Scott Watson appeal: Day two all about two blonde hairs

Tuesday, 11 June 2024

The hairs.

Two fine, blonde hairs.

In many ways, the 15cm and 25cm hairs bear most of the weight of the case against Scott Watson, who was found guilty of murdering friends Ben Smart and Olivia Hope after a New Year’s party in the Marlborough Sounds in 1998.

Over the years, they’ve travelled from a gaudy tiger-patterned blanket on Watson’s yacht, to a forensic laboratory in Auckland, to another laboratory in England.

They’ve been posted, poked at, squinted at through microscopes, and subjected to a variety of complex tests.

And on Tuesday at Wellington’s Court of Appeal, the hairs again came under scrutiny, as Scott Watson’s appeal against his double murder conviction moved into its second day.

Why?

Well, DNA testing showed the two hairs were likely from Olivia Hope. And police say they were found on Watson’s boat.

Watson has always stressed he never met Hope and Smart, they were never on his yacht, and he didn’t kill them.

But how else could two of Hope’s hairs have ended up on a blanket on Watson’s yacht, unless she had been on board?

It was a compelling argument for the jury at Watson’s 1999 trial.

Watson’s conviction for killing Hope, 17, and Smart, 21, remains one of the most controversial in the country’s history, and this is Watson’s second appeal.

He has served 26 years in prison.

Hope and Smart’s bodies have never been found.

But the story of the hairs has remained one of the most pivotal issues in a vexing case.

When Watson’s yacht, Blade, was seized by police and hauled from the water near Picton on January 12, 1998, it was trucked to Woodbourne Air Force base and forensically examined.

Items from it were sent to ESR for forensic testing, including the tiger-patterned blanket.

Around 390 hairs were taken from it.

On January 22, ESR scientist Susan Vintiner and a technician isolated 11 hairs from the 390, which had roots and were most likely to provide a DNA profile.

None did.

But on March 7, Vintiner went back to the tiger blanket hairs, and this time, found a 15cm and a 25cm hair, which she and the technician had previously overlooked.

Stunningly, these hairs did have intact roots, which provided DNA profiles linked to Olivia Hope.

They became known as YA69-12, and YA69-13, and were the pieces of evidence that broke the case open.

Without these hairs, police have admitted it would have been difficult to charge Watson. Indeed, it was only after test results were received, that police moved to arrest him on June 15, 1998.

But concerns about how the hairs were found, handled, and tested, have always dogged the evidence.

It became clear Vintiner examined the tiger blanket hairs on the same day, at the same work bench, as she looked at reference hairs from Olivia, taken from her bedroom, and Vintiner didn’t change her coat between examinations, raising speculation the hairs could have become mixed.

Vintiner could never explain how a 1cm slit in the bag holding Olivia’s reference hairs had occurred, other than to say she may have accidentally cut it when opening the envelope it was in.

And because no count was taken of the reference hairs collected from Olivia’s home, it could never be known if any of these were missing, and possibly mixed with the tiger blanket hairs.

In addition, many struggled to understand how Vintiner hadn’t seen the 15cm and 25cm hairs when she first examined the tiger blanket hairs on January 22, given she knew she was looking for blonde hairs, and the majority of the other hairs were short and dark.

On Tuesday, Vintiner admitted the January 22 search of the tiger blanket hairs was mainly conducted by a technician and not her, despite having indicated at Watson’s trial and in other material that she did it. The technician didn’t make any notes about this.

And in a remarkable revelation, Vintiner said she found a document that validated some of ESR’s subsequent DNA testing, “at the back of my case file” on Monday night.

This document has never been made public before, and Vintiner told Watson’s surprised lawyer Nick Chisnall, KC, she hadn’t even told the Crown about discovering it the previous evening, and didn’t think the jury would have needed to know about it.

Vintiner had earlier accepted Olivia’s hairs could have got on to Watson’s boat without Olivia being on board, such as when people brushed past each other at a party.

“Considering the situation, secondary transfer is a possibility.”

However, Vintiner said she didn’t believe she would have inadvertently got hairs on her lab coat when examining the reference and tiger blanket hairs, and she would have noticed them if she had, despite Chisnall pointing out they would have been blonde hairs on white fabric.

Earlier in the day, Crown lawyer Robin McCoubrey continued Crown attacks on experts Watson had received reports from.

He told forensic expert Sean Doyle that his criticisms of Vintiner and ESR were an attempt to “portray a chaotic laboratory, substandard, and a part-time scientist who needed people to help her out with the hair examination”.

“I pointed out deficiencies,” Doyle replied.

“Where there have been options of an entirely proper conclusion, your preference has been to select the pejorative conclusion, the one that puts her down, do you accept that?” McCoubrey continued.

“No, I’ve been as fair as possible,” Doyle insisted.