From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Friday, February twenty eight. Elective surgery and emergency department waiting times are stuck at COVID levels, and public hospitals are struggling to cater for Australians over sixty five. That's the damning report card from the Australian Medical Association. An Iranian immigrant who killed his wife and then tried to dispose of her body with acid is fighting Labour's attempts
to deport him to Nauru. Tony Kelissar was convicted of a calculated and premeditated murder in nineteen ninety seven and were sentenced to twenty two years in prison, but now his lawyers have won a bid to stall his deportation. Those stories alive now at the Australian dot com dot au. Momentum is bible building around The Australian's blockbuster investigative podcast
Bromwyn about the unsolved disappearance of mother Bromwyn Winfield. On Thursday night in Sydney, the podcast team gathered with listeners to record a special episode of the podcast, and today we've got a sneak peek for you behind the scenes with Headley Thomas, Bromwin's family and the teen. Less than a year ago, The Australian launched a new Headley Thomas podcast, Bromwyn. It tells the story of Bromwyn Winfield, a thirty one year old mum who disappeared from Lennox Head in nineteen
ninety three. Very early on into the investigation, there were a lot of worrying similarities between this case and the one we'd covered in Headley's podcast, The Teacher's Pet. That was the story of another missing woman, which led to the eventual arrest, charge and murder conviction of its subject, Christopher Michael Dawson. When Headley Thomas set out to investigate the disappearance of Bromwyn, he thought it would be a short series, maybe seven or eight episodes, but the story
keeps getting bigger, curlier and more concerning. A lot of the questions about what happened to Bromwyn revolve around one figure, John Winfield, Bromwin's husband at the time. He has always denied any wrongdoing. Since the podcast was released, it's been listened to more than seven million times around the world and has led to a lot of revelations. Some of those have come from the public, listeners and people who
knew Bromwin personally. Early on, there was the witness who saw John Winfield driving with what looked like a human body, according to her allegation, in the back of the family's Ford Falcon on the night Bromwin vanished.
And this night I was sitting out now I could see directly into the car and I saw this what looked to be like a mummy in the back of the car, and I thought, well, if he was taking out belongings, you wouldn't make it look like a body, do you know what I mean?
And then there was the discovery of John Winfield's secret daughter.
The first time I ever saw his face was on the front page of the Australian.
He'll never be my father, will never be mates.
We'll never sit down and have a coppet together.
I'll never break bread with him, purely.
Because my grandmother would be disgusted in me if I did.
We also learned his former wife, Jenny Mason, alleged John Winfield had been aggressive and abusive. A voice actor is reading part of her statement.
I recall on one occasion when he pushed me back onto the bed because answers back to him on that time. He scared me a great deal. He said to me, I'll kill you if you say that again, and at the time he had his hands around my throat and was squeezing.
The dogged coverage of this case has prompted renewed interest from police and a story which was meant to be a few episodes is now entering season three. So what does an investigation like this take, where's it heading the next and are the police taking it seriously? Those were the topics under discussion with me Headley Thomas, the Australian's National Crime correspondent, David Murray, senior reporter Matthew Condon, and
Bromwin's cousin Mattie Walsh. Today on the front we're bringing you some of that conversation and to hear the whole hour and a half, join our subscribers at bromwyn podcast dot com. We'll be releasing a special episode of bromwn on Friday night with the whole evening's conversation. Headley getting to the big question first, why do you think when twenty years ago the police went to the coroner the coroner went to the DPP.
Was laid. Yeah, so you know, we had a situation in two thousand and two after the coroner recommended a murder charge that the decision was made I think, initially in a regional office in northern New South Wales that there would be no prosecution. And it seems at first unfathomable why after so much work, with such a compelling, circumstantial case, wouldn't you put it before a jury. It's not to say that the accused is guilty, just that
there should be a determination. And you know, I've thought about this deeply over the years since I've heard about Bromin's case and since I've been talking to Andy Reid and reading the evidence, and all I can come up with is human error. I believe that the system, clearly and quite obviously, in this case and in others that I've been involved in, fails to grasp what most people who can step back and look at all of the
evidence can see. That there is a strong prema facy case and that as the coroner, a very experienced judicial officer, recommended, it should have been prosecuted. And the coroner doesn't make a decision like that lightly he has to satisfy under the Coroner's Act a certain test. That is that, in his view, a jury would be likely to find beyond reasonable doubt that the known person would be found guilty. And that's an important bar. It's not a balance of
probabilities test. It's a strict legal test at the higher level. So it's our job in journalism and with these podcasts to try to re ignite these cases, to refresh them, because the families don't have anyone else. After the police have tried and failed or the DPPs said well we're not going to take this forward, the families then go back and say, well, where do we go from here?
And I think that police, even cold case teams, unsolved homicide units, which are a more recent innovation, they struggled because they've got limited resources and a huge number of these cases that didn't go forward, or cases that didn't even get to the stage of a brief of evidence.
And so we have the opportunity with the resources that the Australian makes available, with the goodwill of the listenership and the help of people who want to volunteer their time and people like Maddie down the front here we have the opportunity to make a difference and find new evidence, new witnesses. We hope that something gets done. All we can promise Andy and Michelle and Caitlin and all of the Reed family is that we'll keep trying. We'll keep
trying to find new evidence. And it's not our job to directly pressure the DPP or the police. They have to do their job independently. But we believe that with the weight of the evidence that comes out, we hope that it gets to a tipping point where skilled prosecutors say, well, this is more than enough, we can make something of this.
Dave, what do you think the delay in this case has done to it? You know, the fact that charges were not laid in two thousand and two when the coroner recommended that they should be, and of course John Winfield denies any wrongdoing and that is yet to be tested in any kind of court. We've seen a significant delay there. In a very separate matter, Chris Dawson is
still pursuing his right to appeal. He's now telling the High Court that because of delays and what is called forensic disadvantage in the legal system, he can't get a fair troll. He couldn't get a fair troll because police delayed for so long. What do you think about that?
Yeah, well, we're eagerly awaiting that decision of Cryst Wilson's appeal. I know that delay was cited in the letter that Nicholas Cajurey the DPP way back at the time of the inquest, when he wrote to Andy Reid. You know, he from memory cited the delay and the initial investigation before it was taken up and investigated really thoroughly for the first time. That was twenty plus years ago, so
we're further down the track. I think we've seen that these cases still are solvable even though there is a delay. It might be a barrier, but it doesn't mean that they can't be solved. It was solved in Linn's case, it was solved in other cases, and this was all happening at the time of the lindaws An investigation. So these cases can still be solved even though there is a delay.
Coming up. More from our special Bromwin recording. We'll be back after this break, all right now. Joining me on stage once again, of course, is Headley Thomas. Next to him is Mattie Walsh, Bromwyn Winfield's cousin and an invaluable member of the team on this podcast. And next to Mattie is Matthew Condon, who is one of Australia's greatest journalists. Matt is such a beautiful writer and such a beautiful speaker, and so Matt no pressure, but I want to talk
about Bromwin. She is, of course the subject of this podcast, and we haven't really talked about her a lot tonight. But when we first began this project and Headley was working away very hard on the audio, Matt, I asked you to write the feature that we would publish to kind of kick off this story in the paper, and you dug through Bromin's writings. What sort of person emerged in those diaries and letters that you read.
My first introduction to Bronwin was her writing. And I read it very carefully, and I read it over and over, and it was very poignant and very touching, and I tried to find the woman behind the words. And you know, these peripheral judgments may be wrong Andy her brother, but I sensed a very loving human being, a very dedicated mother. I sensed a woman who was trying to make the most of a very difficult personal situation. I got the sense that she was psychologically and physically in a vice
and that she was trying to express herself. And at the end of those writings, she's very positive and she says, I'm looking forward. I'm going to move forward positively with this. So I saw a woman who had an enormous amount to give, but it was falling on fallow ground and she was in a very awkward scenario.
She wrote beautifully, didn't she She.
Did write beautifully, and she wrote, to my mind, very honestly. She didn't hold back in terms of her emotions, which was another for me, a key insight into the sort of person that she would have been. To my mind, I would have loved to have met her, you know, just one of those straight up people, a lot of love to give, but was in a despicable situation near the end that she was trying to find a way
out of. And the writing reflects that she's trying to keep it together and move forward in a positive way.
Maddie, in your family's life and and you're growing up, what did you know about Bromwin.
Despite never meeting her, I knew that she had the biggest heart.
She cared for.
Everyone around her no matter what, and her devotion to her kids was like none other. She would have never left her kids, and she loved everyone around her. She was positive, happy, and just a really kind soul. She just wanted to make a great life for her kids. You can tell that through her writings, you can tell that through you know, her relationships with her family. And it's really kind of confronting to realize that, you know, she was close in age to me, and she was
going through something that was normalized back then. It was you were told, you know, just to suck it up and keep going. And to know that when now in this situation thirty one years later, it is is so hard to fout them because there are still so many people in that kind of situation.
I just want to ask, where are the police in all of this. We find it very frustrating that all this evidence is coming out and yet there's only just in the last episode there was a little mention of the police looking into something, but apart from that, the police seemed to be not there.
Thank you great much.
Thank you. The police who had been doing a big review of Romin's case told Andy in I think early May last year, that following their review, they didn't believe that they could take this case any further, that they'd been knocked back by the DPP before and that they'd run out of leads and angles and evidence. Now what's happened as a result of the podcast is more leads and angles and evidence and witnesses have come to light, and as a result, the police have been doing more work.
What is a bit frustrating is and I'll speak briefly for Andy here because I think I know from everything he's told me, he feels that he is the last person to know anything that's going on. The police won't share with us or anyone else in the podcast team what they're doing, and I totally understand that they don't need to. They would have serious trust issues that it would end up in episode twenty four, and so that's
absolutely fine. But I think that there's got to be a balance struck between them being able to do their job effectively and us being able to do our job independently. But they're being a better way for them to jump onto evidence that could make a difference. They can always ask at the first opportunity for anything that they believe could help their investigation, they only have to pick up
the phone. But in this investigation, it's just struck me that there has been a very deep reluctance of police to be as proactive in going after the relevant and I believe important information. And that's really disappointing for everybody who wants to see a result here. And I know it's incredibly disappointing for Andy and Michelle because they know how sometimes this information is just coming up out of the blue and how willing we are.
To share it.
I just added to it.
I caught up with Andy yesterday for a news story for them for the paper, and he reminded me of what the former New South Wales Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said after the Teacher's Patty. He said, and this is
when Chris Wilson had been convicted. He said, this is the most powerful investigative tool I've ever seen for an experienced policeman like that to say that, you know, things are still pretty new for police back then, but we're now at a stage with these podcast investigations that I think police should be, you know, know what to do now. They should have a plan. It should be on the front foot, and they should see it as an opportunity
because it's not something they can stop out. It's beyond their control and they should just be trying to get They should be ready to get all the evidence that they can because I'll never get a better opportunity to get new evidence then if it's taken up on a global platform like that.
Come to Bromwin podcast dot com for a special new episode of broman on Friday night. And if you like this kind of forensic investigative journalism, you'll love everything else we do at the Australian. Check us out and join our subscribers at the Australian dot com dot au