Roger Childs: Scott Watson at the Supreme Court

In December 2023 … police decided to go back to the hairs that had been collected from the tiger blanket 25 years previously and DNA test them in an effort to … link Watson to Hope or Smart.

 The following year the Institute of Environmental Science and Research began testing 30 hairs from the blanket. Results showed that none of the hairs contained any DNA from Hope or Smart. Mike Wilson, The Post, September 3 2025

Stitching up the suspect

The disappearance of Olivia Hope and Ben Smart in the Marlborough Sounds was the big story in late 1998. Now 28 years on, the case against Scott Watson has reached the highest Court in the land – the Supreme Court. 

Watson was the main suspect for the police from early on in the investigation, and he was subsequently tried and sentenced, for a crime he didn’t commit.

This is possibly the worst case of police duplicity in New Zealand history. Inspector Pope and his team:

 ~ twisted, and in some cases falsified, the evidence to fit their suspect

 ~ ignored possible leads and evidence linking a mystery man to the crime

 ~ harassed Watson family members and bugged their homes

 ~ pressured witnesses into changing their stories notably water-taxi driver Guy Wallace

 ~ manipulated the media.

In mid -June 2025 journalist Jonathan Harper re-examined the case and quoted two expert American psychologists who cast doubt on the eye-witness evidence used to convict Watson. (New Zealand Listener June 7-13 2025.)

Possibly the worst outcome of this case, is that the person(s) responsible for the abduction of the pair got away with it, and may well be living in Australia or beyond.

No substantive evidence

Scott Watson was not a “Mr Nice Guy” and at the time of the disappearance of the young couple already had a significant police record, mainly from his teenage years. However there were no sexual misdemeanours. He freely admits that he was a little shit when he was younger.

He was at Furneaux Lodge on the fateful night; had a single-masted sloop moored near the shore and was involved in some boorish behaviour during the New Year’s Party. 

He did leave early the following morning, but could not have had the young couple on board because they had been delivered by water taxi driver Guy Wallace to a two-masted ketch the night before. 

A large number of people testified that a “mystery man” with long hair was present at the party and that he climbed up onto his ketch along with the young couple.

 The police pressurized Guy Wallace to change his evidence, but the water taxi driver, and four other people in Wallace’s boat, were adamant that it was definitely a ketch that Ben Smart and Olivia Hope were delivered to. See below.

Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald leaning on water-taxi driver Guy Wallace

F. The mystery man you described to me … he doesn’t exist … Perhaps you haven’t been telling the truth Guy. I know what happened.

W. Well … do you want to know what I think? I think you guys can’t find them, you’re looking for a reason so you’re going to put it on me. 

F. Tell me the truth, I don’t want to have to talk to you again.

W.  You’re just trying to put words into my mouth, it might be police procedure mate but it sucks.

( Wallace committed suicide in 2021.)

A large ketch becomes a small sloop!

In the weeks that followed, there were over a hundred sightings of a two-masted ketch, in the Marlborough Sounds and the people who saw it passed on their evidence to the authorities. Some claim they actually saw the two young people on board.

 Many commented, as Guy Wallace did, about brass work around the portholes and a blue strip of paint along the outside. (Watson’s sloop had no portholes and was partly painted red at the time.)

But the police were seemingly not interested in any other lines of inquiry, as they were convinced they had their man. Their case was built on the young couple leaving the waters off Furneaux Lodge in Watson’s small one-masted sloop “Blade”, not on an inconvenient two-masted ketch.

The police constantly said they had no interest in the ketch and Inspector Pope claimed the two-masted vessel didn’t exist! 

This is equivalent to a hundred witnesses saying that someone was run over by a large four door BMW, and the authorities saying No, it was a two door Volkswagen.

The Crown case was based on very flimsy threads such as:

 ~  two hairs, that might have been Olivia’s, on a blanket on Watson’s boat. These were only discovered after the prosecution insisted on the forensic expert having a second look at the evidence. How could she fail the first time, to miss the two fair hairs among the black, which her eagle eyes would have searching for?

 ~ scratches on the hatch cover of Blade that were claimed to be Olivia’s work attempting to  escape. However, it was explained that the scratches went right to the edge of the cover which was inaccessible when closed. 

 ~ Watson repainting his boat early in 1998.

People watching the 2016 television docudrama on the case, who were not in New Zealand at the time of the trial or who had not studied it, would have been incredulous about the judgement.

Keith Hunter in his book Trial by Trickery – concluded that the case against Watson was not only unconvincing, but inexplicable.

No-one saw the couple getting on Watson’s boat, but a large number of people saw them get into the water taxi heading for the ketch, and five testified that the two young people actually climbed onto that boat with an unknown long-haired man. 

To have abducted the pair, Watson would have had to come back from his boat and entice Olivia and Ben off the ketch!

A miscarriage of justice

Scott Watson had been in trouble with the police many times in the 1980s and1990s, and seemed like an obvious suspect. However, on the basis of the evidence outlined above, he should have been quickly eliminated as the probable perpetrator of the crime.

However, the police were under a lot of pressure from the media and the public to come up with a culprit for the crime of abducting the two students. 

As Olivia’s father Gerald said: The police were out to get their man; we were out to get the man; everybody was focusing on the conviction and they did what it took to do it.  

This was a shocking case of providing the evidence to fit the suspect. Watson didn’t have a motive; the opportunity or the access to the young couple who were on a different boat at the time. 

Only one person knows for sure what happened to Olivia Hope and Ben Smart, and that is the mystery man who got away scot free.  

This story will not go away until a man who has been wrongfully imprisoned for more than 25 years is exonerated. Three judges deliberating on the case in the Court of Appeal in early 2026 compounded the injustice and in their judgement concluded that the jury got it right and that Watson had a fair trial. It is difficult to understand how they reached this conclusion.

Basically there was no solid evidence that Watson was the abductor: he had no motive, no access, no weapon, no bodies, no scratches and was on the wrong boat.

 Hopefully the Supreme Court will get it right and overturn what is possibly the worst case of criminal injustice in our history.

Roger Childs is a writer and freelance journalist. He is a former history and geography teacher, who wrote or co-authored 10 school textbooks.