Deeper into the Watson False Conviction
John Steinbeck wrote......."The gods are fallen and safely gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply in the green muck." There were many "gods" in Scott's case. 2 of them were presented as impeachable hairs but the "true fallen gods" were in fact those that said they had found the 2 hairs making them able to say their magic words: "Watson is guilty."Understanding the Watson case has always been about the 2 hairs that were said to be immovable for around 20 years, they were the glue that could not be escaped. But as Steinbeck wrote they finally did fall and it was not a little because they crashed and shattered.
While ESR might maintain its arguments of why the hairs were not found on the boat, why so many searches were required, and why there was re-searching, will now fall on deaf ears. Because when those "heroes" fell the truth filtered to the top. There were always sightings of the ketch right in Furneaux Inlet on the 31st and the next morning the first of January 98, but they were hidden and submerged in a web of lies built around the 2 hairs. The people that saw it were silenced in one way or another with an energy that could have found the ketch, even perhaps with the couple alive.
It is not the police that have had to reconcile that they were not believed when they said they saw the ketch or saw the couple aboard. It is the people that weren't believed that have struggled with that and wondered what might have been if they had been believed and not shut down, bullied, or ignored.
Photos were taken of the ketch and in at least one instance there are witnesses who saw such a photo and delivered it to someone in the family after police rejected it as important. For all those years the person that delivered the photo has wondered what happened to it and for the present, we do not know. But what we do know is that other people either surrendered photos of the ketch to the police or had police take such photos and not return them. We now know the photo file was replaced with one that makes no sense and does not reconcile with witness reports. The photo file is inconsistent with job sheets and statements which have never been altered, the information on them was mistakenly not removed when the new photo file was made. It is unavoidable truth now that photos of sightings were destroyed but not always the statements or job sheets that matched.
The points made above when drawn into a single picture shows malfeasance around the reporting of the Ketch, photos of it, and its known movements in and out of Mapua. It was already identified in those places but police either did not take statements or statements were removed from the file with excuses made that they had never existed or were irrelevant, having other innocent explanations. The cover-up was huge, but also stupid. Now, this part of the case can be heard.
There was a recent experience revealed where someone had sent photos to the police of a ketch but never got them back. On the face of it, that was like many other similar situations but with a distinct difference, one of the particular families had kept copies which may not have appeared important at the time. From those copies, the ketch photographed was excluded as being the ketch that went into the inlet on New Year's eve. However, it might well have been another vessel seen with the mystery ketch after New Year when one of the boats was seen dragging its ropes in the water, usually a sign of being in distress. While not realised at first, it was eventually seen as proof the photos had been given to police because of the copies retained. All photos taken or given to police were the personal property of the owners and are something else police have gotten away with, they should not have been disposed of without the owners' written consent.
So what does it mean? Scott now has further proof of the file manipulation which is so poorly done that it is obvious anyway. But all those people who said they gave photos but struggled to prove it now have support because the family that sent photos kept the copies as described above.
So when we look to the horizon and count how many battleships the Crown retains what do we see? The 2 hairs sinking, all police credibility on dismissing witness reports and photos of the ketch or sightings are sunk like the photo file. The good ship Fitzgerald with its witness enhancement methods also sunk, There's been no sign since 2017 of Pope or his 2nd commanding officer John Rae, who took control of the photo file late in the inquiry. In 2017 they said smugly about the second RPOM application that they had seen it all before. The difference now so has the public has seen it all before - too many times.
