{"id":739388,"date":"2026-06-16T04:11:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T04:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/739388\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T04:11:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T04:11:14","slug":"mark-waden-found-guilty-of-murdering-american-partner-priscilla-brooten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/739388\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Waden found guilty of murdering American partner Priscilla Brooten"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Brisbane man accused of killing his American partner, whose body has never been found, claimed “it wasn’t me” after being found guilty of her murder.<\/p>\n

Mark Waden, 51, faced a murder trial in Brisbane accused of causing the death of Priscilla Brooten in July 2018.<\/p>\n

The prosecution alleged the 46-year-old was killed by Waden during an argument at their Bracken Ridge home, shortly after she discovered he was having an affair.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Priscilla Brooten’s body has never been found. (Supplied: Queensland Police)<\/p>\n

After deliberating for less than a day, a Supreme Court jury returned its verdict today.<\/p>\n

When they told the court they had found Waden guilty of murder, he replied from the dock, “It wasn’t me.”<\/p>\n

Jury told victim was buried then dumped<\/p>\n

During the trial, the jury heard that after killing Ms Brooten, Waden buried her in a trench beside his driveway.<\/p>\n

He then used Ms Brooten’s phone and posed as her in texts, before dumping the car she had been driving near her ex-partner’s home.<\/p>\n

Almost a year later he dug up her remains and disposed of them at a Brisbane dump in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n

Witnesses gave evidence that in this 10-month period, Waden told a number of lies about where his partner had gone.<\/p>\n

This included that she was possibly arrested by immigration officials or that she had gone back to the US to be with another man.<\/p>\n

Waden’s defence team tried to argue there was no evidence Ms Brooten had even died.<\/p>\n

Frist trial aborted for juror misconduct<\/p>\n

Just two days into the first trial, a separate jury was discharged after it was revealed a juror had made internet searches about the case.<\/p>\n

A new jury was empanelled, and Justice Peter Callaghan stressed that they could under no circumstances carry out their own independent research.<\/p>\n

“[The first jury] had to be discharged yesterday because one juror took it upon himself to disobey this instruction, and so the whole trial had to be aborted,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"Lady<\/p>\n

Waden has been sentenced to the mandatory life in prison for Ms Booten’s murder.\u00a0 (ABC News: Demi Lynch)<\/p>\n

He told the new jury to think about how “horribly unfair” it was to deliberately cause a mistrial.<\/p>\n

“Think how much this is costing, for a start,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Everyone involved is under extreme pressure, and that pressure has been extended, prolonged for all those people.”<\/p>\n

Waden, who was on bail during the trial, was taken into custody.<\/p>\n

‘Full of energy and life’<\/p>\n

When handing down the mandatory life sentence, Justice Callaghan told the court the circumstances surrounding Ms Brooten’s death would never be known.<\/p>\n

But he said it was accepted Waden had engaged in an “elaborate campaign of misdirection and deception” after killing her.<\/p>\n

He described Ms Brooten as “a vibrant woman fully engaged with life”.<\/p>\n

“The fact that her body has not been found will be a source of trauma for her daughter and those who care for her,” he said.<\/p>\n

Waden will have to serve at least 20 years in custody before being eligible to apply for parole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Brisbane man accused of killing his American partner, whose body has never been found, claimed “it wasn’t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":739389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,356897,356899,356895,75309,44,356898,356896,94,701],"class_list":["post-739388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-beauty-queen","tag-bracken-ridge","tag-mark-waden","tag-murder-trial","tag-news","tag-nudgee","tag-priscilla-brooten","tag-qld","tag-queensland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}