Gordon Wood set free
After spending three-and-a-half years in jail for the murder of Caroline Byrne, Gordon Wood was released from prison and cleared of all charges on February 24.
A jury had convicted Wood of murdering Byrne, his live-in fiancee in 2008.
Wood, the former chauffer of stockbroker Rene Rivkin, was found guilty by a Supreme Court jury of the 1995 murder of former model.
Wood was accused of spear-throwing his fiancee off of The Gap, a notorious Sydney suicide spot.
He told police that during the night of Byrne's death, her spirit called to him, enabling him to lead them directly to where her body lay on the rocks of the cliff.
When Wood won an appeal for his case in 2012 it was found that the evidence was too circumstantial to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Wood killed Byrne, or had any part in her death.
Wood's family worked for an appeal, and after reviewing the case, the court unanimously overturned the verdict. It judged that the expert witness 'crossed a line' on the stand, and that none of the evidence directly pointed out Wood as the killer, or that any foul play had been involved.
After being released, Wood said it was "nonsense" that people said he told police how Byrne's spirit led him to the cliffs, and that he saw her legs from the cliff by torchlight that night. However, police records show him saying the exact opposite in his initial statements.
