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What happened to Warriena Wright after she met Gable Tostee?

She fell 14 storeys to her death during a Tinder date with Gable Tostee, who recorded her final moments. Was justice served?

Melissa Fyfe
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It's late afternoon and I'm knocking on the door of a weatherboard house in a small New Zealand town called Levin, nearly two hours' drive north of Wellington. I'm about to give up when I hear Jimmy Barnes singing Driving Wheels from behind the house. The old place, I realise, has a second residence at the back.

I follow the sound of the classic rock song around the side of the house, past a cat, and find a man in a flannelette shirt sitting on his porch drinking beer. He has brown hair swished across his forehead, intense blue eyes and lined skin.

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Gable Tostee met Warriena Wright on a dating app and recorded audio of their night together, while CCTV captured his every move afterwards. Nine News

"Are you Warren?" I ask.

"It depends," he says, gruffly. "Who's asking?"

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Warren Wright has not spoken a public word since his daughter, Warriena Wright, was found dead at the base of a Surfers Paradise apartment tower in 2014. And he's not starting now, it seems. "I'm sorry you've come so far," he says. "But there's nothing more to say." Somehow, though, over the next hour we share a beer and chat. 

"Is that your red hire car there?" he says, nodding towards the kerb. "Did you get lost? The cats told me you were here 15 minutes ago."

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It's true, I say, I drove down the street, made some notes and checked if one of Warriena's friends had emailed. I ask where Warriena got her love of animals. His blue eyes sparkle. "Well, that would be me. I have cats as guard dogs." The 58-year-old semi-retired electrician is a little wary of people. "I never trust a human being. I taught both my daughters that. And then Warriena went and trusted him."

Warriena Wright worked in a Kiwibank call centre in an ugly office tower near the Wellington waterfront. On her desk was a row of little plastic figurines from one of her favourite Japanese anime television shows, Dragon Ball Z. At night, Wright, who was 26 when she died, returned to Lower Hutt, where she lived with her younger sister Marreza. 

To travel there by car, I skirt around Wellington Harbour for 15 minutes, steep flanks of pine-green hills on my left. In a quiet street in the working-class suburb of Epuni, I find the place Wright called home: a modest white brick house behind a high fence. On weekends, Wright and a small crew of close female friends, including Marreza, gathered here to play computer games such as the role-playing Final Fantasy.

"They would go to sleep, wake up the next day and keep gaming," a friend tells me.

The friend sits opposite me in a Wellington cafe. She does not want her identity revealed. When Wright died after an ill-fated Tinder date, her family and friends maintained a dignified, near-total silence. In the ensuing media storm, their "Rrie" became the "death plunge woman", a two-dimensional character in the perfect tabloid drama.

But there was much more to Wright, her friend says: "She was all about dignity, equality, fairness, what's right." She was a technology-literate nerd who took photographs and drew. She liked Hello Kitty, eBay bargains, last-minute road trips and conspiracy theories. She was hard – with strong opinions, never retreating in an argument – but also soft. "She had this motherly, want-to-help-you thing," says her friend. "Even if she didn't know someone very well. And she looked after her sister and her mum so much."

She had this motherly, want-to-help-you thing, even if she didn't know someone very well. And she looked after her sister and her mum so much.

Warriena Wright with her mother Merzabeth, a devout Seventh-Day Adventist.

Warriena Wright with her mother Merzabeth, a devout Seventh-Day Adventist. Photo: Nine

The sisters were born in the Philippines to Warren – Warriena is derived from Warren – and his Filipino wife Merzabeth Tagpuno, a devout Seventh-day Adventist (SDA). When Wright was three, the family settled in Porirua, not far from Lower Hutt, where the girls went to a SDA primary school (Wright, though, wasn't "churchy", her friend says). In 2001 Wright attended nearby state secondary Tawa College for a year, where she performed well in technology and English. Principal Murray Lucas, a kind man with thick glasses, shares her reports with me. "I get the impression," he says, sitting at his desk, "that she was quite shy and quiet, and she did the right thing." 

Wright was naturally beautiful: big brown eyes, high cheekbones and a shine of long black hair that swept across her forehead. But like many 20-something women, she battled insecurity: was she pretty enough and in the right ways? She'd had a long-term boyfriend who was a personal trainer, which didn't help. 

"Even though she was really, really petite, she felt like she wasn't mainstream beautiful," the friend says. The couple split and Wright, like millions of Australians and New Zealanders, turned to Tinder, a phone-based dating app that delivers potential partners based on proximity. When a profile comes up, you swipe right if you like them, left if you don't. And if they swipe right on you, too, it's a match.

Wright started seeing a Tinder guy, though nothing official. But just before she flew to Queensland for a friend's wedding, they had a fight. When Wright opened her Tinder app on the Gold Coast to look for a date, the friend says, "It might have been like getting back at him".

On July 29, 2014, Wright flies to Australia. Three days later, Tinder delivers a match: a tanned and strong-jawed 28-year-old Gold Coast carpet layer called Gable Tostee, who makes his intentions immediately clear. "You look delicious," he messages. "I want to do dirty things to you." Wright is attracted to Tostee: she thinks he looks like Sam Winchester, a character in Supernatural, one of her favourite TV shows. But there is much she can't know. She has no idea he's slept with more than 180 women in the past four years, keeping a log of names and dates of each encounter. She can't know he is obsessed with recording his nights out, and that his personality problems are so severe that a psychiatrist once described him as "partially disabled".

They meet in Cavill Mall, Surfers Paradise, at 8.45pm on Thursday, August 7. Nearly six hours later, at 2.21am, Wright falls 14 storeys to her death.

Lunchtime in Surfers Paradise. Schoolies Week. Young partyers gingerly greet the sun like hungover vampires. Girls in top-knots yank boob tubes up and the hems of short shorts down. Boys in sleeveless tops haul six-packs of Red Bull and slabs of beer. Cavill Mall smells of kebabs, stale beer and waffles. This is the world Gable Tostee found in his backyard: thousands of party-thirsty school leavers flocking to Surfers each year. He has lived his whole life on the Gold Coast – with his father Gray, a carpet sales consultant, his mother Helene, a replacement teacher, and younger brother Tennyson – so when he graduates from a private school in 2003, he parties, too. But for Tostee and two mates, Schoolies is more than just boozy good times. It is a business opportunity.

They make fake identification cards for underage schoolies banned from nightclubs, pocketing $30,000 before a police bust. When it goes to court, Judge John Newton finds himself weighing troubling psychological assessments of Tostee. The case is, in retrospect, the first public hint of trouble ahead for the young Gold Coast resident.

In evidence, psychiatrist Ian Curtis diagnoses Tostee as ill-equipped to deal with people socially, with an autistic spectrum disorder best described as Asperger's – which can manifest as difficulty with empathy – and severe obsessive compulsive disorder. Tostee was, Curtis found, hugely disadvantaged in "the normal social world", a "socially distant, emotionally estranged person with whom it was impossible to establish a clear-cut rapport". (In 2009, Tostee started seeing a psychiatrist for social anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and depression.)

No conviction is recorded, but the incident leaves its mark on Tostee. He cuts off school friends and becomes a loner. In July 2004, he joins the forum on bodybuilding.com, a global site for muscle-sculpting enthusiasts. Like many male members, Tostee's profile features his lean torso and corrugated stomach muscles, head just out of frame.

He asks the forum about fat-burning supplements and structuring a non-dairy diet. In January 2005, Tostee starts asking deeper questions – the deepest sort. He asks about faith and proof of the existence of God. "The_Champ01" and "Powerman2000" answer patiently and thoughtfully.

In January 2010, Tostee, then 23, approaches the forum looking for more advice: how do you make friends? He's bumped into an old mate and realises how much socialising he's missed.

"It's difficult to make actual friends without knowing people already," he writes, "since I eventually have to reveal the fact that I am a hermit."

A few days later, he reports that he's been out with the school mate and they'd picked up some girls. There was dancing, kissing, numbers swapped. But Tostee, who hasn't had sex since he lost his virginity at Schoolies at 17, feels awkward. He's left a message for one woman. Should he try again?

A week later, with another woman, he tries a "more aggressive" approach, to "close the deal" in one night. "Ended up rooting her in the back of my car," he tells the forum. But then he wanted a "second one down" to know the first was no fluke.

More dancing, kissing, soliciting numbers. "Not sure what more I could have possibly done," he says of one who got away. "Bought her more drinks? Would this be unethical?" Tostee persists and soon lands a cute blonde. A Gold Coast playboy is born.

The inside of Tostee's apartment as shown in his Brisbane Supreme Court trial over the death of Warriena Wright.

The inside of Tostee's apartment as shown in his Brisbane Supreme Court trial over the death of Warriena Wright. Photo: Seven News Brisbane

It's June 2012 and Tostee is in his Surfers bachelor pad, lying on a white leather couch. He's hit a milestone: his 100th woman, asleep in his bedroom. He can't sleep, so he logs on to the forum. "Ask a guy who just reached 100 girls slept with and is kinda depressed anything," he types.

He'd posted something similar in December 2010, when he reached 50 women. His date, he explains, is "a big drop" in his standards, but he just wanted to get the 100th "out of the way". On the upside, he adds, she has "huge teddies" (he explains he's never slept with a woman rated higher than 8.5, most were seven out of 10, and he generally doesn't "touch anything" lower than that).

The bodybuilders want tips, others think something is awry. "Epicness83" offers that "dudes that tap a lot of ass" tend to be insecure, with low self-esteem and often narcissistic. 

"Actually," Tostee writes back, "you made me realise something pathetic. One of the main reasons I try to sleep with different girls as often as possible is to improve my own confidence." He has low self-esteem, he admits. "I had a lot of difficulty keeping friends as a kid and was never very popular. That's a long time ago but the feeling still lingers."

In April 2013, Tostee discovers Tinder (a timely development, as several Gold Coast nightclubs have banned him, with one manager later describing him as "creepy".) Tinder is a playboy's perfect tool: every holiday-making, fun-seeking woman in Surfers is only a finger flick away. 

For Tostee, it is a hook-up app for sex, but some women have other ideas. "Sick of time/money wasting bitches," he writes in September 2013 about "totally frigid" women. "Every girl has [Tinder] now and none of them are DTF [down to fuck] anymore." (When police seize Tostee's phone after Wright's death, they find Tinder interactions with more than 250 women in a year.)

Meanwhile, Tostee's binge drinking – which he later admits eases his social anxiety – is spiralling out of control. In June 2011, he wakes to find a used condom and a long hair on his couch, but no woman. He tells the forum he remembers drinking a bottle of vodka and taking 500mg of caffeine, but cannot recall going out.

His remedy is not to curb his drinking, but instead record his nights. "I'm somewhat obsessed with recording everything," he tells the forum. "I have motion detection cameras in my house, call recording on my phone, and sometimes I even leave my phone on record in my pocket for nights out in case I forget what happens."

He also keeps running into trouble with police. In 2011, police pull Tostee over because he is driving into oncoming traffic with a blood alcohol level of 0.185.

In his recording of a January 2014 fight with police, Tostee says: "All this is being recorded."

Policeman: "Recorded, is it? God, you're a dickhead."

A bit later, Tostee: "What are you arresting me for?"

Policeman: "For being a dickhead."

In late July 2014, police clock Tostee driving his mates back from Byron Bay's Splendour in the Grass festival at 150 kilometres an hour. He plants his foot to 195 kilometres an hour.

Road spikes eventually stop him, he is arrested and blows 0.2, four times the legal limit.

Eleven days later, he meets Warriena Wright in the mall. In security footage, Tostee, 188 centimetres tall and 90 kilograms, opens his arms in a request for a hug and bends down for a perfunctory embrace with Wright, a petite 162 centimetres and 57 kilograms.

It is, of course, the slightly awkward embrace of strangers: a quirky and artistic Kiwi, who believes fiercely in animal rights and mothers her sister and friends, and a good-looking, socially clueless loner trying to fill a void with his prowling sexual thirst for one-night stands. They were two people who probably would never have met, had it not been for the geo-location powers of Tinder, the modern-day Cupid's arrow.

The Wright and Tostee story quickly lodges itself in the public imagination as a salutary tale about online dating. It raises questions about how many now choose sex partners; the speedy risk calculations inherent in Tinder dating. These decisions have always been made, of course; often drunk and late at night in bars. But unlike hooking up in a bar, surrounded by your friends and their friends, people are now weighing these risks by themselves, based on a photograph, scant profiles and some saucy text messages.

"There are a number of things about online dating that are particularly problematic," says Peter Jonason, a University of Western Sydney psychological scientist who researches mating strategies. "With Tinder you are suffering from a shortage of information. That being said, these horror stories are statistical anomalies." (Another horror story happened in New South Wales last November, when petty embezzler Paul Dennis Lambert stabbed young doctor Angela Jay 11 times, when she rejected him after meeting two months earlier on Tinder.) "There have been many women and men who have gone over to a person's place they've never met, and had sex. And nothing bad happens," says Jonason. "But strange events like [Wright's case] make everyone panic because we don't think about probabilities well."

Jonason, 39, who uses dating apps Tinder, Bumble and Happn, says the only way to get a better sense of potential mates online is via research: go through their Facebook page, hold a Skype date first and plan an hour-long initial meeting. But these things, says Jonason, require the brain to override lust. "It's a gear change that's difficult, particularly when your brain is younger," says Jonason. "And sexual attraction is not really rational."

Shortly after Wright and Tostee meet, security cameras capture Wright lifting a six-pack of Toohey's Extra Dry onto a BWS liquor counter. She steps back, looking pensive, while Tostee pay-waves for the beer. By 8.58pm, less than 15 minutes after their first encounter, the couple enter his Surfers Paradise apartment building, Avalon, and at some point in the next four hours have sex. They snap selfies, which Wright posts on her private Facebook page, announcing she's met the Australian Sam Winchester: "Drinking with him, woot!" 

A selfie taken during the Tinder date between Warriena Wright and Gable Tostee in his 14th-floor Surfers Paradise apartment, just hours before she fell to her death.

A selfie taken during the Tinder date between Warriena Wright and Gable Tostee in his 14th-floor Surfers Paradise apartment, just hours before she fell to her death. Photo: Supplied

At 12.56am, Tostee hits record on his Sony Xperia phone. The recording, titled "session 24", lasts for three hours and 19 minutes. When the tape begins, they are drinking Tostee's vodka, or moonshine, made from a still in his kitchen. Around five minutes in, Wright, normally a beer drinker, declares she's "psycho drunk". Yet Tostee offers or pours her a drink at least three more times (tests later revealed an alcohol level of 0.156, three times the legal limit).

The conversation soon stumbles into the drunkenly eccentric. Tostee says: "There are no gods. We just discussed this." Wright: "There are gods, everywhere." Wright play-fights him with Muay Thai, a martial art she once learnt. Tostee says she's a bit violent.

'One of the main reasons I try to sleep with different girls as often as possible is to improve my own confidence,' Tostee wrote in an online forum.

'One of the main reasons I try to sleep with different girls as often as possible is to improve my own confidence,' Tostee wrote in an online forum. Photo: Supplied

At 1.35am Wright, clearly inebriated, wants to leave and accuses Tostee of taking her phone. "Are you going to Muay Thai me? Because I will fucking destroy your jaw," she yells. Then, like a becalmed ocean, things suddenly settle.

At 2.10am there is a struggle and Wright says, "That really hurt my vagina." Tostee laughs. Then she starts playing with small ornamental stones. Tostee says "ow", which the prosecution says is most likely because she's throwing them at him.

At 2.12am, she calls him Sam Winchester. Tostee promises to do what she wants: "Sexually, I'll be your slave." A struggle ensues and Tostee says: "Alright, that's enough." You can hear whimpers of protest from Wright. "You have worn out your welcome," he says. "You are not my kind of girl."

Tostee's tone switches from patient to menacing and totally in control. "You have to leave," he says. "Okay," says Wright quickly, labouring to get air. "It's all good. Hey, it's all good." There's something obstructing her voice; the prosecution says she is probably being pressed down, with her face towards the carpet and Tostee restraining her.

After calling her "fucking insane", Tostee delivers his soon to be famous line. "You're lucky I haven't chucked you off my balcony, you goddamn little psycho bitch." You can hear Wright panting. "What? What?" he taunts. "Got something to say?"

With something obstructing her voice, Wright throws one last barb. "You're a sexist," she says. "I am the one who is injured," Tostee replies, "You don't have a goddamn scratch on you."

Then, in a sober voice, he says: "You're not going to collect any belongings, or anything, you're just going to walk out. And I'm gonna slam the door on you. You understand? If you try to pull anything… I'll knock you the fuck out." 

There's another struggle, and Wright, scared, apologises. There's a gurgling, rasping sound – prosecutors allege Tostee was choking Wright here – and she manages to reach for the metal clamp of a telescope. He tells her repeatedly to let go. She's struggling to breathe, gasping. The clamp thuds to the floor.

At 2.19am, there are sounds that police think could be the balcony door – only a few metres away – unlocking. Just after this, Wright starts to scream "NO!" She screams the word 31 times in 46 seconds.

Like thousands of others who flock to Facebook discussion groups to puzzle over Wright's last moments (yes, it's a thing), I've listened to this part of the recording (it's on YouTube) dozens of times. 

It's distressing. "Scream" does no justice to the sound Wright makes. Each "no" is a primal, stop-right-now roar that barrels up from her stomach and comes out ragged, edged, throaty. 

It is an untamed, wild howl. She is screaming like her life depends on it, pleading with Tostee to stop whatever he is doing. And, amid her screams, you can hear him speaking: "Shut your fucking mouth. This is all on a recording, you know!" 

On the night Warriena Wright dies, Nick Casey is two floors below Tostee's apartment visiting his friend and fellow hairdresser Emily Ellis. Directly below Tostee is Gabriele Collyer-Wiedner, who later tells police that, two months earlier, she'd heard a female shouting "no, no, no" in the same scared and panicked way she heard Wright in the early hours of August 8.

When they hear banging and yelling, Casey, Ellis and her boyfriend Ryan Martin come out to the balcony and look up to see Wright standing on a concrete ledge on the wrong side of the glass balustrade of Tostee's balcony. 

Nick Casey remembers Wright saying she wants to go home. Casey says he tells her something like: "You can't get down this way, go back in." He says Wright briefly tries to twist around and lower a leg down off the concrete ledge. Then she returns to a standing position. Shortly after, he says, she seems to stiffen, then slip.

The scene of the tragedy: looking out from Tostee’s unit to the balcony where he isolated her, and the railing over which she climbed before falling to the ground.

The scene of the tragedy: looking out from Tostee’s unit to the balcony where he isolated her, and the railing over which she climbed before falling to the ground. Photo: Supplied

When I meet Casey, 37, in a cafe in Broadbeach, just south of Surfers Paradise, it's as if the incident has injured his gentle spirit. "I just thought: 'How do people treat each other like this?' " Casey, who is studying to be a pharmacist, says Wright's face as she fell – wide-eyed with pure fear – will stay with him forever. And he remembers a noise, as if she was trying to say something, but nothing came out. "If I had put my arms out, I could have touched her as she fell. And then we just watched her fall to the ground."

Twenty-five seconds after shutting the balcony door, at 2.21am, Tostee's phone records a faint scream as Wright plummets to her death. Tostee, breathing deeply, does not check on Wright or call 000 (Collyer-Wiedner alerts emergency services as soon as she sees Wright fall). Instead, 38 seconds after her fall, he tries without success to reach his lawyer. He leaves the Avalon, evading police by using a fire escape and walks around for 43 minutes, calling Wright's phone twice (he later discovers her iPhone in his pocket).

At 3.10am, he orders and eats a slice of pizza on Cavill Avenue, from where he can see the Avalon aglow in red and blue light, as police puzzle over a dead woman with 80 injuries. With no phone, no purse and no ID, they have no clue who she is.

Tostee's unusual actions after Wright's death – particularly eating pizza – condemn him in the court of public opinion. But whatever people think of Tostee's movements after Wright died, none are illegal. The crucial part is what he does prior to that. And for those actions, police wake him at 10.40am on August 15, 2014 at his parents' home in a gated Gold Coast community. Then they arrest him for the murder of Warriena Wright.

In October last year, in a jury room in Brisbane's ultra-modern Supreme Court, six women and six men struggle with Tostee's fate for nearly four days. They ask Justice John Byrne six questions and report they cannot reach a unanimous verdict. Keep trying, he says. When they finally do so, Tostee, a little chunkier than in his body-building days, straightens to face his future. When the jury foreman declares him not guilty of murder, Tostee's mother Helene cries out in relief. Wright's mother Merzabeth puts a tissue to her face. Tostee is still. When the foreman declares him not guilty of manslaughter, Tostee allows himself to lean back, clasp his hands and nod his head.

As he leaves court, almost every bystander with an arm has a phone pointed at Tostee. "We knew you were innocent, mate!" shouts one passer-by. "Tostee's a pig!" offers another. And that was how the public divided around Tostee post-trial: a man falsely accused or wrongly set free.

In a building across from the Supreme Court, Tostee's lawyer Nick Dore greets me in his board room. This is no solemn office of law; the walls boast Pearl Jam posters. And Dore, 40, is no stuffy practitioner. Tall, with scruffy brown hair, Dore has several tattoos, one tracing the tiny hand of his daughter Isabelle, stillborn at 26 weeks. In his office, he reflects on defending Tostee. "I've acted for people who kill kids, I've acted for triple murderers, notorious paedophiles, but all of a sudden this one particular case becomes the moral high ground."

It was mad, he says: the media storm, a jury member almost triggering a mistrial with Instagram posts and the strange fans (Dore received one note in small type saying "Gable, we believe in you"). Then, after the acquittal, agents and production companies were on the phone about books and films. Russell Crowe would play him in the movie, one said.

"I was like, really? Russell Crowe?" Dore complains, cheekily. "I'm not saying it needs to be [handsome Australian actor] Chris Hemsworth, but maybe somewhere between him and Crowe would be good."

It wasn't meant to be like this: the defence pulling off an unexpected victory against the might of the Queensland Crown, and Tostee, the unsympathetic protagonist, a free man. But legal experts tell Good Weekend that a murder charge would always have been difficult to prove because the recording clearly shows Wright was on one side of a balcony door, Tostee on the other. 

Despite this, Bill Potts, the Queensland Law Society's immediate past president, thinks the prosecution's decision to run a murder case was "stock standard". In the past, he says, Queensland prosecutors have been slammed for not proceeding with tough charges. "While they would have believed they had sufficient evidence to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt, the Crown will often proceed with a more serious charge so they don't seem weak in the eyes of the public."

And the Crown did have a precedent case to rely on. In 1988, Sydney criminal Kim William Royall violently fought with his girlfriend Kelly Healey, who climbed out of the bathroom window and fell to her death. NSW prosecutors argued Royall was guilty of murder because he created a "well-founded apprehension that [Healey] would be subjected to further violence" if she stayed in the apartment. Royall was convicted of murder and lost an appeal to the High Court.

Senior prosecutor Glen Cash, QC argues in court that Tostee's threats and intimidation have provoked Wright's actions, resulting in her death as much as if he has pushed her. He says Wright probably threw "small decorative rocks" at the defendant, but Tostee quickly "turned the tables", dominating her and inducing "abject terror". But Cash has to also negate defence arguments beyond reasonable doubt.

He has to convince the jury Tostee's actions were unlawful (you can lawfully use reasonable force in some situations, such as removing a disorderly person from your property). Cash also has to argue Wright's actions were reasonable; that Tostee could have foreseen her death. The prosecution concedes that Tostee had no intention to kill Wright, but intended to cause her grievous bodily harm by choking (proven by the "choking or strangling" sounds).

This argument unravels somewhat when forensic pathologist Dianne Little testifies she found no internal damage suggesting choking or strangulation (though she says there is an arm hold across the neck, used by police, that leaves no internal marks). Justice Byrne later tells the jury they can only find Tostee guilty of murder if satisfied beyond reasonable doubt he had choked her.

Tostee's formidable barrister Saul Holt – legal sources say Tostee's defence is funded through Legal Aid – argues the defendant acted with reasonable force in restraining Wright, sensibly "de-escalating" the situation. Tostee could not have foreseen the actions of an intoxicated woman, he says. Climbing over a 14th-storey balcony while drunk would only be reasonable, he argues, if someone was chasing you with a knife.

Holt calls Wright's behaviour "utterly, utterly irrational" and draws from Little's evidence that Wright had old scars consistent with self-harm, possibly raising in the jurors' mind a question about her mental stability. (Wright's friend says she can't imagine her trying to hurt herself.)

Gable Tostee looks to the sky during his trial for murder at the Brisbane Supreme Court.

Gable Tostee looks to the sky during his trial for murder at the Brisbane Supreme Court. Photo: AAP

Tostee does not go quietly into his new life as an acquitted man. Despite never submitting to police questioning or taking the stand, Tostee grants 60 Minutes an interview last November for which he is paid $250,000, according to sources close to the negotiation. (The program refuses to discuss the fee and Tostee declines Good Weekend's request for an unpaid interview.) 

On Facebook, around 5000 people join a group to discuss the case and, in late November, members put questions directly to Tostee. To their surprise, he responds.

The group has plenty of anti-Tostee sentiment and the man himself comes out swinging. He corrects members' spelling and dispatches withering put-downs ("Do your bitter angry delusions help you deal with the constant rejection you no doubt experience from men?" he tells one woman). Some answers are unproven. He says the "real and heavy" stones are found with "blood on them after being pelted at me". 

Forensic scientists did find his blood on some stones, but no evidence Wright threw them. Other answers stretch credulity. When asked what Wright was saying "no" to, Tostee says "being disarmed" of the telescope base. 

Still, there are many unanswered questions. Such as why, for instance, Wright screamed for 46 seconds (in removing her to the balcony, Tostee had to cover only a few metres). And a new Facebook group discusses another lingering question: what was the silver object cameras recorded him holding near the Avalon lift the night Wright died? The jury also wanted to know, but Justice Byrne ruled it irrelevant. 

Sitting on his Levin porch, Warren Wright is a world away from the politics of Queensland prosecutions and uninterested in Facebook discussion groups. He's just a grieving father. He puzzles at the attention his daughter's death has received.

"You look at something like Aleppo and 60 families are being killed there every day. Why is this up there?" But he does believe Gable Tostee was charged with the wrong offences.

"Please," he says, "charge him with the right thing – false imprisonment resulting in death. I don't know what the charge is in Australia, but that is what he is guilty of. That and being an arrogant son-of-a-bitch, but I guess there's no crime against that."

Warren tells me a lawyer has been in touch offering to review the case, but they weren't interested. It was time to let it go, move on. "The bottom line is nothing brings her back." Marreza is his priority now. But Gable Tostee? We haven't seen the last of him, Warren says, giving me a knowing nod of his head. "That," he says, "is the nature of the beast."

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