![\"Missing](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/8774df79b56def34d2050d656be6c173.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nA 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
Her body has never been found.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Waden has been found guilty of murdering Priscilla Brooten in 2018. Her body has never been found. (Supplied: Queensland Police)<\/p>\n
After deliberating for less than one day, on Tuesday a Supreme Court jury returned its verdict.<\/p>\n
When they told the court they found him guilty of murder, Waden replied from the dock “it wasn’t me”.<\/p>\n
Jury told Ms Brooten was buried then dumped<\/p>\n
During the trial, the jury heard 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 three 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](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/11ecf2698ab05e953b0cb41362923de1.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Waden will be 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,” he said.<\/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 Peter Callaghan told the court the circumstances surrounding Ms Brooten’s death will never be known.<\/p>\n
But Justice Callaghan 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,” she 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":32032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[21217,29283,99,29282,205,19396,21214,211,212],"class_list":["post-32031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brisbane","tag-beauty-queen","tag-bracken-ridge","tag-brisbane","tag-mark-waden","tag-murder-trial","tag-nudgee","tag-priscilla-brooten","tag-qld","tag-queensland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}