Private night, public view
TOSTEE NOT GUILTY OF LOWER HUTT WOMAN’S MURDER
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 her 26-year-old daughter’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 Warriena 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 has 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.
Holt, Tostee’s defence lawyer, 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.
In the final moments, as their struggle reaches a crescendo and Gable Tostee is about to lock Warriena Wright 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.’’
Moments later the 26-year-old from Lower Hutt was dead, having fallen from the 14th-floor balcony of his apartment in Surfers Paradise, in the early hours of August 8, 2014.
The pair had met for the first time the previous evening, having hooked up on dating app Tinder. She was on the Gold Coast for a friend’s wedding; he was a carpet layer living in an apartment with panoramic views of the resort town.
Tostee was silent in court, and did not give evidence during his murder trial at the Brisbane Supreme Court. But the jury heard his voice repeatedly, and Wright’s too, in the recordings.
The young woman, who friends would later describe as shy and quiet, had no idea she would have an global audience as she has sex, makes drunken chatter about gods, galaxies, ninjas and her family, has an argument, throws rocks, pleads to go home, and dies.
There are many things the audio leaves unanswered – as Tostee’s defence pointed out, there was no way to prove Wright knew if the door was locked when she made the fatal choice to attempt to climb down to a balcony beneath.
It was also unclear whether the gurgling sounds heard in the audio proved he choked her. His defence lawyer rubbished this suggestions, saying it was up to the jury to decide.
In the audio, Wright’s final cry can be heard fading unmistakably into the distance, as she plummets to her death. And in a final insult, the wheels are set in motion for her privacy to be shattered forever.
Tostee had the right to remain silent in court. But if the jury were indeed as curious as the rest of the armchair observers seemed to be about why Tostee had recorded - they were not going to get an answer during the trial.
In addition to his recording, Tostee also published a flood of social media posts, all of which were reported before the trial. But they were not mentioned in court, because they were not part of the evidence put forward.
His habit of boasting online came back to bite him: the claims he had bedded hundreds of women, his online self-defences in which he claimed he was subject to a ‘‘witch-hunt’’, changing his name online to Eric Thomas – it all fed the headlines.
His Facebook page and a bodybuilding forum on which he posted his defences became an irresistible magnet for his critics. ‘‘Womanising moron,’’ strangers wrote on his Facebook page, along with: ‘‘Classic narcissist,’’ ‘‘Cold blooded murderous creep.’’
In the end, the focus was not on the exploits of Tostee the ‘‘Gold Coast playboy’’ – as some characterised him – but the nearly twohour phone recording.
Why, though, did Tostee record? Tostee wrote on one forum that he had security cameras in his previous apartment solely for security, saying it had helped him catch a thief – a girl he said stole from his wallet.
He explained the recordings as being like insurance, in case he ever got into trouble. Of what kind, he doesn’t say.
‘‘I regularly made audio recordings of my drunk nights on the town in case something happened. I kept them for myself but didn’t need to listen to them 99% of the time. It’s so easy to do using a smartphone and comes at such a small cost, and sometimes the recordings have been invaluable.’’
"I regularly made audio recordings of my drunk nights on the town in case something happened." "Gold Coast playboy" Gable Tostee