Listeners are advised that this podcast series Bromwin contains coarse language and adult themes. This podcast series is brought to you by me Headley Thomas and The Australian. The tone in the male caller's voice was intimidating. The brief voicemail he left was unusually abrupt. Kathy Hardy, a woman in her sixties, heard it one day in October twenty twenty two on her mobile phone. At the time, Kathy and her husband Les, living in regional Victoria, had been wondering
about her cousin, Beverly Brooker. They had heard nothing since Bev's birthday in March twenty twenty two, no texting or calls for seven months from Kathy's lifelong friend Bev, living just down the road from her handyman builder John Winfield.
I've got a mysterious message on my phone. Please do not ring this number. BEV is no longer available on this number.
Have nothing more to do with it.
And it was quite gruff, and it was abrupt, and there was no introduction to the speaker or anything. We dismissed it and left it. It was a bit menacing almost to me. I felt it was a bit of a warning.
Don't try and get in contact with this.
As I understand it, Bev's phone was used to try to telephone you, but you didn't pick up, and the caller using Bev's phone left of voicemail, which you've described.
That's correct, and the call was very brief. It was less than ten seconds. We mostly spoke by text anyway, So yes, it was out of the blue.
And as best you can, Kathy, can you just say what the caller said.
It was like, do not ring this number. This number is no longer available. Bev is not contactable on this number. It didn't say she was dead. It just warned me off using the number. There was no warmth in the voice. It was quite almost aggressive. Made me think twice, who is this?
They didn't say who they were.
Within hours of the release of the previous episode called Suburban Gothic and the accompanying newspaper articles about John Winfield's extraordinary multimillion dollar windfall after the death of Bev brain cancer, on September fifteen, twenty twenty two, I heard for the
first time from Bev's cousin Kathy Hardy. Before Bev became terminally ill, she had left everything in her estate to Kathy, but Kathy didn't know this until just the other day, and shortly before this episode was released, we recorded this interview.
I had no idea until I read the paper on Friday.
This is the article in the Australian based on the podcast. Correct your reaction.
Oh, I was GOB's mate. I really was speechless. I had no idea.
In the previous episode, you'll recall that Jeff Outerbridge from the town of Balina, spoke of his sister Beverly Brooker and her ties with John Winfield. John Winfield took total charge of the funeral and cremation arrangements. John was the executor and trustee of Bev's will, and he excluded most of Bev's family and friends from what felt like a secretive and unusually low key service. According to Jeff, he said that John would claim this was what Bev really wanted.
She made a significant change to her will six months before she succumbed to misothelioma. The cancer had spread from her lungs to her brain. Treatment options by then were palliative. With the change to her will, Bev left almost everything in her estate to John Winfield. John had not featured in the previous version of her will. The two introverts
and near neighbors. Bev and John first became friends after he offered to do handyman work at her ocean facing house near Lennox Head, and he was helping to organize the care for her when she was very ill. Not long before she died, Bev's solicitor told Jeff Outterbridge of the purported role of John Winfield in Bev's life, but Jeff is still incredulous about it.
And the solicitor said to me, there's a name on this paperwork that you won't recognize, and it is Bev's partner. And I looked at him with a funny face and went, I don't think so, because Bev doesn't have a partner. I thought, this blake doesn't know what he's talking about.
The story of John Ann Bromwin is stranger than fiction. The story of John and Bev is similarly remarkable. This is part two of the story of how Bev's wealth fell almost entirely into the hands of the executor of her estate, her handyman John, while the only other beneficiary, Bev's cousin Kathy, was completely oblivious for more than two
years to the fact that Bev had even died. It looks like a textbook study of maladministration of an estate by an executor, John, who clearly put his financial interests first. He appears to have deliberately kept Bev's cousin Kathy in the dark about the fact of Bev's death and of Kathy's rights and entitlements. It raises serious questions about John's influence on Bev when she was dying of brain cancer and when she changed her will six months before her passing.
Bev's original will in twenty eleven left everything to her cousin Kathy Hardy. Bev's new will left almost everything to John, and the changes that Bev made to her will occurred at a time when Bev was behaving very strangely as the tumor in her brain was quite possibly affecting her cognition. A Winfield family friend, John Heaton, has asked on the Facebook discussion group for the Bromwin podcast series, what does any of this have to do with an investigation into
what happened to Broman? The answer is, it quite possibly has a lot to do with Bromwin. In my view, and we are not suggesting for a moment that Bev
met with foul play. But while evidence of the handling of Bev and her assets by John is not directly relevant to Brohman's disappearance, it goes to questions of character and an important legal concept which criminal defense lawyers and prosecutors call evidence of a tendency that turns on whether a person such as an accused, acts in a particular way in different situations, such as with assets, money, property. You could not make up the twists and turns in
this case. For reasons you are about to hear and which I was not expecting. We are going to spend more time on Bev Handyman, John cousin Kathy, and Bev's two brothers in Barna, Jeff and Paul, before we start the string of episodes which will reconstruct the two thousand and two inquest into the presumed death in nineteen ninety three of Bromwin Joey Winfield. Now let's go back to
October twenty twenty two. At that time, Kathy was perplexed about having been warned off contacting Bev on her mobile phone. She didn't have contact details for Bev's brothers Jeff and Paul.
Most of the communication miss th ree Bev, so when we were coming up, she'd let them know we knew about them and what they were up to.
Three Beev.
But Bev's silence was troubling.
There were no no Christmas messages, no Birthday messages, and we started to think something's not quite right.
But we couldn't find a death notice. We couldn't find anything, so.
We were just sort of at a loss to know what to do next, and we did lots of searches, and so it sort of left us in a quandary and we just sort of.
Sat on it. Really, it was not very satisfactory.
We did, or we thought we could do, to try and find her, but to no avail. It was one of those friendships where it was intermittent, but we could take up from where we left off. We had a lot in common in our parentage and she was my link to the rest of the family. My brother and I were brought up in Sydney and most of the cousins were on the north coast of New South Wales, and she was that link to let me know who
was doing what and how things were going. Beverly's got my mother's name a middle name, so there was their closeness there, and I was grateful to have their friendship, and we always made sure that when we went up that way that we called in and visited.
Now the dates are important. Bev had been dead for about a month when her phone was used by a mail with a gruff voice to leave that message on Kathy's phone. John Winfield had control of Bev's mobile phone. Two years later, in October twenty twenty four, Kathy's mobile phone rang.
Basically, I got a phone call who was late October, so just last year, quite a gap.
Kathy didn't recognize the number, so it went to voicemail.
That was an office girl in a solicitor's office in Ballana telling me that I was a beneficiary of a will and they'd like me to contact them. They wanted my bb details and a mailing address. They only had my phone number that I didn't know how much at that point. They just said, you've been the beneficiary of some money. And I listened back to the voicemail and that was my first time that I actually got clarification that she'd actually died.
They didn't say when.
Kathy telephoned and spoke to someone at the law firm in Ballina.
We asked for a copy of the will as well.
She sent all that through and that was a huge shock to me, absolute shock.
In fact, I burst into tears.
I was really upset because that's the first time I really had clarification that she was dead and that she thought enough of me to give me that much money.
I was blown away.
By late October twenty twenty four, the Bromwin podcast series was nearing the end of season two. My investigation had been gaining traction for five and a half months since the first episode was released in May twenty twenty four, and folk in lennox Head were talking furtively about John and the two deceased women in his life, Bromwin and Bev. In Victoria, Kathy's husband, Les Hardy, was shocked for another reason.
He could see that John Winfield was named in Bev's will as almost sole beneficiary as well as the executor of her estate. Les Hardy is a subscriber to The Australian. He and Kathy had been reading about a blow called John Winfield and his missing wife since May twenty twenty four. I couldn't believe it.
When I got the will, I said, OK, this company right, can it this bloke here?
Kathy wanted to know more about her cousin and friend Bev.
I had so many questions. I wanted to know when she did. I didn't know when she died. I wanted to know what she died of. I wanted to know where she was buried. And so a few days later I rang back the solicitors again and I asked to speak to the solicitor who.
Made the will.
I asked him what she died of and he told me, and I asked when she died and.
He told me that.
I asked, so, this John Winfield person, is he the person that's in the paper?
And he said, yes, he is.
We had no idea. Why did you ask about John Winfield?
Well, I was curious.
I get the weekend paper and we've been reading about this situation with John Winfield. And we were interested because it was on the north coast of New South Wales. It was a lanic said skinner's head, and because I knew they've lived there, my ears pricked up.
I was interested in it.
I thought, well, surely there's not two John Winfield's in the town. And then I said, so, what was the relationship?
And he said they were neighbors as far as he knew. They went in a relationship, but they were close.
I was a bit concerned because who is this fellow who were few suspicious things about what had happened in his past, And I wondered what made Bev connect with this person in the first place. And I was concerned for the boys, my cousins.
We are going to come back to Kathy and Les Hardy a little later.
Oh my god, I just can't believe it. Why don't you find this out?
Bromwin's cousin and good friend, Megan Reid, was done by the disclosures about Beverly Brooker. John's conduct in excluding Beb's friends and relations from her funeral service in Balina in late twenty twenty two, has called to stir and the revelations about Bev's will and the multi million dollar estate which went almost entirely to John Winfield, have fired people up.
Keeping the family away that is really calculated.
It is just so suspicious, especially when she had brain cancer. The alternative scenario is that he really cared for her.
And sorry, I know him. I don't think he's capable.
The family is deeply suspicious that the funeral service was conducted in such a low key way with just really nobody who knew Bev. There, Like, was that really Bev's will and wish? Or was that John's wish?
They could have contested that will. Definitely contested it on the ground that she had brain cancer. What strikes me as even more suspicious of this notebook that is unusual.
John and Bev were not living together. Lawyers and experts in financial planning have suggested to me that the diary entries in relation to Bev's illness are integral parts of John's evidence of his conduct in the event of the will being disputed. The diary is John's insurance policy, and according to one expert in financial planning, this is the way that John is trying to show that he was
a big part of Bev's life. I asked a voice actor to express parts of a note that I received from a senior financial planner.
To me, it shows intent to get his hands on the estate. He has seen an opportunity with a single, vulnerable woman. He probably spoke to her every day while working there. He is trying to show he was integral to her care, but it wouldn't be too hard to record her appointments. For example, Bev might say, I have my own college's appointment tomorrow at too. He records that. Next day, he asks how it went, and he records that. It gives the impression he is more important or involved
than he probably was, at least until the end. Overlaying that, of course, is her high level of vulnerability with brain cancer. This can change how people react to things and could impact their decision making.
On the other hand, John may have been assiduous and diligent in his care for Bev, noting every appointment, her medication, the visits that she was receiving from the cancer Council.
For him to do something like that, I can't imagine that at all. I mean, why wouldn't he allow the family? That's not right.
How did he.
Suddenly get guardianship and I don't want to see my family? I don't believe that from a minute, like a bad movie. I talked to Crystal about it straight away. I said, you won't the one taking notefully to know wasn't me. She laughed, and I said, Crystal, hate to tell you but it really does look dodgy. And she said, oh, I think they were with friends.
Crystal knew about it. That's interesting, yea, she knew.
She knew about her.
And I said, your father's never been good friends with anybody. And she said, oh, you don't know. It's changed so much. And I said, well, how is he doing with the podcast? She said, oh, he's absolutely fine about it because he's got so many friends out as this huge socialize. And I said, did you see in the paper that said that John's selling the house?
And I said, do you.
Think he's doing a runner? And she said no, She laughed. She said no. She said, there's nowhere in the world he'd leave here. He's got a life here. He wouldn't leave. He believes in himself so much, and he believes he's innocent. If he believes it enough, he'll think the whole world will too.
As we were talking about wills, I asked Megan about something I recalled being told the past by her and by Andy and Michelle read what has Crystal been told about John's will?
Tells her that not just once, repeatedly, he tells her, so she's not confused by it at the time. That he's leaving her absolutely nothing.
And why is that?
Has a mother walked out and anything that she had, he's spent looking after her, and so therefore she shouldn't get anything, which is just looking ridiculous. And I said, don't you find that weird? And she said, no, no, no, no, Dad's just making sure that.
I know my situation.
He's brainwashed her into believing that she's not really entitled to anything, and I don't really understand that.
Let's return to Kathy and Les Hardy. Kathy was upset by what she heard in episode twenty two, the extraordinary control demanded by John over the conduct of Bev's funeral, the exclusion of Bev's friends and relations from the funeral service. It was beyond the pale. Kathy was very surprised by the disclosure that she had been the sole beneficiary in the previous will. And Kathy hadn't been told about this by the solicitor in Balner when he informed her in
October twenty twenty four of Bev's death. When Kathy called me to talk about it, I shared details from a property search that we had done on Bev's ocean facing house. We have the property record for the house in Skinner's Head, Beverly's former house, and it's showing that the sale date, that is the date on which it was acquired by John Winfield, was the twenty seventh of April twenty twenty three. John's newcastle the inheritance, and this time at zero cost
to him. The property had gone into John Winfield's name seven and a half months after Bab's death, according to the property records.
And the moment that he was granted probate, he transferred that property to his name.
And it wasn't for another eighteen months after that that I was informed by the solicitors that I was a beneficiary.
It's remarkable when John is the executor and trustee of the will, he has these legal responsibilities. Now, in the previous episode, you heard Jeff Outerbridge explain that he asked a solicitor for advice on whether he and his brother Paul could contest the will, but because neither brother was named in either of Bev's wills, the legal advice that
they got was that it would be hard for them. However, the one person who could make a legal challenge to the will before the assets of the estate were distributed with something that's called probate was Kathy Hardy. It is important to emphasize something at this point. Les and Kathy Hardy are comfortably off, unlike the brothers. Bev had told Les and Kathy when they visited her in twenty seventeen at her house that she had named Kathy in her will.
I can remember actually telling her putting the will, she's not that much younger than you, you might outliver.
Kathy speculated back then that a gift of perhaps five thousand dollars might be coming to her from cousin Bev, but Kathy didn't covet it. Now, however, Kathy and Les are of the same mind as Kathy's cousins Jeff and Paul Outerbridge. They all smell a rat with the radical change in Bev's will to benefit John Winfield.
Out of all the people who could have challenged that will, Kathy is the person who could have, and she was denied the opportunity because she wasn't even told anything about the circumstances, and even worse, she wasn't even informed of her cousin's death. And the idea that we wouldn't have attended the funeral is just terrible, because we certainly would have.
Not only was she not informed, she was told in a voicemail to back off. How does John justify that he knows, because he's the executor of the will, that Kathy is the only other beneficiary, so he knows that Kathy's very important to Bev, and yet he doesn't tell Kathy about Bev having died. And it's impossible to not suspect that that's because he just wanted to conceal it from Kathy.
That's the only thinking you can have on that he's trying to cover up as much as he could. It's quite deedious, really, it's almost to me feels like a bit of a scam.
So hypothetical, let's imagine things turned out differently. You were alerted to the fact that there was to be a funeral service Bev had died. You went to the funeral, You caught up with Jeff and Paul. You were subsequently about the will. Jeff then showed you the earlier will, which left everything to Kathy, and that will, of course,
had been fundamentally changed shortly before Bev died. Jeff also informed you that Bev was becoming incredibly confused forgetting really obvious and important things and was not herself, and that everything had gone to John bar two hundred thousand dollars for Kathy. Do you believe you would have returned to Victoria and said, oh, well, that's the way it is, or would you, with Jeff and Paul, have considered a course of action to challenge the will before probate was granted.
Definitely.
Obviously we would have on behalf of myself, but on behalf of the other two people involved. You could see that some injustice had been done, and we would have tried to do something.
About it immediately if we'd had the opportunity. Definitely.
If you don't treat other human beings like that, he's ad Johnny come lately.
As far as.
Her life goes, he's preyed on someone. Really, she wasn't a recluse so much as she's just a quiet person. She had friends from work, she was out and about, but she just kept herself to herself. When her mother passed away, quite a number of colleagues came to that funeral to support her, and she never talked about him. She never told her friends her family about him. He was not someone who was considered part of her life. So who is this person and how come he's all of a sudden been left this.
Amount of money.
We definitely would have got involved because we're suspicious now, and we would have been suspicious then.
It's not just a legal thing, it's a moral thing.
If we'd gone to that funeral and there were only a people there, we would have been gobsmacked, and all of the other weird things that went on, we would have said, this is just outrageous, and it is outrageous. The brothers thought about challenging the will, and Jeffrey actually told us yesterday when they did go to the solicitor. The solicitor that they sought advice from, said, you possibly would not have been successful, but your cousin probably would be.
But of course the cousin Kathy didn't know, and Jeffrey didn't have Kathy's number, although he had asked John for it on at least two occasions, and he wouldn't provide it. I don't think we're talking out of turn here. The brothers don't have any resources. These people haven't had the education and the opportunities that Kathy and I have had, and they see the world through different prism.
After the revelations from the previous episode, Kathy spoke to the solicitor in Ballina again. She wanted him to give her Jeff Outterbridge's phone number.
I just said that I'm now aware that there was another will and that I was so beneficiary and I'd like to talk to Jeff about it and find out more information and how he's feeling.
But the solicitor declined to pass on her own cousin's contact details.
He said, no, the more I think about it, the more no, I don't think I can help you. And I just said, okay, that's fine, old ring Headley Thomas, and see if I can get it that way.
We have some questions here when the will was changed, What inquiries were ate about Beb's health she was obviously ill at the time. What advice was being offered to the execus about him fulfilling his juiciary duties towards us. That is a fundamental question and it needs answering. People need to be held accountable, don't they. I asked Kathy why.
In her opinion, her cousin had intended to leave everything that she owned to Kathy, as set out in Bev's will, which had been valid for eleven years until just six months before Bev's death.
Years ago, Bev's parents' marriage broke up and Bev's mum struggled to look after four children, and so my parents, who were much better off, decided that they would support the two girls by paying for them to go to back in the sixties, a secretarial school.
Ensuring them of a job for their future.
She'd lost her sister, and my parents had helped a lot in that sit situation as well. There've been a close connection for a long time, and I thought, is this.
There of giving back?
Does it strike you both as something highly unusual or perhaps in Bev's nature to have altered her will when she was ill and given almost everything she owned to her neighbor John.
I said, as highly unusual.
She was a person who planned her life, she was careful with her money, she thought everything through, and this seems to be very much a spur of the moment kind of decision. And I'm not saying that for my benefit either. I'm not about the money. I'm not an avarice person. But I just think that it's very odd, after eleven years that you would do that particularly so when you were unwell.
And Les recalled the last time they saw Beverly. It was June twenty seventeen.
And we had a lovely afternoon tea together and a chat.
She said, I'd love you to come and have a look at my house, and it's on the way back to Barron Bay.
And she was so proud of it. And for a girl who came from.
A broken marriage and she lived by herself for most of her life, it was a real achievement.
Were there any signs of renovation then absolutely none.
Red brick and I had a lot of brick inside That was Nita's a.
Pin great for her, perfect and it was in a nice area. She was proud of it, and we were proud for.
Her, absolutely, and we also learned something else about it by going there. We didn't realize she was such a rockabilly. We really had a laugh together. She had all these pictures of Elvis Presley and other people from that era with the walls, and she liked revealing that aspect of her character to us.
How would you describe Beb's physical and mental condition in twenty seventeen when you saw her for the last time.
She looked fabulous.
I've got photos to prove it, and she sounded fabulous.
She was really happy.
She was excited that we were here with her, and we hadn't seen each other for a while, and she was in grateful.
Beverly was a really good looking lady. If she was ever going to attract a man, she could easily have done so in her forties and fifties if that was the purpose of her life.
But it wasn't.
She enjoyed being single and doing her own thing. Beverly did not disclose her illness then or were subsequently to Kathy.
She gave us no indication that she had something wrong with her none at all.
She is a bit stoic like that.
If I had have had knowledge of it, I would have been up there like a shot, because I would have wanted to have spent some time with her. You think you would have let your brothers know. She wasn't estranged from them at all. They kept in very regular contact.
We can't explain it.
This person who on the evidence, didn't contact Kathy about her death, didn't ask her brother Paul to go to the hospital to be with her, let Jeffrey know. At the last moment, what was going on controlled the funeral to keep people away from it, and did he actually encourage her not to contact people who may have had a different outlook on what was going on the circumstances
that don't look very good really. Before interviewing athy An Les for the first time, I had unfinished business with Jeff and Paul Outerbridge in Ballina, as well as Paul's wife Sarah. Something that you did not hear in the previous episode was Jeff's recounting of a promise by John to do something with Bev's ashes.
His text message was about my sister's ashes because she was cremated and he was going to have her ashes interred into the wall over the eastbound cemetery, the same wall that my mother is in.
He said, I'm not.
Going to do it straight away, It'll be done in twelve months time, which I thought was strange.
Why would you wait twelve months?
He actually gave me the date and I thought, well least, but it all worked out right down to the very day. He was telling me how things were going to go, and that was it. He might have done something completely different with her ashes, might have spread her ashes in the garden at the house.
The first anniversary of Bev's death was September fifteenth, twenty twenty three.
I should go and have a look ostpose and see if she's actually in that war. I was only jogatitt Cemetery just the other day. That's where my partner is there, and that's where my mother is there, and I go over there from time to time.
As this episode was being put together, Jeff visited the cemetery with my friend and young colleague, Isaac Irons. Bev's ashes were placed in the wall, albeit one year and eleven months after Bev had died. So the plant.
Reads in loving memory of Beverly Eileen Brooker, quite achiever, quality human, devoted public servant, loved and well remembered by all. You'll find me in the garden. And that's Bev's plark.
And how does it make you feel?
It's very nice. There's no mention of any family members. It just says loved and will remembered by all.
I was quite surprised to see a picture of Bev on there, better than some of the other plerks that are here. Would have been nice to know it was happening better late than ever I guess so.
This was put in place in August between.
Twenty four apparently, So yeah, you found out today, found out today.
I think it's place.
You'll come back to visit, oh for sure, because I'm going to be just up here at my partners. My mum's on the other side of the same wall. So definitely, now that I know it's here, I will pay my respects. If my brother hadn't made inquiries and found out about this today, we still wouldn't have known that it had already been organized and done. No contact from John, and she didn't deserve to have the funeral that she had.
It was me and I was having any say.
In the matter.
I would have made sure that there would have been a lot of people there, all her work colleagues, more family. It would have been packed. It was just very disappointing, and according to John, that's how Bev wanted it. No, I think he had a lot of control in the matter. It was all his way or no way.
Jeff held a certificate. It was an acknowledgment from Bev's new South Wales government employer that she had served fifty years for the department. Bev would have been at least sixty five in the accompanying photograph of her with a younger manager offering his congratulations half a century of service in the one place. The certificate was a nice touch, but unfortunately someone had spelt Beverly's name wrong.
When she started out, she was tea lady. She had to make everyone tea smogo.
We all start something.
You got to start somewhere. Yeah. One hour earlier, at Jeff's house, his younger brother, Paul outer Bridge, spoke of John with thinly veiled contempt during our interview via zoom. Have you seen John since the funeral?
No?
No, why would I. I can't say his name. I call him the snake, cunning as a cut snake. I can't drive past the house. I can't go down the.
Road because it upsets you too much.
Yeah, he does, he does. Totally gutted. It hasn't been easy. I was totally blind to the situation, and I knew nothing about this other guy that we're talking about. Apparently was on the scene for seven years or so.
Paul wants me to know that, as far as he was concerned, his relationship with his sister Bev was good. She was quite a bit older, than him, but they got along just fine.
There wasn't any bad tension between us at all.
There was no major falling out.
No no falling out at all. My wife, Sarah, she used to take Beverly out the square dancing.
Jeff told me Paul that he was instructed by John that Jeff couldn't disclose to you how close to the end Bev was, and that you weren't to know about that.
I just felt kind of left out. I thought my sister would let me be there for the final few hours of her life.
Here's Jeff.
I don't think Bev was of soeund mind to be honest near the end, because she did have brain cancer.
She was making strange decisions. My partner was in.
Hospital at the time, and Bev would come to the hospital to visit and we'd walk outside and talk.
Her behavior was very odd, odd and strange. But she even.
Forgot Paul's birthday, yeah, first time ever. And she forgot all about Paul himself. She didn't remember Paul, and she changed her will during that time when she was making strange decisions and acting very.
Odd, and she'd always ring me or I'd have a card in the mailbox. Birthday card, but there was nothing this year.
I wished him happy birthday and I said, what did BEV say to you? And he said, oh, I haven't heard from Bev. And I thought, Oho, there's something funny going on here. This is strange. I'll ring her tomorrow, which I did, and I said what did Paul say for his birthday? And there was silence. There was no answer. I said, are you there, Bev? Because everything went silent, and she said, yes, I'm here. And I said what did Paul say for his birthday? And she said, who's Paul?
She didn't know who Paul was brother? And I said, Paul your brother. You know what did he say when you're ranging for his birthday? And she said, oh, I remember Paul. She never rang Paul for his birthday, couldn't remember Paul, and that was the first time ever she missed it.
Paul also recalled the unusual spectacle at Bev's funeral of the woman introduced by John Winfield as his daughter. Paul, Jeff, and Paul's wife Sarah have since been showing photographs of Lauren Winfield. The three confirmed that she was the woman at the funeral.
Probably two things that stick in my mind. When we were watching the photos of Beverly at the time, she wasn't watching them really. She was on my left, the far left, and Jeffrey was on my right. I could see her for my peripheral vision that she wasn't looking at the movies or the pictures. She was looking at us, And I was thinking that.
Was a little bit weird.
Why is she looking at us all the time? She was looking right at us, Me and my brother along the front seat. She didn't look behind or anything. She was fully attention on us. She might have been writing something down at the time. I remember Paul telling me that she was taking notes. That sounds pretty true. I wouldn't have said that the brother if it wasn't happening. Sarah and my wife found Palm Brothers to a Sister and we thought that'd be nice to.
Be read out.
So she asks Lauren would that be okay? And she said yes, we'll fit it in somewhere along the way. So we did that and Sarah read the palm mount about brothers and how they are to their sister, their journey through life. He didn't want that at all, because I heard him, so.
He is Sarah Outerbridge Paul's wife. She's found the poem.
Dear sister, Together on life's journey, we have traveled, you and me sharing all the joys of life, keeping each other company, sharing lots of happy times, and sometimes sharing tears, always leaning on each other together through the years, and no matter where life leads us, His sister know it's true.
It's been a joy to.
Travel down the road of life with you. He was quite upset.
I asked his daughter, and she said, I think that will be okay, And I said, I think it should be okay. He said to her, what's she doing? What she doing? And I just kept going.
Sarah did not know then of John Winfield's missing wife, Bromwin and John's emphatic denials that he murdered her. That knowledge came a week or so later, when Jeff received a copy of Bev's will and it bore John Winfield's name.
And then I just google it. I just put in John Winfield and I've come from when Wingfield the picture. It really freaked me out because the picture came up of Bromway where she's getting out of the car. The likeness blew me away.
Because I've seen.
Beverly many times with that same look.
Originally, she had very frizzy hair, and we used to refer to her as Marge Simpson. When I saw the photos of Bromwin, I thought straight away, oh my god, she's got hair like Bev.
Same hair, same skin, same small build. It was just freaked me out because it just looked like Beverly.
Sarah recalled seeing John respond to questions from Bev's cousin Luke at the funeral. Luke was asking John about the nature of Bev's terminal illness.
And then he got aggressive and through the documents, literally throwing that Luke, so here you go. Have a look. His voice changed, And I've been around aggression, so I know exactly what that's about.
Luke's sister is a nurse and his sister's husband is a doctor, and they wanted to know what sort of history of cancers were in the family. So Luke approached John about the question about what sort of cancer Bev had.
But I believe he hit a brick wall, didn't he.
He snapped back at Luke and got a bit angry and much of some words back at him.
They might be the papers that I've got now that might be where I got them from right.
Could be yeah, But why would John have brought medical papers for BEV to her funeral?
Honestly, don't know. Strange, like you said, why would he be carrying.
That piece of paper in the first place? Could she change the world by yourself? I very much doubted. Was she cursed and tricked? I really think so? Something's kind terribly wrong here? Am I thinking of my sister. We'd be looking after two brothers in one way or another. She had no family, she had no children, she didn't have a husband. But to leave it to some person that I've never heard of in my entire life, to some strangers just popped up in the last few years of a life.
When we were.
Watching the photos, there wasn't one photo of him. So what kind of relationship does that? Like I've always said, there wasn't any relationship to me anyhow, There's seems to be this empowering body of control, and everywhere you turn it's like his way or the highway. I don't know how her mind was six months out, or how much influence this guy had over it. I didn't have any hang ups with my sister at all. To be left out of the will just cold, with nothing, just devastated me.
The funeral, that's the hard part.
That's the hard party, that's the hard part.
The fact that we were left out of the will is one thing now, but it's the proceedings that was the hard part, that was rubbing into the wound.
Yeah, the question was asked something about Beverly's house, and he just gripped up and said, I have no interest in her house. Why would I need another house while I've got one on you own? But I guess he knew the answer to that question anyhow, he already had the house.
I already knew the answer, and not.
Include her loved ones. You can have nothing to do with your family for years and news years, but when you die, your partner, any decent partner, would involve the siblings, even if they've never had anything to do with each other for ages. A funeral brings people together, So to birthdays.
It's not too hard for somebody to make a phone call or send a text to say Bev's ashes are going to be interred into the wall on such and such a date.
Nothing.
It's just a decent thing to do to contact the family and say this is what's happened, and that's where Bev is no contact.
He had everything under control. I think was going his way.
Didn't do too bad for a handy man who was doing some work on the house. After the service, we went down to the RSL Club for a get together with the family and.
Have a couple of drinks.
He didn't come to that.
Never spoke to him since I didn't want to have any confrontation, so I walked away. I contacted him twice after the service, rang him and left two messages. First message was, is there any way I can have the family photographs? Because when my mom passed away, Bev took all the family photographs and she was going to compile albums for us. Well, we never saw the albums, and we never saw the photos and never heard from John.
John didn't get back to me.
When Sarah reflects on the final chapter in Beverly Brooker's life, she describes a woman who appeared to shrink, not physically, but in the way she withdrew from the people who were important in her life. And some of that, perhaps even all of it, could have been because of Bev's illness. Bev was dying. People handle this unavoidable fate in different ways. Sarah cannot put her finger on exactly when Bev started
to become more reserved and withdrawn. She is just suspicious about it having happened before.
She apparently had this relationship. She was always independent. She was never going to get another man. For a start. She wasn't interested in dating because I'd always say to her, I'll sit y up on tindat and that speed dating they had that at the RSL. No, she didn't want to know, man, how she was changed. She seemed to be very withdrawn, very very quiet. That's the part that blows me in Lane. What she was about changed dramatically.
To me, I wouldn't care if our c and Kathy got everything is mentioned in the first will.
She was the sole beneficiary, and that's fine.
But to have this bloke step in and put his hands up and say it's all mine, that's what leads a dirty bit of taste.
In my mouth.
I'm a big believer in karma. What goes around comes around.
My longtime friend and colleague, David Murray, spoke to a legal expert in Wills and the States about the turn of events. My name is.
Lucy McPherson, I'm the partner of the estate litigation department at our with Marshall Lawyers.
Thanks, Lucy, I've sent you some background on this case. My first question is was it John Winfield's responsibility as a trustee and executor to inform the other beneficiary it was Beverly's cousin, that Beverly had died and that the cousin was a beneficiary.
In short, yes, it was mister Winfield's responsibility. It is the executor's duty to ensure that all beneficiaries in the state are informed of their entitlement in a will, and whilst this is not explicitly set out in legislation, it is an implied duty because an executor of an estate has a number of duties to beneficiaries, including a duty to act in their best interest, and it is part of that duty to act in their best interest that
there's this implied duty to keep beneficiaries informed about their entitlement and about the administration of the estate.
Was it John Winfield's responsibility? Has the trustee and executor to ensure that all beneficiaries actually received what they'd been left in Beverly's will?
Absolutely, I mean this is the cornerstone of the executor's duty to administer the estate. It is the executor's obligation to ensure that all beneficiaries receive what they are entitled to under the will, and this is part of the executive's responsibility to administer the estate in accordance with the law and in accordance with the terms of the will.
At the cornerstone of all of this is this idea that executive stands in a fiduciary relationship to the beneficiaries of an estate, and fiduciary really, in simple terms, it
means a relationship of trust. The executor has an obligation to do things like avoid conflicts of interests so avoid conflicts between their personal interests and the interests of the estate, obligations not to make profit from the estate assets, for instance, and also importantly an obligation not to act for their own benefit against the estate.
So who's responsible for ensuring trustees and executors fulfill these obligations?
So the Supreme Court has the ultimate oversight to ensure that executives and trustees act appropriately and in accordance with their legal obligations and their duties. When an executor is behaving badly. Somebody who has an interest in the administration of the estate, generally a beneficiary, has legal standing to
approach the Supreme Court. The key question for the court is really whether the conduct of the executor has placed the administration of the estate into jeopardy, and the court's overriding concern in all of that is really promoting the interests of the beneficiaries of the estate, promoting the orderly administration of the estate, and the rights of those who are beneficially entitled in the estate are set.
Has John Winfield potentially breached his obligations?
I believe that he has potentially breached his obligations the delay distributing the cousin's entitlement in the estate. And it doesn't appear as though interest has been paid on the legacy either, And.
Are there any ramifications for that?
There are a number of different ramifications for executors who do not fulfill their obligation or behave badly during the course of the administration of an estate, which includes court intervention and.
Also adverse cost orders.
So the court can revoke the grant of probate, removing the executor from that position. And it's not unusual in a situation where an executor has been removed from offers or mismanagement or misconduct for a court to order that that way, would executor pay the legal costs of the party who was required to bring the application before the court.
In this case, Beverly Brooks health had been deteriorating over time and her family has questions about her soundness of mind. Could they be grounds for challenging the will?
Absolutely, deteriorating health and questions about an individual's capacity to understand the nature of the act of making the will are often ground for challenging the validity of that will. It must be proven that the will maker, at the time of giving instructions to make the will and at the time of signing the will, understood the act of
making a will. They must also understand the extent of property over which they have disposing power, so they must be able to identify in broad terms the assets that they hold that will ultimately be distributed. They also must understand the claims over which they should give affect, and what that means is who they would generally be expected
to provide for under the terms of set will. It must be satisfied that the willmaker didn't have a disorder of the mind that would create some sort of delusion influencing the act of making a will. That question of whether Beverly was of found mine at the time that she made her will is a ground to challenge the
validity of the will. Certainly in circumstances where the family are concerned about her capacity to understand these matters, it does raise some questions about whether the will should be challenged on those grounds. So somebody like Beverly's cousin is somebody who in this scenario would have appropriate legal standing to brand action to challenge the will.
It has been a hectic week. After Kathy Hardy got her cousin than Jeff Outbridge's telephone number from me, they were soon on the blower and reconnecting. David Murray then had a further chat to Jeff. At first, Jeff was wary of Dave. Jeff suspected that he was being set up by someone acting for John Winfield.
Well, I'm not sure about whether I should say.
Anything or not.
I don't know who I'm talking to, but I just don't trust this guy, and I don't know what he's up to.
So you're not associated with John. I think that's probably always better to check Jeff. I'm a bit suspicious mate.
After I contacted Jeff again to reassure him that David was working with me, not John, everything was okay, all.
Right, David, Sorry to be so coy about it all in the beginning there.
Jeff then opened up about his conversation with Kathy and Les, and.
You'd been looking for her for some time.
Yeah, I've been trying to track it down and I was unsuccessful. Headley did tell me that, he said, I think we might have some contact details for her. Now, we'll try and make contact with her, and he did, and they've been talking a few times. And that's when Kathy and Les rang me last night to say, Hey, what's going on with this whole thing? Kathy and Les they're victorians, but they're good honors, down to earth, trustworthy people.
Probably talk for about forty five minutes, and we've promised each other that we can stay in contact now.
They didn't know anything about Bev's passing.
He didn't notify them, and they got a message back from John saying don't ever bring this number again. I don't want to be contacted the fact that John didn't even contact them and tell them that she'd passed away, And of course I couldn't contact her because I didn't have her contact details, and he wouldn't give me her contact details. The time lapse, he's let the whole thing run out so that no one can contest the will.
All the beneficiaries are supposed to be paid before John does anything for himself, and apparently that hasn't been the case. The first thing he did was transfer the house into his name. He knew the time was ticking away, and he delayed everything until after the time had run out, and then he paid the money. He's out to get everything for himself that he can. They're going to seek legal advice because of the way the whole thing's been handled,
and it's all been handled incorrectly. It hasn't been dealt with in accordance with law. They can now fight it because he's done the wrong thing.
They can appeal it. Now.
He will be in trouble for not doing his job. Probably she should have not even been allowed to change that will at the time.
When she did, Les did say, look, u'se guys been the losers in this whole thing.
Family deserve it first, and if it goes to Kathy and Les, a good luck to him. I know they don't need the money, but I'd rather see family have it than this guy.
And how do you feel about this getting exposed now?
I think it's a good thing because my friends that I talked to, and I was actually talking to a couple of here this morning at a bike show in Austinville, and my mate's wife said, Oh, you're famous.
You're famous, You're on the podcast. But I said, I don't know about being famous. The more people know, the better.
Everyone has been commenting to me about it in a positive way.
That this is a good thing.
Every little bit of information helps to go towards putting it together.
A profile on what this guy is like paints.
Him in the picture that he really is what he is. I don't think he was much of a care The solicitor told lez that they were not in a relationship. John and Bev were not in a relationship. They were not partners.
That's very interesting because that's very different to what you were told.
She's never had a partner since she divorced her husband. I was told by a person that worked at the solicitors that this guy was her partner.
Dickens say in later episodes, as more information comes to light, we are likely to revisit Bev's case. It has been made clear to John and Lauren that if they want to make any comment or share their side of the story about Bromwin or Bev or anything else in the podcast, they are welcome. Now, let's return to the investigation into Bromwan's disappearance. That is our overriding priority.
Well, it was just honest and straightforward. I'm used to listening to people and trying to figure out whether they're telling the truth, and quite often patients don't tell me the truth. But I knew she was telling me the truth. It was the truth that she'd experienced.
Dr winsom Araha is talking to me from her home country, New Zealand on a zoom link. You have not heard her name before, and that's because she had asked for anonymity. She is describing her impressions of Judy Singh from having met her some sixteen to eighteen years earlier. Doctor Araja spoke to me shortly before the release of this episode, the twenty third in the Bromwin Investigative podcast series. But
I have known about her for some time. Right back in episode seven, Judy Singh spoke about having seen a figure which she believed was Bromwin's body, allegedly wrapped in sheets in a car driven by John Winfield. And from Judy, a nurse, you heard her brief references to a Kiwi doctor they met in northern New South Wales when they were both working at a regional hospital. Judy spoke about the doctor from New Zealand having gone with her to Byron Bay Police Station to make a report about what
Judy saw back in nineteen ninety three. Here's a reminder of some of what Judy told me.
I ran into a doctor right and I told her the story in a little cafe called the Being Seen in Ballina. Many years later, she came back to the hospital and I was actually working in that little hospital in McLain and she said to me, did you go back to the police after you had that interview? And I said no, I didn't, and she said, well, we're going today anyway. She taught me into going to the Byron Bay Police station this time, thinking somebody there might
listen to us. Then I spoke to a gentleman there and I said, you know, I'm just always haunted by this story about this woman. At the end of the stry they didn't do an official interview. I said, is there anyone here that wants to write something down? She's hardly interested in any of it.
Soon after I spoke to Judy, I found doctor Aurorha in New Zealand and we spoke off the record for the first time her request. I did not record that conversation, but I made a good file note of it. The contact was really just to corroborate a small part of what Judy Singh had told me. If the New Zealand doctor had said to me, look, I don't know what
you are talking about. I've never heard of this woman Judy or her strange story, then it would have made it very difficult to have proceeded with what Judy had told me she saw in a Ford falcon late one night in May nineteen ninety three. But doctor Roha in fact had a solid memory. When I talked to her
last year, she confirmed key details. Judy Singh's bombshell interview was then duly aired in the podcast and published widely in The Australian and in videos that we produced As a result, a senior New South Wales Police officer asked me for the Kiwi doctors contact details. I provided these two police. That's where I left things. Doctor Aurha and I did not speak or communicate again until very recently. For the past several months, Bromman's brother Andy Reid, has
been persistently curious. He wanted to know had detectives from the police Unsolved Homicide Unit taken a formal statement from the doctor in New Zealand. Andy is like a dog with a bone about these things. It's understandable he and his sister have been badly let down by shoddy, lazy police work in the past. He does not want anything to fall through the cracks again. Andy did not know the identity of the doctor because of her request at
the time for anonymity. Here's doctor Aurorja again from our recent zoom conversation talking about Judy Singh. The GP has of course waived her earlier request for privacy. I asked her how things had fared with detectives from the Unsolved Homicide Unit of New South Wales Police. Can you let me know what's happened.
We're just playing telephone tag really for quite a while. Finally were arranged to have a time to talk and I talked and then he asked if i'd make a statement. And I was really busy at the time, and I'm busy all the time, but I was particularly busy at that time.
Doctor Roja said she had been trying unsuccessfully so far, to establish the precise dates on which she was working in the regional hospital in New South Wales, as this would indicate when she must have met Judy Singh. The police want these details. Perhaps a listener with access to this kind of information can help.
So there were two hospitals involved. There was Grafton Hospital and the little one where I only worked for a few days really with Judy.
And that was McLain. Was it, yes, Tell me how you had got to know her in the first place.
Well, just we were working together and she invited me out to her place and so I bought some lunch and we had she had lunch. I said, I was going up to see my nephews up in Barron Bay. We just hit it off. She's lovely, very real, very natural and very real.
Doctor Rouha recalled some of what she and Judy talked about when they caught up that day.
The fear that she had when he looked at her and he saw her, and she described stepping back into the shadows and turning the light off. That made me feel she was intimidated by him.
Yeah, look, I've met her, and I also believed that she was a truth teller. Had affected her quite profoundly.
She had just seen something that was really bad and she wanted to get it off, really literally help by getting it off her chest. She felt that she would help others. Really, she was perturbed about it. It was clearly weighing on her because I didn't say, hey, it sounds far fetched and ridiculous, because it didn't. I don't think she knew her very well, the neighbor. She didn't give me an impression that she knew her well.
What do you.
Remember about the Bay and Bay police station visit.
I remember we came into the foyer together and she was hesitant, and I was encouraging her. Come this far, let's do it. I feel that I spoke to somebody there, but just gave a very brief synopsis. I said, a person may have witnessed a murder or something like that, and she was the one who had the information. We parted there at the police station. We said goodbye, and then I took off, and then I never saw her again. And I don't know whether she's said anything or what she did.
I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, But you then left to meet your nephew, and she either stayed in the police station or she left at the same time.
Yes, I wasn't sure whether she's going to do it. I felt that we'd had a long enough and meaningful enough discussion, and it wasn't a five minute discussion that we had. It was quite involved. We talked about a lot of things in detail. We especially drilled down on this a bit. We've had lots of meaningful conversations with many thousands of people in the interim in the last eighteen years or whatever. It was tons of heartfelt, meaningful conversations.
And I did feel there was a sense of disquiet for her, that this information had been burdening her and it hadn't gone anywhere. Maybe she said to me that she'd been to the police before. I can't recall. I had a feeling that she must have talked to other people about it. I'm sure I wasn't the first person she'd disclosed it to I felt that she just needed someone to spare along, to say you're doing the right thing.
It's important and other people might disregard it, but you think it's important, and I think it's important, so let's act on it. To some extent, it was a sense of vulnerability because she was on her own and was worried about him having seen her. Definitely got that sense
of what's the word menace? Menace is the word. I can recall that because you remember things like that when you're a woman, and she's on her own, and she said it with what I thought was honesty and integrity, And if I can corroborate anything that she's trying to say, then I'm happy to do that. She was a straightforward medical woman and certainly not a drama queen, nothing like that.
I've never been told that somebody had witnessed a murder, and so that's not something I forget easily, and especially as she had credibility. She was a sound person of sound mind. We had a rapport and there was no way that it wouldn't take it seriously. I trust my instincts with people like that. It wasn't a five minute discussion two or three hours together got a long time.
While doctor Aurha has emailed information to police, a formal science statement has not yet been taken from her, some seven months after the podcast episode was aired, and his concerns were not unfounded. I hope that when they follow you up, you say, look, let's just get this done.
I'm quite happy to do that because I'm interested in justice, and especially injustice and when things aren't followed through properly.
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 Bronwyn podcast dot com. Our subscribers and registered users here. Episodes first.
The production and editorial team for Bromwin includes Claire Harvey, Kristin Amiot, Joshua Burton, Bridget, Ryan Bianca, far Marcus, Katie Burns, Liam Mendez, Sean Callen, Matthew Condon and David Murray, with assistance from Isaac Iron's. Audio production for this podcast series is by Wasabi Audio and original theme music by Slade Gibson. We have been assisted by Madison Walsh, a relation of
Bromwin Winfield. 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