“It Was Me” – The not-so-sudden plot twist at Wagatha Christie’s trial
“It was me.” That’s three “kind-of-a-big-deal” words in matters of this nature. In crime and court drama, real or fictional, the “it was me” moment tends to be where the plot resolves itself .
et Rebekah Vardy, who faces a second full day of cross-examination at the Royal Courts of Justice, must have known the “it was me” moment was coming since at least February. And what makes things even more bizarre is that she’s not the accused. This is a defamation suit she brought herself.
She is suing Coleen Rooney for daring to claim that it was she who leaked various stories about Rooney to The Sun newspaper (stories Rooney only made up to seduce the perpetrator, hence the now unshakable moniker brought in “Wagatha Christie”).
Vardy needs to see the moment looming over the horizon like a train she’s stood on the tracks of for the last three months but refused to swerve.
It was just before lunch when it arrived when Vardy had interrogated for seven and a half hours, all leading to her being able to credibly claim she would never work with her agent to sell stories to The Sun. It was read to her by Rooney’s attorney. Three simple words. “It was me.”
To be clear, it wasn’t Vardy who said, “It was me.” It was her agent, Caroline Watt. But that doesn’t make things any less delicate for them.
Conclude
Coleen and Wayne Rooney leave the Royal Courts Of Justice in London during a high profile defamation battle between Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney. James Manning/PA Wire
Unfortunately, Watt’s own phone was lost during the early stages of this case when it fell off the side of a boat in the North Sea. Watt herself has now sadly disappeared, in the sense that she was deemed too ill to testify at the trial.
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(Vardy was once told it was somewhat helpful that important messages on Watt’s phone were now in “Davy Jones’ locker.” She turned to the judge to ask, “Who is Davy Jones? I don’t know who that is .” The judge’s response that it was “figurative” didn’t seem to fully clear up the mystery.)
Anyway. Watt had said that “it was me” to make it clear that Rooney was wrong if she thought someone she “trusted” was leaking stories about her to the press. Wrong, because it wasn’t Vardy, just her agent.
It is on this distinction that Vardy’s defense rests (although we must again clarify that she is not the accused, this insanity was her only idea).
This Watt, who had access to Vardy’s social media accounts — or, if not hers, then through a process of digital alchemy — leaked stories from Rooney’s private Instagram to journalists at The Sun newspaper. And that Vardy had nothing to do with it.
So it’s more than a little uncomfortable that Vardy had to spend 10 full agonizing hours in a witness stand at the Royal Courts of Justice, having an endless tranche of WhatsApp messages read to her, all spelling out the extent to which she and Watt appeared to be working together have to deliver stories to The Sun.
When Rooney dropped her bombshell tweet almost three years ago, she was immediately heralded as a private investigator without equal. She had posted totally fake stories on her Instagram, made sure only one account could see them (Vardy’s account), and then watched those stories make their way to The Sun.
But that stunning case was equaled, if not surpassed, by the equally stunning incident earlier in this case, in which a large number of WhatsApps shared between Vardy and Watt were inadvertently shared with Rooney’s legal team.
The consequences of this accidental leak were quite spectacular. It has led to such incidents as Vardy, who sat on the witness stand with a stone face, claiming a previous affidavit presented to the court was not intentionally false, just inaccurate because she had not read the WhatsApp messages in question .
Which may be true. Maybe she hadn’t read them. But she wrote them.
To determine the level of Vardy’s contact with the newspapers, the court heard about an incident at a restaurant at the World Cup in Russia in 2018. Vardy denies that she persuaded a large group of England Wags to gather outside a restaurant for a photograph where she had allegedly arranged for a photographer to hide in the bushes, but had not been apprised of a last-minute change of plan and instead just stood out with his rather large camera, much to the disgust of the rest of her group.
Vardy denies that this caused her to “panic,” but she also denied why she used the word “f***!” to her agent Watt again.
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Rebekah Vardy, wife of Leicester City footballer Jamie Vardy, leaves the Royal Courts of Justice on May 12, 2022 in London, Britain. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
Also crucial to Rooney’s case is that she can prove Vardy had a long and successful relationship with The Sun and her showbiz reporter Andy Halls. And in Vardy’s case, it’s equally crucial that she proves that no such relationship existed.
And it’s a case she’s continued to bring up, even when, for example, she was shown an Instagram photo of herself eating a kebab in The Sun’s hospitality section at the National Television Awards, for which she credited Halls in the accompanying caption personally thanks At the same time, the court heard without knowing whether he was even there or not.
Her case rests on convincing a judge that she would never message The Sun’s Halls with stories about other people. And their WhatsApps to their agents include phrases like “messaged halls.”
There is also the unfortunate fact that in 2019, when she replied to Rooney and claimed that many people had access to her account and it could have been any of them, she accidentally spotted us behind the wizard’s curtain on WhatsApp messages left , again with Watt where the answer is patched up, not to mention a defense suggested by Watt where they could claim she left the company and someone else got their hands on her laptop.
That line, Watt explains, should only be used when everything becomes “undeniably obvious” that it was.
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It’s important to remember that since this is merely a civil libel suit, the judge must decide whether Vardy was involved in the sale of these stories to The Sun only after “weighing the probabilities” rather than “without a reasonable doubt”. . ” In other words, that it’s more likely that she was involved.
There’s still a chance Vardy will win. The judge may yet decide that the evidence against her is not compelling enough. At this point, Vardy might decide to seek damages.
It will then be up to the judge to decide how much her reputation has been damaged by the suggestion that she would leak stories to the press. It’s a pretty mean and tactless thing, after all. And while you may decide it’s not certain that she leaked this one, the intricate details of other such cases have been laid bare and they’re extraordinarily ugly.
It’s an awkward metaphor, but if you were to falsely accuse Harold Shipman of killing your grandma he might have a case of libel, but he wouldn’t have taken it all lightly to claim that your outrageous suggestion would have worked his reputation in tatters.
The case continues.
https://www.independent.ie/style/celebrity/celebrity-features/it-was-me-the-not-so-sudden-plot-twist-at-the-wagatha-christie-trial-41645802.html “It Was Me” – The not-so-sudden plot twist at Wagatha Christie’s trial