Amber Haigh said she was tied up by the man accused of her murder and questioned by him during sex, after he claimed to have video of her having sex with her third cousin, a court has heard.
Haigh was a 19-year-old mother when she vanished from the New South Wales Riverina in June 2002, leaving behind her five-month-old son.
The father of her child, 64-year-old Robert Geeves, and his wife, Anne Geeves, are on trial for her murder. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Haigh’s cousin Paul Harding told the NSW supreme court on Thursday that he had visited Amber at the Kingsvale home of Robert and Anne Geeves sometime before she went missing. While the Geeves were out, he said he and Amber had sex.
Later, Harding went to Queensland to work on a cattle station. He said he spoke to Amber on the phone and she told him Geeves had videotaped them.
In evidence in chief, the crown read parts of Harding’s November 2002 police statement.
“‘I can’t remember her exact words. But she said something along the lines that Robert Geeves had tied her up after watching the videotape of Amber and I having sex.’ Do you remember telling the police that?” the prosecutor Paul Kerr asked.
“Yes,” Harding said.
“‘She said he tied her hands together at the wrist and did all sexual things to her.’ Do you remember telling the police that?” Kerr asked.
“Yes,” Harding said.
“Did Amber tell you that?”
“Yes,” Harding said.
Kerr asked: “‘She said that Robert Geeves asked her a lot of questions about it while he was performing sexual acts on her. She also said that he, Robert Geeves, played the video in front of her, and said, tell me that’s not Paul.’
“Remember telling police that?
“Yep,” Harding said.
Harding had briefly lived with Haigh while she stayed at the house of her great-aunt, Stella Nealon, who is also Harding’s grandmother. Nealon lived next door to the Geeves’. The court heard that during Haigh’s stay at the Nealon household, Haigh fell pregnant to Harding and after pressure from his family to terminate the pregnancy, advised her to terminate and paid for the subsequent termination.
Under cross examination, Harding agreed that Haigh’s pregnancy to him had caused problems in his family.
Harding agreed under questioning that he had previously heard “bad things” about Robert Geeves but at the time Harding thought “he was an all right bloke”.
He also said he had visited the labour ward when Haigh was giving birth to her baby and she had asked him into the room for the labour.
Haigh’s unresolved disappearance has been an enduring mystery in NSW’s Riverina, where she was last seen alive more than two decades ago. She left behind a five-month-old son who the court has heard she “adored” and “never let out of her sight”.
Haigh’s body has never been found, but a coroner has ruled she died from “homicide or misadventure”.
Earlier in the day, James Arber, thought to be one of the last people to see Haigh alive, spent nearly three hours in the witness stand under cross-examination.
Arber had previously told the court that he had seen Robert and Anne Geeves, Amber and her baby in early June 2002 in his then home town of Boorowa after he finished school one afternoon.
But under cross-examination, he admitted his dates and times could be a bit “hit and miss”. A number of times, Arber claimed the detective who took his statement, Amanda Cary, had got it wrong.
He also denied the suggestion from counsel Michael King for Anne Geeves that he was trying to write himself into a “murder mystery”.
“Mr Arber, can I suggest that what you’ve done, is picked out some fragments of memories, added in a few fantasies, stitched them all together using the glue of tabloid sensationalism, to end up with this not so neat story,” said King.
“What do you say about that?”
“Yeah you’re right,” Arber said.
The prosecution has alleged in court that Haigh – described in court as “very easily misled” – was used by Robert and Anne Geeves as a “surrogate mother” because they wanted another baby.
Haigh was last seen on 5 June 2002. The Geeveses say they drove her that evening from Kingsvale to Campbelltown railway station so she could visit her dying father in hospital, and have not heard from her since.
They told police Haigh willingly left her infant son in their custody.
The Geeveses reported Haigh missing a fortnight later, on 19 June 2002.
The court has previously heard the Geeveses 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.
Lawyers for Robert and Anne Geeves have argued the case against the couple – now more than two decades old – was deeply flawed, arguing that “community distaste” at Robert Geeves’ 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,” the court has heard.
The judge-alone trial, before justice Julia Lonergan, continues in Wagga Wagga.
