Listeners are advised that this podcast series Bromwin contains course language and adult themes. This podcast series is brought to you by Me Headley Thomas and The Australian. You heard John Winfield's voice actor say in the previous episode.
I mean she wasn't hostile or anything like that.
John was responding to a question from Detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor about Bromwin's attitude towards John when he turned up at Sandstone Crescent. That's set out on page thirty six of the official interview transcript from that morning in early August nineteen ninety eight, as John sat in the police station in Ballina with detectives Taylor and Wayne Temby asking questions. There are forty pages of transcript from that interview left
to analyze. Some of the most important references are coming up now. Back in episode five of the Bromwin podcast series, Maddie Walsh and I talked about the importance of timelines. Timelines are so important, definitely in cases like this. They help us understand what's going on. YEA, who said, what when, what happened? As you go through it, it'll become more and more detail. I remember talking to us to a
great criminal lawyer, and he said, timelines win cases. But until I had time to look more closely at the transfer script of the police interview for the previous episode and this one, neither Maddie nor I realized that there was something very wrong in a particular part of John's story. Let's start unpacking this. Here's John's next response on page thirty six of the transcript. Remember he's describing being at the house in Sandstone Crescent on Sunday night.
And then that was when sometime I'm trying to think that was probably it was after seven o'clock. It might have been even after eight o'clock by that time. I can't remember, honestly. All I know is it was dark. You know, it was probably at least an hour or maybe an hour and a half after the plane landed, whatever time that was. And that was dark, because I remember I got off the plane in the dark.
It was two phone calls, mate, Yeah, apparently one at six fifty three pm and one at seven oh six.
Pm, six fifty three seven. Yeah. Do you know did you make any phone Cooks?
No, I didn't make Apparently she made a couple of calls to Graham told me she had a solicitor, Yes, another solicitor she had in Lismore, the guy that used to be on the radio all the time, you know, legal advice on a Thursday.
John is referring here to Chris mcdebitt. Christopher.
Yeah, that's him. Yeah, yeah, she had him actually, and she had his home phone number. And this is what Graham said, apparently because Graham looked on her telephone accounts afterwards and he told me the phone calls were made to his place, his house.
Detective Tempi, can you just assist in relation to the identity.
Of those chief phone numbers? First one was I think that's Jody's Is it? Five? Two one, three to one? Wayne Temby read out a seven digit telephone number, which we will not repeat in full in the episode. John Winfield replied to the detective Senior Constable's question like this.
Yeah, it is. Yeah.
It is interesting that in his first response to Glen Taylor's question, John says that he did not make any calls, but then Glen Taylor asked Detective Temb during the interview with John to help in relation to the two calls in question, as these two calls were long distance or STD the abbreviation for subscriber trunk dialing. They were noted in detail on the paper telephone bill for Sandstone Crescent
for the month of May nineteen ninety three. The time the phone calls were made, the duration of the calls, and the numbers dialed are printed on that telephone bill, which the detectives had in the interview room when they were questioning John. This itemized telephone bill and copies of it are still in existence. We've got a copy of it in our files on the case.
Oh I see, yeah, I rang that one, yeah, to tell Jody I was at home. Yeah, that's right, Yeah, yeah, I remember that's six fifty three. Okay, that's seven o'clock. Yeah, so that was Jody.
Yeah.
I rang Jody and said, okay, I'm back home now, you know, because I sort of come up now. I remember that's Jody and my brother the one at seven oh six. Yes, my brother, yep, I rang my brother too. Yes, that's my brother's number. Yeah, I forgot about that.
Yeah, So there was no no SHD calls, which Bromwin may Well, I don't know.
Yeah, I remember that's Jadie and my brother. Well, I rang them to say I'd arrived home safely, you know. Yeah, Yeah, I forgot about that.
Your brother's name's Peter, is it, Yeah, Peter Winfield.
Yeah.
Is Peter still living in Sydney?
Yeah, anger Den.
Okay, so you've made they've TIFA calls and then you're still sitting around the dining room with the children.
Yeah, I think so. I can't remember what was bronwin doing.
Well.
I made the phone calls from the telephone in the kitchen. There's another telephone in the main bedroom, and she went into the main bedroom and made these ones apparently too. Apparently, I don't know. I wasn't in the bedroom with her. I don't know. I didn't know, But all I know is that she went in the bedroom and that it was Graham. That was Graham told me that where the
phone calls were going. Because I was surprised when he told me, because I didn't know you could trace local phone calls and I had no idea you could do it. And then he told me you could, and he did it.
You know.
But there are some loocians and concerning discrepancies in all of this, and they cry out for further investigation. They could be really important in this case. For reasons that will soon become obvious. These loose eians became obvious to me while I was reading documents during the drafting of this episode. As a result, I've been emailing and calling former and current airline pilots, aviation regulators, even collectors of
old airline timetables. I have been helped enormously by some very clever listeners who went into full private detective mode to help me find the answers. We have been trying to confirm the arrival time in Balliner on May sixteen, nineteen ninety three of the flight which John Winfield bordered in Sydney earlier that day. It was a seventy to eighty minute flight. The airline Anset Australia, which collapsed several
years later, flew the route for several days. I was tantalizingly close because of the discovery of an ANSET timetable for the months of September nineteen ninety two to March of nineteen ninety three. That timetable sets out all the ANSET flights and their departure times for the hop from Sydney to Balliner. But I didn't have the May nineteen ninety three timetable. We were close no cigar. Here's why
it might be crucial in this podcast series. You have heard me say that John Winfield called his daughter Jody and his brother Peter at six point fifty three pm and seven h six pm respectively, from the house at Sandstone Crescent on May sixteen when he arrived at the house, and it seemed uncontroversial. John Winfield confirmed this as you've just heard in his interview with Glenn Taylor in nineteen ninety eight. There just didn't appear to be anything unusual
about it. But while going through John's interview transcript, it struck me that the timing appeared to make it very difficult, if not impossible, for John to have made those calls. Here's what his friend John Watson stated in his police statement in nineteen ninety eight.
John was wringing me from Sydney and he asked me if I could pick him up from the Ballina Airport and give him a lift home. That night, about six thirty pm, I went to the airport and I met John. He asked me if I could take him to the Ballener Police station prior.
To taking him home.
I drove him to the police station, and I waited in the car while he went in. He was in the police station for about five minutes.
We do not know the time at which John Watson drove away from Balliner Airport with John Winfield, but if the pickup went smoothly despite all of John's gear and his surfboard, and if the flight landed around six twenty five pm, let's say they got away at six forty pm. It takes a good ten minutes or so to get from the airport to Balloner Police station, but let's say they do it very quickly, in just seven minutes. Glenn Taylor was told by John Winfield that he was in
the police station for about fifteen minutes. John Watson, in his police statement estimated that he was waiting in his car outside the police station for about five minutes. Let's be generous and go with the five minute estimate. That means it would have been after six point fifty pm when John Winfield is the passenger in John Watson's car driving away from Barner Police Station to pick up Becky
McGuire from her home in Lenox Head. John Watson said they drove to either Gibbons Street or Stuart Street in lenox Head to collect Becky. It doesn't make much difference because both of those streets, just a few blocks northwest of the retail strip in Lenox Head are about the same distance from Barner Police Station. I've done the trip
many times now. It's a good fifteen minutes. The two men and the young woman say they then drove to Sandstone Crescent together and that's going to take seven minutes minimum. The upshot is this, if the Ansett Australia jet landed just before six thirty pm, and John then wore off and very quickly collected his luggage and surfboard, then went directly to the police station and then to lennox Head
to get Becky. The earliest that they could have arrived at his house in Sandstone Crescent would have been about seven point fifteen pm, the house which bronwin had moved back into with the two girls on the Friday night after asking a locksmith to come out to remove the locks which John had put on to try to prevent
his estranged wife from getting back inside the house. But that's not all, because the evidence of Becky is that John Winfield then drove her in the family Ford Falcon back to Becky's home in Lennox Head John Watson had left.
John Watson drove away. We walked up to the front of the house and John knocked on the door. The door opened and Bronwin and the children were standing at the door. I wasn't really paying much attention at the time, but I recall Bronwyn babbling on about something, but they weren't arguing. Bronwin walked back into the house towards the kitchen, and John gave the girls a cuddle, and I saw
that Lauren was crying. I saw two suitcases inside the doorway, and John picked them up and put them in the car. John must have had a set of keys to the car, because we then got into the car and he drove me home. I remember both Crystal and Lauren were standing at the window inside the house, watching as we reversed out of the driveway. John didn't go inside the house at all while I was in the house with him.
While we were driving back to my house, John thanked me for coming with him and told me he was sorry for getting me involved. I haven't seen Bronwin since that night I went to her place with John.
John Winfield then must have returned on his own to go to the home in Sandstone Crescent. It's got to be about seven thirty pm before he gets there, and that's if the plane landed at about six thirty pm.
My name is Karina Berger.
Three months before the release of this episode, a listener emailed we were in Ireland on leave at the time.
I'm contacting you to offer my assistance with legal research, analysis, etc. For Bronwan or any other podcasts you might have in the pipeline. I love true crime and working to solve a problem or mystery. I also find undertaking work that is in the public interest very rewarding. Some of my particular strengths are my attention to detail, communication and organization and project management SKI and my ability to recall information
and facts. If you ever require another pair of hands and think my skill set might be beneficial, I would be very happy to hear from you.
Karina is an experienced lawyer with a particular interest in coronial inquest work, and she has worked on many coronial investigations and inquests over the years. She was following the Bromwin podcast very closely. We started exchanging emails around the same time offers of help from other women with proven experience in investigations in the criminal justice system were coming in. Some have preferred anonymity. They're all amazing and very generous
with their time. Three days after I first became suspicious about those calls from the house, I raised it with Karna over a Greek salad in Brisbane. The timing was good. She was visiting from interstate with her husband for his work. Karina flew home late that afternoon and she resolved to start looking for a thirty one year old timetable which might show when a long defunct airline used to fly to the airport of a regional town in New South
Wales on Sundays in May nineteen ninety three. My other contacts from the podcast listenership were also on the job trying to locate this key information. In northern New South Wales, my friend and colleague Matt Condon called. We spoke about the driving that he would do while retracing where John would have gone thirty one years ago. After the anset jet landed. Then Matt rang off, turned on his voice recorder and got ready to roll.
This is the side of obviously the old Byron Ballina Regional airport. I remember getting.
Flights to and from Sydney into here.
It hasn't changed that much that we're here now to follow John Winfield's timeline and we'll.
Just see how the templates marry up.
Okay, just leaving the airport and out, traffic conditions are pretty light. Simple direct route from the airport down to the police station, past the Ballona Bayside and Ballon Affair shopping centers, straight down to River Street and hang a left.
We're at over.
Five minutes at the moment, so I've arrived at the Ballina Police station on River Street at twelve minutes and eleven seconds. Winfield claims that he was brought here by mister Watson and went into the station to check if there were any legal restraints against him as in Bronwyn, placing possibly domestic violence restrictions on his proximity to her. Okay, that's exactly five minutes. I'm now leaving the police station and heading towards the Ocean Road, which will head up to Lenox.
Seventeen minutes eleven seconds.
There's a sort of little backway here to get onto that which the locals would know, and it would be a logical way through Ballinatown to get onto that coastal road.
I'm just coming through the main drag of Lenox.
There was a little bit of traffic, not a lot, but it might have accounted for twenty or thirty seconds over and above a clean run through that street. I've just arrived where he picks up Jody's friend. We'll wait for ninety seconds. It's thirty four minutes and fifteen seconds. Just arrived outside the house at Sandstone Crescent. It was forty one minutes and thirty nine seconds.
I'll wait now.
For another ninety seconds before we head back to drop the young woman off and then come back to Sandstone. Right, we're back at Gibbon forty nine minutes and one second. We'll wait for fifteen seconds to Sandstone for the final leg. Okay, just pulled up back at Sandstone Crescent in front of the house. That journey from the airport took precisely fifty six minutes and thirty five seconds.
Hey Matt, how'd you go?
I went from Ballino Airport, did all the stops, and finally I've returned here back at Sandstone Crescent and giving Winfield sort of two minutes at the end of the journey to meet and greet his kids, etc. At the door of the property which I'm parked out the front. The final time came in at fifty eight minutes and thirty five seconds, right.
Well, that's consistent with what John Winfield himself says in the record of interview that he's done with Glenn Taylor in nineteen ninety eight. So he says something like it was about an hour to an hour and a half after he'd arrived in Ballener that he got into the house. So that makes sense exactly if we round it up
to one hour. He would have had to have arrived in Ballaner and be getting into John Watson's car at Banner Airport by five fifty pm on Sunday May sixteen for him to have been able to make that first phone call at six fifty three pm to his daughter Jody on that same day.
What time did the plane land?
This is still the missing piece in this puzzle. We know from John Watson's statement that John Watson says he got to the airport at six thirty pm to collect John Winfield. What we don't have for certain yet is
the arrival time of the aircraft from Sydney. We've got a timetable that shows that in the months of October to March, and said Australia had aircraft leaving at six ten pm in Sydney and arriving into Ballana at seven thirty But we don't yet have the timetable for the months following the end of March, whether the timetable changed
for those subsequent months. You know Matt from previous episodes in this series, as well as from his work in other podcast investigations I've done into the murders of Australian women. In a coincidental piece of voice acting symmetry. You know Matt's voice from this episode too, because he read the lines from the police statement of John Watson. Matt suggested that the aircraft possibly landed in May nineteen ninety three
at around six thirty pm, not seven thirty pm. Matt suggested that that might have happened because of daylight saving.
If you're a boat is in New South Wales in the beginning of October of any given year, I think since the early nineteen seventies, so you actually on a Sunday you turn your clock forward one hour at the beginning of daylight saving, so in essence you're losing an hour, but by going forward it gives you an extra hour or so of daylight at the end of the day, which is the point of daylight saving, and that is for people to be able to finish work and enjoy
the daylight in the summer months. Come April the following year, six months later, daylight saving ends in New South Wales, so you have to claw back that hour and it goes back to normal Eastern Standard time. The flight, as we know, was in May, so daylight saving was well and truly over by at least six seven weeks by then, so the clocks would have gone back an hour to
parity with the East Coast. So if a flight in March, for example, landed in Ballina at seven point thirty pm during daylight saving hours beyond April outside of daylight saving hours, that flight would have landed at around six thirty pm, so you claw back the hour. If he'd landed at six thirty, it was picked up at six thirty pm and then went to the bell on the police station, so seven eleven pm is the first revisit to Sandstone then to go back to be able to pick up Becky.
He would have arrived there at seven nineteen pm. Give them ninety seconds for that, and then to swing back to Sandstone, and to give him credit for a couple of minutes of meeting and greeting at the door and getting back into the house. He would have been in Sandstone Crescent after all of that journey at around about seven twenty eight pm.
Well, how does he make these telephone calls that he said he made to Jody and to Peter at six fifty three pm and then seven ozh six pm from Sandstone Crescent.
Well, he couldn't have, because going by these specific times, he wasn't in the house to make the calls.
Let's go with a hypothetical, allow for perhaps a mistaken memory. They didn't get Becky, or he decided to go to the house at Sandstone Crescent ahead of getting Becky, something like that. It seems from those time stamps, Matt, that he still can't make it in time to make a call at six fifty three pm, twenty three minutes after the John Watson six thirty pm pick up at Balner Airport. No, there's no way you know these roads, Matt. You've driven them a lot before the Bromwin podcast, and more so
since we've been working on it together. Can you imagine being able to drive from the Ballina Police station to Bromwin's old house in Sandstone Crescent, Lenox Head in six to seven minutes. It's impossible.
I've done the journey from Ballina Town Center along the Coast Road for innumerable reasons, kids soccer, shopping at Woolies at the back of Lennox invariably in the back of your head. You know, it takes on average at least fifteen minutes. There's no way around that. I mean, that's even with a clear run. That's just the time it takes. It's as simple as that.
I don't want us to count o chickens before they've hatched. But this is a really big loose end because John was adamant in his police interview that he made those telephone calls. He was initially saying he didn't make any calls, and then when propped it, he goes, oh, yeah, that's right, I remember now I did make those calls.
Neither of them correspond on the timeline to Jonathan Winfield being in the house and physically able to make those calls.
If he didn't make those phone calls because he couldn't have been in the house. Then I'm suggesting the only person who could have made those calls was Bromwin, and I think that's consistent with Bromwin having telephoned her solicitor, Chris mcdebott in the late afternoon because of her concern about John's imminent return. John says that he made those calls basically to tell his daughter and his brother that he had arrived safely and was in the house.
I'm just thinking of myself and my own family, saying I flew from Sydney to Ballina, which is a relatively short flight within the same state. I fail to see why there would be any reason or urgency to ring not one family member but two to alert them that they had arrived safely an hour and twenty minute flight maximum. I'm not sure what sort of peril could one could encounter in a humble domestic flight from Sydney de Ballena.
If you're flying into Delhi, or if you're flying into Barcelona or London and you'd had a long haul, I would totally understand that, but I simply cannot comprehend why someone would have to alert close family members to their safety after a very short domestic flight.
It makes no sense.
It's just simply illogical and something most certainly that I wouldn't do, and I think most people wouldn't do.
My supposition on.
Your theory is that I think you've nailed it, even if the timeline's out by a few minutes either side.
I reckon she's made those.
Calls six point fifty three pm. Is the first one.
Six fifty three pm?
Yes?
And when's the next one?
Seven six pm?
Something has prompted her to make the first call and then another call twelve thirty minutes later.
If this theory is right, she brings Jody because it was to Jody that she had her earlier conversation in which she said, your dad had better not approach me, or worse to that effect. If Jody and Peter have no way of contacting John, what's the utility of Bromin contacting them when John's on the way.
Well, she's tried the solicitor, right, Yeah, and somehow she's learned he's on the way, made the call at six point fifty three in a panic.
It's impossible he can't have made those calls. It's impossible.
And the only other explanation is that John Watson's claim that he arrived to pick up John at six thirty pm is wrong, and that in fact it was five thirty pm.
If it was five thirty, then that may work in terms of him being in the house.
He gets to the house then by six thirty bit of meeting and greeting and he has a cup of tea and then he makes those calls. But that's the only way.
That's the only way. Yes, where did you come up with the five thirty time?
I've just plucked it out of the air, taken two hours off the arrival time of seven thirty. Yeah, he says it was dark when he landed. Now, sunset at that time was after five shortly after five pm. Yes, it would have had to have left Sydney at fourteen pm, two hours earlier than the schedule. In the month of March yeap. What would be John's potential motive to claim that he made those two phone calls if in fact Broman had made them.
We know she's on alert because she's phoned her solicitor, so she's in that heightened state. If she's phoned Jody and Peter Winfield. One can only imagine logically it would be out of concern for her safety.
He doesn't want the police to know.
Now, with the benefit of hindsight, would John Winfield have worried about two things? Firstly, he's worried that there are two people in the world, Jody and Peter, who know that she is fearful at that moment. And secondly, his consideration would be to keep them out.
Of the narrative.
So is this woman who's already been warned that John's not going to like it that she's back at the house. She's worked up enough to ring the solicitor and seek advice. She anticipating his arrival and not knowing whether he might be in a mood or how he might react, it would be very logical for her to reach out to two of the closest people to him to try and work out what do I do. I'm in trouble here, Yeah, that makes sense. I'll just ride out the timestamp timeline for you.
Thank you so much, Matt, and I'll keep trying to find the timing of that flight. Some listeners may not have heard of the once massive answered Australia Airline and its founder, Sir reginald Anset. Here's a promotional clip from the early nineteen nineties.
It's no wonder the Answered group of Airlines flies the largest domestic fleet in Australasia. Our constant aim is to provide you with excellence in products and service.
When this much loved airline folded in two thousand and one, it was Australia's largest corporate collapse, with more than sixteen thousand jobs lost. Back in Canberra, two days after I had first met her, Karina Berger had a breakthrough. Karina. When I met you at lunch in Brisbane and told you how I was looking for timetables for Anset in nineteen ninety three and they were proving really elusive. You probably didn't expect that you'd be on the chase for them within a day or so.
I love a challenge, heed Ley, so I was happy to help.
How did you find it?
I started off with a basic Google search. It made me realize that timetables for planes and other modes of transport are actually really collectible items, and there's quite a lot of private collectors who tend to catalog them and post blogs about them and take pictures of their covers and things like that and pop them online. And that was really helpful because I could have a look at what people had put up on the Internet, and I realized that there were a couple of timetables from Anset
that existed in nineteen ninety three. The problem was, though, that these people only had pictures of the covers, and they didn't seem to have photographs of the actual timetables themselves or PDF copies. I reached out to Air Services Australia in the hope that they might have actual flight records for the Ballina Airport on the sixteenth of May nineteen ninety three, and I contacted the National Library of
Australia and did some searches of their online catalog. So I then turned to the National Archives of Australia catalog and the New South Wales State Archives catalogs and had to look there, But those searches also weren't very fruitful, and so then I just went back to Google and started to work my way through all of the hits, and I came across the Sir reginald Anset Transport Museum, and then I stumbled across a hit that didn't appear
particularly relevant. At first blush something to do with anset buses, not planes, But it was in the journal of the Australian Timetable Association. It turns out that that's an organization that describes itself as being for anyone interested in the study of transport timetables, schedules, maps and associated literature. So I decided to email the secretary of that organization and then lo and behold. In less than an hour I heard back from the association and they'd found what I was after.
Yeah, that was great. I'd tried to get a timetable through a website for airline pilots and contacted a collector in North America and he had lots of timetables, but not that one. There was another really diligent listener who had offered to help, and she knows who she is. She wants to preserve her anonymity. Around the same time as you were making those inquiries, she was also talking to the museum and she was hopeful and then she
also got a positive hit. Just shows how when we all collaborate, just people from home doing these searches, you know what's possible. What we can see from that is that there were two flights from Sydney with Anseid Airlines on Sunday May sixteen, and the second of those flights left Sydney shortly after six pm.
That's right, Headley. The timetable shows that a jet was due to depart Sydney at six fifteen pm and arrive in Ballina at seven twenty five pm on a Sunday.
And we're not aware of any other operator flying aircraft from Sydney to Ballaner at that time.
No, not at this stage. And it's actually a query that I did put to the Australian Timetable Association and they indicated that they checked the Quantus timetable from the time and had found that Ballaner wasn't a part of the Quantus network and that they didn't think that smaller airlines like East West or Hazleton had flown to Ballaner from Sydney either.
You've done work with Coronial inquiries over a number of years, haven't.
You, Yes, I have, Hedley.
Is it easy to see how this would fall through the cracks the actual time that a person of interest traveled to the regional town.
I think it's probably dependent upon the nature of the case and the police lines of inquiry. At the time, it would be prudent for an investigator officer to seek facts to support things like in our port arrival time. If a suspect or someone who may very well become a suspect is claiming that they arrived in a location at a particular time, doing something like that at the time would be much easier than doing it many years later.
We've done some on the ground checking of how long it would take to travel from the airport. It's in the fifty five to sixty minute range. And it's interesting that in John's police interview he says that he was in the ball and a police station for about fifteen minutes, whereas we allowed for just five minutes when we did that exercise. It seems to us that it was physically impossible for John to have made those telephone calls that at times six fifty three pm and seven h six
pm on the night of Sunday, May sixteenth. Your finding of that timetable now really helps to demonstrate that. Can you think of any other explanation that would have permitted John to have got back in time to make those calls?
I suppose the only explanations that seem open would be either John catching the earlier Ancet flight that was due to land in Ballino at about ten past three in the afternoon, but that seems unlikely. As I understand he says that he arrived in the dark, and I think the sun probably set in Ballino at around about five pm.
And the only other explanation that I can think of is that he traveled with a different airline carrier, and we haven't been able to identify such a carrier at this point in time.
Yeah, I agree, the passenger manifest would be amazing have Whether that's available after thirty one years, I don't know. I think you'd probably need a warrant for that. It's probably something only the police could get, I.
Think so, and there'd be privacy considerations as well. Another explanation that does occur to me that might allow John to have made the phone calls would be if the n set timetable had changed for some reason, such that he did arrive in the dark in Ballina in time to get home and make the calls. But we don't at the moment have any information suggesting that that was the case. We can't really take that any further.
In terms of the timings that other people have talked about, there really aren't that many. There's nothing written down to our knowledge at the police station. But you've made the point for to me that the duty books of the officers could show when John came in to talk to Sergeant Hart, who's now deceased, about whether John can approach the home. Despite the conflict with Bromwin.
I think John to say himself that he saw a police officer write some things down whilst he was at the station.
At one stage in his police interview he says that it could have been around seven or eight pm that he got to the house. Unfortunately, Becky Maguire doesn't nominate a time as to when she gets picked up. Have you read in the police interview where John's asked about phone calls?
Yes, I have read that part.
He originally says I didn't make any.
That's right, and then he was more or less sort of prompted about the phone calls and changed his story and said, oh, that's right, I forgot I did make those calls. Yeah, after the phone numbers were read out to him and the persons that those numbers were allocated to were confirmed.
Even if John hadn't driven Becky home, he still couldn't have made those two phone calls. The evidence does show that Bronwin knew John was coming back to Lennox Head on that Sunday evening. Karina suggested that John had phoned the house at Sandstone Crescent before he departed Sydney.
What about the idea that he could have phoned from the Sydney airport, like he said before the flight took off, figured out that they were home, said that he was coming, and then that led to the panicked phone calls from Bronwan, potentially to Jody and his relatives.
Yeah, that makes sense. We also have Mel Taylor, who was twelve years old at the time, and she'd been playing with Lauren and Still on that Sunday afternoon. She says that when Bromwin returned from work at Eden's takeaway, she said, oh, where are the girls? Can you tell them they've got to come home. Their father's arriving, Their father's coming. Here's how Mel described it in episode four.
I know I was at the park with Crystal and Lauren that afternoon around five point thirty ish six ish. I came home before the girls came home. Bromin came to that door and she's like, oh, hey, is Lauren and Crystal here, and like, no, they're at the park, and she said to me, can you go get them because her father's coming home.
Is it a strong memory? Yeh, it's a strong memory. Yeah. Speaking generally, what is the significance in lies that are told during a police investigation by a person of interest, Well.
It tends to suggest that their evidence is unreliable and can't necessarily be trusted, and that they might be looking to deflect focus on them onto somebody else, probably because there's a potential element of guilt there.
I called Andy and Michelle Reid Broman's brother and sister in law, and explain the flight time issue with the telephone calls. What time did you say the plane actually landed, Well, we can't know for certain when it landed, but what it was scheduled to do was land at about seven point thirty pm.
Planes don't take off ahead of schedule, no, unless they've got every passenger on board. But it still would not be an hour because no.
One, it seems when got a record of that aircraft when it actually there's been this assumption that those phone calls would have just been made by John, as he asserted, and that everything around the flight was not that important and it just fell between the cracks under the radar, so to speak.
She was concerned, and she already rung mcdebitt to express concern that she'd found out he was on his way up there.
Do you have a view about how Bromwin would have been responding and feeling when she knew that John's arrival was imminent. He was in the air.
Well the whole time in that lead up to her going missing, The biggest worry was him trying to take the kids.
She'd have been.
Worried about him turning up for sure, for sure, Hence the reason she called Chris mcdebitt to get his advice advice.
Another thing that's quite evident in the lead up to this, as she was obviously speaking of David getting legal advice, advised to go back to the home, advised by us to go back to the home, get yourself set in, get away from all the financial stress. He knew exactly what was going on.
He's flown for an hour from Sydney to Ballina and then gone back into his own home. Is that the sort of thing that John would do. Bring someone and say I've got off the flight and I'm at home now and I've arrived sakand sound.
Look it doesn't sound like him to me. The Jody one possibly makes sense.
We need to know if Bromwin made them. What was conversed about to Jody and to Peter or was it Louise on the other end of the line.
We don't know. Could either at the second call.
Those two people Jodie's John's daughter and the Winfield is his brother and sister in law.
Why there and not her brother? I wonder what she was doing.
Was she pleading with them to try and talk to John.
Maybe it was in the hope that his brother and his daughter might be able to talk to him.
She didn't ring us. Was she trying to get some help from his family.
Maybe she thought they might have had more clout with him. If she was worried about what he was doing, I don't know.
Well, I suppose she was worried.
She knew he was going to try and take the house back, because that was always being said.
We need to find out We told that many different people, that many different stories. If you went through everyone's statement everyone's memory and all the rest of it. You wind up with a one hundred points of facts that he's got wrong. I've started to do that. That's incredible. To be honest. The more you go through this now with such a fine truth can absolutely my numbing. You're a one man band, You've got your public help, and the people have come forward out there in the real world.
There's Maddie, there's us, there's all us reviewing it.
And here they are a complete homicide unsolved unit and a statewide police force, and we just hear nothing.
We just here not one thing that they're moving forward with. To be fair, they may be aware of this, you don't you. The public help has been incredible, with the Facebook discussion group and people emailing me directly emailing Maddie. Karina Berger she found the timetable along with another woman who has requested an anonymity, and she's a gun investigator. Lazy. Now. Early in this episode, you heard detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor
questioning John Winfield. The second half of the nineteen ninety eight interview began with a question which has been on the minds of.
Many, was the conversation between you and browin quite on good terms.
Amicable, Yeah, because the kids were still up and they the kids went to bed at about sort of eight point thirty.
Or suppose it's a leading question and John has embraced it. A characterization of peace and harmony between a divorcing couple must be better than the alternative, particularly when the wife
has been missing for five years. We can only speculate now whether the answer from John would have been different if he had been taken to an entry in the Police Running Sheets from nineteen ninety three, the entry where Deb Hall reports to police what she says John had told Deb that John and Bromlan had an altercation on the Sunday evening May sixteenth, when John arrived at the house.
The Dictionary definition for altercation is noisy disagreement. It's the opposite of a conversation on good terms, a conversation that is purportedly amicable. If Deb was the only person who recalled John saying that he and Bromin had an altercation, it might be one of those he said, she said claims that makes sense but can't be given a huge amount of weight. But Louise Winfield, the wife of John's brother Peter Winfield, made a similar observation in her witness statement,
which is dated August fourteenth, nineteen ninety eight. That's just nine days after John was questioned by Glenn.
Taylor, I became aware that John did go to Lennox Head. My memory of the following events are very vague, but I recall John telling us that he and Bronwyn had a fight and that Bronwyn had walked out.
There were many important recollections and observations which came out in the dozens of interviews Glenn did with witnesses during his investigation, but he couldn't put any of those to John because John gave the detective one shot at an interview. We're going to look at this in the next episode because Glenn Taylor, who is always trying to help this podcast investigation and the Reed family, has offered his perspective
as an insider on all of it. The situation at Sandstone Crescent on the night of May sixteenth, nineteen ninety three was something akin to a powder keg with an unlit fuse. In my view, I have wondered whether it was triggered by John realizing that Broman was determined to proceed to divorce did John see in the house that night Bromlin's copy of a legal letter which her solicitor, Chrismic Debitt, had sent to John in Sydney two days earlier, a letter which John would not have received in Sydney
before he flew to Ballina on Sunday afternoon. But John was going to get that letter anyway, and it would have been logical for Bronwyn to tell John what her instructions were, or to tell him what the legal letter conveyed. It would have been normal for her to say something like John, I don't want an argument, but as you're here now, you might as well read what's in the letter that was sent to you on Friday. This is what Chrismic Debits legal letter to John stated in part.
Bronwyin is hopeful that you will both be able to reach an agreement in relation to financial matters, and we will be writing to you further with a proposal in this regard in the near future. We are instructed by Bronwyn that in her view, your marriage is out an and that there is no prospect of a reconciliation. In the meantime, we require your immediate agreement for Bronwin to retain the use and possession of the Ford motor vehicle depending finalization of your financial matters.
The last paragraph of the legal letter urged John to get his own lawyer and to disclose his intentions around the Ford Falcon within the next seven days, and it warned John that Bromwin would go to court to get an interim order giving her possession of the car if John failed to respond. Now, let's go back to the questioning of John by Glenn Taylor in that nineteen ninety eight interview in the Ballana police station. Can you tell us what was talked about?
I got no idea. I can't remember what we talked about at the moment. We may not even have had too much discussion. I really can't remember, to tell you the truth. She didn't ask me anything about Sydney. I didn't really ask her anything about Lettox or probably about the kids, you know, just probably about the kids.
These answers from John where he says they didn't really talk about anything, are hard to fathom. John is suggesting two detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor that it was pretty much like any other evening at the family home. Nothing out of the ordinary, probably didn't discuss much about anything, but this was an extraordinary evening. Tensions must have been very high. John had gone to the expense and trouble of having
new locks installed at the family home. He did that to ensure that his estranged wife would not get into that home. But she had. Bronwyn had got herself a locksmith, and she was living in the house. She had beaten and discarded the physical barriers that John had organized, and John could see that she now had possession of the house. Whatever John believed that possession meant in terms of a
legal right. Bromwyn had already told John's daughter Jody that the property was Bromwin's too, and that John needed to be careful about approaching. Here's how Jody described it. You heard this in episode four.
I can't recall how it happened, but I rang the house at Sandstone Crescent and Bronwin answered the telephone. She told me that she'd moved back into the house with the kids and that she was staying there. She also told me that Dad was not welcome there and that he can stay in Sydney with me. She told me that she was going to get a restraining order, so
that he couldn't come near the house. She also told me that the house belonged to her, and I really know that she changed from the person who wanted us all to stay close. We both started to argue because I told her that it was not her house and that it belonged to Dad, Crystal, Lauren, and me as well. I also told her that it belonged to us, more so because she was the one that chose to leave. It developed into a very heated argument and we were yelling at each other, and she hung up on me.
Jody told her father about her difficult Friday, May fourteen conversation with Bromwan. Jody had tried to talk to Bromin again on the Saturday morning, but she couldn't reach her stepmother. Jody spoke instead to ten year old Crystal, and from whatever the child said, Jody concluded that Bromwin was leaving the two girls on their own in the house. This is how Jody described it in her nineteen ninety eight police statement.
When I terminated the phone call and told Dad, he appeared to be very stressed out about it because they had never been left alone before and he was so far away. I started ringing at four pm, and from memory, I think she answered and hung up when she heard my voice because she knew what was going to happen. I tried bringing her straight after, but she must have left the phone off the hook again. It was off the hook all night. I told Dad and he made
arrangements to fly to Baliner the following day. I felt that I was out of the situation then when Dad was going back home to sort it out, so I left it to him.
And soon after, a man obsessive about the home he had built with his bare hands, who carefully watched every dollar, suddenly packed up his things in Sydney, stopped work on the building job he was doing in the Shire, and spent money he would have preferred to keep in his bank account on a costly fair to fly north to Ballina. But according to his interview with Detective Glenn Taylor.
I can't remember what we talked about at the moment. We may not even have had too much discussion.
Now, while Jodie's voice is fresh in your mind, let's hear what she said in her police statement in nineteen ninety eight about a phone call from Sandstone Crescent on Sunday, May sixteenth. This is that six point fifty three pm call which John told the detectives that he had made to his daughter. It's the call which we believe John could not have made because the flight timetables suggests he was still in the air on an Anset jet to bowner.
Jodi referred to the call in the last paragraph of her twenty one paragraph statement, which was dated August twelve, nineteen ninety eight. That's a week after John was interviewed by the detectives.
Today, Detective Tenby showed me an STD telephone record. I can recall that my father rang me at that time from the home at Lenox Head to tell me that he'd arrived there safely. I don't recall much of the conversation, but I believe that Bromwin must have been in the house at the time. I did not speak to Bronwin, and as I said before, the phone call was very short. My father told me that he would ring me later, and that was about it.
Jody confirmed in her statement that the telephone number which made the call was known to her as having come from the home phone at Sandstone Crescent, and Jody confirmed that the number it called was Jody's number at the
time in her flat in Sydney. John's brother Peter Winfield, in his statement to police in mid August nineteen ninety eight, was also shown the telephone bill and the reference to the telephone call being made to Louise and Peter Winfield's home at seven oh six pm on sixteen May nineteen ninety three. Peter Winfield told the detective Glen Taylor that it would have been the call that John made to Peter from Lennox Head. He said he didn't remember much about that phone call and that John made it in
the evening. The next thing he says he recalled was John and the children arriving in Sydney. Peter said that he had tried to remember, but he couldn't recall what John said about coming to Sydney with the children. In episode five, you heard what John had told police five years earlier in nineteen ninety three.
He stated that his wife met him at the door and they sat and talked for some time in the dining room. The children were then put to bed and both he and his wife had an evening meal.
In this version, the one weeks after Bronwin's disappearance John and Bronwin had quite a bit to talk about. After the children went to bed, they had an evening meal together they talked for some time. Five years later, Crystal described it this way in the statement that she made two Detective Sergeant Taylor at Ballina Police Station.
I remember being at home in the early evening when I received a telephone call, and from my recollection, it was from my father. I don't remember what it was that I spoke about, but it was not long after this that my father arrived at the house.
I remember my.
Mother saying something like, what are you doing here? My father says something about having caught a plane back to Bleana. I remember Dad coming into the kitchen and I was sitting watching television. My Dad and Mom started talking, but I don't know what was being said. The next thing that I remember was Mum telling myself and my sister Lauren to clean our teeth and go to bed. After I went to bed, I heard Mom and Dad arguing in the kitchen. I could hear Mom crying at the
same time. I don't recall what was being said between Mom and Dad, but I could tell that they were arguing. I could hear them arguing until I must have fell asleep. My next recollection that night was being woken by my father. Dad told me that he was taking Lauren a iight to Sydney.
Let's go back to the nineteen ninety eight interview. Did you communicate to her that you were going to leave that same night to go back to Sydney?
No, no, no way, no.
How did that all come about?
Well, I didn't say, but like it, I mean, all of a sudden after the phone calls that she apparently made, you know, I heard a car pull up. I was sitting there at the dining room table, and she was in the bedroom and a car pulled up, and I mean she opened the front door and she was off. That was it. What time was that PNA About quarters to midnight? I think eleven o'clock. I don't know, you know, it's probably down there somewhere. This is a mistake by
John in terms of the timing. He had previously said that Boman left about nine thirty pm. What were you doing at that point? I was still sitting at the table. I was still sitting at the table, and I stayed at the table.
What time did the kids go to bed?
I think the kids were in bed by that time. I'm quite sure they were. I you know, I they would have been in bed by that time, would have been in bed by that time.
Well up until that point, hag, you communicated to Braunway what you intended to do, whether you stay in the family home or no.
No.
I just maybe there was, oh, I can't remember. Maybe there was a discussion about sleeping arrangements. I don't know. I might have said I'll sleep on the lounge. I don't know what I said. I really can't remember, but that was it. You know, I had a couple of cups of tea. I wasn't really sort of tired. I wasn't in a sleeping sort of mood. And then like we heard a carpool up and she opened the front door,
and she was off and she left. The front door were open, and I heard the car go off up the hill.
Glenn Taylor might have been holding or looking at some of the running sheets and other documents from Graham Diskin's investigation five years earlier. Referring to that time, Glenn said to John, you mention that you stayed at the dining room table for some time with Bromlin discussing family matters.
Oh yeah, probably, I don't know. I can't remember, I mean, five years ago. I can't remember where we sat. You know, I know I was sitting at the table because I always have this one seat I always sit in, you know, it's just sort of where I used to always sit, you know.
Here, Glenn Taylor has highlighted John's nineteen ninety three claims about having talked about family matters with Bromwin for some time that night. Perhaps four tactical reasons, the detective has not challenged John about why he claimed they didn't really talk about anything. But it begs the question, what is the correct answer? John? Both answers can't be right.
You mentioned this too, that there was some discussion between you and your wipe about her having a break from the children.
Well, see she left a letter in the car too, I mean I go to pick her up. She left a letter in the back of the car, and in that letter she said that she needed a break.
And notice that John actually avoided answering the question here by raising the existence of a letter written by Bromwin. John doesn't deal with whatever he claims Bromman had told him that night about wanting to have a bit of a break. It's a deflection, and perhaps it was just an accident. Part of the response from John, though, is baffling. It's hard to know what he was talking about when he said, I go to pick her up. She left
a letter in the back of the car. The known timeline has John having no physical contact with Bromwan for weeks until his return to the house in Lennox Head. He hadn't picked her up, as in driven somewhere to get her. Broman was in the house with the children when he turned up there on the Sunday night, and she left, according to him, in a mystery car driven by an unknown individual, before John left with the children
to drive to Sydney overnight. We know about the letter you heard excerpts from Broman's writing in earlier episodes.
When we moved to Lennox Head, I was even more lonely. The house that was Bill became John's castle and my prison. Eventually I switched off and became cold inside. He had a heart of ice and always criticized me no matter what I did. The man was cold and heartless and gave nothing but expected everything. That'll be fine now, A little break for a few weeks and everyone will see the old me look out.
John was vague about the contents of the letter when Glenn Taylor raised it.
I can't remember what was in the letter. It was a long letter. I mean, I know I gave it to Graham anyway. You know, I'd be lying if I told you I can remember what was said, because I can't remember what I said, you know. I mean, it's that long ago and I've put it out of my mind, I really have.
You know, was it anything that you can retral about whether you and her to say that you were going to take the children down to Sydney?
No, no, never, never. It's just that when she bolted out that door and drove up the street, you know, and left the car, well, you know, I thought, oh well, I'll just take the kids to city with me. You know, I don't know. It's just a spontaneous thing. But I just did it, you know, So I did it.
Were you not concerned that she go to the police and say that you've taken the kids?
Yeah?
But see, in the eyes of the family court, everyone's got a right to access until the court determines, you know. So, I mean I hadn't seen the kids for weeks, so I sort of decided to take them. I may have discussed it with her. I can't honestly remember, I'll tell you the truth. I can't remember whether I said, listen, how about leaving the kids with me, because like it's five years I really don't think about it that much. You know, it wasn't school holidays at that time, was it?
You can check that. I can't remember, but it may have. I don't know. It was in May, so I don't know.
In fact, it was not school holidays at the time. Children were meant to be at school on Monday, May seventeenth. It's still a mystery why John took off so suddenly, particularly as he said that he had brought his surfboard and his gear back to Banana on the aircraft, and his story was that Bromin had announced to him that night that she was going away for a few days. On his version, he would have had the house and the children to himself. He didn't need to drive anywhere.
This car that you heard pull up, it just pulled up out the street, out the front.
Did you say, yeah, I was thinking about the school holidays. It could have been school holidays. I don't know.
What did it sound like? Did it sound just a car?
You know, I mean, if you're trying, was it a four cylinder or a V eight? I don't know, see what I.
Mean, you're not sure?
No?
No, how do you know that it stopped at the front of your place because I heard it? You know what the engine I was stopped there with the engine ray.
The engine running. Yeah, and you didn't go to investigate. No, No, at next stage you thought, I mean, once she'd gone and the car gone up the hill, I walked up and she was gone. The car was gone. So I just shut the front door and the front door was still open. The front door was still open. Yeah.
Do you go and check whether she'd taken anything close or I didn't?
No, I don't think I did. I mean I think I noticed her handbag was gone or something like that.
So there was no communication with to her that she was even leaving in the house.
No. No, she didn't say I'm going or anything like that.
No, So these phone calls happened. I'm not long after the phone call was car pulls up?
Yeah, Like I said to Graham at the time, well, maybe one of these phone calls that she made might have been to a bloke to come and pick her up, you know, or a friend. So like Graham has suggested to me, maybe that was her boyfriend, just come round a pay or a visit. I don't know that was his suggestion, you know.
Bronwin is written and investigated by me Headley Thomas as a podcast production for The Australian. If anyone has information which may help solve this cold case, please contact me confidentially by emailing Bronwyn at the Australian dot com dot au. You can read more about this case and see a range of photographs and other artwork at the website bronwynpodcast dot com. Our subscribers and registered users here episodes first.
The production and editorial team for Bromwin includes Claire Harvey, Kristin Amiet, Joshua Burton, Bridget, Ryan Bianca, far Marcus, Katie Burns, Liam Mendez, Sean Callen, Matthew Condon and David Murray. Audio production for this podcast series is by Wasabi Audio and original theme music by Slade Gibson. We have been assisted
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