Famed Australian crocodile wrangler Matt Wright urged friends to “torch” evidence and tried to pressure a hospitalised witness after a fatal helicopter crash, prosecutors have told his trial.
The former Netflix star is accused of three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice over the crocodile-egg-harvesting disaster in 2022.
Mr Wright’s friend and Outback Wrangler co-star Chris “Willow” Wilson, who was suspended from the aircraft in a sling, died when it hit the ground. Pilot Sebastian Robinson also was seriously injured.
Mr Wright has pleaded not guilty, and his defence team deny he tampered with any evidence.
In their opening address to the Northern Territory (NT) Supreme Court, the prosecution said it was not alleging that Mr Wright was responsible for the crash, but accused him of interfering with the investigation.
He was not on board but was among the first on the scene in Arnhem Land, about 500km (310 miles) east of Darwin.
The court was told he had a “play around” with the dashboard of the damaged helicopter and falsely reported its fuel tank level.
Prosecutor Jason Gullaci SC also claimed Mr Wright was involved in “systemic under-recording” of flight hours and, worried he might be blamed for the crash, tried to destroy or alter the logs for the helicopter involved.
The jury was on Thursday shown transcripts of secret recordings made inside Mr Wright’s home, including a “critical passage” in which prosecutors claimed he was discussing requests from aviation authorities looking into the incident.
“Just torch it. I don’t know where it is but I’m thinking it’s either there – I’ve got to send it to CASA (Civil Aviation Safety Authority) or the ATSB (Australian Transport Safety Bureau),” Mr Wright said, according to the transcript provided by prosecutors.
Mr Gullaci also told the court that Mr Wright had visited Mr Robinson at a Brisbane hospital to put “the hard word” on the injured pilot. He alleged Mr Wright asked Mr Robinson to transfer flight hours from the crashed aircraft to another helicopter.
During the defence’s opening statement, lawyer David Edwardson SC said that under-recording flight hours was standard practice for many pilots in the NT – but Mr Wright “emphatically denies” he broke the law trying to cover this up.
Both parties agree that authorities were ultimately provided the correct, original flight records, he said, and recordings captured inside Mr Wright’s home and relied upon for two of the key allegations were “extremely poor”.
He added that the defence would dispute the evidence of conversations between Mr Wright and Mr Robinson, saying the pilot’s credibility – as well as his extended family’s – was “seriously in issue”.
Mr Wright is best known globally as the star of National Geographic’s Outback Wrangler and Netflix’s Wild Croc Territory reality shows. The 43-year-old also owns several local tourism businesses and has been a tourism ambassador for Australia.
His trial is expected to run for up to five weeks.
