Kneeling before a freshly dug, unmarked grave at Southern Heritage Cemetery in Birmingham, Alabama, is a tall, thickset young man with dark hair and an oval, expressionless face. He is reading the card on a bunch of flowers. He gets up, goes to his car and removes a pair of bolt-cutters. With the efficiency of a seasoned handyman, he cuts through the wire bicycle lock binding the flowers to a stake in the ground. He tosses the flowers away, dumps the severed wire in a rubbish bin, strolls to his car and drives off. The grave is that of Christina Watson Tina to her friends and family who died, aged 26, on her honeymoon. The man destroying the flowers laid there by her father is 31-year old David Gabriel Watson Gabe Tina's husband of 11 days. Until police caught him on a hidden camera, Gabe denied it was he who, for almost a year, had been destroying his dead wife's flowers. Tina Watson (nιe Thomas) died on the morning of October 22, 2003, while diving on the Great Barrier Reef off Townsville, North Queensland. The story of her death and her husband's ghoulish behaviour in the aftermath has mystified and shocked all who have heard it. Did she drown in an accident or was it murder? Why, as she slipped away to the sea bed, her arms outstretched and her panic-stricken eyes bulging in her dive mask, did her husband, a qualified rescue diver, not try to save her? Why did he turn away and slowly ascend before sounding the alarm? Why, two weeks before their honeymoon, had he demanded that his fiancιe increase her insurance and name him as a beneficiary? Yet, for almost five years, the Townsville police and Tina's parents have refused to believe Gabe's versions of events. Finally, glaring inconsistencies in his story helped compel the Queensland government, in November 2007, to launch an inquest into Tina's death. In June this year, the Townsville coroner David Glasgow returned his verdict: the court charged Gabe Watson with his wife's murder. It concluded that Gabe had held Tina under water, turned the valve off on her (air) cylinder, bear-hugged her until she suffocated, switched the (air) back on, and let her sink as he slowly surfaced to raise the alarm. A warrant has been issued for Gabe's arrest; this year the FBI searched his home. But his return to Australia on murder charges awaits a decision by the Queensland director of public prosecutions on whether to recommend his extradition. The whole process may take years. A question still festers in the minds of those involved: which of the 16 versions of Gabe's story of Tina's death is true or are they all lies? Tina and Gabe were engaged in April 2003 and married on October 11. Tina was 26, a petite blonde, 5ft 5in tall and weighing about 91/2 stone, with a pretty smile and an engaging sense of fun. Gabe is a man mountain, about 6ft 4in and weighing over 17 stone. He worked in the family packaging business. He met Tina at Alabama University, where she was studying communications (she went on to work at a department store, Parisian, in PR). Gabe arranged his university schedule around her classes. When he asked to date her, Tina initially reacted with disdain. "Tina told us of Gabe," said her father, Tommy Thomas. "She referred to him as a guy in some of her classes who was always trying to get her to go out with him. She said he was a little weird and that she'd never date him." But they did begin dating, and in November 2002 Gabe bought Tina an engagement ring. But, bizarrely, instead of giving it to her, he put it in a bag and placed it on top of the TV at his condominium, and told her if she looked, he would take it back. "I told her she should tell him to take the ring and shove it," said her father after her death. "Tina complained to us about Gabe on several occasions. She said that she let him get away with it because she loved him, and hoped one day he would ask her to marry him." Gabe's odd behaviour took a darker twist on Friday, September 26, 2003 a fortnight before their wedding when he asked Tina to increase her group life insurance to the maximum and name him as the sole beneficiary for her work insurance policy. Tommy recalls: "Gabe told her that if she wanted to see him on the weekends, she needed to take up hobbies such as diving. In my opinion, she didn't like swimming much. It's not that she couldn't swim, she just didn't like doing it." But Tina's lack of self-confidence and desire to please her fiancι made her agree to get her open-water scuba-diving licence. The day after their wedding a sumptuous affair at the Southside Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama ("Tina always wanted a princess wedding," said her father. "That's what we tried to give her"), they flew to Sydney to start their honeymoon, the highlight of which would be a two-day dive on the Great Barrier Reef. _____________________ The Yongala dive is one of the world's most beautiful and, in one sense, most tragic. The SS Yongala, dubbed the "Titanic of Townsville" in local history, was a 360ft steamship that sank during a cyclone on March 23, 1911, with the loss of all 121 passengers and crew on board. On October 21, the dive party international tourists and a crew of 12 boarded the Spoil Sport, a 30-metre purpose-built diving vessel. The Spoil Sport moored at the Yongala around 6am on October 22. Soon after, Wade Singleton, the diving instructor, gave a pre-dive briefing. Gabe and Tina arrived late. Gabe seemed in an upbeat mood and asked the dive team one by one what kind of marine life they hoped to see. Gabe and Tina rolled into the water, then surfaced moments later. Gabe claimed that he needed to return to the boat because he said his dive computer was faulty and was emitting a strange beeping sound. Gabe later told the police that the batteries were in back to front the first of many anomalies in his story: surely the dive computer wouldn't beep, or function at all, if the batteries were inserted the wrong way? One lawyer speculated that Gabe returned to the boat to distance himself and Tina from the main party. The couple then reboarded another dinghy, and soon reached the jump-off point. They entered the water well ahead of three other divers in the group. They descended to about 15 metres, then swam for about 10 metres over the wreck and were pushed along by the current. Soon Gabe and Tina found themselves in open water. Gabe claimed that the current had pushed them away from the wreck. "We floated out. She was on my left," Gabe told the police. "We were around 20ft from the rope before we realised the current was a lot stronger than we felt comfortable diving in. [Tina] motioned with her thumb back toward the anchor rope. She wasn't moving as quick as I was. I had her left hand in my right hand. I realised this is not a good situation, so I began swimming. At some point I noticed she was dropping down. I was horizontal she was almost vertical so I let go. "I grabbed my inflater hose I squeezed it [to inflate the buoyancy vest]." Gabe claims that he motioned to Tina to do the same: "She squeezed it whether she squeezed it hard enough or didn't squeeze the right thing, I don't know. She was still going down, and that's when
I won't say I panicked, but I mean, she was scared
that's when I realised that something was going on." Tina continued to sink. Gabe told the police that he swam down and grabbed her buoyancy vest. "I pulled her toward me and I turned and started swimming back toward the anchor rope. I could see people on the anchor line, so I headed toward them. At some point before we got there, her hand hit my mask, knocked it sideways so I had to let go
" In another version, he said he let his wife go because she was too heavy. He added: "I may have kicked with my fins to give myself a little space. When I cleared my mask I went to breathe but didn't have my regulator in. The thought went through my head that I had no air." Gabe then applied his emergency mouthpiece: "I had it in my mouth and I had my mask cleared. But at this point she was going down she had both her arms up reaching out to grab, looking at me. I upended myself headfirst and I remember going down. But she was out of arm's reach. She was maybe 5ft below me. I went down kicking to get her but she was going down just as fast. It still shocks me how clearly some of the thoughts were going through my head. I remember thinking, can I chase her down to the bottom, dump her weights, and get back to the top? They'd said the bottom was about 100ft. We were about 50ft." Gabe then decided to surface: "I realised I couldn't get to her. I rocketed to the top. I've never swum so fast." He expressed amazement that he didn't suffer the bends during his rapid ascent. In fact, he was at no risk. On the contrary, his dive computer recorded a very gradual ascent. On surfacing, Gabe said: "I yanked my mask off and started yelling, 'Tina's gone down! I need help.' " The first boat he saw was a new arrival: the Jazz II. "I remember seeing the boat and yelling, 'Tina's gone down, Tina's gone down!' " He then climbed out of the water and returned to the Spoil Sport. The diving instructor Wade Singleton was with other divers in the water when he noticed a limp shape on the sea bed. He swam down and gathered Tina in his arms. He swam swiftly to the surface at great personal risk. It took him, a slight man, burdened by the weight of Tina's body and equipment, just one minute and 30 seconds to ascend faster than Gabe's ascent from half that depth. _____________________ Tina's body was hauled aboard the Jazz II, where divers with medical experience attempted to resuscitate her. They tried for 30 minutes before she was pronounced dead. Another diver, Dr Stanley Stutz, saw something Gabe had failed to mention. Stutz told Sergeant Gary Campbell, the Townsville detective in charge of the investigation: "A male diver coming in horizontally on top of a female diver [whom he later identified as Tina]." Stutz watched the male diver "place his hands under the arms of a female diver and do something to the rear of the woman". Stutz watched the two divers separate. Tina began "descending in an uncontrolled manner". The male diver started "ascending towards the surface" while Tina continued to "descend into darkness". Stutz then saw the terrified young woman struggling to breathe. "The look on her face was awful. I had the belief she knew she was in danger; her eyes were wide open," he said. Stutz said he saw Watson, a heavily built former gridiron player, lock her in a bear-hug for about 10 seconds before she sank into the ocean's depths with her arms outstretched like "Jesus on a cross". A police re-enactment later showed how easy it would have been for a man of Gabe's size and diving experience to cut off Tina's oxygen and crush the life out of her. | | On the boat back to Townsville, Gabe was described as, by turns, distraught, lonely, insensitive, manipulative and meretricious. Perhaps this is understandable in such a situation. But the better divers, Ken Snyder and Doug Milsap, simply thought him a crude liar. Back in Townsville, Snyder's wife, Paula, who was also on the dive, urged Gabe to call his parents. He said: "I don't want to wake them up." Snyder later heard him on the phone: "He said, 'Hello, Dad,' and told them Tina was gone, that they'd been on a dive and she didn't come back." That night, Gabe checked out of the couple's expensive Townsville hotel he later told his mother he "couldn't stand being in the honeymoon suite" and moved to the Holiday Inn. Craig Stephen, the operations manager for Mike Ball Dive Expeditions, the company behind the trip, travelled from Cairns that evening and met Gabe at midnight: "I ended up spending the night with him just to be there for moral support." Gabe said he felt guilty about pushing Tina to dive. Stephen recalled he was "definitely calm and not over-emotional". Tina's father, Tommy, heard the news at 8.36am on October 22, while on business in Tallahassee, Florida. The messenger was Gabe's father, David. Tommy recalls: "He said, 'Tommy, are you still at the hotel or the office?' I said, 'I'm at the office.' He said, 'Are you alone or are people around?' I said, 'Well, there's people around but I can talk.' He said, 'I don't know any other way to say this, but there's been an accident and Tina drowned
Here's my preacher.' And he handed over the phone. "I went to my knees. The only part of the conversation with [the] pastor I remember was saying could he try to keep it quiet until I could get home to my wife and my younger daughter. I wanted to be the one to tell them." Tommy was about to board a plane home to Alabama when his mobile rang. It was his daughter, Alanda. "She said, 'Daddy, what happened to Tina?' She was crying. I asked her how she found out. She said she'd got to work she worked at Parisian with Tina and everybody there knew but her." Gabe's mother, Glenda, had known of Tina's death all day that night she boarded a flight to Australia. Yet the Watsons had failed to return the calls from their late daughter-in-law's father. In despair at not knowing what had happened, Tommy tried the American consulate, which merely confirmed that Tina had drowned. At 18.30, Gabe called Tina's family. "Alanda and Cindy [Tina's mother] and I were all at the house," Tommy said, "all on different extensions. The first thing Cindy did was ask him if he was all right. He assured her that he was, you know, under the circumstances. Then Cindy asked Gabe what happened. Gabe replied, 'Do you want to know what happened?' She said, 'Yes, we need to know.' He repeated it, 'You want to know exactly what happened?' That's when I came on the phone. I said, 'Gabe, Tina was our daughter. We need to know exactly what happened to her.' "When we got off the phone, I felt it was just a terrible accident," Tommy recalls. "Then I relayed what he told us to some friends. Alanda's friend Kelly said it didn't sound right. She said, 'I'm a diver and it doesn't make sense.' She called her dad, and it didn't make sense to him either." On October 27, Tommy and Cindy visited a local undertaker to arrange Tina's funeral. When they arrived at the funeral home they were told the Watsons had already made the arrangements. Tommy tried to call Gabe in Australia, but didn't know where to find him. "I thought I'd start with the Holiday Inn, and that's where he was. I let him know that we wanted to be a part of the funeral arrangements and were more than happy to pay for them." Gabe flew back to America on October 30, stopping in New Zealand en route, complaining of severe pressure in his ears. The local doctor found nothing wrong. Around this time Tommy began to feel deep unease about Gabe's story, which deepened at Tina's funeral on October 31. The funeral director and the manager called Tommy aside. Very apologetically they "told me they'd been instructed by the Watson family that if I said anything or did anything or anybody in my family said or did anything that would in any way be against Gabe, we were to be removed from the funeral. I was totally shocked. It blew my mind that they told me that. I thought, 'If this was an accident, why would they tell me that?' " The week before Thanksgiving, Tommy received a visit from Ken Snyder, a man from Florida who had witnessed Tina's death. ("Ken had a daughter about the same age as Tina," explained Tommy.) Snyder flew to Alabama on a business trip and spent three hours with Tommy, who recalled: "He asked what I'd been told. I relayed the story Gabe told us. When I finished, he said that I could get that out of my head because that was not what happened." To their horror, the Thomases realised that Gabe had told them a litany of lies. The lie that most hurt was that he said he held Tina and called her name as divers tried to revive her. On the contrary, said Snyder, he was recovering on the Spoil Sport while Tina lay dying on the Jazz II. Two days before the funeral, Gabe's father demanded possession of Tina's Jeep and pestered Tommy for the rest of her belongings. Then came the insurance claim. Just weeks after the funeral, Gabe lodged a claim on the couple's life-insurance policy. He also lodged a larger compensation claim, in excess of $75,000, through the United States District Court in northern Alabama, for "mental anguish". Gabe later withdrew the insurance claims, on advice that they may incriminate him. _____________________ In November 2003, Tommy, Cindy and Alanda flew to Australia. They wanted to meet the people who had been with their daughter when she died and see the sights Tina had seen. The year 2004 was a dreadful one for the Thomases. Alanda found out by accident that Gabe tried to have Tina's remains exhumed in June. On a visit to the cemetery, she saw little orange flags around her sister's grave, indicating that the body was to be moved. They resisted the decision, but Alabama law states that a husband can bury his wife where he chooses. There followed a year of legal battles before a judge approved the exhumation, which took place on October 7, 2005, under the Watson family's instructions. Tina's father recalls: "[The gravediggers] took a backhoe and dug up the grave. They brought the vault up, loaded it on the back of a dump truck, and hauled it across the cemetery to a different location." "Of course, Mr Watson [Gabe] didn't show," an Alabama detective, Brad Flynn, said. "He sent his father. It was the most disrespectful thing I've witnessed in my life. They dug up the casket, drove it 150 yards, then put it back in the ground into a grave that, to this day, is still unmarked." A month later, on November 7, Flynn received the latest in a series of calls from Tommy, who for almost a year had been contacting the police to report the vandalism of Tina's grave. Flynn proposed that a surveillance camera be set up, approximately 100 yards from the grave. They were then able to "identify the male as Mr Gabe Watson. He broke the chain lock used to secure those flowers. He then pulled those flowers up, tossed the flowers onto the street, then immediately left the cemetery". Flynn and Tommy decided not to press charges, so as not to interfere with the investigation. Perhaps the Watson family, whose monstrous insensitivity has shocked the Thomas family, consider Gabe's behaviour acceptable? Tommy will never know. For almost five years he hasn't seen or heard from Gabe's parents. _____________________ Whether Gabe murdered Tina, or simply panicked and fled when she got into trouble, is a question that awaits his extradition and trial. That may take years. The coroner's findings and the long process of extradition are hardly a source of comfort to Tina's parents, who endure the tormenting reminders of their loss. "Tina made life fun for all of us," said Tommy. "Ever since we lost her, there's not been much fun in our life. I just try to go day by day. That's all you can do. I watched my wife go through some horrible things in the last five years. And I can't even begin to imagine how she feels most of the time. I've seen what it's done to Alanda, her sister. I never in my life imagined losing a child." Every week, Tommy visits his daughter's unmarked grave. To this day it is without a headstone the state law prohibits her family from laying one. "I go up and I talk to her," says Tommy. "And I tell her I miss her. And I tell her we're going to get to the truth." by PAUL HAM |
