Death of American polo star in spa pool: man acquitted of supplying ecstasy

A Christchurch engineer was acquitted of supplying ecstasy to an American polo star before he died in his spa pool, but was convicted of attempting to pervert the course of justice by concealing his clothing from the police.

A jury took 12 hours over two days in Christchurch District Court to render unanimous verdicts tonight.

Up-and-coming American polo star Lauren Mikaila Biddle, 22, died suddenly, likely of a drug overdose, at Joseph Douglas McGirr’s hillside home in the Christchurch suburb of Clifton on October 22, 2018. .

McGirr, 39, had denied having supplied Biddle, and his friend Guy Higginson, the controlled class B drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy, and had attempted to pervert the course of justice by burying Biddle’s clothes after his death. .

There were gasps in the McGirr family’s public gallery as the verdicts were read. They have supported him throughout the trial this week.

McGirr was found not guilty of supplying MDMA, or ecstasy, to Biddle and Higginson.

He was found guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice by burying Biddle’s clothes after his death.

Judge Tom Gilbert ordered McGirr to be sentenced on March 10.

McGirr had claimed that Biddle and Higginson inhaled ecstasy of their own “will.”

During the four-day trial, the jury heard two accounts of what happened on that tragic night: one version from Higginson and one from McGirr.

McGirr himself took the witness stand Wednesday to explain how he was “going crazy” after witnessing someone’s death “in front of my eyes” and how he buried Biddle’s clothes and belongings in an act of “spiritual reconciliation. “.

He claimed he had an “innate desire to do something reverential” with his belongings, he said, and wanted to “commemorate his life.”

“At no point did I try to hide anything from the police,” McGirr told the court.

“He was very upset and shocked, affected by alcohol and drugs.”

Biddle’s bikini top has never been found, the court heard.

McGirr claimed that he had taken four party pills at his house that night.

Someone had given them to her at a party, she says, and she didn’t know “if it was ecstasy or some kind of weed.” To this day, he says he is unsure of the “exact composition” of the pills.

After crushing one on a cutting board in the kitchen, he says he inhaled the powder from the pill before heading back to the spa pool where he, Biddle and Higginson had been drinking and hanging out.

Earlier claims at the trial of his friend, North Canterbury polo player Higginson, that McGirr walked out of the house to the spa with three 3cm rows of ground powder “a kind of blue … bluish” that he took as ecstasy were “absolute rubbish”.

Two more pills were left in a container and placed in a bread container, McGirr says.

You suspect that others must have taken them.

After taking the pills, Higginson said that at some point he returned to the spa when McGirr told him that Biddle was dead.

Higginson says he was the one who pulled Biddle out of the spa and tried to resuscitate her with CPR, while an aggressive McGirr, wearing an ankle bracelet for a drunk driving conviction, refused to call an ambulance, claiming he said, “Shit. Get out. The police won’t come around here.”

Higginson put her in his car and drove to the top of McGirr’s steep driveway, where he called 111 and said he continued CPR.

Emergency services arrived quickly, but Biddle was pronounced dead on the side of the road around 1.20 a.m. M.

But McGirr said it was he, and not Higginson, who tried to save his life.

He remembered turning around and seeing an unconscious Biddle “head down in the pool.”

“I immediately took her out and started CPR on her,” McGirr said.

After a while, he thought CPR was “useless.” He looked into the spa and saw Higginson “gurgling water”.

“In my opinion, he was about 30 seconds away from drowning,” said McGirr, who claims that he pulled him out and put him in recovery position, saving his life.

Biddle was dead before she left home, McGirr believes.

McGirr, “freaking out and peaking,” began to order. She put the lid on the spa pool, put away the cans and bottles of alcohol, and when she was scooping fish guts into a bucket outside, she tripped over her clothes and bag. He saw his passport photo and a “great deal of sadness” washed over him.

McGirr came down the steep slope of his property “threw his things on the ground.”

He used a shovel to cover Biddle’s items with “leaves and what not” and pushed them in a cross formation, said a prayer, repeating the psalm “The Lord is my Shepherd” and then “felt as if she lifted up.

He said it may sound a bit strange, but “when someone dies in front of you, you feel like you need to do something.”

“It was just a moment of peace really, in the native forest with his things … He was quite upset to put it mildly,” McGirr said.

“I just had an innate desire to find some kind of spiritual reconciliation immediately after the event.”

McGirr then slept wrapped in a duvet on the floor of his hillside property before arriving home at 3.30 a.m. and being greeted by police officers.

He claims he told an officer about the clothes right away, then took them exactly where they were.

The Crown says Biddle was very drunk, almost four times the limit for drunk driving, and found a high concentration of MDMA in his system about 15 times higher than “normal recreational use” of the drug.

An autopsy found that the cause of death was likely a drug overdose that caused sudden cardiac arrest.