It might be freedom but this is more like a prison
HE escaped the horror of a jail cell but his own home will still serve as his prison.
Unable to face society after being cleared of murder, Gable Tostee is believed to be hiding within the same Carrara home he has been forced to live in for the past two years.
Steel fences guarded by 24-hour security cameras protect the gated community which looks more like the front of Wacol Prison than an upper-class suburban enclave.
This is where Tostee has slept every night for two years after Warriena Wright plunged to her death from his Surfers Paradise unit in August 2014.
He is no longer under house arrest but the 30-yearold has nowhere else to go.
The same secret audio recording he used to clear himself of murder also provided a look inside his strange dating habits.
The resentment has pushed Tostee underground but everyone above the surface certainly has something to say.
“I have to walk past this building every day and it’s eerie, to say the least,” 27year-old barista Alix Farrell said as she strolled past the Avalon Apartments.
“(If I ever saw his face) I wouldn’t know what to feel.
“It would be like seeing a celebrity but without any excitement.”
The feeling is mutual at Tostee’s parents’ Carrara estate.
“Knowing he’s been here has been a weird feeling,” one neighbour said on the condition of anonymity.
“I don’t know how he’ll ever be able to go out in public again.
“He’s not a murderer – no way.
“But we’ve seen and heard too much to just forget.”
Tostee reportedly described his life fighting the murder charge as a living hell in a text message to a friend.
That same message was then leaked to television stations, leaving the already paranoid man to realise he had yet again been betrayed to the media by a friend.
It would have been a final straw for his father Gray, who yesterday spoke to the Bulletin outside the gated estate which is believed to still hold his son.
Angry and frustrated with the way his boy has been treated, he pleaded with scores of media crews to leave the street as he took his dog for a walk.
Tostee is believed to be leaving his playboy past behind on the Gold Coast to start a new life elsewhere.
After one of the most highly publicised and controversial trials in Queensland’s history, it’s hard to imagine that will ever be possible.