Robert and Anne Geeves have been found not guilty of the murder of Amber Haigh, who disappeared more than two decades ago.
Robert Samuel Geeves, 64 – the father of Haigh’s child – and his wife Anne Margaret Geeves, also 64, spent more than two years in prison awaiting the trial, which ran for nine weeks in the NSW supreme court.
Haigh, who had an intellectual disability, was 19 when she vanished from the New South Wales Riverina in June 2002. She left behind her five-month-old son whom, the court heard, she adored and “never let out of her sight”.
The couple were charged in 2022 with her murder, police alleging they killed Haigh so they could take custody of her baby.
The Geeveses consistently denied ever harming Haigh or having anything to do with her disappearance. They have maintained they last saw Haigh on the evening of 5 June 2002, when they drove her from their home in Kingsvale to Campbelltown railway station, where she intended to catch a train to visit her dying father. They told police Haigh willingly left her young son in their care. Haigh never arrived at the nearby Mt Druitt hospital to see her father.
On Monday, after a judge-alone trial, Justice Julia Lonergan found the couple not guilty of murder.
She told the court: “Mr and Mrs Geeves are not guilty and ought be released from the dock.”
The verdict was met with anger from some: one member of the public gallery stormed out of court and yelled. Family members of Amber Haigh were seen in tears outside the court, consoling each other with hugs.
In her summary judgment delivered to the supreme court, Lonergan said Haigh’s short life was marked by disruption and disadvantage. She was, the judge said, “physically attacked and abused” by people she trusted, and made to feel unsafe by her own family.
“How terrible that must have felt … there was little evidence that Amber was ever shown the love and support she deserved.”
Lonergan said Haigh was a vulnerable young woman who was naive about relationships and susceptible to exploitation.
“Amber went back and forth between places and people, looking for love and solace. She never found it. She was still looking for it when she disappeared.”
The judge said the prosecution sought to prove two “indispensable facts”: that the Geeveses had a shared motive to kill Haigh in order to assume control of her baby; and that the Geeveses did not drive Haigh to Campbelltown railway station on the evening of 5 June 2002, the day they say they last saw her.
“I am not persuaded that either indispensable fact is proved.”
