Tina Watson
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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out at patreon.com/forensictales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. In October 2003, a young couple traveled to Australia for their honeymoon. Newlyweds Tina and Gabe celebrated life by sharing adventures.

The daring couple prepared to dive into the Australian Ocean, a deep sea dive to see an iconic shipwreck. The conditions were treacherous, but the young lovers persisted. As they sank lower and lower, panic crept in. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. Gabe finally resurfaced, air filled his lungs. But his wife sank to the ocean floor, her last breath of air gone.

This is Forensic Tales, episode number 124, The Tina Watson Story. ♪♪ ♪♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.

Sharing true crime isn't just about the story. It's about getting justice for the victims and their families. This show serves as a megaphone for those who have suffered.

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and access to my exclusive opinion after each episode. I get to share with you what I think really happened. To support Forensic Tales, please visit our Patreon page at patreon.com slash Forensic Tales, or simply click the support link in the show notes. You can also support the show by leaving a positive rating with a review. Now, let's jump right into this week's story.

Before we jump into this week's episode, I've got a very big update to bring to you. In an earlier episode of the show, we covered the 1977 Girl Scout murders. In 1977, 8-year-old Lori Farmer, 9-year-old Michelle Goose, and 10-year-old Doris Milner were murdered while away at an Oklahoma summer camp.

A few days ago, Mays County Sheriff Mike Reed announced that DNA evidence confirms that the man tried and acquitted for the murders in 1979, Gene Leroy Hart, is in fact the killer. According to Sheriff Mike Reed, this DNA evidence was not available back in 1979, but if it had been available, he would have been found guilty.

Nearly five decades after the murders, DNA evidence finally identified the man responsible. And finally, at last, the family can have some sort of closure. Now, let's get to the episode. In October 2003, 26-year-old Tina Watson and her husband, David Watson, left their hometown in Alabama to embark on their honeymoon in Australia.

David, who went by Gabe, and Tina had just gotten married two days earlier in a small ceremony in their hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Tina, whose maiden name was Christina Mae Thomas, met Gabe while attending classes at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Right from the get-go, the two of them hit it off, and they began dating in January 2001 after meeting at a New Year's Eve party.

Tina's start in life was far different than her life was when she met Gabe. She was born in West Germany on February 13, 1977. When she was a baby, she immigrated to the U.S. after being given up for adoption by her birth parents. In January 1980, when she was three years old, she was legally adopted by Tommy and Cindy Thomas.

Before moving to Louisiana, Tina and her younger sister grew up in Walker County, Alabama. As a little girl, doctors diagnosed her with a heart condition known simply as PSVT. PSVT is a condition that causes an abnormally fast heartbeat that can sometimes lead to heart palpitations, lightheadedness, sweating, and shortness of breath.

To deal with this heart condition, doctors prescribed her a handful of different medications over the years. But none of the medications seemed to help her. When she turned 24 years old, she had minor surgery to help stabilize her heartbeat. By college, Tina moved out of her parents' house and started her new life in Birmingham, Alabama.

Shortly after moving to Birmingham, she met Gabe. Although Tina seemed to be head over heels for Gabe, her parents, Tommy and Cindy, weren't as thrilled about the relationship. According to her parents, Tina was a bright and happy person, the kind of person who just lit up a room. Gabe wasn't. Gabe didn't have the same brightness and happiness as Tina.

After college graduation, Gabe started working for his father's company as a bubble wrap salesman, and Tina landed a job working as a retail manager in a clothing store. When Gabe wasn't at work, one of his favorite hobbies was scuba diving. From his very first scuba dive, he was hooked. He enjoyed it so much that he decided to take diving lessons to become a certified diver after only a few dives.

and he eventually took the next step to becoming a PADI-certified rescue diver. The PADI-certified rescue program is an intense certification for divers to learn the skills and confidence to deal with any type of open water emergency. Because Gabe enjoyed diving so much, Tina wanted to take lessons so that they could do this together. So in January of 2003, Tina enrolled in dive lessons.

When Tina's parents found out about the lessons, they weren't exactly thrilled. Not just because this was something they thought Gabe was pressuring her to do, but because of her heart condition. They worried that being hundreds of feet underwater could affect this condition. They were so worried about it that at one point, Tina's dad Tommy approached Gabe about it.

He told him just how nervous he was about his daughter scuba diving and told him that he didn't want Tina to get involved. But according to Tommy himself, Gabe did not take his concerns seriously and simply brushed him off. In February 2003, Gabe approached Tina's parents about getting engaged. By this point in their relationship, they had been dating for a little over two years and Gabe told her parents that she was it. She was the one.

Initially, they weren't happy about it. They just didn't think that he was the right guy for their daughter. But at the same time, they loved Tina. And like most parents, they wanted their daughter to be happy. So they swallowed their pride and said yes, he could ask Tina to marry him.

A few weeks later, on Easter morning, April 20, 2003, Gabe followed through on his promise. He proposed to Tina by hiding the engagement ring in an Easter egg. While they were playing an Easter egg hunt, Tina found the egg containing the engagement ring. That's when Gabe got down on one knee and proposed.

Six months later, on October 11, 2003, Tina and Gabe got married. Two days after the wedding, on October 13, 2003, they hopped on a plane together to spend the next two weeks honeymooning in Australia. The first part of the honeymoon was an absolute dream. They spent the entire first week sightseeing in Sydney before traveling to Townsville, Queensland.

Once they arrived in Townsville, they had tickets to board a cruise ship with plans to scuba dive. Townsville is a popular tourist spot for experienced scuba divers. There are lots of places to dive, like the Great Barrier Reef, Lady Elliot Island, and that's just to name a few. Before arriving in Australia, Gabe had contacted Dive Expeditions to book a spot for him and Tina on one of their dive boats, the Spoilsport.

They told the company that they wanted to dive into the historic shipwreck Yolgala. The SS Yolgala was a passenger ship that sank in 1911. The reason why it's such a popular scuba diving spot is that most of the ship is still intact even after all these years. It's a diving spot that attracts more than 10,000 scuba divers a year.

This shipwreck is one of the largest, most well-preserved shipwrecks in the world. It also has an extensive array of marine life. To some, it's considered one of the best scuba diving spots in the entire world. But scuba diving here isn't for the inexperienced.

This ship diving spot is a deep dive. The bottom of the shipwreck is around 27 meters below sea level or about 89 feet. To swim there, you must be open water certified and you'll need to be comfortable swimming in open water with strong ocean currents. The current around the shipwreck is challenging, even for more experienced scuba divers.

It's also a dive spot known for its red flag conditions. New or experienced divers are usually told to pick a different dive. When Gabe reached out to dive expeditions to book their spot on the Spoilsport, he had only completed 55 dives. Not in the past year. 55 total lifetime dives. Tina? Tina had only completed 11, and none of her dives had been in open water before.

Tina and Gabe arrived in Townsville on October 21st. They brought their own diving equipment with them, so all they needed from the dive company were their air tanks. At 10 o'clock p.m., they boarded the Spoilsport along with 25 other passengers, 12 crew members, and three commercial divers. Around an hour and a half later, the boat and its passengers headed towards the dive site.

By 9 o'clock a.m. the following morning, the ship's crew members began briefing the divers on what would happen during the dive and let them know the best route to take to see everything the site had to offer. After the briefing, the divers put on their equipment and entered the water.

After putting on their equipment, Gabe asked one of the crew members for additional weight for Tina. He told the crew that he didn't think that she would be able to descend deep enough into the water without the extra weight.

After Tina got the additional weight, the crew asked them if they wanted an orientation dive with instructors. This particular dive was known as a red flag drive due to the strong current in the area. So the crew would typically encourage divers to participate in what they call an orientation dive.

This makes sure that the divers get some practice breathing under the water, check and make sure all of their equipment is working correctly, and ensure they have the correct amount of weight to make the dive. But Tina and Gabe said no. They said they felt comfortable with everything and that they didn't need to practice. Even though this would be the first time Tina had ever attempted an open water dive.

After refusing the orientation dive, the dive company offered to have a dive master go down with them. But again, they refused. Gabe and Tina said they wanted to do everything on their own.

Around 10.30 a.m., Tina, Gabe, and four other divers entered the water together as dive buddies. The plan was to travel down the anchor line, drift across the top of the shipwreck, pick up a second line, and then return to the surface. That was the plan. According to crew members, within minutes of Tina and Gabe getting into the water, they experienced problems.

They returned to the boat where Gabe told the crew members that he was having problems with his dive computer. Like many scuba divers, Gabe wore his dive computer like a watch on one of his wrists. Once he got back on the boat, he repositioned the batteries to see if that would fix the problem. After playing around with the batteries, he told the crew that everything seemed to be working. So he and Tina got back in the water.

Not long after entering the water for the second time, Gabe made his way back up to the boat. Only this time, he was alone. The crew said that when Gabe returned to the boat for the second time, he said that Tina was having trouble in the water, that she needed help right away. Without hesitation, dive instructor Wade Singleton jumped into the water. In a diving emergency, every second matters.

It took Wade Singleton several minutes to find Tina. By the time he saw her, she had already sunk to the bottom and was lying on the ocean floor about 90 meters from the surface. He knew that the instant he saw her, things weren't looking good. From the time Tina and Gabe re-entered the water and when Wade Singleton found and retrieved her, Tina had been in the water for over 10 minutes.

The second Tina was pulled out of the water, she was taken to a nearby dive boat. Wade Singleton and a doctor on board tried resuscitating her. Tina wasn't breathing. They performed CPR on her for the next 40 minutes. They tried everything, but there was nothing they could do. Tina had spent too much time underwater, and she was dead. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash tails to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash tails. A 20-something-year-old young woman dies on her honeymoon after being married to her husband for only 11 short days. Everything looked like a tragic accident.

But when the police spoke to Gabe, something seemed strange. According to the Australian police, Gabe told them 16 different versions of what happened during the dive that day. In one of the versions, Gabe said that within seconds of getting into the water, they quickly realized that the ocean's current was much stronger than they thought.

Gabe said that that's when Tina signaled to him that she wanted to go back to the anchor line and likely get back on the boat. He said he pointed to his inflator hose and signaled back to Tina to put air in her buoyancy compensator, which was her piece of equipment that could help pull her back to the surface.

According to the police, Gabe said nothing happened when she pulled on it. The vest didn't fill up with air.

Games said he grabbed hold of Tina and tried to help her. But when he grabbed onto her, she panicked and she accidentally knocked off his mask. He said he briefly let go of her so he could fix his mask. But when he let go of her, she started falling to the ground. He said she was already about 10 feet further down and sinking by the time he fixed it.

Instead of trying to swim down and get her, Gabe said that he decided to return to the boat in order to get some help. Police had several problems with Gabe's story, starting with what the ship's crew members saw. According to the crew members, Gabe didn't seem panicked when he returned to the boat and asked for help. Instead, he appeared calm and didn't act the way a husband should after seeing his wife struggle in the water, as he claimed.

Crew members also told the police that Gabe didn't want to be next to her when Tina was brought back up on the boat. According to them, he asked to wait on a different boat while they worked on her for nearly 45 minutes. Now, we know that everyone reacts to emergencies differently. Some people immediately step in and want to help.

Others probably do the same thing that Gabe did. It doesn't mean he's right or wrong, but in the eyes of the crew members, Gabe's perceived indifference towards Tina signaled some big red flags. Next were the eyewitness accounts from the other divers. One of those divers that spoke to the police was Dr. Stanley Stutz.

He told the police that he saw Gabe give Tina what he described as a bear hug underwater. He also said that while Gabe wrapped his arms around her and hugged her, Tina was, quote, flailing her arms around. After the bear hug, Dr. Stutz said that Tina started falling while Gabe turned around and went back to the surface.

The police didn't understand why Gabe decided to return to the boat so quickly instead of trying to help his wife. They knew Gabe listed himself as a PADI-certified rescue diver. This indicated to the police that he had been trained in rescue techniques to help himself in an emergency as well as help others.

However, when the police asked Gabe about his certification, he reportedly told them that this was not covered in his training. He told the police that his training as a rescue diver never taught him, quote, anything about how to get someone in trouble to the surface, end quote. The police also scrutinized the time it took Gabe to return to the surface to get help.

Wade Singleton, the one who went down to get Tina, took just 90 seconds to bring her to the surface. But when the police looked at Gabe's dive computer data, they had their own interpretation. The data showed that Gabe took twice as long as Wade Singleton to get back to the surface. He took around three minutes.

The day after Tina's death, David Williams, a consultant forensic pathologist to the Queensland coroner, performed the autopsy. Investigators hoped that the autopsy could shed some light on why Tina ended up on the ocean floor. Dr. David Williams found that Tina's cause of death was drowning. But that's not all he found. He also found evidence of an air embolism in her lungs.

An air embolism, sometimes called a gas embolism, happens when air bubbles pass through a vein or artery and block it. If the bubbles go through a vein, we know it as venous air embolism.

In scuba divers' cases, air embolisms typically happen for two different reasons. One, it can happen if a diver comes to the surface too quickly. And number two, if the diver holds their breath while swimming, this can cause the air in their lungs to expand. If that happens, this can then rupture lung tissue, leading to gas bubbles being released.

Most scuba divers are taught how to avoid this happening. You want to surface slowly. You want to keep calm and breathe normally. You want to be well hydrated before diving. Experienced scuba divers know what to do and what not to do to prevent an air embolism. But was Tina Watson an experienced scuba diver? Did she have the experience to breathe normally while she was underwater?

Or could someone have caused her to experience an air embolism? The forensic pathologist's autopsy findings triggered a formal inquiry. Tina's death was automatically investigated by the state coroner's office because her death was unexpected and they couldn't determine the cause of the embolism.

Back in the United States, Tina's family was heartbroken. According to Tina's parents, Gabe never told them what happened. Instead, they found out through his parents. After Tina's autopsy, Gabe returned to the U.S., and Tina's body was also flown home for her funeral.

According to Tina's friends and family, at the funeral, Gabe wasn't acting like a grieving husband. Now, we hear that all the time in stories. The husband isn't acting like a grieving husband should act. But how is someone supposed to act after losing their spouse only 11 days after getting married?

According to unconfirmed reports by Tina's family, at one point during the funeral, while Gabe looked in front of the open casket, he turned to one of his friends and said, quote, at least her breasts look perky, end quote. Now, I want to be clear with my listeners, this is an unconfirmed report.

Over the next several months, the Australian authorities continued their coroner's inquest into Tina's death. Gabe didn't return to Australia, but he provided statements to the police through his lawyers. He maintained his innocence and swore that Tina's death was a tragic accident. But Australian prosecutors disagreed with Gabe's statements.

Based on the forensic pathologist's findings, witness statements, and other physical evidence, they didn't think Tina's death was simply an accident. Instead, they suspected that Gabe murdered his wife. In July 2004, prosecutors upgraded the case from a simple coroner's inquest to a full-blown criminal case.

They made this move for several reasons. Number one, prosecutors believed they found inconsistencies in Gabe's statements to the police. Prosecutors argued that he had told them over a dozen different versions of events from that day. Number two, eyewitness accounts. Prosecutors said that one of the fellow divers that day told the police that he saw Gabe, quote, bear hug Tina while she was struggling in the water.

They believed that while he grabbed onto her, he wasn't hugging her or trying to help her. Instead, they thought he used this bear hug as an opportunity to turn off her air supply. Then, once she was unconscious from the lack of air, he turned the air back on and let her sink to the bottom before surfacing himself.

Prosecutors believed that their theory explained things that Gabe's story simply couldn't. When the dive instructor who pulled Tina's body to the surface found her, he noticed that her air tank still had plenty of air in it and her regulator was still in her mouth.

When Tina started her dive, her tank had around 1,746 liters of air. When she was brought back up to the boat, the tank had 1,280 liters left, meaning that Tina had used roughly 466 liters.

When her equipment was tested later on for any malfunctions, the test came back perfect. The test showed her equipment was working perfectly that day. Prosecutors didn't believe Gabe's story about why he asked the crew members for additional weight for Tina. They thought he did it to ensure she sank. Prosecutors claimed that when her body was pulled up to the boat, she was wearing 20 pounds of additional weight.

The exact amount of weight a diver should wear depends from one person to the next. But a general rule of thumb is that a diver will carry about 10% of their body weight in lead. Without knowing Tina's exact weight, prosecutors assumed she wore too much weight. 20 pounds of extra lead weight means that Tina weighed around 200 pounds when in fact she was not even 150 pounds.

Several weeks after Tina's death, the prosecution learned about a photograph taken by another diver on the trip that day. The diver thought he was simply taking a picture of his wife while they were in the water together. He had no idea that when he snapped the photo, he also captured Tina lying on the ocean floor behind her.

He didn't realize Tina was even in the photo until he developed the film weeks later. And as soon as he saw Tina in the background, he immediately turned it over to the police. The prosecution's biggest obstacle to proving murder was figuring out a motive. Why would someone want to kill their wife of only 11 days? Of course, the prosecution had a theory for that too.

According to a statement by Tina's father, in September 2003, just a few weeks before the honeymoon, Tina approached him about increasing her life insurance policy. She also asked to make Gabe the sole beneficiary. Tina's father told the police that he didn't understand the rush. They hadn't even had the wedding yet.

They were just about to go on a two-week honeymoon in Australia. Why the rush to update the insurance policy? According to Tina's father's statement to the police, he brushed off his daughter's request and told her that he would take care of it after they got back from the honeymoon.

He told the authorities that he didn't think twice about it until he found out that Tina was dead. As soon as he found out, he suspected that Gabe was the one behind the sudden request to switch out the insurance policy and to make him the sole beneficiary. On top of the life insurance policy, Australian prosecutors believed there was a second financial motive.

They claimed that Gabe attempted to collect on a $45,000 travel insurance policy that they took out right before the trip. In March 2005, Gabe filed a civil lawsuit in Alabama's Jefferson County Circuit Court trying to collect on the money after the travel insurance company refused the payout.

In the lawsuit, Gabe wanted $45,000 for Tina's accidental death, plus compensation for trip interruption, medical expenses, phone calls, taxi fares, extra credit card statement fees, and other nonspecific punitive damages for, quote, mental and emotional anguish, end quote.

This lawsuit was eventually dismissed three years later, but it wasn't dismissed for the reasons you might think. Instead, Gabe's own attorneys requested to the court that the entire case be dismissed because, quote, the Australian investigation into his wife's death caused him to reasonably apprehend that he risks self-incrimination in this case.

In other words, Gabe knew that filing and pursuing the lawsuit made him look guilty. So for that reason, his attorneys asked the court to dismiss it. In the end, Gabe never received the $45,000 payout.

Nearly five years after Tina's death, the Australian authorities wrapped up their criminal investigation. On June 19, 2008, the coroner issued the following statement, quote,

On October 22, 2003, at the site of the historical shipwreck 48 nautical miles southwest from the point of Townsville in the state of Queensland, David Gabriel Watson murdered Christina Mae Watson. The announcement was a huge relief to Tina's family, who all along believed that Gabe had murdered their daughter.

But the information came as a shock to Gabe, who said that he was completely innocent. Although his story may have changed, one part of it never changed. He didn't murder Tina.

Almost one year after the criminal indictment, Gabe voluntarily traveled to Australia to face trial in May of 2009. But the case against him would never go to trial because on June 5th, 2009, Gabe pleaded not guilty to murder, but instead he entered a guilty plea to manslaughter.

Gabe accepted his role in Tina's death as part of the guilty plea. According to the guilty plea, Gabe unlawfully killed Tina by failing in duty of care to fulfill his obligations as her dive buddy during the scuba dive. When Tina grabbed his air supply, he didn't give it to her. Instead, he swam away as she sank to the bottom of the sea.

In exchange for pleading guilty to manslaughter, the Australian court sentenced Gabed to four and a half years in jail to be suspended after serving 12 months. In other words, he received one year in prison for Tina's death. The next day, Alabama's Attorney General, Troy King, publicly announced that he was lodging an appeal with the Queensland Supreme Court.

He argued that one year behind bars wasn't sufficient for a manslaughter conviction. In response to Troy King's statement, the Queensland Director of Public Prosecutors issued a statement of their own. Quote, "...the decision to accept Mr. Watson's plea of guilty to manslaughter was made after a careful and thorough examination of the admissible evidence and was not taken lightly."

End quote. The Queensland court eventually heard the appeal launched by Alabama's Attorney General of Appeals in July of 2009.

On appeal, prosecutors asked the court to increase Gabe's sentence to two and a half years instead of one year. Gabe's defense asked the court to keep his current sentence, believing that it was fair given the circumstances of the case. In the end, the appellate court agreed to increase Gabe's sentence, but only by six months.

In September 2009, instead of serving only one year in Australian prison, he was now ordered to serve 18 months. But this outcome didn't please Alabama prosecutors. In May 2010, Attorney General Troy King announced that he would be pursuing capital murder charges against Gabe when he returned to the U.S.,

This announcement did not make officials in Australia happy. They told King that they would not turn over any evidence, forensic or otherwise, to U.S. officials unless they agreed to take the death penalty off the table.

Again, this didn't go over well with prosecutors in the U.S. In a public statement, they said, quote, if an Australian woman was killed here, we would immediately send the evidence there. We would not presume to tell the Australian authorities how to run their criminal justice system, end quote.

Alabama's desire to secure a conviction against Gabe for Tina's murder outweighed their desire to pursue the death penalty. So in August 2010, it was announced that Gabe would be released from jail in Australia and deported to the U.S. to face murder charges with the death penalty off the table.

You might be wondering how the U.S. could still charge Gabe with murder even after pleading guilty to manslaughter in Australia. Wouldn't that violate his rights against double jeopardy? Alabama prosecutors believed that they had jurisdiction to try him for murder because they believed that the murder was planned when he was in the U.S., not in Australia.

In October 2010, a Birmingham, Alabama grand jury voted to indict Gabe on two criminal charges, one for murder and another for kidnapping. The trial was set for February 13, 2012. Once the trial got underway, the prosecution and defense knew that the case would come down to the forensic and physical evidence.

Each side had its own experts who would testify and argue the evidence before the jury. The prosecution relied heavily on the forensic data obtained from Gabe's diving computer. It was the only piece of hard evidence that tracked the dive. An Australian police officer testified that when he first interviewed Gabe, he appeared calm and provided many details.

However, his tone changed when the police refused to return his dive computer. According to this police officer, he asked for the computer back twice and Gabe became angry when he wasn't allowed to see it. According to the prosecution, the forensic data from the dive computer showed that Gabe didn't ascend to the surface as quickly as he should have.

Their experts testified that based on his previous dive records, the data showed that he took much longer to get to the surface than he had in the past. The prosecution argued that this data shows intent, that Gabe knew his wife was in serious trouble. Instead of making his way back to the surface as quickly as possible, he went as slow as possible.

As her dive partner, he also didn't help her inflate her buoyancy control device or help her take off the additional weight. He also didn't share his alternative air source with her when he knew that she was in trouble. According to the prosecution, the motive was simple. Money.

The defense's opening statements reminded the jury that Gabe never received any money from Tina's death. He had no reason to kill her because he loved her. It was just a tragic accident, and they had the science to prove it.

Professor Michael Bennett, a leading expert in dive medicine for the defense, testified that Tina Watson was, in his words, unfit to dive without clearance from a cardiologist.

According to records, Tina did not disclose that she had any heart problems or surgery on her dive application. However, two years before her death, she did have heart surgery to try and correct her heart condition. According to Michael Bennett, this condition would have made her medically unfit to dive. This condition could also explain the air embolism.

Another key expert witness for the defense was Colin McKenzie. McKenzie was a dive expert who also participated in the original investigation in Australia. When he was first brought on to the case, he stated that given Gabe's diving training, he should have been able to bring Tina up to the surface.

But after he reviewed Gabe and Tina's dive logs, certifications, and their medical histories, he retracted his original statements. After reviewing all of the documents, he was surprised that Gabe himself could get out of the water, let alone try to save his wife.

Therefore, according to him, neither Gabe nor Tina should have been allowed to dive that day based on their dive records and medical histories. One of the last experts to take the stand for the defense was Michael McFadden, a Sydney-based sports diver who writes for one of the most popular Australian scuba diving websites.

According to McFadden, the mystery behind Tina's death can be explained by examining her respiration rate. According to McFadden, Tina likely died because she panicked and because she over-breathed. When Tina got into the water that morning, her scuba tank contained 1,746 liters of air. When it was recovered, the tank only had a little over 1,200 liters.

This meant that Tina used a little over 450 liters. McFadden theorized that most of the air used had been breathed by Tina, but a small amount, approximately 66 liters, had been spilled when Tina's body was recovered.

The Australian forensic pathologist determined that Tina had collapsed at around the 13-meter level, which would have been about six minutes into the dive. Based on this information, McFadden estimated that Tina would have been breathing using air from the tank for around five and a half minutes. This means that Tina was breathing at a rate of 72.73 liters a minute.

then corrected to 29.09 a minute at the surface of the water. Now, I know this is a little confusing. Let me explain. According to an article by the Sydney Morning Herald, a university in Holland published a study that found young Dutch women breathed air at a rate of 16.1 liters a minute when cycling at 10 mph.

This data suggested to McFadden that not only did Tina have enough air to breathe while underwater, but that she was breathing a lot of it. Too much of it. According to him, her air consumption was likely even higher based on this calculation.

McFadden also testified that the amount of air in Tina's tank actually proves that her air was never turned off because had her air been turned off, like the prosecution said, he believes more air would have been left in the tank, but it wasn't. The evidence presented by both the prosecution and the defense were important elements in proving their case.

But the evidence that wasn't presented may have been even more important. Alabama Judge Tommy Nail ruled that evidence about Gabe's behavior following Tina's death was inadmissible. This meant that the prosecution was not allowed to talk about Gabe's attempt to collect on Tina's life insurance policy.

The judge also didn't allow Tina's father, Tommy Thomas, to provide evidence about Tina coming to him about the insurance. Once the prosecution rested, Gabe's defense attorneys motioned the court to dismiss the case based on lack of evidence, and the judge agreed.

On February 23, 2012, Judge Tommy Nail acquitted Gabe on all charges, citing a lack of evidence. In his decision, Judge Nail criticized the prosecution for their lack of forensic evidence proving that Tina's death was a homicide. And without solid forensic evidence, the case relied solely on circumstantial evidence.

Alabama prosecutors failed to present to the court enough forensic evidence to prove that Gabe murdered his wife. Likewise, they didn't have the evidence to show that Gabe intentionally turned off Tina's air that morning. So Gabe Watson was acquitted. Today, Gabe is remarried and lives with his second wife, Kim Lewis in Alabama. He's tried his best to move on with his life.

but there remains a dark cloud of suspicion over him. What exactly happened underwater on that day? Forensic science came up short. Only one man knows the answer to that question. What was the true reason for his wife's final breath? To share your thoughts on the Tina Watson story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. Let me know what you think happened to her.

To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales. After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case. You'll want to listen to this one because I'm going to share with you what I think happened to Tina Watson. To check out photos from the case, head over to our website, forensic tales.com.

Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us. You can also help support the show through Patreon. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please join me next week. We'll have a brand new case and a brand new story to talk about.

Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings. Forensic Tales is a Rockefeller Audio production. The show is written and produced by me, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola. For a small monthly contribution, you can help create new compelling cases for this show, help fund research, and assist with production and editing costs.

Thank you.

To learn about how you can support the show, head over to our Patreon page, patreon.com slash Forensic Tales, or simply click the support link in the show notes. You can also support the show by leaving a positive review or spreading the good word about us.

Forensic Tales is a podcast made possible by our Patreon producers. Tony A, Nicole L, David B, Paula G, Selena C, Nicole G, Christine B, Karen D, Nancy H, Jim C, and Sherry A. If you're interested in learning more about Forensic Tales,

If you'd like to become a producer of the show, head to our Patreon page or send me an email at Courtney at ForensicTales.com to find out how you can become involved.

For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Thank you for listening. Your support of my show means the world to me. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.