Anger as Wright’s final moments aired to public
AUSTRALIA: It was meant to be a night of intimacy between two young people who met on the dating app Tinder. It ended with their every word and action exposed to public scrutiny and innuendo.
For the Wellington-based mother of Warriena Wright, that exposure was too much to bear, and she hit out at the judge who released audio recordings of her daughter’s last moments before she fell to her death from Gable Tostee’s 14th-floor balcony in Surfers Paradise.
For Tostee, public judgment of his behaviour that night will probably stay with him forever, despite a jury at Brisbane Supreme Court acquitting him yesterday of both murder and manslaughter.
Merzabeth Tagpuno Wright was livid that 26-year-old Warriena’s final moments, captured and played in a harrowing recording made by Tostee on his phone, were publicly released during the trial.
She felt her family had been ‘‘disrespected’’ by the judge’s ruling, and wanted to be left in peace to return to New Zealand.
Tostee, meanwhile, will now have to rebuild his life and reputation after two years of ridicule and abuse.
From the day Wright – who was visiting the Gold Coast from her home in Lower Hutt for a wedding – was found dead to the moment Tostee walked free, interest in the case had been at fever pitch. Every day, the 30-year-old took a short walk across the road to the court with his Kiwi lawyer, Saul Holt, QC. Each time a flock of snapping photographers and reporters lay in wait, hoping for a final word or glimpse in case it was his last walk as a free man.
The existence of the audio recording – and why Tostee made it – was a key feature of the trial.
In Wright’s final moments, as Tostee is about to lock her outside on his balcony, there is triumph in his voice as he tells her: ‘‘It is all on recording, you know. It’s all being recorded.’’
Even after her death, he continued recording. He swears and his breathing quickens, then he calls his father and his lawyer, and goes pacing through Surfers Paradise, all without calling police or ambulance services.
The phone listens in as his footsteps finally stop at a pizza joint: ‘‘Umm, a slice of Supreme please.’’
The Crown never attempted to argue that he pushed Wright off the balcony, but said the bodybuilder, who towered over his petite date, instilled enough fear into her that she felt she had no choice but to climb down from it after they had a violent altercation and he locked her out.
Tostee’s defence lawyer, Saul Holt QC, told the jury in his closing arguments: ‘‘Thank goodness he did press record on his app . . . Can you imagine for a moment this case if that recording had not existed?
‘‘Would anybody, anybody, have believed without bursting out in unmitigated laughter an account in which Ms Wright throws rocks at Mr Tostee? Hitting him with a metal clamp? The things she said and did over the course of the evening? Any explanation of that kind would have been laughed out of court.’’
Tostee – who boasted online of his many sexual conquests – said in one attempt to defend himself: ‘‘I regularly made audio recordings of my drunk nights on the town in case something happened . . . It’s so easy to do using a smartphone and comes at such a small cost, and sometimes the recordings have been invaluable.’’
The case was almost declared a mistrial after one of the jurors was found to have been making social media posts, identifying herself as being on the jury, and giving her thoughts about being part of the trial.
‘‘I snagged a nasty one, so it’s a bit full on,’’ she said in one of her Instagram posts.
‘‘I took it home with me yesterday and woke quite miserable this morning. Will make sure I leave it behind this afternoon,’’ she said in another.
She did not discuss evidence, or the jury’s deliberations.
Holt argued for a mistrial, but Justice John Byrne dismissed the application.
However, he did scold the woman anonymously after the jury delivered its verdict. ‘‘This is a particularly disappointing feature of the events of the day, but only one is responsible for it,’’ the judge said. Fairfax NZ