Jason Leon Watford said he ‘snapped’ after verbal dispute with the woman, before allegedly killing her in a cabin
A passenger of a Texas-based cruise ship has been charged with murdering a woman in their cabin on Sunday on the first day of their voyage.
Crew members aboard the MSC Seascape found the unidentified victim deceased and face down on the cabin floor, with Jason Leon Watford sitting in a corridor outside scrolling through his phone, according to an FBI affidavit that details the alleged crime.
Watford was arrested after the vessel returned to port in Galveston early on Monday, a day after embarking on a planned seven-day cruise around Mexico and the Caribbean. He is charged with one count of felony homicide and was scheduled to make his first appearance in federal court in Galveston on Tuesday afternoon.
The four-page criminal complaint, signed by Thomas Plew, an FBI taskforce officer assigned to maritime crimes, states that Watford admitted to investigators that he and the woman argued while eating in a restaurant on Sunday evening – while the ship was in the Gulf of Mexico and continued to fight after they returned to the cabin.
Watford, the document states, admitted that the escalation of the verbal dispute caused him to “snap”.
