by David Murray
Detective Sergeant Peter Roddick and Detective Acting Inspector Mal Gundry went to McHugh’s unit early in Monday morning. Roddick pressed the buzzer and held it until McHugh eventually came out. She said they’d woken her and asked them to come back in half an hour, and they obliged. When they returned, the officers assured McHugh that police were not behind the media report about the affair; it wasn’t a leak, and must have come from someone else. They sympathised with her. But, the detectives said, there was no hiding from the affair any more and they wanted to work with her.
They asked if she had a lawyer – there were things they needed to discuss. She confirmed she did. The lawyer was Marek Reardon and the detectives arranged a meeting in his office, where they handed him examples of the recovered emails between Gerard and McHugh. In the days that followed, police would continually return to McHugh. On one occasion, they showed her photographs of Gerard’s face from the day he reported Allison missing, with the scratches trailing down his cheek. McHugh also became aware of some other important information about Gerard.
On Sunday 27 May 2012, McHugh’s mobile lit up with an unknown number. She answered and heard a familiar voice: ‘It’s me.’ But an icy reception awaited Gerard. Someone from the police – it wasn’t clear who or how – had let McHugh know she was not the only ‘other woman’ in his life.
McHugh laid straight into him: ‘I know what you’ve been doing. How could you do that to me?’
Even after Allison had been found dead, McHugh had stayed loyal to Gerard, thinking she was his true love. Now she knew she wasn’t his only lover on the side, and that he had been lying to her too.
McHugh knew one of the other women, Jackie Crane, who had been hanging around at the Australian Real Estate Conference in Sydney in 2010 and had left her husband not long after. Century 21 Westside partners Jocelyn Frost and business partner Phill Broom had noticed unusual chemistry between Gerard and Crane. Frost told McHugh she suspected something might be going on between Gerard and Crane. McHugh had even asked Gerard, and he had denied it. Gerard had always told McHugh he had never been with any woman besides Allison. Blinded by love, she once believed him.
McHugh also knew of Michelle Hammond – another woman Gerard had an affair with – from real estate circles. Hammond had worked with Gerard at Raine & Horne years earlier. McHugh wanted to hear Gerard confirm it himself, then demanded to know if the suggestion of yet more affairs was true.
Gerard admitted it was. Scrambling, he reminded McHugh of a conversation in late 2011 when their affair had reignited. At the time, Gerard cryptically said he would need to sit down and be honest and frank with her in the future if they were going to be in a normal relationship. They’d never had that frank and honest discussion, and McHugh never suspected he was hinting at other affairs. Gerard didn’t want to talk further on the phone. He wanted to meet.
‘I basically asked him why I should give him any time to explain,’ she later told police. ‘Gerard then told me that he loved me. He again said that he did not know what went wrong there and that he believed the police would find the killer and bring them to justice. Gerard told me that he would ring me at work the next day. On Monday. Gerard did not call me.’
In the days that followed the call, McHugh went back to see the detectives at Indooroopilly Police Station to complete her fourth statement.
‘I can expand on the following …’ she said, before elaborating on intimate details about their long-running affair.
Roddick, from Homicide, showed McHugh a hand-drawn map in Allison’s journal that she had asked Gerard to sketch during a 15-minute venting session. McHugh was stunned to recognise the floorplan of her unit – a regular rendezvous point with Gerard. The same journal was filled with Allison’s questions about Gerard’s affair with McHugh, penned in the days before she went missing.
‘Gerard always writes in capital letters,’ McHugh said, confirming the map was in his handwriting. A handwriting expert would confirm the same.
One day in June, Gerard phoned McHugh at work from a blocked number. He was outside her office, in a cab. ‘I need to talk to you,’ he said.
When McHugh slid in next to him in the taxi, a paranoid Gerard asked her if she was wearing a wire.
‘No! Of course not,’ she said.
The pair went to a Fortitude Valley rental unit. In her later interview with the Australian Women’s Weekly, McHugh would explain that they both knew their phones were being tapped and Gerard wanted to stop anyone listening in. Once they were inside the unit, he told McHugh that he had sex with other women to make sure what he had with her was real.
Arrest
The senior ranks of the Metropolitan North police region and the state’s Homicide squad gathered in a conference room at Alderley on 12 June 2012 to discuss the progress of Operation Kilo Intrigue. Mark Ainsworth and Mal Gundry joined Detective Superintendent Brian Wilkins, the head of Homicide, Detective Inspector Damien Hansen, also from Homicide, and Detective Inspector Bob Hytch. They had more than a century of policing experience between them.
Ainsworth spoke about the operation for a couple of minutes and then handed over to Gundry to outline the investigation into Allison’s disappearance and death. Gundry went through it from start to finish.
Gundry talked through everything police had done to exclude the possibility that Allison had been randomly abducted. He had a long list of investigations into known offenders and reported sightings of people and vehicles of interest. The team in the MIR had taken 500 witness statements. Among them were people who were at locations all over Brookfield, where Allison vanished, and around Kholo Creek, where she was found. He added that although no one saw the body being dumped under the bridge, no one saw Allison out walking either.
He concluded by saying that police were ready to charge Gerard with murder. The group agreed. Gerard Baden-Clay would be charged with murder the next day. Gundry started setting a plan in motion for the arrest.
Chris Canniffe and Cameron McLeod, from Indooroopilly CIB, had been appointed to the arrest team at the start of the investigation. When the decision was being made to make the arrest, Canniffe and McLeod had already been sent north in a government jet to have a chat with Gerard’s sister, Olivia Walton, at her home in Townsville. It wasn’t as glamorous as it might sound. They shared the cramped jet with prisoners being transferred to correctional centres through the state’s north. Commercial flights to Townsville took two hours. The bunny-hopping government jet, stopping at a range of towns all along the way, took more than five hours but saved the QPS some money.
A decision had been made in the Major Incident Room to share selected snippets of the evidence against Gerard with his family. If Gerard’s family knew more about what happened to Allison, perhaps an insight into the police case would encourage them to talk to the detectives. Canniffe and McLeod told Olivia, among other things, about the electronic evidence showing Gerard’s iPhone was connected to a charger at 1.48 am when he said he was sound asleep. The detectives didn’t give away that they had found Allison’s blood in the Holden Captiva.
Walton didn’t add anything of great value in the conversation. At the end of their talk, she asked if police considered her a suspect too. Police had no evidence linking anyone other than Gerard to Allison’s disappearance.
Simultaneously, detectives were talking to Gerard’s parents, Nigel and Elaine, in Brisbane.
That night, Canniffe and McLeod were told of the arrest plans and took the first commercial flight back to Brisbane the next morning.
It was a day of the year no one expected an arrest. Game two of the State of Origin was on in Sydney that night. One of the great rivalries in Australian sport, the annual rugby league grudge match between Queensland and New South Wales was akin to a religious event. Workers would be knocking off early to gather for barbecues and get-togethers with friends. Gerard would not be thinking an arrest could be ahead, making it the perfect day for police to make their move. McLeod was wearing
his maroon State of Origin jersey when he arrived at Indooroopilly Police Station to meet up with his colleagues, but changed into the more appropriate arrest attire of a dark suit and tie.
In the early afternoon, police quietly took up positions all around the Toowong Village shopping centre. Gerard’s business had all but collapsed after Allison went missing. He’d been forced to move out of his big Taringa office, where he once dreamt of dominating real estate in the western suburbs. Retaining a handful of staff and with about the same number of properties for sale, he was working from a small office space on level three, above the shopping centre. Memorably, when he moved into the new office he had told lurking Courier-Mail police reporter Brooke Baskin it was ‘business as usual’.
The plan was for the detectives to go up to Gerard’s office and ask him to accompany them to Indooroopilly station, where he would be arrested and charged with murder. If he refused, they would arrest him on the spot. Police wanted the arrest to go down with as little fuss as possible. In particular, police wanted to ensure there was no confrontation near his children. Gerard was due to pick up the girls from school.
As McLeod, Canniffe and Detective Senior Constable Grant Linwood waited for a lift to take them up to Gerard’s office at around 2.40 pm, the plans went out the window. Colleagues had seen Gerard come down to the car park and get into his silver Toyota Corolla hire car. Alerted to the unexpected turn of events, the three detectives sprinted to Gerard’s car. Linwood, getting there first, opened the driver’s side door and pulled the startled real estate agent from the car. Gerard instinctively threw his hands in the air, offering no resistance, and Linwood released his grip. Canniffe asked Gerard to come with them to Indooroopilly station.
Gerard started making excuses. He had to collect his children.
He needed to call his parents. ‘Gerard, you’re under arrest for murder,’ Canniffe told him.
As he was escorted to the back of an unmarked police car, Gerard’s overriding emotion was anger. He glared at the detectives, silently and sullenly. McLeod took the wheel, with Linwood a front passenger and Canniffe in the back seat with Gerard. Canniffe told Gerard he had a number of questions. Did Gerard have an explanation for the presence of Allison’s blood in her car? It was the first time Gerard had been told of the evidence. Canniffe also asked Gerard if he had an explanation for the Google searches on his phone? Further, did he have an explanation for his phone being plugged into a charger at 1.48 am?
Gerard quietly gave the same response to every question: ‘I want to speak to my lawyer.’
Other police were waiting at Brookfield and moved in to collect Gerard’s three daughters from school as soon as the arrest was made. They were taken to Ferny Grove Police Station to keep them away from all the fuss that would surround their father. Allison’s parents, Priscilla and Geoff Dickie, would take care of them from then on.
There were no TV news crew or photographs to record the arrest – it was successfully kept under the radar. Only after Gerard was taken into Indooroopilly Police Station and put in one of the two small cells behind the front counter, did word start to spread. Then, media descended on the station from everywhere.
Gerard’s solicitor, Darren Mahony, visited him at the station. Mahony asked police if there was any reason the arrest had to be that night. Perhaps he had Origin plans.
Detective Sergeant Peter Roddick had been one of the officers sent to the girls’ school, and when he returned to Indooroopilly Police Station he went to see Gerard in the cells. Gerard was staring blankly at the wall. Roddick asked what his daughters’ favourite toys were, and Gerard didn’t reply. Roddick had to repeat the question, and this time Gerard listed a toy for each of the girls for police to collect from his house.
It was almost unheard of: the football was playing on a TV in the station’s meal room, but few people were paying attention. New South Wales won, levelling the best-of-three series 1–1, but that wasn’t the reason for the lack of interest. The detectives had just taken a decisive step towards getting justice for Allison.
Chris Canniffe and Cameron McLeod started working on the objection-to-bail documents. There was still much work to be done.
PART IV – TRIAL
Phone a friend
Gerard Baden-Clay spent his first night behind bars in the company of drunks and State of Origin rabble-rousers. From Indooroopilly Police Station, detectives had driven him to the Brisbane Watchhouse in the city. He was, by far, the highest profile prisoner in the cells that year. Around 9.30 am the next day, he was taken to the adjoining Brisbane Magistrates Court in the rumpled work clothes he was wearing when arrested.
Journalists crowded the courtroom but, as he took his seat in the dock, Gerard managed to turn his body around to deny all assembled a glimpse of his face. Court artists were reduced to sketching the back of his head. In any case, it was to be the briefest of appearances: the proceedings – to set a new court date – lasted less than a minute.
Outside court, Darren Mahony said simply: ‘Mr Baden-Clay maintains his innocence.’
If Gerard had hopes to make bail and return to his daughters, he would have been disappointed. Magistrates do not have the power to grant bail on murder charges, and Gerard’s legal team would need to wait for a date in the Supreme Court to make an application.
Once the initial hearing was over, Gerard was led to a holding cell but was soon brought back to Court 3 for another matter. Police, who wanted to shave the beard he had been growing since Allison disappeared, had applied for a Forensic Procedure Order to do it. The magistrate swiftly granted the application, allowing police to see what was disguised by the new growth. Forensic medical officer Dr Leslie Griffiths – who had examined Gerard in hospital after his car crash almost two months earlier – was called to the watchhouse to carry out the order. Shaving Gerard’s right cheek, Griffiths found his injuries were fading but still clearly visible and had scarred. Superficial shaving cuts would not have been expected to form scars.
When the examination was over, Gerard was driven in a prison van to his new home, the high-security Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre, at Wacol in Brisbane’s south-west, which sat behind row after row of razor-wire fencing. Prior to joining the 865 inmates on remand there, Gerard went through a strip search, interview and shower. He changed into a green prison-issue T-shirt and was photographed, his eyes red from crying: prisoner E00477.
Because of his high profile, he was kept under observation in the jail’s medical centre. Brett Peter Cowan, charged with the abduction and murder of Daniel Morcombe, was also being housed there. Beef stroganoff and penne pasta were on the menu on his first night in the prison. It was a long way from the rolling hills of Brookfield.
Gerard’s family was already working overtime to get him out on bail. Dr Bruce Flegg was a wealthy man, but even for him the request was extraordinary. Not long after Gerard was arrested, Flegg answered a phone call. It was Gerard’s sister, Olivia. She cut to the chase. Would Flegg stump up $1 million as a surety for Gerard’s bail?
The bold request took him by surprise. It was wildly out of touch with reality. All it would take would be for Gerard to skip bail and Flegg would be out of pocket. Not to mention how it would look for the MP. He was a man who prided himself on his loyalty, and his friendship with Gerard had already led him into some tricky situations. This request was going too far. He told Walton straightaway he couldn’t help, and in an instant the phone call was over.
Walton and Gerard’s parents were still able to put together a sizeable $500,000 surety, putting their own homes on the line and getting some help from other friends. Gerard would live with his parents if he was bailed. His hearing was scheduled for Thursday 21 July. Two days beforehand, Olivia emailed friends to say they had enough surety but urgently needed $30,000 for legal bills.
Gerard, looking at his clean criminal record and the fact that there was only circumstantial evidence against him, thought he was a good chance of bail.
Bo
mbed out
Chief Justice Paul de Jersey was livid. Standing on the footpath on George Street in the city, he had been evacuated along with everyone else in Brisbane’s Supreme and District courts. An anonymous caller had phoned in a bomb threat against Gerard’s bail hearing just minutes after it got underway, forcing the entire Law Courts Complex to be cleared.
‘It is absolutely disgraceful, if this is a hoax, that proceedings of the state’s highest court can be disrupted in this way,’ de Jersey told reporters, as sirens echoed through the buildings behind him.
Gerard, still in Arthur Gorrie’s medical unit, missed all the hullaballoo. He’d chosen to stay at the jail to await the result of the Supreme Court bail hearing. Given it became even more of a circus than usual, it was a wise choice.
Justice John Byrne, the judge in Max Sica’s trial for murdering Sidhi, Kunal and Neelma Singh, had just begun his summing up when the alarm bells rang from the Baden-Clay bomb threat. Justice Byrne, one of the state’s most senior judges, would later preside over Gerard’s trial. He cleared the court and Sica was ushered outside to the rear of the building and handcuffed to a set of bike racks until the threat subsided. Two weeks later Sica would be convicted of the triple murder and sentenced to life in prison with a record non-parole period of 35 years. Other judges were clearing courts throughout the ageing complex; a new courts building was only months from opening on a separate site on George Street. Security staff ushered hundreds of court staff members, lawyers and jurors into lifts and down fire escapes. Following the bomb threat, court proceedings were cancelled for the rest of the day to allow the police dog squad to search the building. They found nothing. Gerard’s bail hearing was adjourned until the next day.