Olivia Hope's father now unsure of events leading to murders

8.45am

The father of murdered Blenheim teenager Olivia Hope now claims she and friend Ben Smart could not have been killed on a boat.

Gerald Hope today said he had inspected inside the sloop The Blade, where the Crown contend Picton man Scott Watson killed the pair.

Mr Hope now claims the pair would have been able to escape from inside the boat's cabin.

Watson was charged with the murders in June 1998, six months after Olivia and Ben were last seen boarding a boat in Endeavour Inlet in the Marlborough Sounds on New Year's Day.

Their bodies have never been found.

Watson was subsequently convicted after a three-month jury trial at the High Court in Wellington in September 1999 and was sentenced to life in prison with a 17-year non-parole term.

His lawyers are currently pursuing an appeal at the Privy Council, after the Court of Appeal rejected an appeal against the sentence last April.

But Gerald Hope said he was now unconvinced the events on New Year's Day 1998 happened the way the Crown painted them.

"Between the two of them (Ben and Olivia) they would have got away. But interestingly enough, none of those happened, none of those outcomes occurred," he told TV3 News.

"The conviction (of Watson) was obviously important to the nation, the judiciary, the police and everybody associated with us.

"But the only thing I really ever, ever, and still want, is to know what happened and that's the truth. We accept the truth doesn't necessarily come out of a guilty conviction."

Mr Hope stopped short of suggesting Watson was innocent, but said he would be prepared to listen to Watson's account of what happened.

"Maybe he can fool me, maybe I can be fooled, but the truth has to be found somewhere and we have yet to find it," Mr Hope said. "... I would like to meet him if he would meet me, and it would be very very simple. Scott, you convince me you're innocent and I'll back you, if you're a wrongly convicted New Zealander."

Mr Hope had met Watson's father Chris and inspected The Blade. Mr Watson was not surprised at Mr Hope's thoughts.

"I just think over time he's (Mr Hope) got to have doubts," Mr Watson said.

"... there's no one out there looking for the truth. The truth is not part of it at all. It doesn't seem to matter, the truth.

"We haven't got an inquisitorial system of justice here, we have an adversarial system."

Inquiry head Detective Inspector Rob Pope said there were no new developments in the case that warranted his comment.

- NZPA