Hope still in doubt over Watson claims
The father of a murdered teenager has finally met the man convicted of killing her in a behind-bars meeting years in the making.
Gerald Hope, the father of 17-year-old Olivia Hope, met with Scott Watson at Rolleston Prison for two three-hour sessions on November 8 and 9.
Hope has campaigned for close to a decade to confront the convicted murderer face-to-face about the events of New Year’s Day 1998, when his daughter disappeared.
‘‘He pitched to me that he was innocent, and I was not able to accept that he was based on some of his omissions,’’ Hope said. ‘‘There still remains considerable doubt as to whether what he says can be believed.’’
North & South journalist Mike White was present during both sessions, recording the men’s conversation for an article that was expected to be released next week.
Hope said he did not want to comment further until the public were able to see how the exchange played out in the article.
The meeting had faced numerous challenges from the Department of Corrections, which was served with a judicial review by Watson earlier this year to allow it to take place.
Corrections originally approved a meeting between Hope and Watson but would not allow White to be present in his capacity as a journalist, leading to the judicial review hearing in August.
The hearing, heard in the Christchurch High Court, was the first time Watson and Hope had been in the same room since 1999, when Watson was convicted of the murders of Ben Smart, 21, and Olivia Hope, and sentenced to a minimum non-parole period of 17 years.
It led to Corrections lifting its restriction on White, paving the way for the two November sessions.
Speaking in November, Hope said he had no expectations for the meeting, but stressed it would be the ‘‘first and only
"There still remains considerable doubt as to whether what [Scott Watson] says can be believed." Gerald Hope
time’’ the two men would talk about the night his daughter disappeared.
Hope and Smart disappeared in the early hours of 1998, following a New Year’s Eve party at Furneaux Lodge, in the Marlborough Sounds.
Last year, another judicial review lodged by Watson led to his first extensive behind-bars interview, in which the convicted murderer told his story to White and protested his innocence.
White said in July that his involvement with the case and connections to both parties made him the right person to sit in on the meeting.
‘‘Both Gerald and Scott Watson want me to be there and both support me being there as a journalist, to potentially write about it and record the meeting objectively,’’ he said.