What happened to Amber? Mystery over the fate of a young mother who disappeared 22 years ago after the man who fathered her baby and his wife are cleared of murder

The last time anyone accessed Amber Haigh’s bank account was to make a $500 withdrawal from an ATM at Campbelltown in Sydney’s south-west on June 5, 2002 at 8.49pm. 

The last confirmed sighting of the 19-year-old mother was three days earlier and 300km away at Young in the NSW South Western Slopes region.

What happened between those two dates and whether Amber was the person who used the ATM might forever remain unknown after the husband and wife accused of killing her were cleared.

Amber, whose body has never been found, had been living with Robert and Anne Geeves at their Kingsvale property, near Young, before she went missing. 

When Amber was seen for the final time by an independent witness she was with Robert Geeves, an orchard worker who the court heard was previously acquitted of murder and had recently fathered her baby.

After a coronial inquest, two major police investigations and the offer of a million-dollar reward, the Geeveses were charged with Amber’s murder in May 2022 and spent more than two years in prison.

Police alleged the couple, both aged in their early 40s when Amber disappeared, killed her so they could take custody of her five-month-old boy.

Both denied having any such motive or killing Amber, insisting they had driven her to Campbelltown train station the day of the ATM transaction so she could visit her dying father. 

The Geeveses, now both 64, stood trial for 28 days earlier this year in the NSW Supreme Court before Justice Julia Lonergan.

They had chosen not to face a jury, as was their right, and the hearing did not attract widespread media coverage because it took place in Wagga Wagga, midway between Sydney and Melbourne.   

Again, as was their right, the Geeves did not call witnesses in their defence or give sworn testimony. 

Justice Lonergan handed down her judgment on September 16, finding the couple not guilty of Amber’s alleged murder and leaving the intellectually disabled teenager’s fate a mystery.

Justice Lonergan ruled Amber was dead but found it could not be shown beyond a reasonable doubt she was killed by the Geeveses.

The judge rejected the Crown’s proposition the couple used Amber as a ‘surrogate’ so they could take her son and accepted it was possible their version of her last movements was true.

‘The account of this given by the accused is not inherently implausible and is supported by other independent evidence,’ Justice Lonergan said.

Robert and Anne Geeves (above) were charged in May 2022 with murdering Amber Haigh in June 2002. They pleaded not guilty and were acquitted on September 16 

The Crown had also said the Geeveses controlled Amber’s banking and spending but Justice Lonergan said those claims were not supported by the evidence. 

Amber, who had a disrupted childhood in Sydney and also suffered from epilepsy, went to live with an aunt in Kingsvale as a teenager.  

She moved in with the Geeveses, who lived next door to her aunt, in 2000, then found her own flat at Young in October the next year. 

The court heard that Amber, who at 18 was assessed as having the mental age of a 12 or 13-year-old, shifted between her aunt’s place, the Young flat, and the Geeves farm up until she disappeared. 

Justice Lonergan described Amber as a ‘disadvantaged young woman with poor family support’ who had endured a ‘jagged, abusive childhood’.

‘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,’ she 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.’ 

In 2001, Amber began having sex with Robert Geeves.

Their son was born in January 2002 and Amber proved a devoted parent, if lacking the basic skills of motherhood.

Amber began having sex with Robert Geeves (both pictured) after moving into the property he shared with wife Anne. She later gave birth to their son

Crown prosecutor Paul Kerr had contended ‘it was always the intention of the Geeveses to assume custody and care’ of the boy, who was given the pseudonym Ben. 

‘So, the Crown asserts, they killed her,’ Mr Kerr said in his opening address. 

The couple, who had their own son, maintained they drove Amber to Campbelltown on June 5, 2002 to visit her father at Mount Druitt Hospital and she had willingly left her boy in their care.

Amber, who had previously travelled by train when she wanted to go to Sydney, did not visit her father in hospital and the Geeveses said they never saw her again. 

The couple reported Amber missing at Young police station on June 19, two weeks after they said they had dropped her at the train station, by which time any useful CCTV footage could not be retrieved.  

Robert Geeves told police six days after making that report he had not come to them earlier because Amber ‘wasn’t the most reliable person’ and ‘didn’t like police’.

Mr Kerr submitted Anne Geeves had ‘desperately wanted’ another child after three miscarriages and a stillbirth but it was her husband’s past which drew detectives’ attention.  

Police alleged Robert and Anne Geeves, both aged in their 40s when Amber disappeared, killed her so they could take custody of her five-month-old boy

The court heard that in 2006, Robert Geeves had been cleared of the 1993 shooting murder of his pregnant girlfriend Janelle Goodwin, having maintained a .22 rifle discharged accidentally.

In 1987, he was found not guilty of sexual assault after two missing schoolgirls were found on his property a year earlier and one of them made false allegations him. 

Barrister Michael King, acting for Anne Geeves, told Justice Lonergan from the time the couple reported Amber missing they had come under a cloud of suspicion.

‘People in the community around Young have thought that Robert Geeves has been guilty of many things going back into the 1980s,’ Mr King said in his closing submissions.

‘Everyone who would meet him would presume him to be guilty.’

Referring to Amber, Mr King said it had been a ‘very poor decision’ for Robert Geeves to have sex with an intellectually disabled teenager and that led to more community derision.

‘Everything the Geeveses have done has been viewed by everyone who has come across them with this haze of mistrust and suspicion,’ Mr King said.

‘Amber went back and forth between places and people looking for love and solace,’ Justice Lonergan said. ‘She never found it’. Amber Haigh is pictured

Police investigating Amber’s disappearance placed listening devices in the Geeveses’ house and car and there was no incriminating material found on the recordings.

In one taped conversation which took place two days after detectives raided the couple’s farm Anne Geeves said to her husband, ‘This is her fault’.

‘I don’t care anymore, if she comes back, she can pack her stuff and go,’ she told Robert Geeves.

A coronial inquest in 2011 found Amber died as a result of homicide or other misadventure in June 2002.

In 2020, a formal review of the case was conducted under the homicide squad’s unsolved homicide protocols and Strike Force Villamar II began a fresh investigation.

NSW Police announced a reward for information about the cold case had been increased from $100,000 to $1million in April 2022.

A month later, on May 4, Robert and Anne Geeves were arrested. 

Robert Geeves is pictured being arrested by homicide squad detectives in May 2022

At the time, a statement from Amber’s mother Rosalind Wright and sister Melissa Millar-Hodder was released by police.

‘I know in my heart that she would never have left her son,’ Ms Wright said.

Ms Millar-Hodder said her family felt ‘incomplete and lost’ not knowing what had happened to her sister.  

‘Amber, she had a kind, warm, loving soul. She would help anyone in any way,’ Ms Millar-Hodder said.

‘Not able to lay her to rest, not able to pick up the phone or give her hugs one last time; that has been taken away from us.’

Justice Lonergan delivered her judgment in the Supreme Court at Darlinghurst, more than 22 years after Amber disappeared. 

She said the early phase of the police investigation had focused on ‘disproving the Geeveses’ version of events rather than investigating in an objective way Amber’s disappearance’. 

Anne Geeves is pictured being arrested by homicide squad detectives in the NSW Riverina 

As for Robert Geeves having been charged and cleared of serious offences previously, the judge said that was irrelevant.

‘As Mr Geeves was acquitted of both sets of offences, this evidence cannot be used to prove any type of bad character, or tendency to act in any way,’ she said. 

‘Mr Geeves must be given the full effect of his acquittals.’

Justice Lonergan found the couple’s explanation of having last seen Amber when they dropped her off at Campbelltown ‘may be true’. 

‘In those circumstances, I must acquit,’ she said. 

Now that Justice Lonergan has found the Geeveses not guilty of murdering Amber, who did? 

‘If Amber Haigh was not killed by the Geeveses – and there is no direct evidence that she was – this is the greatest tragedy in this case,’ Mr King had said in their defence.

‘That she met someone at the station, or on a train, who lured her and her money away, and then caused her death, and that that person or persons have escaped justice for their actions, escaped even any investigative scrutiny.’