Amber Michelle HAIGH
| Amber Michelle HAIGH | |||||
| DOB: | 1982 | ||||
| HAIR: | Brown | BUILD: | Thin | EYES: | Green/hazel |
| CIRCUMSTANCES: | |||||
Amber was last seen at Campbelltown Railway Station where she was dropped off by relatives at 8.30pm on 5 June 2002. Amber was to attend Mt Druitt Hospital to visit her father, but has not been seen since. There are grave fears for Amber's safety and welfare.
Reported missing to: Young Police Station.
It is hoped the reward will prompt someone to come forward with new information.
Ms Haigh was reported missing on 19 June, 2002 by a married couple who she had been living with in the rural town of Kingsvale in southern NSW.
The couple told police that they dropped Ms Haigh off at the Campbelltown railway station on 5 June, 2002 and never heard from her again.
Police believe that Ms Haigh met with foul play, but they have been unable to find enough evidence to prosecute anyone over her dissappearance.
Despite extensive searches of the Kingsvale area, she is yet to be found.
Someone within the tight-knit community of Kingsvale could hold the key to solving the mysterious disappearance.
The smallest piece of information may allow police to close this case.
Strike Force Villamar was set up to investigate the case, but police say they have exhausted all avenues of enquiry.
There are still many unanswered questions in the Amber Haigh case and it is only with help from the public that police can expect a breakthrough.
Any information you have about this is worth giving to police, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem.
You can provide information to police via any of the methods below:
Any information provided will be treated in the strictest confidence.
Your help may give police the clue they need to close this case and provide some comfort for the families of victims.
Renewed appeal to locate missing woman - Campbelltown 3 August
2005
Police from Cootamundra Local Area Command have renewed their appeal to the
public in trying to locate a woman who went missing at Campbelltown in 2002.
In conjunction with National Missing Persons Week, police are investigating the
disappearance of Amber Michelle Haigh, who was 19-years-old when she went
missing from Campbelltown Railway Station on 5 June 2002.
Ms Haigh is described as being 160cm, thin build, with brown shoulder-length
hair and green/hazel eyes. She was last seen wearing a green jumper, dark
tracksuit pants and joggers. She was also carrying a bag with clothes in it.
Anyone who has any information in relation to Ms Haighs location is urged to
contact Young Police on 02 6382 8199 or Crime stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Monday, 2 August 2004
It is National Missing Persons Week and police are hoping to gather any clues
for the families of about 9,000 people who go missing every year across NSW.
There are many cases continuing to baffle police locally. Amber Haigh is
described as thin, with brown hair and green-hazel eyes. Anyone with information
should contact Young police.
Police fear for missing woman
Detectives at Young, in central southern NSW, have escalated their enquiries
into the disappearance of a local woman. Police have been told Amber Haigh was
dropped off at Campbelltown Railway Station on the night of Friday, June 5, but
she has not been seen since. Detective Sergeant Gae Crea says Strike Force
Villimar is now trying to locate people of interest in the Young area, around
Campbelltown and around Tahmoor near Picton.
Forty-three-year-old Robert Samuel Geeves of Huntleigh Rd, Harden was first charged with murder after Janelle Goodwin received a fatal gun shot wound to the head on June 20, 1993 at his property near Wombat.
He was discharged at the committal hearing stage in 1993, however a police reinvestigation occurred in which new evidence from experts and witnesses came to light.
At 11.42am Wednesday morning Geeves attended the Young Police Station and was arrested in relation to the death.
At court that afternoon police prosecutor Sergeant Mitchell Croyston opposed bail, citing the seriousness of the charge and the strength of new evidence by two experts regarding human movement and ballistics.
New evidence from a man and Geeve's son regarding the couple's relationship was also mentioned by Sgt Croyston, who added there were fears for the safety of the witnesses if Geeves was released.
He said a threat towards the son had been recorded by police on a listening device during investigations into the disappearance of 19-year-old Amber Haigh, who went missing in June last year.
Defence solicitor Geoff Casey told the court there was no dispute that in 1993, the victim had died as a result of a gunshot wound.
The "violent interludes" between the couple had been made abundantly clear from the start, Mr Casey said.
Geeves had continued to live in Harden since the death and had since remarried and bought land there; "all of his roots are in that district".
The last time Geeves had seen Ms Haigh was when he and his wife had dropped her off at the Campbelltown Railway Station, while the threats towards his son had been in a completely different situation and context, Mr Casey said.
He concluded by stating that Geeves had been tested and had chosen to "stand and fight" rather than leave the area and avoid the charge.
Sgt Croyston then added that the Director of Public Prosecutions, after reviewing the new evidence, had "directed, not recommended" that Geeves be charged with the death.
Magistrate Phillip Moon described the matter as "extraordinary" with the issue resurrected after Geeves had been discharged a decade beforehand.
He noted that Geeves had community ties and that the case was circumstantial with no eyewitnesses, choosing to grant Geeves bail following $5000 surety with an associate of Geeves also required to put forward the same amount.
The case has been adjourned to Young Local Court on January 20.
NSW police are hoping a $100,000 reward will help solve a five-year-old mystery surrounding the disappearance and suspected death of a young woman.
NSW Police Minister David Campbell said the reward could lead to finding or solving the case surrounding Amber Haigh who disappeared when she was 19.
"$100,000 is on offer to anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the suspected death of Ms Haigh," Mr Campbell said.
"Police believe that Ms Haigh met with foul play, but they have been unable to find enough evidence to prosecute anyone over her disappearance."
A married couple who lived with Ms Haigh in Kingsvale, southern NSW, reported her missing on June 19, 2002.
They had dropped her off at Campbelltown railway station in Sydney's west on June 5, 2002, but never heard from her again.
Mr Campbell said despite extensive investigations police were unable to uncover any clues about her disappearance.
"There are still many unanswered questions in the Amber Haigh case and it is only with help from the public that police can expect a breakthrough," he said.
Posted - ABC
Police say they are still hopeful that a $100,000 reward will help solve a five-year-old possible homicide case in southern New South Wales despite no new local leads.
It has been more than two weeks since NSW Police Minister David Campbell announced the reward for information that could help solve the mystery of 19-year-old Amber Haigh's disappearance in 2002.
Inspector Dean Smith of Cootamundra police says there has been no local responses to the reward, but he is still hopeful.
"We haven't been overwhelmed by responses which is disappointing by our point of view, but if we can keep this investigation, or this missing person case out there, then we're hopeful that people will still contact us," he said.
| Author: Eamonn Duff eduff@fairfaxmedia.com.au Date: 06/12/2009 |
Publication: Sun Herald |
Scarecrows stalk the main street, false eyes vacantly scanning this middle-of-nowhere town. They prop against power poles, signposts, almost anything in Harden that stands still long enough.
As a symbolic connection to the local spring-time show, the scarecrows are silent sentinels for the town and all within. Old-timers assure they are temporary. Something to do with the children.
An oddity, perhaps, but trivial in a country town where unanswered questions hang like dark clouds.
One woman is dead and one woman is missing.
Something bad - something awful - has happened here.
Even the police are predicting "a story to unfold like no other".
The story involves Janelle Goodwin, a pregnant 29-year-old who was shot in the head.
Another central character is orchard worker Robert Geeves, who admits dumping her naked body in a wheelbarrow.
Plot twists and turns bring us to teenager Amber Haigh who, like so many others, was lured to this pocket of south-west NSW by the promise of work as a fruit picker. It was her first stint away from mother Ros and their Sydney home. She made the 350-kilometre trek to stay with her great aunt at Kingsvale, a village on the fringes of Harden shire.
Concern nagged at her mum.
Amber was 17 years old but, developmentally delayed; she viewed life through the gaze of a prepubescent. Although she could manage day-to-day tasks, in her mother's words, she was vulnerable and easily led.
Amber never grew up.
"I always worried for my daughter's well-being," Ros explains. "When she left, I was comforted by the fact that she was able to stay with an aunty ... I felt safer knowing that."
No one in the family feels safe any more. Not in Harden, not anywhere. Not since Amber disappeared from the shire seven years ago, leaving behind her baby son and a litany of loss.
"I feel helpless, frustrated, angry, hurt and upset because I think someone has taken my daughter away," says Ros, who asks for her surname and suburb to be withheld.
What she would give for a full night's sleep. "I am constantly thinking about Amber. Every day it goes over and over in my head.
I always ask why."
Amber never knew Janelle Goodwin. They met their fates almost a decade apart, but they do have place and one person in common - the bed of Harden shire orchard worker Robert Geeves.
Ms Goodwin was first. At the age of 29, and pregnant to Mr Geeves, her body was discovered in a barrow beneath a tarp inside a shearing shed behind his Kingsvale farmhouse on June 21, 1993.
She was naked, tied from ankles to throat, wrapped in bed sheets with a shopping bag over her head. She had been shot through the nose at close range with a .22 rifle.
Police were called a day after the shooting. Mr Geeves confessed to putting her body in the shed. They had been drinking. They argued, then struggled. The gun went off. He panicked. He cleaned the scene.
It was a terrible accident.
Mr Geeves was charged with murder, pleading not guilty. A magistrate discharged him in Cootamundra Local Court due to insufficient evidence. The ruling meant the case could be prosecuted in the future.
And it was. Police reapplied the heat after Mr Geeves and wife Anne contacted police on June 19, 2002, to report that Amber Haigh - another of his live-in lovers - had vanished in the night.
The resurrected investigation led to Mr Geeves being tried in the NSW Supreme Court over Ms Goodwin's death. Prosecutors were confident: they had ballistics advice and fresh witness statements. The trial took more than three years. Mr Geeves was found not guilty of murder. The jury members agreed: it was a terrible accident.
Ms Goodwin's death was not the first time Mr Geeves, now 49, had been acquitted of serious charges.
In 1986, two 13-year-old girls from nearby Young failed to return home from school. They were missing for more than a fortnight.
When they finally resurfaced, one filed a police statement alleging she had been kept prisoner in a wheat silo and was sexually assaulted by Mr Geeves. The other teenager contradicted the claims.
Again, he was cleared.
Mr Geeves maintains his innocence in all matters, and The Sun-Herald does not suggest otherwise.
We arrive in Harden on a steaming day full of small, sticky flies.
Driving through the scarecrow honour guard, we run head-first into another Stephen King-style moment: giant spiders have invaded the town's only motel. They are monsters, like tennis balls even in curls of death, and we're told that no one, including the local pest control man, have seen their kind before.
Admittedly, as we check in, it is tempting to chase riddles of spiders and scarecrows, but somewhere within the shire boundaries are clues to a far more sinister mystery.
"We believe something bad has happened to Amber Haigh," says local area police commander Keith Price, appealing for any assistance that may lead to a breakthrough. "Someone in this community has information that can end this once and for all."
About 3500 live in Harden shire, although the population swells considerably in this corner of the "Golden Triangle" - so called due to its favourable conditions for growing wheat - from October to December. That's when students, backpackers and other transients flock to the harvest. (A cherry grower in Young this season fielded 5000 inquiries from potential pickers.)
The town of Harden itself is a twin, joined at the hyphenated hip to bordering Murrumburrah, settled in the 1850s.
One face of that twin shines with the rural charm of a bygone era.
A private museum salutes the birth of the Australian Light Horse while the historical society hails glory days of gold rushes, faster trains and bumper crops. The second-hand bookshop boasts almost as many titles as the council does ratepayers. Imposing churches from three denominations offer a reminder why it could have been confused with God's country. A new medical centre and nursing home point to a forgiving future.
But turn the other cheek, and this shire is masked in shadow.
Beyond isolation, drought and the desperation of such a combination, there's an unhealthy mix of the unknown, unbelievable and uncertain. The community's collective expression contorts whenever someone, usually an outsider, mentions Amber Haigh or Janelle Goodwin. What once was the talk of the town is now whispered behind hands.
"We wondered when the big media would finally arrive," one businessman tells us. "We don't want our names mentioned but we want people to hear what has happened around here."
Big media will follow in droves when an inquest - to be announced tomorrow - is held next year into Amber's disappearance. They will focus on her last-known steps.
The Geeveses, described as her "carers" in early reports, told police they had dropped her at Campbelltown railway station at 8.30 one winter night, having driven about four hours from the shire.
They said Amber wanted to make a surprise visit to her critically ill father in Mount Druitt Hospital. She left her son Royce with them, farewelling the five-month-old with a kiss and a hug.
The couple went to the police when she failed to return home after a fortnight. They appealed publicly for help finding her.
"Amber, come home, Roycey needs you," Mr Geeves said at the time. "He's growing at the moment - what you miss today you don't get back tomorrow."
Police set up a strike force. They searched the ramshackle weatherboard house where she had been living with the Geeveses. They also checked abandoned mineshafts littering the 160-hectare property. Nothing was found. Even a $100,000 reward for information yielded nought.
But the extra police attention did make Harden more protective of its own, and others. Regulars at the town's Commercial Hotel tell of how patrons pulled on the machismo one evening when someone they no longer trusted tried chatting up a barmaid: "All the guys in the bar stopped what they were doing and stood to attention with their chests all puffed out."
The troublemaker hightailed it.
Amber has not touched her bank accounts since she went missing. She has never contacted relatives or friends. Not her parents. Not her baby boy.
Turns out Amber had also fallen pregnant to Mr Geeves. Royce was his son, although the boy is now in the custody of Amber's relatives.
We approached the Geeveses at their property on what would have been her 27th birthday. Amber, if she was around, would have wanted to blow out the candles on her favourite cake: sponge with jam and icing.
At least that's the sort of cake her aunt used to make before the girl struck up a relationship with the older couple down the road.
Mr Geeves acknowledged the mystery of Amber's disappearance still had an effect on him. "Of course it does, but I have nothing to say." His wife Anne added: "We'd love to know what happened."
So too would her long-suffering family, the authorities and the good folk of Harden who, like the name suggests, are a resilient lot.
Younger sister Melissa thinks about her every day. "I miss and love her so much. She will be in my heart forever ... I was a cheeky kid but Amber would always say: 'Melissa,
I love you no matter what'."
Everyone is steeling themselves for this inquest. The proceedings promise rage and resentment. Fingers crossed, relief too.
Mr Geeves and his wife will take legal advice before deciding to give evidence.
While they are deciding, Harden locals recommend we chat to a youngish lady in town about him. She tells us: "He's a good man ... what's it got to do with you?"
The inquest aims to determine what it has to do with anyone.
Amber's mother hopes for justice. She wants to make sure another young life is not wasted: "We do not want to see another family grieve a loss such as ours."
Posted
An inquest into the disappearance of a woman who was living near Young, in south-west New South Wales, is to be held almost eight years after she vanished.
Nineteen-year-old mother Amber Michelle Haigh was last seen in June 2002 at Sydney's Campbelltown railway station.
Two weeks later she was reported missing by a couple she had been living with on a farm at Kingsvale, between Young and Harden.
Despite an eight-year investigation and a $100,000 reward for information, police have few leads.
They believe she has met with foul play.
An inquest into Ms Haigh's disappearance and possible murder will be held on March 5 in the Glebe Coroners Court in Sydney.
It is set down for one day before magistrate Scott Mitchell.
Posted - ABC
Police say they have not given up solving the disappearance of Amber Haigh, 19, from the Young district.
Ms Haigh's son, five months old at the time of her disappearance, has been cared for by relatives since June 2002 when his mother was last seen at the Campbelltown railway station.
The case was mentioned in the Glebe Coroner's Court on Friday and was adjourned for another mention late next month.
Inspector Dave Cockram from the Cootamundra local area command says the inquest into the Kingsvale woman's disappearance is not expected in the short-term.
"I don't think so, even after this extended period of time we receive information and we're acting on that," Inspector Cockram said.
"We still have to make certain our inquiries are finalised before the matter ends up in the coroner's court."
Inspector Cockram says a big reward is still in place for information that finds Ms Haigh.
"The Police Minister back in 2007 issued a $100,000 reward for anyone that can provide information to the police that leads to the conviction of the person that was responsible for Amber's disappearance," he said.
"So I can only reinforce that. Please, if anyone has any information in relation to this matter, please give me a call."
Cootamundra Local Area Command, crime co-ordinator Sergeant David Cockram said police applied for adjournment for a further four to six weeks to allow for the investigation to continue.
“This matter is still under investigation, with two Detectives full time on this matter, one being myself and another from Young,” Sergeant Cockram said.
“Police remind members of the community there is a $100,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of persons involved in Amber's disappearance.
“Anyone with information can contact me directly on 6942 0025 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000,” he said.
Miss Haigh was last seen on June 5, 2002 in Campbelltown, Sydney.
The then 19-year-old was about 160 centimetres tall, had a fair complexion and was a thin build with green/hazel eyes.
Ms Haigh was reported missing on June 19, 2002 by a married couple who she had been living with in Kingsvale.
The couple told police that they dropped Ms Haigh off at the Campbelltown railway station on June 5, where they never heard from her again.
Police believe that Ms Haigh met with foul play, but they have been unable to find enough evidence to prosecute anyone over her disappearance.
Despite extensive searches of the Kingsvale area, she is yet to be found but police believe someone within the tight-knit community of Kingsvale could hold the key to solving the mysterious disappearance.
The smallest piece of information may allow police to close this case.
Strike Force Villamar was set up to investigate the case, but police say they have exhausted all avenues of enquiry.
There are still many unanswered questions in the Amber Haigh case and it is only with help from the public that police can expect a breakthrough.
Posted - ABC
An inquest into the disappearance of a Young district teenager is scheduled to start almost nine years to the day after she was reported missing.
Amber Michelle Haigh, 19, from Kingsvale, had been staying with a couple in Sydney who reported her disappearance on June 19, 2002.
An inquest has been set down for five days at Parramatta starting on June 20 next year before deputy state coroner Scott Mitchell.
Local police have said they have provided details of Ms Haigh's missing person case to Strikeforce Hixson which is investigating the discovery of bones in the Belanglo State Forest.
The matter is to be mentioned in the Coroner's Court next month.
