As a hint of suspicion remained, Ruth called for a new investigation in 2014. Thanks to better techniques, the cold case team quickly found new DNA traces on Rikki’s clothing, which had been thrown into a nearby garbage can by the perpetrator. The trail led to the now grown Watson.
Missed opportunities
Watson appeared to have shared fantasies about murdered children as a child and had also shown a morbid interest in Rikki’s case at the time. He now has a history of fornication, animal abuse and intimate partner violence.
He turned out to have been heard by the police as a child, after a local resident saw him walking with Rikki on the day of the murder. However, because officers believed that Rikki had been killed by his mother later in the day, they missed the significance of that statement.
The prosecutor called the decision to designate Ruth Neave as the prime suspect after the conviction yesterday “a fundamental mistake that led to a misfocused investigation”. A police spokesman promised that “lessons have been learned from the 1994 investigation”.
‘Liar and a fantasist’
Shortly after being arrested in 2016, Watson fled the country on bail. Via Rotterdam and France he eventually ended up in Portugal, where he was arrested again.
During an interrogation, he told police that his DNA may have gotten on Rikki’s clothes when he lifted the boy over a fence to watch construction work. However, officers managed to find video evidence that there had been no high fence around the construction site Watson was talking about.
The jury agreed with the accuser’s description that Watson was “a liar and a fantasist”. It will become clear next month what punishment the judge will impose. Because Watson was still a minor at the time of the murder, he will be sentenced under juvenile law. That could mean a life sentence, with a minimum of 12 years.
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