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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder The Most Shocking
Speaker 5: Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 5: journalist and author Dan Zupansky. Good evening.
Speaker 6: This is your host Dan Zupanski for the program True Murder,
Speaker 6: The most Shocking Killers in True crime History and the
Speaker 6: authors that have written about them. Dead just one week
Speaker 6: into her Australian honeymoon, Tina Watson's body lay one hundred
Speaker 6: feet below the ocean's surface at the foot of the
Speaker 6: Great Barrier reef across the globe, three days into a
Speaker 6: secret Erubian getaway with an older gentleman she met online,
Speaker 6: Robin Gardner, vanished from the same town as Natalie Holloway,
Speaker 6: who had had just five years earlier. Why did Robin
Speaker 6: Gardner's travel companion purchase a one point five million dollar
Speaker 6: insurance policy and make himself the beneficiary? Did Tina Watson's
Speaker 6: husband really insist she increased her life insurance coverage to
Speaker 6: one million before the wedding. When both suspects stories are
Speaker 6: deemed suspicious, what does the evidence ultimately reveal? Mode of
Speaker 6: an opportunity gave the media full opportunity to cast these
Speaker 6: suspects as murderers. But what actually happened and what is
Speaker 6: it about this pair of bizarre cases that remains brutally
Speaker 6: chilling to this day. The book that we're featuring this
Speaker 6: evening is Vanished Beauty Fatal Sunset with my special guest,
Speaker 6: journalist and author Mark Yoshimoto nemkov Welcome to the program,
Speaker 6: and thank you for agreeing to this interview. Mark Yoshimoto Nemkov.
Speaker 2: Dan, thank you so much for having me on. It's
Speaker 2: my pleasure. I love your show, by the way, Oh.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you very much. And you fit right in
Speaker 6: there with all the other denizens of the program here.
Speaker 6: I think I think we're gonna have a great program
Speaker 6: here because it's a wild, wild story. A question that
Speaker 6: I often ask if, without giving too much away at all,
Speaker 6: how is it that you came to write this story?
Speaker 6: What was it about these two stories, about these two
Speaker 6: cases that compelled you or drove you to decide to
Speaker 6: write this book? Vanish beauty Fatal Sunset.
Speaker 2: Well, last year I had written a book called Fatal
Speaker 2: Sunset Deadly Vacations, which is really a compilation of a
Speaker 2: number of different stories of people who you know, met
Speaker 2: their demise during their vacation. I mean, obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: it's kind of a kind of a bizarre topic. But
Speaker 2: I was. I was on the island of Maui and
Speaker 2: this guy who just happened to be there at the
Speaker 2: same time, another tourist nine miles up the road, he
Speaker 2: fell into a natural uh it's it's a thing. It's
Speaker 2: called the Knochalley blowhole, which which sounds really dirty, but
Speaker 2: it's really just like it's like a geyser that comes
Speaker 2: up underneath this lava shell. And this guy fell in
Speaker 2: and he vanished. And this happened while I was on
Speaker 2: the island, and I was just I was. I was
Speaker 2: terrified by the idea that he fell into this thing
Speaker 2: and vanished and they never found him. And and I
Speaker 2: started to write this book, and I started to write
Speaker 2: about these stories, and I wrote about Natalie Holloway, and
Speaker 2: I was just horrified at the Natalie Holloway story. How
Speaker 2: this was a case that probably could have been solved
Speaker 2: and it wasn't. And as I was working on a
Speaker 2: sequel this year for Fatal Sunset Deadly Vacation, this one
Speaker 2: that became Banished Beauty, I looked back at the Natalie
Speaker 2: Holloway case and I noticed there was this Robin Gardner
Speaker 2: case that was incredibly similar to the Natalie Holloway case. Now,
Speaker 2: Nadalie Holloway was eighteen, she just graduated high school. Robin
Speaker 2: Gardner was thirty six. But they were approximately the same height,
Speaker 2: the same build, the same look, blonde hair, blue eyes,
Speaker 2: and I thought it was very bizarre that they had
Speaker 2: both disappeared under very mysterious circumstances from the same exact
Speaker 2: Eruben resort. So I started to look into this case
Speaker 2: and I realized there were a lot of aspects to
Speaker 2: not just how she just heard the strangeness of just
Speaker 2: another blonde American woman vanishing the from an Auruban beach,
Speaker 2: but there were these elements to her story about the
Speaker 2: people who were involved, just her traveling companions, and she
Speaker 2: had met this guy. It was an older man she
Speaker 2: met online and she took up this trip with him
Speaker 2: that she didn't tell anybody about. She didn't tell her
Speaker 2: family about, she didn't tell her boyfriend about, and she vanishes.
Speaker 2: And as I dug into this story more and more
Speaker 2: and I looked into this kind of shady character that
Speaker 2: she went to Aruba with, I first felt like, Wow,
Speaker 2: this is again another obviously open and shutcase. Why couldn't
Speaker 2: they bring this case to trial? Why couldn't they solve
Speaker 2: this case? As I dug more into the evidence and
Speaker 2: really the public perception of what was going on, because
Speaker 2: again with the shadow of Natalie Holloway's disappearance, how that
Speaker 2: was a worldwide news sensation. There was this taint on
Speaker 2: this Robin Gardner disappearance because everything that happened in the
Speaker 2: Robin Gardner case was being held up to the incompetence
Speaker 2: of the Natalie Holloway investigation. So I felt that there
Speaker 2: was really more to this story than just a a
Speaker 2: chapter in another book that was a compilation of several
Speaker 2: different deadly vacation stories. And as I looked into it
Speaker 2: more and more and deeper and deeper, and the characters
Speaker 2: started to get weirder. And this guy that she went with,
Speaker 2: who seemed like such an obvious villain, there were elements
Speaker 2: to this that pulled me in because every time I
Speaker 2: looked up something about Robin Gardner or her traveling companion,
Speaker 2: this guy Gary Giordano, her boyfriend, I started to find
Speaker 2: things in this story that just made my jaw drop.
Speaker 2: This thing had so many twists and turns, and I
Speaker 2: was I wondered to myself, how how do you write
Speaker 2: this thing? How do you publicly indict someone who was
Speaker 2: never really brought to trial for this crime because they
Speaker 2: never They arrested Gary Giardano, but they released him four
Speaker 2: months later because they couldn't build a case against him.
Speaker 2: And I was like, I can build a I can
Speaker 2: build a case against this guy. Let me do it.
Speaker 6: Well, Mark, let's let's go back, like, let's go back
Speaker 6: like you were able to do that, and you do
Speaker 6: that in the book very very effectively. Let's let's go
Speaker 6: back a little bit here before we talk about Gary
Speaker 6: gi O'Donnell, because Richard Forrester is the boyfriend of Robin
Speaker 6: Gardner and that's not her maiden name. So let's go
Speaker 6: back just a little bit with Robin and just tell
Speaker 6: who Robin is in terms of her we'll say her
Speaker 6: history in terms of being married. Let's go back with
Speaker 6: a little bit into Robin's life before we introduced Richard Forrester,
Speaker 6: and well before we get into Gary Jerio Danel, so
Speaker 6: we can paint the picture and introduce these characters.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, Robin Gardner was kind of a hometown girl,
Speaker 2: grew up outside of Washington, DC, and she had been
Speaker 2: married before. She married a guy who was a real
Speaker 2: estate He was a senior executive at one of these
Speaker 2: companies that goes and builds a big housing developments. Right,
Speaker 2: And of course, the recession hit and crushed the construction industry,
Speaker 2: and this guy loses his job and their marriage falls apart.
Speaker 6: But they were doing, they were doing. They were living
Speaker 6: a pretty lavish lifestyle. Mercedes Benz in the driveway, and
Speaker 6: so let's not leave that out. She did get a
Speaker 6: taste for the high life and the good life, right.
Speaker 2: That's right. She was definitely living an a very upper
Speaker 2: middle class almost like a dream life for a young
Speaker 2: lady who wants these types of things. And so here
Speaker 2: she was, and she was divorced from her husband and
Speaker 2: facing a very very contentious alimony battle with her husband,
Speaker 2: who was unemployed, who couldn't find a job. Afterwards, tried
Speaker 2: to start his own business building houses, and that didn't
Speaker 2: take off, And then she was working as a dental
Speaker 2: assistant and also trying at the same time, she was
Speaker 2: a very attractive woman. Thirty six, she's trying to kickstart
Speaker 2: a modeling career. Now, now thirty six is not the
Speaker 2: agent which one starts a modeling career. No, it's about
Speaker 2: twenty two years late for starting a modeling career, right,
Speaker 2: And so here she was and there was this almost
Speaker 2: you'd almost feel like there was a sense of desperation
Speaker 2: in her life because she was with this guy, Richard
Speaker 2: forrest Or, who she also met online, and they were together,
Speaker 2: but things weren't exactly rosy between them. So here she was,
Speaker 2: and there are aspects of Robin's life that just that
Speaker 2: make her seem like she's she could be anyone. But
Speaker 2: then there were secrets that she kept that were really
Speaker 2: that really kind of painted a much different picture about
Speaker 2: her as the story developed. Right, So she was definitely
Speaker 2: someone who who who liked to uh ah, how should
Speaker 2: I say it? She liked to have fun and she
Speaker 2: liked to keep secrets, which is one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why when she had this friend, Gary Giordano, who she
Speaker 2: met online as well through a swinger website, that she
Speaker 2: didn't tell her boyfriend about it. All her boyfriend knew
Speaker 2: about this guy, Gary Giordano, was he was a friend,
Speaker 2: just a platonic friend. That's all she told him. But
Speaker 2: it wasn't the truth, not at all.
Speaker 6: Now they do have a relationship, and you say it's rocky,
Speaker 6: But what is the basis of the problem. It's what
Speaker 6: seems to be. They just don't click what is the
Speaker 6: deal here? And this is important because on the last
Speaker 6: few days of her life, or at least before she
Speaker 6: disappears from the face of the earth, there are some
Speaker 6: messages for Richard Forrester. So just before we get into
Speaker 6: that eventful day, let's talk about a little bit about
Speaker 6: the relationship. What exactly did you say was the problem
Speaker 6: in the relationship? What did you think or what were
Speaker 6: witnesses at that time, or what was Richard's viewpoint on
Speaker 6: what was the problem with the relationship?
Speaker 2: Well, Richard Forrester had also been married before, and he
Speaker 2: had a very expensive divorce. He had divorced his first
Speaker 2: wife and she was dragging him through the coals for everything,
Speaker 2: and rightly so, because he refused to pay alimony, he
Speaker 2: refused to pay child support. So he was hit with
Speaker 2: a massive judgment, a massive, massive judgment. And here was
Speaker 2: Richard Forrester, and they he had been together with Robin,
Speaker 2: and he had his baggage and she had her baggage.
Speaker 2: And at some point after she had lost her job
Speaker 2: as a dental assistant. Maybe it was the financial aspects
Speaker 2: of her trying to battle her ex husband for alimony
Speaker 2: and Richard trying to come up with all this cash
Speaker 2: in order to fulfill this massive judgment that he had
Speaker 2: to pay. So money is money issues are never a
Speaker 2: good thing for a relationship. But it seemed like their
Speaker 2: relationship had maybe run its course. And even though they
Speaker 2: didn't live together, they had separate apart up and he
Speaker 2: claims she she would spend six nights a week at
Speaker 2: his place, but she still maintained her own apartment, and
Speaker 2: her roommate at the time claimed that, you know, not
Speaker 2: everything was really rosy because she she did she was
Speaker 2: kind of I think she she liked Richard, but she
Speaker 2: always had her eye open for other opportunities. And when
Speaker 2: Gary Giardano showed up and offered her a trip to Aruba.
Speaker 2: Here was a guy who had a history of larceny,
Speaker 2: a history of lying a history of harassing his previous girlfriends,
Speaker 2: of being being a bully, and of lying that to
Speaker 2: women that he was a modeling agent, that he was
Speaker 2: a manager that booked modeling gigs. So here she is
Speaker 2: probably not in the best time during her life, and
Speaker 2: this friend, who she obviously knows is interested in her,
Speaker 2: has propositioned her before says hey, I'll take you to Aruba.
Speaker 2: Come with me and let's get away from it all.
Speaker 2: And so she did, and she never came back.
Speaker 6: Now let's get to the let's go backwards just a
Speaker 6: little bit and talk about Richard. Forrester, we already set
Speaker 6: the stage that this relationship is not so good. So
Speaker 6: they are not together one day and set the stage
Speaker 6: for that day that he gets I wasn't clear whether
Speaker 6: he had he got the phone call or he was
Speaker 6: listening to a message from a phone call that she made.
Speaker 6: And then talk about that day and the phone call
Speaker 6: or the message of the phone call that he listened
Speaker 6: to and his deduction from there.
Speaker 2: Well, they they had been in a fight. They things
Speaker 2: hadn't been so good, and according to Robin's roommate, she
Speaker 2: was about to break up with him, and he claims
Speaker 2: that He got a phone call from her a couple
Speaker 2: days after the last time he had seen her, and
Speaker 2: the phone call sounded it sounded strange. There was noise
Speaker 2: on the line, there was beeping on the line. It
Speaker 2: was an internationally placed phone call. And he didn't know
Speaker 2: that because she told him that she was in Orlando
Speaker 2: with her family they were taking They took a last
Speaker 2: minute trip to Orlando, and she was like, look, I
Speaker 2: can't talk, but we'll talk when I get back, and
Speaker 2: you know, i'll call you soon, and so he didn't
Speaker 2: even realize that she was out of the country. He
Speaker 2: tried to message her on Facebook and she replied. They
Speaker 2: never had any other direct conversation after that, but they
Speaker 2: had you know, Facebook messages back and forth, and they
Speaker 2: were all kind of like, look, well, I care about you, Richard,
Speaker 2: and we'll talk when I get back. And so here
Speaker 2: was this boyfriend who didn't even realize that maybe he
Speaker 2: was being broken up with. I mean, he had been
Speaker 2: blindsided by this whole thing, apparently, And so he's trying
Speaker 2: to get in touch with her desperately and she's responding
Speaker 2: very cryptically on Facebook, and so it's it's.
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Speaker 2: It wasn't until uh the he because she found out.
Speaker 2: He found out because she admitted, well, she was like,
Speaker 2: look I went to Aruba. It's it's uh. I'll be
Speaker 2: back soon. Don't worry about it. I'll be back at
Speaker 2: the end of the week. And he didn't even find
Speaker 2: out until the day after she was supposed to return
Speaker 2: something had happened to her three days earlier, or two
Speaker 2: days earlier, as a matter.
Speaker 6: Of fact, so he has limited contact with her. He
Speaker 6: gets this phone call and again she says, I can't talk,
Speaker 6: but we'll talk soon. Then she gets the email I
Speaker 6: love you, I care about you. Yeah, it does sound
Speaker 6: like kind of like but we're going to have to
Speaker 6: break up kind of deal. But we'll discuss it when
Speaker 6: I get back. What is the last message that he
Speaker 6: does receive and what day is that?
Speaker 2: The last message was a Facebook message and this was
Speaker 2: the day before that she had vanished. She vanished on
Speaker 2: a Wednesday. It was Tuesday, and he had been trying
Speaker 2: to call her, trying to message her, trying to email her,
Speaker 2: and it was it was obvious, I think, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe to him that there were there were bigger problems
Speaker 2: in this relationship than he had first thought. And so
Speaker 2: he was, you know, he didn't like the idea of
Speaker 2: not being able to get in touch with her, so
Speaker 2: he kept trying to get in touch with her. And
Speaker 2: the last, the last Facebook message was it was it
Speaker 2: was really like, you know, I uh thinking about you
Speaker 2: will we'll talk soon. And after that, what was bizarre
Speaker 2: was he had seen her on Gmail, on his Gmail account,
Speaker 2: he had seen her indicator her uh come on, and
Speaker 2: you know, if you're familiar with Gmail chat, when someone
Speaker 2: who is one of your chat friends comes online and
Speaker 2: they want to be seen in chat, their little indicator
Speaker 2: goes green. Well, he says, well, you know, I saw
Speaker 2: her indicator go green, and I tried to message her
Speaker 2: and she didn't respond to me. And he found out
Speaker 2: later on after he discovered that she had been missing,
Speaker 2: that her indicator had gone green after she had disappeared.
Speaker 2: So here again, he wasn't sure what was going on.
Speaker 2: He wasn't sure who was on her account or what
Speaker 2: was you know, how was she being manipulated? And the
Speaker 2: only and the only person who knew what Robin Gardner
Speaker 2: was up to was this guy she was with, Gary Giordano.
Speaker 6: Now what happens with who calls police? And when do
Speaker 6: they call police? She's supposed to be back on Thursday,
Speaker 6: and of course there's no show. So and then Friday
Speaker 6: Andrew Colson, which is Robin's brother called to say that
Speaker 6: Robin's mother had said that Robin was missing at sea.
Speaker 6: Tell us about this phone call and what was said,
Speaker 6: and Forrester's reaction, Well.
Speaker 2: What happened was that Robin's mother had gotten a phone
Speaker 2: call from authorities and you know, informing her that, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, we your daughter h is missing. And she
Speaker 2: went uh snorkeling with her travel companion and she didn't
Speaker 2: come back to shore. She vanished. And so of course
Speaker 2: this is this is all news to the Colson family and.
Speaker 6: Sorry for snorkeling or scuba diving or anything.
Speaker 2: Well, that was the thing that that most of the
Speaker 2: people who knew her found to be suspicious, because Robin
Speaker 2: Gardner was someone who liked to wear a lot of
Speaker 2: makeup and liked her hair done nice, and and she
Speaker 2: wore hair extensions. And she wasn't known as the kind
Speaker 2: of adventurous girl to to uh strap on a pair
Speaker 2: of fins and go snorkeling.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: She was the kind of girl who would have a
Speaker 2: few cocktails by the pool. Yeah, And so it seemed
Speaker 2: very suspicious to everyone. All of a sudden Robin went snorkeling.
Speaker 2: How did this happen, She doesn't Snorkel and the only person. Again,
Speaker 2: like the authorities were right away, the authorities had started
Speaker 2: to look at this guy, Gary Giordano. They started to
Speaker 2: you know, they initiated a search, an island wide search
Speaker 2: of Robin, coast guard, boades, helicopters, and this is this
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you know, becomes a frantic search
Speaker 2: for a missing person. And her family is informed of this,
Speaker 2: you know, almost almost twelve to eighteen hours after the fact.
Speaker 6: What does Geordano claim when he tells police or what
Speaker 6: is geored Dano's reaction, Because this is the thing that's amazing.
Speaker 6: What does Geordano do and say and how you know,
Speaker 6: give us the timeline here of what he does and
Speaker 6: then what does he say happened?
Speaker 5: And who does he.
Speaker 6: Say that to?
Speaker 2: Well, according to Gary Giardano, and according to eyewitness accounts,
Speaker 2: Gary and Robin had been drinking at the hotel they
Speaker 2: went and they stayed at the Marriotte. They were in
Speaker 2: the same room together and they were drinking and then
Speaker 2: they went out for you know, lunch at a little bar,
Speaker 2: and so they were seen at the bar. There was
Speaker 2: actually pictures taken of them. The pictures where you can
Speaker 2: see them. And so there's evidence that they were there
Speaker 2: at this bar at about two o'clock or so, and
Speaker 2: that she was drinking and he was drinking, and she
Speaker 2: didn't really touch her food. And so then he claims
Speaker 2: that they later on, just a few hours later, they
Speaker 2: were just hanging out and he said, let's go snorkeling.
Speaker 2: They went in the water. They're kicking or round off
Speaker 2: the shore, and all of a sudden, Gary claims that
Speaker 2: that the current got stronger and started to pull him out,
Speaker 2: and he motioned to her. He said to her, he
Speaker 2: tapped her on the foot and motioned, look, let's go in.
Speaker 2: Hurry up. You know, I'm I think we might be
Speaker 2: in trouble here. So he claims he started to swim
Speaker 2: for his life towards the shore and by the time
Speaker 2: he got close enough, he turned around and Robin was gone.
Speaker 2: And so at approximately five o'clock late afternoon, early evening,
Speaker 2: he emerges from the water by himself, and he goes
Speaker 2: back to the bar, because they were snorkeling very close
Speaker 2: to this bar, and he goes back to the bar
Speaker 2: and he knocks on the window on the door and
Speaker 2: there's no answer. And he goes around to the kitchen
Speaker 2: and finally is able to have somebody call the police,
Speaker 2: and the police come and all of a sudden, they're like, well,
Speaker 2: what how did this happen? How did how did you
Speaker 2: guys go circling and she didn't come back? And why
Speaker 2: is there blood here on the beach? And uh, you know,
Speaker 2: why why are you still wearing your twope? And it's
Speaker 2: really I mean, there was there was a lot of
Speaker 2: suspicion placed on Gary Giordano, very very quickly, but there
Speaker 2: was no evidence. There was no evidence to be found.
Speaker 2: There was no evidence that he had done anything wrong.
Speaker 6: Well, you know the thing is, though, pardon excuse you,
Speaker 6: excuse me, they did find almost immediately a bloody palm,
Speaker 6: and then you don't say whether that was ever identified.
Speaker 6: But there's a bloody pom print in an unused condom
Speaker 6: and that's right behind the rum reef bar and grill.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 6: That's what happens early on right the right.
Speaker 2: And according to eyewitnesses who came forth later, Robin had
Speaker 2: apparently cut her foot on the Rocky beach and a
Speaker 2: lot of people, a lot of people were suspicious of
Speaker 2: the fact that they had gone snorkeling off of this
Speaker 2: little beach behind this bar, because here was this, you know,
Speaker 2: not very sandy, not very pleasurable beach. It was kind
Speaker 2: of rocky. She cut her foot, so she was seen
Speaker 2: having cut her foot. People saw her on the beach,
Speaker 2: so but they did. They were never able to match
Speaker 2: whether or not that was her blood. They were never
Speaker 2: able to match whether or not it was that condom
Speaker 2: had any sort of DNA that would link them to
Speaker 2: to either Gary or Robin. And this was and many
Speaker 2: people blamed the fact that here is Aruba, this is
Speaker 2: a very very small island community where the closest crime
Speaker 2: lab is another island away in Cursow. So it's this
Speaker 2: is a very sleepy town and all of a sudden
Speaker 2: they have to perform CSI here. It's it's not gonna
Speaker 2: happen now.
Speaker 6: And Robin, Robin's mother actually travels to Aruba to try
Speaker 6: to find her missing daughter, doesn't.
Speaker 2: She right away. Robin's mother goes and she confronts this guy,
Speaker 2: Gary Giordano, and she described him as being very calm
Speaker 2: and not very concerned with the fact that here was
Speaker 2: somebody that he was with who he you know, he
Speaker 2: would he introduced Robin to the waiter at the restaurant
Speaker 2: as his wife, you know, maybe half jokingly, but all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, you know, here's somebody he was with,
Speaker 2: and he told Robin, oh how much he cared about
Speaker 2: her and all that. But he just seemed very blase
Speaker 2: about it. It was almost as if he had lost,
Speaker 2: you know, a frisbee or you know, a pair of
Speaker 2: a pair of sneakers, and so that that again seemed
Speaker 2: very suspicious. And what as Gary is stuck here on
Speaker 2: Aruba watching this search go down. One of the things
Speaker 2: that was revealed later was the police. He was unable
Speaker 2: to be questioned by police immediately afterwards because he was intoxicated.
Speaker 2: So he excused himself as is the police are rusor
Speaker 2: he excused himself to go lay down, Yeah, because he
Speaker 2: couldn't answer their questions. And then when he could answer
Speaker 2: their question he didn't seem like he was He didn't
Speaker 2: seem too freaked out about the fact that his traveling
Speaker 2: companion had vanished.
Speaker 6: The other thing that did you put in the book
Speaker 6: is that is included is that it took twenty minutes.
Speaker 6: He has a difficulty getting took twenty minutes for him
Speaker 6: to get someone to call police after emerging, you know,
Speaker 6: apparently so not much of a panic if you think
Speaker 6: twenty minutes it takes for him to get a message
Speaker 6: to someone to call police after he emerges from that water.
Speaker 2: No, And there is surveillance of it from the bar
Speaker 2: that shows him immediately afterwards, and you see him in
Speaker 2: his bathing suit, actually wearing a pair of sneakers and
Speaker 2: still wearing his really bad to pay and he doesn't
Speaker 2: seem in a huge rush, and he's knocking on the door,
Speaker 2: and it does seem that if I mean, I know
Speaker 2: personally I feel that if I was in a situation
Speaker 2: where someone I cared about, or someone I was traveling with,
Speaker 2: or someone who I saw across the beach was in
Speaker 2: some kind of trouble, I don't know how much lingering
Speaker 2: I would do in order to try to find somebody
Speaker 2: to help me.
Speaker 6: No, no evidence, no evidence of the proper usual behavior.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: And this is all part and parcel of Gary Giordano's personality, because,
Speaker 2: as it became revealed throughout the investigation, there here was
Speaker 2: a guy who uh he was He was arrested for
Speaker 2: shoplifting from Target stores. He would go into Target stores
Speaker 2: in the around the DC area, and he would fill
Speaker 2: his car up with electronics and he'd walk out. He'd
Speaker 2: just wheel the thing out, fill up his car. And
Speaker 2: this guy had the gall he would go back and
Speaker 2: do it again. But because I guess they have some
Speaker 2: sort of you know, security compliance thing where they don't
Speaker 2: really confront people, they would never be able to call
Speaker 2: the police in time and get this guy rest. Well,
Speaker 2: finally he was arrested, and he just didn't seem that
Speaker 2: concerned about the fact that he was he had stolen
Speaker 2: from from the store, from these stores, well, and so
Speaker 2: he was he was here was a very bizarre individual,
Speaker 2: someone who had a history of extremely bizarre behavior, very
Speaker 2: very suspicious behavior, and almost every aspect of his life.
Speaker 6: Well, he's a brazen thief, and that that would make
Speaker 6: sense to what he attempts to do here and how
Speaker 6: out of touch he is with you know reality here.
Speaker 6: You know, he's not certainly not insane, and he's not
Speaker 6: he's not a stupid man, but he acts quite foolishly.
Speaker 6: So he's will say, very very overly confident. The most
Speaker 6: interesting aspect that we alluded to it so we might
Speaker 6: as well address this, is that police, of course are
Speaker 6: going to look into motive for anybody being killed at
Speaker 6: any time by anyone. So what evidence do they find
Speaker 6: about the insurance policy and where do they get some
Speaker 6: of this evidence from in terms of who do they
Speaker 6: speak to in terms of this insurance policy.
Speaker 2: Well, not very long after Robin disappears, Gary calls his
Speaker 2: insurance company. Now he he claims that he was instructed
Speaker 2: to do that by he had retained a lawyer on
Speaker 2: the island of Aruba, and he claims that the lawyer
Speaker 2: told him, you need to call your insurance company, so
Speaker 2: he called his insurance company. Well, it turns out that
Speaker 2: Gary Giordano, before they had left the United States, Gary
Speaker 2: had taken out a traveler's insurance policy on Robin Gardner
Speaker 2: that covered accidental death. But it was a policy for
Speaker 2: a million five a million and a half dollar policy
Speaker 2: on someone he didn't really know, and he named himself
Speaker 2: the beneficiary and had her sign it. So here he
Speaker 2: was in contact with his insurance company, asking them all
Speaker 2: sorts of questions like what do I do, what happens
Speaker 2: if they don't find her? What about all any sort
Speaker 2: of bills that I get for the search? So he
Speaker 2: seemed much more concerned with this insurance policy than with
Speaker 2: Robin's well being. And as as he tried to leave Aruba,
Speaker 2: he was detained at the airport, covered in sweat, just
Speaker 2: sweating profusely and very acting, very suspicious. And so they
Speaker 2: stopped him feet from getting on the plane, and they,
Speaker 2: you know, they slapped the cuffs on him. And as
Speaker 2: he started to talk about what was going on, the
Speaker 2: insurance policy was revealed, and all of a sudden, not
Speaker 2: only does he have opportunity to kill Robin Gardner, but
Speaker 2: he has motive to kill Robin Gardner. And when you
Speaker 2: have opportunity and motive together and someone is sketchy, as
Speaker 2: Gary Giordano, well, you know, to a hammer, everything looks
Speaker 2: like a nail. So the police feel like we have
Speaker 2: an open and shutcase. We're going to lock this guy up,
Speaker 2: and we're finally going to prosecute somebody for you know,
Speaker 2: someone going missing. Well, it turns out it was much
Speaker 2: more difficult than that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, certainly, certainly. Yeah. So now what you do in
Speaker 6: Vanished Beauty is that you switched to the other story
Speaker 6: that you want to draw parallels to and draw the
Speaker 6: reader into for attention to the story about a woman
Speaker 6: named Tina Watson Christina May Tina Thomas born in nineteen
Speaker 6: seventy seven. Tell us a little bit about Tina Watson
Speaker 6: and her marriage in two thousand and three, but tell
Speaker 6: us about Tina Watson. Who was she?
Speaker 2: Tina Watson was another small town girl from Alabama who
Speaker 2: was turning thirty and watching all of her friends get married,
Speaker 2: and so she married a guy who her family didn't
Speaker 2: feel was right for her. They thought that she was
Speaker 2: settling for this guy, Gabe Gabe Watson. And Gabe was
Speaker 2: kind of another odd duck. He wasn't really the most
Speaker 2: personable guy, wasn't really the most ambitious guy, not necessarily
Speaker 2: the kind of person that the in laws really you know,
Speaker 2: looked at and said, Wow, We're thrilled to have you
Speaker 2: in our family. They were very very cold to Gabe,
Speaker 2: and Gabe in turn, just kind of alienated her family
Speaker 2: and insisted that you know Tina well, if he told her, like,
Speaker 2: if you want to spend time with me, you have
Speaker 2: to do what I'm interested in, which is scuba diving.
Speaker 2: You have to be involved in my scuba diving hobby. Now,
Speaker 2: Gabe had gone off and he had gotten himself certified
Speaker 2: as a scuba diver and certified as a rescue diver
Speaker 2: as a matter of fact, And so he gets Tina
Speaker 2: to also go to the same place, the same quarry
Speaker 2: in Alabama to get her certification. And she was thrilled
Speaker 2: to be part of his life, that she could spend
Speaker 2: weekends with him and they could enjoy this together, which
Speaker 2: is why for their dream honeymoon they were going to
Speaker 2: spend half of it sightseeing, which is what she wanted
Speaker 2: to do in Australia, and the other half they were
Speaker 2: going to spend scuba diving on an excursion boat that
Speaker 2: would take them around the Great Barrier Reef. Well, as
Speaker 2: it turns out, I guess learning how to scuba dive
Speaker 2: in a quarry in Alabama really isn't good practice for
Speaker 2: scuba diving in the open waters in a red flag
Speaker 2: dive area like the Great Barrier Reef.
Speaker 6: Now the thing is, though, too, you do a great
Speaker 6: job of explaining this, and I'm ignorant about this. I've
Speaker 6: never scuba dive, so you know, I'll put my head
Speaker 6: underwater and that's about it. So the thing is is
Speaker 6: that we're talking about he's been involved. He's a fanatic
Speaker 6: David since ninety six and he's had fifty five. He's
Speaker 6: an experienced diver. And you say, like I say, he's
Speaker 6: got his rescue diving certificate and he's certified, but he's
Speaker 6: been doing it for a long time. By the time
Speaker 6: we're talking two thousand and three, she says, yes, I
Speaker 6: want to do this, but we're talking she's doing it
Speaker 6: just a couple months. She just gets certified a couple months,
Speaker 6: like you say, in this pool, in a backyard or
Speaker 6: a pool somewhere, and it's only a couple months before
Speaker 6: this dream honeymoon. So I just wanted to say that
Speaker 6: as well, that compared to his experience, she is a
Speaker 6: real novice.
Speaker 2: Oh, she's a complete nube. And as it turns out,
Speaker 2: Gabe didn't realize the situation they were entering. He didn't
Speaker 2: realize that maybe they weren't prepared for dives like this,
Speaker 2: because even though he had been diving for quite a
Speaker 2: while and was certified as a rescue diver, he had
Speaker 2: never The only open water dives he had done were
Speaker 2: to a much shallower depth in much calmer waters in
Speaker 2: the Gulf of Mexico. Now the Great Barrier reef is
Speaker 2: is uh that that's definitely much more of an advanced
Speaker 2: scuba diving venue than say a quarry in Alabama or
Speaker 2: the calm waters around the Gulf of Mexico. And so
Speaker 2: they enter the water on their first dive after uh
Speaker 2: Tina had declined taking any sort of instructional dive from
Speaker 2: the dive master of their boat.
Speaker 6: I think that's important because she she declines twice. He
Speaker 6: he's this master diver, and he's and he's boord this
Speaker 6: this luxury boat, and part of this expedition is that,
Speaker 6: you know, he's taking responsibility. And despite she says, no, no,
Speaker 6: I'm with I'm with my best buddy, my partner, my my,
Speaker 6: my guy here, he says twice. So I think it's
Speaker 6: you know, ironic that he singles her out and says, listen,
Speaker 6: I think you should suggest I'm suggesting a training dive
Speaker 6: with a pro. And she declines twice.
Speaker 2: She said, no, no, I'm I'm here with my my husband,
Speaker 2: my dive buddy here. And Tina seems like the kind
Speaker 2: of she was kind of a submissive type, you know,
Speaker 2: she she really kind. She wanted to make Gabe happy
Speaker 2: was really what she wanted. And so there's no evidence
Speaker 2: that Gabe gave her a glance and said, oh, no,
Speaker 2: you're not getting a training dive. She she just flat
Speaker 2: turned it down. She just she thought that she was
Speaker 2: ready for something like this, and it turned out to
Speaker 2: be a very fatal mistake because as they entered the water,
Speaker 2: there was a situation Gabe had with his equipment. They
Speaker 2: had to hang back a little bit, and as they
Speaker 2: fixed Gabe's dive computer so that it worked properly so
Speaker 2: they could join the rest of the excursion group in
Speaker 2: the water right away, she had difficulty. And so within
Speaker 2: minutes of this dive, she was struggling and she turned
Speaker 2: she was she started into panic, and she started to sink.
Speaker 2: And Gabe turned around, and here she was trying to
Speaker 2: desperately write this situation, and she was she was overbreathing.
Speaker 2: She was panicked. She flailed her arm and knocked his
Speaker 2: mask away. And as he tried to write, his regulator
Speaker 2: his airpiece in his mouth and put his mask back
Speaker 2: in place. While his wife is panicking, he finally looks down.
Speaker 2: In the seconds that it took in order for him
Speaker 2: to be able to see and breathe again, he looked
Speaker 2: down and she was sinking. She was sinking. In this
Speaker 2: ninety foot water. She was ten feet below him, and
Speaker 2: he turned and he tried to kick down to her
Speaker 2: and claims that he couldn't reach her, that she was
Speaker 2: sinking too fast, she was plummeting towards the bottom. And
Speaker 2: this was in minutes of them.
Speaker 6: Entering the water, right six minutes soon.
Speaker 2: So Gabe then makes a snap decision instead of trying
Speaker 2: to go down and get her, he went for help.
Speaker 2: And they were already added depth at which he couldn't
Speaker 2: just shoot up to the surface if you know, he
Speaker 2: would he would have to ascend at a at a
Speaker 2: pace that would prevent him from from getting you know,
Speaker 2: air bubbles in his in his blood, you know, the benz.
Speaker 6: The benz, right, so it could you can you can.
Speaker 2: Die from the benz. And so he goes and he
Speaker 2: decides to get help while Tina sinks to the bottom.
Speaker 2: Now where the story becomes interesting and how it intersects
Speaker 2: uh with the Robin Gardner story. What I found very
Speaker 2: compelling was the fact that Gabe was accused of murdering
Speaker 2: his life, and it turned out that there was The
Speaker 2: accusation came because there was there was insurance policy, There
Speaker 2: was a million dollar life insurance policy that Tina's father
Speaker 2: claims Gabe wanted, which so that he would be the beneficiary.
Speaker 6: And this is shortly before their marriage.
Speaker 2: This is shortly before their marriage.
Speaker 6: Andreas and increased the amount to a million dollars.
Speaker 2: Right max out the policy. She goes to her father
Speaker 2: and says, Gabe wants me to increase the life insurance
Speaker 2: policy to the full million dollars and make him the beneficiary.
Speaker 2: So when so Tina sinks to the bottom and she
Speaker 2: dies and they rescue her body, but it's too late,
Speaker 2: and initially the whole thing is ruled as an accident.
Speaker 2: But it's not until her father gets a phone call
Speaker 2: from a couple of people who were on the boat
Speaker 2: who said, well, you know this Gabe afterwards, he didn't
Speaker 2: really seem that concerned. He seemed he seemed, you know,
Speaker 2: he's playing cards and I don't know, he just it
Speaker 2: doesn't all add up. And here was Gabe, this rescue diver,
Speaker 2: an experienced diver, and he couldn't rescue his wife.
Speaker 6: You added two things too as well, that you added
Speaker 6: a history of Gabe Watson despite having him claiming having
Speaker 6: hearing problems, had dove seventy five feet to help his
Speaker 6: partner out, his diving his diving partner, so there was
Speaker 6: at least that history of an attempt to dive down.
Speaker 6: She was down ninety to one hundred feet, but he
Speaker 6: had dove in the past seventy five feet to help
Speaker 6: his partner out, his buddy out. So the other thing
Speaker 6: was that you said that there was a singleton that
Speaker 6: master diver was the actual person that got her off
Speaker 6: the bottom because he was already underwater. For you said
Speaker 6: seven minutes. And there was a doctor Stuts that claimed,
Speaker 6: maybe I'll let you explain to the audience what he
Speaker 6: said he witnessed underwater regarding Gabe and Tina.
Speaker 2: Well as the authorities were questioning the other people who
Speaker 2: were on the excursion. This doctor and you know, you
Speaker 2: go and you ask a doctor what did you see?
Speaker 2: I mean, a doctor is a very credible witness, sure
Speaker 2: just by Richard the fact that he's a doctor. And
Speaker 2: the doctor says, well, I saw them struggling, and I
Speaker 2: saw I saw Gabe hold her in a bear hug
Speaker 2: moments before she sank to the bottom. And the suspicion
Speaker 2: became that Gabe had was holding Tina turned off her
Speaker 2: air until she suffocated, and then once she was held
Speaker 2: her until she she died, and then once she was dead,
Speaker 2: turned her air back on in order to make it
Speaker 2: seem like her her gear was working, not that somebody
Speaker 2: turned off her tank in mid dive, because that would
Speaker 2: be suspicious. And so he claims that he saw them
Speaker 2: in a bear hug, that she was struggling and then
Speaker 2: she sank to the bottom, and this is something that
Speaker 2: he claims he saw. And you know, as as the
Speaker 2: investigation went on, it really became this very questionable piece
Speaker 2: of evidence. Even though it was the most damning piece
Speaker 2: of evidence against Gabe. It was something that doctor Stutts
Speaker 2: had only seen very fleetingly and from thirty yards away,
Speaker 2: which is a considerable distance in the water, and from above.
Speaker 2: So here was somebody who saw something but wasn't really
Speaker 2: sure what they saw. But again, it was enough evidence
Speaker 2: in order for the Australian authorities to eventually years later
Speaker 2: reopened the case at the behest of Tina's parents and
Speaker 2: charge Gabe with murder, but they weren't able to prove
Speaker 2: that he murdered her.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, his case is we're going to do
Speaker 6: jump back to the Gary Giordano case. For the audience
Speaker 6: to see that, the reader to see the progress in
Speaker 6: that case. So let's go back to Gary Giordano and
Speaker 6: the mounting evidence against him, or the case against him,
Speaker 6: or the attempt. Now, what I wanted, what I was
Speaker 6: trying to allude to, was that if people are listening
Speaker 6: kind of carefully, Gary gi Ordano seems to have much
Speaker 6: more of a motive, a very clear motive, even though
Speaker 6: it's circumstantial evidence. There seems to be more of a
Speaker 6: case against him. It seemed for your average Joe as
Speaker 6: opposed to the Gabe Watson case. But just tell our
Speaker 6: audience before we get back to Giordano, which case did police,
Speaker 6: when prosecutors think they had a solid case, did they
Speaker 6: think Watson was comparable We'll say, to the Giordano case
Speaker 6: in terms of enough circumstantial evidence to be able to
Speaker 6: prosecute case.
Speaker 2: Well, the Gabe Watson case happened years earlier. It happened
Speaker 2: in two thousand and three, and it resurfaced again years
Speaker 2: later when the case had opened. So this happened before
Speaker 2: what had happened with Robin Gardner, and it was it
Speaker 2: was one of the similarities in this case. It just
Speaker 2: felt like I was looking at what happened with Rob
Speaker 2: with with Tina Watson and Gabe Watson, and I thought
Speaker 2: to myself, wait, is this what happened to Robin? Is
Speaker 2: this the same situation? And as they as I looked
Speaker 2: at the evidence that was against Gary Giordano, there was
Speaker 2: there were elements of his case, of Gary's case that
Speaker 2: were so open to interpretation. They didn't have any any
Speaker 2: physical evidence against this guy. The only evidence that they
Speaker 2: actually found was that he and Robin were involved in
Speaker 2: a sexual relationship, because he had a lot of let's say,
Speaker 2: very dirty pictures of them doing the nasty in their
Speaker 2: hotel room on his camera. So this was not something
Speaker 2: he had disclosed before. And as these little pieces of
Speaker 2: information about Gary Giordano that he had taken, these pictures
Speaker 2: of them having sex, these dirty pictures of her posing
Speaker 2: on the bed and just them and the act, and
Speaker 2: it just made him seem slimier. And the fact that
Speaker 2: he had tried to he contacted the insurance company, but
Speaker 2: this was the only evidence they had. They couldn't link
Speaker 2: him to any sort of physical elevenance and they didn't
Speaker 2: have a body, and without a body, it was even
Speaker 2: more impossible for them to try and pinpoint a cause
Speaker 2: of death or how he could have done anything to her.
Speaker 2: So he spent four months in jail while they tried
Speaker 2: to They they opened the case up, they tried to
Speaker 2: find more eyewitnesses, anyone who had come for us. And
Speaker 2: there were people who claimed that they saw Gary and
Speaker 2: Robin talking to some strange man, some strange tattooed man
Speaker 2: that afternoon before she vanished. And this man also vanished
Speaker 2: from the island. They couldn't find him, and and of
Speaker 2: course there were there were accusations of of well, this
Speaker 2: whole Madie Holloway case became the suss that you're in.
Speaker 2: Vanderslute became a he became a sensation when he started
Speaker 2: to talk about, oh, I sold Madleie Holloway into white
Speaker 2: slavery to a Venezuelan man. So all of a sudden
Speaker 2: people started to, well, look, did Gary Giordano sell Robin
Speaker 2: Gardner into some you know, prostitution ring, some South American
Speaker 2: prostitution ring. Did she end up like Jurine vander Slut's
Speaker 2: story where he claims that some man that he met
Speaker 2: at a casino offered him ten grand for a blonde woman,
Speaker 2: And so all of these bizarre stories and twists from
Speaker 2: the Natalie Holloway case became points of interest in the
Speaker 2: Robin Gardner case because of the similarity of the disappearances.
Speaker 2: So people were looking for this strange man who was
Speaker 2: a pimp for the South American you know, underground, and
Speaker 2: they were looking for ways that Gary Giordano could have
Speaker 2: been somehow interested in the Natalie Holloway disappearance or was
Speaker 2: he somehow tied into organized crime. I mean, here's a
Speaker 2: guy with a vowel at the end of his name.
Speaker 2: He must be tied into some sort of mafia somewhere.
Speaker 6: And so that, let's the thing I wanted to ask
Speaker 6: was the when do police get to speak to actually
Speaker 6: to Sharon Cohen, who had three kids with him, and
Speaker 6: she said he can't control his anger. And then they
Speaker 6: found a very very interesting person named Jeannette Farrago, and
Speaker 6: so she talked about stalking. And then there's the offer.
Speaker 6: Then there's the offer with the mother and the daughter
Speaker 6: and the modeling, which you know, just shows his character,
Speaker 6: but also the very very ironic and maybe we'll say
Speaker 6: cryptic he says something referring to Natalie Holloway. So tell
Speaker 6: us a little bit about that. That's a fascinating aspect
Speaker 6: of this too. What he says and his past behavior
Speaker 6: and when he's talking to the mother trying to procure
Speaker 6: her daughter. Very interesting story.
Speaker 2: So as this story opens up and as the news
Speaker 2: are digging around for information about this guy, Gary Giardano,
Speaker 2: they find his first wife and they find that there
Speaker 2: are you know, you can look up police records, so
Speaker 2: they're very easy to find, especially in the state of Maryland.
Speaker 2: So they look up his police records and there he is,
Speaker 2: you know, domestic abuse against his wife and he was
Speaker 2: They look into the records and the police showed up
Speaker 2: and they had a fight and she claimed he was abusive.
Speaker 2: And then there was this girlfriend that was shortly after
Speaker 2: his divorce, and she claims that he was stalking her
Speaker 2: and he threatened her, and he was very controlling and
Speaker 2: made her text him anytime she went somewhere to prove
Speaker 2: that she wasn't with somebody very jealous man. And so
Speaker 2: this thread of this jealousy and controlling behavior and somewhat
Speaker 2: psychotic personality was definitely something. This history of Mary Giardano
Speaker 2: wasn't painting a very nice picture of him. As a
Speaker 2: matter of fact, this Janet Ferrago. She claims that Gary
Speaker 2: once showed up outside of her window wearing a deer
Speaker 2: mask and holding a flashlight to his safe, just to
Speaker 2: freak her out or something. That he had taken pictures
Speaker 2: of her when they were having sex, and he had
Speaker 2: made copies of them, and after they broke up, he
Speaker 2: had put them in her neighbor's mailboxes to harass her.
Speaker 2: And she was so scared of the guy she wouldn't
Speaker 2: go through with the restraining order.
Speaker 6: That's right.
Speaker 2: And so as people are coming out of the woodwork,
Speaker 2: as the press, as people are locating these people who
Speaker 2: had any sort of you know, legal conflicts with Gary Giordano,
Speaker 2: and these people, these women who claimed that he was
Speaker 2: he was not a very nice person. Well, all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, this woman comes out and she says, well,
Speaker 2: not that long ago, Gary Giordano posed as a modeling
Speaker 2: talent manager and he found my underage daughter's picture online
Speaker 2: on one of these modeling websites, amateur modeling websites, and
Speaker 2: he called us up and he offered her a get this,
Speaker 2: a trip to Aruba for a modeling shoot, a modeling
Speaker 2: shoot that of course did not exist, and Gary said, well,
Speaker 2: you know, she I will I will be with her
Speaker 2: the whole time. You know, I'll be her chaperone, and
Speaker 2: no need for you to come, mom, I'll be taking
Speaker 2: care of it. Well, you know, we'll be staying in
Speaker 2: the same room. Don't worry, your underage daughter will be
Speaker 2: fine in Aruba on her modeling gig that doesn't really exist.
Speaker 2: And then when she started to question him, all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, in what would seem like a very unprofessional way,
Speaker 2: Gary started to proposition her as well, well, well I
Speaker 2: could probably do a mother daughter shoot and you know
Speaker 2: would I've never been with a mother and daughter together.
Speaker 2: He got really kind of, you know, very very greasy
Speaker 2: at that point.
Speaker 6: What did he say about Natalie Holloway though.
Speaker 2: He said, because the mother was like, well, you know
Speaker 2: you're you're going to take my daughter out of the country,
Speaker 2: he said, oh, you know, don't worry. This isn't going
Speaker 2: to be another Natalie Holloway thing. These are this is
Speaker 2: the He's he's invoking the memory of Natalie Holloway to
Speaker 2: try and reassure this mother that he's going to take
Speaker 2: care of her daughter on this trip to Aruba, that
Speaker 2: he wants to take her to an underage girl, and
Speaker 2: so it was, uh, well, she wasn't underaged, really she was.
Speaker 2: She was really kind of of age but young. And
Speaker 2: and so when this comes out in the wake of
Speaker 2: his arrest, all of a sudden, you know, there is
Speaker 2: even more suspicion heaped on Gary Giordano. Here's someone who
Speaker 2: has a history of lying to women to get them
Speaker 2: to try to go to Aruba with them with him
Speaker 2: so that he can have sex with him. He's a
Speaker 2: sexual predator.
Speaker 6: He had also purchased, which is even more interesting, He
Speaker 6: had also purchased an insurance policy a month before or
Speaker 6: six months before for Carrie Emerson.
Speaker 2: Yes, and so here here was here was this All
Speaker 2: of a sudden, there was a series brewing that this
Speaker 2: was his plan. He's going to take a woman to Aruba,
Speaker 2: make her vanish without Eddie eyewitnesses, and then claim this
Speaker 2: big insurance prize. And it became even more suspicious when
Speaker 2: it was revealed later on that not long before this,
Speaker 2: Gary tried to sue a company he was. Gary Giordano
Speaker 2: owns this very small HR tech HR firm that he
Speaker 2: runs out of his house, million dollar mansion he has
Speaker 2: in uh outside of DC, and so he had tried
Speaker 2: to sue one of his clients, Uh for five million dollars. Well,
Speaker 2: it turns out that Gary Uh the case ended up
Speaker 2: being dropped because or Gary ended up dropping the case
Speaker 2: because it was he had he had forged documents, he
Speaker 2: he committed fraud. So in order to cleanly walk away
Speaker 2: and not be arrested for fraud or you know, anything
Speaker 2: like that, he was he walked away from this case.
Speaker 2: But here was a guy who's willing to commit fraud
Speaker 2: in court to try to sue for five million dollars
Speaker 2: against a company that he claims did him wrong, which didn't.
Speaker 2: So you know this again, all of these things come out.
Speaker 2: Here's a guy willing to scam millions of dollars from
Speaker 2: this company. Of course this all fits into his profile.
Speaker 6: Now what is we've only got We're going to go
Speaker 6: a little bit later because we have two detailed stories here,
Speaker 6: but I know you don't want to give too much
Speaker 6: information here in terms of some of the surprises here,
Speaker 6: in terms of is there a conviction are these what's
Speaker 6: what's the success at trial? What's the defense? How do
Speaker 6: they try to defend against this? So we won't have
Speaker 6: time to go into all that, But let's first go
Speaker 6: into Gary Giordano. Now that the police have all this information,
Speaker 6: can they lay charges? And how does that work in Aruba?
Speaker 6: How does how does that work?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: The justice system in Aruba is different from the justice
Speaker 2: system we have here in America. The Aruba is a
Speaker 2: Dutch protectorate, so the the Dutch laws are are far
Speaker 2: different in terms of the rights that you have when
Speaker 2: you are arrested. For instance, like when you are arrested
Speaker 2: in Aruba, like he was not able to have counsel
Speaker 2: when he was being questioned, and they were able to
Speaker 2: hold him for extended periods of time and they would
Speaker 2: get extensions on this detainment. So originally he was only
Speaker 2: going to be detained for you know, sixty days, and
Speaker 2: then they extended another thirty days, in another thirty days
Speaker 2: while they tried to build a case against him, and
Speaker 2: at during this time, without any physical evidence that they
Speaker 2: could find, all they had was opportunity and motive and
Speaker 2: with no body. Same thing with Natalie Holloway, with nobody
Speaker 2: they weren't able to. It's not that they didn't want to.
Speaker 2: The solicitor general, their attorney general type figure. It's not
Speaker 2: that they didn't want to bring charges against him. They
Speaker 2: were unable to file charges against him because the country,
Speaker 2: the incial system, demanded that he be let go because
Speaker 2: there was no evidence against him that they could they
Speaker 2: could prove that he had done anything wrong. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: but what really, what really happened there? It goes so
Speaker 2: much further than just that, than just the lack of evidence,
Speaker 2: because what really happened there is really what I feel
Speaker 2: I discovered what truly happened to Robin Gardner, and it's
Speaker 2: even more shocking than what you may think was done
Speaker 2: to Robin Gardner.
Speaker 6: M m, well, let's just leave it at that. We
Speaker 6: will leave the audience wanting more on the other side
Speaker 6: of the coin here with Gabe Watson in terms of
Speaker 6: evidence against him again, how did police proceed and what
Speaker 6: was the success in terms of being fifiled charges against him?
Speaker 2: Well, when Gabe Watson, when they when they filed charges
Speaker 2: against Gabe Watson for the murder of his wife, Tina Watson,
Speaker 2: he uh, he volunteered to come back to Australia to
Speaker 2: face the music, and he went of his own volition,
Speaker 2: not knowing that if he would ever come home, because
Speaker 2: if he was convicted of murder. He could spend the
Speaker 2: rest of his life behind bars in a foreign country.
Speaker 6: But would sorry, would a defense lawyer advise like because
Speaker 6: you know, it's like the Amanda Knox the refiled charges,
Speaker 6: But any defense lawyer worth a Nichol is going to say,
Speaker 6: don't bother, don't go it. Could he have gotten defense
Speaker 6: advice like that if you know?
Speaker 5: Or was it?
Speaker 6: Did it really represent that he was doing the honorable, honest,
Speaker 6: you know, something that an innocent person might do.
Speaker 2: Well. What had happened was the case got reopened because
Speaker 2: Tina Watson's family went to their congressman went to you know,
Speaker 2: they were going trying to get anyone who had listened,
Speaker 2: especially in government, to compel the Australians to open this case.
Speaker 2: So there was enough. There was definitely a very strong
Speaker 2: feeling that Gabe Watson said, you're gonna have to drag
Speaker 2: me back, kicking and screaming, that they would have done so.
Speaker 2: And he felt that there was enough evidence to prove
Speaker 2: that he didn't murder her, that he was willing to
Speaker 2: go back. And the fact that he was willing to
Speaker 2: go back was a very very big factor in what
Speaker 2: had happened because in the end, they couldn't charge him
Speaker 2: with murder. The best that they could do was except
Speaker 2: a plea bargain for manslaughter, and a specific type of
Speaker 2: manslaughter in Australia that deemed Gabe Watson was he was negligent.
Speaker 6: Homicide.
Speaker 2: Well, no, that he was a bad dive buddy, okay,
Speaker 2: really is what it comes down to. And so they
Speaker 2: expected the family still expected that they were going to
Speaker 2: throw the book at him. And I think Gabe accepted
Speaker 2: his fate, that he bore some responsibility as to what happened,
Speaker 2: because ultimately he mistook his certification for experience, and when
Speaker 2: it came down to it, he was a bad dive
Speaker 2: buddy and he was not the right person to be there,
Speaker 2: and he had the responsibility, especially in Australian under Australian law,
Speaker 2: when you undertake some sort of extreme sports or you know,
Speaker 2: anything like that with someone, you have a responsibility for
Speaker 2: their well being. And since she didn't come back, he
Speaker 2: was convicted of being a bad dive buddy and he
Speaker 2: went to jail. And what I found very interesting about
Speaker 2: this case was not so much really what happens to
Speaker 2: Gabe Watson, because I feel like I can talk about
Speaker 2: what happens to Gabe Watson and reveal what happens to him,
Speaker 2: But is how it actually informs what had happened and
Speaker 2: the investigation and really the nuances in the circumstances behind
Speaker 2: the Robin Gardner case, Because at first I thought that
Speaker 2: this was what happened to Robin Gardner, but it turns
Speaker 2: out that that's just the very the very tip of
Speaker 2: the iceberg, the very edge of the story.
Speaker 6: Wow. And with with Gabe Watson, what what is your
Speaker 6: conclusion from that that that.
Speaker 2: Gabe Watson, that Tina Watson died because she married an
Speaker 2: idiot because here was here she was she was emotionally,
Speaker 2: uh physically and mentally unprepared for this dive that she
Speaker 2: undertook in it, she took an advanced dive with little
Speaker 2: or no skills, with someone who was not able to
Speaker 2: identify the danger the dangerous situation that they were about
Speaker 2: to enter. And really, the title of the book Vanished
Speaker 2: Beauty is not just a reference to here are two
Speaker 2: beautiful women who vanished, but it has more to do
Speaker 2: with society's viewpoint of what happens. It's really the book
Speaker 2: is not just about these cases, but it's about how
Speaker 2: we react and how we perceive these cases and how
Speaker 2: we treat the whole concept of the accused, and so
Speaker 2: it's uh. And then there's another aspect to the title
Speaker 2: which goes which speaks towards what really happened to these women,
Speaker 2: but that I'll leave for the for the readers.
Speaker 6: Oh great, Yeah, it's a very very interesting uh. And
Speaker 6: then I'm I was interested to hear your conclusion on
Speaker 6: Gabe Watson too, because again, you know, throughout the story
Speaker 6: you don't know if it's a lot more on the
Speaker 6: fario than that. And in terms of his motive, again
Speaker 6: he has the insurance policy. You do allude to that
Speaker 6: he did do this rescue before seventy five feet and
Speaker 6: then just leave the reader to decide is this guy
Speaker 6: guilty or not? And so you leave it up up
Speaker 6: in the air, and I applaud you for that, and
Speaker 6: I'm you know, I think the audience has been titillated
Speaker 6: here in terms of what exactly Robin Gardner, what was
Speaker 6: she up to? And more about Gary ge Ordonald because
Speaker 6: obviously we couldn't cover everything of this guy's wacky character.
Speaker 6: So something for the audience to look forward to in
Speaker 6: reading Vanish Beauty so I want to thank you for
Speaker 6: a very engaging interview and keeping the mystery alive to
Speaker 6: this book for sure, certainly, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was my absolute pleasure.
Speaker 6: Well, I want to thank you very much and I
Speaker 6: hope to have you back on again talking about another
Speaker 6: one her fine books. And again, thank you very much
Speaker 6: for this interview, and good night.
Speaker 2: M h yeah, mm hmm