Scott Watson on board the Mina Cornelia on New Year's Eve, 1997, in a photo from the court exhibits book.

Allegations that police swore misleading affidavits to gain warrants to bug convicted double murderer Scott Watson's yacht and telephones are being considered by the Police Complaints Authority.

The complaint, lodged by Auckland author Keith Hunter about the conduct of murder-investigation head Detective Inspector Rob Pope, is due to be answered shortly and could raise further questions about Watson's conviction for killing Ben Smart and Olivia Hope in the Marlborough Sounds 10 years ago.

Among those who have voiced growing doubts over the conviction of Watson are the father of Olivia Hope, two key police witnesses and a former detective on the investigation. MPs Rodney Hide and Nandor Tanczos have also called for an inquiry.

However, in keeping with police policy on closed cases, Pope, now a deputy commissioner, has repeatedly declined Herald on Sunday requests for interviews.
Hunter sent Pope a copy of his book Trial by Trickery with a letter in June, which was in turn forwarded to the PCA the following month.

Despite not reading it, Pope later said there was "nothing new" in the book.
The PCA then requested a copy of Hunter's two-hour documentary, Murder on the Blade, and the author laid a formal complaint with the authority in August.
Affidavits sworn by police, and obtained by Watson's father Chris under the Official Information Act, form the basis for part of that complaint.

The sworn affidavits asked the Wellington High Court for interception warrants to allow police to place listening devices on, or "bug", the telephone, home and yacht of Scott Watson.

In the four-weekly documents which started in February 1998, Detective Inspector Pope stated police believed Watson had murdered the missing pair for a number of reasons, including that he matched witness descriptions of the "mystery man" last seen with them on the water taxi.

"The water taxi driver, Guy Wallace, and passengers on the Naiad at approximately 4am on 1 January 1998, [Hayden] Morresey and [Sarah] Dyer, described a person of similar description to Scott Watson as being dropped off the water taxi in the company of Olivia Hope and Ben Smart near where Scott Watson's yacht was rafted," Pope stated in the February 18 affidavit.

But neither Wallace nor Morresey described a person similar to Watson at any time. Dyer had not given a description of the mystery man.

In a police interview recorded on January 4, 1998, Wallace said the man who got on board with Olivia and Ben was about 32 years old, with wavy brown hair and two days' facial hair growth, wearing a green Levi shirt.

Later, Wallace identified a drinker in the Furneaux Lodge as the man he took on the water-taxi with Ben and Olivia to the mystery yacht.

Furneaux Lodge bar manager Rozlynn McNeilly told police on January 8, that the "mystery man" drinking at the bar was someone in his mid-30s with two days' stubble, with scruffy hair "like he hadn't seen a hairdresser for a while".

Morresey, one of the passengers on the Naiad, described his fellow passenger as having straggly, shoulder length hair which, he said, needed a cut. Another affidavit, filed on July 28 to oppose bail for Watson, said police were in possession of photographic evidence suggesting that Watson was unshaven and had scruffy hair while at Furneaux Lodge. No such photograph was ever produced.

But a photograph of Watson, taken at 9.30pm on New Year's Eve on board a neighbouring boat, the Mina Cornelia, showed him with short and tidy hair and freshly shaven.

A spokesman for National Police Headquarters declined requests to speak to Deputy Commissioner Pope.

"Thank you very much for the kind offer to provide some balance and fairness to the story. We are aware there have been about four complaints on the case lodged with the PCA.

"We feel that it would also be inappropriate to comment before they have made public their findings."

Last month, Olivia Hope's father Gerald told the Herald on Sunday that he had serious doubts over Watson's double murder conviction.

"What we got was a conviction, but we never got the truth," Hope said. "Nothing ever was confirmed. It was all circumstantial; there was no hard evidence. And that's where my greatest doubts lie. I'm not saying [Scott Watson] is not guilty. What I'm saying is let's clear up the doubt."

Two other police witnesses - Wallace and McNeilly - have also retracted their key evidence identifying Watson as the "mystery man" in the bar.

Last week, former detective Michael Chappell, who worked on the case, said he was ashamed to have been part of the police investigation - and believed Watson was innocent.

 

Editorial: Police cannot ignore concerns about conduct of murder case

The end of the month will mark 10 years since Ben Smart and Olivia Hope were last seen alive at Endeavour Inlet in the Marlborough Sounds. On the safe assumption that they are dead, it is to be hoped that they rest in peace.

Their ease, and the peace of mind of those bereaved by their loss, was always going to depend on the successful apprehension and prosecution of the person or persons responsible. But 10 years on, the double-murder conviction of Scott Watson is looking far from safe. Persistent questions swirl around the conduct of the police investigation and the subsequent prosecution. The chorus of disapproval is increasing in size and gaining in volume.


Watson's predictable protestations of innocence have been supplemented by a growing groundswell of unease about the conviction. The number of New Zealanders convinced of Watson's guilt has dropped from almost 60 per cent in 2002 to barely 40 per cent now. That doesn't mean he's not guilty; public opinion does not and should not decide such matters. But neither should public disquiet be ignored.

Yet that, apparently, is what is happening. Filmmaker and writer Keith Hunter's extremely disturbing book Trial by Trickery is a patient and exhaustive analysis that forces any reader to wonder how a clean-shaven, short-haired rum-drinker sailing a small steel sloop (a one-masted boat) could be convicted of a crime for which the likely suspect - according to many eyewitnesses - was an unshaven bourbon-drinking man with wavy, medium-length hair who sailed a large wooden ketch (two masts).


Hunter has undertaken the most thorough critique of the Watson case, but he is far from a lone voice. In this month's issue of North and South magazine, a journalist who covered the investigation and trial for the Marlborough Express newspaper, outlines Hunter's thesis and expresses misgivings of his own. Other journalists covering the trial were sceptical that Watson would be convicted and astonished when he was. Gerald Hope, Olivia's father, remains uncertain.


Reporter Jared Savage's revelations in this newspaper over the past three weeks, and again today, only deepen doubt. Michael Chappell, a police officer involved in the investigation says he and colleagues were directed to ignore evidence that pointed to the "mystery" ketch and away from Watson.


All this, it seems, is water off the proverbial duck's back to Rob Pope, now Deputy Commissioner of Police, but then, as Detective Inspector, the man who led the case. He says that "there's nothing new" in a book that he is reported to have returned unopened to the author and adds, amazingly, that "no one's given me any great detail".
Whatever else may be said about Hunter's book, it is not short on detail. And it is far from satisfactory that Pope implicitly maligns Chappell's integrity while ignoring his claims.


In terms of their public image, the police have had a bad few years - and the top brass, Pope included, have much to answer for. Last week we heard that assistant commissioner Clint Rickards would be allowed to resign, thus escaping being called to account for behaviour which, his acquittal on rape charges notwithstanding, was plainly unacceptable. Pope's dismissal of the allegations about the Sounds case smacks of the same high-handed indifference to public opinion and the importance of public accountability.


Last year, former High Court judge Sir Thomas Thorp, calling for an independent body to review miscarriages of justice, said that as many as 20 New Zealanders might be wrongly imprisoned. David Bain, yet to be retried for the murder of his family, was wrongly convicted, the Privy Council said. The case of Peter Ellis remains an ugly stain on the pages of our judicial history.


It is not enough for Pope to dismiss accusations that he has not taken the trouble to read. A police force's effectiveness is in direct proportion to the esteem in which it is held and that esteem diminishes in direct proportion to its willingness to be accountable and open to review.


It has been observed elsewhere that Ben and Olivia's families are entitled to go to bed at night satisfied that the right person has been locked up for their murders. The rest of us are, too.