Thinking Sideways: Tina Watson

I wouldn't. Well, don't go to Australia in general. Everything there is trying to kill you. But hey, that's besides the point. Yeah, it's a deadly place. Yeah, I watch Mad Max. You don't believe me. Uh yeah, So this is actually about the death of Tina Watson that there there's some who, by the way, I feel that the name of Honeymoon Killer is not exactly appropriate, but we'll

talk about that. Yeah. Yeah, But Tina had drowned accidentally while scuba diving in Australia in two thousand three four. Did she I know? Because there are people, including Tina's family and the Australian police, who thinks she was murdered. So we got a mystery here, you think, I think that's usually why we sit down. Yeah, the other reason heresies. Yeah yeah, yeah. Alright, so let's talk about the death

of Tina Watson. But first off, I want to give a shout out to Maggie who suggested this episode, so thank you. Yeah, it's a fun little mystery. And also I forgot my last episode I talked about murder on the Herbert Fuller fun little story and uh, I forgot to mention Rachel, our listener who suggested that one sold. Yes, a belated shout out to you, Rachel High and hope you're not mad about me forgetting previously. It happened sometimes. Anyway,

back to our story. Also a warning this episode it involves water, which may frighten some people, so you've been warned. My mom is actually scared of oceans. She's very uncomfortable about the ocean. That is actually a thing. Does that include like walking on the beach or just being out on boats in the ocean when it's so deep and you don't know what's below you. Yeah, anyway, that's a thing I could. I can sort of get that. Yeah. Anyway, back to our story of Tina and her husband, Gabe.

That's his name was David Gabriel Watson. I shouldn't say it was. As far as I always still alive. David Gabriel Watson went by the name Gabe, and Christina May Thomas. She went by the name Tina. They were both twenty six and there from Helena, Alabama. If you're from Helena, if that's pronounced Helena, well I'm sorry, I apologize, but I'll go by Helena. The Tina and Gabe men in college and they've been together about two years before they

got married. That was in October two, ius and three, and then they went off of their honeymoon in Australia, didn't they. Then they have kind of an on again, off again relationship during that time. I have heard that, but I'm not sure. Okay, That's why I asked, because I had seen it somewhere. It's like, I don't I

don't know who's the source of that. Well, with these two, uh, you see a lot of stuff about their relationship out there, a lot, and I'm not sure what to believe, to be honest with you, Yeah, I think that's one of the hardest things about reading this is there's a lot of conjecture about the couple and the relationship and in their trip and everything. Like, there's just so much weird coverage. Yeah.

Some people say they were a happy couple. Other people say they were totally dysfunctional, And I feel people tend to do that. We've definitely covered a lot of cases like this where people really read into the relationship and kind of put their own spin on it, and realistically, nobody can never know what that relationship was like except for the two people who were in it. Ye. Yeah, it's very true. Yeah, and I'll talk I was going

to talk a little bit about that. Well, Tina into is what you you hear from some people, including your family and friends. At the age of twenty six, all of her friends have gotten married, and she was apparently worried that she was gonna wind up being an old maid. Cats with cats, We don't know anybody like that. No, I don't know, but I don't think it's weird to

have cats at all, but some people apparently do. But it looks like from what people have been saying, it looks like Gabe was not exactly Mr Wright for Tina, but at least maybe good enough. I guess so Tina was desperate. This is, you know, not necessarily true. This is just what some people have been saying. Yeah, that's right up there with they got married to fix a relationship. Sometimes we see in stories they had children to save the relationship. That's what you see that out there. Yeah.

But and then on the other side, Gabe was supposed to be a very controlling, Dominetian kind of person. He reportedly said to Tina that, well, if you want to be with me, you're going to have to learn to do the things I like to do, which is fishing and scuba diving. Of course, we've all seen how well the scuba diving turned out for Tea. Yeah. And of course there was a famous engagement ring episode, which I'm sure you guys have heard about, right, I mean probably

our listeners haven't. They probably haven't, let me tell them about that. And again this is um from I think Tina's sister mostly. So can can I give a little caveat here? Which is his family? Gabe family apparently liked Tina. Yeah, Tina's family despised Gabe prior to everything going down. That very least, yeah, at the very at least they had

they didn't they didn't like it. They weren't sure by this point in time they actually do this question because they spent some bad water under the bridge or something.

But but the the engagement ring episode was supposedly after they've been together, like maybe six months or god don't I can't remember, he bought an engagement ring for her and and brings it home in a little bag, a little from the from the jewelers that's got the jeweler's name of the side of it, sets it on top of his big screen TV at home, and then she see sit sitting in the seats of access what's in the bag? And he says, oh, it's an engagement ring,

but you can't look at it. And she's like what And he says, no, you can't look at it. If you look at it, I'm gonna return the ring. And so she didn't look at it. And supposedly this is like tormenting her for months according to some people. And this is sort of a telling story of it's a game to him about Gabe, you know, you know, being this sort of manipulative, domineering person. I okay, I mean

I don't want to again. Sometimes we put ourselves in the position where we find ourselves defending people who are kind of jerks. But to me, you know, either that is like super domineering or it's his idea of romance, like he you know, he's trying to like build suspense and drawing it out. Yeah, he's like, well, okay, I'm

gonna gage and we're gonna get Yeah. I mean, I think of situations where guys are like, oh, yeah, I bought the ring six months in because I knew, and then three years later I finally proposed, And I don't know, maybe in his head it was super romantic to be like, here's the thing that we're going to do, but also it is super jerk move. I'd be mad, well, yeah, did that to me? Yeah, But again, you don't know exactly how he said it. He might have just said

it kiddingly and all that stuff. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, that's the other thing too. He could have totally been like joking like ha ha, don't open that, expecting her to open it, and she was like, oh my god, I better not open it. So she interpreted it one way, and he was hoping she would open it because then

he'd be like so very be I don't know. I think this is this this case is much like uh, I think it was actually your last one, Joe the Herbert Fuller, where the context and the way that the statements were made ken dramatically changed what their meaning is. And that's I think we're gonna we're gonna have to talk about that several times from this. And there's there's been a lot said about this one too. Like one of the things that's been said about about Gabe is

that he changed his story like sixteen times. Yeah, yeah, not necessarily so, but but anyway, his the picture that's been painted of Gabe and the press, frankly, it's not been good, not at all. And I had no idea how much, if any of that stuff is really true. Probably a lot of his bs, I know, a lot of it came from Tina's families. He said things were never great between Gabe and Tina's family, and then of course, after Tina died, while things really went south in a

big way, as you would expect. Yeah, yeah, it's understandable. Of course, you know, Gabe did sort of get her killed, but encouraged her to get her to get into scuba at the very least. Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, and and of course they think it went beyond that. I think think he murdered her. But we'll talk about that

in a few minutes. Yeah, uh yeah. And so they've kind of put everything, every aspect of Gabe and his relationship with Tina in the worst possible And I think back to our honeymoon that we've been We've taken a little detour there. But no, they got married, they went out for their honeymoon in Australia, and of course somebody didn't make it back and the other one became known in the press as the honeymoon killer. Uh yeah, so

that's our mystery. This week. They had about two weeks in Australia and the plan was is that the first week would be Tina's week and they would just do stuff that Tina wanted to do. Uh you know, I'm sorry, Yeah, I'm I'm going to be super judge and say, like, if you can't compromise with a couple on things you might want to do together. Well, I don't think that it was all this, you know, screw you were doing this, it's my week. I don't think it was quite like

that necessarily. It's more like just what do you her turn to plan? Yeah, what do you really want to do in Australia. But that's stuck to me is very weird because I know what I went on mine. It was we have we have these things in this area while we're there, Which ones do we want to do? Yes, I mean I know what happened on yours, if not in yours. The first week was your wife's week, and then the second week was your wife's week. I was going to say the first week was alcohol and the

second week would be more alcohol. Totally true too, Yeah she didn't say that. Yeah, no, okay, but they had so they had a week the during Tina this week, and I see, Tina wanted to experience Australian culture, which you know what Australians do. They drink fosters and they also put on leather outfits, put stuff out on the bobby. Yeah they do that. But they also you know, they wear leather and they and they drive muscle cars at high speeds in the outback. Yeah, and these are all

very true statements. And they change people on guitars to the front of cars exactly. And then they had these high speed chases and shooted each other and stuff. Yeah, you know, Australia actually sounds like a pretty pretty place. That's why I want to go to all our Australian listeners before you shut this off and unsubscribe. Sorry, we're having fun. Yeah, we totally are. Uh. Well, then we number two came around. It was Gave's turn, and Gave

it booked a trip with Mike Ball's Diet Expeditions. And of course this was a bad idea. Uh nobody knew that at the time yet, but it turned out to be a bad idea because based on my anecdotal analysis, statistical probability of somebody dying on your scuba honeymoon in Australia, it's about that. Actually, that's not right. That's not right. No, because I have friends who did it, and they're both still they both came back. Did anybody on your expedition

not come back? Okay, well everybody made it. That that is the exception. Actually, all all I know is I remember reading the paper. This is years ago though, this couple was honeymooning off the Great Barrier Reef and they were scuba diving, and then how you got eaten by a great white shark which I'm sure it cast to Paul over things just and then of course there's this one where Tina died, So there you go. That's pretty high.

Yeah yeah, And of course there's there might be other stuff going on out there where people scuba div and nothing happens. But I don't know about this, so I don't care. That's not included in your data now exactly used incidents where people were killed in made that I have heard of. So yeah, my data set asist of two U. But our story is, yeah, they're they're on a dive trip with Mike Ball Dive Expeditions and it's going to be a dive on the SS Young Gala,

which was a ship that was a shipwreck. Yeah, it's sat in the cyclone in nineteen eleven. There's two got it. Yeah, yeah, I wasn't sailing on I know, I was like, wait, I thought this was a scuba diving thing, not a shipwreck thing. But you can in the ship. Yeah, you can dive on the records, but yeah, yeah, the record is not sailing anymore though, it's sort of sitting in one spot. Yeah. Yeah. The Young Gala was rediscovered in night and it's considered today to be one of the

world's best wreck dives. And I guess you know. Wreck dives are a big thing with scuba divers. Yeah, very popular. Oh yeah, totally because normally you go down there, what's there to look at? A bunch of fish? So it's kind of cool and drom act to be able to look at the wreck ship of swim through it. Yeah, I don't think they encourage people to swim through this one. Well, I mean swim through like the top deck in the you go around the cabins, That's what I mean by that.

Oh yeah, and you're not really supposed to go inside when you're not a good idea, No, not really, unless you're very highly rated, which these people aren't. Yeah, there's things to cut yourself on, and god knows what's living inside. There's exactly something to be thinking about too. I saw finding Nemo, I know those things. Oh yeah, there's all kinds of scary stuff hiding in there. But from the outside of least, it looks pretty cool. Let me give

you a quick rundown of how the wreck looks. It's about fifty miles off the east coast of Australia and it's southeast of a town called Townsville. And how far is that in? Okay? Yeah, and it's about twenty eight ms down or about a hundred feet so the sea flowers now it's laying on at starboards side, so it's not super deep. But no, not not really no, And especially you don't have to go all the way down. You can cruise like fifty ft down and see the wreck nice and and just look at it from up.

My point was, it's not like you requires some crazy dive set up like Whember we talking about Ben mcdanie the gas mixes that he needs. It's nothing like that. No, no, no, not at all. And uh it is considered a sort of difficult dive because of currents and such things. But the wreck is oriented north to south of the bows, pointing north, maybe a little bit off north, but more

or less north south. And they've set it up for what essentially with permanent access points or permanent permanent anchor points. Because so many boats are coming and going bringing dive groups there, you can't have people setting anchors all the time. So if they oh yeah, so they they've dropped these massive concrete blocks with chains or ropes attached to them

that go up to booties. So your cruise up in your boat full of divers and you just grab one of those booies and tie your anchor line of that instead of dropping an anchor. And there's two two special blocks that are called diver access points or d ap s, and those are there's one of the bow, one with the stern. Also a chain or rope. I've heard it said, I'm not sure which it is. I've seen a picture of it looks like a rope, but other people have

said it's a change. It doesn't matter. It's a line that goes down to about ten ms in front of the ship from a boolly a top and then so that's what you get in, and then you cruise down that the current is flowing from north to south along

the wreck, and so what happened. What most divers do is they get in at what's called DAP too diver access point to at the at the bow, go down as deep as they feel like going, and then just let go and let the current take them across just down the length of the wreck, so you can just basically drift over the top of it and check it out and get to the exit. And get to the exit line down one and just climb back out again. Uh.

And of course you can do whatever you want. You can stop off and explore and you know, prowl around on the on the side of the wreck or just or you can just like I say, drift right over the top of it, just like a lazy river. Yeah, pretty much like a little river. Cruis gonna yeah, and so it looks like water, yeah, yeah, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah. And so on the morning I believe it was October two, the second, two thousand three, they had gotten on their their boat, which was called

the spoils board dive boat that they were on. They had gotten on that the night before, and then they spent the night as they on the boat, and then then the next morning I think they actually I think that night they cruised out and just sort of spent the night cruising out there. And they woke up in the morning and they were pretty much there. The spoil spoort tied off at what's called accident or point nine oh five, which is an anchor point two directly to

the east of the wreck. And then a little later in the morning another boat showed up, the Jazz To, which is another dive company, and they tied up at point nine oh four, which is a point north of where the spoil sport was and kind of northeast of the wreck, so the JAZ two was actually pretty close to the bow of the ship. And then later on yet another boat showed up on the other side at point nine oh three and they tied up. That's the

Adrenaline tied up there. So there were three boats in the water there and a lot of divers, and so what happened is so they they're making kind of a loose triangle on top of the wreck at this point, Yeah, kind of around the outside of the wreck. Yeah, and I had a very popular place, just a teeming with divers all the time. Yeah. Well, on that on the day of they went to get in the water there. So the spoil sport was of course south of the

access point. So what would happen is that people would suit up and they would get into it like a rubber rubbering kind of thing, went a little bigger than a dinghy, but essentially a boat and uh, and they would be ferried up to the to the put in point diver excess point too, and and then they would all go just go down and do their thing, and then they could when they got to the exit point, they could either be picked up by a boat or I think they had a rope actually when they tied,

they tied a rope across from the spoils board to the exit line, and they also put they also put a cylinder of air down there too, at five meters down for people who are running low on the air but wanted had needed to do a little decompressing, so they had an extra cylinder bear hanging down there for

safety sounds. I think that's standard, right, Yeah, I feel like I remember from the Ben McDaniel saying it was the compression that like you would have extra especially on a on a set up organization like this, absolutely, because while a hundred feet isn't going to give you the worst decompressions, the bends, yeah, there is a chance of

some of it. So it is good you would want to have tanks there so that, yeah, just in case, you know, the guy needs to sit there for five minutes and he's only got three minutes of air, you want to encourage him to do the right thing by having the air available instead of just saying screw it. I've only got three minutes. I'm just gonna get out and then barfing all over your boat. Yeah, sometimes it's worse than barfing that the bands are bad my understanding

of how that works. I'm sure I'll get an email about this, but it's just a lot of it has to do with depth and also how long you've been down. Yes, so it's how long you've been down, and then how long you spent taking how long you come up to allow the Is it the nitrogen in your blood? Is that what it is? I think yeah, I think it is. You get little bubbles your blood and stuff, and and so there was that there was some controversy about this, even in that one. Some people feel like Gabe took

too long to come up to surface. And but we'll talk about that soon though. So they were heading out about maybe ten to get into the water, and they were they were one of a group of six divers, and they headed out to the access point. I had climbed on in with the other divers and sorry, how long had Tina and Gabe been Probably should have mentioned that, yeah,

they were. What Gabe had been doing its dramatically different amounts of touch, but just wondering for Gabe had been doing it since I believe nineteen and he had a total number He hadn't total number of dives like fifty six dives, which is and then Tina had I think eleven dives under her belt. She was a novice and she was not good at it it. Actually Gave was a novice too. I mean he had a lot of

his dives were just like kind of pooled dives. He actually took his first classes in in a quarry basically a flooded quarry, which means there's no current whatsoever. Yeah, very contry, old environment. He did a little bit of ocean diving, not too much, and most of his dives were pretty shallow. We're talking and I think the deepest he ever went was about something like that. That sounds about right, Yeah, but yeah, he but he if you read, when you do the reading on this, what's so confusing.

This is what really lights some people on fire. People will list his certifications. Other than the quote unquote rescue dive certification. All he had was basic novice certifications. He could dive. He was okay to dive on his own in a group. He wasn't some crazy super expert dive master in any way, shape or form. I'll just mention that just because you're certified rescue something doesn't anything really mean.

It means you technically have the knowledge in your brain on how to do a given thing, but until you're foot in that situation, you have no idea if you're

going to be able to do it well. Exactly. He took this class, and he even set himself in his police interview of the class really more covered things like just search patterns and stuff like that, like how to find somebody versus how to actually do the harry work of rescuing the and so you know, he wasn't as qualified as as he sort of made himself out to be. And I don't I'm not sure too. I mean again, I don't want to accuse him of misrepresenting himself. Maybe

he didn't. He might have you know, he might not have said he might not. He might have just said, hey, you know, I did take this rescue class, and people might have heard, oh, he's a certified rescue diver. Maybe gave never misrepresented himself at all. I really people have said that he did. I don't. I'm not so sure that. Yeah, yeah, I feel like he's a bit of a blowhard, but say that. The other half of your question was Tina. She had only been diving in pools if I remember correct,

or maybe one quarry for like a year. Yeah, and she's been in classes and apparently was not good at it and was kind of panicky underwater. Did not take to it like a duck to water, not at all. Yeah, she h fish. Yeah instance, Yeah, she did not seem to be, but she really seemed determined to learn because you know, Gabe was her man, and she wanted to do the school of things so she could be doing things with him. You know. Okay, I just realized we

hadn't talked about that yet. And it's actually what they did is not un comedy. But like I said, I had friends who he was a diver forever. He wanted to go to this tropical place and dive on their honeymoon. And she said, yeah, let's do that. Let me go get this, and she took like six months or a year of lessons in preparation before they ever went out. Like people do this, there's nothing bad and a fairies to say, hey, let's take a dive trip on her honeymoon.

It's just some people are more take to it better than others. Yeah, I and I thought myself, you know, I've always thought if I lived in a nicer climate with clearer, warmer oceans, I would totally be a scuba diver. But we live in Oregon. And let's let's say I said, I I know, was some scuba divers and they jet halfway around the world. They go to the Caribbean, they go to the South Pacific. You know, you can't do

it without a lot of money. But there's not that many places to really do a good scuba around here. So I'm not a scuba diver. You know, Otherwise I would because it's cool. Yeah, I'd love to do it, you know. But so they go out with oh yeah, so back to our story here. So they go out with four other divers and they get in the water and go down just a little ways, and then it turns out that gives dive computer is not working right, and yeah, thats computer is like this this little apparat

basically a smart watch for underwater. It's like a gigantic watch underwater, and it does stuff like it keeps track of your depths and stuff. And some of them I've been told I talked to a dive expert about this stuff. Actually is. His name is Austin at Aquatic Sports here in Portland, and he was very very helpful and explaining how some of this stuff works to me. So dive

computers can be There's there's several different types. Like the cheapest, simplest kind is basically uses computer algorithms to just sort of estimate, you know, if you put that, you put your parameters in. It just sort of says, hey, you told me you had this moxt ostygen. You've been down for this long, you might be running out, dude, you

know that kind of thing, Real simple stuff. And then the more fancier ones like the one Gabe has actually has a little radio transmitter that you put in your tank and and actually the the it's got a sensor that can sense the pressure in your tank, can tell you how much air you've got left, which is kind of cool, kind of important. And so this one had had issues. Uh. In his first statement to the police, he said that they got in the water and he

noticed it wasn't working. In his second statement it was later on he's I think it was on the same day, but just later in the day with a different interrogatory. He said that, well, they got in the water and his computer was beeping at him and saying that there was a malfunction and saying he had no air pressure and so he was So they got back out of the water, they get back on the boat, they go back to the spoil sports. Yeahina both go together. They

got to go together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, because you got you want your And this is one of the things I asked Austin and said, well, you know, is it really that important And he said, well, you know what kind of is because I guess what divers you want to keep track of all your stats. It's like a baseball player, you know, And so that's one reason they want to keep track of all their dives.

And your dive computer does that for you. It actually keeps his memory and it keeps track of your dives, how deep you went, what your oxygen consumption was like, and how fast you came you went down and came back up, and all kinds of stuff like that, and so they like to keep tracking. So so he said, you know, I would probably fix it rather than you know, just go without. You could do the dive without it.

But your typical diver is gonna because something A little bit has been made about this, about the whole he had to go back just because his dive computer wasn't working. What's the big deal, dude? You know? And it's thought it's an important piece of equipment. Well, it's it's a kind of a safety equipment. Yeah. Well it's been thought that perhaps there were too many divers around and he wanted an excuse to delay and come back out a

little later when there weren't as many divers. Yeah, exactly, And I think it was Dateline NBC actually mentioned this point, but they weren't the first of the last to say that. Well, because he went back to Spoilsport, took out open it up, took out the battery, realized it was in backwards, flipped it around and put it in the right way, and the dive computer worked. So so if his dive computer is is beeping at him and he had the battery in backwards, it wouldn't have worked. So it had to

have been the battery on his tank. The little the sensor on his tank had been the one that was in backwards, or it wasn't actually beeping at him. Well, I'm giving him the benefit of that. We'll see. That is the point that people have made is they said, like, well, okay, if the battery was in backwards, then it couldn't have been beeping at him because it wouldn't work at all.

It's not even going to produce a bit. But if the tank receiver is not sending any information, the dive computer theoretically would be like, hey, you have no air. You have no air. It's getting no signal. That was essentially, and apparently what this particular one, It's called an oceanic, and Oceanic makes a lot a lot of different models.

I can't remember what model this exactly was, but but yeah, it was the transmitter battery that was in apparent And apparently you know how their their coins cells basically, yeah, a little bit like watch batteries, right, You know how they've got the smooth side that's got the little plus sign it and everything, and usually that side is the upside. Well, and this one the one that goes the unit that goes in the one and your on your wrist is like that. But the one that goes in the transmitter

of the tank is the other way. Around and so yeah, yeah, and so that's what happens. You put it in backwards. Apparently they recommend taking the batteries out if you're not going to use it for a week or more, which is not a bad idea with electronic devices, the batteries out. So he'd put the batteries in just prior to his trip, I think, and I got one of them in backwards. So yeah, he flipped it around and it worked. So again,

it wasn't that his computer was working. It's just a transmitter, as you say, in his tank was not working, transmitting a signal. And I also, just as a note, don't find anything particularly nefarious from him first saying it wasn't working in second saying it was beeping, because he's saying the same thing. Yeah, right, he just has had a detail. Yeah, it's not yeah, exactly as it's calmed. I mean, as he's gotten further away. Well, I mean what happened, Yeah,

I mean they both essentially saying the same thing. One saying it's not working right, you know, beeping or not. In the second time it wasn't working right. A little more information. Yeah, and this is you know, Joe, you just said this earlier. Is that there's the his story change sixteen times. This is an example of the quote unquote changes. They're very simple little things, and we've talked about before, you know, witness statements change and evolve, and

well that's just what happens, exactly. And the thing about it is, too, is he made certain statements to the police, and they were more or less the same, although I admit I had to admit some of them don't entirely make sense, but okay, But then he said other things to other people. There were a lot of other people there that were fellow divers on the boat and company, you know, employees and stuff, and he said various things to various people, and also members of Tina's family at cetera,

Tina's dad and his sister. And then it was out, not actually until several years after this whole incident that there began to be a big, huge police investigation. A lot of these people were not interviewed until several years after the fact. And these are people who had talked to Gabe. But after several years, I mean, they're all going to have different memories and so and so that the whole he changed his story sixteen times really kind of came from that. All these different people said that

Gabe said different things. But I mean, but they said he said, they said he said this, and yeah, years later, and so what do you expect? I mean, I also will just briefly mentioned sorry before we get back into the story here. Um. I also feel like it's like either way, right, police are often suspicious. When they're like, the story didn't change at all, that's that's even more.

And then they're like, but the story changes, just like, no, nobody's ever going to be happy with the moral of the story is police are always suspicious, yea, which I guessed to. That's that's kind of the nature of their job. And alright, so the battery, he fixed it, and then what they go back out? Yeah yeah, yeah, they still

they go back out. And by the way, apparently Tina was complaining that she felt too buoyant, and so she, uh, she did ask an employee on the boat where the weights were because she was she's wearing what's called a b c D. That's a buoyancy compensation device, which is an inflatable bags. Essentially, it's a vast as part of your gear. It's like that your your tank attaches to it everything, and it fastens around your body, and it's got bladders inside so you can inflate it and change

your buoyancy. And it hooks up to your eoks up to your air tank and bleeds ab out that and so you can inflate it or deflated is needed to change your buoyancy. But she felt and then they also have pockets so you can add weight, and so she

felt like she was underweighted. So she said that she say where the weights, and she was pointed towards the ways, But nobody actually recalls seeing her grabbing weights and putting them in her pockets or what it turns out in the end, she wounded up with about twenty pounds of weight in her pockets, which some people feel was too much. That's about four different chunks of metal she had in your pockets. And I don't know because I don't you know. Again,

it's it's gonna vary. It depends on your gear, depends on Tina well, Tina wade Uh. I think she weighed about hundred forty pounds. I have no idea what her body, her body composition was. I don't know she was solid muscle or mostly fat. You know fat. I had no idea, so it all there's a a lot of variables there. I also, you know, you're you're not going to say, yeah, the weights are over there and I'm going to watch you put them in your vest. You're gonna say, this

is a responsible adult who's making their own decisions. They probably find the waiver. The dive company had apparently already talked to them and been convinced that they were competent divers, although they knew that she was a bit of a novice. One thing, they they were apparently they were supposed to do a test dive with her. They're supposed to do

an orientation die and that never happened. So that, you know, I'm sure that the guy on the boat who is helping out is presumes these things have already been taken care of, so it's not his job to watch her like she's a two year old child. Well yeah, actually, you can't be just badgering people left and right, saying, oh, by the way, are you sure you can handle that weight and confident? I can't really be saying that people,

you know. But so she puts in her vest, She puts in her vest, and and she might have overweighted herself. Had to say, it seems in the light up everything that happened afterwards, she might have um and uh, And that's one thing I should say about the company. So they did kind of like drop the ball on this a little bit, a little fast and loose. Yeah, they

probably should have. I mean, I mean I think that really this whole situation would have turned out just fine if if but these two but really, Gave and Tina were not were They were both basically novices, you know, both of them were. And they should not have been die buddies on that. On that particularly, they should have had more experienced dives. But yeah, they should have. They should have been paired off with the experienced die But they really should have. But I'm sure from their point

of view, A, it's our honeymoon. We want to be together. We want to be together to drift past this wreck. It's gonna be so magical, you know, and all this stuff romantic. Yeah, put an engagement ring on it. That's a good point. I was too late for that. Yeah, So back on the boat. They got back on the little boat is and then it's just the two of them. No, actually, they were I think four divers this time again. Yeah, so I don't think they were. I think there were

fewer divers. I think they were like the two of them and then two others, one of whom was Wade Singleton, who was like the diving director on this trip. So he was like the most senior diver on the ship. And he is actually the guy who wound up like fishing Tina. He rescued her. Yeah, but so he was there and they all they headed back down and they seemed to go okay, at least for a little bit. They went down about and I think they wound up

at about a depth of around forty five ft. They went down slowly, but they were in the water probably at a maximum of ten minutes. And it was actually not too long after they got in the water and got down to about forty five ft And apparently they were drifting down stream or from not because there is a current going from from it's moving from the south from yeah, from north to south south from the from

the bow towards the stern. They were moving with the current, and Gabe said later that he felt the current was way too strong. He thought it was really super strong, much stronger than he had been expecting, and that apparently what was a little bit scary for both him and Tri Tina. And they were of course being pushed away from the entry line the adapt to the stir that excuse me, the bow line, and they were getting down

about probably maybe ards, so essentially visibile. It was about fifty or twenty yards underwater that they kind of they kind of lost sight of it. I mean, they kind of knew where it was because the ship was underneath them, but at this point in time, they drifted over the ship and apparently um Gibs said that Tina's seemed to be anxious and she signaled she wanted to go back

to the back to the line and get out. Apparently she was having and I could sort of see it because I mean, um, I haven't scoped it, but I've done a lot of snorkeling in the ocean. Not in Hawaii, by the way, but that snorkel then, and it's a really alien environment. It is kind of it is if you're not used to it, it's kind of scary, you know, and especially when you're drifting over this huge whole clop of ship. There's something about huge objects underwater. That's kind

of intimidating, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, it is, and that I can't explain it, but but that's that's just what it is. And so it might have been that, I'm not sure exactly. It might have been the current. She could have just been like nervous and uncomfortable. I mean, if this was her first time really in the ocean scuba ying. Yeah, gave at one point, I ever heard a statement somewhere he suggested that instead of trying to get back up to the entry line, they just go

straight up. And apparently but she wanted to get back to the line. He's stilly point she had in her brain apparently where Yeah, and uh, I think it's it's white. I think she probably wasn't nervous because her dive computer. They one of the things that police did is they they seized the dive computers from Gabe Antina. They took them into Casto because you can download all the information on those things. And also they grabbed Wade Singleton's computer

too and downloaded his information. And apparently it her dive computer did record much higher than normal use of air. So that's what happens when you're scuba diving and you're, yeah,

breathing way too fast. So apparently she was pretty scared and nervous and sorry, I was in visible, I mean, was he did he have visibility towards the couple or I don't think he was with us to him at this point in time, but he was, he was somewhere not too far away, because again he he did sort of like, you know, was Johnny on the spot when she finally went down. But I'm getting ahead of myself

there though. But but they were I think at this point kind of like not really visible to anybody because I was ge getting limited visibility in the water there. And according to Gabe, they started, he took her hand and they started swimming together back up against the current towards the line. He said it was tough going because

of the current. And then they paused at one point and she apparently was getting negatively buoyant, and so he pointed towards the button on the BCD, the buoyancy compensation device, and you hit that button and it will push air into that and make it more positively buoyant. So he indicated that to her, and he said it looked to him like she was actually hitting the button, but nothing was happening. It wasn't changing her status at all. So at that point, well it was time to continue on.

He grabbed her, I think by the shoulder of her harness this time, and started heading back towards line again. Well, the thing about the b c D though, is it's not like the emergency raft on a boat that just goes and it's completely flow. It's a it's for making small adjustments, so you don't want it blasting huge quarity. So she's like pushing it, you know, tap tap tap tap, thinking why is this thing not inflated? That would explain why they're not getting the reaction that they expect. That

could have been it. But but anyway, he headed on back to the line some more, and he said, at this point in time she was getting heavier. It seemed like she was like no longer swimming and she was just sort of hanging vertically underneath him as opposed to horizontally swimming. Next it looked like yeah, at that point they stopped. He still had hold of her, and apparently she panicked and thrashed around and knocked his his respirator

out of his mouth. And knocked his mask off, ESQ on his face and shows it with water and it was his mask fills with water. He so he likes, let's go over and it pulls his mask back into place, and then he has to like blow some air out

through his nose to clear the mask. And then he's got to find his his respirator and it's like floating off somewhere he can't see out of his vision, but they've got a backup that's also on the bc D. So he grabs that sticks out in his mouth and then he looks and while Tina is Tina has floated downwards.

He's just sinking. She's now sinking downwards slowly. He said that she was sinking looking up at him with her arms out stretched towards him, but not really doing anything, not really not kicking or screaming or fighting or doing anything like you would expect somebody to do in a situation like that. Uh. And he said at this point that what he did is he upbended himself. And and of course I didn't mention that. I don't think he had been actually hitting his bc D and inflating it

for the drag and uh. And so he upbends himself and tries to swim down after her, and he said he couldn't make it to her. Possibly possibly, I'm not totally sure about how much that true or not. That's one of the parts of the story that really doesn't make sense. This is one of the things I ran past Austin into aquatic sports said, it said, does that make any sense to you at all, even if his bc D was totally inflated, that he couldn't get down

to her, couldn't catch up with her. And he said, no, it makes absolutely no sense at all, even with an over inflated bc D. That's really weird that that he wouldn't be able to, you know, give a few kicks of his fins and get down to her. But according to him, he couldn't get to her, and so at that and he he had to make a decision. He's he thought, well, okay, I can keep going after he's going to hit bottom here eventually, and then I can

catch up with her. But what happens if I hit bottom and for whatever reason, I can't raise her up off the bottom and get her to the surface. What happens then, Well, then I've got to take that much longer to get up a hundred feet versus fifty feet where I'm at about now. The think the greatest depth on his on his computer was at that day. Yeah, and so so his thinking was what he told the police later, was well, Okay, if I follow her all

the way down, I can't get her up. It's gonna take me that much longer to get up to the surface to get help. And so, uh, maybe it's better if I turn and go for help now. And so

that's what he said. He did as he turned, and he headed like not just up, but also towards the diver access point at the bow, where he says he said, there were a couple of divers hanging onto it at that and he went up and tap damaged and grabbed him and shook them and said and tried to gesture and make it clear that there was trouble and and all that stuff, and they just sort of looked at him like what Because yeah, I said that at least one of them was an Asian guy, and so maybe

he didn't speak English well, And you know, I think it's their novices. They don't understand the hand signs because he's underwater at this point still. Yeah, Yeah, and that's he was just trying to tell you. It's just he was just trying to say, like, you know, he had no idea exactly who these divers were, and so the only identifying characteristics you can see is he can see a couple of Asian eyes looking at him through the that's out of the mask. And so that's about it

as far as describing these people. And of course later on they identified a few Koreans that were on the jazz to who neither one of them actually remembered this incident, which was kind of didn't look so good for Gabe when it turns out it doesn't look that good. Uh So he gives up on trying to get them to help. So he goes he continues on upwards and when he gets there, he gets he yells at the boat and says his wife has gone down and she's in trouble.

And the alarm goes up, and I guess on his radio people on the people on the boat start sitting up and getting ready to go down for a search and rescue. But as it happens, Wade Singleton comes along and notices somebody laying on the on the ocean floor next to the ship and thanks, yeah, exactly. Something a little hanky there, Yeah, something about her body language and the fact that she's not moving. So he goes over there and shakes her a little bit and nothing's going on.

So he grabs her and hits her BCD button to inflate it as much as you and they head on up. They took about I think a minute and a half to ascend to it the hundred feet, which my understanding is that's kind of a breakneck pace to go up from a hundred feet for in scuba terms. Well, yeah, but circumstances, univergency circumstances. But for Wade, you know, obviously for Tina at this point she was dead and not to give away the game, but oh well I already

have so. But for him it was a risk that he there was a big risk, but he got her up there and they spent about forty minutes I think, trying to resuscitate her. The nearest boat was the Jazz Too, so they put they took her over to the Jazz Too, and it turns out there was there were a couple of doctors that happened to be just diving on the boat and they got it. They got them over there to help out with with some of this, and after everything they did, they gave up after about forty minutes.

The game wasn't on that boat he was. He went to it. He ended up on a different boat. He ended up back on the spoil Sport. Yeah, he was back on the spoil Sports, standing in the stern of it. And a lot has been made of that, is that, you know, he was on the spoil Sport. His wife is on the Jazz and they're trying to resuscitate her. And what's he doing hanging out on the spoils board when she's over there and you know, dying apparently, and so well, you know that is a question. I guess, Yeah,

but he did. I mean, he didn't know exactly where she was not And it's not as if they're going to say, quick, send the dinghy over, bring the distraught husband over so he can get in the way. Well we try to resuscitate this. Well, you know, I I don't know that that would be high on their list of things to do. Probably not, probably not. Yeah. I also think, yeah, if you have somebody who's distraught, you know, you're not necessarily going to say let's move this person.

You're gonna say, let's try to keep this person here and calm, because if you try to move this person, you risk having more than one victim, you know, if he jumps in and like tries to swim there, but he's panicking, and what I mean, you just you have to minimize the victims. Yeah, and so so he's so that's what was going on. It didn't look so good from some people's points of view, I suppose, um, And there was there were a lot of different statements that

were made, some of which are rather apocryphal. Um. You know, there were many things, many weird things. A lot of his story didn't make sense. And then there was you know, one of the local Australian police overheard him at that there was a body viewing at the corners, you know, they had to identify the body, and they left him with her body for a little while, and policemen overheard and mumbling to her, I'm so sorry, and I never meant to hurt you, and I shouldn't have kept taking

you down and I'm sorry I couldn't stop it. That's what the police said. Gabe said to you, Tina's body, those all those statements go both ways. Yeah, let's talk about that in theories maybe yeah, maybe. Uh, And so that's where we're at. The it went on, it was originally classified as an unfortunate accident. There was of course an investigation anyway, but there was still classified as an accident.

But then one of the divers actually that was on the boat, I remembered feeling a little at the at the time, feeling a little bit uneasy about the situation and thinking that that after he after talking directly to Gabe and hearing his story, feeling like that it just didn't make any sense. And when he got back to the States, he looked up Tina's father, Tommy Thomas, and uh and and they've ranged a little meeting and and he and this guy tells Tommy all the doubts that

he had in his mind about this whole thing. And of course the Thomas family, they've they've been kind of wondering about this whole situation for a long time. Now this sort of gelled thinks for them, and they started this campaign to get the Australians to reopen the investigation. Eventually, so compressing a lot of stuff in a small amount

of time. Uh, they did. They reinterviewed a lot of people, They had an inquest and everything, and they decided to indite Gabe for murder because the theory being that he had oh and I forgot about. There was another doctor, doctor Stutts, who also of course, this is sometimes time after the fact, when he was interviewed, he testified that he spotted Gabe and Tina underwater. He because he followed them into the water. Later he saw them and he

was Gabe was holding Tina in a bear hug. The bear hug, and so that the police's theory is that he grabbed her, cranked off her air supply and basically held her that bear hug so that she couldn't get to the surface or do anything. And then once she had died and drowned and everything, he turned her air supply back on so everything would look okay, and let her just drop and concocted this whole ludicrous story about how it was all a horrible accident when he had

actually murdered her. And by the way, it turns out, there was some life insurance money involved. Uh yeah, a decently large amount. According to Tina's dad. She said that Not long before the wedding, she had told him that the Gabe wanted to her to increase the amount of her life insurance and also make him to be the beneficiary of it. Well, they were about to be may so the beneficiary thing makes sense, it kind of does. Yeah,

I know, maybe the increases makes sense too, Yeah, it might. Yeah, I mean there's a there's a whole bunch of reasons to change it. I mean, I don't know what his reasonings were. But again, this is one of those things can be very innocent or very very it can look kind of bad. I think. Yeah, I think the way it was set up is where she was working, and I used to have a job that was like this. You could get the minimum basically employer paid, you get

the minimum life insurance. And that's what she was doing. And he's he just said, well, you know, it doesn't cost that much in premiums. You know you should bump that up, you know, you really should. It doesn't cost all that much and you know a lot of Huger benefit out of the whole thing. And uh so, I don't know that he actually pressured her. If he just sort of set it off and one day you know, you ought to you ought to increase that it wouldn't

cost you that much. And uh so, I don't know exactly how Again that we have Tina's father for this, and that Tina never as far as I don't know, she never told anybody else about this, so we only have his word for the whole thing. Turns out that the but you know, the life insurance did actually play a role in the prosecution. This is in Australia. Yeah, yeah, okay, so this is the Australian prosecution which is now charging him with murder. Is still we haven't even got two theories.

This is what happens. Yeah, this is what happened. And I'm compressing as much as I can. And this story is pretty huge actually, um it was a huge sensation, especially in Australia, but even it generated some news up here too in the States. But it turns out the policy it was worth about thirty three bucks, so that was a lot. Yeah yeah, annual salary. Yeah essentially, um so, and Gabe was not the beneficiary of It's hard to

say if that was a sufficient motive or not. It sounds like not to me, but that did play a part in the prosecution's reasoning that was that was the motive for doing that. He was mad that he wasn't

with beneficiary. No, that maybe he was mistakenly believing that may mistakenly believed that she hadn't had jacked up the amount and had made him the beneficiary, but he was too careless apparent to check before they left for that that would be a jacked up amount for me, Like I had the similar situation as you were talking about that my employer pays a certain amount and it's not thirty three a year, but I don't know. Yeah, I

don't know. I don't I have a definite amount that I will murder somebody for not thirty three now sorry yeah now. And by the way, you guys haven't meaning to talk to you about life insurance. So he he is, he is convicted in Australia. They knocked at that essentially

negotiated a plea for manslaughter. So he returned voluntarily to Australia to stand trial for the charges and basically agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter and was sent to like a year in prison and then it was linked in to about a year and a half because the family was upset, and that Thomases were upset. He spent a

year and a half. He spent yeah, a certain amount of time and in Australian prison, and eventually was after he got out, he was deported and sent back to the States, and the Australians said, meanwhile, I mean, a lot of the investigation actually had been uh what's the word I'm thinking of here at the ages of Alabama police.

Essentially somebody and the behest of the Tommy Thomas, got in touch with the local police in Alabama and spelled the whole thing out to them, and so and so they had actually gone the Alabama police lit a fire under the Australians a little bit. She end up interests

over there, gotten their conviction. Now he's back. They want to try him from murder here in the States, which in their theory was, well, this looks like a coldly calculated, well planned out murder, so he must have planned this back here in Alabama, therefore we can prosecute it from murder, even though it took place halfway around the world. So they were planned. They were they were going to take him to trial and try to convict to the murder. Uh,

and apparently the judge threw it all out. Yeah, they had no case. Yeah, essentially, the judge said, what are you doing here? You've got no case. Okay, So that's where it is. Uh. Gabe has since remarried. His new wife is not dead. She do look a lot like Tina. Well that's not surprised, and we all have a type. Yeah, yeah, it's not. It's true that out there, just because I see it everywhere. People just get excited over that. In that first date though, and it's like, oh, you've ever

been married? Oh yeah, she died. What happened? Oh she died in our honeymoon. Everybody thinks I killed her. I didn't, I swear they but they called me the honeymoon killer just so you know. But apparently they made it past that little hump and wind up getting married and she's still, like I said, still alive. Uh So that's about. That's about it. There's a lot more out there if you want to do more research on our little mystery. There's tons of stuff out there. It's time for us to

get into theories. But before we do that, let us take a really brief break. Take a look at me now, the rufous leaking. I'm just standing here. Oh think twice. You know what I mean? Another day in paradise. I believe in me is easy. I can feel it coming in the air tonight. This must be love. I missed again. Tomorrow never knows. Do you know what any of that means? Yeah?

I mean neither. You should probably pick up a copy of Not Dead Yet by Phil Collins so he can explain it, or better yet, why don't you get it from Audible and let him read the book himself? I mean, who doesn't love to just sit around and listen to that guy all day? Yeah, well there is the past, Mrs Collins, But that's just not fair. So go to Audible. Audible just launched the first ever Binge listening event, and you are invited to binge on great listens and big

savings with their biggest sale ever. Enjoy the benefits of gold Audible membership, celebrity narrated Audible books, new podcasts and audio shows, exclusive content, and more a fifty dollar savings since Audible's annual membership retails for the sale ends US seventeen. Learn more at audible dot com slash binge. Okay, we're back, Time to talk about theories. They're essentially three series here. Uh one is well murder, that's the prosegation theory. He

killed her. Then. It's not surprising to me that some people were a little suspicious because a lot of parts of gabe story really didn't actually make a lot of sense, Like the part about not being able to catch up with her when she was sinking underwater. I mean that that that didn't make a huge amount of sense to me. Of course, as you know, it is awfully suspicious about the insurance policy thing and wanting her to bump up the the amount and all that stuff. Of course we

know that really amounts to nothing. There's also that talk about Gabe controlling personality that and so maybe after a week in Australia, maybe something or another cause gave to sort of think that, well, Tina is just a little wild stallion that will never be that will never be tamed, and so I gotta kill her, right right? Yeah? Or maybe she ferred with some handsome Australian dude and he went nuts with jealousy and decided to kill her. Yes,

she met Paul Hogan. Yeah, you know. And I gotta say about about this part is that if he was a total control, controlling sort of person, you know, the manipulative, controlling whatever, and he found somebody that was willing to put up with that. I wouldn't I wouldn't have thought he would have killed her. Yeah, I mean, yeah, like that's a fine. Another another thing is the battery malfunction

is diet computer. Again, what we talked about the fact that he reversed the battery and but it was beeping before and I was working. Well, apparently the prosecution didn't actually trouble themselves to try to try to figure out exactly how the thing worked. Uh. Yeah, Actually, there's another website on that's out there. It's got a fantastic about of information about this case. It's actually written by a professional diver, and he explains that all the whole battery thing.

But apparently the prosecution made much of the state. They really said that that was part of their theory is that he wanted to murder or he planned it out and he faked a malfunction in his dive computer so that he could get her by herself and not go down with all those other divers. Well, then there's the you know, they also were figured he was doing something

weird murder was guilty. Proof of his guilt was shown in the fact that he always got so upset about all the stuff on her grave site, all the flowers, and he kept hauling them away. Yeah, his family, her family would leave flowers there, and he would, he would. They kept disappearing. Somehow they chained him or started wiring him down, cabling him down and stuff and uh and and then they would still disappear. And they finally put a closer like a camera out there, and turns out

and Gabe was busted. He was the one removing the flowers. But I don't think there's anything too that though, because he may have thought that it was highly disrespectful, because this is something I have friends that refer to the you know, like where there's an accident and people leave memorials and balloons and all of that, and then nobody takes that down and three or four weeks later it's well they call him. My friends refer to those is

trash trees. Yeah, and so he may have said, you jerks, why are you turning my my dead wife's grave into a trash tree? That's it. Yeah, that's the thing. I don't know. It's like some of the stuff they left was plastic artificial flowers, which he thought were tacky, and and and as far as the other flowers, I don't know if he was removing fresh roses or if they were like a week old kind of dead looking. I don't know, Yeah, I really don't. But apparently, uh yeah,

that lot, a lot was made of that. And I don't know what to make of it myself personally. But and there's also the fact maybe he just did it out of pure spite. And let's a lot of us, let's face it, we can be perfectly decent person and not murderers and still be kind of petty that happens. If that happened. Uh well, of course there was the other thing. The Asians on the on the entry line up at the bow. Uh yeah, that's two Koreans that he said, he's an You talk to a couple of

Asian people. But when the police went back and interviewed everybody, the only Asian people that were out there that day didn't didn't remember any instant Okay, but nobody we're saying they interviewed and nobody remembered or just specifically, the two Koreans didn't remember because it's possible he mistook their race. Yeah, so did they ask everybody? Well, the way they want about the whole thing is they didn't necessarily track down like everybody from say the Jazz to they didn't. I

think they tried. I think they got ahold of these Koreans. I think they might have interviewed them through via email. I don't I don't think it was actually a one of them. I think that's suspicious. I just think it's not I think they didn't do their due diligence. That's entirely possible that they bungled out a little bit. It's also entirely possible that the Asians maybe at the time, this guy is all all disturbed and they're like, what the hell, dude, we want on vacation, leave us alone,

and then afterwards they hear what happened. Oh my god, somebody drowned. That's what's her husband? Oh man, I feel really bad. And so maybe they were just kind of embarrassed to talk about this guy desperately needed our help and we blew them off. I feel kind of bad about that. So maybe I really don't know, or could have just been memory, because I don't think these people were contacted for quite some time after the actual drowning. It does seem like you would remember that. But again,

it's so easy. I have friends who are friends with people and they said, oh, yeah, he's his mom's Chinese, and and that guy's like, no, I'm German, like German, but they think he's, you know, half of some sort of Asian descent. And I mean it identifying races just impossible. Well, it could have been that. It could have been to these people. They had their masks on. The masks were just clamped out a little too tight and was sort of pulling their face like this to make their lives

kind of like like under pressure. Yeah, okay, but there's the whole hug. There's the doctor stuts in this testimony about the bear hug. So can we talk about that for a second, because that makes absolutely no sense. So I was I talked to a couple of people like you did, people I knew who could dive. And it takes like a dozen revolutions of the knob on a tank to turn it all the way off and then back on. And it's yeah, and it's not an easy

thing to do because it is under pressure. So It's not like your faucet, you know in your garden, where you just each reach reach and it just turns. No, you've got to put some force into it. It would have taken him a good little bit to do that

in a bear hug scenario. Yeah, probably would have. So, I mean, wouldn't also her censor have her computer have shown that if she had just stopped consuming air for a little while, You would think it would have shown that, Yeah, or the well, I don't know, how are you getting at, would have shown that the air going through the regulator

was reduced. Is that what you're getting at? Yeah, I guess it would have shown like a decrease, right, Well, I'm sure, Well it did show a decrease because she stopped breathing, But I don't I don't know that it would have been able to distinguish that decrease being because the valve was turning. I don't think it would record that kind of content now, and it wouldn't, I don't think now. But and those things don't record everything, especially

this is two thousand three. It's hard, it's hard to remember, but actually storage was not as as easy and tiny as it is today. It's amazing what we get into a tiny little card these days. Thousand and three was a little different. Yeah, yeah, definitely was different. So are there more suspicious things here? See? What we had the bear hug, and there was the fact that she became amazingly negatively boy and all of a sudden, which you know,

that's that's actually there. There there are some people who wanted if Gabe actually deliberately overweighted her. I have another question about this because I'm not a diver, and I think a lot of our listeners are not divers. So she put weights in her pockets in her vest, and were those pockets it? Basically the question is is could they not have just unzipped the pocket and taken the weight out? Yeah? Well I was asking Austin about that, and he said that it's when you're actually out there,

it's kind of hard to do. When you get your tanks on and everything, it's kind of hard to get to those pots. But somebody else couldn't have Gabe couldn't have done that for her, not if she was in a panic. Yeah, I mean, you know, if you've ever have you ever seen anybody gets suited up to dive

if they need assistance. They're standing there and you're kind of arms a bit at your side, and you're lumbering around and they are getting to everything, and it is then hard to get out of yourself because remember, she's in a wet suit. That's why I'm a king, That's that was one of the things I was I was wondering too. The same thing was how easy is it to grab those weights and chuck them lighten yourself up a little bit? It is easy if she had been

wearing a weight belt. If she had a belt, then you because I've known people who have been underwater and was it a seed? He turned around and there was a seal and he wasn't expecting and it was like inches away from his face. He scared the holy crap on him and he just popped a belt and shout towards the surface because it just freaked him out because he wouldn't have been able to do that had he stucked him into if he had a vest on at the time. And again depends on equipment. It depends it,

does you know? I know Wade Wade Singleton actually dropped his belt that day when he when he had to get up off the floor. There he dropped his belt, so but that's a different outfit, and that I think Gabe did say something about not being able to You know, it would have been great if he could have if she had been wearing a belt, he could have dropped the belt and that would have helped things. But he

wasn't able to do that. And the next step after that is to chuck everything, which is problematical too, because then what you gotta do is you gotta go straight up to the surface, and that's got his issues. Yeah. Well, and if he dropped all of her equipment, they would have had to have been in the buddy scenario sharing a breather the regulator, or if he had figured out where his original regulator was floating around him, then they could have both used them. But he apparently didn't have

the wear with all to do that. Yeah, and it turns out to you he found I didn't find out till later when he was cleaning it that the mouth pieces has actually been knocked off of it, so it wasn't really usable anyway. Yeah, and I don't know what exactly that happened, might have been in the incident when it got knocked out of off his face, and out of his mouth. Another thing that was really kind of suspicious was his claim that he was unable to die

fast enough to catch her, which we've talked about. Yeah, yeah, I mean from the prosecution's point of view, you know, if you want to draw your wife, you wanted to spend some extra quality time at the bottom of the ocean drowning, Well, that's what you want to do, is let hers think and go and then just you know, come back later. And I still I'm not entirely able to make sense of his claim that he couldn't catch her.

That does seem awfully strange. Remember that he is used to swimming in freshwater, Yeah, and when you are in saltwater, your buoyancy goes up. Yeah. So he may have been used to swimming down and expecting to make a certain speed and is not going as fast as he expects. So therefore was judging it saying there's no way I'm going to get there. Yeah, And again perception. Yeah. And there's also another explanation, which I'll talk about in one

of my other theories. But another thing that was suspicious is this slow ascent after he left her. It took him like three minutes to get to take a top side. I think almost three minutes, although it's hard to say. Well, you know they were using his dive computer, and the dive computer goes in one minute increments, and so it could have been like, you know, just barely over too. It could have been two minutes five seconds and something

like that. Yeah, it does. It does look like from the asset it does look like he made a fairly rapid ascent. Again, you think in apparent situation like that, he would have just thrown all the cautions of the winds and just zipped up to the surfaces A S A P. I guess. Yeah, I don't know how recently he had taken the rescue class, but it hadn't It

wasn't recent. Okay, Well, I know that you know on land first date thing that the number one thing they drill into you is like you have to put yourself first. You have to put yourself first. You have to make sure you do not become a victim as well. Right, And so if he was thinking, Okay, I gotta do this slow, I can't get the bends. I can't you know.

Whereas whereas Wade Singleton, right is his name, who was a very experienced diver was confident in his skill to be able to make that ascent in an emergency situation dangerous, sure, but was more confident in his ability and frankly probably had done this dive a million times and knew where he was right because Gabe probably also was like, I don't know where I am. I don't know where anybody is. I can't get lost in the ocean if I just

flail around and go someplace. And again, I don't necessarily want to defend it, but I do want to say that it's totally possible that in his brain he was like, Okay, I have to and there was a stay calm that was, by the way, the fact that he did take a small break from his asset to talk to the Asian divers on the line at the access the access on the access, so that probably added to his time to his time up. As well as far as Wade goes,

I don't know exactly Wade actually entered the water. He went out there in the boat with him, but he might have that they went in like a little less than ten minutes before before the whole disaster happened. Wade might have just like just actually entered the water just a minute before and then swimming down the boat, you know, and sees her gets her up. If you've only been underwater for a minute or two, then it's not nearly as serious as if you've been under a longer period

of time. It's longer underwater, So maybe that's way. And again, you know, Gabe may have been inexperienced enough to not even be thinking about that, to be thinking like, oh, I've been under for you know, I need a lot of time to decompress. Versus Wade again, who is experienced and would have known my risk for my own personal injuries very well. Yeah, and they, Yeah, I'm sure when they they probably they probably teach you and die school.

They're probably like you are towards cars, totally and totally. It's so way probably with experience new that you could really push the envelop a lot. No, that's about that. I've got to say that that there's been some We've we talked about the battery malfunction. I don't think that really counts. Dr Stutts. There was an interesting web page

out there that I mentioned already. This guy actually looked at all the various data from dive computers, et cetera, and found out when doctor Stutts actually entered the water. It turns out that by the time he entered the water, Gabe was already kind of starting his way up from Tina, so there was no way. So there was actually no way if the guy saw anybody bear hugging anybody, he might have seen Wade bringing Tina up off the floor

of the ocean. Maybe that's what he saw, but he could not actually have seen this bear hug if it was Gabe and Tina. But nonetheless, his testimony was accepted in court. But it looks to me like it's kind of questionable, the slow, the unable to dive fast. But we'll talk about that. That that that is kind of been explicable. But I don't think he murdered her because

and here's why. Remember one, he didn't really have a strong motive, is that I can see, you know, unless and lest his motive was well, he wanted to go, like, you know, have his wife die on their honey, even tragically, so he could get a lot of sympathy and maybe write a book about it, or maybe a movie deal or something like that. Although that's very that's a long game that's that's not. That's not that's very very likely to backfire on you. Yeah, it's not. That's the reason

I really don't think he murdered her. Besides the lack of motive, is that if you truly had killed her, then it would have made no sense for him to abandon her body underwater the way he did, because you know he would he should have brought her up. Remember the official theory that would make him the hero for at least instead of making him look like well, basically, it didn't make him look too good that he abandoned her,

not at all. And remember the official theory of the prosecution is it gave shut off her air supply and held her on her until she drowned. And just a quick thing, just for anybody who doesn't know that, I've thought about this, and I know somebody's gonna ask, well, could he have just kinked the air hose, you know, like you do with the garden hose, But you can't. Those hoses are super dense, They're they're made to not do that. Yeah, I wonder why, because it's kind of

important they don't do that. Yeah, I mean, I guess he could have grabbed the grabbed the regulator out of her mouth or the respirator and just pulled it, pulled her away from her and just like not giving it back, and she would have drowned maybe, but nonetheless, no matter how you kind of if he deliberately murdered her by drowning her, then there's no reason not to bring her up. Yeah, he's already got her. She's already dead. She's not gonna

like squeal or anything like that. And it certainly would have made him look better, a lot better, because abandoning your your die buddy is a huge deal. I mean, Wade Singleton said, remember him, said that he thought that Gabe should have been prosecuted for that alone, just abandoning her, even if he didn't kill her, she should have been prosecuted for that. Um. And so yeah, that's so that's why I don't believe that murder is is the correct area here. I don't think the Gabe actually was the

honeymoon killer. Agreed, Yeah, um. And so the next theory, of course, is that it was all an accident. Gave was pretty much telling the truth, you know, so Tina loses it, which is entirely possible. Not the first time, it's she's a total novice, and it's a self fulfilling prophecy. If she had just remained calm, I bet things would have been just fine. And so, you know, one thing about Tina that we haven't talked about is in the paperwork that she had to fill out with the dive company,

it said do you have any heart conditions? She said no, which was a lie. She did she did having a resumet that had been corrected with surgery I think just a couple of years before. Yeah, so that that's like, that's a that's a something that they would not be too comfortable with and would have put her under even more scrutiny. They might not have let her dive, is the way that I understood it. So the fact that she ignored it makes me think that she may have

brought some of it on herself. Good thing. I mean, the cause of death was officially drowning. There was no evidence of any sort of heart attack or anything like that, but you never know, I mean maybe here kicked in again or something. Yeah, it would have been more of a panic attack, which if she had a heart condition,

may have made it even worse in her mind. Oh God, I'm having a heart attack and she's freaking out, and yeah, and you know, I mean the thing is that she's yes, she's got air, she's got a regulator in her mouth. But if she's freaking out and she starts yelling, that's when all the water gets in, and that's why she would drown or she hypervatolites and sort of kind of passes out. Yea, that that'll do it. Yeah. So again, if she had just been a little calmer about things,

it probably would have been good, I think, Gabe. And that's not a judge. I know that what you said, that is not a judgment on anyway on Tina. So anybody listening to its. Sometimes we say these things get misperceived. It's a it's a very scary alien environment. It's scary. I was I was just remembering that. Um, you know, I've never been scoop diving or even snorkeling really because I don't like water in my face. Um no, it's fine,

I don't. But I remember watching the videos for the Ben McDaniels thing, and even just watching the YouTube videos, and you know, I it was a little unsettling too much. Yeah, it was still that was too much. Yeah, no, I like that. I like the whole in the water thing.

But that's just me, you know. I mean, but even I you know, I've done the snorkeling, and I've done other fun stuff in the water, but you know, I'm not sure what would happen if I was down there fifty feet and maybe I would lose it too, I don't know. But it's and similarly, you don't know what you would do if your dive partner were doing that thing, yeah, you know, yeah, or what I would do if my dive partner put me to show my air. What am

I saying? Yeah, So we pretty much agree it was not just an accident in the way that gave Well, no, it could have been an accident, I mean, but not the way that Gabe represented it. I actually, I actually think that it may very well have been exactly the way he reped presented it. It is just that they were both so inept at the handling the situation that they literally their combined actions was her cause of death.

I think so, because, I mean, they didn't need to fight the current to try to get back to the access point. They could have just gone straight up. How long is the how long is it. What's the distance from access point to access point? Joe, It's about a hundred hundred. Yeah, it's not it's not a huge especially when you're already in a moving current. Yeah, they could have Actually it might have been faster to just swim downstream and easier. Yeah, or or the alternative is just

go straight up. Yeah, but and so that might have compounded the situation by trying to go back there again. And just to pause here for a second to talk about the fact that everyone's like, okay, it was super domineering and blah blah blah. It sounds like he just was like, yeah, okay, Tina, we're going to do what

you want to do. He you know, in a situation where you're kind of a jerk, super dom sneering, aren't you going to be No, if this is the right way, you're not gonna say Okay, we're going to say you know, you're not gonna say I mean, it sounds like kind of what he was thinking was, all right, what she wants to do is going to be the best way to calm her. We're going to do what she wants to do. Let's go do this. Even though he may or may not have known it was the wrong call. Yeah,

its like considered that to be the right call. You gotta remember too, that at this point, I mean, he might not have even been aware that this is a total life in this situation. Probably might I just said, well, she's wagging out a little bit. We're going to get her back to the line she wants. She gets your hand on the line, she'll calm down and she'll relax, you know, And that he's probably, at least initially, it's possible that he thought, hey, she'll she'll be fine. We'll

just get her back to the line and she'll settle down. Well, I didn't work out that way, but so I would not say that this is totally beyond the realm of possibility. But there's one word theory. I like the theory, which is that Gabe did not murder her. It was an act to that. But he's also not quite telling the truth about the whole thing. A show me, show me what you got here. Yeah, it statements to the police which I read. I read his entire well, not everything,

I read his entire October twenty three statement. There's a transcript out there, and I send you guys a link to that. Did you guys read that? Yeah, it's it's it's there's a lot there. There's a lot there, and it's hard to read, um, you know, And not not because I'm semi literally or anything like that, but just because of the way it's been transcribed and the way he speaks doesn't really translate to the written page very well. I'm told that the video of it is actually much

much better for understanding what he's saying. And there are transcription heres as well, which doesn't help. But his statements to the police indicated he thought that Tina was experience and I was stress and anxiety and maybe even panic. But what if it wasn't heard that lost it. What if it was Gabe who lost it? And so what if Tina didn't actually knock his masks and respirator off of his face. What if he panicked and locked knocked

hers off of her face and she drowned. What if that help He clocked her in the head and she was semi conscious and therefore drowned because of that, And and it might be that And I'm not a note nocastic expersions on anybody. Anybody can again lose it and just panic a little bit and cause something like this accidentally and maybe not want to fess up to it.

So you're saying something is effective. He freaks out, He accidentally swings and and clobbers are in the head, and that's what then starts the whole dropping clawbers here in the head, knocks her mask and respirator off her off of her face. But her mask and her mask was in place, wasn't it. You could have gotten it back into place and her masking its respirator and respirator were in place. Yes, but not. But even even leaving that aside,

he might have panicked also. Well, I guess one question would be then on this theory is why why was it that her oxygen consumption was so much higher? And it seems it sounds like his was fairly normal. Yeah, so I mean higher higher than what it experienced diver would use, right, but not, I mean it sounds like hers was really high. Yeah. So, like, I mean that feeds into the theory that she was the one freaking out in hyperventilating, not him. But she's breathing shallow and fast.

He's breathing deep and hard. Yeah. But yeah, but but when you look at it this way, if you if you think that that Gabe actually had a panic attacked, and even if he didn't knock the mask up her face, if he was the one who was really panicking, or maybe they both were panicking. One of the things one of the anxieties that he said that he had was well that the current was super strong, which I think

is what's the big deal. They're on drift dive, but they just have to drift down the length of the boat. And he also was talking about to the police again said well they were they lost sight of the of the entry rope on the bow, and they he knew that there was an exit line on the stern of the ship, but that was as far as he was concerned. That was a hundred miles away. That was well, but as far as but I was at hadder meters away maybe, but obviously it wasn't visible. It wouldn't be visible for

a while. He expressed some anxiety about not being able to see it and maybe missing it and being swept out to see. So I don't think this is a rational concern personally. I mean it is in a sense, but at the same time it would be it would actually be very easy to find that thing. All you gotta do is stay over the ship at that on that on that day, the current was not parallel to the ship. It was actually about ten degrees off according

to what I've heard. So if you stayed at the same point you entered right on the bow, stayed in that same exact point without moving a muscle, you would be blown off course enough that you probably would miss that line, because by my back of the envelope calculation, they would have missed it by about seventeen meters, which is just beyond the realm. Maybe they would have seen it, maybe not. But of course, at the same time, you know what to do. There's a huge ship underneath you.

All you gotta do is kick your fins a little bit and get back over the ship the sent line of the ship, and boom, you're lined up for your exit line. So it seems like interrational. And again there's no way underwater. There's no way that Tina's somehow communicated this through body language, your sign language. He didn't communicate that to game. That wasn't anxiety. That was all his own,

entirely his own. Also, by the way that they were there is mentioned also that the people at the dive company actually talked about what to do and how to signal them if you want beyond the exit movie. In fairness, though, the people at the dive company, we're supposed to have done a test dive with Tina. Fairness, Yeah, I mean you know, so maybe they said they told them, and and in fairness to the dive company, you can tell somebody what to do, but that for them to pay

attention and register and retain that use a whole another matter. Yeah. Another thing that makes me think that maybe Gave was in a state of panic is the part of the whole part. This is the part that truly doesn't make sense. It's what he's trying to chase Tina downward as she's sinking and he couldn't catch her, which makes utterly no sense to me or the experts I talked to. And again there was a whole question a well, was his

bc D way over inflated? And well, if that was the case, if that was inhibiting his downward progress, then all he had to do was deflated He didn't apparently think to do it. Was what's his evidence to me that he wasn't thinking very clearly. Was that he was panicking, I don't know, And and at that point he turned around and just left again evidencely scared because maybe he already figured out the Tina was already dead and figured there's no sense of losing my own life trying to

rescue her. Much kind of along in the same lines as although at the same time, I'm asking myself, well, was that really rational? Because you have a whole tank of air, we got attack of air, and if he swim down a little farther grabb her hauler up, you know,

really what's the risk there. But let's also add to that, right, the fact that he had already had that misfire with his computer or computer computer, right, So he may have already been a little in a weird mindset of like, well, maybe this computer isn't a hundred accurate right now, right because I was having issues with it before. So maybe he's thinking, all right, I know, I definitely have enough to get on this you know, short little scuba trip.

But maybe he's thinking, you know, he's already not thinking particularly clearly. He's probably panicking and thinking, oh my god. Also, what if my computer is telling me that I have a lot more air than I actually have. What if you know, something malfunctions, blah blah. He's already panicking, and then he's trying to get down and then he's like, oh, I've obviously used way more air than I should have

and oh my gosh, my computer. You know, just a huge panic of I mean, I agree that rationally above ground with no one no emotional trauma of watching your wife die. I'm sorry, on on ground above water to us sitting in a dry room without having just watched our wife die. You know, Yeah, of course he had air to get down there, and blah blah blah. But if he's panicking, he's having a panic attack, I think, not having not in his right mind, he it makes

sense to just beat feed out of there. And uh, you know, and that's because you know, again, like you said to us, it looks it looks simplicity itself. He just swim down there, grabber hauled the surface. Alive or dead, at least you've got her. And he just turned and left, And I think that that's the sign again, and and and again. From where he went, he could have gone straight up insteady he goes back to the bow against

the current, taking more time. Um, you know, every decision was kind of the wrong one, A lot of them, A lot of them were not rational. I don't think I think that he was. I think he was just panicking. Yeah he was. Yeah, And I think he lost it. And I think that's why his story doesn't quite make sense. It's because he's never wanted to fess up entirely to the fact that he just lost it. Well, here's a question. If he had a pank, did he lose his scuba license?

Not that I know. So if he had admitted that he was incompetent, caused the death of someone and you know, basically just and everything, would he have lost it? Probably? Right? Maybe, But I'm not sure how at that point, how enthusiastic was about scuba anymore. Anyway, right, he might not have ever done scuba diving after that. And I gotta tell you that the whole thing of him saying I want a scuba dive and I want to go on boats, and you need to learn to do it with me

as well, if you want to be with me. I mean it again is it's it's weird to me because he'd been diving for at this point ten years, uh seven years, seven years, and he had only in seven years logged fifty dives, and they were all like pool dives and little quarry dives, as if he was an avid diver, and this was going to always be his things, which is why I agree with Joe that it's so easy to see him freak out. Yeah, I agree with that. I was just going to say, it's to me, it's

not that weird that he didn't go on. I mean, we don't know their financial situation. He probably couldn't afford. He lived in Alabama, right, It's not like there are a lot of really great dive spots in Alabama, right, as far as I know, I don't know. I'm sure they we'll find out. Alabama is actually close to the close to the Gulf of Mexico, so there's good diving down there. I hear close. But you know, depending on where in the state you are, it's financial situation, right,

you know. So it may have been that he thought, all right, well, we're going to go someplace tropical for our honeymoon. I've always you know, I've been scooping for ten years. This is my chance to really get a great, nice dive in and obviously I want you to do that with me because you're my wife and I love you. So yeah, I guess they were years old, so yeah, Financially, it's not as if they would be super well off. Okay,

now I'll retract a little ahead of my school. I mean, you can be at fifty and not be financially well off enough. I mean, well, you know, there's no stage of life where you can definitively say that person is definitely gonna be able to afford to go scuba diving. Well, I'm not exactly hurting for cash, but I gotta tell

you it's just a matter of priorities. I mean, I could actually, if I actually I do, I could afford to travel halfway around the world and go scuba diving, not going to but you're also well there's that too, Yeah, but I just you know, no matter what the age, there's always something better to spend the money on, buying a house and starting family. Yeah exactly. But you know,

but there there could have been other repercussions too. I mean, I he might have felt at least partially responsible if he felt like he had done something to contribute to her death. Well, I think he did I mean that that body viewing comments, that seems like, well, obviously, obviously, you know, yeah he did in one way or another. But from a legal point of view, it's one thing to sort of say it wouldn't it be great to learn how to scuba dive, because that's sort of, you know,

contributed to her death. But that's not something you can throw somebody in jail for. But there are the things that you could conceivably say, well, that's manslaughter, dude, you screwed up. You screwed up, and you can and you did this and this that contributed to her dying, and so you're gonna go to jail, so freaking out and stuff, and and you can see where he might finance his story a little bit to make himself look a little better, not only from the standpoint his self esteem, but also

from a legal standpoint. I don't want to get arrested or whatever. So uh, that's kind of my theory there is that it was an accident, an unfortunate thing, but his behavior probably it wasn't entirely the best. And I'm not saying I would have been any better in that situation myself, but that's what I think most likely happened. Yeah, most likely. All right, so that's that story. Uh, next week finding Nemo. Yeah alright. Let me do a little housekeeping before we go here. Uh, you're a scuba diver.

And by the way, I just want to say this. I don't know if I said it before. This die does not look that daunting to me. You know, it looks actually fairly easy. You know, it doesn't have a lot of fun. But I want to say if you're if you're one of these scuba diving types and you want to take issue with that, if you'd like to issue a challenge to me to go to Australia and do the dive, well I will accept that challenge absolutely. You throw down that gauntlet and your wallet and I

will go to Australia and dive that wreck. Absolutely. And let me give you the way that you want to get a hold of me through our our email, which is Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. What or what else have we got? We've got a website, you know what those things are, right, Thinking sideways podcast dot com where you can find our episodes. We have an episode list out there. You can download and listen to

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a subreddit, Thinking Sideways that's on Reddit. If you haven't heard of those guys, well, do a google. That's R E. D D I T. We have a sub reddit and so go check it out and that's about it. Tell him next week. Uh, any final thoughts? You guys know, I was gonna make a swimming joke, but no, I got nothing. Yeah. I can't think of anything either, So alright to next week. Bye guys, Bye,