AS THEY trudged through the darkness at The Gap looking for his missing daughter, Tony Byrne had already begun to question the truthfulness of her boyfriend, Gordon Wood, a Supreme Court jury head yesterday.
Hours before her body was found at the foot of The Gap, Wood was trying to convince her family that Caroline had committed suicide, Mr Byrne said.
Wood, 45, a former driver for the late stockbroker Rene Rivkin, has denied throwing Ms Byrne to her death at The Gap on June 7, 1995.
On the night she died, Wood had called Mr Byrne's house about 1am alerting him that his daughter was missing. During that call Wood did not first inquire if Ms Byrne was with her family despite her having agreed to have dinner with them that night.
Wood then drove Mr Byrne and his son Peter to The Gap to search for her. Wood, who was agitated and speaking in a high-pitched voice as he drove at high speed, told them he had "a feeling" that she was at The Gap and that he had earlier found her white Suzuki car there.
Mr Byrne said it was the darkest night he had ever experienced and he had trouble seeing Peter and Wood, who were in front of him as they scoured The Gap looking for his daughter.
"It was absolute, eerie silence," Mr Byrne told the jury. "I was freezing cold and I began to question the truthfulness of what Gordon was telling me."
Later that night, while waiting at a police station, Wood had produced a referral for Byrne to see a psychiatrist and, handing it to Mr Byrne, said: "Here's the evidence. Caroline has taken her own life."
Mr Byrne replied, "You'll never convince me she's taken her own life."
The court heard that Wood visited Mr Byrne in the hours after his daughter's body was found. He said Wood was "very calm, very cool" and thought carefully before he answered any of Mr Byrne's queries. Mr Byrne told the jury Wood did not look at him.
That same morning Mr Byrne said he received a call from Caroline's employer, June Dally-Watkins, who ran a deportment and business school, to say that Wood was telling people Caroline had died in a car crash.
Two weeks after her death, Mr Byrne questioned Wood about Caroline's spirit having told him where to look for her and that she had died at 6pm.
Mr Byrne recalled saying: "If this spirit world would have been available to you at 6pm we might have been able to save Caroline." Mr Byrne said that Wood replied: "There was no way you were ever going to save Caroline."
Later in that same conversation Mr Byrne told the jury that Wood had said to him: "If Caroline and I had married she would not only have killed herself but also all the children."
In early 1996 Mr Byrne said that he had printed posters of Caroline and placed them around Kings Cross and in the city. The poster read: "In memory of Caroline betrayed by her best friend."
The trial continues on Monday.
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