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You are now listening to True Murder The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky. Good evening.
This is your host Dan Zupanski for the program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True crime History and the authors that have written about them. Dead just one week into her Australian honeymoon, Tina Watson's body lay one hundred feet below the ocean's surface at the foot of the Great Barrier reef across the globe, three days into a secret Erubian getaway with an older gentleman she met online, Robin Gardner, vanished from the same town as Natalie Holloway,
who had had just five years earlier. Why did Robin Gardner's travel companion purchase a one point five million dollar insurance policy and make himself the beneficiary? Did Tina Watson's husband really insist she increased her life insurance coverage to one million before the wedding. When both suspects stories are deemed suspicious, what does the evidence ultimately reveal? Mode of an opportunity gave the media full opportunity to cast these
suspects as murderers. But what actually happened and what is it about this pair of bizarre cases that remains brutally chilling to this day. The book that we're featuring this evening is Vanished Beauty Fatal Sunset with my special guest, journalist and author Mark Yoshimoto nemkov Welcome to the program, and thank you for agreeing to this interview. Mark Yoshimoto Nemkov.
Dan, thank you so much for having me on. It's my pleasure. I love your show, by the way, Oh.
Well, thank you very much. And you fit right in there with all the other denizens of the program here. I think I think we're gonna have a great program here because it's a wild, wild story. A question that I often ask if, without giving too much away at all, how is it that you came to write this story? What was it about these two stories, about these two cases that compelled you or drove you to decide to write this book? Vanish beauty Fatal Sunset.
Well, last year I had written a book called Fatal Sunset Deadly Vacations, which is really a compilation of a number of different stories of people who you know, met their demise during their vacation. I mean, obviously, you know, it's kind of a kind of a bizarre topic. But I was. I was on the island of Maui and this guy who just happened to be there at the same time, another tourist nine miles up the road, he
fell into a natural uh it's it's a thing. It's called the Knochalley blowhole, which which sounds really dirty, but it's really just like it's like a geyser that comes up underneath this lava shell. And this guy fell in and he vanished. And this happened while I was on the island, and I was just I was. I was terrified by the idea that he fell into this thing
and vanished and they never found him. And and I started to write this book, and I started to write about these stories, and I wrote about Natalie Holloway, and I was just horrified at the Natalie Holloway story. How this was a case that probably could have been solved and it wasn't. And as I was working on a sequel this year for Fatal Sunset Deadly Vacation, this one that became Banished Beauty, I looked back at the Natalie Holloway case and I noticed there was this Robin Gardner
case that was incredibly similar to the Natalie Holloway case. Now, Nadalie Holloway was eighteen, she just graduated high school. Robin Gardner was thirty six. But they were approximately the same height, the same build, the same look, blonde hair, blue eyes, and I thought it was very bizarre that they had both disappeared under very mysterious circumstances from the same exact
Eruben resort. So I started to look into this case and I realized there were a lot of aspects to not just how she just heard the strangeness of just another blonde American woman vanishing the from an Auruban beach, but there were these elements to her story about the people who were involved, just her traveling companions, and she had met this guy. It was an older man she met online and she took up this trip with him
that she didn't tell anybody about. She didn't tell her family about, she didn't tell her boyfriend about, and she vanishes. And as I dug into this story more and more and I looked into this kind of shady character that she went to Aruba with, I first felt like, Wow, this is again another obviously open and shutcase. Why couldn't they bring this case to trial? Why couldn't they solve
this case? As I dug more into the evidence and really the public perception of what was going on, because again with the shadow of Natalie Holloway's disappearance, how that was a worldwide news sensation. There was this taint on this Robin Gardner disappearance because everything that happened in the Robin Gardner case was being held up to the incompetence
of the Natalie Holloway investigation. So I felt that there was really more to this story than just a a chapter in another book that was a compilation of several different deadly vacation stories. And as I looked into it more and more and deeper and deeper, and the characters
started to get weirder. And this guy that she went with, who seemed like such an obvious villain, there were elements to this that pulled me in because every time I looked up something about Robin Gardner or her traveling companion, this guy Gary Giordano, her boyfriend, I started to find things in this story that just made my jaw drop. This thing had so many twists and turns, and I was I wondered to myself, how how do you write
this thing? How do you publicly indict someone who was never really brought to trial for this crime because they never They arrested Gary Giardano, but they released him four months later because they couldn't build a case against him. And I was like, I can build a I can build a case against this guy. Let me do it.
Well, Mark, let's let's go back, like, let's go back like you were able to do that, and you do that in the book very very effectively. Let's let's go back a little bit here before we talk about Gary gi O'Donnell, because Richard Forrester is the boyfriend of Robin Gardner and that's not her maiden name. So let's go back just a little bit with Robin and just tell who Robin is in terms of her we'll say her
history in terms of being married. Let's go back with a little bit into Robin's life before we introduced Richard Forrester, and well before we get into Gary Jerio Danel, so we can paint the picture and introduce these characters.
Okay, Well, Robin Gardner was kind of a hometown girl, grew up outside of Washington, DC, and she had been married before. She married a guy who was a real estate He was a senior executive at one of these companies that goes and builds a big housing developments. Right, And of course, the recession hit and crushed the construction industry, and this guy loses his job and their marriage falls apart.
But they were doing, they were doing. They were living a pretty lavish lifestyle. Mercedes Benz in the driveway, and so let's not leave that out. She did get a taste for the high life and the good life, right.
That's right. She was definitely living an a very upper middle class almost like a dream life for a young lady who wants these types of things. And so here she was, and she was divorced from her husband and facing a very very contentious alimony battle with her husband, who was unemployed, who couldn't find a job. Afterwards, tried to start his own business building houses, and that didn't take off, And then she was working as a dental assistant and also trying at the same time, she was
a very attractive woman. Thirty six, she's trying to kickstart a modeling career. Now, now thirty six is not the agent which one starts a modeling career. No, it's about twenty two years late for starting a modeling career, right, And so here she was and there was this almost you'd almost feel like there was a sense of desperation in her life because she was with this guy, Richard forrest Or, who she also met online, and they were together,
but things weren't exactly rosy between them. So here she was, and there are aspects of Robin's life that just that make her seem like she's she could be anyone. But then there were secrets that she kept that were really that really kind of painted a much different picture about her as the story developed. Right, So she was definitely someone who who who liked to uh ah, how should
I say it? She liked to have fun and she liked to keep secrets, which is one of the reasons why when she had this friend, Gary Giordano, who she met online as well through a swinger website, that she didn't tell her boyfriend about it. All her boyfriend knew about this guy, Gary Giordano, was he was a friend, just a platonic friend. That's all she told him. But it wasn't the truth, not at all.
Now they do have a relationship, and you say it's rocky, But what is the basis of the problem. It's what seems to be. They just don't click what is the deal here? And this is important because on the last few days of her life, or at least before she disappears from the face of the earth, there are some messages for Richard Forrester. So just before we get into that eventful day, let's talk about a little bit about the relationship. What exactly did you say was the problem
in the relationship? What did you think or what were witnesses at that time, or what was Richard's viewpoint on what was the problem with the relationship?
Well, Richard Forrester had also been married before, and he had a very expensive divorce. He had divorced his first wife and she was dragging him through the coals for everything, and rightly so, because he refused to pay alimony, he refused to pay child support. So he was hit with a massive judgment, a massive, massive judgment. And here was Richard Forrester, and they he had been together with Robin, and he had his baggage and she had her baggage. And at some point after she had lost her job
as a dental assistant. Maybe it was the financial aspects of her trying to battle her ex husband for alimony and Richard trying to come up with all this cash in order to fulfill this massive judgment that he had to pay. So money is money issues are never a good thing for a relationship. But it seemed like their
relationship had maybe run its course. And even though they didn't live together, they had separate apart up and he claims she she would spend six nights a week at his place, but she still maintained her own apartment, and her roommate at the time claimed that, you know, not everything was really rosy because she she did she was kind of I think she she liked Richard, but she always had her eye open for other opportunities. And when Gary Giardano showed up and offered her a trip to Aruba.
Here was a guy who had a history of larceny, a history of lying a history of harassing his previous girlfriends, of being being a bully, and of lying that to women that he was a modeling agent, that he was a manager that booked modeling gigs. So here she is probably not in the best time during her life, and this friend, who she obviously knows is interested in her, has propositioned her before says hey, I'll take you to Aruba. Come with me and let's get away from it all.
And so she did, and she never came back.
Now let's get to the let's go backwards just a little bit and talk about Richard. Forrester, we already set the stage that this relationship is not so good. So they are not together one day and set the stage for that day that he gets I wasn't clear whether he had he got the phone call or he was listening to a message from a phone call that she made. And then talk about that day and the phone call or the message of the phone call that he listened to and his deduction from there.
Well, they they had been in a fight. They things hadn't been so good, and according to Robin's roommate, she was about to break up with him, and he claims that He got a phone call from her a couple days after the last time he had seen her, and the phone call sounded it sounded strange. There was noise on the line, there was beeping on the line. It
was an internationally placed phone call. And he didn't know that because she told him that she was in Orlando with her family they were taking They took a last minute trip to Orlando, and she was like, look, I can't talk, but we'll talk when I get back, and you know, i'll call you soon, and so he didn't even realize that she was out of the country. He
tried to message her on Facebook and she replied. They never had any other direct conversation after that, but they had you know, Facebook messages back and forth, and they were all kind of like, look, well, I care about you, Richard, and we'll talk when I get back. And so here was this boyfriend who didn't even realize that maybe he
was being broken up with. I mean, he had been blindsided by this whole thing, apparently, And so he's trying to get in touch with her desperately and she's responding very cryptically on Facebook, and so it's it's.
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It wasn't until uh the he because she found out. He found out because she admitted, well, she was like, look I went to Aruba. It's it's uh. I'll be back soon. Don't worry about it. I'll be back at the end of the week. And he didn't even find out until the day after she was supposed to return something had happened to her three days earlier, or two days earlier, as a matter.
Of fact, so he has limited contact with her. He gets this phone call and again she says, I can't talk, but we'll talk soon. Then she gets the email I love you, I care about you. Yeah, it does sound like kind of like but we're going to have to break up kind of deal. But we'll discuss it when I get back. What is the last message that he does receive and what day is that?
The last message was a Facebook message and this was the day before that she had vanished. She vanished on a Wednesday. It was Tuesday, and he had been trying to call her, trying to message her, trying to email her, and it was it was obvious, I think, you know, maybe to him that there were there were bigger problems in this relationship than he had first thought. And so he was, you know, he didn't like the idea of not being able to get in touch with her, so
he kept trying to get in touch with her. And the last, the last Facebook message was it was it was really like, you know, I uh thinking about you will we'll talk soon. And after that, what was bizarre was he had seen her on Gmail, on his Gmail account, he had seen her indicator her uh come on, and you know, if you're familiar with Gmail chat, when someone who is one of your chat friends comes online and they want to be seen in chat, their little indicator
goes green. Well, he says, well, you know, I saw her indicator go green, and I tried to message her and she didn't respond to me. And he found out later on after he discovered that she had been missing, that her indicator had gone green after she had disappeared. So here again, he wasn't sure what was going on. He wasn't sure who was on her account or what
was you know, how was she being manipulated? And the only and the only person who knew what Robin Gardner was up to was this guy she was with, Gary Giordano.
Now what happens with who calls police? And when do they call police? She's supposed to be back on Thursday, and of course there's no show. So and then Friday Andrew Colson, which is Robin's brother called to say that Robin's mother had said that Robin was missing at sea. Tell us about this phone call and what was said, and Forrester's reaction, Well.
What happened was that Robin's mother had gotten a phone call from authorities and you know, informing her that, uh, you know, we your daughter h is missing. And she went uh snorkeling with her travel companion and she didn't come back to shore. She vanished. And so of course this is this is all news to the Colson family and.
Sorry for snorkeling or scuba diving or anything.
Well, that was the thing that that most of the people who knew her found to be suspicious, because Robin Gardner was someone who liked to wear a lot of makeup and liked her hair done nice, and and she wore hair extensions. And she wasn't known as the kind of adventurous girl to to uh strap on a pair of fins and go snorkeling.
You know.
She was the kind of girl who would have a few cocktails by the pool. Yeah, And so it seemed very suspicious to everyone. All of a sudden Robin went snorkeling. How did this happen, She doesn't Snorkel and the only person. Again, like the authorities were right away, the authorities had started
to look at this guy, Gary Giordano. They started to you know, they initiated a search, an island wide search of Robin, coast guard, boades, helicopters, and this is this all of a sudden, you know, becomes a frantic search for a missing person. And her family is informed of this, you know, almost almost twelve to eighteen hours after the fact.
What does Geordano claim when he tells police or what is geored Dano's reaction, Because this is the thing that's amazing. What does Geordano do and say and how you know, give us the timeline here of what he does and then what does he say happened?
And who does he.
Say that to?
Well, according to Gary Giardano, and according to eyewitness accounts, Gary and Robin had been drinking at the hotel they went and they stayed at the Marriotte. They were in the same room together and they were drinking and then they went out for you know, lunch at a little bar, and so they were seen at the bar. There was actually pictures taken of them. The pictures where you can
see them. And so there's evidence that they were there at this bar at about two o'clock or so, and that she was drinking and he was drinking, and she didn't really touch her food. And so then he claims that they later on, just a few hours later, they were just hanging out and he said, let's go snorkeling. They went in the water. They're kicking or round off the shore, and all of a sudden, Gary claims that that the current got stronger and started to pull him out,
and he motioned to her. He said to her, he tapped her on the foot and motioned, look, let's go in. Hurry up. You know, I'm I think we might be in trouble here. So he claims he started to swim for his life towards the shore and by the time he got close enough, he turned around and Robin was gone.
And so at approximately five o'clock late afternoon, early evening, he emerges from the water by himself, and he goes back to the bar, because they were snorkeling very close to this bar, and he goes back to the bar and he knocks on the window on the door and there's no answer. And he goes around to the kitchen and finally is able to have somebody call the police, and the police come and all of a sudden, they're like, well, what how did this happen? How did how did you
guys go circling and she didn't come back? And why is there blood here on the beach? And uh, you know, why why are you still wearing your twope? And it's really I mean, there was there was a lot of suspicion placed on Gary Giordano, very very quickly, but there was no evidence. There was no evidence to be found. There was no evidence that he had done anything wrong.
Well, you know the thing is, though, pardon excuse you, excuse me, they did find almost immediately a bloody palm, and then you don't say whether that was ever identified. But there's a bloody pom print in an unused condom and that's right behind the rum reef bar and grill.
Uh.
That's what happens early on right the right.
And according to eyewitnesses who came forth later, Robin had apparently cut her foot on the Rocky beach and a lot of people, a lot of people were suspicious of the fact that they had gone snorkeling off of this little beach behind this bar, because here was this, you know, not very sandy, not very pleasurable beach. It was kind of rocky. She cut her foot, so she was seen having cut her foot. People saw her on the beach, so but they did. They were never able to match
whether or not that was her blood. They were never able to match whether or not it was that condom had any sort of DNA that would link them to to either Gary or Robin. And this was and many people blamed the fact that here is Aruba, this is a very very small island community where the closest crime lab is another island away in Cursow. So it's this is a very sleepy town and all of a sudden they have to perform CSI here. It's it's not gonna happen now.
And Robin, Robin's mother actually travels to Aruba to try to find her missing daughter, doesn't.
She right away. Robin's mother goes and she confronts this guy, Gary Giordano, and she described him as being very calm and not very concerned with the fact that here was somebody that he was with who he you know, he would he introduced Robin to the waiter at the restaurant as his wife, you know, maybe half jokingly, but all of a sudden, you know, here's somebody he was with, and he told Robin, oh how much he cared about her and all that. But he just seemed very blase
about it. It was almost as if he had lost, you know, a frisbee or you know, a pair of a pair of sneakers, and so that that again seemed very suspicious. And what as Gary is stuck here on Aruba watching this search go down. One of the things that was revealed later was the police. He was unable to be questioned by police immediately afterwards because he was intoxicated. So he excused himself as is the police are rusor he excused himself to go lay down, Yeah, because he
couldn't answer their questions. And then when he could answer their question he didn't seem like he was He didn't seem too freaked out about the fact that his traveling companion had vanished.
The other thing that did you put in the book is that is included is that it took twenty minutes. He has a difficulty getting took twenty minutes for him to get someone to call police after emerging, you know, apparently so not much of a panic if you think twenty minutes it takes for him to get a message to someone to call police after he emerges from that water.
No, And there is surveillance of it from the bar that shows him immediately afterwards, and you see him in his bathing suit, actually wearing a pair of sneakers and still wearing his really bad to pay and he doesn't seem in a huge rush, and he's knocking on the door, and it does seem that if I mean, I know personally I feel that if I was in a situation where someone I cared about, or someone I was traveling with, or someone who I saw across the beach was in
some kind of trouble, I don't know how much lingering I would do in order to try to find somebody to help me.
No, no evidence, no evidence of the proper usual behavior.
No.
And this is all part and parcel of Gary Giordano's personality, because, as it became revealed throughout the investigation, there here was a guy who uh he was He was arrested for shoplifting from Target stores. He would go into Target stores in the around the DC area, and he would fill his car up with electronics and he'd walk out. He'd just wheel the thing out, fill up his car. And this guy had the gall he would go back and
do it again. But because I guess they have some sort of you know, security compliance thing where they don't really confront people, they would never be able to call
the police in time and get this guy rest. Well, finally he was arrested, and he just didn't seem that concerned about the fact that he was he had stolen from from the store, from these stores, well, and so he was he was here was a very bizarre individual, someone who had a history of extremely bizarre behavior, very very suspicious behavior, and almost every aspect of his life.
Well, he's a brazen thief, and that that would make sense to what he attempts to do here and how out of touch he is with you know reality here. You know, he's not certainly not insane, and he's not he's not a stupid man, but he acts quite foolishly. So he's will say, very very overly confident. The most interesting aspect that we alluded to it so we might as well address this, is that police, of course are going to look into motive for anybody being killed at
any time by anyone. So what evidence do they find about the insurance policy and where do they get some of this evidence from in terms of who do they speak to in terms of this insurance policy.
Well, not very long after Robin disappears, Gary calls his insurance company. Now he he claims that he was instructed to do that by he had retained a lawyer on the island of Aruba, and he claims that the lawyer told him, you need to call your insurance company, so he called his insurance company. Well, it turns out that Gary Giordano, before they had left the United States, Gary had taken out a traveler's insurance policy on Robin Gardner
that covered accidental death. But it was a policy for a million five a million and a half dollar policy on someone he didn't really know, and he named himself the beneficiary and had her sign it. So here he was in contact with his insurance company, asking them all sorts of questions like what do I do, what happens if they don't find her? What about all any sort of bills that I get for the search? So he seemed much more concerned with this insurance policy than with
Robin's well being. And as as he tried to leave Aruba, he was detained at the airport, covered in sweat, just sweating profusely and very acting, very suspicious. And so they stopped him feet from getting on the plane, and they, you know, they slapped the cuffs on him. And as he started to talk about what was going on, the insurance policy was revealed, and all of a sudden, not only does he have opportunity to kill Robin Gardner, but
he has motive to kill Robin Gardner. And when you have opportunity and motive together and someone is sketchy, as Gary Giordano, well, you know, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So the police feel like we have an open and shutcase. We're going to lock this guy up, and we're finally going to prosecute somebody for you know, someone going missing. Well, it turns out it was much more difficult than that.
Yeah, certainly, certainly. Yeah. So now what you do in Vanished Beauty is that you switched to the other story that you want to draw parallels to and draw the reader into for attention to the story about a woman named Tina Watson Christina May Tina Thomas born in nineteen seventy seven. Tell us a little bit about Tina Watson and her marriage in two thousand and three, but tell us about Tina Watson. Who was she?
Tina Watson was another small town girl from Alabama who was turning thirty and watching all of her friends get married, and so she married a guy who her family didn't feel was right for her. They thought that she was settling for this guy, Gabe Gabe Watson. And Gabe was kind of another odd duck. He wasn't really the most personable guy, wasn't really the most ambitious guy, not necessarily the kind of person that the in laws really you know, looked at and said, Wow, We're thrilled to have you
in our family. They were very very cold to Gabe, and Gabe in turn, just kind of alienated her family and insisted that you know Tina well, if he told her, like, if you want to spend time with me, you have to do what I'm interested in, which is scuba diving.
You have to be involved in my scuba diving hobby. Now, Gabe had gone off and he had gotten himself certified as a scuba diver and certified as a rescue diver as a matter of fact, And so he gets Tina to also go to the same place, the same quarry
in Alabama to get her certification. And she was thrilled to be part of his life, that she could spend weekends with him and they could enjoy this together, which is why for their dream honeymoon they were going to spend half of it sightseeing, which is what she wanted to do in Australia, and the other half they were going to spend scuba diving on an excursion boat that
would take them around the Great Barrier Reef. Well, as it turns out, I guess learning how to scuba dive in a quarry in Alabama really isn't good practice for scuba diving in the open waters in a red flag dive area like the Great Barrier Reef.
Now the thing is, though, too, you do a great job of explaining this, and I'm ignorant about this. I've never scuba dive, so you know, I'll put my head underwater and that's about it. So the thing is is that we're talking about he's been involved. He's a fanatic David since ninety six and he's had fifty five. He's an experienced diver. And you say, like I say, he's got his rescue diving certificate and he's certified, but he's
been doing it for a long time. By the time we're talking two thousand and three, she says, yes, I want to do this, but we're talking she's doing it just a couple months. She just gets certified a couple months, like you say, in this pool, in a backyard or a pool somewhere, and it's only a couple months before this dream honeymoon. So I just wanted to say that as well, that compared to his experience, she is a real novice.
Oh, she's a complete nube. And as it turns out, Gabe didn't realize the situation they were entering. He didn't realize that maybe they weren't prepared for dives like this, because even though he had been diving for quite a while and was certified as a rescue diver, he had never The only open water dives he had done were to a much shallower depth in much calmer waters in
the Gulf of Mexico. Now the Great Barrier reef is is uh that that's definitely much more of an advanced scuba diving venue than say a quarry in Alabama or the calm waters around the Gulf of Mexico. And so they enter the water on their first dive after uh Tina had declined taking any sort of instructional dive from the dive master of their boat.
I think that's important because she she declines twice. He he's this master diver, and he's and he's boord this this luxury boat, and part of this expedition is that, you know, he's taking responsibility. And despite she says, no, no, I'm with I'm with my best buddy, my partner, my my, my guy here, he says twice. So I think it's you know, ironic that he singles her out and says, listen, I think you should suggest I'm suggesting a training dive with a pro. And she declines twice.
She said, no, no, I'm I'm here with my my husband, my dive buddy here. And Tina seems like the kind of she was kind of a submissive type, you know, she she really kind. She wanted to make Gabe happy was really what she wanted. And so there's no evidence that Gabe gave her a glance and said, oh, no, you're not getting a training dive. She she just flat
turned it down. She just she thought that she was ready for something like this, and it turned out to be a very fatal mistake because as they entered the water, there was a situation Gabe had with his equipment. They had to hang back a little bit, and as they fixed Gabe's dive computer so that it worked properly so they could join the rest of the excursion group in
the water right away, she had difficulty. And so within minutes of this dive, she was struggling and she turned she was she started into panic, and she started to sink. And Gabe turned around, and here she was trying to desperately write this situation, and she was she was overbreathing. She was panicked. She flailed her arm and knocked his mask away. And as he tried to write, his regulator his airpiece in his mouth and put his mask back
in place. While his wife is panicking, he finally looks down. In the seconds that it took in order for him to be able to see and breathe again, he looked down and she was sinking. She was sinking. In this ninety foot water. She was ten feet below him, and he turned and he tried to kick down to her and claims that he couldn't reach her, that she was sinking too fast, she was plummeting towards the bottom. And this was in minutes of them.
Entering the water, right six minutes soon.
So Gabe then makes a snap decision instead of trying to go down and get her, he went for help. And they were already added depth at which he couldn't just shoot up to the surface if you know, he would he would have to ascend at a at a pace that would prevent him from from getting you know, air bubbles in his in his blood, you know, the benz.
The benz, right, so it could you can you can.
Die from the benz. And so he goes and he decides to get help while Tina sinks to the bottom. Now where the story becomes interesting and how it intersects
uh with the Robin Gardner story. What I found very compelling was the fact that Gabe was accused of murdering his life, and it turned out that there was The accusation came because there was there was insurance policy, There was a million dollar life insurance policy that Tina's father claims Gabe wanted, which so that he would be the beneficiary.
And this is shortly before their marriage.
This is shortly before their marriage.
Andreas and increased the amount to a million dollars.
Right max out the policy. She goes to her father and says, Gabe wants me to increase the life insurance policy to the full million dollars and make him the beneficiary. So when so Tina sinks to the bottom and she dies and they rescue her body, but it's too late, and initially the whole thing is ruled as an accident. But it's not until her father gets a phone call from a couple of people who were on the boat who said, well, you know this Gabe afterwards, he didn't
really seem that concerned. He seemed he seemed, you know, he's playing cards and I don't know, he just it doesn't all add up. And here was Gabe, this rescue diver, an experienced diver, and he couldn't rescue his wife.
You added two things too as well, that you added a history of Gabe Watson despite having him claiming having hearing problems, had dove seventy five feet to help his partner out, his diving his diving partner, so there was at least that history of an attempt to dive down. She was down ninety to one hundred feet, but he had dove in the past seventy five feet to help
his partner out, his buddy out. So the other thing was that you said that there was a singleton that master diver was the actual person that got her off the bottom because he was already underwater. For you said seven minutes. And there was a doctor Stuts that claimed, maybe I'll let you explain to the audience what he said he witnessed underwater regarding Gabe and Tina.
Well as the authorities were questioning the other people who were on the excursion. This doctor and you know, you go and you ask a doctor what did you see? I mean, a doctor is a very credible witness, sure just by Richard the fact that he's a doctor. And the doctor says, well, I saw them struggling, and I saw I saw Gabe hold her in a bear hug
moments before she sank to the bottom. And the suspicion became that Gabe had was holding Tina turned off her air until she suffocated, and then once she was held her until she she died, and then once she was dead, turned her air back on in order to make it seem like her her gear was working, not that somebody turned off her tank in mid dive, because that would
be suspicious. And so he claims that he saw them in a bear hug, that she was struggling and then she sank to the bottom, and this is something that he claims he saw. And you know, as as the investigation went on, it really became this very questionable piece of evidence. Even though it was the most damning piece of evidence against Gabe. It was something that doctor Stutts had only seen very fleetingly and from thirty yards away, which is a considerable distance in the water, and from above.
So here was somebody who saw something but wasn't really sure what they saw. But again, it was enough evidence in order for the Australian authorities to eventually years later reopened the case at the behest of Tina's parents and charge Gabe with murder, but they weren't able to prove that he murdered her.
Well, I mean, his case is we're going to do jump back to the Gary Giordano case. For the audience to see that, the reader to see the progress in that case. So let's go back to Gary Giordano and the mounting evidence against him, or the case against him, or the attempt. Now, what I wanted, what I was trying to allude to, was that if people are listening kind of carefully, Gary gi Ordano seems to have much more of a motive, a very clear motive, even though
it's circumstantial evidence. There seems to be more of a case against him. It seemed for your average Joe as opposed to the Gabe Watson case. But just tell our audience before we get back to Giordano, which case did police, when prosecutors think they had a solid case, did they think Watson was comparable We'll say, to the Giordano case in terms of enough circumstantial evidence to be able to prosecute case.
Well, the Gabe Watson case happened years earlier. It happened in two thousand and three, and it resurfaced again years later when the case had opened. So this happened before what had happened with Robin Gardner, and it was it was one of the similarities in this case. It just felt like I was looking at what happened with Rob with with Tina Watson and Gabe Watson, and I thought to myself, wait, is this what happened to Robin? Is
this the same situation? And as they as I looked at the evidence that was against Gary Giordano, there was there were elements of his case, of Gary's case that were so open to interpretation. They didn't have any any physical evidence against this guy. The only evidence that they actually found was that he and Robin were involved in a sexual relationship, because he had a lot of let's say, very dirty pictures of them doing the nasty in their hotel room on his camera. So this was not something
he had disclosed before. And as these little pieces of information about Gary Giordano that he had taken, these pictures of them having sex, these dirty pictures of her posing on the bed and just them and the act, and it just made him seem slimier. And the fact that he had tried to he contacted the insurance company, but
this was the only evidence they had. They couldn't link him to any sort of physical elevenance and they didn't have a body, and without a body, it was even more impossible for them to try and pinpoint a cause of death or how he could have done anything to her. So he spent four months in jail while they tried to They they opened the case up, they tried to
find more eyewitnesses, anyone who had come for us. And there were people who claimed that they saw Gary and Robin talking to some strange man, some strange tattooed man that afternoon before she vanished. And this man also vanished from the island. They couldn't find him, and and of course there were there were accusations of of well, this whole Madie Holloway case became the suss that you're in.
Vanderslute became a he became a sensation when he started to talk about, oh, I sold Madleie Holloway into white slavery to a Venezuelan man. So all of a sudden people started to, well, look, did Gary Giordano sell Robin Gardner into some you know, prostitution ring, some South American
prostitution ring. Did she end up like Jurine vander Slut's story where he claims that some man that he met at a casino offered him ten grand for a blonde woman, And so all of these bizarre stories and twists from the Natalie Holloway case became points of interest in the Robin Gardner case because of the similarity of the disappearances.
So people were looking for this strange man who was a pimp for the South American you know, underground, and they were looking for ways that Gary Giordano could have been somehow interested in the Natalie Holloway disappearance or was he somehow tied into organized crime. I mean, here's a guy with a vowel at the end of his name. He must be tied into some sort of mafia somewhere.
And so that, let's the thing I wanted to ask was the when do police get to speak to actually to Sharon Cohen, who had three kids with him, and she said he can't control his anger. And then they found a very very interesting person named Jeannette Farrago, and so she talked about stalking. And then there's the offer. Then there's the offer with the mother and the daughter and the modeling, which you know, just shows his character, but also the very very ironic and maybe we'll say
cryptic he says something referring to Natalie Holloway. So tell us a little bit about that. That's a fascinating aspect of this too. What he says and his past behavior and when he's talking to the mother trying to procure her daughter. Very interesting story.
So as this story opens up and as the news are digging around for information about this guy, Gary Giardano, they find his first wife and they find that there are you know, you can look up police records, so they're very easy to find, especially in the state of Maryland. So they look up his police records and there he is, you know, domestic abuse against his wife and he was They look into the records and the police showed up and they had a fight and she claimed he was abusive.
And then there was this girlfriend that was shortly after his divorce, and she claims that he was stalking her and he threatened her, and he was very controlling and made her text him anytime she went somewhere to prove that she wasn't with somebody very jealous man. And so this thread of this jealousy and controlling behavior and somewhat psychotic personality was definitely something. This history of Mary Giardano wasn't painting a very nice picture of him. As a
matter of fact, this Janet Ferrago. She claims that Gary once showed up outside of her window wearing a deer mask and holding a flashlight to his safe, just to freak her out or something. That he had taken pictures of her when they were having sex, and he had made copies of them, and after they broke up, he had put them in her neighbor's mailboxes to harass her. And she was so scared of the guy she wouldn't go through with the restraining order.
That's right.
And so as people are coming out of the woodwork, as the press, as people are locating these people who had any sort of you know, legal conflicts with Gary Giordano, and these people, these women who claimed that he was
he was not a very nice person. Well, all of a sudden, this woman comes out and she says, well, not that long ago, Gary Giordano posed as a modeling talent manager and he found my underage daughter's picture online on one of these modeling websites, amateur modeling websites, and he called us up and he offered her a get this, a trip to Aruba for a modeling shoot, a modeling shoot that of course did not exist, and Gary said, well, you know, she I will I will be with her
the whole time. You know, I'll be her chaperone, and no need for you to come, mom, I'll be taking care of it. Well, you know, we'll be staying in the same room. Don't worry, your underage daughter will be fine in Aruba on her modeling gig that doesn't really exist.
And then when she started to question him, all of a sudden, in what would seem like a very unprofessional way, Gary started to proposition her as well, well, well I could probably do a mother daughter shoot and you know would I've never been with a mother and daughter together. He got really kind of, you know, very very greasy at that point.
What did he say about Natalie Holloway though.
He said, because the mother was like, well, you know you're you're going to take my daughter out of the country, he said, oh, you know, don't worry. This isn't going to be another Natalie Holloway thing. These are this is the He's he's invoking the memory of Natalie Holloway to try and reassure this mother that he's going to take care of her daughter on this trip to Aruba, that he wants to take her to an underage girl, and so it was, uh, well, she wasn't underaged, really she was.
She was really kind of of age but young. And and so when this comes out in the wake of his arrest, all of a sudden, you know, there is even more suspicion heaped on Gary Giordano. Here's someone who has a history of lying to women to get them to try to go to Aruba with them with him so that he can have sex with him. He's a sexual predator.
He had also purchased, which is even more interesting, He had also purchased an insurance policy a month before or six months before for Carrie Emerson.
Yes, and so here here was here was this All of a sudden, there was a series brewing that this was his plan. He's going to take a woman to Aruba, make her vanish without Eddie eyewitnesses, and then claim this big insurance prize. And it became even more suspicious when it was revealed later on that not long before this,
Gary tried to sue a company he was. Gary Giordano owns this very small HR tech HR firm that he runs out of his house, million dollar mansion he has in uh outside of DC, and so he had tried to sue one of his clients, Uh for five million dollars. Well, it turns out that Gary Uh the case ended up being dropped because or Gary ended up dropping the case because it was he had he had forged documents, he
he committed fraud. So in order to cleanly walk away and not be arrested for fraud or you know, anything like that, he was he walked away from this case. But here was a guy who's willing to commit fraud in court to try to sue for five million dollars against a company that he claims did him wrong, which didn't. So you know this again, all of these things come out. Here's a guy willing to scam millions of dollars from this company. Of course this all fits into his profile.
Now what is we've only got We're going to go a little bit later because we have two detailed stories here, but I know you don't want to give too much information here in terms of some of the surprises here, in terms of is there a conviction are these what's what's the success at trial? What's the defense? How do they try to defend against this? So we won't have time to go into all that, But let's first go into Gary Giordano. Now that the police have all this information,
can they lay charges? And how does that work in Aruba? How does how does that work?
Well?
The justice system in Aruba is different from the justice system we have here in America. The Aruba is a Dutch protectorate, so the the Dutch laws are are far different in terms of the rights that you have when you are arrested. For instance, like when you are arrested in Aruba, like he was not able to have counsel when he was being questioned, and they were able to hold him for extended periods of time and they would
get extensions on this detainment. So originally he was only going to be detained for you know, sixty days, and then they extended another thirty days, in another thirty days while they tried to build a case against him, and at during this time, without any physical evidence that they could find, all they had was opportunity and motive and with no body. Same thing with Natalie Holloway, with nobody they weren't able to. It's not that they didn't want to.
The solicitor general, their attorney general type figure. It's not that they didn't want to bring charges against him. They were unable to file charges against him because the country, the incial system, demanded that he be let go because there was no evidence against him that they could they could prove that he had done anything wrong. Yeah, yeah,
but what really, what really happened there? It goes so much further than just that, than just the lack of evidence, because what really happened there is really what I feel I discovered what truly happened to Robin Gardner, and it's even more shocking than what you may think was done to Robin Gardner.
M m, well, let's just leave it at that. We will leave the audience wanting more on the other side of the coin here with Gabe Watson in terms of evidence against him again, how did police proceed and what was the success in terms of being fifiled charges against him?
Well, when Gabe Watson, when they when they filed charges against Gabe Watson for the murder of his wife, Tina Watson, he uh, he volunteered to come back to Australia to face the music, and he went of his own volition, not knowing that if he would ever come home, because if he was convicted of murder. He could spend the rest of his life behind bars in a foreign country.
But would sorry, would a defense lawyer advise like because you know, it's like the Amanda Knox the refiled charges, But any defense lawyer worth a Nichol is going to say, don't bother, don't go it. Could he have gotten defense advice like that if you know?
Or was it?
Did it really represent that he was doing the honorable, honest, you know, something that an innocent person might do.
Well. What had happened was the case got reopened because Tina Watson's family went to their congressman went to you know, they were going trying to get anyone who had listened, especially in government, to compel the Australians to open this case. So there was enough. There was definitely a very strong feeling that Gabe Watson said, you're gonna have to drag me back, kicking and screaming, that they would have done so.
And he felt that there was enough evidence to prove that he didn't murder her, that he was willing to go back. And the fact that he was willing to go back was a very very big factor in what had happened because in the end, they couldn't charge him with murder. The best that they could do was except a plea bargain for manslaughter, and a specific type of manslaughter in Australia that deemed Gabe Watson was he was negligent.
Homicide.
Well, no, that he was a bad dive buddy, okay, really is what it comes down to. And so they expected the family still expected that they were going to
throw the book at him. And I think Gabe accepted his fate, that he bore some responsibility as to what happened, because ultimately he mistook his certification for experience, and when it came down to it, he was a bad dive buddy and he was not the right person to be there, and he had the responsibility, especially in Australian under Australian law, when you undertake some sort of extreme sports or you know, anything like that with someone, you have a responsibility for
their well being. And since she didn't come back, he was convicted of being a bad dive buddy and he
went to jail. And what I found very interesting about this case was not so much really what happens to Gabe Watson, because I feel like I can talk about what happens to Gabe Watson and reveal what happens to him, But is how it actually informs what had happened and the investigation and really the nuances in the circumstances behind the Robin Gardner case, Because at first I thought that this was what happened to Robin Gardner, but it turns out that that's just the very the very tip of
the iceberg, the very edge of the story.
Wow. And with with Gabe Watson, what what is your conclusion from that that that.
Gabe Watson, that Tina Watson died because she married an idiot because here was here she was she was emotionally, uh physically and mentally unprepared for this dive that she undertook in it, she took an advanced dive with little or no skills, with someone who was not able to identify the danger the dangerous situation that they were about to enter. And really, the title of the book Vanished Beauty is not just a reference to here are two beautiful women who vanished, but it has more to do
with society's viewpoint of what happens. It's really the book is not just about these cases, but it's about how we react and how we perceive these cases and how we treat the whole concept of the accused, and so it's uh. And then there's another aspect to the title which goes which speaks towards what really happened to these women, but that I'll leave for the for the readers.
Oh great, Yeah, it's a very very interesting uh. And then I'm I was interested to hear your conclusion on Gabe Watson too, because again, you know, throughout the story you don't know if it's a lot more on the fario than that. And in terms of his motive, again he has the insurance policy. You do allude to that he did do this rescue before seventy five feet and then just leave the reader to decide is this guy
guilty or not? And so you leave it up up in the air, and I applaud you for that, and I'm you know, I think the audience has been titillated here in terms of what exactly Robin Gardner, what was she up to? And more about Gary ge Ordonald because obviously we couldn't cover everything of this guy's wacky character.
So something for the audience to look forward to in reading Vanish Beauty so I want to thank you for a very engaging interview and keeping the mystery alive to this book for sure, certainly, Yeah.
It was my absolute pleasure.
Well, I want to thank you very much and I hope to have you back on again talking about another one her fine books. And again, thank you very much for this interview, and good night.
M h yeah, mm hmm