AUSTRALIA: On August 7, 2014, Gable Tostee met up with Warriena Wright for a date. The two had matched on Tinder a week earlier. Wright was an animal lover from New Zealand, and was due to return home in a few days.
“You look delicious,” Tostee had told Wright. “I want to do dirty things to you.”
The two met up near Tostee’s 14th floor Surfers Paradise apartment. They drank Tostee’s homemade alcohol and had sex. Tostee, who had previously admitted he was “somewhat obsessed with recording everything”, recorded a lot of what happened that night.
At about 1.30am, Tostee can be heard, on a recording, saying, “I don’t like getting beaten up.” Later, he added, “I should have never given you so much to drink.”
Wright’s blood alcohol level was measured as being 0.156 when she died.
Wright threw ornamental rocks around the apartment, and Tostee can be heard saying, “This is ****ing bull****. You are lucky I haven’t chucked you off my balcony, you goddamn psycho little b****.”
Tostee claims what happened next was that Wright tried to hit him with part of a telescope and he restrained her. She can be heard screaming, “No!” repeatedly.
Wright begged, “Just let me go home,” and Tostee replied, “I would, but you’ve been a bad girl.”
He pushed her out on the balcony and locked the door. Wright tried to climb down to the apartment below, and fell 14 floors to her death.
Tostee’s first reaction was to ring his lawyer, who didn’t pick up. He then went for a walk, ordered pizza and finally rang his father, telling him, “I might have a bit of a situation.”
Within weeks, Tostee was charged with Wright’s murder. He was released on bail and banned from using dating apps.
After being acquitted, Tostee changed his name to Eric Thomas.
Tostee said he had an account on Tinder again.
In January this year (2019), he posed this question on Facebook: “If a man went to a woman’s apartment, got himself blind drunk, became aggressive without any provocation and started violently attacking her, verbally abusing her, throwing her things at her, refused to leave and then attacked her with a piece of metal and then climbed off her 14th floor balcony after she managed to lock him outside in desperation, would she be charged with murder? Would she be dragged through trial, vilified, shamed and defamed even if fully acquitted? I don’t think so.”
He said “victim blaming” was “hardcoded into the fembot brain”.
The Tinder profile is headed “Eric, 33” and describes him as “Proud single mum (might also be pregnant, dunno), here to find my princess.” He adds that he is looking for “adventure, friends, laughter, a bunch of other generic ****” but is “definitely not here for validation or attention, not looking for a one-night stand (but will probably take one anyway), not here just to promote my insta”.
On Facebook, where Tostee asked for thoughts on his Tinder profile, people have posted, “A date with you is to die for,” and, “Needs more balcony.”
The Courier Mail reported that the Coroner, James McDougall, was still investigating Wright’s death and a coronial hearing was still a possibility.
Complete audio recording from the night in question - the hours before the altercation, during the altercation, Wright's scream as she falls from the balcony and Tostee's reaction and movements in the hour after her "fall": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivdbsvjuW2Q&t=9522s