In March 2002, 19-year-old Amber Haigh was struggling with the demands of motherhood.
It was the first few months of her young son’s life – but it would also prove to be the last few months of Haigh’s, a court has been told.
The NSW supreme court heard this week Haigh saw Emma Baldock, then a counsellor at the QEII Family Centre in Canberra, that month. Baldock, an experienced nurse, midwife and counsellor, was troubled by the meeting.
“I believe Amber was a very vulnerable young woman,” she would later tell police. “In my opinion, she would have difficulty in understanding the difference between love and exploitation.”
Months later, in June 2002, Haigh vanished without trace. Her body has never been found.
Now, 22 years after Amber Haigh was last seen, the married couple Robert Samuel Geeves and Anne Margaret Geeves, both 64, are on trial charged with her murder. They have each pleaded not guilty.
The crown has alleged in court that Haigh – cognitively impaired and described by her mother in court as “very easily misled” – was used by the Geeves as a “surrogate mother” because they wanted another baby. It has alleged that once Haigh’s baby – fathered by Robert Geeves – was born they sought to have her “removed from the equation” by killing her.
The crown case is circumstantial, the court was told, but in the absence of a body, or significant forensic evidence around Haigh’s disappearance, prosecutors will put forward a “strands of the cable” case – individual elements of evidence that, taken together, collectively prove guilt.
‘Very little or poor parenting’
Giving evidence this week, Baldock was taken to an interview she gave to police in 2007 and asked to read excerpts to the court.
“She had very little or poor parenting and relationship models in her family of origin. Her intellectual capacity also made her vulnerable, together with her previous sexual abuse,” Baldock told the court, reading from her police interview.
“Amber was confused about her relationship with Robert and Anne. She had poorly defined boundaries, in particular with her sexual relationship. In my opinion, she would have difficulty in understanding the difference between love and exploitation. I believe she would therefore have trouble protecting her own child.”
In Baldock’s evidence, the court heard Haigh adored her son but was struggling to cope with the round-the-clock demands of parenting a newborn.
Haigh would occasionally leave the baby screaming or “abdicate responsibility” for her child to someone else “when it all got too hard”, Baldock recounted from her police interview.
In court, Baldock was also taken to her contemporaneous notes of her session with Haigh.
She recorded that Haigh said of her family of origin: “father in jail and mother ‘didn’t want me’”.
The notes reported Haigh was deeply worried that her child would be taken from her, the court heard.
“Amber states that if Anne and Robert [Geeves] try to get [her child] – because they want a baby – she will tell them ‘back off’.”
‘Homicide or misadventure’
The court has also heard Haigh was an intellectually disabled teenager from Sydney who had endured a “dysfunctional upbringing” and who had moved to the Kingsvale area to live with her great-aunt in the late 1990s.
That aunt lived next door to the Geeves’s then property, Huntleigh. Haigh briefly dated the Geeves’s son – a teenager almost identical in age to Amber – and later moved in to the Geeves’s home.
A sexual relationship commenced between Haigh and Robert Geeves – 22 years her senior. In January 2002 Haigh gave birth to her son, fathered by Geeves.
The Geeves have consistently denied having anything to do with her disappearance.
The court heard the Geeves told police they drove her to Campbelltown railway station in Sydney’s outer south-west, from where she was to visit her dying father, on the evening of 5 June, and have neither seen nor heard from her since.
They told police Haigh left her five-month-old son in their custody. They reported Haigh missing a fortnight later, on 19 June.
In 2011, a coroner ruled Haigh had died, some time in 2002, “from homicide or misadventure”.
The supreme court has previously heard the Geeves had had one child together – a son the same age as Haigh, who had previously dated her – but the couple wanted more children, having subsequently endured three miscarriages and a stillbirth.
“The crown case theory is that it was always the intention of the Geeves to assume the custody and care of [the child] from Amber,” crown prosecutor Paul Kerr told the court in his opening.
“But they knew that to do that, Amber had to be removed from the equation … so – the crown asserts – they killed her.”
Lawyers for Robert and Anne Geeves have argued the case against the couple is deeply flawed, arguing in court that “community distaste” at Robert Geeves’s relationship with “a much younger woman with intellectual disabilities” fuelled “gossip and innuendo”.
“Everything they did was viewed through a haze of mistrust and suspicion,” Michael King, acting for Anne Geeves, told the court. He said his client had “no motive to kill Amber, or even wish her dead”.
Paul Coady, for Robert Geeves, told the court his client “denied being in any way involved in [Haigh’s] disappearance or murder” and argued “many witnesses harboured grievances or suspicions particularly against Mr Geeves”.
‘She was my ex-girlfriend’
So far, the court has heard from 11 witnesses, all called by the prosecution.
Amber Haigh’s mother, Rosalind Wright, testified her daughter was “bubbly” and “kind-hearted” but someone who found school difficult because she “took a long time to learn”. Haigh was “very easily misled” her mother said.
A neighbour of Haigh’s said under cross-examination that Haigh could be an “over-sharer” when the pair sat down for a cup of tea.
In late 2001, both were pregnant at the same time: Haigh had told her she wasn’t sure who the father of her baby was, reportedly saying it was one of three men: Geeves, Haigh’s own cousin, or her cousin’s grandfather.
The Geeves’s son Robbie appeared in court, called as a prosecution witness in the murder trial of his parents.
In the witness box, and sitting in court after his evidence, Robbie Geeves did not look at, or acknowledge, his parents as they sat in the dock.
His mother wiped away tears as she looked towards her estranged son.
Robbie Geeves told the court of the irreparable schism caused by his father fathering a child to Robbie’s ex-girlfriend.
In early 2002, his mother had brought the infant to him, pleading with him to accept the newborn as his brother. He told the court he was unable to.
“I don’t know how to say it in a nice way: she was my ex-girlfriend, you can’t have a baby brother to your ex-girlfriend … it’s not right.”
The judge-alone trial before Justice Julia Lonergan continues in Wagga Wagga. Baldock will return to the witness box to finish giving evidence.
