First Interview: Gable Tostee said he did not check to see if Warriena Wright was okay — ‘it would not look good’

His behaviour appeared suspicious: What was the first thing Tostee did when Ms Wright fell from the 14th floor of the Surfer’s Paradise apartment in 2014?

He called his lawyer.

So why didn’t he call an ambulance or the police? Or even look to see if she was okay?

“Instinctively, I knew that if I ran out there and somebody saw me looking over the edge and she had actually fallen all the way, it would look like, you know, it would not look good,” Tostee told 60 Minutes last night.

Tostee, 30, was cleared of the murder and manslaughter of his Tinder social-media hook-up date by a jury last month. Police had not accused him of throwing her off the balcony. Rather, they said she was so afraid she fell while trying to escape.

After meeting in Cavill Mall, they started drinking. More drinking, and sex, followed.

At 12.55am, he hit record on his phone. “I don’t have the best memory when I drink,” he told 60 Minutes.

Police alleged recordings demonstrated he had been choking Ms Wright.

Wright: “Just let me go home! Let me go home!” (screaming)

Tostee: “I would, but you’ve been a bad girl.”

And, separately — Tostee: “This is (bleep). You’re lucky I haven’t chucked you off my (bleep) balcony, you goddamn psycho little (bleep).”

After he realised she had fallen, Tostee left the building by a back door.

“Of course I was worried about her,” Tostee told interviewer Liam Bartlett. “I was absolutely terrified at what had just happened to her. But, you know ... whatever had happened out there had happened. And, looking over the edge, you know, it doesn’t help anybody. There’s no purpose to it.”

Tostee said that he ‘froze’.

“Nobody is trained for a situation like this. It’s like being hit by lightning. There is no right or wrong way to proceed from there,” he said.

“What had happened had happened, and there’s nothing an ambulance could do to change that.”

He said he then wandered around Surfers Paradise, drunk and confused.

“That was — that night — that was the most scared I’ve ever been. It’s the most distraught I’ve ever been in my entire life.”

Tostee rejects that Ms Wright had been afraid of him.

“There was no threat to her. She was out there on her own. I was inside on my own,” he said. “That’s one of the most perplexing things, to me. I can’t understand what would drive a person to climb off a 14-floor balcony, into nothingness.”

The Tostee family and their lawyer maintain Gable’s innocence is demonstrated on the same recording being used to accuse him. The drunken fight went both ways.

Wright: “I will (bleep) destroy your jaw! It’s not (bleep) funny.

Wright: “Bow down to Sam.”

Tostee: “Ow! What?”

Wright (recording): “Bow down to Sam, dick.”

Tostee (recording): “Alright, I’ll bow down.”

“If you had actually heard someone give that description, or if Mr Tostee had given evidence without that tape, and explained what had occurred in that apartment for the hour and 46 minutes before ... It would have been unbelievable,” says his lawyer, Nick Dore.

Tostee says he is in reality a kind person..

“Who am I really? Well, I’m a ... I’m a pretty normal kind of guy,” Tostee told 60 Minutes.

He also says, in hindsight, he would have done things differently

“Taken her home earlier, in hindsight. But you don’t get hindsight when you’ve never experienced something like this in your entire life.”

Originally published as Tostee: ‘It would not look good’