Listeners are advised that this podcast series Bromman contains coarse language and adult themes. This podcast series is brought to you by me Hedley Thomas and The Australian Listen Photos.
Oh here we go. This is why I kept this. What you can see there? That car, I think and Murray'll be able to tell you for sure was the car that he used to go to Sydney the night she disappeared.
I see on the evening of May sixteenth, nineteen ninety three, Bromwin was at home with her two daughters, next door to Murray and Devin Sandstone Crescent. John has been away in Sydney for work. He and Bromwin had formerly separated seven weeks earlier. The Winfield family car, a white Ford Falcon Sedan, was in the driveway. Murray always knew when John or Broman left the house in that car because of a distinctive noise.
It made it ad litally squeaking brakes. And so that's why I was sitting here. I thought, I'll get to your Bromin's car. It's like I heard it before I saw it. So I'm sitting on the unge here two Viel's there I'm actually watching Wore the Roses.
The black satirical comedy from the late eighties stars Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. A married couple heading towards a bitter divorce, The Roses fight to the death for the family home and its contents. I want a divorce.
No, you don't.
You can't have one.
I've thought about this a lot. I really don't want to be married to you anymore. I may have let you have the house, but now you'll never get it.
You will never get that house.
Do you understand?
You will never get that house.
The movement and noise of the white Ford Falcon owned by his neighbors grabbed Murray's attention, and he stopped watching War of the Roses.
When I heard the squeaky brakes, someone's stealing Broblem's car.
Can you show me what you saw? Yes?
What?
The lounges used to be there, and the two v used to be there. So I've got up off that lounge when I heard the car break squeak, and I come up here and stood here. Yeah, and it was all open. I'll see the cargo out there.
Let's walk outside onto the front.
Law.
So Jodn Broman's house.
That's it there.
Has the house changed much?
Hasn't changed at all? Not one thing that exactly.
Did you ever hear them arguing? No, so if they squabbled or fought, they were fairly quiet. Yeah, yeah, but you shouldna live far apart.
Yeah, but I never heard it.
Why did you think that it was a car theft rather than Bromin or John Travil car?
Well, because it's no John was back.
Yeah.
Yeah. The car backed out with no lights.
On, bottomed down on the road, does a big groove in the road and rolled down the hill down the bottom of he down here with no lights on.
It's on, the lights on, start the engine and ran out of the way.
When Murray describes the car bottoming out and leaving a groove in the road, he's describing what he believes must have happened. He distinctly heard the noise of what he says must have been the chassis or underside of the back of the car beneath the boot or trunk scraping on Bitchamen. As the car reversed from the sloping driveway and onto the road of Sandstone Crescent.
The car bottomed out and strap from the road out the front. But it dug a pretty deep hole in the road. Have it occasionally spraped before?
Yes?
Yes, At this time when it scraped, it actually dug it with probably twenty five milad.
And did you infer anything at the time that was suspicious from that scrape and that noise?
And yeah? Oh for see the boots fitevy.
You remember seeing the car rolling down hill headlights off and jed off. Had you seen John or Bromin driving the car down the hill like that?
Pool? Nah?
No, Have you ever driven down this hill without your engine and lights hill?
No?
No, it's pretty unusual.
It's very unusual. Yeah.
Yeah, And normally they would always come out of.
The driveway and go up the hill. Yeah, it was an odd thing to do.
Is that what made you suspicious?
Oh?
Definitely.
At the time, I was concerned about someone steel in my car and it was Brom's car, so I got up in this twenty to eleven.
That's strange for a car leaving a strong night.
Murray's account of seeing and hearing the Winfield vehicle leaving the house in Sandstone Crescent on the night of Sunday, May sixteenth, nineteen ninety three, must be solid. But Bronwan wasn't driving that car. Her husband John was behind the wheel, and the reason for the car bottoming out scraping on
the bitchmen. Five years after Bromwin disappeared, the detective sergeant from Ballina Police, Glenn Taylor, who led a comprehensive investigation and prepared a significant brief of evidence for an inquest, was of the view that the car bottomed out because Broman's body was in the boot or the back seat. It's a very serious allegation and John Winfield emphatically denies this. But John certainly does not deny that he was driving
the car about that time. In fact, he says it was him, and we're going to deal with this in detail in this episode and in the next one. First, it's important to establish the chronology of events over the Saturday and Sunday leading up to the time of about ten forty pm on Sunday when the family car left and Bromwin was never again. Will go first to the
evidence of Jody, John's daughter from his first marriage. In a previous episode, you heard how Bromman had written a heartfelt letter to Jody pledging love and support for her stepdaughter, notwithstanding the breakdown of the marriage. In Jody's statement to police five years later in September nineteen ninety eight, she discloses a telephone conversation with broman on the Friday, two days before her stepmother's disappearance.
I can't recall how it happened, but I rang the house at Sandstone Crescent and Bronwin answered the telephone. She told me that she'd moved back into the house with the kids and that she was staying there. She also told me that Dad was not welcome there and that he can stay in Sydney with me. She told me that she was going to get a restraining order so
that he couldn't come near the house. She also told me that the house belonged to her, and I really noticed that she changed from the person who wanted us all to say close. We both started to argue because I told her that it was not her house and that it belonged to Dad, Crystal, Lauren and me as well. I also told her that it belonged to us, more so because she was the one that chose to leave.
It is an interesting point. Jody is suggesting that because Bromin had decided to leave John and had moved out of the house for about seven weeks. Her entitlement to the property was diminished. John's daughter, Jody, was living in Sydney at the time of these conversations with Bromwin. She was eighteen years old and close to her dad. Jody was twenty three when she gave her statement to police in nineteen ninety eight. These are her words, it's not her voice.
I asked her what had made her change her attitude so much, and she told me that the clairvoyant had told her to move back in and do all this. It developed into a very heated argument and we were yelling at each other, and she hung up on me. I immediately rang her back and the phone was engaged. I kept trying, but she must have left the phone off the hook. The following day, which would have been Saturday, fifteenth of May nineteen ninety three, I rang the Lennox
head house before I went to work. It would have been before nine am when I spoke to Cristel and she told me that Bronwin had gone out for the day and would not be returning until four o'clock that afternoon. At that stage, Cristel was about ten years of age and Lauren was five. I asked Cristel who was minding them, and she told me that she was minding Lauren and that it was great because she had never been left alone before. I told Christel that I wanted to talk
to her mother when she got home. When I terminated the phone call and told Dad, he appeared to be very stressed out about it because they had never been left alone before and he was so far away.
It's hard to know what to make of this claim by Jody that Bronwin was going to leave her two children alone in the house through Saturday. Everybody who has to to me and to the police has stressed how responsible Bromwin was. If anything, Bromwin was overly protective. That's the message I took from all of these conversations with witnesses, and they ranged from those who were close to her to others who didn't know her well but just saw
her attentiveness. You heard from Virginia Bevis in the previous episode when she mentioned that her daughter had babysat on the Saturday night when broman went to the birthday party in Lennox. Virginia remembers Bromwin disclosing that her stepdaughter Jody had telephoned the house after broman and the girls had moved back into Sandstone Crescent, and.
Jodi rang it when she moved back in and said, how do you move back in Dad's house?
Because she told me that too.
Why would that be?
How do you She was furious.
Yeah, John had said something to Jody, and Jody rang Bromwin in the abused and.
I remember.
Virginia told me something else, which underlines how careful Bromwin was with her daughters, Crystal and Lauren. Just before Bromwin left for the birthday party on the Saturday evening, she walked with her daughters to the nearby home of Virginia and her husband Lee.
She was really nervous, and my husband kept on telling her how great she looked, and it'd be great.
And it wasn't that.
Late that night that we saw.
The reason for the brief meeting was simple. Bromwin had already made an arrangement for her girls to be babysat by Virginia and Lee's daughter Celeste.
It was probably Mant sevenish that we saw that she come over.
Haw'd she see excited?
She was only coming over to pick up our daughter to take her back there across the road to babysit.
That's why I said she'd never leave those kids.
And she carried the kids in too.
It was about her wanting to look after your daughter and hers. Yeah at the same time.
Yeah, yeah, no, she brought him in.
You just found that was reinforcement with or view that she was a very dating mother.
Oh god, Ja, even at work at Eden's, it's a nursing Lauren on her breaks.
And then she wouldn't leave those kids for the world.
You saw her being fairly devoted with her kids.
Just knock on the door. She carried Lauren in and they were all round way in the world.
She would lead it.
But I never saw her again.
Several hours before Virginia saw her for the last time, Bronwyn telephoned the home of Richard and Jane Johnston in Sydney. Richard Johnston is a cousin of John Winfield, and Richard's wife Jane had become Bromwin's friend. They lived close by in the shire and even shared a home there for a month and a half while John was building the house in Sandstone Crescent, Lennox Head. These are the words of Richard and Jane Johnston. These are not their voices.
I became a bit of a confidant to Bronwyn and I got to know her extremely well. We would often talk on the telephone, and it was mostly for an hour at a time. When Bronwyn moved to Lennox Head, we still kept in constant contact. In fact, no longer than a month would go by without a phone call. I noticed that the telephone calls from Bronwyn during the latter part of nineteen ninety two and the early part of nineteen ninety three contained more specific complaints. These complaints
concerned the possibility of violence. She would often state to me that she was scared of John and worried that he would hit her, Although she never ever told me that he did, and I'm sure she would have if it had occurred. She did inform me after Christmas that year he had backed her up against the kitchen cabinets and raised his hand as if to hit her, but
then just walked away. She would always tell me during these conversations that she felt like leaving John, and at one point I told her to leave if it was really as bad as she said. She would also tell me that John would keep her short of money and wouldn't let her have any more than about thirty dollars in her purse. She would have to account for every cent that he had given her, and she had to ask for everything she needed. She couldn't just go and
draw money from the bank. She did say on one occasion that John would not give her any money because he wanted to make sure she couldn't leave.
When Richard Johnston spoke to police, he explained that when he and Jane had last visited Bromwin and John in the Lennox in October the previous year.
There was some fiction between them. I recall that it was a very uncomfortable evening. I did not see any physical contact between them, but there seemed to have been some verbal confrontation between them.
Earlier, Richard told police about the call that he received the day before Bronwyn vanished.
The next time I had any contact was on Saturday, May fifteen, nineteen ninety three. I was at home when Bronwyn rang on the telephone and asked for Jane. This would have been somewhere between two thirty and three pm in the afternoon. I told Bronwyn that Jane was overseas but would be back in a few weeks. Bronwyn seemed very upset on the telephone, and I asked her, could I have Jane ring her. Bronwyn said for me not
to worry and she would ring her later. I did not know why Bronwyn was upset, but I could tell something was bothering her by the tone of her voice.
Richard and Jane had emigrated from the United Kingdom several years earlier, and coincidentally, Richard flew to the UK on May sixteen, and he and Jane returned to Australia in June of that year, nineteen ninety three. By then, Bronwyn had been missing for a month.
I have never had any contact with Bronwyn since what's the last phone call on May fifteen, nineteen ninety three. John has told me that he has had no contact with Bronwyn either.
I feel certain that if she was still alive, she would have made contact with her children if nobody else. She was a very devoted mother, and I am certain that she would not have left the children willingly.
Shortly before the release of this episode, for Cristel assured friends and family of her hopes for a result from the podcast investigation into the disappearance of her mother, Bronwyn. Cristel does not know what happened to her mother. She likes to post photographs of her. More photos, including some Crystal has never seen, are being sent in now by people who knew Bronwyn. Some of the images include Crystal
from when she was a little girl. I doubt Cristel will talk on the record in this podcast, and I haven't asked her to be a participant. It's well understood on Bromwyn's side of the family that Crystal doesn't want to upset her sister Lauren or her stepfather, John Winfield. Lauren hasn't had contact with her mom's side of the family for three decades, but Cristel is close to the
read relations. In Cristel's recent message to her friends and family via Facebook, she posted some happy photographs of herself. She wrote, I just want.
To thank everyone that has reached out to me this week to see how I'm doing. In conjunction with the recent Headley Thomas podcast release of my mother's disappearance. It has not been easy all these years. I chose not to be involved in it for various reasons. However, I do have a few theories on her disappearance based on my own life experiences, and maybe someone out there knows the truth. Maybe we can finally solve this mystery and
put it all behind us. It's been so nice to reconnect with so many of you, and.
Now weekends with Peter Vegan on four VC.
Good Morning, Brisbane, Happy Saturday. It is the first of June and the first day of whinther It's the case of Bronwyn Winfield, who went missing from her home in Lennox Head thirty one years ago, leaving behind her two children and never to be heard from again. I listened to that Bronwen podcast yesterday and for people on the
outside that don't understand how we work. If we're trying to get a family to speak about, whether it's a cold case an accident, at times you have to offer them a guarantee or a result, and families expect that if they do speak to you, that something is going to happen. How difficult is it for you Headley, to sit down with a family and not be able to guarantee that there's going to be an outcome if they tell their story.
I have a general rule.
I don't want to raise expectations to such a level that they believe they're definitely going to get justice that they believe has been denied for sometimes decades. I assure them that I'll give it absolute total commitment. It will bring mistiness who knows something, who have never talked before out of the woodwork. It causes people who have been keeping secrets a long time to think, I don't want
to do this anymore. I actually want to tell Headley or the cops something that I saw or heard, something.
That might be relevant.
And that's why it's never too late with these cases. There's always a possibility of more and fresh, better information being produced. Unfortunately, a lot of cold cases that they can just age and go stale in an unsolved homicide squad's filing cabinet where there are so many of these. What the podcast investigations can do is all of the information in a coherent way over multiple episodes and attract witnesses who have never talked.
Before for people that may not be aware of Bromwin Winfield. She was a young mother that lived in the town of lenox Head in New South Wales, a very small town. Head Lee a lot of people would find it difficult to keep secrets in a town like Lenox Head. But once again we have this, Oh the mother just took off mentality.
How deeply stupid is that proposition? Then somebody could just sort of start again without the children that they've always dosed on, without leaving any trace, any evidence of life. And in Bromin's case, she's a very dedicated mother of two.
Why would she take off?
For someone to think that the mother would just leave their children a devoted mother. We hope that some good and I'm sure it will will come out of this podcast series.
I really appreciate pir Thank you.
This podcast series may be the last chance to solve a mystery spanning three decades, the last opportunity for Bromwin's family and loved ones and friends to know the truth. If you know something about Bromwin, about her marriage, about her fate that you believe could make some difference, even a small difference, then send me an email confidentially. The address is Bromwyn at the Australian dot com dot au.
Let's go back to the police statement of John's daughter Jody, describing the events of the Saturday afternoon.
I started ringing at four pm, and from memory, I think she answered and hung up when she heard my voice because she knew what was going to happen. I tried ringing her straight after, but she must have left the phone off the hook again. It was off the hook all night. I told Dad and he made arrangements to fly to Balaner the following day. I felt that I was out of the situation then when Dad was going back home to sort it out, so I left it to him. I can't recall whether I tried ringing
the following day. The following afternoon, Sunday, May sixteenth, nineteen ninety three, I drove Dad to the Sydney Airport so that he could catch the plane to Balliner.
The last time I spoke to bron was on the Saturday.
We then later found out that she had a shift at the takeaway shop on the Sunday afternoon, and the girls were at home playing with the next door neighbor on the life side, Debbie's kids, and Debbie was looking after him and the kids were sort of playing him in the tree.
Holmes, John's older brother by two years, Peter Winfield, was interviewed by the police. Detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor in nineteen ninety eight. Peter said he hadn't been aware of trouble in the marriage until he heard that Bromwin had moved out of the house. It was during this separation period that John moved to Sydney for work, and for a while he stayed at his brother Peter's house.
I can't recall how long John stayed with us, or if he confided with me in what was happening in his private life. I do remember that all of a sudden, John had heard that Bronwin had returned or was going to return to the family home at Lennox Head. I think John was worried that if he didn't go back, he would find out that he would be locked out and it wouldn't be his home anymore.
It's the same view expressed by his niece, John's daughter Jody, that the partner living in the house could make the stronger claim to ownership of the house.
I remember leaving our home to go to Bowena. I don't recall whether he said anything about Bronwyn or what was happening at that stage.
Peter's wife, Louise, however, had a better memory.
John came and saw us and told us that Bronwyn and the kids had left the house in Lennox Head and moved into a townhouse. John was very upset and very emotional at that time. He considered that it was very unfair that someone could take the children away from him so easily. John also said that he was worried that if Bronwin moved back into the house and he wasn't living there, that he would then be unable to
return to the house himself. As far as I recall, he told us that he was going back to Lenox Head to prevent this happening.
John had been bricklaying at a house in Sydney owned by a contact he had made in the building industry, Glenn Webster. When John wasn't on the job, he stayed in a house Glenn and his wife were renting while their own home was being built with John's help. This is what Glenn webs did old police during the investigation by Detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor in nineteen ninety eight.
I recall while the work was going on, John suddenly left. John didn't tell me where he was going. I don't remember how I found out, but I later established that John had gone up to Lennox Head. During the time that John stayed at our home in Dixon Clothes. He never mentioned Broman, and at no stage did he ever tell me that Broman had moved out of his family home in Lennox Head. On occasions he used our phone to call home, but I didn't take any notice of his conversations.
Glenn's wife, Jane Webster added.
I recall that on one occasion, John Winfield phoned his home when he was staying with us. I remember that he seemed concerned following this telephone call. I remember asking John if everything was all right, and he said yes. John was not the type of person to disclose anything of his personal life.
I went with Madison Walsh to meet Mel Taylor in a Brisbane public library after Mel had finished work. Mel grew up in the home next to John and Bromwin's home. Mel's parents are Murray and deb and Mel's childhood best friend back then was Crystal Bronwin's daughter.
How do I know you?
I know it looks really familiar.
I am Bromwin's second cousin, so I'm quite close to Crystal.
Now let's go back to Lennox's Head, nineteen ninety three. What do you remember about Sunday May sixteen?
I know I was at the park with Crystal and Lauren that afternoon around five point thirty ish, sixish. I came home before the girls came home. Bromin came to that door and she's like, oh, hey, is Lauren and Crystal here? And like, no, they're at the park. And she said to me, can you go get them because her father's coming home.
Is it a strong memory, Yeah, it's a strong memory, yep.
But your confident that was the day she read.
Yeah, because it was a Sunday night.
It was clear to her then that johnthan was coming back.
Yeah, because she had just come home from work. We were looking after Lauren and Crystal. I had gone with Crystal and a mum to the house to take boxes back to Sandstone Present. I wouldn't know how she'd found out that he was coming home. I think she did say to me that he was coming on a flight.
As a twelve year old girl in nineteen ninety three, Mel tried to stay out of John's way.
Us to frighten me the way he used to treat the girls, his demeanor and he mess whatsoever, he would just go crazy, very strict.
Are you're going to be strict and not scary?
I think it was this because of the strength of him, just my memory of the person he was seeing him working out with his branch press and yeah, that wasn't the garage.
Did he get cross with you or angry with him?
Not to me.
No.
If the girls had eaten any food and they made a mess on the floor with the food, he had seen it, he would be very angry. Said, well, that's to play over something that was spilt on the floor. I went talking like minimal like crumbs. And then the girl's wan allowed to come out and play after that.
What about with Bromwin? How did you observe her?
I love Bromwin. I found out she was such a beautiful person.
What was it about Bromwen you liked?
She would have done anything for those kids, And that's what's sad about the whole situation, Like she was, I was trying to prepare for a better life with the kids.
Giving and taking is equally important, for without the taking, you lose all feelings of self worth and self esteem. It can be extremely dangerous and have disastrous repercussions on those around you, especially with children.
In Bowna, a man called John Watson received a tell lephone call at his home. He knew John Winfield because their respective daughters were friends.
John was ringing me from Sydney and he asked me if I could pick him up from the Balliner Airport and give him a lift home. That night, about six thirty pm, I went to the airport and I met John. He asked me if I could take him to the Balloner police station prior to taking him home. I drove him to the police station and I waited in the car while he went in. He was in the police station for about five minutes.
After passing the same police station on the drive north back to Brisbane, I spoke to Madison Walsh about Bromwin and the probable reason for John's visit on the evening of May sixteenth, nineteen ninety three.
I think she was trying to get an apprehended violence order. I reckon she was trying to get that through with one of the solicitors she was consulting, and that's why he went to the police station after he landed.
Definitely like that's not normal behavior.
But it hadn't actually been implemented before John came back from Sydney.
Yeah, that was my thought, because why else would you go to the police station before going to your house. Yeah, so he definitely would have assumed that she would have filed something, but it just hadn't been put through.
Well, it's quite possible that they'd had a conversation when he rang and spoke to him before he left Sydney, and.
She might have said something like I've got an order or I'm getting an order or something, and he wanted to check that.
Because I remember learning in legal studies.
That sometimes you actually have to go into the court to get the ABO signed for it to be official. So I don't know if that was like the next process or anything like that to get it confirmed.
But I can have a look into it and see. Obviously this area has evolved a lot in recent years, but thirty one years ago, I don't know what was there.
I don't know, but I can definitely look being there somewhere.
There's an online resource where you can actually look at the legislation as it existed, say ninety three or ninety eight, whenever you can see what it allowed for what it looked like at that time.
Yeah, definitely.
There's also evidence that Ronlin rang her solicitor on Sunday while John was in the house.
I think that's in the statement of the solicitor.
I'll have a look.
John Watson recalled that John Winfield then asked him to go to the home of Becky McGuire, another of Jodie's school friends.
He told me that he wanted Becky to go with him when he.
Went to the house.
I drove him to her house, and from memory, Becky was either waiting outside or came out when we pulled up, and she got into the car. I drove them to John's house in Sandstone Crescent at Lennoxhead and they got out of the car and went to the front door, and I drove home. John told me when he got out of the car that he would drive Becky home.
Becky McGuire confirmed being collected at her house by John Winfield and John Watson to go to Sandstone Crescent. Becky was pregnant with her son at the time. She knew Bromwin and her husband. John threw her friendship with Jody.
He told me that he needed someone there just in case something happened as he just wanted to pick up some clothes and needed a witness there Whilst he did this, John Watson dropped us on the other side of the road, about two doors up from the Winfield's house. John Watson drove away. We walked up to the front of the house and John knocked on the door. The door opened and Bronwyn and the children were standing at the door.
I wasn't really paying much attention at the time, but I recall Bronwyn babbling on about something, but they weren't arguing.
It does seem an oddly pejoritied way for Becky to describe whatever Bronwyn said when John arrived.
I can't recall what she was going on about.
She used to babble on all the time.
Bronwin walked back into the house towards the kitchen and John gave the girls a cuddle, and I saw that Lauren was crying. I saw two suitcases inside the doorway, and John picked them up and put them in the car.
Clearly, Bromwyn had packed John's things and put them near the front door, ready to go, with the intention of him taking those two suitcases away the car, which Becky is referring to is the white Ford Falcon Sedan, the one with the squeaky brakes.
John must have had a set of keys to the car, because we then got into the car and he drove me home. I remember who both Crystal and Lauren were standing at the window inside the house watching as we reversed out of the driveway. John didn't go inside the house at all while I was in the house with him. While we were driving back to my house, John thanked me for coming with him and told me he was sorry for getting me involved. I haven't seen Bronwin since that night I went to her place with John.
You are going to hear how Becky, who was twenty two at the time of her statement, perceived Bromwyn.
During the time that I knew Bronwyn, she had terrible mood swings, and Jody and her would fight a lot while I was there, and we would go into Jody's bedroom to get away from her. I was positive that Bronwin had a split personality, because one minute she was fine and friendly, and the next minute she was cranky and yelling and generally going off the deep end about nothing at all.
Telephone records show that at seven oh six pm a call was made from the home phone at Sandstone Crescent to Peter and Louise Winfield's house in Sydney. John was calling his brother to let him know he had arrived safely. It's a call made just thirty six minutes after John Watson estimated that he had picked John up from the airport at Ballina. At the house, what happened next, only two people really knew for sure, bronwin and John.
Whoever said that love makes the world go round was correct. I have felt it all around me recently, some hate as well, but mainly the compassion for another person in pain.
John insists that his estranged wife told him in the house that evening that she wanted to have a break for a few days, and he said she had gone into their bedroom and made a telephone call, resulting in a car he didn't see, driven by an unknown person stopping outside and Bromin getting in, and John says that's the last time he saw his wife. In the episode after this one, you are going to hear a lot
more detail about John's version of events. He explained it to the local police in Ballina in nineteen ninety three, and again five years later when Detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor became involved and recorded a formal interview. I've obtained the documentation and I've been comparing it with the versions which
are remembered by Bromman's family and friends. For now, I want to consider the proposition which is implicit in so much of what has been said by Bromman's friends and family, and that is that Bromwin was a very loving mother who would never have left her two girls. On one of my drives from Brisbane to Lennox Head, I telephoned
my friend Brian Jordan, a retired family court judge. Brian knew nothing about Bromman's disappearance when we spoke, but he had closely found though the first podcast series I did about Lynn Dawson's nineteen eighty two disappearance from the Northern Beaches and the suspicion which fell eventually onto her husband Chris. Listeners of The Teacher's Pet might recall Brian, who was featured in several episodes as the investigation unfolded in twenty eighteen.
Here's a brief snippet from one of those episodes. In June nineteen eighty three, with Lynn a fading memory for her very young children. Chris and Lynn were divorced. I asked Brian Jordan, a friend and a retired senior judge, to review some of the documents from the coronial proceedings. What's the minimum period that two married people must be separated before they can apply for a divorce?
A minimum of twelve months, and a mere separation itself may not qualify it. The relationship must be ended. There must be an irretrievable breakdown of the marriage. Now, I don't know, and you'd know more whether mister Dawson acknowledges that the relationship was over the day his wife walked out of the.
Home, well legedly walked out in Bronwin's case, another mother in a failing marriage, another deeply suspicious disappearance. Six years after Brian spoke about the legalities of separation and divorce for an episode in The Teacher's Pet about Chris and Lynn, we talked about Bronwyn her disappearance and John, let's go back to late twenty seventeen and early twenty eighteen. You were interested in podcast investigation I was doing at that time into the disappearance of Lynn and that was for
the teacher's pets. What stood out for you most in that case when I first described it to you.
As soon as you mention that she left her four year old and two year old daughter, so she had difficulty with conceiving those two children and was a convoted, dedicated mother, my ears picked up and I started paying attention and our.
End of saying, just she didn't leave those children. It was that dark that It was that moment that comstallized, and it gave me the interest in the story.
And it's not a conclusive because of study.
It's a compelling piece.
Of circumstantial evidence her wife family, without any prior indication of intentions do so people walk out of their lives for her two children to never see them again, never inquire about them again.
It's just inherently improbable.
Session is so improbable as to cause one in one to look for other reasons for children being abandoned other than the car and walking out on their lives.
I know you, Brian, as a very dedicated father and husband, and Pauline, your wife, as a very dedicated mother, But what else are you facing that view on, apart from your own observations of Pauline and perhaps other brothers.
You know, a culmination of factors, including twenty years just a family called joke, carrying children's cases on an almost daily base, and seeing the extent to which parents we go to the brink to retain a relationship with contact with their children.
Stinkive thing.
There's bonding with their children that they find impossible to let go.
Also, in the course of.
Hearing cases for twenty years, I did hear in olog experience getting evidence about the bonding between parents and their children, and in particular the bond between mother, biological mother and young children is extremely strong. It's what enables parents and in this case mothers so almost invaribly.
Took their own lives.
I had those and their children if it comes to those sorts of terrible choice. So it's my personal experience, my experience as a family lawyer.
And visiting new experts that I can't remember a case where a mother had abandoned her John cares fewer question. What did the investigation, the inevitable investigation of the table one suspect to the husband, what did that reveal?
Well?
The original investigation by police in nineteen ninety three was very peacemeal. I gave Brian a summary of the separation and then the last days of Bromwin in Lennox Head. How she had moved back into the house at Sandstone Crescent with her two girls on a Friday afternoon in May nineteen ninety three while John was away working in Sydney, and she was there through the Saturday. On the Sunday early evening, John turned up. He flew from Sydney to Ballana.
It wasn't schedule. He left his work job suddenly because he must have become aware that Bromin was back in the home.
And how then have they been separated.
A couple of months. He went to the home. Now we don't know what happened next apart from what he says. The children, they were very young. It was close to bedtimes. Believed that they were put to bed.
John says that there was a disagreement, but not he did.
He says that Bromin said she needed some time away from the kitchen, needed a break. That she made a telephone call and somebody came to pick her up and she left. I told Brian that the next thing that happened close to eleven PM after Bromman had purportedly left in an unknown person's car. Was the sighting of the Winfield car the white Ford Falcon leaving the house rolling down the driveway, but the headlights weren't turned on and the.
Engine wasn't on either, so it rolled silently down the hill, and then at the bottom of the hill the lights came on and the engine was turned on.
The other observation by that witness was that as the car left the driveway to turn onto the road and rolled down hill, there was a scraping noise. He resumed it was from the back of the vehicle, and John drove through the night. It wasn't planned. He took the girls to Sidney. The marriage had been under quite a lot of strain. She, according to the statements by some of her.
Friends, was concerned about John, somewhat fearful. Her uncle observed bruising on her arm.
Roberts said that John had assaulted her in his usual measured way. Brian injected a note of caution. He referenced the Teacher's Pet podcast and the eventual case against Chris Dawson, who was found guilty of Lynd's murder in August twenty twenty two.
You've got to be mindful of the trump. Your instincts were right.
Your investigations were central to the eventual successful prosecution.
Of that man.
Doesn't guarantee that you're infallible on another matter that you're pursuing, Does it say?
Cause is always required? In the sense of matter.
You're going to hear again now from Michelle Reid, Bronwin's sister in law, the wife of Andy Reid. She's describing an unexpected event at their Sydney home on the afternoon of Monday, May seventeenth, nineteen ninety three. Andy had not yet arrived home from work. What do you learn on Monday?
I was just in the kitchen and there was a knock on the door.
I didn't have my glasses on.
I couldn't work out who it was because I looked down the hallway to the front door. When I got down there, I was really shocked to see John and the two girls.
Wow, what's going on?
I thought they were in Lennox.
At that point.
We didn't know that John had taken himself up there because we hadn't.
Heard any of that.
That all happened, and then John was all the was sung with the kids. So I said, what are you doing here? John was nervous talking, he was mumbly. He actually ushered the kids inside because he didn't.
Want to talk in front of them.
And we were standing on our little front veranda, just cheir and I. He said, oh, Bromwin's left me, and I went, oh, okay. He was like jittery and all of that, and then he said, well, actually she needed a break. She's going on a holiday. And I thought to myself, oh, is she on a holiday or she left him?
Like, in my head, I'm thinking that's weird.
It's just my nature to be a little bit suspicious and stuff.
But to your knowledge, she had already left it.
And then he switched it to she needed a break, she needs a break, and she going to get her head together.
For her and so he brought the kids to Sydney.
You'd heard from Romwin previously that there was no going back. Yep, the marriage was finished.
Yep.
When he first spoke, he was going down the lines of she's walked out and left, and she's left me with the kids, and then it switched to she needed a break for a few days, She's gone away for a few days to get her head together. I said to him where he's staying, and they decided they'd stay with us, So I said, come on, we'll go and get have you got stuff. Went up to the back of the car he was packed in our cul de
sac on the road, and he opened the boot. He was picking up pillowcases, and inside pillowcases were just kids clothes, stuff like stuffed in a pillowcase, pillowcase here and a pillowcase there, and there might have been a smallish bag of some sort. I kind of thought, oh, why are you so who disheveled? Why isn't anything organized? And I said to him, what I come you down here like this? Like what don't you wait sort of thing until tomorrow?
Because he said we always drove overnight because the kids slept better. He brought in some stuff out of the back of the car. At the boot he said three significant things on the front veranda. She's got the kids, she's got the car, and she's not having the house too. And they were the three things that John said on the front veranda before Andrew got home. If she's only going way for a couple of days, what has that got to do with anything.
I've read in your evidence that you say to him, why are you in such a hurry? And then he shows you something.
Yeah, he gets out of his wallet and he's got like a little receipt that you get from the cashier, and he got petrol eleven o six at.
A service station near Lennox.
Yeah, yep, yep. And then he put it back in his wallet.
What did he say when he showed that to you?
Just proving to me that he left eleven o six and got petrol. And I kind of thought to himself, why you showed me that. I don't care if you got petrol, Like, because at that point on the front Verandah, I suppose never put it into our heads that something sinister may have happened. It was very confusing as to why he was there.
And I just thought, why did you show me.
Eleven o six? You remembered the receipt for eleven oh six pm. Ye, the night before yep. But doesn't really show what time he left, does it?
Because he could have got fuel or he could have done anything.
What time he got fuel. But he could have gone back to.
The house of the house that he could have gone anywhere, could have gone anywhere, kids could have been asleep in the house. He could have done lots of things in that time.
Do you still find at baffling or do you have some ideas about why he showed it to you.
I think it was his evidence to prove that he had got petrol, to show that he had left and gone to Sydney.
But I don't know why.
Had he told you that he had arrived in Sydney that morning.
Help and then he would drive through the night and see At that point in time, I assumed he comes straight to us, like where the family.
On the Monday morning, a sixty year old woman called Joan Mason was visiting at her son Brad's house in the Sydney suburb of caring Bar. Brad lived there with his wife, Jennifer. These are Jones' words. It's not her voice. It's from her police statement in nineteen ninety eight.
I remember on that day I heard a knock at the front door. My daughter in law, Jenny, was out and I was not sure where Brad was. I answered the door and I saw a man who introduced himself as Winfield. I don't remember his first name, but I recall he told me that he had been Jenny's first husband. I saw that he had two young girls with him. I remember both these young girls were dressed in pajamas. I remember this man Winfield asked me could he leave the two girls as he was in Sydney to do
a big job. He said something about being in the building game and he had to go and see someone about a job. He said that he had been driving all night. He said he needed to leave the children with someone. I recalled telling him that he could leave the kids there and I would tell Jenny when she came home. He left the children with me and I looked after them until Jenny arrived back home. I remember this man Winfield arrived back at the house at Carrying
Bar later that afternoon. He went out in the backyard and they spoke for some time. After that, he took the children and left the house.
It sounds highly unusual. John has gone to the home of his first wife, Jenny, but she was out in her absence, John has persuaded a woman he has never met, the mother in law of Jenny, to look after his children for the day. The timing is interesting too. Joan Mason recalled that John arrived at the house some time in the morning, he left the house in his car without his children. A short time later, he returned again in the afternoon, collected the children and drove to the
home of Michelle and Andy Reid. But Michelle and Andy didn't know about those movements until the detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor got to the bottom of it five years later.
That blew me away, blom me away.
But he didn't tell you that.
No, these kids, they would never have met Jenny, let alone Jenny's.
Mother in law.
He made out that he come to Sydney and he'd come to us bombshell that was to us.
The natural thing to do would have been to go to Bromwin's brother and sister in law, of course, but he went to his ex wife's home.
Her mother in law was down visiting. She had no idea who this random bloke was.
Is it possible that he did that because he thought you'd already taken sides Bromwin's side, and it was all a bit sticky in the separation.
Who knows what goes on in John's head. If you're going to bring some two little girls and a little dog down to Sydney for two weeks, you wouldn't take them.
Anywhere and leave them.
With anyone except people who they know and trust, their.
Uncle and Nardi like.
And to find that out later, what was he doing?
Well? Why did he need to do that?
Why would you do that?
But before John went to his ex wife's house, he stopped in at a Sydney hair salon where his daughter Jody worked. Jody remembers that her father arrived there about mid morning.
I rushed out the front and hugged and kissed both the girls. I asked Ad what was happening, and he told me that Bronwin had had enough and she'd gone away for a holiday for two weeks. He said that she went to the bedroom and made a telephone call and that she took a small amount of clothes. He then told me that he heard a car pull up and leave, and that he was sitting on the lounge and didn't get.
Up to see who'd picked her up. Dad appeared to be happy.
Because he had the kids and he hadn't seen them for so long. He is definite that one day she will turn up on the front doorstep and attempt to take Crystal and Lauren. He's positive that she's still alive somewhere and will suddenly reappear.
All these years later. We do not know exactly what John was doing. Over a crucial period of about five hours, he went to the marital home of his first wife, Jenny. She had married a man called Brad Mason. As you've already heard, John left the children. Let's say it was around ten thirty am in nineteen ninety eight. The Ballona detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor found Jenny and he took a detailed statement from her. The statement discloses that John's first wife, Jenny,
and John's third wife Bromwyn became friendly acquaintances. These are Jenny's words, it's not her voice.
I brom When after John started going out with her. As my daughter Jodi was leaving with them, I then became friendly with Bromwin. Bromwhin and I made a pack that we wouldn't discuss personal things about John.
We didn't think it was appropriate to talk about it.
Bromwhen and John seemed quite happy, and by that time I was married to my second husband.
I've got a photograph.
At home when me and my husband Brad visited Bromwin and John at their new home at Lennox head. The photograph's been marked on the back March nineteen ninety one. I'd say that we only stayed at the house for about half an hour. I remember having a joke with Bromwin saying something like, so, this is the house that
I could have had, Ain't you a lucky girl? Bromwin just looked at me with a sad look and shook her head and said no. Then John and Brad walked into the room, and that was the end of the conversation. I think Bromwin would have liked to talk about something that was troubling her, but she never had the opportunity to speak. The next thing I remember about Bromwin was I came home one day from shopping in nineteen ninety three and my mother in law, Brad's mother, said, you've
got two visitors out in the backyard. I looked out the back and I saw it was Crystal and Lauren Bromwin's children. Both of the children were dressed in pajamas. I said to my mother in law, Joan Mason, what are they doing here? Joan told me that John Winfield had turned up about an hour earlier and asked if he could leave the kids at my house. I asked Jane if he'd said how long he wanted me to look after the kids for, but she said he didn't say.
There were no clothes for the children that John brought. It was about an hour after that when John arrived. I said to him something like, what's going on? John said, I've got a big job on and nobody to look after the kids. Can you look after them for about two weeks? I'll pay you. I said, where's Bromwin. John said, she's gone off with a boyfriend. I said, I can't look after them, You'll have to find someone else. I'm in the process of packing and moving at that stage.
I was splitting up from my second husband and moving to Queensland. John said, oh no, I didn't think that would happen to you. I'm sorry to hear the news. And then after that, John just took the kids and left the house. He didn't say what he intended to do with the kids.
Jenny recalled that her ex husband John asked her if she had any spare clothes for the girls, but Jenny couldn't remember whether she gave him any.
I remember thinking at the time it was strange he hadn't brought any clothing for the children. It wasn't his normal character. He usually liked to be organized. I found out later through Jody that Bromwin had gone missing from Lennox Head. I found out later that she'd gone missing the night before John had turned up at my house with the two children. I don't feel that Bromin would ever have left those children permanently. He was a very
dedicated mum and loved her children very much. I think something might have happened on the night before John turned up with the kids at my house in nineteen ninety three. I think John's the type who could lose his cool. He was under a great deal of stress at that time. I feel Bromin may be dead and somehow met with foul play.
Jenny's full statement to police in nineteen ninety eight is poignant. It recalls some sad parts of her own life with John. In a later episode, you'll hear more of Jenny's evidence. She paints a sad picture of a deeply troubled marriage. And you came home about an hour later at five pm.
Yes, seeing the old white falcon at the end of the street, I thought, wow, the kids and Ron might be a day.
And then I saw John sitting on the front veranda talking to Michelle.
Walk down to the front for Andrew and said what's going on? And he said, oh, Roman had a chance to go.
Away and clear her head for a few days. So I brought the kids down to Sydney.
I thought it was strange straight away.
You've described yourself as just a naturally suspicious person. Romwin's told you if anything happens to me, look after Crystal please. Suddenly he's turned up in the vehicle she had been driving with the kids, and they've packed hastily. What were you thinking then about where Romwin was?
Well, I suppose to give him the benefit of the doubt. I do recall thinking, well, she'd been out of the house on her own with the kids for about six weeks. I was thinking, that's twenty four with the kids, trying to work get a bit of money. Possibly she did need a break.
Possibly.
Michelle Reid says that on Monday afternoon she asked John, well, what.
Have you been doing?
Where have you been?
He said, I had to go and get a green slip and a pink slip and register the car and do all that, which accounted for the time during the day, which is why he turned up here at four o'clock, because he'd been doing.
Things reregistering the family car that he had driven from Lennox Head the night before with two girls and a puppy. Back in Lenox. The neighbors, Murray and Debbie, were wondering what was going on. At what point do you believe you became suspicious?
I said something really weird. I said, Larrens cars missinging. You know, where would she be this summer? The day she would park there all the time. They wouldn't park in the garage, and I just thought it was odd that the car wasn't there.
Dead come and saw me six o'clock on Monday morning. It said the car has gone next door. And then I said to Dead, yeah, I heard the cargo last night. Did you see it or yeah?
I saw it?
Yeah, And I thought, oh, this is sus. So I waited until about eight o'clock. There was no kids, no nothing, and no Roman, no car. I thought, this is too.
Sus And when you say sas you mean it was really suspicious. It was strange.
That was a bit suspicious.
Yeah, as early as Monday.
As as Monday yes.
Well, when I saw the car go in the nighttime eleven or twenty eleven at night, I thought that was sus So then I past seven.
Eight o'clock, this is in the morning. Yes, on the Monday morning, Monday morning, I walked up.
To the neighbor on top of John's place, Lloyd and Chris Harday, Yeah, And I went to Lloyd and locked his door and said, book, I think John's come back last night and done something to Bromwin.
Do you mind coming down to the house and having them look at the house with me? But he didn't break in there, and did you no? Okay?
Me and Lloyd just walked around the house and then we said, oh, yes, it's us, and then Lloyd went in and I came back here.
When I came home on the Monday afternoon, I said to my children, was Lauren and Crystal at the school today?
And they said no, Monday weren't.
And then on the Tuesday I went to work and I do recall ringing the unit because she had a phone down there, and I think I might have rung the house to see if I could find.
It deb telephone a mutual friend, probably Denise Barnard.
I can't remember exactly who it was, but I rang them instead of you. Anyone's seen everyone know where Bromin might be.
No, no, no, Yet by about seven thirty at night, I'd forced John to ring Murray and Devi next door to break into the house to.
Look into the house to see.
What was going on and whether Brahman was there.
Did you suspect foul play that night?
That came later because further into that conversation between five o'clock and seven o'clock, when we sort of forced him to get someone to break into the house to check it out, he was saying, now I should be back by Wednesday, Chris, she's got a shift at the takeaway shop.
On the Tuesday, I came home after work. John had rung Murray, so.
I've got the court.
He said, would you mind going up the house? Would you mind going up the house and breaking in for me? This was a class panel next to the back door. He said, put your handy open the door and get in. And I said that's fair enough, and I'll do that. He said, oh yeah, because I've been trying to ring Braman and now I want you to have to look to see the probins there. Because I've been ringing I'm getting no answer. John said to me, I'll ring you back in twenty minutes, so I'm suss again.
Murray went back to see the retired neighbor, Lloyd Hargrave.
And I said, mate, I said, he's rung me up. He wants to be a break into the house. I'm not too sure why he wants be a break into the house. He's only read me back. We broke into the house and we walked around the house and had a look, and then John rang back in twenty minutes and he said it was probleman in the house. I said, no, she wasn't, John, No, she's not there, and no one said. He said, well, can you go up and put the
phone back on the hook please? So I went back up there and put the phone back on the hook, and they'd come up with me after that.
Yeah.
When I got home from work, Murray told me what had happened, and I've gone, well, I want to go up and have a look.
Something not right here.
My normal brain's thinking, no, he wouldn't do anything to her, But my other half of my brain's going, yes, he would.
You know.
That's the sort of thing I was a bit conflicted with, and I just wanted to go and have a look and just.
See all I could see.
The house was disheveled because she was still moving back in, so she had boxes and everything still unpacking boxes. She'd had dinner on a Sunday night. There was plates in the sink with scraps on them. I looked in the washing machine. There was wet washing in the washing machine, like clothes. I hung the washing out.
Do you recall what was in the washing machine? What you hung out?
Yeah?
Kids?
All the kids stuff?
Yeah, well kids closed.
So then we went into the bedroom and it was at the front of the house, and I'm looking to see what she talk. She didn't take twelve trees, she didn't take a makeup. I'm looking around. She hasn't taken any of this. Why would she do on a holiday with that all this stuff? I'm thinking, this is weird. The bed was unmade, she took nothing. Appadly, the only thing that I could see that was missing was her handbag.
I couldn't find a handbag.
I'm a woman, and if I'm going on a maybe even if it was an impromptu holiday, I would still pack some essential items, but there was nothing.
It was all still there, her makeup was there, everything. I thought, I'm not buying.
This is her daughter?
Mail again and I answered the phone and he asked to speak with Dad. I said, I'll put him on And then night's when I went to the house with Lloyd and my dad through the laundry. I remember thinking, Oh, I'm coming up to see this house.
Why, I don't know.
I think it was strange.
Was it strange because you were so rarely in the house.
No, I think it was strange because I had a feeling why I be going in there? Why Why did he come up and then leave and then us going to the house to see whether she's been back. What I find is strange about the whole thing is jand to come all the way up here, to have the argument with Brown and then to leave that same night in a hurry. Why don't you say next morning then go back to Sydney. Why do we leave in such a hurry?
And is that because you suspect flight urgent panic?
Yeah? I noticed the house, what it looked like, the state that was left in.
What do you remember about that?
There was the.
Washing in the laundry, the dishes. The girl's beds were stripped.
The girl's beds were stripped, There.
Was no sheets in the bed they were gone.
Mel's disclosure about the sheets being stripped from the children's beds was a surprise to me. I did not recall that anyone else had raised it before, and I couldn't remember reading it in any of the hundreds of pages of evidence and witness statements and other documents. Perhaps the reason Murray and deb did not raise it with police was because they had not looked at the children's beds.
I mean, I had been in the house and it was very neat, like oct needs. So to leave the house in the state that was that was what was so strange about the whole thing.
And is it your view that John, under normal circumstances couldn't have walked out of his house if it was in that state.
No way, he wouldn't have. No, no, not the way he was as a person.
Dear Van Murray walked back to their house, shaking their heads at the turn of events. They spoke on the telephone soon afterwards to Bromman's brother Andy, who had called from Sydney.
That's when he said John's down here in Sydney with the girls. And he tells me Bromin's gone on some holiday And I said, what when did he?
How did the girls get to Sydney.
That was the first we knew that they were with him in Sydney.
Did Andrew sound incredulous to you?
Yeah?
Yeah, he was concerned for sure, and so was I. That John's starting to hyperventilated, be thinking this couldn't happen. This is not happening, you know that sort of disbelieved that this is going on, And in my quiet mind I'm thinking he's not.
Well, no, he hasn't, No, surely not.
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, Josh Bridget, Ryan Bianca far Marcus, Katie Burns, Liam Mendez, Sean Callen, and Matthew Condon and David Murray. Audio production for this podcast series is by Wasabi Audio and original theme music by Slade Gibson. We have been assisted by Madison Walsh, a relation of Bromwin Winfield. We can only do this kind of journalism with the support of our subscribers and our major sponsors like Harvey Norman.
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