Gable Tostee: Untold story of a reclusive playboy

BEING charged over a fake ID racket turned Gable Tostee into a recluse. But a meeting with an old friend sparked a journey of social discovery that would ultimately lead to tragedy.

The Courier-Mail’s Kate Kyriacou looks into Gable Tostee’s life before he met Warriena Wright.

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• Tostee recording was crux of case
• Tostee: From coy boy to king of paradise
• The case almost too complex for a jury

THE banging was coming from above them, around the living area where they sat on their laptops.

Emily Ellis and Nick Ryan had been on their computers for hours, sitting on the lounge near the balcony doors, where outside waves crashed in the dark along the famous Surfers Paradise coastline.

“We’ve been up too long,” Emily said to Nick. On the other side of the 12th floor unit, her boyfriend Ryan Martin was playing his PlayStation. She looked at the time. A little after 2am.

She’d thought the scuffling was coming from the unit upstairs. Later they would realise the noises were carrying down two floors, loud enough to wake half the building.

“Did you hear that?” Emily asked. Nick didn’t reply. Scuffling had turned to banging now, almost as though a heavy piece of furniture had fallen on to the floor.

She jumped up and walked out on to their ocean-view balcony. The others followed. Upstairs, on level 13, Austrian woman Gabriele Collyer-Wiedner woke to the same crashing noises.

Then the screaming started. It was a woman. She shouted “No!”, then shouted it again.

Gabriele sat up. “No!” the woman was screaming now. Terrified, guttural shrieks. “No, no, no!”

She got out of bed, walked through her unit and out on to her balcony.

A male voice was shouting something but she couldn’t make out the words.

“There’s something going on up there,” Emily said on level 12.

The woman was screaming something else now.

“I want to go home!” she shouted, hysterical. “I want to go home!”

Emily moved to the balustrade and looked out. There was nothing to see. She moved to the corner, and looked again.

The woman was wearing black jeans, her feet bare. Emily couldn’t see her face, only her torso, her dangling legs. She was climbing down from the balcony two floors above, trying to make it to level 13. It was impossible, Unreachable. She was climbing quickly, thoughtlessly. Climbing to her death.

Behind Emily, Nick moved forward.

“Go back inside,” he said, alarmed. “You can’t come down this way.”

“I want to go home,” she said again.

Then, horribly, shockingly, the woman fell. She hit the railing on level 13, ricocheted off and plummeted to the ground. Nick saw her hair, her long dark hair, as she fell into the darkness.

Above them, Gabriele ­Collyer-Wiedner screamed. Below them, the dark-haired woman screamed as she dropped 14 floors to her death.

SISTER’S TEARS FOR WARRIENA: Most important person in my life

WHEN Gable Tostee was just 17, he masterminded a business plan that would prove more than fruitful for a kid living at home with his parents.

It was a fake ID racket, designed to take advantage of the Gold Coast’s Schoolies Week.

Tostee, the brains of the operation, recruited a trusted schoolmate to bring in the ­clientele.

The mate would bring Tostee $60 and a passport photo. Tostee would hand over a product detailed with the close eye of a perfectionist.

His work was guaranteed – any card confiscated by a suspicious security guard would be replaced free of charge.

Together they’d produce hundreds of the cards over more than a year before Tostee began souring on the scam. It was too much work, too much stress. He sold out to his mate and a third school friend for $300 apiece.

Only a few months went by before the operation was brought undone.

Police raided the trio in late 2004. By then, the business had brought in $30,000 for the young entrepreneurs.

But a check of Tostee’s computer would reveal something even more interesting – a perfect reproduction of a $50 note. It was so good that Australian Federal Police officers were amazed by its quality.

Gable Tostee leaving Southport Court in 2006. Picture Alex Carter

Tostee and two mates pleaded guilty to forgery.

It took two years for the matter to reach court. Tostee, labelled the “mastermind” by the Crown prosecutor, was said to be “partially autistic” with exceptional skills in art and drafting. He was also said to be suffering from severe obsessive compulsive disorder.

The case made the front page of the Gold Coast Bulletin in June 2006 after Tostee and his two mates pleaded guilty to forgery.

The publicity had an enormous impact on a 20-year-old Tostee. He devised a plan to keep his face from the pages of the paper at his sentencing hearing a week later. Taking an Esky with him into court, Tostee hid inside the building for hours, finally emerging with a hoodie over his head.

The judge put Tostee and his mates on probation with no conviction recorded. Tostee was ordered to undertake 200 hours of community service.

“He has extraordinary talents that must be harnessed in such a manner to ensure the products of his abilities are not illicit,” Judge John Newton said.

But the warning fell on deaf ears. He would focus his skills somewhere else – women.

IN January 2010, a user named G T wrote a lengthy, heartfelt post on a body building forum asking for advice on how to make friends.

Describing himself as a 190cm, 90kg Australian, G T had been posting on the popular forum since July 2004.

“I’m in a bit of a strange situation,” he wrote. “About five years ago, some s--- went down (I won’t go into it) and I had to cut off contact with literally all my friends and basically disappear, many of them were involved.”

He’d always been shy, Tostee wrote. He’d been working for his dad. He hadn’t studied at university, he played no sports. He lived as a virtual hermit.

“Said s--- that happened has sort of blown over now, but I never really re-established contact with anyone I used to know, until the other week when I bumped into an old best mate at a restaurant,” Tostee wrote.

“When I asked him what other friends were up to I ­realised how much I have missed out on socially over the last half a decade.”

Gable Tostee posted often on a body building forum.

The problem was, he explained, that he didn’t know where to start. How should he go about making friends? Should he set up a Facebook page? Should he track down his old schoolmates?

The advice from fellow forum users varied in its sarcasm and usefulness. Tostee replied to nearly everything, giving considered answers.

He explained he’d been out with the friend on a couple of occasions and had even headed into Surfers Paradise alone while “s---faced” where he’d tried to strike up conversations with strangers.

“It’s difficult to make actual friends without knowing people already, since I eventually have to reveal the fact that I’m a hermit,” he wrote.

The following day, he provided an update – he’d set up a Facebook page. How long did people usually take to respond to friend requests?

“This is pretty daunting,” he wrote. “I feel as though I have been pushed aside or can’t relate, even sort of with my old best mates.”

A few days later he was back with a new dilemma.

He’d been out with his friend from school again. They’d started chatting to a couple of girls. There’d been dancing, kissing and exchanging of numbers. Tostee, of course, had had virtually no interaction with women in years.

“Mine seemed pretty into me, wanted to meet again, hugged her goodbye outside and said I’d call her. They were on holidays and are leaving today,” he wrote.

“I called earlier but it was an answering machine so I texted her and haven’t had a reply. Should I call again, perhaps off a private number?”

No, a fellow forum user advised. She got your message. It’s up to her to respond.

“Well I’ll never see her again in a few hours no matter what I do. Last night I got the idea I’d be able to close the deal,” he wrote.

Then: “Do you think it’s possible to close the deal in the same night with ANY girl if you’re good enough?”

Tostee never saw her again. But he used the opportunity to ask for more advice on what to do, what to say.

A week later, he tried again.

“On Friday I met this chick who was here on holidays. Started talking to her at the bar, danced, kissed and kept in mind at this point to be more aggressive,” he wrote.

“I can’t remember exactly what I said but I was much more direct. Ended up rooting her in the back of my car … then taking her back to my place to root her in bed.”

The following night he was out on the town again. He kissed one girl and asked her if she wanted to take it further. She gave him her number and left to find a friend. He got two more numbers before the night was out. He rated one a 6/10 and admitted he couldn’t even remember the third.

He called and messaged the first girl but got no reply.

“Not sure what more I could have possibly done though,” he lamented. “Maybe bought her more drinks? Would this be unethical?”

The weeks that followed were more of the same. Drinking and dancing. Kissing and exchanging of numbers. Girls would seem interested but they wouldn’t follow through when he tried calling and texting.

He met a Brazilian girl and got her back to his place one night but she didn’t want to sleep with him. He took her on a date the following night and he thought it went well. But her responses were lukewarm when he tried to contact her again.

“Is it normal to get screwed around like this?” he asked his forum mates.

“In my mind, I just want to get the second one down,” he wrote. “So then I’ll know it’s not a fluke.”

BY February, things were getting desperate. Tostee wanted to have sex again but he wasn’t having any luck. He approached 20 girls at a club before he convinced one to hand over her number. It came to nothing.

He tried again and he and his mate found two blonde girls to dance with.

“The one I was with had a boyfriend,” he wrote. “She was dancing, grinding with me and initially refused to kiss me (although I could tell she wanted to) but with a bit of work I finally got a kiss and her number.”

He had taken the Brazilian girl out several times but she was innocent – all kisses and hand holding.

On February 2 she sent him a text saying she did not want to see him again. She couldn’t like him if she was returning home in a couple of days. Tostee was unexpectedly hurt.

“I realised something that never even occurred to me,” he wrote to his online friends.

“But all the girls I have met and gotten to know over the past few weeks I have actually cared about. I’m still in touch with the girl I banged before even though she is overseas now.

“Regardless of whether I get laid I’m still going to really miss this Brazilian girl and I don’t really know what to think. In any case I do not believe in monogamous relationships but I never thought I would give a damn about any of these girls until I realised that I may never see one of them again.”

But he was sure about one thing: “None of this will stop me from trying to meet new girls.”

TOSTEE noticed the cute blonde and thought about the best approach. He walked over to her friend, and said “I think your friend is checking me out”.

Tostee rated girls on online forums.

“You should dance with her,” the blonde girl’s friend told him. So he did. They kissed and he told her to come back to his place, that he’d drop her home in the morning.

“Is this part of your routine?” she asked. It was, but she didn’t mind. It had taken three weeks but Tostee had landed his second sexual conquest.

“It was important for me to get the second one out of the way so I knew the first wasn’t some kind of fluke,” he recounted to the forum boys.

With his newfound confidence, he headed back out.

He tried the same tactic. Dancing, kissing, the invite back to his place, the offer to drop her home in the morning.

It worked – and it had only taken a few minutes. He told the forum boys she’d been hot. An eight out of 10.

All the girls got a rating. One he rated a 5.5 and described as a “huge mistake”. He should have spent his time on a “much hotter girl”, he told the forum.

“Anyway, that’s the fifth root for the year and the fourth within a week,” he wrote. “My mates were amazed and actually asking me for tips. Who would have thought?”

A few days later he was out with mates but they weren’t interested in finding girls. Frustrated, Tostee went it alone.

“I saw this hot smallish girl, 8/10 with an amazing body, dancing on her own, surrounded by like five guys,” he wrote.

“All I did was give her a glance, then a ‘come here’ gesture with my hand and I was in. She was great in bed.”

Night after night, Tostee and his mate headed into the clubs with a mission to bring home girls. Then, back home, Tostee detailed his successes and failures on the forum.

“There is some great advice in here and thanks for sharing with us your experiences. Keep us updated!” a forum user told him.

Continued: From coy boy to king of paradise