Husband accused of driving wife to suicide through abuse cleared of manslaughter

A husband accused of driving his wife to suicide by subjecting her to a ‘tsunami’ of physical and sexual abuse has been cleared of all charges.

Tarryn Baird was just 34 when she was found hanged at the family home in Swindon in November 2017.

Her husband, Christopher Trybus, 44, was today found not guilty of her manslaughter at Winchester Crown Court. He was also cleared of coercive and controlling behaviour and two counts of rape.

Prosecutors said Trybus carried out ‘extensive and escalating controlling, coercive and manipulative behaviour including sexual violence’ over a ‘sustained period of time behind closed doors’.

Tom Little KC, prosecuting, told jurors: ‘It led ultimately in November 2017 to a woman in just her 30s and whose name is Tarryn Baird taking her own life by hanging.

‘She was the defendant’s wife and the prosecution say that the defendant is legally responsible for her death.’

Giving evidence, Trybus, who ran an IT company, said that he travelled abroad frequently for work and was out of the country on the days of several of the allegations.

He also said he believed his wife had mental health issues due to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The jury of seven women and five men returned their majority verdicts to a hushed courtroom after spending 40 hours in deliberations.

Trybus, dressed in a grey suit, blue shirt and dark tie loose at the collar, looked up at the ceiling and burst into tears as the verdicts were announced with cries of relief also heard from the public gallery.

Outside court, Mr Trybus hugged his current wife Bea, who he married in August 2024, with both of them in tears.

The judge, Mr Justice Linden, thanked the jurors for their service and told them: ‘It was a difficult and sad case and the stakes were high for the families involved so we understand your task has not been an easy one and no-one should underestimate your role in these proceedings.’

Katy Thorne KC, defending, insisted Trybus was a man ‘falsely, wrongfully and unfairly accused’.

She told jurors the case was an unintended byproduct of the drive by police and prosecutors to change the way they deal with cases of violence against women and girls.

In her closing speech to jurors after all of the evidence had been presented, Ms Thorne said the prosecution of Trybus has been ‘Kafkaesque’.

She said he was the ‘victim of a dogma, an agenda that the state is now pursuing’ in which ‘it’s a violence against women and girls case so it must be true’.

‘How can Christopher Trybus be expected to answer the wild allegations of a ghost from 10 years ago?’

It is the second high profile trial concerning a charge of manslaughter where a woman has taken her own life following domestic abuse in just over a year.

Both ended in acquittals.

Last year, Ryan Wellings was put on trial over the death of Kiena Dawes, who left a note before ending her own life saying: ‘Slowly … Ryan Wellings killed me.’

Wellings was convicted of assault and coercive and controlling behaviour but cleared of manslaughter.

To date, there has only been one criminal conviction for manslaughter in a case involving an alleged domestic abuse-related suicide.

Nicholas Allen pleaded guilty to the charge in 2017 after his former partner Justene Reece ended her life.

Two other men are currently awaiting trial accused of manslaughter in similar cases.

Jurors were told Tarryn’s death was treated as a routine suicide for nearly eight years.

But that changed with Trybus’s arrest following the discovery by Tarryn’s mum, Michelle Baird, of photos on her phone allegedly showing injuries from beatings he had inflicted over more than a year.

Mrs Baird also found an audio recording of an alleged sexual assault in which her daughter can be heard screaming. The clip was played several times during the eight-week-trial.

Jurors were told they had to decide whether those were screams of pain or might have been an example of Tarryn ‘playing up’ as part of a wider plan to make false allegations against her husband.

Mr Little took the jury through more than interactions between Tarryn and her GP, spanning some 189 pages.

He told the court they showed the scale of Trybus’s ‘extensive and escalating’ abuse.

Mr Little explained that Trybus controlled ‘many aspects of their relationship’ even while working abroad using the ‘threat and fear of physical and sexual violence’ leading to a deterioration in her ‘already weakened mental state’.

He was said to have frequently meted out beatings – often when he was about to leave the country – punching and kicking Tarryn in the abdomen, choking her during sex, strangling her using both his hands and rope, holding her head under water and striking her with a metal pole.

She spoke with professionals – including doctors, domestic abuse advisers and police safeguarding workers – more than 40 times in 2016 and 2017 presenting ‘a catalogue and constellation of serious injuries’.

Mr Little told jurors there were ‘at least 10 separate occasions’ when Tarryn had abdominal injuries.

They heard her injuries were likened to those seen in road traffic accidents or cases involving fatal violence.

All of them were inflicted after June 2016, when she wrote in her diary that something had been ‘unleashed’ in her husband.

She wrote: ‘So the line keeps moving. What I mean by that is what I thought to be crossing the line has changed over the last two years quite considerably. This has almost become the new norm.

‘It started slowly over the years without me even knowing it then progressed into even more serious things. The way he spoke to me started getting more condescending.

‘I will never forget the day it all overflowed and he blew up. Since then, my life has never been the same. The second standout moment was one night during sex. I felt his hands around my neck.

‘Something in him was unleashed that night. Progressively sex got rougher, and the more I fight back the more he enjoys it.

‘It’s like there was this side of him hidden all these years.’  

Further diary entries in August 2016 note how she was ‘walking on eggshells’ around Trybus, who had become more controlling and had a ‘tracer’ app on her phone, the court heard.

Tarryn made her first report of domestic abuse a month later in September.

Mr Little said that as the ‘tsunami’ of incidents built up, Tarryn made repeated contacts with an employee of Swindon Women’s Aid (SWA) and her GP.

She met with a domestic abuse support worker the following month after a ‘non-intentional’ overdose, although she continued to have an ‘enduring concern’ about the police getting involved.

Tarryn went to hospital in January 2017 and disclosed having been hit by Trybus with a metal pole two weeks earlier.

Staff contacted the police and an officer spoke with Tarryn, but she told them she was ‘fine’ and said the ‘hospital must have got the wrong end of the stick’.

‘Tarryn Baird said she was working on an “exit plan” that she wanted to do when her partner was away,’ Mr Little said. ‘As a result, the police did not take any further action.’

He told jurors she did not want any further intervention, fearing ‘he would get away with it, and she would be more vulnerable than ever’.

Later that same month, Tarryn went to her GP and reported that an argument about her changing her online banking password had started an argument which led to Trybus punching her in the face and putting a rope around her neck.

Mr Little told jurors it was important to recognise the catch-22 situation she was in – ‘stay and the violence and control would continue or leave and make a complaint to the police which may well go nowhere and she is at greater risk of harm’.

She told the police officer the following month that Trybus ‘would rather she died than leave’.

Tarryn was admitted to Great Western Hospital on April 16, 2017, after taking an overdose. She told a mental health worker she had to leave her husband ‘at the right time’ and that she believed he was tracking her movements and had hidden cameras installed around the house.

During a meeting with police in June that year, Tarryn denied Trybus had been violent and insisted things were fine between them.

But jurors heard the officer noted that she appeared ‘very low in mood’ and ‘broken’.

Both the judge and Mr Little reminded jurors during the trial that in cases where alleged domestic abuse leads to a suicide ‘there will never be a perfect victim’ and they should not assume how victims should react.

Similar incidents and conversations took place through July and August, from which point Tarryn recorded her attempts to secure a place in a refuge.

Mr Little said that on September 19, 2017, she made an attempt to hang herself and she told her doctor that she had ‘wanted to escape the domestic violence’.

Jurors heard she told the SWA worker ‘she can’t believe she’s still alive’.

He said Tarryn reported she was struggling with her mental health at the end of September 2017 after she had been told police that no further action would be taken in a complaint against her husband.

By November 2017, Tarryn had reached a ‘very low ebb’ and she told her doctor that ‘she has had a terrible few days with her husband and he has been extremely violent, hitting her with an object and she had to protect her head’, Mr Little said.

On November 28, a day after an ovulation test showed she was potentially pregnant, she told a GP that she had ‘constant thoughts’ of suicide and still could not find a refuge place.

After calling the police on 101, a police officer attended her house and found her hanged, Mr Little said.

She left a note which said: ‘To my family, I am so sorry but I just couldn’t take it anymore.

‘I know you may not understand this but I just can’t explain the dark cloud that is over me.

‘Please don’t let this break you but know I am now free. Nothing any of you could have done could have changed this, please just know that.

‘I love you and please forgive me.’

Defending, Ms Thorne told jurors Trybus ‘was never abusive to his wife – he didn’t beat her, he didn’t rape her, he didn’t coercively control her’.

She added: ‘On the contrary, he loved and cherished her deeply.

‘His case is that without anyone’s knowledge, Tarryn Baird was making demonstrably false allegations to health professionals.

‘There are injuries but the defence case is that on a number of occasions Tarryn Baird made allegations of violence which were demonstrably false, for example, by reporting injuries to health professionals when Christopher Trybus was not even in the country.

‘The defence case is that one obvious example of that on November 16, he says that he was out of the country, having left on November 8 and not returned until November 23.

‘And yet during that period, Tarryn Baird made more than one set of allegations of domestic violence and took photographs of injuries, each of which she said was caused by him.’

Giving evidence, Trybus told jurors he had ‘absolutely not’ been violent, controlling or sexually abusive to his wife.

Asked if he loved her, he said: ‘Yes, very much.’

Describing how he felt about Ms Baird’s death, he said: ‘At the time, still, extremely sad, devastated, you can’t even describe it, it’s nothing you can prepare for.

‘It’s absolutely heartbreaking and devastating, the worse thing I have ever had to deal with in my life by far.’

Denying the allegations of sexual violence, Ms Thorne said the couple enjoyed a ‘healthy, consensual marital sex life’ that included ‘some practices which may not be familiar or comfortable to everyone, including bondage and rough sex’.

Trybus said they purchased a ‘kit’ from Amazon, containing handcuffs, a collar, a whip, a rope and other sex aids. But he said they only used it once because it caused bruising to Baird’s neck.

Ms Thorne told jurors there was a ‘perfect storm’ of reasons why Tarryn might have fabricated allegations against her husband, describing her as a ‘troubled woman’ who was lonely and resentful of her husband for always being abroad and ‘leaving her at home with difficult thoughts’.

She said at one stage there were six professionals ‘all hanging on her every word, all worried that at any moment she is going to be murdered’, adding: ‘Is it that she can’t stop without losing her credibility with these professionals, all the trust that she has built up with them, the intense relationships? So, on and on it goes.’

The barrister told jurors she applauds the efforts of police and prosecutors to change the way they deal with cases of domestic violence and sexual offences: ‘But at the altar of getting things right, please do not make women into these saintly figures who have no faults, because that’s not right either.

‘Women do not always tell the truth.’

Speaking outside court and accompanied by his wife, Trybus said: ‘After three police investigations over the course of 10 years, I’m relieved that the jury has carefully considered the evidence and reached the correct verdict today.

‘I want to thank my wife, my family, and my friends for their unwavering support – and my legal team for their hard work and dedication throughout the process.

‘This has had a profound impact on my life and on those closest to me. It’s been an incredibly difficult experience.

‘I would also like to acknowledge that domestic abuse is a very real and serious issue, and victims must always be supported.

‘Right now, I’ll focus on moving forward and rebuilding my life with my family.’

When he was asked if he had a message for Tarryn’s family, he replied: ‘No.’

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