Gerard Baden-Clay spied on his wife Allison with baby monitors and controlled her with systematic emotional and financial abuse, her cousin claims.
Allison Baden-Clay’s cousin, Jodie Dann has come out to accuse her slain relative’s husband, and eventual killer, Gerard Baden-Clay of eavesdropping on his wife with baby monitors, limiting her access to money and taunting her about her weight during their marriage.
Ms Dann’s revelations to Woman’s Day come as Queensland prosecutors prepare to return to the High Court to have Baden-Clay’s murder conviction reinstated after it was controversially downgraded to manslaughter late last year.
In an explosive interview Ms Dann claims Allison was abused and tormented by her husband years before her dead body was discovered dumped in a creek bed on April 2012, just 14kms from the Brisbane home she shared with Gerard and their three daughters.
“She said, ‘Allison is missing,’” Jodie told the magazine of the day her daughter rang to tell her cousin had vanished. “I’ll never forget that moment for as long as I live.”
Allison had wed Gerard in 1997 but Ms Dann said that throughout the couple’s 15-year marriage the former real estate agent had an “insatiable appetite” for extra-marital affairs and systematically made his wife feel “worthless” so she wouldn’t leave him.
Allison married Gerard in 1997 and was married to him for 15-years before it all ended in murder.
Ms Dann said some members of the family were aware of the tactics the convicted wife-killer would use to trap his spouse.
Apart from cutting her off from those who cared for her Gerard had another sneaky method of closely monitoring his wife when she did have family and friends over.
“Gerard had this baby monitor and he would put it around the house and listen to Allison from the other rooms,” Ms Dann tells Woman’s Day.
“If her parents were there, he would listen to their conversation from another room.”
Apart from the chilling eavesdropping, which Ms Dann labelled “unbearable”, that was just part of it.
“Allison was controlled in every aspect of her life,” tells her cousin. “He wouldn’t let her have her banks cards and would only give her bits of cash to spend.”
Gerard also kept Allison feeling low with constant attacks on her self-esteem.
“He was always at her about getting fat,” says Ms Dann. “She felt worthless, and she was taunted by his infidelities.”
Jodie says her cousin never left her husband because “she was so broken – and broke – that she thought she couldn’t leave.”
One year after Allison’s death her parents Geoff and Priscilla Dickie along with other friends and family penned an open letter remembering Allison as the “wonderful woman” and “model mum” she was.
Gerard Baden-Clay reported his wife missing from their home at Brookfield in Brisbane on April 20, 2012.
Allison was missing for 10 days before her badly decomposed body was found and Gerard was charged with her murder in June 2012. After a six-week trial in 2014 he was convicted of stabbing his wife to death and later sentenced to life in prison.
The Court of Appeal’s controversial decision last December to downgrade the murder conviction to manslaughter was the result of Baden-Clay’s defence team arguing that there was no proof Gerard intentionally killed Allison.
A full bench of the High Court is set to hear the case to reinstate the conviction on Tuesday, July 26.
In documents filed to the court Queensland prosecutors have accused Gerard’s lawyers of creating “imaginary possibilities”.
Despite his successful 2015 appeal Gerard Baden-Clay has remained in prison since his 2012 conviction.
You can read Jodie Dann’s full interview in Woman’s Day, on sale now.
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