The Murder of Allison Baden-Clay

by David Murray

  Broom and Frost each bought an equal, one-third stake in the business with Gerard, paving the way for his parents to retire. The two new partners paid only cursory attention to the underlying financial position of the business. They felt no need for caution – Gerard seemed to be made for success. His public profile had been growing. In 2005 and 2007 Century 21 Westside had won a Quest Business Achiever Award. An exuberant Gerard was photographed pumping his fists in the air in celebration at each of the events. In 2008 the business also made Business Review Weekly’s top 100 Fast Starters list and was a Real Estate Institute of Queensland Top Agency of the Year finalist.

  Gerard, in his promotional material from around this time, was brimming with confidence: ‘I’m very proud of what we’ve created here … Your reputation is everything in this business and we continue to receive wonderful testimonials each week from people who appreciate the professional integrity and personal ethics that define the way we do business here,’ he wrote.

  While he set the bar so high in public, privately Gerard was spectacularly failing to meet his own standards.

  Toni McHugh

  Things could have been so different if Toni McHugh and Robert Mackay-Wood had chosen a different agency to sell their block of land back in 2005 – if they had turned away the confident Century 21 salesman, Gerard Baden-Clay. But Gerard, as flash as a rat with a gold jacket, worked his charm and soon had McHugh hanging on his every word.

  McHugh was born on 5 February 1971 – five months after Gerard – in the Sutherland Shire in Sydney. Her parents were upstanding Catholics, and McHugh was their wild child. At 16 she fell pregnant, had a son, and fell out with her parents.

  ‘I was the only one they didn’t bother to send to a private school because I was the rebel, not worth spending money on. Then I shamed the family by having a baby when I was still a teenager,’ she would later say in a paid interview with Australian Women’s Weekly.

  Whatever relationship she had with the baby’s father, it didn’t last, because in her early 20s the attractive brunette fell for Mackay-Wood.

  A decade older than McHugh, Mackay-Wood was a science graduate who had worked as a research assistant at Cornell University in New York, where his projects included alfalfa breeding. He became a University of Sydney teaching lab manager in biological sciences and, in his relationship with McHugh, became step-dad to her young son.

  From the mid-1990s they lived together at Blaxland, in the Blue Mountains, across the road from the Glenbrook Lagoon. By then, the creative, fun-loving McHugh had a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the University of Sydney. After adding a graduate diploma in education to her credentials, she started work as a high school arts teacher.

  She and Mackay-Wood had twin boys in the late ’90s. A couple of years later, they bought a ‘dream home’ farther west in the Blue Mountains, in Shortland Street, Wentworth Falls. McHugh brought her artist’s touch to the home, and it was in pristine condition when they put it on the market in 2003 in order to move to Queensland.

  In the Sunshine State, they bought a 1.5-hectare block of land in Pullenvale on Brisbane’s western fringe. Mackay-Wood got a job at the University of Queensland. McHugh left teaching to begin a career in property, managing homes for Rental Hotline in Toowong.

  Deciding to sell their Pullenvale block in 2005, they contacted the relatively new Century 21 Westside and met Gerard and his parents, Nigel and Elaine. The Baden-Clays secured them as clients and sold the block.

  Interestingly, Gerard’s mother had her own instinct about McHugh. During a strange exchange with Century 21 colleague Phill Broom not long after that land sale, Elaine was disparaging about McHugh. Broom had a working relationship with McHugh through her Rental Hotline property management role. When he made a passing complimentary remark about McHugh one day, he was pulled up short by a surprisingly hostile Elaine.

  ‘You can’t trust that woman,’ she told Broom, knowingly.

  Broom didn’t understand. McHugh seemed pleasant enough to him. A few days later, Elaine took it upon herself to warn Broom about predatory women: ‘You need to be cautious, Phill. You’re a good-looking man; you’re going to go into single ladies’ houses or houses where wives are getting divorced. They will make a play at you and you have to be strong and stand by your wife.’

  Taken aback, Broom nodded in agreement. ‘Okay, I didn’t ask, but thanks,’ he thought.

  Elaine’s instincts proved correct. In 2007, McHugh clicked onto the Century 21 Westside webpage and emailed an application for a sales job. Gerard hired her in April of that year. She had a crush on her new boss from the beginning.

  Later, she would tell police: ‘When I first started working with Gerard, there was definitely chemistry for me. I admired him and I was attracted to him. I don’t know how he felt.’

  Gerard, after hiring McHugh, continued to behave like a devoted family man. Every day except Sundays, he would open the business at 8.30 am and by 5 pm he would be heading home to be with his family. He explained to McHugh the agreement he and Allison had – that he would be home every afternoon for ‘couch time’: the couple wanted their daughters to see them together. McHugh saw Gerard as an inspiring leader and a good father; her attraction to her boss never wavered.

  For the first year, they worked side by side without the relationship straying beyond the professional. It wouldn’t last.

  A highlight of Brisbane’s calendar each year is the fireworks event Riverfire, when the city’s residents combine two of their great loves: the waterway at the heart of life in the Queensland capital and colourful explosions. Brisbane’s penchant for fireworks is almost unrivalled in Australia, from the big-ticket events of New Year’s Eve and Australia Day to the tiniest school fairs.

  Up until 2010, Riverfire culminated with a Royal Australian Air Force F-111 jet swooping over the CBD for a spectacular ‘dump and burn’ of fuel. The burst of flames and blast of heat would wash over the tens of thousands crammed into riverside vantage points.

  Two days before the F-111s were to launch into action in August 2008, Gerard Baden-Clay enthusiastically embraced the event in a posting on his blog, The Real Estate Expert. The previous weekend had marked Gerard and Allison’s 11th wedding anniversary.

  Big bang! This weekend marks the end of winter and the start of spring, and as usual the event is marked by the fabulous RiverFestival … I usually like to take my young family up to Mt Coot-tha where we can experience the spectacular display from a ‘safe’ distance, where the crowds are slightly smaller and the noise a little less threatening to young hearts and ears! Hopefully too, the F-111’s will perform their customary ‘dump and burn’ again this year, which for me (as a frustrated fighter pilot!) is the highlight of the show! During the day, we have an equally impressive display of property for you to view!

  In hindsight, the title of the jubilant blog – ‘Big bang!’ – seems loaded with hidden meaning. The day before that entry was published, Gerard and Toni McHugh began their fateful relationship.1

  The pair were working back late in the office when it happened. ‘He asked me to kiss him. I did,’ McHugh would tell the police. Three years of pent-up sexual tension ignited into a passionate affair.

  Among the newly listed homes featured in the ‘Big bang!’ blog was an acreage property on Grandview Road, Pullenvale. Gerard and Toni kept finding reasons to visit the area. Off Grandview Road is Mill Road, a secluded spot where the pair met for late-night trysts in the first, heady weeks of their affair.

  Gerard drove the white Prado to meet up with McHugh. His family affectionately called the car ‘Snowy’, and it was usually used by his wife. Gerard would fold the seats down to create a makeshift bed. With cicadas screeching in the darkness around them, nothing disturbed the two 37-year-olds.

  As well as hooking up on dark back roads, the pair used the office for after-hours sex. As McHugh put it more delicately when she spoke to police: ‘We would then be intimate in the Century 21 Kenmore office.’ Gerard would
tell his wife he was going back to finish off some work.

  The lovers would send steamy emails to each other about what they planned to do when they met. Gerard unleashed a stream of X-rated fantasies. When police later recovered some of the missives, there were blushes all around among seasoned investigators. The emails never saw the light of day, but reflected Gerard’s well-concealed private desires. Along with their explicit sexual fantasies, the pair also exchanged tales of woe about their respective partners. Gerard was adamant that his marriage was effectively over.

  ‘Gerard told me that he did not love Allison and they had not slept together for many years,’ she said in a statement to the police.

  On two occasions in the early stages of the affair, Toni rather self-consciously walked up the long driveway to Gerard’s home on Brookfield Road. Both times, Allison was away with the girls at her parents’ house on the Gold Coast.

  This was at the start of the relationship. I never felt comfortable about going there. On both occasions Allison and the children were not at home. I think they were down the coast with Allison’s parents. The first time I went to the house we slept in the spare room. I stayed the entire night on that occasion. The second time we pulled a mattress out into the lounge. I did not stay the night on this occasion, as Gerard was not well. I did not see any bedding, sheets or blankets to indicate to me that he did sleep on the couch. This, however, did not appear to be unusual. Gerard would not have wanted the girls to know. At least this is how I justified that to myself.

  For McHugh, the affair was too much of a burden while she was still in a committed relationship. In November, three months after the affair began, McHugh broke up with Mackay-Wood to pursue a future with Gerard. She moved into a small unit at Jerdanefield Street at St Lucia and arranged shared custody of their twins. Gerard didn’t follow her lead.

  Gerard and Toni thought they had been careful about concealing their feelings from colleagues, but the spark between them had not gone unnoticed. Gerard’s business partner Jocelyn Frost sensed there was something between Gerard and Toni almost as soon as she started at Century 21 Westside in 2008. Whether it was intuition, experience or keen powers of observation, Frost suspected the two were more than merely colleagues.

  It was all but confirmed in an incident in late 2008. Frost was standing at Toni’s desk. Toni was excitedly relaying a clairvoyant reading that told her she had a love interest in her life, but she didn’t know who it was.

  ‘It would be Gerard, wouldn’t it, Toni?’ Frost blurted out. Frost knew by Toni’s shocked reaction she had hit the mark. Toni didn’t know how to respond and disappeared from the office for a few hours. She had said nothing but her reaction spoke volumes.

  Field signals

  Two weeks after Gerard began his affair with Toni McHugh, business partner Phill Broom welcomed his first child into the world. Despite his own marriage unravelling, Gerard played the doting father in a blog announcing the arrival of Broom’s son, Darcy.

  ‘For those of you who have been fortunate enough to experience the miracle of bringing a new person into the world,’ Gerard gushed, ‘you will no doubt join me for a collective “aaahhh” at the thought of the joy that Phill and Michelle must be feeling right now, and at how fortunate Darcy is to have been born into such a loving home. When I was speaking with Phill earlier, I asked if he had enjoyed any “fast-asleep-on-your-chest” moments with Darcy, and when he replied in the affirmative, I nearly shed a tear at the memory of such simple pleasures! I don’t think it matters who you have talked to or how many books you’ve read, nothing can prepare you for the roller coaster of emotions that the birth of your first child can evoke … We look forward to seeing Darcy in a gold jacket at an open home soon!’

  Broom and Gerard were friends. Their business partnership had become official that month. But Broom was cautious about fatherly insights from Gerard. He may not have known much about parenting but he always felt Gerard had an overly controlling relationship with his wife and daughters, and kept them in their place. The most telling example was Gerard’s extraordinary use of field signals to communicate with and command his children.

  The first time Broom recalled noticing it was at a function at a park. Gerard had brought his daughters along, and at some point had wanted them to come to his side; rather than calling out, he simply raised his hand to his head. Like magic, the little girls came running. Broom couldn’t be sure about what he was seeing initially, but on the rare occasions when the girls came into the office, he witnessed similar occurrences. The girls would drop in on odd afternoons or school holidays and quietly occupy themselves drawing in the boardroom. If they wanted their father, instead of calling out to him, they silently signalled.

  If Gerard was having a conversation with someone, for instance, the girls would silently enter his office, touch his knee and wait until he gave the go-ahead to talk. Broom saw again that Gerard would touch his head when he wanted the girls and they would appear. After a while, Broom’s curiosity got the better of him, and he quizzed Gerard about the interactions.

  ‘It’s a field signal in the military; it means, “Come here”,’ Gerard explained. It was important to set a framework for how children behaved in a social context, Gerard said. He’d taught his children that if they wanted his attention when he was talking to someone else, they should tap his knee and not say anything.

  Broom’s father had been in the RAAF for 20 years, and his mother was involved with Girl Guides. Even so, he’d never seen field signals used in daily life before, let alone with young children. It took the expression ‘Children are to be seen and not heard’ to a whole new level.

  Gerard tried to impart some of his parenting wisdom on his younger colleague, the overall message being that a firm hand was needed. Whenever the girls did something wrong, Gerard explained, you sternly lectured them and waited for an acceptable reply. They had to respond with ‘Yes, Daddy.’ Not ‘Okay’ or sullen silence, but ‘Yes, Daddy’. Gerard was controlling of his family in a way Broom vowed he would never be.

  Jocelyn Frost had more to say about Gerard’s strict parenting when she spoke to police: ‘I believe that Gerard had a bad temper with his children,’ said Frost. ‘I remember on a couple of different times that he had told me that he had belted the children.’

  Of course there was no hint of this in his blog. As usual, Gerard’s post, while ostensibly about Broom’s newborn son, was really about emphasising his own credentials as the sensitive family man.

  Keen observers might have noticed also that while Gerard reflected on the emotions of cradling a newborn, there was no mention of the woman who had delivered all three of his children, Allison. His wife was a key omission in the post.

  He was in the early throes of his affair; she seemed to have been cast aside like a used dishcloth.

  Allison wasn’t alone when she went to see her psychiatrist, Dr Tom George, on 3 June 2009. At this visit, she’d come with Gerard, to talk about the crisis in their marriage.

  Their relationship had deteriorated and Allison felt they needed professional help. She wanted to get things back on track; she also knew nothing of the affair bubbling away in the background. Allison was aware she and Gerard had grown apart, but she put it down to the stresses and strains of having a young family.

  At Dr George’s, Gerard vented his frustrations about the relationship. He was tired of making all the decisions, plus he was under considerable pressure at work. Sales were now few and far between in his real estate business. He was upset that Allison had gone and bought an expensive treadmill when they were short on money.

  The couple told Dr George they hadn’t had sex for two years. Gerard said he felt isolated, unsupported and resentful. He was thinking of ending the marriage, but felt guilty about the impact on Allison and their daughters. He didn’t mention his ongoing affair with employee Toni McHugh.

  Allison told Dr George she did not want the marriage to end. She wanted to fight to stay together, just as
she had always pushed through when times were tough. She had come through the other side on her depression and believed they could work their marriage problems out. Dr George recommended a marriage therapist.

  The next month, Allison again went to see Dr George about her marriage. It was the last appointment she would ever have with the psychiatrist. She told Dr George her wedding anniversary was coming up. Allison, ever hopeful, had booked a room at a resort on the coast and let Gerard know he could join her if he chose. The ball was in his court.

  Secret’s out

  2009

  In a throwback to a bygone era, the Tattersall’s Club in the Brisbane CBD accepted only men as members. However, the doors opened to the hoi polloi for functions, and one of Gerard’s best young salesmen, John Bradley, was celebrating his engagement to girlfriend Stephanie Fisher. As waiters strolled the carpet with trays of champagne and seafood canapés, a strategic battle was playing out among the guests.

  Phill Broom had noticed some awkwardness among his colleagues, and it had to do with Allison Baden-Clay. Gerard didn’t always bring his wife to work events, and Broom had the impression some people were surprised to see her at the engagement party. He got the distinct impression that Toni McHugh ran a mile whenever Allison came near her.