Ep. 3 Great Barrier Reef of Death

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Adam: So, it’s like at home where I just talk and you have your phone out. Is that…?

Jerry: What we’re doing? We starting…

Kim: No, I thought you was going to do your little shtick that you do. Don’t you?

Adam:  You were just going to ignore it. Okay, great. No, that’s awesome.

Kim: No, I just was looking. It’s something.

[music 01:15-27]

Adam: Pack your body bags. We are going on a slaycation because whether it’s a murder or a vacation, everyone just wants to plan the perfect getaway. Right? Of course, on this show, nobody gets either. I’m your co-host, Adam Tex Davis. And as always, I’m joined by my lovely wife of 23-years [inaudible 01:45].

Kim: Hi.

Adam: Hi, Kim. And my separate but equally lovely work wife of 15-years. Jerry, hello.

Jerry: Hey guys.

Adam:  Before we start, I want to introduce a new little segment.  Things we learned from previous episodes of slaycation. I’ll start. I had no idea. Kim, my lovely wife, had such a lady honour for the actor who played Joe Kenda in Homicide Hunter.

Jerry: I mean, he’s a good-looking guy.

Kim: He is.

Adam: Yeah. He has a name, by the way. He’s not just a pile of crime solving meat. His name is Carl Marino.

Jerry: Yes.

Adam: And he’s married and has two adult children.

Jerry: Wonderful.

Kim:  Nice. Well, you know that saying just because you admire the art doesn’t mean you want to buy it.

Adam:  Right. So, I was going to say, you’re stuck with me, the home fry, the home fry Hunter.

Kim: Oh no.

Jerry: Who would Adam play? Like, trying to think like what famous detective you could play here. Or who would play you in the TV adaptation of slaycation?

Adam: Kool-Aid.

Kim: Is that a person?

Adam: Oh, yeah, yeah. No, the Kool-Aid man.

Kim: Oh God.

Adam: Anyway, I was thinking about that one Bannerman Island case and with Angelica Griswold.

Jerry: Oh, the one with the kayak where she her fiancé was a…

Adam:  Yeah. And the one thing that stood out to me, I did a little bit of looking around and like the New York Post for example, was savage on her. The headline was, Kayak Killer gets slap on the wrist.

Kim: Mm-Hmm.

Adam: And as we were discussing the case, it was like, you know, it wasn’t clear cut thing, but a headline can be made. I guess that’s their thing, the New York Post. But I will say though, I did look at pictures of her and she’s kind of cute in an odd, evil pixie kind of way, but she does have crazy killer eyes. So, I could see also why you’d look at her and think like, yeah, she, you know.

Kim: You think all killers have crazy killer eyes?

Adam: No, that’s what I’m saying. Like, they don’t all, but she definitely had the look.

Kim: She had the look of killers.

Jerry: Well, let me ask you.

Kim: I’m going to have to investigate.

Jerry: We need to take a look but my other question for you, Adam, is if you didn’t know that she was involved in a death of someone, would you still think she had killer eyes or do you think you were coming to it looking like, oh yeah, she’s got those killer eyes?

Adam: She looks like she has killer eyes. Like she looks like somebody who’s planning to kill someone.

Jerry: Okay.

Adam: If she hasn’t already killed someone.

Jerry: See, I’ve seen pictures of her and I didn’t have that in person. To me, she just looks like a Russian woman. She doesn’t have a lot of emotion in her face.

Adam: I don’t know. Look at the eyes. Like, just take your finger and block out the rest of her.

Jerry: I’m pulling her up right now. I’m pulling her up.

Kim: You guys.

Adam: Just block out the rest, block out the rest and just look at the eyes.

Jerry: Huh?

Adam: You see what I’m saying?

Jerry: I don’t.

Adam: Huh-huh?

Jerry: Oh, all right. Well, I don’t know. Kim, what do you think? I mean, let’s pull this up open here.

Adam: I just looked at like a Google search of all these images of her there. We’re passing around the picture of Angelica Griswold and if she’s listening, I’m kind of kidding. Don’t come find me, please.

Jerry: You’re not seeing it?

Kim: No.

Adam: All right, well.

Kim: Look, it’s okay.

Adam: Look, you guys are going to be victims. That’s great.

Jerry: Josh. Josh over here our engineer.  Killer eyes or…?

Adam: Look at the pictures of her not with somebody else.

Jerry: Okay. So only when she’s alone, she’s thinking about murder?

Adam: When do you think of murder?

Jerry: That’s a good name for something, when I’m alone, I think of Murder.

Adam: Anyway, okay, moving on. Like always, Kim and Jerry will present today’s case, which I have deliberately gone out of my way to know as little as possible about. This way, I kind of get to learn right along with you, the listener, which isn’t super easy to do. By the way, Jerry and I work together and talk pretty much every day. And Kim and I, of course are married and live together, so we don’t talk at all. But there still could be evidence lying around the house, a laptop, you know, a notepad or something. So, they kept this one completely under wrap. So, I legit have no idea what’s in store for us today. So, I’m excited. What do you get?

Jerry: I’m going to let Kim introduce the case, but I just wanted to say one thing before we do, which is, I think it’s important that we note that on this show, we’re trying to do a couple of things different. Where one is, we really want to think about the victims of these murders. There’s a lot of crime shows and murder shows that just touch on it. And I think it’s really important to think about who the person was, who was killed. And I also like to dig in a little. So sometimes these cases are seen cut and dry, but when you dig in, there can be questions about whether the really was a murder or whether there was some reason why the person was found guilty or had to plead to something that maybe didn’t happen. And so, I’m going to say that specifically about this case we’re about to talk about.

Kim: Yeah, that’s very true.

Adam: I can edit that part out. I’m just kidding.

Kim: You’re such a dick.

Adam: Why you got to be such an asshole?

Kim: What is wrong with you.

Adam: I don’t know.

Kim: What is wrong with you?

Adam:  I’m trying to have fun.

Kim: This isn’t about fun.

Adam: Oh. Oh, okay. Sorry.

Kim: When you say it’s business, serious business, serious business. This is what I live with

Adam: [Laughs]

Kim: Everything is a joke.

Adam: I’m not sure if your joking right now.

Kim: No, no. There are times when I literally have to turn to him and go, is everything a joke?

Adam: Yes.

Kim: Is everything comedy?

Adam: Yes.

Kim: Is me needing emergency gallbladder surgery hilarious to you?

Adam: Okay. What was funny? What was funny about that?

Kim: Exactly.

Adam: And when did you find a joke in that? Do we like the gall of you?

Kim: Now he just makes jokes all the time and sometimes it leads to arguments.

Jerry: Oh, by the way, sometimes, it also leads to getting in trouble at work, not with me. Right. We have been in situations where people have been like, why are you guys having so much fun? We’re like, because we’re…

Adam: Oh, that?

Jerry: Yeah.

Kim: Okay. I thought you were just implying that we just got in trouble because I, rick rolled the

Kim: All right.

Adam: I love that. Oh,

Kim: Well. Anyway…

Jerry: Okay. All right.

Adam: Kim would you like to go ahead and introduce this case?

Jerry: Yes.

Kim: Well, you know, it seems water is a very dangerous thing. Today, we’re going to be talking about the case of Tina Watson. She was born Christina May Thomas on the 13th of February, 1977. She met her betroth Gabe, who was born David Gabriel Watson, on March 5th. What a coincidence.

Adam: My birthday’s March 4th.

Kim: I know but coincidence.

Adam: No, no. I’m telling the listeners who don’t know me. Right. That would be coincidence.

Kim: He’s still a Pisces. But anyway, so they met at the University of Alabama and they initially started off his friends, seems like a playful relationship, a flirty relationship. She was actually involved with somebody else at the time. But as time went on, that just friend situation turned into a relationship.

Adam: Also, a coincidence.

Jerry: Also, a feature film star Ryan Reynolds and Ferris.

Kim: Right.

Adam: And it was a….

Kim: Anyway, they were both students.

Adam: Was this like the late 90s?

Jerry: Early 2000s.

Kim: Yeah.

Adam: Okay.

Kim: Yeah, early 2000s.

Adam: Yeah. Okay.

Kim: Anyway, so they had a two-year relationship and ended up getting married. But before that, Gabe had wanted to ask for her hand in marriage and went to her father and, you know, express that he wanted to marry Tina as she is known as. And initially, he called him on the phone and he said, well, “This is something you really should do in person.”  So, he arranged to meet with him in person and he asked him again if he could ask Tina to marry him.

Adam: And did he say no?

Kim: You know, he didn’t say yes.

Jerry: Mm-Hmm.

Adam: Oh, what a dick moves. Hey, you should do this in person. Okay. They set up a person meeting and then he said, no,

Kim: Easy buddy. Easy.

Adam: That’s kind of a….

Kim: Well, but that is what happened.

Adam: If you’re going to say no, just say no on the phone. Don’t. Well, guy like, Hey, meet me at I-hop. And then like, no. And your favorite…

Jerry: It’s a very old, old school dad, kind of move.

Adam: Right?

Jerry: Yeah, for sure.

Adam: It’s just sticky enough that I might write it down.

Jerry: Well also just this guy, this family, in fact, she brought home boyfriends and the parents never liked anyone down.

Kim: That’s right.

Jerry:  Just as a general rule. There was always something wrong with everybody.

Kim: Right. Her family did seem to have an issue with warming up to anybody that she brought home. And this case was no exception. This boyfriend was no exception.

Adam: Do we know why he might have refused?

Kim: You know, a lot of what my understanding is, is they just didn’t particularly care for him. And there was really nothing that I could find that would make me think “oh, it just felt like…

Adam: Nobody’s good enough for Tina.

Kim: Exactly. The proverbial, Hmm. I don’t know if,

Adam: So, he says no or he doesn’t say yes?

Kim: He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say no, he doesn’t say yes, say yes, but it really doesn’t stop Gabe from proposing.

Adam: They’re in line.

Kim: Right. They’re in love and they’ve been together for a couple of years.

Adam: Does she say yes?

Kim: She does say yes.

Adam: That’s the more important one.

Kim: Right?

Jerry: She’s excited, she loves this guy.

Kim: Right. Yes

Adam: I got you. Did he tell her that hr dad said…?

Jerry: She knew.

Kim: She knew. Yeah

Jerry: His mom, Gabe’s mom called Tina’s mom after the engagement and invited her to dinner.

Adam: Okay. Right. That’s a nice mom.

Kim: Bring the family together.

Adam: Bring the family together.

Kim: Get to know

Jerry: Tina’s mom said, “Why–

Kim: Would I do that?

Jerry: — she’s marrying into your family; you are not marrying into ours.”

Adam: Okay. It’s like their family’s a little, eh, off, a little off, a little insular. She’s an only child?

Kim: She has a younger sister and she’s adopted.

Adam: Was another thing we should mention. Tina was adopted?

Jerry: Mm-Hmm.

Kim: Yeah.

Jerry: Oh yeah.

Adam: Oh, I felt that the family’s that protective over the adopted kid. I mean, they raised her.

Kim: Yeah.

Adam:  She’s their daughter.

Kim: All accounts of her childhood was that she was happy and she had a very good childhood.

Adam: All right. Where was this by the way?

Jerry: Alabama.

Adam:  Alabama. Okay. So, okay. So obviously, they started off on a, on a weird note where like he went around the dad for the proposal, but they do like each other so they get married. But like, was there any kind of weirdness or red flags or anything between them that might make you think like, this isn’t ideal or idyllic?

Jerry:  I saw one thing.  Kim, I don’t know if you saw this, there was like a breakup at some point.

Kim: They had broken up, according to her best friend?

Adam: Obviously before they got married.

Kim: Yeah.

Adam: Okay.

Kim: Yeah. They had broken up. I’m not sure why, but I understand that they did break up and apparently, she had some interest, or her friend had suggested that she go meet up with a cousin of hers.

Adam: Tina should meet her friend’s cousin as a substitute for Gabe?

Kim: Right. You know, I think that they had some connection or sort and it was sort of like, go see him. And she did.

Jerry: Did that work out?

Kim: Yeah. But no, no. And she ended up back together with Gabe. And then there was another where I believe it was her sister who had said that they were meeting and then Gabe had come later and they had an argument and he had thrown I guess a slice of pizza at her

Adam: That is well unforgivable. Look, pizza. Yeah. That is…

Kim: Here’s the thing though.

Adam: Of all the things Gabe has done, this is the most…

Kim: I have to say though. Do I consider that a red flag? I mean, look, they’re young. There, you know, relationships can get heated in certain circumstances. I don’t know that I would look at that and think, oh, he murdered her. So, I don’t know that I would look at that and cite that as —

Adam: Right. Okay.

Kim: — something that is a red flag or something that should alert you with, oh, this person is not good.

Adam: Right. But you know that if you ever see me throw pizza,

Kim: Well that’s, yeah, different. All that.

Adam: Obviously whole a def. That’s whole different def one.

Kim: Yeah.

Adam: Okay.

Kim: So, one of the things was Gabe was an avid diver and he enjoyed diving, had even recently become a certified rescue diver. And he insisted that if he and Tina were going to be together in any serious way, that she would need to adopt some of his hobbies, most notably diving. And she promptly began taking diving lessons.

Adam: Wow. Okay. And maybe he wasn’t insisting, but like, basically his, I think grandmother had offered a trip to the Great Barrier Reef to go diving.

Kim: That’s right.

Jerry: And he had the idea, why don’t we just turn that into our honeymoon?

Kim: It was supposed to be a graduation gift for him.

Jerry: Yes.

Kim: And then…

Jerry: Morphed into our honeymoon.

Kim: Exactly.

Jerry: At which point he was like, well, you’re going to need to learn it, dive, because we’re going to diving.

Adam:  Huh. Maybe that’s why the dad was not happy. He’s like, really not into diving. He doesn’t like it.

Kim: Well…

Adam: Hey, I’m going to marry you daughter. She’s going to get really good at diving.  He had a bad snorkel experience. You never know.

Kim: Yeah.

Adam: She’s still recovering from the bends.

Kim: Well, she did take some diving lessons

Adam: More than I could get you to do.

Kim: Yeah. Well, I’m not doing this.

Adam: Yeah, you’re not doing any of this stuff that I like.

Kim: So anyway, Christina ended up taking some lessons and now…

Adam: This is like scuba diving. This isn’t like just, you know, snorkelling or scuba–

Jerry:  The whole thing.

Adam: — and all that. Okay.

Kim: Yeah. She took some lessons and they ended up planning their honeymoon. They were going to the Great Barrier Reef.

Adam: Oh

Kim: Yes.

Adam: And what were they going to do at the Great Barrier Reef?

Kim: They were going to dive. They have special tours there.

Adam: What’s so great about it?

Kim: Well, there’s a lot of exciting things. I mean, diving is a whole thing. And apparently, Gabe was very passionate about diving. It was something that he’d done as a teenager. And he was very excited for this trip.

Adam: Mm-Hmm. So, what was their big plan?

Kim: So, their plan was to dive this shipwreck and they got on a boat called the Spoil Sport, got to the site of the SS and Gala, and the plan was to explore that wreck.

Jerry: It’s worth noting here, this is not an easy dive. This is not a beginner dive.

Adam: Oh?

Kim: No.

Jerry: Not even a moderate.

Kim: How far down?

Jerry: 30 something meters. It’s almost a hundred feet down.

Kim: Mm-Hmm.

Adam: Wow.

Jerry: And it’s an area with currents. And the shipwreck itself is considered challenging when you’re down there.

Adam: Wait, they’re going to swim around inside the shipwreck?

Jerry: Mm-Hmm.

Kim: Right.

Adam: Oh, and the Great Barrier Reef. Isn’t there like sharks and stuff over there?

Jerry: Possibly.

Kim: Yeah.

Jerry: The only thing I know there’s for sure is flesh eating bacteria, because that’s where my father contracted MRSA that ate half of his hand.

Adam: That’s a great barrier reef.

Jerry; Mm-Hmm.

Adam: Did he go down to that ship?

Jerry: He was nowhere near the ship. He just went in the water.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: Like snorkelling–

Adam:  He was on that ship.

Jerry: — when it first sank. He was actually the Captain.

Adam: Captain Cliff. But yeah, this is not a dive for beginners. And so…

Jerry: And this is her first big dive. It’s her first dive below nine meters. Right?

Kim: Exactly.

Jerry: So, this is this is like three times deeper than she’s ever been.

Adam: Mm.

Jerry: He has done, as Kim said, you know, he’s an experienced diver. He is done 50 plus dives. He’s a certified safety diver. But his safety certification, he is not open water. He has little to no open water experience. He’s mostly…

Kim: This is what they were doing. Yeah.

Jerry: This is like open water.

Adam: And is it just them or is it a group or something?

Jerry: They’re with a group.

Adam: Okay.

Jerry: It’s a whole company out of Australia that has dive masters, a support ship.

Adam: Okay. So, there’s people that could potentially help if there’s a problem.

Kim: Mm-Hmm. Yes.

Adam:  So, is this guy like, just… is this a slaycation or is this guy just like an idiot guy? No, no, honey, you’ll be fine. It’s okay. You can do it.

Jerry: Let’s go through this story and see.

Adam: Yeah.

Kim: And Tina had five dives under her belt, like she was a novice, but when they had made the arrangements to do this dive, it was a whole process. And part of the process was the head diver

Jerry: Dive master.

Kim: Right. That’s it. The dive master was to interview all the divers regarding their experience. It’s expected that you had some diving training.

Jerry: Mm-Hmm.

Kim: And there was a couple of things that was interesting. It was interesting that they were supposed to be interviewed separately. So, you’re interviewed one-on-one, they don’t interview the couples. They’re not supposed to interview the couples together. So, if the not have one be influenced by the other.

Jerry: Mm-Hmm.

Kim:  But what was interesting was, they were interviewed together. The other thing was, was that this company required that there be some type of orientation. If you were not terribly experienced, you were supposed to have a, what is it, Jerry? A dive guards? Like, sort of like a…

Jerry: Yeah, it was like a dive orientation, basically. Like a safety class and an orientation. So, in the interview, which they had them together, he, Gabe was like we’re good. I’m experienced. I’m her dive buddy. Don’t worry about it.

Kim: Right.

Jerry: We’re good.

Adam: Okay.

Jerry: Now, had they been interviewed separately, it’s likely that the dive master would’ve gotten two questions in with Tina and been like, okay, whatever your husband says, you have to go through safety orientation.

Adam:  Right. So, she didn’t go through the orientation?

Jerry: They refused twice. They asked him once after the interview, and then again, they’re like, are you sure? When they were out on the boat and they said, “We’re fine.”

Kim: Right. They were very adamant that they were fine and that they were not in need of any additional support.

Jerry: Right.

Adam: Well, were they adamant or was he adamant? It sounds like sounds like…

Kim: It sounds like he was adamant.

Adam: I mean, I don’t think I’m pulling this on you, honey. Oh no, she’s good. I can’t swim.

Speak 7: It’s like you needs a swimming orientation.

Adam: Yeah. I don’t think this is working with Kim, but that’s okay. That’s good. That’s why Kim is here.

Jerry: So, she was nervous about it, but she trusted him. He was an experienced guy. He is a confident guy. She thought knew what he was doing as far as diving.

Kim: Right. I’m sure she felt safe, confident.

Adam: Did she,

Kim: I mean, look, I just speaking for myself. If you said to me, oh, I’ve got you. I would feel safe

Adam: In the water?

Kim: I don’t know about the water.

Adam: I wish I can have an avid skydiver. And I was like, don’t worry about it. We’ll just, just go together and I’ll got you.

Kim: Well, I wouldn’t do that. That’s the thing.

Adam: It feels like this is a dangerous thing. She needed to…

Jerry: She should have spoken up.

Adam: She should have spoken up.

Jerry: We’re in the middle of an ocean.

Adam: Right.

Jerry:  It’s like I’ve taken a dive class in a pool and a lake.  So maybe I shouldn’t even be here.

Adam: Yeah.

Jerry: She also might be like, I’m on my honeymoon. We’ve come all this way. I want to have a good time. So, I’m just going to go…

Kim: I think she wants to make her husband, her new husband happy.

Adam: See, Kim would’ve done the passive aggressive thing. She would’ve said yes, yes, yes. And then the day of, she would’ve just slept in. It’d be noon. And like you just missed breakfast and the lunch and the boat slept. And all right, I guess I’ll dive alone.

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Speaker 6: He would lie his way into their dreams.

Speaker 7: He was looking for James Bond girls.

Speaker 8: How fun would that be to be a Bond girl?

Speaker 6: Then twist them into a nightmare.

Speaker 9: This guy has done this before. He’ll do it again

Speaker 6: Until a group of women banded together to put him behind bars and keep him there.

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[music 22:08-16]

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Adam: Anyway, okay. So right now, in my head, I’m like, is this guy a murderer or is he an asshole?

Jerry: So, up to the point, they’ve been interviewed together.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: Incorrect. They’ve refused the orientation, which is incorrect.

Adam:  Mm-Hmm.

Jerry: And also, by the way, incorrect of the dive company to allow her to refuse it.

Kim: Yes.

Jerry: They should never have allowed…

Kim: Absolutely never now, never given her… inexperience given just even the number of dives.

Jerry: Right. Yeah.

Adam: All right, so blame to blame to go around.

Jerry: So now we’re on the dive boat and we’re ready to go diving.

Adam: The Young Gala?

Jerry: Yes, Young Gala.

Adam: Young Gala

Kim: Yes.

Jerry: And they’re dying off of, of course the Spoil Sports.

Adam: The Spoil Sports?

Kim: Yes.

Jerry: Well, she didn’t want to be a spoil sports, so she went along with it. Like the universe was like, yeah, you’re going in.

Kim: Yeah.

Jerry: You don’t be as spoiled sport it.

Kim: Yeah.

Adam: If the boat was called the WTF.

Jerry: Like should we still be here?

Adam: You know the Oh hell no.

Jerry: Yeah, exactly.

Kim: They suited up and started to go down, but there was some issue with his monitor.

Jerry: Oh, the dive computer.

Kim: Right.

Jerry: The stupid dive computer.

Kim:  Right. He was saying that it started beeping at him.

Adam: Who? Gabe.

Jerry: Yeah.

Kim: Yeah.

Jerry:  Right After they got on the water, he’s like, the dive computer’s beeping. Something’s wrong.

Kim: Right.

Jerry: We got to get back out. And so, he gets Tina and they get back onto the boat where he says that his battery was in backwards on the dive computer. Takes a coin, opens it, flips the battery. Now everything’s working. And now they go back in.

Kim: Dive computer is something that’s on them?

Jerry: You wear the dive computer, it tells you things like depth and your oxygen levels, all that kind stuff.

Kim: Right. There’s a lot of information.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: This key point actually becomes a very important point in the story, but he fixes the dive computer and he’s like, all right honey, we’re good. Let’s go back in the water.

Adam:  Fixes or “fixes”. Okay. Anyway. so, he fixes it.

Kim: He was right.

Adam:  I mean it was legitimate.

Jerry: It was beeping and now it’s not beeping. Even the beeping becomes an issue later in this case.

Adam: Oh boy.

Jerry: But the point is —

Kim: Yeah.

Jerry: — the dive computer’s working now and they go back in the water back.

Adam: Now he has one that… she has one too?

Kim: She does have a dive computer. Right. Hers was not as sophisticated as his,

Adam: But you get this from the company or you bring your own?

Kim: He brought his own.

Jerry: He brought his own.

Adam: He brought his own and she uses…

Jerry: Yeah. I don’t know where she got hers, but he definitely had his own.

Adam: Okay.

Jerry: Right.

Adam:  It’s like when I played…

Jerry: What’s that?

Adam: Frisbee?

Jerry: No. Soccer football?

Adam: No. When you shoot people with paintballs.

Jerry: Ping ball.

Adam: I guess it’s just called paint ball. Right? Like there would be people that have to rent a gun. They sucked. And then there’s people that show up with their own, like souped up paintball gun. They could kill you.

Jerry: Not paintball, man. I went one time, we were doing a shoot and we had to go do paintball.

Adam: That hurts. Oh, those balls hurt. Yeah.

Jerry: I didn’t know that until I went and did it. It was a lot of fun.

Adam: But people would bring their own modified thing that shoots it 10 times harder and faster and that and more accurate. And you’ve got one that is like paints is blowing up inside the gun and like it’s dribbling out. You can’t do anything.

Jerry: Yeah. Yeah.

Adam: And then you get shot in the neck and then you have a welt for like a month anyway.

Kim: Yeah. So, they resolve that and…

Adam:  Okay. Got computer fixed back in the water.

Kim: Right. They resolve that and they get back into the water

Adam: And everybody else has gone down at this point. Like they’re the only one?

Kim: I mean, there’s just activity around them. People are getting ready to go in. Some people are already down there.

Jerry: Just to paint a little bit of a picture. This is an area where lots of dies are happening. There’s big boats and then off the big boats have a little die boat. So, it’s this whole place is filled.

Adam: Right. It’s a great barrier. Everybody’s, everybody’s checking together.

Kim: It’s like a tourist destination if you’ll in the world of diving.

Jerry: Right.

Adam: Sure. It’s a great barrier reef.

Kim: Right.

Adam: It’s not a good barrier reef for the mediocre barrier reef. I’m certain that’s what the term great means in that sense. You think great is like a, an adjective. But it’s awesome. It’s the awesome barrier Reef. maybe it’s big. It’s the outstanding barrier reef. It’s the Grand Canyon of reefs.

Jerry: That’s accurate.

Adam: Thank you. Wow.

Jerry: We got there.

Adam: Yeah.

Kim: I would love to see an old ship wreck, but I’m not diving.

Adam: Mm-Hmm.

Jerry: Me neither.

Kim: I don’t care how much I love you.

Adam: Right. Kim’s going to the Titanic Museum. Mm-Hmm.

Kim: Correct

Adam: We’ll walk around and see the Titan ship.  She’s not going in a little, little tiny

Kim: Exactly.

Adam: Okay.

Kim: Exactly. So anyway, so they make another effort to get back in the water and they descend and then he notes that she has a concerned, anxious look on her face.

Jerry: Mm-Hmm. And this is about 30 feet around 10 meters down, which is about as deep as she’s ever gone before.

Kim: Right.

Adam: 30 feet is crazy deep. It’s deep.

Kim: It is.

Adam: And she’s clearly at this point…

Jerry: Having some kind of anxiety or panic.

Adam: Okay.

Kim: Right. And signals to him that she wants to go back up.

Adam: Okay.

Kim: And then I guess there was some kind of scuffle, you know, I guess in her anxiety she knocks off his mask.

Jerry: She’s panicking so much that she’s not even able to get herself back to the rope that you can go up. That’s the easiest way back up.

Kim: Right. They have this lead [crosstalk 28:32].

Adam: Okay.

Jerry: So, he goes over to her to try and help her to get her to the rope.  And she’s freaking out and hits his mask and regulator.

Adam: Wait, his mask and his regulator?

Kim: Yes.

Adam: Ooh.

Jerry: So, everything comes off of him.

Adam: Oh.

Kim: Right.

Jerry: He lets go of her for a second to fix his stuff. And she apparently got unconscious at that point and she was sinking.

Kim: Right.

Adam: Holy Molly. Yikes.

Jerry: Yeah.

Adam: I thought our honeymoon was bad.

Kim: We didn’t have a honeymoon.

Adam: Exactly.

Kim: Anyway, so she’s… and at that point —

Adam: I will need an episode on that.

Jerry: I realize you guys didn’t have a honeymoon.

Adam: All right.

Kim: No, we didn’t.

Adam: I’m an official one.

Kim: Our whole marriage is a honeymoon.

Adam: Aw.

Jerry: Aw. Wow.

Adam: Huh.

Kim:  Anyway.

Jerry: So, she’s thinking.

Kim: Right. And what happens is by the time he’s put his mask and regulator in and reorients himself, he sees that she has sort of drifted away

Jerry: Quite far.

Kim: Right.

Jerry: Like too far for him to quickly get to.

Kim: Right. Then he makes a split decision at that point. Either I try to go and retrieve her or I go get help.

Jerry: Because maybe I can’t get her on my own. Like he says, he’s also panicking; later he tells us.

Adam: Right.

Kim: Right.

Adam: By the way, all of this is his version or is this a corroborated?

Kim: No, I mean this is his version.

Adam: This is his story. Okay.

Kim: Yes. Mm-Hmm.

Adam:  So, she’s drifting away and even though he’s got enough oxygen to go down to a shipwreck, he feels that he can’t get to her.

Kim: Right.

Adam: So, it’s better to what go up?

Jerry: Well, it’s not just get to her, but also get her up. Because remember it’s not just her, it’s also the weight of her tanks for divers. So, he’s given different, slightly different version of the story. But the basic telling of it from him is that he wasn’t sure, he made a split-second decision that he didn’t think he would be able to get to her and bring her to the surface by himself. Which it’s like, okay, but aren’t you trained rescue guy?

Kim: Well, he said too that there was a problem with his air. Let’s just for the sake of arguments that he panicked.

Adam: Yeah.

Kim:  And decided that the best possible thing to do would be to go to the surface and get help. And he reports that he rapidly ascended to get help for Tina. And he alerted the–

Jerry: The dive master.

Kim: — the dive master. Right.

Adam: Who was on the boat, I guess?

Kim: Yes.

Jerry: Was he on the boat or in the water?

Kim: I think he was on the boat.

Jerry: Okay.

Kim: I think that he…

Adam: I’m going to go all the way back to the surface and get help that now somebody has to dive back in and go all the way down to find her.

Jerry: Which is what happened. So, Gabe goes to the surface, he signals to the dive master, a gentleman named Wade Singleton, who quickly goes down, sees her. This point, she’s actually, she’s still on the bottom of the ocean.

Adam: Oh God.

Kim: She’s on the ocean floor.

Jerry: Yeah.

Kim: And in fact, there’s actually a photograph, a fellow diver was down there taking photographs and off in the distance, you can see that there is a photograph.

Jerry: This is the photo. It’s creepy, I warn you.

Kim: Right.

Jerry: Inadvertently, someone took a photo of her laying on the ocean floor.

Kim: Right. And you could see that fuzzy outline in the back.

Jerry: So, the dive master goes in, gets down to her and he encounters an issue, which is you’re supposed to be able to inflate, I think it’s called like the safety vest, which could get someone right to the surface.  It’s a thing that gets you surfaced, but also you can use it during the dive to like change your buoyancy.  And it’s not getting her up as fast as it should.

Kim: Right.

Jerry: Her vest.

Kim: She’s waited for some reason.

Jerry: Yeah. So, the dive company turns out, put too much weight because you have to have extra weights on you to counteract your natural buoyancy, to get you to able to go down.

Kim: Right. And so that you can dive and explore.

Jerry: Right. Someone did wrong. They overweighted her.

Adam: Oh my God.

Jerry: So, the vest she’s wearing that should be helping her get back up isn’t doing much. So, there’s just a lot of terrible things happening.

Adam: Yeah.

Jerry: There happens to be a doctor, a doctor named Dr. Stutz,

Kim: He saw what he said was Watson engaged in a bear hug

Jerry: Trying to hold her.

Kim: Right.

Adam: You mean in the water?

Kim: Mm-Hmm. Yes.

Jerry: Yeah. Before…

Adam: So, now we’re going back to them in the water?

Jerry: Yeah. Dr. Stutz corroborates that Gabe was trying to help her at some point. He’s a tourist. He’s just there diving. But as soon as they get the body up to the surface, I shouldn’t say the body, as soon as they get Tina up to the surface.

Adam: So, the dive master is able to eventually get her, despite the overweighted, despite all that.

Jerry: He gets her up.

Adam: He gets her up there.

Jerry: He gets her not as fast as they would’ve liked, but he gets her up to the surface.

Adam: And she’s unconscious?

Jerry:  She’s unconscious. They surface right next to another dive boat from another company called the Jazz two. And they get her into the jazz two. And Dr. Stutz has seen all this happen. So, he comes over and, and there’s an actually another doctor advocacy around. So, they start performing emergency CPR and whatever they can. But she never regains? No.

Kim: No.

Adam: Okay.

Kim: No, I mean they frantically begin CPR and resuscitation.

Adam: Do we have any idea like, like how long was she in the water, like down at the bottom and stuff?

Kim: I think it was about 10-minutes.

Jerry: That’s what I’d read.

Kim: Yeah.

Jerry: Which seems like a lot.

Adam: I mean, she has air, so even though she’s unconscious, she’s still breathing. Is she breathing or…?

Jerry: Theoretically, but we don’t know. Right. We don’t know.

Adam: That’s it.

Jerry: We know that she has air in her tanks.

Kim: Right. And the tanks were full of air when she was brought up to the surface.

Adam:  Mm-Hmm. I’m also curious why she passed out.

Jerry:  Like was it from fear or…?

Adam:  Well…

Jerry: …or was her…?

Kim: There was an interesting thing? Her instructors had cited that she was an incredibly anxious diver.

Adam: Mm-Hmm.

Kim: And that there were times like in those five dives where she didn’t even complete it.

Adam: You mean even the little dives in the pool?  Correct.

Kim: Right.

Jerry: She had no business being on this dive.

Kim: Right. Exactly.

Adam: I mean, there are people that climb Mount Everest and don’t have…

Jerry: They do but they are a higher risk of dying. The other thing that doesn’t get mentioned much, you and I haven’t talked about this, but it’s sort of… it’s a footnote that I’m surprised didn’t get brought up more often, is she has a condition, this condition called Paroxysmal Supraventricular Tachycardia, which is PSVT

Kim: PSVT, for people like me who could never pronounce that.

Jerry: I know that.

Adam: That’s pretty good.

Jerry: Thank you.

Kim: That is very good. I’m impressed.

Jerry: I’ve been practicing for weeks.

Adam: What was it again? I missed it.

Jerry: It was Paroxysmal Supraventricular Tachycardia.

Adam: Okay.

Kim: Wow.

Jerry: That’s probably not correct.

Adam: That like letters, that’s scuba phobia. What is it? I think I just made all

Kim: No, it’s a heart condition.

Adam: Oh.

Jerry: So, the heart condition specifically, it’s a heart condition where you have irregular heartbeats. It’s considered a serious arrhythmia condition. It’s considered to be highly incompatible with scoob diving.

Adam: Really?

Kim: Triggers include —

Jerry: Triggers include cold water–

Kim: — cold water, stress.

Jerry: — stress.

Kim: Lack of sleep

Jerry: Barriers, exercise, literally.

Adam: Reading this thing.

Jerry: Right.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: And in fact, the Divers Alert Network, which is the non-profit organization that provides diver safety information, says that anyone who has more than one episode of this type of arrhythmia should never dive.

Adam: I wonder if he knew that before he proposed?

Kim:  He was aware. In fact —

Adam: Oh.

Kim: — her father had expressed concern to Gabe essentially saying, my daughter has this condition.

Adam: Mm-Hmm.  Oh, this came up beforehand.

Kim: Yeah. This frightens me.

Adam: She’s going to dive. No, she can’t dive.

Kim: That’s pretty much how that went down.

Jerry: That’s it. Again, she chose, she’s a grown woman. She chose to take the risk. But according to doctors and the scuba diving Non-profit Medical Organization literally says specifically, if you have this condition and you’ve had more than one episode of it, you shouldn’t be diving.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: So, the panic and the anxiety, we don’t know that she had an episode of this. There’s no way to know that. The quarter report, which wasn’t really done conclusively at the time, there was a later sort of revisiting of it, but they said that they didn’t see any evidence of a heart issue.

Adam: Okay.

Jerry: But it’s one of these things where does she dive computer…

Adam: Compute that as well? Or no, just that.

Jerry: Yeah.

Kim: Well, she had had a surgery to correct that

Adam: Because she wanted to go diving?

Kim: No, I think she…

Adam: I must dive you fixed my heart.

Kim: I don’t know if that’s what it was, but my understanding is that she did have a surgery to correct that. Nonetheless, it still recommended that she would’ve gotten clearance from a cardiologist before.

Adam: So, they bring her up from the surface. She never regains consciousness. Right. So, is she pronounced dead there on the boat or back on the shore?

Kim: No, she’s pronounced dead on the jazz two ship.

Adam: Okay.

Kim:  And now at this time, Gabe is on the other ship.

Adam: Spoil sport?

Kim: Yeah.

Jerry: Yeah. She was pronounced dead at 11:21 and the dive began at 10 30.

Adam: Jesus.

Kim: Right.

Adam: That is efficient. Okay. So, Gabe is on the other boat. They let him know, I guess.

Kim: Yeah. They come to him and they break the bad news.

Adam: I mean, this is a spectacular just series of horrible things. And I’m like hearing culpability everywhere from the dive company to Gabe to whatever. So, we have a whole festival of terrible happening.

Kim: Right.

Adam: I’m wondering like, okay, where’s the slaycation part coming?

Jerry: So, the slaycation part comes in when… to your point, yes. There’s ever lots of culpability, just lots of mistakes were made. Gabe goes home and if you remember the Thomas’s.

Kim: Right.

Jerry: Tina’s family —

Adam: Yeah.

Jerry: — where’re not a fan of Gabe.

Adam: Neither am I.

Jerry: Yeah, you might not be, but they were not more importantly.

Adam: Yeah.

Kim: They definitely,

Jerry: They definitely were not. And they decide that he did this for the insurance money.

Adam: Oh, insurance money.

Jerry: Insurance money.

Adam: Huh.

Jerry: And they start telling people that there was a large insurance policy that Gabe had specifically inquired before the wedding about increasing her life insurance payout from her job.

Adam: So, wait, they just got married?

Jerry: Mm-Hmm.

Adam:  And they immediately, he started with life insurance.

Jerry: No, before, before the wedding. She had a life insurance policy from her work and she made him the beneficiary.

Kim: No.

Jerry: Well, no. This is what’s interesting. So, the family starts telling everyone that Gabe was trying to benefit from this big life insurance policy.

Adam: Gotcha.

Jerry: And they tell people, which is accurate, that prior to the wedding, Gabe and Tina had discussed getting quarter of a million-dollar life insurance policy on each other.

Adam: Mm-Hmm.

Jerry: And it even contacted an insurance agent. Gabe had asked her about could she actually maybe would save the money if she could just increase her policy she already had from work. So, there was a life insurance conversation happening.

Adam: Gotcha.

Jerry: Okay. And the family starts spreading the word that, you know, isn’t it suspicious that he was asking about these big life insurance policies and that maybe that’s what was happening here. And it comes out that the only life insurance policy she had was for $30,000.

Adam: Okay.

Jerry: And the beneficiary was her father.

Kim: Her daddy.

Adam: Oh.

Jerry: But he doesn’t tell people that, that’s not what the story he’s telling.

Adam: Oh.

Kim: Right.

Jerry: He’s just trying to paint Gabe as a murderer.

Kim: Well, she had come to her father and had talked to her father about insurance and about Gabe wanting her to…

Adam: Gotcha.

Kim: And he essentially said to her, “Don’t worry about that now, go on your honeymoon; address it when you come back.”

Jerry: It’s actually interesting. What he claims specifically he said was, if he is the father, the father Tommy.

Kim: Yeah.

Jerry: So, Tommy says that his daughter Tina came to him and said, “Dad, Gabe wants me to increase my life insurance policy at work.”  And he says to his daughter,” Don’t do it. Don’t worry about it, but just tell Gabe you did it to get him off your back.”

Kim: Right, right.

Jerry: A very weird piece of advice telling your daughter to lie to her soon to be husband about a life insurance policy.

Adam: All of it’s weird. Like him hounding her to get more life insurance and then him saying like, just say you did it.  I don’t know if it’s weird to discuss life insurance, I mean, on your honeymoon.

Jerry: No, not on your honey money but like…

Kim: But it seems… it doesn’t seem crazy as a newly married couple to have those things in place.

Adam: Well, I mean, I think we waited until we had our daughter before we really got serious about life insurance.

Jerry: But I don’t think that’s smart.

Adam: I never claimed to be smart.

Jerry: Well, you are smart. But the thing is, with life insurance…

Adam: You know, what is, we had insurance, but we didn’t have like a lot.

Jerry: Okay. But the thing is, if you’re married and either one or both of you is not working and something happens to one person, the last thing you want to be doing when you’re like dealing with the death of your spouse is figuring out what am I going to do for money? Even for things like a funeral, everything costs money. He is an organized guy. This just might be on his checklist, like, I just want to make sure we’re covered. But, so, you know, the insurance agent that they reached out to, notes that, in his notes, he said that “When Gabe spoke to me, he said, look, Tina and I are interested in getting a, a quarter of a million-dollar policy on each other, but we’re going to be going on our honeymoon. We’ll reach out to you in a few months when we’re back.”

Adam: Hmm.

Jerry: So, he was not… it wasn’t like a make sure this happens before the honeymoon —

Adam: No.

Jerry: — because there might be an accident on the Barrier Reef.

Adam: No.

Jerry: Just, yeah. No.  No. According to the insurance agent’s notes in his records, Gabe was like, let’s just…

Adam: Okay, so he was tabling it?

Jerry: Mm-Hmm.

Adam: Like it wasn’t like a priority.

Jerry: Yeah.

Adam: Okay. Did she take dad’s advice?

Jerry: Unclear.

Adam: Okay.

Jerry: So, the whole thing with dad saying he told her to lie to Gabe and say, she upped the insurance. It’s just weird. I don’t know what to make.

Adam: So, he’s saying this, but there’s no proof of it?

Jerry: Zero proof.

 

 

 

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Adam: Okay, so now, where are we?

Jerry: We are back in Alabama.

Adam: Okay.

Jerry: Okay. So, Gabe has returned to Alabama. There’s a funeral. The tensions are very, very high.

Adam: Oh.

Kim: Well, the funeral director had remarked that he had to keep the family separate because it was just so intense.

Jerry: Mm-Hmm. And Gabe’s mom ran into Tina’s mom. And Gabe’s mom, of course, expressed just the horror. And Tina’s mom said, “Well, if it was me, there’s no way I would let my daughter slip away.” There’s a sense of finger pointing and blame.

Adam: Mm-Hmm.

Kim: Yeah. I mean, she was angry and upset. Gabe had exhibited what would be considered some strange behaviours on the boat. People were questioning why didn’t he ask to be taken to his wife? Why didn’t he go to the Jazz to the boat where they were working on his wife? Why was he hanging back?

Adam: So, he knew she was there and like literally?

Jerry:  Well, it’s unclear how easy it would’ve been to get from the one boat to the other.

Kim: Right. But it was something that came up.

Adam: I feel like the boat could have driven to the other boat, but I guess maybe there.

Jerry: Sure. There’s a lot. There’s a panicking situation. You’ve got someone dying in the middle of his vacation now.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: This is also turns into a classic case of he didn’t act the way he was supposed to. Right.

Adam: Mm-Hmm.

Jerry: He didn’t do the things he was supposed to,” supposed to do.” And there’s a guy back in Alabama, a family friend who’s a big wig in Helena, that part of Alabama, a guy named Bob Austin, who actually says on the record, he goes, I knew someone was going to say he didn’t do the right thing. And he got with the Watson family and was like, just be ready because this is one of those situations where you guys need to be ready for people to say you didn’t do the right thing. And if someone presses this, it could become a thing.

Adam:  Right. So, what were some of the wrong things?

Jerry: Wrong things like Kim just said, not rushing over to the boat, not expressing the correct emotion.

Adam:  So, he didn’t seem particularly interested.

Kim: Right. Somebody even suggested or remark that he was playing cards.

Jerry: Right. Which we don’t know if that’s true or not.

Kim: Right.

Jerry: But someone…

Kim: It’s just hearsay.

Jerry: Right.

Adam: Hopefully not Guilt fish.

Jerry: He removed the wedding ring from her at her funeral.

Kim: At her funeral, he removed the engagement ring. She could keep the wedding ring.

Adam: That’s three months’ salary.

Kim: Right. So, he wasn’t going to let that go.

Adam: Right. So that a whole…

Jerry: Yeah.

Kim: Well, he did a lot of things that were just…

Adam: But is this a slaycation or is this just a horrible accident?

Jerry: Well, yeah, here’s what happened.

Adam: Oh.

Jerry: So, the Thomasses’, her family, as Bob Austin family friend predicted, they’re like, we’re going to press this.

Adam: Yeah.

Jerry: We’re not happy. We want answers.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: So, they go to the Helena, Alabama Police Department, which is, I could show you a photo, but I think you can imagine, it’s a small police department of about seven people.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: And they say, “We would like some answers.”  And I was trying to find whether this family was influential in Helena or had some…

Kim: I never got the sense that they were particularly influential, but I think that they’re just mere presence and just sort of being in the faces of officials. It was just clear that they were not going to go away.

Jerry: Right.

Adam: Does this make the news? Like, was this…?

Jerry: Yes. Okay. It started becoming news to the point where in 2004 when they contacted the Helena Police and said, “We’re not satisfied. We think that there was a crime committed here.” The Helena Police started trying to reach out to the Australians, and eventually the Helena Police by about 2006, so it’s three years later, decided that they’ve got enough evidence of foul play. Right. So, they’ve concocted a case that revolves around the malfunctioning dive computer. They found witnesses who claim they saw….

Kim: Well, it was suspected that the bear hug that they…

Adam: Right. So, Stutz, Dr. Stutz, whose name I can’t forget now, said, “He saw —

Jerry: He saw.

Adam: — Gabe giving her a bear hug as in like…”

Jerry: Like trying to keep her from sinking.

Kim: Right. And it was…

Adam: Trying to keep her from sinking?

Jerry: Right.

Adam: Like helping?

Jerry:  Right. But…

Adam: Oh. But I was, in my head, I was like, bear hug as in like, holding her down or freaking her out, or…

Jerry: Well, but then the Helena police, and I don’t know whether they found someone, whether they came up with this on their own or found someone, but they concocted theory that during the bear hug, what actually was happening was that Gabe turned her oxygen off long enough to suffocate her.

Kim: And then put it back on.

Jerry: And then put it back on so that no one would know.

Kim: So that by the time she was sinking, she was unconscious.

Adam: Ah, I’ll tell you what, that’s a good slaycation. That is a good method. You know, that is tricky.

Jerry: They also decide that the dive computer, that we were speaking of, that he claimed was malfunctioning. They say, no, that couldn’t be possible. That the dive computer, if the battery was in wrong, wouldn’t be doing anything. It wouldn’t be beeping.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: So, they claim, the theory is that when they first went in the water, they were with the whole group. Right. So, they were with supervisors and all the other tourists. So, then he pretends his dive computer’s not working.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: They go back on the boat, he changes the battery. But while he is doing that, everyone else is moving along on the dive. So, when they go back in the water, they’re more isolated.

Adam: Gave him separation.

Jerry: Separation.

Adam: Gotcha.

Jerry: And that’s when 30 feet under, she starts to panic.

Kim: Right.

Jerry: He bear hugs, he turns her oxygen off, suffocates her, turns it back on. She sinks done. Okay.

Adam: Wow. All right. Wow.

Jerry: So, you’re back in?

Adam: Yeah, I’m back in. Okay. What does Dr. Stuarts do? Like, is he just really slow? Like, how is he like seeing them?

Jerry: They’re all not that far away.

Kim: I think also too, you have to remember —

Adam: There’s bunch of people everywhere.

Kim: — eyewitnesses.

Adam: Right.

Kim: These are all from other people, second-hand information, eyewitnesses, I mean, who knows?

Adam: You know also the Great Barrier Reef. It’s like, oh look, there’s fish.

Kim: Mm-Hmm.

Adam: There’s coral, there’s a murder. Like, you’re not really expecting, you know.

Jerry: Like, no, it’s not, you’re not looking for that. So, they get the Australians involved. Okay.

Adam: Wait. What does that mean?

Kim: Well, the Australian

Jerry: The Helena police.

Kim: Yes.

Jerry: The Helena Police Department gets the Australian police involved.

Adam: The Australian police. Oh. [crosstalk 51:02]

Jerry: South Australia.

Adam: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jerry: Yeah. So, they reached out.

Adam: I’m sure they work together a lot.

Jerry: Yes. The Hele…

Adam:  Ah. It’s Alabama on the phone again.

Jerry: The entire country, Australia is the sister precinct for the Helena, Alabama Police Department. It’s a longstanding cultural exchange.  So, they get to the Australian coroner, actually, and this becomes an international news. Right. So, it starts to turn into this story of like this unsolved murder. Instead of it being a tragic situation, now there’s a theory.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: There’s a theory of what happened. And so, it starts to become news in Australia and the coroner, the Mr. Glasgow, who’s the Australian head coroner states, I’m going to just read you the quote so you can understand the political situation we find ourselves in.

Adam: Okay. Yeah.

Jerry: “Unless there is some decision on this matter soon, her father will generate considerable publicity over the perceived lack of action over the death of his daughter. This lack of action will by implication, reflect badly on the office of the coroner and on the Queensland Police. You’ll gather from my comments that I’m concerned that this matter has real potential for political embarrassment of major nature.”  So, the family has succeeded.

Adam: Yeah. Not in…

Kim: Putting pressure on.

Adam: The pressure. Right.

Kim:  They put the pressure on.

Adam: On Australia. All of Australia. Australia.

Jerry: Right.

Adam: Oh my God.

Jerry: Yeah.  So, we know two things here. Number one is political pressure works on to Australia, man, like kind of weak, right? Like he’s not at all saying, I think there might have been a crime.

Adam: Right.

Jerry:  He’s saying if we don’t do something, we’re going to look bad.

Adam: Right. Plus, I’m sure it’s an Australian company that does the tour.

Jerry:  It is an Australian company that does the tour.

Adam: So, tourism could…? Yeah.

Jerry: Mm-Hmm.

Adam: You know?

Jerry: Right. So, a probe ensues…

Adam: Okay.

Jerry: It turns into a whole thing. They actually re-enact the whole thing. The Australian police get a dive company and they re-enact the entire situation. Okay?

Adam: You got to get a nervous girl with a heart condition, who’s never dived before.

Jerry: And in 2007, the FBI gets involved. Now that the country of Australia is involved, now the US government is involved.

Adam:  Right.

Jerry: Right. So, the FBI raids, Gabe’s home at 6:00 AM one morning and takes his computer and various documents.

Adam: Not his dive computer?

Jerry: Actually, they took that at some point. They did take his dive computer. He had already started dating a new woman at this point, just a few years later.

Adam: Okay.

Jerry: He’s moved on, this woman named Kim.

Kim: Kim Lewis. Somebody that he went to high school with.

Jerry: Yeah.

Kim: That was like a couple years behind him.

Adam: But this is years after that.

Jerry:  This is now 4-years after the… right.

Adam: So, it’s not like completely inappropriate.

Jerry: Everyone notes. And it is true that she looks…

Kim: Very similar to similar to Tina.

Jerry: …to Tina,

Kim: Although, he [crosstalk 53:53]. That’s not alarming.

Adam: You think that’s alarming?

Kim: No. Not necessarily.

Adam: You wouldn’t try to replace me with another lovable?

Jerry: I mean fuzzy.  Again, Kool-Aid man. Oh yeah.

Adam: He is not available.

Jerry: Okay. So…

Kim: Back to our slaycation.

Adam: Yeah. All right.

Jerry: So, the FBI gets involved, they get his computer, they dig his computer. Meanwhile, while that’s happening in America, and they’re raid his computer in this same time period, the dive company that did the dive has been fined many fines now for failing to comply with safety standards, including that the current was too strong for anyone to be diving.

Adam: Oh, my goodness.

Kim: And that they didn’t follow their own safety guidelines.

Jerry: Mm-Hmm.

Adam: The orientation.

Kim: The interviewing. Right.

Jerry: And she was supposed to have, at her dive level, she should have had–

Kim: A diving guide.

Jerry: — a dive person with her.

Adam: Absolutely.

Jerry: So then cut to a year later, under pressure, the Australian coroner, Mr. Glasgow, who told the whole thing about the political pressure, releases a seven-page inquest, basically going through point by point what’s happened and the fact that there’s been a request by the family to reinvestigate. And it’s an interesting document because he basically says there’s nothing that she could have died from other than drowning. There’s no indication of a heart attack. There’s air in her tanks.

Kim: Right.

Jerry: So somehow or another she drowned. We’re a little unclear exactly what happened. But that is the cause of death. It was drowned.

Adam: Right. So, wait.

Jerry: That theory about turning the air off, basically by saying that she drowned, meaning she did not have oxygen, that potentially that means he turned her air off. So, he writes after this whole thing, saying like, the family is asking for this investigation. It’s been years, but blah, blah, blah. We arrive at, he writes in his document, “On the 22nd day of October, 2003, at the site of the historical shipwreck, Young Gala 48 nautical miles southeast from the port of Townsville in the state of Queensland. David Gabriel Watson murdered Christina May Watson.”

Adam: Dun, dun, dun slaycation.

Jerry: Yeah.

Adam: Wow.

Jerry: So now he’s accused of murder…

Adam: In Australia?

Kim: In Australia.

Adam: Right.

Kim: Yes.

Adam: Good for the Thomases. I mean, wasn’t the murder?

Jerry: Well…

Adam: Oh, what do we got?

Kim: That’s the question.

Jerry: What happens next?

Adam: Yeah. Tell me. What happened.

Kim: Well, they actually did a very lengthy investigation. I mean, this whole thing went on for a number of years.

Adam: Well, we’re already at like 5-years.

Kim: Right.

Adam: Mm-Hmm. We’re 5-years on.

Kim: And at this point, they were trying to extradite him from the United States —

Adam: Australia

Kim: –to Australia.

Speake 6: Mm-Hmm. Do we do that? Do we give people to Australia?

Jerry: It’s not impossible, they’re an ally, but it’s a complicated process.

Kim: Right. And it can go on and on for years. And then Gabe decided that he was just going to go back to Australia.

Adam: Oh. And face the music.

Kim: And face the music.

Adam: Huh-huh.

Kim: Although…

Adam: Oh, there’s ups and downs in this. I like it

Kim: Some suspected that there was some sort of deal worked out.

Adam: Between Gabe and–

Kim: The Australians.

Adam: the Australians, right.

Kim: Yeah.

Adam: We got some people we don’t like; can you take them to the Barrier Reef for us.

Jerry: We have this perfect diving company spoil spot for you.

Adam: Yeah.

Kim: So, he ends up returning to Australia, and they essentially give him a deal where they charge him with manslaughter,

Jerry: And he copses.

Adam: And he takes…?

Jerry: Yeah.

Adam: He says, and then he goes to jail?

Kim:  Yes.

Jerry: He gets a 4-year jail sentence; 3-years are suspended. And he basically is saying, “I’ll take the manslaughter charge. And what I’m admitting is that I did not completely fulfil my obligation as a diving buddy to my wife.”

Adam: Because he realized as her husband.

Jerry: Right. And I think he’s realized at this point, this thing has just spun out of control.

Adam:  Well, it’s never going to go away.

Jerry: It’s not going to go away. Right. And it’s like he can go on trial for murder, which could go really poorly, or he could take this deal, you know, of course, her family was…

Kim: Well, they were insulted.

Jerry: Yeah.

Kim: I mean, it was a slap in the face to them.

Adam: So, they think he’s just…he killed her.

Kim: They think he did it. They think that he…

Adam: He killed her; he did this whole rigamarole, which can’t really be proved. Right.

Jerry: Well, no, no. You can’t.

Kim: I don’t.

Jerry: You can’t really prove it.

Adam:  The court of Kim, it seems to have been proven.

Kim: No, I mean… the thing is, is that there’s nothing to really prove that he…

Adam: Did it.

Kim: Exactly.

Adam: Right.

Kim: And that it was premeditated and that he had this whole thing planned.

Adam:  Let me ask a question.

Kim: There’s no proof of that.

Adam: Motive.

Jerry: None.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: Right. So, he does his time in Australia; he gets a year of, of jail. I don’t even know if he finished the sentence.

Kim: Well, what happened was that they were…

Adam: You didn’t even get to finish your sentence.

Kim: There was an appeal.

Jerry: And the family gets so upset.

Adam: The Thomases?

Jerry: The Thomases, her family that they go to Alabama, attorney General Troy King. And he says, “This is insane. This man murdered your daughter. In fact, he didn’t just murder her, says Troy King, he kidnapped her.”

Kim: Right.

Jerry: Right. “You said she didn’t really want to go on this dive trip and she was nervous. Well, then he kidnapped her and murdered her. And he says, the attorney general of Alabama says Queensland Australia should start advertising itself as if you desire to kill your spouse, Queensland should be your homicide destination.”

Adam: Slaycation. Wow.

Jerry: He’s like, basically, yeah. Right.

Adam:  It’s a little clunky, clunky as but yeah.

Jerry: And so, he actually puts in to Australia to extradite the guy who’s now been sentenced to jail and is serving time in Australia. He wants extradited back to Alabama to be tried for murder and kidnapping in a state with a death penalty.

Adam: Oh.

Jerry: And what does Australia not have?

Adam: Death Penalty.

Kim: The death penalty.

Jerry: And so, Australia says, “We will give him to you on the condition that if he is found guilty of murder —

Adam: You don’t kill him.

Jerry: — you do not execute the man.”

Adam: Right. Wow.

Kim: I mean Alabama, Alabama, Alabama went on to charge him with capital murder.

Jerry: Mm-Hmm.

Kim: Now, the appeal process was three judges in Australia, and he ended up getting more time added to a sentence, not a whole lot of time, but…

Adam: But another like year or two or…

Kim: Right. Because one judge felt that he should have his prison sentence extended and another one felt, this is nonsense.

Jerry: Yeah. One of the judges was like, this is just a terrible accident.

Kim: Right.

Adam: Did he get remarried during this time or anything?

Jerry: Mm-Hmm. Yeah. He remarried this woman, Kim. He did.

Adam: Okay.

Jerry: Yeah.

Kim: Yeah.

Jerry: So, he comes back to Alabama. Alabama agrees we won’t execute him. So, he comes back and they…

Adam: Did he have to go back?

Jerry: Yeah, he’s extradited.

Adam:  He was extradited.

Jerry: He was being extradited from one justice system to another.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: Okay. So, we have him back in Alabama.

Kim: Right. But Alabama needed to make it very clear that they were not going to implement the death penalty, that had to be taken off the table. So, when Gabe was released from prison, I believe it was in sometime in 2010, they had kept him in a facility until they could make sure that he was safe from his own country.

Jerry: Okay. Right. They wouldn’t release him to Alabama until Alabama said, “We won’t kill him.”

Kim: But at this time, he had served his sentence in Australia.

Adam: Plus, the extra time.

Kim: Plus, the extra

Adam: That was…?

Jerry: Yeah.

Adam:  So, this guy’s, yeah, been run through the ringer. Mm-Hmm.  I can’t say I feel bad because of all the torment he created. Whether it was murder or not, he should never have taken her on this path.

Jerry: Yeah.

Adam: But, okay. So now he goes back to Alabama.

Jerry: And so, in Alabama, the way the justice system works there, it’s a jury trial, but the judge has the right to dismiss charges. So, the judge can dismiss certain charges. Any charges that the judge doesn’t dismiss that are judge by the jury.

Adam: Okay.

Jerry: Okay. So, the first phase of his murder trial, is literally the prosecution just trying to prove to the judge and jury that a murder happened.

Adam: Right.

Kim: And that the planning of said murder occurred in the state of Alabama, which was what they were trying to make point.

Adam: Right. That’s where they lived. That’s where they got married. Right.

Jerry: So, in order for this to be in the jurisdiction of Alabama as a premeditated murder, the planning would’ve had to happen.

Kim: At the capital case.

Adam: What if it happened on the boat in the barrier?

Jerry: Then it’s not in Alabama.

Adam: Yeah. Right. Certainly not.

Kim: So that’s what they had to prove.

Adam: That’s a lot to prove.

Jerry: It is a lot. And so, the dive computer comes up again. Okay.

Adam: Oh,

Jerry: Meaning, the beep, beep, beep. Right?

Adam: Yeah.

Jerry: So, one of the key pieces of this story is that this dive computer was beeping and he had to go back on the boat and fix the battery.

Kim: Right.

Jerry: And the prosecutors have always said that is BS because watch with the battery installed properly.

Kim: It does nothing.

Jerry: It wouldn’t beep, it would do nothing.

Kim: It would just —

Adam: Which makes sense.

Kim:  –would be inoperable.

Adam: I have not had the experience where you put a battery in wrong and it makes some noise. No.

Jerry: So, Gabe’s lawyer, a guy named Brett Bloomston, his Alabama Defence Attorney, says,” This is a very simple thing to find out. Just call the company that makes the dive computer.” And the prosecutor says, “Well, we didn’t do that.” And he says, “Well, I did.” And in fact, the dive computer is designed so that if the battery’s in wrong, it beeps so that you know, it’s not functioning.

Adam: Wow.

Jerry: Mm-Hmm.

Adam: Wow.

Jerry: Yeah. Wow. Indeed. Right?

Adam: That’s pretty cool.

Jerry: We got Josh over here as wow,

Kim: Right. Yeah.

Jerry: It’s like really that nobody’s…

Adam: No one in 6- years call the freaking.

Jerry: Right.

Adam: Or just get one of them and put the battery in wrong and see if it beeps.

Jerry: Right.

Adam: What to call the company, just buy one, try it with his prep. Okay. So, it does deep.

Jerry: Okay. So, it does beep. That’s a big like strike because the prosecution whole thing was like, he’s lying about the computer. So, he is not lying.

Kim: And it was interesting because it seemed in some strange ways that the prosecution made the case with the Défense.

Adam: Mm-Hmm.

Jerry:  Right. Hundred percent. Their case was so wrapped up in the guy’s computer.

Adam: Well, the guy’s computer part of it though was just, oh, he had to get separation so he could enact his evil plan.

Jerry: Yeah. But if that first part of the plan turns out not to be true…

Adam: You could still kill her, though. It still turns off her air. I was going to kill her earlier, but the beeping, I couldn’t kill with the beeping in my ears. It was bothering me. So, I had to fix that then. I don’t know. Right. I mean, it doesn’t end. It completely does it or did it?

Jerry: Well, not completely.

Adam: Okay.

Jerry:  But motive. Right.

Kim: They couldn’t prove the motive.

Adam: They weren’t being married long enough to hate each other.

Kim: That and only had this $30,000 life insurance policy.

Adam: Right.

Jerry:  Despite the family trying to spin this whole thing that he tried to get new police involved and blah, blah, blah. Right. That none of that,

Kim: It turned out that he had taken on her debt.

Jerry: Yeah.

Adam:  Huh.

Jerry: So, yeah, they actually, at the trial, they have her dad on the stand.

Kim: Right.

Adam: Oh boy.

Jerry: And his lawyer says to her father, “Did you know that her entire estate was valued at $3,000 at the time of her death?”  And her father says, “No.” And Bloomston says to the dad, “Are you aware that she had $24,000 in debt?”  And the father says, “No.”  He asks the father, “Was there any more than a $30,000 life insurance policy?” The father says, “No.” And he says, “Did you dad, collect the life insurance policy?”  And dad says, “Yes.” And the prosecution then says, “Oh, with a ring. Right.”

Kim: Right.

Jerry: They say the fact that he took her engagement ring off her body shows greed. Okay. The judge at that point, Judge Tommy Nail in Alabama, is so incensed by this prosecutorial comment that he actually, did he read this? He dismisses the jury out of the courtroom and he say to the prosecutors, “Because I sent the jury out because I have a question for you.” And I’m going to read the quote from the judge. He says, “So you mean to tell me that Gabe Watson bought the engagement ring, married her, he and his family paid for a wedding. He planned and paid for a honeymoon halfway around the world. Also, he could kill her to get an engagement ring that he bought the first place.

Adam: Yeah. It’s pretty funny. It’s super funny.  I don’t know, I don’t think he’s not an idiot, but I do think that not sounding like a murder,

Kim: I think the one thing that was clear to me was that her parents did not like him.

Adam: Mm-Hmm.

Kim: And he in turn came to really not like them.

Adam: Right. But think of it this way. You don’t like him. He goes around you and then this happens.

Jerry: Mm-Hmm.

Adam:  I mean, it’s like I fucking knew it.

Kim: Right.

Jerry: Mm-Hmm.

Adam: I knew this guy was going to be trouble.

Kim: There’s also some very odd behaviour on his part.

Adam: His being Gabe?

Kim:  Gabe.

Jerry: Gabe.

Adam: Okay.

Kim: When her father, her mother, they had buried her and he then made a motion to have her body exhumed.

Adam: Gabe did?

Kim: Yes.

Kim: Gabe.

Adam: She forgot another ring or something? Oh, she had a watch in the sandwich.

Kim: Well, he wanted her buried where he wanted her.

Adam: Oh, yeah. Okay.

Kim: Okay. It was an odd sort of situation in that her family would come and lay flowers and he would literally…

Adam: Throw out their flowers?

Jerry: Mm-Hmm.

Kim: Yeah.

Jerry: Yeah.

Kim:  I mean, it was clearly a pissing contest in point.

Jerry: Angry, angry guy?

Kim: Yeah. And then there was even, they had went to the police, the police did surveillance that showed him removing…

Adam: The family flow.

Kim: Right.

Adam: And putting his own.

Kim: I don’t know if he put it his own.

Jerry: Well and remember —

Adam: Or did he go sell them?

Jerry: — let’s also keep in mind at this point that the Helena, Alabama Police Department and the parents are basically operating as a unit. Right. They’ve got the police department on their side. The police department is a tiny local police department that has invested their international reputation in this being a murder case.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: So weird behaviour or not, the judge at the end of hearing about all the life insurance that didn’t exist, and the fact that Gabe actually took on her debt.

Kim: Yeah.

Jerry: I mean, he was trying to pay off.

Adam: Well, I was going to say, where do we go with the case? So, like he dismissed the jury,

Kim: The judge dismisses the case.

Jerry: The judge completely dismisses the case

Kim: Which is really unusual.

Jerry: Yeah. He said, “There’s not even enough evidence of a murder for me to even bother putting it to a jury.”  So, the case is dismissed, it’s over, you’re free.

Adam: Right. If I was Gabe, I would go to Australia.

 

 

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Matt: Hi, I’m Matt Harris, Seton Tucker and I host the podcast Impact of Influence, which were 2-years covered in depth Alex Middaugh, who was eventually convicted at 2023 of murdering his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul. That story continues to evolve and we will cover that. Plus, we’ll tell you stories of other true crime events that have happened in the South. Please join us on Impact of Influence and give us a follow on the Impact of Influence Facebook page.

Adam: Wow, what a crazy case.

Jerry: And by the way, this is one of those cases where when you first read about it and you read any article about it, it’s a case about a guy who murdered his wife on a scuba vacation.

Kim: Right.

Jerry:  It’s one of these like cut and dry, like this is what happened.

Adam: Mm-Hmm.

Jerry: And those are all articles that came out around the time that it happened. So, it is a very public decision that’s been made in the public eye. This is what happened. He took his wife on the scuba vacation, he murdered her. And it’s like the reputational damage is insane. Like imagine being this guy, right?

Adam: Yeah.

Jerry: He made bad decisions. He shouldn’t have brought her on this dive trip. He shouldn’t have put her in this situation, but he didn’t kill her, it seems. And meanwhile, her family’s grieving. He’s grieving, he was in love with her. And now he is got to go through all this rigmarole.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: And, you know, this is a case where if her family had not pushed this and pushed, and pushed and pushed, this would’ve gone down as a terrible tragedy.

Adam: Yeah.

Jerry: There was just enough theories that…

Kim: Well, here’s something interesting. So, the chief justice in Queensland Court had cited, “Stupidity is revealed rather than wickedness. Malice is nowhere to be found in respect to this case. Must be less seriously regarded than the ordinary domestic case where there is a distinct intention to harm. “

Jerry: Mm-Hmm.

Adam: That’s such a smarter way of saying what I said earlier.

Jerry: [laughs]

Adam: Okay. So, let’s go into some takeaway. What’s your takeaway from this?

Jerry: Well, my biggest takeaway from this is like, don’t do things that you’re not equipped for. Right. Even if you’re being pressured into it, there’s something like 80 to 90 deaths a year from scuba diving in the United States and Canada. Most of them are deaths of experienced divers because inexperienced divers don’t go into situations where they could die.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: Like, you’re not going out into the open ocean.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: Most of these deaths, something like 75% of them are from rapidest sense, by experienced divers who get the bends and die. And this is a very rare situation because most people at her diving level would never go near a dive of this complexity.

Adam: Right. Sure.

Jerry: And we hear, you know, but like you hear…

Adam: But they didn’t even make it to the bottom. They didn’t even make it to the ship.

Jerry: She did

Adam: Jerry, wow. Wow. My God. You’re welcome. The part of Adam will be played by Jerry

Kim: Exactly Jerry. For a minute, I was like wait.

Adam: The point is, yeah, scuba diving.

Jerry: It’s not a guaranteed thing.

Kim: Well, the thing is that it’s so nuanced and complicated. There’s so many different types of diving.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: I did it once and I’ll never do it again.

Adam: Really?

Jerry: I was like, for a couple reasons. One is my, I have something with my ears. Like I have like, which I didn’t know, but like I get 10 feet down and my ears start. It feels like someone’s putting a pick act and I can’t.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: I can’t clear them. But the other thing I didn’t like about it is there was so much to pay attention to.

Adam:  Mm-Hmm.

Jerry: I was like pretty good at focusing on things, but there’s like a lot of information. And I’m like, I’m going to get so into just watching the fish and stuff, I’m going to forget something. And I’m sure that with experience and training, you learn how to not do that.

Adam:  I would be the same way. I’ve never done it, but yeah, I’d be worried about the tank emptying and like, can I get back up when I hit halfway on the gas in my car?

Kim: Right.

Adam: I’m already thinking like, oh, where’s the gas station? I can’t even imagine if it was the, you know, the oxygen in a tank that’s on my back.

Jerry: Yeah. It got to keep you going. And I was even like diving so shallow that, I mean I probably could have taken a mask off and swim.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: But I was just like, this feels like a lot to pay attention to.

Adam: Sure.

Jerry: So, for me, I would never even think to put myself in that situation.  But I would say like if you’re doing a sport or something like this where you’re not trained or you have any misgivings, just don’t do it.

Adam: Yeah.

Jerry: It’s not worth it.

Kim: Or if you’re anxious, I mean, if it’s giving you such anxiety.

Jerry: Right.

Adam: I’ll piggyback on that. Like you have to advocate for yourself. Like this isn’t a quick a case of somebody doing something that they were nervous about, like that they were just doing on their own. They followed along with their new husband.

Kim: Right.

Adam: They allowed themselves to be put, I’m not trying to blame the victim, but you do have to advocate for yourself if you really feel that strongly and that uncomfortable. You can’t let somebody strong arm you into doing something

Kim: No matter who they are. No matter how much you love them. And if they love you…

Adam: They’ll understand.

Kim: Absolutely.

Adam: Right. I would not put Kim in a situation that, you know, I would never let my need to go diving or whatever it is, put somebody else at harm. I would say, look, I want to do this. And she would come on the boat and I would go down.

Kim: Exactly. That’s exactly how that would play.

Adam: Well because she’s sick and we’d have to end the trip early. But you know that, that’s exactly…

Kim: It’s correct.

Adam:  I’m Kim in this situation.

Kim: Yeah.

Jerry: Brian is a much nimbler person about things like hiking and rock.

Adam: Who’s Brian?

Jerry: Brian is my husband.

Adam: Oh, okay.

Jerry: Sorry, I should mention that.

Adam: That’s alright. No.

Jerry: Yeah, we went to a hiking trip out in Sedona.

Adam:  Right.

Jerry: Where there was some stuff where I was like, I am not super comfortable about this. And he’s like, yeah, let’s not do it.

Adam: Right.

Jerry: And there were a couple points where he actually would go ahead.

Adam: Sure

Jerry:  And he’s very good at balance and that he’s, you know, and he is like, goes ahead and he is like, yeah, no, this is not for you. Like don’t do it.

Kim: Right. He recognizes that and he recognizes your discomfort. I think that Gabe was probably not a terribly emotionally mature person. Wasn’t necessarily tapped into his wife, but I don’t know that I think that he deliberately set out to murder her.

Jerry: Huh-huh.

Adam: All right. So, you got the Kim pass?

Jerry: Unusual.

Adam: Yeah.

Kim: Right.

Adam: Well, you think Kim is…?

Jerry: It’s like he definitely did it.

Adam: Yeah.

Jerry: Well, I also think on that point, Kim, that he was so enthusiastic about diving and he is the guy who likes to be outdoors and do stuff and she got swept up in that.

Kim: Right.

Adam: And was like, I want to do this too.

Kim: And you know, I think couples need to realize you’re allowed to have your own hobbies. It’s allowed to want to do something and be like, good, have fun.

Jerry: You mean Adam doesn’t knit?

Kim: I’m afraid that he not only does not knit crochet craft in any way, he’s not interested

Adam: Really?

Kim: No.

Jerry: Not surprising at all.

Kim: No. And that’s okay.

Adam: I’m so disinterested that I didn’t even want to comment. I’m kidding.

Kim: He doesn’t care. I mean it’s…

Adam: Of course, I care. Beautiful thing.

Kim: I mean if I make something, it’s like, oh, that’s so pretty. But he’s not like, oh, what yarn did you use? Is that an acrylic? Is that washable?

Adam: Are you marrying that guy though?

Kim: No.

Adam: Are you marrying the guy who wants to know what yarn you use?

Jerry: I don’t know.

Kim: But the thing is…

Adam: Look, you force your murder shows on me. That you’re a little forcing.

Kim: No, you’re just there. I don’t force them on you.

Adam:  I wish I had a heart condition that would stop me from watching murder shows. And Kim, did you have any takeaway?

Kim: The thing that really stuck with me was the fact that she was very anxious. Her diving instructor said that she was terrified. It just felt like if it terrifies you, maybe what you need to ask yourself is, is this something that I really want to do or am I doing this for somebody else? And if you really want to do it, maybe you just need more time.

Adam: More practice.

Kim: More practice, you know, help…

Adam: Take the orientation. Why not? Why not just take the orientation?

Kim: Exactly.

Adam: And then they could sort you out and then they could see if you were really.

Kim: Right. Why not have the dive master there? Why not just say, you know what, let’s just have him there?  I mean, I know you’re an expert babe, but I want the master there, the dive master.

Jerry: Boy. Oh boy.  So many jokes, coming actually out of Adam’s mouth right now.

Adam: Oh, I didn’t say it.

Jerry: I going to say one last thing on that is that, that’s a great point, is that whenever you’re doing these kind of activities, take the orientation because if she had, they would’ve totally identified that she could not only be out with Gabe. They would’ve made her go —

Kim: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jerry: –one of their employees.

Adam: So, wait, what actually happened to that company that didn’t do the orientation and didn’t do the separate interview?

Kim: Well, they’re actually still in business. They paid the fine and they’re still in business and I’m sure that they are probably much more on top of their guidelines.

Adam: I would hope so.

Kim: Being followed to the letter.

Adam: Yeah. It’s funny, the separate interview thing, you know, you usually hear about that like when the cops pick up people, like that are involved in a crime and they interview everybody separately. Like you don’t think of it in terms of a scuba diving company, but it makes total sense.

Kim: Did you know that there was actually a lifetime movie?

Adam: I was going to ask if there was…

Jerry: About this?

Kim: Yeah.

Adam: Oh, a lifetime movie.

Kim: Yeah. I’m trying to think what the name of this [crosstalk 1:19:26].

Adam: It’s interesting that all these death things are on a channel called Lifetime, but whatever, it’s called Yacht without…

Jerry: Nice. Thank you.

Kim: Yeah. I know, Lifetime movie.

Jerry: How do I tell my daughter?

Adam: It’s pretty good. It’s not bad.

Jerry:  Not bad. That should be what it’s called.

Kim: Fatal Honeymoon

Adam: From the makers of generic title comes Fatal Honeymoon.

Jerry: Next up, Bad Date.

Adam: Exactly.

Jerry:  I feel like we should remake it as a yacht without my daughter.

Kim: And that premiered… Fatal Honeymoon premiered on August 25th, 2012.

Jerry: So that was right after the case was dismissed?

Kim: Yeah.

Adam: Huh?

Kim: Yeah.

Jerry: So many years in the making.

Kim: Yeah.

Adam: Was there a movie…?

Jerry: Wait, I need to know who’s in this movie.

Kim: Starring Harvey Cartel.

Adam: Oh.

Kim: Wow.

Adam:  Harvey Cartel, it’s Tom Thomas,

Kim: Billy Miller and Amber Clayton.

Adam: I don’t know who the…

Jerry: Oh my god, this is real.

Adam: Who did Harvey play?

Kim: You thought I was making it up? You thought I was making it up?

Jerry: Harvey Cartel must play her dad.

Adam: Right. She’s Tom Thomas. Right?

Jerry: Oh, this looks terrible.

Adam: A lifetime movie, that’s not that good. What are you talking about?  Could you possibly…?

Jerry: No expense was expensed.

Adam: No expense was expensed. Holy molly. This is why, why Fatal Hunting? Like I feel like that could be the title of like most of the things on Lifetime.

Jerry: Yep. There’s Harvey Cartel, that looks like he’s playing her father. Right. What was the rating?

Adam: Oh, what, like Rotten Tomatoes or…?

Jerry: Yeah. Or any…

Adam: It has a 5.5 on IMDB, 81% liked on Google. Maybe it’s one of those sleeper hits. So, wait, in the Lifetime movie, is he a murderer or is does he get dismissed or did they include the dismissal?

Jerry: Well, having not seen the movie, I’m have to look that up for you Adam.

Kim: Maybe we should watch that movie.

Jerry: Oh, it has a 25% on Rotten Tomatoes. I didn’t know there was a movie.

Kim: Fun Fact.

Adam: I can’t believe you haven’t seen it yet, Kimmy.

Kim: I just recently found out about Fatal Honeymoon.

Adam: Is that what you’ve been trying to get me to go see in theatre?

Jerry: I mean, it says the movie is about the investigation to whether or not an American murdered his wife on honeymoon, right?

Adam: In Australia.

Jerry: I don’t know. If you’d like to watch it for 499, it’s available on Amazon.

Kim: Thank you.

Jerry: That’s alright. Should we just do that for the next hour and a half?

Adam: I’ve got a Russian pirate site. I’m sure I could watch it tonight.

Kim: All right guys,

Jerry: I don’t know if we need any of the last 10-minutes of this show.

Adam: Well…wait, Kim, you had another takeaway.

Kim: I know this is a tough one, but if your kid comes home with somebody and you are not psyched, keep it to yourself. Keep it to yourself.

Adam: Why?

Kim: ‘Because it will only make their love stronger.  They will be clinging to that person. They will cleave unto that person. They will definitely marry that person.

Jerry: They’re definitely not choosing you over them.

Kim: No. No.

Jerry: That’s just never how the story is.

Kim: No.

Adam: Was it pretty clear that she knew that her father had said no?

Kim: No.  I don’t think she even knew. I think she…

Adam: What do you think he said to her?

Kim: But I think what she did know, and this had even come up. What she did know was that her father, her mother, that they did not particularly care for him.

Adam: Right.

Kim: And in fact, the minister who had married them had even had made a comment that she would even lie to her parents because she didn’t want to spend time with them. You don’t want to spend time with people that are just basically like, oh…

Adam: Taking apart your life.

Kim: Right. That’s why when Gia calls me with advice, I’m like, this is a setup.

Adam: Gia is our daughter.

Kim: And she’s like, Ugh, I’m thinking of breaking up with my boyfriend. I’m like…

Adam: You go, I love him. He’s the best.

Kim: Exactly.

Adam: I can’t wait till he’s in our family. He’s gone by the weekend.

Kim: Really what you really should do is encourage them to think about what is best for them.

Adam:  Right.

Kim:  Turn it on them.

Adam: Right.

Kim: I mean, I don’t know if it would’ve made a difference. I don’t know if it would’ve even helped in this case.

Adam: A good point though.

Kim: Now, what if they would’ve embraced him? What if they would’ve went to dinner with his family and was like, oh, we love you guys. You guys are great, we’re family. What if they had done that?

Adam: Or even just made an effort.

Kim: Right.

Adam: Sounds like they didn’t even make the effort.

Kim: Right. Exactly. So, I don’t know, that’s just something that…

Adam: Does that mean you have to start making efforts?

Kim: Yes.

Adam: Okay.

Kim: I think it’s… I think, I think it works.

Adam: All right. One thought on Gabe, like Gabe strikes me as like one of those guys who’s just super overconfident, thinks he is so great at like, say scuba diving. That don’t worry about it. That you’re a novice, that you have no experience. You’re with me, I’m Superman. I can take care of you, I can handle anything. I’ve got friends like that. I know that type. Mm-Hmm.

Kim: I mean it’s interesting too because, you know, it’s even sort of figured that Gabe wasn’t as experienced as he even said he was.

Adam: Well at least you know, the battery worked.

Jerry: You know, the thing is, in a certain context, he was very experienced, but it’s very easy for certain kinds of guys. A lot of guys, maybe most guys be like, oh, well I know how to do that in that world so I can go, you know, do it elsewhere without thinking about, oh my, maybe my skills don’t translate.

Adam: Right. Well, unless anybody…

Kim:  But I think we’ve all agreed that one of the takeaways is anything that makes you that anxious —

Jerry: Right. Don’t do it.

Kim: — don’t do it. Anybody that cares about you will understand. It’s okay to have your own hobbies. Your partner does not necessarily have to.

Adam: Thanks for the recap, honey. Okay. Well thank you for joining us on another exciting episode of Slaycation and we’ll see you on the next one.

[End of Audio 01:25:31]