Accused killer Baden-Clay awaits his fate
Gerard Baden-Clay is a self-confessed adulterer who promised to abandon his depression-prone wife for a new life with his mistress.
But he says he did not murder the woman he married 17 years ago, bundle her body into a car and leave their young daughters alone in the dead of night to dump it on the banks of a creek.
· Jury retires in Baden-Clay trial
For the past month, the Baden-Clay trial has captured the attention of the nation as the most private particulars of a seemingly ordinary suburban couple were laid bare in a Brisbane court.
Jurors with the task of deciding his fate have heard in detail of his various affairs, the lengths to which he went to deceive his wife Allison, and the financial woes that plagued his real estate business before she vanished.
During his time in the witness box, Baden-Clay was frank about his sexual indiscretions in the six years leading up to Allison’s 2012 disappearance, affairs he said were solely about sex and never about love.
His defence team has reminded the jury that while they might find Baden-Clay’s morals “despicable”, he is not on trial for infidelity but murder.
And the evidence, they maintain, simply doesn’t stack up.
By Baden-Clay’s own account, his wife was fine when he climbed into bed at their Brookfield home on the night of April 19, 2012.
They had spent time earlier that evening following their marriage counsellor’s advice to let Allison “vent” her feelings after she learned of his affair with a colleague named Toni McHugh.
Baden-Clay told police they’d had a constructive discussion, albeit about some “difficult things”, but it had ended with a normal chat about plans for the following day and he was confident their marriage was on the mend.
When he awoke the next morning Allison was gone.
She’d gone for a walk, he told their three daughters, but later that day called police to report her missing.
Ten days after that, a kayaker discovered Allison’s badly decomposed body on the banks of Kholo Creek not far from the family’s home.
She was lying in the mud, her arms raised above her head and her jumper twisted around her head and neck. Her face was unrecognisable, her body so decomposed that an autopsy could not confirm the cause of her death.
The case against Baden-Clay is a circumstantial one.
Crown prosecutor Todd Fuller has told the jury Baden-Clay resorted to murder after becoming trapped in a web of his own making.
The jury was told Allison believed Baden-Clay had ended his affair with Ms McHugh when in fact they were still in contact.
Just 17 days before Allison was reported missing, Baden-Clay emailed his lover telling Ms McHugh he’d keep his promise to leave his wife by July 1.
And on the last night Allison was seen alive, Ms McHugh called Baden-Clay and in her words “lost it” with him after discovering she and Allison would be at the same conference the next day.
Mr Fuller said Baden-Clay was so fearful of being exposed and so desperate to end his double life and start a new chapter with Ms McHugh that he killed his wife, “probably” by smothering her in a violent struggle.
The court was also told Baden-Clay and his mistress spoke on the day Allison was reported missing. He told Ms McHugh he didn’t know what had happened to his wife, and told her to “lay low” and that he loved her.
The prosecutor said Baden-Clay had killed his wife in such an “efficient” way that he left no significant evidence behind, but that didn’t mean the case against him was weak.
“It’s like a television picture,” he told them. “If you stand close to a television screen, you see a series of small dots. Step back and you see the full picture.”
Mr Fuller said there were three crucial pieces of hard evidence, which when teamed with Baden-Clay’s obvious motives, would leave jurors with no doubt about his guilt.
Chief among them, Mr Fuller said, were the scratches he had on his face on the day he reported Allison missing, scratches several experts testified were probably caused by fingernails and unlikely to have been caused by a blunt razor as Baden-Clay said.
“There was a struggle between the two of them and she left her mark upon him. They are damning,” he told the jury.
He also pointed to a trickle of Allison’s blood found on a side panel of her car, a vehicle that was just two months old.
He focused, too, on the six different plant species, found tangled in Allison’s hair and on her jumper, as proof her death was linked to her home. All six species were found growing around the Baden-Clays’ home but only two were found in the Kholo Creek area where her body was found.
Those plants, he said, inextricably linked Mrs Baden-Clay’s death to her house, and put paid to defence suggestions she walked the 13 kilometres to the Kholo Creek bridge and fell or leapt to her death.
Baden-Clay’s defence barrister Michael Byrne QC has argued the prosecution’s case is full of holes, and the jury will not be able to conclude, beyond reasonable doubt, that he killed his wife.
Yes, Baden-Clay had admitted to being a serial adulterer and making empty promises to leave his wife for Ms McHugh when he never intended to carry through with it.
But Mr Byrne said that did not make him a murderer, and the lack of physical evidence proved that.
“There’s no cause of death and there’s no injuries to be found,” Mr Byrne said of the autopsy results.
He said there was a “complete absence” of a crime scene at the couple’s home, including in the carport where Baden-Clay is alleged to have bundled his wife’s body into a car so he could dispose of it.
“Why is there no blood anywhere in the house, outside the house, on the patio, in the carport, when the prosecution case is the body is somehow either dragged or carried through the foliage and deposited in the car?” Mr Byrne asked.
“No blood. But there’s one (blood stain) in the car and therefore that’s how he did it? All you have in the car is a blood stain … that can’t be aged.”
Mr Byrne also focused heavily on the repeated use of the words perhaps and probably as the prosecution made its case.
“Before you can convict anyone you have to be satisfied that the evidence establishes that person’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Not with perhaps, or maybe, or probably.”
The defence also made much of Allison’s battle with depression in the years before she died, and elevated levels of alcohol and traces of an antidepressant drug that were found in her system, with Mr Byrne suggesting she could have fallen or jumped to her death while under the influence of that medication.
“The autopsy report can’t rule out drowning, it can’t rule out a possible fall, a jump from a bridge which could have rendered her unconscious,” he told the court.
Finally, Mr Byrne reminded jurors that their job was not to cast judgment on Baden-Clay’s character, but to rely solely on the evidence, or the lack of it.
“Maybe you would think that you find his morals despicable. That is a far cry though from labelling him a murderer,” he told them.
“Once you have carefully considered all of the evidence, it’s my submission to you that you will not be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Gerard killed Allison.”
It’s now up to a jury of seven men and five women to determine Baden-Clay’s fate, and what constitutes reasonable doubt will be central to their deliberations.