Watson Murder Case - Discussion

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Gabe knew exactly that Tina had not made an ocean dive. Birmingham is about a 5 hour drive each way to the beach and they were days from their wedding waiting on her certification to arrive in the mail for the honeymoon. There was no way she could have gone to the beach and back to make a dive without him knowing, with or without her instructor. Its these lies that continue that cause Tina's friends and family to not believe anything Gabe says.
That did certainly leave me wondering, like how could he have not known, discussed, etc? To himself anyway, he was the experienced ocean diver and Rescue certified responsible for his new bride. Did they not talk, did they just make arrangements, or what? It boggles my mind. Not that I am a relationship expert having been single most of my adult life, but many glimpses of theirs leave me wondering why and what? :shakehead: Well, I got married once for poor reasons. Some of us are better single I think.

From what I have seen about the fateful dive, he really wasn't capable to do that one safely, she had no business on that dive, and the operator really failed in letting them do it without any questions. I doubt that he had the ability to pull off a sinister act.
 
This demonstrates the problem with being Open Water or Advanced Open Water certified in quarry.

From day 1 I stated that Gabe was not guilty of murder, he was guilty of being "over Certified" and believing it. What happened here is two would be detectives that didn't witness a thing decided he was guilty and called Tina's father setting the whole revenge ball rolling. The facts are he got his mask knocked off and his regulator knocked out of his mouth and panicked. She was over weighted, in a strong current started to sink, panicked and over breathed her regulator. The OP kept it's mouth shut because the blame was being focused on the husband. Op's in Oz had already left divers and snorkelers at dive sites, letting one drown would have been devastating to the dive business. Kept quiet was the fine they paid for this sad incident. Lot's of blame to go around here. I actually thought the interviewer was fair, she went after Gabe and that glory hound prosecutor. Once she did the insurance math the case really made no sense. I hope this family comes to peace with this but I have my doubts.
 
So the idea of moving Tina to a new, family plot was his grandmom's, so - since her family wasn't talking to him, he just did it.

Tina's father had said he just wanted a fair trial, but I don't think he's satisfied. I can't get the clip of former attorney general King to play, but the other clip that included comments from him seems to indicate he still thinks Gabe guilty.

I missed the bit about moving her body... better watch it again

Gabe knew exactly that Tina had not made an ocean dive. Birmingham is about a 5 hour drive each way to the beach and they were days from their wedding waiting on her certification to arrive in the mail for the honeymoon. There was no way she could have gone to the beach and back to make a dive without him knowing, with or without her instructor. Its these lies that continue that cause Tina's friends and family to not believe anything Gabe says.

Do you have inside information so you KNOW this is a lie? Seems like poor communication was the order of the day. One can ASSUME that he SHOULD have known if she went away on a day trip but:idk: Are you one of Tina's friends or family members so you know what they believe and why? :idk:

I view a dive boat operator as a means to the site and backup safety net if needed, but for a brand new OW diver, first time in the ocean, it sounds like they really failed Tina - as guilty of negligence manslaughter as Gabe maybe. 9-12# overweight, confuse inflator with deflator and she would indeed sink fast, with panic taking over I'd think.

I finally got the last clip from King to play. No surprises.

In OZ the dive boat operator is held accountable for more than a ride there and back. In Queensland the regulations are quite strict. Every time we have dived up there the Dive Operator has a DM in the water with you. I know someone commented about divers being left behind and so on. If the Dive Op is following regulations that could not happen. With the number of divers and Dives conducted in Queensland every year there are surprisingly few incidents and I believe that is because of the regulations. I have had a Dive Operator allow us to separate from the group and stay in one spot to take pics but there were 4 of us ..nobody with less than 400 dives and one was an active instructor. Even after a week of diving with us they were cautious about leaving us on our own! They knew we had good bouyance, weren't damaging coral, weren't harrassing the critters, the dive was fairly shallow and near an island. We arranged it in advance but they didn't want other divers to find out for fear they would want to do the same.
 
Thanks.. downloaded it. I missed it before somehow. I thought the King one was number 4. One thing I find interesting .. we heard all about how Gabe inherited Tina's house.. we never heard about inheriting $10K in credit card debts. I know some will claim that we are hearing one sided information.. that is true but it is the first time we have heard the other side of the story.
 
This demonstrates the problem with being Open Water or Advanced Open Water certified in quarry.

From day 1 I stated that Gabe was not guilty of murder, he was guilty of being "over Certified" and believing it. What happened here is two would be detectives that didn't witness a thing decided he was guilty and called Tina's father setting the whole revenge ball rolling.

I agree with the general drift of what you are saying. From what I've seen, most people who do the OW courses go on to become competent and safe divers. Some don't. I'd suggest that Tina and Gabe's story highlights the risk factors associated with certification. Those factors include doing it in a different country with different qualifying conditions, many months between dives, the diver being very anxious and uncomfortable in the water and not having mastered basic skills like finning and buoyancy control.

I've noted increasingly in a number of different areas of life that people are being expected to do courses and become 'certified' after reading a manual and doing a few practical exercises. I've seen it in my work as an engineer. I saw it in the first aid course I did recently. It is the way diving courses are done. As Gabe discovered, this often does little except increase your personal liability.

Last year I did a first aid course. A few months later I'd forgotten how many pumps of the heart and breaths were required for a given interval. In short I've forgotten more than I remember. I spoke with a friend recently about a deep diving course he'd done and asked him what he'd learned. He was quick to respond he couldn't remember much. I have no problem accepting that Gabe felt inadequate even though he'd done a 'rescue' course many years before.

I'd recommend any one who does their open water to use what they've learned on a number of dives soon after the course. Practice setting up your tank and gear at home if you found it confusing. Where I live, people who learn to drive a car have big signs that tell other drivers they are inexperienced. How about a big orange sticker on the tank of inexperienced divers or those whose experience is in doubt. Experienced divers could be encouraged to keep a watchful eye out and help those who appear to be having trouble.

On a dive yesterday I saw someone about 5-6 m away with their spare air regulator streaming behind. In an emergency that could have been enough to kill someone. I swam over and alerted the diver. On reflection, it did occur to me that this was about the distance that others like Stutz' were supposed to have been from Tina and Gabe at the time Tina drowned. I still find it difficult to fathom that no one went to help as Tina drifted to the bottom.

he got his mask knocked off and his regulator knocked out of his mouth and panicked. She was over weighted, in a strong current started to sink, panicked and over breathed her regulator.

Firstly, Gabe never said he got his mask knocked off. He said it was dislodged and, as I recall, got flooded. Secondly, I believe these comments made by Gabe and the inferences you have drawn are reasonable and probably did happen, but they are not established fact.

Some facts of the case are:

- Gabe and Tina aborted their first dive and went back to the Spoilsport;
- Ken and Paula Snyder and Doug and Ginger Milsap were other divers on the Spoilsport;
- Stutx claims he saw Tina sink away from Gabe after their encounter;
- Ken Snyder did not believe that Gabe's version fo the story was genuine;
- Gabe and Tina dove the SS Yongala; and
- Tina drowned with regulator in her mouth.

If three people had seen Gabe grab Tina, shut off her valve and hold here for several minutes while she drowned and gave similar eye witness accounts to the police of what happened then Gabe should have been convicted of murder. What happened would have been established beyond reasonable doubt.

In trying to work out what happened, the police are supposed to find and assemble all the facts or evidence supporting their case. It is like assembling a giant jigsaw puzzle. The pieces of the puzzle are the evidence or facts. When enough pieces have been assembled, a reasonable person can see and interpret the whole picture. If you are missing three pieces of a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle then it probably won't matter. If you are missing enough of the important pieces the whole picture becomes obscured.

Problems occur when there are big gaps in the picture or the wrong pieces are forced into the wrong places. That is what happened in the prosecution's case. They gave an account of what they believed could have happened but they didn't have the facts to back up their story. For every story concocted that tried to explain how Gabe murdered Tina, there was an equally plausible story explaining how it was just an accident.

Tina was said to have drowned in the postmortem. I believe that was a fact in this case. The doctor who carried out the postmortem testified that the medical evidence he saw was consistent with Tina drowning. Some tried to argue Tina died as a result of being asphyxiated ie. she ran out of air and this was consistent with Gabe turning off Tina's air supply. At one stage this was popular in the media and even accepted by one of the appeal judges.

The fact that Tina drowned does not however rule out the possibility that Gabe turned off Tina's air supply. While it seems unlikely, Tina could have drowned with the regulator in her mouth after having had her air supply turned off.

We discussed before on this thread that even while Tina was breathing it is possible that she panicked and the seal between her lips and the regulator could have broken allowing water to enter her mouth and lungs. This is not a fact. It is conjecture. The fact that we don't know for sure how Tina died with plenty of air in her tank and the regulator in her mouth highlights how much we don't really know about this case.

Facts are important. How you interpret the facts are also important. In a murder trial you cannot afford to have too many pieces of the jigsaw puzzle missing that get filled in with hearsay and conjecture. In the end that is why the case was tossed out of court. It was easy for the media to beat up a story and gain public sympathy for Tina. They took a few pieces from the puzzle and filled in the blanks with hearsay and innuendo. It could have meant a man was wrongly convicted for murder and even sentenced to death.

Incidentally, I don't think we should accept everything Gabe says as fact. Some of the things he is reported to say in the media seem odd and I wouldn't rule out the possibility that he has lied. That doesn't make him a murderer.

That said, on more than one occasion his story can be shown to be reasonable and correct when in the past it seemed odd to many. That alone should sound a warning to those who are quick to dismiss his testimony as nonsense.The computer beeping was a case in point. In spite of what the police claimed, we now know, based on the manufacturer's testimony, that his computer transmitter does beep. Gabe said he saw Tina panic and then saw her fall away and sink to the bottom serenely. The 'diving experts' who first heard Gabe's story when he surfaced confirmed this is what Gabe had said. But in their view, this was nonsense. I believe that anyone who knows anything about the stages of drowning would find Gabe's version of what happened to be very consistent with what occurs. I've gone into some depth on this matter in past posts. The same experts also claimed that you are weightless underwater. That is wrong unless a diver is neutrally buoyant. Inexperienced divers are often not neutrally buoyant. Given the weight Tina was carrying and the way she sank, she obviously wasn't neutrally buoyant.
 
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Clip named 120302_2020_4 :wink:
Thanks.. downloaded it. I missed it before somehow. I thought the King one was number 4. One thing I find interesting .. we heard all about how Gabe inherited Tina's house.. we never heard about inheriting $10K in credit card debts. I know some will claim that we are hearing one sided information.. that is true but it is the first time we have heard the other side of the story.
:laughing: No, 120229_2020_king was the one I was calling King. It was a clumbersome way to send the clips, I was rusty on all that and did fumble some, so sorry about the confusion. The main clips are 120302_2020_1, 120302_2020_2, 120302_2020_3, 120302_2020_4, 120302_2020_5, and 120302_2020_6, but 120229_2020_king did shed light on a new piece of info to me.

I think the only case Alabama hoped to have was built on him thinking she'd opted for $300K in life insurance payable to him, which he was lame for requesting - but he never confirmed it, and a honeymoon murder would have been much too obvious. That just does not float.

I'd not heard that he inherited her $10K in credit card debt, but then I didn't remember him inheriting her house either. It wasn't clear was it? Alabama estate laws are so different from Texas' but we are one of the community property states inherited from Mexico's ganancial community system that goes back much further. He's not living in it surely, with his new wife? Did he get anything from it?

His grandmom may have suggested a Watson family plot to include Tina, but as young as they both were when it happened - I would have thought leave her on her family's plot, where her parents will go someday, as he'd end up married someday (or quickly it seems), and he'll want to be buried with her if that one lasts. Well, it's hard to plan family plots. My maternal grandparents got a huge plot when the first died because they had 8 kids, but none of them will end up there decades later, then my parents got a large one when we lost a baby grandson, later joined by another, then the parents, the room on the other side - looking kinda odd.
 
Do you have inside information so you KNOW this is a lie? Seems like poor communication was the order of the day. One can ASSUME that he SHOULD have known if she went away on a day trip but:idk: Are you one of Tina's friends or family members so you know what they believe and why? :idk:

Yes, I know this is a lie.
 
Yes, I know this is a lie.
You mentioned in 2008...
I've tried to read all of this thread, but cannot. Has anyone mentioned that he now lives in Tina's house that he inherited when she died? Its a nice house in a nice neighborhood with a pool. He has now moved his new wife into Tina's house.

If he thought he would get the house, plus the huge insurance money he was expecting, that's enough of a motive in my mind.
Was it clear, owing, under water? Is he and his current wife in it now?

Well, you mentioned earlier this month you've met Gabe, but not part of Tina's family.
It was the conversation between Tina and her father that is causing the suspicion. She told her father that Gabe was pushing her to get this done BEFORE the honeymoon and she was too busy in the days leading up to the wedding to do it. Her father told her to not do it but tell Gabe she did. Plus the scenario you mention does not fit with what happened. Gabe went to her place of work and demanded the insurance money. He would not have done that if he believed the insurance issue had been postponed until after the honeymoon.
Bad fatherly advice. I would have told my daughter to just stand her ground now and set the precedent: No way. We'll do that when there is a need.
 
Yes, they live in Tina's house and no I don't know the financial situation of the house. He and Tina could have bought it together. I don't know that part.
 
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