Three months before she disappeared, Amber Haigh told a woman she befriended at a train station that the man now charged with her murder used to ply her with alcohol, tie her to a bed and have sex with her, a court has heard.
Haigh was a 19-year-old mother when she vanished from the NSW Riverina in July 2002, leaving behind her five-month-old son.
Now the father of her child, 64-year-old Robert Geeves, and his wife, Anne Geeves, are facing trial, each charged with her murder. They have both pleaded not guilty.
Petrina Ingram met Haigh in March 2002, after both of their trains were delayed, leaving them stranded at Cootamundra railway station for several hours together, the court heard. The pair had lunch and ice-cream together.
Haigh was travelling to Sydney with her young son, still in a pram, and whom Ingram told the supreme court on Monday Haigh “was clearly besotted with”.
When Ingram complimented Haigh on her pram or blanket – “I can’t remember which” – Haigh replied that it was a gift from the wife of the father of her child.
“I found it shocking, I was shocked by that comment … I said: ‘What? Does she know about the baby?’”
Ingram told the court Haigh talked to her about her relationship with Robert and Anne Geeves.
“She told me that both the husband and wife would come to her place in Young, that they would bring alcohol with them. They would all drink the alcohol until she [Haigh] was drunk and then the wife would go home and that the husband would tie her to the bed and have sex with her.”
Ingram told the court she kept a diary in 2002 and wrote an account of the conversation in her diary that night. She also told her partner.
Ingram said three months later, in June 2002, she saw a news report saying that Haigh was missing, and asking for people with information to come forward.
Ingram told the court she rang CrimeStoppers to report her meeting with Haigh to police – including Haigh’s disclosures about being tied up – and said she was told a detective would call her back.
She said she called CrimeStoppers twice more in the years that followed – including once in 2008 when she saw another news item about Haigh’s disappearance – but never received a call back.
She said she was finally telephoned in 2024 by Snr Const Amanda Cary, a homicide detective who’d been reassigned to the case. Under cross-examination, Ingram agreed she had been “disappointed” police had not called sooner.
Before Ingram’s testimony, the court heard legal argument about the admissibility of her and other witnesses’ evidence. Defence counsel argued the probative value of the evidence of Haigh’s disclosures that she was allegedly tied up was outweighed by its prejudice to the Geeves.
Justice Julia Lonergan ultimately ruled in favour of admitting Ingram’s evidence, saying it was not unfairly prejudicial to Robert or Anne Geeves. The judge has not ruled on other witnesses’ evidence.
She said Haigh had made “multiple recounts” of identical or similar information to other people in her life. Some of those people are expected to give evidence later in this trial.
Haigh’s unresolved disappearance has been an enduring mystery in the Harden area of the Riverina, where she was living at the time. She left behind a five-month-old son that, the court has heard, she “adored” and “never let out of her sight”.
Haigh’s body has never been found.
In 2022 the NSW government offered $1m for information leading to a conviction over her disappearance and presumed murder.
The prosecution has alleged in court that Haigh – who had an intellectual disability and was described in court as “very easily misled” – was used by the Geeveses as a “surrogate mother” because they wanted another baby.
It alleges that once Haigh’s baby was born – fathered by Robert Geeves – they sought to have her “removed from the equation” by killing her.
Haigh was last seen on 5 June 2002. The Geeveses say they drove her to Campbelltown railway station, from where she was to visit her sick father, that evening, and have neither seen nor heard from her since, the court has heard.
They told police Haigh left her five-month-old son in their custody.
The Geeveses reported Haigh missing a fortnight later, on 19 June 2002. In 2011, a coroner ruled Haigh had died from “homicide or misadventure” sometime in 2002.
The supreme 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.
“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, but they knew that to do that, Amber had to be removed from the equation … so, the crown asserts, they killed her.”
The crown case is circumstantial, the court has heard, but in the absence of forensic evidence over Haigh’s disappearance will rely on witness testimony from people who knew Haigh, and were concerned she was being exploited and abused by the Geeveses.
The court has heard the crown case will also include evidence of phone intercepts – placed in the Geeveses’ home and car in 2002 – that were retranscribed in 2019, with significant discrepancies from the original transcripts discovered. These will be contested in court.
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’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,” the court has heard.
The judge-alone trial continues in Wagga Wagga.
