by David Murray
About the Book
How did a father with no criminal history come to be on trial for the brutal murder of his wife?
It began with a phone call to Brisbane police on 20 April 2012. Allison, wife of real estate agent Gerard Baden-Clay, was missing.
When investigating officers arrived at the family home, in one of the city’s wealthiest suburbs, a neatly dressed Gerard was about to send the couple’s three daughters off to school.
Scratches on his face were shaving cuts, he told them. Police weren’t so sure and opened one of Australia’s most high-profile investigations.
Ten days after Gerard reported Allison’s disappearance, the body of the former beauty queen was discovered on a creek bank 14 kilometres from home.
The Murder of Allison Baden-Clay is written by the investigative journalist who covered the case from the start. It weaves together exclusive interviews and police and court records to explain how an upstanding family man with no criminal history received a life sentence for murder. It’s a story of love, lust, image, ambition and marriage. It’s also a story about everyday choices and their consequences.
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Map
Part I – Allison and Gerard
The bridge
Where are you?
Ballerina
First love
Second thoughts
The decision
A friend in need
Right to silence
Scout’s honour
Meet the Clays
Schoolboy
Accountant
’Til death do us part
Honeymoon’s over
Setback
Boom
Keeping it in the family
Sold
All’s fair in love and real estate
The gold standard
Here’s my card
Brookfield
Red lights, blue ribbons and idle banter
The real estate expert
Toni McHugh
Field signals
Secret’s out
Dear diary
Conference call
The office
Happy anniversary
Bruce Overland
Storm brewing
Flood
Aftermath
The last to know
Broke and broken
I’m yours
Fifteen minutes
Final hours
Part II – The vanishing
Tzvetkoffs
Shout, scream, thump, screech
Tangled web
Scraps
Screams
Tennis
Kholo Creek
Part III – Investigation
Missing
This is all routine
Criminal Investigation Branch
Legal advice
Operation Kilo Intrigue
Forward command post
Test match
Newsroom
Shithouse
Bloodstain
Crash
Please help us
A little bit hurt
Nightmare
Found
Bringing her home
Death puzzle
Pandora’s box
Families divided
Flowers for Allison
No stone unturned
’Net detectives
Truth to tell
Arrest
Part IV – Trial
Phone a friend
Bombed out
Herbarium
Glitches
Herbarium II
Suicide theory
Committal
A tale of two husbands
Trial begins
Nicest guy in the world
Last song
Battle lines
Mistress
Building the case
Death of a salesman
The wait
Outpouring
Dear Gerard
Legacy
Part V – Appeal
The law is an ass
The people v the establishment
Vindication
The law
Epilogue
Picture Section
Acknowledgements
Notes
About the Author
Copyright Notice
For Catriona, Ned and Joe
PART I – ALLISON AND GERARD
The bridge
The sun had yet to break the horizon, but a soft glow was lighting the morning. Along the banks of Kholo Creek, creatures were beginning to stir. Above, the rest of the world was waking too. Cars began rattling across the concrete-and-steel bridge spanning the creek. Wildlife heading to the water below had to negotiate a new presence that day. It was a woman – arms tangled in her jumper, running shoes laced. In the night her killer had come, leaving her on the muddy banks of this unremarkable little creek.
The Brisbane River snakes for more than 300 kilometres through south-east Queensland to empty into Moreton Bay. In 1823, New South Wales governor Sir Thomas Brisbane dispatched explorer John Oxley north to find a place to settle Sydney’s worst convicts. Oxley, with the unexpected help of some shipwrecked convicts, found a broad waterway. He named it the Brisbane River, and a city rose on its banks.
Kholo Creek is a tiny tributary that feeds into the vast brown river before it wends its way through the CBD. Today, Kholo Creek Bridge spans the waterway, a 14-metre-high structure that supports an endless stream of cars, trucks and motor-bikes travelling along Mt Crosby Road. Underneath, two large, ugly concrete pipes supply water to houses and businesses in the east. Steep creek banks and thick undergrowth keep bush-walkers away, while a fallen tree at the creek mouth renders it impassable at low tide. Few had the inclination or the means to venture up Kholo Creek. So the woman lay there, in plain view, yet unseen.
As the sun rose on that morning, 14 kilometres away, at her Brookfield home, the woman’s absence triggered anxiety: when the three young Baden-Clay girls awoke, their mum, Allison, was nowhere to be seen. The worried girls had breakfast, got dressed and were shuttled off to school. By nightfall she still wasn’t there.
Since childhood, Allison had been afraid of the dark, and as day turned to night Kholo Creek turned pitch black, with no street lights in sight. The headlights of cars whizzing back and forth on Mt Crosby Road cut through the darkness, but their beams did not reach down to Allison. Small fish breaking the surface of the creek, a lizard or snake rustling unseen through the undergrowth – these were her only witnesses.
With each passing hour, traces of her killer were lost to the earth. As the tide rose and fell, the water lapped her body. On the eighth night the rain came. It was a cloudburst that drenched the ground, parched from months of blue skies. Allison lay under the bridge but wind swept the deluge over her. Rivulets ran down the bank to the creek, washing more traces of him from her clothes, her body, her fingernails.
Somewhere, her killer was warm and dry. The sound of the heavy rain outside brought comfort. It would wash her clean. Perhaps even wash her away. Muddy brown floodwaters frothed, bubbled and gushed down the creek, gathering pace as they raced towards the Brisbane River. But stubbornly, steadfastly, Allison did not move. She stayed as if waiting for someone to find her.
Where are you?
Friday 20 April 2012
6.20 am
Gerard Baden-Clay tapped out a message on his iPhone, exclamation marks lending it a cheery tone: ‘Good morning! Hope you slept well? Where are you? None of the girls are up yet! Love G.’
Gerard would say later he had woken just after 6 am. His wife, Allison, was not in bed. He padded through their house looking for her before deciding she must have headed out for an early-morning stroll. The couple’s daughters, aged ten, eight and five, were waking.
In the ensuite of the master bedroom, Gerard lathered his face with shaving foam. When his middle daughter called out, he rushed into her room with a cloud of foam on his face. Surprised to be greeted this way, she wanted to know where her mother was.
‘She’s gone for a walk,’ Gerard said, hurrying back to the bathroom to shave.
When she saw him next, the foam was gone, revealing a trail of angry scratches streaking down his right cheek. Daddy had cut himself shaving, he told her, asking her to play nursemaid and help put a bandaid on the wounds.
Together, they went through to wake the other two girls so they could begin getting ready for school.
Where was she? Again, Gerard tried calling Allison’s phone but got no response. His wife was running out of time if she wanted to make a conference in the city that morning. He typed out another text, still with the jaunty exclamation marks: ‘Al, getting concerned. [The elder girls] now up. I’m dressed and about to make lunches. Please just text me back or call! Love G.’
There was no reply. He phoned his parents at their nearby home. Within minutes his father and sister were on their way to help with a search of the local streets. When they came up with nothing, Gerard decided to hit the panic button, about an hour after he had woken to find his wife gone. He was around the corner from his home when he phoned 000.
7.15 am
Operator:
Police Emergency. What’s your location?
Gerard:
Ah, good morning. Brookfield.
Operator:
Whereabouts in Brookfield, sir?
Gerard:
Ah, Brookfield Road, Brookfield.
Operator:
And what’s happening there?
Gerard:
Um, I, I don’t want to be alarmist. I tried the 131 number [the Policelink line] but, um, it went on forever.
Operator:
Yeah.
Gerard:
My, my wife isn’t home. Um … I don’t know where she is.
Operator:
Okay … when did you last see her, sir?
Gerard:
Um … last night … I went to bed. And I got up, ah, this morning and she, she wasn’t there. And that’s not unusual. She, she often goes for a walk in the morning.
Operator:
Yeah.
Gerard:
Um, I’ve texted her and called her a number of times. I think she has her phone with her.
Operator:
Yeah. What time does she normally get back when she goes for a walk?
Gerard:
Well, this morning she, she was planning to, she has a seminar in the city, so she was planning to leave by, you know, about seven.
Operator:
Okay.
Gerard:
And she’s not back home yet. I’m now driving the streets. My, my father’s come over and – to look after my children.
Operator:
Yeah, okay. So what was, what’s your name first of all?
Gerard:
I’m sorry. Um, Gerard. G-E-R-A-R-D.
Operator:
And your last name Gerard?
Gerard:
Baden-Clay. B-A-D-E-N hyphen C-L-A-Y.
Operator:
And what’s your wife’s name?
Gerard:
Allison with two Ls.
Operator:
Okay. And how old is Allison?
Gerard:
Um, um, 44.
Operator:
Okay. So you didn’t see her before she got up this morning?
Gerard:
No.
Operator:
All right. And how tall is your wife?
Gerard:
Um about five six, something like that, I think.
Operator:
Okay. And what colour hair’s she got?
Gerard:
She just had it done last night. It’s sort of blondie, brownie, reddish.
Operator:
Yep. And how long is it?
Gerard:
Ah, shoulder length.
Operator:
Okay. What I’m going to [do is] put a broadcast on for the police to keep a look-out for your wife. We’ll get the police to come and see you.
Gerard:
I need to go home and get the kids ready for school.
Operator:
Yeah, all right, Gerard. I’ll get the police to come and see you.
8 am
Constables Kieron Ash and Leah Hammond were on the road when their radio sprang to life with their call sign, M466. Their instructions were to check in with Gerard Baden-Clay about his absent wife. Every year, 6500 people are reported missing in Queensland. The vast majority are found safe and sound in the first 48 hours. There was no reason to suspect this would be any different.
Ash and Hammond saw the house was tucked between a small church and a childcare centre in Brookfield Road. A woman was walking three young girls down the front steps of the house, and for a moment it might have seemed the missing mum had turned up after all.
Gerard, close on the woman’s heels, walked over to greet the officers. An older man came up behind him and casually put an arm over his shoulder. Gerard introduced his father, Nigel Baden-Clay. And the woman with the girls was his sister, Olivia Walton, not his wife, he explained. She was taking his daughters to school. Gerard was smartly dressed for a day at work – long pants, business shirt, tie and cufflinks. But what commanded the officers’ attention were the painful-looking scratches trailing down his right cheek to his jawline. They were immediately on alert.
‘Is it okay if we speak to you in private?’ asked burly, bald-headed Ash.
Gerard asked his father to wait inside; Olivia left to take the girls to school.
Alone with the officers, Gerard expanded on what he’d told the emergency operator. There was nothing unusual to report from the previous night. His wife, Allison, was on the couch watching The Footy Show when he went to bed at 10 pm. By morning she had simply vanished.
Allison usually went for a 2-kilometre walk each morning, Gerard told the officers. He presumed that’s where she was when he woke to find her gone. However, he told police he couldn’t be certain she had gone to bed because she sometimes slept on the couch or in another room.
Ash’s eyes were fixed on the red marks on Gerard’s face. He asked if everything was all right between him and his wife.
‘Look, there is something I should tell you,’ Gerard said. Speaking softly, he told the officers he had been having an affair. Things weren’t great at home. Allison had found out about his cheating and, although they were seeing a marriage counsellor, she no longer trusted him. He wanted the information kept strictly confidential – his father and sister did not know.
Absorbing the details, Ash queried Gerard about those vivid scratches.
Gerard said he’d cut himself shaving. He was distracted and in a rush to get the girls ready and off to school. As he described each step of his morning, he used an oddly coarse expression: he’d had a ‘shit, shower and shave’. It seemed to clash with both his buttoned-down business attire and the gravity of the situation.
There was no set length of time for his wife’s walks, but she should have been back long ago, Gerard told police. She had a conference to attend.
Ash registered that when Gerard spoke about himself, he confidently looked him in the eye. When talking about Allison, however, his eyes would drop to the ground and he would fidget.
Ash asked to go inside, so Gerard led the two officers up the front driveway.
In every direction there were sprawling acreage properties with grand entrances, sweeping drives and manicured lawns. Gerard and Allison’s home was not one of the
se. Though Gerard was a prominent local real estate agent, the Baden-Clays had been renting their four-bedroom home for six years. It was an elevated, single-level house on a block that sloped down towards the road. The duck-egg blue paintwork was faded and peeling.
Thick vines had overtaken latticework at the front of the house, with spidery tendrils creeping over the steps and railings and spilling onto the unmowed lawn.