Husband murdered wife on honeymoon dive, coroner told
WARNING: Some people may find the photo that accompanies this article disturbing. The coroner’s findings (bottom of post) make interesting reading.
20 June 2008.
AN AMERICAN should be charged with murdering his wife while they were diving at the Great Barrier Reef during their honeymoon, an inquest heard yesterday.
Counsel assisting the coroner, John Tate, said police believed there was sufficient evidence for David Gabriel Watson, 31, to stand trial for the murder of Christina Mae Watson, 26, both from Alabama.
Known as Tina, the woman drowned a few minutes into a dive at a shipwreck off the Townsville coast in October 2003. She was a novice diver. Mr Watson had a rescue diver qualification, but he resurfaced instead of rescuing her. A fellow diver inadvertently photographed her lying on the sea floor.
A diver poses for a picture, unaware of the drama unfolding behind as a dive instructor tries to rescue Tina Watson, whose body lies on the sea bed.
“There is a strong case to answer,” Mr Tate told the inquest in Townsville. “There are too many unanswered questions. These … go to the heart of what happened to (Tina) Watson during the fateful dive. It is for a jury to determine the answers to these questions.”
Mr Tate told the court Mr Watson gave different reasons for leaving his wife on the sea floor: that the current swept her away, that she sank too quickly, and that ear problems stopped him going deeper.
Mr Watson said he “rocketed to the top” to raise the alarm.
But a former navy diver said the rise had been “pedestrian and controlled”.
Police allege Mr Watson turned off his wife’s air supply until she was dead, or nearly dead, before turning it back on and leaving her to sink to her death.
Steve Zillman, for Mr Watson, said the evidence was circumstantial, and many, particularly media, had disregarded the presumption of innocence.
“One is left with an uneasy feeling in this case that the police, at some point, determined that Gabe was guilty of murder and have endeavoured to construct a case to that end,” he said. He said there was no “logical and identifiable” motive.
The coroner, David Glasgow, is due to make his findings today. Should they lead to charges against Mr Watson, he would be extradited from the US.
This article was sourced from The Age.
Husband charged with scuba murder, news.com.au, 20 June 2008.
Office of the Townsville Coroner, Findings of Inquest.
Filed under: Ali Perkins, News/Current Affairs
After reading the entire text of the “Findings of Inquest”, one thing really leapt out at me in the autopsy report; “Radiology: The body shows florid evidence of air embolism”. Now how do they get murder out of that one? This is much more consistent with the husbands explanation than the prosecutors. An air embolism would explain a lot. She was a novice diver (was she even certified?) and if she indeed did panic, the tendency would have been for her to hold her breath and head for the surface, which is the worst thing a diver can do. An air gas embolism is where the lungs over-pressurize and force air bubbles into the bloodstream and you get either stroke like or heart attack like symptoms, which by the way includes unconsciousness and death.
My sympathies go to the ladies family, but this looks more like a tragic diving accident than murder. The coroner I suspect, doesn’t know anything about scuba diving or else he might realize that his theory of the incident is completely unsupported by the autopsy report.
Fair comments. However, I’ve read that air embolisms can occur after death too, when a body is brought back to the surface, as the lungs don’t vent their air. This could have been a post-fatality occurrence.
I also wouldn’t assume that a coroner in Queensland, especially Townsville, doesn’t know anything about scuba diving. As far as I can tell, there are fatalities on the Great Barrier Reef every year, so if there was anywhere in the world where a coroner might know something about scuba diving it would be there. In 1998 alone there were 7 recreational scuba fatalities in Queensland.