Man told wife he would snap her neck, landmark coercion case told

A woman who had accused her husband of domestic abuse told a psychiatric nurse months before she killed herself that “she had two choices of a way out: either to leave her husband or to die”, a court heard last week.

Christopher Trybus is on trial at Winchester crown court accused of the manslaughter of his wife, Tarryn Baird, who died in November 2017 aged 34. He also faces charges of coercive or controlling behaviour and two counts of rape. He denies all charges.

The jury has heard evidence that in the year before her death, Tarryn made allegations of abuse against her husband to health professionals, domestic abuse services and a close friend. During this period she also took several accidental or attempted overdoses and expressed suicidal thoughts.

In April 2017 she was referred to a crisis mental health service in Swindon. Suzanne Hawkins, a senior mental health nurse, told the court that during their first meeting Tarryn told her “she had given up” and that “[her husband] will never go to prison. I’m the one in prison”.

Later that year Tarryn killed herself at home while her husband was working abroad. She left a note addressed to her family, which said: “I am so sorry but I just couldn’t take it any more… I love you and please forgive me.”

Michelle Baird, Tarryn’s mother, said that two weeks earlier, her daughter had told her family that Trybus had said “he would snap my neck in a heartbeat, cut up my body, dissolve it in acid and nobody would find me”. Baird told the court she had responded by saying to Trybus: “Are you sick? If I don’t find my daughter, I will come looking for her” – to which he had laughed, and began to “tell me how he could do it”.

During a heated cross-examination by Katy Thorne KC, for the defence, Baird denied Thorne’s suggestion that the conversation had in fact been a joke about the TV show Breaking Bad. “I am not going to sit here and let you put words in my mouth,” she said. “I knew nothing about Breaking Bad.”

She said that while her daughter had raised the subject in a “jokey” way, it was “horrendous to hear” and had concerned her enough to ask her husband afterwards whether Tarryn was trying to warn her about something.

This is a landmark trial: if Trybus is found guilty of killing his wife as a result of alleged abuse, it will be the first conviction of its kind.

In his opening statement Tom Little KC said it was the prosecution’s case that Trybus had “engaged in extensive and escalating controlling, coercive and manipulative behaviour” as well as sexual violence and assaults during his marriage to Tarryn, and that he was legally responsible for his wife’s death.

The defence argues that Tarryn was making what Thorne has called “demonstrably” false allegations of abuse and that she may have become “addicted to the attention” that these disclosures brought. She said Trybus was “never abusive to his wife” and instead “cherished her”.

Trybus, who is 43, has attended court every day hand-in-hand with his new wife.

Trybus and Tarryn moved to the UK from their native South Africa in 2007. While there Tarryn witnessed a carjacking and later was involved in a shooting, which resulted in PTSD. Two attempted burglaries in 2015 at her home in Swindon appear to have triggered her symptoms.

Giving evidence over two days Tarryn’s mother, who moved to the UK in 2010, told the court that her daughter was an “outgoing” and “lovable child” who was “inseparable” from her brother Greg, but who “withdrew” from her family in the years before her death.

Baird said that the family had become so concerned about Tarryn’s mental state in 2017 that they had arranged a meeting with Tarryn and Trybus to discuss possible in-patient care at the Priory.

Baird said her daughter later told her that Trybus, who drove a Porsche, “thought it was too expensive… and he felt it wasn’t the right fit for her”.

Police initially began an investigation in April 2018 but no further action was taken. In October 2020 a new investigation was opened after Baird looked through her daughter’s mobile phone and found photographs of injuries and a four-minute long audio recording that the prosecution alleges is a sexual assault from October 2017. The defence says it records consensual sex.

Baird broke down on the stand when asked about the evidence she had discovered. The previous day court proceedings ended early because she had become too upset to continue. “It’s just so traumatising, this nightmare that I’ve been living for eight years,” she said. Gripping the side of the witness box she stared across the court, directly at Trybus until she was dismissed. Trybus looked straight ahead.

Baird later said in court that her daughter had never told her she was being abused and had explained visible bruises as accidents or the result of fainting. She said that when she questioned Trybus about the injuries, he said Tarryn had fallen after drinking and taking prescription medication, and that she was “an alcoholic”.

Earlier in the trial a forensic pathologist compared images of the bruising on Tarryn’s abdomen to those she would expect to see after a “traffic accident” and said she had seen cases of fatal strangulation where there was less external bruising than some of the pictures she had seen of injuries to Tarryn’s neck.

The cause of the injuries is a key point of contention in the case. The defence appears to intend to argue that at least some were self-inflicted. Thorne has also suggested that some were the result of consensual sexual encounters and accidents.

The trial is expected to continue until mid-April.

Photographs by Ollie Thompson/Solent News, Andrew Matthews/PA Wire