Dau Soko
Because police knew there was no way Scott Watson could have carried out these "murders?" they had to manually create an opportunity in time for him to get rid of the bodies. The story they came up with was that he went out into Cook Strait and disposed of the bodies there.
As the evidence stood there was no opportunity for this to happen between leaving Furnaeux Lodge and arriving at Erie Bay other than a couple of "non" sightings. So what to do?
Much has already been mentioned about the Erie Bay caretaker and his children gradually changing Scotts arrive time at Erie Bay from between 10.00am and 12.00 noon on the 1st of January 1998 to around 5.00pm after said caretaker was charged with a serious drug offence that carried prison time.
There was also a sighting of a yacht in Cook Strait by 2 passengers, a father and Son on the ferry Aratika, albeit towing an aluminium dinghy as opposed to the wooden one that belonged to Blade. This sighting was confirmed as taken place some 5 nautical miles out into Cook Strait from the tory Channel entrance as it coincided with a main engine speed reduction recorded in the Aratika's log.
Even if Scotts arrival time at Erie Bay was around 5.00pm the trip from that location would have been impossible, as documented in the Keith Hunter Documentary "Murder on the Blade?" And this NZ herald article. The prosecution answer to this in their final summing up at trial was "So What".
But it goes deeper than that, the police actually knew that the yacht in Cook Strait was not Blade but was in fact Dau Soko. Dau Soko had left Wellington that morning and arrived at the Tory Chanel entrance at 5.00pm. This fact was hidden by a "typo" in the where the officer had written 2.00pm as the arrival time at the Tory Chanel entrance even though this was at odds with the skipper's statement of 5.00pm and his arrival time at Picton of 9:00pm.
Had the above evidence been presented to the jury it is doubtful that they could have formed the opinion that it was Blade, and by extension Scott Watson, dumping bodies in Cook Strait at 4:30 pm on 1/1/98.
The nonsense didn't just stop there, after the trial the Navy was employed to carry out a sidescan sonar search of the area and found nothing of relevance (report). But Rob Pope still insisted there was a "high probability" the bodies were there weighted down in a sleeping bag which resulted in the families of the missing pair funding a private recovery operation at great expense. Nothing was recovered.