Charged with the murder of a 19-year-old girl with intellectual disability in 2022, Australian couple Robert and Anne Geeves, both 64, have been found not guilty after a high-profile trial. Robert Samuel Geeves had fathered a child with the teenager, Amber Haigh, and it was alleged that he and his wife plotted to get her out of the way to assume full custody of the child.

According to the Guardian, Robert and Anne Geeves spent more than two years in prison awaiting the trial, which ran for nine weeks in the New South Wales Supreme Court.

They were charged with the murder of Amber Haigh, who vanished from New South Wales in June 2002, leaving behind her five-month-old son. A BBC report said the couple had consistently denied any involvement and maintained that, right before she went missing, they had dropped her at a train station 300 km from their home in Kingsvale so that she could visit her dying father. The report said that, despite an extensive police search, a coronial inquiry, and a million-dollar reward for information, Amber has never been found.

According to the report, Amber Haigh shifted to Kingsvale to stay with her great aunt Stella Nealon, as a way to escape her dysfunctional childhood in Sydney. They lived next door to the Geeveses, and Amber was introduced to them by their 19-year-old son Robbie. 

Robert and Anne Geeves said they “got along very well” with Amber even though the relationship may have been perceived as “weird” by others. Once it was known that Amber was pregnant with Robert’s child, there was reportedly a rupture within the local community, and Robbie also severed his relationship with his parents. 

The prosecutors alleged that the Geeveses had “manipulated” Amber into having Robert’s baby, and then got rid of her when she did not give up custody of the child.

The Guardian reported that Justice Julia Lonergan found the couple not guilty of murder and felt that there was “no satisfactory evidence” to support the prosecutor’s theory. While acknowledging the vulnerability of Amber, and the fact that the teen was “physically attacked and abused” by people she trusted, Justice Lonergan said the prosecutors had to to prove two “indispensable facts”: that the couple’s motive to kill her was to get the custody of the baby, and that the Geeveses did not drive her to Campbelltown railway station on the evening of 5 June 2002. She said, “Mr and Mrs Geeves are not guilty and ought be released from the dock.”

The verdict was met with anger from many, especially Amber Haigh’s family members, who were seen crying outside the court.