60 Minutes (screenshot)
No one will ever be entirely sure of what went wrong on the night when 26-year-old Warriena Wright fell to her death from the 14th storey balcony of a Sufers Paradise high-rise in August 2014. We only know one thing: a court of law has found that her Tinder date that night, Gable Tostee, 30, was not responsible.
That doesn’t make her death any less appalling. And hearing more about the details about this young woman’s tragic death is simply grisly voyeurism. There is no reason for 60 Minutes to pay a reported $150,000 so we can hear from the man who was there when she died.
Why? Because her death is not about him. It’s not about whatever he went through as he endured a murder trial, or about his creepy decision to record Wright’s final hours on his phone. It’s not about his excuses or reasons or explanations.
Yesterday, 60 Minutes released another preview of their interview with Tostee. In it, you can hear Wright’s final screams from the 190 minute phone recording Tostee made. We simply don’t need to disrespect this young woman by listening to it.
Spare a thought for Wright’s mother, who released a statement soon after the trial.
“To the media, you have made this trip the most saddest, hardest trip I have ever had to endure,” said Merzabeth Tagpuno-Wright, who explained that she’d requested that the audio tapes of her daughter’s final screams be withheld from the media.
“Yet I was overruled by the judge. I did not want to hear my daughter screaming ‘no, no, no’.
“I did not want to remember her like that.”
And yet that is what we’re forcing on this woman, a grieving mother, to endure.
We don’t need to dignify Tostee’s choice to continue eating ‘super supreme pizza’ while Wright lay dead on the pavement below by watching the interview.
We don’t need to help him ‘clear his name’ which is almost certainly how 60 Minutes producers convinced him to appear on the show.
And we certainly don’t need to hear her last anguished howls, which Tostee recorded on his phone .
The only person who matters in this whole ghastly episode is Warriena Wright, who made the fatal mistake of accepting an invitation to return to an apartment with a man she barely knew. The only surviving people who matter are her family, who will be forced to relive their loved one’s grisly death for the grim viewing pleasure of a ghoulish public and a team of even more ghoulish TV producers on Sunday night.
Wright does not deserve this final indignity. Don’t be a part of it. Don’t watch.
