Listeners are advised that this podcast series Bromwe contains coarse language and adult themes. This podcast series is brought to you by Me Headley Thomas and The Australian. Goodbye every week.
Okay mate, hell are we Maddy?
I'll take you my down to born that have been quieted out there.
It has been thirty one and a half years since Glen Webster built his own home in a place called Illiwong. Glenn and his wife had a young family. Back then, Illiwong was a new estate. It had started to see solid family homes rising out of the bushland. The nearby Georges River and Warnora River provided easy access for boaties, but it is a fair drive west from the beaches of Cronulla in the Shire to get there. We met Glen Webster at a newer, much larger house a short
distance from Shelley Beach south of Crenulla. Glenn and his team of tradees had been doing a major renovation of an impressive pile perched high above gunner Matta Bay and Port Hacking a property. App estimated that you wouldn't get much change out of twenty million dollars for this place, and that's before the costly reno. Building residential and kimmercial properties in the Shire has been Glenn's passion for more than forty years. It's how he met John.
Still know like been on the tools, Yeah, I must have. It's this point thing isn't just coordinate it all?
Before visiting Glenn on the job, I read his police statement again. It dated September twenty one, nineteen ninety eight. He was still living at that time in the house in Illawang which John had helped build back in nineteen ninety three. Glenn's statement from twenty six years ago disclosed that he was working as a carpenter in nineteen eighty seven when he and John met. They had a mutual friend called John mcmonagall, who was also mates with John
Winfield's brother Peter. Before John Winfield did the brick laying at Glenn's house at Illawong, he helped build Glenn's first family home at Menai. In Glenn's police statement, he recalled that he had met on three or four occasions, but he had never been to their home and he said John lived a very private life. Have you had any contact with police recently? They haven't conducted. When did your last spoke to.
Him, last time went at Coral at Police station.
So your original statement was ninety eight, But then that must have been during the review by George Radmill.
What ye was that two thousand and eight, nine ten.
That you've probably about year heap be about right then, So.
I thought they might have reached out in the recent review. Okay. Glenn led us down many steps to some outdoor seating beside the water. Over the decades he has built dozens and dozens of houses, including several for his own family. He cast his mind back to the home at Illawong and John Winfield's connection to it.
John started the brick work there.
What we were looking at were some documents from the council showing the timing of inspections and the sign off of some of the details around the garage slab and the patio slab.
Yeah, okay.
What it showed is that on the Thursday, the thirteenth of May, the council had approved for pouring, but it was still awaiting that poor I've heard from somebody who spoke to John on the Monday the seventeenth of May.
And this person said to John, what are you doing back here?
Like what's going on? Why are you in such a rush? Blah blah blah. He just come back from Balan and he said, oh, I've got to go. There's a concrete Paul. So you get the inspection document giving you the green tick to do something on the Thursday the thirteenth.
This person was saying.
On the Monday the seventeenth of May, John tells someone, I'm back because there's a concrete polm going to be here for a poor. So that's indicating that the poor hasn't occurred on the weekend.
Just gone. It's still ahead of you. Does that work for you.
Have a year?
I would have thought personally, I would have probably done it on the weekend because I was working.
Yeah, I could have done it.
Would they have come out and poured it on a weekend on a Saturday. I'm trying to think she did my concreting back then. Contractors probably could have came out and done it. Yeah, yeah, okay, we just all that out.
We don't have a document. I remember you saying you might be able to find one, but there was nothing.
If you went for some pos and stuff and I didn't really have that much it, Well, I did find something but there's no dates on the poet.
Yeah, thanks for looking. I really appreciate it.
I had to look prior over it then a bit of a dig last night.
It's amazing that there are documents still around after three decades.
Yeah.
Correct.
There was a lady that's worked at the council for twenty five years and she runs the Scout facility or the old Scout hall, it's now the men's shed. And I know her through my involvement with Lily Pilly clubhouse, when I rang the council and rang her and explained to who I was, and then she said, yeah, yah, yeah. She was able to track down the records because she'd been there for so long she cold to even just rattle straight off the top of her head.
The four inspectors from back.
Then, Glenn with that darage slab poor Andy and I were talking about that with Maddie, just thinking about the logistics of that, and obviously we're looking at whether it's possible that Bromin's body was put under the rio on the Monday and then the poor possibly occurred the next day. If what John told the source who spoke to me is accurate, as I understand that building site was kind of empty unless John was there with you helping him.
Correct.
I used to go there in the mornings and go back of there in the afternoons.
So who would have been there if John were not there? Just John, nobody else. So he's to set our in cup for the day. Any would work and just labor for himself. Yeah, yeah, then I'd go back in the afternoon start again. And what sort of activity human activity.
Was around that site around that time?
Quite a big block of lane.
It was subdivided into about three or four blocks, and I think I was the first time to be built there.
So it would have been quiet, yeah what I thought.
So, Yeah, just thinking about the logistics of that with the sort of theory that we've been discussing.
Is it possible?
Probably unlikely the nature of the material out there, It's not like it's sand.
Dealing with the slab first, because if that's what John's rushed back for and that's what he's talked about someone that's what's on his mind. Why is it unlikely in your mind for the slab for the gap.
It's sandstone and rock and it's a hard material.
When I was talking to Andy about this before the way he explained it was you would take the steel mesh off, take the plastic off, dig a hole, and he thought it was probably easy to dig, as it would have been phil.
No, it wasn't.
No, it wasn't easy to dig.
So you're saying the ground was tough ground to dig in. Every building site is different. Achieving a perfectly even level for a concrete slab often means the introduction of phil, dirt that has been brought in to complement the natural ground. The natural ground is always harder to dig, but the phil is another story. It's relatively easy to put your pick and shovel into. There was a front patio as well that also took a concrete pour, same problem.
In your mind, that one was probably a lot deeper, So that one was a billy that would have been like fill in there, right.
The porch was back towards the left hands right.
In your memory.
Did the poor for that patio occur at the same time as.
The garage, Yes, that would have happened the same time.
Yeah, that was signed off at the same time. Why would John have been needed for the poor.
I would have thought he would be just down there carrying on bricklaying.
So you didn't necessarily need him for the poor.
He was purely there to lay bricks.
So I wonder why he's saying to someone, I've got to be back. There's a paw as a concrete Paul. Why is John making such an effort and using the poor as the explanation. But the other option that you've raised, Glenn, is this raised area and that's at the back of the house. Is that right correct? Can you just explain that what's in that debris pile?
What's there timidus bricks, dirt and then it's slab at the top.
And the documents that Andy got from the council with Maddie's help, shows that the concrete was poured there sometime in August.
That would have been the last one thing we were wondering is well, doesn't it introduce a lot more risk if you're trying to conceal a body on a building site and you come back the day before a poor, but you don't put the body where the poor is going to be.
You put it out the back where there's a debris pile.
You don't know when there's going to be a poor there, and it ends up being another three months away, because you were talking Maddie about the risk of animal activity.
Yeah, and the smell of decomposition animals would be very very prevalent in the area.
In sects. Maybe your answers under a fund for ender.
We've got the cover sheet of the file. It shows all the dates and all the information.
Question regarding the raised patio.
How easy would it be to get a body into that kind of area, Like was it easily accessible?
John put it back the dar up right to the corner.
It must be a bit of a headspin for you, Glenn, this whole saga, knowing John as you did back in.
The day, it is a bit. I never had a problem with John Patrol. Yeah, he played his cards very close to his chest. We always got on just his mates.
And he was a very good tradesman, wasn't Here's a tradesman, Yeah, very neat and tidy.
YEA three my houses, the last one in two thousand and two.
Have you heard from him recently?
Probably two and ten. Last time I've ever talked to him.
Do you remember talking to him about brommin or what happened?
No, I never ever brought it down.
I've got another place to mate that he's pretty close to only pumped into him last week or so. He's known him a lot longer than me and is only just finding out stuff that he evin knew about.
Do you remember when John was leaving the rush back to Balana and we know he flew up on the Sunday, Do you recall what he said to you or conversation.
Before he left or yeah?
Nothing sort of. There was no red flag for me.
He actually turned back up on a Monday.
Michelle was looking after the girls and he went to work that first week.
John comes back on the Monday the seventeenth of May. And who was brick laying for Glenn until John leaves again?
I believe it was still John because he was leading my place and going to work and then coming back and having dinner with the.
Kids and us.
John was downing person there.
So he probably was working at Glenn's for just that week he was at our place. And then finally when I pressured him to get the girls back home and get him in school and don't report from and missing, is when he's told Glenn, I thought, I can't finish the house, but I've got to go and going home, you said, right off he went.
So that it makes sense he would have been there during the concrete for that first week.
Still work it.
He goes back, he's looking after the girls. The girls have been put back into school. That's when Glenn is getting another team to finish the brick clans the house good house to live in?
Mate.
Yeah, yeah, I.
Mean it's not a nice thought. How do you feel about that?
You planned the seed and you start thinking about possibilities.
I guess yeah, do you think it's possible.
I don't think anything's possible.
Do you know who lives there now? Now that.
I asked Glenn whether he was asked by detectives to describe or comment on the Illawong building site when he spoke to the police some fifteen years ago during the cold case review by the then Detective Inspector George Radmore, Not at all, Glenn Webster replied. He said that the
angle was not mentioned. Andy confirmed something that was bugging him for reverse charge long distance telephone calls from a home in the Shire to Broman's flat in Byron Street in the four weeks before her disappearance, and the total duration was forty eight minutes. We established that those calls were made from a property which Glenn and his wife were renting at the time. John would stay over there while he was bricklaying for the Websters. One call on
April eighteen went for almost half an hour. The last reverse charge call was May eighth at eight fifteen pm, and it went for nine minutes. Before we left Glenn to his work, he and Andy stood together for photographs. Just take your classes off, mate, thanks back up at street level. I tried to put the known events of Monday May seventeen into a chronological order. These are the events about which I'm confident from documents and police statements.
Sometime that Monday morning, John arrived with the two girls in the Shire south of Sydney in the family Ford Falcon, its registration had lapsed. He went to a house in the shire, knocked on the door and asked a woman he had never met, the mother in law of John's first wife, Jenny, and he asked that older woman to look after Lauren and Crystal for the day. Joan Mason
said the girls were in pajamas. In nineteen ninety eight, Joan Mason told police that John had said to her he needed some temporary child minding help as he had to do a very big job. It was extremely strange behavior on John's part in my view. The two girls did not know Joan Mason from a bar of soap. They had probably met Brad's new wife, Jenny, because she'd become friends with Bromwin, but there would have been a very limited connection and Jenny was out shopping. John and
Jenny had not been together four years. As you have heard from previous episodes, theirs was a very sad and at times toxic relationship. It produced their daughter, Jody, who was raised by John's parents until Bromwin and John got together. Michelle and Andy Reid, the aunt and uncle of Lauren and Cristel, also lived near by in the Shire. The Reed's house should have been the first stop for John when he needed somewhere to leave the girls for a
few hours. That's the first red flag indicating something else was possibly going on with John on that Monday. But what happened next? Where did John go after leaving the girls at Jenny Mason's house with her mother in law Joan. Jenny was very surprised when she got home from shopping to see Bromwin's daughters playing in the backyard. What was John doing prior to his return in the afternoon to pick up the girls to then go to Michelle and
Andy's house for the first time that day. As you have heard, John had woken the girls up in Lennox's head, put some clothes into pillowcases and driven away from a messy house on Sandstone Crescent very late the night before, then driven an unregistered car through the night and most of the morning to the Shire. The evidence of what
lawyers call flight is compelling. John offered no real explanation for his unusual urgency when interviewed by the detective Sergeant Glen Taylor in August nineteen ninety eight, but John did tell Glen Taylor in that interview that John had registered the Ford Falcon on the afternoon of Monday May at a place called Miranda in the Shire. Miranda is where the premises of RTA for the registration of cars was situated.
But when the detective checked John's credit card statement in the late nineteen nineties, it did not show a credit card charge for registration on Monday May seventeen. The May nineteen ninety three Commonwealth Bank credit card statement for John Winfield shows a charge on May twenty four of two hundred and twenty two dollars, and that's one week after
John's arrival in the shire. As a result of this, Glen Taylor told me that he strongly suspected John had lied about registering the car at Miranda on May seventeen. The detective's formal signed police statement in nineteen ninety nine makes this point about the date discrepancy, but dates on credit card statement in the nineteen nineties did not necessarily match the dates of the actual purchases. There was a
lag sometimes of several days. The old fashioned machines which were used when we bought things on our credit cards were operated manually. They were not electronically connected to bank accounts like they are today. I'm grateful to Glenn for letting me know that he was innocently mistaken about the date on which John had registered the vehicle. From further checks done with the RTA, Glenn subsequently discovered that the
registration of John's Ford Falcon did occur on Monday May seventeen. However, this doesn't change much. There was ample time for John to drive from Jenny Mason's house to the house at Illawan do whatever he needed to do, then drive to the RTA at Miranda in the afternoon, pay to register the car, and then turn to get the children from Jenny Mason's house to go to Michelle and Andy's house. John did not disclose to Andy and Michelle that he had taken the children to his ex wife's house, where
they had been for several hours. John did tell Michelle that he had got the car registered that day. Glen Taylor told me that in the nineteen ninety eight recorded interview that he did with John Winfield, the person of interest was very vague about his movements on that Monday, John failed to mention dropping the kids off at his ex wife's house. Glenn said that probably because of that vagueness, Glenn didn't press John hard in the interview about everything
that he did that Monday. Glenn told me, however, that he accepts John was telling the truth about the Ford Falcons registration that day. Glenn is now deeply suspicious about the property at Illawong. Just before driving away from the remarkable house overlooking Gunner Matta Bay being renovated by Glenn Webster in the Shire, the builder answered a further question about John being left at Illawong to work alone.
I would set any up, see him in the morning, make.
Sure he's right gay And so he'd worked a line and after he'd set it up, Yeah, got it.
Yeah, and that's pretty much if he's in the job.
Yeah, probably soon he's temper round t.
Yeah, he liked boon by himself.
Yeah, I see ye.
Thanks for clarifying that. See you guys to describe.
It made me wonder why if John needed to go to Illowong to just lay some bricks before stopping by in Miranda to register the car, did he need to make an unusual detour to his ex wife's house to leave his two girls there for several hours. Why couldn't he have grabbed the girls some takeaway food and drink and then driven them with him to illawa On whether they could have read or slept in the car or played outside if he was determined to lay a few
rows of bricks before going on to Miranda. Back in Andy's car, we talked about some of the angles arising from the conversation with Glenn Webster.
What did you take from all that?
She showed?
The garage is pretty much hard on deck, so he thinks.
Any possibility of quickly stashing a body.
He thinks it to be on the west side of the porch and towards the back because it's elevated.
What do you think of that theory?
If she was going to be put under a slab boy and then that sounds like the place.
But I'm also thinking by that stage, by the time he would have got there, she would have full well been in rigging mortis. Depending on how he put it into the car. I am quite confident she would be stuck.
In that position.
Someone can't physically larry completely across a boot.
Then she would have been like that, with possibly her legs tucked up a.
Bit right, you say, riga mortis set in and you're rather person on their back.
You're picking them up like you can carry a small child, your arms tucked under the legs.
You've got your hand under their back and under their armpit type thing, and you lift them up.
Where you go. The porch might be.
Two meters step or two point four meters streep, maybe front to back, and it's probably six meters wide.
There's plenty of room, plenty of plenty of root.
Two point two meter five five point eight meters void.
Underneath that slad, Andy and his sister Kim Rushall are very different. Andy speaks clinically and without apparent emotion or effect about a possible crude burial place for his older sister Bronwyn. It is as if he is on a mission and must keep a brave face, not let the mask slip, lest his true feelings slow his bid to achieve justice for Bromwin. Sometimes it is confronting when Andy is a matter of factly talking about how his sister's body might have been handled. But while Andy is resolute,
he is not without feeling. I have seen and heard him choke back tears. On those occasions, Andy has been talking about his two mothers, Jennifer, who raised him and Barbara, who gave birth to him. Barbara and her legacy hover over this case. Her plight, her mental illness almost certainly influenced early investigations into Bromwin's disappearance. Kim mar She'll, on the other hand, is a lot more open about herself and her feelings and emotions. Perhaps that's another key factor
in their disagreements. But Andy and Kim have been incredibly helpful in different ways. They haven't always agreed with what the other has told me, but they have put their differences aside to support the podcast series and me. They have respected my independence and need to reflect the recollections and views of a range of people. When this investigation was in its infancy, Kim told me something interesting about John Winfield's recent behavior on the telephone.
You told me last night about what Crystal has told you she must do.
Is that something that you can talk about.
My answer to that question is that I have an obligation to actually stay focused on what I have always said out to do, and I've made it very clear upfront, very early on to every person, family or other. So I will actually talk about.
That, Okay, all right.
Crystal was reiterating again John stand on how he would always stick to his story and that story hasn't changed.
Crystal informed me that Jonathan had given her a set of instructions as to how she was to continue having any communications with him, and that caused alarm bells for me, being that he said that she was not to use her phone that she uses on a daily basis, that she was only to call him from a separate external phone, and he suggested that she just a separate phone, and that he had then given her a new private number that he had obtained and that was the only way
she was to ever contact him in the future. He said the reason was because then the scammers wouldn't have an ability to hack his personal details.
Kim made a prediction back.
Then, Crystal's heart will always continue to ache because she's putting Lauren's relationship as a priority over actually finding out the true answers of what happened to their mother. So she just really doesn't want to have anything to do in relation to hearing about what happened to her mother. There's been several periods of time where she changes that opinion,
and that's what's confusing for me. I get the indications that she wants to actually go forward with finding out what happened, and then suddenly she reflects and she withdraws from her desire to do that and shifts back to staying in a world where things will never be worked out, never be solved, and it's such a struggle, and she writes about it, we talk about it.
After twenty episodes, Crystal's position has become more fixed. Her contacts with her uncle Andy and her Auntie Michelle have become more strained and fewer. Their catch ups have stopped, and it's partly because of what Crystal sees as an unfair targeting of John, her stepfather.
I always encourage her that she needs to have some really good therapy to try and have an independent person that she can work through with that there's always going to be a degree of bias whoever she talks to in the family, right I really feel for her. I am going to see this through and unfortunately, if I end up having a fragmented family once again, which is
what I started with, so be it. I don't actually know right at this moment whether I will ever be able to restore bonds with Andrew that I thought I had built, but now look like they're gone again.
Sorry about that, and that's the thing for Crystal.
Crystal's statement to the police in nineteen ninety eight is a powerful and distressing document. She was fifteen at the time and had walked into the Ballina police station after school one day to try to help police find her mum. Crystal's strength that day rings loudly through the paragraphs of the statement, taken by the detective Glenn Taylor. Shortly before the release of this episode, one of Cristel's friends in nineteen ninety three, who lived near the house at Sandstone Crescent,
reached out. She was prompted to contact me by episode nineteen and the analysis of the Winfield family's Ford Falcon sed Ann, a former taxi which probably had a large tank for liquefied petroleum gas in the boot. We wanted to test hypothetically whether the car's boot would have had room for Bromman too, given that there probably would have been an LPG tank of up to one hundred liters
capacity the taxi standard. I have talked at length to the woman who has so recently come forward, Cristel's former friend. She has, however, requested anonymity, and she asked me to omit some of the detailed information which she has provided, as she does not want her identity to become widely known. Here's what she told me. These are her words, it's not her voice.
I grew up near the Winfield's house. Crystel is younger than me, but we were friends and went to the same schools. We would hang out sometimes and played together. Cristel had told me that herself and Lauren were not allowed to look in the boot of the car the
morning John rushed them to Sydney. I clearly remember her telling me she had heard her parents arguing that night when she went to bed, and remembers John waking her up early morning and telling her they were going to Sydney and throwing some clothes and things into pillowcases or garbage bags. John was angry and they were not allowed to look in the boot of the car. This was always alarming to me. Whether or not Bron's body was in the boot, her handbag or both, or something else
possibly incriminating. I do not know this information, and whatever else I remembered was told to the police in two thousand and nine. When they called me one day, Cristel told me John had been very angry with her when the case reopened in nineteen ninety eight for going to the police without her sister Jody, and she felt too uncomfortable to stay with him. I found this pressure from John also to be quite alarming. When I visited the Winfield's house, Crystal and Lauren were not allowed to play
inside the house, only in the garage. The garage was always tidy, not like the usual garage. The car was never parked inside, only on the driveway, no oil stains, etc. John was intense and insistent about everything being neat, clean, and in its place. I recall one day he got aggravated at Crystal and Lauren eating ice blocks in the garage and one had dripped onto the concrete floor. I remember his enraged reaction making them eat outside on the
grass instead. One day, John let Crystal inside the door connecting the garage to the house to retrieve something. On this rare occasion, John told me I was allowed inside too. I was startled. What I'm allowed inside? Yes, of course I found this very odd, as I had never been inside before. From memory, the door seemed to always have been locked from inside the house, or at least it was always closed. The girls had to knock to get John's attention if they needed anything. I was nervous entering
the house and immediately taken her back. At how neat it was. The tiled floor sparkled, everything was in its place, a polished statue, possibly of a black panther. Everything white and black, spotless, not a speck of dust. John sat on the leather couch two seats up from his new girlfriend, as I followed Crystal to her room. I could not remember seeing any toys, maybe a Teddy Bear on the bed, a large chest and cupboard. I was too scared to step on the carpet. It was by far too neat.
I always tried to remain open, mostly for the sake of supporting Crystal. Surely the police would have found evidence if he had murdered Bronwin. But as time went on it was very clear the police work was incompetent, and we all knew something since it happened. Crystal was always in a difficult position and she didn't want to lose her sisters as well, particularly Lauren.
You'd never been to the house at Illawong until we talked about it during the podcast in an earlier episode.
Yeah.
Correct.
Once I'd known the address, I went and had a a snake.
To drive by.
And you didn't have contact with Glenn Webster either until recently.
Never ever really had any conversations or anything.
Have you found him in terms of cooperation?
Yeah?
Great.
He's been very open and very very helpful, very happy to contribute any way you can.
Andy, We've just left Cronella's Street.
Where's the beach straight behind us? Do you want to say it.
Was Roman keen on the beach.
Oh, she tacked the kids down.
You remember that phoe of my wedding. This is the church, oh, where Michelle and myself got married.
Then Gosford Streets in that photo in the photo with everyone.
Yeah, a block there.
It's when my son had his first unit and I did it all up, renovated and put himself a house out of Dannet from Southron right around the boat harbor.
I think it's yea clam beach, God's country, mate.
I reconcile the beach.
I'll tell you that I know.
But they're still struggling to get sure. And curb mc gutters up there. Can you notice all the curb mc gutters made.
What beach is this?
That's all one.
Stretch of same that starts as South Cronella and then you have North Cronella.
And the wall. We call that the wall because there's a big sea wall there.
This is Alura.
Glenn Webster's name came up on the phone display on the dashboard of Andy's car. Left Glenn just fifteen minutes earlier.
Glenn Webstuff.
Great, hey, mate, I just asked if they did have any records going back.
To that time.
I just thought, you know, you don't have any records.
As we were driving Glenn back on the building site had telephoned one of the longtime concrete reps on the off chance there was still paperwork to show when exactly the concrete poor occurred at Illawong in nineteen ninety three.
Okay, so I wouldn't have any records of that far back. Yeah, okay, okay, thanks for trying, mate, thank you, thank you. God.
That was good of him. Yeah, that's nice, And he proudly pointed out some of the local landmarks that he had built with his employer in Trek.
This is one of my jobs years ago, a shitty little clubhouse.
I've demoed that whole building across to here where it says club entry.
Does that mean demolished?
But mate, I just looked at let's crooked straight as to die in trick building.
Mate, this weekend there'll be packed. You won't get a part hug. If it's warm, it'll be chockers.
This is where you grew up.
And yeah, coming down the crown, I got a surfing and kids are roll then new electric bogs. Mate, we have to do it hard bake round the pedal. Now you want to go past the takeaway You want to see Bron's little flat.
Yeah, okay, but are you hungry?
That's Oak Park there.
That used to be an old takeaway shop and that was the flat, the flats on the back of the shopping.
That's where Brown lived.
That's where Brian, John and Lauren and Crystal live.
That's the flat on the back of the shop, goes right across the back of the shop.
There's single level places there. Ye, it looks really small. It's not very big at all, mate, No, did you see them there? That's where Lauren came home to from hospital.
And she was a baby because he used that type from and used to have to do the bottles on the stove and everything. And so I finally got the shits for that after coming in sooner struggling away.
So I bought her a microwave so she could make Laurence bottles.
I remembered something that Andy and Michelle told me when we first started recording in their house at the start of twenty twenty four.
He was so proud of himself that he'd let her have the car, which was a ship box of taxi that was worth probably four hundred dollars five hundred dollars back then, if John spent one thousand dollars on a vehicle that was over the top, he was very frugal.
We looked from the street at the dilapidated extension to a shop, and his mind went to the nineteen eighties when John and Bromin were in what looked like a blossoming relationship. Roman's family and friends, however, look back now and say John was too controlling from the start. Some say they worried that it would not end well.
But it's a small flat, small little joined to be living in in it. That's where Jody first moved in with him.
Jody had her own.
Room, three little bedrooms in that joint.
God, it doesn't look like it.
Nod that used to be a takeaway shop in.
The front of that really.
When Andy was out of his shot at his house earlier that day, Michelle told me he had cried when he heard his system Melyssa's voice in episode eighteen. They haven't been in contact for twenty years.
I think it's wonderful what Andrew has done. He has been relentless.
I admire everything that he's done in his efforts to find our sister.
So much of that episode must have been difficult for Andy to hear. It focused heavily on the police statement of his mother, Barbara and her mental health struggles. The episode featured Andy's youngest sister, Kim, talking about Barbara's life and Barbara's separation from her children, Bronwin and Andy for a decade.
Do you think it might be easier to pretty connect with Melissa?
Hopefully you may get some stage. I'd like to think that she opened up and possibly breach an egg. It'd be fantastic. She knows where I am.
I'm going to say, spot where we last sat down and she was.
On our back for anger and we were chatting away and.
How long ago was that? Oh five, so almost twenty years. We don't need to do this, or we can do this.
If you want to say anything about your father to defend his reputation, your call.
I just wanted to give you the opportunity if you wanted to.
It does just bug me that you know they're trying to or Kim's attempts to portray my.
Father, you know, in the wrong light around what happened and how it unfolded. I don't think it's very fair at all that he portrayed in the manner that any locked Barb out of anywhere or anything like that happened, because that just wasn't the way it went down.
It wasn't the way it happened.
You've heard Kim honoring her mum, Barbara, your mom, Barbara.
What do you say about Philip as a dad?
Dad was.
Always there, especially for Brin, you know, like Melissa says, you know, hearing her brought back a lot in that episode. But Dad was her rock, He was her go too, and he was always there for us. He was there for all of us, all for of us. He's a good man, and it's just a shame that Kim wants to try and portray him in some sort of bad light. She didn't really know the man, so I'm not sure
what the mode if he's there. I don't understand she's defensive for a mother, but definitely what she's portrayed isn't the way the whole thing fell apart. You know, Dad was very upset. He was devastated that Bob got that ill and was that.
Sick and couldn't teens to the children.
And I'm sure it was a terribly, terribly hard decision to.
Finally say, after.
Months of separation and Mum trying to get health back and to get into some sort of normal shape, but a terribly hard situation to make the decision that we weren't going to keep on seeing Barb.
I know from being a parent, and be a.
Terrible decision to make that decision that your children weren't going to be involved with their mum. But from all knowledge and conversations that I've had with anyone about it, Dad only made that decision that we weren't going to go on and keep seeing Barb once she'd had the massive over days and wasn't any sort of state to.
Be around us, I suppose.
And then she obviously went overseas for that period of time, and I think it might have been up to four years before she returned stage Dad and met Jenny, who I sort of refer to mum because she's the person that sort of raised me. I knew nothing different until I was ten years of age or so.
What was the catalyst for your father to contact Barbara when it was time and his view for you to know that you had a.
Mother called Barbara. She was your biological mum.
It was actually Barbara reaching out and talking to Dad and telling him that she wasn't some sort of state to be okay, that's from discussions I had had with Dad. Yeah, she'd breached out and sort of convinced Dad that she was well enough.
About ten pm one evening in nineteen seventy five, I received a phone call at home from my ex husband Philip. He told me that my children wished to see me. I was thrilled because I had not I've seen them since nineteen sixty four. Kim was four years old at the time, and I've organized to fly both of us to Sydney and we booked into the Wentworth Hotel. Philip told me that the children could stay over the weekend
and he would pay for the room alongside mine. We had a wonderful reunion and we've kept in constant contact ever since. I've been to Bronwin's first wedding, and Andrew's wedding, and all the grandchildren's christenings. Ever since. I go to Sydney and stay with Andrew and his wife Michelle on a regular basis.
Kim was just about four years of age. I suppose she was reaching out. She would have thought it was nice for her children to meet Kim. I believe that was the catalyst for allowing us to see.
It must have been hard pe to get your head out.
You've suddenly got two months suddenly.
Yes, that's right, that's rights. I tried to do my best to include Mom, to include Barb in things we did, always tried to have Barb involved in my life in some sort of way. I must admit there was never that true feeling of a sort of maternal bond, you know, like I'd never had that because all my formerty years had been you know, Mam had raised Sorry Jenny, but you know who I refer to as the lady. That's
the lady that raised me. That's the person that sort of bestowed the morals and the way I am today.
She's your mum, She's mom.
How are you and Kim? Now?
She contacted me after episode seventeen and we had a.
Conversation, but I was just straight out asked her.
I said, I'm not sure why you had the nerve to try and portray or basically say.
Something that you knew was in fact and wasn't true.
That I'd sent you up there on a fact finding mission.
Here's a reminder of what Tim said in episode seventeen, and.
Why did 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, but.
I understand that he knew that Jonathan had done something, and he still set me up to live in that house.
Why would you put that out there to hundreds of thousands of people that are listening to a podcast to know something that's not true. And our answer to me was, oh, that's just the trauma talking. I don't know why I said it, but it's the traue. We got into a bit of a tiff about so what you own the trauma on this whole thing, do you? You're the only
one that's been traumatized by this. She'd been involved in it recently, but she was only your kid back then when she went up twenty when the whole thing unfolded.
Didn't send her up there at all.
We only found out, I think after the fact that when she was there, and I remember having a conversation, and I think it's once I knew she was there.
I mentioned to her, said to her.
That you need to be careful, but possibly you might actually find something out.
I don't know, but you need to keep your wits about you.
You previously told me that you found out very late that she was going there, that you didn't know about the plan.
I didn't actually ask her to go to Andy Chad. I found out about it very very late. I remember saying to her, or maybe you could possibly find out something.
Don't push the wrong button, don't go too far.
And it was perhaps a couple of days, very soon before she went in that you heard about it.
Does that seem right? Or do you reckon? You found out later than that?
Oh, I think we actually found out later that.
Throughout this process, I've tried to keep the moral high ground. You're not run around trying to improve any form of memory or anything like that with grandiose statements and fabricate anything for everyone with a bit of respect. So it is just frustrating when there's some people that are trying to drag you down and make accusations. Don't know why, that's up to them explain, but any it's hard on
shell people that want to hide behind you. People just say some pretty scathing things that they don't know anything really about it, so they don't know the.
Depths that we've gone to to get as far as we have. There's a lot of good people were found, young Maddie.
Yeah, we won't sack.
No, I'm not sucking. And the ship. These people that have been helping us have been fantastic.
Here's a small sample of voices of some of the people who have helped me and this podcast investigation.
And we're squeaking breaks.
And so that's why I was sitting here.
I thought, I'll give your wrongs.
Car.
It's like I heard it before I saw it.
So I'm sitting on my un here two bolls there. I'm actually watching War the Roses.
I was listening to podcasts and you said, if there's anything that you should be investigating or or any ideas, email me, and I thought, right, that's all I need.
So I've got online found your email address.
My friend lived in that street down the road, a little bit double story place up high.
And I thought we would it be going late at night with something that looked like I just called it a mummy. And I've said this to my son so many times about this, and I thought, well, even if he was taking out belongings, you wouldn't make.
It look like a body.
I know that he had something in that car that resembled a body, just a body shape in the back seat.
She was a friend and a good friend at the time. We'd still be friends today, I know we would. I did feel so sorry for her though, she was gone through so much heartache with him, which is why I keptn't trying to encourage her to go.
Circumstance.
I believe it's extremely likely that foul play occurred in the house that night. John was obviously in a bit of a panic that his wife, Rollin had moved back into the home.
Today's answered a lot about how the lake works. It's slowly giving out some of their secrets.
That water is bloody cold, even when you're only standing in it up to your knees.
Then I'm just trying to work out the most efficient and fail safe way to actually identify the objects.
I'll drag it along the bottom.
I'm contacting you to offer my assistance with legal research analysis for Bronman. 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.
I've got time, Hadley.
Everybody I mentioned to what I'm doing, they picked there is up, there are right behind it.
I easily easily just climbed in and climbed out.
I had a lot of dreaming there.
You sound very definite about your memory of the availability of local call data.
That's one thing I'm one hundred percent sure about because I used to do that with my job all the time.
Multi talented Maddie, Yep.
He's just a guy I saw on the front page of the newspaper for the first time four months ago who happened to get my mother pregnant.
That's all he is to me. He'll never be my dad.
He'll never be my father, will never be mates. We'll never sit down and have a copper together. I will never break bread with him, purely because my grandmother would be disgusted in.
Me if I did. We pulled up in a side street outside a small business. The name painted on the glass was immediately familiar.
It's the salon there.
The hair salon intercuts where John's daughter Jody worked at the time of Bromwin's disappearance. There are phone records from the bill of Bromwin's rented flat at Byron Street showing the calls she had made to Jody weeks earlier, but in a subsequent telephone call they had a row. Jody discovered that Bromwin had moved back into the house on Sandstone Crescent. Soon after Bromwin disappeared, someone purporting to be
her telephone the salon intercuts. The female caller asked that her message be passed on to Jody, who was on a day off. It was a message that Bromwin called, and this person purporting to be Bromlin said that she had gone and that she was never coming back. When Andy heard about it from Jody and John, he headed straight down there.
I got here on that night and I parked with that girl sitting in that white car.
I watched and waited for the last.
Client to walk out of that shop, and then I walked over there, knocked on the door, introduced myself, told Tanya Robinson who I was, and asked her about the phone call. I spoke to her and I said, John and Jody, you told me that there was a phone call to the salon, And she says to me, yes, that's correct. There was a phone call around lunchtime, well
just after lunch, and it was a female voice. I can't one hundred percent tell you whether it was Bromwin, but it was a female voice saying and stating that I'm in Queensland and tell.
Jody I'm not coming back.
So I left with that information, went back home Michelle and told her what I'd found out, and she took haend notes and write anything down.
But all this time it's still called exactly the same salent.
In early July, as we were putting together Episode ten, and his hopes of a discovery were raised at Lake Ainsworth at Lennox Head. With the help of volunteers led by Ashley McDonald, an expert scuba diver and retired captain in the Royal Australian Navy, and Chris Darcy, a qualified searcher and kadava dog handler, we scanned the lake bed for clues.
I should have always thought she's up there, that she was dumped up in the lake or whatever.
You know, That's what I'd always sort of thought.
But knowing our suspicions and how I had said to you, the other possibility is this place because you came forward and told me about the information you received. Now knowing what Glenn has said, this is the easier option. The garash lab would have been thigger and possibly could have been three layers of mesh, so it would have been more work to lift up the reinforcement. You possibly would.
Have had a top and bottom layer a mesh.
The eastern back corner of the porch was where it was back filled. That's easier because that's just pedestrian traffic, no vehicle traffic. It would have only been one hundred mili concrete or one twenty max and one layer of mesh.
That's all much required structurally.
If that's where she is.
I'm trying to visualize it is she entombed in concrete.
No should be under concrete in dirt, so.
The dirt goes first.
John would have dug into the dirt to put her in and then covered her with dirt, and then she would have been then covered with that layer of plus sick and then covered with the mesh, and then the concrete.
Animal activity wouldn't bother.
It locked in because it would have complete brickwork all the way around it. With the slab sitting on the brickwork as a capping as a complete lead.
If she was.
There, she sealed a lie in the back corner of a perfectly sell cavity of brickwork with a concrete.
Lead, she'll still decompose, but there's no way.
Any animals can to move her bones and things like that.
Would there be any external smell?
No, not at all.
How would you go about testing that side to see if there's anything there?
Wouldn't that be a difficult process.
You could nearly just drill a hole through the ground, gap through the slab, and down into the ground to disturb. So you can drill a series of holes and get a checked by a dog. The place is unharmed. All you've got to do is just regrout the hole and fill it up. If it's a smaller type tile, then you might have to break some tiles to be able to draw lyles through it.
That would mean you'd have a little bit of remediation to do. It's a relatively easy search to happen.
You will note.
Pretty quickly if she's not there, If the dogs don't sense anything, she's not there because she kind of moved.
Is there a scan that can be used?
Andy telephone to contact in the building industry as we drove west towards Illawong. The guy is a concrete scanning specialist with whom Andy has worked on sides across the shire.
Andy, you mane cool, my good. Just got a quick question.
Yeah, does any of your equipment through say a tile one hundred or one hundred and twenty mel slab? What would that detect underneath the slab? If there was something in the ground with any of your gear, would it pick up bones?
Bones?
Yeah? The trouble is they might be deep.
Wouldn't be any more than four hundred maybe four hundred below.
So you found something of you. We're trying to.
Work out if there was a body lying under the slab, would it show up?
If what you're asking me is what I think you're asking me, You're really looking for a disturbance in the ground where there's been something dug and you're not going to see bones. You're really looking for a disturbance in the ground, changes in what's happening below the slab.
I guess this thing it.
Was about six hundred millifil we'd only be looking into the six hundred because we know it wouldn't be any deeper than that because the ground had been fairly hard and it'd be too hard.
A job just sounds possible in principle. Yes, where us is this job?
Killow? Thank you?
The call ended, and I wondered what Andy's friend with the concrete scanning equipment and expertise was thinking. His mind must have been racing with possibilities.
If she was ever put there, then the ground will show up to be very loose because she's decomposed. It'd be a dark shadow underneath the slab because the ground is subsided away from hard up under the concrete and the plastic. As she decomposed, the sand and the dirt would seek down and there'd be a void space underneath the slab.
I've had him do jobs for me.
The slab will show up and you'll see the reinforcement.
They can tell you exactly how deep it is.
If the ground had stuck away from that slab and there's nothing underneath the slab, the radar goes dark in color.
I remember researching it, and as you recall that in some cases it wasn't successful. When went to dig there were no roomains, so they thought there.
Were It's quite a drive that's the word one.
Yeah, I noticed how we crossed the bridge.
We always say that if we haven't needed to, we can book dates on those bridges.
Keep the riff raff out.
I thought the riff raff was in.
No, it's all. That's all on the fat side, bak.
This wasn't originally part of the show until I have started opening up.
And he turned into the street. He slowed to a crawl outside a double story brick house.
So see the veranda. It's the garage on ground.
There's the front door with the bay window, and then that front area of the slab over there, because the ground starts sloping away on that far.
Side, looks like a neat and tidy house. Yeah, it's aged. Well, so just slow down here on the.
Reflat front window.
In that back corner in front of that window is where he's mentioning that he possibly thinks's that point.
Yeah, it was backfields.
Just go forward and do it too, and he.
As you look at it again, Now, what's your view about the logistics and the feasibility the plausibility of what we're talking about.
Like Glenn was saying, he only came in the morning and in the afternoon he'd come, he'd set things up, so he'd probably laid bricks out, make sure there's sand, make sure there was cement, make sure everything was there, and then John would just come and work away on that house on his own. So John could have very easily backed the car up over there. That tree wouldn't have been there. You would have backed the car up over there, disturbed the back of that porch or whatever.
Hardly anyone would have been around, and then you would have just taken around of the boot, rolled straight across the ground there under the back of that porch.
They've added soil into.
That back area to level it, to level it and then pull the slab on top. So it's backfield okay, in that back east corner, got it all right?
See the land falls away.
Yeah.
At the start of the day I spoke to Andy and Maddie about possibly trying to explain things to the owners, about trying to talk to them about John and Bromwyn and events of three decades ago and how those events are being brought into sharp focus by a suspected murder and a podcast investigation which is now circling their beautiful family home in the suburban street near two rivers and parks and schools.
Can you imagine if someone came up to your door and Tony, this may be a person underneath your approach geor which, Yes, I don't know if i'd like to hear that.
How would you even approach that?
I just feel like I'd like to take a bit more time. I don't think we should approach today.
So maybe this episode is going to be the last one of this season two. Yeah, there'll be a whole lot more coming, but I feel like with the amount of material that we've developed and so.
Much more that is still to come, we're just.
Going to have to take some time and a break and come back with the third season of this and there could be another eight, ten or more episodes earlier than New Year.
Who would have thought that we'd have to do what nineteen episodes and still hear nothing from the police about getting act different, mobilizing and actually doing something.
You'd had no further word from anybody. Did you listen to that episode of The Front?
Yes?
I did.
From the Australian Here's what's on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Tuesday, November five, What if anything is going on with the New South Wales Police's investigation into missing woman Bromwin Winfield. This is Andy Reid, whose sister Bromwyn Winfield vanished from her Lennox Head home more than thirty years ago.
I just can't believe that they can be so slow on this matter.
He's venting his frustrations to The Australian's National Chief correspondent Headley Thomas about the conduct of New South Wales Police. Our reporter Alexei Dimitriadi hit up Commissioner Karen Webb and Homicide Commander Danny Doherty at a press conference in recent days.
In terms of for.
That matter that's on investigation as the Carol avestigation and it's world documented. There's a podcast in Israel and following that story. But in terms of the un termine have an investigation is current when that's oncoming.
Heally, I've heard senior police saying over the years, very frankly, that the conviction of Chris Dawson would not have happened without the teacher's pet. Do you think there are remnants of a bit of a cultural cringe or a bit of humiliation in the police that they were shown up in that instance and that they don't really want this to be true. They don't really want it to be the case that there is more to be done here and that a journalist is doing it.
It's possible. I think there's also a high degree of caution because these cases can inevitably end up before a judge, and in the Teacher's Pet case, parts of my work were criticized by a senior judge and parts of the police response with the Teacher's Pet podcast were also criticized by a judge. So there may be a bit of an overcorrection by a new South Wales Police currently as a result to that.
But I think that they've just gone too far.
They've gone from being really cooperative and in a very constructive way in the Teacher's Pet and owning the issue in the public arena, to looking like they're trying to curl up and be the smallest possible target, almost to the point of appearing to be disinterested in Bromin's case.
And if you're the family.
Of a woman who has been missing thirty one years, a woman who was separating from her husband when she suddenly disappeared from their two daughters, their home, all of her possessions, family and friends. You're looking at these two cases and saying, well, is Bromwin's life to the New South Wales Police worth less than Lin's.
It's very frustrating that I haven't wanted to come forward.
I've made the first representation to Parliament. I was a parliament House last week. Have it a meeting with Mark Speakman, my local member who's actually the.
Ship Wales opposition leader as well.
He said he's more than happy to make representations on my behalf to the police Minister, to Attorney General, to the commissioner.
With the cat amongst the pigeons, so to speak.
I don't know what's taken him so long.
He's a busy fella.
We know there's further things that need investigating.
We've got to do it. That's what we've got to do.
Something somewhere along the line's going to get the police into action. Doady gets up there and makes broad ranging statement.
And he is referring to a media conference at which the police Commissioner said nothing, and the most senior homicide detective in New South Wales, Danny Doherty, said.
He probably read about an Australia or listener on the podcast. However, we can't comment on WHPE investigations, current discussions.
Live investigation happening, and they haven't spoken to everyone like investigation happening.
I was thinking, also, any about the impact on you and your family. You've become public property in this investigation. Has it been worth it for you?
It takes its tile, I must say.
Went to the doctors the other day and he made me stay there and do a bloody, a zero or five minute and a ten minute blood pressure test because it's not happening with blood pressure. And I had to tell him and I confide in doing what I've been going for and he just went shit. He said, Any, I've been treating you since two thousand and eight. He
couldn't believe. He said, trist you've boomed through a lot mate and he fall over in Italy and having to get flown home and spinal surgery and crushing your foot and breaking your tailbone, and said christ stage four canc He said, you put through everything.
But I said, I think we're cann handle a bit of blood pressure.
Will stay in trouble that for you and take a bucket full of brown snakes to get rid of me.
May I got to see this through.
We just check plowing on known't we? I suppose that's all we can do. Keep pushing for justice for Braun.
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 Bronwin 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 Bronwyn podcast 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 bromin Winfield. We can only do this kind of journalism with the support of
our subscribers and our major sponsors like Harvey Norman. For all of our exclusive stories, videos, maps, timelines, and documents about this podcast and other podcasts including The Teacher's Pet, The Teachers Trial, The Teacher's Accuser, Shandy's Story, Shandy's Legacy, and The Night Driver. Go to the Australian dot com dot au and subscribe