Machete on boat says witness

By Alison Horwood

The man accused of killing Ben Smart and Olivia Hope kept a machete on board his homemade yacht, a witness told the High Court at Wellington yesterday.

Yvonne Greer first met Scott Watson about 10 pm on December 27, 1997, when he stumbled drunk into the tent that she, her husband, Gary, and four other family members occupied at the Momorangi camp ground, between Picton and Havelock.

Watson, with his sister Sandy, was hunting for a light for his cigarette when Mrs Greer's party offered him a seat.

"He was pretty drunk," Mr Greer told the court. "He just came in asking for a light for his cigarette and he stumbled and fell into the tent. We just got him a seat and he sat down."

Watson was proud of his sloop and talked about it a lot.

Mrs Greer: "He said he had built a steel yacht, about 26 feet long. He had been in it recently and had come down from Napier. It was red and white.

"He had caught a tuna and a shark. He had a machete on board, that's how he caught the fish."

She told the court that Watson chanted, "Kill the dog, kill the dog" during the night for no apparent reason.

Watson had told the group he was going to Furneaux Lodge for New Year's because "that's where you get babes."

Another member of the party, Dennis Greer, said Watson "went on and on about mad dog, mad dog." Asking the court's permission to swear, Mr Greer added: "He also said, '**** a dog on a chain,' several times, just out of the blue."

The court heard that earlier in the evening Watson and sister Sandy had been socialising at the campground with a school friend of Sandy, Deborah Cassidy, her husband, Gary, and two friends.

Mrs Cassidy described Watson as annoying because he referred several times to what she had been wearing the last time he saw her.

The Cassidys made excuses about going to bed because they were tired of Watson's company.