Croc Wrangler: Defence and prosecution make final bids to jury

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Ominous, low clouds sit over the NT Supreme Court today.

And now Matt Wright's future lies in the jury's hands.

I'm ABC court reporter Olivano Lothoris.

And I'm Stephen Stockwell.

Welcome to the case of the crock wrangler.

He's one of the territory's biggest stars.

Flashing cameras and waiting reporters.

As Netflix star Matt Wright fronted court.

The Territory tourism operator is facing three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

This was a tragic event that took the life of the crocodile egg collector.

Mr.

Wright strenuously denies any wrongdoing.

We have had the closing arguments, we've had the judges charge, and now the jury has retired to consider its verdict in the trial of Matt Wright, the crock wrangler.

Ollie, in less than 60 seconds, can you give us an idea of where you're going to take us in this episode?

I'm going to take you through each of those closing addresses.

And in short, the prosecution emphasised what they say is Matt Wright's motive for each of the alleged charges.

He then took the jury through each of those three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Meanwhile, the defence say there was not a scintilla of evidence to support the prosecution's argument of motive and they described the whole case as a scandalous fiasco.

Yeah, the drama of closing arguments is one of my favourite parts of a judicial process.

So you get the whole thing wrapped up into a little bow.

And really what we're talking about here is Matt Wright's actions following a helicopter crash in early 2022.

He had people who were working for him and with him out collecting crocodile legs.

A helicopter crashed.

It resulted in the death of one of them and life-changing injuries to another.

Very dramatic series of events in a very kind of adventurous setting.

Matright's actions following that crash are what have led to the prosecution, say, him attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Ollie,

Something I want to do as we get into this, as we start considering the final arguments in this case, is this attempting to pervert the course of justice charged?

This is quite a serious charge and I was wondering actually just so you can give us some context for what we're considering here, what the jury is considering here I should say, of how serious that charge is.

Stocky, the stakes are high here.

This is an extremely serious criminal charge.

I mean, the fact that it's being heard in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory is in one sense indicative of just how serious the allegations against Mr.

Wright are.

The charge carries serious penalties and at the heart of these charges is this element that someone did something with a tendency to obstruct or get in the way of the course of justice.

And in this case, that course was this investigation into a fatal helicopter accident.

And the seriousness of these charges is actually something that was really emphasized by the defence in their closing.

David Edwardson, KC, pointed to the fact that this isn't just about

someone trying to cover up some things that were going on in their business.

What the prosecution is alleging is that Matt Wright allegedly doing those things got in the way to a criminal extent of this investigation.

So certainly some very serious allegations against Mr.

Wright and certainly some very serious charges.

Yeah, these are really serious charges that we're hearing.

And I think, yeah, the point you make, you know, we're hearing this in the Northern Territory Supreme Court kind of, you know, gives weight to what they are.

Ollie, we finished our last episode wondering whether or not Matt Wright would be giving evidence in his own trial.

I mean, we've spoken about a helicopter crash.

There's no suggestion that Matt Wright was in all responsible or should be blamed for that helicopter crash.

It's his actions afterwards that he is on trial for here.

You know, we didn't know if he was going to get into the witness box and give evidence.

What have we learnt over the last few days?

Yeah, so there was this moment where where Acting Justice Alan Blow asked

the defence whether Matt Wright would be taking the stand and giving evidence.

And of course, the defence said, No, Your Honour, we don't wish to call evidence from Mr.

Wright.

And of course, there's always so much anticipation about whether someone who is on trial is going to take the stand in

their own proceedings.

Of course, you know, there shouldn't be any adverse inference drawn drawn by the jury or anyone else about Mr.

Wright's decision not to take the stand.

Of course,

there is that natural curiosity to hear his side of these events because, of course, throughout the last few weeks, we've heard multiple different accounts of how these alleged events unfolded,

you know, on the day of the crash, after the crash.

And of course, there is that natural curiosity to know what Matt Wright's side of that story is.

But as we know, it's the prosecution's job to prove the case.

The defence don't have to do anything.

And so the defence's decision was not to call evidence from him and, in fact, not to call evidence from anyone else.

So not a single witness giving evidence in the defence case, which is absolutely their prerogative.

And often the case as well, often you'll get to the end of a prosecution case and the defence is challenging various evidence presented.

It's not unusual to have no witnesses or anything presented by the defense.

And yeah, when we got past, you know, whether or not Matt would or wouldn't give evidence, we got into the closings.

And Jason Galachi, SC, the prosecutor in this case, he started by setting the scene for the helicopter crash, talking about the work that these men were doing, collecting crocodile legs, hanging underneath helicopters, talking about how dramatic and how adventurous that work seemed and asking him to put any emotion that they had aside in that situation, to not feel sympathy, to not worry about the people who'd been involved in that.

You know, we had Chris Wilson die as a result of that helicopter crash, Sebastian Robinson, who we've heard evidence from.

You know, he's in a wheelchair now.

And Jason Galachi, SC, telling the jury to put those things out of their mind, not to think about any emotion they might have around that work.

Ollie, what did he say about the people involved in that?

that crash and also about what motivated Matt Wright to commit these alleged crimes?

Yeah, so on the point of emotion,

the prosecution sort of said it was absolutely uncontested that this helicopter accident was a tragedy.

And he said it was perfectly natural for the jury themselves to feel emotional about some of the evidence that they've heard.

He pointed to the multiple times that witnesses who gave evidence became emotional on the stand, particularly about recounting that helicopter accident.

He talked about the emotion that was displayed from people in the gallery.

Chris Wilson's wife, Danielle Wilson, has been in the front row of the gallery for most of this trial, and she has certainly, for obvious reasons, become emotional at various points during the proceedings.

He also said that Matt Wright himself and Matt Wright's wife, Kaya, have also expressed

emotion at various stages of this trial so far.

And on that, he said

those were not crocodile tears.

He said they were genuine emotion.

And he also talked about the closeness of everybody involved and the fact that this accident, this incident, which is really at the heart of this case, has totally torn this tight-knit group of people apart.

He said that it's split this group who were once very, very good friends into camps.

And he said there was no secret about that.

And certainly we've seen that just play out in the gallery.

You've got Matt Wright's family and supporters on one side of the court

and

Sebastian Robinson's family and of course Danielle Wilson on the other side.

And so he said there was no mystery about that but of course urged the jury that regardless of how emotional this whole situation is, that they have to just think dispassionately and intellectually about this.

They're judges of fact and so their task is not to base their decisions off emotion but to base it off the evidence.

On motive, this is something that has really been an important part of the prosecution case right from the very get-go and it's something we've heard a lot of evidence about and really at the heart of it what the prosecution say is Matt Wright knew that there was going to be an investigation into this helicopter accident essentially as soon as it happened and that at the end of the day he feared he was going to get blamed for the cause of the crash.

And they say that is really the basis or the motive for these three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

We're joined for this episode again by the ABC's senior reporter in the Northern Territory, Matt Garrick.

Matt, what did you take away from the prosecution's framing of motive and the closing?

Yes, Stocky, over those two days of prosecution closing arguments, what we really heard was what they say was going on in the mind of Matt Wright in those in the course of those events following this fatal crash.

They say they alleged he wanted to, at almost any cost, prevent investigators finding out about a systemic failure by Matt Wright and his companies to record helicopter flying hours.

They say that was essentially the motive for all of these crimes.

And over those two days, he laid bare exactly what they say they'd found.

While we didn't hear evidence from Matt Wright himself, we did hear his voice through that evidence in recordings from his house, from tapped phones, even from a covert recording made in the hospital.

So Matt Wright's voice was in that evidence.

We certainly did hear that.

We didn't hear it from himself on the stand, of course, but what we did have was this picture from the prosecution where they allege since the moment of that crash, since the moment that he went out there to see what was going on himself, that he'd been trying to hide something, that he'd been trying to obstruct this investigation.

So that went to the heart of their closing arguments.

We heard so much evidence over these weeks, and then certainly in those two days of closing from the prosecution, at one point, Jason Galachi actually acknowledged over a recording that there was no absolute gotcha moment in the recording.

What he's relying on and what we heard over those two days was this greater context context that the prosecution is alleging that is there.

And that is really that there was something to be hidden.

There was a reason for Matt Wright to have allegedly engaged in trying to interfere with this investigation.

Layers upon layers is how he kept describing it.

So, so interesting, Matt, lovely to have your insight.

Always a very welcome voice on the case of

Ollie.

I mean, something you were talking about just before, you know, this idea of the kind of the camps that we have within this trial.

On one side, Seb Robinson and his family.

He's the chopper pilot, the pilot flying the helicopter the day it crashed.

On the other side, Matt Wright and friends, I suppose.

Prosecutor Jason Galachi, SC, you know, was talking a lot about how hard the defence went on Seb Robinson throughout this trial, calling him out, looking at times to kind of discredit his character.

With that, is Jason Galachi trying to preempt what he thinks was going to come

from the defence closing?

Stocky, potentially.

I mean, there were a few moments during the prosecution's closing where he sort of said you might hear arguments from the defence that sort of doing that bit of preemptive work.

But in terms of Sebastian Robinson in particular, the prosecution really was drawing on

the way that David Edwardson had cross-examined the pilot.

And he really said that the prosecution had launched this

full-out, full-blown credit attack on Sebastian Robinson by sort of dredging up all of those text messages that we heard about,

you know, the conversations about drugs, for example.

He said that all of that was really just an attempt by the defense to entirely destroy Sebastian Robinson's credibility.

And he really urged the jury not to place much weight on a lot of that evidence.

Yeah, and I mean a lot of that centers around Sebastian Robinson's, I mean I was going to say alleged cocaine use, but it was admitted cocaine use and admitted drug trafficking that we heard during the trial and also what he remembers about fueling up the helicopter involved in this crash, a helicopter with the name kind of IDW that we heard a lot through the trial.

That was sort of where a lot of that was based, right?

Absolutely.

The prosecutor Jason Galachi urged the jury to use their life experience to make a judgment about Sebastian Robinson's drug use and whether or not that was really a reason to set aside his evidence.

You know, he said that, yes, people do drugs.

It was admitted that Sebastian Robinson occasionally had done cocaine, but that really shouldn't be a reason for the jury to totally scrap every single thing that Sebastian Robinson said during the course of that really lengthy course of evidence that he gave.

I mean, he was on the stand for several days giving evidence.

And then, of course, in relation to fuel, this is the other sort of big-ticket item, was the way that the prosecution described it, fuel and cocaine.

And on fuel, we've heard so many little mentions of fuel.

Was it green fuel in the chopper?

Was it blue fuel in the chopper?

Was the chopper refueled?

Was it not refueled?

Did the chopper go down because it ran out of fuel?

Did it not go down because it ran out of fuel?

And so there's sort of been these sprinklings of these arguments right through this trial.

And it's been a little bit difficult to grapple with because the cause of the accident is not a subject that this trial is trying to deal with.

So

the prosecutor sort of acknowledged that it's all right if the jury's feeling a little confused about all of that but he essentially said that these

attempts by the defence to suggest that the helicopter ran out of fuel was again another way of discrediting Sebastian Robinson's evidence.

You know, Sebastian Robinson at one point told the court that he couldn't remember the day of the accident, but then we heard during a police interview that he told them that the chopper definitely didn't run out of fuel.

And the defense really sort of nailed that point saying, well, why is there this discrepancy in your evidence?

But instead, the prosecution said during their closing that in fact

evidence presented during the course of the trial might suggest that fuel exhaustion was not the reason that the helicopter went down.

And again, tried to urge the jury not to place too much weight on these arguments about fuel when deciding whether to adopt Sebastian Robinson's evidence.

Yeah, and I mean, we're talking about the kind of attacks from the defence on someone's character.

You know, again, we talk about these camps.

You have, you know, Sebastian Robinson and Coe's camp.

You have Matt Wright and Co's camp.

And when you're talking about attacks on character and attacks on credibility, you have Jason Galachi SC calling out the defense for doing that in one instance, and then himself going straight to the character of Jai Tomlinson and Tim Johnston, a couple of witnesses who we heard through this trial, and in his closing, basically just accusing them of lying throughout their evidence.

What kind of picture did he paint

of the supporters of Matt Wright in his closing?

Yeah, in terms of the evidence from Jai Tomlinson and Tim Johnston, who were two of Matt Wright's friends who gave evidence during the course of the last couple of weeks, he really just said that both of those men's evidence should just be completely disregarded by the jury.

He said it was painfully obvious that these two guys were telling blatant lies and truly doing their best not to answer questions put to them by the prosecution.

At one point, Jason Galachi said to the jury, they treated you all collectively like a bunch of Muppets.

And so a little bit of flair there from Jason Galachi SC.

And so essentially he suggested that the reason that these two men allegedly weren't telling the whole truth was to try to protect their friend.

He sort of painted them as being part of sort of Team Matt Wright and that really the jury shouldn't believe their evidence.

Yeah, I mean they were telling different stories, I suppose, to the one that the prosecution was pushing and the one that the prosecution is alleging occurred in these instances.

We have Matt Wright accused of three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

The first count relates to whether or not he did or didn't see fuel in the fuel tank of IDW, the helicopter that crashed.

The second count relates to whether or not he did or didn't ask Sebastian Robinson to move hours from one helicopter to another helicopter.

And the third count around whether or not Matt Wright basically directed someone to destroy a document that investigators were looking for.

Prosecution closing going for a couple of days.

So it was a bit of a long stint there from Jason Galachi SC as he wrapped it up.

The defence closing from David Edwards and Casey,

a refreshing,

refreshingly shorter, I suppose you could say.

That was a mere couple of hours this morning.

Ollie, we spoke about the prosecution trying to predict where the defence was going to go in their closing.

Obviously, the prosecution goes first.

They don't know what the defence is going to hit.

But Ollie,

how did did Jason Galachi SC go in predicting where the defence barrister David Edwardson would go in his closing?

Well, he certainly hit the nail on the head in terms of the defence trying to discredit pilot Sebastian Robinson and Sebastian Robinson's family members.

And again, this was something that was

fairly obvious during the course of those family members' evidence.

The defence David Edwardson really during all of those witnesses, during the cross-examination of all of those witnesses, was definitely trying to sort of point out inconsistencies in their stories.

You know, he made comments about the family fabricating these allegations against Matt Wright.

But that definitely was something that Mr.

Edwardson really emphasised during the course of his closing.

The defence began their closing this morning by saying to the jury, ladies and gentlemen.

and gentlemen, I apologise for looking at my notes, but the reason I'm doing that is because I am trying to get this absolutely perfect.

He sort of said, you know,

this is a case that really requires attention to detail and absolute intellectual rigor.

And he also said that

there was no winners in this case.

He said that His client, Matt Wright, has lost his best friend.

A family has been left without a father.

And he too said this group of friends who were once thick as thieves are never going to be the same again because of this tragic accident.

And he also said that

Matt Wright

had sort of gone from the face of the Northern Territory's tourism industry to sitting in a dock with his fate in the jury's hands.

So he really painted the picture of what's at stake for his client in this case.

Yeah, really dramatic language at that point.

And, you know, you probably get him writing the introductions to the podcast with things like that because, yeah, it really sort of painted a picture.

It might have even been a line that I think we used at some point.

So,

you know, at least we know they're a fan of the pod.

But, you know, Ollie talking through how the defense was kind of challenging the prosecution's claims.

Where did they go?

What sort of specific points were they hitting?

Where were they trying to kind of needle into to create that doubt in the jury's mind?

So the defence went count by count

to sort of discredit the prosecution's case, essentially.

But starting with motive, David Edwardson said there wasn't a scintilla of evidence, not a trace of evidence that was capable of proving that Matt Wright contemplated that he could be held responsible for the cause of this crash so soon after it happened.

So

as Matt Garrick said earlier, this motive that the defence has been, this motive that the prosecution has been trying to establish over the course of this trial is really that

really goes to the heart of what was in Matt Wright's state of mind at the time

back in February, March of 2022.

And the defence today said

It's acknowledged that these practices were happening in Mr.

Wright's business.

This is agreed facts between both of the parties in this case.

It's not disputed that there was a widespread underreporting of flying hours.

We heard evidence that IDW, the crashed helicopter, was pretty likely to have overflown, to have exceeded that maximum number of hours that would have required the chopper to either be retired or to undergo this really costly servicing and maintenance work.

But the defence said that there's a distinction between Matt Wright being concerned that investigators were going to find out about this dodgy paperwork and pulling the pin on Hobbs Hobbes meters and establishing criminal intent, or that Matt Wright had actually contemplated that he could be charged and held responsible for this crash.

And he said there was really no evidence to support that that was his state of mind so soon after the crash.

And then we had David Edwards and Casey kind of running through each of the charges we mentioned before, you know, the fuel, the hours being moved, the alleged destruction of document.

He ran through all of the allegations.

And for each one, he had these sort of like quite neat explanations for his client that he's obviously presenting to make the jury think twice about what the prosecution's presenting.

To plant reasonable doubt, absolutely.

And in terms of count one, which we know relates to allegations Matt Wright lied to police during a police interview days after the crash, he said that Matt Wright knew bugger all at that time, that he didn't know how much fuel was in the tank.

He couldn't possibly have known, really,

and that that really wasn't enough evidence to prove that Matt Wright allegedly lying about how much fuel he thought was in that tank.

He sort of said, well, how does that pervert the course of justice?

How does that stop any type of investigation into the cause of the accident?

So in terms of count one, he said, it's just nonsense,

dispense with it.

On count two, it was again really down to the credibility of the pilot Sebastian Robinson and his family.

We know count two is about allegations.

Matt Wright went to the hospital and tried to convince Sebastian Robinson to fabricate flight hour records.

And he said, you can't trust the evidence from Sebastian Robinson.

He said that he lied over and over and over again.

And as for the family, who you described as Clan, Chillingworth and Robinson, had essentially given evidence that was all too convenient.

It was all too neat, it all married up and essentially amounted to fabricated allegations against Mr.

Wright to protect Sebastian Robinson.

And as for Count 3, which is allegations that Matt Wright asked a friend to burn helicopter records, he said the recording that the prosecution is relying on to prove that charge is simply way too unclear to possibly be able to make out the words that Matt Wright says, and that there's simply far too much doubt about what that conversation was about and what the words were that were allegedly spoken during that conversation.

So he essentially urged the jury to throw out all three charges.

Matt Garrick, Garrick, what were your thoughts on the defence's closing as they, you know, kind of refuted the allegations against Matt Wright?

Yes, Stocky, if I can just jump in on something that Ollie said just then about the third charge, they also said not just that the audio was of bad quality, but the central characters, Matt Wright and Jai Tomlinson, were drunk.

And he essentially went into depth about you could hear them burping, you could hear them slurring their words.

And so he really went into into detail of how inaccurate he seemed said this ridiculous notion of that recording being evidence that could prove the guilt of Matt Wright.

He went into detail about that.

Look,

to compare the prosecution and the defense's arguments, we saw the prosecution go over two days and really lay out in detail this evidence, whereas defense was about two hours, two and a half hours to get to the heart and basically try and answer everything the prosecution had put out there to the jury in a much quicker time frame.

So really we heard this summed up with David Edwardson saying to the jury, it is your sworn duty to acquit Matt Wright.

So you know they were vehement in their arguments against the prosecution and now it's really in the jury's hands.

Yeah,

we've wrapped the closings at this point.

The judge's charge has been given to the jury.

That is where basically you have the directions of the law kind of given by Justice Blow, who's presiding over this case.

That has been

refreshingly short,

only a couple of hours for that one.

We saw that go over the course of five days in the trial of Aaron Patterson.

So a relief that we only had a couple of hours to sit through on that.

And in that, he is really just reminding the jury on what they've got to decide and what they've got to consider.

Things like, you know, putting your emotion out of your mind, just judging it kind of on the facts.

So that direction has been given to the jury.

Now, though, the jury is out.

How long have we got?

Well, how long's a piece of string, Stocky?

This is the tense part of this whole process where we literally just have to wait.

And theoretically, the jury is allowed to take however long they like.

There was one moment where Acting Justice Alan Blow sort of said to the jury,

he sort of mentioned that he'd like it if this trial could be wrapped up by the end of of Friday.

But he sort of qualified that by saying, but of course, you shouldn't feel any pressure.

You shouldn't be rushed.

And David Edwardson, the defence, really emphasised that during his closing as well.

He said there's no timeframe on justice and that the jury should absolutely take as long as they need to consider this mountain of evidence that they have to sift through to decide whether or not they think the charges have been proven beyond reasonable doubt.

Yeah, it was interesting to hear Justice Blow yesterday, in fact, talking to the jury about, you know, how we'd like them to come to a verdict and promising them hot meals as well.

So they can work late into the evening and, you know, really, really crack this one out.

And then you had the qualification from David Edwardson KC, as you mentioned, you know, no timeframe on justice.

So yeah, it was interesting that thing to hear unfolding in the courtroom.

Matt Garrick, what do you think the jury is going to be kind of ruminating over as they sit in this room and kind of think through, you know, their verdicts on these three charges?

Well, Stocky, from both the prosecution and the defence sides, we've really heard how this was a group that was as thick as thieves.

You know,

they were going out into the outback and doing extraordinary things that very few other people in Australia do.

And what has been essentially laid out to the jury over these weeks is a complete breakdown of that group and of these people's lives and a real schism of people who used to be so close.

Now they have to take the emotion out of that.

They have to take the sympathy out of that.

And they just have to go to these three charges that Matt Wright is alleged to have done and really try to pick apart if they believe in their hearts that it's true or not.

There's three charges.

Each of them is different to the other.

The jury now is going to take the time to try and look into exactly what's going on there.

And they can, of course, come back with a guilty version on one and a not guilty on another.

There's an endless, well, not an endless, but

there is a number of permutations that we could have here.

Ollie, you've done the maths, I believe.

I have.

There's eight, eight possible outcomes.

That excludes a hung jury.

So technically, it's actually nine.

Although I'm really bad at math, so maybe that's not, don't test me on that.

But my calculations say eight plus hung jury.

Eight different variations of how the various guilty, not guilty permutations of each of these charges could roll.

So if Ollie's maths are on, please email us at theksob at abc.net.au and I'll make sure I pass on your feedback directly to Ollie so she can continue some future study.

Your math teacher will be straight on that.

Like, that old Ivana girl, she was never paying attention during math class.

Ollie, I know this period, the waiting for a verdict, is one of the most nervous times of a trial.

It is not that anyone is worried that, you know, the trial will or won't won't go a certain way.

It is more this anxiety of making sure you're there and ready to cover that verdict when it comes.

And

the anxious sweating has been amplified by a blanket of humidity that has descended on Darwin to really create quite an oppressive atmosphere over these days.

I literally think we jinxed ourselves by talking about damn dry season last episode.

I shouldn't have said those words.

The last four days, three or four days, it's like

a flip of a switch and we've gone from beautiful dry season weather to this sticky, humid conditions.

There was this bizarre mist that literally descended over the entire city.

You couldn't even see the tops of parliament and the Supreme Court was sort of swirling in this grey, misty weather and it has trapped all of that Darwin heat in and we are all sweaty messes at the front of court.

I don't think any of the lawyers are appreciating it either.

It's been, yeah, this sort of bizarre,

bizarre weather change that has come with this, yeah, really tense time of this trial.

Of course, you know, I want to put it on the record that, you know, of course

it's a tense time for the media where we're anxiously waiting, want to make sure that we're there when the decision comes.

But of course, that's absolutely

nothing in comparison to the immense amount of anxiety that I'm sure everyone involved intimately in this case would be feeling.

I can't imagine what waiting for a verdict must be like.

Just on Ollie's observations about the weather, they call this time, it's almost the advent of the mango season, and they call it the start of mango madness.

And it is something that kind of infects you.

You can't really help but get it.

And I may have seen a high-level member of someone's legal team swearing at a vending machine in that Supreme Court earlier this week.

If that's just a sign of how thick this oppressive air is getting in and out of that courtroom.

Yeah, very, very tense time.

So I appreciate both of your insights into not just the trial, but the environment around the stress that even, you know, lawyers and barristers can feel at times like this as well.

So I appreciate that insight.

You know, we're going to be here with you when we get a verdict.

We'll bring that to you.

If we don't have one by Tuesday next week, when we'd normally be doing an episode, we'll be answering some of your questions.

So if you would like us to answer any questions, if you've got anything specific about how a jury works, how they're going to be thinking through this stuff, please get in touch.

Thekasov at abc.net.au.

We do have some questions to run through now as well, Ollie, that have been emailed to thecaseov at abc.net.au.

One of my favorite parts of hosting this podcast is be able to read all the wonderful emails we get, thinking through all the different questions and making sure we're talking to the right things.

And so I want to start with a question here today from Caitlin.

Caitlin writes: Hey, Stocky and Ollie, I'm loving the Case of series.

I've been listening religiously from London.

I have a question about Sebastian Robinson's cocaine use.

And sorry if I've missed something.

How is the drug use and possible epilepsy related to the destruction of evidence charges?

My understanding was that this trial is not about the cause of the crash at all.

So, is the defence just trying to discredit him as a witness?

Caitlin, great question.

And as the prosecution said during their closing,

they said that the defence has launched this full frontal credibility attack on Sebastian Robinson.

And the prosecution said the defence did that by

going through all of those messages about cocaine use, discussing his attendance at that party two days before the accident.

And as for how that relates to the charges,

these various accounts of drugs, of the refueling issue, both sides of this case, the prosecution and the defence, have used those

questions around drugs and around fuel to either bolster or try to discredit certain witnesses' evidence.

You could certainly see how central Seb Robinson's past cocaine use was to the entire defence argument in David Edwardson's closing arguments, where he said

it gives him no pleasure to make these kind of claims and calls against Seb Robinson, who's been been left a paraplegic from this accident, to then go into such detail about this past cocaine use.

They've obviously found it of a huge importance to Matt Wright's case.

Thank you, Ollie.

Thank you, Matt.

And thank you, Caitlin.

Wonderful question that really helps us understand the reason that we're hearing about all of these things that don't immediately seem related, but really end up forming quite crucial parts of cases for and against certain people in judicial proceedings.

So yeah, wonderful question.

We have another one here, Ollie and Matt, you're still here as well, from Libby.

Libby says, hello team, I'm really enjoying the podcast and your coverage of the latest case in the Northern Territory.

Thank you for the great work.

I have a geography related question.

The crash happened in Arnonland in the Northern Territory, but you mentioned that Matt Wright lives in Queensland.

Were the crocodile egg missions flown out of Darwin and did Matt Wright commute from Queensland for that work?

I'd love a better sense of how these locations connect together.

Yeah, another great question.

So Matt Ryan had multiple properties.

One of those properties was in Queensland and we know that that's where he was living at the time that those recordings were taken and that was you know some months after the accident.

So he was you know staying or living in Queensland at that time but he certainly did reside in the Northern Territory as well.

And actually in terms of sort of understanding the geography of sort of where all of these things are, we had also had like this place called Nunamar, which is where one of the helicopter hangars was.

We had Mount Mount Borodale Station where the choppers refuelled before going out to their egg collecting mission.

A lot of that is actually contained in that really helpful online explainer that our Northern Territory Newsroom digital team has been putting together.

So if you're curious about trying to understand

where these helicopters went on this day and where all of this stuff was,

that's a useful resource.

If you're ever flying over this vast jurisdiction, you can go hundreds and hundreds hundreds of kilometres without seeing anything.

I mean, this is a land where crocodiles and buffaloes run free.

It's really the Australian outback.

From Queensland, it's a long, long way.

He wouldn't have been able to go that far.

But from his property at rural Darwin and from Nunamar, where he eventually took off and went to the crash scene himself, I mean, it's still not that close.

An hour right out into the bush, but it's doable.

Yeah.

The article that Ollie mentioned, I'll pop a link to in our show notes as well.

So you can have a read of and chase that up there.

So jump into the show notes and I'll be able to link you to that there.

Final question for today, Ollie and Matt.

This one is from Claire.

Claire writes, hi team, loving the podcast.

Thanks for being so informative.

Perhaps I've missed something.

However, could you please advise if the helicopter had a black box?

Would that indicate why this crash occurred?

Also, double-barreled question here, can you please advise where the covert recordings came from?

Were they police bugs or did others take the recordings without Matt's knowledge?

Claire, we haven't heard anything about a black box in this trial.

As for the covert recordings,

there's multiple.

So there was

a couple of recordings that were taken from inside Matt Wright's Queensland home.

That is from a police bug.

As for some of the other recordings, they were tapped phone calls, so police able to record various phone calls between Matt Wright and some of his friends.

And there was also, of course, the phone recording from inside the hospital, which was taken by Sebastian Robinson's uncle, Jim Carew.

And it's fairly obvious that in all of those recordings, no one knew that they were being recorded at the time.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, Jim Carew, who was doing the recording, he probably knew, but in all the other ones, yeah,

there's no indication that those people were aware.

We did a whole episode on the secret recordings claire.

So if you want to jump back and have a listen to that, it was our last episode.

It was the, I can't remember the exact title has covert recordings or secret recordings in the title it'll be pretty obvious which one that is so jump back into your feed wherever you're listening and you'll be able to hear that one if you have any questions as well please get in touch the case of at abc.net.au as i mentioned we'll be back when there is a verdict but you know if we don't get there by tuesday when we'd normally be doing an episode we'll uh do a whole episode answering your questions about this trial about the jury all those things so please get in touch before then and we'll we'll answer them.

We do really love hearing from you.

I mean, there are some things that we can't answer at this point, but if you send them through now, once we get a verdict and we can speak a bit more freely, we'll dive into all of that.

Ollie, Matt, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for having us.

Thanks so much.

We will be back in your feed, as I mentioned, when we have a verdict.

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The case of The Crock Wrangler is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News.

It's presented by me, Olivana Lothuris, Matt Garrick and Stephen Stockwell.

Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson and thank you to senior lawyer Jasmine Sims, our legal queen, for her legal advice, the Northern Territory Newsroom and audio studios manager Eric George.

This episode was produced on the land of the Larakia and Wurundjeri people.

Have you ever seen a news story and thought, huh, what's the science behind that?

I remember thinking, gee, Lancet,

how did you publish this?

You know, it's not great.

Well, chances are, I have two.

Obviously, everybody poops, and depending on what depth it gets to, it could be sequestered away from the atmosphere for decades to millennia.

Hi, I'm Belinda Smith, the host of Lab Notes, where every week we bring you the science behind new discoveries and current events.

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