Amber Haigh never made it to Campbelltown on the evening she was allegedly last seen alive, the crown has submitted in its closing submission to the trial over her murder.
Instead, crown prosecutor Paul Kerr said, the teenage mother may have been “alive or dead” in a car that was driven towards Campbelltown railway station, located on Sydney’s southern outskirts, or she was killed along the way and her body dumped.
Haigh, who had an intellectual disability, was 19 when she vanished from the New South Wales 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. Closing submissions in the nine-week trial began on Monday in the supreme court in Wagga Wagga.
The Geeves have consistently maintained they last saw Haigh on 5 June 2002 when they drove her from Kingsvale, in the Riverina, to Campbelltown station, where she intended to catch a train to visit her dying father.
Haigh never arrived at the nearby Mt Druitt hospital to see her father. She has never been seen since.
The last time Haigh was independently sighted was three days earlier, on 2 June, seen with Robert Geeves at her bedsit flat in Young.
No CCTV of the alleged trip to Campbelltown or independent corroboration has been put before the court. But nor has the Geeves’s version of events been disproved, the trial has heard.
A $500 ATM withdrawal from Haigh’s bank account in Campbelltown at 8:49pm that night was not made by Haigh, Kerr told the court, but by Robert Geeves, who Kerr said controlled Haigh’s finances, kept possession of her bank debit card, and knew its pin.
The Geeveses’ insistence they dropped Haigh at Campbelltown station – and Haigh willingly left her five-month-old son in their custody – was one of several “deliberate lies” they have maintained in the decades since Haigh disappeared.
“It is potentially possible that Amber was in the Pajero that Robert Geeves drove to Sydney on 5 June 2002: she may have been alive or dead. Robert Geeves may have murdered her on the way and disposed of her body,” Kerr told the court.
Kerr asserted Haigh never reached Campbelltown, and likely died before leaving the Kingsvale area around the Geeveses’ home. Kerr argued the Geeveses’ assertion that Haigh withdrew money from her account on the evening of 5 June is undermined by lies they told police about not having access to Haigh’s finances.
Kerr told the court the sole purpose of Robert Geeves using Haigh’s bank card in Campbelltown was to “create a narrative” that she had been there, in order to deceive police. Anne Geeves was part of the deliberate deception, he argued.
“The crown says that Amber Haigh didn’t go anywhere near Campbelltown on the 5th of June 2002, she didn’t withdraw any money from the ATM in Queen Street. And Anne Geeves knew these things, because she was a party to the murder of Amber Haigh.
“Why? So she could hopefully have custody of [Amber’s baby], a child she so desperately wanted. Her claims that she was too old were more than just nonsense, they were deliberate lies.”
Kerr told the court the trial had revealed “the true character of Robert Geeves”.
The trial has heard extensive evidence over Geeves’s history. In 1986, he was charged with sexual offences against two missing schoolgirls who were found on his property. He was acquitted of sexual offences, but convicted of hindering a police investigation. He was charged with murder over the 1993 death of former partner, Janelle Goodwin, who died from a gunshot wound to the face – Geeves said sustained during an argument – before her body was tied up, wrapped in a sheet with a bag on her head, and hidden in a shed for two days. Geeves was acquitted of murder.
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“The crown says he is a violent and manipulative man,” Kerr told the court. “He is a man who expects to get what he wants, irrespective of what is right, legally or morally, he is a man who was prepared to manipulate and exploit a young, vulnerable, intellectually disabled girl who had already suffered sexual abuse and who was easily led.”
Kerr said Geeves manipulated Haigh into a sexual relationship – often marked by acts of violence – which resulted in her becoming pregnant.
“After which the Geeves may have realised that this could prove an opportunity for them to have the child that Anne Geeves so desperately wanted.”
Kerr said Anne Geeves “was not immune” to Robert Geeves’s domination.
“But she stood by him and she lied with him. She backed up his lies when the police came knocking at their door, and with him she discussed the lies they could tell police that would hopefully explain their movements.”
The crown case has been that the Geeves deliberately impregnated Haigh in order to be able to take her baby from her, and have her “removed from the equation” by killing her.
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.
Lawyers for Robert and Anne Geeves have not yet begun their closing submissions to the court. But they have argued during the trial that the case against the couple, now two decades old, is deeply flawed.
Michael King, acting for Anne Geeves, said his client did not kill Haigh, and had “no motive to kill Amber, or even wish her dead”.
King said others in the community – who disapproved of the Geeves’ relationship with Haigh – were “all too quick to point the finger” at the couple when she disappeared.
“Everything they did was viewed through a haze of mistrust and suspicion,” he told the court.
Paul Coady, defence counsel for Robert Geeves, told the court his client had “denied being in any way involved in her disappearance or murder”. He said “community distaste” at Robert Geeves’s relationship with “a much younger woman with intellectual disabilities” fuelled “gossip and innuendo”.
“Many witnesses harboured grievances or suspicions, particularly against Mr Geeves.”
Closing submissions are expected to conclude this week, before a decision in the judge-alone trial by justice Julia Lonergan.