11 dives under her belt, none in open water.
Gabe Watson said she never told him this last fact, adding she wasn't nervous.
"She was excited," he said. "I was excited. We were ready to go."
Watson expected a relatively easy dive.
"I kind of figured, We're on vacation. They're going to be very easy, calm, nice, pretty dives," he said.
In fact, the dive was a 50-foot wreck dive to the SS Yongala, a 350-foot steamer that sank in 1911. And there was a strong underwater current, which led the crew to label it a red dive, i.e., one typically for advanced divers only.
The couple planned to travel down the anchor line, drift across the top of the wreck, pick up a second line and return to the surface.
Within minutes, the severity of the current hit Gabe Watson.
"As soon as we let go," he said, "we were moving, moving quite a bit. ... It was definitely not what I was expecting, and neither was Tina."
Tina Watson looked at her husband and motioned back toward the anchor line, Gabe Watson said.
"I stuck out my right hand, she grabbed it with her left, and we both started swimming back to where we came," Watson said.
The current prevented them from making much progress, he said.
"I turned to her, grabbed my inflator hose and motioned to her, you know, Fill it up, thinking that she's going to understand. Put some air in your [buoyancy compensator] and we'll start floating up," he said.
"Nothing happened from the inflator hose," Watson continued. "That was when I realized, you know, We're -- This isn't good. We're in trouble. So I reached out and grabbed ahold of the b.c. strap right there. And I just pulled her in, and then I turned and started heading back to the anchor rope."
"I was scared to death," Watson recalled.
He turned back and tried to yell, "Swim! Swim, Tina, swim!" he said.
"All of a sudden I just felt this whack across my face, and my mask got, like, turned off to the side of my face," he said.
Gabe let go of Tina to replace his mask, he said.
When he turned around to look, Tina was 10 feet down and sinking, he said.
"She was face up, and she had her arms up. She was reaching out for me to grab ahold of her."
"I kinda just turned on my head and gave a few kicks down to see if I could grab her," he said. "And she was still out of arm's reach. And that -- I just decided I got to go find somebody."
How could he leave his wife?
"I don't think I was making rational choices at that point," said Watson. "I don't know what I would have done had I stayed with her. I don't know that there's anything that I was actually capable of doing."
Watson ascended in a controlled way to avoid injury, as with any scuba dive. At the surface, he yelled for help, and a dive master raced to find Tina.
He brought her up, and crew members and fellow passengers tried to resuscitate her for over 40 minutes while Gabe was comforted by other divers on another boat.
Why didn't he go to the other boat?
"That's not something I can handle," Watson said. "I don't ever want to see one of my loved ones being worked on like that, ever."
John Downie, a cruise passenger who is a doctor and who tried to help Tina Watson, told Gabe Watson his wife was dead.
"I just-- I just collapsed onto him. ... We just all kinda piled into each other and at some point fell to the floor. And I don't know how long that went on. I -- I mean-- I was devastated."
When Australian police interviewed Gabe Watson for details on what happened, it became more of an interrogation. Fellow passengers came forward, saying Watson's story didn't add up. Police started comparing it to the dive computer.
Dr. Carl Edmonds is a diving medical expert who has examined this case and was prepared to testify for the defense. He said that, in the context of diving accidents, Tina's death was neither mysterious nor suspicious.
"She was doing a dive to a depth that she had never been to before, in conditions she'd never experienced before," Edmonds said. "It all fits together ... as a very common drowning accident."
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Post by trubble on Mar 6, 2012 12:18:08 GMT
Again from ABC, the article continues: Michael McFadyen, another diving expert who has examined this case and was prepared to testify for the defense, agreed. He said he wouldn't take Tina Watson or any diver with her lack of experience on the Yongala dive.
"She's never been [scuba diving] in the ocean, never been in salt water, never been in a place where there's wave actions, currents," he said.
Edmonds and McFadyen said the first three to four minutes of Tina Watson's dive were normal, as she and her husband leisurely followed the anchor line down 30 feet to the Yongala wreck.
It was in the fifth minute, when they let go of the anchor line and Tina Watson began to sink involuntarily, that the touble began.
"[Sinking this way] makes you very unsettled," McFadyen said. "It also makes you swim in a vertical situation instead of being horizontal, like you should ... which takes a lot more effort."
Edmonds said that Tina Watson's motioning back to the anchor line was "sensible, except it doesn't take into account the effect of the current. ... Had they got back to the line, it would have worked. Unfortunately, they only got halfway back." "Because she was over-weighted, because she was swimming against a current, she's exerting herself greatly," Edmonds said. "And we know that, because of her air consumption, which was unbelievably high, she was also panicking."
Panicking made her overbreathe, then aspirate water through the regulator in her mouth, eventually losing consciousness and sinking to the ocean floor, Edmonds said.
"The autopsy was very clear," Edmonds said. "The findings were that she [was] drowning and that she had air embolism. ... If you look at the statistics on diving fatalities, the two commonest causes of death are drowning -- in about 70% -- and air embolism -- in about 14%."
The prosecution said Gabe Watson didn't ascend as quickly as he might have, and that this showed his intent to kill his wife.
"I happen to think that he went up quicker than they think he did," McFadyen said, "mainly because they're relying on the ... the graph that's produced by the dive computer as being 100% accurate, and it's not."
Dive computers take snapshots of a dive based on each time a diver goes through a 10-foot level, McFadyen said. "So if you go through at two minutes 10 seconds, it would record it as two minutes. If you went through at two minutes 59 seconds, it would still record it as two minutes. So it's not exact."
Because of this, McFadyen believes Gabe Watson ascended the 54 feet in about one minute 30 seconds, an ascent he characterized as "quick."
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Post by trubble on Mar 6, 2012 12:20:53 GMT
More from ABC
With the murder case against Watson dismissed by an Alabama judge last week, Watson and his family are now speaking out against former Alabama Attorney General Troy King, who presented the case to a grand jury while running for re-election.
"I felt like Troy King used (Tina Watson's family) as well as us to divert attention from his problems at the time," said David Watson, Gabe Watson's father.
King, meanwhile, maintains that the case against Gabe Watson was solid and deserved a jury verdict.
"The jury was fully capable of weighing this evidence and deciding if they believed that Gabe Watson was guilty or not," King said. "They were deprived of that opportunity."
King alleged that Watson killed his wife Tina while the newlyweds were on a honeymoon scuba diving trip in Australia in 2003. After Tina Watson's death, Gabe Watson pled guilty in an Australian court to a charge of negligent manslaughter for failing to save his wife. He served 18 months in an Australian jail, but he maintained his innocence at his U.S. murder trial. While King was preparing his indictment against Watson, he was also running for re-election. King staged a media campaign slamming Watson, with campaign signs that read "Justice for Tina."
"With the attorney general being elected, and being able to basically direct the charge, or a trial, or convene a grand jury...that's what was at the root of it," Gabe Watson said.
King went on to lose his primary race against a Republican opponent and was not involved in the murder trial that began and ended earlier this month. But in a contentious interview with "20/20" co-anchor Elizabeth Vargas, King said he believed that the evidence against Watson pointed to his guilt.
Prosecutors had argued that Watson's motive for the killing was to collect a $33,000 life insurance benefit. Critics, including the judge in the case, have said that amount seemed too low to serve as motive for murder.
"People have said to me, 'Do you really think he would've killed her for this small amount of money?' I don't know. I mean, what is the amount of money that somebody will kill somebody for? People kill over tennis shoes. They kill over $100 in drug deals. But what is the amount of money that you've got to have at stake before somebody would commit murder?" King said.
As it turned out, it wasn't Watson who stood to collect the pay out. Tina's father, it was later learned, was the insurance beneficiary.
King said there was evidence that Watson believed he was the beneficiary. When pressed, however, King conceded that Tina's father was the only source of that information and his statements would be considered "hearsay."
Vargas also asked King why Watson would have gone through the trouble to plan Tina Watson's murder in Alabama -- as prosecutors had alleged -- without checking her insurance policy himself.
"I don't know what he would've done," King said. "I'm telling you what the prosecutors and the investigators believe. That's what you asked me. That's the answer."
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Mar 6, 2012 13:55:03 GMT
You've made me look at it a little more carefully. I'm stumped. Can't tell either way. Viewers in the US (alas, not me) can watch the full program here: Watch the full story on "20/20" - full episode.On Feb. 23 Gabe Watson, the 34-year-old Alabama man some called "the honeymoon killer" after his wife died on their scuba-cruise honeymoon, had the murder charge against him dismissed by a Birmingham, Ala., judge.
Although the judge declared there was not enough evidence to continue his trial, the cloud of doubt and mystery still hangs over Watson and the events that took his wife's life.
In an exclusive interview with "20/20" anchor Elizabeth Vargas, Watson for the first time spoke publicly and in detail about what happened that day.
Unlike the other passengers aboard the Spoil Sport, including her husband, Tina Watson was not an experienced diver. She had 11 dives under her belt, none in open water.
Gabe Watson said she never told him this last fact, adding she wasn't nervous.
"She was excited," he said. "I was excited. We were ready to go."
Watson expected a relatively easy dive.
"I kind of figured, We're on vacation. They're going to be very easy, calm, nice, pretty dives," he said.
In fact, the dive was a 50-foot wreck dive to the SS Yongala, a 350-foot steamer that sank in 1911. And there was a strong underwater current, which led the crew to label it a red dive, i.e., one typically for advanced divers only.
The couple planned to travel down the anchor line, drift across the top of the wreck, pick up a second line and return to the surface.
Within minutes, the severity of the current hit Gabe Watson.
"As soon as we let go," he said, "we were moving, moving quite a bit. ... It was definitely not what I was expecting, and neither was Tina."
Tina Watson looked at her husband and motioned back toward the anchor line, Gabe Watson said.
"I stuck out my right hand, she grabbed it with her left, and we both started swimming back to where we came," Watson said.
The current prevented them from making much progress, he said.
"I turned to her, grabbed my inflator hose and motioned to her, you know, Fill it up, thinking that she's going to understand. Put some air in your [buoyancy compensator] and we'll start floating up," he said.
"Nothing happened from the inflator hose," Watson continued. "That was when I realized, you know, We're -- This isn't good. We're in trouble. So I reached out and grabbed ahold of the b.c. strap right there. And I just pulled her in, and then I turned and started heading back to the anchor rope."
"I was scared to death," Watson recalled.
He turned back and tried to yell, "Swim! Swim, Tina, swim!" he said.
"All of a sudden I just felt this whack across my face, and my mask got, like, turned off to the side of my face," he said.
Gabe let go of Tina to replace his mask, he said.
When he turned around to look, Tina was 10 feet down and sinking, he said.
"She was face up, and she had her arms up. She was reaching out for me to grab ahold of her."
"I kinda just turned on my head and gave a few kicks down to see if I could grab her," he said. "And she was still out of arm's reach. And that -- I just decided I got to go find somebody."
How could he leave his wife?
"I don't think I was making rational choices at that point," said Watson. "I don't know what I would have done had I stayed with her. I don't know that there's anything that I was actually capable of doing."
Watson ascended in a controlled way to avoid injury, as with any scuba dive. At the surface, he yelled for help, and a dive master raced to find Tina.
He brought her up, and crew members and fellow passengers tried to resuscitate her for over 40 minutes while Gabe was comforted by other divers on another boat.
Why didn't he go to the other boat?
"That's not something I can handle," Watson said. "I don't ever want to see one of my loved ones being worked on like that, ever."
John Downie, a cruise passenger who is a doctor and who tried to help Tina Watson, told Gabe Watson his wife was dead.
"I just-- I just collapsed onto him. ... We just all kinda piled into each other and at some point fell to the floor. And I don't know how long that went on. I -- I mean-- I was devastated."
When Australian police interviewed Gabe Watson for details on what happened, it became more of an interrogation. Fellow passengers came forward, saying Watson's story didn't add up. Police started comparing it to the dive computer.
Dr. Carl Edmonds is a diving medical expert who has examined this case and was prepared to testify for the defense. He said that, in the context of diving accidents, Tina's death was neither mysterious nor suspicious.
"She was doing a dive to a depth that she had never been to before, in conditions she'd never experienced before," Edmonds said. "It all fits together ... as a very common drowning accident."
Taking flowers from Tina's grave and throwing them away as can be seen on Trubble's video show that this man had no respeect for his wife.
The judge also ignored the Austrailian witnesses that saw the suspect putting the murder victim in a bear hug. Proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is difficult, but I feel a murderer walked out free in this tragic case!
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Post by trubble on Mar 6, 2012 15:59:54 GMT
Dr Sutz? Dr Stutz also told the jury he did not see the male diver place Ms Thomas in a "bear hug". "She caught my eye because she was distressed," Dr Stutz told the jury of eight women and six men.
Dr Stutz said he observed a male diver he believed was Watson swim to Ms Thomas, put his arms under her arms and they remained close for "10 to 30 seconds". 10-30 seconds? Enough to turn a valve on and/or off? If off, then they would have discovered it off when they tried to revive her, but it was on. I can only think that this is the point where Gabe Watson allegedly turns the valve back on again, but Sutz testifies that he believes Tina is still alive when she falls away. And if the valve was being turned on at this brief point of contact, doesn't that means she would already have been in dead rather than in distress for some minutes before this point? This method of murder doesn't seem to add up. "He swam over to her and basically was in front of her and put his arms around her armpits," Dr Stutz, who in 2003 was working at a Townsville hospital, testified.
"I thought he was trying to save her.
"Then they split apart and he went to the surface and she sank."
Dr Stutz said he was close enough to see Ms Thomas' facial expression, but the angle he was looking from meant he could not tell if the male diver reached behind Ms Thomas to turn off her air supply.
Dr Stutz also told the jury he did not see the male diver place Ms Thomas in a "bear hug". After the male diver separated from Ms Thomas, Dr Stutz said Ms Thomas was alive but in poor condition and she sank "pretty quickly".
"My opinion was even though she was alive, she was dying," Dr Stutz said.
He then observed a rescue diver, Wade Singleton, rapidly swim down to Ms Thomas, put her in a bear hug, then quickly take her to the surface.
Dr Stutz helped in the attempts to resuscitate Ms Thomas, which were unsuccessful.
Prosecutors allege Watson murdered Ms Thomas on the dive to pocket $US210,000 in life and travel insurance payments and other benefits. Watson, however, told police his wife panicked underwater after attempting to swim against the strong ocean current, struck him and dislodged his mask.
Watson told investigators Ms Thomas was sinking to the sea floor faster than what he could get to her so he swam to the surface to get help.
When Dr Stutz finished testifying and left the courtroom Watson's father, David Watson, approached him and shook his hand.
"Thank you," David Watson said. So.... witness for the defence?
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Post by trubble on Mar 6, 2012 16:04:58 GMT
It's hard to think what motivation he had, what he was thinking, why, etc. It doesn't seem to fit into any scenario but I suppose he could have been angry at the people who were leaving the flowers rather then disrespecting his wife. ??
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Post by trubble on Mar 6, 2012 16:23:43 GMT
On a lighter and perhaps totally inappropriate note, I'm afraid I had to laugh at the transcript of a news report provided at Alabama's 13 website: video.alabamas13.com/v/51991587/eyewitness-testifies-in-gabe-watson-honeymoon-murder-trial.htmQuoted extracts: Automatically Generated Transcript (may not be 100% accurate) Understatement of the century.Back up in the trial of -- a man accused of killing his -- killing wife on their Australian honeymoon. The important facts for you Gabe Watson has been charged with capital murder. ... Paris Jackson's live tonight at the Jefferson County courthouse with more on today's testimony parents. .... The prosecution called key witness a Doctor Who was indicting near the Great Barrier Reef. Doctor Stanley stat says he -- Tina alone in having difficulty in the water. We'll just sort of flying backwards and my best for the arms out. And arms from moving. Sort of you know -- but that's. Another election. It does sort of describe an election.........And cross examination the defense in the early -- on what stats actually saw did you ever see -- to. In the war of Perth about 100 general. Another state witness ......-- ten or twelve minutes into their diet.... diet....hehe....here. Hearing. Then she. Well. Now we spoke with both the prosecution. And the defense after they left the court today in both of them said basically. They are confident in their cases -- now we're live in downtown Birmingham Paris Jackson out of the thirteen tried terrorists thank you note.That was the reporter's sign off and should have read: Paris Jackson; Alabama's 13 News.
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