The family of slain gangster Stewart John Regan has been frustrated by an unwillingness on the part of the NSW Police Unsolved Homicide Unit to share information about its investigation into his death. It's the same police unit leading the investigation into Bronwyn Winfield's disappearance – and they say they're reluctant to share important files because they're concerned publicity from podcasts like Bronwyn and The Teacher's Pet will compromise their investigation. Catch up on Episode 1 of The...
May 30, 2025•44 min
After a bizarre last ditch bid by Jon Winfield to curry favour from a Ballina detective, the coroner heading the inquest into Bronwyn’s presumed murder sums up the case against the surfing bricklayer. He describes Bronwyn’s predicament in May 1993, the plans she was making for herself and her two girls, and her resolve to be free from Jon. The coroner weighs and rejects Jon’s claims – that a mentally befuddled Bronwyn had gone on an impromptu break and must have started a new life. Jodie’s prote...
May 08, 2025•1 hr 28 min
Johnny 'The Magician' Regan was a murderer, pimp and psychopath, gunned down by three assassins in a grimy back lane in 1974. He was 29. In this new investigative podcast, The Australian's Matthew Condon investigates gangland’s last great murder mystery. Subscribers to The Australian and registered users hear episodes of 'The Gangster's Ghost' first at gangstersghost.com.au . Plus, you can read more about this case, see exclusive stories, photos, videos and more. See omnystudio.com/listener for ...
May 08, 2025•2 min
Jon’s daughter Jodie returns to the witness box for a searching cross examination on Day 4 of the inquest.She volunteers that she looked in the boot of the Ford Falcon on the morning that she says her father arrived at the Shire hair salon, Intercutz, after the overnight drive from Lennox. If Bronwyn’s body was in the boot en route to be concealed somewhere in the Shire – a theory which Jon emphatically denies – Jodie didn’t see it. Her memory of events was generally vague. Jodie couldn’t recall...
May 01, 2025•1 hr 14 min
Did Bronwyn have a secret boyfriend with whom she was having a clandestine relationship before he spirited her away from her daughters and her Lennox Head home? Was Jon’s neighbour Murray affected by painkillers or cannabis when he says he saw Jon leaving the house with his car’s engine and its lights off on the night Bronwyn disappeared? Was such a departure even unusual for Jon? The bricklayer’s lawyer Craig Leggat turns up the heat on witnesses on Day 3 of the inquest. Bronwyn’s close friend ...
Apr 24, 2025•1 hr 3 min
Bronwyn’s state of mind and powerful maternal instincts for her two daughters face a determined challenge as Jon’s side depicts the missing mother in a negative light. Bronwyn’s care for Chrystal and Lauren comes into sharp focus when Jon’s lawyer asks if it would have been out of character for the Lennox Head mum to go to a Saturday night party, leaving the girls home alone. Witness after witness reject the suggestions. Andy’s wife Michelle is combative as Jon’s lawyer questions her closely. It...
Apr 17, 2025•1 hr 7 min
Jon’s lawyer Craig Leggat does his homework, analysing witness statements and other documents to discover significant and inconsequential flaws in the evidence. He knows that if things go badly in the inquest, Jon faces a murder charge. But if defects in the evidence are properly highlighted, there’s a chance Jon can walk away. Bronwyn’s cousin Megan Read faces another torrid time in the witness stand because Jon and his lawyer see her evidence as the weakest link. Bruised but not beaten, Megan ...
Apr 10, 2025•1 hr 8 min
Bronwyn’s friend and cousin Megan Read drops new bombshells while under oath on Day 2 of the inquest. Megan gives evidence at the coronial inquiry about having been told by Jon Winfield that he saw and spoke to Bronwyn in Brisbane, several years after her disappearance. Jon’s lawyer starts a fierce cross examination of Megan in the witness box. Jodie also comes under renewed scrutiny for pushing a claim that Bronwyn has been happily living in a hippie community. The claim appears baseless and po...
Apr 03, 2025•1 hr 18 min
The inquest into Bronwyn’s disappearance hears that when detective Glenn Taylor attended Jon and Bronwyn’s former family home at Lennox Head, dozens of photographs lined the walls. Glenn only started investigating the unsolved case five years after Bronwyn disappeared, and Jon was still living at the same property in Sandstone Crescent. The pictures in the home included happy snaps of Jon and daughters Jodie, Chrystal and Lauren, but Bronwyn had been erased. Not one image in the house showed Bro...
Mar 27, 2025•1 hr 2 min
For more than 140 years, the Lismore courthouse has stood firm through a procession of natural disasters. Withstanding everything nature has thrown at the town, the courthouse has witnessed a tragic roll call of cases. Cases such as the alleged shooting murder of local mother Carolyn Stuckey by her enraged husband, pharmacist Allan Stuckey. And cases like Bronwyn’s. In 2002, Bronwyn’s family and friends gather at the court for an inquest that explores in detail her disappearance and suspected mu...
Mar 20, 2025•58 min
In this special live event recorded at the Art Gallery of NSW on a warm late summer evening, listeners and Bronwyn's family gather for a Q&A with the podcast team, including Hedley Thomas, David Murray, Matthew Condon, Madi Walsh and Claire Harvey. Through panel discussion and thoughtful audience questions, we examine twists in the story so far, including the mystery of how Jon Winfield became a beneficiary of Beverley Brooker's estate, and explore the status of the police investigation. The...
Mar 13, 2025•1 hr 9 min
News of Jon Winfield’s windfall and changes to the Will of his near-neighbour, Bev, shock the Lennox Head community and galvanise Bev’s friends and relations. Bev’s cousin Cathy comes forward and says she was isolated from knowledge of what had happened to her lifelong friend, Bev. Cathy describes having been ‘warned off’ by a gruff man using Bev’s phone after her death. Cathy and her husband Les are aghast and they’re back in touch with their cousin’s brothers Geoff and Paul. A legal challenge ...
Mar 06, 2025•1 hr 14 min
Lennox Head locals are suspicious of Jon’s motives with a well-off elderly woman who lives alone and has a terminal illness. Jon has been spending a lot of time at her ocean-facing house, helping with renovations and an expensive makeover. As she’s dying, the woman buys two new cars and new furniture and appliances. Her two brothers are shocked when they finally get hold of her will after she dies and discover she has changed it to make Jon the new prime beneficiary and executor. Almost everythi...
Feb 27, 2025•59 min
Investigations reveal Jon’s fast work to get federal government welfare payments diverted from Bronwyn’s bank account to his account when she went missing. The single parent pension and other payments to Bronwyn to help her raise the children were cut off quickly after Jon said it should be going to him. Andy Read says Jon’s actions were not those of someone expecting Bronwyn to come back. A ‘lightbulb moment’ during filming with the podcast team at Hedley’s house results in Andy making a formal...
Feb 20, 2025•1 hr 11 min
Hear the Bronwyn team debate how to approach the biggest question: was Bronwyn concealed under a concrete slab in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire? This mini-episode is a snippet of a new instalment in our video-only series. Watch the videos now at bronwynpodcast.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jan 21, 2025•6 min
Go behind the scenes of the podcast in a very special new series of video episodes, live now at bronwynpodcast.com . Plus, you can read more about this case, see photographs, maps, timelines and more at the website. If you have information which may help solve this cold case, you can – contact our team confidentially by emailing bronwyn@theaustralian.com.au See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Jan 14, 2025•5 min
Andy seeks expert advice about the x-raying of a concrete slab at a house in Illawong in The Shire – the place he refers to as God’s Country, where he and Bronwyn grew up. After getting more intel about a concrete pour in May 1993, Andy and Madi visit and are more suspicious about what went on at the former building site in Illawong where Jon had been bricklaying. Jon’s friend at the time, builder Glenn Webster, discloses knowledge of his former family home and an area which would have been easi...
Dec 13, 2024•1 hr 13 min
The ‘smoking gun’ is data from the phone company about any local calls made from Sandstone Crescent on the night of May 16, 1993. Jon insists that Bronwyn made a couple of local calls, then a car came to pick her up and she disappeared. But if no local calls were made, his story falls over. Hedley and Karina hunt for local call data which fell between the cracks during previous police investigations. Terry and Heather Freeman track down a Ford Falcon XF sedan with a large LPG tank to test if the...
Dec 06, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Jon disparages Bronwyn’s mother Barbara as a sex worker. In one of his final comments in his 1998 interview with police investigating the disappearance of Jon’s estranged wife five years earlier, Jon’s smear of the grandmother of Lauren and Chrystal goes unchallenged until now. Kim Marshall and her brother Andy emphatically reject the labelling and explain Barbara’s mental illness struggles as depression took hold. A deeply personal account of Barbara’s life story is told through her own stateme...
Nov 29, 2024•1 hr 7 min
Police Commissioner Karen Webb and her top Homicide detectives come under fire. Bronwyn’s brother, Andy Read, calls out a lack of effort, urgency and competence in the police investigations of his sister’s case, which has been hopelessly bungled all the way back to 1993. Commissioner Webb and her top Homicide detective Danny Doherty look uncomfortable and unwilling to talk about a case which has embarrassed detectives for three decades. Jon insists that Bronwyn went back to the house in Sandston...
Nov 22, 2024•54 min
A politician and a leading newspaper speculate that a serial killer could have murdered Bronwyn and 66 other women on the New South Wales north coast over the past three decades. Bronwyn’s daughter Chrystal – who still supports Jon Winfield – welcomes news of a possible serial killer instead of her step-father being responsible for Bronwyn’s presumed slaying. In stark contrast, other members of the Read family point the finger at Jon. The powerful emotions and different views fuel family tension...
Nov 14, 2024•1 hr 2 min
For 31 years, key parts of Jon’s story have been taken for granted. Even while he has been a longtime murder suspect, nobody challenged Jon’s claims that he made two long-distance telephone calls from the house at Sandstone Crescent on the night Bronwyn was last seen alive. The first call, he claimed, was made to his daughter Jodie. The second one to his brother Peter. Hedley Thomas and Matt Condon delve deeply into Jon’s own words from his recorded interview with police in 1998, and they test t...
Nov 08, 2024•1 hr 13 min
What was going on in Jon’s marriage to Bronwyn leading up to the separation in 1993? Why did he suddenly take a flight from Sydney one Sunday afternoon to return to the house in Lennox Head when Bronwyn moved back in with her daughters? What did Bronwyn say and do when he turned up at the front door? What did they talk about when he went inside the house? Did he know that Bronwyn was getting legal advice about her rights to the property? These questions and many more are asked in Jon’s only inte...
Nov 01, 2024•1 hr 4 min
A surprise message opens a long-closed door to Jon’s secret past. Sonia Lee has been listening to every episode in the Bronwyn podcast series while weighing the right time to come forward for the first time. She made a promise to her grandmother on her death bed to tell the truth about her biological father when the time was right. A man she has never known— but is now hearing so much about. In a remarkable interview with Hedley Thomas, Sonia Lee reveals her biological father is Jon Winfield, an...
Oct 25, 2024•1 hr 8 min
An update from the Bronwyn team: Listen to a taste of Episode 15, the latest in Bronwyn's second season. The full episode is live now at bronwynpodcast.com , where you can also see subscriber-only content like photographs, maps, timelines. If you have information which may help solve this cold case, you can contact our team confidentially by emailing bronwyn@theaustralian.com.au If you need support, Lifeline can be reached on 13 11 14. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Oct 18, 2024•5 min
An update from the Bronwyn team: Listen to a taste of Episode 13, which kicks off Season 2. The full episode is live now at bronwynpodcast.com, along with episodes 11 and 12. Read more about this case and see photographs, maps, timelines and more at bronwynpodcast.com. If you have information which may help solve this cold case, you can contact our team confidentially by emailing bronwyn@theaustralian.com.au If you need support, Lifeline can be reached on 13 11 14. See omnystudio.com/listener fo...
Oct 10, 2024•7 min
In this episode of The Australian's daily news podcast, a family ‘curse’, an audacious scam, and a remarkable young woman helping to solve the mystery of Bronwyn Winfield’s likely murder. Find out more about The Front podcast here . You can read about this story and more on The Australian's website or on The Australian’s app. This episode of The Front is presented by Claire Harvey, produced by Kristen Amiet, and edited by Lia Tsamoglou. Original music is composed by Jasper Leak. See omnystudio.c...
Sep 04, 2024•13 min
Distressing evidence from Jon Winfield’s first wife, Jennifer Mason, was part of the police brief which the then-Detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor believed would result in a prosecution over Bronwyn’s disappearance. A dispute over the identity of her first daughter’s father resulted in Jon challenging one man to have his DNA tested. At Lake Ainsworth, on the northern edge of Lennox Head, locals joined with volunteers and Bronwyn’s brother, Andy, to try to find her body beneath the dark, stained wa...
Jul 18, 2024•1 hr 28 min
A short walk from the sandy northern beaches of Lennox Head is a lake loved by locals and visitors alike. It is deep only in a few places, but nobody can see the bottom - the waters of eerie Lake Ainsworth are always dark because of staining from the leaves of the Tea Trees which flourish on the foreshore. As a result of Judy Singh’s disclosures, Andy Read and locals including Murray and Scruffy fear Bronwyn’s body has been at the bottom of the lake since May 1993. Madi has been doing her homewo...
Jul 11, 2024•56 min
Bronwyn’s friends and loved ones reel as the revelation of Judy Singh’s sighting of what appeared to be a body wrapped in a sheet, being driven away by her estranged husband Jon Winfield in 1993, is understood. Detectives fly north to take a statement from Judy. They drive her to her old home in Lennox Head as part of a renewed homicide investigation. Former neighbour Murray Nolan admits deep regret about his handling of potentially game-changing information he withheld from detectives in 1993 w...
Jul 04, 2024•1 hr 6 min
