WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
Outback Wrangler Matt Wright has given home to a crocodile that once belonged to a disgraced zoologist who filmed himself raping, torturing and murdering dogs.
British crocodile expert Adam Britton, 53, was sentenced to ten years in prison in the Northern Territory Supreme Court in August after pleading guilty to 63 counts of bestiality, animal cruelty and possession of child abuse material.
Britton, who made a name for himself in BBC documentaries and once hosted Sir David Attenborough in his home, obtained the dogs from Gumtree Australia over a two-year period for the sole purpose of torturing them to death on camera.
He told former owners that their pets were enjoying their new home, when in reality they were already dead.
When Britton was arrested in 2022, his two Swiss Shepherds, Ursa and Bolt, and his crocodile Smaug were rehomed.
Daily Mail Australia understands that Smaug was taken to live on a property owned by Wright, who became famous for several television series featuring his conservation efforts.
On Sunday, Britton’s ex-wife, Erin, a fellow biologist, broke her silence on an episode of Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes, saying she was so shocked and disgusted when police told her about her husband’s crimes that she was left speechless. words.
Outback Wrangler Matt Wright is understood to have accepted Britton’s pet crocodile Smaug onto his NT property.
Adam Britton (pictured) was a respected crocodile expert until his arrest in 2022.
Britton shared this photo of him and Smaug in X before his arrest.
She took viewers on a short tour of the home they shared in McMinns Lagoon, near Darwin, where Britton committed most of her crimes while she was away on a work trip.
The tour included a swamp in the backyard where Smaug was kept and an outside laundry room with a freezer, where detectives found a disturbing collection of dog remains.
Erin said, “He was most likely feeding it to the crocodile.”
Britton operated two Telegram accounts called ‘monster’ and ‘Cerberus’ (the latter being a three-headed dog in Greek mythology) between 2020 and 2022, and used them to interact with like-minded people about animal cruelty and bestiality. .
In some of those messages, seen by Daily Mail Australia, Britton told his colleagues that he derived sexual pleasure from dead dogs.
Adam Britton’s ex-wife, Erin, broke her silence in an interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday.
Britton kept dog remains in a freezer, located in an outside laundry room at his McMinns Lagoon home (pictured)
During Sunday’s episode, Erin was asked if Britton fed Smaug dog carcasses to get rid of evidence.
She replied: ‘Yes, of course.’
Since her ex-husband’s arrest, Erin said she has been asking how she didn’t realize what he was doing.
“The question I’ve been asking myself every day is, ‘Why didn’t I know?’ “What did I miss?” he said.
“I scratch my head, I try to look, I try to replay the events of the last few years to see if there are any details or something, but there is nothing.”
He now describes Britton as a “psychopath” who destroyed his life.
Erin no longer reads his prison letters, in part because he didn’t take responsibility for his actions.
Pictured is the now abandoned compound where Britton carried out his obscene acts.
Britton (centre) poses for a photograph with his ex-wife Erin and Sir David Attenborough.
When he was first arrested, he would write to her about topics he was interested in and books he wanted to read, even asking her to send him one on dog domestication, breed history, and behavior.
She said it bothered her head.
“He’s writing about this as if he can, more or less, continue his fantasies in his mind, and that makes me very angry,” she said.
“I still can’t understand how someone can be so depraved, so evil, and how he has destroyed my entire life.”
When they met before 2004, Erin thought she had found her soulmate: They had shared interests and together they created a consulting company called Big Gecko, which sold images of crocodiles to film and television directors.
They worked with natural history programs on the BBC and National Geographic.
Meanwhile, Smaug became something of a celebrity in his field and appeared in two horror films.
While their life together was idyllic at first, their relationship began to disintegrate in the years before his arrest.
Adam Britton and his ex-wife, Erin, are pictured together on their wedding day.
Britton and his ex-wife, Erin, lived on a sprawling property near Darwin (pictured), where he committed most of his crimes.
They were both absent for long periods of time on expeditions, but slept in separate beds when they were both at home and had not been romantically involved for years.
NT Chief Justice Michael Grant’s sentencing remarks outlined Britton’s lifelong struggle with sociosexual disorder, paraphelia, and zoosadism.
He was never attracted to humans and struggled to have proper relationships with women when he was a university student in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. He had two female partners, but they were not sexual relations.
After graduating, the judge said he had a “brief” sexual relationship with a woman who worked in the animal industry.
“You attempted to establish a sexual relationship with her, but those attempts were obviously hampered by your unorthodox sexual preferences,” the judge said.
‘Sexual relations with your wife were not something you enjoyed and, as a result, were extremely sporadic.
“The relationship eventually became completely platonic and asexual in nature.”
Erin said Britton’s crimes had inspired her even more to advocate for animal welfare.
