A judge has been informed that a couple accused of killing a teenage daughter did so in search of child custody.
Following a cold case reward over the death of Amber Haigh rising to $1 million, Robert, 64, and Anna Geeves, 63, were caught and charged with murder in 2022.
The 19-year-old mother had disappeared while staying with the elderly couple on their NSW Harden property in 2002.
Haigh, with an intellectual handicap, had been sexually active with Robert.
Claiming custody of a five-month-old kid, Crown Prosecutor Paul Kerr today said the Geeveses killed Haigh.
“Although the Geeves always intended to assume custody and care for the child, they knew Amber had to be taken out of the picture,” he said.
The defense disproved these assertions.
” Both accused must have seen such an act would result in the child being taken from their care in the faintest of suspicions,” public lawyer Paul Coady acting for Robert stated.
Public defender Michael King speaking for Anne said, “Anne’s only concern was to look after the child that Robert had brought into their own relationship, whether she was happy about that or not she did not kill Haigh and nor did she stand by as her husband killed her.”
The pair claimed to have seen Haigh last in June 2002 when they drove her to Campbelltown Railway Station to see her ailing father in hospital.
The pair didn’t mention her missing until two weeks later.
Haigh’s body has never turned up anywhere. Among the list of people scheduled for eight weeks to testify in the judge-only trial is her mother.
Additionally heard by the court will be hidden recordings placed by police in the Geeveses’ house and vehicle.
