Twisted Minds podcast: How Gerard Baden-Clay came undone after he killed his wife Allison

Gerard Baden-Clay was an amateur killer and he made fundamental mistakes. Listen to our Twisted minds podcast.

Wife killer Gerard Baden-Clay was sure he’d get away with it.

His wife Allison’s body was in a creek, several kilometres from the family home in Brookfield, Brisbane, and he’d been quick to file a missing persons’ report.

Perhaps, a little too quick.

Then there were the two raggedy, red scratches on his cheek.

He claimed he’d cut himself shaving but the two first responding officers were instantly suspicious.

It’s these kind of “red flags” that investigators should look out for, according to Dr Claire Ferguson, a criminologist and forensic psychologist who specialises in identifying concealed homicides.

“Baden-Clay is such an interesting one because he had a double-barreled approach to detection avoidance, which a lot of offenders do,” Dr Ferguson, who works with Queensland Police on complex death investigations, told the Twisted Minds podcast.

Usually she’s called in when a killer has been initially successful in hoodwinking police that a death was suicide or misadventure. Then someone looks closer and realises a murderer may be on the loose.

Of course, none of us will truly know what went through the mind of philandering real estate agent Baden-Clay when he murdered the mother of his three young children in 2012, but Dr Ferguson is able to come close.

After reviewing hundreds of murder cover-ups, she believes Baden-Clay’s tactics are calculated but show his criminal inexperience.

Dr Claire Ferguson, criminologist and forensic psychologist. Picture: NIGEL HALLETT

Listen to episode three of the podcast below:

“So Plan A was: they won’t suspect I’ve done something. So there was some sophistication in the attempted manipulation of police.

“The second barrel was: if they do suspect me, they won’t be able to prove it. And this is what a lot of offenders do.

“They think that they’re such a good liar. And they also have a very low opinion of police – they think that they’ll be able to pull the wool over the police’s eyes.

“What he did to try to avoid detection was first calling in the missing persons’ report. So she was missing for like an hour before he actually called police, which is not very long.

“The other thing that he did was sending Alison the text messages to prove that he was looking for her which is actually quite sophisticated from an offender standpoint,” Dr Ferguson said.

Gerard Baden-Clay and Allison in 1997.

Baden-Clay continued to send texts, telling Allison he was getting the kids ready for school, painting himself as a good father and concerned husband and Allison as wilfully missing and a neglectful mother.

This was all part of his attempts to malign her memory after death – a tactic reserved for the most cruel kind of domestic violence murderers, according to Dr Ferguson.

“Detection avoidance for a normal offender is just about not going to prison – wear a condom, wear gloves, don’t let witnesses see you. It’s fairly straightforward, but for in an intimate partner femicide, the detection avoidance is actually part of the control and part of the motivation for wanting to perpetrate the homicide.

“It then becomes about punishing the victim and you’re also able to control the money, the kids, and how the victim is portrayed in death.

“Offenders will often malign the victim after they die and try to do it in such a way that looks like they’re just stating the facts: ‘oh, she fell off the building – she was just so clumsy’ or she was drunk …

“And now, low and behold, I have control over the kids, and all of her money,” Dr Ferguson said.

Gerard Baden-Clay arrested at Indooroopilly Police station.

It’s a horribly cruel device that not only delivers the ultimate punishment of death to the victim but continues to punish her family by negating their memories of her.

But Baden-Clay was an amateur killer and he made fundamental mistakes that a sharp-witted investigator could detect.

For starters, his timing was way off.

He dumped Allison’s body at Kholo Creek, approximately 13km from the Baden-Clay residence in Brookfield. But tried to tell police Allison disappeared after leaving the house for her morning walk.

“He didn’t think about the timeline of transporting the body,” Dr Ferguson said.

“She would have had to get up at 3.30am to be able to walk to that spot and if she fell off the bridge [near where her body was found].”

And there were other issues with Baden-Clay’s disposal of the body that would later become key to his undoing.

“He could have tried to stage it as like a legitimate, non-suspicious death that happened at the house but transportation of the body gave him a window of time … it allows him time to think about some of the unknown factors he might not have planned for.

“If there was a primary crime scene in the home, he would have had time to tidy that up, or if there was weapons, he might have been able to get rid of weapons,” Dr Ferguson said.

However, it was also a clumsy criminal move that in the end acted like a red beacon of guilt for prosecutors.

“There were things he didn’t account for, like the potential for extra witnesses when you transport the body. And one of the major things he ended up getting convicted on was the plant evidence.”

A tribute at the former home of Gerard Baden-Clay and wife Allison.

The plant evidence Dr Ferguson is referring to is the two sets of plant material forensic scientists were able to retrieve from Allison’s body. As this combination of plants only grew in the Baden-Clay property, and not at the creek, it allowed prosecutors to argue Allison’s body must have been dragged through the surroundings of the family home to collect the foliage.

But right from the very beginning, Baden-Clay had set himself up to fail with his rookie explanation for the two scratches on his cheek as a shaving injury.

Two red, raw markings we can now assume were left by Allison as she fought for her life, the most potent clue she could leave the world about the truth of her demise.

“One of the things that I kind of loved about that is that razor and shaver injuries are one of the most researched injury wound patterns we know about. Why? Because razor companies get sued,” Dr Ferguson said.

“So he didn’t think about the fact there would be this body of literature about what a shaver injury actually looks like. And it is not like the injury he had”.

Originally published as Twisted Minds podcast: How Gerard Baden-Clay came undone after he killed his wife Allison