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Well, why not? At the end of the day, you can only get 1 year in Jail if you decided to kill your wife in a Scuba Diving Honeymoon. Gosh… because that’s what any NORMAL Killer will plan. mmm… let me get married with this wanna-be-scuba-chick and then let’s take her to a medium-difficulty wreck (where I can find a place to hide from the group)… and then in the middle of the dive (at 30 meters underwater) let’s kill her.
Creeeeepy. But the most creeeepy thing is that this crazy-m***-f**** only gets 1 year in Jail. After Tina Watson never returned from that scuba trip, and now, six years later, David Gabriel Watson (AKA: I’m a crazy , insane, killer) , who pleaded guilty to his wife’s manslaughter, has been sentenced to just a year in jail. (Yep, 1 year.. that means if he is lucky we will be free for the World Cup in South Africa in 2012!)
Tina Watson’s family is outraged by the light sentence. Her father, Tommy Thomas, said, “I’m sure that the entire Australian nation, as well as our country back home, shares in the shock at what we’ve just seen, because it’s a total injustice. … It’s ludicrous.”
Thomas told “Good Morning America” last week that he was certain Gabriel Watson had killed his daughter. “He had turned off her oxygen,” Thomas said. (To clarify you don’t turn off the oxygen, you turn off the Air – anyway)
Like the millions of viewers who saw media reports of the death, Thomas had seen the image of his daughter floating motionless in the water as captured by a tourist’s underwater camera. Watson is not in the picture. (Obviously not, the guy was already on the boat celebrating killing his wife). Amazing.
By all means, if our system isnt quite up to scratch, maybe send your criminals to other countries….
You haven’t read the court’s sentencing remarks, have you, because what the above blog lacks in information and facts it makes up for in self-righteous indignation and broad gneralisations that border on defamatory. He might have murdered her, but courts make decisions based on evidence, and in the absence of that evidence, he was convicted for swimming away, and in effect being criminally negligent.
I understand why you didnt put a name to this one.
For what it’s worth, the Queensland Attorney General is appealing the sentence.
Here’s an update, with much on the bizarre behaviour of the killer:
http://www.watoday.com.au/quee.....-cmeh.html
It is a strange one, as the A-G in effect initially sought 1 1/2 years minimum lock up time, defence suggested around 9 months i think, and he got 1 year, this is not a wild departure from the submissions made by both sides, it is the middle ground. One of the reasons he got the sentence he did was because he has been subjected to baseless allegations in the media for a long period of time, such as the article on this page.
Hole, this is the guy, that was caught by the FBI, destroy the grave yard of his wife…. the guy is crazy.
Are you a diver?
What kind of diver takes his wife to their 1st dive in open water , to the Yongala Wreck. Come on….
I am a diver and was sitting in court when the judgment was handed down (and i could write a pretty interesting story on that)- i have no ties to either side. Anecdotal evidence at least suggests that generally dive buddies are not particularly reliable at the best of times. Keep in mind that we are now jailing dive buddies.
Scuba Herald, all of this wonderful evidence of yours, namely that stealing flowers and being crazy or diving the Yongala as a first, is murder, in most courts of the world, has little probative value. Unless you come up with something better, ie legal and admissible, than you are just blowing hot air (in the right place i might add). Rodney King didnt have much luck with videotape of the offence, you reckon Gabe would have been convicted on videotape of a gravesite? The flowers may be evidence of issues he has with the parents, not the wife.
I am saying, he might have done it, he might not, but courts need good evidence and short of that, can’t convict beyond a reasonable doubt.
Well… for sure the court had little clue about diving.
You are grasping SH, the court indeed spent a significant amount of time hearing evidence on the ins and outs of scuba diving, and made numerous references to the ins and outs of the buddy system, and watson’s actions at the time. Have you read the sentencing submissions and the judgment?
http://www.news.com.au/courier.....97,00.html
You have questioned me as to whether I am a diver (inferring i must be ignorant), you have said that the court is ignorant (not that you were in there at any stage), the director of public prosecutions must have been mistaken not to prosecute him for murder and to suggest just 1 1.2 years in jail, so nobody knows quite as much as you – my question how much do you know about the law? Are you a lawyer?
This is a messed up story. Evidence or no evidence, I have a hard time siding with the guy. My wife and I dove for the first time in the ocean on our honeymoon. I think that there is a different bond under the water between dive buddies that are married. I cannot imagine ditching my wife under water. My wife and I are now dive masters. For someone with rescue diver certification, as this man had, it is a no brainer to pull your buddies weights, or inflate, or use yourself as a bouncy device if they are having issues or if they have passed out. If she was flailing around wildly, I could see getting out of the way until she calmed down or passed out. Even if you don’t buy the story that the guy was a prick according to her relatives (and of course they didn’t like the guy), certainly there are some thought provoking issues here worth an appeal. At first I worried, as perhaps hole worries, that this could have far reaching implications to blaming all dive buddies for all future deaths. Then I thought, here is a guy who has experience who brought his new wife with little experience on a dive that was perhaps beyond his own experience level (as he seemed to try to use as an excuse) and then he ditched his wife. Perhaps this is a good lesson to all of us that we need to get thrown in jail if we put ourselves in similar situations. He either let his arrogance kill his wife, he was a total chicken shit who crapped his pants and ditched his wife, or he killed his wife. Manslaughter in causing the death of someone through negligence. OK. So at a minimum he killed his wife through negligence. Hopefully the family of his wife sues the pants off of him and every dive organization in the world should revoke any certifications they issued him. SH, keep ranting. Hopefully the guy ends his life in jail through the appeal or has every penny taken from him in a civil case.
To hand down this decision, I would agree that the system, court and lawyers, had little clue about the real driving forces behind buddy diving. If they were both new, or they even if he had not had a rescue diver course, maybe I would feel a little different about the issue.
This is more screwed up silly “noise” from the Watson family. The Watson family are a bunch of “nut jobs” from America, that try to make a crime out of nothing. The girl was a snobbish crazy finatic that wanted to dive a wreck dive (as an amateur diver) and she ends up separated from her spouse, and the whole crazy “Tina Watson” family are acting like complete morons because they have no idea what it’s like to even Scuba Dive (yes it’s an EXTREME sport) in the open water, with strong currents.
I’m a Scuba Instructor with over 1,800+ dives, and there is no way I would have let a person like Tina go on that dive. That was complete stupidity on her part, and that was SUICIDE, not murder.
Stupid people, do stupid things. She killed herself, so let’s not cast blame on anyone else for not attempting suicide to save her.
Gabe should have never gotten a single day in Jail, and his only crime was getting married to some stupid and foolish woman, with crazy family. The Watson family are a bunch of nut jobs, who know absolutely nothing about scuba diving.
Would an amateur go sky diving without a parachute? Well only if you were Tina Watson. Then her parents would complain that it was everyone else’s fault (except for hers). Stupidity is no excuse, she dove well beyond her experience, and she should have NEVER been in those waters, or doing a wreck dive.
She was only a watson for 11 days I think you are referring to the Thomas family sounds like she went diving to appease gabe that aint suicide but maybe blind love, I am only a novice diver with less than 10 dives and I thought a higher level of certification was required for these dives. Really weird to end up on bottom of floor though, Ive has a couple of bad dives where I have got myself into trouble and panicked and basically went to surface but too quickly (no bends but did have a nose bleed on 1 occasion) and cant believe that instincts wouldnt take over and she didnt try to resurface even if only too quickly