As police were still searching for missing teenager Amber Haigh, Robert and Anne Geeves were speaking about her in the past tense in police interviews because they knew she was already dead, prosecutors have argued before the New South Wales supreme court.
In closing submissions to the nine-week trial over Haigh’s alleged murder, the crown prosecutor Paul Kerr argued Justice Julia Lonergan “would be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Amber Haigh is dead and that she is dead because Robert and Anne Geeves – in the execution of a joint criminal enterprise – murdered her”.
He told the court on Monday the language the Geeveses used after she vanished was revelatory: “There are times during [recorded police interviews] and during the listening device products (placed in the Geeves’ home) that Robert and Anne Geeves speak of Amber in the past tense”.
“The crown submits that Robert and Anne Geeves have, at times, acted in a manner that is consistent with them knowing that Amber Haigh is dead.”
Haigh, who had an intellectual disability, was 19 when she vanished from the New South Wales Riverina in June 2002, leaving behind her five-month-old son.
More than two decades since her disappearance, the father of Haigh’s child, 64-year-old Robert Geeves, and his wife, Anne Geeves, also 64, are on trial for her alleged murder.
Both have pleaded not guilty.
The Geeveses have consistently maintained they last saw Haigh on the night of 5 June 2002 when they drove her from their home in Kingsvale, in the Riverina, to Campbelltown station, on Sydney’s southern outskirts, from where she intended to catch a train to visit her dying father.
Haigh never arrived at Mt Druitt hospital to see her father. She has never been seen since. The Geeveses reported Haigh missing a fortnight later, going to police on 19 June.
The prosecution has asserted the Geeveses killed Haigh so they could take her baby, which the defence denies.
On Monday, Lonergan asked Kerr to provide specific examples of the Geeveses speaking about Haigh in the past tense in the immediate aftermath of her disappearance. “I need those places identified with specificity,” she said.
Robert and Anne Geeves’ police interviews were played for the court last week.
These interviews were conducted on 25 June and 18 July 2002: six days, and then three weeks after Haigh was reported missing: she was still, ostensibly, a missing person.
During his initial interview with police, Robert Geeves said: “Amber wasn’t the most reliable person.”
One of the reasons he gave for the delay in reporting her missing was: “I didn’t want to come to police due to the fact Amber just didn’t like police.”
And he said of his sexual relationship with the teenager: “Amber wasn’t really into intimate relationships.”
Anne Geeves told police of Haigh’s demeanour: “She wasn’t always happy, no.”
It was 14 days after the Geeveses last allegedly saw Haigh that they reported her missing, during which time the couple “made no attempt” to contact her – despite having custody of her son – Kerr told the court in closing submissions on Monday.
He said the Geeveses lied to investigators that they did not have phone numbers for people Haigh might have been staying with in Sydney, arguing, instead, they made no effort to find Haigh because they knew she could not be found.
“The Geeves didn’t ask, because they didn’t care. Because they already knew where Amber Haigh was, she was gone and [Haigh’s baby] was in their care.”
Kerr told the court there was no plausible scenario – besides murder – before the court explaining what happened to Haigh. A body has never been found, but Haigh has never attempted to contact her son or any family member, refilled her prescription for the epilepsy medication she required daily, touched her bank account, travelled on a passport, or used a government service.
“There is no evidence she met with foul play at Campbelltown railway station, no evidence she committed suicide. There are no other signs of life,” Kerr told the court.
Kerr said the Geeveses’ attempt to “manufacture” evidence of Haigh’s presence at Campbelltown on 5 June by using her bankcard at an ATM was an effort to deceive police.
“The idea that Amber was driven to Campbelltown railway station by Robert and Anne Geeves with [her infant son] in the car, and that she simply walked away from her son in those circumstances is simply … implausible.
“The crown respectfully submits there is only one verdict your honour can return: that is that between 1 June 2002 and 6 June 2002, Robert Geeves and Anne Geeves intentionally took the life of Amber Haigh.”
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 her then infant son who the court has heard she “adored” and “never let out of her sight”.
The crown case has been that the Geeveses – arrested in 2022 – impregnated Haigh in order to be able to take her baby from her, and had her “removed from the equation” by killing her.
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 will begin their closing submissions to the court on Wednesday. But they have argued during the trial that the case against the couple, now two decades old, is deeply flawed.
The defence barrister Michael King, acting for Anne Geeves, said his client did not kill Haigh and had “no motive to kill Amber, or even wish her dead”.
King said others in the community – who disapproved of Robert Geeves’s relationship with Haigh – were “all too quick to point the finger” at the couple when she disappeared.
“Everything they did was viewed through a haze of mistrust and suspicion,” he told the court.
Paul Coady, the defence counsel for Robert Geeves, told the court his client had “denied being in any way involved in her disappearance or murder”. He said “community distaste” at Robert Geeves’s relationship with “a much younger woman with intellectual disabilities” fuelled “gossip and innuendo”.
“Many witnesses harboured grievances or suspicions, particularly against Mr Geeves.”
Defence closing submissions were expected to argue, the court heard on Monday, that police unfairly targeted Robert and Anne Geeves as the primary and only suspects in their investigation, largely because of Robert Geeves’s police history.
Closing submissions were expected to conclude this week, before a decision in the judge-alone trial by Justice Lonergan.
