HOLIDAY SPECIAL: The New Year's Murders 2 with Vanessa Richardson
Murder: True Crime Stories
Crime House
4.6 • 769 Ratings
🗓️ 1 January 2026
⏱️ 36 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The investigation into the disappearance of Olivia Hope and Ben Smart intensifies in this second episode, following detectives as they seize on 26-year-old Scott Watson as their primary suspect despite mismatched witness descriptions, a missing boat, and no bodies ever found. Carter and Vanessa examine the controversial forensic hair evidence, disputed scratch marks, shifting witness identifications, jailhouse informants, and the prosecution’s improvised “two-trip theory,” all of which led to Watson’s conviction in one of New Zealand’s most divisive murder cases. As key witnesses later recant and public skepticism grows, the episode explores decades of appeals, wavering public opinion, and the families’ painful search for closure—raising the haunting question of whether the truth about what happened to Olivia and Ben has ever truly been uncovered.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, Crime House community. It's Vanessa Richardson. |
| 0:05.5 | Exciting news, conspiracy theories, cults and crimes is leveling up. |
| 0:10.2 | Starting the week of January 12th, you'll be getting two episodes every week. |
| 0:14.8 | Wednesdays, we unravel the conspiracy or the cult, and on Fridays we look at a corresponding crime. |
| 0:21.3 | Every week has a theme. |
| 0:23.0 | Tech, bioterror, power, paranoia, you name it. |
| 0:27.1 | Follow conspiracy theories, cults, and crimes now on your podcast app, |
| 0:31.4 | because you're about to dive deeper, get weirder, and go darker than ever before. |
| 0:50.3 | Music get weirder and go darker than ever before. This is Crime House. |
| 0:52.3 | We've all heard about the five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. |
| 1:00.9 | A step-by-step guide like this sounds comforting, but anyone who's lost someone knows it's not that simple. |
| 1:08.6 | Grief is a process, and it's different for everyone. |
| 1:12.1 | And for those people who have lost a loved one, |
| 1:15.7 | that list that Carter mentioned misses a crucial step, closure. |
| 1:21.0 | Unfortunately, that's not always so easy to find. |
| 1:24.2 | In 1998, the families of 17-year-old Olivia Hope and 21-year-old Ben Smart learned that the hard way. |
| 1:32.2 | Olivia and Ben had gone missing after a New Year's party and were presumed dead. |
| 1:37.6 | The police had a suspect in mind, but one very important piece of the puzzle was missing. |
| 1:46.0 | Their bodies. People's lives are like a story. |
| 1:58.0 | There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. But you don't always know which |
| 2:02.7 | part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and we don't always get to know |
| 2:09.5 | the real ending. This is a special New Year's episode of Murder, True Crime Stories, |
... |
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