My name is Alex MacDonald. In 2009 I was on a sailing adventure to Tonga that turned into my worst nightmare. The captain went overboard, and when I finally made it to land, the police were waiting for me. I am innocent. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017. (WATER RUSHING, SPLASHING) As I got to the top of the ladder, coming out of the cabin, there was no sign of him. Stop it! Stop it! We were in a panicked situation here. We got a guy overboard, and we're in the middle of nowhere in the big ocean. Hang on, mate! Hang on! Stop it! Give me more rope! There was none else who was gonna help me. It was only him and I. Looking in his eyes, he looked quite frightened. (THRASHING) Just within a matter of just a few minutes or less ` a few seconds, he was just going out of sight. (TENSE MUSIC) Round about 10.40am on Sunday the 23rd of, uh, August,... defence patrol located a yacht ` The Santana. On-board was Alex MacDonald, a 65-year-old New Zealander. I` I remember walking in the door, and he was sitting here, the desk's like this. And I went, 'Oh, what have we got here?' By the time I'd arrived back on shore, I was all bruised and bloodied, and then the police got hold of me and accused me of throwing this guy overboard. Do you think Alex MacDonald murdered David? My answer is no. He didn't murder David. (REWINDING TAPE WHIRRING) (POIGNANT MUSIC) I'd just come back from a three-month tour around Australia, and in those three months, I'd only had, like, two days of wet weather. And I got home to North Canterbury in June, the middle of our winter,... and I decided, 'Well, this isn't much of a life. I'll head up to the islands, to a better climate.' I remember once, years ago, an old guy telling me that if there's ever any shit in a man, it'll come out on a shearing board. I guess I'm a bit of a loner ` I, um... I enjoy a bit of adventure. I seek adventure. I guess that's why I got into the motor racing. Alex and I have worked together for 20-odd years shearing together, beside each other. He's a competitive person. He goes in there to win. If you get second, you're only the first of the losers. There's not a lot of middle ground with him. And when you're working in such an intense environment day in and day out, seven days a week, you get a pretty good feel for how mentally tough they are, physically tough they are. (ENGINE REVS) He's always done a bit of travelling, but I think he decided to do more travelling after his son got killed. Oh, it was a huge shock. You know? You don't expect, um, your children to go before you. It changed my attitude completely. (ENGINE REVS) (TENSE MUSIC) (PLANE ENGINE WHIRRS) I arrived up in Rarotonga on the 10th of July at, um... at 1 o'clock in the morning. I'd been there a couple of weeks, and I was starting to get sick of the same old routine. This` You know, every day on the scooter, round to a different resort, have lunch, uh, wait till round about 4 o'clock, that was beer-o'clock time. So I thought I would book my flights home to New Zealand. It was about this time that, um,... I was talking to Henry. Henry was, uh... He's an American chap, but he now lives in Wellington. He mentioned to be about would I be interested in, uh, going on a yacht trip from Rarotonga to Tonga. I said, 'No, I wouldn't really,' because, um, you know, I'd been out to the airport and arranged my flights home. Here am I at 65 years of age, and I was thinking this during the night, 'I might never get another chance like this. This is, you know, something I'd never done, 'and probably most people haven't been on an ocean-going yacht.' And the next day I said to Henry, 'Can you take me down and we'll meet the captain?' A lot of guys that've worked in the shearing industry for a reasonable period of time have more of an attitude of, 'We'll give it a go,' than, um, 'Are we allowed to do that?' It'll be a bit of a new experience for me, but... Oh, you'll be right. (BOTH LAUGH) He would've had that attitude ` 'Why not? Let's give it a go.' Tuesday 28th of July ` met Dave off the yacht, Santana. Discussed going to Tonga. Henry introduced me to, um,... David Parkinson. He was the same age as me, 65 years of age, and we had a common interest in motorcycles and doing, you know, long trips. I went on-board, and, um, I just put my hand out on a rail, and there was a cat sitting there, and he just tore at the back of my hand and ripped the skin off my hand, and I, 'Gee, he doesn't want me on-board.' You could see in` in` in,... um, the way David spoke that he... he had been a military-type person. He was a high-ranking officer in the, uh... the British Royal Marines and had served time in, uh... in the Falklands. He was quite slight. He didn't seem to be in great health and, yeah, very, very thin and that. And then he told me that he had Parkinson's disease. And I thought he's just pulling my leg, because I knew his name was David Parkinson. But it was actually in a quite advanced stage. And he had a implant in his chest... that would send impulses to his brain to try and control this Parkinson's. It didn't really enter my head that it could be a disadvantage or that. I never really thought about it. (RELAXING MUSIC) Wednesday ` had a beer with Dave and Henry on the boat, and then came home for a steak-and-vege tea. David had two other people who were gonna come with us on this trip. There was a German couple. So he couldn't give me a time when we were going to leave, because he was waiting to hear back from them. He said, 'If we get good weather, which we should, it's a seven-day trip. If we have a bit of rough weather, it'll be 10 days. So I altered my tickets to fly out of Tonga in 14 days' time. (SPLASH!) (RELAXING MUSIC) The next day I went down and` and seen David, and, um, I said to him, uh,... 'Have we heard from this German couple? Are they coming with us?' And he said, 'I don't they are.' But he said, 'I think you and I would be able to do it on our own.' David would've been quite surprised with` with Alex mentally and physically. He's quite meticulous with small details. Anything mechanically that he would see wrong, he would be capable of fixing it. So, David decided that Thursday the 6th of August was the D-Day ` that's when we were gonna leave. (SEAGULLS SQUAWK) (TENSE MUSIC) The morning we... we were getting prepared to leave, David said to me about lashing these, um, diesel drums. And I said to him, 'What sort of knot will I use?' And he said, 'Well, haven't you ever been a bloody Boy Scout?' And I said, 'No, I haven't. I ride motorbikes, and I don't tie them up with ropes.' I thought, 'I'm gonna tell him to stick this up his arse. I'm not putting up with that.' And I held my tongue. And I thought, you know, 'Just let it go.' (OCEAN LAPS) Henry said, 'Oh, you're gonna be in for a wonderful trip. The long-range forecast is great.' David... (CLEARS THROAT) started the motors on the boat and was motoring forward, and I looked back, and I see Henry standing on shore. I was getting sprayed with water. I manage a quick wee wave to them. It was a beautiful day ` clear blue skies, no big seas running. What a great thing to do! How lucky I was! Um, it... (LAUGHS) didn't turn out to be lucky. (LAUGHS) (DRAMATIC MUSIC) 1 (SOMBRE MUSIC) Thursday the 6th of August ` good sailing with about a metre swell. It was a great experience. I thought, 'This is great.' And I` I said to David, 'Would you like something to eat?' And he said, 'Yeah, that'd be nice.' He was on the tiller, and I was just` I was just sitting there stargazing, looking around. So, I went below into the cabin, and we'd bought all this fresh food and fresh bread and tomatoes and lettuces. Hey, Dave. Would you like a bit of salami in your sandwich? So I made us a nice big lettuce and tomato and ham sandwiches and made a coffee, and I thought, 'What a great life this is!' Here you go, mate. Thank you. (LAUGHS) It was about that stage that David had given me the routine of what was gonna happen for the trip. It was something we hadn't discussed before. He said, 'We will, um... We'll do three-hour shifts. 'What do you think about that?' And, well, I didn't know anything about it. I'd never done this sort of thing. (TENSE MUSIC) So my first shift was, uh, 6 o'clock on that Thursday afternoon. 9 o'clock came round,... and I thought, 'Oh, Dave will be up to do his shift.' But 9 come and went, no sign of Dave. So oh, it doesn't matter. It's... You know, it's a warm evening. About 10 o'clock Dave... Dave arrived up. And so my 6-till-9 shift had extended to... to a 10 o'clock ` a four-hour shift. And I thought, 'Well, that's all right. 'I've got three hours down below to have a lie-down.' Um, yeah, that's where I was wrong. I had two hours down. (TENSE MUSIC) When you have a small crew, like you did in this circumstance, with David and Alex being the only people on-board, at the time when the skipper should be giving this other guy the skills that he needs to be able to sail the boat and to remain safe, he's not seeing him. Therefore, he's not building a picture of what this, uh, novice on-board is really like and how much you can rely upon him. (THUNDER RUMBLES) Going into the evening of the third day, we started to get rougher weather, and it looked like we were sailing into some sort of a tropical storm. (WAVES CRASH, THUNDER RUMBLES) Dave said we better start the motor, cos the motor is your power for your batteries and for your lights ` your navigation lights ` and your radios and things. (ENGINE TURNS OVER) And the motor wouldn't start. And he didn't seem that concerned about it. He tried for a wee bit, it wouldn't start, so he just left it, and I was concerned. I said, 'Well,... 'how we gonna, um, get this thing into the port in Tonga when we` when we get to Tonga? 'I was picturing you'd drop your sails and you'd motor.' And he said, 'Oh, no, we'll just sail in.' He wasn't concerned at all, and I thought, 'Well, he obviously knows. He's done a lot of this before.' He also informed me the toilet had blocked up. It had overflowed and was just sloshing round in the bottom of the bathroom floor. So there was a wicked smell in the cabin. Dave and I never used to actually say much, because he would be coming up to do his shift at the tiller, and I'd be going down to lie in my bunk. It was just like we were passing in the night. That sense of isolation and the exhaustion that goes with having such a short watch system, uh, can put you in a frame of mind where you just begin to feel resentful against the other person on-board. (TENSE MUSIC) We were going through some pretty rough seas, and it wasn't what Henry had told me it was gonna be like. It was` It was quite terrifying. We're in this little 40ft yacht and just getting tossed around and battered, and I was sitting on the tiller, and you could see down into the cabin. And I would see a head go across, and I would hear him thump the side of the boat, and then the boat would come the other way ` the boat would sway the other way, and he would zoom across my screen. It was like I was watching a Punch and Judy show. (TENSE MUSIC) And each time he'd come back, there'd be a bit of blood trickling down his face. He had blood trickling down one eye and big lumps on his head. And it didn't concern him one piece. I thought, 'It must be something to do with the medication he's on, 'because he just didn't seem to feel pain.' And he looked back at me sitting at the tiller and said, um, 'Can't you keep this fucking thing steady? I'm trying to get some cornflakes.' David's, uh, military background, being Royal Marines, uh, would mean that came from an environment where everything was ordered, everything was precise, everything was aligned, everything was rolling in the correct direction. His Parkinson's disease would've played very much against that and must've been extremely frustrating for him. It's a curious and, uh, a potentially poisonous set of circumstances that's, uh... that's building up between these two guys. (TENSE MUSIC) We went through a major storm. It seemed to go on all night, and we just sailed through it with a, um... with a full` full main sail up. I looked up at the sail, and I could see the sail had been ripped. There'd been plastic` The plastic sliders that hold the sail to the mast were broken. So, um, I yelled out to David down in the cabin, you know, 'We've got problems here. 'We've got broken sliders, and the eyes have been ripped out of the sail.' And he didn't really seem that concerned about it. So I went down into the cabin. I said, 'Well, you know, where are your spare plastic sliders and that? 'And I'll` I'll go and fix this thing.' And he said, 'Well, I haven't got any.' And I thought, gee, here we are in the middle of the ocean, and we got no replacements for this stuff. And I'm thinking, you know, 'If I'd done a motorbike trip through the middle of Australia,' 'you'd have some spare gas ` you'd have spares for everything.' (WIND HOWLS, OCEAN THRASHES) I actually thought to myself then, 'This... (CLEARS THROAT) This guy's putting people's lives in danger.' I thought, 'Once I get to Tonga, I'm gonna go to the authorities and seek and, you know, 'something be done about it. Cos, you know, you shouldn't actually be` 'be taking people on this` this boat.' He's... He's not fit enough. Feeling so tired and dispirited with seasickness and, uh... and an extraordinarily harsh regime of watch-keeping, Alex would've become... angry, disillusioned,... upset, exhausted,... worried. He would've been spiralling down to a pretty dark place. And sitting there in the pitch-black at night, thinking, 'Well, at my age, I've had a pretty good innings. 'I've done a lot of interesting things ` 'uh, if this is it, well, so be it.' You can hear the waves coming, and you're not sure whether it's` you're gonna` the next one's gonna sink you. Is it gonna go over the top of you, tip the boat upside down? We were both just absolutely buggered ` um, lack of food, lack of sleep. Probably our whole systems were staring to break down. I got the feeling I was being put through an SAS course ` he was trying to see how much it would take to break me, I think. David had said it was gonna be a seven-day trip or a 10-day at the worst. And I` Well, here we are day eight, and we haven't spotted any land. Could you show me where we bloody are? I actually left the tiller and went down into the cabin, and I said, 'Well, can you show me on the chart where we are?' And he` he pointed out the position where we were. We were halfway to New Zealand. (DRAMATIC MUSIC) 1 1 (POIGNANT MUSIC) Day nine was quite special. The massive storms we'd been through in the previous six days or so suddenly just disappeared, and that afternoon was dead calm. It was like a... It was just like a millpond. At this stage, the batteries had pretty much... had gone flat. The motor hadn't been working for the last seven days or something. There was no way of contacting anyone. It'd come home to me what a vast ocean it was. It was quite a lonely sort of feeling. The further you are from land, the` the longer you have a sense of being completely isolated. Not being able to step off this tiny little thing can actually become something of a torture. We sailed all through the next day. And I was in bed for my 3-till-6 shift. I wasn't wide awake, but I wasn't fully asleep. I thought I heard him calling my name. I could see the clock, and it said quarter to 6. And I thought, 'That old prick's trying to put it across me again.' He wants me to get up there early. Stop it! A few seconds later, there's` My name is called with a lot more urgency. As I got to the top of the ladder coming out of the cabin, I had a look, and there was no sign of him sitting at the tiller. The tiller's just floating around on its own. He's gone. Give me more rope! And then I heard him calling from over the side of the boat. (TENSE MUSIC) Stop it! (THRASHES, PANTS) He was still tied on to the boat, but being dragged head first through the waves. It was panic. I went, 'What the hell do I do?' And I` I think he yelled, 'Unhook me! Stop it! Stop it!' And I thought, 'Stop what? Where's the bloody brakes on this thing? How do I stop it?' Unhook me! My mind was just racing. It was in turmoil, you know? We were in a panicked situation here. We got a guy overboard, and we're in the middle of nowhere in the big ocean. And it was... You know, there was no one else gonna help me. It was only him and I. I just leapt straight on to the cabin floor, grabbed the first knife I could to cut the twine, to throw him the floatation device. Hang on, Dave! Within a matter of just a few minutes ` less, a few seconds ` he was just going out of sight. (TENSE MUSIC) And looking in his eyes, he looked quite frightened. (SIGHS) You can only imagine what would've been going through David's mind as he saw that yacht gradually sail away from him. Uh, to be alone and afloat in the vast expanse of the South Pacific Ocean with your survival capsule disappearing ` uh,... terrible. Absolutely terrible. So I tried to turn the yacht around. I went back in the direction I thought I'd come from, but who knows when you're in a big open sea? There's no landmarks; there's no way of knowing whether I was going back in the right direction or not. And I'd done probably three passes backwards and forwards before dark. I thought, 'There's nothing more I can do. I've` I've done everything I can to try and save him. 'You know, he's a goner.' (SOMBRE MUSIC) I dropped the main sail, and I went below. And funny thing ` I don't` I don't know what` I don't know what made me do it, but I went to the` the smelly old fridge in the galley and got a can of warm beer... and sat in the dark on the side of the boat. I sat there and sipped this can of warm beer,... apologised to Dave for not being able to help him. (SIGHS) It was like I'd been` it was a scripted play and I was one of the actors in it. (THRASHES) Help me! Hang on! And it just felt like I'd played out the scene and that was the finish of the scene. It was a` It was quite a weird sensation. And I had, um... I sat there thinking, 'I'm in big shit now.' You know? I don't know how to navigate, I don't really know a great deal about sailing this damn thing, I'm in the middle of the South Pacific somewhere ` I don't know where. I'll miss Fiji, and then I might strike the east coast of Australia, but then, this a big ocean. I might miss that. I truly thought, you know, this is` this is the end of my life. (TENSE MUSIC) I gotta get control of my head, because it's` it's getting me nowhere, you know, this thinking of doom and I'm dying and all that. I actually made up a mantra that night ` (VOICE CRACKS) I'm gonna survive this. And, uh, if it got that bad, I'd sit there saying it out loud, 'I'm gonna survive this.' (POIGNANT MUSIC) Friday the 21st of August ` couldn't sleep with what happened. Took all sails down. First daylight, I looked` scout` scouted through the yacht, all the little cubbyholes and that, and there was lots and lots of tins of cat food. The cat and I never got along from day one. I thought, 'I might get rid of this cat. 'I'll throw it overboard.' But then, uh, reason, sort of, struck pretty quickly. 'You get to port somewhere, if you make it to port, the captain's gone, and the cat's gone ` 'it's not gonna look very good for you.' (BEEP!) I hunted round and found the GPS. And I managed to get a` a couple of figures on it of longitude and latitude. It wasn't difficult. It had five buttons, and I figured, uh, even an old retired blade shearer can work out five buttons, so I played round with them. And, um, I got the GPS readings, and I actually pinpointed... where I was on the chart, and I was away down south of Tongatapu, or Tonga. So, it was` it was a great relief to know I was actually there. I could see where I was in relation to land. (SEA LAPS, WIND BLOWS) I got up on-board there and pulled the main sail up as best I could, and away we went heading for Tonga. And I sailed right all that day,... and just on dusk,... just... yeah, just as dusk was coming,... I could see what looked like a wee glare in the horizon. (WATER RUSHES) My mood had completely... it had completely changed because I was in sight of land. I felt, you know, I was no longer out in the middle of the ocean. I got on to the northern coast of Tongatapu, and I thought, 'Well, perhaps if there's anyone, sort of, looking through binoculars from shore, 'they'll see this yacht.' So I thought, 'Now, if I put a something red, 'if I can find something red and hang it up in the rigging, 'it may indicate, you know, I have a problem.' So I hunted through the yacht, and I found the red sail bag and I just coming out of the rear cabin, and I noticed some sort of a wee gadget, so I took it off and read it. And it was a location device. I played with whatever was on it ` a button or a switch, I forget. And I thought no more about it. I went up top and tied my red sail bag. I tied that on the rigging. And I found a piece of cardboard. I wrote on it, 'Help'. I thought, 'That's a bit rude, isn't it?' So I put, 'please' in smaller letters, and I tied that below the red sail bag. (TENSE MUSIC) And then I just went back up and carried on sailing in towards Nuku'alofa. (TENSE MUSIC) So, the next morning I kept watching that horizon, and sure enough, there was` there was definitely diesel smoke or smoke, and then eventually, there was... a boat appeared on the horizon. They were coming straight at me. I went down into the cabin, into the smelly old hot fridge,... got a can of beer out. Um, I dropped the main sail,... and I sat up, leaning against the cabin and, um,... (CLEARS THROAT) sipping away at a real hot beer, and tears just streaming down my face. It was` It was like a huge weight had been just lifted off me. (MOVING MUSIC) I was saved. (LAUGHS) (MUSIC CONTINUES) 1 1 (TENSE MUSIC) 10.40am on Sunday... the 23rd of, uh, August ` a beacon had gone off in Tongan waters. Defence Patrol went out to the, uh, location of the beacon,... and around about, um, half past 12, uh, that day, located a yacht ` The Santana. (TENSE MUSIC) We'd no sooner tied up and there was five big, burley Tongans come on-board, just in` in plain clothes, no uniform. They said, 'Do you mind if we have a look over the yacht?' Tonga's a transit point in the Southwest Pacific. It's not unknown for, uh, yachts to be involved in drug trafficking. Two or three chaps went down into the cabin,... while I sat at the back with another two of these Tongan policemen. The elder of the policemen just kept staring at my hands. And my hands, because they'd been so soft with the sea water all the time I'd been at sea, there was a lot of, um, skin missing off round the back of them. And then he just hit me with a broadside. He said, uh, 'You had an argument with the captain, 'didn't you? You had a fight with him and threw him overboard.' Gee, I couldn't` I couldn't believe what he was saying. And I just denied it. I said, 'I never had no fight with the captain. It wasn't like that at all.' Tonga Police put a guard on the yacht,... and the person on-board, Alex MacDonald, was taken to the Nuku'alofa Central Police Station. All I wanted to do was lie down and go to` go to sleep, and here I was being questioned. It was` It was pretty hard to deal with. I` I remember walking in the door, and he was sitting up, he's sitting here, the desk's like this. And I went, 'Oh, what have we got here?' So, you and this David are mates? It was important to me to try and work out,.. had there been a crime committed here? Was it just an accident? Was it, you know, maritime, sort of, mystery? At that point in time, um, we didn't know the answers. But we had a lot of questions. I introduced myself and said, 'Look, um, I'd like you to tell me what happened.' He questioned me at length, how the accident had happened; you know, what I'd done to try and, um, save David. (REWINDING TAPE WHIRRS) He had said that he had been in Rarotonga, uh, that that was a regular exercise for him during the winter. He'd been introduced to, uh, the skipper of The Santana, and that person was David Michael Parkinson. Uh, he then goes on to describe that on the day in question, when he got up on deck, he couldn't see anybody. And, of course, in a short time discovered that David Parkinson was overboard. More rope! And then I heard him calling from over the side of the boat. He was still tied on to the boat, but dangling along. He was on his back, coming out of the water, and then under the water and getting dragged along sort of like a submarine. And then he yelled to me to, 'Give me more rope!' I think Alex misunderstood what was being said, because he said he went back, I think, to the cabin to get more rope, when, in fact, what David Parkinson was requiring was for him to ease the rope, so that he could come round the back of the boat, clamber up the ladder and get back on-board. We were still under... We were still under sail, so we're moving` we were moving forward I` I know, probably 5 knots, 6 knots. And with the weight of him on it, and the sea's pulling at him, it nearly tore it out of my hands. But as it shot out` out of my hands, I clipped it on to a cleat on the side of the yacht. And that allowed him to get round to the boarding ladder. And David was struggling, according to Alex's account, to get on-board. And it was then I realised where I'd put the end of his safety rope on the cleat on the side of the boat, and it'd actually fallen off the cleat. So he was no longer attached to the boat. My understanding, from memory, was that he slipped off the aluminium ladder, into the sea. (TENSE MUSIC) On the side of the cockpit, on the railings round the boat, there was, like, a horseshoe-type floatation device. So I went to grab that, and it actually was tied on to the rail with a piece of light twine. I just leapt straight on to the cabin floor, grabbed the first knife I could to cut the twine to throw him the floatation device. And I threw it past him, screaming out, 'Grab hold of this!' And he grabbed hold of it. As it went by him, he grabbed hold of it and actually managed to put this horseshoe floatation device around himself. I was just... just panicking. But once he got this floatation device on him, I felt, 'Well, that's good.' You know, 'I've got him.' You know, 'I've just` It's just a matter of reeling him in now.' And then I'd no sooner done a few winds on it, and it just went slack. And I thought, 'Fuck. It's broken.' The... The strength of, um,... David Parkinson in the sea and the pull to drag pulled it off the bolts. So I thought, 'No problem. I've still got him on the rope. I'll pull him in by hand.' And I started to pull him in by hand, and it just went slack. And the rope broke. And, um` And cos I was in the boat, still sailing, so I was going one way, and he was just stationary. We think Alex said he went back to the cabin and tried to use the radio and call mayday. 'Mayday, mayday, mayday. Uh, man overboard, SV Santana.' And I repeated that about twice. And then the radio just went flat. And then tried to turn the vessel round to go and look for him. I'd spoken to Alex for around about an hour. I satisfied myself with that was his story of what had taken place. And then I directed, um, the Tongan staff to take a statement from him. I said, 'What the fuck do I gotta go to the police for? I've just spent hours telling you how it happened.' And I hadn't had a lot of sleep in the` in the last few weeks, I hadn't eaten ` I was... I probably wasn't in a great state of health. I knew there was something wrong. I rung a couple of friends locally here and said that, 'You know, I don't think things are that good up there.' I phoned Alex, and I could tell straight away by the tone of his voice that he was under a fair bit of pressure. There were` And there was also, obviously, other people there. He was quite blunt, reasonably blunt. He said physically he was OK, and that was about it. It was a pretty short` short and sharp phone call. I had a diary I'd been keeping for the whole trip, and I had a couple of entries in there that I thought if the police read that diary, it wouldn't look too good for me. So I went across to the, um, New Zealand Commission, and I asked could they hold on to my diary for me? And they said, 'No, we can't do that. It's a police issue.' And they give me a list of lawyers that I could choose from. At that stage, still, I just assumed I'd be going home the next day. Alex had no,... sort of, money or resources. Um, which in itself was a little unusual, so the arrangements that we made was that, um, Alex should stay with Isi Vaihu, who was the officer in charge of the Criminal Investigation Branch. I thought then, this is, sort of, getting quite serious. At this stage they'd taken my passport off me. So it was... That was a bit of a concern. When you're overseas and you haven't got your passport, you're... you're pretty much marooned. (DRAMATIC MUSIC) 1 (BIRDS CHIRPING) I had a... my own room. I had a big double bed. I woke up, and I was in a hot sweat. It was beautiful and warm. And I had a look at the time ` it was 11 o'clock, so I'd slept... I had 11 hours' straight solid sleep. It was probably the longest sleep I've had in my life. (SIGHS) OK. Well, once I'd... I'd woken up, um, I was informed that Isi had been in touch and wanted me to` in at the police station. Did you fight with him? I was questioned for hours on end. Isi questioned me over the same old thing, you know, what had happened; how did it all happen? Alex, what happened on the boat? The questioning was different from the night before. The night before with, um, Chris Kelley, he just wanted to hear my story. He didn't actually question me, as such. But this was more questioning, and my answers were getting written down. It was more formal. Did you fight with the, uh, man? Every now and again, from... from out of the ballpark, they'd say, 'You had a fight and threw him overboard.' That was... That was brought up, um, in every questioning session that I had. I did everything I could to pull him back on the boat, and his rope snapped. The second day, the third day, I was back with... Well, I was back with Isi, the head of, um, the detectives. I was back with him questioning again. It got worse each day, and every day, it was brought up about having a fight and throwing him overboard. That seemed to be their, um... their main questioning. They` They just... It was like they would throw it in and I'll admit to it. By about Wednesday I was really concerned. I thought, you know, they` I felt like they were gonna charge me with murder. That was the way the questioning seemed to be going. I've told you what happened on the bloody boat, mate. I've told you over... I think it was about that stage that they took me down to the cells. I` I may have asked about the cells, so they took me down to the cells, and, um, it wasn't a pleasant sight. The smell of urine and that. It was sort of in a basement area. And as we walked along in front of the, um... the cells, there was a big Tongan fella, a big muscly Tongan fella in there. He was gripping hold of the bars with his nose, face pushed up against them. And as I walked past, he seemed like he directed it at me. He said, 'This is home.' (ENGINE REVS) I was round at a bar where the ex-pats and, uh, tourists seem to frequent, and I... I met a, uh, New Zealand lawyer there. And, um, he said to me, 'If they decide to charge you with something, 'you're gonna be here in jail for 18 months,' because, he said, 'that's what the backlog is in court cases.' Oh, I was pretty worried. About mid-week, I knew I was in big trouble, the way the questioning had been going. I think a critical, you know, aspect of the investigation was the scene examination of the boat. The search of the boat itself didn't reveal any contraband or any drugs. I asked Isi, 'Could I go back down to the yacht and take some photos for myself?' I decided that I would perhaps need, um, my own evidence if this thing went to court. We found passport documentation, we found personal papers,... we found money ` all things in place, which didn't indicate, you know,... maybe a fight over possessions. I photographed the reel that had broken off. They looked at the... the wincher, and it had broken free from the cabin itself. In other words, it'd been pulled out by force. I photographed the ropes that'd frayed and then sunburnt. I examined the rope. And clearly there was a fray there. And the... it wasn't a cut, as such. Things that I thought that I would need if it went to... to a court situation. (CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS) We didn't find any evidence of any blood that would indicate a fight or something like that. I was innocent from day one. I knew that; I was trying to... trying to convince the police and the CID that I was innocent. There was no evidence... that Alex... was responsible for the death of David Parkinson. ECHOES: Dave! Isi, just out of the blue, just casually said after his work one night ` he said, 'You're OK to go.' It was a... You know, from what had been transpiring at the police station over the previous three or four days, it was sort of` it, um... it was a big relief. But then, he... he said, 'You probably won't get away from here till next Wednesday or Thursday.' And I thought, 'But what are you talking about?' You know, if I'm free to go, I'm going. I'm going this weekend. I actually got an official letter from Chris Kelley saying, 'You're free to go.' We got the passport back, and then as he took me out to the airport, he had stopped being the policeman. He was like a mate of mine. We actually had a great big man hug and said goodbye to me at the airport. I was pretty relieved when... when I finally got on that plane and... and it went down the runway and I heard those... those wheels thump up behind me. I thought, 'Yeah, it's all over.' Really, at the end of the day, it was... a maritime misadventure. (MOTOR REVS) It's given me an insight into to what you can overcome. You don't realise what you can put yourself through... until you've... you've done something like that and come through the other end. (POIGNANT MUSIC) My name is Alex MacDonald. On the 23rd of August 2009 I was suspected of killing David Parkinson. I am innocent. Captions by Starsha Samarasinghe. 1