An artist's sketch of Gerard Baden-Clay during day one of the committal hearing in Brisbane. Source: The Courier-Mail
IN THE front garden of a Brookfield house that would soon become a crime scene, Gerard Baden-Clay made a quiet confession to the officers who had responded to his call for help.
He'd been having an affair, he told police, and his wife Allison had found out. They'd been having counselling and were supposed to spend 15 minutes each night - and no more - discussing his betrayal.
Now she was gone.
Details of the real estate principal's statements to police that morning and his on-again, off-again dalliance with his staffer Toni McHugh were told to the Brisbane Magistrates Court this week during a hearing to determine whether he will stand trial for the murder of his wife.
But, as the court later heard, Baden-Clay's confession to police on the morning he reported Allison missing was certainly not the first time he'd revealed details of his affair.
Baden-Clay's business partners, Phillip Broom and Jocelyn Frost, had had enough of the ongoing drama.
They told the hearing Baden-Clay was eventually given an ultimatum - leave your wife or say goodbye to your mistress.
"At some points Gerard was leaving his wife to be with Toni, at other points, he was leaving Toni to remain with his wife," Broom told the court.
"It was confusing to me as to whether or not they were in the throes of an affair, had cooled off in their affair (or) had rekindled their affair."
Broom and Baden-Clay spoke about it at golf and on business trips.
Allison Baden-Clay at her friend Kerry-Anne Walker's wedding.
The court heard at one point Baden-Clay told Broom he needed a new, bigger car. One that would fit McHugh's two sons.
The affair was also a constant source of frustration for Frost.
"There were many, many conversations (about the affair)," she said under cross-examination.
"But certainly that was one of the main reasons that the partnership failed at the end.
"We asked him to either leave his wife or leave Toni or we wouldn't continue on."
When challenged by the defence, Frost told the court that while Baden-Clay never said he would leave his wife for his mistress, McHugh was certainly expecting there would be a day when he did.
First on scene
The court heard that on the morning of April 19, 2012, Indooroopilly police Constable Kieron Ash and his partner responded to a routine missing persons inquiry at a home on Brookfield Rd, Brookfield.
Baden-Clay, ready for work in a shirt and tie, was waiting with his parents and sister, Olivia Walton.
Toni McHugh: the court has been told of her affair with Gerard Baden-Clay.
Ash told the court Baden-Clay said he had left his wife on the couch watching The Footy Show when he went to bed at 10pm.
A heavy sleeper, he had no idea whether Allison had made it to bed. But she wasn't there in the morning when he got up.
The officer told the court Baden-Clay thought Allison might have gone for a walk - a 2km circuit she had been making in the mornings to try to lose weight.
Under examination, Ash confirmed the routine missing persons inquiry was becoming more and more concerning.
There were scratches on Baden-Clay's face, the court heard - deep gouges near his jaw and down to his neck that Ash couldn't help but notice.
The officer told the court he asked Baden-Clay how he came to have the scratches on his face.
"I cut myself shaving," Baden-Clay told him.
The court heard Ash searched the house for bloodied tissues - or any signs of a struggle. "I was looking for any signs of blood that would be matching the shaving cut that Gerard Baden-Clay told me about," he told the court. He found nothing.
Defence barrister Peter Davis put it to the officer he was suspicious from the start.
Allison Baden-Clay and best friend Kerry-Ann Walker.
"You went into the house, by the time you walked in, you'd seen the cuts on the cheek," he said to Ash.
"You had a missing person.
"It crossed your mind that something untoward might have happened to her.
"And that something untoward might have involved a husband.
"You were looking for evidence of what might have happened to Mrs Baden-Clay."
Ash agreed.
"There was no blood anywhere," he told the court.
In cross-examination, Davis scoffed at the officer's search, saying it wasn't "hard to imagine" someone flushing bloodied tissues down the toilet after shaving.
The scratches
Former Housing Minister Bruce Flegg was a witness at the committal hearing of Gerard Baden-Clay over the death of his wife Allison.
In the hours after Baden-Clay told police he had cut himself shaving, he was put in front of a camera and stripped to the waist.
The court was shown a series of photographs taken at the time of his face, neck and torso, riddled with a patchwork of cuts, scratches and grazes.
Scratches on his face, neck and near his armpit, as well as bruises and grazes on his chest, were analysed by a series of experts.
Queensland Health senior forensic medical officer Dr Robert Hoskins told the court it was "implausible" the deep scratches on Baden-Clay's face were from shaving.
"I think it's extremely, highly implausible but I wouldn't rule it out absolutely," he said.
Associate Professor David Wells, head of forensic medicine at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, was of a similar opinion.
"(Allison's fingernails) could certainly produce an injury similar to those displayed on the screen at the moment," he told the court.
Asked under cross-examination whether the large red patch of grazes on Baden-Clay's chest could have been self-inflicted while "scratching an irritation", Wells said it was unlikely.
"That extent of bruising after scratching yourself to relieve an itch would be very unusual," he said. "It would have to be a very vigorous sort of scratching."
SES volunteers search for Allison Baden-Clay last year. Picture: Nathan Richter
However, both men told the court their opinions were not an "exact science".
State of mind
Soon after the couple's marriage in 1997, Allison suffered depression, the court was told.
She explained to friends the condition was a side-effect of malaria medication from when the newlyweds went to South America.
Later, she was known to have suffered depression a number of times.
Her friend Kerry-Anne Walker told the court of noticing changes in Allison. They wouldn't catch up as much.
But, Walker said, Allison became much more outgoing after returning to work and was doing well at the time of her disappearance.
Davis asked if Walker would be surprised Allison sought to increase her anti-depressant medication after being affected by mood swings as recently as March 19, 2012. Walker said she would be surprised.
Allison previously went to doctors about being anxious and teary with a low mood, Davis suggested. Walker maintained Allison was in control.
Allison Baden-Clay.
The search for Allison finally ended with the discovery of her body under the Kholo Creek bridge, 10 days after being reported missing.
The court heard her body was 14km from home and, after being exposed to the elements, had suffered the effects of decomposition, hindering attempts to determine how she died.
Forensic pathologist Dr Nathan Milne travelled to the bridge and later performed the autopsy.
There was "insufficient positive evidence" to conclude a cause of death, he told the court.
Anti-anxiety medication sertraline, sold under the brand name Zoloft, was certainly in her system, Milne confirmed to the court.
But when Davis, for the defence, suggested the level of the drug was potentially fatal, Milne said there was not enough information to make any interpretation.
Queensland Health's Hoskins also gave his opinion on the sertraline levels.
Under cross-examination, Hoskins explained that the drug could concentrate in certain parts of the body after death - particularly the liver.
The court heard the liver was the only part of Allison's body from which Milne could retrieve blood for toxicology testing.
Gerard Baden-Clay's business partners Jocelyn Frost and Phillip Broom.
Sertraline could be expected to accumulate in the liver tissue, Hoskins told the court.
A high reading from her liver blood was to be expected as the liver tissues would have released the drug into the liver blood as the cells broke down.
Despite this, Hoskins told the court he did not believe the levels in Allison's blood were high enough to be fatal.
"It would be exceptional (if she'd died from it)," he said. "It's never happened before at that level.
"Everything that is found in these samples would be explicable with a normal therapeutic level."
Cabinet connection
Bruce Flegg was sitting up in bed at his Brookfield home on the night of April 19. He told the court he was on the phone to his friend Sue Heath when he heard a "bloodcurdling" female scream.
At the time, Flegg was the state's housing minister. He was sure Heath would have heard the sound, but she told him she hadn't.
Flegg testified he was concerned enough to go down the corridor to a spare bedroom where his media adviser Graeme Hallett, who had been staying with him for some months, was fast asleep.
"(He) sleeps like a railway sleeper," Flegg told the court. "I was unsuccessful in waking him up."
Concerned about the scream, Flegg ventured outside into the night in search of the source of the sound. Finding nothing, he went back inside where he heard a second scream.
The next morning Baden-Clay - his friend from the Kenmore Chamber of Commerce - reported Allison missing from his Brookfield home, about 1km away from Flegg's house.
The court heard Flegg didn't call the police that night or report the screams immediately. In the days that followed he visited Baden-Clay.
His friend Heath had told police in a statement that she gave Baden-Clay a mobile phone. She said at the time that Flegg did not know about the phone, but in court this week immediately made a correction. "We did discuss it. We agreed that I'd lend him the phone," she said in court.
Flegg told the court: "Most of us locally would not have expected this to be a murder."
He also said that before Allison's disappearance, a distressed Baden-Clay had asked him for a loan of $400,000 for his real estate business.
Hit by the Brisbane floods of January 2011 and a falling out with his business partners, Baden-Clay's Century 21 real estate agency had been in trouble.
Flegg told the court Baden-Clay was unwilling to tell him the names of his business partners and he "closed the door" on the discussion.
Sounds in the night
The court heard Flegg wasn't the only one to hear screams or other strange sounds the night before Allison was reported missing.
A procession of witnesses appeared in court this week to tell of hearing various sounds from a range of surrounding locations.
Julie Tzvetkoff, who lived across the road from the Baden-Clays, was in her kitchen some time between 8pm and 9pm when she heard a sharp, hard yell that lasted for about a second and a half.
Questioned by the defence, Tzvetkoff said she couldn't tell if a man or woman made the sound but it came from around the direction of the Baden-Clay home.
Her husband Kim was also home and heard the same sound, describing it to the court as a startled or shocked yell from a woman.
Brookfield physiotherapist Anne Rhodes, who lives a short distance away in the direction of the city, dropped in to the police command post on Friday, April 20, and asked officers what was happening.
The court heard Rhodes didn't tell police of hearing any strange sounds at the time.
Only later, she said, did she piece together a series of unusual noises on the night of April 19, including an argument, scream, thud and screech of tyres.
The defence, however, challenged the fact she had not reported the sounds earlier.
Susan Braun, another nearby Brookfield resident, told the court she heard loud, agitated barking at about 10pm on the night of April 19.
During cross-examination, she said after falling asleep she woke to the sound of a loud, unpleasant "human noise" in the area of the Baden-Clay residence.
Later she was woken a second time by the same type of sound.
In the Anstead area, where Allison's body was discovered, under the Kholo Creek bridge, the peace of the night on April 19 was also broken.
Something set off the neighbourhood dogs late into the night, witnesses told the court.
At a house about 700m from the bridge, Brian Mason's german shepherd started barking about 12.30am on Friday, April 20, the court was told. When Mason finally managed to stop his pet barking, he could hear other dogs howling to his left, straight ahead and across the river, he told the court.
David Jenkinson heard a car door closing, two heavy thuds and dogs barking, he told the court this week.
He described each of the thuds as being like the sound of a full bag of concrete being thrown on to grass.
Were the sounds related to the Baden-Clay case? What caused them?
The hearing continues on Monday.
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