Gordon Wood gives evidence for first time in infamous Caroline Byrne case

GORDON Wood, the man wrongfully convicted over the murder of his girlfriend Caroline Byrne, has denied asking to see her breasts as she lay dead.

Gordon Wood was to give evidence for the first time at his hearing for wrongful prosecution. Picture: Stephen Cooper

GORDON Wood, the man wrongfully convicted in 2008 over the murder of his girlfriend Caroline Byrne, has begun giving evidence for the first time in the infamous case.

Mr Wood is in the witness box at the New South Wales Supreme Court where he is pursuing damages against the state over his conviction, which was quashed in 2012, claiming grounds of malicious prosecution and false imprisonment.

Ms Byrne was found dead at the base of notorious suicide spot The Gap in 1995. Last week the hearing heard exactly how the body ended up among the rocks was never properly investigated.

Choking back tears, Mr Wood told the court of the moment he held Ms Byrne’s hand in the morgue after an attendant unzipped her body bag.

He was told he would not be able to identify Ms Byrne because of her injuries, the Supreme Court heard on Monday.

“A lady counsellor invited me into a room to say goodbye to Caroline,” Mr Wood said.

“There was a chair next to the table upon which she lay in a blue body bag and it had white trimming on it.

“She sat in a chair on the other side of me and she removed Caroline’s hand from the bag and allowed me to hold her hand and say goodbye, which I did my best to do. I didn’t feel comfortable doing it in front of the other lady.”

One of the claims that has followed Mr Wood since her death has been that he asked morgue staff if he could see Ms Byrne’s breasts. Today, he denied that was the case.

“Did you ask to see any other part of her body?” his counsel Bruce McClintock SC asked him.

“No,” Mr Wood said, The Daily Telegraph reported.

A statement by a morgue attendant that Mr Wood had asked to see her “tits” forms part of Mr Wood’s case for malicious prosecution in the Supreme Court.

Caroline Byrne died in 1995.

He told the NSW Supreme Court he hasn’t worked since the day before his 2006 arrest and has been taking medication for depression since his murder conviction was overturned in 2012.

Asked under cross examination whether he felt he had ever got over Ms Byrne’s death, Mr Wood replied: “I think so but I don’t know. I hope so.”

He said he still felt today what he had told the court in a witness statement, that “Caroline was and is the love of my life”.

Mr Wood also expressed regret at agreeing to a television interview with Paul Barry in 1998.

“I was informed that the purpose of the interview was to tell the facts of the story and to clear my name, and when I did the interview, I found I was actually more interrogated and I reacted poorly to that,” he said.

The hearing continues.