At the same time that police were drilling into Keogh’s financial dealings they were delivered another source of intrigue. Two young women came forward, independently of each other, claiming they had affairs with Henry Keogh while he was involved with Anna-Jane. A. and B., as the public came to know them, were granted suppressions over their identities, on the grounds of personal hardship, which remain in effect. It was decided their appearance and evidence at the trial may cause undue stress in their working and private lives and negatively influence their chances of future employment. It was also thought they would be more candid witnesses if they could testify under the veil of anonymity.
Henry’s barrister, Michael David, argued the evidence of these two witnesses was irrelevant and prejudicial. He claimed the fact that Keogh admitted having a sexual relationship with one of the two women 14 months before his fiancée’s death, during a time when he and Anna-Jane were separated, had no bearing on his guilt or innocence. When the case came to court the judge, Justice Kevin Duggan QC, disagreed. He told the court, ‘it is appropriate that you should be supplied with information relating to the nature of that relationship so you can understand it properly.’61
A., the younger of the two women, said she learnt of the death of Anna-Jane Cheney a week after it occurred, when a colleague at the State Bank, where she’d worked since 1987, rang her and read out a newspaper article. It’s not clear who made contact with the police, A. herself or someone from the bank, but they wasted little time. Her first meeting with Detectives Man and Fielding was on 28 March, just ten days after Anna-Jane’s death. A. had first met Keogh in 1992 at the city office of the bank where, at that time, she worked in the Retail Business Management section. Keogh had been the District Manager of the Norwood branch in the inner-eastern suburbs. The two met during his visit to the King William Street head office. At that meeting, she said, it took only 15 to 20 minutes of conversation before ‘he was interested in going out with me. He wanted to take me out to dinner.’62 She gave him her number with the invitation to call.
Keogh maintained that A. was confused about the attention paid to her. She confided in him that she had never been able to keep a boyfriend and turned to him for advice. He indulged her, admitting they exchanged Christmas presents and in February 1994, a month before Anna’s death, he had even personally delivered a Valentine’s Day card with a rose. According to A., she had asked, ‘Does this mean you’re mine? She said Keogh replied, ‘Yes. I’m yours and you’re all mine.’63
Keogh didn’t deny his sexual relationship with B., the second woman, though he pointed out it was during a period in 1992 when he and Anna-Jane’s relationship had cooled and when they were not living together. B. worked for Dun & Bradstreet, the credit reference company which the State Bank often engaged to check the financial bona fides of customers and prospective clients. In 1991 she and Keogh met a number of times at various business meetings and developed a rapport. She was aware he had been married and had children. By the end of that year they met occasionally outside work for a coffee or casual drink.
In March 1992, she said, Henry rang her and said, ‘I need to discuss something with you and I can’t do it over the phone.’64 They met at the trendy Oxford Hotel on O’Connell Street in North Adelaide, a historic Victorian building with high ornate ceilings and stained-glass windows. The two sat in the colourful bar lounges and according to B. Henry told her that he needed to break up with his girlfriend, Anna. Although he really loved her she wanted to marry and have children. He’d recently come out of a long marriage, he already had three children and he’d since had a vasectomy which he didn’t wish to reverse. While telling her how much he loved Anna, he broke down and cried. She then said Keogh expressed the view that ‘the kindest way he could end it was to wean her off him’.65
In June they ran into each other in the fashionable suburb of Unley, just south of the city, while shopping. Henry was with Anna and B. was with a couple of friends. There were friendly introductions all round. The next day he called B. to say that he and Anna-Jane had moved apart and were now just friends. The relationship between B. and Keogh turned into a full-blown affair that continued until mid-December of that year. During this time Anna purchased her house in Magill and moved out of the Parkside rental she and Henry had shared. Henry took up lodgings in a unit at the back of the bank’s Norwood branch. As far as B. was concerned she and Henry were now an item. They had sex five or six times a week and enjoyed dinners and outings together.
However, in December 1992 B. broke off the relationship because Henry would not stay the night at her place. The reason he gave was his back; he complained her bed was too soft. In her evidence B. stated that Keogh had also said he was an early riser and didn’t want to disturb her, and later said his break-up with Anna was still too raw to make such a commitment. Keogh later admitted in court that towards the end of that year, while he wasn’t living with Anna-Jane, the relationships did briefly ‘overlap’.66 B. said they remained friends and saw each other occasionally but that there was no sexual contact. They did meet for lunch at the Seven Stars Hotel in the city on Valentine’s Day 1994: the same day A. claimed Henry delivered a rose and a card to her. According to B., at that lunch Keogh told her that he hadn’t been involved with anyone since they had broken off their relationship 14 months previously.
During the period between his arrest on 7 May and the scheduled committal hearing in August 1994 Henry Keogh had plenty to be concerned about. In May at a hearing in the Adelaide Magistrates Court, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Paul Rofe QC, described the crime as ‘premeditated and meticulously planned’.67 If that was true, Keogh appeared to have prepared no credible strategem to deflect the inevitable questions about the will and the fraudulent insurance policies. The Cheney family’s hostility towards Henry Keogh following his arrest intensified and in July they petitioned the court to have him struck from the will as both the executor and a beneficiary. They applied to place Anna-Jane’s estate in the hands of the Public Trustee.
However Henry Keogh reacted, he was likely to appear guilty. Challenging their action could be interpreted as his continued wish to profit from her death. If he did nothing it may appear as an admission of guilt, a sign he was surrendering to the inevitable. His predicament was exacerbated by media coverage of Kevin Cheney’s wish to contest the will. The Adelaide Advertiser headline, ‘Court asked to cut alleged killer from victim’s will’,68 did little to reinforce the principle of innocent until proven guilty.
The first hearing before the Supreme Court was held on Friday 29 July. Henry Keogh opposed the Cheneys’ application on legal advice that not to do so would prejudice his chances of a fair trial. His counsel told the court he believed that was at least part of the motive behind the action: ‘there is simply no reason for this application except to prejudice this defendant’s trial and, with great respect, that is my personal greatest concern.’69
The dispute over the will was postponed until after the August committal. On 2 September Justice Millhouse adjourned the proceedings indefinitely. It wasn’t until March 1998 that the Cheney family had their way and Keogh was finally disqualified from benefitting in any way from Anna-Jane’s will. The Public Trustee was installed as the executor of the estate.