Baden-Clay shied from public gaze

JOINING THRONG: Olivia Walton, Gerard Baden-Clay's sister, leaves the court building at the lunch adjournment. Source: The Courier-Mail

THE accused was in court. But you would have been excused for not realising it.

Soon after entering the dock of Court 17 on level four of Brisbane's Magistrates Court yesterday, Gerard Robert Baden-Clay sat in the seat in the deepest recess of the glass-walled box to the right of the court.

For the whole day's proceedings Baden-Clay was out of sight, away from the glare of the public gallery, visible to only two or three people in the far left of the first row.

Court artists had to lean out of their seats and crane their necks for inspiration.

Check here for rolling coverage of the hearing during the day

Baden-Clay was dressed in a dark suit and a light-blue open-collar shirt and cleanly shaved. And he wore the wedding ring with which he married Allison almost 16 years ago.

Baden-Clay shifted his body to face the bench, but his gaze moved only from a hulking white folder of documents on his lap to nowhere in particular; removing his glasses, replacing his glasses, looking down, looking forward but never looking to the gallery.

In the gallery there was a mixture of justice rubber-neckers, students, media and supporters of Allison Baden-Clay, swelling to about 100 people by the lunch adjournment.

Many were women who had followed the case and were there to witness the legal system in action.

One white-haired woman in the gallery, thought to be an aunt there to support Baden-Clay.

An artist's sketch of Gerard Baden-Clay during day one of the committal hearing in Brisbane.

Olivia Walton, the sister so often by her brother's side during the media spotlight that burned for two months after Allison's disappearance on April 20 last year, was not in the gallery.

She sat in a conference room next door, slipping out of the court building briefly at lunchtime, only to be chased down George St by a pair of television cameramen.

Soon after, Mrs Walton marched resolutely back to Court 17 and waited for her brother to return to the dock, where the pair held a long and inelegant conversation, whispered through a hole in the glass wall of the dock.

And just as he was in those two months after April 20, Baden-Clay was expressionless throughout. His only concession to emotion came at the end of the opening remarks by prosecutor Danny Boyle who said while the prosecution case was circumstantial due to the significant decomposition of Allison's body, he would still show that Baden-Clay murdered his wife based on overwhelming motive.

Baden-Clay lifted his gaze and shook his head at the slow-talking prosecutor.

And as the gallery filed out for the lunch adjournment, again Baden-Clay turned his back to the procession of onlookers.

Most were not only there to listen to the detail in the litany of witness statements but to be part of a case that has fascinated the community.

Much of yesterday's gallery were there to catch a glimpse of the man who was pillar of his community - the small businessman with the very public face, the president of the Kenmore and District Chamber of Commerce, a potential political candidate and someone active in his local P&C - now standing in the dock of the Magistrate's Court.

One witness, though, made sure she, for one, got to look into the eyes of the accused. School teacher Julie Tzvetkoff who lives in Boscombe Rd across from the Baden-Clay home, told the court she heard yelling coming from the general direction of the home between 8pm and 9pm on April 19.

As she left the witness stand, Mrs Tzvetkoff chose to not walk around the back of the thicket of desks and screens of the defence and prosecution teams.

Instead she marched across the front of the court, past the bench and passing directly in front of the dock, glancing at the man perched in the corner.

The accused did not return the favour.

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