1962), who at the time of her death was a chauffeur and personal assistant to businessman Rene Rivkin, was convicted of her murder on 21 November 2008 and spent three years in Goulburn Correctional Centre.

The contention whether Wood had claimed he could see something in the darkness figured in much media speculation over the years and formed a key part of Crown evidence in the 2008 trial.

Ultimately in 2001 Rivkin was charged with insider trading (of Qantas shares) and his eventual conviction in 2003 had a devastating effect on his mental stability, culminating in his 2005 suicide.

Moore died in July 2000 a year prior to the Strikeforce Irondale interview with Richardson, thus preventing corroboration of the luncheon timings and Rivkin too was dead before the trial.

[5]: 206  Other celebrity witnesses who figured in the case at some point included businessman John Singleton, journalist Paul Barry and paparazzo Jamie Fawcett.

[9] In 2004, scientific reports relating to the physics of a body falling/jumping/being projected from the cliff produced by Professor Rod Cross were the principal elements of new evidence which encouraged the Crown to push for a trial of Gordon Wood.

[10] In March 2006, the New South Wales Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery QC agreed with police that there was enough evidence to charge Wood with Byrne's murder.

On 6 August 2008, Justice Graham Barr declared a mistrial because of the alleged contact that a member of the jury had with 2GB radio host Jason Morrison.

"[12] The second trial commenced on 25 August 2008 and for the first time in New South Wales court history a panel of 15 jurors was sworn in instead of the usual 12 to provide some contingency.

[13] Witnesses called by the prosecution included Pan, Richardson, Watson, Zaetta, Singleton, Fawcett, Bob Hagan and sports journalist Phil Rothfield.

[10] Although formally qualified in the field of plasma physics, Cross had experience working with biomechanists regarding sports research and had published and refereed many papers on biomechanics;[14] he was therefore proposed by police investigators as a forensic expert in fall dynamics.

[15] In 2005, when he was recontacted by the police that the position of the body was in fact farther away (11.8 metres (39 ft)), he conducted experiments which informed his speculation that Byrne could not have jumped that far and must have been thrown.

Cross tested eleven females from the New South Wales Police Academy and found that they could dive and land head first (in a swimming pool) at about 3.5 m/s after a 4 metres (13 ft) runup.

She gave evidence that in 2004 she was contacted by an officer in charge of the murder investigation (Sergeant Powderly) and told that the position of Byrne's body had become a significant issue.

Media reports during the second trial suggested the location of the body was an essential component to the Crown case that Byrne was not pushed nor jumped, but was forcefully thrown to her death.

[20] Terracini also read to the court a letter Tony Byrne had previously provided to police in which he claimed that Caroline had made an attempt on her own life via overdose in 1992.

At another stage of the cross examination, he claimed to suppose that had Caroline wanted to kill herself she would have copied her mother Andrea's method rather than jumping from a cliff.

Otherwise Terracini commenced the defence case on 27 October 2008 calling another physics expert Marcus Pandy, a biomechanical engineer who conducted experiments on running and jumping speeds of two females.

Only a handful of defence witnesses were called: two forensic pathologists; one psychiatrist; Pandy; a stunt diver, and Wood's sister Jacqueline Schmidt.

With the trial drawing to a close, the jury made a number of requests of Justice Barr that included a visit the Gap for a third time; for a transcript of Doherty's evidence; and for video footage of Pandy's running experiments.

[23] For the first time in New South Wales court history, a ballot was used to select the three jurors who would stand down so that twelve of the sitting fifteen would deliberate to a verdict.

Early media reporting of the appeal focused on Game's submission that the scientific evidence used to convict Wood and presented by Associate Professor Cross was flawed.

A photograph was presented in the trial and purported to be taken in 1996 showing that scrub near the fenceline had limited Byrne's possible run-up to the jump, supporting an argument that she would have needed to have been thrown to achieve the horizontal distance from the cliff wall that her body travelled.

Day two of Game's submission focused on the police's changed view between 1996 and 2005 as to Byrne's landing spot and specifically trial evidence given by Sergeant Mark Powderly used to justify the reconstruction.

[1] The appellate judges delivered a unanimous decision that there was insufficient evidence beyond reasonable doubt that Wood murdered Byrne and that the jury's verdict was not supported.

[33] In 2016 Wood sued the state of New South Wales for millions of dollars plus costs for malicious prosecution and wrongful imprisonment, based on a number of grounds including a "hopelessly corrupted" and "ridiculous" police case against him.

[34] In a witness statement filed as part of his lawsuit against the state, Wood said that during his three years in Goulburn Jail he lived in constant fear of guards who dished out "therapy" and was king-hit, (a sucker punch) and knocked unconscious in the prison yard by an infamous rapist and killer.