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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Man, woman charged with 2002 murder of teen mum Amber Haigh

A man and woman in the NSW Riverina have been charged with murder over the suspicious disappearance of teenage mother Amber Haigh almost 20 years ago.

Last week NSW Police announced the reward for information about the cold case had been increased from $100,000 to $1 million.

The pair, both aged 61, were arrested at a property in the NSW town of Harden (about 120km north-west of Canberra) at about 7.30am on Wednesday, and have since been charged with one count each of murder.

The man was also charged with aggravated sexual assault of a victim with serious intellectual disability, NSW Police said in a statement.

Both were refused bail and will face court on Thursday.

Ms Haigh was reported missing on June 19, 2002 after failing to return to her home at Kingsvale, a town in the South West Slopes, where she and her six-month-old son had been living with a married couple.

Police were told the couple dropped the young mother at Campbelltown station on June 5 and she intended to travel by train to Mt Druitt in western Sydney to visit her sick father in hospital.

Later that night, money was withdrawn from her bank account at a Campbelltown ATM.

A coronial inquest in 2011 found Ms Haigh died as a result of homicide or other misadventure in June 2002.

In 2020, a formal review of the case was conducted under the Homicide Squad’s Unsolved Homicide framework and Strike Force Villamar II began a fresh investigation.

NSW Police last week announced the reward for information about the cold case had been increased from $100,000 to $1 million.

A video message from Ms Haigh’s heartbroken mother Rosalind Wright was also released.

“I know in my heart that she would never have left her son,” she said in the video.

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