Hypnosis brings new information in Sounds murder case

Hypnosis has helped a key witness in the Hope-Smart murder inquiry come forward with new information.

Scott Watson was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders of Olivia Hope and Ben Smart in the Marlborough Sounds on or about January 1, 1998. Their bodies have never been found.

Key witness Guy Wallace drove the water taxi that took the missing Blenheim pair to an anchored yacht the night they disappeared in Endeavour Inlet.

Mr Wallace said on TV1 news last night that hypnosis helped him recall the name of the boat.

"The name was the Exiora. I just came straight out of the hypnosis bang, just like that," he said.

Mr Wallace said he had told police earlier that the boat's name had a Z in it.

"There is no Z in it. But it's a foreign language and it sounds like a Z. That's the name I came up with."

Wallace has consistently described the vessel to which he took the two young people as a ketch, a type of two-masted yacht.

Scott Watson's yacht, Blade, was a sloop - a type of yacht that has only one mast.

Watson's lawyer Mike Antunovic confirmed earlier this year that Watson would seek leave to appeal to the Privy Council against his convictions for murdering Mr Smart and Ms Hope.

Mr Antunovic said two main grounds were put forward in an attempt to overturn the convictions: evidence aimed at identifying Watson as the killer and the way the jury was directed about the evidence.

The appeal also challenged the decision of trial judge Justice Heron, who died last year, to allow the jury to hear the evidence of three witnesses who said Watson talked about killing a woman before the night he was alleged to have murdered Olivia and Ben.

Mr Antunovic said he did not know when the Privy Council would say whether it would hear the appeal or not. It hears very few criminal appeals from New Zealand.

- NZPA

Herald Feature: Sounds murders