KEY POINTS:
A former police officer with 40 years' experience is the latest boatie to claim police ignored his sighting of the "mystery ketch" that was key to Scott Watson's conviction for the murder of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope.
John Gower, a retired police hostage negotiator and three-term Hamilton
city councillor, anchored beside a ketch, which he says matched the police description of the vessel, in the Hauraki Gulf in February 1998.
A thin, unkempt man with dark, straggly hair - similar to police identikits of a suspect - peered from the hatch and began acting suspiciously, said Gower. "I yelled out, 'hi' and he ducked his head again, peering out of portholes. That is so strange, it just doesn't happen on the water," said Gower. "I just don't imagine stuff. It was bloody suspicious behaviour that would raise the hackles of anybody."
Gower rang the Coastguard and asked it to alert the Marine Police but was told no one was available.
He later submitted a police job sheet, but was told by officers they were not looking for a ketch in connection with the disappearance of Ben and Olivia on New Year's Day 1998.
Gower is loathe to criticise the Operation Tam investigation but is concerned police "scrubbed" the search for the ketch, seen by numerous eyewitnesses, so quickly.
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 ketch also matches the description from eyewitnesses Hayden Morressey and Sarah Dyer, who were in the water taxi with Wallace, as well as another watertaxi driver, Ted Walsh.
The police and the Crown later said those who claimed to have seen the ketch were mistaken, that no such vessel existed, and Wallace took Ben and Olivia to Watson's 8m sloop Blade.
Wallace later said the only similarity between Blade and the two-masted ketch was they "both float".
"An experienced boatie does not get a sloop mixed up with a ketch," said Gower. "As soon as the police changed direction, from a ketch to a sloop, I became interested."
Last week, experienced boatie Ross Parker said detectives ignored his sighting of a boat he believed to be the mystery ketch, which he berthed beside at Westhaven Marina in March 1998.
A 12m white ketch in a poor condition, with a blue stripe on the side and portholes, the boat was identical to the vessel described by witnesses at Furneaux Lodge, said Parker. Parker, then 73, rang the harbour police from his cellphone but they never turned up.
A few months later, the Operation Tam investigation was still appealing to the public for information through an 0800 number but Parker said he was ignored when he rang.
Watson was arrested soon after, in June 1998, and charged with the murders of Ben and Olivia.
The latest ketch claims 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 new evidence and are planning a petition this year to the Governor-General.
King said barely a week went by without another "credible sighting" of the mystery ketch.
"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 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 around the same time as Parker.