The case that just won’t go away
Almost 20 years on, Guy Wallace still has moments when he racks his brain for details lost to time. Eugene Bingham and Paula Penfold report.
Ben Smart and Olivia Hope, two young friends, vanished in the early hours of New Year’s Day, 1998, never to be seen again. They’d been at a party on the shores of Furneaux Lodge in the Marlborough Sounds before searching for a bed for the night.
Water taxi driver Guy Wallace dropped them at a boat with a man. The police say – and a jury agreed – that that man, and therefore the pair’s killer, was Scott Watson.
From there the details get murky. Contradictions abound.
According to the Crown, it’s a closed case: The yacht Wallace dropped Smart, 21, and Hope, 17, off at belonged to Watson. A High Court trial, the Court of Appeal, and a legal team that reviewed an application for the Royal Prerogative of Mercy all agreed: Watson killed the pair.
Even though their bodies have never been found. Even though the physical evidence against Watson was limited and compromised. Even though the evidence of two jailhouse witnesses has been questioned. Even though the boat Wallace described dropping Smart and Hope at is nothing like Watson’s boat.
Now, Watson’s supporters are asking questions again – about the location of the boat the pair were dropped off at that fateful night.
From their home in Auckland, keen yachties Mike and Jenny Kalaugher were, like the rest of the country, transfixed by the case.
‘‘The picture of two young teenagers going missing from a New Year’s Eve party was disturbing,’’ says Mike Kalaugher.
But it was what happened next that really gripped them. On January 5, police from Christchurch arrived to take over the murder inquiry and soon afterwards attention turned to another boat. Watson’s singlemasted 26-foot (7.9m) yacht was seized on January 12.
That dramatic switch made Kalaugher sit up: ‘‘They’d been looking for a 40-foot wooden ketch with high freeboard and next it’s a 26-foot steel sloop with one mast. We thought ‘oh yes, that’s different’ and I hope they got that right, changing tracks like that.’’
So what had drawn police to Watson and his yacht, the Blade? A 2008 police report on the case notes simply it was ‘‘a combination of information and circumstances’’.
One of the factors was where Wallace described the location of the boat he had dropped Smart and Hope at.
After leaving Tamarack, Wallace put the track of the water taxi’s journey relatively close to the Furneaux Lodge jetty. It’s the path police went with, concluding that he had pulled up to the Blade.
Watson and the Blade left the bay in the early hours of the morning. In the days afterwards, there was evidence he had cleaned and painted the boat. Forensic examination of the Blade discovered scratch marks in the hatch. Later, two hairs said to belong to Hope were discovered on a blanket onboard.
Throw in evidence from two cellmates, who said Watson had confessed to them in June 1998, and it was case closed.
Watson remains in prison, a convicted double murderer.
Last year, in response to protests about Watson’s innocence, the police said they were unable to re-litigate aspects of the case in public. ‘‘Mr Watson’s conviction by a jury is based on consideration of all the evidence, not just individual pieces of the picture. This includes witness testimony corroborated by the facts,’’ they said.
Kalaugher is increasingly frustrated that a man he is certain is innocent, remains incarcerated.
‘‘There’s a fundamental error that happened in the early days of the police investigation that led to a wrong verdict. This case should never have got to trial. It’s a horror story. How come this guy’s still in prison after 19 bloody years?’’
This is why he wants to talk about his theory concerning the location of the boat with the mystery man.
‘‘The police made a huge reliance on an uncorroborated statement from one witness which has turned out to be incorrect, and they built the whole case on it,’’ Kalaugher says.
That witness is Wallace. ‘‘Guy Wallace made a simple error when he was describing to the police where the boat was.’’
Kalaugher has examined evidence of the crucial journey from the Tamarack to the drop-off location. He used the timings, directions and descriptions laid out in the statements, the angles and known locations of certain boats, and plotted on a chart each version of the trip.
Crucially, the location Kalaugher has plotted is where other witnesses say they saw the mystery ketch.
‘‘Guy Wallace made a simple error that any other person could just as easily have made.’’
Kalaugher knows that’s what Wallace thinks because he went to see him about it in 2001, and even filmed the conversation.
In it, Wallace says: ‘‘I got my, um, the runs that I did that night, I just got those mixed up. So yes I imagine the ketch would have been further out in the bay than what it actually has been estimated.’’
Keith Hunter’s 2006 book on the case, Trial by Trickery, examines how Wallace was always confused about the location of the boat, but how, despite that, police job sheets show detectives fixated on the area where the Blade was.
So where was this mystery boat and can Kalaugher be right? His theory is backed up by Barry Kirkwood, an experienced navigator and retired psychologist who has given expert evidence on memory and the psychology of how people orient themselves and move in spaces.
He reviewed the statements and sketches of the other witnesses on the water taxi and compared them with the known positions of certain objects.
One witness told police about how long it took to travel between the various points. Kirkwood calculated the speed of the water taxi as being about three knots, which was consistent with what Wallace said.
By using that speed and the time the witness said it took to get from the Tamarack to the mystery yacht (three and a half minutes) and then on to Doctor’s Jetty, where she and her partner were dropped at (two minutes), Kirkwood was able to draw arcs from the known points of the Tamarack and the jetty.
‘‘This case should never have gone to trial. It’s a horror story.’’
Watson investigator Mike Kalaugher
Where those arcs overlapped gave an area where the mystery yacht should be – and it was not where the Blade was.
Kirkwood also examined the sketch and statements of the other witness on the water taxi.
‘‘In summary, the positions for the unidentified yacht as given by [two witnesses] are consistent with each other. They exclude the yacht Blade and point to an area appreciably to the seaward of the yacht Blade,’’ wrote Kirkwood.
The location issue was skirted around during the trial, most notably when the defence asked a police officer on the case: ‘‘Did you ever consider that Mr Wallace might perhaps have been mistaken about the exact area that he had taken the missing couple to?’’
The officer replied: ‘‘Considered it, but it was corroborated by the witnesses that were with him.’’
Location was also dealt with during consideration of a failed Royal Prerogative of Mercy plea from Watson. Kristy McDonald, QC, who gave the Ministry of Justice advice on the 2008 application, pointed out that Wallace had not given ‘‘any evidence [at the trial] relating to the specific location of the boat, presumably because he was unable to give such evidence’’.
But neither McDonald nor the trial or appeal judges ever heard Kalaugher’s theory.
The only way he can think of it being considered is if there is a fresh application for the Royal Prerogative of Mercy.
So, does the justice system do enough to investigate potential miscarriages of justice? Kalaugher’s answer is clear: The system is letting people down.
‘‘New Zealand hasn’t really come to grips with the problem of wrongful convictions.’’