Dad’s chilling confession after killing wife and keeping it secret for 45 years

With national parks and miles of remote coastland, South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula offers an escape from busy life – and in the 1970s it was even quieter than it is today.

Colleen Adams lived there in the small town of Maitland with her painter husband Geoffrey, 26, and their two young children.

It was 1973 and the couple had no phone, no TV and no car – but that wasn’t unusual when you were living their slower-paced rural life.

Colleen, 24, loved to keep house and was a devoted mother, although living on Yorke Peninsula did have downsides. She was raising two daughters – Marie, then aged three-and-a-half, and Kaye, 18 months – without many friends around her to help and her nearest family was more than 50 miles away.

Due to their lifestyle, when Colleen went quiet for a few weeks in the November of that year, it took a while for people to grow concerned.

Her mum, Vera, reported her missing in December but it was a year before police interviewed Geoffrey. He said that one night he’d returned home from a local meeting to find that Colleen had packed two cases – and she told him she was leaving.

Geoffrey said his wife had been suffering from “baby blues” and that she had talked about walking out on him before.

He told officers that Colleen had said, “Goodbye, you little bastards,” on the way out and then climbed into a white Ford Falcon that was being driven by a middle-aged woman he didn’t recognise, leaving him and the children behind.

That was on 22 November, he said – a month before her mother had reported her missing.

With few close friends, no one could confirm the claim that Colleen was suffering from postnatal depression. Soon whispers spread about the mum who had walked out on her family.

Geoffrey avoided talking about her with their children and they grew up feeling abandoned. It became the “family shame”. But Colleen’s siblings were sure she would never have left her daughters. And if she had started a new life, why hadn’t she touched her bank account or contacted her family?

In 1979, Colleen’s disappearance finally became a criminal probe. Geoffrey, who had divorced her in 1977, was brought in for questioning again. He said that Colleen had wanted to “live the single life”. He also said that her parents and sisters didn’t care about her, which was why she hadn’t been in touch with them. But that was the opposite of what they were saying.

Police were out of leads but as with any missing person case, Colleen’s was continuously reviewed and there would be media releases and requests for information about her.

In 1996, a Crime Stoppers episode ran a fresh appeal about Colleen and Geoffrey was interviewed. He was asked how he felt about being suspected by the community of knowing more about his wife’s disappearance than he had revealed.

“The one who gets left behind is the one who gets the brunt of the blame,” he told the journalist. “That has been the biggest punishment for me.” Geoffrey also insisted that Colleen’s mysterious disappearance “haunted him”.

But investigators continued to be suspicious about a large concrete slab that Geoffrey had arranged to be laid at his former marital home.

Three years later, they used a ground-penetrating radar to see if there was anything buried beneath it. They even made a dig – but found nothing. Were they wrong in their suspicions? Had Colleen really walked away, abandoning her kids to start a new life under a new identity?

Then, in 2018, 45 years after Colleen disappeared, an article about the case appeared in a local paper. It reignited interest and the local media clustered around the home Geoffrey had moved to in the town of Wallaroo. Police warned Geoffrey they were going to pull up the floorboards of his previous home – and break up the concrete slab.

A day later, Geoffrey confessed that he’d killed Colleen on 22 November 1973. He said he’d struck her twice over the head with a metal object during an argument, while their children were in bed.

“I just struck her a bit hard,” he told the police. “She fell to the floor and then she died.”

When asked for a motive, Geoffrey cruelly suggested that Colleen had become impossible to live with.

“It was the continuous having a go at me for nothing, yelling and screaming, it had gone on for too long,” he said.

Geoffrey said he’d left her body on the kitchen floor overnight in her pink nightgown, before burying her the next day in their back garden. He told police that admitting it was “the hardest thing I’ve done in my life”.

That same day, officers went to excavate the ground and haunting footage was taken of Geoffrey pointing to a specific spot. The area was cordoned off and diggers were brought in as his neighbours gathered in disbelief.

Before long, under a tented area, Colleen’s remains were unearthed. The young mum hadn’t left that night – she was just metres away from her children.

The police had even excavated in the same area before but had just not dug deep enough.

Devastated Marie and Kaye requested privacy as their dad, then 70, was arrested and charged with killing Colleen. A month later, their mum was finally buried with dignity.

Geoffrey pleaded guilty to manslaughter but not guilty to murder, which led to a seven-day trial in 2020. He remained in custody until the trial, in which he admitted killing his wife.

But his defence argued it was manslaughter because he hadn’t intended to take her life.

The prosecution said Geoffrey had spent almost half a century “peddling a story” to everyone. “He spent 45 years creating a false narrative of a mentally unstable woman who abandoned her children,” the jury was told.

Geoffrey’s police interview was played in court, where he continued to say that Colleen “couldn’t cope”. He said he’d found it hard to live with her and told officers that even “nice guys get pushed to the limit”.

The prosecution spoke about how Geoffrey had callously left Colleen’s body on the kitchen floor, then buried her in the garden. He told everyone she had said she was “bloody glad” she was leaving and did not want to see any of them again. “None of that was true,” the prosecution said.

In August, after four hours of deliberation, the jury found Geoffrey, 72, not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter. It was
a disappointment to Colleen’s loved ones and because Geoffrey had made an early lesser plea, it made him eligible for 40% off his sentence. Colleen’s sister Heather Johncock, who had long suspected her brother-in-law, said, “I knew she wouldn’t have run away and left her children. She was a very loving mother. She loved her children and doted on them very much.”

At the sentencing hearing, Marie gave a statement about growing up feeling abandoned, rejected and like she didn’t belong – and telling of her heartache over discovering her father was not the victim he’d led her to believe.

“The realisation that he took her away and she had not left me was devastating. He then lied to me for 45 years,” she said. “I felt like I was living with the sins of my mother, and now I realise it was the sins of my father.”

Marie said she’d never stop grieving but added, “The most meaningful moment from all of this has been knowing that my mother did love me and that she didn’t choose to abandon me.”

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Heather and Colleen’s other sister, Kristina Burford, told of how they had been forced to listen to her being portrayed as unstable and argumentative so that Geoffrey could make himself look like the victim.

“The victim here is Colleen – she was a wonderful, caring person and I loved her,” Kristina said.

The judge was due to sentence Geoffrey before Christmas but the case turned out to have one final twist in store.

On 14 December, the judge revealed to the public that Geoffrey had brain cancer. The very next day, it was announced that he had died.

South Australia’s oldest solved cold case had finally come to an end but Geoffrey would never face sentencing for his crime.

However, at least the truth about tragic Colleen had finally been revealed before her killer took the secret to his own grave.

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