June 19, 2026 — 7:48pm
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.
Priscilla Brooten and Mark Waden. 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.
Mark Waden with new girlfriend Desiree Hatzipapas. Queensland Police 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.
The trench at Waden’s house. Queensland Police 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.
An excavator used to dig a trench at Waden’s house. Queensland Police 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 visit…
Read the full article at The Age →
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