Episode 2: War of the Winfields

Listeners are advised that this podcast series Bromwan contains coarse language and adult themes. This podcast series is brought to you by me Headley Thomas and The Australian.

I met Jody and she was adorable and needed a mother who loved her, so everything was going to work out well. I would look after Jody in Crystal and he would be the perfect husband.

At the beginning of their relationship, it must have seemed an ideal match. John sir, fit handsome single dad aged thirty, Bromwin a strikingly attractive, slender and deeply committed single mum of twenty three. They had shared interest from having grown up in the same area of Sydney. Many rusted on residents say that it's God's country. They insist Kronella's beaches are better and the lifestyle slower, easier than in Sydney's

We moved to South Crenella behind a milkbar. John moved in. I found out I was pregnant and we married a few months before Lauren was born in Ballina.

Broman's brother Andy Reid, has taken a day off work as a construction manager to meet me for several hours of recorded interviews. In his his wife Michelle is by his side. Andy and Michelle met on the Famed Hill near the old Doug Walters stand at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Andy has kept some history about his older sister Bottled Up. He confides that he has felt guilty for many years over things he had done and not done for Bromwin

Oh, she was always there for me and always there for me.

I moved out of home at a reason early age New Year Zoo. When I was nineteen. I got blown up by a bonfire. Someone had doused the buddy thinking petrol and not told me and asked for someone to light the bonfire, and I lit it and woke up. She went and up I went with it. I stayed with Braun for a couple of weeks. She was nursing me back to health and changing bandages. And she was very nurturing, always part of my life. And she need

Loved someone to be there for her as well. But she was also there for you.

Had you heard Roman in the past saying, I can't handle this, the kids are just.

Driving me crazy and I've got to get away.

Never. Never, Roman was just so dating. Those kids were her life.

Did she ever take a break away from a children?

No.

Never.

To give you a little bit of insight into Bromwin's motherly nature, Jodie was actually raised by John Winfield's parents, so Bromwin brought and asked John to bring Jodie out of that environment into their environment to be part of the family. The first time she lived in a family or environment was at the little house down at South Kronola where Jadie had actually moved in with John and Bromwin and moved into the house down there.

That's the type of person Bromin was.

Michelle recalls meeting Bromwin at the time of the birth of Lauren, her second daughter.

We got on will Yeah, she was great. She was a lovely person, a beautiful mum, spoke kindly to the kids, was caring, looked after them. They were always beautifully presented.

And how would you describe the relationship between her and John at that time?

From what you saw, John was the type of person who was always he was doing his own thing. He often went surfing, did that a lot. If we were there, he'd come in, he'd say the hi, how are you kind of thing? Nothing in depth. I don't remember anything in depth with John, and they need zay on going for a surf. He was always one of those in and out, Hi, how are you going?

Yeah?

In and out, in and out. He wasn't always around.

I often begged him to spend more time with us, as I had postnatal depression after having Lauren and didn't have anyone around to help. Never ever met very many of the people he worked with, or any of the people he went down the coast with. His mother hated the fact that I had heard John so never looked after Lauren or any of the girls. I was dreadfully lonely, but never complained too much as he was always tired from working. In the end, I threw myself into looking after the children.

I know when we would visit there, like we'd go to have a cup of tea or something, and she'd open up the cupboards and she'd make comments like, oh, yeah, I can only afford to buy generic food and tins and stuff like that. He only gives me sixty dollars a week. I knew that John was a person who ran the house.

I found it harder to cope with Lauren's sleepless nights and John never being around, but I slowly became friends with a few people, and I then joined playgroup and met heaps of great people. Unfortunately, John didn't want to socialize at all, so I started to go out and do things for myself. Playgroup and the people I met there kept me amused and gave me time for myself. I also had enough time for the children.

I went to see Bromwin's friend from the nineteen nineties, Denise Barnard, at her home in Lenox, his years recalling that time of their lives.

Well.

I was in the playgroup as a secretary. She was the president, and she would often come to my home because I couldn't go to hers. John was quite antisocial, didn't like having people there because they might make a mess. He had a very i'd say, like an OCD almost about the us.

She told you that, didn't she?

Yeah, yeah, but I did witness it as well. Crystal had spilt the lemonade and the floor, and Browin had got down and was cleaning it up with a toothbrush. And John came in to say what to be spilled on the floor, and Broman said she'd done it. She didn't want him going off a crystal. She told me this very particular with the house. He'd done some work for us at our house.

Was there any problem with John's work?

He's an amazing bricklayer, is he? Yeah? Yeah, he's a very very talented tradesman. My husband's very particular and John had that skill.

You'll hear more from Denise later in this episode.

If there was anything out of place in the house, it would be a big argument. If anyone spilt anything on the floor, she would have to get down and scrub it up, because if John felt a sticky bit on the floor, he'd go off his brain. A very volatile type of person.

Those things you're talking about in relation to spills and so on, are they what you witnessed or heard her talking.

About Honey, what she'd told us?

When did you become aware that there were serious tensions in their relationship? Michelle is the first to acknowledge that even close relatives never really know for sure what is going on in another couple's marriage.

What you see on the outside isn't always what's happening on the inside. Is it what happens behind closed doors in someone's house. The only people who can really tell you about that is Broman, and she can't and John, and he.

Wrote perhaps the relationship was always doomed. Michelle believes she can put her finger on one of the most distressing and serious catalysts for it to go irretrievably bad. Roman was living with John in Sandstone Present when she told Michelle and Andy that she had wanted to have a third child.

She'd become pregnant. She'd wanted to keep the child, and John didn't want to. John had just lost his mum and he was particularly close to his mother and he wasn't coping with that. He insisted she have an abortion. He didn't want any more kids.

Bromwin told other friends about this. They have shared their recollections, and the accounts are consistent is Deb Hall from next door.

She fell pregnant and she was really torn. He did not want another child. She wanted another baby, she loved kids. She didn't go ahead with it, but I know she struggled big time over that, as you would.

That kind of like to me was the catalyst of their marriage.

And I thought, you know what, you've got to get away from this guy if you're that miserable when he's controlling. And I did used to say to her when you know, when she'd had her crying sessions about him down here, and I say, Rowin, you can't.

Live like this. You've got to get away from him.

Oh but I've got nowhere to go, and I'll have no money. And that went on for a while.

Romman's medical records show that she became pregnant in the second half of November nineteen ninety brow.

Being the type of person that she is, well, she loved kids. Having the abortion was probably heartbreaking for her, and for him to have insisted on it then that would have been another nail in the coffin, so to speak, on their marriage.

How would you describe her level of distress over that?

It was a hard time.

That was stressful for everybody. And that's when in that conversation she had said to me again, if anything ever happened to her, would I would we make sure that Crystal was looked after? Would we look after Crystal?

You never saw any signs of physical assault or bruising on Romwin.

No, I can't say that we did, but we weren't living nearby anymore. They'd moved to lennex Head. One day Jody came around to visit. Mitchell was little and he was just born. I was asking Jody how everyone was. I instigated a bit of talk about Romwin and John and she had been living up there and then I know she went up and down fairly regularly, so she saw them a lot more than we did. I said, tod ever, argue like, was there ever any arguments and

Heard stuff like that before.

And I had written that down, of course, And that was in nineteen ninety three, and when that was brought up at the inquest. She couldn't recall having said that or denied it one or the other. Crystal used to say that there was lots of yelling and arguing. I know Bromwan wasn't allowed to look sideways at anybody. He was a jealous person.

In her writing in nineteen ninety three, Bromwin refers to a platonic friendship she forged with a single dad and his child. They were housemates for a time shortly before John and Bromwin started seeing each other.

A genuinely nice man, but he was a friend. Wonder how they're going, as John would have had a fit if I'd rung to see how they were going. He would have thought there was something going on, paranoia.

Here's deb Hall.

When I first met from them, they were building the house next door and I was at the front here on my veranda, and she came down to introduce them. Yeah, we got chatting them him and welcome to the neighborhood.

We were chatting.

We had things in common, we had kids and the same age. She was about the same age as me. But whilst I was talking to her, she kind of broke down and I hadn't met her before, and she started to cry.

She said, I've just got some things going on with my husband. And I thought, no, I don't even know you.

And that struck me and I went, oh.

There's anything I can do.

Let me know.

She didn't sort of elaborate, and I didn't kind of push the agenda, and.

Then she went.

When they moved into the house, we got to know each other very well.

She would be here a lot.

The reason she would be at my house was because John would not allow anyone to come to their house. John was an absolute neat freak. I mean you could eat off the floor, nothing was out of place, and Rowan was neat. But she wanted a house to we lived in. They had kids, so I had four kids, but they were never allowed in the house. If they went up there to play, they had to play in the garage. But quite often she would offload to me

Her do that.

When I ever I spoke to him, it would always just be polite conversation. I think they came down here once or twice and had a dream. But Roman would come down here all the time we sit and have coffee for hours.

In early nineteen ninety Michelle and Andy were newly weird and holidaying in Queensland for their honeymoon. They decided to stop in at Lennox Head on the drive back to Sydney to see Andy's.

Sister and Roman and the kids weren't there. Only John was, and we kind of thought, oh, that's crazy, where are they? And he said, ah, they're in Sydney having a holiday. I think was he said. We found out later that heat up and left Uncle John's house, which is Andrew's uncle, and left them there and taken himself back to Lenox Head. There'd been some sort of ish and that was probably I don't know, I suppose when I first started to think, oh, let's be crazy, like who does that.

There was another incident remembered by the Reed family and cited as evidence of John having a callous disregard for Bromwin. Bromin's uncle John and Auntie Leah were hosting Bromwin and John Winfield with their young children overnight in the Reed home in Sydney. It was Christmas nineteen ninety two.

And he said he was going to Newcastle to look at a car, and I said, you're going to be back for dinner, and oh, yes, yes. We cooked dinner and waited and waited and he hadn't turned up. And I said to bromin about half us nine ten, do you think he's coming back? And she did, no, I don't think he is. And she was left here and we were going overseas within a couple of days. We gave him money and we had nobody around here could

It was really strong, and it.

Was his father that came and picked her up and drove her back up to home. Obviously John had taken off and had no intention of coming back and picking her up.

Ronman's cousin Megan Reid, says she was there and that the occasion was a lunch on Boxing Day, December twenty six, not at dinner, as remembered by her mother, Leah Bosting.

Day was to read Christmas poets.

The whole turkey and all the rest.

Of it, and so Bonn went and the family, they were all there. He never would have thought anything was wrong, no fight for whatever, and he said he'd be back by one day, two o'clock for lunch. Well, he never showed up, and it wasn't sure. About nine hours later that we found it out he was back at lenach Shad, but he just choldn't back.

But what was his explanation for just taking.

Oh, there wasn't one. We never got an explanation.

Where were gobsmacked perfectly honest. Mom and dad didn't know what to do, and John refused point blank to pay for them to be flown home. But this is the second occurrence, very very strange.

At the end, I'm going to tell you.

The first time was when Andrew got married January nineteen ninety.

Woman came down.

In fact, the photo is the police used were the ones I took for her in the purple dress. But he went back to learn i'd set again. So that was the first time he did it. Roman It ended up staying for quite some time.

Both times, here's Michelle again.

She would bring up. She would be saying that things like, oh, I'm not very happy, I'm not happy with John and stuff like that. I'm thinking about moving out and we had a baby. I said to her, well, do you want to move back to Sydney like, I can help you try and find somewhere to live, and she'd say, I can't afford to do that.

I've got no money.

And then she'd say, you know, if anything ever happens to me, will you promise me you'll look after Crystal, particularly Crystal, because Crystal was not John's genetic child whereas Lauren was. She kind of felt that John would look after his own more than he would look after Crystal, which rang through in the end. We would discuss what was happening, and we even thought, oh, we can't even really put them up here. We're in a little three bedroom home. We had hardly any room to fit another

When she was saying, where's the effect if something happens to me?

I guess There's a couple of different ways you can interpret that. She may self harm. For example, she might have a health.

Issue, or she may be fearful of a partner. Do you recall what you took from it at that time?

Oh, definitely fearful. We knew she wasn't unwill she would never leave her kids. She loved those kids wholeheartedly, like everything for her. It was fear. It was fear of John. I just knew that.

Why do you think she didn't actually express that bluntly?

Maybe her fear of him find out out she'd said that.

Michelle recalls Broman telling her about John's volatility and his intolerance for visitors in his house, his castle.

He didn't want anyone there. He didn't want her having friends. A really strange bloat.

Andy.

Around this time, when Robin was telling you.

About her troubles in the marriage, you were counseling her to try to work things through and keep a marriage intact.

Do you remember that I was doing my best to sort of advise Brian to do her best to see if she could work through it.

She had a previous marriage.

I knew John was very controlling, you know, with money and all the rest of it. She was on that tide of budget that she used to hand so all the kids, little dressed, little summer dresses and things like that.

As much as she could.

But Debhall knew that a reconciliation was pointless, if not impossible.

To my astonishment, one day, she and I can't remember exactly when it was, but she told me she was going to leave him. And I said, oh, okay, well where are you going to go? And she said, I've organized the place down in Lennox. I said, well that's good. I said, well, you know what is John thing. Well, he's agreeable to it, and I'm.

Going to move down there, and so she did. I did visit her there.

She got a dog.

The kids always wanted a puppy, and then she thought, well, I'm going to get him a puppy.

And I used to think, oh, she's really branching out, you know, she's really and she had a job at the cafe down there, and she was sort of getting on with it. And you'd go down there and the house has lived in, the kids had their stuff, and that my kids would go and play, and you know, it was just a normal environment, albeit a little bit difficult for her.

Why did she even move out?

She didn't have a choice. It's a jointly owned house, not in Don's ice. But would it have been a legally jointly owned house to your knowledge?

Of course it should have been. Of course it would have been.

And in a situation like that, where there's a mother, a father and two girls being raised ostensibly by Bromwin, it's normal for the male to leave the family, not the moment of the kids to be up.

Ready, she was forced out, basically. I remember having the conversation that she just said, she doesn't have a choice. She's going to have to find somewhere to go. And that's when I believe that she'd found that little townhouse down in Byron Street.

Turn left onto Byron Street.

At that time, Michelle and Andy were having their second child, Mitchell. Andy wonders how things would have turned out if their lives had been less hectic.

Then we were trying to tell her we'd had a boy and she was happy, but all then channeled back to her leaving John. She was leaving. She was going to find somewhere to live. Mitchell was born on the thirty first of March. Bromwin was very preoccupied. That was all happening in her life right then and there.

When Bromwin had called about the advertisement for the townhouse on March twenty two in the Northern Star newspaper, the property's owner and landlady cut her some slack. Shirley Taylor knew it must have been a financial struggle for the newly single young mum. These are Shirley's words to police in September nineteen ninety eight.

It's not her voice.

She informed me that she had separated from her husband and was looking for a place to rent. At the time, she had two young girls with her. After inspecting the flat, she informed me that she wished to rent it, but told me that she would have trouble paying the one hundred and fifty dollars a week rent. I told her that she could move in and we would see how things go.

Shirley also asked for a bond of seven hundred dollars. A check for the amount was signed by John Winfield. Bronwin handed it over the same day.

Whilst bron was moving in. On that day, her husband, John came over to my place and asked for the bond money to be given.

Back to him.

I told him that Bromin had given me the money for the bond, and he was very angry and demanded the money because of the way he was acting in his aggressive manner. I gave him back the check and he left. A couple of days later, broman came over to my place and gave me another check for seven hundred dollars. I think it was the same check that her husband had taken from me.

Shirley grew fond.

Of the young woman.

I came to know Bromwin fairly well, and I would mind her children if she had to go down the street. I found her to be a most devoted mother who was very attached to her children. I didn't really have any conversations with her about her private life. I do recall, though, that she told me that she hated her husband.

Bromwin spoke to a solicitor, Tony Mannering, at his office in the nearby town of Ballino. It was a fortnight after she and her daughters had moved out of the house in Sandstone Crescent. John promptly changed the locks up there put a deadlock on the front door. It was a powerful signal to Bronwin that she would not be welcomed back. The solicitor must have taken careful notes during their first meeting. He and his new client covered a lot of ground for a pending divorce and a possible

Dear madam. We advise your instructions as follows. You married your husband on fourteen December nineteen eighty seven, at Ballina. Although you did not live with your husband as man and wife prior to your marriage, you did look after your husband's daughter, Jodi Line Winfield, on a full time basis sometime prior to your marriage. You separated from your husband on twenty one March nineteen ninety three. Your husband has been married twice before, and you have been married

The solicitor noted the respective assets of Bromwin and John at the time they became a couple and when they separated. Bromwin owned furniture and a car with the value of about five thousand dollars. When she and John got together, John had a car worth one thousand dollars.

And some fifty thousand dollars being his share of the proceeds of the sale of a former home owned by him and a previous wife.

Tony Mannering described what he.

Called the present asset of both you and your husband a home at Sandstone Crescent, Lennox Head, the former matrimonial home, which you value between two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and three hundred thousand dollars. The former matrimonial home is not encumbered by mortgage or debt. Your understanding is that the former matrimonial home is in your husband's name alone.

The solicitor listed a white Ford Falcon worth about five thousand dollars. There was the household furniture, a bank account in the name of her youngest daughter, Lauren with a balance of about seven hundred dollars, and an account in John's name, but Bromin didn't know how much John had saved.

Throughout the marriage, you and your husband adopted traditional family roles in that you were the homemaker and mother and your husband and worked as a bricklayer.

Bromwin had been doing some casual work in her friend Robin Shanahan's hamburger and sandwich joint called Eden's Takeaway on Pacific Parade facing the beach. It gave her some pocket money without affecting her availability for school. Drop offs and pickups.

You wish to continue your role as a mother at least until Lauren is a bit older. Your husband is a qualified bricklayer, although he has had some neck and shoulder injuries which he says have prevented him from working. We confirm our advice to you as follows. The Family Law Act provides that you are entitled to make a claim upon the assets that we have listed above.

He described some of the things that would be taken into account in a fair property settlement. Their respective financial contributions to the marriage and the work of Bromwan as homemaker and parent were part of this.

In this regard, we note your instructions that you have been the parent to perform the majority of the parental duties for the three children, including your husband's daughter. Further, you have been the party to the marriage who undertook the majority of the household tasks and duties.

It was too soon to provide Roman with a percentage, however, Tony Mannering wrote.

You can be assured that you are entitled to a significant percentage of the assets. We note our suggestion that you do not leave property matters for too long, but contact us again in say one month's time to assess when you will make your claim on your husband for the finalization of property matters in respect of dissolving your marriage. You can make an application for dissolution after twelve months has expired from the date of your separation.

Roman was doing the legal rounds. She had asked for advice from a solicitor called Graham Holland in Byron Bay, north of Lennox. The third solicitor she would go and see, Chris mcdebitt, was based in the inland town of Lismore. On April twenty fourth, nineteen ninety three, Bromin had a birthday. She turned thirty one. Her friend de Niece remembered it was a happy occasion for her and the other playgroup mums.

She'd moved into a unit with the girls and they had got a puppy because John had never wanted to have a dog, so they've got a puppy. We went down, we surprised her and we had her birthday morning there, which was lovely.

She loved it. What did you think of Romin's state of mind?

She always seemed to have it together. You would never imagine them as a couple. Here was the surfy, sort of very good looking, piercing blue eyes. Alona doesn't have any mates, as far as I know, didn't have any. Den don't think he has a knee now. Bromwan was the almost prum and proper tall slender. She was very intelligent, uckly groomed, as were the children always they were very chalk and cheese.

You're certain about Bromwen confiding to you that John was threatening towards her.

I still recollect when she told me that he had had her by the throat up against the wall, and that she was frightened.

That he physically held her, that she was scared of him.

Yep. It's not something that.

He had a by a throat, yep. I remember the conversation.

Presumably John would say that he was never threatening towards Bromman and that she made up these stories or she grossly exaggerated and you didn't see any actual violence. What do you think about the proposition that Bromwin, for example, could embellish or fabricate stories about John.

I don't know that she would need to.

Did she ever say to you, I just need to go away for a long long time.

No.

I think she was committed to leaving him and taking the girls and starting a new life for herself. Probably the bottom line, she would never have left those children never they were her life, and knowing that Chrystaw wasn't John's, she wouldn't have gone anywhere without them. She just wouldn't have done it. And afterwards, after she disappeared, John contacted me because he didn't want the dog, So my parents ended up with that lovely little dog for like eighteen years.

What was the name, Muffy?

How do you feel about Bromin's case becoming part of this podcast investigation?

Fantastic?

You're not worried about bringing up painful memories and no difficult situation.

No, I think we need to We need to do it. It's been too long. I think anybody that had anything to impart any more information to try and get this resolved one way or the other would be interesting in talking to you. Whatever happened that night, on that Sunday night that was the last of Bromwin. That's tonight those girls lost their mum.

I drove to a park in a rural town near Lennox to meet one of Bromwin's friends. She has been anxious about meeting me and speaking publicly. I'm not going to identify you by your name in this podcast, but your voice will be heard.

Yeah.

Are you okay with that? And I understand that you've got personal reasons. Where would you like to start? And talking about your friend brom.

She loved kids, so there was no way she would willingly fell off and leave her kids.

At the time, she and Bromwan were good friends. In this place. Joan had recently left a violent relationship. She still looked over her shoulder.

Had you been through a tough time?

Yes?

Broman supported her until her disappearance.

She understood, and you knew about the termination.

Yes.

She told me that he had made her have an abush That would have been really hard for her because she loved kids.

Broman told her friend that she had wanted to leave John for some time, but that he had warned her she would get next to nothing. He was not going to vacate or sell the house on Sandstone. Isn't the title deeds show that he had put the property in his name, and.

He said he would give her And I can't remember the exact amount, I have ten dollars something like that. There was no mortgage on house and she said, no, I won't. I'll get a real estate to value it.

Joan recalled Roman, disclosing that she had organized a valuer to put a potential price on the property. It came in around two hundred and forty five thousand dollars in nineteen ninety three.

She couldn't get a certain one because he was friends with them, and.

She wanted the house valued so she could work out what her equity in it potentially would be in a property settlement.

Yes, and she'd told me she'd one time he was talking to his father. He didn't want to lose that house. Like she said, she overheard him talking to his father, it'd be better if he had the kids more chance of having the house.

Had you been in the house?

Yeah, not often.

And then she moved into the un.

Do you remember the townhouse that she moved into, trying to cast your mind back to that period nineteen ninety three when she was living there.

You visited her there?

Yes?

How did she see?

It's fine? Probably more relaxed. I think she could feel like she could do what she wanted to do.

I met Joan again a few weeks later in a riverside park. Do you recall Broum whenever saying things to you that made you concern for her safety.

Yes, she had told me that John had said to her she bad mouth killer around the hound.

He would killing.

She said that to you.

I got the impression she felt like he would. I had no ideat about believing anything she told me.

You took that seriously at the time, Well.

She certainly did.

So.

Somebody at that loved kids like she did wasn't going to go off and leave her own kids.

I was so.

Wanting to get answers right because I felt like, but for the grace of God go I.

I know from talking to Brohman's family and friends that she was finding it difficult to support herself and the girls while also trying to find rent of one hundred and fifty dollars a week for the townhouse. Here's her Auntie Leah again.

Well, she was on the phone.

She wanted me to give us two thousand dollars, and we didn't have two thousand dollars without taking it out of our business. Our business was new, we weren't in that sort of position. Particularly, she wouldn't tell me what it was for. At that time, she had moved out of the house, and she told me she was living in an apartment.

She called me constantly.

I'd get these long phone calls and she'd talk about clair voyance and all this sort of thing, and that's what I thought she wanted the money for.

What did you understand about her interest in the clear words?

I think she was trying to find out, you know, what was going to happen with a marriage that sort of couldn't get her off the phone. Must have been the last I would say months. But she didn't really tell me she was moving. I remember being surprised when I found that she had gone, and she said, I'm in an apartment, but I'm going back to my house because John has got to go down to Sydney for a job, and I'll go back while he's gone.

Did you detect any fear or urgency in the conversations.

Because I would have lent him money if i'd thought that she needed it for something important from my recollection, As you said at the time, she wouldn't tell you what she wandered for. Yeah, Broman wanted money, but she wouldn't tell us what it was for. And she said to me, and you'll all be sorry that's right. She said you'll all be sorry.

And that comment that she made you'll be sorry, was that connected to her being unable to get alone?

I think so.

We discussed it at the time whether we should give her the money, don't you remember, And our own kids were all wanting money too at the time.

Do you recall whether you or John had lent money to Bromwin before.

No, No, it was quite a lot of money, and we thought.

If we give her money, we're going to have to give our.

Own kids money.

Perhaps she wanted to get a lawyer or.

Something like that.

But if she'd said that to us, if she'd said I need a lawyer, and there'd been no reason not to tell us, were there that she wanted a lawyer, I certainly wouldn't have thought, from what I knew of John that she was in any danger from him.

What was it about John's personality and demeanor that made you feel she would be in no danger from.

Him even though they were going through marital issues.

Well, it just seemed like a normal everyday father of the time.

My man name didn't do anything terribly terrific or bad.

Did They just had an unhappy marriage.

Do you recall Broman's showing you her arm and a bruise and saying that she had been.

Assaulted by John. That's in your statement. Yeah, I don't recall it now, Hedley, but.

If I said that would have been what what happened?

You recall it now.

John Reid is an elderly man. It is unsurprising that he cannot remember what he told police twenty six years ago when he signed a formal statement. I'm going to read some key sentences from John Reid's police statement. It's dated August eleventh, nineteen ninety eight. He is describing a visit by Bronwan to the Reid home in Sydney, about

Unquote.

He then raised the stream of telephone calls from Bromwin when she was seeking money in the weeks before her disappearance, and he says in his statement from nineteen ninety eight, quote, I was aware that Broman was causing Leah some anguish about these regular telephone calls. So I asked my daughter Megan, who was very friendly with Broman, to ask her to stop ringing. I can't really remember what happened after this, but I am aware that Bromwin disappeared a very short

Couple of ships a week for you. Is that right? Can you recall?

Yeah, she was always keen to get to work.

She liked a job, just go worker.

And I think she needed the money to make milkshakes, I think, and make sandwiches and stuff. Yeah, that's a little takeaway. We just all paid our staff cash. She obviously needed finance some money to keep going. If she wasn't living at home and she wasn't getting any money off. John and her were toxic. I had thought I knew her, and we got to know her very well. And I'll tell you this because I don't I ever told anybody she was so nervous. I think with John.

Robin told me that in the kitchen of Bromman's home at Lennox Head, there was a teatawel draped over the back of the taps at the kitchen sink. When Robin asked, why do you have a teatawel there, Robin replied that when peeling potato, starch sometimes sprayed onto the taps it would set John off. The tetail minimized the risk of an argument.

In my opin shouldn't infere.

John had taken his tools and gone to Sydney to work. The family home in Sandstone Crescent was sitting empty, but John did not want Bromwyn and the two girls, Crystal and Lauren, living there now that he had separated from his wife. John's daughter from his first marriage, Jody, was in Sydney and working in a hair salon when the breakup occurred. Bromwin was fond of her stepdaughter. They had

Dear Jody, since I didn't want to run up your phone bills, saying what things needed to be said. I thought I would write you a letter. It's always easier to write these things down than it is to say them. When I spoke to you last and said that I will always be there for you, I meant every word of it. A young girl always needs someone to talk to and hopefully guide them until they can make the right decisions. I know you have your own mother, but

Throughout this time, as Bromin did her best to make ends meet in the rented townhouse, she and her brother Andy were talking regularly.

You know, that's something I've always lived with since the day I was the one that's in that week when she found out that John had actually left Lennox and the house was vacant, and here she is on absolute struggle street.

I said, well, Ron possessions, no intense at the law.

She's just struggling for money, not getting any support from him. Really, I said, don't get back in the head, get back in the house, and then it's going to force the issue.

It's going to force everything to be resolved. She'd boomed to see a solicitor and started the process. Go and so if you can get back in the house.

In Lismore, Bromwin's new solicitor, Chris McDevitt, offered the same advice she was getting from Andy. Chris acted promptly on Broman's instructions to write a formal legal letter to John.

Dear mister Winfield, 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.

Bromwin must have told her solicitor to leave John in no doubt about her intentions to proceed to a divorce. The letter is dated Friday May fourteen, that's two days before Bromwan disappeared, and the letter was sent to John's brother, Peter Winfield's address in Sydney. John was working in Sydney and staying at Peter's house, but it is unlikely John saw it before Bromin disappeared.

The letter, if.

Posted in the usual way, would not have arrived there until early the following week. Bromwin's sister in law Michelle and brother Andy are adamant that John knew the gist of what was in the.

Letter, but told him so he was aware that it was in the process.

We are instructed by Bronwyn that in her view, your marriage is at an end and that there is no prospect of a reconciliation. In the meantime, we require your immediate agreement for Bronwinn to retain the use and possession of the Ford motor vehicle pending finalization of your financial matters.

The letter doesn't disclose to John that Bromwin was about to move back into Sandstone Crescent, but Bromwyn and Chris mcdebitt had talked about this in his office in Lismore. He told her she had every legal right to do so. Broman made up her mind that she would move back in on Friday May fourteenth. In a separate note to her, Chris mcdebitt wrote that he would let her know of any reply from John in the meantime.

Chris mcdebitt added.

We look forward to seeing you at your appointment next Monday.

But Broman didn't show up for that appointment at the law firm in Molesworth Street, Lismore on Monday May seventeenth, nineteen ninety three. Meaghan Reid has invited me to her house on Sydney's Northern Beaches to look at some of the newly recovered police files. Meghan also has a lot to say about John Winfield.

I've been on the phone talking to her at her flat when she moved into Byron Speed and in here screaming outside let me let me in.

And she actually tore.

The phone off the wall at one point to stop me ringing out a hassling out.

These are bills for missus b J.

Winfield Byron Street Lennox head phone bills from Telecom Australia.

Yes there were more than a police have got them.

And the date of issue this one was the seventeenth of the fifth ninety three.

God went.

Phone calls expensive then four hundred and thirty dollars and sixty six cents.

Back then, usually.

Bromwin would call me and I would call her back. My husband was very wealthy, so I could afford to doing her so I did.

Was Bromwin materialistic No, not at all.

She had dreadful u friends.

She was left it too and she had to go and live with my grandmother, my father's mother, who then had a nurse breakdown.

Ever since she was a little girl who wanted the.

Fairy tale when she was sort of most loving gentle person.

Because I was always saying to her, come over scenes with me, she did want that.

She wanted to have more children, desperately and just have a house of her own, to be a mother. That's all she wanted to be, and a homemaker and a wife. All I want is the white picket fence. That was her whole thing, and she threw herself into it head first.

She was a brilliant mother. She just loved those kids.

They were always immaculate, They were happy, even when obviously there were problems in the marriage. She never showed it in front of those children. She never wanted to move to Lane Upset. All her friends were in Sydney. Her whole support circle was in Sydney. But John bought that book of Land with his ex wife the one before.

He made her go up there.

Took her a while to meet people, but she did because she's very friendly. The last time I actually laid eyes on her was just before she moved into Byron Street in March. And I know that because I was with my dean husband on a business trip and she looked dreadful. And she's sitting there, she's chainsmoking and drip cuts coffee.

The house looked like a showroom.

What do you mean the house look like a showroom.

They looked like a display home. All the time sold where they used to live. Cristoll actually went up there for Christmas last year. She calls him dad.

Still And what is Lauren's position?

Lauren believes her mother has taken off and left her father. She doesn't believe for a minute that he would hurt her.

And does Lauren have contact with you?

I've met her once.

John built her a house next door to his house, another house for his other daughter on the other side.

Do you think that he would be interviewed by the by you, I don't know.

I don't know.

He'll be very upset because he is such a private, private individual.

Maybe he would feel that he needs to put his side forth. I'd give it a go.

I have written to John Winfield and left messages for him explaining who I am. I wrote to John that this podcast series Bronwin is an investigation into the disappearance in May nineteen ninety three of his missing wife. John has always denied foul play. He has also always tried to minimize media interest. John has insisted that Bronwin got into somebody's car one Sunday night at the house in Lennox Head and that was the last time he saw her so far. He has declined to be interviewed for

She looked really really irishy, and she said he's.

Going to be back any minute.

Other words, she was trying to chell us when should go.

Madison Walsh has been sorting through the piles of paper in front of her while we've been talking at the dining table.

How deeply have you read into these files?

Yeah, I've gotten quite deep.

I just havn't gotten that far into the criminal inquest by for a lot of the statements and nary entries.

She has come to her Auntie Meghan's home to help organize more files of evidence about the case.

Grew up with a whole thing. She's heard about it all her life.

I was told about.

It from a previous I can remember.

She's got done a bachelor in a forensic science and specializing in crime scene investigation.

Brommin's fate has intrigued Maddie for years. She's been bringing order and structure to a very large number of documents. Most of these are important evidence at the heart of the disappearance and the suspected murder of the woman. Maddie grew up hearing about her mother's cousin. Great that you're going through the detail of it and reading it and that you've got that expertise.

Here we have witness statements from nineteen ninety eight. Some of them are from neighbors, and that's from Judy.

Nineteen ninety eight. It's the first time Eddie statements Bedegen.

That's what got me. Why was nothing done? So we have these statements by there five years later. The police didn't search for her, the house wasn't investigated, was at a crime scene. Usually in this day when there's a missing person, there at least like a search of surrounding areas, even if it's just volunteers. But that didn't happen. It was like no one cared. It was like, oh, she

Didn't have any money or not much money at.

The time, but there was money at her bank accounts.

Never been touched, so money not touched, and equity in the house that she owned with John, yes for this, but she didn't touch the equity, which she couldn't.

Barbara, who was Bromwin and Andrew's mother, she had personal depression after having Bromwin, and she got even worse when she had Andrew.

What John was trying.

To say is that because Barbara was a paranoid schizophrenic, and she was, and she ran away and disappeared out of their lives when Andrew was six months old and broman was two, and then she came back about ten years later.

That that's what she did. So that's what he's saying now.

I distinctly remember Bromwin saying, if anything happens to me, that's what he's going to say. With Bromwan's mother, it was brought on by post natal depression after having children.

Both mother.

While I went, oh, good girl, this is really helpful Maddie, thank you.

Numerous printouts of emails over the years may also hold clues and fresh leads.

So many she kind of sought them into dates of what's.

Kind of going on.

How do you feel about being part of this investigation with me?

I love to so.

Do you think you can be objective.

About it though your knowledge of the family, your expertise?

Definitely, she never met her.

I did hear about it all the time, but I never knew her. That was what I was talking to Megan and Kim about. Obviously, for them, a lot of emotions would drive it, and it can blur the evidence. I am disconnected from it because it happened before I was born.

What if we found some evidence that suggested that the person your family believes killed your auntie didn't.

Do that, then that would be okay.

I would understand that, And there is a possibility that it wasn't who my family thinks.

Thanks to the family tree drawn by Maddie, I realized that Bromwin, if she were alive, would be Maddie's second cousin, not an auntie.

So if it turns out she did run away, I'd be like, okay, we have evidence of that.

We know that.

I do have no open mind, and I have questioned everything that Megan has told me. I'm like, how do you know? How do you know this didn't happen? How do you know she shouldn't run off? Why are you blaming this one guy?

This record of interview with Winfield is obviously a crucial.

Document, seventy six pages.

We haven't seen a tape of this anyway. Do you have some photographs of it?

Yeah?

I do, I got it.

That's when the day she booked John over to me I was living in Double Bow.

Open a folder just for selected plans. Thanks Manny.

That's brain Baby, that is John the first time I'm eating, And that's Crystal to the left hand side.

That's Brawn and I.

That's Jodie to step to it, Michelle, mum, Bromwin and myself.

She's such a good mother.

Thought.

But that's Crystal starther Mark Davis, who's deceased. That's Ronnie on the track. She's gone there, she's gone there to thest family photos. She's gone.

Bronwyn 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 Bromwyn Podcast dot com. Our subscribers and registered users here episodes first.