The Ben Smart and Olivia Hope Case

In the early hours of 1 January 1998, Ben Smart and Olivia Hope were looking for somewhere to sleep after celebrations at Furneaux Lodge in Endeavour Inlet. They travelled by water taxi and were last seen leaving with a lone man after accepting an offer to stay on a boat. Neither Ben nor Olivia has been seen since, and their bodies have never been recovered.

The investigation and prosecution

The disappearance triggered a major police investigation in the Marlborough Sounds. Investigators came to believe that Picton resident Scott Watson was the lone man seen with Ben and Olivia and that the pair had been murdered aboard his yacht, Blade.

Watson denied killing them. After a three-month trial involving hundreds of witnesses, a jury found him guilty of both murders in 1999. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. The absence of recovered bodies did not prevent the Crown from prosecuting the case as murder.

Why the convictions became controversial

Parts of the prosecution case have been debated for decades, including identification evidence and forensic hair evidence. Watson has maintained his innocence and pursued multiple legal challenges. The controversy should not be confused with the current legal position: he remains convicted unless and until a court sets those convictions aside.

The 2025 Court of Appeal decision

In September 2025, the Court of Appeal declined to quash Watson’s convictions after a reference that required the court to consider whether a miscarriage of justice may have occurred. The court reviewed the disputed identification and forensic issues and concluded that the convictions should stand.

The Supreme Court appeal in 2026

On 10 March 2026, the Supreme Court granted Watson leave to appeal in part. The approved question concerns whether the Court of Appeal was correct to find no miscarriage of justice arising from the trial judge’s decision to admit visual identification evidence. The Supreme Court’s public case information lists the hearing for 20–21 October 2026.

As of this page’s review on 21 August 2026, that hearing has not yet occurred. It would therefore be inaccurate to describe the convictions as overturned, or to describe the appeal as finally resolved.

What remains unanswered

Whatever the outcome of the legal challenge, a central factual absence remains: Ben Smart and Olivia Hope have never been found. Their disappearance became one of New Zealand’s most prominent no-body murder cases and continues to generate public scrutiny because the legal findings and disputes about parts of the evidence have existed side by side for decades.