Croc Wrangler employee Jock Purcell admits entering pilot’s home and taking his logbook day after fatal crash

A pilot who was on the crocodile egg collecting mission the day Netflix star Chris Wilson was killed admits he frequently disconnected the hour meter in Matt Wright’s choppers and that he entered Sebastian Robinson’s home and took the injured pilot’s logbook.

Jock Purcell also admitted, while giving evidence in the reality TV star’s criminal trial on Monday, to having falsified flight records for Mr Wright, who is accused of trying to cover up that he had not properly maintained his aircraft prior to the fatal crash.

Mr Purcell’s testimony comes more than three years after Wilson was killed in a helicopter accident at West Arnhem Land on February 28, 2022. The 34-year-old left behind his wife Danielle and their two young sons.

Mr Wright’s aviation business Helibrook owned the destroyed Robinson R44, registered VH-IDW, which crashed soon after taking off from King River with Wilson slinging beneath it.

Pilot Sebastian Robinson, who worked for Mr Wright, survived but is now paraplegic.

Mr Wright is facing trial in the Northern Territory Supreme Court in Darwin on three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice in relation to the investigation into the fatal crash. The 45-year-old has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Mr Purcell was working as an egg collector, in another one of the three crews, on that fateful mission. The court heard that the group of men conducting crocodile egg collecting was “as thick as thieves” prior to the fatal crash.

The young father-of-two had worked for Mr Wright for about five years prior to the fatal crash as a pilot, egg collector, airboat driver and tour guide at the celebrity croc-wrangler’s Top End tourism ventures.

He also starred alongside Mr Wright and Wilson in Netflix series Wild Croc Territory.

On Monday he gave evidence via video-link from Rockhampton where he now works in a coal mine.

Under questioning by crown prosecutor Jason Gullaci SC, Mr Purcell admitted there had been “more than 10 times” he had failed to record flight hours in the aircraft’s maintenance release after flying one of Mr Wright’s helicopters.

When asked if it happened more than 30 times, he replied: “Yes, I don’t know”.

Mr Purcell said he “probably at some point” discussed the decision not to record flight hours in the aircraft’s MR with Mr Wright before later saying Mr Wright had “at some point” directed him not to record hours in an aircraft’s MR.

He said he would also fly Mr Wright’s helicopters with the hour meter disconnected “because (the chopper) was getting close to service”.

“That the 50 hours or 100 hours service was coming up,” he said.

“Because we couldn’t get the helicopter back in time.”

Mr Purcell said that he had disconnected and reconnected the Hobbs meter in Mr Wright’s helicopters himself.

He said Mr Robinson had demonstrated for him how to disconnect the Hobbs meter and he had also seen Mr Wright doing it.

“I’d seen (Wright) do it,” he said. “I can’t recall if he 100 percent demonstrated it to me, but I have seen him do it.”

Mr Purcell recalled arriving at the crash site with pilot Ty Richardson and egg collector Tim Luck on the morning of February 28, 2022.

Mr Purcell initially said he did not approach or look inside the crashed chopper at any point, or see anyone else approach the crashed chopper, after arriving at the scene.

However, Mr Purcell later admitted checking whether the destroyed helicopter’s hour meter, also known as a Hobbs meter, was connected.

“I know someone lifted the dash of the crashed helicopter but I don’t recall who it was or seeing who it was,” he said.

“I was outside the front bubble.

“I looked under the dash to see if I could see anything obvious to why the helicopter had crashed.

“I can’t remember exactly what I said but I know the Hobbs meter was connected.

“Just looking throughout the whole console, under the dash, just to see if I could see anything.”

Mr Gullaci suggested Mr Purcell “knew that there was a practice among Matt Wright’s helicopters of the Hobbs meter being disconnected”.

“And you wanted to see whether it was connected or not for when investigators turned up to look at the crashed helicopter?” he asked.

Mr Purcell said he didn’t “believe so”.

“I looked under the dash to see if I could see anything that could be relevant to why the helicopter had crashed and the Hobbs meter was under the dash and I observed that it was connected,” he said.

The crown prosecutor rejected this.

“Tell me one thing that you were looking for in that area, that, with your experience as a pilot, might have been able to tell you how the helicopter had crashed?” Mr Gullaci asked.

“I’m not an investigator so I don’t know,” Mr Purcell replied.

The court heard that at about 9.30am on March 1, 2022 – the day after the fatal crash – Mr Purcell went to Mr Robinson’s home and took the critically injured pilot’s flight logbook while his friend was in hospital.

Pilots use their personal logbook to record information including their flying hours, aircraft and locations flown.

Mr Purcell said he did not recall who had asked him to retrieve Mr Robinson’s flight log book or the reason for taking it.

“I only collected Seb’s pilot logbook,” he said.

“I took it home and then like Seb’s brothers come and got it from my house.

“Seb asked that morning if he could get this logbook off me, and I was away and – yes, they come and got it (from my wife).”

Under cross-examination from defence barrister David Edwardson KC, Mr Purcell said that following this, while Mr Robinson was still in hospital, he had helped the injured pilot bring his flight records “up to speed”.

A text exchange between the pair, tendered in court, showed that on March 16 Mr Robinson sent Mr Purcell his Air Maestro login credentials and two pieces of paper with flight times jotted down.

Air Maestro is a cloud-based aviation software used to record flight hours for aircraft, manage safety, operations and reporting.

Mr Purcell said he logged into Air Maestro using Mr Robinson’s credentials and entered hours for Mr Robinson’s helicopter VH-ZXZ before texting him, “You’re all done, brother”.

The court heard Mr Robinson owned VH-ZXZ but was operating it under Mr Wright’s Air Operator’s Certificate.

Mr Purcell struggled to understand some of Mr Edwardson’s questions.

“Look, Mr Purcell, it’s not complex,” the defence barrister said.

“I am just simply suggesting to you that Sebastian Robinson was hopeless with his paperwork. That was obvious and you knew it, didn’t you?”

During re-examination by Mr Gullaci, Mr Purcell said Mr Wright was “probably not” up to date with his aircraft paperwork either, saying “he was lenient” and a bit lax “at some point”.

“Has your memory improved during the course of the day in giving evidence?,” Mr Gullaci asked the witness.

“Why I’m asking you, Mr Purcell, is when I asked you a lot of questions – and maybe they were genuine answers, I don’t know – a lot of your answers were, ‘I can’t remember. I don’t know. It was three years ago’. Do you remember giving answers like that in your examination-in-chief to me?

“You’ve been asked a number of specific questions in cross-examination (by Wright’s barrister) and asked whether you could recall certain things, and my understanding of your evidence is that you have been able to recall them.”

During re-examination Mr Gullaci asked Mr Purcell for the context around those text messages in which Mr Robinson shared his Air Maestro log-in details.

“You tell me in as much detail as you can the conversation or the text message exchange you had with Mr Robinson that led to him providing you the Air Maestro log-in details. Enlighten us,” the prosecutor said.

Mr Purcell said he thinks he messaged Mr Robinson to ask how he was going.

“And it ended up being a phone conversation and he asked me to do his Air Maestro for him and he sent me his details and what I ought to fill in on the Air Maestro, so I did that and then – yeah,” he said.

Mr Purcell denied discussing this with Mr Wright and said he was unaware Mr Wright had visited Mr Robinson in hospital days earlier, on March 11, 2022, with “pieces of paper purporting to have figures from ZXZ’s MR” on them.

The jury also heard a recording of an intercepted telephone call between Mr Purcell and Mr Wright, recorded about five months after the crash, on August 10.

“The Hobbs has been touched, like something had gone on with the Hobbs there with the . . . um, I don’t know, they’ve moved it forward or some f***ing thing as well,” Mr Wright allegedly said.

Mr Purcell asked him “What’s the Hobbs — what’s the ‘Hobbs’ mean?”

Mr Wright says, “Uh, just the clock — the meter clock.”

“Anyway, so — so yeah, just going through a few motions there — just don’t know exactly what and I’m just trying to think how much Sebby’s — or what Sebby’s tried to say to them, if anything even, because as lot of this stuff they could’ve got out of the — “

Mr Purcell then said “MR”.

Mr Wright continues: “Out of the logs, you know, the maintenance logs.”

In court, Mr Purcell told Mr Gullaci he “can’t remember this phone call” or what the pair were speaking about.

“It was three years ago, I can’t remember mate,” he said.

“It could be related to anything. I can’t specifically say it was related to the crash.

“I don’t know what Sebby — what Matt was saying about Sebby . . . I don’t know, it was three years ago. I know I’ve got the transcript here in front of me, but I don’t know.”

Mr Edwardson put to Mr Purcell that Mr Robinson was a “party animal” and “cocaine user”, and Mr Purcell agreed.

But under re-examination by the prosecutor, Mr Purcell said he only saw Mr Robinson use cocaine once.

CareFlight nurse Matthew Auld, who attended the fatal crash, also took the stand on Monday.

The court heard the CareFlight crew – which included himself, another nurse, a doctor and pilots – took off from its Darwin Airport base at 11.22am that day.

“It was just over three hours (at the scene),” he said.

“I arrived at 12.22pm and I departed at 3.45pm.”

The court heard that upon arrival at the King River site, Mr Auld confirmed Wilson deceased before trying to stabilise Mr Robinson.

“When we assessed him we, and considering the location, it probably took us about ten minutes to make the decision to move him on to Maningrida and not to do a full resus in the paperbark swamp,” he said.

“And it took about probably 10 minutes to move him from the helicopter to a drier area to start resuscitation.

“Then we treated him for about 15 minutes there and we called in a helicopter to come and get us.”

After the 28-year-old pilot was evacuated, Mr Auld stayed at the scene for about three hours with Wilson’s body.

“I waited on the scene … to repatriate Mr Wilson back to Darwin.”

While waiting for the CareFlight chopper to return, Mr Auld heard Mr Wright discussing the cause of the crash.

“I heard him (say) ‘Wonder what happened to the helicopter’ in terms of he said something like, ‘I wonder what the go of this … Bastard’. It was something to that effect,” he said.

“There was a conversation between Mr Wright and some people there and there was a discussion to remove items and then they were removed.”

Mr Auld saw items being removed from the destroyed chopper from where he sat with Wilson’s body.

“There was a conversation about removing items from the helicopter and some dual controls were removed from the helicopter as well as other items, such as jerry cans, red fuel jerry cans,” he said.

“I saw someone reach in to where they were, under the seat and remove items that looked to me like what I know dual helicopter controls to be. They were not installed, they were under a seat.”

Mr Auld said he saw someone look inside the destroyed chopper’s fuel tank but could not identify who that was.

“Unfortunately it was from a distance. I was with Mr Willow’s body at the time,” he said.

Mr Auld said he did not see or smell fuel at the crash site.

The trial, before Acting Justice Alan Blow, continues with Mr Robinson expected to give evidence on Tuesday.