He rubbed shoulders with politicians and wealthy entrepreneurs, while selling prestige properties in Brisbane’s affluent western suburbs. He addressed assembly halls of high-school students, spruiking the keys to success in life.

Despite his self-made image, he was inordinately proud of his lineage. His great-grandfather was Lord Robert Baden-Powell, the famed founder of the international Scouts movement, a link that he never hesitated to drop in to conversation or a sales pitch.

Baden-Clay’s life may have continued largely unnoticed, a big fish in Brisbane society, had it not been for the fact that the loving husband and successful businessman facade he presented so convincingly was increasingly revealed as a fraud.

In reality, Baden-Clay had had numerous lovers, was unhappy in his marriage and his business was failing. The Brisbane real-estate agent’s secret life would spiral out of control when he received a call from his lover and former employee Toni McHugh on April 19, 2012.

That was the day Baden-Clay realised that both women would be attending the Real Estate Institute of Queensland's conference the next day.

The lovers discussed their days and their plans for the weekend, before Baden-Clay said to Ms McHugh, “There’s something I need to tell you.”

He said two of his employees planned to attend the conference the next day.

Ms McHugh was due to attend the same conference and realised the ‘‘employees’’ Baden-Clay was referring to included his wife Allison.

Baden-Clay had long been embroiled in multiple affairs with women, sometimes juggling more than one at the same time, while maintaining his marriage to his wife of 15 years. But his longest-running affair, and perhaps most tumultuous, was with Ms McHugh.

The affair began in Baden-Clay’s real-estate office in 2008 and continued, on and off, for three years. By her own admission, Ms McHugh “lost it” during the April 19 phone call, demanding Baden-Clay tell his wife of the impending run-in.

But their conversation was cut short when Baden-Clay arrived at his parents' Kenmore house and was greeted at the car by his three young daughters.

What happened over the next 24 hours would shock and captivate the public for the next two years.

The prosecution in Baden-Clay’s subsequent trial  at Brisbane’s Supreme Court would allege that that fiery phone conversation set in motion events that would end in the murder of his wife in a leafy hamlet in western Brisbane.

Brookfield is a semi-rural suburb of sprawling acreage properties bordered by creeks and bushland reserve. It has an air of genteel and rural affluence despite being just 14 kilometres from Brisbane’s CBD.

Baden-Clay and his wife lived with their daughters in the heart of the suburb, within walking distance of the quaint Brookfield General Store, the Brookfield Showgrounds and the local primary school where Mrs Baden-Clay taught ballet one afternoon a week.

Baden-Clay was born in 1970 in England, but his family moved to Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia, where his great-grandfather’s legacy as the founder of the Boy Scouts and British hero of the siege of Mafeking in 1899 was widely known and celebrated.

Baden-Clay's grandmother Betty, Lord Baden-Powell's youngest child, married colonial civil servant Gervas Clay in 1936. The Clay had four children, the third of whom, Nigel Clay, was Baden-Clay’s father.

Baden-Clay was 10 when his family migrated to Australia. But no one would recognise the family’s heritage with the surname Clay, so the Clays became the Baden-Clays. There is a hotel in Melbourne named after Baden-Clay’s great-grandfather and five streets in Australia with his name.

Baden-Clay routinely mentioned his lineage, using it to sell houses and himself.

“Gerard’s personal philosophy of ethical excellence and team loyalty, derived from his lineage as the great-grandson of international Scouts leader Robert Baden-Powell, have found their perfect landing spot in the field of real estate,” he wrote on his blog.

When it came to another online profile, though, Baden-Clay was uncharacteristically reticient about his famous heritage. On New Year’s Eve 2010, he created a profile on the swingers’ and online dating website Adult Friend Finder under the pseudonym ‘‘Bruce Overland’’.

“Married, but don’t want to be - looking for some sex on the side!” he wrote.

Few people in his inner circle, least of all his wife, were aware of his philandering ways.

In fact, police officer Sergeant Murray Watson, who met Baden-Clay through his involvement in a community liaison group, described the real-estate agent as “one of the nicest guys in the world”.

But his former business partner, Phil Broom, came to learn of Baden-Clay’s Machiavellian nature and would later give police some insight into the defendant.

“Gerard has a public face which is ethical, moral and upstanding. A lot of his legacy is fuelled due to his great-grandfather. He is involved in all the right groups, but it’s always about what is in it for him. He is politically savvy,” Broom told police.

“He would lecture staff about lying, but would continue his long-term affair.”

Broom also recalled their trip to a Gold Coast conference when Baden-Clay mysteriously checked out of his hotel room at midnight; and another conference in Sydney where Baden-Clay was openly affectionate with Ms McHugh, after having spent the previous night with a former colleague and lover, Jackie Crane.

He also recalled a meeting with Baden-Clay, where he confronted him about his affair with Ms McHugh.

“There was swearing and crying,”  Broom said. “He can use his emotional blackmail to get what he wants. Gerard is the type of guy that will seek forgiveness, rather than ask permission.”

Broom recalled Baden-Clay saying: “I only continue to f--- her for the sake of the business.”

At home, Baden-Clay’s wife  was struggling with loneliness and rejection. “Friends think we are ‘all together’,”  she wrote in her journal in December 2010. “I feel like a phony when I am out with Gerard and his office staff.”

Previously, Allison had been the high achiever. She earned a coveted place on the Australian Youth Ballet for five years, received a scholarship to Ipswich Girls Grammar School, where she became school vice-captain in her senior year and was later crowned Miss Brisbane.

Although she did not finish her degree in psychology at the University of Queensland, she excelled to become the global head of human resources for Flight Centre, managing 3000 employees in six countries. It was at Flight Centre’s George Street office that she met the young, charming Baden-Clay.

A year later, Baden-Clay proposed to Allison under the replica Eiffel Tower at Brisbane’s La Dolche Vita Ristorante on Park Road, Milton. She asked for a week to think about the proposal, before finally accepting.

They married in 1997 and lived in London for about a yearbefore returning to Brisbane in 1999. Allison stopped working shortly before the birth of their first daughter in 2001. It was then tBaden-Clay turned to  real estate, first finding a job with Raine & Horne.

He had big plans. But a natural disaster and a crumbling divide between his public guise and his private predilections would combine to torpedo those ambitions.

His wife discovered his affair with Ms McHugh, in late 2011. Baden-Clay   met his wife in the car park of a McDonald’s restaurant at Indooroopilly, after she phoned him saying, “We need to talk.”

“She just came straight out and asked me if I was having an affair with Toni and I said, yes I was, I had been,” Baden-Clay told the Supreme Court.

Baden-Clay agreed to end his affair with McHugh immediately. He met her at her home in the riverside suburb of St Lucia. "I just told her that Al had found out and that I didn’t want to be with her, I wanted to be with Allison and the girls,” Baden-Clay said.

His actions thereafter were indicative of a man in damage control. He returned to his real estate office and  told each of his staff members, one at a time, of his affair with McHugh. “I wanted the staff to know the facts straight from me, rather than hearing some sort of grapevine version,” he said. Later, Baden-Clay also told the principal of his daughters’ school about the affair, “just so that he was aware”.

By that time, Baden-Clay’s real estate business was also in torouble. Baden-Clay had just expanded his business, Century 21 Westside, moving  into larger, more prominent premises.

His overheads doubled, but his revenue did not. There were weeks, he and his business partners were not paid. “It got to a point where we were robbing Peter to give to Paul,” said Phil Broom. “We were taking debt from the previous quarter and carrying it over.

“In January 2011, the floods hit Brisbane and we were completely wiped out. We were looking at a whole bunch of hurt. We had seven new employees and a ridiculously massive lease.”

Baden-Clay eventually turned to his three school friends, Robert Cheesman, Peter Cranna and Stuart Christ, for help. The three men, who had attended Toowoomba Grammar School with Baden-Clay, each agreed to lend him $90,000 by way of a “gentleman’s agreement”.  In late 2011, Baden-Clay also approached Queensland Member for Moggill Bruce Flegg for a loan of $400,000.

Baden-Clay had developed a friendship with Flegg through his involvement with the Kenmore Chamber of Commerce.

By late 2011, Baden-Clay was desperately trying to save his business,   but considering ending his marriage. He visited at least three psychologists with his wife, including Rosamond Nutting and Dr Laurie Lumsden. Baden-Clay told both Nutting and Lumsden he was considering leaving his wife. But he persisted with counselling at Allison's request.

His last consultation with Nutting was on December 7, 2011. Two weeks later, he and McHugh had rekindled their affair. Baden-Clay instructed Ms McHugh to email him via an account using his swinger website pseudynom  ‘‘Bruce Overland’’.

The Supreme Court was shown emails between the pair, in which Baden-Clay professed his love for  McHugh and promised to be with her “unconditionally” by July 1, 2012. Baden-Clay addressed one email GG, for “Gorgeous Girl”, and signed off GM, for “Gorgeous Man”.

The cracks had started to emerge in the Baden-Clays’ marriage the previous year, in 2010. Mrs Baden-Clay’s journal entry from the day of their 11th wedding anniversary reveals a woman, wondering where she had gone wrong. “I would give anything if my partner would love me and make love to me,” she wrote. “I hate it when my husband treats me like shit …

“If only I had given more sex and put some more work into our marriage and not just been a mother.

Unbeknown to Mrs Baden-Clay, her husband had begun cheating on her years earlier - first with his former colleague Michelle Hammond in 2006, then with Jackie Crane, and then  McHugh.  Allison had tried to reignite the passion in her marriage in February 2012, but her husband had “laughed at her undies” and told her she “smelled”.

As she would tell Relationships Australia counsellor Carmel Ritchie in April 2012, Mrs Baden-Clay felt her battle with depression was to blame. Mrs Baden-Clay had first experienced symptoms of depression and anxiety during a trip to South America with her husband. The symptoms worsened during her second pregnancy and returned during her third.

Yet, she had been largely symptom-free after being prescribed the antidepressant medication Zoloft. She would later tell Ms Ritchie: “I have spent the last 10 years saying I'm not depressed.”

Baden-Clay visited  the counsellor with his wife on Monday, April 16, 2012, three days before the fateful phone coversation with his lover.

Ms Ritchie, met with Baden-Clay alone initially and  began with the question, “Who are you?”

Baden-Clay replied by listing his professional achievements. He didn't speak of his personal attributes, nor mention his children.

Ritchie told the Supreme Court that she spent the better part of an hour convincing Baden-Clay that he needed to spend 10-15 minutes every second night with his wife and listen to her feelings.

It is not clear whether the Baden-Clays had their first 15-minute discussion on Wednesday, April 18. But the couple did have  a 15-minute discussion the following night on April 19, only hours after Baden-Clay’s argument with Ms McHugh had been truncated when he arrived at his parent's house.

Baden-Clay has maintained he never told his wife during that discussion of her impending run-in with his mistress at the real-estate conference the next day. But he conceded his wife pressed him for details about the affair, asking him where and when he and Ms McHugh had sex.

Prosecutors would allege an argument erupted in the Baden-Clay house that night. Baden-Clay’s desire to start a new life with his mistress and the pressure of the mounting financial strain would result in lethal violence, Crown prosecutor Todd Fuller, QC, told the Supreme Court jury.

Baden-Clay emphatically denied the accusation. “I never did anything to physically harm my wife in any way, ever,” he said from the witness box.

His defence team pointed to Mrs Baden-Clay’s history with depression to suggest she took her own life in the early hours of April 20, 2012. It also suggested Mrs Baden-Clay may have stepped out to “clear her head” and died by misadventure or accident as a result of an overdose of her medication.

However, Mrs Baden-Clay’s mother Priscilla Dickie told police of once seeing bruises on her daughter’s body.

“I was at Allison’s house. Gerard wasn’t home. Allison showed me some bruising … I have never known Allison to be an easy bruiser,” Mrs Dickie said.

Mr Broom also spoke of Baden-Clay’s controlling nature. “As a family they use field signals. Field signals are sign gestures that  Gerard uses with his children. Gerard told me that he touches the girls on the leg and that means that it’s adult talking time and that they were not to interrupt,” he said.

Baden-Clay said he left his wife on the couch watching The Footy Show when he went to bed about 10pm on April 19, 2012. He said he woke to find her missing the next morning.

Ten days later, a kayaker found Mrs Baden-Clay’s decomposing body on the banks of Kholo Creek at Anstead, nearly 14 kilometres from her home, and about 300 metres from a Scout campsite.

Baden-Clay was arrested and charged with his wife’s murder two months later.

Most incriminating evidence in the case against him was the three marks that appeared on his face on the morning he reported his wife missing.

“It was obvious to me that one of the last things Allison did was to leave her marks on her husband,” Mrs Baden-Clay’s mother said. “God bless her.”

Baden-Clay has steadfastly maintained his innocence, claiming the marks were shaving cuts.

Yet, he engaged a criminal defence lawyer within hours of reporting his wife missing and he visited the chambers of a high-profile Brisbane defence barrister on the day her body was found.

Just a day after Allison’s body was found, Baden-Clay contacted Asteron Life Insurance to inquire about claiming her $347,287 life insurance policy.

As sure as Allison’s loved ones are of his guilt, Baden-Clay’s family and friends are equally convinced of his innocence. Charles Tarbey, the directing founder of Century 21 Australia, sent senior company manager Greg Allan to Baden-Clay’s office after Allison’s disappearance.

“Greg said to me that, ‘Gerard is either the coldest bastard that I have ever met, or he is completely innocent and I believe he is innocent,’” Mr Tarbey said.

Baden-Clay’s high school mates also believed he was innocent, with some prepared to mortgage their homes as surety for his two bail applications.

Peter Cranna and his wife Tanya were prepared to provide $50,000 surety, while Robert Cheesman and his wife Katie were prepared to contribute $10,000

The friends never had to part with their money, because Baden-Clay’s two bail applications in 2012 failed. He remained in custody for the duration of his trial in the Supreme Court. The trial heard from 72 witnesses, including Baden-Clay.

On the 21st day of the trial, the jury of seven men and five women emerged from the deliberation room with a verdict: Guilty.

Baden-Clay was sentenced to life imprisonment to serve a minimum of 15 years without parole.

The facade finally fell and the real Baden-Clay was  revealed: unfaithful husband;  failed businessman;  convicted killer; the Queensland prison inmate, E00477.

The Baden-Clays'  daughters, now aged 13, 10 and 7, were not present to hear their father being convicted of murdering their mother, but their grandparents, aunt and uncle spoke of their heartache.

Mrs Dickie struggled to contain her grief as she spoke of the three granddaughters she had "wholeheartedly" taken into her care.

"They miss her terribly and cry for her at night," she said. "To have mummy put them to bed one night and then to wake up the next morning and be told that mummy is missing, what a situation to face.

"What can you do or say when dealing with the stress of hugging a little, crying girl saying 'I want my mummy' or answering the question 'does mummy love me?'

"The girls will never see their mother again … they have been condemned to a life sentence without the love and companionship only a mother can give."

On Tuesday, they also lost their father.