by David Murray
To do this, she turned to someone else she trusted – Dr Phil McGraw, the TV psychologist who found fame on Oprah Winfrey’s couch and went on to front his own show and publish many books for couples in crisis. On her grim 13th wedding anniversary, Allison fished out Dr Phil’s book Relationship Rescue and began completing one of its exercises in her journal.
The exercise presented a series of half-sentences. Allison’s role was to complete the sentences with the first thoughts that sprang to mind. Cursing herself for everything under the sun – from being overweight to failing to live up to Gerard’s expectations of a mother – the thoughts that poured out were deeply sad.
I tend to deny … most things.
I am happiest when … I am with my family and friends.
Sometimes I … sabotage things.
What makes me angry is … when I feel I have been unfairly treated.
I wish … my marriage was like it was before the actual ceremony.
I hate it when … my weight bulges over my pants.
When I get angry I … sulk.
I would give anything if my partner would … make love to me.
Sometimes … I take the easy way.
I would be more loveable if … I loved back and was myself?
My mother and father … have struggled with their relationship.
If only I had … 1 million dollars, a size 10 body. Put more effort into my marriage.
My best quality is … my perception.
Sometimes at night … I stay up too late.
When I was a child … I was treated like a princess.
My worst trait is … my lack of communication.
My life really changed when … I got married and had kids.
If my relationship ends it will be because … G has had enough and doesn’t love me anymore and of all the crap I have dished out to him over the past 13 yrs.
My partner hates it when I … sabotage our parenting and not do as I say I will.
When I am alone I … relax.
Desperate for the marriage to survive, Allison resolved to fix the problems. The young ballerina in her obviously still felt she could overcome any hurdle if she just worked a little harder.
Immediately after Gerard’s anniversary attempt to end the marriage, she had consulted a new marriage counsellor, determined to salvage the relationship. The counsellor’s response, which she relayed to Kerry-Anne Walker later, was not what Allison wanted to hear. Most times in this situation, the counsellor informed her, the marriage ended.
Allison was horrified. She didn’t want to hear the marriage couldn’t be salvaged. ‘I’m here to fix my marriage and they’re telling me it’s not going to work,’ she told Walker, who thought the advice made a lot of sense.
But Walker couldn’t make Allison see she was fighting a losing battle, any more than the counsellor could. Allison resolved to get the relationship back to the way it was before they married, and continued furiously working through Dr Phil’s exercises to make sense of it all, save her marriage and improve herself.
Unhappy with the counsellor’s take on her marriage, Allison shopped around for some more palatable advice. She wound up in the office of Dr Laurie Lumsden at the Kenmore Village Shopping Centre on 9 December 2010. Lumsden had been a psychologist for 45 years. Allison told him of seeking help with someone else in the city but had decided to try a local. She was hoping Lumsden would talk to her husband, but wanted to see him first herself.
Lumsden did a test to see where Allison fit on the scale for stress, anxiety and depression, and found her levels completely normal. Allison had been open with the psychologist about her history of postnatal depression, and he was impressed by her recovery. Allison had been studying for a Master of Psychology when her first daughter was born. She hoped to one day complete it. Lumsden told her that when she did, he would love her to work for him.
Gerard did go to see Lumsden twice, in separate appointments later that month. He told the psychologist he was stuck between whether to stay in his marriage or leave, but chose not to mention his continuing affair with Toni McHugh.
By the end of the month, Allison was confident she could turn things around in her marriage. Her big family Christmas party went ahead, as usual, and Allison had a warm half-hour conversation with Mary Dann, her aunt. Mary would never forget the way she spoke that day about her three young daughters. Allison was intensely focused on raising courageous girls who would make their own decisions in life and above all, be free to be happy.
Bruce Overland
New Year’s eve 2010
Hunched over a computer keyboard, careful to ensure neither his wife nor mistress could find any trace of his activities, Gerard quietly tapped out a new online profile. This one wasn’t for his real estate agency, and he didn’t use his real name – the name he had always been so proud of. On this day, he was Bruce Overland, an alter ego he had invented for his illicit activites. And the profile he was compiling was on Adult Friend Finder, a sex, dating and swingers website.
‘Looking for discrete Sex,’ he typed. Under the section headed ‘Introduction’, he added some more details.
‘Married, but don’t want to be – looking for some sex on the side!’
Bruce Overland was a name Gerard had been using as an alias in his business life for years. Although Gerard lectured others about ethics, he was secretly using Bruce Overland to keep tabs on his rivals and even bait them online. He would email other agents as Bruce Overland – a wealthy miner looking for prestige property in Brisbane’s west – and get added to their databases. Once he was on their mailing lists he could track new properties as they came onto the market and keep up to date with their sales techniques.
But Gerard took it further. On one occasion he bragged to Phill Broom that he’d arranged for a former Century 21 agent, Ann-Louise Savage, to collect the fictitious Overland from the airport. Apparently Savage had done something to raise Gerard’s hackles, so he decided to mess her around. Savage knew Bruce Overland as a WA-based miner and prospective client who had inquired about million-dollar plus homes.
The name was also convenient for pursuing affairs. As Bruce Overland on Adult Friend Finder, Gerard typed out a false date of birth, but other details rang true:
Sexual orientation: Straight.
Looking for: Women
Birthdate: January 1, 1970
Marital status: Married.
Height: 177–180cm
Body type: Average
Smoking: I’m a non smoker.
Drinking: I’m a light/social drinker
Drugs: I don’t use drugs
Education: BA/BS (4 years college)
Race: Caucasian
Male endowment: Average/Average
Circumcised: Yes
Gerard was chasing the opposite sex in the real world, too. Incidents of inappropriate behaviour around women were racking up. Cheryl Kelly worked with Gerard in his real estate office and was taken aback when her boss asked if she had ever had a three-some. She wasn’t comfortable with the question, or with Gerard’s habit of hugging her when the agency sold a property.
Century 21 Westside partner Phill Broom would also tell police of being uneasy about the hugs Gerard dished out to staff. Broom thought it was a calculated ploy to cover the hugs he gave to Toni.
Gerard’s pursuit of women at times went from the off-putting to the plain bizarre. Melissa Romano, a pretty, blonde real estate worker, was in touch with Gerard about a property deal on the Gold Coast in 2009. She spoke to Gerard on the phone a number of times and, characteristically, he asked her to come and work for him. When Romano turned down the offer, the conversation took a bizarre turn.
‘Well, if you’re not interested in doing that, then I’ve got another job to do,’ Gerard volunteered.
‘Well, what is that?’ Romano asked.
‘I’m looking for someone to kill my wife,’ he said.
After Allison’s disappearance, Romano went to the police,
and later told her story to 60 Minutes, claiming Gerard was deadly serious at the time. Detectives concluded Romano was an unlikely assassin, and suspected Gerard was trying to woo her with an appalling pick-up line.
Allison’s cousin Jodie Dann had always had reservations about Gerard. They multiplied the day she saw Gerard and Toni McHugh at a coffee shop together at the Gailey Road Fiveways at Taringa. There was something about the way Gerard and Toni behaved when they were together that troubled Dann. She had a gut reaction and guessed their secret on sight. ‘That’s Gerard. He’s having an affair with that woman,’ she told the friend she was with.
Dann and Allison had been close when they were young. They used to spend hours playing on a wooden cubbyhouse Geoff Dickie had built in the bedroom Allison and her sister Vanessa shared at their childhood home in Redbank. Dann recalls Allison as being the sweetest girl, never in any trouble, and a perfectionist who strived to please her parents.
Later in life, Dann became a court advocate with the Ipswich Women’s Centre Against Domestic Violence. Dann and Gerard did not get along. When Allison had been in a relationship with Ian Drayton, Dann saw her all the time. Allison and Drayton would drop around for dinner most weekends, and they’d share spaghetti bolognaise and a cheap bottle of wine. After Gerard came on the scene, Dann rarely saw Allison. Although the cousins lived on the same side of town, they never once had dinner together. Dann invited Allison to come around with the girls to use her pool, but the offer was never taken up.
Dann suspected there was more to Gerard than met the eye. At one point, Allison broke her ankle, and said she had fallen down some steps. Dann thought there might be another explanation and told her mum, Mary, she was worried Gerard may be hurting Allison. Her mum cautioned Dann, saying her work made her see everything through a prism of domestic abuse. Dann was not so sure and told Allison’s mum, Priscilla, of her concerns.
In her job, Dann saw men like Gerard all the time. They would turn up to court in expensive suits and with impeccable manners, then the court would be told of the fear and control they inflicted on their wives. Usually in these cases, the women had been victimised for years before finally coming forward, after hanging on to false hope their husbands would treat them the same way they had when they first met. These were the men she worried about the most, because their abuse was more insidious, and hidden behind a veneer of wealth or respectability.
One of the few people independent of either Allison or Gerard’s family to ever witness events inside the Baden-Clay home was their cleaner, Deb Metcalfe. Metcalfe, an office assistant, was cleaning part-time for extra cash. After registering with an agency, she was sent to Allison and Gerard’s Brookfield home in early 2010. Metcalfe liked Allison from the start. Only 20 minutes after they met, Allison had to go out and was telling Metcalfe, a stranger, where she could find the spare key to let herself in if no one was home in future.
Metcalfe cleaned Allison and Gerard’s home every Tuesday for the next two years. During that time, she saw Allison was a loving and relentlessly busy mum, always racing around to get her kids to school or pick them up and drop them off to extracurricular activities such as dancing or swimming. Allison went out of her way to make Metcalfe feel comfortable, making her lunch if she was at home, or giving her a card and small gift of a candle and cupcake at Christmas.
It stood out to Metcalfe that Allison would never talk about her husband. Photos of Gerard lined the walls, but Allison only ever talked about her children and work. Metcalfe never met Gerard but tells me, in hindsight, she thought back to all those months working in the house and wondered what sort of husband Gerard must have been. Early on, Allison had asked Metcalfe to do some ironing if she had time and Metcalfe obliged. But Allison soon approached apologetically with a request: Gerard wasn’t happy with the way Metcalfe was ironing the cuffs on his business shirts, Allison said, and showed her how he liked it done. Metcalfe duly took note, but after a while Allison asked her not to worry about ironing anymore. Metcalfe remembers thinking at the time that Gerard must be very particular.
Allison generally had the slow cooker going, preparing a meal for that night’s dinner. She was particularly obsessive about her weight. Metcalfe sometimes saw Allison weighing her food before eating. A fitness fanatic herself, Metcalfe often chatted with Allison about weight-loss strategies. Whenever Metcalfe encouraged Allison and told her she looked great, the support would always be met with appreciation.
Storm brewing
Despite the turmoil in Gerard’s private life, 2010 was the biggest year yet for Century 21 Westside. While the rest of the world was still being buffeted by fallout from the global financial crisis, in the leafy western suburbs, their business was doing a roaring trade. Phill Broom and Jocelyn Frost were dedicated to sales, and Gerard was managing the agency. Ben Bassingthwaighte was in charge of rentals. As fast as Gerard’s partners could list houses, they were selling them. Gerard proudly told people his agency had become the number one Century 21 office in Queensland and ranked tenth nationally. Gerard’s dreams of career success appeared to be within reach.
As the business progressed he abandoned his original plan for a series of branches throughout the western suburbs and set his mind on a single, giant office instead. The partners all agreed it was time to expand. Broom and Frost were riding high on their lofty commissions and were up for the challenge. By now, the business had outgrown its current office space in Kenmore. They discussed knocking out the walls and setting it up as a big open-plan space. But the lease was coming up for renewal fairly soon and in the end they decided to roll the dice – to move to bigger premises and go on a recruiting drive.
They found a space two suburbs closer to the city, at the corner of Swann Road and Moggill Road at Taringa. It sat between the western suburbs and the CBD, so thousands of commuters passed every day. They’d have the naming rights to the building, which they thought would give them significant exposure. There was double the space, which meant they could hire the new staff they needed to grow. Everything about their new super-office seemed perfect. They would be within reach of the entire west. They could tap into St Lucia, Indooroopilly, Chapel Hill, Kenmore, Brookfield, Pullenvale, Moggill and across the river to Sinnamon Park, Jindalee and beyond.
In their excitement, the three key partners glossed over the risks. They were uprooting their business from a location where they had a name and following. They were moving to a building that was isolated, with no surrounding businesses to draw foot traffic. And they were doing it at a time the market was unsteady. Yes, they had been doing remarkably well but in real estate, things could change dramatically, without warning. Their outgoings would multiply: the rent was enormous and until their old lease ran out, they would have to keep paying for the Kenmore office space. They would also have to pay for a new fit-out at Taringa and all the other expenses associated with relocating.
They leased three separate offices in the Taringa building to obtain the space they wanted, and Gerard oversaw the shop fit-out from November 2010. Internal walls were knocked down and rebuilt; the premises were painted, carpeted and wired. Gerard took charge of the hiring, selecting nine new salespeople and an extra support person. The additional staff would take the office head count to 27.
They moved around Christmas and planned an opening for 10 January 2011, when the new staff members were due to start. But the plans quickly derailed. In December, Broom would recall, he found out the business couldn’t afford to pay the directors the fees they were owed. By then it was too late to back out of the move to their big new office. And the finances were much worse than Broom or Frost imagined. Almost as soon as they’d moved offices, Gerard called a meeting and broke the bad news to Frost and Broom. The finances were diabolical. They were severely in debt.
‘Phill and I were in absolute shock. This was because 2010 was such a great year. We wondered where the money had gone,’ recalled Frost.
Gerard would blame Broom and Frost, accusing them
of dropping the ball with sales while he did everything to get them into the new office. Still puzzled, Broom and Frost tried to figure out how they had landed in so much trouble. Broom did the sums. In the final quarter of 2010, they’d raked in about $600,000 in commissions. There should have been plenty of money to tide them over.
‘Given that the sales from the fourth quarter were massive, it was a question of where the money had gone,’ Broom would tell police. ‘It got to a point where we were robbing Peter to pay Paul. We were taking debt from the previous quarter and carrying it over. The back-pay to Jocelyn and myself was quite large. The reality was that there wasn’t as much money as was supposed to be there.’
When Frost looked back, she realised how naive she’d been. She’d trusted Gerard to handle the finances and hadn’t been firm enough in demanding information that might have revealed the true position of the business. ‘Gerard always had reasons for not having his financials ready every week at management meetings,’ Frost told police. ‘We had some discussions about whether we could afford to move and afford to rent the larger place. I asked Gerard several times for the financial records to show we could afford it, but it never really showed us the data.’
Broom looked back at Gerard’s performance. The partners had long ago agreed Gerard would run the office to free Broom and Frost to bring in business and income. Bassingthwaighte’s job was to run the rentals side. Gerard, as principal and managing director, would look after training, recruitment and accounting. He was rewarded handsomely to do this but he had staff helping him. He had someone looking after the accounts plus he had a PA, bookkeeper and two front-of-house people. None of these people generated income.
As for Gerard’s job of keeping the office running smoothly, that hadn’t happened either. Between managing his complicated love life and joining every community association going, he’d failed to manage his own business.
