Some of you will have wasted hours of your life watching Warwick Jenness and Mike Kalaugher’s supposed ‘expert’ MRG videos on the Watson case. Now I am going to save the rest of you hours by debunking them in less than five minutes.
The test of any good documentary is whether the producers have genuinely investigated all sides of the issue by addressing different claims and testing them before reaching a conclusion, or whether they have simply ‘cherrypicked’ bits favourable to their own point of view and avoided covering challenging evidence.
While the FSW try to accuse me of cherrypicking, anyone who reads Elementary will quickly see I embraced all of Keith Hunter’s arguments in favour of Watson’s innocence, then demolished them using evidence so people could see Hunter’s best point and then see mine.
I do this for two reasons – to help readers fully understand both sides of the debate, and also to protect myself legally by showing I had quoted them honestly and fairly before debunking and criticising.
That’s the reason I haven’t been sued over Elementary: because as usual I had the evidence to back up my claims and I had not misquoted or ‘cherrypicked’. Doing either of those things could have earned me a massive writ, so it would have been exceedingly stupid no matter how much Watson supporters accuse me of it.
This ability to embrace critical arguments and show where they are wrong is why my Elementary 2 book was able to destroy Hunter’s so-called ‘rebuttal’ of me on his website.
Hunter, Kalaugher and Jenness have to varying degrees researched and promoted the pompous-sounding ‘master mariners’ report into the mystery ketch by the Maritime Research Group (MRG), which erroneously concludes that Ben & Olivia accidentally boarded a ketch owned by international drug runners.
Warwick Jenness has very kindly posted a ‘timeline’ to all this in the photo below, and that timeline will enable me to blow the credibility of all three MRG videos out of the water.
Here’s why. Firstly the official timeline admits Watson was seen at Marine Head acting suspiciously at 9am on 1 January. Why is this admission important? Because Watson has always denied it! On Watson’s version of events he should have been close to Erie Bay in totally the opposite direction where he insists he arrived at 10am. So the Marine Head admission from Jenness is utterly an own goal because it proves Watson has lied.
Here’s what Mike White wrote in North & South a year ago:
A family later claimed they saw Blade near Marine Head at the entrance to Endeavour Inlet, with Watson acting strangely on board.
“They were adamant it was me. But it wasn’t me. Didn’t happen. That was one of the wake-up calls of the whole trial – to have someone saying, without a doubt, I was in this place. I was thinking, what the hell? Absolute garbage.”
I can’t imagine how comforted Watson will be to hear Jenness confirming he was seen at Marine Head.
But rather than concentrate on Watson’s lies, which are laid out in Elementary and the free video, let’s look at the honesty of the MRG timeline in regard to Ben & Olivia’s movements. Remember, the timeline is a ‘greatest hits’ compilation of their videos so if I can show you the timeline is a fraud it follows that you can’t trust the videos.
EMBARRASSMENT #1: A VAST CONSPIRACY OF KETCHES
If you thought the MRG was accusing just one mystery ketch of snatching Ben and Olivia, you are sadly wrong, they have invoked a fleet with more boats than the Royal New Zealand Navy. Look at the timeline.
On 1 Jan, B&O board ‘the’ mystery ketch. At 9.30am, MRG claim, this same ketch is seen at Snake Point heading south towards the Picton police station, rather than hightailing it out into Cook Strait. A “similar vessel” is seen anchoring for the evening further south at touristy Ruakaka Bay.
On 2 Jan, Eyvonne Walsh reported seeing a ketch-rigged “barge” off Resolution Point, with a blonde girl on the back. Could be any blonde girl (and was in fact Holly Pickering on the Alliance) but you will note MRG confidently states “Olivia identified”. Nowhere in the witness statements or court testimony will you find anyone positively identifying Olivia on board – none of the witnesses knew her. In my view Jenness is lying or totally incompetent (your call).
However, that afternoon says Jenness, the ketch is seen anchored at Forsyth Bay in Pelorus Sound.
Leave aside for the moment any of your skepticism that an international drug cartel would, a) kidnap two teenagers, b) parade them in open sight on the deck and c) embark on a grand tour of scenic hotspots rather than flee the area. No, MRG has more treats.
On 3 Jan a ketch is seen arriving at Mapua near Nelson “with Ben and Olivia on board”. Again, no one has actually “identified” anyone, but the ketch that was seen was not the “bargey..Chinese junk” that the Walshes saw, so clearly Ben and Olivia must have been transferred to a new mystery ketch.
According to MRG Ben and Olivia are “taken ashore” at Mapua, presumably for tea and scones, before magically getting back on this second ketch next morning and sailing out again.
That afternoon (4 Jan) a ketch is seen back at Pelorus Sound, but suddenly the missing couple are spotted sightseeing on a “runabout” (off the ketch again), but then they rendezvous with a third ketch which they are “rafted to”.
Confused? But wait! There’s more. On 5 Jan Ben and Olivia are back in a different runabout for more sightseeing in Pelorus Sound, and allegedly photographed on the back of a runabout at Mary’s Bay wharf in Pelorus Sound, apparently ready for transfer to a blue ketch acting suspiciously (the extra detail is not in the abbreviated timeline but Jenness recites it in part three of his video.
Jenness alleges Ben & Olivia had spent the night of 4 Jan on this blue ketch.
On 6 Jan, another witness says he was sailing to Nydia Bay when he saw a white ketch with Ben & Olivia on board and a mystery man with grey hair. This was says MRG dramatically, the last sighting of Ben & Olivia.
Did you count how many boats are now involved in the disappearance?
- The original ketch of Wallace’s with the bulbous stern (Wallace later admitted he made this up)
- The bargey Chinese junk seen by the Walshes on 2 Jan
- The non bargey ketch at Mapua
- Another ketch they “rafted to”
- The blue ketch at Mary’s Bay
- The white ketch at Nydia Bay
- The runabout.
Must have been some kind of super-duper international drugs cartel with the ability to commandeer six ketches and a runabout in the Marlborough Sounds alone at short notice on a public holiday. Imagine how many drug-running ketches this group must have had in the whole of New Zealand? It must run into the hundreds!
This is a conspiracy theory that makes Kennedy’s assassination from the grassy knoll look like child’s play. Mike Kalaugher, Warwick Jenness and the rest of the brains trust calling themselves the “Maritime Research Group” are not asking you to believe there was “a” mystery ketch: the are actually asking you to believe there were six of them!
If you believe that, you should be wearing a tinfoil hat. On this “vast ketch-wing conspiracy” story alone, you should now see that the MRG videos and report are devoid of all credibility.
Just in case you still harbour an urge to look at Warwick Jenness without feeling the need to laugh, let’s look a little deeper at his timeline:
EMBARRASSMENT #2: OLIVIA’S RADIO CALL FOR ‘HELP’
On 2 Jan, Jenness states definitively that Olivia called for help on VHF radio channel 64 between 3pm and 4pm.
First, no one identified “Olivia”, but you’ve already seen that facts are apparently not important to Kalaugher and Jenness. So let’s see what the evidence statements really say about the emergency radio call.
Boatie Len Hogarth told police:
“Over the New Year period I was staying down at Okiwi Bay with family. On the 2nd of January I was coming into the bay in my boat after being out. I have a marine radio set on my boat.
“It was between 4.15 and 4.30 pm on the 2nd that I heard a distress call come over on Channel 16 which is the emergency channel monitored by Wellington radio all the time.
“It was a woman’s voice and sounded very upset. She was breathing very heavily and said, “can someone help, help, help.”
“The operator at Wellington has then come on the air and asked the person who called to repeat the message but it was not repeated.”
Marine Radio has a 24/7 recording system. Police found the recording of the call. She didn’t say “help”:
“Tape for 2 January 1998 reviewed again between 1500 and 1700 hours. At exactly 1615 hours on 2 January 1998 a female voice can be heard saying, “Hello, hello”. She then proceeds to breathe deeply, ie, simulated sex. There is no doubt that the call was someone being stupid.
“Following the deep breathing the operator can be heard saying that it was an emergency channel only and not to be used for personal banter.
“1615 hrs Advised complainant of result. He said he actually wondered afterwards whether it was a hoax call and was not surprised at what had been said.
“Result:
“The call described has been traced to the 1615 call recorded at the Maritime Centre.
“There are no distress calls logged and the operator has listened to the tapes from 1500 to 1700 hours inclusive. The only call is the lady who made the simulated sex call.
“The informant is positive of the date, approximate time and the channel received. The call made at 1615 hours fits in with what he has said (as per job sheet from DRUMMOND) in that he thought the call was between 4.15 pm and 4.30 pm. He has obviously heard incorrectly what was actually said.”
So much for the #fakenews story about Olivia calling for help. And it was Channel 16, not 64.
Not content at getting it wrong about the radio call, conspiracy theorists MRG try to work in an emergency beacon alert.
EMBARRASSMENT #3: OLIVIA AND BEN SET OFF AN EPIRB
On 3 Jan, says Jenness, “Ben and Olivia activate emergency EPIRB in Pelorus Sound”.
It is true an EPIRB was activated 3 Jan, but the signal doesn’t reveal the names of the people setting it off unless they are the registered owners. Jenness doesn’t know “Ben and Olivia” set it off. He’s making stuff up – another blow to his MRG credibility.
But it gets worse. The beacon was traced. It didn’t come from Pelorus Sound. It came from ten nautical miles due south of Wellington…some 80km from Pelorus Sound. Again, Mike Kalaugher and Warwick Jenness and their MRG have either lied or displayed gross incompetence in my view, because the precise location of the beacon was triangulated by the National Rescue Centre which told police:
“Please find enclosed papers outlining the ELT incident, detected by both aircraft and the NZ Local User Terminal (NZLUT) in the Cook Strait area at 1040 hrs on 3 January 1997, nzdt. All times in the attached documents refer to UTC time.
‘The NZLUT is the satellite receiver at the National Rescue Co-ordination Centre that detects ELTs. An ELT, Electronic Locator Transmitter is the generic term for all distress beacons of which an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB), are those carried on vessels.
“For a first detection by a COSPAS-SARSAT satellite (they are all in polar orbit), the LUT supplies two positions as it is unable to determine accurately which side of its track the transmission originated from. A second pass resolves that ambiguity. However, in this detection in was confirmed as being in the 1617 position by overflying aircraft. The position was 41 31S 174 47E, approximately 10 nm south of Wellington Airport. A fixed wing aircraft, ZK-POD was launched from Wellington to “home-in” on the transmission, however, shortly after the aircraft became airborne the crew heard it stop abruptly as if switched off, the crew reported many vessels in the area. The search aircraft then returned to base. The source of the ELT was not determined, it could have originated from either an aircraft, vessel or have been a personal locator beacon (PLB). There were no further detections.
“There is no reason to suspect that this transmission represented a vessel in distress. Of the 648 ELT transmissions detected in the calendar year of 1997, only 26 were found to be real, i.e. 4%. The others were either inadvertent activations or the source was not determined, probably switched off before detection. This would appear to be one of those.”
So with an average of two accidental EPIRB incidents a day around NZ, the fact that one happened briefly on 3 Jan near Wellington (not Pelorus Sound) is nothing special. The fact that MRG tried to fake it into their story is special, however.
EMBARRASSMENT #4: OLIVIA CALLS TO FRIEND FOR HELP
In his timeline for 3 Jan, you will see Jenness has Ben and Olivia disembarking from one of the six ketches, at Mapua Wharf. He then writes (and says in his video), that Olivia calls out to a schoolfriend she recognises. This is the famous Veralynn story. It did not happen on 3 January at Mapua, it happened at Picton’s Federal Hotel at 2am on New Year’s morning. As a matter of fact, it didn’t happen at all.
Here’s how that rolled out:
First of all, look at how much the witness had been drinking, then look at how detailed her description of each person is:[12]
“I stopped drinking after I left the Federal Hotel. I had drunk about ½ a hip flask of gin at Donna’s sister’s house earlier in the night and only had about 6 Midoris at the Federal. Before I went to the Federal I was sick twice at Donna’s sister’s from the gin. It didn’t agree with me. I was also sick twice more at the Federal Hotel. I was drunk but I could still walk talk and remember everything.
“There were still lots of people around in the streets. I don’t know what direction they came from but when I was at the door of the Federal I saw Olivia Hope. I think they came from the main street. It was definitely Olivia Hope because I used to go to school with her. I don’t know if Olivia would remember my name because it was a while ago.
“I was a year ahead of her at school.
“Olivia was with another Caucasian male and three Maori guys and one Maori girl. Olivia had her glasses on and her hair was out. I don’t know what she was wearing but I am pretty sure she didn’t have jeans on.
“One Maori guy was in front of her, one Maori guy was behind her and one Maori guy was on the side of her so I couldn’t really see what she was wearing. The Caucasian guy was sort of at the back of the group. There was also the Maori girl that was at the back of the group.
“The Caucasian guy was about 20 yrs old. He had short and tidy hair. It was light brown in colour. It wasn’t shaven short but was just short and tidy. He was taller than Olivia. He was slim. He was wearing dress pants that looked white or tan and a dress shirt that was white but had a blue design through it. It buttoned up at the front, had a collar, a pocket, and long sleeves that buttoned up at the sleeve. I don’t know what sort of shoes he had on but I would say they would have been dress shoes.
“The Maori guy that was at the front of Olivia was just a little bit taller than Olivia but not as tall as the Caucasian guy. He looked quite big built and stocky. He wasn’t fat though. He would have been in his late 30’s. He had short black hair but not shaven. He had sunglasses on his head. They were black sharky looking glasses. He had jeans on and they were scruffy but I am not sure of the colour. He had on a black leather jacket. It looked heavy. I didn’t see what was under the jacket. I don’t remember what he had on his feet. I didn’t hear him say anything.
“The Maori guy at the side was not a Maori.
“Sorry there were only two Maori guys. One was at the front and the other was at the back. The Caucasian guy was at the side. There were two Maori guys and a Maori girl and Olivia and the Caucasian guy and another Caucasian guy.
“The Maori guy at the back appeared to be in all black. He had a leather jacket on. He had dark hair and I don’t think it was long. He looked about 28 yrs old or so. I think he might have had black jeans on but I am not sure. This guy was quite slim. I think he had a moustache. I couldn’t see any tattoos on him.
“The Maori girl was about in her 30’s. She was little in build and was slim. She had long black hair right down her back. It was in a pony tail. She was wearing a long trench coat that was sort of a dark browny colour.
“The trench coat had 2 pockets and buttoned up at the front. It was not buttoned up at the time. I am sure that she had a skirt and top on underneath. It was a dark skirt and was long. The top was dark too. It wasn’t a blouse and looked more like a t shirt.
“The guy that was off to the side of Olivia was a Caucasian guy. This guy was about in his late 20’s, he was slim and a bit taller than Olivia. His hair was short, scruffy and was brown. He was wearing blue jeans and a blue jeans [jersey?]. It looked like acrylic wool and had a pattern around it in a different colour like a dirty maroon colour. I don’t know what he was wearing on his feet. His clothes weren’t tidy looking at all.
“They were all going into the Federal Hotel and at that point I was sort of passing around the back of them.
“Olivia turned her head to look at me and said, “Can you help me”. These were her exact words.
“I kept walking and said back to her “I can’t help you”.
“As this conversation took place the Maori guy in front turned around to look and sort of pulled Olivia inside the pub.
“When Olivia asked for help, she wasn’t crying but looked sad and scared.”
“The Caucasian guy that was dressed nice I think looks like the photo of Ben Smart. I don’t know Ben Smart but after I seen his photo I realised that I think it was the nicely dressed younger Caucasian guy that I saw with Olivia. He had looked at me outside the pub but did not speak to me.
“When I last saw them, they were going through the doors into the bar. I don’t know if they definitely went inside or not but if they didn’t go inside they had to have gone back up towards the main street.
“Initially when Olivia had talked to me and asked for help, I heard the rough looking Caucasian guy talking to someone from the pub in the doorway. I heard a man’s voice from inside the pub say something like “what have you been doing”.
“The rough looking Caucasian guy said back “We’ve just come from the Sounds and we are off to the bay”. I thought that he said Tory Bay but I am not sure if it was or not.
“I also heard the guy inside the pub say “What are you going to do with them” and the rough Caucasian guy said, “I don’t know”.
An amazing level of detail from someone so tanked on alcohol that she had thrown up several times that night. The sighting has been seized upon by those arguing Ben and Olivia were spirited away by drug dealers. Let’s look at it further.
Firstly, the timing is bad. Wallace’s water taxi ride was 4am, so it was impossible for the pair to have been in Picton around the same time.
Secondly, it requires a posse of guards to have abandoned the yacht and presumably motored at speed to Picton, without Ben or Olivia making a squeak on the still-crowded streets of Picton – which again incidentally points to a time closer to 2am than 4am.
Then there’s the quality of the identification of Olivia. There’s no doubt she thought she saw Olivia, because her best friend Natasha remembers the conversation:[13]
“I know it was after midnight but I don’t know exactly what time it was when Veralynn came back over to me. At the time I think I was standing with Graeme and perhaps a couple of others, I can’t exactly say who though.
“Anyway, Veralynn came up to me and in the course of talking to me she said, “I caught up with Olivia Hope”. That was all she said.
“I wasn’t exactly interested and I didn’t want to appear too interested otherwise Veralynn would have just carried on jabbering away. I pretty much cut her off there and she went off talking to others again.
“The only thing that stayed in my mind as far as Veralyn mentioning the name Olivia Hope was that this person may have been a relative of some sort of Veralyn. They both had the same surname and there was a “V” in their first names.”
Natasha described Veralynn as trolleyed at the time:
“Veralynn was drunk and incoherent with it. The first I really knew of how drunk she was at Kelly’s was when she got up to go to the toilet. She walked into a coffee table that was right there in front of her.”
Veralynn had claimed to know Olivia, but look what she said in her next statement:[14]
“I do not know Ben Smart and have never met him. I only thought it was him because I have since seen his photo and this person looked similar.
“I only know Olivia because I think I have seen her at school. I think she was one year behind me at school but I can’t be sure.
“I have never been introduced to her and I don’t socialise in the same group of friends as her.
“I just had a vague idea of who Olivia was at school.”
She then told police she only “thought” it was Olivia, before giving more detail about her drinking that night:
“I had four Purple Goanas which is like an alcoholic soda. I then had a can of beer in the taxi and in Picton I bought a hip flask of gin at the bottle store just as you come into Picton. I only drank half of that. At the Federal I drank about six Midoris and lemonade and one Kahlua.
“I also smoked one joint during the night. I think I only had a couple of puffs of it.
“I have not told any lies in my previous statement but I do accept that I could have been mistaken about certain things such as times.”
Mistaken, she was. Graeme Wikaira, one of the people Veralynn was with and who Veralynn told police had seen Olivia said he didn’t, and they were all home by about 2am:[15]
“About 1.00-2.00am Natasha and I wanted to go home back to Blenheim. We found a taxi and just the two of us went back to Blenheim. Veralynn Hope did not mention anything to me about seeing a friend at all. She did not say anything on the New Year’s eve night or any time after.”
Regardless of what time it was, it’s clear the only ‘witness’ was heavily drunk and possibly stoned. For reasons that will become clear by the end of the book, it was not a credible sighting of Olivia Hope, given that Veralynn Hope was not even sure what she looked like.
Veralynn’s friends describe her as kindhearted. The best explanation is that her alcohol-befuddled brain has merged what she thought might have been a sighting of Olivia into the abduction narrative playing out all over the media. Another classic example of false memory syndrome.
Remember: Veralynn’s alleged sighting was definitely the night of New Year’s. It was not 3 January.
There’s another sighting at Mary’s Bay in neighbouring Pelorus Sound on 5 January that is raised, along with a long distance, blurry and grainy photo of a woman claimed to be Olivia Hope. The photo could be anyone, and the supporting sighting is so vague that it simply isn’t credible as evidence of Olivia. That means we have to apply logic:
If you had abducted two young people, and the alert had gone out nationwide along with photos on every TV channel and newspaper two days earlier on 3 January, and thousands of boaties, searchers, police and members of the public were on the lookout throughout the Sounds – would you then parade your captives on the back of an open runabout and six different ketches in broad daylight to public places like a wharf in the summer holidays? Seriously? If you believe that, you probably believe in leprechauns.
EMBARRASSMENT #5: THE BLUE KETCH AT MARY’S BAY IDENTIFIED
You will recall the photograph of a blue ketch beside a yellow runabout at Mary’s Bay. Warwick Jenness in his video accuses the blue ketch owners of holding Ben and Olivia prisoner on the night of 4 Jan, and says the boat was not supposed to be at Mary’s Bay that day – based on a police note recording the boat had moved from Mary’s Bay to Forsyth Bay on 4 Jan.
The point Jenness missed is that the ketch “Shoeless Joe”, regularly moves between Mary’s Bay, where the family live, to nearby Forsyth Bay where owner Jeffrey Le Cheminant worked at the salmon farm.
Le Cheminant and his wife were interviewed by police and ruled out, they had no involvement in Ben and Olivia’s disappearance. The Maritime Research Group’s Mary’s Bay story is a conspiracy theory built on an innocent sighting of a blue ketch at its home mooring, and grossly defamatory or Mr and Mrs Le Cheminant.
Although Jenness in his video says the witness who took the photo saw people running under the wharf to hide, and then the runabout carrying “Ben and Olivia” raced past the witnesses, his witness did not tell the police this back at the time. What he in fact said was:
“As we were going past Mary’s Bay I saw a blue ketch. I knew the Police were looking for a blue ketch so I decided to go into the bay for a closer look.
“I have taken a photo of this ketch, which is attached.
“The thing I found strange about the ketch was that the name was obstructed by the fenders put over the side. It appeared to me that they had been placed there deliberately.
“We got within about 500m. We saw people on the beach near the boat. There appeared to be about three or four people but we weren’t close enough to distinguish any detail about them.
“Because I knew the Police were looking for such a ketch I phoned *555 and gave them the exact position of where the ketch was. The call was made at 10.06am.
“The house and jetty seen on the photograph is called Homewood.
“We then left that Bay and went to Maude Island to do some fishing and then went round to Tennyson Inlet and stayed at Ngawhakawhiti Bay spending two nights there.
“We sailed back to Wellington on the Sunday night of the 11th of January and arrived back at about 2.30am on the 12th of January.”
Nowhere does he describe the yellow runabout carrying Ben and Olivia, this appears to be a later false memory. Sure, the runabout is in the photo, but it isn’t mentioned in the signed police statement. “We weren’t close enough to distinguish any detail about them” in his March 1998 police statement is vastly different from his claim today that they leapt in a fizz boat and sailed past them and he could see Ben and Olivia apparently with their hands tied behind their backs.
Fantasyland memory syndrome.
As for the fenders hanging suspiciously, a more recent photo shows them clearly:
EMBARRASSMENT #6: YELLOW RUNABOUT IDENTIFIED
Now here’s the clincher, the final proof that the Maritime Research Group deserve to be the laughing stock of all thinking New Zealanders: I have identified the yellow runabout.
I mentioned at the start the differences between professional and amateur investigations. And I did here what professionals do – I cross-checked the MRG’s claims by locating the residents of Mary’s Bay.
I located Marilyn and Jeff Le Cheminant now living in Picton. When I showed them a video of the MRG’s Warwick Jenness defaming them by alleging they had held Ben and Olivia captive on their blue ketch, Marilyn’s reaction was outrage:
“What a load of shit! How dare they say that?”
Jeff revealed he now works with Chris Watson: “I’ll be having words with him tomorrow, I can tell you!”
Not only that, but Jeff recognised the runabout: “That’s Bruce Farley’s boat! They had recently built a bach just up from the Homewood jetty at Mary’s Bay.”
Farley is not a kidnapper. He’s a devout Buddhist who has hosted visiting lama dignitaries. He owns the Sunrise Cleaning Company in Nelson which is where I tracked him down.
“I am 99.99% confident after seeing that picture,” he told me, “that that is indeed my boat.”
And the blonde woman on the back?
“Yes, that would be my wife.”
And with that, three entire MRG videos and its highly-publicised report and alleged photo of Olivia on the back of a runabout – crumble into dust. #Fakenews
CONCLUSION
So here we have an alleged “investigation” by the Maritime Research Group into the disappearance of Ben and Olivia which has been found to have major factual errors at the heart of its story. If Jenness and Kalaugher can’t get their facts right about the alleged movements of Ben and Olivia over the first six days of January, then how incompetent were they as they enlarged their inquiries to international ketches and alleged drug syndicates? If they can’t be trusted on the core story, how can you trust them on the rest of their conclusions?
Fifty-two “master mariners” (you and I would just call them ‘boaties’) may well have seen ketches, but those ketches are innocent and their owners are being defamed.
Ben and Olivia did not get passed between six different ketches. Respected Buddhist Bruce Farley’s runabout was not used to transport a kidnapped Ben and Olivia. The couple on the boat did not have their hands tied behind their backs, they were merely bracing themselves as the speedboat planed across the bay.
Olivia never called for help on marine radio – the actual tape recording of the call reveals it was the word “hello” and it was not Olivia.
No emergency beacon was set off in Pelorus Sound.
No one who wants their Facebook friends to take them seriously believes that an international drug cartel – capable of using more boats to abduct Ben and Olivia than the Navy has warships – would at the same time be stupid enough to parade their captives in plain sight in the middle of a major police manhunt for 1) a ketch, and 2) the missing pair.
If you want to do something positive for the memory of Ben and Olivia, share this post to help stop the spread of stupidity around the Watson case caused by Mike Kalaugher, Warwick Jenness and their good mate Keith Hunter via his book, doco and website.
In my view these three clowns are not only confusing New Zealanders with half-baked ‘research’, but they are also demeaning the dead.
Ben and Olivia deserve the truth, not fabrications designed to make their killer appear innocent.
As three psychologists (including Watson’s own choice) appear to agree, Scott Watson is at the extreme end of the psychopath spectrum.
UPDATE:
On Christmas Eve the Maritime Research Group published a three page “rebuttal” of this article. You can see their “rebuttal” get torn to shreds here
http://investigatemagazine.co.nz/19898/mrg-videos-on-scott-watson-case-turn-into-public-laughing-stock-as-major-errors-confirmed/?doing_wp_cron=1482741601.0839970111846923828125