KEY POINTS:
An experienced boatie is the latest potentially vital witness to criticise the Scott Watson investigation.
Ross Parker said detectives ignored his sighting of a boat he believed to be the mystery ketch that was central to Watson's conviction for the murder of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope.
Key police witness Guy Wallace, a watertaxi driver, was adamant he took Ben and Olivia to a ketch off Furneaux Lodge in the Marlborough Sounds on New Year's Eve 1997, the night they disappeared.
The police and the Crown said everyone who claimed to see the ketch was mistaken, that no such vessel existed, and Wallace took Ben and Olivia to Watson's 26-foot sloop Blade.
Wallace later said the only similarity between Blade and the two-masted ketch was they "both float".
Parker is adamant he saw the boat at Westhaven Marina in March 1998, when he and his wife were refuelling their 55-foot launch.
A 40-foot white ketch in a poor condition, with a blue stripe and portholes in the side, Parker said the boat was identical to the vessel described by witnesses at Furneaux Lodge. "The more I looked at it, I thought: 'That's the boat the police are looking for'."
The Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron member and former director of a large marine engineering firm also saw a thin, scruffy man with dark hair in his 30s walk out of the marina fuel office.
He performed "handsprings and cartwheels" before starting the motor and pulling away from the mooring.
Parker said the man and Watson were very similar in appearance - both thin, with dark hair and aged around 30.
The 73-year-old said he rang the harbour police from his cellphone and was told they would be "right around". He assumed police had arrested the sailor.
A few months later, the investigation, Operation Tam, was still appealing to the public for information through an 0800 number.
When Parker rang to pass on his sighting to them, he was told police no longer wanted information on a ketch.
Watson was arrested soon after, in June 1998, and charged with the murders of Ben and Olivia.
"Here was a boat which matched the description absolutely, this bloke was as mad as a snake, and they never went to have a look," Parker said.
His claim that police ignored his calls come hard on the heels of recent coverage in the Herald on Sunday, North & South magazine and Keith Hunter's book Trial by Trickery, questioning the strength of Watson's convictions.
Defence counsel Greg King and Mike Antunovic have compiled much new evidence and are planning a petition this year to the Governor-General. If convinced, he has the power to pardon Watson or refer the case back to the Court of Appeal.
King said, barely a week goes by without another "credible sighting" of the mystery ketch, which he described as like the Loch Ness monster.
"That won't reopen the case," said King. "But when police officers come out and say they were concerned with the investigation, when the father of the deceased speaks out, that has to ring alarm bells."
King is referring to Herald on Sunday interviews with ex-detective Mike Chappell - whose work on Operation Tam was praised by inquiry chief turned deputy police commissioner Rob Pope in a two-page letter - and Olivia Hope's father Gerald, who has expressed his own doubts over Watson's convictions.
Chappell was the systems manager for the police computer system and answered hundreds of calls about the ketch from the 0800 number.
But after only a few days of receiving calls, he said the inquiry team was told to ignore them and focus on Watson, even though the Picton man did not match the description of a mystery man seen on the ketch.
The mystery man was described as wiry, with two days of stubble and shaggy dark hair, but photos taken on New Year's Eve show Watson clean shaven, with short, cropped hair.
Last November, police took a statement from Auckland couple David and Rachel Arlidge who said they saw the boat at nearby Bayswater Marina at about the same time as Parker.
The ketch also matches the description from eyewitnesses Hayden Morressey and Sarah Dyer, who were in the water taxi with Wallace, as well as another water taxi driver, Ted Walsh.
Walsh had seen the ketch moored off Furneaux Lodge on New Year's Eve and again two days later in Queen Charlotte Sound and a young woman with blonde hair on board looking unhappy.
For three months, Pope has declined to be interviewed by the Herald on Sunday - citing the upcoming petition to the Governor-General - despite speaking at length to both the Listener and North & South.
