Gable Tostee: From coy boy to king of paradise

GABLE Tostee devoted much of his life to collecting sexual conquests. But while he boasted of sleeping with more than 100 women, his lifestyle left him far from satisfied.

Gable Tostee has been found not guilty of murdering Warriena Wright.

• Gable Tostee found not guilty of murder
• Juror almost caused mistrial in Tostee trial

BY the end of his first year as a Gold Coast nightclub lothario, Gable Tostee was ready for public acclaim.

He waited for the last day of the year to post: “Ask a guy who slept with 50 different girls in 2010 anything. Go!”

Other forum users wanted to see what he looked like. Tostee’s profile picture – a shirtless torso with sculpted abs – did not show his face.

“Almost every time I go out I have girls coming up to me saying I look like Jacob off Twilight,” he wrote.

They asked him what he used as his approach. Was he the same person who had posted a year earlier wanting to know how to pick up women, how to make friends? How did he know there’d been 50 women? Did he keep a notebook?

“I keep a log of names and dates just for my own info,” Tostee replied.

“Often I’m just on the dancefloor and I make eye contact with a girl and offer my hand out.

“You have to actually put yourself out there and initiate the interaction, rarely does a girl do this herself. A big factor is obviously to look good too.”

It was December and Tostee had just had a two-week slump, which ended with three different girls on three consecutive nights.

“Gotta love Christmas holidays,” he said.

When someone asked him how he planned on topping his 2010 efforts, he responded: “Don’t really feel the need to. I just wanted to prove to myself that I could do it after having only ever slept with one girl until I was 23. The plan is to just keep having fun.”

Girls told Gable Tostee he looked like Jacob off Twilight.

The year wore on and Tostee’s main ambition continued to be the collecting of sexual conquests. He’d worked for his father’s carpet laying business for years but described himself as a property developer and investor.

Home was no longer with his parents. He lived in an apartment just metres from Surfers Paradise nightclubs. It was the perfect bachelor pad.

When he wasn’t working and touring Surfers Paradise nightclubs, Tostee spent time watching shows like Californication, Nip/Tuck and Jersey Shore to get ideas on how to talk to women.

“So I wake up…,” he wrote in June, “with no memory past midnight, a couple of used condoms and an empty wrapper next to my bed and no trace of any girl except one long hair on the living room couch.”

“No text messages, Facebook, phone calls or anything.

“Last thing I remember is dozing off at about 8.30pm and waking up at about 10.30pm then drinking a whole bottle of vodka and 500mg of caffeine.

“I don’t even remember going out.”

BY 2012, Tostee had developed a reputation with some Gold Coast nightclub workers, who described him as a “serial pest”.

He was still keeping a record of the girls he’d slept with and by June, Tostee had reached a new milestone. This one did not seem to arrive with the same sense of achievement as the first.

“Ask a guy who just reached 100 girls slept with and is kinda depressed anything. Go,” he wrote.

Forum users wanted to know why he was depressed.

“Don’t really feel content,” he said. “Hard to explain.”

He’d never been in a relationship. Never. And he didn’t plan on that changing.

“I’ve actually kept a written log with dates and names,” Tostee said.

“I’m somewhat obsessed with recording everything. I have motion detection cameras in my house, call recording on my phone, and sometimes even leave my phone on record in my pocket for nights out in case I forget what happens.”

His 100th girl was asleep in his bed as he replied to questions from forum users.

She was a huge drop in his standards, he explained, but he’d taken her home because she had “huge teddies”. And he’d wanted to get the 100th out of the way.

He spoke again of his years as a hermit, his desire to change after keeping to himself for five years.

“This is one of the things that gets me down,” he wrote. “I imagined myself being different but I’m not sure I really am. I’ve always had very low self-esteem.

“Actually,” he told one forum user, “you made me realise something pathetic. One of the main reasons I try to sleep with different girls as often as possible is to improve my own confidence.”

A couple of weeks later, Tostee started a forum thread that he hoped would bring a bit of a confidence boost.

“Rate my facial aesthetics,” he said. He’d never wanted to show his face to the forum, but now he changed his mind. He posted a selfie in a low-necked white t-shirt, his hair swept across his forehead.

Fellow forum users rated him a 4/10 and told him he looked cross-eyed.

TOSTEE’S drunken nights out were starting to get him into trouble.

He’d been spoken to by two officers who spotted him holding a beer bottle on the street but talked his way out of a fine.

A few hours later he was pulled over – driving two girls home from his place – and a breath test revealed he was over the limit.

Tostee had another run-in after giving the finger to a couple of officers, which resulted in a notice for public nuisance and a $1000 fine, with no conviction.

On another occasion, a drunken Tostee had got a lift with a tuk-tuk rider and walked off without paying. The police found him inside a convenience store trying to buy chocolate bars. They asked him to come outside and he told them to “f--- off”.

“What are you going to do small man? F--- off c---,” Tostee told one of the officers. They bundled him into the back of a police car and he used his feet to stop them closing the door. They tried to drag him out, to reposition him, but he lashed out violently, kicking at them.

For his troubles, he got a dose of capsicum spray and charges of public nuisance and obstruct police.

IN April 2013, Tostee found Tinder.

The mobile phone dating app was a little different to websites that promised to help lonely hearts find love.

Tinder helped you find people in your vicinity. It was about a quick judgment of looks. It was about hooking up.

Gable Tostee.

“Is this real?” Tostee asked. “Has anyone met girls off this?”

Soon he was frequenting forum threads about the app, where men posted photographs and screenshots of their Tinder conversations with women and invited fellow users to rate them.

In February, 2014, Tostee posted a screenshot of a conversation he’d had with a girl from Tinder. He was annoyed that she had left abruptly without sleeping with him, that she had accused him of only wanting “one thing”.

“No, I like you, I think you’re cool and I want to see you again! Believe me!,” he wrote when she told him she wasn’t interested.

When she didn’t reply, he continued, messaging her three times before she replied.

“The only thing I’m faulting you for is repeatedly grabbing at my vagina and putting my hand on your c--- after I said I’m not like that,” she said.

He wasn’t done. She had led him on, he insisted. Why else had she come to his house if she hadn’t wanted to do anything?

His post on the forum brought mixed results. Tostee came off as desperate, insecure.

“You probably shouldn’t have expected to get laid on the first date,” one wrote.

“Complains that all women are whores. Complains even more when walking into your bedroom isn’t a contract for sex,” said another.

It was halfway through 2014 and Tinder had, by then, become a regular pastime. Girls would come back to his apartment for drinks and end up in his bed.

In late July, Tostee headed to Byron Bay’s Splendour in the Grass music festival with a couple of mates.

Tostee was asleep in his car when his mates woke him. They wanted to head back to Surfers before the 3am lockout.

Tostee was doing 150km/h when police spotted him on the Pacific Highway. They tried pulling him over but he planted his foot, reaching 195km/h.

Police gave chase and road spikes were laid across the highway near the Queensland border. Tostee hit them at high speed and drove until sparks flew from the car’s rims. A breath test found he had a blood alcohol reading of 0.2 – four times the legal limit.

This was no disorderly conduct charge. This time Tostee was in serious trouble.

IT would be some months before the police pursuit charges would make it to court so Tostee went back to his Surfers Paradise apartment and his Tinder account.

Five days after his arrest, he spotted a quirky brunette who called herself “Cletus Bob”. She was attractive, with big dark eyes and a petite build.

“Hey you sexy slack jawed yokel,” he wrote, proving that he too watches The Simpsons.

“Lol Hey. Had a few people (think) that’s my real name,” Warriena Wright replied.

Tostee considered his approach, and dived right in. “You look delicious. I want to do dirty things to you,” he wrote.

She was non-committal.

“That usually work?” she replied.

He wasn’t trying to make anything “work”, he told her. He was “just saying”. The conversation had been going over Tinder for nearly a week when they agreed to meet.

It was August 7 and Warriena, a 26-year-old bank employee from Wellington, New Zealand, was in Australia for a friend’s wedding. She was leaving on Monday.

They met on Cavill Ave, Surfers’ famed shopping and entertainment strip, and hugged before moving on to the Surfers Paradise Beer Garden. They didn’t stay long.

At a nearby BWS store, Warriena put a six pack of beer on the counter and Tostee handed over his bank card to pay.

It was a short walk back to his place and they caught the lift up to the 14th floor.

Tostee’s apartment was modern and masculine. A tray of small, white, decorative rocks sat on a curved glass coffee table. A white leather lounge faced a large-screen TV.

A tanning bed took up one end of the balcony. Weight lifting equipment took over a study nook.

They had a few drinks and tumbled into bed. They laughed and talked and took photos together out on the balcony.

Warriena sent a message to her sister, Marreza, back in New Zealand.

She’d met a guy, she said. He was the “Australian Sam Winchester” – a character off one of her favourite television shows, Supernatural.

It was late in New Zealand, so Reza sent her big sister a thumbs up and went to sleep. It was the last time she’d ever hear from her.

As the night wore on, Warriena became increasingly drunk and her behaviour more and more erratic.

At 12.55am, Tostee took out his Sony Xperia phone and hit record.