The mother of a woman who claimed she was driven to suicide by her husband’s coercive behaviour is planning to ‘pursue’ the mental health services she believes failed her daughter, the Daily Mail’s The Trial UK podcast has revealed.
Tarryn Baird was found by police after she took her own life aged 34 at her home in Swindon, Wiltshire, on November 28, 2017.
Her husband Chris Trybus, 43, was cleared by a jury on April 22, 2026, of manslaughter, controlling and coercive behaviour and two counts of rape in relation to Ms Baird.
The verdict came following a trial at Winchester Crown Court, in which a series of explosive evidence was presented by both sides.
Mr Trybus had been accused of an extensive and escalating pattern of controlling, coercive and manipulative behavior by his late wife.
The Trial UK co-host Caroline Cheetham said: ‘The allegation was that Taryn Baird, a woman in her 30s, was being controlled by her husband.
‘The allegations were he limited her access to money. He was violent. He hit her more than once, but certainly the allegation was with a metal pole, other times with a remote control.
‘You know, numerous allegations of him tracking her. Her being scared. She made attempts to leave, but couldn’t escape. She felt trapped, and in the end, took her own life.’
Pictured: Christopher Trybus (right) leaving Winchester Crown Court with his current wife Bea
Mr Trybus’s first wife Tarryn Baird killed herself more than seven years ago and was found at her home in Swindon after accusing him of controlling and coercive behaviour
The court heard that Tarryn had logged the alleged abuse with a number of people including her mother, her GP and a civilian officer at the local police station.
Text message exchanges were read out in court from one of Tarryn’s friends, which appeared to paint a damning picture of the marriage.
However, the prosecution’s case began to waver when a number of disparities began to emerge in court – including that Mr Trybus was not actually in the country at the time some of his abusive behaviour was alleged to have occurred.
‘There was a really key moment in this trial, and it was a single word used by defence barrister Katy Thorne, and it was the “disconnects”,’ Caroline Cheetham said.
‘Let’s start with the bugging device. So this was a meeting that Taryn Baird was having with her domestic violence advisor, and she used a phrase in that meeting where she said “He always seems to be four steps ahead of me,” referring to Chris Trybus, he always seems to know where I am and what I’m doing.
‘And in the evidence at that point, the domestic violence advisor said to Taryn Baird, have you considered you might be being tracked?
‘And a couple of days later, they meet again. This is in a Marks and Spencer’s cafe, and Taryn produces a bugging device that she said she had found in her study at home, and it was sort of trained or looking at her desktop.’
As Thorne put it in court: ‘You make the suggestion that she looks out for a bugging device, and just a matter of hours later, she’s on Amazon, ordering a bugging device.
‘The next day, showing you a bugging device, and a few days later, sending it back to Amazon. So there’s a disconnect, isn’t there, between what she’s telling you there, and what the evidence appears to show.
Baird was accused in court of being an attention-seeker and a fantasist after the defence team revealed a number of ‘disconnects’ between her claims and the facts
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 asserted.
She branded Tarryn Baird’s allegations ‘fairy dust’ and claimed the 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, harmed herself and made false allegations against him in order to continue receiving the attention she craved.
Tarryn’s mother has now said she is planning to ‘pursue’ the mental health services she says failed to intervene to save her daughter – although it is not yet known if this will include exploring legal options.
The podcast includes testimony from medical expert Dr Philip Joseph, who told the court: ‘I’ve listened to her phone calls on the day of her death. What comes across to me is that she seemed very frustrated, rejected, abandoned by the mental health services, feelings that she was going around and around in circles and not getting the help she was desperately seeking, feeling she was completely let down by the mental health services, and losing hope that may have prompted her to decide that day to kill herself.’
Caroline Cheetham added: ‘Tarryn’s mother, Michelle Baird, has decided she is now going to pursue the mental health services and the other medical services who she says abandoned her daughter.
‘We talked a lot about her contact with her GP, over 100 appointments in two years.
‘We talked a lot about her links to mental health services, the crisis team, and, of course, to the domestic violence advisors.
‘But what we know is, by the end, both of those agencies, the domestic violence charities and the mental health crisis team, had decided they couldn’t help her, and by the end in her awful phone calls that she made in the hours before she died, she makes it clear that she feels abandoned.’
To hear more about the Christopher Trybus’ case, search for The Trial UK wherever you get your podcasts.
