Episode 8: Mea Culpa

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

You can Trust Opinions that matter. Now Ben Fordham comments.

And now we have the bombshell witness statement from the retired nurse Judy Seeing describing what looked like a body in the back of a car.

The country's leading commercial radio broadcast to Ben Fordham has been following the Bromwyn Winfield case. We've got good history.

Looked in, Oh yeah, was he definitely him?

Judy felt suspicious, but she didn't immediately act on it. In the days that followed, she didn't know Bronwin was missing, but when rumors started spreading that on when had disappeared, Judy says she knew she had to tell someone. She says she went to Ballona police.

I talked to the ballon and police first, and they took me behind the counter.

Did you form an impression then of how seriously or not they were taking it?

Hardly? Interested?

Hardly?

I can't understand why that would be.

Almost had to beg them to let me say something.

Did you feel better for having disclosed these things?

Now?

No, he died recently, so and I'm taking this to the grave.

Always some relief when you can get something out, you know.

What's becoming clear is that the early investigation into Bronman's disappearance was not handled properly. Police were too quick to believe the storyline that a mother of two had just packed up and left and walked down on her children.

Then also told his vast audience a truth which might surprise listeners. He revealed that the Bromwin podcast investigation.

Has been running for one month and in that time he's not been contacted by anyone at New South Wales Police. Nobody's reached out to him to see if he's uncovered new information. Nobody's checked to see if maybe, just maybe he's found evidence that could solve the mystery of who could have killed Bronwin or what happened to her. It's been radio silence, no calls, no emails, no inquiries, nothing and that should change today.

But at seven twenty pm on Thursday June twenty, a couple of hours after the release of episode seven, Assistant Commissioner of Police Mick Fitzgerald emailed to request contact details for retired nurse Judy Singh. I immediately shared those details with Fitzgerald. Detectives are going to be spending so time with Judy Singh. Finally they should take a statement from her. Ben Fordham had the last word.

Well done, Mick Fitzgerald, and I'll keep you updated on this case.

On the Nine Networks Today show, host Karl Stefanovic talked to Madison Walsh, Bromwin's second cousin, who has been on this case with me since the start of the podcast. Madison, your family's been watching this.

Yeah, for thirty one years. We have had no real movement within this case. Nothing's happened, and our family has felt lost.

What is that? That must be torture?

Oh, look, it's it's hard. I mean I didn't know brom when she disappeared ten years before I was born. However, I've grown up with it. I've witnessed what my family has gone through. I know what they're still going through. Last night, when the episode released where this new information and came out, they didn't know about it, and it was both confronting and raw to witness that and to see how much that affected them, because at this stage you don't think that anything more would come out.

How are they?

They're good.

This is motivating for them as well, because this is something new, something that the police can hopefully use now to finally do something nice.

To see Mats and all the best of the family.

Just twelve hours earlier, Maddie sat with Bromman's brother Andy Reid and his wife Michelle in their home in the Shire. She drove there to answer their questions and help them listen as Jude sings account of what she saw was played through episode seven. Andy and Michelle heard it for the first time as the episode unfolded. Here's Maddie who used her iPhone to make a recording.

It's all very, very hard to listen to, that's for sure.

That unbelievable that this poor lady's had to live with that. Yeah, it's breast keys up. Then she's going to take it to a grave.

If you were going to bed, why would you have your surfboard in the car?

Well, that's what I was thinking, And then there was like maybe he paddled out or something.

Murray used to say to me all the time, every time there's massive floods in the hinterland. Murray used to fedigm religiously, religiously. He used to tell me about how he used to he watched for the news reports, always watching the news. I think her body's going to turn up. Yeah, it flushed out in one of the estuaries.

I remember. Glenn used to say to me, mate, do you never know what will turn up?

Michelle read aloud a message that she had just received from the retired detective sergeant Glenn Taylor, who began a thorough police investigation in nineteen ninety eight.

He's just said it quite stunning news coming out of what a witness saw apparently on the night of Broman's disappearance, and I said, yeah, we're listening to it as we speak.

We are shattered, but hopeful.

It doesn't even feel like belief because we've just knowned for so long that the vastard did something that night.

The systems just filed for so long.

Shortly before the release of the very first episode in this podcast series, and he met with detectives led by Nigel Warren of the Unsolved Homicide Unit, and here to remind you is a bit from episode one.

Basically said, well, their hands are tied.

We can't do any more than what we've done.

And we don't have any new evidence as it steds.

Yeah, okay, he said, going Look, I cannot apologize enough for how badly the original investigation was handled.

They've got no intention of puting any more work into it.

When you walked away with Michelle from that meeting six weeks ago, what was your view of what they were doing on the Roman police investigation.

Nothing? Nothing unless someone came forward.

Unless there was something more to add.

He mentioned to me that they had twenty six open cases, so there's twenty five poor people out there that.

Are worse off than we are because we've quit.

You given what you know, Now, what do you want them to do?

They need to go and speak to Juty get correct statements like they should have done the first two times she went there. The poor woman in ninety three, the only night that he had access to that vehicle. Wow, wow, like to meet her.

Thank you.

Have you seen the video?

Yes?

Yeah, that's pretty hard to look at.

I'm sorry.

Michelle always knew something went wrong that night, but we never really had the proof as hard as we did.

Push diskin.

Maddie and I were in the Tuong Public Library and Brisbane and interviewing Mel Taylor, Devin Murray's daughter.

She worked nearby.

She came and saw us after she finished work and Mel was just describing what she saw as a twelve year old going through that house mate. She's the only person that remembers this bedstrip The beds were stripped of their sheets.

Yeah, I've never heard of that until Mel said it.

What I think it shows is that even twelve year old kids should be interviewed by cops. Would Bromwin have let the children sleep in a stripped bed?

That is a bed without sheets.

Never.

Crystal says in her statement that Lauren woke up and went in and found a mum crying in the bedroom and then her mum said, come on, darling, go back to bed or whatever, and she went and tucked her.

In and said, I'll see you in the morning.

Yeah, So you don't tuck someone in if there's no bedding.

How did Judy present to you?

From what she said?

And Kerry, Oh, totally one hundred percent telling the truth.

Why would anyone make that up.

She's seeing something on the night that nobody.

Else knew about.

There's no reason for them to fabricate anything that we've heard tonight.

I just feel for Judy. The poor woman has gone.

At the police station twice and she's just been dis garden and they haven't even taken us seriously on a missing person's case.

What's wrong with these people?

I thought she was really authentic because she could be the key to solve.

Him what happened.

We're very grateful, really, and we believe her wholeheartedly.

You can't make that sort of stuff up.

If this drive that she had witnessed was around midnight, how does that fit with what Murray saw at ten forty pm. What was he doing on the ten forty pm trip?

What I'm thinking is he filled the boot with heavy things.

He started wiring the boot down.

Then he's got in the car and then going shit, the cars nearly empty.

The last thing I had to do.

Is put a body in his car and it's going to run out of fuel.

And on that trip, that first trip he made, was trying to scope out he might put her. Got close to petrol station, was like, I need to fill up, fills up.

And then he's come back with petrol cars full of petrol.

Then goes back home and then that's when.

He goes down grown up with her.

Then he would have had to have come back, and then he's come back got the kids at some stage.

Why do you think the surfboard would have been in the car? It is an obvious question and it raises mccarbre thoughts and ideas. Judy Singh is adamant that a surfboard was lying in the car from the back seat across to the front seat, and that something resembling a body wrapped in a sheet was on the other side of the back seat behind the front passenger seat.

When John flew to Ballona in the.

Late afternoon of Sunday, May sixteenth, nineteen ninety three. His friend John Watson picked John Winfield up at the airport. They went first to the local police station in Balin. John went to the station to check whether there were any orders preventing him from approaching Bromwin and the house that they had lived in together until their separation. John

Then John returned to the house alone.

You'll hear more about John's visit to the police station in a later episode when we look at John's record of interview with the former police detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor. That interview was done in nineteen ninety eight, five years after Bromwin's disappearance. If Judy sings witness account is accurate, John's surfboard has gone into the car that night there are creeks and water holes.

In the Lenox Head area.

John wouldn't have had a lot of time because he had to get on the road to Sydney. He drove through the night and arrived in the mid morning.

In the Shire.

Back then, it was a good nine to eleven hour drive depending on conditions. Lake Ainsworth, a popular swimming and picnicking place for Lenox families and visitors, is only a ten minute or so drive from Sandstone Crescent. Andy has speculated that the surfboard was in the car because John needed to float Bromwin's body out into the water.

He wouldn't use the surfboard to float a body out into the middle of a creek or something and then be able to dump it off the board and then come back to the house.

At a place such as Lake Ainsworth. In Andy's mind, his sister her body has been put into a large surfboard.

Bag with weights or blocks.

Inside it, then towed by a leg rope late at night into the still water and rolled over the side. The weights would take the bag down to the murky depths. But it's only a theory, a speculation based on circumstantial evidence. Something John vehemently denies the theory would explain the presence of the surfboard. You've been through so much over the

When this is unfolding.

That's been pretty harrowing.

We're strong, We're strong, and he said he understood why Maddie and I did not tell him about Judy Singh's revelations before they were published.

You've got to do your job.

Let's the podcast doesn't work if it's just a bunch of leaked information.

I fully understand it.

Since we first sat down with you in that cafe Clovelly, I've lived in here.

We are five years later, we've all got a bit older made. You're going to have a tough night. I hope you've nursed a beer through all this.

So what do you think the police's obligation is.

Next, they'll make a bee line for Jude. They will want to get a statement from her. They will want to reconstruct what she describes. They'll go to the Sandstone Crescent and Granite Street. They'll run cars past that house at night with the light on in the car at a slow speed that she described. They'll put something in the back of the car so that that can be filmed, and they'll film what they can see.

They'll do all of those sorts of tests.

But if they're satisfied that what she described is plausible, they'll then have to make a further submission to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Andy and I spoke about why people like Judy Singh came forward and how podcasts were like a vacuum cleaner that is drawing up so many potential new leads, tips from people, sources coming out of the woodwork, and the reluctance of police

And they don't like intruders.

Police are not going to be the go to for people who are dissatisfied, who have been let down by cops in the past, or who are just not going to necessarily trust cops, But who are possibly going to trust me? They just need to catch up with the modern era. How many other missing murdered women have just fallen through the cracks. The next day we heard from other important people in this case. Hello, Glenn Taylor, Glenn, Matt Condon, how are you?

Oh?

Yeah, good Matt.

He was shocked by what he heard.

Well, you can't get much more serious to crime than a murder, And to allegedly murder a young mother and leave two children behind.

It's just a horrendous thought. I'm sure that this information that's now come to light would be very much a priority in any murder investigation.

I was actually quite stunned. We may better finally move this investigation forward. I was appalled that so little had been going back in ninety ninety three, and then to hear this latest revelation that this witness duty had actually come to bow on a police station and reported to someone back in nineteen ninety three, that was just astounding.

And then it got worse.

Usually something of that absolute significant importance would have been acted upon. It would have been an absolute priority to have the lady attend the police station and with her consent to take a statement from her, and we would have some forensics come up and take some photographs about where she was standing and how she would observe this vehicle.

From your perspective, is an experienced homicide detective, what sort of weight is carried by this observation by Judy singher well?

Checking to make sure that the information is plausible and could be corroborated by other people homicide investigations, it doesn't matter if they're forty years old or even longer. Any information further that comes out is absolutely crucial from what Hidley has found from this lady. I mean, every single thing that she said certainly seems plausible, and she's told

Was no formal interview of the husband, and then the whole matter was just completely shelved.

There's red flags flying everywhere.

I've always had.

This investigation on the mind.

I mean, every time anything would come up, like any human bones, fan or something, I'm always thinking, I'm hopeful to the family that it might be Bromling and the media plays a very vital role in investigations, especially investigations that have been around for a long time, and show there's potential there for people that know things about unsolved longicides to come forward.

Back in your day, mate, there was no such thing as a podcast, and suddenly you have this platform to reach millions of people.

It's wonderful that it's an opportunity for people further to come forward.

These are most serious crimes. There's never been any closure. They can't go to a century and lace and failers or grieve what did actually happen to bromwin Where is she? The deputy state coroner, he was clearly of the view that in.

A diutable offense, namely murder had been committed and there was a known person responsible.

This is after hearing all the evidence out of a week and numerous numerous documents.

Statements be intended, but obviously we didn't have a statement from this new witness duty at the time. It's important that senior Coroner believe that there was sufficient evidence to warrant the DPP considering a charge of murder being laid against mister Winfield. Mister Winfield's obviously got the presumption of innocence. That's there's further developments.

Here's Bromlin's half sister, Kim Marshall, who is in Hobart, Tasmania. Kim has been doing it tough. Maddie's recording this call.

Just say though, okay, probably nearly midnight, I decided said I'd listened to it, felt very saddened and heartbroken. I was beside myself, and then I did try to ring one or two people, but when I did try to talk to them, that made me burst into tears because I don't like being needy. So I had a big cry with Andrea and then pulled herself together and listened to the rest of it.

Do you form a view of Julie's credibility veracity of what she was saying?

Yes, most definitely she was aware of her environ so she had a physical thing going on watching a car, But she also had an awareness about the time of the year, the time of the evening, the type of fauna in her view, and also her miscarriage that she was worrying about. So I believe that there's so many factors there that make her recount or her witness account quite valid. But you know what, I'm actually not that surprised because I always knew that there was.

Going to be information out there. I knew from day one.

That the police were not doing their job. I couldn't even get a seat with Detective Discns. I always knew there was going to be a number of key witnesses that were out there.

It's a small town, but my biggest thing was to actually make sure.

That Crystal was all right.

But we don't talk about the podcast.

Crystal has this way that she wishes to compartmentalize it. She's actually an incredible person because she somehow seems to have put lots of boundaries in place, and she's staying the line. Crystal maintains that she will continue to keep reaching out to her sisters. I know that Lauren is not willing to engage in any conversation.

She is not ready to talk.

She does not want to entertain the idea that's something of a foul play nature that involves her father.

She doesn't want to talk about.

That at all, and she's not willing to discuss it with Crystal at all. And then Jody, it's just no reply, no communication.

Kim said that while Crystal still referred to her stepfather, John Winfield as Dad.

She doesn't feel the wars or the connection, and it's always Crystal that's actually wanting to be reassured or seek reassurance that she's still part of the family. I'm more than happy to disguise that no matter what the outcome is.

In regards to.

Broman's disappearance, I believe that he was a very cold and calous parent.

All of this, the podcast, the curiosity of the public, and the ongoing disclosures are taking a toll.

Where Andy contact to before you have listened?

What did he say?

So?

I really don't want to tell the country there?

Okay, I don't even know if I want to do the podcast any wolf.

Andy and Meghan are not going well either.

Because Meg is still very upset with Andrew and Michel.

He wants nothing to do with Megan ever. Again. I've recommended that they both go to counseling.

Megan, I'm with Maddy.

Oh Man Sale, I'm good.

How are you Maddie's auntie. Meghan was unsurprised by Judy Singh's account of having got nowhere when she went to local police in nineteen ninety three, Megan played the episode that featured Judy twice and she listened carefully to her story.

Never in a million years I think this is going to happen. I mean, whoa episode seven Nelly blew my head off.

I really do believe her.

I don't really feel one hundred cent sure did she saw from one in that car? What the hell was wrong with the police not thinking on this information?

As confronting?

She comes across as one hundred percent credible to me.

I mean, you can tell me just the emotion in her voice. You should the keet that to.

I did, I did, didn't tell a soul. You were going to find out eventually, find out eventually when the time was right, when everyone else found out. I was on strips instructions. This is not the end, but it's definitely the start of something else.

What were it goes from here?

Yeah, she tried to make people listen.

Her friend she kept at it too.

Kerry McLean told me that she became emotional when she listened to the episode. She followed up reading the stories in The Australian and on the website Roman podcast dot com.

It's emotional.

Someone's life has been lost and the poor kids. Just one little bit of information can uncover all that.

It came from me and then it came from her.

Yes, when do you reckon? You and her would have last had contact probably twenty years ago.

Did she sound how you remembered her?

Absolutely?

Yes.

For the police to not act on it once in nineteen ninety three, it was bad enough. But then she goes again with a doctor from New Zealand to the Byron Bay police.

Did It's unbelievable. I spoke to them, I don't know whether it was once or twice, and gave her name and the names that I knew that she went by, and her maiden name so they could find her.

So we've tried.

I don't speak negatively of the police, but in this case, someone dropped the ball.

It's probable that the police will want to talk to you too.

Yeah, I know, yes, I'm aware of that.

If the police asked me for your contact detail, are you okay for me to share?

Yeah?

Sure, But that should have happened a long long time ago.

When lots of information is coming in during a podcast series and then you get an email, a random email from someone called Jude singing, you don't know the backstory, and all she says is I saw him leaving on the night you had the light on the car, But she doesn't say what she saw in the car in her email, she didn't say that. It's very easy when you're so busy and there's so much of the material coming in, you're doing interviews, you're editing and arranging your

And that's thanks to you.

I'm really pleased that I'm involved in it and something's happened. It's amazing how everything sort of come together.

Murray Nolan is a perceptive and friendly bloke. He is immediately likable and I reckon he's zen like about some things, you know. The star of The Mentalist, Simon Baker.

We used to go surfing together all the time. The Legs Surfing Crew we'd all surfed together. Wow, you just lived down the bottom on the street, and now I see in Saint Crescent.

In reality, Simon is one of our most successful and in demand international actors. He has his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was even once voted the sexiest man on television. I mean, look around, there's barely a soul on the beach. It's a busy day growing up. This was Simon Baker's playground.

This was your house right here, This was here. He's still serves slangs point occasionally.

Why did you call him smiley?

Because when is the young bloke?

He used to walk around small all the time. He's always this happy, a little smile on his face. The house has been pulled down now.

Murray Nolan is keen to help this investigation. But what you are about to hear him say in his own words and voice is probably going to produce.

Strong reactions in some listeners.

And Murray knows he's inviting judgment over the things that he withheld from police in nineteen ninety three. He's got regrets. He's describing a day he was at home. It was very late May or early June nineteen ninety three. His neighbor John Winfield had been to the police to report Bromwin missing days earlier. As a result, Detective Graham diskin with the less experienced officer Wayne Tenby, went to Sandstone Crescent from the.

Police running sheets.

It doesn't appear that they questioned any other neighbors who knew things. The detectives only went to the door of the property next to Bromwin and John Murray and Deb's house and it's where they still live happily thirty one years later.

And Murray, I've also read your statement.

Yes, However, it seems you didn't at the time raise any suspicion about that noise the scrape of the vehicle. In nineteen ninety eight, Murray signed off on a written statement to the detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor. Glenn Taylor's investigation led to a brief of evidence, which went to the then Deputy State Coroner Karl Milavanovitch for.

A week long inquest.

Murray's statement in that brief of evidence includes key details which Murray did not disclose to police back in nineteen ninety three when they pulled up in Sandstone Crescent at a time when everything was still relatively fresh and just a fortnight or so after whatever happened on the night of Sunday, May sixteenth. The first time I met Karl Milavanovitch, it had been fifteen years since his inquest into Broman's disappearance and presumed death, but Karl still remembered one of

Here it is again from Karl.

And there was some suggestion from a neighbor that they heard the car reversing down the driveway and scraping on the ground, though some suggestion there might have been something in the boot.

She was never found.

Now that I am back in Sandstone Crescent, dead breaks the eyes.

Murray is a very tolerant person and he never sees wrong in anybody. Really, he knows John's done what he's done. But Murray is the type of person whereas on the opposite, like Headley.

You wrong me and I'll wrong you.

You know what I mean.

He's always been that way, and I guess it's either a good or a bad nature to have.

When she went missing, I never gave told the police anything because he's my friend.

I never told the police laughing all staying out of it. Are you listening to yourself? It was that obvious to me. It was that obvious to me that he'd killed her.

Becauys arrived, not one she's got to miss in twenty eleven, and I thought, well, almost stay out of this because resting three or four days like it was that obvious.

What about when Discin started investigating soon after she disappeared?

And now I told him nothing. You can't speak to you.

I don't have a memory of the day, but I was cooking a lamb in the cockpot. Him and Timmy dropp up here probably about eleven o'clock one morning.

He just come inside and asking me a new questions?

What do you remember about that conversation?

How sure it was? I could be mistaken. I'm pretty sure.

There's write it down on a spy on notepad they did.

There were no formal statement, you know. I thought that was a bit unprofessional with but Discoln They were very friendly. John and discon were very friendly.

How do you know that it's seeing at the back of here they'd be having coffees or cups of tea and sitting on their back from the andre What type pray were you talking about?

And this is like the.

Initial inquiry after his border miss and the detectives have got involved.

They just seemed to be a bit chumming.

From his house, Murray could see the detective and his neighbor on the verandah of the house that John built. He said they would, in his words, yarna way for ages. Now, good detectives would argue that this might well be tactical. It doesn't mean that they are naive or being conned by a possible murderer. Couldn't have been the really clever detective building rapport with the murder suspect.

That could have been.

You say you were immediately of the view that he'd kill.

We'll got rid of that.

Yes, what had you decided for yourself?

Well, I just what I'm staying out of this. He's my friend.

I've got to live next door to him, and I'm going to surf with him, and just what I'm staying out of this.

But it was just too obvious and I was follow you mistaken at the time.

Deb's conversation with detectives Graham Diskin and Wayne Temby occurred separately in nineteen ninety three.

She recalled it like this.

It was an afternoon and him and Wayne Timby were at the front door. They didn't come in, and they asked me a couple of questions, very little like what I knew.

I remember so.

Them, can't you forensic the car? Can't you go in and forensic the house? And they go, no, no, no, it doesn't work like that. We can't just go in guns a blazing and accuse him of anything.

Just gonna actually said, this is a missing person inquiry and not a murdering.

That's right, a missing person inquiry. Yeah, And I'm like, nah, no, he's done something to her, And this is what I'm saying to them. He was very blase about the whole lot. That's why I kept saying to him, but there's something wrong here. You need to investigate, you need to go and see the house. It was just like, oh, you know, I just got to fill out these forms. And he was literally here probably five or ten minutes. He wasn't here long. I invited a minute said no, no, no, it's

Actually, they're going to do nothing.

You know, she's missing they're not even going to open the can of worms and say, right, let's dig into this further. And if it wasn't for Glenn Taylor, that's where it still remained today. And I remember Waying Tenby at the time. He was just probably only a fresh constant book back then, and he's just sort of standing behind Disco said, and I remember he told me this. He said, Oh, well, women do this all the time. They take off, they get a bit frustrated.

And they just go. And I said, no, she wouldn't do that. Brahma would never leave her kids.

I said to him, Oh, well, we're treating it like yeah, miss in person until we have any other events. They believed everything John had told them, and the story he told them was that she got picked up that night by a car. Apparently she'd gone into the bedroom, made.

A phone call.

Ten minutes later a car picture up.

Because he told me this, and I said to him at the time, well, did you see who it was? No, did you go and check who she got in the car with. Where were you when she left the house? And he said, I was watching TV at the other end of the house. I said, but John, she could have got in the car with anybody. I can't believe he wouldn't have even looked to see. This is the story he was spinning to the police and to myself.

You went home, when you come home.

While den was talking to Discount, you didn't mind that she was talking to Discoon.

Not at all.

Now, I sure would have probably told Disco at the time, But then Discins was pretty short of me the question anyway, like it was just like he was walked in and said the lay next door's gone missing. There was any signs of violence or anything. No, I never saw any violence, and I didn't So.

When was the first time that a detective heard about the car rolling down the hill.

And the lightspeaking? Offered?

We established that it was indeed five years later, when Detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor took the case over in nineteen ninety eight. Murray Nolan's police statement is dated September of that year.

Do you think that if Discot had come in, sat you down, or asked you to come down the police station and I really wanted to understand what had happened and questioned you in ninety three, would you have still been silent?

Let me phrase your question, Sorry, what you said.

Before, was that discin was pretty short, didn't seem terribly interested its chuggling with John.

But hypothetical if in fact he had asked you to come down the station. He wanted to get a statement from you.

It's ninety three, it's may You've got your suspicions, but you're also feeling some loyalty to John.

What do you reckon you would have done then in those.

Circumstances, if you were being pressed by the detective to cough up some information.

I would have told them nothing. But I just didn't want to get involved. I thought it was just too obvious.

Well, I just want this guy's going to get arrested quite soon for so much evidence here against him.

Was he intimidating you?

Not at all?

Not at all.

No, did you ever tell him, Hey, I hadn't talked to a police.

At all when memory even mentioned Bromwin between me and John, when they've mentioned it.

And have you had experiences with the police that has helped sort of shape your view that you don't tell them information about your friend.

My dad is a detective and a lot a lot of respect for the police. My only issue was I just didn't want to get involved on stepping back. He's mistaken. Yes, I realized it's a mistake now that it's I'm offul this is so then when nothing got done, yes.

Because it sounds like he was an acquaintance, not really a close mate.

Look, I wasn't.

I wasn't staying silent to protect him. I was just staying silent because I didn't want to get involved.

Marry doesn't like a lot of confrontation. Allow my little world.

Indeed, do you recall whether you told this getting in ninety three what Murray had told you?

And I think I did tell him that, whether I was told dead.

Murray shared with deb that he had seen the car leave, but he didn't share with her for some time the most suspicious features that the car left with its lights off, injured off, and that it scraped the ground while reversing down the driveway.

I wouldn't have mentioned any of that to Discan. No, I definitely wouldn't have.

What changed for you five years later when Glenn Taylor became involved, Why did you talk to him?

I could see that was going nowhere and there's injustice been done here. When I would give a formal statement on the truth.

Earlier, Murray disclosed that his father was a police detective, and this made it harder for me to understand Murray's silence when detectives Graham Diskin and Wayne Temby turned up at Sandstone Crescent.

Did you talk to your father about it?

Yes?

What did you tell him? That's home the situation in what had happened, probably a couple of days later. Yes, And he said it looks all he strangler. I said, I don't think so too, because there was no blood, There was no nothing.

I said that. I said, what's JAILO? Is jerns a turn or is joil a punishment? Yeah? In answer me, But that's why I was wiring.

Up as well. What is jail?

To put that block of that fellow up for ten years in jail? It's probably not. It wasn't a pleasant thing to do. And I thought, but I'm not going to be the one who's going to do that. I'm going to sit out of this because it was to me it was obvious.

Did your dad know that you were sitting out of it?

Yeah?

Yes, he was okay, he was okay that yeah. Yeah. In my mind it was just it was cut and right.

But your idea is about the right thing to do.

Change.

Since then, my ideas probably haven't changed. My idea is just tell the truth, but.

It is a deliberate o mission telling the truth.

There's no deliberate omissions in that.

No.

I mean from ninety three, not telling anyone.

No, I wasn't asked.

Yeah, yeah, I wasn't ask and I was staying out of it.

John's reputation in the community has ebbed like the tide at Boulders Beach.

Well, they are calling the murder around he murder from the time Brown went missing.

It was ten years later to the inquest. I think he thought you'd got away with it.

Madison Walsh and I talked about Murray's decision in nineteen ninety three to keep his head down and his mouth shut. Maddie has also met Murray at his home in Lennox Head, next to Bromwin and John's house. She stared at that house and wondered what happened inside on that night, And like me, Madison finds Murray thoughtful and keen to help this investigation, which makes his omission of what was vital information really hard to fathom. Detective disc And came to

It's not a big place, a lot of secrets would be kept.

John's car leaving with the lights off and the engine off and was scraping on the road. That was one of the reasons why Murray was suspicious of a murder right back on day one. Murray didn't tell the police that until he was interviewed five years later.

That could have been just enough for it to be taken seriously. Saying that he witnessed that.

He says he knew that she'd been killed. He said, but I just knew that she was dead.

He's probably not the only one that thought that way or had an inkling of a thought that early on either.

We speculated over whether it would have made a difference that.

Could have been enough for formal interviews to be completed. At that time.

You could have called sumb and said, I think we need the homicide squad here. Those detectives are very experienced in hardcore.

The fact that there was no forensic investigation done on the car, because that could have changed everything as well.

Although Murray had told me he was not intimidated by John, I have wondered about this. Murray was incapacitated as a result of a very accident in the surf when a large swell was producing heavy waves at trestles off black Head near Ballina.

I'd crossed my vertebrae in my back as the worst pain of ever thought in my life.

Pushed my spine right up into the back of your head. Oh, it was horrible. And what did you do?

Did you hit a sand that.

Went over the falls and bang lan on me?

Bun but hit a roof land on a reof crushed it like a can possible for a couple of weeks, and then came home and Miss Preston regrigerated.

He was in his house in Sandstone Crescent recovering his physical movements severely restricted, after being released from the medical ward a day before Bronwin's disappearance. Murray was a young dad of small children at home. Back then, John was in excellent physical condition. He was strong and fit from surfing, from his manual labor on building sites and working out with weights in his garage, John could have seemed physical intimidating without even trying to be.

Debbie and Murray like, are they still in relative contact with him or have they completely ceased communication.

They're not enemies and they're not boosom buddies. Debbie says she can't stand him and he won't look at her in the eye when she sees.

Him around town.

Wow, whereas Murray says he bumps into him a lot, mostly at the beach when they're getting ready to go.

For a surf.

I mean, maybe that's what works for him.

John Winfield still lives relatively close to deb and Murray, although John sold the house in Sandstone Crescent a quarter of a century ago. In fact, just about everything in Lennox's head is close, relatively.

Literally around the corner. At five ten minutes, I can take you there, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll take you for a drive.

As we drove out of Sandstone Crescent, deb raised Murray's disclosures about him not wanting to tell police what he saw and heard on the night of May sixteenth, nineteen ninety three.

So where are we going now?

We call this the Headlands. As you can see Headlands Drive. That's where I see John walking around here millionaires roll I call it that. He bought a dual block, one for himself and one for Jody. Are they good views up here over this side there are.

And these properties look at the ocean. Yeah they do.

I asked deb whether she or Murray had wondered whether his decision to hold back some information for five years was one of the reasons the first investigation went nowhere.

Yes and no.

When disc and as I said, was investigating it, if you'd like to call it.

That, it was just like a general chit chat.

He was giving them the benefit of the doubt really to say that, oh, they'll do their job. Their police officers know what they should be doing. And it all kind of died nowhere else we could go. He was waiting for them to really be the ones that will or less bring it to a head or swept under the carpet. I always get him confused, Sorry, Ledley, here we are here.

Yeah, he brought that block on that block.

The house next saw that jobs it's a fortress.

It is very odd looking.

It had been need as of him inside.

That's his car in the driveway.

That's him there.

Right, very exclusive.

As you can.

See sitting up there in your smug castle.

It seemed like a terrible person.

Don't I.

This has weighed on you for a long time.

Because I have a sister, and if it hadn't in my family, I just don't know how I would be able to handle that.

She was a friend and a good friend at the time.

We'd still be friends today, I know we would.

Did you ever have any disagreements?

No, we didn't, not at all.

I did feel so sorry for her though, she was gone through so much heartache with him, which is why I kipt didn't trying to encourage her to go.

I didn't really expect it.

All to turn out like it has.

In the very first episode of Bromwin, you heard that Murray still saw John most days when they would go to Boulders Beach to check out the surf. But they haven't talked to each other about Bromwin since way back in the beginning thirty one years ago, and they have not had any contact with each other over the past month and a half. Since this podcast series, Bromwin started in May twenty twenty four, John has been surfing different beaches.

There's been a development in a suspected murder of New South Wales mother Bronwyn Winfield more than three decades ago.

As this episode eight was being produced, detectives from Sydney's Unsolved Homicide Unit flew north and met Judy Singh for a lengthy sit down interview in the Tweedheads police station. The detectives took her statement for the first time in thirty one years. Afterwards, Judy went with police to the home in Granite Street, Lennox Head where she and her

A witness account, which was previously dismissed, is now being considered by detectives.

The idea that Bromwin took off to start a secret new life with no money and somehow evaded every proof of life check over the past thirty one years is too far fetched to be taken seriously. It's also offensive to all those who knew Bromwinn's remarkable dedication to her children, Crystal and Lauren. Bromwin Joy Winfield, who was thirty one when she disappeared on the night of May sixteenth, nineteen

Here, she's adamant, absolutely adamant. Yep, no doubt for her. She just seems like she's gone that block. I know that's where she is. She looked up, she said she's up there.

She's somewhere up there on that block.

For a while she could kept saying she's on the block, and then at some point she started telling me, you know, I do haven't checked the loose soil.

Now, in twenty twenty four, we still don't know where Lynn's remains are. A search of the property by police in twenty eighteen did not shed any light on her whereabouts.

Police have started digging for the remains of missing mum Lynette Dawson, who disappeared thirty six years ago and has thought to be buried in the garden of her family home at Bayview on the Northern Beaches.

In Bromwin's case, there were searches of the house and backyard at Sandstone Crescent by forensics officers in two thousand and nine when a review by Unsolved Homicide Unit detectives was unfolding, but nothing came out of these efforts. Sixteen years after Bromwin's disappearance. Kadava dogs have also been put

We went to do a sort of laundry bathroom area.

I actually said, why do you fuck the levels up here?

Because it was thick.

Laundry and bathroom areas don't have to be that thick and concrete to Deer he was working there as the brickplayer. You are going to hear more about this when we get to the episode dealing with the evidence. At the inquest, Scruffy got back in touch.

What has been on your mind?

What everyone wants to know is where's Bromwin? Yes, one day she's there, and the next to the sign of her and the kids went at the skill. They had taken them down to Sydney, and then it wasn't until they came back that all of a sudden what happened to Bromwin and the backstory started going, well, her mother was n absent and left him family home, and she's following in her footsteps.

John had been pushing to everyone.

Brown was supposedly unstable.

You've previously heard Deb Hall saying she's one hundred percent sure that John killed Bromin. She suggests that John, who emphatically denies wrongdoing, continues to live in the community because he takes the view they can't get.

Me because they can't find the body.

That's why I think he lives his life like he does.

Deb and Murray are also convinced that when John left the house in the car on the night of May sixteenth, nineteen ninety three, he was in a panic. Whatever happened was not planned. Something had happened.

He had his served body, had his bag, so he wasn't planning on going back to Sydney that night.

Why would you do that?

Here's the former experienced detective Glenn Taylor, who did dozens of interviews and worked very hard on the case for several years from nineteen ninety eight. Glenn's investigations had a significant impact and Bromwin would thereafter be seen as a probable victim of murder.

Circumstantially, I believe it's extremely likely that foul play occurred in the house that night. John was obviously in a bit of a panic that his wife, Wrongan, had moved back into the home.

Glenn described the events of the Sunday night from when John left the house in the family car, having woken the two girls for the drive to Sydney. You've heard some of this before, but course of its significance and what's to follow, it's best if it's really well understood.

And upon arrival at the house in Sandstone Crescent, Lannox said, Roman answered the door and from there within in what we call only one sided conversation as to what then

Rolling down the driveway.

We don't know, but it could be an influence that was waiting the boot. And then the vehicle then rolled down the hill still.

With its lights off.

And for some reason he believed that he needed to get a receipt, which he got. Eleven oh six pm that night, John Winfield obtained a receipt from the Airpole service station in Ballina. He still had that receipt years later,

One of the odd things from the night Bromwin disappeared is John's attachment to the receipt from the Ampole service station. He showed it to Michelle, he showed it to Andy, he showed it to Megan when she saw him in Sydney. He showed it to the detective Graham Diskin. In nineteen ninety three and five years after Broman's disappearance, John produced the receipt from his wallet and showed it to Glenn Taylor, the then detective sergeant.

It just hits me in the bat head like a sledge Emma.

In the next episode, we are going to unpack John's highly unusual attachment too his receipt, and he believes he has finally solved this puzzle.

Bugged us for so long.

Why he had to put so much emphasis on that petrol receipt.

It's a ship. What time you bought petrol? Who even needs to know that you bought.

Petrol to drive a car to Sydney.

No shit, Sherlock.

Really, it's always bugged me, and you and I talked about It.

Makes sense to us now.

And it might just be a powerful clue to Bromwin's whereabouts. Bronwyn has written and investigated by me Headley Thomas as a podcast production for The Australian. If anyone has information which may help solve this cold case, please contact me confidentially by emailing Bronwyn at the Australian dot com dot au. You can read more about this case and see a range of photographs and other artwork at the website Bromwyn podcast dot com. Our subscribers and registered users here episodes first.

Music by Slade Gibson.

We have been assisted by Madison Walsh, a relation.

Of Bromwin Winfield.

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