Wife left observe saying ‘I simply could not take it anymore’ after she was ‘pushed to suicide by her rapist husband who managed her with bodily and sexual violence’, courtroom hears

A woman who was allegedly driven to suicide by her husband after a campaign of physical and sexual violence left a note saying she ‘just couldn’t take it anymore’, a court has been told. 

Christopher Trybus, from Swindon, is accused of the manslaughter of Tarryn Baird, who died of hanging in November 2017 at the age of 34.

The 43-year-old also faces charges at Winchester Crown Court of controlling and coercive behaviour and two charges of rape.

The coercive control charge alleges that Trybus controlled Ms Baird through using and threatening violence towards her and sexually assaulting her.

He is also accused of monitoring her whereabouts, limiting access to finance, threatening to reveal private information to her family and isolating her from them.

The trial heard how Ms Baird, who worked at an opticians, left a note which said: ‘To my family, I am so sorry but I just couldn’t take it any more.’

Trybus put a rope around 34-year-old Ms Baird’s neck before going on a trip, jurors were told – and it was heard that in one incident, when she tried to leave, Ms Baird was hit with a metal pole in her abdomen.

Prosecutors said Ms Baird ‘stopped his control over her in the only way she felt she could – by taking her own life’.

Tom Little, prosecuting, told the jury that Trybus carried out ‘extensive and escalating controlling, coercive and manipulative behaviour including sexual violence of two rapes and other sexual assaults’.

He continued: ‘It took place over a sustained period of time behind closed doors and all of it during the course of a marriage.

‘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.’

Mr Little explained that Trybus controlled ‘many aspects of their relationship’, even from abroad, using the ‘threat and fear of physical and sexual violence’ leading to a deterioration in her ‘already weakened mental state and a cause of her deciding that she should take her own life’.

He added: ‘She did so in their own home. She had not managed to escape from him, despite seriously considering doing so on a number of occasions.

‘However, we say that constricted by his control she could never go through with leaving him, no doubt fearing the consequences if she would try to do so, and instead she stopped his control over her in the only way she felt she could by taking her own life.’

The note left by Ms Baird told her family: ‘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.’

Mr Little said the couple, both from South Africa, moved to the UK in 2007 and married in 2009.

Trybus’s mother moved in with the couple in 2015, which the prosecutor said ‘made matters more difficult at home’.

Trybus ran a software business which was financially profitable and required overseas travel.

Ms Baird worked for Trybus’s company from home, doing his administration and accounts.

The court heard her GP was Dr Tessa Jones and that Ms Baird began reporting cardiac concerns and fainting episodes to the doctor between September 2015 and June 2016.

No cardiac or neurological causes could be found for her symptoms.

Dr Jones noticed Ms Baird had physical injuries on multiple occasions between January 2016 and July 2016.

Ms Baird said then she got the injuries by fainting or falling while exercising at home.

The prosecutor said that at first Ms Baird reported suffering injuries from being ‘clumsy’ such as during exercise or falling down the stairs.

He said that Ms Baird had been diagnosed as possibly having PTSD, having witnessed and suffered from armed carjacking incidents in South Africa.

He added that Ms Baird told her GP in May 2016 that she ‘occasionally felt life was not worth living’ and by August that year was ‘struggling with her mental health’.

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

But when offered spaces in a refuge, she turned them down, only later going on to repeatedly seek a place and not be able to find one.

Mr Little said that Ms Baird went on to reveal to her GP that Trybus had raped her on October 19 2016 following an argument over the defendant paying for her cousin’s school fees.

Mr Little said: ‘He grabbed her wrists and had sex with her against her will and also hit her around the face with what she believed was a phone.’ 

Ms Baird said to Dr Jones in October 2016 that her husband had injured her and there was bruising to the left side of her abdomen visible, Mr Little told the court.

He said that Ms Baird also told the SWA worker that he had ‘strangled her causing her to pass out’ and she blamed herself because she had told the defendant she wanted to leave him.

Mr Little said: ‘That is gaslighting in any ordinary sense of the word.’

Trybus, who travelled abroad regularly for his work as a software consultant and developer, is alleged to have raped Ms Baird a second time in November 2016.

The prosecutor added: ‘Other things that Tarryn Baird said about the nature of the relationship were that the defendant had told her parents she was addicted to drugs and alcohol, and that this would prevent them believing her if she told them about the domestic abuse.’

Mr Little described this as ‘classic domestic abuse perpetrator behaviour’. 

The prosecutor said that in one incident, when Trybus was due to leave for a trip abroad, ‘before he left he had put a rope around her neck’.

Mr Little also said that in November 2016 she told Dr Jones ‘she had tried to leave, but the defendant hit her with a metal pole to the left side of her abdomen and she had to protect her head with her right arm’.

She is also said to have told the SWA worker he had reduced her wages and threatened to divulge private information about her mother which would affect her parents’ marriage if she left him.

Ms Baird added that there may have been a hidden camera in their house and that Trybus used a tracking device, according to the prosecution case.

Trybus, a software consultant and developer, denies the charges.

The trial continues.

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