What the Garden Knew

Allison Baden-Clay was 43, a former human resources executive who spoke six languages and was raising three daughters in a rented house at Brookfield, west of Brisbane. Her husband Gerard ran a real estate agency and traded on his descent from Scouting’s founder, Robert Baden-Powell. In September 2011 Allison learned from a friend that he had been involved for three years with one of his agents, Toni McHugh.

He promised it was over. By December he was back with her. On the night of April 19, 2012, Allison died at the house, and Gerard reported her missing the next morning. Ten days later a man in a canoe spotted her body on the muddy bank of Kholo Creek at Anstead, under the Mount Crosby Road bridge, thirteen kilometres from home. Three fresh marks on Gerard’s right cheek, which he blamed on a razor, looked to forensic experts like fingernail scratches. Leaves from four plant species that grew at the Brookfield house were caught in Allison’s hair and clothing, and a stain of her blood was in the back of the family’s new Holden Captiva.

A jury convicted Gerard of murder in July 2014, and he was sentenced to life with a fifteen-year minimum. The Queensland Court of Appeal downgraded the verdict to manslaughter in December 2015. On August 31, 2016, the High Court of Australia restored the murder conviction.