Sydney  - People wondering why it's taken 13 years to pin the murder of Sydney model Caroline Byrne on Gordon Wood might reflect that it took jurors no less than six days to agree she didn't jump from a cliff but was thrown to her death by her handsome boyfriend.

A death that has perplexed Australians since it was splashed across front pages in 1995 was never going to be easy to explain.

No suicide note, but neither was there an obvious motive for taking the life of the 24-year-old. No witnesses on that cold and moonless June night, but no alibi for Wood either.

There were suspicions, but no damning evidence, that the 45-year-old had fallen out of love with a woman he described as the light of his life.

Complicating the 60-day court case was a bungled police investigation that instantly equated a death at a popular suicide spot in Sydney with just another suicide. At the start of a trial that ended Friday detectives were still unsure about the exact spot the body was found.

Byrne's relatives shed tears of joy and relief when the verdict was read out. Wood, as always, was impassive. He sipped water from a paper cup, then slipped a ring from his finger before being led away.

In Winston Terracini, Wood had Australia's most distinguished defence counsel. He told jurors there were 12 reasons to acquit Wood, salient among them that there was only a circumstantial case against him, that no motive was established and that a psychiatrist had found Byrne was "a high risk of suicide."

Wood wasn't charged until 11 years after Byrne's death; Terracini argued that this delay had impaired the memories of those called to give evidence.

Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi left the jury with 50 reasons why Wood, who at the time was a driver for a millionaire stockbroker, should be found guilty.

He only really needed the first of the 50 because it was so damning.

On the night Byrne's body was found, Wood said he had dozed off and then woken up to find she wasn't in the flat. He didn't ring her mobile phone, but drove directly to where her body was discovered, found her car there, then drove back into the centre of the city to alert her family. With her father and her brother, he returned, leading them directly to the cliff top from where her body fell.

The observation Tedeschi made was the obvious one: "The only way that the defendant could know about the location of Caroline Byrne's body at the bottom of the cliff was because he was there when she went over."

Tedeschi even had the benefit of Wood's statement to police after the body was found that "it was Caroline's spirit that told me where to find her."

Wood said in his statement he "felt sick" when he spotted her car. "I remember running around crying out 'wait, hang on, baby!' - she used to call me Gordy - 'Gordy's here to save you, I will fix everything up,'" he told police.

Also likely to have impressed the jury was evidence that life was remarkably normal for Byrne in the hours leading up to her death. She filled her car with petrol, drew money out of her bank account and even bought chocolate.

Another telling strike against the defence was that Byrne's body landed 11.8 metres from the ledge of the cliff. Sydney University physicist Rob Cross told the hearing that tests with a 57-kilogram dummy - Byrne's weight - convinced him that she could not have leapt or fallen to her death but was thrown.

And thrown by a very strong and very fit man. Wood, a fitness instructor, went to the gym every day. (dpa)