A jury in the Northern Territory Supreme Court case against Outback Wrangler, found Matt Wright guilty on two charges relating to trying to hinder the investigation of a helicopter crash that killed his best mate in February 2022.
“Your best friend is lying dead not too far away, Sebastian Robinson has been airlifted with life-threatening injuries and what’s your concern – ‘is the Hobbs meter connected?’,” prosecutor Jason Gullaci told the court during closing statements.
Wright, 45, who is best known for starring in the hit Netflix series Wild Croc Territory, pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice following the crash.
After the verdict was handed down, Wright was released on bail. Outside the courthouse he told media that he was disappointed with the ruling and would be appealing.
“It’s been a long fight and we’ve got an appeal in process now, and we’ll keep moving forward with this,” he said.
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‘It’s been devastating for everyone involved.”
When the crash occurred, its pilot Sebastian Robinson and Chris “Willow” Wilson were flying in remote Arnhem Land on a crocodile egg collecting mission.
HIDING FLIGHT HOURS
While Wright has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to the crash, he’s been accused of lying to police, doctoring flight records and asking an associate to burn a document to hide flight hours at his company Helibrook – and in turn – avoid expensive maintenance requirements.
During the trial, Robinson told the court he was directed by Wright to not accurately record his flight hours.
“He’d say, ‘pop the clock for this trip’, for example, disconnect the Hobbs meter,” Robinson said.
He also said the practice of disconnecting the Hobbs meter, which tracks flight times on aircrafts, was a “very common practice” at Helibrook that benefitted Wright.
“He owned the aircraft and obviously if you’re doing more hours and you’re not recording them, you get to make the extra money, and it prolongs the maintenance intervals between having to spend money.”
In the fateful crash, Robinson suffered a traumatic brain injury that’s left him with no memory of the crash along with multiple spinal fractures that made him a paraplegic.
While recovering in hospital, Robinson said Wright asked him to transfer the flight hours from the egg collecting mission from the crashed helicopter to Robinson’s – which lacked the equipment to carry out the mission.
Robinson also revealed Wright deleted text messages and notes about the start and stop times for the egg collection mission from his phone while he was in hospital.
“He asked to go through my phone and delete a few things,” said Robinson.
“I remember looking over and seeing him holding my phone and flicking through it and deleting things.”
LIES ABOUT THE FUEL TANK
In a police interview after the crash, Wright claimed the helicopter had half a tank of fuel left when he checked it at the crash scene.
But, he was later recorded by covert listening devices installed at his home admitting there was no fuel in the tank.
“It just had no fuel, he had run out of fuel, I’ll just say he was a s**t pilot,” Wright was recorded saying.
However, another member of Wright’s team, Timothy Luck, says he’d filled the fuel tank “completely” minutes before the crash.
“I over-fuelled the machine and some fuel spurted out over the top of the machine and down the side,” Timothy testified.
“Chris and Sebastian sort of teased me a bit to say ‘Oi, don’t do that’, them two boys gave me a bit of stick and we carried on.”
In his closing statements, Wright’s defence barrister David Edwardson rejected Luck’s claims of refuelling the helicopter and argued that Robinson failed to notice a low fuel light during the flight.
“Either way, and for whatever reason, the fact of the matter is that if IDW [the helicopter] ran out of fuel, and assuming the fuel light did come on, Sebastian Robinson missed it completely.”
DESTROYING MAINTENANCE DOCUMENTS
In a secretly recorded midnight conversation from September 2022, Wright can be heard directing one of his associates, Jai Tomlinson, to destroy the crashed helicopter’s maintenance document that was being requested by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).
“Just torch it, I don’t know where it is but I’m thinking it’s either there,” Wright can be heard saying.
But, Edwardson says the recording is “incomprehensible” due to the poor quality.
“You listen to that tape yourself and you tell me what, if anything, you can actually understand of it without the benefit of all the prompts that the prosecution want you to have,” he said during closing statements.
He also claimed both Wright and Tomlinson were drunk at the time the recording was made.
“Their speech is slurred, their musings clearly do not reflect sober thoughts.”
The jury did not return a verdict for this charge and it has been discharged.
