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. I'm just going to merge this call with Karina. Okay, Karna Berger. You heard her, she found the handset timetable. All right, eh, yep, yep, Hey, Kaarina you're there.
Yeah, I'm here Headley and.
He's on the line.
He's very grateful that you found that timetable.
How Annie, thank you for your diligence forwarding that document.
Well, that's my pleasure. That's a privileged to be helping your family.
That's been fantastic the help we've been getting.
Well, they's community detectives.
Hello, I'm seening you a couple of peaks horror up the ladder than the fleece.
The day before the release of this episode, Bromman's brother Andy Reid, hinted at some of his frustration over the failure of police over many years to give just as much chance in this case. We were on a call with Karina Berger, an experienced lawyer who has been giving her time and expertise to help this podcast investigation into Bromwin's suspected murder thirty one years ago. Karina and many other listeners who have become deeply invested in Bronwan are
making a powerful difference. In Episode fifteen, Kaarina's discovery of a May nineteen ninety three official timetable for Answered Australia supported our suspicions that John has misled police with his claims of having made two long distance telephone calls from the house in Sandstone Crescent shortly before Bromwin disappeared. It now appears likely that John was in a jet high above Australia's eastern seaboard when those calls were made, probably
by Bromwin. Another stitch in a pattern of what looks like interwoven deceits, another apparent example of a failure by previous police investigations to thoroughly check all the relevant claims made by someone who has always emphatically denied having murdered his estranged wife. Words like frustration and disappointment do not do justice to Andy's view of how police have handled his sister's case since nineteen ninety three. At times his
emotions boil over and I hear a powerful anger. He is buoyed that this podcast series and the remarkable efforts of listeners have produced new leeds and witnesses.
Joe Putlick and people are quite better at finding things out and frame more diligen on what they are as so frustrated.
But it is a double edged sword because Andy is sure that his involvement with the podcast has meant that the new South Wales Unsolved Homicide Units, Detective Inspector Nigel Warren and other detectives are more wary of Andy telling him nothing. Just before the Bromwin series started, Andy met Senior Police with his wife Michelle. The detectives told him that they would not be able to advance their cold
case investigation without new evidence. That position appears to have changed with the public interest and revelations in this series. Detectives flew from Sydney to cool and Gatter to take a statement from Judy Singh after her revelations in episode seven about seeing John and what Judy believed was a
body in the back of the Ford Falcon. Detectives have also taken statements from Judy's friend Kerry McLain and from Bromwin's neighbor and friend, Virginia Bevers and Inspector Warren has sought from me and my employer, The Australian, a number of documents and files, including all of my interviews with
those women. We have provided these. For all we know, Inspector Warren and the unit's detectives are independently uncovering important information away from the spotlight and diligently preparing a brief of evidence to present to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the same office which in two thousand and three rejected a senior coroner's recommendation that John Winfield
should be prosecuted over Bromwin's alleged murder. Andy Reid, however, still dumbfounded by the hopelessness of the early investigations into Bromwin's disappearance, is not convinced. He tells me that he sometimes feels like he is having to alert detectives to what's going on and lobby them to do their job. The day before the release of this episode, Andy and
I spoke again. The head of the homicide squad, Danny Doherty, was at a media conference today with the Police Commissioner for New South Wales, Karen Webb, and there was a question from one of my colleagues at The Australian about Bromin's case. She cleared the rostrum so that he could talk about it. Danny Doherty stepped up.
What was his response just in relation time ongoing bronwin podcast? What's going on with the John Winfield investigation and what is the force doing in response to the revelations?
Response in terms of for that matter, that's on investigation as current investigation and it's well documented.
There's a podcast in Israel following that story.
But in terms of the unsold term they have that investigation, it's current and that's oncoming. Is there any updated all that we probably read about in an Australia or listened on the podcast? However, we can't comment on white investignations currents in terms of why wasn't mister Winfield charged as the coroner recommended it all those years ago.
Let's talk about it already.
I went to the DVP and at this stage in sufficient evidence to charge any person.
The strengths will for the role.
They're obviously playing their cards pretty close to their chest.
When I'd been messaging Nigel and I was getting those responses of sorry, I'm not able to disclose anything at this present time. We will be in touch when we are in a position, I want to reach out to him to say, well, who's following, what are you up to date with what's going on. We had all revelations regarding the flight inventories and all the rest of it, and I'm pretty sure that he didn't even know about it.
When I first disclosed about the historical fight records and all the rest of it, where knocking down doors, breaking barriers, coming up with you info, he was taken aback by it. He wasn't aware of any of them. That's when I pressed him further and then he had to disclose that. From all the way back at episode seven, Judy, seeing they still haven't got any official statement from New Zealand.
From the doctor who corroborated Duty's account of going to the Byron Bay Police station, correct, how do you feel about how the police are performing?
I just can't believe that they can be so slow on this matter. We've got something that's a major podcast that's breaking down all sorts of barriers and coming up with all sorts of information. I don't believe that there is anyone that is directly involved with Broman's case that he's up to date.
It's just bizarre that you've got to tell them what's already been broadcast to hundreds of thousands of people.
Bizarre, absolutely bizarre.
My theory is that they handled this.
That Paulie and that badly originally that I feel either they're embarrassed or they don't want it out there in the limelight. I can't believe that they're not acting on anything to your knowledge.
They could be doing things behind the scenes that we're not aware of. It is beyond dispute now in my view that the original investigation of bromwin Winfield's disappearance in nineteen ninety three was utterly abysmal, just like the appalling early police investigations of wife killer Chris Dawson, who murdered his wife Lynn in nineteen eighty two. Dawson got away with it for four decades. In twenty eighteen, New South Wales Police, under the then Commission Mick Fuller, helped make amends.
His detectives ran a very thorough, painstaking investigation led by Daniel Poole. Mick Fuller kept close tabs on the Dawson investigation. He stood up to respond to media questions about it. He publicly admitted the failure of police to handle it with professionalism in the first decade, and he repeatedly pledged the police force's determination to solve the crime. Fuller did not disclose any operational details that would have been improper,
but he was proactive. He showed leadership and a steely resolve. By contrast, Fuller's successor, Commissioner Karen Webb, has been completely silent on Bromin's case.
She wanted nothing to do with it.
When the questions were asked in a media conference the day before this episode, the most senior homicide detective in
the state, Danny Doherty, had next nothing to say. That's very poor form in my view, how do they think families like Bromwin's should feel With performances like those, It is easy to understand why Andy Reid and Bromwin's relatives and friends believe they are being treated shabbily again by police, and at the highest levels this time, and why Andy's dead sister, a mother of two girls, is not getting
the top level attention that she has always deserved. There is a striking feature in all of the evidence and information from John For me, It is the sketchiness of the information. It is the banal generality weaved around, an absence of detail and the lack of expression of concern for Bromlin's welfare. Bromin was the mother of John's biological child Lauren, the mother of John's stepdaughter Crystal, and the
stepmother of John's daughter Jodi. Bromwin must have been his soulmate for some of the years they were together in a de facto relationship, and then as husband and wife, John and Bromwin were obviously estranged and she wanted a divorce. The marriage was finished. Half of all married couples deal with this, but it is an extraordinary event when a
young mother completely vanishes five years later. Feelings of remorse and genuine concern for the woman's welfare would surely be present for an estranged husband notwithstand the tensions in the original separation. Five years is the time between Bromwin's disappearance and John's interview in the Baroner police station. It is a long time to reflect on the complete absence of the most significant person in the lives of your young children.
John's presentation in the police interview, however, is cold to Glenn Taylor, John presents as indifferent to Bromin's whereabouts or fate, and perhaps it is because, in John's version, the missing woman to whom he was still legally married, the mother who had planned to drop her two girls at school in Lennox Head on the Monday morning, is still alive. In the previous episode, you heard John being specifically asked about this by Glenn Taylor in that upstairs interview room
near the Richmond River in nineteen ninety eight. Do you think your wife might be deceased?
No, No, no reason for me to think that way.
So you think she's somewhere in this country under another identity?
Well, well, I mean I'll tell you the truth. I reckon I could go anywhere alike and assume another identity. I don't see why anyone else can't. I mean, it wouldn't be hard.
In the transcript of the only formal interview John has done with police in the thirty one years since Bromin vanished, something else is clear. The sketchiness in John's story about Bromlin after her May sixteen disappearance rises to a level of detail in some crucially important ways, and with the existence of an actual document. It is when John is describing some very unusual circumstances surrounding what has become known
as the Medicare check. You heard a small part of this in the previous episode.
We went to Sydney again for two weeks and it was during that two weeks that she came back, took clothes and left a Medicare check.
Let's take a few moments to explain what exactly the Medicare check is or was. In nineteen ninety three, when Australians like Bromwyn Winfield went to see the doctor, the federal government picked up most and sometimes all of the bill through a system known as Medicare. A reserve bank check would be issued in the name of the payee,
the treating doctor. It must have been a frustrating process at times for medical practitioners because the check would be sent by the Federal government or Medicare to the address of the patient in this case Bromwyn, and it would be then up to the patient to physically take the check to the doctor the payee.
The doctor could then present.
The Medicare check at the bank and when the check cleared, the funds would be posited into the doctor's account. In the case of this particular Medicare check, the amount was forty dollars and eighty cents.
I'm looking at a.
Photocopy of the check. There is capitalized black type for the paye that's written as doctor F Initial G.
Hughes.
The date on the check is May one, nineteen ninety three.
There is a.
Medicare logo in the top left hand corner, and the other detail written on the check comes under the heading reference. It states simply Missus b Winfield five Stroke forty two Byron Street, Lennox Head. Of course, that's the address of the townhouse owned by Shirley Taylor, the one which Bromwin started renting in March when she and the girls moved out of the Sandstone Crescent House, and where John changed a lock so that her keys would not let her get back in.
For completeness, is.
John earlier in his interview with Glenn Taylor mentioning doctor Hughes the paye for the Medicare check. She reckons.
She told me just before we separated that she had a nervous breakdown in the January of nineteen ninety three, all right, and I said to her, you know, what's a nervous breakdown? I've heard of it, but can you tell me what it is? You know, I sort of didn't understand, but she reckoned. She had a nervous breakdown and she went to see the doctor in Lenox I don't know if it was doctor Watson or doctor Hughes. I don't know which one it was.
Later Glen Taylor would go to see the doctors bromwin was known to have consulted, and nobody had any record or recollection of treatment of bromin for a nervous breakdown. A voice actor will read the brief statement which doctor Francis Hughes signed on September seven, nineteen ninety eight, at the Lenox Head Medical Center, where his clinic was situated.
My age is seventy seven. I hold the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery, and Bachelor of Arts and Obstetrics. I graduated from the University of Dublin, Ireland in nineteen forty seven. On the fifteenth of April nineteen ninety three, I saw Bronwyn Winfield at my surgery at the Lennox Head Medical Center. She informed me that she thought she might have AIDS and requested to be sent
for a blood test. She also informed me that she was separated from her husband and that he was waking her up several times at night and she was very tired. She didn't elaborate any further in relation to this at the time to my knowledge, and I don't recall asking her anything further about her domestic matters. I arranged for her to have a blood test on the twenty first of April nineteen ninety three. Her blood test results were
received at my surgery, which revealed a negative result. I do not recall whether she checked up on her test results, but most people checked by telephoning the surgery a couple of days later. I do not make a note on the person's file of whether they have inquired or not. I did not make any comment on her file as to her manner or demeanor during that appointment. I have not seen Bronwyn Winfield since that appointment on the fifteenth of April nineteen ninety three.
Before returning to the mystery surrounding the Medicare check, I'll try to summarize two matters that come out of the statement of doctor Hughes. His assertion that broman had told him that her estranged husband, John was waking her up several times at night, resulting in fatigue. Is similar to disclosures by Bromman to others that John was telephoning at all times and harassing her. Here's Bromwin's cousin and good friend, Megan Reed, speaking to me at her home on Sydney's Northern Beaches.
I'd be on the phone talking to her at her flat when she moved into Bayron Street and you here screaming outside, let me let me. And she actually tore the phone off the wall at Montboy to something.
And Bronwyn's sister Kim Marshall.
I was even on the phone when he was banging on the Brewers down at the Fats.
The reference by doctor Hughes to Bromwin's blood test for HIV and the negative result has a longer tail. Bromwin was worried about sexually transmitted disease. She believed that John had been seeing someone else. I'm not aware of evidence to confirm this belief. John was not asked about extramarital relationships during his interview with Detective Taylor. That Bromwin had been worried about HIV or aides as it was more commonly known in nineteen ninety three for a couple of years.
I joined the Lenox Heead Medical Center in April nineteen ninety and have seen Bronwyn Winfield thirteen times for general medical care.
She went to see doctor Susan Mitchell in February nineteen ninety one in what was described as a highly agitated state.
Presented highly agitated and requested that this consultation be kept separate to our usual family group record. She said that the woman John had had an affair with six years previously, leading to an earlier marital.
Separation, had been confirmed.
HIV positive blood was collected and returned HIV negatives.
February nineteen ninety one must have been a particularly difficult.
Time in Bromwin's adult life.
It was just nine days after she had an abortion, which doctor Mitchell had helped arrange with a referral to another doctor. The abortion occurred in the twelfth week of Bromwin's pregnancy. Bromwin's blood test for HIV in February nineteen ninety one was, of course negative, and it was negative in April nineteen ninety three too, when she went to see doctor Francis Hughes. Bronwyn was in good physical health when she vanished. Now, Medicare's payments system is much more
advanced now and hardly anyone uses bank checks anymore. John appeared definite in his nineteen ninety eight interview with Glenn Taylor that the Medicare check had been signed by Bromwin. John also appeared definite that the check was not in the kitchen of the house in Sandstone Crescent when John returned to the house from Sydney on the evening of Sunday, May sixteenth, nineteen ninety three, the last time Bromwann was
seen and confirmed to be alive. The Medicare check, according to John, was not there when he returned to the house from Sydney again on about May twenty seven, after some ten days away in Sydney. John's version is that when he went to Sydney with Crystal and Lauren over their school holidays in July, Bronwyn came back. On his version, she must have slipped quietly back into the house. She must have taken some clothing from the house when she
left again, and thoughtfully. On John's version, Bromwin must have signed the Medicare check which was payable to doctor Hughes, but less thoughtfully Bromwyn left the check in the kitchen
for John to deal with. In my view, John's evidence around the Medicare check, evidence which John spoke to Bromin's family and friends about in nineteen ninety three and to police in nineteen ninety eight when he was relying on it as proof of life for Bromwin, is some of the most damaging evidence against John because none of it makes rational sense. And that's before we talk about the signature purportedly Bronwin's signature, which is suspiciously very different to her Nolan signature.
Here's deb Hall and Murray Nolan.
Because I remember this conversation in July of that year. John had been in Sydney and said, did I had I seen Bromwin during the school holidays in the July school holidays? And I said no, why And he said, well, she's been back to the house. See what do you mean because when? And he said, oh, she's been here. And I said, Pat, do you know that?
John?
Oh?
Well, if I had all these bags of clothes in the garage and half of them have gone, and there's a Medicare check being left on the table, and I went, Nah, no, you know, I'm saying this.
I can't believe that, John. When did she come back?
Nobody saw her, nobody heard her.
How did she get here?
And why would she not come and tell anybody she's the back. Oh, she's definitely bet in here, you kept saying to me, because he went to Sydney in those July holidays with the kids to get these bags of clothes, which we found out through Andrew were put in this little manhole that's twelk foot off the ground to get up to that manhole to get the bags. How did she know the clothes were in there? It doesn't make sense. It's not logical. And not only that, how did she
carry all these bags on her own? We would have heard something. Murray was home that time during the day. Was he still recovering from his back injury so he couldn't work because he was working as a build up.
I was at work and I certainly didn't see her.
And if she'd come back at night, surely we would have hurt some commotion or.
Something up there.
You would have heard the garage door goer.
Because it was a noisy garage anyway, on Saturday when we were talking about that.
Again, had bindly dawned on me and I said, well, how did she get in?
Because he had the keys in Sydney, and if she's come back during that time when he wasn't there, I don't know how she would have got in.
We know that back on Friday May fourteen, nineteen ninety three, when Bromin was distressed at being unable to get back into her own home, she called a locksmith out to Sandstone Crescent.
Murray explains it this way, when.
The Barron locksmith come there and cut her a key for the front door on the Briday night.
But they would have just cut one key just to get her in. They wouldn't have tout two keys. That is my feury in right from when.
Actually had the old keys to the house, but she'd had the feet of the deadlock that John put on in the Joy school holiday.
She's apparently come back to the house.
Well, if he's saying that she'd come back in, so there's that way she had.
A couldie how'd she get in?
John spoke to a number of people about Bromman's purported visit to the house with a Medicare check. The recollections of those people are good now. They must have been even better many years ago when their recollections were put into police statements during Glenn Taylor's investigation from nineteen ninety eight and then during George Radmore's cold case review for the Unsolved Homicide Unit in two thousand and nine and ten.
Here's Megan reading from one of her statements.
I distinctly remember John ringing me after riding home and supposedly finding that Bronwin had returned to the house while he'd been in Sydney. John was very excited, relieved and elated, and he stated, guess what. I've just walked into the house and Bronwin has been home. It's good news. She's okay. She has left a medicare check which wasn't there before I left, and taken some photos of the children. She must have a boyfriend because she's taken a pair of
jeans and a jumper of mine. I actually said to him, well where is she? He said, well, she's obviously got a new man, because my jeans and jumper are missing. Thought that this was suspicious as it did not make sense, and I thought that he had orchestrated the whole thing. I also thought it was ridiculous that she would leave a Medicare check yet still not touch any of her own bank accounts.
There are other fundamental problems with John's evidence about Brommin's purported return to the house in July nineteen ninety three
and her alleged signing of the Medicare check. Will go through these, but were those problems given a pass by detectives Graham Diskin and Wayne Temby in nineteen ninety three because of the misreading of the time of a call on the Sandstone Crescent telephone bill and as a result, a misguided belief that Bromwin actually went back to the house in the early hours of Monday, May seventeen to use a home phone to check lotto results at two thirteen in the morning. Here's Glenn Taylor in one of
my meetings with him and lennox Head. They believe that she'd come back to the house.
During our reinvestigation and looking at the telephone bill, we quickly established that it wasn't two thirteen am.
It was two thirteen pm, and it was the day before.
It was the afternoon just prior to her disappearance some weeks later, and the running shirts indicated this. John Winfield contacted the police, the detectives at that time that we're looking into the matter and said Roma must have been back at the house because there's been a Medicare check. It was addressed to a local doctor, and those were the days where the lock of the patient goes to her doctor and then Nedicare would send a check made parable to the doctor and then the patient pays the
difference of the bill. This particular check was addressed to a local doctor at Lenox Head, but it or a signature which should have been a signature for the doctor.
It had a signature allegedly rom wingfel on the check.
Just to reflect on that for a moment.
The check should not have been signed by anyone other than the payee, doctor Hughes, but a signature which does not look like Bromwin's signature appeared on that check. Bromwin regularly saw doctors for herself and her daughters. She dealt with the Medicare system. It is highly unlikely in my view, that she would have erroneously believed that she needed to sign the check. John didn't deal with those administrative things while Bromwin was his partner. So John declared, look, she's
lean back to the house. She's left a check here that she.
Signed was on the table that wasn't here before. And also she's taken some clothes and she's even taken one pair of my jeans. So he was trying to indicate to the He looked, she's very much alive and she's gone on some extended holiday without contacting the children.
Here are Michelle and Dandy at their home in the Shire.
Clarity for me time when he made that phone call after the school holidays, we only briefly saw the girls in him on that trip. I believe he stayed out at his brother Pete and Louise out in Ingodoon, then returned home to Lennox, to the Sandstone Crescent and he made a phone call and he said, I've just got back to the house.
Bromwin must have been here.
There's a Medicare check on the bench, and there's two bags of clothes missing. I remember having that conversation with him, and I just remember hanging the phone up and I turned around her. I just looked at Michelle and I just saw it straight out to myself the bus has done something that was just clarity straightaway as soon as that phone call, none of it made sense.
Did he know that you suspected him over Broman's disappearance at the early days.
I think he knew that a minute he hung up the phone making that phone call all the way back in July because of the way you spoke to him. Well, I'm one hundred percent sure I sent you with that phone called. That just doesn't make sense. Why would she sneak back into the house while you're away and not she Debbi next door and tell her and tell someone in Lenny's head that she's okay?
What are you thinking?
I still remember this day hanging up the phone and turned around at Michelle and just gone that start right.
No way in the world.
Why would she sign a check that doesn't need signing?
Yeah, and she worked in a beat in younger times. She knew she wasn't silly with checks and naturing you people didn't sign their own Medicare check. Feasibly that check was sent to that dress steps on there, which was Byron's and could possibly have been inside the handbait.
Well, once you've started.
Thinking there's a bit of hoot on me here, magically, go back home, produce this check. That could have been in the house the whole time. We don't know, but it could have been in the house the whole time. Magically produced this check. The police believe that that's a forward signature.
Who signed it?
The bags have closed, he refers to he actually put inside the manhole in the roost base. How would Bromin know to find her bags have closed in the roosts base? Brombin was always someone that was very, very feminine in ways. There's no one in the world w sister, I know it. So there's no way the world mysh sister would have gone and got a step ladder and bring precariously three meters or two and a half meters in the air, trying to meanhandle garbage bags, two garbage bags of clothes
out of a manhole. How would you even know to look?
Bit? None of it makes sense, mate, none of it. None of it. Well before the release of the first episode of Bronwin, Kim Marshall told me that she saw the Medicare check when she visited Lennox Head in June nineteen ninety three. Her trip was meant to be a long overdue catch up with Bromwan. They had been planning it for some time.
I spoke to her every day on the phone about my plane flight, what time my plane would rite, when I'd be going to hair Expo.
Then I'd be getting on the Greyhound bus.
We found the buses out together, what time the bus would arrive in Ballina. Because I'd never had an adult experience with Ronnie, it was always as the youngest child wild but this time it was going to be adopt to adult, and so we had all these wonderful twoks.
It's going to be so exciting. I'll be able to show you all my dresses in my wardrobe.
When Brommin disappeared, neither Kim nor her mother, Barbara, suspected that John had been involved in foul play, so Kim ended up staying in the house with Crystal, Lauren and John in June, just weeks after Broman's disappearance and shortly before John took the girls to Sydney for the July school holidays.
John saying that Bromin's returned to the house and she signed it. The whole piece of evidence that it's missing is that I was in the house at week three after Bromwin, going straight after the June Long Weekend, I was there that medi Care check was already there.
You're saying it's the same check.
Yes, Yes, they.
Sent the Mediicare check off to Cottognyard, those people that look at writing, and they said, yes, give us the letters, all the actual comparisons of handwriting.
A month before the.
First episode of Bromwin, Kim talked to me again about her observations from nineteen ninety three.
She understood the potential significance.
What am I to do with my valuable and precious information about the Medicare check?
And I can leave that question with you.
But this is a question I keep asking Andrew all the time because my information about the Medicare check, I believe is crucial and very very serious.
Okay, let's get your information about the Medicare check on the record, So just describe.
It for me please.
Kim explained that, in her view, previous police investigations, including the most important one by the detective give Sergeant Glenn Taylor, had effectively sidelined her. As a result, her first hand knowledge of the Medicare check had not been put into a formal statement.
My voice had not been heard by any of the police force, nor my brother or my sister in law being the young girl that I was that lived at the house in Lennox just after Bromwin was no longer there. That Medicare check I have cited, I have touched, and please don't think that I'm a horrible human for sayings My brother and my sister in law followed the police's directive orders to keep my mother and myself out of any type of involvement in Brahmin's missing person case or the inquest.
It's just been totally ignored.
Is it because people are scared that they got it roll by ignoring my infa before all?
Right, when you were there in the days and weeks after Bromman disappeared, Yes, you saw the Medicare check at the house.
Yes, and had a conversation in depth with Jonathan about it.
What did you see and what did you talk to him about?
The Medicare check was made out to a provider that Bromman had gone to for a general visit. It was the refund check for the payment that in the old days you had to sign and then mail back to the practitioner. And so that check was signed and that check was sitting in full view well before Jonason traveled down to Sydney with the kids in the school holidays, where he rang me and a number of other family
members saying, Bromwin's been to the house. There's a Medicare check on the table, and she's removed a few of her clothes from the wardrobe, and she's taken a pair of my genes.
I just need to clarify a couple of things, Kim. So the Medicare check was there when you went to the house after Broman disappeared, correct, But then that means the Medicare check could have been at the house before you arrived.
Correct.
He's used the Medicare check as a form of evidence that Broman has returned to the house after I visited and stayed at the house.
I actually saw it signed, it was all ready to go back.
I have a conversation in detail with Jonason about it because I love the fact of all the letter writing that's happened over the years that Rowan's crinching is so beautiful, like my mother's running writing and my own writing. And I made the comment as how beautiful all of us ladies in the family have the most beautiful writing.
You are confident that Bromin did in fact sign that check. Yes, now here's the rub. Kim is the first to acknowledge that she is not a handwriting expert. However, when she saw the check in June nineteen ninety three, it bore what appeared to her at the time to be Bromwin's signature, even though there would have been no reason whatsoever for Bromwin or anyone other than the payee doctor Hughes to sign it.
But put that aside for the time being.
The key thing about what Kim says is that it directly contradicts John's version about the check turning up at the house while John and the girls were in Sydney over the July school holidays. John's reliance on that check materializing as a new proof of life of Bromwin being at the house while John, Crystal and Lauren were away in July is shot to pieces by kim sighting of the check in June.
I know that it was there in the house before he traveled to Sydney and rang everybody and said, Bromwin's been in the house and Medicare check has appeared in the house.
Next day that the check was there before.
Okay, let me just be Devil's advocate. Why would he want to rely on that when he knows that you, if you were questioned by police, would say, well, that's not true. It was already signed, and John and I even talked about it while I was staying there.
I've been always discounted and dismissed.
In this instance, it's happened again, and I just don't understand why it's not.
A significant piece of evidence.
I raised the Medicare check to them when I was actually at the Corona inquest.
I was very politely just told to go away and keep quiet. They actually asked me not to attend one of the days.
Andy Reid has told me that he remembered Kim coming to him about her observations of the Medicare check during the inquest. Andy said that he does not know why a statement was not taken from Kim then, or earlier or subsequently. I'm going to look at this again in upcoming episodes when we go through the evidence and testimony which unfolded over five days of public hearings at the two thousand and two inquest in the town of Lismore.
West of Lennox Head. There is some remarkable material in the transcripts and some very vigorous cross examination of key witnesses. According to KIM, detectives including George Radmore from the Unsolved Homicide Unit, who subsequently focused on the forged signature angle with analysis by expert handwriting examiners at New Scotland Yard in London, have.
Gone down the wrong part of investigation and their two embarrassed to reverse it.
But in my view, George Radmore and his team of detectives were diligent and professional in sending multiple documents bearing Bromwin's signature to handwriting examiners in the United Kingdom. Bromwin's cousin, Megan Reid, was told about the outcome of that analysis.
The Scotland Yard said it wasn't persecutor.
For this podcast series, a respected handwriting expert in Australia, Taraney Dewhurst, looked at just one sample of Bromwin's known and confirmed signature and the signature on a very poor photocopy of the Medicare check. Tarney has helped me with handwriting analysis in the past. Some listeners will have heard her voice in the Night Driver series Tarney Dewhurst identified obvious differences in the two Bronwyn Winfield signatures, which, in
her view, warrant further examination with better quality specimens. Lay people with no expertise in handwriting analysis can readily see the differences too. Detectives working with George Radmore on the case obtained good comparison samples during their cold case review
fourteen years ago of Bromwyn's alleged murder. Why isn't it possible, though, Kim, that John, for example, if we pick up the police case, that John did forge Bromwin's signature, and that's what you saw, and he just did a really.
Good job of it.
And he could have because I've got an answer for that as well, because I could forge it.
So you're not ruling out that he may have forged it.
Yes, it's correct, most definitely in preparation for use.
Definitely. No one's put that question to me. Am I being ignored because I was young? Am I being ignored because of the mental health? Am I being ignored because I'm a female? And they're the questions that I live with every day for many, many years, and they're destroying.
Kim Marshall was twenty when the trip she had planned to lennox Head to spend time with her sister Bromwin went sideways. If there had been a modern police response to the disappearance of Bromwin, detectives would have descended on that house and declared it a possible crime scene. They would have had scientific officers combing it for evidence, but instead life went on as if nothing much had changed.
In nineteen ninety three. Kim did not know Bromman with anything like the kind of familiarity of most siblings.
They had never together.
Bromwin did not know of Kim's existence until Kim was four, but they were looking forward to getting to know each other better during the June visit, and that is another obvious, although rarely pressed, reason to doubt that Bromwin would suddenly up and leave with no explanation to Kim, with whom she had been talking and planning things in their phone
chats between Hobart and lennox Head. It is hard to fathom now why Kim's visit went ahead in Bromwin's absence, as she and John had been separated for seven weeks before she vanished. Kim sleeping under the same roof as John in Sandstone Crescent under those bizarre circumstances must have been weird. It's hard to imagine the introverted John welcoming bubbly Kim, a younger woman whom he would five years
later call the illegitimate one. As a result of many conversation and interviews, I'm confident that Bromwin's side of the family harbored a foreboding about John relatively early, from the third week of May, when Bromwin neither turned up for work at Eden's Takeaway nor came back from a so called break. Perhaps the read family suspicions had not become so serious as to call off Kim's visit.
In mid June.
I wrived ten to fourteen days after she'd lost Yeah, I demanded to go to the police station.
When I got there, John waited for me at the bus stop.
We went up to the house and I said, I want to go down to the police station now, and John took me down straight away, only to the police station. And I can tell you now, after going through everything, they have not written down a single thing that I said.
When only to the police station.
There's a brief mention from Discan that I had visited the station, and I don't understand why he didn't take any notes.
If the police running sheets are accurate in relation to Kim stay, she arrived in Lenox on June fourteen.
As I was living there with John, I became very frightened. John went to be so early because he'd get away from me as quick as he could, so I'd be awake in the house by myself.
I started searching around the house.
I'd look at the window, thinking she got a knock on the window and say here, come here quickly.
A stay of ten days would have seen Kim say goodbye to John, Lauren and Crystal. On June twenty four Kim headed north to Surface Paradise on Queensland's Gold Coast. The timing fits with the police running sheets noting that John told police he left Lennox head on June twenty six for the visit to Sydney with Lauren and Crystal.
Over the course of this pod cast series, you have.
Only very briefly heard about Bromwin and Andy's younger half sister, Melissa. Melissa's mother is Jennifer, who married Andy and Bromman's father, Philip. Melissa lives in Sydney, and she has been privately following the podcast very closely. While there has been no contact between Melissa and Andy and other read relations for many years.
You are going to hear from Melissa in the.
Next episode because she is breaking her silence.
Broma would never have left those girls. Barba left Bromwin when she was very small. It's not something that Bromlin would have ever wanted to see happen to her children. We discussed it, We talked about it had happened to her. She knew how it felt. She would have taken them if she disappeared. She would have disappeared with those two young children by her side.
She would never left those children.
Melissa and Bromwin were close. Kim recalled that back in June nineteen ninety three, Melissa was deeply concerned and she did not want Kim near John because when.
She found out I was in the house, she thought that that was inappropriate and that she needed to check to see if I was okay. We were telling the police that we were frightened and suspicious that something was going on.
It is impossible to know how many police records and running sheets from nineteen ninety three have gone missing. I have not cited one which notes the concerns of Melissa and Kim from that time. Family tensions and unresolved issues between Kim and Andy are unfortunately always close to the surface.
In another interview with Kim, she became.
Emotional while reflecting on her proximity to John in June nineteen ninety three.
Only Andrew put me in that house. He put me in that house. He made me go up there so I could have eyes on Jonathan. So now I understand, and this has nothing to do with everything.
He knew that Jonathan had done something bad and still set me up to live in that house. And that's why Melissa got in the car to come up to make sure it was safe, because she was the only one that thought it was the Broxic to do.
I asked Andy about this, so Andie.
In one of my conversations with Kim, she becomes quite distressed because in her mind, she's been asked by you.
Or you've let her go up there.
In mid June, so that's a month after Bromins disappeared.
I didn't actually ask let to go to Lennich Head. I found out about it very very late. I remember saying to her or maybe you could possibly find out something. You could possibly find out some information. Anyone that found out about it would have been advised you to be very careful, don't push the wrong buttons, don't go too far.
She makes the point that she was only twenty and not very worldly wise, with a bit of reflection, she was probably potentially put it into some certainly an unusual situation and possibly a dangerous one.
Well, with what we know now after the fact, one hundred percent it was a dangerous thing. Learning more and more from her friends and finding more and more out, we were one hundred percent very very suspicious by that stage. Melissa visited on her way back from being on some sort of break up in Queensland.
What do you understand Melissa knew and did when she discovered that Kim was staying at the house in Lennox head.
Melissa advised King that she thought it was dangerous to be at the house when she found out that she was there, and advised that she should get out of it.
Brown 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 by Madison Walsh, a relation of Bromwin Winfield.
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