San Diego Reader

It was March 2009 when the British-born siblings Gillian Ison and John Graham Watson met at Zermatt, a resort in the shadow of Switzerland’s Matterhorn. There, with family members, they indulged a passion for skiing: Watson, an alpine expert, loved running the fall line, the steepest and fastest route down the slope. A traveler, an adventurer, the 64-year-old relished high-performance sports as much as he did his career with pharmaceutical and biotech firms. Balancing business and play had made his life storybook-successful. The self-made Watson had just retired, a multimillionaire.

The odd thing his sister Gillian Ison recalled about the trip to Zermatt was her brother’s “friend.” The man, a financial planner named Kent Thomas Keigwin, showed up with his daughter Parisa, surprising John. It was true the two had met in San Diego. And, according to Keigwin, Watson had invited him skiing. No, he hadn’t, Watson told his sister. Keigwin had invited himself. “He was,” she remembered, “nothing like he made himself out to be.”

Ison found Keigwin offensive right away. On the aerial tram and in front of his daughter, he told dirty jokes. He bragged about a “serious girlfriend” he had in America for whom he’d bought “a boob job and a face-lift.” On skis, the barrel-chested man, clearly out of shape, was awkward at best, staying far behind the group. Ison and Watson were aghast watching Keigwin fall. She said he “embarrassed” her brother. That evening, the siblings met him and Parisa for a quick drink. Otherwise, they spent no more time with him, and Keigwin and daughter soon flew home.

Who, Ison asked her brother, was this faker?

Watson said Keigwin came to Zermatt to show his daughter that he had rich friends who spent their vacations in luxury. (Keigwin roomed in a cheap pension, far from the resort.) Without doubt, Watson was wealthy, although few of his friends knew just how wealthy. The Brit’s road to millions began when the Cambridge-educated economist and marketer came to America to work in the pharmaceutical industry. His executive career, always vertically progressive, had taken him to Johnson & Johnson and Wyeth Laboratories, and then, specializing in biotech, to Vestar, Biotech Consulting, CarboMed, and, finally, Ionian Technologies in San Diego, where he was president and chief executive. In his professional life, Watson helped launch products for people with HIV, inflammatory diseases, and spinal cord injuries, among other ailments. When he retired from Ionian in 2008, he joined Tech Coast Angels, a nonprofit organization of wealthy people who invest in worthy start-ups. Watson was quickly elected to the board.

An associate of Watson’s, Charlie Grebenstein, said of him, “John was rollicking good company. Quick wit, cultured, broadly read, passionately devoted to his adopted country. He valued being an American because America provided opportunity. He loved California for that reason, plus the freedom to innovate and the endless opportunities to play.”

Arriving in San Diego in late 2007, Watson met Anna Sorriso and joined her in the Action Ski Club. He, Sorriso, and others enjoyed hikes, beach walks, dances, and skiing. “He liked active people,” a friend recalled. At La Jolla Shores, Watson rented an apartment in a boxy building at 8111 Camino del Oro. The two-bedroom pad suited his lifestyle: travel and working out — swimming, tennis, inline skating, wind surfing, running — “two hours or more every day,” said another friend. Watson liked sailing, too, which was how he met Keigwin.

Rarely opening up, Watson was guarded about his wealth. But he did have a penchant for discussing stocks. Keigwin did as well. Born in 1950, he was a certified public accountant. His brother Jim said that during the 1970s, Keigwin was hired by the Shah of Iran to establish an accounting system for the government. When that ended with the Iranian revolution, he returned to America with an Iranian Jew whom he married and with whom he had a daughter. A financial advisor, Keigwin counseled clients first at UBS, then at Morgan Stanley in La Jolla. But, his sales performance fell off at Morgan Stanley, and he was let go. In April 2010 he hired on with Wedbush Securities, working on commission. Keigwin sold annuities as well as life, accident, and health insurance on behalf of New York Life and other companies. At Wedbush, Keigwin fattened his contact list, dozens of well-heeled individuals like Watson whom Keigwin targeted as potential clients.

Watson and Keigwin, Sorriso said, sailed once or twice but developed no friendship. At best, Keigwin was in a group who received “jokey” emails from Watson. One day in 2008 she noticed Keigwin’s name had been dropped from the CC line. Watson told her that he’d become “disenamored” of him. He was angry that Keigwin had lied to him about an investment property for sale. He also told her that Keigwin was in “dire financial straits.” Watson said he no longer wished to “associate with that turd ball.”

Still, wishing the opportunist away doesn’t get rid of him. In November 2009, a woman with Citibank phoned Watson about his new credit card application. Watson said he hadn’t applied for a card. But, she asked, hadn’t he just opened an account using his Social Security and phone numbers? Absolutely not, Watson said. He realized he’d been hacked and notified police. Two months later, a manager from E-Trade called Watson to welcome him as a new client. Same as before — the online applicant had used Watson’s Social Security and phone numbers. Watson was livid. It wasn’t he who had applied. Who had? Neither E-Trade nor Citibank knew. Watson notified police again.

“Perfectly Posed”

In May 2010, Watson and Dr. Barry Kassar, a fellow board member at Tech Coast Angels, put the final touches on their “Quick Pitch” event for June 8 at 6:00 p.m. At these confabs, start-up executives made presentations, hoping to lure new money. Up first on June 8, a Tuesday, was a 3:30 Angels board meeting. Watson, always hands-on and on time, didn’t show. When he failed to arrive for happy hour at 5:00, Kassar “got suspicious.” He phoned him twice and left messages.

No one had spoken to or heard from Watson since the previous week. The lifelong bachelor, whose immediate family lived in England, traveled often. He lived alone, seldom if ever had people over. He liked his privacy, had no cell phone, kept an untidy apartment, and spent time studying his portfolio on his living room table.

Kassar knew Watson could handle any emergency. He was the picture of health, no heart problems, just a bum knee and some bruises from skiing. He was like a senior fitness model in the swim ads for Modern Maturity. He told his sister that he was once robbed at knifepoint in Spain and without a weapon had subdued two assailants, though he was bloodied in the process.

After 6:00, Kassar decided to investigate Watson’s absence. At 8111 Camino del Oro, he, a security guard, and an emergency medical technician rode the elevator to Watson’s third-floor apartment, K.

Knocking loudly, then unlocking deadbolt and doorknob, the guard, the medical tech, and Kassar entered. Kassar saw a “disheveled” apartment that looked as though it had been burglarized. A dresser’s drawers had been left pulled out, and a book, Time Management for Dummies, lay on the floor. One of Watson’s financial statements was set out on the living room table. It caught Kassar’s eye. It was from Watson’s Deutsche Bank account and showed a balance in the millions. Kassar clicked on the answering machine and heard the messages.

In the bedroom came the shock. There, on the floor, beside the red-sheeted bed, lay John Watson, his body speckled with scrapes and scratches, bite marks and bruises. Clad only in low-rise black underwear, he was on his back, arms rigid at his side. He was facing up, like a stone sarcophagus. Watson, Kassar recalled, seemed “perfectly posed.”

The medical tech checked for a pulse, but there was none. The lividity of the body was pronounced; Watson had been dead at least a day. Soon, San Diego police arrived and found only the phone number of Beth Martinez, Watson’s emergency contact. She and her husband Manny were very close friends. Their kids called Watson “Uncle John,” and the children and parents often spent ski holidays with him. The Martinezes were devastated by the news.

The following morning Beth arrived at the apartment and was told that Watson’s wallet was missing. His 14-year-old Saab was still parked in the parking lot, and eight ripe pineapples, Watson’s favorite fruit, were in the fridge. No one could locate his computer, where phone numbers for his family in England were stored. It was obvious, she told the detectives: there had to have been foul play.

Kassar, who also came by on Wednesday, felt the same. Thinking that Watson’s death reeked of financial theft, he called William Conn, Watson’s financial advisor with Deutsche Bank in San Francisco. He conveyed the sad tidings and then told Conn to check Watson’s account. The account showed no withdrawals.

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