Scott Watson, right, was convicted of murdering Ben Smart and Olivia Hope on his boat, Blade, background. Composite Photo / NZME
A video of convicted murderer Scott Watson attacking another prisoner was played to the Parole Board as it met to decide if he should be released from jail after 27 years.
In the video, several inmates are seen socialising and playing cards at tables in a prison unit.
Watson steps up behind another man and grabs him around the neck and upper torso from behind, pulling him off a bench.
As the man tries to get up, Watson pushes him back to the ground.
After the man manages to get to his feet, another prisoner steps forward and punches the victim in the face.
The Parole Board viewed the video and discussed it several times as members met on Friday to decide whether Watson would still pose an undue risk if he were to be released on parole.
Watson was convicted of murdering Ben Smart and Olivia Hope, who went missing in the Marlborough Sounds in the early hours of New Year’s Day 1998.
The board was told that although Watson may now be considered at low risk of committing another homicide, he was still assessed at a medium risk of committing lesser forms of violence, and a medium risk of reoffending generally.
Although Watson had tried to pass off what had happened in the video as a “play fight”, Parole Board chairwoman Justice Jan-Marie Doogue said it looked to board members to be “very serious violence”.
In declining to release Watson before another hearing 10 months from now, she said he needed to work on a safety plan, and “You need to stay out of trouble. We need to see you do that. You need to regulate your behaviours better than you have.”
Justice Doogue called for further assessments of Watson and his risk factors, and for him to undergo more rehabilitative treatment regarding his attitudes towards violence and women.
Watson will next be seen by the board in November 2026.
The precise date of the violent incident captured on closed-circuit video was not disclosed at the hearing, and it was variously described as happening in 2024 or last year.
Watson said it occurred around the time that the unsuccessful appeal against his murder convictions was being heard by the Court of Appeal, which would place it in mid-2024.
Parole Board member and forensic psychiatrist Jeremy Skipworth asked Watson what he thought would happen if he committed an assault in the community like the one on the video.
“I would be in prison forever,” Watson replied.
He said he was embarrassed about the assault and told board members that he had developed strategies to stay out of trouble in future.
“I will always be polite, respectful and just zip it,” he said.
He said if he were released, he would be sticking 100% to his parole conditions.
“I’ve got a lot to lose if I don’t.”
Watson was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering Hope and Smart. A condition of a life sentence is that he would be liable to be recalled to prison any time he puts a foot wrong after being paroled.
Watson’s counsel, Kerry Cook, said Watson was now looking for a “concrete pathway” forward with a plan towards release.
“The punishment period of his imprisonment is over,” Cook said.
“We would like to come back to the board sooner rather than later.”
Hope, 17, and Smart, 21, were last seen stepping off a water taxi in Endeavour Inlet, in the Marlborough Sounds, in the early hours of New Year’s Day 1998.
The young friends had attended a New Year’s Eve celebration at Furneaux Lodge the evening before.
They left in the water taxi with a lone man, who offered them a place to sleep on his yacht. They have not been seen since, alive or dead.
It has been accepted that Hope and Smart died at the hands of the lone man in circumstances that amounted to murder.
Watson was eventually identified by the water taxi driver and the lodge’s bartender, Guy Wallace, as the lone man.
Following a three-month trial in the High Court at Wellington in 1999, a jury found Watson guilty of the murders.
Some 27 years later, he remains in prison, where he maintains his innocence and has made several unsuccessful appeals since 2000.
In 2020, then Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy referred the convictions to the Court of Appeal to determine whether a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.
The appeal court, presided over by Justices Christine French, Patricia Courtney, and Susan Thomas, released its decision last September.
It determined that Watson’s trial was fair and the convictions must stand.
“Ultimately, the Crown presented a compelling circumstantial case to show that only Mr Watson could have been the lone man.
“The evidence was carefully presented, challenged, and subjected to submission and analysis. It was a fair trial.”
The appeal hearing focused on evidence about Hope’s hairs that were said to have been located on Watson’s boat, Blade, and Wallace’s evidence that identified Watson as the lone man.
The Court of Appeal found there was no miscarriage of justice.
The decision stated that the only real issue at trial was whether Watson was the lone man on the boat.
The Appeal Court decision concluded that all of the strands of circumstantial evidence traversed at the appeal were extensively addressed during witness questioning and in the closing addresses at trial.
“There is no doubt the jury was entitled to treat the strands of circumstantial evidence we have outlined as consistent with, and indeed pointing strongly towards, Mr Watson’s guilt.”
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.