48 hours after Guy Wallace plied the waterway at 4 to 5 am, he stated
The guy on this ketch would have been about 5 9 tall wiry build. He was unshaven but didn't have a moustache. He had short dark wavy hair and smelled like a bottle of bourbon. It would have been very near 5 am or just after when I dropped these people off.
AJ Saunders
Detective Constable D279
3 January 1998.
Here is the key to this testimony.
Guy Wallace was ear witness to an angry Olivia Hope describing occupiers to the bed she had paid for on Tamarak, she was the principal lessor.
Guy Wallace would have recall according to the import of the events and people, and in straightforward terms, when he asks Olivia and Ben if they are OK with climbing on board with a stranger, he will remember with some strong memory fixation the appearance and demeanour of this stranger.
Blade was moored to many boats, things look larger in the dark, and there are multiple masts, but indelible is
SHORT DARK wavy HAIR.
Come on everyone, please don't be fooled by this case.
There was just one water taxi on the water.
Samson, you are completely ignoring some crucial evidence and witness testimony!
1. Scott Watson was still on the
Mina Cornelia at 9:30 pm (verified by numerous witnesses who were also present on the
Mina Cornelia at the same time). He was encountered by Eyvonne Walsh outside the bar when he came ashore at around 10pm and was told to finish or dispose of his alcohol, which he did. The Mystery Man was already at the bar at 8 pm, his lecherous behaviour was clearly observed by numerous witnesses in the bar. He was served alcohol by Guy Wallace.
2. The witnesses at the bar all described the Mystery Man as scruffy, shabbily dressed, with long wavy
shoulder length hair. The photo of Watson taken on the
Mina Cornelia at around 9:30 pm shows him smartly dressed, clean shaven with
short cropped, straight hair, yet the police insisted that the Mystery Man was Scott Watson. On what planet can a person have two entirely different descriptions and be in two different places at the same time?
It is also noteworthy that Amelia Hope (Olivia's sister), when giving evidence in court, pointed to a different man when she was indicating the forelock of the Mystery man...
This is a still from the court footage. She is pointing to photo #1, yet Scott Watson is right there in photo #3 and she doesn't identify him!
3. Guy Wallace was adamant (and is still adamant to this day), as were the other witnesses on the Naiad, that he dropped off Olivia and Ben and the Mystery Man (i.e. the man he had served alcohol to earlier and NOT Scott Watson) onto a ketch....
And here is a visual comparison
Note the difference in freeboard (the distance between the water line and the deck). The inflatable sides of a Naiad are about 18" to 2' above the waterline; the freeboard of the
Blade is 3' 2", so for a person standing on the floor of the Naiad, the deck of the
Blade would be lower than hip height; if they stood on the top of the sides of the Naiad, the deck of the
Blade would be below knee height. Yet those three people were dropped off on a boat that required them to climb up onto a deck that was al least chest high as described by Wallace and the other two witnesses.
Everything might look bigger at night Samson, but not that much bigger. Confusing these two yachts would be like mixing up a 6-seater minivan and an 80-seater touring bus. Wallace said that the only thing the two boats had in common was that they both floated!
4. Over a dozen people on Ted Walsh's charter boat saw a young couple at the stern of a ketch that matched the description of the Mystery Yacht. They also saw an older long-haired man working the boat. They did not twig that it might be Ben and Olivia they saw because all the publicity photos showed her as a redhead. It was only after the trial was over that Ted Walsh saw footage of Olivia at Furneaux Lodge and realised that she had long blonde hair, then he realised the girl on the back of the ketch was Olivia, something that he maintained until the day he died.
There were other independent witnesses who saw the ketch with these three people in other parts of the Sounds as well as an Mapua Wharf, Nelson and Post Tarakohe in Golden Bay.
NOTE: Those, like Wishart, who think that the ketch was the
Alliance, need to think again. Wishart is wrong, and so are any others who believe him. The
Alliance is a modern ketch with a typical feature of that style of yacht; the mizzen mast (aft) is noticeably shorter than the main mast (this is sometimes incorrectly referred to as a "fractionally rigged ketch"). In the case of the
Alliance, the mizzen mast is 4/5ths the height of the main mast. as can be seen here...
However, the Mystery Yacht was an older style ketch of 1940s - 1950s design;
both of its masts were the same height; its one of the reasons why it got the attention of so many old yachties in the area.
Alliance also lacks the intricate hemp "ladder" rigging that was so distinctive on the Mystery yacht. There are also a number of yachties who actually knew the
Alliance very well, so knew that it was not the yacht they saw.
Alliance was definitely NOT the Mystery Yacht.
a source document.