After a hung jury in November, prosecutors are retrying a former Tucson Fire Department captain on three murder charges.
Opening statements were held Wednesday in the retrial of David Watson, 47. He is charged with one count of second-degree murder in the 2000 death of his ex-wife Linda Watson, 35. He is also charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the 2003 fatal shooting of Linda Watson’s mother, Marilyn Cox, 63, and Cox’s friend Renee Farnsworth, 53.
After Linda Watson’s disappearance, investigators found blood on the floor of her house in the 2600 block of West Curtis Road. More blood was found on a plastic trash bag and the cord of a vacuum cleaner.
Her skull was found three years later near the Silverbell Mine northwest of Tucson, but it wasn’t identified as hers until 2011 because of the mistaken assumption the skull belonged to an illegal border crosser who died in the desert.
In 2003, Cox and Farnsworth were fatally shot in Cox’s driveway by a lone gunman after Cox’s first unsupervised visit with the Watsons’ daughter.
On the third day of deliberations, the jury in the first trial notified Pima County Superior Court Judge Richard Fields they could not reach a verdict.
On Wednesday, defense lawyer Michael Storie and prosecutor Jonathan Mosher reiterated many of the arguments they made in the first trial.
This time, they made their opening statements in front of Superior Court Judge Deborah Bernini. Fields was unable to preside over the second trial because of medical issues.
Storie said the prosecution did not have enough evidence to prove Linda Watson was murdered, let alone that David Watson killed her.
Mosher cast the killings as the result of a custody battle over the Watsons’ daughter, who was 4 at the time of her mother’s disappearance.
Several weeks after a judge ordered Cox’s visitation rights be enforced, Cox and Farnsworth were gunned down, Mosher said.
The killer fired five times, including a close-range shot to the back of Cox’s head, Mosher said.
“This was not a robbery; this was not a carjacking; this was not gang violence,” Mosher said. “This was an assassination.”
Storie told jurors the custody battle over the Watsons’ daughter was led by Rosemary Watson, who was David Watson’s wife at the time.
“Rosemary drove the bus; Dave was the passenger,” Storie said, noting Rosemary Watson picketed outside the courthouse for three days after an unfavorable ruling involving the custody dispute.
Storie said a former boyfriend of Linda Watson was a more likely suspect in her death than David Watson and criticized the investigation of the incidents.
He also noted there was no indication of foul play on Linda Watson’s skull and the gun used to kill Cox and Farnsworth was never found.
Mosher cautioned the jurors against believing what they see about DNA forensics in movies, which is “not remotely connected to reality.”
Investigators rarely find enough DNA evidence to allow them to “follow a trail like Hansel and Gretel,” Mosher said.
Storie told the jurors the case “boils down to the credibility of Rosemary Watson.”
Rosemary Watson provided an alibi for her then-husband David Watson for the 2000 and 2003 incidents, but recanted her account shortly after their 2007 divorce.
Mosher urged the jurors to view Rosemary Watson not as a jilted lover, but as a person who struggled to believe what her husband told her.
After a harsh verbal exchange with David Watson, Rosemary Watson went to a detective with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department and said her ex-husband was not at home during either of the incidents, Mosher said.
The question Storie posed to the jurors was whether Rosemary Watson was lying when she provided an alibi to David Watson or when she told investigators she lied about the alibi.
Watson worked at the Tucson Fire Department from 1995 to 2015 and was promoted to captain in 2007.
