American charged with killing wife while on honeymoon dive in Australia

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Eleven days after getting married in 2003, an Alabama woman put on diving gear and slipped into the water off Australia's coast for what was supposed to be a romantic exploration of a shipwreck with her new husband. But the dive ended with her drowning and on Friday, almost five years later, her husband, David Gabriel Watson of Birmingham, Alabama, was charged with murder for the honeymoon death. The Queensland state coroner found there was sufficient evidence to charge Watson in the death of his 26-year-old wife, although circumstances of the drowning remain unclear. Watson's lawyer, Steve Zillman, argued during an inquest his client had no motive to kill his wife and the evidence did not support a criminal charge. He accused police of being intent on blaming Watson for the death, no matter what the evidence showed. Christina Mae Watson, known as Tina, drowned Oct. 22, 2003 while diving at the wreck of the SS Yongala, a passenger and steam freighter that sank during a cyclone in 1911 on the Great Barrier Reef near the northeastern city of Townsville.