Croc Wrangler: Secret recordings and tapped phone calls

35m

Covert recordings of croc wrangler Matt Wright allegedly discussing the destruction of a helicopter maintenance document have been played to the court as his trial nears its end.

In this episode reporter Olivana Lathouris joins Stephen Stockwell to talk through the key moments of these recordings and the next stages as the prosecution closes its case against Matt Wright.

If you have any questions you'd like Oli and Stocky to answer in future episodes, please email thecaseof@abc.net.au.

The Case Of is the follow-up to the hit podcast Mushroom Case Daily, and all episodes of that show will remain available in the back catalogue of The Case Of.

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It's the trial everyone in Darwin is talking about. In February 2022 a helicopter on a crocodile egg collection mission crashed in remote Arnhem Land, killing the egg collector and paralysing the pilot.

NT Croc Wrangler Matt Wright isn't on trial for the crash, but for what allegedly he did after. Charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice, prosecutors say he tried to interfere with the investigation.

Matt Wright has pled not guilty and denies all the allegations.

To hear the background of this story, listen to our episode introducing the case of the croc wrangler.

You can also check out this article from ABC News, which breaks down the key players, charges and evidence so far.

The Case Of is the follow-up to the hit ABC podcast Mushroom Case Daily. The response to Mushroom Case Daily was overwhelming, with more than 8000 emails from listeners, many of them noting how the coverage had given them unprecedented insight into Australia's criminal judicial system.Β 

We decided to convert the podcast into an ongoing trial coverage feed to continue delivering on this front, following cases that capture the public's attention

Listen and follow along

Transcript

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A late-night covert recording from inside Matt Wright's home and tapped phone calls with friends.

I'm ABC court reporter Olivana Lothoris.

And I'm Stephen Stockwell.

A heads up, there is some quite strong language in this episode.

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 quarters.

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're starting to get to the real pointy end of this trial, Ollie.

Can you give us a wrap-up of the key moments of the last couple of days in under 60 seconds?

Stocky, I'll do my best.

There's been a lot, but we've heard evidence from the mate that Matt Wright was allegedly talking to about burning helicopter records.

We've also heard more than two hours of secret recordings taken from inside his home and tapped phone calls with friends.

A few police officers involved in the investigation have given evidence, and the Crown has closed their case against Matt Wright.

Thank you, Ollie.

Yeah, we're getting close to kind of the end of that, which is one of the reasons we are breaking our routine of Tuesday and Thursday episodes and dropping into your feed today because we don't want to leave you hanging as we

get to the end of this.

Also, we've got an update from Aaron Patterson's sentencing tomorrow as well.

So we'll bring you that in the evening.

But Ollie, talking Matt Wright, I realized

we've actually neglected something pretty massive as we've been covering this whole trial.

You know, Matt Wright charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice, three counts following a helicopter crash in February 2022.

This is all set in the backdrop of Darwin in the north of Australia, in the Northern Territory.

And we've never discussed how being in Darwin affects the way that people are kind of engaging with this and coming and going because, you know, you don't have what you have in other cities, certainly colder cities in Australia, when you have, you know, the barristers kind of arriving at court in their flowing robes, like very different wardrobe that you're seeing outside of the Supreme Court in Darwin Rite-Ollie.

Yeah, I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but there is definitely,

yeah, there's definitely been some very territory kit going on out

of the court.

You know, a lot of the guys that are giving evidence, like these

crock wranglers and helicopter pilots, there is definitely a little bit of a uniform.

Like it's the Wrangler jeans and the big belt buckles and the, you know, Danielle Wilson has been arriving in some pretty impressive looking cowgirl boots some days.

And not to throw, again, not to throw anyone under the bus, of course.

Of course, everyone, especially the lawyers, are trying to look professional, but it's hot out.

Like,

it's dry season, so we're not subjected to the absolutely disgusting build-up 98% humidity every day, which is an absolute blessing, particularly might I add for core reporters and TV reporters who have to stand outside and somehow look presentable on camera without my whole face of makeup like sliding off my face because I'm sweating too much.

But, you know, I actually noticed the other day,

and she's going to hate me for saying this, but one of the prosecutors, she's part of the prosecution team, Kate Thomas.

I caught her coming into court in her Birkenstocks the other day.

And I think, yeah, it's just the, it's the territory lifestyle.

What can I say?

I know that I'm definitely one for that with us TV reporters.

You only see us from the waist up, so it doesn't matter what we're wearing on our feet, and I've definitely worn the slides in a few days this week.

I would absolutely be getting around with a pair of thongs, a pair of ruggers, and a sleeveless t-shirt if I was coming and going from the Darwin Supreme Court, Ollie.

So, I mean, Kate with the Birkenstocks, that's a pretty classy alternative.

So, you know, no shade on Kate with that choice.

No, she's a very classy lady.

I would like to put that out there.

Very professional, of course.

Ollie, we've been getting into some really interesting evidence over the last couple of days.

As the trial kind of gets to its pointy end, we're hearing all of these secret recordings.

What are we talking about when we say secret recordings?

What have we heard?

There's a heap of them.

Some of these recordings are taken from inside Matt Wright's home and this was in Palm Beach in Queensland.

He had a home there at the time.

And then a bunch of them are also from tapped phone call recordings and they capture conversations with various people.

The ones inside his home obviously, you know, capture moments with his family even.

This was the home that he was living in with his wife, Kaya, and his kids.

And then, of course, there's all of the tapped phone calls, which we've heard snippets of over the last kind of couple of days.

And the two recordings that really go to the heart of the prosecution's case when it comes to count three of attempting to pervert the course of justice, they were two covertly recorded conversations from inside Matt Wright's home.

And it's in those two recordings that the prosecution allege Matt Wright is talking to a mate by the name of Jai Tomlinson about destroying or burning an MR, a helicopter maintenance release.

And yeah, the charge three, as you mentioned, Ollie, is all around this allegation that Matt Wright destroyed documents that were relating to this investigation.

The MR, the maintenance release, is kind of,

that's the document they are saying that he allegedly attempted to destroy.

What is an MR?

MR maintenance release is a document which contains a bunch of information about the chopper, including its maintenance records, of course, and also flying hours.

So it's something that is supposed to be filled out regularly and is supposed to keep track of how many hours the chopper has been flying and yeah, any maintenance details that might be important to keep a track of.

And the reason we keep talking about the MR is because it's that document that the prosecution say Matt Wright allegedly instructed his friend to destroy.

Yeah, great.

Thank you, Ollie.

And you know, something we've heard a lot about in this trial already is

the fact that the helicopters that were being used in this instance didn't appear to be logging their hours correctly.

So that's been agreed early on in the trial, and we've heard a lot about, you know, Hobbs meters, the little, you know, basically the helicopter odometer being disconnected being a common practice in the helicopter industry, not just in the Northern Territory, but also around the entire country.

So, yeah, that's where this is all coming from.

The allegation in this trial is that Matt Wright was worried about what this investigation may uncover, which is why he's allegedly acted in these ways.

So that's kind of giving a sense of place for this.

And yeah, Ollie, we heard these recordings, which are central to the third charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

What are some of the key moments in them?

Well, I think it's important to mention from the outset, and of course, you know, we got to hear these recordings as well.

They were played to the court multiple times, in fact.

And I want the audience to know that the recording quality is...

is poor.

And that's something that's acknowledged absolutely by the prosecution as well.

There are plenty of moments in these recordings where it's very muffled and you can't hear much at all.

It's not as though we're hearing these crystal clear recordings where you can make out every word that's being said.

And that was really crucial to the way that this evidence was presented.

There was a number of key moments in these recordings or phrases or words that the prosecution is keen to sort of focus in on.

And I'm going to give a language warning before I go into these, but there's sort of two key phrases.

One of them is just torch it.

And another one is burn the cunt.

And these two phrases are

again going to this allegation that Matt Wright was talking to his friend about burning helicopter records.

And of course there's a bunch of context to those phrases, different words that are alleged to have been said,

you know, discussions about MR, mentions of MR, mentions of different people who might have been involved in the investigation.

But those are sort of these key phrases that the prosecution are relying on.

Yeah, and I mean, you're talking about how how it's kind of hard to hear what is being said in these recordings.

We had one of the participants of the recording, so someone who was in the room having these conversations with Matt Wright.

He was called to give evidence last week, Jai Tomlinson.

And, I mean, we didn't get a lot from Jai, did we, Ollie?

No, we didn't.

Jai Tomlinson was a good friend of Matt Wright's.

He's a pilot himself.

And he is sort of the, he's the witness that this evidence was introduced through.

And so he is the man that Matt Wright can be heard speaking to in some of these recordings.

And as I mentioned, there's two.

One of them was on the 23rd of September.

The other one was two days later on the 25th.

And this is

a while later in the year, because I mean, the crash is in February.

So this is, you know, we're talking months and months after the fact.

Absolutely.

So six months after this accident has occurred.

And

Jai Tomlinson was sort of taken section by section through these two recordings.

They're not long,

but it took a fair while to

get through the evidence because the prosecution would play sometimes even just a couple of seconds of these recordings and would ask the witness what words he could make out.

And there would be times where he would go over them two, three, four times and continue to ask the witness, what words can you hear?

Can you make out anything there?

Can you tell us what you were talking about in that recording?

And essentially, Jai Tomlinson from the outset just said, I have no recollection of these conversations whatsoever.

I don't know what we were discussing.

And he also just flatly denied that Matt Wright ever asked him to destroy helicopter documents.

But there were some exchanges that really went for a long time while the prosecution and the witness argued about what was being said.

And that just gives you an idea of how unclear some of these recordings are.

Yeah, I mean there was a moment in the

in this process where they're playing short sections of audio and then asking Jai Tomlinson, you know, what are you talking about here?

I mean, there was a point where

MR came up like a couple of times, but Jai Tomlinson, you know, was going when questioned was like, oh, look, I don't, I don't know, maybe we were talking about helicopters.

I don't know.

Maybe we were talking about something else.

It was this really strange

kind of like interaction.

Like conversation is definitely the wrong word.

It is not a conversation.

This kind of like strange back and forth where he wouldn't accept they were talking about helicopters.

Then also, Ollie, a whole thing on the definition of squealing.

Oh my gosh, a whole thing on squealing.

Tell me about this.

So one of the phrases or words that the prosecution allege Matt Wright says in these recordings is he talks about people putting the, quote, pressure on, and then a few words after that says something about people start squealing.

And it's also alleged by the prosecution that Jai Tomlinson responds to that comment by Mr.

Wright and says something like, one word against another.

That's the allegation of what this exchange was.

And the prosecution just asked over and over and over again what

Jai Tomlinson understood the word squealing to mean.

And at first, Jai Tomlinson said, Well, I've got two daughters.

So when my daughters start squealing, I usually know there's something going on.

And that sort of triggered this ridiculous back and forth.

Eventually, at one stage, the prosecutor, Jason Galachi, said, Are you seriously suggesting that as a man of 45 years of age, you've never heard the concept of someone squealing, as in, you know, someone dobbing someone in, essentially?

Like, you've never heard it in that context in your life and Jai Tomlinson just insisted nope not to my knowledge I never knew what that meant and I think it probably gosh I don't know how many times he asked what squealing meant but at one point Jai Tomlinson made a comment he said well why don't you just look it up in a dictionary

and the prosecutor took that quite literally and he said okay sure I'll look it up in a dictionary which actually the defense made a funny comment as well he goes oh which dictionary the prosecutors so then there was this funny thing about a dictionary.

And then you had Kate Thomas, who's also in the prosecution team assisting Mr.

Galachi.

She's looking up, squealing on the laptop, and they bring it up on the laptop.

And it comes back with, at first it was an AI-generated definition.

And that was something like a high-pitched sound or betrayal of information.

And so Mr.

Galachi said.

Okay, have you ever heard it in the context of a betrayal of information, Mr.

Tomlinson?

And he said, nope.

And then we went back and did another definition.

And this one was from the Cambridge Dictionary.

And we got to give information to the police about people you know have committed a crime.

And he said, how about that definition, Mr.

Tomlinson?

Have you heard of that on your 45 years on this earth?

And Mr.

Tomlinson just said, no.

So yeah, a lot of chat about squealing, Stocky.

And a lot of I don't remember from Jai Tomlinson as well.

He was asked, you know, about a lot of specific instances, a lot of, you know, obviously, you know, what he recollects from the conversations that had been played to the court as well.

And the whole time, him saying, I don't remember, kind of pointing to trauma in his past as a reason that he only likes to look forward and doesn't dwell on the past.

That's right.

Yeah.

At one stage, the prosecutor

said,

after the 28th of February, 2022,

this accident where a friend of yours has passed away.

Another friend of yours has, you know, been permanently injured.

I mean, was this a, he asked whether this was a big deal in your life life at the time and again Jay Tomlinson's answer to that question was I don't remember I've had a lot of big deals in my life and then the prosecutor came back with something like you know how many acquaintances do you know that have fallen out of the sky and died is that a regular thing for you And he said, not regular, no.

And then he said, you know, I've suffered a lot of trauma in my life and I don't think about going back to the past.

It's just not something I do.

I just want to look forward.

So that might give you a bit of

a picture of the way that this evidence went.

Yeah, it was an incredible exchange.

Over the course of, I think, a day or so, the Jai Tomlinson was being questioned, first by the prosecution and then by the defence barrister, David Edwardson, Casey, where he kind of pointed him to the quality of the recordings and asked, look, have you, has the prosecution been putting words in your mouth?

Yeah, David Edwardson sort of said, you know, despite the prosecution putting words in your mouth or priming you,

have you done your absolute best to decipher what you can hear?

And have you given sort of honest answers to the court, basically?

And Jai Tomlinson said yes.

And Stocky, bearing in mind that, again, the jury has transcripts of these recordings, but as the judge has reminded everyone, it's not the transcript that is the evidence.

The evidence is what you can actually hear from these recordings, which is a contentious point because the recordings aren't very clear.

Yeah, and I mean, there are a lot of them.

I mean, there's the couple that we've just been spending a lot of time talking about, Ollie.

These are the kind of the key,

you know, the secret recordings from Matt Wright's home in Queensland that the prosecution says point to Matt Wright attempting to destroy evidence.

And that's central to this third charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice that Matt Wright has been, you know, is facing at the moment, that he's defending at the moment.

But Ollie, there were also all of these other recordings as well.

These are tap phone calls, other recordings from around the house as well.

These were all introduced through other police officers that we heard from on Friday afternoon.

What did we learn from them, though, about how they actually go about kind of listening to these recordings and checking through what's actually been said?

Yeah, absolutely.

We had, as you mentioned, this whole series of tapped phone calls and then

these recordings that are taken from presumably a police bug inside Matt Wright's home.

And we did hear from

a detective by the name of Timothy Gardner and he was sort of the cop whose responsibility it was really to listen to these recordings that were being taken from inside Matt Wright's Queensland house.

And he listened to them for three months, he told the court and he said that you know during that period he got quite familiar with Matt Wright's voice and Kaya Wright's voice and potentially other people that were sort of coming and going from the house.

And he talked a little bit about how these recording devices actually operate.

And he sort of explained that,

you know, they're not necessarily recording all the time.

They're on, but they're not necessarily collecting sound all the time.

They only sort of start recording.

when the volume gets above a certain threshold.

And there was one recording, for example, example, where

you could hear Matt Wright's kids, presumably his children, in the background.

I think one of them was sort of screaming about pizza, and then you can hear another one sort of going, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, like pretending to, you know, shoot his little fake gun.

And it was a very cute moment, but they're being, you know, the kids sort of being quite raucous, as kids do.

And presumably, like, this is the sort of thing that would get picked up because it's above a certain volume, a certain threshold.

And there were other examples, you know, in the other recordings where the recording would sort of start with sort of a loud bang, like maybe who knows what it was.

It could have been, you know, for example, someone putting something down on a kitchen bench or dropping something or something like that.

And of course, that's the thing that triggers the recording to start.

And so, yeah, it was just an interesting insight into how these recording devices operate.

Yeah, and you know, this guy listening to literally months of audio from this house all laid out.

You know, this is a part as an audio person I quite appreciate it.

I didn't appreciate the quality of the sound.

I thought they could do some work there.

But yeah, the way that he described how they would get this audio, it's just like a long timeline.

And then when the device turns on, they just sort of see that pop up and they can go through and listen to each bit.

And yeah, three months of sitting there listening to whatever's happening in whatever room of Matt Wright's house this bug was in was,

yeah, kind of wild.

We also Ollie heard from some of the crash investigators who investigated the helicopter crash as well.

Now, you know, this all starts with a helicopter crash in late February 2022.

There's no suggestion that Matt Wright is in any way responsible for that crash.

But the crash kind of set in chain the events and the motions that have kind of got us to this point.

What did we hear from the crash investigators, Ollie?

Yeah, so as we know, charge three is related to this alleged attempt by Matt Wright to destroy a helicopter document.

And that helicopter document is the MR, the maintenance release that we were talking about earlier.

And the investigators that we heard evidence from were from CASA, that is the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.

And we heard from one investigator, Rolf Kidson, who talked a little bit about

the investigation at the time and he was saying that the original in-force MR for IDW, that is the crashed helicopter, he said that that was never surrendered to CASA.

So, we learned that there's lots of versions of these MRs and they get replaced and updated, but he wanted the original in-force MR.

It's a waxed colored copy of this document, and he said that was never surrendered.

But then, during cross-examination by the defense,

it came out that that original MR for IDW was cited and photographed by a different investigator from a different group, that is the ATSB, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

And that investigator cited this original document in the presence of Matt Wright's then lawyer in March, so a very short time after the accident.

And she had declared that she had cited the original and then photographs of that document were provided from the ATSB to CASA.

So there was this back and forth about who had the actual original in-force physical copy of it and who had sort of cited it, seen it and taken photocopies and sent those to the relevant investigators.

But it doesn't seem to be entirely clear where that original In-Force MR is now.

And of course, the investigator from CASA insisted that that's the document that they made multiple requests for, and they say they never received it.

Yeah, a document that is central to the third charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice in the trial of Matt Wright, the charge he's defending at the moment.

And yeah, obviously, talking a lot about that in this episode, Ollie, the recordings, where the prosecution allege he instructs someone to destroy that document.

So, yeah, really interesting stuff around, you know, what would normally be

a really peripheral piece of kind of documentation of a helicopter, I guess.

Ollie, as we get towards the end of this, you know, the Crown closing their case, we get to the agreed facts where we just get to sit in court and listen to a bunch of statements get read and a bunch of other details, kind of like just talked at us for a little while.

No one in particular says that.

Well, someone in particular says it.

It's the prosecutor David Galachi, SC, reads us some things, and that included some medical records.

What sort of stood out to you from them?

Yeah, so this was was from a Dr.

Jason White.

And as you mentioned, he didn't give evidence in the court.

He just provided a report or a statement which was sort of read onto the record.

And

of course, we've talked a lot about cocaine in this trial.

Of course, the cocaine use relevant to Sebastian Robinson, the pilot who survived that accident.

And on this topic, we know that traces of cocaine or metabolites indicative of cocaine use were found in Mr.

Robinson's blood at the time of the accident.

And so on this topic, in the statement provided by the medical expert,

it was stated that it was most likely that Mr.

Robinson had consumed cocaine at least several hours prior to the accident.

And the doctor also said that such use could have meant that he was experiencing fatigue at the time of the the accident due to the sort of rebound effects following cocaine use and possibly also due to sleep deprivation caused by insomnia arising from the use of cocaine.

The report went into a whole host of different medications or drugs that were found in Seb Robinson's blood at the time and a lot of those were because he was administered several different types of drugs including ketamine and morphine at the scene of the crash because of course he was suffering an incredible number of injuries and would have been in a huge amount of pain.

But one of the other drugs that was detected in his blood is a drug used to reduce the likelihood of seizures for someone who suffers epilepsy.

And the report essentially stated that it was highly likely that Mr.

Robinson had been diagnosed with epilepsy and that cocaine use can increase your likelihood of having a seizure if you suffer from that condition.

Yeah, interesting.

I mean, we've heard so much about Seb Robinson, you know, what he was doing in the lead-up to this helicopter crash, what happened in the weeks and months afterwards as well.

So, yeah, detail like that, something that I'm sure we'll sit with the jury a bit as they're thinking through and talking through their deliberations, which will be coming, I mean, potentially kind of soon.

I mean, we're at a point now where the Crown has closed their case.

What happens now?

Well, Stocky, now we're sort of venturing into the unknown part of this trial.

The Crown sort of sets out what evidence they're going to be presenting at the start.

That was back during the openings where he set out that sort of roadmap.

And we've kind of come to the end of the road of the Crown's case, if you like.

And of course, it's the prosecution's job to prove these charges.

Matt Wright doesn't have to do anything.

It's not his job to defend these allegations against him.

He's innocent until proven guilty.

But of course, it is absolutely the defence prerogative to call witnesses.

It's absolutely Matt Wright's prerogative if he wishes to to give evidence.

But we simply don't know.

We don't know what the defence is going to do.

And we have a whole day set aside for legal argument.

Those lawyers just can't help themselves.

They just love to argue.

So we've got a whole day of that.

The jury's got

a well-earned day off.

And then we're back to court on Tuesday, which is when we're going to find out whether the defence plans to call any witnesses and whether Matt Wright himself will take the stand.

Yeah, I mean, the next few days of this trial, Ollie, are going to be really interesting to just see kind of what unfolds.

You know, Matt Wright obviously would be incredibly illuminating if he were to take the stand, but there should be no adverse inference if he doesn't take the stand.

You know, it's entirely up to him.

He doesn't have to get up there.

You know, it's the whole right to remain silent vibe, I guess, that continues through all aspects of the the judicial process so he doesn't need to uh to say anything and yeah and if he doesn't get up there we shouldn't assume um any anything from that as well uh the jury will will just go through and um make its decision based off of what's been been put in front of it uh we do have some questions coming to us as well ollie the case of at abc.net.au it's uh it's really lovely to see the amount of interest and and curiosity from our audience uh i want to start with a question here from Jody.

Jody says, sorry, not being gruesome, but have the jury been given aerial photos of the crash site?

I've been trying to get a mental picture of the distance to where the boat was coming to to try and recover the things of this accident.

Yeah, Jodi, definitely.

They have been shown images of the crash scene and they're not gruesome.

If you would like to go and have a look at them yourself, the ABC has included some of those images which the jury have seen in our online coverage.

And so if you want to go look that up, it's been in a lot of our TV coverage as well so you can have a look at that as well and of course

hopefully it will give you an idea of the of where they were trying to get to and the kind of terrain that these men were having to navigate.

Of course despite the fact that the police sent a boat to this location, hopefully it will become plainly obvious when you look at the image.

It would have been pretty difficult for a boat to get there.

It's dense bush land and you can see that in the image.

Yeah, and you know, there's a great ABC online article that also, you know, as well as just photos from the crash site, gives you a sense of the scale in the territory of where, you know, where Darwin is, where the crash site was, where some of the other staging areas that these helicopters are moving from as well.

So jump onto the ABC News website.

You'll be able to see a whole bunch of that as well.

Great question, Jody.

Thank you, Ollie.

Another one here from Elaine, who's writing to us from Crocodile Free but Penguin Infested Phillip Island.

Elaine writes, just wondering, Ollie and Stocky, why Matt Wright is referred to as Seb's employer employer when it's been given in evidence before the jury that Seb got no workers' compensation after the accident.

He was told that he was a subcontractor to Hellybrook Wright's company.

Can you elaborate on the relationship between Wright and Robinson?

Great question, Elaine.

And love the attention to the detail.

It's a great point.

Yes, Seb Robinson was an employee of Matt's for quite some time.

He did various work for Matt, including crocodile egg collecting, flying helicopters, all part of his business with Helig Brook.

But on that egg collecting mission in February 2022, he was subcontracted by Matt Wright to conduct that work, and hence he wasn't covered by Matt Wright's workers' compensation.

But we have heard evidence

from various family members of Mr.

Robinson during those hospital visits.

And they did say that Matt Wright did offer the family $10,000 to try to assist them financially.

The family declined that offer.

And they did say that they haven't received any other financial support from Mr.

Wright.

Thank you, Ollie.

Great question, Elaine.

Elaine actually continues on, Ollie, and I'll just tack this on on the end.

Elaine's wondering, is making Hobbs Meters tamper-proof going to be a recommendation out of all of this?

That's the little helicopter odometer that we talked about a bit earlier.

At the bitter end, it won't bring Chris Wilson back, but it might give some comfort to his bereaved wife and children.

And we always have to think of the people left behind in this, just as in the mushroom case.

Elaine, great question.

I mean, at this point, we don't know.

None of that's been spoken to the jury, so we can't talk about any of that.

But it's an interesting point that you're making there as well.

And it's important to remember the people who are left behind in cases like this as well.

Our final question here, Ollie, for this episode is from Joe.

Joe writes, Hello, I'm catching up and heard some of the other charges already laid for people involved.

Could we have a separate episode to fill us in or is this off limits until after the case?

I'd love to have the info to fill in some gaps.

Yeah, so of course we've heard from Neil Mellon.

He was a former very high-ranking police officer in the territory at the time.

He was at the crash site and he pleaded guilty to charges related to what happened at the crash scene.

The same goes for another pilot, Mick Burbage, who also pleaded guilty to destruction of evidence for piffing the mobile phone phone of Chris Wilson after visiting the crash scene.

And of course, that was all said in front of the jury.

And that's really what we're sort of confined to being able to talk about.

We can only really discuss what the jury has heard.

Yeah, while the trial is in progress though, so Joe, you will be pleased to hear that we are thinking about the episodes we'll be doing once the trial concludes.

And one of the things we're discussing is, you know, kind of giving you a bit more detail on those.

And we'll kind of tell the story of, you know, those are the cases what happened with Neil Mellon and Mick Burbage once this trial wraps up we get a bit more freedom a bit more latitude to to talk at those stages Thank you so much for all of your questions.

If you've got questions as well, please email the caseov at abc.net.au.

We love hearing from you.

Some of the questions that we get, just like Elaine's today, are so detailed and so wonderful to give us an opportunity to explain some of the things that, you know, we might spend so much time thinking about that we forget that, you know, the detail is really important.

So please get in touch if there's something we're glossing over or you're not sure about or you have a question about the case of at abc.net.au.

Ollie, where are we heading next?

Well, Stocky, it's really at the pointy end of this trial, the defence case.

And then at some stage, the jury will be sent to deliberate on everything that they've heard.

We'll be back in your feed with an update on the case of the Crock Wrangler later this week.

Make sure you get yourself around the ABC Listener app because it's the best place to listen to this one.

If you're using something else, please leave us a rating and a review because it makes it so much easier for other people to find us and to explore the interesting facets of the Australian legal system.

For everybody who's been following us since the trial of Aaron Patterson, the case of the mushroom lunch will be dropping into your feed tomorrow evening, Tuesday evening, with an update on the sentencing process for her as well.

I'll be joined by Christian Silver and Rachel Brown.

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

It's presented by me, Olivana Thoris, and Stephen Stockwell.

Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson, and this episode was produced on the land of Larakia and Wurundjeri people.

Deeply insightful.

One hour.

Deeply personal.

Two mics.

Two microphones.

Four walks going at the same time, one for each hand.

Can you murder him, please?

Hey, what?

Unforgettable stories.

We got hit by a wave and I was just in this sort of penumbra of bubbles, this world of fizz.

And it was very beautiful.

I didn't notice that I was drowning.

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