Talk about an unbelievably crazy story for this poor guy:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/16/middleeast/khashoggi-turkish-investigation-intl/index.html

These are the types of things that happen more often than we know.

The fact that it was alleged to be captured on his apple watch is new (not in this article)

that is crazy

Totally agree. One of the weirdest stories in a long time.
Honestly, this stuff probably happened in the past a lot more often than we know, but with cameras all around as well as the internet making the world a lot smaller these days, it isn’t as easy to get away with as it used to be.

Maha Rushie, a guru on all things Apple, says the Apple watch is just a slave to the IPhone and it must be within range to capture anything. Stories say he left his phone in the car with the potential new wife. The range is very small, maybe less than 100 feet, so the Apple watch may not have captured anything inside the building.

unless he had it on telephone mode

imho, the likelihood of the watch going unnoticed in this situation is absurd. Undoubtedly someone rendered it inoperable and any info on it irretrievable.

somehow there are claims that there is a recording of some type.