They made their way to the Sunnybank Tavern. There, Jesse claims Crystal asked if she could be transferred $50 so it could be withdrawn from the ATM because she didn’t have her bank card. She had told Jesse she wanted to play the pokies – an unusual decision given she’d previously said she hated pokies.
While waiting for dinner, Crystal went to play the pokies. When she came out, Jesse told police she was crying, saying she never won anything.
CCTV shows Crystal Beale leaving the Sunnybank Hotel on February 21.Credit: Brisbane Times
As the night progressed, Jesse claims Crystal became angrier. She wouldn’t come out of the restaurant when they tried to leave, despite three attempts from Jesse.
She was vicious and spoke to him through gritted teeth, he claimed.
In the car on the way back to his West End apartment, Crystal jumped out of the car on Ipswich Road in Annerley, he told police.
CCTV images submitted as part of the prosecution’s case show Crystal on the road.
CCTV shows Jesse Beale’s white Ranger driving outbound along Ipswich Road, Annerley, while he claims he was looking for Crystal Beale.
“Crystal was bawling her eyes out. She walked back to the car with me and I sat her down in the front passenger seat with the door open and her legs out,” he told police.
“I put her in the car and starting driving. She started getting angry again but I can’t remember what she was saying. She was sobbing at the same time.”
A CCTV image of that moment shows the pair standing on the street.
When Jesse Beale finds Crystal Beale on Laurier Street in Annerley and walks her back towards his white Ranger.
Jesse says he consoled her, and told her that he would take her home. He says he pleaded with her.
“Please Crystal, I’ll just take you home and put you to bed,” he allegedly said. “All we have to do now is get you home and go to bed.”
About 9.10pm, Crystal’s daughter Charlie-Rose called her mother over FaceTime and saw the pair together. She says her mother was crying and looked very distressed.
“She was crying and distressed,” Charlie-Rose recalls. “She said, ‘I love you, goodbye.’”
It was her last conversation with her mother.
The person police believed to be Jesse Beale walking on Drury Street towards Montague Street in West End carrying unknown items.
Charlie-Rose told police that her mother had confided in her a few weeks before her death about photographs she had found of herself unconscious and being sexually assaulted by Jesse.
She had shown her daughter some of the photos, which included Crystal “passed out in bed and Jesse holding up her skirt or dress”, she told police.
There were also hundreds of photos of Crystal doing yoga in her underwear, court documents state, as well as photos of Crystal without underwear, and her genitals exposed. There were other explicit images involving Jesse, Charlie-Rose told police.
“Mum told me she took photos of all the pictures from [Jessse’s iPad] on her mobile phone and then deleted all the photos off Jesse’s iPad,” Charlie-Rose told police.
Crystal Beale with her daughter, Charlie-Rose Wagner.
Charlie-Rose said her mother confronted Jesse about the photos: why he took them, and why he still had them.
“She told me she was concerned Jesse was going to use them as revenge porn or blackmail against her,” Charlie-Rose told police.
Jesse told his stepdaughter the photos were explicit but consensual, according to court documents.
But police claimed Crystal had also told others about the photos, saying they were taken while she was unconscious and without her consent.
During Jesse’s bail application, the prosecution told the court Crystal had confronted him about the photos while in the car driving back to West End on the night she was allegedly killed, and she had called Jesse a rapist.
Jesse claims he drove back to West End, and he says Crystal got angrier. When they were near Jesse’s West End unit complex on Carlow Street, metres from the Brisbane River, he claims Crystal got out of the car and walked ahead of him.
This was the last time she was seen alive.
Court documents paint a picture of Crystal’s years-long struggle with alcohol and drug addiction. After her own mother had suicided, she had said she was sexually and physically abused while in foster care.
Charlie-Rose told police that as a teenager, she was aware her mother was using heavy drugs, and in the last four years, she had seen her mother use methamphetamine every few months, causing her to lose weight and be “scattered”.
She recalls her mother and Jesse, who had been in her life since she was young, having “pretty hectic fights” but she had “never seen Jesse lay a hand on mum”.
The pair separated in 2020, and last year, Crystal had worked near where she disappeared, at the West End markets, selling seafood.
On the night she was allegedly killed, the prosecution said Jesse had claimed he parked at Ryan Street, and had given her 10 seconds before getting out of the car and assuming she’d walked back to the unit.
But CCTV contradicted Jesse’s account, the prosecution said. The footage showed him driving around the neighbourhood and parking at various locations over half an hour.
The footage showed the car stopped for 11 minutes in Ryan Street from 9.24pm and 9.35pm.
At no point did the CCTV show anyone exiting the car, according to court documents. The vehicle then left Carlow Street before returning to that street.
According to the documents, Jesse visited Hill End Terrace multiple times during the night, and a person, alleged to be Jesse, exited the car and headed towards the dog park area at 9.51pm.
By 9.59pm, the phone disconnected from the vehicle and connected to the home Wi-Fi until 5.07am, showing Jesse left his phone at the unit, the prosecution submitted.
Jesse claims after Crystal left the car, and he realised she was not at the apartment, he began to look for her.
“I drove down the main road by the river that the West End Ferry Terminal is on and looked from there down to a large tree that we call the Avatar tree. It’s the only big tree covered by fairy lights,” he told police.
“I parked up near the tree and walked back along the river to the [ferry terminal] and then back to my car.”
Crystal Beale.Credit: Facebook
He later claimed he drove home to see if Crystal had returned, and then continued to search the streets for her.
During his search, Jesse said he used a torch and was shining light into the bases of trees in the park.
“Crystal used to like leaning against the big bases of the trees looking out to watch the sunset when we’d take Sunday, the dog, out for walks,” he claims.
The prosecution said CCTV supported the version that Jesse had gone back to a park and river area at Hill End Terrace, and returned to Carlow Street on a few more occasions that evening. He was carrying something that has not been located by police, court documents state.
What Jesse was carrying was not alleged to be Crystal, but an item that may have been used in the disposal of her body, according to prosecution documents.
Between 10.54pm and 11.46pm, the prosecution alleged Jesse walked from Carlow Street to his car on Drury Street, and drove back to Carlow Street.
Data from his phone shows that while he was at Carlow Street, he searched tide forecasts on the Bureau of Meteorology website.
Shortly after midnight, Jesse travelled to Hill End Terrace and parked his car. According to the prosecution, the driver left the vehicle and appeared to walk to the passenger side.
Later, a torch could be seen near the boat ramp at the river. A person returned to the parked car, drove it to the intersection of Hill End Terrace and Montague Road, and parked there.
Jesse was allegedly seen later walking along the water at the park at Orleigh Street with the torch, before driving the car back to Carlow Street, where it remained until the next day.
The following afternoon, Jesse accessed Nine News, Seven News, and 10 News Brisbane, according to prosecution documents. The next day, he searched “VPN meaning” and then “does a VPN high browsing history”.
According to court documents, five minutes after the search he received an email with a sign-up code for a VPN from VPN Super. Seven minutes later, he searched: “CCTV cameras near me.”
An autopsy report found Crystal’s death was a “complex case”, with her body found floating in the Brisbane River less than nine hours after she was last seen.
She had suffered severe internal neck injuries that could have caused death alone. Toxicology reports showed a combination of sedatives, including alcohol and stimulant drugs in her system.
The report said while there some signs of drowning, post-mortem diagnosis of drowning could not be made in instances where there were competing causes of death.
“It is possible in this case that death could have resulted from the combined effects of neck compression, drowning, drugs, and alcohol. Hence, the cause of death is not determined,” it said.
Jesse was denied bail last month, with his case remaining before the courts.
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