‘Honeymoon killer’ became ‘agitated’ during police questioning

Watson, who claims that his 26-year-old bride’s death was a tragic accident,
has since remarried. His second wife, Kim Lewis watched as he sobbed while
recordings of his police interviews were played during the trial on
Wednesday.

Claiming that his first wife had got into difficulties five to seven minutes
into their dive after they hit a strong current, Watson was heard saying
that her failing limbs had hit his mask and air regulator, leading him to
kick at her with his fin to get some space.

At that point, he said, she floated away from him.

“She was out of arm’s reach,” Watson said in the police interview. “I couldn’t
grab her hand.”

Watson claimed that he attempted to swim down towards his wife, but she was
sinking too fast, so rather than chase her to the seabed, he headed for the
surface.

“I have never swam so fast in my life,” he told police. “I remember shouting
through my regulator ’Tina, Tina, Tina’.”

In one police interview played to the court Watson described how he learnt
that attempts to resuscitate his wife had failed. “I pretty much lost it,”
he told detectives.

On another recording, taken five days after his wife’s death, Watson was heard
admitting that other divers in the vicinity must have thought “something odd
was going on.” He claimed that he was breathing heavily because he was
attempting to activate his wife’s buoyancy control vest.

“In the back of my mind I was thinking these people could see us, or at least
think something was going on,” he told officers.

Detective Senior Constable Kevin Gehringer, an Australian police officer who
questioned Watson after the drowning, told Jefferson County court room he
did not initially suspect foul play. “In my mind it was an accident,” he
said.

However, he became suspicious as Watson grew “agitated” when police refused to
return a dive computer he had been wearing on his wrist during the dive at
the the shipwreck SS Yongala, off the coast of Townsville, Queensland.

“At that stage he became a little agitated about not getting it that night,”
the officer said.

The case has sparked huge national interest in both the US and Australia.

The 34-year-old has already served 18 months in jail in Queensland for
manslaughter after effectively admitting failing to do enough to rescue her.

Australia extradited him only after Alabama agreed to waive the death penalty.

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