Geoffrey Gordon Adams, who killed wife 47 years ago, dies of aggressive brain cancer before sentencing

A man who confessed to killing his wife 45 years after she went missing has died of brain cancer before he could be sentenced for the horror crime.

Geoffrey Adams, who killed his wife in 1973, has died from an aggressive brain tumour before he could be sentenced. Picture: Nine News

A South Australian man who confessed to killing his wife 45 years after her disappearance has died from an aggressive brain cancer before he could be sentenced for his crime.

Geoffrey Gordon Adams, 72, was earlier this year found guilty of manslaughter after he fatally struck his wife, 24-year-old Colleen, at their home at Maitland, on the Yorke Peninsula, in 1973.

He had been behind bars awaiting sentence when the deadly diagnosis was made and died overnight on Monday.

“It can be confirmed that Geoffrey Adams passed away in hospital from natural causes on Tuesday 15 December,” a Department for Correctional Services spokesperson said.

Mrs Adams’ sister, Heather Johncock, said the news of the terminal illness was a kind of closure.

“In the end we got to the bottom of what happened, we got through the trial and he had to tell the truth and now this is the end of it,” she said.

“The important thing is that we got Colleen back. If this had happened before we might never have known what happened.”

The Supreme Court was told on Monday that Adams had not been expected to survive the weekend.

His lawyer, Bill Boucaut QC, told the Supreme Court his client “took a turn for the worse” on Friday morning and was “in a state which is clearly near death”.

Geoffrey Adams will not be sentenced for killing his wife in 1973 after he died of an aggressive brain cancer. Picture: Supplied

A letter from Dr Patrick Russell, the physician in charge of Adams’ medical team, revealed he has been diagnosed with a type of primary brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme.

In the letter, dated December 10, Dr Russell wrote that the cancer carried a “grim prognosis”, and Adams was not fit to stand for sentencing.

Noting Adams’ death appeared to be imminent, Justice David Peek ordered that he could be transported from prison to hospital at any time to undergo testing, treatment or palliative care.

Until September 2018, Adams told police and family members, including the couple’s two daughters, that Mrs Adams had post-natal depression and could not cope with family life.

He said she told her children “goodbye, you little bastards”, packed a suitcase and walked out on the family.

Under mounting pressure, he eventually confessed to killing her with a metal bar in the kitchen of their home.

For 45 years, Geoffrey Adams told the couple’s two daughters their mother had walked out on them. Picture: Supplied

Following the confession, Adams led police to the spot in the backyard where he buried his wife’s body. Picture: Nine News

He then led police to the spot in the backyard where he had buried his young wife, cementing her death as the longest-running cold case to be solved in South Australian history.

Adams was charged with murder but pleaded guilty only to manslaughter because he insisted he never intended for Mrs Adams to die.

He was acquitted of the more serious charge by a Supreme Court jury.

In a statement read to the court after the verdict, Adams’ daughter, Marie Colleen Adams, said it took years for her to realise her mother loved her and did not choose to abandon her.

“I believed that I had been responsible for her leaving and I thought that I must be unlovable,” she said.

“I thought I was living with the sins of my mother, but now I realise that they were the sins of my father.”

Adams had been in prison since his arrest in September 2018 – a little more than two years.