Death In The Deep Blue

Sheer panic at the realisation that air, the life-giver, can so easily become unavailable leaves one in no doubt of the fragility of life beneath the waves. Of course, during training the sensation is momentary; once you’ve indicated loss of air the instructor quickly turns the air back on and life is once more only an inhalation away.

Tina Watson, a 26 year old American, could not have imagined when she descended on a dive to the wreck ‘Yongala’, on the Great Barrier Reef in the Queensland Coral Sea off Townsville, Australia, on the morning of October 22nd 2003, she would never breathe fresh air again. Her motionless body was scooped from off the ocean floor 80ft below and taken to the surface but attempts to resuscitate her failed. An inquest into her death, and the ensuing police investigation, has gradually moved away from accidental death and towards the more sinister suspicion of murder. It is becoming ever more possible that Tina’s husband of 11 days, 31 year old David Gabriel Watson, Gabe, who was her diving buddy, turned off her air supply 45ft (15m) beneath the waves, held her in a bear hug till her gasps subsided into stillness and then let her sink through the inky depths to the ocean floor below whilst he calmly swam to the surface. Gabe Watson is now awaiting extradition to Australia on a murder charge.

A freeze frame of Tina Watson’s dying moments was inadvertently captured on a photo taken of another diver (www.news.com). From out of the deep, dark blues of the ocean depths the blurred but visible form of her body lying motionless on the ocean floor came as a grisly shock to the holiday-maker concerned when the photos were developed. The photo has been made available to police and has been crucial in flagging up certain of Gabe Watson’s falsifications concerning the sequence of events which lead to Tina’s death. Using the photo, police have ascertained that if Tina and Gabe had been about 30ft off the bow of the wreck when she sank, as Gabe claimed, her body would have been some 20ft from where the photo places it. This is just one of many inconsistencies alerting police to Gabe’s possible culpability.

A few days after Tina’s death, Gabe Watson gave a videotaped statement to the Townsville Police of what transpired that fateful day (www.msnbc.msn.com). He said that he and Tina only went down a few feet on their first descent, before he noticed that his dive computer was not working, making a beeping noise. On surfacing he discovered the dive computer’s battery had been inserted the wrong way round. He put it in correctly and they re-submerged. On their second descent, Gabe claims Tina began to panic at about 45ft, when they were about 20ft from the fixed descent rope. He blames the current, which he says was stronger than they had expected. Tina apparently motioned she wanted to go up. There were no other divers near them because of their delay in having to fix the dive computer. Gabe says they headed back towards the rope and at this point he was holding her hand. Tina then began to move into a vertical position, dragging on him, so he signalled to her to inflate her BCD but says she didn’t squeeze hard enough. He grabbed hold of her BCD and began to pull her to the rope. Then, claims Gabe, Tina knocked his mask off and he let her go so as to replace it. When next he saw her she was looking up at him as she sank, her arms stretched towards him. He followed her down but couldn’t catch up with her. He decided to abandon her and go to the surface for help. Gabe Watson says he risked getting the bends, a build up of nitrogen in the blood when a diver ascends from depth too quickly, in his rush to get help at the surface.

There are a numerous inconsistencies, in both details and tone, with this account of events. Gabe himself has changed his story 16 times. First of all, his problems with his dive computer are odd. Divers are taught to keep dive computers on between dives and it is likely there had been other dives before this one on the 10th day of their honeymoon. Also, inserting batteries incorrectly in such a vital piece of equipment seems at odds with Gabe’s experience. And if the computer was mal-functioning why was it beeping? It has been suggested that Gabe staged the problem with his dive computer so as to get Tina away from the stream of divers using the descent rope; less witnesses for what he intended, possibly. Secondly, if Tina did indeed panic on the 2nd descent it is strange she was content to passively let herself sink. According to Craig Cleckler, Tina’s instructor on her open water training course, Tina panicked during her training but had good self preservation skills, making immediately and swiftly for the surface. This does not sit easily with Gabe’s claim she panicked and more or less gave up. Having been in a similar position myself, I know that the driving force is to fight to get to the surface and survive and only an insurmountable obstacle would stop you. Next, an experienced rescue diver like Gabe would surely have been able to replace his mask with one hand, would have been able to reach Tina, would never have just abandoned a diving buddy, let alone his wife, in water with perfect visibility and would not have taken as long as his dive computer indicates he took to get to the surface. Tina’s body, as seen in the photo provided to police, was not where Gabe’s account would have placed it. If it was as difficult to reach the sinking Tina as her husband claims why was dive instructor, Wade Singleton, on an orientation dive with three others, able to spot her when she was on the ocean floor, at almost twice the depth she was when Gabe abandoned her, and scoop her up and get her to the surface in half the time it took Gabe to get to the surface. The only person who risked the bends to save Tina was Wade Singleton. Other divers on the dive disagree with Gabe’s claims that the current was too swift. And why, oh why, didn’t Gabe go over to the boat, the Jazz II, on which dive doctors attempted for 30 minutes to resuscitate his wife, unless he had something to fear? Experienced divers on the boat with Gabe and Tina, Ken Snyder and Doug Milsap, were sufficiently suspicious of the whole thing they took it upon themselves to contact Tina’s father, Tommy Thomas, to air their concerns.

A witness statement at the coronial inquest before coroner David Glasgow gave a very chilling alternative series of events. Dr. Stanley Kutz, an emergency doctor, who was on the dive boat Jazz II at the time of Tina’s death, was looking down into the water which had excellent visibility. He says he saw a male diver, later identified as Gabe, above and facing down onto a female diver, later identified as Tina, who was on her back facing upwards. He says the male diver’s arms were encircling the female diver, whose arms were hanging limply, and when the male diver let the female diver go she was motionless and began sinking (www.townsvillebulletin.com). The male diver made no attempt to go after the sinking diver. Former Queensland police diver, Senior Constable Joshua Kinghorn, and another police diver, Senior Constable Owen Law, re-enacted what Dr. Kutz saw in court. It became gruesomely clear that Gabe Watson may have been placing his arms around Tina so as to turn off the air supply valve on her scuba tank. Diving expert, Constable Ricky Murdoch, addressed the court with his concerns regarding Gabe’s account of his and Tina’s movements on the wreck dive. He questioned what he called Gabe’s “very conservative” 2 minutes and 30 seconds ascent to the surface from 45ft (15m); a safe civilian rate from that depth would have been 1 minute and 18 seconds so an experienced diver like Gabe, in an emergency situation, should have been significantly faster than he indeed was (www.towsvillebulletin.com). Why didn’t he dump her weights, inflate her BCD for her, do any of the things any scuba diver is trained to do to facilitate ascent in an emergency? Gabe was the more seasoned of the two divers, having taken courses beyond the open water certification to qualify him as a rescue diver.
Why did he make such a half-hearted attempt to use his rescue diving skills to rescue his own wife?

Tina’s sister, Alana Thomas, was surprised Tina took up scuba diving and believes Tina only really took up the sport to please Gabe and because Gabe insisted on their having a diving honeymoon (www.msnbc.msn.com). When Tina’s instructor during her open water course, Craig Cleckler, asked whether Tina really wanted to scuba dive she told him, “You don’t understand. I have to do this.” (www.msnbc.com). There is a world of difference between having to do something and wanting to do it and it is a difference too far in a dangerous sport like scuba diving. Tina struck Craig as a ‘nervous’ and ‘uptight’ student.

There is a reason instructors caution trainee divers to only dive if they themselves really want to do it. This cautionary concern is to avoid people succumbing to spousal or other pressure to dive. Scuba diving can be mentally and physically demanding and it is very easy to panic when you are submerged at pressure. There is nothing like the serenity and glory of being surrounded by the ocean and its inhabitants but there is also nothing like the horror when anything goes wrong with equipment or when the environment is hostile. When something does go wrong a diver relies on his or her buddy but what if it is the buddy who is hostile?

The Australian medical examiner who dealt with Tina’s death documented it as a drowning death but could not ascertain the cause. She was healthy, her equipment had been where it should be and was operating as it should. He could not in all conscience record a verdict of accidental death.

Gabe Watson tried to argue that there could have been something wrong with their dive equipment and questioned whether they should have been diving under the prevailing conditions that day but allegations that he filed papers against Mike Ball Dive Expeditions to sue for wrongful death have been denied by his lawyer, Bob Austin (www.cdnn.info).

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”. (http://simple.wikipedia.org).

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.

Gabe Watson has refused to comment. His lawyer, Bob Austin, said “We really don’t need to be making any comment other than we are disappointed in the finding.” (www.news.com.au/couriermail). A warrant has been issued for Gabe Watson’s arrest but his extradition is dependent on the Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions recommending it and this could take time. However, in the fight to get justice for Tina Watson further waiting will be little impediment.