A BUSINESSMAN accused of driving his wife to suicide got progressively rougher during sex with her and enjoyed it when she fought back, a court heard.
Christopher Trybus, 43, slowly moved the ‘line’ of acceptable behaviour before he ‘blew up’ one day, his wife Tarryn Baird wrote in her diary.
Trybus is on trial accused of manslaughter and of waging ‘extensive and escalating controlling, coercive and manipulative behaviour including sexual violence of two rapes’ towards Ms Baird, 34.
In an unprecedented case, prosecutors say Trybus ‘is legally responsible’ for his wife’s death due to the ‘tsunami’ of abuse even though he was away when she was found hanged in the garage of their Swindon home on November 28, 2017.
He denies the charges.
On Monday jurors were read entries from her diary in which she said the abuse ‘started slowly over the years’.
Something was ‘unleashed’, she wrote, after Trybus put his hands around her neck during sex.
Christopher Trybus arriving at Winchester Crown Court where he is on trial for manslaughter
Tarryn Baird, 34, (pictured) was found at her home in Swindon, Wiltshire, in November 2017
Reading out Ms Baird’s diary entries to Winchester Crown Court, Hants, on Monday prosecutor Tom Little said in one from early 2016 she wrote: ‘I will never forget the day it all overflowed and he blew up.’
She added: ‘It started slowly over the years without me even knowing it, then progressed’.
Ms Baird said: ‘The line keeps moving.
‘The line has been crossed.
‘It has almost become the new norm.’
She described feeling his hands around her neck during sex one night, and after this she felt something was ‘unleashed’.
Ms Baird continued: ‘Progressively sex got rougher and the more I fight back, the more he enjoys it.
‘It’s like there was this side of him hidden all these years.’
On another date, she wrote: ‘Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors, nobody knows what goes on in my head.
‘Every day is a struggle fighting this darkness and loneliness.’
Another entry said: ‘I have been thinking about things like all the years Mum and I fought and how ugly they got, then she had her affair and lied about it and made us all think we were crazy.’
The court has previously heard that Trybus threatened to reveal private information about Ms Baird’s family.
Mr Little also said that in May 2017, Ms Baird Googled the phrase ‘throat pain after strangulation’.
In another diary entry, she added: ‘He never shares his feelings, so I walk on egg shells.’
The jury at Winchester crown court was also told that messages between Ms Baird and her friend Libby Clarke – who she confided in – were missing from her mobile phone.
It included one about her being in contact with Women’s Aid.
Subjects she also searched on the internet on her mobile phone including ‘strangulation domestic abuse’ also vanished.
Others included ‘Can you spoof iPhone location?’ and ‘Can you spoof iPhone location on Friends and Family?’
The court has previously heard how Ms Baird had told Mrs Clarke on January 30, 2017 that Trybus had hurt her.
She had asked her: ‘Tarryn, has he hurt you?’
Ms Baird responded: ‘Yes Libby, I’m afraid he has.’
But Rosemary Latham, a Dorset Police crime analyst, told the court: ‘There were a number of messages that were on Libby Clarke’s download.
‘But they were not showing on Tarryn Baird’s phone.’
Prosecutor Tom Little KC said: ‘In relation to those messages that were missing on the device, are you able to identify when they were removed from the device or not?’
Ms Latham replied: ‘No.’
The court had previously been told how Trybus regarded his wife as a ‘trophy’ once they were married after being ‘besotted’ with her when they first met.
Ms Baird’s mother Michelle Baird – who broke down in tears while giving evidence – also told how her daughter said in front of Trybus how he would kill her.
The court was told how he said he would break her neck, chop up her body and then dissolve it in acid.
Mrs Baird insisted it wasn’t a jokey conversation in reference to TV show Breaking Bad, like it was suggested, but it was Ms Baird trying to warn her mother of ‘something.’
Trybus, of Swindon, insists he loved his wife but her mental health issues meant she lied about his behaviour.
The court has also heard how Ms Baird suffered from PTSD after witnessing two armed hijackings in her homeland of South Africa.
She and Trybus emigrated to the UK after they wed in 2009 because she was concerned about crime there.
Ms Baird worked for Trybus’s company from home, doing his administration and accounts.
He has insisted he ‘loved and cherished’ his wife telling lawyers her purported domestic abuse injuries were from ‘kinky bondage’ and consensual ‘rough sex’.
His lawyers have suggested Ms Baird had ‘mental health problems’ and her suicide was a ‘cry for help that went tragically wrong’.
The trial continues.
