3.55pm: Gerard Baden-Clay said his mistress Toni McHugh called him from the real estate conference on April 20, 2012.
He agreed he told her his wife was missing.
Baden-Clay said he phoned Ms McHugh the next day.
He said his lawyer had warned him the police would be investigating him because he was the spouse of a missing person.
“I called her to simply forewarn her that might occur and tell her to tell the truth because my primary concern was to try and find Allison,” he said.
Crown prosecutor Todd Fuller QC quipped: “Well, Toni McHugh had nothing to do with the disappearance of Allison?”
Baden-Clay: “I don’t know.”
The accused said Ms McHugh contacted him after being “interrogated” by police and told of contact he had with other women.
He said he met with her face-to-face.
“I told her that the relationship with Hammond had been before we got together and I told her the relationship with Crane, whilst it was while we were together, it was meaningless,” he said.
“Because I was concerned about her and I just wanted her to be … not do anything silly.”
Baden-Clay said he did not know if Ms McHugh was still loyal to him.
He said he told her to find someone else and not for the first time.
Mr Fuller asked Baden-Clay about his mobile phone, describing it as his “life-blood” as a real estate agent.
“Where was it when you picked it up in the morning of the 20th?” he asked.
Baden-Clay said it was on the charger on his bedside table when he woke up.
The jury was shown a photo of his main bedroom, showing a bed and white bedspread with a blue throw, a coat hanger and a hair brush on it, as well as a treadmill near to the window and a lace curtain draped across it.
Baden-Clay said he did not tidy up the bedroom on the morning of April 20, 2012.
Another photo showed his white iPhone charger cord looped through a handle of his bedside drawer.
“I didn’t put it on the charger, no,” he said.
“I was asked previously as to whether at some ungodly hour in the middle of the night I put it on and I have no recollection of that.”
Baden-Clay said his wife’s side of the bed was “sort of folded back”.
“So it gave me an indication that it looked like she probably had been in bed at some point,” he said.
The accused said when he made the bed he would not have made it “like that”.
He said he thought someone else may have moved the doona cover.
Baden-Clay said it was “hard to say” whether the bed looked slept in.
The accused took the jury through the bedroom photo by photo, pointing out his wife’s dressing table and their walk-in wardrobe.
He said he did not see his wife’s pyjamas when he woke up that morning.
“Well the, the, I don’t know where her pyjamas were, they may have been in the laundry basket, I don’t know but her shoes were missing and one of the pairs of leggings she tended to wear when she went walking wasn’t there,” he said.
He said he did not connect his phone to the charger at 1.48am.
Baden-Clay said he used his phone up until the last text messages he sent at roughly 8.30pm on April 19, 2012.
“I don’t think I had my phone after that,” he said.
Mr Fuller suggested he did have his phone and he put it on the charger next to his bed.
Baden-Clay: “I did not.”
The accused said he woke the next morning, took his phone off the charger and sat on the toilet.
He said he had not driven the Holden Captiva the previous night.
Baden-Clay agreed they had only had the Captiva for about eight weeks at that time.
He agreed his wife had not complained of bleeding in the car or a chipped tooth.
“No, I don’t remember that,” he said.
Mr Fuller suggested his wife had no plans to walk that morning.
“Well, she did,” Baden-Clay replied.
Baden-Clay said his wife would have preferred to keep the phone after he went to bed.
He agreed he was rushing the next morning when he shaved.
Mr Fuller asked him how he injured his hand.
Baden-Clay said the tip of the screwdriver going into his hand was what caused him to cut his hand a day earlier while fitting a light.
Mr Fuller: “I suggest what you did to your face was not a shaving injury.”
Baden-Clay: “It was.”
Mr Fuller: “That came about when your wife scratched your face?”
Baden-Clay: “She did not.”
Mr Fuller: “At a time when your wife was struggling with you?”
Baden-Clay: “No she did not.”
He agreed it was a significant injury to his face but said not everyone asked him about it.
“Not everybody who saw me, but some people who saw me did,” he said of the marks on his cheek.
Baden-Clay agreed he had a problem with the plant Cat’s Claw at his house and there were Crepe Myrtle leaves in the backyard, which were falling at that time of year.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/...-allison-in-2012/story-fnihsrf2-1226972945594
