Gable Tostee has opened up about the night his Tinder date Warriena Wright, fell to her death from the 14th floor of his apartment balcony in Surfers Paradise, Queensland, in 2014.
Tostee was accused of killing the New Zealand native, but was found not guilty late last year. It was never alleged he threw her off the balcony — instead the Crown case argued he’d intimated Wright so badly she’d tried to escape his apartment via the balcony after he locked her outside.
Wright was just 26 when she died.
“(I called it the apocalypse) from the moment I realised the girl I was with had just disappeared off the balcony and something serious had happened… It’s like something off a horror film.” he told News Corp in a lengthy interview. “It’s still surreal. It’s no less surreal. It’s one of those things you can’t really process. It’s one of those things that’s not supposed to happen.”
“But it is what it is and you’ve just to cope with the situation the best you can,” he said.
The Gold Coast man said he placed Wright on the balcony of his apartment in an attempt to “defuse the situation.”
“We don’t act with hindsight. You think, “Well, there is a door there that can separate the two of us,” he told the publication.
“You’re being attacked. You think you’re doing the most sensible thing and you think that will just defuse the situation.”
WATCH: Gable Tostee speaks about the night of Warriena Wright’s death on 60 Minutes. Post continues…
On why he didn’t force Wright out the front door, he explained the balcony was the closest lockable door.
“The front door wasn’t there. The balcony door was there. You don’t weigh up, ‘“Well, is this person going to climb off a 14-floor balcony?’” he said.
“There is nothing inherently unsafe about a balcony, unless you climb over it… It’s just … there is nowhere to go.”
He added: “It’s certain death. It just doesn’t make sense and you can drive yourself crazy wondering what was going through her mind but you never know. You just can’t know.”
A selfie taken hours before Warriena Wright’s death.
The 31-year-old explained why he chose to record audio in the hours leading up to Wright’s death.
“I don’t get off on recording things,” he said.
“If nothing happened, then I don’t go listening to a recording of a night on the town. It’s only in case something happens I’ve got it there.”
“It’s like saying, ‘Why put surveillance cameras in shopping centres or building?’”
Tostee — who has since changed his name to Eric Thomas — also spoke out about his return to the online dating app, Tinder.
“I’ve got an account but I’m not constantly wearing out my thumb on it. I’ve met a couple of girls since but it’s not like the good old days — I barely had a thumb left.”
Going under his new moniker, ‘Eric’, Tostee’s profile reveals a shirtless picture of himself lying in bed and an image of him posing next to two large milkshakes.
“Shh don’t tell Channel 9”, his bio reads — in reference to the media scrutiny that surrounded the case, including a controversial interview on 60 Minutes following his acquittal.
