Listeners are advised that this podcast series brow contains coarse language and adult themes. This podcast series is brought to you by Me Headley Thomas and The Australian.
I'm Claire Harvey from The Australian. I'm the editorial director and I host our daily news podcast, The Front. It's been a year since Headley Thomas started visiting Lennox head in the investigation for this podcast. Bromwyn Subscribers to The Australian get all our episodes first a special way to thank them and all of our listeners. From time to time we hold special live events where we invite the audience to come along to meet the team, share a
drink and some refreshments. It's a chance to reflect on how far we've come, to meet the listeners who make it all possible, and to answer their questions. This episode of Bromwyn It's episode twenty four in this our third season, is a recording from a live event we held in Sydney on February twenty seven, twenty twenty five, featuring Headley, me National Crime correspondent David Murray, Senior writer Matthew Condon, and Bromwin's cousin Mattie Walsh, who's become an invaluable part
of our podcast team. You'll hear some laughs as we gently rib one another, and some serious and heartfelt moments too. We reflect on the thoughtful, intelligent woman Bromwin was and on the arrival in this story of characters we didn't expect, including former nurse Judy Singh, John Winfield's secret daughter Sonia Lee,
and John's late neighbor Beverly Brooker. We'll discuss the mystery of how John became the beneficiary of Beverly's significant estate and Andy Reid's please to police and the coroner to act on the nearly thirty two year old disappearance of his sister Bromwin. We'll hear Hedley and Dave Murray reflect on exactly where the new South Wales Police investigation is going.
On the night, we had a chance to thank our wonderful team, including producers Slade Gibson, Kristin Amiot, Leat, Sammaglou and Stephanie Comes, and our events guru Jason Hamilton and his team in the audience. We're our colleagues Leah Mendez and Bianca far Marcus, plus many more, and as Hedley says, we're blessed with an amazing crew who are also our friends. Good evening everyone. My name is Michelle Gunn.
I'm editor in chief of The Australian and it is my absolute pleasure to be here and to welcome you all here tonight. Podcasts are a very, very and port part of what we do at The Australian. There's such a powerful medium for storytelling, including hard hitting investigations such as Bromwyn and The Teacher's Pet. The special source of The Australian's podcasts is journalistic integrity and instinct.
These guys have it in spades.
It's an unwavering commitment to uncover the truth and a strong desire, a very strong desire to make a difference. And that is what our newspaper is all about. That storytelling kind of brings our journalism to life. It's wonderful to see so many of you here tonight. The story of Bromwyn Winfield is beginning to captivate the nation. Eight hundred thousand people listen to the very first episode alone.
There are so many people who want to get Behindhead and Bromwin's family who are here tonight in their quest for justice. We've seen Headley do this before. He's not someone to be underestimated. So I'm looking very much forward to joining you in listening to tonight's conversation. Before I go, I'd just like to finally thank Katie Page and Jerry Harvey, who are here tonight. They have been such wonderful and
steadfast supporters of The Australian and of Headley's journalism. We are so very grateful for your belief and support in our journalism and what we do. Thank you everybody, and.
I'll hand over to claiv Thanks Michelle. You guys are the most important people. None of this matters at all if nobody listens. And more than seven point four million downloads of Bronwin have happened so far, that's because I've been in part Australians really do care about stories about missing women. In fact, The Australian, through the work of journalists like Hedley and Dave and Matt, we've been covering issues of violence against women in the most important way
for a really long time. So I'm going to start with a bit of a serious question Headley and Dave, this is a really hard issue to cover, violence against women is as we often so often hear a really serious problem in Australia and throughout the world. Did you think when you stepped a toe into this new medium of podcasting that it would be this issue that would engage you the most.
I understood when I first started looking at the murder of Lynn, that underlying that case was the most horrendous example of a failure of the criminal justice system, of community, of an education, department, of police, of prosecution service, and all of those things added up to a failure to properly deal with a violent crime against a female Linn. But out of that has just blossomed the opportunity to do all of these cases that we can that are
similarly needful. We couldn't have designed it this way. It's just happened naturally and organically through goodwill of listeners, the good will of people who have come forward to help me and offer special expertise, some of whom are in the audience tonight. People have been united and wanting to make a difference in this area.
Dave, you're one of Australia's most experienced crime reporters. Throughout your body of work as a journalist and particularly in your work in audio, you've covered violence against women. How do you think Australians have changed the way they perceived this issue over the years that you've been reporting.
I've been reporting on violence against women in one form or another for my entire career, you know, going back to the nineties when I first started out as a journalist, cases of women going missing and their family seeking answers. Of course, now there's all these other platforms to tell these stories and then more detail. But we've been striving to tell these stories for some time and talking about
changing attitudes. I mean, you look at Lyn Dawson and you look at now know as Lynn Simms at the request of a family, You look at Bromwyn and you wonder, well, how many other women out there went missing and were just treated runaways? They weren't investigated properly at the time, and then you know, many years later, the investigators to pick up those cases, have to pick up the pieces and they just in some cases, you know, then languish
for years and years and years. So you know, fortunately, now you know these cases, you know, we've got a medium to look at them in incredible debt through podcasts, and.
You know that's why Headley's work has been so incredible. Matt is a national treasure. He's an acclaimed author. He has some brilliant podcasts of his own, which I'm not going to mention because they were published by the ABC. But he's also the creator and host of the next true crime podcast will be publishing, so that one is coming soon. Matt is such a beautiful writer and such a beautiful speaker, and so Matt, no pressure, but I wanted to talk about Bromwin. She is, of course the
subject of this podcast. Matt, I asked you to write the feature that we would publish to kind of kick off this story in the paper, and you dug through Bromwin's writings. What sort of person emerged in those diaries and letters that you read?
Yeah, thank you, cir I. Just before I answered that, I just wanted to share a thought I had sitting there watching you and listening to the audience. In terms of the journalism that we do. We get incredible support obviously from Michelle and The Australian and our sponsors Katie Page, Harvey Norman, but listening to the audience humming as different questions were coming up, it's a very unique experience in journalism.
To have this incredible support base of tens of thousands of people you've never met, and to know that you're there and you have the teams back, it's very special. So I just wanted to share that firstly with you before I lost my train of thought. But my first introduction to Bronwyn was her writing, and I read it very carefully, and I read it over and over, and it was very poignant and very touching, and I tried
to find the woman behind the words. These peripheral judgments may be wrong Andy her brother, but I sensed a very loving human being, a very dedicated mother. I sensed a woman who was trying to make the most of a very difficult personal situation. I got the sense that she was psychologically and physically in a vice, and that she was trying to express herself.
When we moved to Lennox Head, I was even more lonely. The house that was built became John's castle in my prison. My children have suffered from the environment that surrounded them. I was surrounded by hate and abuse in various ways as a child, and am determined not to allow this to happen to my girls or myself. Ever again. No one will ever intimidate me again, nor will I allow anyone to force their opinions onto me, as this can cause damage to myself as well as my children.
And at the end of those writings, she's very positive and she says, I'm looking forward. I'm going to move forward positively with this. So I saw a woman who had an enormous amount to give, but it was falling on fallow ground, and she was in a very awkward scenario.
She wrote beautifully, didn't she She did?
She did write beautifully. She wrote, to my mind, very honestly. She didn't hold back in terms of her emotions, which was another for me, a key insight into the sort of person that she would have been. To my mind, I would have loved to have met her, you know, just one of those straight up people, a lot of love to give, but was in a despicable situation near the end that she was trying to find a way out of. And the writing reflects that she's trying to keep it together and.
Move forward in a positive way.
Helly, get into the big question first, why do you think when twenty years ago the police went to the coroner. The coroner went to the DVP, no charge was laid.
The coroner recommended a murder charge. The decision was made I think, initially in a regional office in northern New South Wales, that there would be no prosecution. And it seems at first blush unfathomable, why after so much work, with such a compelling, circumstantial case, wouldn't you put it before a jury. It's not to say that the accused
is guilty, just that there should be a determination. And I've thought about this deeply over the years since I've heard about Bromin's case, and since I've been talking to Andy, read and reading the evidence, and all I can come up with is a human error. I believe that the system, clearly and quite obviously, in this case and in others that I've been involved in, fails to grasp what most people who can step back and look at all of
the evidence can see. That there is a strong prema face case and that as the coroner, a very experienced judicial officer, recommended, it should have been prosecuted. And the coroner doesn't make a decision like that lightly. He has to satisfy under the Coroner's Act a certain test, that is that in his view, a jury would be likely to find beyond reasonable doubt that the known person would be found guilty. And that's an important bar. It's not
a balance of probabilities test. It's a strict legal test at the higher level. So it's our job in journalism and with these podcasts to try to re ignite these cases, to refresh them because the families don't have anyone else. After the police have tried and failed or the DPPs said well we're not going to take this forward, the families then go back and say, well, where do we
go from here? And I think that police, even cold case teams, unsolved homicide units, which are a more recent innovation, they struggled because they've got limited resources and a huge number of these cases that didn't go forward, or cases that didn't even get to the stage of a brief
of evidence. And so we have the opportunity, with the resources that the Australian makes available, with the goodwill of the listenership and the help of people who want to volunteer their time, we have the opportunity to make a difference and find new evidence, new witnesses, people like Judy Singh who came forward and who many people heard in episode seven of the podcast. I mean that should have
been a game changer in my view. Right there, this woman who said that she saw the Winfield family car and Bromwin's estranged husband driving it with what appeared to be a body wrapped in sheets in the vehicle late at night, the night that Brombin disappeared. Now that's an eye witness who's come forward with that evidence, and we filmed her and tested her. And there was even another
witness who said she didn't see anything that night. She wasn't there that night, but she had contact with Judy who had clearly over the years been up said about this and having the burden of this information and seeing nothing done about it, all we can promise Andy and Michelle and Caitlin and all of the Reed family is that we'll keep trying. We'll keep trying to find new evidence. And it's not our job to directly pressure the DPP or the police. They have to do their job independently.
But we believe that with the weight of the evidence that comes out, we hope that it gets to a tipping point where skilled prosecutors say, well, this is more than enough, we can make something of this.
Dave, what do you think the delay in this case has done to it? You know, the fact that charges were not laid in two and two when the coroner recommended that they should be, and of course John Winfield denies any wrongdoing and that that is yet to be tested in any kind of court. We've seen a significant delay there. In a very separate matter, Chris Dawson is
still pursuing his right to appeal. He's now telling the High Court that because of delays and what is called forensic disadvantage in the legal system, he can't get a fair trial. He couldn't get a fair trial because police delayed for so long. What do you think about that?
Yeah, well, we're eagerly awaiting that decision of Chris Dawson's appeal. I know that delay was cited in the letter that Nicholas cardre the DPP way back at the time of the inquest when he wrote to Andy Reid. You know, he from memory cited the delay and the initial investigation before he was taken up and investigated really thoroughly for the first time.
The disappearance of your sister Bronwin Winfield in May nineteen ninety three has no doubt caused much grief to you and your family, and I offer my sympathies. My advice to police in the coroner, after very careful consideration of all the evidence presently available, is that there is not sufficient evidence to charge Jonathan in Winfield or any other person. Bronwin's disappearance was not reported to the police for two weeks and was initially treated as a missing person inquiry.
By the time it was dealt with as a possible homicide, years had passed and any potential scientific evidence was long gone. There is nobody and no known cause of death. While Jonathan Winfield is the last known person to have seen her alive, there is no evidence that he killed her or had any role in her disappearance. Suspicion cannot be substitution for evidence.
That was twenty plus years ago, so we're further down the track. I think we've seen that these cases still are solvable, even though there is a delay. It might be a barrier, but it doesn't mean that they can't be solved. It was solved in Linn's case. It was solved in other cases that come to mind where women went missinging as far back as the nineteen seventies. In one case in South Australia, Colleen Adam, she was found
buried under concrete in the family property. So these cases cant will be solved even though they resided delay.
Now, Headley, when you started this investigation, we had our usual conversation where I say, you know, tell me about the case, and you say, I think it can be solved. It's really exciting. And then you say, I think it's going to be six or seven episodes. We'll have it done by March. So what went wrong?
Did I say six or seven episodes or seasons? You keep finding new information and if we set a rigid finished date or episode number, then how would we accommodate all of the people with more information and unpack this extraordinary case in the sort of detail that it deserves.
And I feel that while we still have the extraordinary support of the listenership and of the Australian and Andy and Michelle and Maddie, who's still helping me wherever I ask, she's been amazing, we've got more to do and I don't want to get to a point where I say, well, we should have done this and we should have done that. But we were running out of time, we decided to end it there. No, we keep going until every stone and every newstone gets overturned, and that is my pledge
to the family and to the listenership. For some people, the podcasts that we do, that I do particularly, are just too detailed. There's too much information, that's too many people. And I have a friend who says, man, I've got a whiteboard in my garage and all the names. He said, I feel like I'm in one of those true crime dramas because stuff around. But he said I needed to do that to work out all the different family connections.
He said, I got to know everybody you know, and I feel like they've become part of my daily kind of routine. Where he was thinking, I wonder how Andy is today, and I wonder what Mattie's going to say next, which is what I wonder sometimes.
Matte is definitely the breakout star of the podcast I Eat It, Yeah, Dave, There were twists in this story that we could not possibly have seen coming. At the beginning, Judy seeing the former nurse who described seeing what she thought was a body wrapped in sheets driving past her window in a car driven she says by John Winfield.
I saw the car pull out at the end of the street and the light was on in the car. There's very squeaky brakes on that car, and he drove very slowly along the street, but he had left the car light on and I could see directly into the car, and I had a small lantern on the balcony rail and he kind of looked up this night and I saw this what looked to be like a mummy in the back of the car, and I thought, well, if he was taking out belonging, you wouldn't make it look like a body.
Do you know what I mean? So when you say a mummy, it was wrapped in something.
Yes, it was either very pale green or cream, not white, but maybe like a bed sheet or something like that. And I wanted the police to know that because I thought the pressure of that, the weight of that on the door might have been what was keeping the light on.
You were involved in testing that theory and with the hardest part of which was obtaining an original which at Headley was absolutely insistent on.
Yeah it was a Ford XS nine eighty seven sedan, and absolutely insistent on getting it that day pretty much.
So Dave and I joined about forty Facebook groups. I'm still getting friend requests from Ford xf fans on Facebook to try and track one down.
I remember sitting on the sidelines watching one of my sons played football, or trying to watch, while I was madly joining Facebook groups, sending messages to people responding to ads selling these except Sedan's calling up car groups and ridiculously that day got onto an incredible couple out at Ipswich. He responded yet very quickly and basically said yeah, come come out tomorrow. And we needed to do it that quick because we needed to get people down from Sydney.
We needed to go out and film this in time for the episode, which was that week.
So Healy's initial request, by the way, was for us to buy this.
Car the family, nice young couple who allowed us to use their car for the day, and put one of our colleagues Bianca. Where is Bianca, She's here. We wrapped the anchor up in one of the one of those sheets from home. Ruth said, oh, I take this one, and so bianchor was on the ground being rolled over in this sheet. But I felt that that was so amazing. It just showed the team effort and we don't have
a full time staff team. We have lots of people who come and help at at integral moments and they help enormously, and so Claire and Dave and others, you know, bi Anchor, they just all pitch in and we have a you know, it's a serious business and we're talking about dramatic and often really distressing stories and angles, but we come together and work professionally and everyone gets on
really well. There haven't been a couple of tense moments, and you know, I still feel really bad about getting cross last year with someone, sorry Bianchor, but you know, we've.
Had I've become really worried about hix Plane, having repped her in sheets with.
Stress levels are going through the roof. It also makes a huge difference when you're working with and having contact with people like Andy and Michelle. You know, they're just such down to earth, decent, cooperative people who have supported what we've done. They haven't always agreed with some of the angles that have been addressed, and I understand that
they're raw. They're very sensitive issues. Who wants to have family tensions broadcast to the world, But you know, they've been up for everything, and I'm incredibly grateful that they have because it has allowed us to tell this story in an unvarnished way, and the human elements, the human interest, are really important. I feel that those elements are almost as important as the hard evidence of what happened, when,
how and why. It's all part of that piece that makes people want to keep listening, and if they keep listening as a chance that they'll share it with someone
who knows something and contacts us. If we make a really boring podcast that sticks only to the black and white evidence and doesn't develop the human interest, then I think we risk failing to solve the crime because that kind of storytelling is not going to engage an audience and is not going to draw from the audience that person who has that little bit of evidence that could grow and make a massive difference.
Well.
A perfect example of that is the story of Sonia Lee, who emerged from of all places, the Facebook group that we run. I'm sure you guys are all members of the Facebook group. It routinely gives me and the dedicated Christen Amiot a stroke dealing with the highly problematic and defamatory comments that you guys will want to post in there. Dave, could you have imagined that the long lost daughter of John Winfield would come forward one.
Of the stories you just did not see coming out of this. And the thing I remember her saying was that I just want John's daughters just to.
Know this story.
I know what happened, so that they can have the full story, and then they can be more informed in making up their mine's about what might have happened, what might not have happened.
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.
And then the story of Beverly Brooker.
We first heard about BEV when we were in Lenox attempting to search Lake Ayneswerth, and there were some locals who were just making furtive approaches to Andy and I and one in particular mentioned Brooker and how this woman, an elderly woman who became very sick, had died, and it sounded like something that we needed to delve into deeply. But there was so much work ahead of us, and
that weekend at Lenox was really full. We were trying to comb a lake because of suspicion that Murray had and others had that possibly Bromin was put into the lake. I resolved that we would find out as much as we could try and contact Bev's brothers and talk to them, and we did that, and Maddie and I interviewed after some time Jeff Brooker, and Jeff told us his story and Jeff, is this just sold of the earth guy
who talked about how his sister became really sick. He felt isolated during her final days, isolated by John Winfield, whod suddenly presented himself as her care her guardian, the person in charge on pretty much everything that was going on in Bev's life, including the funeral. And then Jeff talked about the exclusionary tactics that were deployed at the funeral, where Jeff's family, Bev's relations were not welcomed. There are only eight people there and that was at John's direction.
He said, this is what beb would have wanted. But Jeff new his sister better than anyone, and he said, that's not right. How was the funeral conducted? What happened?
I mean, my brother asked can we help arrange things in the funeral? And he said, no, there's no need. Everything's sorted out. He's got it all under control. And I said, well, can we help with the flowers? Can we do the flower No, no need to touch the flowers. No one was allowed to.
Come to the funeral.
A couple of the people that did attend the funeral he didn't want them there. He was very upset about them being there. He reckons it was all my sister's requests that it was kept private, which is very strange because Beverley wasn't like that. She had a lot of close friends and work colleagues and she would have been happy.
To know that they were there.
At in service, he took control of everything, and there was a slide show of my sister's life, and he did not have one plato of himself in that slide show.
We thought, gosh, this is quite remarkable and we need to know more and more about this, and so we finally got hold of Bev's wills, and it turned out that Bev's wills had changed quite fundamentally six months before Bev died, and John became almost the sole beneficiary of this multimillion dollar estate. He's a total blow in.
We never met him and didn't know anything about him, and it was a real surprise and shop I think that he would inherit everything that my sister owned a Birshley.
And Bev's cousin was all but cut out. She received an amount that was a fraction of what she would have received and then she wasn't even contacted about the money. John was the executor of the world. So there was all of this going on. This is so different to what we started with. It's got nothing to do with bromwyn Winfield. You know, should we be even going there? Like what is it relevant to this important murder investigation
that we're doing. But the answer is it is important and it is part of the case because it goes, in my view, to character and it goes to the alleged manipulation and the influence and the propensity to be obsessive about money assets at a very valuable house and Bev had that and as most listeners know, bromwin had that too. Was Roman referred to as John's castle. He did not want to lose his castle and he would she you fight her to keep it. So we've unpacked that,
and there'll be more about BEV in coming episodes. But these are the tangents that you have with the case like this, where they develop momentum. People want us to know information that we had no inkling of when we started.
Dave, you are I don't want to embarrass you, but you are the most ethical and gentle and thoughtful journalists I think I've ever worked with a far from heavily. Of course, Dave is a pure gentleman, but I did have a moment of just delight within this episode listening to something that all journalists have gone through. When Dave rang one of Bev's brothers, and he wouldn't have a bar of you would.
He He is very wary that I was working with John Winfield, and so he asked me that directly. So I had to come up with a plan, and Jeff Is made it clear he doesn't use technology very much, because I was saying, oh, can I send you an email from my work email address.
Anyway, we end up coming up with something suitable.
I got Headley to text him and just verify that he was allowed to speak to it. He's dealing with a lot, even you know him and his brother Paul. They have just been devastated by the events around their sister's death. And Jeff said to me, look, I'm just glad that this is all out there now and just want people to know this information.
But Dave, this led us down yet another path that we couldn't have expected. Not only were we exploring this story of Bev and her final year, but then we were exploring the pain of her family, very sensitive questions of their relationship with their sister, the fact that they had lost contact with her, a little a cousin who had also lost contact but who had a deep love for Bev. This is part of crime reporting, isn't It's probably the main thing digging into these very private, painful things.
It is.
And you know, fortunately in this case, this is something that they did want out there, they did want to discussed.
You know.
It's just kind of like an open wound for their family and just being kind of completely unsettled. It's prompted us, when in doubt, to go and find out a bit more about wills and what are the rules around those wills, And you know, an experts have told us, Look, the other beneficiary should have been told by John Winfield, for instance that they were a beneficiary much sooner than they were and also confirmed that is appealable. You know, if
there's cousin Kathy wants to appeal that that's an option. Now, these are deeply personal stories, but you can also help people potentially towards a resolution.
So we're going to have a few minutes of questions. Now, I just want to were the police in all of this.
We find it very frustrating that all this evidence is coming out and yet there's only just in the last episode there was a little mention of the police looking into something, but apart from that, the police seemed to be not there.
That's my question.
Thank you. The police, who had been doing a big review of Bromin's case told Andy in i think early May last year that following their review, they didn't believe that they could take this case any further, that they'd been knocked back by the DPP before, and that they'd run out of leeds and angles and evidence. Now what's happened as a result of the podcast is more leads and angles and evidence and witnesses have come to light, and as a result, the police have been doing more work.
They've taken a statement from Judy seeing they've taken a statement from other people that the police didn't know about. And that is as it should be. That's great. What is a bit frustrating is, and I'll speak briefly for Andy here, because I think I know from everything he's told me, he feels that he is the last person to know anything that's going on. The police won't share with us or anyone else in the podcast team what they're doing, and I totally understand that they don't need to.
They would have serious trust issues that it would end up in episode twenty four, and so that's absolutely fine. But I think that there's got to be a balance struck between them being able to do their job effectively and us being able to do our job independently. But they're being a better way for them to jump onto evidence that could make a difference. They can always ask at the first opportunity for anything that they believe could help their investigation. They only have to pick up the phone,
and it's that easy. You know, we don't want to be obstructive. We wouldn't be. We would share with them a contact detail, an audio file, as long as we're not breaching any confidentiality. With a secret source or confidential informant. It's not a problem. I have done that in the Teacher's Pet investigation with the detective from the unsold homicide unit.
But in this investigation, it's just struck me that there has been a very deep reluctance of police to be as proactive in going after the relevant and I believe important information. And that's really disappointing for everybody who wants to see a result here. And I know it's incredibly disappointing for Andy and Michelle because they know how sometimes this information is just coming up out of the blue, and how willing we are to share it.
I just had today.
I caught up with Andy yesterday for a new story for the paper, and he reminded me of what the former New so Wells Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said after the Teacher's Patty said, and this is when Chrystalson had been convicted, he said, this is the most powerful investigative tool I've ever seen for an experienced policeman like that to say that things are still pretty new for police
back then. But we're now at a stage with these podcast investigations that I think police should be you know what to do now.
They should have a plan.
It should be on the front foot, and they should see it as an opportunity because it's not something they can stop.
It's beyond their control.
And they should be ready to get all the evidence that they can because I'll never get a better opportunity to get new evidence. Then if it's taken up on a global platform.
Like that, they've taken the caution to an extreme level. There won't be a collusion. We're not going to cause the police to breach any ethics they have, and I'm
not going to breach any confidences. But I think in their determination to try to not put a foot wrong and not have a judge castigating them in the event of there being some proceeding at a later date, they've become so cautious in dealing and asking for information from us that I think it has become probably a detriment to their own investigation.
What brings you here this cping, Well, I'm a big fan of the podcast.
Our friend and colleague producers Stephanie Coombs, was roaming the crowd, meeting the listeners who'd come out on this warm Sydney late summer evening and What is it about true crime that you're enjoyed in solving puzzles.
I'm actually an investigator for work, so yeah, I like the puzzle.
The riddle needs to be solved true Oh you're a bit of a heavy fan.
I am, and I'm one of the voiceovers that appears in episode twenty one, particularly these ones that are about women, women's stories, looking after other women and how unfair the justice system is and finally someone gets to tell the truth and see the truth that it's a nice way to change the law and the way of being.
I love how deep they go on all the information and no question is left unanswered. So I really enjoy sitting at home or doing all my work with the kids around and having one AirPod in listening to what's going on and knowing that Edley or whoever it is doing the research is going to get to the next point that was a question already in my mind, so nothing left unanswered.
I listened to the podcast fanatically. I think I got drawn into it by Headley and how he gives all the detail in all the podcasts Teachers Pat. I was hooked on and amazing outcome, and I believed him all the way and everything he presented, and I just started out of interest with Headley.
I think he presents incredibly.
My husband is bizarre that I'm coming, but I'm just interested. And also he's helping other people by getting an outcome. I think it's also the context, like women disappearing and everyone sweeps under the carpet and it's just horrendous and blaming them other.
What is it about true crime that you find interesting?
Just the fact that it's real, and I mean, especially in this case, the fact that it's a real story that can be solved, and it's just so clever the way he's piecing together so much complicated little facts and details into such a to be a timeline. And yeah, that's why I here. This one's the one I most look forward to. I'm always eagerly looking at my up to see if a new episode's being released.
Welcome back, all right, now joining me on stage once again, of course, he saidly Thomas. Next to him is Maddie Walsh, bromwyn Winfield's cousin and an invaluable member of the team on this podcast. I don't think any of us expected that we'd be working with a brilliant young person who has helped us so much. I don't think you expect about either, Maddie. No, not at all, not at all.
And next to Maddie is Matthew Condon. One of the things I love about this kind of storytelling is how it helps us look beyond what we might think about people. You know, this is someone who was working in the local takeaway shop. You know she was a young mum dealing with all the pressures of time that young mums are dealing with, and yet she had this deep, soulful outpouring of very intelligent thinking. Maddie in your family's life and you're growing up. What did you know about Bromwin.
Despite never meeting her. I knew that she had the biggest heart. She cared for everyone around her no matter what, and her devotion to her kids was like none other. She would have never left her kids, and she loved everyone around her. She was positive, happy, and just a really kind soul.
What have you thought as you've discovered more about her as time has gone on, and the kind of situation she was in, because she's closer to your age than she is to our age.
Really yeah, Look, she just wanted to make a great life for her kids. You can tell that through her writing, so you can tell that through you know, her relationships with her family. And it's really kind of confronting to realize that she was close in age to me and she was going through something that was normalized back then. It was you were told, you know, just to suck it up and keep going.
And to know that when now I'm.
This situation thirty one years later, it is so hard to fat them because there are still so many people in that kind of situation.
You're seeing your friends, you know, having their first big, serious relationships, embarking on those adult bonds that are going to shape their next couple of decades. Do you see you know, similar patterns emerging the people around you and your generation.
Oh, one hundred percent, the patterns are still there. I see a lot of people I know that are in toxic relationships, and there is still such a big fear that comes with going to the police or reporting these things, because the police still now sometimes just don't listen, they don't acknowledge these things. They just say, oh, you know, get out of the relationship belief, But sometimes you can't.
And I think that's a big part of responsibility that comes down to the police and what they should do in these situations, because I feel like people are getting younger and younger and getting trapped in these relationships and that and so tragically.
Mattie's part of a generation which is very fluent in the language of I suppose what you will call therapy. They know phrases like gas lighting or coercive control that we didn't have as younger people to describe situations that we are our friends might have been in. Matt and Headley, what do you think about that empowerment that has come Has it changed things for people of your kids generation? Do you think?
Gee? I think that the information and the intelligence that I get from people like Maddie and my own daughter who's just two years older than Maddie, makes me really concerned for their safety. And I remember Maddie. It was only this time last year that Maddie told me and I couldn't get on the phone for several days. Yeah, she wasn't applying to messages, and then finally she said, oh, I had the most terrible experience where she meets her friends.
She'd been spiked, She'd been injected with something that was supposed to render her unconscious like rhypnole. Many just tell me what's happened.
Well, Saturday night, I went out with my friends and one second I was sitting at the table, and the next second I woke up at home the next day and I had this really sore upper thigh and it felt like a really deep bruise. I cannot remember a single thing. My memory was completely gone. And it was a very small bruise and it felt very very deep, like any pressure on it hurt. Within like two days after, I was very dizzy. I got a really really bad headache.
I went to the doctor on the Monday. It was going to be really hard to find traces because it had been over twenty four hours. However, they were able to find minimal traces of something they couldn't exactly identify.
What has it made you less trusting?
Yeah, it's essentially a day rate drug. I don't know whether it's because they feel like they can't come up and talk to us.
I don't know why they do it.
I was looking into it and it said, if you've had one or two drinks and you're destructed, chances are the needle is so tiny you won't feel it. My friends were all wearing pants. I was the only one wearing a skirt. There really is no other explanation.
She was with friends, and she got out of that situation, and she was brave enough to confront the hotel managers and try to take it forward get CCTV. They couldn't have been less interested, sadly in that situation. And we talked about even trying to deal with this in the podcast episode as a warning to other young women. And you could be in a really fancy hotel or pub and some guy would just be using a spiking device to try to make you unconscious and then take you away,
and who knows what could have happened. You probably have to be a whole lot more savvy about your safety.
Yeah, one hundred percent.
I mean I told everyone about it because I want them to be aware too, especially considering there was no responsibility taken by the pub, And then through talking to people, found that it had happened so many other times and nothing had been done, and all they really wanted was just awareness for it, be cautious of what's going on.
So they kind of still is that level of hopelessness despite being so far into the future from when Brown disappeared, where it's like, you know, bad things are still happening. Despite being so aware of these things and having avenues like podcasts to talk about them or things being on the news, it's still so difficult because so many things just get swept under the carpet, especially things to do with violence against women.
Matte, you live in northern New South Wales. Lenox Head is really part of your community, and you spend a lot of time there during this investigation. I'm really intrigued about how in this community this story became something that was discussed in the surf break at the local shops, that it didn't go any further. What do you think about that? What was going on in lenox Head.
It's a very complex question. I just want to let you know that my daughter's about to turn seventeen and I sought advice from a very close friend and he said it's very simple. By a double barrel shotgun and you leave it in the umbrella stand by the front door. So I'm working on that. I've been living in far northern Newsathlales now for about six years. I was living
at a place called Suffolk Park. But then if you just go ten or fifteen minutes south you hit Lennox Head, which really is a hamlet that has not changed that much over the decades. You can wander down there and still find every morning at six or seven o'clock in the morning, a particular group of old surfers in their seventies and eighties still talking like they might have when they were in their twenties, as if time has not passed. This is heaven. Let's look at the break and discuss
things at old surfers discuss. I mean, it's that sort of place where you know someone can have the same shop for forty years, so you have a very tight community. And the fact that nothing happened with Bronwyn for me, it goes to the heart of the issue and this podcast, the Bronwin podcast, and indeed the teacher's pet at the core of both of these stories is something that really
upsets me. And this might sound a little grandiose, but thinking about Bronwyn and male behavior around her, I have this thought that the Australian male narrative that we've all lived with and accepted since the seventeen late seventeen hundreds, this story of the knock about larkan beer swilling yobo with a heart of gold. We need to rewrite the Australian male narrative for starters, I think in our history and teach the next generation of boys that being a
yobo and hitting women is not right. You are not a great Australian And that's why I think we should begin. I'm sorry I drifted off into that, but really, when I look at Andy and Michelle and I think about Bronwyn and what she went through. As Headley and his remarkable work unfolds, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that we have to do something essential otherwise this is going to happen over and over and over again as it is happening. So I'm sorry if I sounded like
I was on a soapbox. But the impact of working with the team, with Headley and the team, and it brings up these elemental human stories that are so critical and go to the heart of how we live and behave towards each other.
Matt raised a great point there, But we've been talking about all these complex and sensitive issues, and what experts say about cocive control is that perpetrators often don't present as overtly aggressive or violent. And that's the point. It's much more true and more frightening to confront the reality that it's the quiet, insidious, creeping control that is the most dangerous and that can ultimately lead to intimate partner homicide. It's not just the beast willing your bo you have
to look out for. It might be the quiet guy, the apparently sensitive guy. It might be the guy who doesn't drink or smoke. Coercive control is strongly linked to intimate partner homicide, and there is powerful evidence that behaviors like attempted strangulation are often precursors to homicide. Yeah, one of the wonderful things about true crime podcasting is an opportunity to step back in time and examine what society used to be like and maybe hold a mirror up
to our own society. It's also a bit of a like a road movie. And on this road movie, the buddies, you two divided by a generation, kind of a bit of a father daughter vibe, annoying big brother, demanding younger sister. Maybe, Maddie, how do you keep headly in line?
Oh it's easy, Look, I just tell him how it is he's like, can you do this for me?
Maybe?
And he's like, okay, okay, and it works. It works well.
I don't know.
I feel like if I did everything he said, it wouldn't be the same.
It's very hard to get cross with Maddie. Yeah, she's just got such a big heart and beautiful spirit and she strives to help. And I don't think I could have got as far as we have with this podcast. In fact, I know I wouldn't have if it hadn't been for Maddie's help and support, but also for her
sense of humor. She is so funny, and you need humor in these dark cases, these stories that involve a lot of sadness and stress and looking at death and forensic issues and awful things like body decomposition and so on. And we do all of that, and then in the lighter moments, Maddie just comes to the fore and she's got these incredible one liners, and I find that has
been an enormous help. And the other thing Maddy's been able to do is make a great bridge between members of the family and helping to mediate sometimes difficult situations that if Maddie hadn't been around, probably would have been almost impossible to negotiate.
I can see a question right there in the middle, and please ask us a question, thank you.
I was curious with regards to John Winfield selling his home and if there would be enough grounds to implement an order for him not to leave the country or if there was anything with regards to where that was at.
Well, yeah, I know that a lot of people have been concerned about that possibility. There's probably every opportunity for police if anything happens, to bring back someone who has left the jurisdiction. And John Winfield has to have the presumption that our rule of law entitles into the presumption of innocence, and he should be free to take a holiday in my view, like he can go to Bali or Fiji wherever he likes. But I suspect that if he does, the authorities will know that that's where he is.
And there may well be even more than that in terms of knowledge of where he might be traveling within other countries. Possibly. I don't know he's gone on holidays before, surfing trips and so on. And if he takes another one, then as long as he's bought a return ticket, that's okay.
Another question my Christopher Heavily, I've got actually zoom out a moment.
Did you find podcasting or did podcasting find you?
I reckon it was a bit of both. Actually. I had my wife Ruth, who was urging me to start a podcast investigation, and my cousin Rob, who was doing the same. Like everybody here, probably I listened to Cereal and I hope like most people here, I thought ad Nan definitely did it. And I see that in breaking news yesterday. The courts in the US have determined that they're not going to vacate the conviction and they're looking
at possibly reducing his sentence. But something weird went on about a year ago when they said they were going to withdraw the can against him for killing Hayman Lee. That was the podcast that really got me thinking seriously about doing one. But once I discovered how deeply you can delve into true crime and possibly make a positive and permanent difference in a case, which is what we did in the Teacher's Pet, I realized that it would be impossible to go back to the journalism that I
was doing before, which was all writing. It didn't involve any audio, all video. You know, it's going to be grueling. They're exhausting. I mean, here we are in February, end of February twenty twenty five. I first heard about this case almost seven years ago, but we didn't start really investigating it properly until I guess January of last year, and we've still got several months ago. Hard to let go once you've started, and you also know that there's
so many other cases that need delding into. You know, I received probably twenty emails a week from people who are almost pleading for help in relation to someone they know, often a loved one, and the unsolved murder or disappearance of that person. We're going to a tiny fraction of those, but if we do them properly, and we choose well slect well ones that can be sold, we can continue to do that.
I'm not sure whether you're aware, but had these podcasts actually have a sort of health and medicinal benefit. We were flying from Brisbane today. He was seated behind me and I looked over. He was fast asleep with his ear podged in and on the gangplank off the plane. I said, what we're listening to? Is said, I was listening to the latest episode of Bronwin and he said no, he said, bear me out. He said, women often come up to me and say, I go to bed with
you every night and it helps me sleep. And Henry said, you know what it does, and it was the episode that is due out next week.
Say to deliver the draft to me, and I thought, I'll just hear it on the plane. I can't take notes so what I want to change, but at least I can get a sense of it. So, like most of you, I fall asleep to my own podcast.
Okay, we've got time for one more question and then you'll have to take your questions out back out to the chase just right here at the front. Thank you.
Thank you to everyone and the panel, Mattie and your family, your bravery for coming forward. I've been fortunate enough to live in a few countries before Australia, and unfortunately there's been a common thread where men do act like that no matter the country. And there's a word for that, which is femicide, violence upon women because of their gender. There's a long discussion of loneliness, algorithms, social media creating
the void that creates the islands. But I was just wondering What were the panel's views on that issue, especially in the context of men.
What do you think maybe about the men who you know? Well, oh, okay, she's going to rip into a few people.
I don't know, like I mean my age, no offense, They all suck. I just do think there is a lot of change that needs to happen. And I think maybe it's because they have been given so many excuses for.
The way they act. And oh, it's frustrating. Matt and Henley, we are all raising somes. All three of us are different ages. What do you think about how the generations who are coming into their maturity now might differ, and whether social media does play a part in their struggles.
Well, I have a nineteen year old son who he seemed to have just missed the TikTok obsession, and so he's out of that. Having said that, I've got a twelve year old son. His hands are soldered to his gaming apparatus, but then he's not that fussed with the phone, whereas my daughter is absolutely obsessed with the phone. I'm sorry to answer your incredibly brilliant question, would I don't know whether we've got enough time in a month to do it. It's a very complicated question. But I went
to pick up my daughter. She was sitting on the ground with her girlfriend. They were sitting side by side and texting each other. So the idea of dialogue was anathema, and I just thought, that's a snapshot of her generations, what we're discovering as older.
I guess Maddie would look at Matt and I as pretty old. You know, she's twenty two next week. I'll be fifty eight, and a couple of months match recently turned sixty. But Maddie had to adjust pretty quickly to me picking up the telephone and ringing her.
Regularly.
All right me and email me?
And what's so aggressive?
And I would and I just go, yeah, I'm just going to.
Ring Maddie and we'll have a conversation and we'll communicate. And the communication skill is what we've lost, what the younger people, I believe, have forfeited with their obsession with screens and platforms and so on. Us coming together like this and talking and communicating and having eye contact and meeting each other and touching and being able to share interesting anecdotes.
That just should be the norm. And we've got to get back to a proper communication, whereby the loneliness that you're talking about is less of an issue because we're having interaction, we're having normal contact.
I would like to say, you do often call me before nine am.
I'm not going to pick that up because.
I've been working, I've been working for four hours or.
Yeah, I must say I often get the calls before nine a m. As well, I think only when you don't pick up.
Yeah.
All right, that's it. Thank you very much for coming tonight, thank you for listening.
And.
Just an update on the state of play arising from Andy Reid's letter to State Coroner Teresa O'Sullivan. That's the letter that was emailed to her office on December seventh, twenty twenty four. You heard about Andy Reid's letter in episode twenty one, the first episode of this season three. Now it took two months for Andy to receive a very brief written acknowledgment from someone in the State Coroner's
office or registry. A few lines of text were finally sent to Andy in that acknowledgment soon after we disclosed it episode twenty one, and in related stories in The Australian that Andy had sent the letter to urge the Date Coroner to use her powers and order a search of the Illewong property. The email confirmed that Andy Reid's eleven page letter of two months earlier had been received. Well.
Andy already knew that the email to Andy Reid from an unnamed individual in the Coroner's office did not address Andy by name. The email did not even reference the name of the deceased. Andy's sister, Romwin Winfield. She could have been anyone too, and the email did not say
from whom it originated. What do we have there? For two months, not even the courtesy of an acknowledgment from the Coroner's office of a crucially important eleven page letter drafted in good faith for Andy by a very experienced lawyer. When families seeking answers about loved ones are treated that shabbily by taxpayer funded agency such as the state Coroner's office, it is no wonder in my view that people like
Andy reach out to journalists and podcasters to help. Andy is aware that the Unsolved Homicide Unit has a copy of the letter which Andy had sent to the State Coroner, Theresa O'Sullivan. The Unsolved Homicide Unit must have got that
copy from the State Coroner's Office. The State Coroner will no doubt be seeking advice from police about whether Andy's reasons for seeking a search of the property at Illawong are solid and at the recent request of police, I have provided further information to a senior detective from the Unsolved Homicide Unit in relation to the suspicions we have over the Illawong property. We will follow next steps closely.
In the meantime, someone in the New South Wales government needs to take a good hard look at whether staff supporting the State Coigner's Office are competent and trained to communicate in a timely and courteous fashion with families of the deceased. 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 bromwn Inus Claire Harvey, Kristin Amiert, Joshua Burton, Bridget, Ryan Bianca, far Marcus, Katie Burns, Liam Mendez, Sean Callen and 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,