Fearful of having her baby taken from her, Amber Haigh asked Robert Geeves to sign a handwritten agreement not to take the child, days before the infant was born, a court has heard.
In exchange for this, Geeves – the father of Haigh’s baby – said he made her promise not to allow her extended family “anywhere near” the baby.
Haigh, who suffered an intellectual impairment, was 19 when she vanished from the New South Wales Riverina region in June 2002, leaving behind her five-month-old son.
The 64-year-old Geeves, and his wife, Anne Geeves, also 64, are on trial for murder in the NSW supreme court. Both have pleaded not guilty.
The prosecution alleged that the Geeveses – unable to have another baby – used Haigh as a “surrogate” mother before killing her to take the baby. In recorded interviews with police – played before the court this week – both Robert and Anne Geeves denied they had wanted to take Haigh’s baby from her.
The court heard this week Geeves and Haigh signed the handwritten agreement in Young’s Mill Tavern just days before her son was born. The Guardian has obtained a copy of the document, tendered in evidence before the court.
Written in blue ink on lined paper, the agreement “dated 4th day January 2002” states: “I Robert Samuel Geeves agree not to take Amber Michelle Haigh’s baby due to be born in February 2002 only if she agrees to the following:”
The letter goes on to stipulate that the baby was “never” to be taken “anywhere near or associate with” a list of extended family members.
“If she does, the agreement will be broken. This is to protect the child from any sort of abuse from the above mentioned.”
Both Geeves and Haigh appear to have signed the document.
The people mentioned in the agreement are extended family members of Haigh’s with whom she lived before she started a sexual relationship with Geeves. At the time, they lived on the property neighbouring the Geeveses, the court has heard.
In a police interview conducted days after Haigh was reported missing in June of that year, Robert Geeves was questioned about why he signed the agreement with the teenager.
He told police: “Amber wanted an agreement signed that I wouldn’t take [the child] off Amber.”
He said he didn’t want his child “anywhere near” Haigh’s family, whom he disliked intensely and with whom she had an at-times difficult relationship.
In his police interview, played to court, Geeves cited specific concerns: Paul Harding, Haigh’s cousin, had a sexual relationship with her and impregnated her (the pregnancy was terminated). Haigh had taken out an apprehended violence order against Jackie Cash, her cousin, over a violent incident.
Geeves told the detectives investigating Haigh’s disappearance that family members were thieves, liars and ratbags.
“I didn’t see any of those people in that agreement as fit people for any baby or child to be near,” he said.
A key focus of the prosecution case has been the Geeves’s alleged desire to take custody of Haigh’s baby, and her fears, before and after her son was born, that he would be taken from her by the Geeves.
In her second recorded police interview in July 2002, which was played for the court this week, Anne Geeves could be seen holding Haigh’s son for the duration of the interrogation.
Police told Anne Geeves they had “received information” that she had told Haigh: “If you don’t look after the baby, you will lose it, I’ll take it.”
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She denied saying those words, and told investigators she did not want to take custody of the child her husband had fathered with Haigh. The young mother had been missing for more than a month by the time of the interview.
“If Amber doesn’t come back, I’ll look after him. But I’m hoping she comes back. I’m getting old.”
In his police interview, Robert Geeves told police he did not want to take custody of the child, but that Haigh feared that he and his wife did want sole custody of the child.
“She had a real deep concern. I’d say it appeared to be more before he was born than after he was born. She was really stressing out over it.”
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.
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 a Sydney hospital, and had not heard from her since.
They told police that Haigh willingly left her infant son in their custody.
The Geeveses reported Haigh missing a fortnight later, on 19 June 2002, the court has heard.
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.”
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, before Justice Julia Lonergan, continues in Wagga Wagga.