Court Reporter

by Jamelle Wells

  He stopped and watched what we were doing, then offered his suggestion, ‘Reykjavik’. We were gobsmacked at how relaxed, calm and collected a man facing a possible guilty verdict for murder could be.

  Channel Seven court reporter Lee Jelosek said, ‘No, that’s Iceland’s capital.’

  The correct answer was actually Nuuk.

  When the verdict eventually came, it caught some reporters off guard because it was delivered quite early on Friday morning 21 November 2008 when many people were just arriving at the Darlinghurst Courthouse. By chance I had arrived at court early that morning and was sitting on the grass outside when the court doors opened.

  When the jury foreman stood to deliver the verdict he had his arms crossed. I remember thinking what a tough job that jury must have had because most of the jurors could not look at Gordon Wood when they came in to the courtroom to take their seats. He was sitting just across from them in the dock in the middle of the court.

  When the foreman said ‘guilty’ my heart raced and a gasp rippled through the court.

  It caught Gordon Wood off guard too. He had a drink of water and was visibly shaken as he handed over his wallet, his mobile phone and his ring before being taken down to the cells.

  Tony Byrne and Caroline’s younger sister, Deanna, cried and hugged and shook hands with the detectives who had worked on the case. They had all been through so much.

  A short distance away from him in court, Gordon Wood’s mother, Brenda, and his sisters, Jacqueline and Michele, were also upset. They had always maintained he was innocent.

  As reporters gathered around Tony Byrne outside court, he told us he had been crying tears of joy.

  ‘I’ll never forget the foreman when he said, “guilty”,’ he said. He also expressed his gratitude to the Strikeforce Irondale detectives who had worked on the case. ‘Although we may have been, might I say, badgering the police, if the evidence had not been positive, they would not have spent the enormous amount of money to reach this verdict.’

  June Dally-Watkins, who was with Tony Byrne that day, spoke highly of how persistent he had been during the police investigation.

  ‘We all knew that Caroline could never, never have taken her own life,’ she said.

  But Gordon Wood’s barrister, Winston Terracini SC, said it was an ‘unreasonable verdict’ and that his client was innocent. Mr Terracini said an appeal would be lodged against the conviction.9

  The Acquittal

  On 24 February 2012 Gordon Wood was acquitted of Caroline Byrne’s murder and released from Goulburn jail. He had always maintained his innocence and he finally walked free after serving just over three years of his minimum thirteen-year sentence.

  I was on leave visiting my family at the time but cut the leave short to come back to cover the story when I got word that the appeal judgment would be handed down the next day. A few court reporters at other networks came back from their leave early as well. We had all spent so long covering the trial from the very start and we had a hunch the acquittal decision would be big.

  The three appeal judges were unanimous in their decision. There had been nine grounds of appeal and the judges found the Crown evidence was flawed and said the possibility that Caroline Byrne committed suicide could not be ruled out. They questioned the credibility of physics experiments presented to the jury as evidence by Associate Professor Rod Cross that involved police cadets at the Goulburn Academy diving into swimming pools and throwing each other into pools. Rod Cross had concluded that only a tall man such as Gordon Wood could have thrown Caroline Byrne off The Gap and she couldn’t have jumped.

  Gordon Wood’s appeal barrister, Tim Game SC, argued that Rod Cross’ evidence was biased, and that the jury wasn’t clearly informed about the degree to which he was involved in the police case. Professor Cross denied all allegations of collusion with police.

  The judges also questioned the aspect of the Crown case that Caroline Byrne was killed because she knew too much about Rene Rivkin’s business affairs and allegations of insider trading.

  Most importantly, they said suicide couldn’t be ruled out and noted that Caroline Byrne had an appointment to see a psychiatrist the day she died.

  At the trial the prosecutor had said Gordon Wood behaved strangely by taking Caroline Byrne’s family to The Gap after telling them he had a premonition that that’s where she was and that he had pointed to the spot where her body was eventually found. The judges said, although Gordon Wood did behave strangely and suspiciously after her death, suspicion on its own was not enough to convict him.

  The appeal judges also questioned some of the address to the jury by Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi QC and they questioned the accuracy of some of the police work such as the labelling of photos.10 Gordon Wood had used legal aid and his sisters had done a lot of the research for him, which included finding new witnesses.

  Tony Byrne was at the appeal judgment with a police officer who had worked on the case but left quickly afterwards looking very shaken. What an emotional roller coaster the family had been on.

  A court victory, then the victory taken away.

  In a live television studio cross with presenter Scott Bevan on the ABC News Channel that night, I discussed how Caroline Byrne’s death had in some form or another been the focus of her father’s life for almost seventeen years.

  I realised, too, after reporting on this case for years, the degree to which people have an insatiable appetite for murder mysteries. Years after the trial and the acquittal, my colleague, broadcast engineer Bob Stoddart, would ask me about aspects of the Gordon Wood case or pass on a query about it from a neighbour.

  The malicious prosecution case

  Waiting to go back into court with Gordon Wood in February 2017 — nine years after I had covered his 2008 murder trial — was like a weird case of déjà vu.

  Would this case ever go away?

  This time, in a civil case, Gordon Wood was suing the state of New South Wales for millions of dollars plus costs for malicious prosecution and wrongful imprisonment, based on grounds that included a ‘hopelessly corrupted’ police case against him.

  Gordon Wood was arguing that the Crown case at his murder trial was fuelled by Caroline Byrne’s jealous ex-boyfriend Andrew Blanchette, who was a police officer at the time. The state’s Senior Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi QC was accused of being prepared to ‘bend the rules’ by putting submissions to the trial jury without any evidence.

  This was a very different case to Gordon Wood’s murder trial and the onus was not on him to prove his innocence because he had already been acquitted.11 He needed to try to prove that the prosecution was motivated by spite or a bid to see him come to harm.

  This hearing was not in the Darlinghurst Courthouse where the murder trial was held, but in Court 9D on level nine of the Law Courts Building in Queens Square which was a much smaller courtroom.

  On the opening day of the malicious prosecution case I sat outside the courtroom waiting for the court door to open.

  The CBD seemed darker since I started doing this round almost a decade ago because there was construction everywhere and some of it was probably blocking out the sunlight. I wondered how much Gordon Wood might have changed since spending time in jail and being acquitted.

  Would he look the same?

  What had he been doing since leaving jail?

  I’d heard that he had been living overseas for a while and then in Adelaide.

  A small group of reporters and about twenty members of the public were waiting with me to go into Court 9D. As soon as the court was unlocked by an official we rushed in to try to get the best seats. The tension and curiosity in the public gallery was high because of the possibility of hearing Gordon Wood give sworn evidence in a court about Caroline Byrne’s death for the very first time. He had exercised his right not to give evidence at his 2008 trial and did not appear at his Court of Criminal Appeal hearing in 2012.

  Not only was the public gallery waiting to hear fr
om Gordon Wood, but this court case was a rare opportunity to see the man who put him in jail, the state’s Senior Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi QC, have his own work challenged in open court. Mr Tedeschi had been hailed a hero and walked from court smiling when Wood was found guilty. He had put some of the state’s most notorious murderers behind bars and dedicated his life to his job.

  On day one of the case, Gordon Wood walked into court and there was a hush in the gallery, though his entrance was very low-key. He came in with his solicitor and sat down. To me he looked largely unchanged and still wore good-quality, dark-coloured suits but they were a slightly looser fit on him now. Gordon Wood was also still courteous when talking to his friends and supporters who turned up each day in the public gallery. He had lunch with them in the cafés around the Law Courts building as camera crews followed him. Every day he left court, the reporters waiting outside shouted, ‘Gordon, how’s the case going?’ Even if he said nothing and kept walking, vision of him was added to the nightly television stories. Mostly he kept walking with his lawyers but just once I heard him politely say, ‘I’m unable to comment.’

  Unlike at Gordon Wood’s murder trial, Tony Byrne was not in court for the malicious prosecution case, although for me, he was a silent character in it because he was often referred to in the evidence. Gordon Wood’s barrister Bruce McClintock SC said Tony Byrne had influenced the flawed police case against Wood because he was a grieving father looking for answers. He said Mr Byrne had always refused to accept that his daughter committed suicide.

  ‘This is a terribly sad story, your honour,’ Mr McClintock said.

  The court heard Caroline Byrne had made a failed suicide attempt in 1992 and had missed a psychiatrist appointment the day she died. It heard that after an inquest led to an open finding, Tony Byrne wrote to the police in 1996 telling them the family did not trust Mr Wood. He was concerned his daughter may have known too much about the business affairs of Mr Wood’s employer Rivkin and that he suspected Mr Wood was in a homosexual relationship with Rivkin.

  ‘It expanded in Mr Byrne’s mind to a full-blown conspiracy involving Mr Wood and Mr Rivkin,’ Mr McClintock said.

  The court heard that Mr Byrne wrote: ‘I believe Caroline may have been lured to Watsons Bay . . . then thrown over the cliff. It was a dark and windy night.’12

  The infamous television interview aired by the Channel Seven Witness program in 1998 was played in court at the malicious prosecution case as part of the allegation that police had presented flawed evidence to the jury that should never have been used to prosecute Gordon Wood.

  In the interview, a classic moment in Australian television history, reporter Paul Barry quizzes Wood about Caroline Byrne’s death and accuses him of inconsistencies in his evidence. Gordon Wood replies that he is telling the truth, but at the end of the interview with the cameras still running, he says to Paul Barry, ‘So do you think I did it?’13 The interview was not played at Gordon Wood’s murder trial due to fears it would be prejudicial, but in the malicious prosecution case, his lawyers were now arguing that Crown witness John Doherty may have come forward after seeing the interview.

  They argued that Mr Doherty told police he saw a woman arguing with a tall man at The Gap while another man sat nearby, but couldn’t recall an exact date for the sighting and only saw the tall man from behind. They argued the witness had stated that from behind, the man resembled Gordon Wood because of his build, height and hair.14 The panel of judges who had earlier acquitted Gordon Wood in 2012 said Mr Doherty’s evidence might not have been accurate because it may have been based on images he saw of Mr Wood in the media after 1995.15

  The malicious prosecution case ran for about a week before Gordon Wood gave his evidence and not before Justice Elizabeth Fullerton got annoyed with his barrister Bruce McClintock SC for taking too long to tender documents.

  ‘I don’t have a skerrick of evidence in front of me,’ she told the parties on day five. ‘Send the juniors off in a flurry,’ she added, pressing them to get administrative matters sorted.16

  When there was talk of the legal teams going to The Gap in the rain, Justice Fullerton said, ‘There’s nothing worse than a bedraggled judge wandering around the cliff tops.’ She later noted that she would have to take her field glasses.17

  The trip to The Gap did eventuate on a mostly fine day on 1 March 2017 and later in court, the judge said it had helped her to see areas that were being referred to in the evidence.

  Gordon Wood walked freely around the court acknowledging some of the reporters and chatting with family members and supporters who turned up each day. It was a defining court moment when he gave his evidence.

  He said he feared police would try to ‘stitch him up again’ after he was acquitted of murdering his former girlfriend and that the wrongful prosecution caused him mental health issues and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. Gordon Wood said he been on anti-depressants and felt ‘paranoid’ since he was acquitted in 2012.18

  He choked back tears when he was asked about viewing Caroline Byrne’s body in the Glebe morgue in 1995 and the judge gave him a moment to pull himself together.

  ‘Do you think they are real tears?’ I heard someone behind me whisper.

  Two rows of reporters were leaning forward at the same time to try to see his face and his eyes more closely, but he had his hand up to his face and his head was bowed.

  Wood’s lawyers in this malicious prosecution case had argued that allegations he had asked to see Caroline Byrne’s breasts at the morgue after her body was found were simply lies.

  When the question was put to him, Gordon Wood said he did not ask to see her breasts at all.19 Instead he described how a social worker took Caroline Byrne’s hand out of the blue body bag she was in and let him hold it to say goodbye.

  Gordon Wood also revealed that he hadn’t been able to find work since the day he was arrested for murder. The court heard how he had once worked as a ‘gateway’ to Rene Rivkin and had also been a financial consultant and had set up his own company overseas.20

  Bashed in jail

  In a witness statement filed as part of his malicious prosecution case, Gordon Wood described his three years and two months in Goulburn jail as a ‘living death’.21 He said he was attacked by a notorious rapist and killer and received threats from other inmates and also lived in fear of the prison guards after one of them smashed his glasses. Gordon Wood also said he was traumatised and in a deep depression.

  ‘Jail must be unbearably difficult even if one is guilty, but as an innocent man it was unimaginable,’ the statement said. ‘Doubly so for having been falsely accused and wrongly convicted of killing the woman I loved and intended to marry.’22

  Gordon Wood said in the statement he was unlikely to move forward in life because his reputation was forever tarnished. He said he was unable to find work or have a loving relationship.

  Psychiatrist Robert Hampshire told the court, Gordon Wood had a serious depressive disorder and was agitated and paranoid about police and jails. The doctor said Mr Wood had recently asked him for a prescription for Valium to help him get through his current court case.23

  Waiting to go into court one morning I heard retired Sydney University Associate Professor Rod Cross on the phone to someone explaining he would be back in court the next day because he wrote seven reports on the death of Caroline Byrne and he was frustrated the lawyers in the malicious prosecution case were still only on the first one after a whole day in court.

  ‘Lawyers don’t understand physics,’ he said.

  Gordon Wood’s lawyers argued that Rod Cross had had a motive to make sure Wood was convicted of murdering Caroline Byrne because he was writing a book on her death, Evidence for Murder: How Physics Convicted a Killer.24

  At the murder trial the Crown case had relied on expert evidence prepared by Associate Professor Cross about the position of Caroline Byrne’s body when she was found.

  Associate Professor Cross had said th
e only way the model could have landed the distance from the cliff that she did was if she was thrown in a ‘spear-like way’ from the top.

  However, the malicious prosecution case was told that incorrectly labelled photos of the crime scene at The Gap had been shown to the trial jury and that Professor Cross was not an impartial witness and instead became part of the police-investigation team.25

  Mr McClintock said Professor Cross’ background and experience was in ‘the behaviour of high-temperature gases’ and he had no relevant expertise for the case.

  ‘The case against my client was, to put it mildly, flawed,’ Mr McClintock said.26

  Senior Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi QC

  In March 2017, about midway through the Gordon Wood malicious prosecution case, the man who helped put him in jail, Senior Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi QC, was called as a witness. Part of Gordon Wood’s case was that Mr Tedeschi inappropriately offered his own opinion to the trial jury. It was a rare court experience to see the man who had prosecuted some of the highest-profile criminals in the state being quizzed about his work as a prosecutor that had spanned two decades.

  Mark Tedeschi had prosecuted the first three trials of Robert Xie, who was eventually jailed for life for murdering five members of the Lin family. He had also been the prosecutor for the murder trial of Simon Gittany, who was in jail for throwing his girlfriend, Lisa Harnum, off the balcony of a fifteen-storey unit block in Sydney’s CBD. The murder trials of Keli Lane; backpacker murderer Ivan Milat; the killers of heart surgeon Victor Chang; and Phuong Ngo for the murder of MP John Newman are just a few of the many others Mark Tedeschi had presided over.

  I wondered how it would feel for him to have his hard work ripped apart in public and how his reputation would be affected if the judge ruled in Gordon Wood’s favour. Listening to him defend his work I also thought about the personal cost for a lot of other people associated with this court case that had been kicking away in some shape or form for twenty-two years.