the number of people who didn't see a ketch. That is what the prosecution relied upon, saying that their own witnesses and those they didn't call, hadn't seen a ketch. Something like a double negative, an assumption that a host of kiwis, most of whom, unlike me, would be experts in distinguishing between different types of yachts and boats. People who came forwarded at the police's request and then found their evidence wasn't wanted, because it didn't fit.
First to mention here is Guy Wallace, like he had every reason in the world to say he took the young couple on his water taxi to a ketch, and not a smaller vessel. He just needed to get the police spewing on him for the next 20 years, but he would have been fine if he'd flopped into saying that he was mistaken in the misty moonlight and the couple stepped down from the water taxi and not up. He would have been fine on the outside but sick with himself inside because he was committed to telling the truth even when being leant upon from every direction - and salute to him.
And to the other people from the boating fraternity, who, in an un-orchestrated fashion, simply told what they saw with a type of detail that proved credibility, this from people who would be something like expert callers in a rugby game where the uninitiated wouldn't be able to distinguish the fine nuances of front row play. People, wholly honest and wanting to help out in a major case.
So the error is 2 fold, first of all shutting these people out because what they were saying wasn't help for the 'direction' in which the investigation was plainly being driven. Then gathering from the 1st error, the second, whereby an obviously unsatisfactory investigation can be criticised for want of a thoroughness. No use telling the public there was no ketch, when it is forever in the public mind, better to find the ketches and provide the evidence that it was not them - dispel all doubt. Call the witnesses and let the jury judge, not haphazardly insult good citizens trying to do their civic duty be essentially telling that they don't know what the saw or that they some kind of lunatics. Bad move, in a bad case.
A correspondent has sent me material about ketches that were within the environs of the couples place of disappearance, some of which I published earlier. Exactly what those sightings mean I can't say I know, apart from the fact that they should have been dealt with within the trial. Mystery ketches, much like MOJs, don't go away - nothing is surer and only a naive police hierarchy and prosecution would consider that it would, as time has proven correct.
And overall an anxiety is created about the way Guy Wallace's evidence was received, and how others with clear contributions to make to the overall picture were ignored. Part of that anxiety manifests itself in a desire for some people to 'solve' the murders once and for all. That I am afraid, is not the purpose for the man imprisoned, Scott Watson, and not for those that wish to see him freed because he is already held against the order of our Justice system because he is clearly not guilty beyond reasonable doubt. This case is riddled with doubt, motiveless, 'magic' evidence, prejudicial dialogue, incomplete investigation, singing for their supper stool pigeons who have since recanted, and the list goes on - manufactured by the very doubt at the outset as to what vessel the couple alighted to from the water taxi, right back at the beginning something wasn't right in what the prosecution asked the jury to believe, and not right that all the doubts about the vessel were not dispelled there at the doorstep that led to a false imprisonment.
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