When Amber Haigh disappeared without trace in 2002, her family, friends, neighbours, even investigating police, were blinded by a “presumption of guilt” against the father of her child and his wife, a presumption for which there was “no evidence”, the New South Wales supreme court has heard.
Haigh, who had an intellectual disability, was 19 when she vanished from the NSW 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.
That presumption of guilt, Michael King, defence counsel for Anne Geeves, told the court on Wednesday, persisted over two decades: sustained through multiple police strikeforces, a coronial inquiry, and tenacious community rumour.
“Those days, fortunately, are over,” he told the court, “because the presumption of guilt is left outside this courtroom door, and now they have the presumption of innocence.”
Defence counsel made closing submissions to the two-month trial on Wednesday in the supreme court in Wagga Wagga.
King conceded that Robert Geeves “brought a fair bit of trouble upon himself by things that he has done in the past” – citing the 1993 death of a former girlfriend from a gunshot wound to the face, and the discovery of two missing schoolgirls on his property in 1986 as reasons that his actions were viewed “through a haze of mistrust and suspicion”.
Geeves was acquitted of murder in relation to the former girlfriend, Janelle Goodwin. He was acquitted of sexual offences, but convicted of hindering a police investigation, in relation to the schoolgirls.
But King argued that Robert Geeves’s past improperly narrowed the police investigation, causing officers to fixate on the Geeveses alone, discounting any other possible causes of Haigh’s disappearance.
King said the police attitude to the case was apparent in the evidence of the officer put in charge of the first strikeforce investigation into Haigh’s disappearance, Gaetano Crea.
“Detective Sergeant Crea, when he was appointed as the lead investigator, he made his views very, very clear in the witness box. He believed Robert Geeves was guilty.
“He believed Anne Geeves was the mastermind behind this scheme to deliberately impregnate Amber Haigh in order to steal her baby and then kill her. The problem for Detective Sergeant Crea was that there really was no evidence that that had occurred.”
Rumours that the Geeveses used Haigh as a “surrogate”, so they could have her baby, ran “out of control” among neighbours and members of the local community, fuelled by estranged family members and health professionals concerned about Haigh’s vulnerability in her relationship with Robert Geeves.
King argued the crown prosecution case had been “embroidered together”, relying on unreliable and inadequately tested witnesses, only believed because police were already convinced of the Geeveses’ guilt.
“The Crown has attempted to put together a case that, quite frankly, no one understands,” King said. “I respectfully submit, not even the prosecutor understands: he doesn’t know when they murdered Amber Haigh, he doesn’t know where they murdered Amber Haigh, he doesn’t know how they murdered Amber Haigh.
“It’s a matter of deductive reasoning that Amber Haigh has gone missing, and they were the last people to see her, and no one likes their story, so they must have killed her. The Crown needs a lot more than that to prove the charge beyond reasonable doubt.”
The prosecution case has asserted the Geeveses deliberately impregnated Haigh and, after her son was born in January 2002, had her “removed from the equation” by killing her, so they could take her baby.
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.
The Geeveses have denied ever harming Haigh, consistently maintaining they last saw her 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 Mount 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 last independent sighting of her was on 2 June 2002, when she was seen in the company of Robert Geeves in the town of Young.
On Wednesday in court, King argued rumours about Robert Geeves “ran wildly” among the community, unchecked and exaggerated over years.
“Again, everyone who would meet him presumed him to be guilty in 2001 when he started having sex with an … 18-year-old intellectually disabled girl.
“That was, no doubt, a very poor decision on his part and it added to the general sense of … community distaste and … of everything that the Geeveses did being viewed by everyone who’s come across them through this haze of mistrust and suspicion.”
But, King told the court, the prosecution case against the Geeves was inconsistent, confused and not supported by the evidence before the court.
“The only rational verdict, your honour, is ‘not guilty’,” he said.
“It is a shame it took 20 years for this to be brought to a head. It’s a shame that the family haven’t been able to put any of this behind them. It’s a shame that the Geeveses have had this hanging over their heads for 20 years. It is time to draw the line for once and for all.”
Earlier, there was extensive legal argument about a number of elements of the crown prosecutor’s submissions, delivered on Monday to the court, with defence counsel arguing the submissions were not supported by the evidence before the court.
On most of 47 points of contention, the prosecution conceded and withdrew the submissions.
This murder trial is judge-alone, there is no jury, but Justice Julia Lonergan took the step of telling the court that if there was a jury that had heard those submissions, and defence counsel sought to have the jury discharged, she would likely be bound to grant that application.
“If an application was made to discharge the jury based on that submission, it is an application I probably would have to accede to: after eight weeks of evidence,” the judge said.
The trial concluded on Wednesday afternoon. Justice Lonergan has reserved her decision.
