A wealthy IT consultant accused of causing his wife to take her own life through a ‘tsunami of abuse’ has been acquitted after he argued she had been a fantasist who had set him up.
Christopher Trybus, 44, sobbed in the dock as he was cleared of the manslaughter of Tarryn Baird, 34, who was found hanging in the garage of the couple’s five-bedroom house.
He has always vehemently denied that he was in any way responsible for her death.
Trybus was also cleared of controlling and coercive behaviour and two charges of rape following more than 40 hours of jury deliberation at Winchester Crown Court.
Tarryn killed herself on November 28, 2017, hours after she made a series of calls to mental health services and a day after she had attended her local police station – leading to almost a decade in which Trybus has been under investigation or on trial.
The Porsche-driving software expert, who earned up to £300,000 a year, went on to marry Polish-born Beata in 2024, more than six years after his first wife’s suicide.
Trybus was closely supported by his second wife, Beata Trybus, 39, who accompanied him to court every morning throughout the trial.
It would have been a historic first for England and Wales if the jury had concluded that Trybus was criminally liable for the suicide of Ms Baird.
Tarryn Baird (pictured) took her own life aged 34 at their home in Swindon, Wiltshire, on November 28, 2017
Christopher Trybus (pictured with current wife Bea Trybus outside court), 43, has walked free from court after being accused of being responsible for Tarryn Baird’s death
Following the verdict, Mr Justice Thomas Linden told jurors: ‘It was a difficult case and a sad case and the stakes were high for the families involved, so we all understand that your task hasn’t been an easy one and no one should underestimate the service you have given to the public in these proceedings.’
He said that they will not be required to carry out jury service for another 10 years.
Mrs Trybus posted a statement online as the trial was about to begin, saying she believed her husband had been ‘falsely accused’.
Trybus’ situation during the trial was described as ‘Kafka-esque’ as his first wife had concocted evidence against him prior to her death – and even when some of it unravelled, she was still believed by police and prosecutors over him.
A key claim that he had been caught on a tape raping her was actually evidence of them both enjoying consensual rough sex, it was said, in what was likened to the erotic book and film 50 Shades of Grey.
And far from having driven her to the grave, Trybus would tell the jury that when he learned of her death, it was ‘the worst day of my life’.
A coroner-led investigation into her death discovered underlying injuries across her body, which first led police to question her husband.
That first criminal inquiry was dropped without charge, and the case was treated as the tragic suicide of a fragile woman with a history of complex mental health issues.
But the case was dramatically reopened in 2020 when Tarryn’s mother Michelle unearthed what she said were selfies showing injuries Trybus had inflicted to her face, neck, arms, abdomen and wrists.
Mrs Baird also found an audio recording of what was said to be Tarryn being raped by Trybus just weeks before her death, the trial at Winchester Crown Court was told.
The case was finally taken up by Dorset Police, who collated evidence for the legal pursuit of Trybus, who, like his wife, is South African.
Trybus (pictured) has been cleared of manslaughter, controlling and coercive behaviour and two counts of rape in relation to Ms Baird
He initially told investigators that Tarryn had suffered deteriorating mental health in the two years leading up to her death, but later refused to answer further questions.
Trybus was charged with unlawful manslaughter, coercive control and two counts of rape in February last year.
The case against him was set out by England’s most senior prosecutor, Tom Little KC, who accused Trybus of ‘extensive and escalating controlling, coercive and manipulative behaviour including sexual violence of two rapes and other sexual assaults’.
In turn, Trybus, who had always vehemently denied any involvement in his wife’s death, was represented by Katy Thorne KC.
And it can now be reported for the first time that the trial judge, Mr Justice Linden, was urged three times that the case against Trybus be thrown out due to the ‘unreliable’ and ‘hearsay’ evidence the Crown was basing the whole prosecution upon.
Ms Thorne claimed that most of the evidence cited against Trybus happened when he was overseas and so not in the ‘jurisdiction’ of the UK.
All three court applications to dismiss the case – in July 2025, in March this year, after the Crown had first presented its case, and again in April this year, after all of the evidence had been heard – were dismissed by Mr Justice Linden, due to the ‘high bar’ that must be achieved to throw out a live criminal trial.
And in her final address to the jury, Ms Thorne claimed that the prosecution was driven by a ‘Kafkaesque’ agenda under which it’s widely held that women who make allegations of domestic violence must be telling the truth.
And this applies even when the evidence actually suggests the opposite is true, she suggested.
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She branded Tarryn Baird’s allegations ‘fairy dust’ and claimed the troubled young woman was an attention-seeker and a fantasist, who concocted her story after being left bored and lonely when her devoted husband frequently travelled for work.
Ms Thorne said that Tarryn became trapped in her own lies about domestic abuse and harmed herself and made false allegations against him in order to continue receiving the attention she craved.
Ms Thorne KC said: ‘If you are a man or the partner of a man or the parent or the sibling, you might feel very afraid now, because if you enter a relationship with a woman who’s making false allegations against you, even if they are untrue, you will be prosecuted.
‘Even if you can prove they are not true, you will be prosecuted within an inch of your life.
‘They are totally obsessed with a dogma, this whole case is based on an agenda that when women allege violence and domestic abuse, they must be telling the truth.’
Trybus gave evidence in his own defence during his trial.
Over several days in the witness box, he claimed he had tried to support his ‘beloved’ wife, Tarryn, but he insisted that she had mental health problems.
Dressed in a grey suit, blue shirt and dark tie loose at the collar, he broke down in tears when he described that he learned about her death while he was abroad for work.
‘I was in Germany. I tried to call Tarryn. She didn’t answer,’ he said. ‘I spoke to Michelle [Baird], and she said ‘Tarryn’s dead’. I was in disbelief. I was in a state of shock. I was crying a lot and thinking, “Why has she done this?”‘
Trybus denied he was the reason Tarryn killed herself, that he was never violent to her, that he did not rape, isolate or belittle her or limit her access to money.
During the eight-week trial, Trybus was accused of multiple physical attacks on his wife, two rapes, and controlling and coercive behaviour, including ordering her to have his lunch on the table at the same time every day, making her ask him permission for her keys and threatening to reveal damaging personal information about her mother.
He was also accused of using a belt to choke her and strangling her during sex causing her to pass out.
Ms Thorne told the jury that if the prosecution was right, then Christopher Trybus must be the ‘most depraved, violent, despicable man’ they had ever encountered – ‘a violent monster’.
But the credibility of Tarryn’s allegations was undermined when the defence highlighted two occasions when Christopher Trybus was not in the country when she claimed he had attacked her, and there was evidence to prove it.
This was in November 2016.
Trybus flew to Gothenburg, Sweden, on 8th November 2016 until 23rd November – and he provided evidence – flight reservations, taxi receipts, hotel bookings and restaurant bills as well as eye-witness accounts from colleagues – that he had not returned to Britain.
This contradicted what Tarryn had told her doctor and her friends – that he had beaten her and punched her in the face on 13th November and beaten her with a metal bar on 18th November.
On both occasions, Tarryn Baird had presented with new injuries, which she took pictures of and sent to her friends.
Ms Thorne told the jury that, as all the resources of Dorset Police and the UK Border Force could find no evidence that Chris Trybus had ‘sneaked in and out’ of the country four times, the only logical explanation was that Tarryn Baird had caused the injuries herself.
The jury was then reminded that one of the prosecution’s expert witnesses, forensic pathologist Dr Amanda Jeffrey, said that while self-beating was ‘vanishingly rare’, she had concluded in her first police report that the injuries that Tarryn Baird had suffered could be caused by a combination of accident and self-harm.
Ms Thorne told the jury of: ‘The dogma that women don’t lie, that they don’t fabricate allegations of domestic violence.’
She added: ‘While no one wants to speak ill of the dead, we’ve got a woman who is not just fabricating accounts, but she is deliberately causing injury to her face, her arms, to make false allegations.
‘You realise people make false allegations for all sorts of reasons and for none.
‘Sometimes revenge, for their 15 minutes of fame and sometimes for reasons that no one can fathom.
‘Like attention seeking behaviour, it’s not a nice phrase. But you may think it may be a perfect storm.
‘Was this troubled woman, a woman who was bored and lonely and angry with her husband for travelling abroad all the time, leaving her at home with her troubled thoughts?
‘And if the injuries in November 2016 have been invented by her then, we say all her allegations fall into fairy dust.
‘Does it all coincide with her encouraging Christopher Trybus into racier and racier sex, or is that deliberate?’
The so-called ‘rape-tape’ – the secret audio recording Tarryn Baird made of a sexual encounter between the couple in October 2017 – was played several times to the jury.
Pictured: A grab of body warn footage from police of Tarryn Baird speaking with police on May 2, 2017
Ms Baird refused to answer any questions or make any allegations about her husband at Swindon’s Gablecross Police station
But Ms Thorne highlighted that while it was Trybus who bought a bondage sex kit on Amazon, Tarryn Baird had also bought sex toys, such as heavy-duty handcuffs on the internet, and she had joked with her friends about ‘rough sex’.
Katy Thorne said women enjoy kinky sex as much as men.
She said: ‘Since the book 50 Shades of Grey came out, and then the film came out, who was reading those books – women.
‘And what did Tarryn Baird do?…what lots of women do, they experiment.
‘And so, Christopher Trybus ordered that bondage kit, and they tried it when he came home from work. And they enjoyed it.
‘Christopher Trybus was being sold a pup by his wife.’
From the outset of the proceedings, the jury was told that Tarryn had mental health problems – the most serious of which stemmed from her life in South Africa before she moved to the UK.
Aged just 16, she watched in terror as her father was the victim of a violent carjacking in the driveway of the family home in Johannesburg, in which he had a gun put to his head. And Tarryn, her mother and brother were powerless to act when the gunman returned to her father, who had been forced to lie on the ground, to steal his shoes.
And just a few years later, Tarryn almost became a victim of carjacking herself when she stumbled across another armed car robbery and watched as a woman was shot in the stomach.
Tarryn managed to put her car in reverse and leave the scene, but the gang chased after her and only gave up their pursuit when she got within view of a police station. Tarryn then returned to the scene and stayed with the woman until the emergency services arrived.
The second traumatic incident led to a profound change in Tarryn’s behaviour, leading her to take an overdose of prescription drugs and causing her to drink excessively, later confirmed as PTSD.
And this trauma ultimately led her to embark on a new life in the UK with her on-off ‘IT geek’ boyfriend, Trybus.
The pair flew to London in 2007 and set up home in Swindon, Wiltshire, as it was cheaper than London and had good transport links.
The couple returned to Johannesburg two years later to marry at a lavish wedding ceremony at which ‘tom-boy’ Tarryn was described by one guest as looking ‘fabulous’, and Chris broke down in ‘happy tears’ as he watched her walk down the aisle.
Back in Swindon, the couple enjoyed a luxury lifestyle, buying a three-storey, five-bedroom house. Chris treated himself to a Porsche Cayman sports car and he bought a high-performance Volkswagen Golf R for Tarryn. They worked out together at a local gym, enjoyed cycling and other outdoor activities at the weekends, and went to the pub and local restaurants with friends.
But their seemingly happy home life was shattered in 2015 by two unwelcome intruders. The first was two attempted burglaries – the second while Chris was abroad on business – and the other was the arrival of Tarryn’s mother-in-law, Gillian Trybus, branded by her daughters-in-law as the ‘ginger bitch’.
Her mother Michelle also discovered that the last three pages of Tarryn’s diary – covering the final days of her life – appeared to have been ripped out (pictured an page from her diary)
Notes made by Ms Baird in her diary in the days before she took her own life on November 27
Notes made in Ms Baird’s diary indicate she called mental health services in the run up to her death
The attempted burglaries brought back the trauma Tarryn had experienced in the two carjackings in South Africa, and she was subsequently diagnosed with PTSD.
And it was this – the PTSD and the suicidal thoughts that it brought on – that caused Tarryn Baird to take her own life, not the domestic abuse that Christopher Trybus allegedly subjected her to, Ms Thorne told the jury.
Since Tarryn Baird’s death, Trybus has tried to rebuild this life.
At first, he could not bear to sleep in the bed he had shared with his ‘adored’ wife and slept on the couch at his mother-in-law’s house nearby.
But slowly, he moved on.
He returned to work. He sold the five-bedroom house he had shared with Tarryn. And he got rid of his Porsche Cayman.
Trybus also found love again – with glamorous Polish divorcee, Beata Hefczyc.
The couple married in August 2014 and live, with her two children, in a village outside Swindon.
James Foster, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: ‘First and foremost, we respect the verdict of the jury.
‘Our thoughts remain with the family and friends of Tarryn Baird, who lost their loved one in such tragic circumstances.
‘Despite this verdict, we are not deterred. There has been no successful challenge in law to the principle of prosecuting a perpetrator over domestic abuse where the victim has died by suicide for manslaughter.
‘Even in the case of Tarryn Baird, there was no sustained objection in the law that the defendant couldn’t be prosecuted. Obviously the jury’s verdict was for evidential reasons.’
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