Amber Haigh murder trial: how a ‘red herring’ witness and poor policing hampered the hunt for answers
Amber Haigh was a 19-year-old new mother besotted with her infant son when she vanished without a trace from New South Wales’ Riverina region in June 2002.
She has not been seen since. She has never contacted her family, or telephoned the son she adored. She has never filled her life-sustaining medication prescription, nor accessed her bank account.
No CCTV footage showing her final movements has ever been found, nor has her body ever been recovered.
Related: Robert and Anne Geeves found not guilty of murder of missing teenager Amber Haigh
But, more than two decades on, there is still no closure for Haigh’s family. There are still no answers.
On Monday, Robert Samuel Geeves, 64, and his wife, Anne Margaret Geeves, also 64, were each found not guilty of murder in the NSW supreme court. They had spent more than two years in prison awaiting trial, but are now free. They have consistently maintained they never harmed Haigh, nor had anything to do with her disappearance.
“Mr and Mrs Geeves are not guilty,” Justice Julia Lonergan told the court, “and ought be released from the dock”.
The verdict was a moment of acute intensity inside the packed, hushed courtroom, and the decision was met with anger from some: one member of the public gallery stormed out of court and screamed wildly. Family members of Amber Haigh were seen in tears outside the court, consoling each other with hugs.
In her summary judgment read to the supreme court, Lonergan said Haigh’s short life was one marked by disruption and disadvantage. She was, the judge said, “physically attacked and abused” by people she trusted and made to feel unsafe by her own family.
“How terrible that must have felt for a vulnerable, loving young woman carrying a life-threatening illness, the deep scars of a jagged, abusive childhood and cognitive and processing difficulties.
“There was little sign, in the sea of evidence led in this case, that Amber was ever shown the unconditional love and support she needed and deserved.”
Haigh was a vulnerable young woman who was naive about relationships and susceptible to exploitation, the judge said.
“Amber went back and forth between places and people, looking for love and solace. She never found it. She was still looking for it when she disappeared.”
An ‘unreliable’ witness
Haigh, who had an intellectual disability and epilepsy, moved from Sydney to the Riverina to live with her great-aunt as a teenager. She began a sexual relationship with Robert Geeves – 22 years her senior – moving into the house he shared with his wife.
She bore him a son in January 2002.
The last independent sighting of Amber Haigh was on 2 June 2002, when she was seen – in the company of Robert Geeves – in the town of Young.
The Geeves say they last saw her on the evening of 5 June, when they drove her from their home in Kingsvale to Campbelltown railway station on the southern outskirts of Sydney, where Haigh was to catch a train to visit her dying father in hospital.
The Geeves told police Haigh willingly left her young son in their care, that she gave her child a kiss and a cuddle and told him she would be home soon, before walking off towards the front entrance to the station.
Haigh never arrived at the nearby Mt Druitt hospital to see her father. No trace of her has been found since. No CCTV footage was ever uncovered to confirm she was ever at the station.
The only evidence linking Haigh to Campbelltown on the evening of 5 June was an ATM withdrawal of $500 made from her account at 8:49pm in Campbelltown.
The prosecution alleged the Geeves controlled Haigh’s finances and made the withdrawal themselves and that Haigh was not present. But the judge said the transaction – first making a balance inquiry, before taking out almost all of the money in the account – was consistent with Haigh’s own behaviour.
The Geeves said that after dropping Haigh at the railway station, they drove straight home, arriving home after midnight. It was a fortnight without any contact before the Geeves reported Haigh missing.
Justice Lonergan said she was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Amber Haigh was dead. Haigh has not made contact with any members of her family, accessed her bank account, or refilled her prescription for epilepsy medication since June of 2002. She has not registered for any government services or travelled on a passport. There is no evidence she committed suicide.
But the judge was critical of the police investigation into Haigh’s disappearance and said the initial “focus of the investigation … was on disproving the Geeveses’ version of events rather than investigating in an objective way”.
Justice Lonergan said the officer in charge of the initial investigation, Det Sgt Gaetano Crea – who gave evidence in the trial – “presented as a supremely confident individual who was not prepared to let evidence get in the way of his own belief as to whom he thought was responsible for Amber’s disappearance”.
“He did not identify any other suspect as being investigated.”
And the judge was critical, too, of the crown prosecution case, which relied upon a witness she described in her summary judgment as a “red herring”. That witness came to police in 2021 – 19 years after Haigh’s disappearance – with a version of events purporting to undermine the Geeveses’ account of Haigh’s last known movements.
James Arber told police in 2021 he had seen the Geeveses with Haigh and her baby on the afternoon of 5 June 2002. Later that day he said he saw the Geeveses again, but this time they were alone with the baby, without Haigh.
Lonergan said Arber’s account had been found – even before the trial started – “to be unreliable” and untrue.
“It is surprising that the crown chose to call James Arber at all in circumstances where the police’s own investigation had catastrophically undermined, and in a key respect, disproved, his manipulated final statement.”
Justice Lonergan said the prosecution had sought to prove two “indispensable facts” in its case: that the Geeveses had a shared motive to kill Haigh in order to assume control of her baby; and that the Geeveses did not drive Haigh to Campbelltown railway station on the evening of 5 June 2002.
“I am not persuaded that either indispensable intermediate fact is proved beyond reasonable doubt. I have decided that the version of events provided by the accused may be true. In those circumstances, I must acquit.
“For all these reasons, the verdict I must enter in respect of both Robert Geeves and Anne Geeves is not guilty.”
The question of past acquittals
In a nine-week judge-alone trial, the prosecution argued Haigh had been preyed upon and manipulated by the Geeveses, who impregnated Haigh in order to take her baby from her and then had her “removed from the equation” by killing her.
The court has previously heard the Geeveses 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.
Crown prosecutor Paul Kerr told the court: “The crown case theory is that it was always the intention of the Geeves[es] 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.”
Related: Who cared? The disappearance of Amber Haigh, part 8 - podcast
The crown case focused, too, on Robert Geeves’s history. Geeves was charged with murder in 1993 after his then girlfriend Janelle Goodwin had been killed during an alleged drunken fight, “shot through the nose and killed in a struggle with a gun”.
The court heard that Geeves allegedly put a plastic bag over Goodwin’s head, covered her body in a sheet and tied it up, before reporting her death two days later. Geeves was discharged at committal, then recharged with murder before ultimately being acquitted at trial.
Geeves was also charged with sexual offences over two 13-year-old schoolgirls who had disappeared in 1986 and were discovered weeks later at Geeves’s property. Geeves was acquitted on those charges, but convicted of hindering a police investigation.
But, the crown argued, despite these acquittals, the charges revealed the “true character” of Robert Geeves as “a violent and manipulative man”.
The judge rejected that argument, saying Geeves was entitled to the “full effects of those acquittals”.
“This evidence cannot be used to prove any type of bad character, or tendency to act in any way,” she said in her judgment.
Lawyers for Robert and Anne Geeves had argued the case against the couple, now two decades old, was deeply flawed and that there was simply no evidence linking the Geeveses to Haigh’s disappearance.
The defence barrister 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 Robert Geeves’s 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.”
Robert and Anne Geeves – who assumed pseudonyms in the years before their 2022 arrest – were ordered to be released from custody.
