Tuesday, October 14, 2025

The Watson case turned inside out.

 


                Scott Watson, one of the worst Judicial Failures in New Zealand


Furthermore, the hidden material now revealed is destructive to the entire police inquiry and prosecution. To overcome future Miscarriages of Justice, the Courts must be unforgiving as to even minor malfeasance that sees evidence lost or altered, and encourage inquiries and prosecutions into even the smallest transgressions. New Zealand has seen at least over150 years of false imprisonment in just a few of the current or recently resolved cases. Perhaps the Maney case being the most obvious and blatant. There is also blatant malfeasance abroad in the Watson case from the outset.  That estimated 150 years of relatively recent false imprisonment does not record the 150 odd years to the 1950s where innocent prisoners were hanged. One example being Mokomoko. And arguably the very young Te Whiu, and John Bolton in which it was found post-mortem the farm well had heightened levels of arsenic as he did himself.

 

[875] Contrary to the defence submission at trial that it was equivocal, we consider the evidence of the drop-off location did undermine the plausibility of the defence theory that the lone man’s boat was a ketch. The yacht, on Mr Wallace’s evidence as the driver of the Naiad, was in a raft of three to five boats in the vicinity of the Spirit of Marlborough, which was large and distinctive. Behind the lone man’s boat was what Mr Wallace called a “gin palace launch”, a “great big [boat] like a Markline”. That description appears consistent with the Naiad approaching Blade and seeing the Kaela Rose behind it.273 Mr Wallace’s evidence as to the drop-off location was corroborated by the evidence of Hayden Morresey and Sarah Dyer as to the direction the Naiad travelled when it left the Tamarack.

 

The difficulty with the above logic, is that Hayden and Sarah did not identify Mr Watson as the mystery man.

 

[876] That drop-off location responds to the ketch theory because, based on our review of the evidence, nobody other than Mr Wallace and Mr Morresey said they saw a ketch in that area. It was a matter for the jury to consider the likelihood that a ketch could have come into that location, been rafted to another boat or anchored on its own for the time the lone man was at Furneaux Lodge, then left without being seen. 273 See the photograph at [846] above.

 

This is also wrong. There are many consistent sightings of the ketch in that area.

 

[877] We repeat that Mr Perkins and Ms Egden said Mr Watson told them that night that he had a ketch.274 There is no doubt Mr Perkins and Ms Egden were referring to Mr Watson because they were involved in and witnessed respectively the Perkins incident, which Mr Watson admitted he was involved in.275 Mr Perkins’ evidence that Mr Watson told him he had a “double masted ketch” was not challenged in cross-examination. Although Amanda Egden was challenged about her evidence, there was no suggestion the man who made the comment was different from the man she had otherwise encountered and who we know was Mr Watson. Those consistencies also apply to Ms MacFarlane. It would be a remarkable coincidence if somebody who was described using the same descriptors as were used to describe Mr Watson (scruffy, shaggy hair, stubble) was also at Furneaux Lodge and also suggesting he had a ketch, describing it as “the only double masted yacht out in the bay”.

 

There are now suggestions of whom the man was at the pool table, and he in fact did have a “double masted” ketch.

 

The Court appears not to have considered the “new” information regarding the Ketch the Toroa and the likeness of its skipper to an older version of Mr Watson, including tattoos. Mr Watson had no reason to claim he had a Ketch, but the Toroa owner did. One might consider the uncontested fact that Olivia flatly refused to go aboard the hire craft, and if expecting to be going to a ketch, why she would silently and suddenly passively accept a berth on a much smaller boat. It is clear from other evidence that the photo file has been tampered with, photos removed and so on. The time stamp may not be correct either, but the accepted evidence of Olivia’s rejection of going aboard the Tamarack and instead preferring a smaller boat in a raft up tests the Court’s credibility. The Court, for all its work on the file, overlooked, or did not consider the file was doctored, which factually is the case.

 

There was absolutely no evidence from persons in the “raft up,” that support the Crown’s case, it was ludicrous proposition to accept without single witness in support.

 

There is little doubt that from the 4 numbered paras directly above 874 through 877, the Court with the full gambit of evidence now available around Queen Charlotte Sound would have had to accept the file evidence and the new evidence that supports ketch sightings. Because at this point in the Judgement the Court is establishing its reasons to dismiss Mr Watson’s appeal both new and old evidence combined (including the evidence it did not see) would have needed the narrative to be interrupted with highly pertinent material that remains unknown to it. In fact a steady stream of material reporting the ketch’s arrival at Furneaux, anchoring, leaving there. Henceforth, the decision by Mr Pope to abandon the ketch search and focus the attention on a much smaller boat could be seen at the least as unfortunate,  or at its unfortunate best for Mr Watson to echo Mr Pope’s verbalised thoughts regarding Mr Watson being of the right pedigree. Mr Watson did not conjure up the witnesses that help his case for innocence, it was not Mr Watson that deleted material from 2 statements helpful to him about this very matter. He had no control over that. It was not him that called for all sightings of ketches to be disregarded and for that to be publicised. A prudent investigator would have kept on track with both options and leave “gut instinct” or “prejudice” aside. Resulting from that would have seen the police investigation enlarge at Mapua, where another witness recalls for the Court, speaking to those aboard the Ketch at Mapua and soon after contacting police who would eventually investigate and lead to the confusion between the MK and the Ses Walker in another mishap in this case.

 

Writing of this, on this day the 5th of October 2025, echoes a call by one woman to police to see her statements years after it was made only find it altered, and another to receive her statement after roughly the same passage of time and find it had also had been altered. Earlier there was a suggestion of a doctored file, one of these revelations was time present when the couple were alive, the other simply to close another door on unpalatable evidence for the Crown on its mission to convict Mr Watson and stifle, or rid itself of evidence exculpating him. That hasn’t been successful, but arguably now it can be fully presented to the Supreme Court for the Judiciary to look into itself and the role it has played in this false conviction. There has somewhat been a battle of experts that would not have been required to the same extent if the heart of the fully hidden, or partly hidden evidence of material relevant to this case was heard if not earlier, then at least in 2024.

 

The two-trip theory

 

The recent Court of Appeal decision is a tragedy for all the families involved. Whilst the Judgement of 2025 is reminiscent of the first Court of Appeal decision in that it is bereft of advancement of the full understanding of the case today, notwithstanding the hair evidence. Much of the “new” material has arisen from police files or elsewhere, then supported by careful consideration of the files. That should have been the priority for the Court of Appeal, but something has gone wrong. There is evidence of the file being “cleansed” in a very amateur way, what may have been more may have covertly removed may never be known.

 

For the families involved, the 2025 COA Judgement is not based on the substantial new evidence presented to Counsel before the 2017 RPOM Application and the time before it was fully finalised. There is an example in the COA’s para 10 repeated below where we see in the highlighted red that the OIC in charge of the boat phase accepts late arriving boats may not have been seen. However, a late in the day arriving boat has now been identified as a ketch, it’s arrival time noted, its parked position noted along with its leaving time and is indeed stated to be outside the 300m range described by the OIC. Extensive new evidence likely to influence a Jury was not before the COA.

 

 

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