Listening devices planted in the home of a New South Wales couple accused of murder reveal the pair discussing allegations the husband tied up and raped his teenage lover while his wife filmed. They make no admissions on the clandestine recordings but say, “there’s not enough evidence to back it up”.
Amber 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.
Now Haigh’s lover and the father of her 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.
The Geeveses told police they last saw Haigh on the evening of 5 June 2002, when they drove her from their home in Kingsvale to Campbelltown railway station, from where Haigh was to catch a train to visit her dying father in hospital. Haigh never arrived. No trace of her has been found since.
The last independent sighting of Haigh was three days earlier, in the company of Robert Geeves on 2 June 2002, in the town of Young.
While the Geeveses were being interviewed by police in July 2002, detectives installed listening devices inside their home and car. The job was botched – including the main device being placed next to a microwave which distorted the sound – so much of the recordings are unintelligible or inaudible.
Edited and transcribed contents of the tapes were played to the court: these are contested at key points, but much of the recorded evidence is not in dispute.
Police told the Geeveses they were suspects in Haigh’s disappearance from the first weeks of their investigation. In the tapes, the couple can be heard complaining about harassment from police who “can’t find nothing”.
At one point in the tape, Anne and Robert Geeves are discussing their separate police interrogations by detectives at Young police station.
The couple complain that the police had kept them up late and did not allowed them food, while repeatedly questioning them over Haigh’s disappearance: an attempt “to grind us down”, Robert Geeves says.
As they discuss the police questions, Anne Geeves says: “they didn’t bring up the videotapes”.
Robert Geeves replies indistinctly, before Anne Geeves continues: “They didn’t bring up the fact that you raped her while I took photos.”
At another point in the tape played to the court, the couple can be heard discussing the allegations against them with a third person, whose identity is unknown.
Anne Geeves says: “They didn’t have enough evidence. What they were saying has happened, she didn’t have enough evidence to back it up.”
The third person replies: “What were they actually saying? What are the grounds for?”
Robert Geeves says: “That I tied Amber up and I raped her. Sky is the limit. Sky is the absolute limit.”
Later in the tape, Robert and Anne Geeves are again discussing the allegation with a third party, who is not a lawyer.
Anne Geeves says the allegation has been made that “every guy she [Haigh] has been with has raped her. Robert’s raped her several times and I’ve watched with a video camera.”
The unidentified person says: “Did the cops search for video cameras? Did they have a search warrant?”
“No,” Anne Geeves replies, “they just came here the other day and wanted to look … in Amber’s room.”
The third party tells the Geeveses that if they were “the prime suspects” police would be searching their entire house. “You aren’t the prime suspects then.”
“Well we are,” Anne Geeves replies, “because we were the last ones to be seen with her. They got no evidence and they can’t get any because there’s nothing to get.”
At a separate point in the recording, Anne Geeves says the police “can’t find nothing”.
“Well we haven’t done anything to find,” she says to her husband. “How long are they going to keep harassing us?”
The court heard when the couple were arrested in 2022, police told Anne Geeves that detectives believed the Geeveses were jointly responsible for killing Haigh and together used pigs to dispose of her body.
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Anne Geeves denied killing Haigh, saying she had last seen her alive in Campbelltown: “I’m just hoping that she’s still down there somewhere and she’ll come back”.
A number of witnesses in this trial have earlier given evidence that Haigh disclosed to them that Robert Geeves would tie her up and have sex with her.
The prosecution closed its case on Friday. Counsel for Robert Geeves and for Anne Geeves did not call any witnesses and told the court they would rely on the evidence already tendered in the trial.
Robert and Anne Geeves chose not to give evidence in their defence, as is their legal right.
Closing submissions begin Monday 12 August. More than 130 exhibits have been tendered in this trial, including witness statements, police reports, Christmas and birthday cards given by the Geeveses to Haigh and handwritten letters penned by Haigh in the weeks and months before she disappeared.
Also tendered into evidence are videos of search warrants executed on Haigh’s bedsit flat in Young, and the Geeveses’ property in Kingsvale, as well as recorded police interviews with Robert and Anne Geeves, interviewed separately.
Court hears Amber was ‘removed from equation’
Haigh’s unresolved disappearance has been an enduring mystery in the Riverina, an agricultural region of southwestern NSW.
Her 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.
The prosecution alleged that once Haigh’s baby was born, they sought to have her “removed from the equation” by killing her. The court has heard Haigh “adored” her five-month-old son and would “never let [him] out of her sight”.
The Geeveses told police they last saw Haigh on 5 June 2002 after dropping her at Campbelltown railway station. They insist they’ve 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.”
Lawyers for Robert and Anne Geeves have argued the case against the couple 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.