More than two decades after young mother Amber Haigh disappeared without trace, the long-delayed trial over her alleged murder has been further postponed, after one of the people accused of killing her was too ill to attend court.
Robert Samuel Geeves, 64, and Anne Margaret Geeves, 63, are accused of murdering their then 19-year-old housemate, Amber Haigh, sometime in 2002. They have pleaded not guilty.
Haigh’s disappearance has been an enduring public mystery in the Harden area of New South Wales’ Riverina, where she was living at the time.
But on Monday morning in the supreme court in Wagga Wagga, as Robert Geeves was brought into court wearing a prison-issue green tracksuit, his wife, Anne, was nowhere to be seen. The pair have been on remand since their arrest.
Justice Julia Lonergan said the court had not been told until five minutes before the eight-week murder trial was scheduled to begin that Anne Geeves was unavailable.
“At five to 10 this morning, we were first notified about the unavailability – well, asserted unavailability – of Anne Jeeves,” Lonergan told the court. “Apparently, an email was sent on Friday that did not reach our chambers because it was not correctly addressed.
“So the first thing we heard about this problem was at five to 10. Since then, I’ve been forwarded a medical certificate that’s entirely inadequate and uninformative.”
Geeves lawyers told the court they had been unable to contact Geeves for a number of days.
The court heard she was at Silverwater Correctional Centre in Sydney and had recently been discharged from hospital. She was suffering respiratory illnesses, including bacterial pneumonia, and would not be well enough to attend court until at least the end of the week.
Lonergan adjourned the court until Thursday for an update on Anne Geeves’ availability.
Amber Haigh, who had an intellectual disability and was estimated to have the mental ability of a 13-year-old, had a disrupted and itinerant upbringing. She was described by relatives as “loving and carrying” but also “easily led” and “vulnerable”.
Haigh was aged 19 and the mother of a five-month-old son when she disappeared without trace from country NSW in June 2002.
The Geeveses told police they had driven Haigh to Campbelltown railway station on the evening of 5 June and didn’t hear from her again.They reported her missing a fortnight later.
In 2011, nine years after her disappearance, the state deputy coroner, Scott Mitchell, found that Haigh was dead “and that she died probably in early June 2002”.
“The evidence,” Mitchell found, “does not permit me to be more specific as to the cause or manner of her death or to say where she died.”
The coroner recommended the case remain live and be sent “to the unsolved homicide squad for further investigation”.
The trial, set down for eight weeks, will be heard without a jury.
At the 2011 inquest, Mitchell said Haigh was “entitled to be cared for and protected”. “She was looking for love and acceptance … Her sad death has robbed her little boy of his mother … What happened was a tragedy.”
In 2007, the NSW government offered $100,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction over Haigh’s disappearance. In April 2022 that reward was increased to $1m. The Geeveses were arrested eight days later.
