Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - Murder in Marlborough Sounds

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Olivia Hope and Ben Smart were partying with their friends on New Year’s Eve in the Marlborough Sounds of New Zealand. As the party was dying down they accepted an offer from a stranger to come aboard his yacht. They were never heard from again. Keep up with us on Instagram @serialkillerspodcast! Have a story to share? Email us at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this murder case, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of implied murder and sexual harassment. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. Across the globe, New Year's Eve is a time to party. The celebrations take many forms, but they typically have a few things in common. Music, drinking, and a whole lot of people. To most, it's a beautiful tradition. A way to celebrate the past year and set the tone for a new one.

But it can't all be fun in games. Even during a party, somebody has to take responsibility. That's why we have designated drivers, bouncers, and chaperones. When inhibitions are low, danger is high. Back in 1998, the people of New Zealand got a painful reminder of this. That new year's, the disappearances of two young revelers, Olivia, Hope, and Beaux. Ben Smart captured the nation's attention and had thousands demanding justice. Eventually, the case was closed. But whether or not the victims ever received justice is still

in question. I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. You can find us here every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast. And we'd love love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the lonely hearts killers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These are infamous criminal duels. But you don't need to break any laws to find your perfect business partner because you have Shopify. It's the commerce platform that can help you with literally everything, website design, marketing, shipping, and more. So So start your business today with the best partner, Shopify, and get that.

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Sprits on lush notes of rainforest orchid and crisp sea breeze with hafresco paraizzo. Embrace a floral and fruity scent inspired by Rio's nude beach with cheeky bikini or capture sun-kissed bliss with limonada gelada where zesty Brazilian lemonade accord meets coconut milk and golden brown sugar. Don't miss Sol de Janito's limited edition perfume mist collection only at Sephora. On December 30th, 1997, 17-year-old New Zealander Olivia Hope boarded a chartered yacht called Tamarack with her older sister Amelia and a group of Amelia's friends from university. The yacht

was set to tour the Marlborough Sounds before ringing in the New Year on the western side of the sounds in an area called Endeavour Inlet. Olivia had a lot to celebrate. After years of hard work and practice, she'd officially been certified as a musician and performer. She was heading to college the next year to refine her skills and take the next step in her career. Despite partying the day before, Olivia woke up early that New Year's Eve. She gave her parents a call around 7.30 a.m. and assured her mom and dad that she wouldn't get too out of control that night. The Tamarack dropped anchor in the inlet by the early evening. Olivia, Amelia, and the the rest of their friends headed ashore to the beach. The real party was on land. Right by the beach

was Ferno Lodge, a large hotel, restaurant, and bar owned by a local tour company. The lodge expected over a thousand people to join their New Year's celebration. As afternoon turned to early evening, the party really got started. Olivia threw on a black top and jeans and split off from her sister and their friends on a yacht. She found a group of classmates from Marlborough Girls College. Together, they made a bee line for the dance floor, which was located down by the water. Olivia only came back to the lodge every once in a while to top off her drink. Amelia only caught a few glimpses of her younger sister as the night wore on, but at some point she noticed Olivia hanging out with a familiar face, 21-year-old Hamish Rose.

Hamish was an old family friend, and Olivia had recently done some part-time work at a vineyard, father owned. Olivia stuck by Hamish's side for several hours, and he was a little surprised by the attention. The two hiked over to Hamish's campsite, which was by the lodge. The pair watched the sun sink behind the hills. They talked, exchanged some drunken jokes, and took a walk on the beach. At some point, Olivia turned to Hamish, and they exchanged a kiss, the first fireworks of the night. Not long after, though, the two went there separate ways. It was sometime around 11 p.m. and Hamish had wanted to go back to his friends before the night was over.

Before they parted ways, Hamish mentioned that he'd run into someone they both knew, a guy named Ben Smart. Olivia and Ben had some history. They weren't ever an item exactly, but they were good friends, and occasionally something more. According to a mutual acquaintance,

Olivia and Ben had a family. few one-night stands with no strings attached. Sometime around midnight, Olivia had left Hamish and met up with Ben. Ben had been in the area just a day longer than Olivia, arriving in the sounds on December 29, 1997. The 21-year-old was staying at a nearby lakehouse with a group of friends. He'd spent the last two days floating across the sounds, drinking and playing guitar. Like Olivia, Ben planned to go all out on New Year's Eve. According to a witness who saw Ben around 1145 p.m., he seemed pretty drunk. He'd been drinking for more than 12 hours by that point.

Olivia was celebrating a new chapter in her life, but Ben was looking to blow off some steam. He had to be back home by January 5th so he could return to work at his father's engineering company. These days at the lakehouse felt like an alternate reality, one where adulthood hadn't started yet, and anything was possible. When Ben saw Olivia, it was late. But the party wasn't over yet. By midnight, there were over 1,600 people still packed into the lodge. One of them was Ben's older sister, Rebecca.

She warned her brother to slow down, but wasn't overly concerned about his safety. Half an hour after midnight, she remembered her brother hanging out with a young, blonde woman. She thought it was Olivia, but couldn't be sure. The three had a brief exchange, then Rebecca turned in for the night. Around 1 a.m., she caught a water taxi back to where she was staying. But Ben and Olivia continued dancing and drinking, even after the band and DJ finished their sets around 1.30. Around 2 o'clock, a friend of Olivia and Ben ran into Olivia's friend,

Kirsty Sutherland. Kirsty said she was heading back to the lakehouse that Ben was staying at, along with some of his friends. She invited Olivia and Ben to come along as well. Tired and running out of stamina, they decided it was probably for the best, but Olivia wanted to stop by the Tamarack to grab a change of clothes first.

So they jumped in a water taxi that drove them to the yacht, which was moored not too far from shore. The driver of the taxi, a guy named Marco, promised to come right back and give them a ride to the lakehouse, but they waited on the yacht for more than an hour, and Marco never returned. They were stranded on the tamarack. Which wouldn't have been a problem.

They could have just crashed on the boat, but Olivia paced around the deck trying to find an open bed and all of them were taken by random partiers. Ben was drunk enough to pass out anywhere. He fell asleep right there on the boat. But Olivia couldn't follow suit. She was still hoping Marco would come back or that they'd find another way to get to the lakehouse.

Olivia and Kirstie talked for a while, trying to figure out what to do. It was almost 4 a.m., and they must have been getting more frustrated by the minute. Meanwhile, Olivia's older sister Amelia was in a similar situation at the Furno Lodge. The party had finally wound down, and she was one of the last stragglers trying to leave. The regular water taxi drivers had all finished their shifts, so she needed to get creative. luckily she found a bartender named Guy Wallace who'd just gotten off work. He owned his own water taxi and agreed to drop Amelia and a few friends off somewhere. The lakehouse was out of the question, so Amelia had him drop them off on the tamarack.

She didn't know how crowded it would be until she arrived and saw her little sister on the deck. Olivia brought Amelia up to speed and begged Guy for a ride back to dry land and offered him money. Guy refused her offer, but agreed to drive her and Ben back to Furno. Olivia may have asked Amelia and friends if they wanted to come, but they'd just come from Furno, so in the end, her and Ben were the only ones from the yacht who climbed back into the water taxi. But that didn't mean they were the only passengers. Guy still had a few other people from the lodge, a couple who were bound for a nearby jetty, and a man who needed to get back to his own boat.

Olivia was still pretty wound up, concerned about where she and Ben were going to stay for the night. She hardly glanced up as Amelia waved goodbye and watched the water taxi drift away. On board the taxi, Olivia turned to the other passengers, inquiring about places for her and Ben to stay. The couple didn't talk much, but the other guy, the scruffy one, suddenly came to life when Olivia turned to him. He said Olivia could sleep on his boat, but... that Ben wouldn't be allowed. It seemed like a bad drunken joke. The mystery man was scruffy with shoulder-length hair.

Guy Wallace would later recall that he was about five-foot-eight inches and in his early 30s. It was hard to tell in the dark, but it looked like he had a bit of a beard and was wearing either a khaki or a light green shirt. According to Amelia Hope, he had a widow's peak too. And like nearly everyone else, he seemed incredibly intoxicated,

but was able to give Guy Wallace clear enough directions to get to his boat. It was nice enough. Ben wasn't too picky by that point, and Olivia was more than happy to have a bed. Guy Wallace had some reservations about letting Olivia and Ben go, but the teens insisted they were all right.

So Guy let the couple off, along with the mystery man. They wished each other well, and Guy drove off with his father. final two passengers. It was the last time anyone saw Ben Smart or Olivia Hope. Want to support your gut health? Take Activia's gut health challenge by enjoying two Activia yogurt today for two weeks and see if you feel a difference. With billions of probiotics and 20 years of scientific expertise, Activia is one of the easiest and tastiest ways

to start your gut health ritual. Try Activia today. Enjoying Activia twice a day for two weeks as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle may help reduce the frequency of minor digestive discomfort, which includes gas, bloating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terseptite. The first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5,

5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. Zetbound contains terseptitite and should not be used with other terseptitine-containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pins or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid, cancer or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're

nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zep bound with a sulfonel urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsened kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-9-9 or visit Zepbound.lily.com. On New Year's Day, 1998, Olivia hopes friends on the Tamarack awoke to a mess. Spilled cups, empty bottles, discarded life jackets. They cleaned up as best they could and then took stock of the situation.

They'd rented the yacht and needed to drop it off within a few hours. Olivia was the only one unaccounted for. Amelia last saw her younger sister with Ben, but she had no idea where the couple ended up. Amelia said the others from the Tamarack made it to shore around 9 a.m. and started searching. No one they spoke to knew where Olivia and Ben were. And as time wore on, the group became frustrated. As far as Amelia, Olivia was planning on taking the water taxi back to the lawn.

She figured Olivia and Ben might have made their way from there to a nearby campsite. That was where she'd spent time with Hamish the previous night and where some of her other friends were staying. If she wasn't there, maybe she'd made it back to the lakehouse somehow. As it turned out, they were wrong on both counts. Hamish hadn't seen Olivia since just before midnight the night before. Like everyone else, he figured she and Ben had found a secluded place to sleep. The yacht had a schedule to keep, so around 10.30, the Tamarack crew headed back to the boat.

They stopped at Ben's lakehouse on the way to their next destination, but once again, Ben and Olivia were nowhere to be found. So the Tamarack headed back the way it came. Its next stop was what a mango bay, where some of the people on board planned to disembark and end their New Year's holiday. By coincidence, Olivia and Amelia's parents, Gerald. and Jan Hope were on their own little vacation in the bay. They ran into Amelia when the Tamarack stopped to let people off and immediately noticed Olivia's absence. Amelia told her parents that she'd gone off with Ben Smart,

but they were immediately alarmed. It had been around 12 hours since Olivia and Ben were last seen. Gerald and Jan ended their holiday early and returned home. To their dismay, Olivia wasn't waiting for them. and a phone call never came. The next morning was a flurry of action, panicked whispers and false leads. Gerald and Jan called everyone they could think of to check on Olivia. They contacted the Furno Lodge and Ben's Lakehouse several times.

They promised to compensate anyone willing to search the campgrounds to find their daughter. They also contacted Ben Smart's family. His mother, Mary, didn't seem worried at first. Ben wasn't scheduled to be back for a couple of days, she figured he must have gone back to the lakehouse, and the Tamarack crew just missed him. Frustrated by Mary's reaction, Olivia's parents hung up the phone. Around 3.30 p.m., Gerald and Janhope went down to the local station to file a police report. According to Gerald, the authorities didn't seem overly concerned. It wasn't uncommon for kids to take a while to respond after a big party. They advised the hopes to stay calm and continue making calls. They were sure Ben and Olivia would show up soon. But Olivia was supposed to resume a part-time

job on January 3rd. Her parents knew she wouldn't miss her first day of work without, at the very least, calling ahead. Nothing about the situation made sense. Olivia had a bright future ahead, and as far as anyone could tell, no skeletons in her closet. So around 5 p.m., just 90 minutes after the authorities waved him off, Gerald contacted the police again. He had called everyone he could think of, and no one knew anything about his daughter. He begged the police to launch a full-scale investigation. And his pleas actually worked.

Officers leapt into action. On January 2nd, 1998, more than 24 hours since the police, were last seen, police started investigating the disappearance of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope in earnest. The first significant lead came days later when employees at Ferno Lodge remembered that one of their bartenders, Guy Wallace, volunteered to transport some party guests on his water taxi. Guy wasn't an officially licensed driver, so he wasn't on the authority's initial list of contacts. Luckily, Guy remembered Ben and Olivia from that night. He recalled them being drunk, but said that they were not, in his words, overly intoxicated.

Of note, Guy told police about the mysterious man who was also on the boat and offered the young adults a place to stay after making an off-handed and inappropriate joke about Olivia. As far as anyone knew, this mystery man was the last person to see Olivia and Ben alive. Guy told police that the man didn't strike him as malicious, but he was certainly drunk and, in hindsight, maybe a little too eager to help Olivia and Ben out. Guy sketched a drawing of the man's boat to help police track him down, a two-masted sailboat, large enough to hold a few people comfortably.

It was bright white, with a colored stripe running around its hull. Guy thought it might have been navy blue, but it was too dark at the time to be sure. With the drawing in hand, detectives reached out to Christchurch Criminal Investigation Branch, or C.I.B. for help in their investigation. The odds seemed to be against them. They didn't have much to go on. They were looking for a white male with access to a boat. Not exactly a rarity for the sound. When all was said and done, police added 130 names to their list of potential suspects. But one in particular stood out. Apparently, a guy who said his name was Scott was there at the Furno Lodge that night.

He was drunk and seemed to be hitting on every woman that crossed his path. He also seemed to have a bizarre attachment to the drug Prozac. He apparently kept offering women Prozac-branded T-shirts, inviting them to his yacht and talking loudly about sex. Scott's friend Ed Sundstrom and his girlfriend, Amanda Eggden, told police that this Scott guy cornered them around. 3 a.m. and made them extremely uncomfortable. This would have been about an hour before a mystery man invited Olivia and Ben to crash on his yacht. Moreover, he seemed to match Guy Wallace's description of the mystery man. He was around 5'8, tattooed and scruffy. After some digging, investigators believed the man's full name was Scott Watson. He was 26 years old and had a history

of committing petty crimes. Most were minor, related to possession or use of marijuana, but a few were for assault or possession of a weapon. He stole $350 from his mother to buy drugs. Police also learned that Watson's yacht was docked in the area Guy Wallace remembered taking Olivia and Ben that night. Police brought Watson in for questioning. One officer, Constable Mike Lawson,

described his attitude as, smarmy. But for the most part, he didn't seem like he had anything to hide, and there was one piece of evidence working in his favor. The yacht he owned only had one mast, not two, which didn't match Guy Wallace's description of the mystery man's yacht. So officials set out to identify all the other boats that were in the area for the furneau party that night. All told, there were at least 140 of them. And thanks to logs, folks were. photos and eyewitness accounts, police were able to catalog and map almost all of them. But strangely enough, none seemed to fit Guy Wallace's description of a double-masted ship

with a large, dark-colored stripe running around its hull, which made some detectives begin to question his memory. On January 12th, more than a week after Olivia and Ben were last seen, authorities released two different sketches to the media. One was based on Guy Wallace's description of the mystery man, the other was based on witness descriptions of another man at the party that night. A creepy man skulking about the bar. He sat alone, drank bourbons and coax, didn't say much, and paid for his bill with a ruddy ball of disorganized bills. Coincidentally, Guy Wallace also remembered this man. Based on his clothes, Guy thought he might be a fisherman. Authorities weren't sure whether he was the same person

who'd cornered Ben's friends that night and made them feel uncomfortable, or whether they were two different people. The unanswered questions were piling up. By now, most of the boats they knew of had been identified and cleared. Alibis had eliminated scores of suspects. Dozens of tips had been investigated and dismissed. There was no sign of Ben or Olivia's bodies, nor any clues about where they might have gone. The operation was one of the biggest New Zealand had seen in years. A team of 44 officials were assigned to investigate every possible lead, and almost two weeks later, the police still had no hard evidence. But one thing was certain, with so much media attention on the case, failure wasn't an option.

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All over smooth, all-day comfort. Vanity Fair Laundee. Find yours at Target today. Running out of options and leads in mid-January, 1998, in December 1998, in Investigators working Olivia, Hope, and Ben Smart's disappearance decided to re-interview some persons of interest, including Scott Watson. Police couldn't get a good read on him. Watson had been accused of harassing women the night Olivia and Ben disappeared. Witnesses said he invited some of them back to his yacht for sex.

But he didn't match the description of the man who was seen with Olivia and Ben. He owned a single-masted boat with a red stripe and steel hull. and when Guy Wallace saw Watson's boat, he was pretty confident that it was not the mystery man's. Watson cooperated with the police during their second round of questioning. According to officials, he did so reluctantly and at times acted overconfident and dismissive. But he gave a pretty straightforward account of the night Olivia and Ben went missing. He spent the afternoon before drinking with friends. Around 7 or 8 p.m., he met up with a buddy on his friend.

his boat. From there, Watson said his memory got a bit hazy. He was pretty drunk and told police he might have smote some marijuana as well. He couldn't quite recall. He remembered getting into some kind of altercation at the bar inside Ferno Lodge, but said it wasn't anything serious, just a bit of shoving and punching before someone arrived to break it up. Around 2 a.m., Watson claimed he caught a water taxi back to his yacht, but looking to have some more fun, he dropped in on a boat docked next to him to see if anyone else was partying, but the passengers were all going to sleep and shooed him away. So he says he ate a late night snack and went to bed. Friends could corroborate many of Watson's claims. No one could corroborate that he was,

in fact, sleeping around 4 to 4.30 a.m. when Olivia and Ben were last seen. But in order for him to have been on Guy Wallace's water taxi, he would have had to travel back to shore sometime after 2 a.m., which would have been possible, but not entirely logical. Why go all the way back to land just to ask for a ride home when you're already there? Despite their unanswered questions, detectives pegged Watson as someone to watch. They decided to search his boat, as well as his parents' home, where he lived from time to time. They also began checking Watson's statements against witness accounts of that night to see if maybe he had anything to hide.

They found two possible contradictions. First, Watson told authorities he'd returned to his boat around 2 a.m. Shortly after, he paid a visit to his neighbors. However, the police spoke to his neighbors and they claimed that Watson dropped by around 4 or 5 a.m. which, if true, meant he wasn't sleeping when Guy Wallace dropped Ben and Olivia off. Second, Watson told police he'd left the area around 7 a.m. on New Year's Day, but, based on photographs, investigators estimated that he actually left an hour or more earlier, because his boat was gone by 6 a.m. Regardless, police couldn't be sure whether Watson just misremembered

after a drunken night out, or intentionally lied. And the property searches had detectives just as confused. On one hand, they didn't find anything strange in his parents' home, and there were no signs of Ben and Olivia being on the boat, no clothes or personal belongings, let alone any signs of struggle or foul play, and the boat was barely big enough to sleep three people. On the other hand, detectives couldn't find any of Watson's clothes from that night either. He told authorities he was wearing a red and gray jersey on New Year's Eve,

but photographs and multiple witness statements showed he was wearing a denim shirt instead. The shirt was now missing. And for some reason, Watson had given his boat a fresh coat of paint since the party that night, and certain areas seemed uncharacteristically clean. According to investigator Rob Pope, the surfaces most likely to have fingerprints on them were spick and spick, span, yet the kitchen was a mess. Stranger still, the radio on Watson's boat had recently been removed from its brackets and wiped down, and there were scratches on the inside of the boat's hatch,

and one of the seat cushions had holes cut into it. Of the 1,300 or so fiber samples taken from Watson's boat, 400 were examined by police. It took three and a half months to complete, but after all was said and done, police only found one hair follicle that could possibly be tested for DNA. Preliminary results indicated there was a chance the hair belonged to Olivia Hope. A few more rounds of testing produced mixed results, but one test suggested the hair was 28,000 times more likely to belong to Olivia Hope rather than someone else. Though it wasn't a definitive result, investigators decided it was enough to pursue formally charging Scott Watson. But first, they wanted to consult their main witness, Guy Wallace, to ensure his cooperation

at trial. When they interviewed Guy again, he said that pressure from the media was stressing him out. He felt like people didn't believe him and possibly even suspected him of deliberately twisting the facts. And though that pressure was real, Guy's next move didn't do much. to help his situation or reputation. He lied to the police. Guy told detectives that after New Year's, he saw a boat that looked like the one he'd seen on New Year's at a different marina.

He suggested detectives go investigate. Then the very next day, he retracted his statement. He explained, quote, I made up the story. I just wanted somebody to believe me, and this seemed like a good way of backing my. story up. It further undermined Guy's credibility, and the next time an officer asked Guy about that night, his confidence wavered for the first time. He said he still had a strong image of the

mystery man's boat in his mind. It was wooden and had two masts, but considering no one else had corroborated his account, he admitted that he might have been mistaken, which opened the door for police to charge Scott Watson. After 126,000 hours of work and $3 million, the investigation finally had someone in custody, but it was just the beginning of the quest to deliver justice for the families. Hearings began in June 1999, a year and a half after Olivia and Ben's disappearance. The prosecution constructed its argument based on the scant pieces of evidence they had, the biggest being the single hair follicle. In his book Silent Evidence,

journalist John Goulter quoted CIB investigator Rob Pope as saying, quote, really, it all comes down to the hair, because that is the one incontrovertible, undeniable piece of silent evidence. But the case also hinged on Guy Wallace's testimony. In a deposition before the trial, Guy described the mysterious,

stranger that led Ben and Olivia onto his boat. He described the man as disheveled, sleazy, and unshaven, just as he always had. Then a lawyer for the defense showed him a picture of Scott Watson taken around 10 p.m. on New Year's Eve. In the photo, Watson looked clean-shaven and not really unkempt either. Guy was taken off guard. In the course of the cross-examination, he said that the man in the photo, Scott Watson, couldn't have been the mystery man. That was during the deposition, but when the trial came around, Guy gave a slightly different response. This time he claimed that Scott Watson may have actually been the mystery man. He told the court that he hadn't gotten a good look at the stranger's eyes, which explained his initial confusion. But when the prosecution asked him

about the mystery man's boat, Guy threw more wrenches into their case. He still clung to his initial description of the stranger's boat and insisted Watson's boat bore no resemblance to the vessel Olivia and Ben boarded that night. Nothing could resolve the contradiction. All the prosecution could do was try and convince the jury that every other reasonable possibility had been eliminated. Investigators had worked for months to track down 176 of the boats at Furno that night. None of them matched Guy's description. The implication being, his memory must be flawed. As the proceedings continued, the public and media didn't know what to think.

Opinions seemed to be split, but then the prosecution introduced two secret witnesses, both inmates who interacted with Watson while he was being held under suspicion of murdering Olivia and Ben. The first witness claimed that Watson had indirectly admitted to killing Ben and Olivia on more than one occasion. The second witness claimed that Watson had even physically acted out the murders of Ben and Olivia right in front of him. Their testimonies seemed to seal the deal. All that was left was for the jury to weigh the evidence and come to a final decision. It took them 22 hours to come to a verdict. But in the end, they found Scott Watson guilty,

and a judge sentenced him to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 17 years. And that's where Scott Watson remains today. But a lot has changed since that 1999 trial. Most importantly, some of the witnesses in the initial trial have since recanted their testimony. Guy Wallace has been among the most vocal. Years after the verdict, he said that he believed Scott Watson is innocent.

He claimed he was manipulated into identifying Watson in a photo lineup. After telling investigators that the mystery man had hooded eyes, detectives showed Guy a picture of Watson caught mid-blink with his eyes partially closed. Guy has stated that he tentatively identified Watson as the mystery man at the trial based on that one misleading photo. Another witness, who was also shown the blinking photo of Scott Watson, recanted her testimony as well. Moreover, one of the surprise prison witnesses has since admitted that much of what he presented at trial was inaccurate, saying Scott Watson never actually showed him how he'd allegedly killed Ben and Olivia.

According to this witness, he was pressured by police into testifying against Watson. He claimed investigators distorted his statements to make them more inflammatory. He didn't put up a fight at the time because he worried it would threaten his parole. And since the trial, there have been questions raised around the most pivotal piece of evidence presented. The single hair follicle. A consultant, Sean Doyle, looked into the handling of the microscopic hair samples by authorities and found a number of issues that might have impacted its own. results. He claimed if the same DNA evidence were presented in court today, it would be strongly

challenged. Since these developments, Scott Watson has attempted to appeal his conviction multiple times. After his first appeal, a court determined there was no miscarriage of justice in his conviction, but Scott is awaiting a new appeals trial, which is set for 2024. When the time comes, the court of appeal is ruled that Watson's lawyer, will be able to present new expert evidence. In 2021, Guy Wallace died suddenly. This came after he claimed to the New Zealand Herald in 2017 that he believed he knew who was really responsible for Olivia and Ben's deaths.

He didn't share a name at that time, but described the culprit as someone who was already incarcerated. Even after more than 20 years and a conviction in the case, the mystery of what happened to Olivia Hope and Ben Smart still feels open-ended. In a court of law, a lot hinges on what people recall. But memory can be a fickle thing, especially when mixed with alcohol, large crowds, and late nights. Without hard evidence, certainty can be hard to come by. Should there be room for doubt in this case?

Or did Olivia and Ben receive the justice they deserve? We all have our own biases and our own ways of deciding who to trust. We'd love to hear your thoughts. You can write to us, reach out on social media. But at the end of the day, it's up to a judge and jury to decide. They'll dictate how history will remember this case. Thanks for tuning in to serial killers, a Spotify podcast. We'll be back Monday with another episode.

For more information on the Marlborough Mystery, amongst the many sources we used, we found silent evidence inside the police search for Ben and Olivia by John Golter, extremely helpful to our research. Stay safe out there. Serial Killers is a Spotify podcast. We release a new episode every Monday. This episode was written by Terrell Wells, edited by Kylie Harrington and Maggie Admeyer, researched by Mickey Taylor, fact-checked by Kevin Johnson, and sound designed by Alex Button. Our head of Programming is Julian Boarro. Our head of production is Nick Johnson,

and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. Serial Killers is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson. Want to hear something spooky. Some monster, it reminded me of Bigfoot. Monsters Among Us is a weekly podcast featuring true stories of the paranormal. One of the boys started to exhibit demonic possession. Stories straight from the witnesses' mouths themselves. Something very snake light lifted its head out of the paranormal.

of the water. Hosted by me, your guide, Derek Hayes. Somehow I lost eight whole hours. Listen now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcast.

This year, but they're not Crime Beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.