Case #001 - Olivia Hope and Ben Smart

This is an RNZ podcast. (Music) And as far as we know, the last spin and review was seen was getting on to this yacht with this mystery man. (Music) Hi, I'm Jesse Mulligan, host of the Daily Afternoons program on RNZ. You're listening to Crimes NZ, a series where I talk with people who are connected in some way or another, with serious crimes that have happened here in New Zealand. In this episode, I talk with journalist Mike White, who's covered the case of Olivia Hope and Ben Smart, since they first went missing, and the Malbra sounds on New Year's Day 1998. I remember very clearly I was driving into work. I worked at the Malbra Express, a local newspaper in Blenem, as a reporter there, and I heard Gerald Hope speaking on National Radio about the disappearance of Olivia. And the way he was so forcefully speaking, it was clear that this wasn't, you know, just a run of the mill, misunderstanding or a youthful alope mentor, anything like that, that he knew Olivia so very well and knew that something serious had happened even at that stage. And so I was thrust into the case kind of as a reporter right from that moment. Before we get to the case against Scott Watson, what do we know for sure about what happened that night? Well, as background for those that don't know, Ferno Lodge in the Malbra sounds is a very popular place for New Year's parties, and about 1500, 2000 people converged on Ferno that evening. Oh wow, I've never realised that many. Yeah, most people arrived by boat, but it's not accessible by road. And it's a major, major party. So what we know for sure is that there were a lot of people, a lot of drunk people, sometimes during the night, Ben and Olivia met. And as far as we know, they were last seen when they were heading back to the boat that Olivia was meant to be staying on, that she'd arrived on called the Tamarack. When Ben and Olivia got back to the Tamarack, they found there was no room, a whole lot of other people were sleeping on it. So they were looking for somewhere else to sleep and wanting to go back to shore. When a water taxi arrived that was carrying Olivia's sister and another man, they got onto that water taxi, Olivia's sister, and the other man got out, got off. And Ben and Olivia were then on a water taxi with another couple, Hayden, Morrison, Sarah, Dyer, the water taxi driver, Guy Wallace, and a mystery man, we'll call him the mystery man. And the mystery man almost immediately offered them a place to stay on his yacht. And as far as we know, the last Ben and Olivia were seen was getting on to this yacht with this mystery man and have never been seen since. Now who saw the mystery man? Well, a number of people saw him potentially on shore. There was kind of a mystery man that was sitting at the bar. And the police suggestion was that this was the same man that was on the water taxi with Ben, Olivia, and that offered them a place to stay on his yacht. So the only people that we really have kind of first eyewitness identification of the mystery man, Guy Wallace, the water taxi driver, Sarah, Dyer, and Hayden, Morrison, the other couple who were being taken to another place, near Ferno Lodge on the water taxi. And Amelia, Hope, and Rick Goddard, who went from the shore of Ferno to the Tamarach yacht previously. Now we have to be really clear that most of those people, they weren't thinking that something sinister was about to happen. And they weren't checking the idea of this guy or really taking a lot of close notice. So when obviously the police went to these people and said, "What did you see? Who was this guy? What do you look like?" There was a lot of uncertainty. A lot of them, they were just really tired after a night of partying, wanting to go to bed, and were hunched down in the water taxi, not taking much notice of what happened. Guy Wallace, that name became quite famous and its own right, didn't it? He was the guy driving the water taxi. Yeah, obviously Guy Wallace was crucial because he was the water taxi driver who delivered Benel Livia and this mystery man to a yacht. And to be honest, Guy was probably one of the more sober people that was there that night. He worked at Ferno Lodge behind the bar and also running the water taxi. He would a taxi trip that night. So in many ways, you know, police obviously went to him and thought that he would be the most reliable witness. And he was. He immediately kind of gave what information he could. He suggested that it was a catch, a two-mastered yacht that he dropped Benel Livia off on, which was a wooden boat, kind of old-style with port holes and lots of ornate rope work around it. And he did say, you know, in his first statement catch question mark, but he became very clear in his own mind and publicly afterwards that was the boat that he dropped Benel Livia off to. And he was given a real grilling by the police and at one stage the police suggested that he might have even been involved in the disappearance of Benel Livia. And he generally has stuck to that story. Initially he didn't identify Scott Watson as the mystery man on the water taxi. But eventually he did after being shown a photo montage that people have been very critical of it, included a photo of Scott Watson that didn't really look like him as he appears normally. And it trial eventually he did say that it was likely that it was Scott Watson who was the mystery man. Now since then of course Guy Wallace has come out and reversed that opinion and said absolutely not that it wasn't Scott Watson who was on the boat that he thinks Scott Watson is 100% innocent. And so that's a crucial witness who has reversed his view on the case and reversed the evidence that he gave it trial. Can I jump out of this case for a moment and ask you Mike we've been talking a lot about memory this week on the show just by coincidence and does it give you cause to think hard about memory to think about what your brain does with a scene that you were involved in that you weren't taking particular notice of when you're asked about it over and over again when you're asked to describe it over and over again when people start criticizing you it's pretty crucial isn't it? Oh it's absolutely crucial but it's unfortunately human memories entirely fallible and there's any number of studies that show this and especially in a criminal context. People's memories can be perfect and can be right but so often they're not and so often over time they become influenced by other things that they might have heard and by what other people have said. And so they are notoriously unreliable unfortunately that's not to criticize anyone in this case because I think everyone has done their absolute best to remember what they saw but just sometimes you know they're wrong. So when did the police start looking at Scott Watson as a suspect? Really early on and this is one of the perhaps troubling aspects of the case when you think that there were 1500 odd people at Ferno Lodge that they had to talk to and get statements from plus an enormous amount of other witnesses. They singled in on Scott Watson really really really the local police in Marlborough handled the case in the first five or six days then it was a detector from Christchurch Rob Pope who many people will know his name came up to lead the investigation now within a few days Rob Pope had decided that Scott Watson was their most likely person or suspect. Rob Pope later told me that you know Scott Watson stuck out like dogs balls and he couldn't give me a real reason why that was other than that he had some kind of you know pet agree well Scott Watson had a bit of a criminal history when he was a younger man had virtually had only one conviction in the previous eight years before being a living witness. And so the police did hone in on him very quickly to the point where they pulled his boat from Scott Watson had had a boat called a yacht called blade that he built himself 26 foot steel boat and that's what Scott Watson had arrived at Ferno Lodge with on that night and left on and so the police on January the 12th 1998 pulled that boat from the water and took it away for forensic examination and that was the same day they hauled Scott Watson in. Essentially accused him of murdering Ben Nalivia so that was very early in the case when a you had hundreds more witnesses still to interview from Ferno Lodge but you had numerous reports coming in from around the country of of a catch because in the first week or so that's what everyone thought had happened guy Wallace said look he dropped the Ben Nalivia off on a catch and so the whole country was looking for this mystery catch and when the police pulled a much safer way to get out of the boat. Much smaller 26 foot single master boat from the water that didn't match the description of the catcher tall was a real surprise but Rob Pope was so confident that even at that stage he said it's almost certain that the catch doesn't exist which struck a lot of people as premature and very extraordinary and still does concern a lot of people who because they were a number of sightings of catches obviously and I can't tell you how many people over the years. Over the years have contacted me saying that they saw a catch or they saw something that really concerned them but the police just dismissed it told them they weren't looking for a catch anymore told them that or never got back to the people never took a statement from them so that is an area of concern about the investigation. Yeah and I guess it wouldn't surprise people to hear that sometimes once the police have decided who their man or woman is that they start getting a bit narrow in terms of their investigation I'm sure that's you know something that commonly happens but of course they had 4 million people watching them with this one because it was so incredibly high profile that have you. Had a chance to go back and look at media coverage at the time with what you know now I mean what strikes you about the coverage at the time. Yeah you're absolutely right Jesse the police were under enormous pressure you got to remember that this was a hugely high profile case at a time of the year new years when there's a pretty much a news drought. So all the countries media descended on Marlborough and you had Gerald Hope who's very eloquent and very available to the media particularly. Wanting to get this story out there continually so this story was the biggest thing for throughout January and the months afterwards and public countries and it's never stopped so the so the pressure on the police was enormous I think the media. And it's really easy to be wise on hindsight possibly accepted the police line too much and I'm as culpable as anyone in this given that I was a reporter at the time but I will say one thing that all our information was coming from the police and from from the families of the victims. The Watson family did not speak and I can understand why and they were advised not to but the media was only getting really one side of the story and we were being fed a lot of information on and off the record by the police. Quite a bit of it that turns out to be inaccurate but the silence from the Watson family allowed this void in which an image of Scott Watson was created and perpetuated that he was a bad bastard essentially and that he was his whole family were really bad almost gangsters it was it was a very concerted effort to kind of demonize Watson and his family into separate. From neighbors families friends and even Gerald Hope admits to the point you know where police were telling the Watson the hope family and the media that Scott Watson was involved in an incestuous relationship with the system and this is just horrible horrible you know absolutely untruthful stuff but this was what was being drip fed in a way to try and create an image of Scott Watson. Okay so when we look at what the evidence against Scott Watson we have these sort of eyewitness reports of him being the last man on that water taxi depending on who you listen to and and you know what version of their statement you look at and what other evidence is there. I look there were a lot of circumstantial things and you got to remember about this case that is a circumstantial case we've got no bodies we've got no weapon we've got no real crime scene we've got no eyewitnesses so the evidence presented against Scott Watson a lot of it might have seen peripheral on its own but it all went together to form a case against him I mean there were things like that there were two holes in the squabs on Scott Watson's yacht which police suggested had to be cut out to remove evidence that any of the victims might have bled on them etc there were supposed scratches on the hatch of Scott Watson's boat which were meant to suggest that Olivia was scrambling to get out from there something that has now been proven to be almost totally rubbish and even Gerald hope it accepts that it's rubbish. They said Scott Watson lied about his movements and as you the next morning because he left for no lodge quite early and went to Erie Bay which is an Tory channel and Scott wasn't supposed to see a arrive there about late morning midday and the police had no rubbish he went out to Tory to cook straight dump the bodies have been Olivia then came back to Erie Bay about five o'clock in the evening so they said he was lying. There were two jailhouse snitches that police produced at trial who said that Watson had meted his guilt and while he was on remand in prison that he'd whispered this through a peephole to people who he'd never met before but essentially the most powerful evidence by far were two hairs from Olivia that police said were found on a blanket on Scott Watson's yacht these two blonde hairs from Olivia were found several days or several weeks afterwards but there's so much controversy about these hairs and about how they were tested by ESR that there's a lot of doubt about them and a lot of people just don't feel that you can put the weight on them that the police and crown and the jury obviously did. Even Gerald Hope says the handling of them was sloppy that investigators stuffed up this evidence and that was so crucial and we lost a chance to find more conclusively whether Scott Watson was guilty or not by that. I just wanted to share with you a little fact that I heard at the time which was there was a repaint of the boat there was apparently a lot of cleaning in fact I don't know if I heard this in the media or unofficially that he had gone so far as to clean the outsides and insides of his cassette tape covers in the boat do you remember that but yeah absolutely and look it's amazing how little bits stick with you and little bits can be so persuasive to you about whether they're going to be in the water or not. I don't know if I can talk about whether this is normal and whether that makes the person guilty or not. Scott wasn't did repaint the top of his boat the cabin of his boat he said he'd always planned to do that had arranged with someone to get paint at Erie Bay where he went to after Ferner Lodge and but the police you know construed that as being trying to disguise as yacht. The cleaning was again something the police said he absolutely was meticulous about trying to remove evidence that Ben and Olivia had been on board his boat. Well the scientists that gave evidence that trial actually said only 30 to 50% of the hard surfaces in the boat had actually been cleaned down only I think about half of the cassettes have been cleaned. Scott wasn't arguing was he just come down the North Island in his yacht had been hit by some rough weather particularly around Wellington Harbor and coming across Cook's Straight and you know C spray had got into the cabin and he just wanted to clean it up. You have to remember that Scott wasn't lived on this boat this was his house and so he just said this is normal you know I cleaned up my boat and salt on a boat is just destructive to everything especially. You're stereo and you you put a cassette that's got salt spray in it into the stereo it's going to stuff it so he just said it was absolutely normal and to a large extent the evidence of the experts at trial suggested that it probably was just normal. I'm speaking with Mike White journalist who has covered this particular case that we're looking at for decades now it's the murders of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope. Mike White is an investigative journalist and an author and this is a new series we're starting today looking at some famous criminal cases in New Zealand so a bit of an indictment if you find two of the victims hairs on a blanket and the suspects boats but what's the problem with that or potential problems well. Well you're absolutely right I mean it was critical evidence if the arrow is here is an easy they were never on his boat well you have to think that he's lying but the hairs were recovered once the boat had been taken out of the water they were then all the hairs that were lifted off that blanket from Scott's Scotland's boat were sent to ESR. They were examined there about 400 hairs in this packet they were examined initially and the scientist who is examining them knew she was looking for hairs that might might have been Olivia's she knew that Olivia had blonde blonde here but in that first examination of the hairs she didn't find any hairs that matched Olivia's any long blonde hairs. Weeks later subsequently she examined the hairs again and I'm behold found a 15 centimeter and 25 centimeter hair that were blonde which were later shown to probably almost certainly be from Olivia or someone in her maternal line. The problem was that on the same day the scientist had been examining reference hairs hairs from Olivia's clothes that police had taken from her home as reference hairs and she'd examined them in the same lab on the same day and so there were accusations that it was possibly a contamination and this was aided by the discovery that the bag holding these hairs from the back. Here's from the blanket on what since boat had a one centimeter slit in it that couldn't be really explained nor had police counted the number of hairs that they took from Olivia's home as reference hairs so you couldn't say well there's none missing you know so it can't have been contamination. So there's all these problems about the testing of the hairs and how they were were found that have clouded that aspect which unfortunately as Gerald hopes is if we had more certainty about that we'd probably have certainty about the guilt or innocence of Scott Watson. Should say for a moment by the way it's a fascinating case and so many of us have spent years thinking about it and chatting about it but I just thought then when I thought of police going into Olivia's home and looking for hairs to use as evidence how heartbreaking that must have been for the family obviously heartbreaking for the family and we should just acknowledge too that there is a real tragedy at the center of this case. Any other evidence that is interesting either you know counting in favour of a conviction for Scott Watson or against it Mike the you've uncovered over the years well I mean a lot's changed since the trial and I think it's important to note that not only has guy Wallace crucial crown witness. Backtracked on his testimony and the evidence that he gave a trial and says it's not Scott Watson so is another crucial witness who was in the bar fair no lodge and who identified Scott Watson at the trial is this mystery man in the bar that's for Osmick Nellie. You've also had of the two secret witnesses the jailhouse snitches who it was so much secrecy and drama about them the court was clear and the windows were taped up when they gave evidence well one of them recanted subsequently and I've met the other one and to be honest I struggled to see how he was given credibility sufficient to put him on on the standard Scott Watson's trial and just the mere fact that jailhouse snitches are used in cases usually shows that the case is inherently weak and there's a lot of concern about the use. I think it's how the case has kind of progressed over the last 20 years is how they often do new evidence comes to light new things are brought up and I think a lot of good work has been done in this case to give greater context and understanding. But essentially the powers that they have been pre-storage that Scott Watson's guilty and have rejected all his appeals along the way. Getting some questions in from listeners I'm just going to sort of try and tip tie around the potentially defamatory ones lot of them referring to Scott Watson and what he might have been involved in in previous years where the police may have had a vendetta about him anything you can sort of safely speak to about that. No, no, no, you know, it's no secret that Scott Watson was a bit of trouble, should we say, as a kid, you know, he left school about 14 got into some serious, not serious trouble, no got into some trouble. Minus stuff, you know, smoking dope, stealing cars from about ages 15 to 18 but as I say in eight years before he was arrested for Ben the Lovia's murders, they don't even have one conviction. He only has one violence conviction for a fight outside of pub. It was easy to demonise him, can I put it that way. And it was sort of rough, surly, he didn't like authority, he had tats. So it was really easy to paint a picture that this could well have been the person that moved to Ben the Lovia. But maybe I should be more specific and say that, you know, I mean, because it's a two degrees of separation country, right? And I remember hearing rumors at the time that there was another unsolved murder that police had tried to pin on him and been able to, and this was some sort of payback. Yeah, well, this could be to do with people might be thinking of the Nancy Frey murder or disappearance up in Great Barrier. And again, people said that Watson had been up there and that he was fingered in that one, but the lead investor in that case confirmed that Watson had never been a suspect and he was never even questioned about it. So there's always in these cases, there's enormous amount of rumour and speculation, most of it's irrelevant or muddled or false. The stuff that sounds good travels, right? Oh, yeah, and it sticks. And for, as I say, for everyone, there's that one little bit of evidence is for them confirms one way or the other that this must be the guy or he must be innocent because for them, it strikes him as so extraordinary or so unlike the way they would act. So if you've got any questions that you want to ask or theories, send them in to one, oh, one is the text number. Is it true that Scott Watson has never produced the clothes he was wearing that night? Yeah, well, that's interesting, isn't it? Because the police claimed that Scott Watson, the clothes that he was wearing that night were never found. The suggestion being that he destroyed them. Scott Watson is adamant that those clothes, the jeans, the Levi jeans, I think what Levi should, Levi jeans and Contrary should, would have been on the boat. He said he would have, when he went back to pick them, they were washed it as parents place on land and they would have been back on the boat. So he's adamant that they were there and that police for whatever reason are saying that they weren't found. I mean, you have to remember that the police took his boat, literally pulled it out of the water, put it on a tray that took it to a hanger it near for space, near Blenem. And that was the last access that anyone other than the police had to it. And he also does point out that there were lots of similar denim shirts that were hanging up in wardrobes at his parents place, at his sister's place, that the police never showed any interest in. So he's kind of surprised that if they were so sure that there was a missing denim shirt, why they didn't take those as evidence. Any photographic evidence, particularly on this catch, sloop thing, any yachts that turn up in photos that might be useful. Any number of photos of catches, like I say, like a buck, for every time I've been sent a picture of a mystery catch. Yeah, look, we've got eyewitnesses who adamant they saw catches in the days after Ben and Olivia went missing. Some even saying that they saw a couple on board matching the description of Ben and Olivia. The police adamant that there was no catch, that people were mistaken, or that it was another boat that was there called the Alliance, which happened to have two masks. Whether there was a catch or not, I don't know if there's an awful lot of evidence, or a lot of people who have come forward adamant about that. But in some ways, it's after 20 years, if we haven't found it Jesse, I don't know if we're ever going to find certainty about that. Someone's asked me about satellite photos, any chance of tracking boats, movements using satellite photos. Yeah, we have to remember it was 1998, really '98, and I think some work was done on that by the police, but you have to assume that if anything was available, it would have formed part of the police case. So where are you at with this mic? Sorry to ask, but I have to, do you think that he did it? Oh, look, I've spent more than 20 years sort of looking at this case, and I've changed my view an awful lot on this case Jesse. I'll just say that when Scott Watson was convicted, I was adamant that the police had got it right. We were very supportive of the police. We trusted them completely and when Scott Watson's verdict was handed down, I remember with some embarrassment, fist pumping in the lounge at my home in Picton. And over the years though, I've looked more at the case, I've heard different views, I've managed to speak to the Watson family, and I've become increasingly unsettled about the conviction of Scott Watson. I'm not ever going to be in a position to say he's innocent or guilty, he did it or he didn't, I wasn't there. I don't know. All you can go on is the evidence and if the standard of conviction in New Zealand for guilt is beyond reasonable doubt, I struggle to get beyond reasonable doubt that Scott Watson can be proven to be guilty in this case. That's not to say that there isn't other evidence out there that we don't know, and there are many people that have a different view on this obviously. He's exhausted as appeals, right? Well, yes and no, he's been through the traditional process of court of appeal and he went to the Privy Council and didn't get a hearing there. His first application for what they call the Royal Prorogative of Mercy, where the Ministry of Justice essentially looks at the case. That was rejected after four years, but he has another application on the go at the moment for a Royal Prorogative of Mercy. And for about two years, the Ministry of Justice pointed a retired High Court Judge Graham Pancus to look at it and he's doing that at the moment and as I understand, he will report back about this application sometime this year. And say, look, there are no grounds for another appeal or he can suggest that the case gets referred back to the Court of Appeal for further consideration. So we're waiting here what he has to say about that. Where are those bodies? Who would know? And I think that's one of the most tragic things about this case is that the families of Ben Lvivia have never known that. And if there's one overriding frustration about all the effort that's been put into this case over 22 years is that we don't know where Ben Lvivia are or truly what did happen to them. You've been listening to Crimes NZ with me, Jesse Mulligan, and you can find more episodes of this series on the RNZ podcast page on Apple, on Spotify or wherever you catch your favourite podcasts. And if you like this series, you might also like Gone Fishing. You can find that one along with all our other great podcasts.