The Honeymoon Drowning That Turned A Groom Into A Murder Suspect [re-release]

In October 2003, newlyweds Gabe and Tina Watson travelled from Alabama to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef for their dream honeymoon. Just 11 days after their wedding, the couple prepared to dive the SS Yongala shipwreck, one of the world’s most famous dive sites. But within minutes of entering the water, Tina was pulled to the surface unconscious. Despite desperate attempts to save her, she could not be revived. What began as a heartbreaking accident soon raised chilling questions. Why were Gabe’s stories inconsistent? And what really happened underwater that day? In this episode, host Gemma Bath speaks with journalist and author Lindsay Simpson, co-author of Honeymoon Dive, to explore a case that captivated the world and still divides opinion more than 20 years on. You can find the book here https://www.amazon.com.au/Honeymoon-Dive-Jennifer-Cooke-ebook/dp/B0041KLBP8. THE END BITS If any of the contents in this episode have caused distress, know that there is help available via Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. Make sure to leave us a rating and review on Apple & Spotify to let us know how you're liking the episodes. Click here https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe/?utm_source=shownotes&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=quicky&utm_content=give-back&code=GIVEBACKQUICKY to get 20% off your Mamamia subscription and we'll match it with a 20% donation to RizeUp, our charity partner supporting women and families affected by domestic violence. Offer ends August 24. CREDITS Guest: Lindsay Simpson Host: Gemma Bath Senior Producer: Tahli Blackman https://www.linkedin.com/in/tahli-blackman-205a891b7/?originalSubdomain=au Audio Producer: Jacob Round https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobroundsound/?originalSubdomain=au GET IN TOUCH We finally have an Instagram! Follow us @truecrimeconversations https://www.instagram.com/truecrimeconversations/?hl=en Follow us on TikTok @truecrimeconversations https://www.tiktok.com/@truecrimeconversations?lang=en Want us to cover a case on the podcast? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] or send us a voice note. https://help.mamamia.com.au/en-US/send-a-podcast-voice-note-467960 We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi there, it's producer Ella here, jumping into your feed because this month marks 23 years since Tina Watson tragically passed away on her honeymoon. In October 2003, Gabe and Tina Watson travelled from the US to Australia's Great Barrier Reef. 11 days after their wedding, the pair went diving at one of the world's most famous diving spots. But shortly after entering the water, Tina was pulled to the surface, unconscious, and couldn't be revived. Earlier this year, the Courier-Mail reported that they had tracked down Watson 15 years after he had been extradited from Australia after serving 18 months in prison for the manslaughter of his then-wife. He now lives a quiet life in Alabama with a new wife and two children. Let's revisit the case.

• 0:43Gemma Bath?

  It's October 2003. A newlyweds, Gabe and Tina Watson are aboard a 30-metre catamaran, enjoying the raw beauty of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. They've only been married 11 days after a whirlwind six-month engagement, and their honeymoon to the turquoise waters of Queensland has been planned around the perfect diving conditions for him and the nesting schedule of the green sea turtles for her. The couple, from Birmingham, Alabama, are just two of 25 people, readying to explore the SS Yongala, Australia's largest and most intact historic shipwreck. After some toast and cereal for breakfast, the group is briefed at 8.30am about the day ahead.

• 1:28Gemma Bath?

  They run through safety procedures, weather and current conditions, and the intricacies of the difficult dive ahead. By 10.30am, they're in the water. But within 10 minutes, Tina Watson emerges without a pulse. Despite desperate efforts back on deck, she can't be revived. At first, it's assumed to be a horrible accident, but over the course of years, questions are asked, suspicions are raised, and lies start to unravel. Because the multiple differing versions of what her husband says happened underwater simply don't make sense.

• 2:14Gemma Bath?

  I'm Gemma Bath, and this is True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. From the moment Tina Watson's body was returned to the surface of the water by dive master Wade Singleton, Gabe was acting in a way that those around him thought was odd. He'd surfaced closer to a different boat to them, and while others tried desperately to resuscitate his wife, he made no effort to join her, be by her side, or help in any way. Others remarked that, heck, they would have jumped in the ocean and swam to her side immediately had it been their spouse. They noted that he kept wanting to tell people his version of events, a story that his fellow

• 2:58Gemma Bath?

  experienced divers immediately thought sounded wrong. "It couldn't have happened like that, there was no way," they said. But their suspicions and gut feelings weren't properly examined for many years. Gabe Watson went back home to America, organised a funeral, found himself estranged from Tina's loved ones over a series of bizarre and hurtful events, and eventually remarried, all before he found himself facing murder charges in 2008, five years after Tina's death. This is a story that captured global news headlines, as internet sleuths and media commentators all descended on the story with their views and opinions.

• 3:41Gemma Bath?

  Did he do it, or didn't he? Lindsay Simpson has researched this story extensively, and is the co-author of "Honeymoon Dive" with Jennifer Cook. Lindsay joins me now.

• 3:55Gemma Bath?

  Lindsay, you're a Wits Sunday's local, you're an author, but you also work in tourism, so you and your husband run sailing boats. The story we're about to tell attracted global headlines, it was everywhere for many, many years. What made you want to write about it in depth and kind of put more of a spotlight on it, on your kind of slice of the world?

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Well, that's an interesting question, Gemma, because I was living on Magnetic Island, and at the time this was all unfolding, which, for people who don't know, is probably to me, I'm not good with distances, but it might be an hour or two to the wreck by boat, to the Yongala that Tina and Gabe were diving on. And the more I read about it, and as you said, the headlines were just staring me in the face, I'm a true crime writer, but I thought, this is just in my backyard, this is so much about what we do. We don't do diving, but it's happened. And Jenny Cook, who was an old friend of mine from the Sydney Morning Herald, she lived

• 5:01Speaker 02

  in the States, and I thought, hey, she could maybe look at the American side of it, and I've got everything here. I was able to access the court records through a certain source in Townsville, because of course, the court case was in Townsville, which was only 11 kilometres across the water from Magnetic Island. And I went to work there every day to James Cook University, so, yes, it was all fairly obvious. It was like a story knocking on my door, saying, come on, you've got to... And lecturing is one thing, but I was really itching, to be honest, to get back into storytelling and interviewing and all the exciting things that makes me like being a journalist.

• 5:45Gemma Bath?

  Well, like you kind of alluded to, this story actually starts in America, in Alabama, which is a landlocked city, there's no ocean around it. How popular is diving as a pastime over there?

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Well, I think maybe because it's landlocked, people see, you know, diving as an exotic thing to do. And when you look at Gabe Watson, had a fairly boring job, and his business, the family business, was packaging and bubble wrapping. And I guess for him, diving was something that, you know, represented something exotic, as I said, but also something he could learn and go and rise up through the ranks of learning how to dive. So I think it was just because it probably was landlocked, that there were places that you could dive, and we ended up going to the very place where Tina and him had learnt and got their diving certificates, which was a quarry.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  So there certainly wasn't any ocean to dive.

• 6:48Gemma Bath?

  Tell us a bit more about Gabe's experience, because he kind of walked past a dive shop at 21 and then was obsessed.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Yes, that's right. I think the fact that he had his mate with him, that was something they could do together. But the other aspect was, and I'm not entirely sure when, he'd learnt about this other dive in the British Virgin Islands, where a death had occurred. And I guess, you know, he is, at the moment, of course, he's a free man, he's been found that there's no case against him in America, anyway.

• 7:28Gemma Bath?

  But he started diving long before he met Tina. In fact, he was quite experienced by the time he met Tina, wasn't he?

• 7:36Speaker 02

  That's right. So that's what I was thinking, that he started learning how to dive, and then because he knew so much, and he was even a rescue diver, and that requires a lot of extra training, that's not just having fun and looking at coral.

• 7:50Gemma Bath?

  So he was a rescue diver, so that's basically, you know, could he have been an instructor? Was he that level of qualified?

• 7:57Speaker 02

  That's one below the instructor level, but it certainly means that, you know, when somebody starts panicking down below, and let's not forget that this entire incident was something up 15 metres down, it was not that, that deep. It certainly means when somebody panics that you know what to do, and things like that person panicking and thrashing and trying to grab you, you know, the sorts of things we do when we lose it, and Tina was very nervous, you certainly would know what to do. You have a second regulator, and you have a second way of breathing, and they call it the, I think it's called the octi, which is the other way of having a second source

• 8:41Speaker 02

  of air, and that he would have known. As a rescue diver, he would have understood what all that was about.

• 8:49Gemma Bath?

  Let's bring in Tina here, because, you know, we've got Gabe, who is a young man in Alabama, he's working at his parents' business, diving on the side. What was Tina doing with herself before she met Gabe? And can you tell us a little bit about her health struggles?

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Yes, well, she was always exhausted and they discovered, I think in her teens, that there was a reason for that. And it was a um rhythmic heart condition. And she had had surgery, so there was uh recognition by the parents that something had to be done. Because she was getting out of breath and really struggling. So she had that all fixed before the dive. And uh what her life was like, I know her favourite book was Gone With the Wind. And the whole Alabama princess thing of needing to find a husband. Uh we discovered, I think there was a lot of pressure on her, actually.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Even from the family, all the girlfriends were getting married to find Mister Right. And I think from her perspective, Gabe happened to come along at a time when, you know, she'd broken up with someone. And he actually um went and got her this purse, Kate Spade, I think it was purse. That the other boyfriend um hadn't bothered bringing back. So he went and got it for her and that impressed her. But from the outset, there was red flags because there was a lot of the family were looking at him saying. Why are you with someone like that? And there was a whole lot of incidents leading up to this whole dive on the Great Barrier Reef.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  That were very strange.

• 10:38Gemma Bath?

  During their relationship, she found out that he was planning to propose to her or had a ring. And he kind of held that over her, which became a big theme in their relationship. Can you explain that to us?

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, that was probably the strangest thing because when she came back home one day, the flat was all tidy. And she saw, when they were unpacking the groceries, she saw this little box with the jewellery. It had obviously the name of the jeweler's on it. And she had been waiting for him to propose. So she saw that there and thought, oh, you know, it's finally happening. And he basically said to her, if you go anywhere near that or open it, it's none, nothing's going to happen. So at first she sort of thought, oh, he's waiting for the right time, it's gonna be romantic. Which is odd, because that, people, I mean, men might think that, that they're gonna propose in a romantic way, but they don't put the ring out and the show.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  And then say you can't have it. Eventually she told the family, she told her best friend. And they were all saying to her, but that's not okay. Like, why would someone do that? And, you know, milestones had passed, her birthday, all these things would happen and she'd think it's gonna happen now, it's gonna happen now. And it didn't happen. And then he even went to Tommy, her Tommy Thomas, her father, who was an amazing man. He did so much to try and get the information and answers about his daughter's death. He went to him and said, can I ask for her hand in marriage?

• 12:16Speaker 02

  And Tommy was scratching his head because there was already things coming out that he wasn't happy with. And he said, well, do you love Tina? And Gabe sort of didn't give an answer to that. He said, that's pretty corny, isn't it, to ask me that? And he said, oh, we're right together. But Tommy said, but no, but I'm asking you, do you love her? And and Gabe's answer was very ambiguous.

• 12:44Gemma Bath?

  To say that it's corny, it's just such a bizarre thing to say.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Yes, so much of what he said um in interviews, records of interviews, things that we read. Was bizarre.

• 12:57Gemma Bath?

  Did Tina love him?

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Well, that's an interesting question. Because she did keep saying to her girlfriends, isn't he handsome? And I personally, I don't. How she could have thought that. He wasn't particularly a handsome guy. He was very um socially awkward. I think what happened was he came at the right time of her being twenty six, feeling she was le- left on the shelf. And then fixating on this idea that they would get married. She did go back to an earlier boyfriend. Not really a boyfriend, but an old friend from the past that she got on with. And tried to basically have a date with him and Gabe found out and was furious.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  And this was when the ring still hadn't been given to her. So she'd obviously got sick of waiting. But he had some control over her.

• 13:52Gemma Bath?

  Well, he ended up proposing, not in any kind of huge dramatic way. He just kind of asked her. At their house on a random day. And then everything, he wanted everything to move really quickly after having everything move so slowly. So he kind of was like, right, well, we need to get married within. Six months. So suddenly everything speeds up.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Exactly, which is not what she wanted at all, because the whole wedding. You know, there are some women who the wedding is the most important thing and she wanted to plan and suddenly. Yeah, suddenly, but not only the wedding, she had to learn how to dive.

• 14:30Gemma Bath?

  Why? Why did she have to learn how to dive?

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Well, he told the father, Tommy, that she had to learn to dive because he did things that she liked. Therefore, it was almost like a a contract. Uh so if she's going to marry me, she has to learn how to scuba dive. It wasn't, you know, it would be great if she loved diving like I do. Or maybe I'll take her and dive and see what she thinks. It was, she will be doing that, he told Tommy.

• 14:59Gemma Bath?

  Well, reading the conversations between the two in your book, it kind of felt like he was more focused on planning the honeymoon. Which he wanted to be in Australia at a really famous dive spot, rather than planning the wedding. Like, it was all planned around diving conditions.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Exactly, and the turtles, the green turtles are nesting in October. And he knew that would be a drawcard for her because she loved Nemo and turtles. So, yes, that's right, everything had to be rushed through and again, she wasn't given an option. And there's also some nasty incidents in that uh earlier time where he threw a pizza at her. In a restaurant with, when she was there, I think with her sister or her best friend. And, you know, they'd arrived a little bit late and he was sitting there in a foul mood and was quite grumpy. And she tried to put it off that he had sinus headaches, but then he literally got up in the restaurant, chucked the pizza at her and left.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  You know, that's, there's stuff like that, that this is the betrothed, this is someone who's, you know, you're going to spend the rest of your life with.

• 16:11Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  I mean, that would be, that would be a definite finishing of the relationship for most women.

• 16:17Gemma Bath?

  Yeah, one hundred percent. How did the wedding go? Was it a nice day? Did the families get on?

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Yes, I think their wedding went quite well and they had all the photos. I think it was what she wanted. But she had to then get ready to go overseas very quickly after that and get passport and all the things that went on. And she had to to finish her diving certificate. Uh so she, you know, we went back to that quarry where she learnt to dive, Jenny and I. And neither of us knew how to dive. And we kind of went into that whole experience of what she would have gone through. All while she was getting the wedding ready and getting to go overseas. And I don't think she'd been overseas before, so it was all a very big deal.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  And we went into that quarry with dive instructor who actually took her through the steps of what to do. And he described how she panicked, I think it was ten metres down. And we were able to really feel this pressure. And I still remember him saying, when he said to her, you shouldn't be diving, you're not able to do this. You're really the most panicked diver I've ever seen. And she said, well, there was a reason for that. And she pointed up to the top of the quarry. And here was Gabe, with some of his arms folded, looking down at her, like you had. And he's specifically been told not to come to the quarry while she was learning.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Because they don't like relatives coming because it's a lot of pressure on the person learning to dive. And he was there to make sure she passed the certificate.

• 17:56Gemma Bath?

  She ended up getting qualified, but she wasn't what you would call experienced by the time she left for Australia.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Not at all. In fact, I was trying to find out and trying to remember. I don't think she'd even done an ocean dive. There's been reports that she had, but I think it was only in the swimming pool, because they had a swimming pool and a quarry. The quarry was this murky, horrible place with cars lying in the pot.

• 18:21Gemma Bath?

  Oh, sounds terrifying for a non-diver like me.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  Really gross. And, you know, taking that mask off. I mean, I've never dived before I went into that quarry. Taking the mask off and trying to, you know, not panic underwater and then put it back on, know that your ears are okay. She, that's when she really lost it. I think that her diving experience was just there. And so really, when they went round, I don't know, jumping at the gun. But when they were on the boat and she was asked about how many dives she'd done, she was very inexperienced.

• 18:55Gemma Bath?

  So they left for their honeymoon pretty much, you know, straight after their wedding. They stayed in Sydney for about a week. They make their way to Townsville and then they board this dive vessel, which has twenty five other people on board. Can you tell us about what the trip was? This was, or this is, a very famous dive site in Australia. That people travel all over the world to come to. And it's considered a red dive, which means it's on the harder side?

• 19:29Speaker 02

  That's right, the Yong Gala was as known as Australia's Titanic. In fact, there's a museum, amazing museum in Townsville, like one of these perfect little regional museums that you go in, it's got all the details of everything. Because there were 121 people on that ship that sunk in a cyclone. Actually, funny enough, on our boat, we took the people who were going to board that boat on and didn't make it, their relatives all those years ago, and they commemorate every, you know, significant anniversary. So, yeah, it was a big deal. It sunk and it's about 300 feet or what's that, metres? Anyway, it's a big steel boat and it had fallen sideways on the starboard side and

• 20:14Speaker 02

  it presented this amazing opportunity for a dive. So people, yes, came from everywhere and Gabe Watson had heard about it. And, yeah, there's a lot of people leaving from Eyre, which is a regional town here, from Townsville, and they go out to do this wreck and dive. But it is a difficult dive because of currents. It's kind of out in the middle of nowhere. The 121 people are still on board that drowned.

• 20:40Gemma Bath?

  Oh, really?

• 20:42Speaker 02

  The racehorse off the deck. So, yes, it was a very big disaster. And when, after they left Mackay, which is where they steamed out of and hit the cyclone, the Marconi wireless had just arrived and they left just before this warhorse came in, so they could have had contact with them and said, come back. But unfortunately, that didn't happen and they all drowned.

• 21:06Gemma Bath?

  From the very start of that kind of expedition of this group of passengers that included Tina and Gabe, the other people on board were noticing a bit of weirdness, weren't they?

• 21:20Speaker 02

  They were. Again, his social awkwardness, the fact that he didn't seem at ease. They noticed that Tina was incredibly bubbly, which she was, chatting to everybody. There was another honeymoon couple on board and they'd got married at a similar time. So, you know, they had something in common with them. But, yes, there was, I suppose, right before the dive, I don't think there was too much weirdness noted, other than the fact that, you know, he was a bit uncommunicative. It was just after they went down that things started not quite adding up.

• 21:56Gemma Bath?

  How does a trip like this work? Because you've got a mix of experiences and I'm assuming that there are very detailed briefings, explanations, you do safety things. What does it look like before you actually even get into the water?

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Yes, there is a lot of mucking around, you might say. Because, yeah, exactly, there's so many workplace health and safety. They have a number of, obviously, regulations that you have to go through and there's a lot of checking things off and signing things and checking gear and having a dive buddy. So the preparaturiness of the dive, some of those people on board were still jet lagged. You know, typically, they'd fly all the way across the world just to come and do this dive and then they might just go home. Actually, in Tina and Gabe's case, they went via Sydney, went to Taronga Zoo and did other things. But, yes, there's a lot of work going into making sure, like checking the air and the

• 22:58Speaker 02

  tanks, you know, checking your B C on properly. Yeah, so that was all going on that morning.

• 23:05Gemma Bath?

  And interestingly, some of the other experienced divers said it was some of the best briefings they'd ever encountered.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  That's right. So Wade Singleton was the one who was briefing and he did, he felt incredibly bad about later what had happened, but certainly his briefing was excellent. The problem was that, and I think there was a charge late later, was that she was sitting there, she'd only dived in a quarry. She was petrified, which they didn't necessarily know. And interestingly, she never told anyone that. There was no evidence. I mean, she was terrified in the quarry, only a few metres down. How do you think she felt leaping into this ocean with fast currents and just not having the experience?

• 23:53Speaker 02

  And probably, like I am claustrophobic, she definitely didn't have a good reaction. So, yes, she, the thing that actually happened was that she was asked if she wanted or told she should have an orientation dive, which is what beginning divers do. And she would have then been accompanied by Wade Singleton or a number of other people who were just standing around. That was mentioned several times. All these people would rather be doing this than cleaning the toilets, taking you for a dive. So she had ample opportunity to say, I'm really terrified and I'd like an orientation dive. But he stepped in and said, oh, she doesn't need that, she's got me, I'm a rescue diver, we are fine.

• 24:37Gemma Bath?

  How did that first dive start? Because there was a bit of faffing about with Gabe and Tina even getting underwater.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  Exactly. There was strange, well, the weird thing about that was they aborted the dive, they went out, there seemed to be a lot of fiddle faddling around. They got, I think, one of the last boats, the little tenders that leave to take them out to where they're going to dive. And they came back because Gabe's battery was supposedly upside down inside his dive watch. But that had happened in Alabama before they left and Tina had already taken it to the place he'd bought it. That was one of the jobs she was given by Gabe. And it was about the battery not working and it was upside down. They said they found it in the shop, it was upside down, way before the dive.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  And then low and behold, the morning of the dive, he puts the batteries in upside down again, which was very weird. So they came to the surface, he said, my dive computer's not working.

• 25:43Gemma Bath?

  You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Gemma Bath. I'm speaking with Lindsay Simpson, co-author of Honeymoon Dive. Up next, Lindsay describes the moment a fellow diver saw Tina struggling underwater. A witness report that would become crucial in years to come.

• 26:05Gemma Bath?

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• 26:41Gemma Bath?

  They eventually start their dive and about five or so minutes in, a fellow diver witnesses something underwater. Can you tell us about what he saw? That diver was also a doctor, so he was, you know, a very experienced person in both diving and medical situations. What did he see underwater?

• 27:03Speaker 02

  So he was an emergency doctor and you couldn't get a better, in my view, expert witness than that because he saw, what he saw was this person lying on her back and he said already exhibiting signs that she was dying. She was still alive, but her limbs were all splayed out and she was just staring upwards. So at first, he thought he was seeing things. This other boat I mentioned before was coming from Magnetic Island and just moored exactly where they were. And the divers were coming down the rope when they looked over and this doctor saw this blonde girl lying backwards.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  And he was quite concerned. He didn't know, you know, what was going on. So, yes, that was the first thing that anyone recorded as seeing what was happening.

• 27:59Gemma Bath?

  Was it that same doctor that saw what he described as a bear hug between the two?

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Yes, he did see, well, that bear hug was interesting because I think, and I think I'm right in saying this, but he thought, yes, the reason he didn't immediately go to the girl's assistance was that he saw this other diver. And I think he was described as a very big man and Gabe Watson was six foot seven or something like that. And he thought that she, he was, the doctor thought Gabe was helping her. So that's why he hadn't done something.

• 28:38Gemma Bath?

  And he saw her kind of bear hug her, was the way he described it?

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:42Gemma Bath?

  Put his arms around her?

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Exactly. Put his arms around her and he did, he presumed that that was him helping him.

• 28:52Gemma Bath?

  What happened next in terms of how Tina came to the surface? Because it wasn't with Gabe.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  No, so uh he, I think the doctor then didn't realise that he hadn't taken her up. But Wade Singleton, uh who was the fellow briefing them all in the morning of the great briefing. He then looked down and at first thought he was seeing things and then realised that it was one of the passengers. Uh so anyway, Wade went down, got her from, and I think he took ninety two seconds. What, a minute and a half to get to the surface with her.

• 29:32Gemma Bath?

  Gabe kind of popped up separately, three minutes apart from them. So you've got Wade and Tina kind of appearing in the surface and you've got Gabe appearing not as close. On another side, they both end up on different boats. Let's go to Tina's boat first because what happens there, they basically try and rescue her.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  Yes, so they took her on to the other boat, Jazz Two, the one from Magnetic Island. And basically straight away tried doing everything they could to save her. But really, probably at that point, what that doctor, Doctor Stutz, had seen underwater. The emergency doctor had been correct that that was her completely losing consciousness. So they worked on her for quite some time. And they even used an EpiPen to try and get her to come round. And that was obvious in the postmortem, but um that was another. Another, one of the most obvious things on her body when they examined her was the EpiPen.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  Going into her neck and causing that swelling. But yes, she didn't, couldn't be revived, nothing they did brought her back.

• 30:49Gemma Bath?

  And they spent forty one minutes trying to revive her. Where was Gabe in all of this?

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Well, Gabe popped back onto Spoilsport. And that comment was made by at least one of the passengers, like if that was you over there, honey. I'd be there with bells on, you know, working out what was going on, how you were. He didn't go over to Jazz Two until basically she was pronounced dead by the doctor. So that was quite some time, he was wandering around Spoilsport saying, oh, you know. Something's happened to Tina. And also, which I thought was interesting, telling every man and his dog what he thought happened. Including the chef, he would just start blurting out, this happened, that happened.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  So he was giving these versions already to a number of people.

• 31:44Gemma Bath?

  I know that Gabe had quite a few versions of events, but what was his basic story that he was telling people? About what happened underwater?

• 31:54Speaker 02

  Well, he was basically initially saying that she grabbed, when he went to try and help her. That they went swimming off into the distance and then she didn't seem to be happy. He didn't really mention much initially about any current, although he did say they had tried to swim. And he said then he went towards her because he realised that she wasn't happy, that things were happening. And she grabbed his regulator. Now, that's, he did say that consistently to just about everybody on Spoilsport. After he got on board the boat they'd been on. And he said that he, she grabbed his mask and took it off.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  And he then, the second uh breathing. Potentially way to breathe is that, as I mentioned, that second supply through the second regulator. Which everyone has and every rescue diver is told to use because when a person panics, they're out of control. So if she was doing all those things that he alleged, and let's not forget that nobody saw any of this. Then he should have given her his second air supply. But what he says is he actually took that himself because he thought he would be gone too. So somebody like your wife is panicking underwater, you have a source of air supply you can give to her.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  In addition to the one you're using, even if she's grabbed the one you're using, even if that's all correct. He was trained as a rescue diver to go behind for the very reason that people start flailing and grabbing. Go behind where the tanks are and get the person under control so they're not grabbing at you. He didn't do any of those things. So his versions were that he then tried to find a second air supply. And then he put that in and while he was doing that, she started falling. And she was falling too quickly, quote unquote, for him to go after her. And again, remembering this is not really deep water.

• 33:59Gemma Bath?

  So he made the decision to instead follow her. To head back up to the surface and, in his words, get help.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  That's right. So he said at this stage, he realised. But, you know, a rescue diver also knows the critical time to have actually got her to the surface was not to watch her going further down. But to get her up to the surface so she could breathe. So at that stage, she was falling quickly. And he didn't do any of the things he'd been trained to do at all.

• 34:34Gemma Bath?

  It wasn't just that he didn't do the things that he'd been trained to do. A lot of the experienced divers that he was telling this story to, they immediately were like, well, that didn't happen. Why were they saying stuff like that?

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Well, some of the things he was saying to these two, particularly American divers, who alerted Tommy Thomas, her father, some time later. Because remembering when her parents first heard about all this, they thought a tragic diving accident. And that was what everyone thought for some time, given the police notes, you know, dear me, how tragic. So I think that what they were saying to him, he was saying to them was, I couldn't get her because she was too heavy. And they were saying, but you're not heavy underwater, you're light. And they were saying, and one of them actually said to him, this was some of the first things he told them. They said to Gabe, that's bullshit, that, those words. And they said, that's not right.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  So there was, in the early stages, when he first got back on board after calling the alarm. And then Tina surfacing with Wade Singleton, um being rescued. The early stages, he was saying things that didn't make any sense. They were experienced divers and they were calling him out. And the women, their wives, were talking about how strange the way he was reacting. But there was things that didn't add up, like he hadn't gone over to the boat to be with her. Um that he seemed to be, uh I mean, he was playing cards on the way. Back to Townsville when her body was lying in Cabin fourteen on the boat, very strange behaviour.

• 36:15Gemma Bath?

  He also made an announcement to everyone on the boat home. Where he once again just used weird language, like that kind of corny stuff he said with the dad. He said, my wife died today, this just really sucks. So just weirdness.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  Hmm, everyone was so shocked, yes. And the other strange things he was doing was things like insisting he got his dive computer back. And he wanted a receipt and shouting and yelling at the police, because of course, that's evidence. Exactly, you know, wherever he said they went, it would have been mapped on the dive computer. Because remembering he did go back up and finally get his batteries right. So, yes, there was, um. The fact that he was playing cards, and then he said he wanted to stay on the boat, he didn't want to get off the boat when they got back to Townsville. And they couldn't understand the reason for that.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, nothing, there was, there was things, but unfortunately, all of those sorts of things that really would have been important. For collecting evidence right away when the boat docked. They weren't mentioned, uh some young constables took the statement from Gabe and the other people are on the boat. And they weren't asked, like there was a volunteer on board that day, Lou Johnson. And she went to his cabin with him straight after the whole thing had happened. And he was saying some very strange things to her there. And she wasn't asked about anything, that all of that evidence was never in their statements initially, before the court case.

• 37:53Gemma Bath?

  And why was that? Was it because the police were inexperienced? Was it because they didn't understand diving? A mixture of the two?

• 38:03Speaker 02

  I think, you know, to have that many people giving, um, they wanted to take the statements quite quickly. So they were all kind of shoveled off and, and given um the opportunity to give their version. There was a lot of people and a lot of evidence that one of the passengers said one constable was taking it all down with two fingers. So the whole thing took forever to, the record of interview. And uh but certainly more, probably at least three people said it was just so disappointing. Because there, some of their evidence that went towards pointing the finger at Gabe Watson. Was never collected in those statements.

• 38:45Gemma Bath?

  How were the families, and I say families because Gabe's family and Tina's family, how were they informed about what had happened?

• 38:54Speaker 02

  Well, that was another strange thing, that he was told to ring his parents. And he didn't want to do that initially, but he finally did ring his parents, but he wasn't going to ring Tina's parents. Tina's parents didn't know until 12 hours after the whole thing had happened. And when he first, when Tommy Thomas got the call to say something's wrong, it was Gabe asked his father to call him. And he basically said, there's been something terrible happened. And then he handed the phone to his preacher. They were Southern Baptists, the Gabe Watson's family. And the preacher's the one who told Tommy Thomas. And Tommy was asking for details, which the preacher didn't have.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  And in fact, then the mother, when she was hysterical, understandably, Tina's mother, realised that Gabe's mother had already booked her flight to get to Australia. And in fact, her daughter hadn't just died. It happened 12 hours before and they hadn't even been told. And her sister went to work at a restaurant. And everyone knew, the staff knew, the word had got out before the family were even told. And she found out about it at work. So she had to then go and tell the mother. So, I mean, and then their first reaction, the Thomases' first reaction was how terrible for Gabe. Because, you know, he'd witnessed this awful thing and lost his wife he'd just married and

• 40:23Speaker 02

  there was nothing, as you can imagine, they're miles away in Alabama. There was nothing to suggest that something had happened that was untoward.

• 40:32Gemma Bath?

  Gabe did eventually talk to Tina's parents on the phone and he, there's no other way to say it, he lied about certain things in those initial phone calls.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  He did. And, I mean, at that point, you know, he'd, he was very, um, thinking about the dive computer, but he was also going to give them another one of the versions that he said happened.

• 40:55Gemma Bath?

  Can you tell us what he lied about?

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Well, he lied about the fact that he was with her, basically, at the final moments and that she blinked at him while she was underwater. And that she would have known he was going for help. But also he lied and said he was there because Cindy asked him, her mother asked him, were you there, of course, you know, to help, to see if she'd be okay? And he said, yes, I was there.

• 41:24Gemma Bath?

  So during all of the CPR, all of that, he kind of said he was present?

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 41:30Gemma Bath?

  There was a lot of tension that started bubbling between Gabe and Tina's families during the process of bringing Tina's body home, organising her funeral, the funeral itself. Can you touch on some of that? And how that kind of bubbled over?

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Yes, well, there were plots that Cindy right away said, you know, we've got plots when Gabe can be next to Tina.

• 41:56Gemma Bath?

  So funeral plots?

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Funeral plots that her, their family had organised. And that was never going to be. And in fact, right up even until this present moment, as far as I know, Gabe hasn't given any of her belongings back. And he announced, no, that she was going to their family plot. Um, so there was a lot of angst even around what was going to happen to her now that she had died and what they were going to do with the body.

• 42:28Gemma Bath?

  After the break, we look at why both the police and Tina's family started to grow suspicious of Gabe Watson and his ever-changing story.

• 42:39Gemma Bath?

  So Tommy and the family were starting to kind of get a little bit suspicious. They'd started talking to some of the dive passengers about their suspicions. At this point, were police investigating foul play? Was it an open investigation? Or, like, what was happening there?

• 42:57Speaker 02

  No, I don't think it was. I think police had just, um, there was even comments made on the notes, no suspicious circumstances. So I think if it hadn't been for these, obviously these guests, other guests going home and thinking about it. And they just felt bad about it from the word go. Like, they thought there was something wrong. So I think police had kind of left it, let it be. And I guess the Thomases as well thought, you know, they're so far away, what had happened, she was a beginning diver. There was conversations about the currents that Gabe started feeding in fairly early on.

• 43:36Gemma Bath?

  To the media.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  To the media. So that was another sudden thing that he talked about. And this strange thing, like an earache that he had, and there was no evidence that he had sore ears. So there was suddenly this other stuff coming in at one point. But the currents, I guess from their perspective, from the Thomases, they knew how scared she was probably about diving. They knew it was an ocean dive that was said to be dangerous, which, you know, there had been information that the currents could get extremely strong. But there was a lot of evidence that the spoils board staff checked all of that before she went in. But it certainly wasn't a day where you're just swimming along like in a swimming pool. So I think for all of those reasons, the Thomases believed that,

• 44:22Speaker 02

  you know, their daughter had died in tragic circumstances. So but then I think when that, these questions were asked and this, one of the guests rang Tommy, I think things started changing and that he started recalling all of these other things that were happening.

• 44:40Gemma Bath?

  Four years after Tina's death, so we're talking 2007, there was an inquest held in Townsville around the circumstances of how she died. Why did it take that long? And why wouldn't the next steps for police in Australia be something like arresting Gabe, going down that route of suspicion?

• 45:04Speaker 02

  Yes, because that's four years.

• 45:06Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  After the whole event, which was October 2003. I think, to be honest, it's, the initial police investigation was just expecting, which is not how police should operate. And I'm not saying they didn't do a good job, but I think, um, they just expected it to be, you know, a dive. There are a number of people, by the way, that do dive, um, snorkelling expeditions on boats. I mean, we run boats, we hear about it, it's not necessarily making the media. And most of those are natural causes, heart attacks, people. But it did take till 2007 and

• 45:46Speaker 02

  finally there was the inquest, as you said. And finally there was, the coroner pointed the finger at Gabe.

• 45:53Gemma Bath?

  There were 62 witnesses at that inquest. 12 points of concern for police. We've touched on a few of them, but I want to run through some of them just to kind of give listeners an idea. So we've got obviously the conflicting stories to different people. There was the apparent malfunction of the dive computer, the slow rate of ascent, given the emergency of Gabe coming to the surface and given it only took Wade, you know, 92 seconds or something like that, took him several minutes. And then Tina's heart condition was also a part of this inquest because obviously she'd had heart problems as a child and that was investigated as to whether it could have been a condition that caused her to die.

• 46:37Gemma Bath?

  What was found in terms of that?

• 46:39Speaker 02

  That's right. So she had had that operation and she'd been given the all clear. And that was found not to have been the cause of death. Because a couple of things that the people said on spoils board were the only thing that could have happened and caused her to die was that there was no air when she was found, but Wade Singleton had found that there was air in the tank. They didn't know about her heart condition, the people on spoils board, but certainly the post-mortem said that that wasn't a cause of death.

• 47:13Gemma Bath?

  And they also found her with the regulator still in her mouth and it was all functioning?

• 47:20Speaker 02

  Yes, that's right. Everything, the only, as, it was interesting because these two experienced divers said that's the only reason for the cause of death.

• 47:30Gemma Bath?

  There's also this infamous photo, which we haven't mentioned yet. It's the most famous image from this case. And it has a diver in the kind of foreground, smiling at the camera. And in the background, you can see Tina.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:47Gemma Bath?

  And that photo actually was used in the inquest as well, wasn't it? What did it show?

• 47:53Speaker 02

  Well, that was chilling because the other honeymoon couple, he was so proud of his new camera and it had gone digital way, way back in those days, 2003. And he was photographing his wife, Dawn, I think her name was. And she was turning back to Wade Singleton to get an idea of how deep they were. So he took a photo of her and it wasn't until they were sitting on a sportsport, actually looking through the photographs, he was saying, oh, I didn't get really good ones, you know, I didn't realise how to focus. And then suddenly he came across this one of Dawn, it was one of the better photos. He said, what's that behind her? Is it coral? And then they realised it was actually Tina.

• 48:32Gemma Bath?

  And was there something about the fact that Gabe wasn't in that photo and that was used as evidence?

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Well, they actually had the photo of Wade Singleton, they could see his fins going down. So how quickly he reacted when he realised that, you know, that this was someone at the bottom and he had to get her up.

• 48:54Gemma Bath?

  That inquest came to an end kind of mid 2008 and it basically found that Gabe should be charged with murder. Was that a shocking thing to have happened in an inquest?

• 49:07Speaker 02

  It was shocking, given that not anyone had really looked at the facts in that way before. And also that it was four years after she died. But I think that what happened then, he ended up getting a sentence of manslaughter. Really upset the family because they said that there was definitely enough evidence. The more they were hearing, they flew to towns, well, they hired a lawyer, the more they were hearing about what went on, the more horrified they were.

• 49:37Gemma Bath?

  Gabe arrived in Australia, May 2009. He was arrested as soon as he got here. And then the next shock that kind of came to everyone was that he entered a plea when he turned up in court, not guilty to murder, but that he would plead guilty to manslaughter. And basically, he'd made a deal with the DPP. How did that even come about? Did he know before he got on that plane that if he came, he could just plead guilty to manslaughter, get not the murder charge?

• 50:12Speaker 02

  It's like a plea deal. And I think plea bargaining, the prosecutors said that they basically had looked at all of the evidence. There's still not the evidence that he actually caused her death, which was the problem they faced with the murder charge. And as you said, the initial investigation hadn't uncovered anything untoward and there was a number of years went by before this all ended up in court.

• 50:38Gemma Bath?

  He agreed to a manslaughter charge, which was a sentence of four and a half years, but initially that was, most of it was suspended. So it was about a year in prison. And what was the reaction to that? Not just from Tina's family, but from investigators, from the internet? How did everyone react?

• 51:00Speaker 02

  Well, I suppose the fact that, well, the parents and the family were just really upset, as you can imagine, that he was basically found guilty of being a bad dive buddy. But then he was extradited, as you know, to Alabama.

• 51:22Gemma Bath?

  Because they basically wanted to pursue murder charges again, didn't they?

• 51:26Speaker 02

  That's right, they did. So, but the issue then was, could Australia give somebody up to be extradited if they faced the death sentence, which is what in Alabama, they still have capital punishment, as you probably know. So they were in a very difficult position to give him up. But they ended up getting assurance that he wouldn't be put to death if he was found guilty in America.

• 51:54Gemma Bath?

  That didn't end up happening, did it? The case in America was abandoned.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  That's right. Halfway through the evidence, the judge came in and dismissed the jury and said, there's not enough evidence, I find, to find him guilty. And he walked free. And in Alabama, they don't have a right to appeal. So the parents could do absolutely nothing to revisit the case, get another judge on the case. So it was almost like at every turn between the body of the daughter being exhumed, this terrible set of events unfolding about how she died, the culpability of her husband,

• 52:42Speaker 02

  who had been found guilty of manslaughter, at least in Australia. There was really nothing else that they could do.

• 52:54Gemma Bath?

  Because the only extra kind of rope they got was, instead of a year in prison, they appealed and managed to get a year and a half. So a year and a half in prison was what Gabe Watson kind of served. And then he went home to America and he had a new wife. Do we know what he's doing? Have we heard anything in the last few years?

• 53:15Speaker 02

  I've got an alert on his name, but there was certainly evidence that the new wife was very much a lookalike for Tina, which was quite chilling. So I don't suppose he's been up to anything particularly bad because I think we would have heard about it in the media. But yes, I mean, I fail to see after writing this book and spending all this time and going to America and doing all the interviews, I just cannot understand why women would stay with someone that all your friends and all your family are saying, this isn't right, he's not the right person for you, you know, throwing a pizza at your face in the middle

• 54:00Speaker 02

  of a restaurant. Now, again, I do hasten to say, he is a free man and he's been found not guilty. But at the time we were writing the book, certainly that wasn't the case.

• 54:13Gemma Bath?

  Do you think that that goes to the heart of why this case has been so popular in the media? You know, you and your co-author had completely differing views here. And I feel like that is what was happening on a world kind of stage, where people were just obsessed with going over the details and being against each other and in Gabe's corner, not in Gabe's corner. And that's why it kind of captured everyone?

• 54:42Speaker 02

  I think very much so. And I think this is often the case in murder cases, that to actually prove, you know, I saw him hold up a knife and stab someone in the back, that is not the case in rape cases, you know, her version versus his version. I think ultimately, even, and he's walking free now. So yes, it does fuel that whole idea. I think there were people that adamantly, she was absolutely adamant that he hadn't done it. And yet we'd done the same interviews, we'd doorknocked Gabe's place where he lived, we'd spoken to people at the dive instructor, we'd, you know, interviewed all these people.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  So she was exposed to the same information I was. We're both journalists. So I think that says everything that at the end of the day, yeah, we probably did reflect that ambivalence about, or the, you know, the disagreements that, did he do it or didn't he?

• 55:46Gemma Bath?

  Thanks to Lindsay and Jennifer helping us to tell this story. True Crime Conversations is hosted and produced by me, Gemma Bass, and Tali Blackman, with audio design by Jacob Brown. Thanks so much for listening. Claire Murphy will be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.

• 56:04Speaker 03

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