Croc Wrangler: Witnesses describe the chopper crash

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A body, an injured pilot and eight men surrounded by crocodiles.

I'm ABC court reporter Olivana 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.

The day we're talking about in this episode is one that the people involved are probably never going to forget.

This is the day of that crash back on the 28th of February, 2022.

It's about who went there in the hours after the crash, what they saw, what they did.

Yeah, and to help us through this, we've actually got Matt Garrick with us as well for the pod today.

He's a senior journal at ABC Darwin.

G'day, Stocky.

Thank you for having me as part of the pod.

Yes, I've been following this case since the helicopter crashed back in 2022.

and all the pieces that have come since then.

So pleasure to be here talking about it.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to what you can bring, the insight as we go through this episode.

But before we get into it, Ollie, can you take us through where we're going to go?

So we're going to go to the scene of the accident.

It's in this swampy bushland in a very remote part of the Northern Territory.

A chopper has just crashed.

A man has died.

A pilot is in a critical condition.

And this group of men who were out flying choppers at the time and who had heard about this accident descend on the crime scene.

You have an off-duty police officer.

You have this high-powered businessman, Mick Burns, who had contracted this egg collecting mission.

And we'll also take you through Matt Wright's police interview.

Thank you, Ollie.

The scene of this crash, the way you've just described this, this like scrubland, this bushland, you know, you had Chris Willow Wilson and Sebastian Robinson collecting crocodile eggs.

You know, that helicopter has crashed and you then have these kind of two different groups that descend on that site.

Yeah, so there were three helicopters out flying that day

and each helicopter had a pilot and an egg collector that was hanging from this long line beneath the chopper and it was their job to actually collect these crocodile eggs.

Of course, Chris Wilson and Sebastian Robinson were in one of those choppers and that was the helicopter that went down on the day of the accident.

Yeah, Ollian, you know, we've got these three helicopters.

One of them has crashed, and then Mick Burbage, one of the other pilots, gets worried he hasn't heard from these people and comes out to check, right?

Yeah, so, you know, they'd all been out flying together on that day, but they hadn't heard from Chris Willow and Sebastian Robinson in quite some time.

One of the other pilots was getting worried that they hadn't heard anything.

That pilot was Mick Burbage, and he decides to go looking for Chris Wilson and Sebastian Robinson.

So he hops in a chopper, he leaves the other three men involved in this egg collecting mission behind, and he goes in search of the crash chopper.

And a short time later, he comes across the scene of this horrific accident.

He can see it from the air, and he realises that something really bad has happened.

So then he lands his chopper at the scene of the accident.

And of course, while he's there, the other three men who have been left behind then get worried that they haven't heard from either of these two choppers.

So then they come looking for Mick Burbage.

And of course, then they also discover the scene of the accident as well.

Yeah, and I mean, Mick, when he's there, he can't get onto that other crew who get worried about him, but he does get onto emergency services and manages to kind of get in touch with Matt Wright, who's, you know, the kind of the centre of this trial.

And, you know, Matt Wright's relevant here because he owns the company that had been contracted, the helicopter that Seb and Willow were in.

So a bit later, he turns up at the crash site as well.

He does, and he arrives in a helicopter with two other men.

So those people were an off-duty police officer, Neil Mellon, and the other person he arrives with is a crocodile farmer by the name of Mick Burns.

And Mick Burns was the one who had subcontracted Matt Wright's company.

to conduct this egg collecting mission.

So if you think about sort of a pyramid of who's involved in this whole operation, Mick Burns is kind of at the top.

It's his company that is subcontracting these other helicopter companies to conduct this egg collecting mission.

Right, okay, got it.

And, you know, in this trial that we're covering in the case of the Croc Wrangler, Matt Wright has been charged with three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

But that's all for stuff that he's alleged to have done after the crash.

So why is this seen?

Why is this crash relevant?

Well, Stocky, even though Matt Wright isn't on trial for what caused that accident or being responsible for that accident and of course the death of Chris Wilson and what happened to Sebastian Robinson, this crash is still very much at the heart of this case.

Each of the three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice that Matt Wright is facing really flow from the crash.

So it was the crash that prompted the investigation, and then the prosecution say it was that investigation that Matt Wright allegedly interfered with.

So even though the crash isn't...

the subject of the charges, it's still a really significant point in this trial.

Yeah, and Matt, kind of what Matt Wright has done after the crash and, you know, this crash in the first place, this is all kind of pretty key to what the prosecution says is the motive in here, right?

Yeah, absolutely, Stocky.

Look, to the backdrop of this crash, what you have is this helicopter company run by Matt Wright,

who has been,

as we've been slowly learning over the trial, is that they've been involved in this culture of rule breaking, under-recording flight time hours of these helicopters, basically to avoid costly maintenance and repairs.

So Matt Wright, the prosecution's saying that he didn't want this to be found.

He's basically gone to try to cover it up and the prosecution is alleging that Matt Wright was concerned that in some way he was going to be blamed for the cause of the crash in part due to what Jason Galachi has described as a systemic under-reporting of helicopter flying hours by Matt Wright's company Hellybrook.

Yeah, and Ollie, I mean, you've taken us through some of the people that, you know, I've kind of flown out to this case.

You've got Mick Burns, this, you know, this businessman, you know, at this point owns a croc farm where these guys are collecting the eggs for.

Then you've got the off-duty cop.

And, I mean, Neil Mellon, the off-duty cop, he's not a man that was expecting to be out at this crash site.

No, he wasn't.

And this was an interesting part of the evidence that Neil Mellon gave to the court.

He said that he wasn't on duty that day and even when he found out about the crash through his then wife, who was also a police officer on duty on the day, he had no intention of going out to the crash scene.

Neil Mellon really kind of painted a picture of this very 11th hour decision to go out to this crash site.

He was with Matt Wright and Mick Burns at the hangar, at the chopper hangar, as they were about to take off to get out to this crash scene, scene having just heard about this horrific accident and the picture he sort of conjured was this chopper basically taking off and him sort of saying to Matt Wright is there anything else I can do and Matt Wright saying to him well do you want to come with us and him in this snap decision almost in like this sliding door moment jumping into the chopper and saying, yep, okay,

I'm a police officer who has experience in search and rescue.

I have the relevant qualifications and perhaps there's something I could do to help.

So he jumps in the chopper and goes out to the scene of the accident.

Can I just add a little bit further context to your point, Ollie?

This guy, he's a very senior and experienced police officer.

I mean, he's not a commissioner or a deputy commissioner, but he's certainly one of the highest ranked tactical officers in the territory.

And here he is at the airport hangar wearing nothing but his bordies and thongs and a t-shirt when he gets on this chopper and essentially is the most skilled person at that scene for looking out for a crime scene.

Police, he said on the stand, were

not anywhere near to arriving at this crash scene yet.

They were coming via boat to an area that isn't even accessible via boat.

So in context, this guy was the first emergency services member of the police at the scene.

and he wasn't even on duty.

Yeah, and I mean, dressed in what sounds like a pretty typical Darwin uniform, but certainly not what you would be wearing if you'd been planning to go out to something like that.

Yeah, thongs, board shorts, t-shirt.

Yeah, not

probably what you should be wearing at a helicopter crash.

Ollie, we also had some of the other helicopter parts and crocodile egg collectors at that site as well, right?

Yeah, so as I mentioned, three choppers involved on the day of the accident.

So three pilots, three crocodile egg collectors.

So the four other men who weren't involved in the actual crash eventually all meet at the scene of this crash.

And of course, as Matt just mentioned, police and emergency services haven't even rocked up yet.

So it's really just these

this group of men all trying to work out what's happened and trying to do their best to help their friend who has suffered critical injuries as a result of this crash.

So a really distressing, traumatic scene for those men involved in that day.

Just further to that, there's also the tragic details of Chris Willow Wilson, who's deceased at the scene.

And these men, you know, having to deal with that fact, their good friend has died and he's there and what to do with him.

And some of them sit by his side.

You know, some of them work to get him.

to get him out of that paper buck swamp where they've crashed into.

And it's all very tragic and emotional for a lot of these men.

Even on the stand.

You've seen tears shed by these, you know, crocodile industry heavyweights who, you know, have been moved to tears by recalling that evidence.

Yeah, I mean, you know, as Mick Burns was talking through, you know, kind of what happened to that crash site, really, really quite emotional.

Yeah, I actually think that was probably

one of the most heartbreaking moments we've seen early on in the trial.

Mick Burns, who is this, as Matt said, he's a heavyweight in the industry.

He's this high-powered businessman.

And there was just this question about going out to the crash scene.

And you just heard this crack in his voice as he talked about going out there and having to see Chris Wilson deceased at the scene.

It was a really emotional moment.

He was asked when the last time he flew was, and he said it was the 28th of February, 2022.

So that just speaks to

what an incredible impact this incident has had on some of these witnesses.

We've heard a lot of detail of what happened at the crash site, you know, all these different people's different stories about kind of what was happening and who was doing what.

And I mean, something that feels like

we will continue to come up, so I want to spend a bit of time on it, is

basically who was looking in the fuel tank or who looked in the fuel tank, what happened in this.

And Ollie, you know, we heard a number of different stories about, you know, people going to the helicopter, checking the fuel tank, if they said anything anything about what was in there.

Can you take us through kind of what we've heard there?

Yeah, this has been a bit of a sticking point in this trial.

You know, you can imagine this sort of chaotic scene, all these men trying to work out what's happened and, you know, different people doing different things.

And there is definitely conflicting evidence about who checked what, who touched what inside this crashed helicopter.

And the fuel tank is a really important one of those aspects.

So Mick Burns, for example, said that he didn't see Matt Wright checking the fuel tank of the helicopter at the scene.

Michael Burbage said he couldn't recall whether he checked the fuel tank, but then when he was told that people had provided evidence that he did, he said, okay, I accept that maybe I did check.

And then another one of the other men involved on the day, a man by the name of Jock Purcell, he said he couldn't remember anyone looking in the fuel tank of IDW or hear any discussion about whether there was fuel in the chopper's tank.

So there's sort of this back and forth about who checked the fuel tank of the crashed chopper at the scene of the accident.

Yeah, I mean, it would have been, you know, as Matt was talking through, just so traumatic, you know, this whole situation, right?

You know, one of your best mates is lying in this swamp.

He's died.

You know, there's another mate who's, you know, really seriously injured.

And, you know, you're being asked in this environment, like, who did what, what happened.

You know, something else that has stuck out to me is this conversation of different types of fuel as well.

There's like a high-lead fuel and like a normal fuel they use in these helicopters.

They're different fuels for different other helicopters as well.

You know, a lot of really getting into the weeds around that.

But I mean, Ollie, you're talking about kind of this, you know, some people saying, I saw Mick look in the fuel tank, him's being like, I don't remember.

I mean, Matt, what's it been like with all these kind of different versions and different interpretations or memories of what's happened at this scene?

Yeah, different memories is a good way to put it, Stocky.

I mean, we heard one pilot come up earlier this week, Jock Purcell, he was one of the men at the scene.

He essentially

didn't recall a lot.

As the prosecutor went through the scene, he was often saying, I don't recall the moment.

I can't exactly remember.

I can't

put a name to who it was or what it was.

To the point that at one stage, the prosecutor, Jason Galachi, actually said he was having memory lapses, essentially accusing him of not telling the full story of what he saw at the scene.

in not so many words.

Look, even the jury has had a moment of not fully being able to put the pieces together.

They handed up a note to the judge at one stage and said, which essentially said, what do we do about all the discrepancies in these witness statements?

To which the judge essentially said, well, look, you're the jury, and

it's for you to try and figure out which is the elements of what really happened that day.

And of course, this is against Matt Wright's statutory declaration of what happened, which is a key part of one of the allegations against him.

Yeah, we'll get to what kind of Matt Wright has told to police a little bit later in this episode.

But Ollie, something I want to come back to a bit is Neil Millen's role at the crash site, right?

So this is this off-duty cop.

You know, we've heard that he's really experienced, like very senior policeman.

When I first heard about him being at the crash site, my thought was like, what is this guy?

doing out there and then you know through his evidence we we hear that he's actually you know on the phone to emergency services and he ends up coordinating with them to help kind of manage the recovery of Willow who's died.

He's there kind of securing the scene and putting Willow's body in a body bag.

Yeah, that was again another fairly gut-wrenching piece of evidence.

He got quite choked up saying that

he felt like it was his duty to put Chris Wilson into a body bag.

The words he used was that he didn't want the other men to have to go through that, that he'd had to do it many times in his career before, and he kind of wanted to spare the other men from having

to do that.

And as Matt mentioned earlier, you know, these men were sort of waiting for police or emergency services to arrive, and police had sent a boat.

Neil Mellon told the court that he was sort of like half shocked, almost amused by the fact that they'd said they were sending a boat because he said, well, a boat can't get here.

And the reason they sent a boat is because they didn't have a chopper.

So he's this senior officer.

He's really the only one there.

And so police tell him, instruct him to sort of take control of the scene.

And he sort of talks about changing hats from being a friend of these men to just, you know, putting his sort of professional police hat on, trying to sort of take some photos of the scene of the accident and sort of get a bit of control over what was happening at what was really a crime scene.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, you know, he talks through, you know, what he has to do to Chris Wilson's body to get it in the bag.

You know, Chris Wilson's wearing this harness.

He has a gun on his hip.

He's got a phone in his pocket.

So he's there taking the harness off of him, you know, taking the gun.

He gives his phone to Mick Burbage.

And, you know, kind of, you know, this is all a bit after Seb Robinson's already been evacuated by a Care Flight helicopter.

So this scene's kind of being secure at this point and people are starting to make their way home, right?

Yes, and Neil Mellon and Mick Burbage

get in a chopper together to leave the scene of the accident to go back to Darwin.

And by this point, Neil Mellon has told the court that he's given Chris Wilson's phone to Mick Burbage.

And

the question was asked of him, well, what happened to the phone afterward?

And Neil Mellon told the court that he had a conversation with Mick Burbage a couple of months later and sort of said, where's the phone?

And he said that Mick Burbage had told him it was gone.

And the prosecutor said, well, did you ask him what he did with it?

And Neil Mellon just said, you know, that Mick Burbage told him it wasn't retrievable, that it was in the ocean.

Right.

And I mean, you know, Neil Mellon, you know, it's told the court he was being directed by emergency services out there.

But, you know, both him and Burbage ended up being charged for what they did at the crash, right?

That is correct.

Yes, both Neil Mellon and Mick Burbage have faced their own separate court cases about destruction of evidence involved in what happened at the crash scene and involved in that phone.

Mick Burbage himself did plead guilty to a destruction of evidence charge for what he did with that mobile phone.

And he told the court when asked, he said, yes,

the word he used was piffed it.

He piffed the phone, threw it out of the helicopter, essentially, you know, on the way back to Darwin.

Yeah, right.

And I mean, one of the things I noticed as we were kind of hearing some of that was that they were always very clear that Matt Wright wasn't involved in any of those conversations

around, you know, the phone or any of the stuff that Mellon and Burbage were kind of charged with around there.

But something that did stick out to me about some of those exchanges was that Mitt Burbage, there were times when he'd be asked a question and he'd just sort of refer the prosecutor, Jason Galau, TSC,

to his statement.

He's like, that's in the statement, mate.

And there were other people as well who weren't giving much away.

Yeah, that's right.

There has certainly been a couple of witnesses who, at the beginning of their evidence, were quite short with the prosecution.

They were really just giving one or two word answers,

not really going into any sort of detail, often saying they just flatly couldn't remember.

And in a couple of those circumstances, it wasn't the case for Michael Burbage, but it was the case for another witness, Jock Purcell, who is another one of the egg collectors on the day.

He was granted a certificate from the judge, and that just means that he's protected from evidence that might be self-incriminating.

So the evidence he gives can't be used against him in further proceedings.

And once that certificate was granted, granted, there was a sort of a noticeable change in the way they were responding.

Suddenly, they were much more forthcoming with their evidence.

Yeah, interesting.

You know, as we've gone through all these people, we also heard about Matt Wright's police interview following the accident.

You know, that was played to the court, right?

Yeah, that's right.

And if we cast our minds back to the sort of breakdown of charges, the three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice, that interview is pretty critical to count one.

And so in the interview, you can hear Matt Wright telling police that there was about half a tank of fuel left in the crash chopper.

And that really goes to the heart of Count One and the prosecution saying that Matt Wright told police that there was half a tank, but he really didn't believe that.

He actually didn't know how much fuel was in that tank.

Yeah.

And I mean, something that I think will stick with me from the story of the crash site and the scene and everything that's happened around that is, is, you know, not actually something that happened at the crash site, but it's actually something that happened a few days later.

Mick Burns, the businessman who, you know, kind of basically commissioned this crock egg collecting mission, bringing everyone together in the days after the crash to kind of check in, make sure they're all okay.

Yeah, there was sort of a question asked about whether he had a gathering of people who were involved.

And he said, yeah, well, a couple of days later after the crash, I did invite people over.

And he said that he actually provided counsellors to these men because, again, what they'd been through was

traumatic and horrific and he wanted to, yeah, take care of these guys who had been doing work for him, who were friends of his.

And yeah, he talked about that.

Yeah.

And Matt, it would have been, you know, as you were talking about as well, you know, such heavy evidence throughout this period.

I mean, what's what stuck with you from kind of this scene and what we heard about it?

Look, Stocky, what really sticks in my mind is this differing evidence from this scene.

Hearing that Matt Wright allegedly entered the cockpit and was playing around with the dash.

Things were taken out of the helicopter.

Things were placed on the ground.

And all the while,

here is poor Chris Willow Wilson deceased.

And if I can paint the context, Chris Willow Wilson's widow, Danielle Wilson, has been in court every single day of evidence.

And you're hearing things like a one off-duty police officer say to a helicopter pilot, you know, talking about this phone and Mick Burbage saying, Danny doesn't need to see what's on that.

Here all the time is this widow listening to this evidence and it's it's just heart-wrenching to try and think what you know what this family's gone through, not even knowing what's on that phone, not knowing exactly what's happening, happened at that scene and all that's kind of coming out of the wash in one way or another now.

And you know, we'll keep everyone in the loop with what's going on as this case unfolds.

You know, something that

we'll learn as this case goes on is we'll get more detail about bits and pieces.

You know, things might feel unanswered at the moment, but as this case continues, we'll get more detail about what's going on.

Speaking about things that are unanswered, we've had a whole heap of questions sent to the case of inbox, the caseov at abc.net.au.

Really interesting questions coming through.

And I want to start with one that we've touched on here, but I think is worth really highlighting so people understand what's going on.

It's from Kirstie.

Kirstie says, hi all.

I feel like I've missed something here with the new case we're following.

What's Matt Wright's connection to the helicopter?

Does he own it or run the company or something?

What's his motives for getting involved?

Like they allege he did.

Yeah, that's a great question.

This case is such a web of people.

And I know it's hard for us to keep up, let alone people who are just coming to this case for the first time.

So I appreciate the opportunity to clarify.

Matt Wright owned and operated IDW, which is the chopper that crashed.

So he wasn't involved in that egg collecting mission on the day, but it was his chopper that Sebastian Robinson and Chris Willow Wilson were flying in on the day of the accident.

So that's how he is sort of connected in this whole thing.

Thank you, Ollie.

Great clarification.

Great question.

Kirstie, another one here, Ollie from Marshall in Lambs Valley, New South Wales.

Marshall says, good afternoon.

I'm really glad you're covering the Kroc case.

I've just listened to the intro and I've been getting a bit on ABC News.

First question is, is the cause of the helicopter crash not known as yet or are the aviation authorities still investigating it?

Yeah, so when it comes to this trial, the reason why the chopper crashed is not something that this trial is going to be looking into because Matt Wright isn't on trial for

the helicopter going down for the accident, for the death of Chris Wilson.

And so that's not really something that is going to be investigated.

If I can just add one thing to that, Ollie.

Sebastian Robinson, who was the pilot at the scene, who survived it, the sole survivor of that crash, he doesn't remember anything from the incident itself or even much of the weeks leading up.

So it leaves these huge gaps in essentially understanding what exactly happened in those

faded moments.

Yeah, no, thank you.

Thank you, Matt.

Thank you, Ollie.

Yeah, we'll keep talking about what happens at this crash scene.

I mean, we do need to be careful when we're talking about this.

We can only discuss what has been talked about in front of the jury in this case.

We can't go any further outside of that because we don't want to prejudice this case at all.

Last question here, I think the risk of prejudicing the case with this one is quite low.

You'll be pleased to hear, Ollie.

It's from Alex.

Alex says, hi folks, really interested to keep following along with new cases and learn how our legal system works.

Quick question.

What does the prosecution barrister's SC stand for?

I don't think I've heard it before.

I've heard QCKC before.

Ollie, can you enlighten us?

Senior counsel.

And we like to put those letters in after people's names because

some lawyers really like to make sure that

their seniority and ranking in the legal world is made very clear.

But SC is senior counsel.

So that means Jason Galachi is

a very senior prosecutor.

QC is Queen's Counsel and KC is King's Counsel.

And for some of us reporters who've been doing this since before Charles became the king, it's hard to get your head around changing from the Q to the K.

Yeah, I mean, the QC, KC change, Matt, was a really interesting one.

You may also hear them referred to as silks, which is like a, you know, it's an abbreviation.

You know, special counsel, often quite long.

So, you know, silk is used interchangeably there as well.

All of them barristers, people who specifically argue in courts.

They're the ones that wear the funny wigs and the robes.

It's their cute outfits.

It's the best bit.

They're like superheroes on the bar.

All crowded around the bar table in the middle of the courtroom there

in their nice little outfits.

Ollie, can you take us through where we're going to be heading in our next episode of the case of the Crock Wrangler?

So, we're going to be diving into the evidence from possibly one of the most important witnesses giving evidence in this trial, the pilot who miraculously survived that crash in 2022, and hearing more about the way young pilots idolised Matt Wright and also what happened during a hospital bedside visit between Matt Wright and that pilot.

Thank you, Ollie.

We're back in your feed on Tuesday.

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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 Lothoris and Stephen Stockwell.

Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson.

A big thank you to senior lawyer Jasmine Sims for her legal advice every day and to the Northern Territory Newsroom.

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

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