Hi, my beautiful friends,
how are you today? I am so sorry I missed last week. I (scoffs) where do I begin? I'm not going to. My life has just kind of
been like a mess. (whines) Is the best way to describe. The Lord is testing me and I didn't study. Anyhoo, my name is Bailey
Sarian, and today is Monday which means it's murder,
mystery, and makeup Monday. (singing inaudible lyrics) Focus, camera, focus. Thank you. If you are a new here, hi. Every Monday I sit down and I
talk about a true crime story that's been heavy on my noggin and I do my makeup at the same time. If you're interested in true
crime and you like makeup, I would highly suggest you
hit that subscribe button, because I'm here for you every Monday. Except for last Monday. Before we hop into today's
story, we do have an adversement. Advertisement, I just want to be fancy. Today's episode is sponsored by Audible. No matter what your resolution
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for partnering with me and a big thank you to you
guys, because without you I wouldn't be here making this right now. So I appreciate you. Anyways, so today I want
to talk about a story that's been heavy on my
noggin for a very long time. It's "suspish" to say the least, so today we're going to talk
about Tina and Gabriel Watson. So we're going to 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 P.S.V.T. I'll put the long name down here, because there ain't a chance in heck I can pronounce that word. P.S.V.T. 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 pleasant
that you can say about a person was said about Tina. She just sounded like a
wonderful, wonderful person. (sings) 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 that 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, his hobby. And on top of that, Gabe was
a certified rescue diver. And he would go scuba diving
pretty often with Tina. 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 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 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 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 going to get that ring." On April 20th, 2003,
that's when he hid the ring in an Easter egg. And he sent her on 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. Then on September 26, 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 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 terrifying. I'm not a mermaid. I don't, I couldn't. Now the ship that they
were going to 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 10. 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 was about
to do what's considered like a harder dive, and
whenever there's a harder dive a guided diver was offered to 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 malfunctioning and giving him a hard time. I guess it made Tina a
little uncomfortable, because 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 got to go. I think everything is a sign. So it's October 22nd, 2003. The dive was considered 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 II. And Wade gives her CPR
and tries to revive her for over 30 minutes. Now when people asked Gabe,
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
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? 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 on the boat, walking around, asking the other shipmates for hugs. Everyone thought 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 struggling and that
she was waving her arms. So of course police
wanted to talk to Gabe, and he definitely, 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? What is Gibbs 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 death, 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 fu... 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 because I'm uncomfortable. On the Christmas card had said, quote, "Who's that sexy guy next to Tina?" Question mark, "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 going to 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 want to 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 going to 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 wants 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 an accident. The police noted several inconsistencies with Gabe 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 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? (chuckles) 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 panicking. 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 do something that Gabe liked to do. Again, there was like a
very small amount of water found in Tina's lungs, and they believe 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 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 under water. 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. 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 ended
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 that. 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 this, well, he was trying to
make everyone believe that he was this 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 want to 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, they wanted him to be tried in Alabama. He said there was additional
evidence 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 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,
that'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. Do 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 in 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 it. The, 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 sits in the back of my brain because there, 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, but 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. Anyways, so I would love to
hear your thoughts down below. 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 his, the way he copes with pain. I don't know. My gut says fucking guilty. What does your gut say? Let me know down below. 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. A big thank you to Audible for partnering with me on today's video. 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! Mmm-hmm!
