Murder pays: Only 4.5 year sentence for wife's scuba diving death

[Liberal_in_LA]

remember this horrific story? There is a video showing his wife basically dying as he swims off

Alabama Man Jailed in Wife's Honeymoon Scuba Diving Death

Friday, June 05, 2009

BRISBANE, Australia — An American man has been sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail after pleading guilty in an Australian court to the manslaughter of his wife who drowned during a honeymoon scuba diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef.

Prosecutors sought a five-year prison sentence Friday for David Gabriel Watson of Birmingham, Alabama. His wife, Christina Mae Watson, drowned in 2003 as the couple dove off the tropical coast of Queensland state 11 days after their wedding. The coroner said a possible motive was her modest life insurance policy.

Coroner David Glasgow formally charged Watson with murder last June. Glasgow said it was likely Watson killed his wife by holding her underwater and turning off her air supply.

Watson's guilty plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter means he will not be tried on the charge of murder, to which he pleaded not guilty.

---------------------------

A fellow diver told an Australian coroner's inquest last year that he saw Watson engaged in an underwater "bear hug" with his petite wife, after which he headed to the surface while she sank to the ocean floor.

[Hannah Bell]

1. why would they give him such a light sentence, & why manslaughter?

[dorkulon]

5. Probably not enough evidence.

Took a plea deal rather than let him go scot free.

[Hannah Bell]

6. i thought there was a witness & video? not to mention the guilty plea.

[depakid]

7. Apparently the video was inconclusive

and while criminal matters are sub judice in Australia, media is very limited in what they can report.

The charge he plead guilty is rough;y equivalent to criminally negligent homicide:

Coroner David Glasgow alleged Watson had held his wife under water, turned the valve off on her air cylinder until she suffocated then switched the air back on and let her sink to the bottom of the ocean.

However in court today there was no reference to Tina's air being switched off.

Crown prosecutor Brendan Campbell told the court Mrs Watson "became distressed" while scuba diving and Watson's wrongdoing was that he did not help her when he had a duty of care as her "dive buddy."

Despite being an experienced diver with a search and rescue qualification, when Tina reached for her husband's oxygen mask he refused to help her and made no attempt to save her when she began to sink towards the sea bed.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/honeymoon-killer-to-serve-12-months-20090605-bxr7.html

Trust me, the Australians aren't happy about this- and he won't be doing easy time. In addition, Queensland no longer has double jeopardy for murder charges- so if he opens his mouth and gives up evidence, he can be put back on trial.

[dorkulon]

18. Well, the guilty plea was clearly dependent on the manslaughter charge

and a single witness who says he saw them "hugging" underwater isn't quite rock solid. The pics just show her on the floor underwater.

[Statistical]

19. I doubt he just came out and plead guilty he had counsel at that point.

It was more like:
Defense: "you will never make murder stick"
DA: "we will amend the charge to manslaughter then and go for 10 to 20"
Defense: "what if my client pleads guilty, and saves a trial. manslaughter minimum sentence"

As far as the witness? A single person from a distance underwater.
I was hugging my wife because I was trying to bring her to the surface. She had stopped breathing. I tried to give her my regulator but she didn't respond. I think she was unconscious. I panicked and forgot about removing her weight belt. When I realized I didn't have the strength to bring her to the surface.

Reasonable doubt?

[Hugin]

17. They probably want him to...

GO HOME!

[Mythsaje]

2. This may not be the worst thing I've ever read

but it's pretty fucking bad. :WTF:

[emilyg]

3. I just couldn't believe it.

[depakid]

4. Don't exactly see how "murder pays" here

But I surely do see the all too ugly American obsession with needing big pounds of flesh without knowing a whole lot about the facts of the matter.

I remember the case, and we thought it sounded dodgy at the time, though the evidence was far from conclusive.

[Blue_Tires]

29. well, imo

if the case against him was that dodgy, why plea it out?

and if getting out of a murder sentence with your youth and looks intact isn't 'paying off', then i don't know what is...he's getting out sooner than he would had he robbed a 7-11

[ejpoeta]

8. does he get to keep the insurance money? there has to be insurance money involved.

this just makes me sick. how much is a person's life worth. i understand the evidence and the probability of getting a conviction... but couldn't they have gotten a tougher deal?? people go to jail longer for drug offenses!

[Born_A_Truman]

20. She hadn't changed the beneficiary

He asked her to put him as beneficiary but after her death it was discovered she hadn't done it before the wedding and honeymoon trip. I think this case was on 48 Hours or Dateline. The picture showing her body gives me the chills.

[ejpoeta]

21. well at least there is that. if he asked her to change the beneficiary

then that really raises a red flag.

[Statistical]

23. He won't be able to keep the money. Not a cent.

Insurance policies have a clause that prevents payment if you are responsible for the insured act.

The policy likely is in escrow during the trial. As soon as he plead guilty he lost it.
Same thing with getting home insurance policy and then burning down your own home.

[Judi Lynn]

9. There was a program on one of the main tv channels on this strange death,

with a history of the couple's relationship, and interviews with family members and friends.

The guy is clearly a monstrous guy. Far too much truly unpleasant stuff happened during the courtship which should have alerted people long ago.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/i/pix/2008/06/20/article-1027942-01AE528E00000578-561_233x423.jpg
Here's a good article on this couple which contains a great deal covered by the tv program which ran on CBS or NBC:

Death In The Deep Blue

~snip~
Tina Thomas became engaged to Gabe Watson in April 2003. The fact that Gabe had bought her the ring in November 2002, placed it on his TV and tormented her with it for the months prior to their engagement is just one of many strange and unsettling things about the man. On September 26, 2003, Gabe asked Tina to increase her group life insurance to the maximum and change her sole beneficiary from her father to him. Her father encouraged her to drag her heels on this but Gabe assumed she’d done it. It is ominous that within two weeks of this assumption she was dead. On 11 October 2003, Tina had the wedding she’d longed for in Southside Baptist Church, Alabama. It was a marriage Tina’s parents, Tommy and Cindy Thomas, sister, Alana, and friends were a tad puzzled by. When Tina first met Gabe at Alabama University she considered him a “little weird”, according to Tommy (Paul Ham, Sunday Times magazine, 28 Sept., UK). However, when a relationship’s end left Tina sad, was Gabe able to endear himself to her? Her father thinks that the rebound nature of their getting together, and Tina’s fears of not getting married at a time when all her friends were, played a large part in her change of attitude towards Gabe (www.msnbc.com).

In the aftermath of Tina’s death, Gabe Watson was less than pleasant to Tina’s grieving parents and sister and her friends. He delayed telling Tina’s family of her death by 12 hours, would not allow them to arrange the funeral, made their attendance at Tina’s funeral conditional on not saying or doing anything against him, refused them access to any of Tina’s belongings, exhumed her body on October 7, 2005, and moved it to an unmarked grave, in the face of their legal battles to prevent him doing so, and destroyed flowers placed on Tina’s grave by her father. After Tina’s funeral, Gabe showed his friends a video with him saying to Tina “Smile at the camera, case you get eaten by a shark or something”; tasteless in the extreme under the circumstances. He also joked that for an extra $10 his wife could have had a million dollar life insurance policy (www.news.com). Within weeks of the funeral, Gabe lodged a claim on the couple’s life insurance policy and lodged a compensation claim for hundreds of thousands of dollars in punitive damage against Old Republic Insurance and Travelex, citing the ‘mental anguish’ of his loss (Sunday Times Magazine, 28 Sept.2008 and www.news.com). Gabe sent Amanda Phillips, Tina’s friend, a Christmas card just months after Tina’s death which had a picture of his and Tina’s wedding on the cover and which said inside, “Who’s that sexy guy standing next to Tina? Oh yeah, that’s me,” with a smiley face. Does that sound like a man grieving for the wife he abandoned to her fate? Does that sound like a man beating himself up for failing to do the right thing?

In March 2005, Gabe launched legal action in Alabama’s Jefferson County Circuit Court to recoup the cost of the doomed trip after the travel insurance company refused a payout. He was advised by his legal team not to pursue the claim and at this time announced that he would not be voluntarily “going back to Australia”.

In April, 2008, the FBI and two Queensland detectives raided Gabe Watson’s home, seizing his computer and other material (www.dailymail.co.uk). On 20 June 2008, David Glasgow, the Townsville coroner, found that there is enough evidence to extradite Gabe Watson from his home in Hoover, Alabama, America, to Australia to face a murder charge. For Tina’s family and Helena Police Department Sergeant Brad Flynn, lead US investigator in the case, this is the culmination of a long and arduous process over the nearly five years since Tina’s death. Tina’s father, Thomas, has repeatedly flown to Queensland over the years to ensure that the Townsville Police have kept the case hot.

More:
http://www.huliq.com/3270/69607/death-deep-blue

[Chemisse]

11. That article suggests she never made the switch to him as beneficiary

[bobburgster]

10. Hopefully no insurance money for him ;)

[Judi Lynn]

12. According to reports, he thought he had talked his bride into transferring

his name onto her life insurance, replacing her father as her beneficiary, and increasing the insurance to the maximum only a couple of weeks before she was killed.

She chose to discuss it with her father first since he was an expert on insurance, and he had convinced her to postpone it for a while, and simply pretend she had taken care of it until later. So what he assumed was that he was the benefificiary of a maximum payout insurance policy when the little woman "accidently" died.

This insurance information appears in my linked story immediately above your post, and also was given serious attention on a tv special program on the murder.

[Judi Lynn]

13. Damned sad photo. A tv program on this murder said she was scared to death

of diving, and forced herself to learn to do it so her boyfriend/husband would be appeased. Her diving instructor said she was truly terrified throughout the whole time she worked with him.

[lostnfound]

14. How sad that she felt such pressure to get married

that she ended up with such a lowlife as that.

[Liberal_in_LA]

25. I had the same thought.

[Blue_Tires]

28. +1

on a selfish note, i'm amused that this uber-creepy piece of shit could still land a woman (and will probably find another sooner or later) while i always sleep alone...

but on a serious note, if he comes back to the states, i hope this hounds him for the rest of his life, no matter what name changes or plastic surgery he gets...hopefully the victim's family never lets him rest and gives him at least half the grief that O.J. got....


edit: of course, i see in another story he's already remarried :argh:

[JVS]

15. Could you give a link?

I don't doubt the story but I'd like to see if there's more and know who's telling this.

[depakid]

16. Link to the Brisbane Times

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/honeymoon-kill-sentence-ludicrous-20090605-byb3.html

There's be more about the evidence in the coming weeks no doubt as the case has gone to disposition, and the Aussies as I noted above aren't happy about it. People will have some 'splaining to do.

[LostinVA]

22. Shockingly low sentence

[WI_DEM]

24. My guess is that they didn't have enough evidence to convict him of the more serious crime.

[TexasObserver]

26. Must have been real problems with evidence, because it's a heinous crime.

If the proof was there, it sounds like a life without parole case.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

27. 4.5 Years Suspended. Only 12 Months Behind Bars.

What a crock of shit sentence that is for such a scumbag.

[Blue_Tires]

30. ABC link

http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7692155&page=1