Death of American polo star in spa pool: Joseph McGirr buried Lauren Biddle’s clothes in act of ‘spiritual reconciliation’

A Christchurch engineer accused of supplying ecstasy to American polo player Lauren Biddle “freaked out” after her sudden death and buried her clothes to “commemorate her life,” a court heard today.

And Joseph Douglas McGirr claimed today that it was he, and not his good friend Guy Higginson, who tried to save the life of up-and-coming American polo star Lauren Mikaila Biddle, 22, the night he died suddenly, probably from an overdose of drugs, at McGirr’s hillside home in the suburb of Clifton on October 22, 2018.

McGirr, a 39-year-old civil engineer, denies supplying Biddle, and her ex-boyfriend Higginson, with the controlled class B drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy, and has attempted to pervert the course of justice by concealing Biddle’s clothes after his death. .

McGirr took the witness stand today to testify on the third day of his jury trial in Christchurch District Court.

Shocked and upset Joe McGirr was “going crazy” after witnessing someone’s death “in front of my eyes” when he buried Biddle’s clothes and belongings in an act of “spiritual reconciliation.”

He had an “innate desire to do something reverential” with his belongings, he said.

“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 today.

McGirr claims that he took four party pills at home 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 herb.” 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 sniffed 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 left the house to the spa with three 3cm long lines of ground “blue … bluish” powder that he took as ecstasy were “absolute rubbish”.

McGirr suspects Higginson found a second pill on the cutting board, crushed it, and inhaled it.

“He would have inhaled anything he could find,” McGirr said.

He then suspects that Biddle “licked the crumbs” off the board.

“Lauren was very interested in everything that was going on and recreational drugs were by no means an unusual element in the polo association,” McGirr said.

“In regards to the party pills, I did not give them anything,” he added, saying that the drugs they took were “of their own free will” and did not come with any instruction or influence from him.

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 claims that at some point he returned to the spa and that’s 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, who wore an ankle bracelet for a driving under the influence conviction, refused to call an ambulance, claiming he said: “*** * out. The police don’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 road around 1.20 a.m. M.

But today, 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 took her out right away and started CPR on her,” McGirr said.

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

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

When Higginson recovered and adrenaline kicked in and took an unconscious Biddle to try and get help, McGirr says he was “in absolute shock … He was very upset, to put it mildly.”

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 alcohol cans and bottles, 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.”

She 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 were lifting up.

He said it might 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.”

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

He claims that he told the officers about the clothes immediately, then led 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 greater 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.

The trial, before Judge Tom Gilbert, continues.