Court releases police interviews with Mark Waden, beauty queen’s killer boyfriend

Sitting across from two detectives, Mark Sheridan Waden is emotionless as he’s questioned over the murder of his girlfriend.

“Murder?” Waden asks.

It’s June 2019, about a year since US citizen and former beauty queen Priscilla Brooten went missing.

Waden is measured as he tells police he came home from work one day in 2018 to find Brooten had left.

It wasn’t unusual – he had told her he wanted the relationship to end. He had threatened to call immigration officials on her.

He had discovered she was keeping secrets, he said.

But investigators had begun to build a case that Waden had, in fact, killed her.

It was eventually a circumstantial one, with no body, no eyewitnesses, and no crime scene.

So, detectives asked, what happened to Brooten?

And why had Waden excavated his Brisbane yard, dumping more than 800 kilograms of soil and taking a wheelie bin to a suburban tip?

Waden’s police interview was made publicly available for the first time on Friday, days after a jury found the Brisbane real estate agent and Zumba instructor guilty of murder.

He begins the interview telling police he needs to pick up his girlfriend, Desiree Hatzipapas, from the airport.

For years, Hatzipapas remained in the scope of the police investigation as many of Waden’s lies began to unravel.

Before her disappearance, Brooten shared a home with Waden. She had discovered messages between him and Hatzipapas, his 21-year-old colleague at Bees Nees Realty.

It was a high-stress job, Waden tells police, and his long hours led to a strain on his relationship with Brooten.

Brooten confronted Waden about his messages with Hatzipapas. There was a huge argument, the prosecution said.

The interview bounces around various moments in the life of Waden, who referred to himself as ‘Marky Mark’ in his police statement. At one point, he rattled off a list of all the women he’d dated.

Brooten and Waden first met through his work teaching Zumba classes at a gym in Deagon, on Brisbane’s north side, and started a relationship in late 2016.

Brooten had been living in Scarborough, about 20 minutes north-east of Waden’s home in Bracken Ridge, before she moved in with him, bringing three suitcases full of clothes, make-up, shoes, a table, a chair, and some plants.

But Waden claimed she was secretive. He tells police she closed her laptop around him, wouldn’t speak about her past, and used false names while doing illegal activities online.

Eventually, Waden says he wanted the relationship to end.

“Finding out about her past, her aliases, different surnames, she wasn’t a nice person,” he says.

He claimed Brooten had been using him to stay in the country, spending his money.

Around the breakdown, Waden spent more time with Hatzipapas, in what was described by the prosecution as an intense relationship. His messages to Hatzipapas became central to the case.

One, from July 5, 2018 – the day Brooten was said to have been murdered – read: “We could sneak a long kiss as no one is here to see it.”

That evening, Waden cancelled his Zumba class, making a 29-minute phone call to Brooten. It was the last recorded call between the pair.

When Hatzipapas asked Waden that evening if everything was OK, he replied he had a class but could not respond.

The day after, Waden asked for a trench to be dug on his property, and for work to be done on a retaining wall. He told contractors that council were “on his back”.

The prosecution case relied on the locations where Waden and Brooten’s phones had pinged off cell towers, and places where the missing woman’s Volkswagen Golf was tagged.

That car was given to Brooten by Steve Thompson – a man she had a complicated relationship with, and who provided for her financially.

Waden had sent a series of messages from Brooten’s phone to Thompson about where the car had been left. But by then, she was already dead.

Within a few weeks, Hatzipapas was invited to Waden’s home for the first time. He offered her Brooten’s clothing and make-up, and Brooten’s phone, which he’d restored to its factory settings.

It wasn’t until late 2018 that Brooten was reported missing by her former partner Thompson, and her friend from Zumba class, Laetitia Penfold.

Brooten’s daughter reached out from the US, discovering Penfold was also looking for Brooten.

In December 2018, police attended Waden’s home. Body-worn camera footage shows an officer asking if he can briefly look inside the home.

Waden is softly spoken as he talks with the officer. It is the first time police see inside the home where Brooten had been living before her disappearance.

He tells them he split up with Brooten earlier that year, talking of lies and how the relationship wasn’t working out because of her “hidden secrets”.

By May 2019, police visited Waden’s home. They did not speak to him, but the day after visiting, he hired a self-drive excavator.

On May 4, he messaged Hatzipapas explaining his entertaining area was flooded and that he needed to go to Bunnings to purchase a drainage pipe.

A day later, the excavator was delivered. By 10am, Waden bought tarpaulins and rope from Bunnings.

Waden again messaged Hatzipapas, saying he was taking excess soil to the dump.

That day, he dropped off 400 kilograms of soil from his trailer covered in a blue tarp. By 6pm, he was at his parents, with a wheelie bin on his trailer.

The following day, CCTV captured Waden washing the bin at a Deagon car wash. Later, he dumped another 460 kilograms of waste at the tip.

The trial heard it was not known when or where exactly Waden disposed of Brooten’s body – but it may have been at the Nudgee tip.

The jury were given glimpses into Brooten’s at times troubled life.

Her daughter, Caitlin Williams, told the murder trial that her relationship with her mother was at times complicated, and became distant once she began dating Waden.

Williams became emotional as she told the court her mother had not responded to her several messages, including about her grandmother being sick in hospital.

“She would’ve called if she’d known her mum was sick,” she told the court.

Brooten’s audio messages were also played to the court, as part of emotional testimony by her former boyfriend Steve Thompson.

In audio played to the court, Brooten could be heard talking about her mental health. “It’s going to be hard … I need to learn how to be me, how to be a good person … stop taking, be more thoughtful.”

Thompson said his relationship with Brooten became strained over financial issues, and together, they had accumulated more than $70,000 in debt.

He said he told Brooten at one point he could not afford her lifestyle, and a week later she spent $700 on perfume.

Pages from Brooten’s notebook were also shown to the court, detailing her struggles with mental health and hopes for the future.

Many entries did not specify who they were referring to, including one that read: “Remember when you beat the shit out of me.”

“You gave me excuses … I hate you for what you did to me. I tried to kill myself. You don’t care. You hit me, you don’t care. I have nothing now. Everything I had, everything believed was just lies.

Other sections of the notebook included: “He claims he fears for his life, that I will stab him while he is sleeping. He chooses to sleep next to me. I have never threatened to kill, stab or physically hurt him. Why would I kill or stab him?

“According to him, I have threatened to ruin his life by exposing his weed growing and selling operation and publishing my injuries he gave me after almost killing me on Facebook.

“Mark is trying to put all this on me. Yes, it may appear he is taking responsibility and apologising but his facts regarding my mental health are incorrect. It is an attempt to save himself, to give himself an out or to try and make me appear crazier than I am.”

In other entries, Brooten defends her decision to seek help. “It is hard to face, to realise, to see that I am this way.”

“I will not continually beat myself up over this … while I am sorry I cannot change what I did or didn’t do but I’m not going to feel sorry for myself and it happened and it’s what I needed but at sir’s expense.

“Sir has every right to feel how he does, do not dismiss that. I’m grateful he expresses his feelings. I will/am changing what I do now.”

The audio messages and notes are some of the last pieces Brooten’s family have left of her.

Earlier this week, before a packed courtroom, Waden was found guilty of Brooten’s murder by a jury.

He now faces life imprisonment, and will be eligible for parole after 20 years. From the dock, he said: “It wasn’t me.”

His legal team have indicated they will consider appealing.

Brooten’s daughter still holds hope that one day her mother’s remains will be found.

“Until we know [where] he hid her body we cannot fully rest and I hope she haunts his dreams forever until he confesses.”

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