Ben Smart and Olivia Hope were reported missing on 2 January 1998. Initially the
Blenheim police treated the investigation as a missing-persons case, but it soon became apparent that the disappearance was suspicious and out of character for the duo. Detective Inspector Rob Pope was appointed to take charge of the investigation on the 5th January and a mix of police staff from across the country joined the investigation, which became a
homicide case code-named "Operation Tam" (short for
Tamarack). The investigation featured requests for information from the public, significant numbers of interviews across the country and months of extensive searches of the waters surrounding the Endeavour Inlet. Despite this, no bodies were ever found.
The focus on Guy Wallace In his police statements on the third and fifth of January, Guy Wallace (the driver of the water taxi) described the unknown man with whom Hope and Smart left his water-taxi as having two days growth on his face, possibly arm tattoos, wiry build, 5'9", short dark wavy hair, being scruffy in appearance and wearing a
Levi shirt with jeans. Wallace maintained that the man on his taxi was the same man he and other staff had served in the lounge bar earlier in the evening. Wallace was subsequently shown two photographs of Watson in montages when he was interviewed by police on 9 January 1998 but he said he did not recognise anyone in the photographs. Police then changed the photo of Watson in the montage using a different one in which he had his eyes half closed. This became known as the 'blink photo'. On 20 April 1998, Wallace was shown a new montage, known as montage B, containing the blink photo. Not realising this was Watson, Wallace said this could be the 'mystery' man on the boat - but said that while "the eyes were the same as the man he had seen on the night, the hair of the man in photograph 3 was too short and his appearance was generally too 'tidy'." Wallace said he felt tremendous pressure from police and the media during the investigation. He was interrogated by the detectives from Christchurch CIB who initially suggested he was somehow responsible for the disappearance of the teenagers. As a result of accusations against him by the police, some locals began treating him with suspicion. People he knew began to think he was guilty and shunned him. He said that in the initial stages of the investigation, the police were desperate to arrest someone, and it could easily have been him: "I know in my heart of hearts, if he [Scott] wasn't in there, I'd be doing time. It's just that simple."
The mystery ketch Wallace told police and the media that he had dropped Smart and Hope off at a wooden
ketch (a boat with two masts). On 3 January 1998, Wallace drew a sketch for police of what he thought the boat he dropped the duo onto looked like. He drew a yacht with two masts and wrote "38-40 foot ketch?" on the drawing, underlining the word "ketch?" twice. He described the ketch as well-maintained, built of timber, with a thick blue stripe on the
hull, and several round
portholes with brass surrounds. He also said it was rafted in a group of between three and five other vessels. Police seized Watson's sloop,
Blade, on 12 January to the surprise of many following the case. Compared to descriptions of the mystery ketch,
Blade was small, had a steel (not timber) hull, no portholes, no blue strip, and had only one mast. Police analysed thousands of photos taken on New Year's Eve and interviewed all of the boat
skippers, but were unable to corroborate Wallace's reports of a ketch in the Endeavour Inlet that night, or find any of the "three to five" vessels it was rafted to. The prosecution at Watson's trial would later argue that Wallace had simply been mistaken about the second mast;
Blade had been moored next to other boats, and the prosecution suggested that, from certain angles in the dark, the mast on one of these boats could have appeared to Wallace to be a second mast. However, in the following weeks there were a number of sightings of a two-masted ketch in the Marlborough Sounds area reported to the police, including one account from a former police officer with 40 years' experience. A number of witnesses who came forward with sightings of a ketch were either told their information was not wanted, or their statements were not followed up. Former detective Mike Chappell, who worked on the case, later claimed officers were told not to follow up sightings of two-masted ketches. Watson had 48 criminal convictions at the time, mainly from when he was a teenager for
burglary,
theft,
cannabis offences, two counts of possessing an offensive weapon and one for
assault when he was 16. Watson had been imprisoned for two short periods in 1989 and 1990, but had seemingly cleaned up his act in his 20's, having just one conviction in the eight years leading up to 1998. Watson was being interviewed by Detective Tom Fitzgerald on 12 January when Police seized
Blade and executed search warrants on the homes of his parents and sister. During the interview, one week into the investigation, Fitzgerald made it clear that police considered Watson their main suspect. Rumours about the Watson family began to swirl in the small town of Picton, as well as in national media. Later, Watson would accuse police of influencing media coverage of the case, suggesting they leaked rumours to reporters that his family were criminals, that he was a guilty man and that he had an incestuous relationship with his sister. Gerald Hope, Olivia's father, also asserted that the police deliberately leaked details of Watson's criminal history and were responsible for the unsubstantiated suggestions of incest.
Publicity during the investigation Prior to his arrest, the media were free to report police comments and actions which demonstrated that Watson was the prime suspect without fear of jeopardising a fair trial. Watson was arrested on 15 June 1998, six months after his yacht had been pulled from the water in full view of bystanders and media. According to journalist
Mike White, during this six-month period, police allowed unsubstantiated gossip about Watson's family to circulate, including rumours that Watson was sleeping with his sister. In an interview with
Paul Henry, Mike White agreed that the media were manipulated and said: "I don't think the media asked enough questions. We were thinking that we had to support the police and we were doing the right thing by doing that." Police denied starting these rumours, but Gerald Hope (Olivia's father), says the police constantly told him and his family how bad the Watsons were. Watson was advised by his lawyer not to speak publicly, so the media relied entirely on one-sided comments from the police and the victims' families. When interviewed by Mike White 18 years later, Watson said: "Every comment he'd made was reinterpreted to sound sinister, every action he'd taken was twisted to seem suspicious". ==Trial==