GABE Watson says he keeps a photo of his deceased wife next to that of his new wife.
Mr Watson, acquitted last week in sensational circumstances at his Alabama murder trial, opened up in two separate interviews in the US yesterday after keeping silent since his first wife, Tina Thomas Watson, was found dead on their 2003 Queensland honeymoon scuba dive.
In 2006, Mr Watson began dating Alabama school teacher Kim Lewis and they married in 2008, with some media reports describing her as a "lookalike" to Ms Thomas.
In an interview with his local newspaper, the Birmingham News, Mr Watson said he "never saw'' Ms Lewis as a lookalike and revealed he keeps photos of Ms Thomas and Ms Lewis in his home office.
"Kim's been very accepting of my past," Mr Watson said.
"She knows that Tina and I were crazy in love and she doesn't make me have to forget that."
In the other interview, aired on America's ABC TV network, Mr Watson attempted to explain some of the unanswered questions about how Ms Thomas, his wife of just 11 days, ended up dead at the bottom of the Coral Sea.
Mr Watson and Ms Thomas boarded the luxury dive vessel Spoilsport at Townsville on October 21, 2003 for a seven-day honeymoon cruise of the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea, with the first stop the SS Yongala shipwreck.
The murder trial, held in Birmingham, Alabama, heard Ms Thomas was inexperienced, with just 11 dives in a flooded Alabama quarry, while the Yongala dive, with a strong current, was for experienced divers.
Mr Watson did not realise Ms Thomas had never dived in the ocean.
"It's just one of those things that never occurred to me," Mr Watson said.
The 34-year-old said he was not "making rational choices" when he decided to swim to the surface to get help instead of staying with his wife when she became distressed and began sinking to the sea floor.
A point prosecutors highlighted at the trial was Mr Watson's decision to stay on the Spoilsport for 40 minutes while doctors worked on resuscitating Ms Thomas on another boat a short distance away.
"That's not something I can handle," Mr Watson explained.
"I don't ever want to see one of my loved ones being worked on like that, ever."
Alabama judge Tommy Nail made the rare decision to acquit Mr Watson of the murder for financial gain charge when the prosecution rested its case.
Judge Nail said there was no need for the defence to call witnesses because prosecutors failed to present "evidence to suggest" Mr Watson intended to kill his bride.
Mr Watson served 18 months in a Queensland jail after pleading guilty in 2009 to his wife's involuntary manslaughter.
The legal cost of defending himself in Australia and the US, estimated at more than $A500,000, had taken a financial, emotional and physical toll on his family, he said.
"It was every penny Kim and I could get our hands on, and every penny the Watson family had been able to sock away for retirement," he said.
"Not only did all this throw my future plans out the window, but it did the same for my parents.
"That eats at me."
However, he is not angry at the prosecution and others who still believe he murdered Ms Thomas.
"Being angry is not going to do me any good," Mr Watson said.
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