A pregnant Amber Haigh said she needed to make a will because the father of her baby had threatened he would “end her life” after she gave birth, a court has heard.
Giving evidence in the supreme court on Tuesday, a former paralegal said Haigh told her she needed a will to stop the father of her child taking custody of the baby, instead nominating her aunt to take the child.
Haigh was a 19-year-old mother when she vanished without trace from the New South Wales Riverina in July 2002, leaving behind her five-month-old son.
Now, 22 years since her disappearance, the father of her child, 64-year-old Robert Geeves, and his wife, Anne Geeves, are on trial for her murder. Both have pleaded not guilty.
In the fourth week of the Geeveses’ trial for murder, the former paralegal Rebecca Pisaturo-McMillan gave evidence that Haigh, then four months pregnant, walked into a law firm in the NSW town of Young in August 2001.
Pisaturo-McMillan met with Haigh, and a file note made that day by Pisaturo-McMillan was read into evidence:
“Is four months pregnant, would like to make enforceable in event anything happen to her: child to be awarded to aunty and two cousins (16 and 17 years), ? [question] as to price (father in prison, drug addict, mother unknown).
“Father of child has been in jail. Murder?”
In her evidence-in-chief, Pisaturo-McMillan told the court in detail about the conversation she said she had had with Haigh at the law firm’s offices:
“When she came in, I asked her how we could help her. She said she needed a will. During our conversation she mentioned that she was pregnant and requiring a will for the safeguard of her unborn child.
“She made a comment to me that she was going to die. My reaction was to be lighthearted and say, ‘well, we’re all going to die, you’re making a will, obviously’.
“And then she explained to me that she suffered epilepsy, to which I responded to her, ‘there are medications and things can be done and we shouldn’t expect to die from epilepsy’.
“The conversation grew from there. And that’s when she told me about her fears. She was very straightforward and adamant that once her child was born, her life would be taken.
“She told me who it would be taken by, not in name, but in her mind, the equivalent, which was a description of who that person was.”
Pisaturo-McMillan was asked: “Who did she describe?”
“She described that it would be the father of the child, who had told her, if she was ever pregnant, that she would not live beyond the birth of that child – that he would end her life,” she told the court.
“She was quite convinced that this would happen. It wasn’t if or but or a maybe.”
Haigh also said the father of her child had threatened her that he had been in jail for murder previously, the court heard.
The law firm, Carmody Crampton Solicitors, ultimately drew up a will for Haigh, nominating her aunt Patricia Haigh as guardian of her child.
Pisaturo-McMillan was a witness to Haigh signing it.
Under cross-examination, it was put to Pisaturo-McMillan that she had misremembered the allegation Haigh might be murdered: “Amber Haigh never said that to you.”
“I deny that 100%. She categorically did,” Pisaturo-McMillan said.
“It has scarred my memory.”
Pisaturo-McMillan said she passed on Haigh’s disclosure to a solicitor in her office, and defended not reporting it to police.
“I didn’t speak to law enforcement. I spoke to the legal professionals within the office.”
Pisaturo-McMillan said she was “quite certain” she told Ross Crampton, the solicitor for whom she worked, as well as other staff in the office.
Crampton also gave evidence Tuesday morning.
In the witness box, he was not asked whether Pisaturo-McMillan relayed to him Haigh’s concerns about being killed.
He told the court he remembered Haigh saying to him she wanted a will in case “anything happens to me”, but he did not attach any “sinister meaning” to her comment at the time the will was signed, in August 2001.
He called police about his interactions with Haigh after reading in a newspaper in 2002 that she was missing.
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 a five-month-old son who the court has heard she “adored” and “never let out of her sight”.
Haigh’s body has never been found, but a coroner has ruled she died from “homicide or misadventure”.
The prosecution has alleged in court that Haigh – described in court as “very easily misled” – was used by Robert and Anne Geeves as a “surrogate mother” because they wanted another baby.
It is alleged that once Haigh’s baby was born, 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 that evening from Kingsvale to Campbelltown railway station so she could visit her dying father in hospital, and have not heard from her since.
They told police Haigh willingly left her infant son in their custody.
The Geeveses reported Haigh missing a fortnight later, on 19 June 2002.
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 crown case theory is that it was always the intention of the Geeveses 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,” crown prosecutor Paul Kerr said.
The crown case is circumstantial, the court has heard, but in the absence of forensic evidence over Haigh’s disappearance, the prosecution will rely on witness testimony from people who knew Haigh, and were concerned she was being exploited and abused by Robert and Anne Geeves.
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’ 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.
