Honeymoon Killer. Scuba Diving Gone Wrong or Murder?
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Savings assumes pre-purchase of Brita System. Hi, my beautiful friends. How are you today? My name is Bailey Sareen, and today is Monday, which means it's Murder, Mystery, and Makeup Monday! If you are new here, hi! Every Monday I sit down and talk about a true crime story that's been heavy on my...

And I do my makeup at the same time. So today we're going to talk about Tina and Gabriel Watson. So we're gonna start with Tina first. Now, Tina, she was born on February 13th, 1977 in Germany. And she was put up for adoption. Well, she was put in an orphanage.

out there in Germany. In 1980, she was adopted by Tommy and Cindy out in Walker County, Alabama in 1980. They also had a younger daughter. So the family ended up moving to Birmingham, Alabama, and that's where they would raise Tina and their younger daughter as well. The family was like very close, all around good family. I mean, very loving, just great.

Just great. As a child, Tina was diagnosed with PSVT. I'll put the long name down here because there ain't a chance in heck I can pronounce that word. PSVT is an abnormally fast heart rhythm that causes palpitations, lightheadedness, sweating, and shortness of breath. They do have different medicines to help, but when Tina would take it, like nothing was really helping.

So at the age of 24, Tina had a minor surgery to correct the problem. Now Tina's family would say that she was like a bright, happy girl. She would just light up the room. I mean, everything, everything,

that you could like pleasant that you can say about a person was said about Tina. She just sounded like a wonderful, wonderful person. I'm getting so tongue tied today. Tina attended the University of Alabama out in Birmingham. That's where she would meet her future husband, Gabe, Gabe Watson.

and before meeting Gabe she was actually engaged once before. She called off the engagement due to her mother's disapproval. I think there was probably a lot more like underlying issues going on. Tina and Gabe began dating in January of 2001. So who is this Gabe guy? Well let me tell you. David Gabriel Watson was his full name but he went by Gabe. He was named after his father. He was six foot

three and like a very big built big boy. His friends and father would describe him as just being a really nice guy. He was friendly, he could get along with anybody. He was just an all around super friendly guy. Gabe met Tina again at the University of Alabama and he kept asking her out. He was very interested in her, but at the time she was engaged.

So she kept turning him down, but Gabe did not give up. He would still just ask her out all the time. And she would just keep saying no because she was in a relationship. Tina and Gabe would end up attending the same New Year's Eve party. And this is when Gabe had asked her out again. Now, finally though, Tina,

had broken up or ended her engagement. It had been a little bit of time now and she was ready to date. So when he asked her out, she was like,

I'm sure it was more than just an okay. After a couple of dates, they ended up or they began to officially start dating. So both Tina and Gabe would go on to graduate from the University of Alabama. Tina went on to work as a manager at a clothing store in the mall. And Gabe went on to work at his father's packaging business.

Now Gabe, he loved to scuba dive. Scuba diving was like his passion or yeah, like his passion and his hobby. And on top of that, Gabe was a certified rescue diver and he would go scuba diving pretty often with Tinoch

She really wasn't into it as much as he was. It's not that she was against it, but it was more Gabe's thing. Gabe and Tina had been dating for quite some time now. And then in January of 2003, Tina began to take, uh,

lessons so she could actually get in on Gabe's hobby. So she started taking scuba diving lessons and Tina's parents were pretty worried at first because of her previous like heart condition. Tina's father goes to Gabe and he tells Gabe that he's worried for her and Gabe just completely brushes him off and he says that he had to do things all the time that Tina liked and Tina should do things that he liked. Then in

February of 2003, well he asked Tommy for his permission to marry Tina. Now it was said that Tommy was kind of hesitant. He appreciated that he asked, but he never like really gave Gabe permission. That didn't stop him though. Gabe was always taunting Tina with like a wedding ring, but he wouldn't propose. But Gabe would say that he was just waiting for the right moment to propose to her. Like he would tell Tina like, "Oh, you're not gonna get that ring."

On April 20th, 2003, that's when he hid the ring in an Easter egg. And he sent her on like this little Easter egg hunt around their home. And then finally, when she got to the egg with the ring, that's when he proposed to her and she said yes. Tina's parents were not very thrilled. They just thought that Gabe did what he wanted to do

It didn't seem like there was much communication in the relationship between the two. It was just what Gabe wants, Gabe got. 500. Then on September 26th, 2003, Tina went to go see her father and she asked her father if he could increase her life insurance and add Gabe as the sole beneficiary. Tommy thought it was really weird. It was just a very strange, like why? What's the rush?

So Tommy told Tina like, "Hey, don't worry about it. "We'll talk about it when you get back from your honeymoon." And then on October 11th, 2003, that's when Gabe and Tina got married. So their honeymoon was set the day after their wedding. They would be going to Australia for two weeks.

The first week they would be in Sydney, and then the second week they would travel to Townsville, Queensland. Once in Townsville, they would board a cruise where they would perform around 25 scuba dives visiting reef sites, and there was like a shipwreck that you could deep scuba dive to, which sounds incredible. Well, this is a side note, but scuba diving to me sounds terrible.

I'm not a mermaid, I don't, I couldn't. Now the ship that they were gonna be on, it was named Spoilsport. This very moment in Gabe's life, he had over 55 dives at the time of the honeymoon. Tina only less than two

She was a little less experienced than him. And again, Gabe had also been certified as a rescue diver and Tina, she did feel safe. Anything went wrong, at least Gabe was there and he could help. The couple is about to do what's considered like a harder dive. And whenever there's a harder dive, a guided diver was offered to like help, but Gabe refused the help.

He said, "I'm a certified diver. I had this many dives. I know what I'm doing. Like, it's okay. We don't need any help." So he tells the people like, "We're fine. We're good. We don't need you here." So they're on this boat. They're just kind of waiting to do their dive. And Gabe was having issues with his dive computer. It's a device that measures time and depth of the dive. So divers can return to the surface safely. But his was kind of like malfunctioning and giving him a hard time. I guess it made Tina a little like uncomfortable.

'Cause if he's having a hard time, like, oh no, you know, it could send you easily down just panicking. I know for me, I would be like, oh, that's a sign, we gotta go. I think everything is a sign. So it's October 22nd, 2003. The dive was considered like fairly difficult due to the depth

of the dive and the current of the ocean. There were people on the boat who were there to help if anything was going wrong or something wasn't working right. And then Gabe asked for additional weight for Tina's vest. He didn't think she would be able to descend to the wreck without additional weight. It doesn't drown you, it just helps you get down there to the bottom of the sea, ocean, lake, wherever you are.

Tina gets additional weights and then they go and they dive down. Within just a few minutes of them being underwater, Gabe says that Tina began acting concerned, trying to signal to him that something's wrong. Gabe said that Tina, she accidentally knocked his breathing mask off of his face.

So he started to panic because now he's not getting oxygen. Gabe said that he was kind of distracted, right? Because his breathing apparatus, it was loose, it was off of his face. So he's kind of struggling and he's distracted by this and he's not really paying attention to what's going on with Tina. Now, finally, he gets the mask on, he secures it. Okay, he looks, where's Tina? And he notices that Tina was sinking to the ocean floor. Now, what would you do?

I don't know. But Gabe over here was a certified rescue diver, remember? So he should know what to do, right? He instead surfaces, goes back to the boat and he tries to get help. Also underwater was this man named Wade and he was the instructor and also the trip director.

He's underwater, Gabe surfaces, he sees Wade that Tina is sinking. So he grabs her and brings her to the surface. He brought her to another boat, it was called Jazz 2, and Wade gives her CPR and tries to revive her for over 30 minutes.

Now when people asked Gabe like why didn't you go after her? What happened there bud? And Gabe's reasoning was he had never learned how to bring somebody to the surface. So once help arrives and they take Tina to the hospital, doctors said that it was kind of weird or kind of odd because there was very little water in her lungs and they found this odd because she should have had a lot more

water in her lungs. Wade thought it was really strange that Tina sunk in the first place. Scuba divers, unless you're weighted, were naturally buoyant. You don't just sink. And when Wade swam to save Tina, he noted that she had all her weights on, he had to drop the weight belt in order to get her to the surface faster.

And later on in the investigation, they discovered that Tina was wearing 20 pounds of weight when she would have only needed to wear about eight pounds of weight to descend her to the wreck. So...

That's not like a little bit of a mistake. Wade, the real MVP here, he brought Tina up and then brought her onto the second boat that was nearby. Gabe, when he got up, he went to the original boat. He never even tried or asked how to get to the boat where Tina was at. There were other people on the boat, thought that was weird. Tina just drowned and they're trying to save her over there. Why are you here? Dollars would make up.

Some of the other shipmates who were on the boat, spoilsport, said that Gabe was just acting all sorts of weird. He was going around asking everyone for hugs, which, okay, how I worded that didn't sound like that

Weird. His wife is on the other boat getting CPR, trying to have her life saved. And he's like on the boat walking around asking the other shipmates for hugs. Everyone thought like that was very odd behavior. He didn't seem overly upset at all. He was just walking around asking people for hugs.

Sadly, Tina could not be saved and she passed away. So there were some other people there also doing the same dive as Tina and Gabe, but people saw some shit, okay? Several people say that they saw Gabe give Tina a bear hug under water

When he gave her a bear hug, they saw that Tina was like struggling and that she was waving her arms. So of course police wanted to talk to Gabe and he definitely like, he was willing to talk. Gabe's story kind of, it would change pretty often. It would change from him going down to get Tina. It would change from him saying, I didn't get Tina, I went to the surface. The more and more, just like nothing was making sense as to how did she sink? Didn't drown. What?

went wrong? They couldn't seem to like get a straight answer. Gabe did contact his parents and told them about what happened to Tina and Gabe told his parents that he didn't want to talk to Tina's parents so he asked his family if they could call Tina's parents and tell them what happened. I don't know man that was a bad move Gabe

I mean, Gabe was just taking his sweet ass time. It's like, hello, something happened to Tina, your wife, you just got married. Wouldn't you be calling the families right away and like letting them know what happened? And what is Gabe's thought process? The initial ruling by the coroner stated that Tina's death did not look suspish. The death was ruled as a drowning. So Tina's family did get word about what happened. Well, Tina's dad had a gut feeling that it's just something wasn't right. So five days after Tina's

Gabe and Tina's body were flown back to the United States and they were making arrangements for the funeral and the funeral happened pretty shortly after. So they have the funeral and Gabe's and Tina's friends and family were all there and a lot of the people were saying that Gabe was just acting really inappropriate. I mean, not even like strange. He was just acting straight up inappropriately, okay?

Get this. So it's an open casket and Gabe turns to one of his friends and says, quote, at least her breasts look perky, end quote. What the actual fuck? He made that comment and it made somebody uncomfortable enough to actually say, hey, this is what Gabe said and media got hold of it and stuff and it wasn't a good look for you, Gabe. Was he sad at all? It doesn't, hello?

Then it was said later that year, Gabe had sent out Christmas cards because they did Christmas cards every year. Gabe decided to still follow the tradition and send out a Christmas card. So he included a picture of Tina and Gabe at their wedding. On the Christmas card, I'm laughing 'cause I'm uncomfortable. On the Christmas card it said, "Who's that sexy guy next to Tina?" Oh yeah, that's me.

Like, why would you put that on a Christmas card? What is he doing? So after Tina's funeral and things kind of start to settle down, Gabe tried to file a payout from the travel company for an interrupted trip. But the insurance company told Gabe that injury during scuba diving wasn't covered by the insurance. He wasn't entitled to her life insurance either.

And he wasn't entitled to her life insurance because Tina's dad didn't put Gabe on her life insurance. Remember they were gonna change it? He didn't do it, thank God. Tina's father, Tommy, did not believe Gabe's story. Nothing was making sense. He wanted answers. What happened to his daughter? He wasn't getting answers.

So Tommy felt like he needed to just kind of dig a little bit deeper because nobody else was. A few members from the Spoilsport had reached out to Tommy. They were there, they were like, "Hey, we will help you. "We will answer any questions you have. "We wanna help." And after speaking with one man from the ship,

and learning that Gabe hadn't gone to the boat where Tina was being resuscitated. That's when Tommy decided, "I'm just gonna fly out to Australia so I could speak to people myself." So Tommy flies out to Australia and he goes to speak with the diver who brought Tina up to the surface. And also he wanted to talk to the police out there.

After looking a little bit more closely into the death, the Townsville police agreed that there was reasonable evidence of foul play. They decided in July of 2004, the case was listed now as a criminal case and not just...

The police noted several inconsistencies with Gabe's story and the evidence. Tina's body was not where Gabe said it was. Gabe had also said that on the way to the surface, he encountered two divers and had tried to tell them to go help Tina, but police found no evidence that the body

that there were these two divers Gabe spoke of. There were divers underwater with them, but they were already far out there and they were kind of just watching from afar. And those divers said that there was nobody else around the two of them. That's a lie. - Okay. - Gabe said that he had also rocketed to the surface in order to help Tina, but his dive computer

had proven otherwise, that in fact he was taking his sweet time to get to the surface. Now Tina's dive computer showed that she resurfaced a couple of times throughout their little scuba adventure very quickly, which made them believe that she was going up because she was

I mean, this is a pattern they see in people who are panicking and they saw this on her dive computer. So this made them believe that Tina was not an experienced diver at all. And it seemed that she was very uncomfortable with diving. She should have had extra help there just in case she needed it. But Gabe had turned it away. Her scuba teacher would later confirm this in court

that she wasn't a very experienced diver, that she did panic. It's sad because the only reason she was doing this is because she just wanted to like do something that Gabe liked to do. Again, there was like a very small amount of water found in Tina's lungs and they believed that she had passed out during the dive and when she did her mouth must have relaxed

off the mouthpiece, which would allow a small amount of water into her mouth, but she would have had to be unconscious for this to happen. They suspected that Gabe had turned her air off until she was unconscious and then turned it back on before he let her go. Remember when

The eyewitnesses said that they saw Gabe give her a bear hug and then she was kind of flailing her arms. So they believe that during this bear hug, Gabe must have turned off her air, waited, waited, waited until she passed out, turned it back on, and then that's when she must have

sank. This was disputed as dive experts said that this would have been nearly impossible as Tina would have been able to reach the surface before her air ran out. Now after interviewing several scuba diving experts, police found that Gabe had experience with bringing people to the surface with the rescue training he had received. This is what they teach you when you get your certificate.

So police then go and investigate the company that Tina and Gabe had dived with. The company labeled each diver according to their skills and the amount of dives they had performed. Only 15 of Gabe's dives were ocean dives, but he didn't note that

on the form. The company thought Gabe was way more experienced with these types of dives than he actually was. They thought this because Gabe had said over and over and over again that he was way more experienced. If this company had followed protocol, Gabe and Tina would have had to have a trained diver with them

for all of the dives to make sure that they were safe. So Gabe lied. Gabe also never told the company about Tina's panic while underwater. He completely left that part out and just said that she started to sink. So Tommy, Tina's father, would tell police that every time he went to visit Tina's grave, the flowers that he left would mysteriously disappear. And Tommy believed that someone was stealing them and his gut was telling him that it was indeed

Gabe also wanted to exhume Tina's body and move it to a plot that he had owned. Sadly, when he moved Tina's body, I'm sorry, when he moved Tina's grave, he never got a headstone for it. He left it unmarked. Gabe did. Tommy ended up finding out where Gabe had put Tina at

Same thing, Tommy would go and leave flowers on Tina's grave and the next day they would disappear. Tommy would say even sometimes hours later, the flowers that he had just left were gone.

So Tommy goes to police and is like, I think Gabe is taking or removing or doing something with the flowers that I'm leaving. Police actually end up setting up a camera to see who's taking the flowers. Finally, on the footage, they see that Gabe was indeed the one removing the flowers from Tina's grave. And Gabe's excuse was that Tina didn't like plastic flowers and he was removing them to respect

And then during this time, Gabe, he began to date another woman named Kim and he would end up marrying her August of 2008. So authorities from Australia, they ended up flying out to Alabama to research into the case further, finding just a lot of dirt on Gabe. Like he wasn't the husband that he said he was. He made everyone believe that he was, well, he was trying to make everyone believe that he was just great husband and this was all an accident. But they saw this kind of,

pattern he had. On one occasion, he had thrown pizzas the two, Tina and Gabe, had just ordered at Tina after an argument they had. Authorities also found out that Tina and Gabe had broken up shortly before their engagement. Tina wanted to get married, she had been in this relationship with Gabe for a while, they were bickering a lot and Tina was just

ready to move on. So they broke up. During their break, Tina was set up on a date. You know how it goes. When you break up with someone, you just wanna go out and meet new people. Like you're not really trying to like, well, maybe you are. I guess I can't speak for her.

But it's like, you know, you're just trying to like go out after a breakup. But apparently Gabe found out about this and he was livid. He was calling and harassing Tina. Eventually they ended up getting back together and that's when Gabe would later propose. Police thought this as well as the life insurance payout could have been his motive. I think just the life insurance payout on its own sounds like a pretty strong motive to me.

In May of 2009, Gabe was finally sent back to Australia to stand trial. He agreed to go after making a deal that they would drop the case from murder to manslaughter. So at his trial, he was convicted of manslaughter and given a sentence of four and a half years, but the judge ended up suspending it to just 12 months. The Alabama Attorney General

appealed the sentence because he thought it was way too lenient and the appeal was approved and it went from 12 months to 18 months. So six extra months. Alabama Attorney General wanted to bring this case back to the United States and they wanted him to be tried

in Alabama. He said there was additional evidence that hadn't been seen in the Australian court case. Australia would not allow any evidence found in Australia to return to America without promise that Alabama would not seek the death penalty. So they wanted like this agreement, we won't give you any of our evidence if you promise that you're not going to seek the death penalty. So Alabama, the state, it's kind of funny,

No, it's not, sorry. Alabama agreed and Gabe was returned to the United States, put into police custody, and he was going to now be tried in Alabama. So the attorney general indicted Gabe on two counts,

One was capital murder and the other was kidnapping with trickery. The attorney general said that Gabe had tricked Tina into taking dive lessons and tricked her into going to Australia. During this time, Alabama courts removed Gabe as the administrator of Tina's estate and they ended up granting it to Tina's father. Gabe, this son of a bitch,

He had left her grave unmarked for three years after exhuming her remains to have her moved. Tommy then asked Gabe to return Tina's personal belongings, but Gabe... So the trial officially went to court on February 13th of 2012. Now this would have been Tina's 35th birthday. Did they do that on purpose? That's fucked up.

In Alabama, for some reason, the evidence of Gabe, his odd behavior, they were not allowed to mention that in court at all. And they would not allow the attempt to raise the life insurance claim. Like they weren't allowing this as evidence at all to help the case. I don't

fucking know why. I feel like at least the life insurance claim part happened in Alabama. So it's like you would think they would allow that, but they didn't. I feel like, and I'm sure you would agree too, but I feel like that would have helped the case and proving that he was guilty because it would give him a motive and it would show that he was acting weird, but they wouldn't allow

So they were like, well, now what? And without this evidence, the judge decided that there was not enough to convict Gabe of murder and he was acquitted of the charges. Gabe has said that he's at peace with it now and wants to rebuild his life. And Tina's family really got no closure from it all. Yes.

So this story is one that like sits in the back of my brain because it just doesn't make sense. It's just all so weird. I personally believe, I think he had a lot more to do with it. I think he was guilty. That's a personal opinion, but the state of Alabama did not agree with that. I mean, maybe the state like normal people did,

The courts found him not guilty. I don't know, I don't know why. So this is where I need you Alabamians. Is that a word? Well, it is now because it was a really big case and I know you heard about it. What happened? Give me the deets. Do you think Gabe was guilty or do you think it was truly an accident and maybe that Gabe's actions and his demeanor and the way he was handling himself was just the way he copes with pain? I don't know.

My gut says fucking guilty. Thank you guys so much for hanging out with me today. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead of you. Please, please, please be safe out there. I love and appreciate you guys so much. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Make good choices. I'll be seeing you guys later. Bye.