A couple from the Australian state of New South Wales has been cleared of murder charges 22 years after a young woman went missing. 19-year-old Amber Haigh disappeared in June, 2002, and has never been found.
Fingers started being pointed to the last people to see Haigh alive, Robert and Anne Geeves, both of whom are 64 years old today. The Geeveses were charged with murder on the suspicion that they killed Haigh because Robert Geeves impregnated the young woman, and the couple wanted her baby for their own.
Despite the popularity of this speculation about motive, Justice Julia Lonergan said that murder cases are not resolved based on “rumour, speculation, or suspicion.”
All along the Geeveses have maintained that they took Amber Haigh to a train station 186 miles from their home on the day she was last seen. All three had been living together at the Geeveses home. They dropped her off, they said, so she could pay a visit to her dying father.
An extensive investigation never found Amber Haigh or her body, but the prosecution had a theory. They believed that the couple had “manipulated” Haigh into bearing a child for Robert Geeves, and the couple decided to end her life and take the baby when Amber Haigh would not agree to give up custody.
During the murder trial, prosecutors argued that although the Geeveses had an adult son, that they “desperately” wanted to have another child but could not because of a series of miscarriages and a stillbirth. The defense team countered that there was never any truth to this theory of murder to steal a baby, and that the police investigation was riddled with problems from the get-go.
Robert Geeves’ own past may have contributed to the suspicion against him. He had previously been acquitted of murdering a former girlfriend (she turned up dead with a gunshot wound to her face on Geeves’ property), and had been acquitted of sexual assault against two girls. The Geeveses’ defense attorney said this reputation created a “presumption of guilt” unfairly against the couple.
Still, many witnesses told the court over the course of the months-long trial that Amber Haigh had been exploited by the couple. Some testified that Amber Haigh claimed Robert Geeves had gotten her drunk, then tied her up and had sex with her. The couple’s own son, Robbie, told the court that his parents had come to his house in the middle of the night and asked him to see Amber Haigh’s newborn as his own “little brother.”
In the end, the judge said there simply was not enough evidence to tie the couple to the presumed murder.
