From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Tuesday, May twenty eighth. The new Australian made nuclear subs will be substantially bigger than the US Navy's Virginia class submarines. That's a revelation in the Australian today. As we prepare for a big day of defense news, We're hosting a Defending Australia summit with top defense brass former spies, ex political prisoners and ambassadors. It'll all be live on
Sky News Australia today. The Coalition is promising to cancel the visas of anti Semitic student protesters if it wins the election. Foreign students who engage in campus protests should be booted out, says Opposition Home Affairs spokesman James Patterson. That's an exclusive on the Australian dot com dot a
you right now. Former New South Wales's Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery told the family of a missing mum Bromwyn Winfield that there was no evidence her husband killed her, despite a senior coroner finding there was a reasonable prospect a jury would convict him. John Winfield was never changed and denies any wrongdoing. That's today's episode.
My advice to police in the coroner, after very careful consideration of all the evidence presently available, is that there is not sufficient evidence to charge Jonathan Winfield or any other person.
Those are the words written by former New South Wales Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery in a letter to a Sydney man named Andy Reid in two thousand and three. They're being read by a voice actor. That's the moment Andy and his wife Michelle lost hope that they'd get answers in the disappearance of Andy's sister, Bronwyn. Bronwyn Winfield was thirty one, the mother of two little girls aged ten and five, and stepmom to an eighteen year old,
the daughter of her husband, John Winfield. They lived together in a beach town, Lennox Head, on the wild New South Wales north coast. John was a surfey and a bricklayer. Bronwyn worked part time at the local takeaway food shop, but in nineteen ninety three, after tucking her children into bed one Sunday night, Bronwen disappeared. The last person to report seeing her was John Winfield, and the mystery of what happened to this devoted young mum is the subject
of our newest podcast here at The Australian. It's called Bronwyn and it's reported and investigated by our national Chief correspondent Headley Thomas, who also created The Teacher's Pet. Where do you want to go?
Today? Thirty one years since the sudden disappearance of a mother of two little girls. I'm driving on a winding road south of Byron Bay to the house that Bromwin had called her prison, past former dairy and sugar cane farms resident.
There are some startling similarities between the stories of Bromwin Winfield and Lynn Simms. Lynn was the subject of Headley's podcast, The Teacher's Pet. Both young mums of two little girls, both utterly devoted, both going through a difficult time in their marriages, and in both cases the coroner recommended their husbands be charged with murder, and a Director of Public Prosecutions declined to recommend a charge. And here's another similarity.
The coroner who recommended the charge in both Lynn and Bromwin's cases was the same person, Karl Milavanovitch, and the DPP who declined was the same person, Nicholas Cowdery.
While Jonathan Winfield is the last known person to have seen her alive, there is no evidence that he killed her or had any role in her disappearance. Suspicion cannot be substitution for evidence.
Nick Cowdery Casey was as close as you can get to a legal superstar.
The Beast of Malaglow Ivan Malatt is serving seven life terms for the backpacker murders five young women and two men.
Mohammed Skaff was a member of a rape gang that terrorized young women in Sydney in the year two thousand. He led the agency that prosecuted some of Australia's most notorious criminals. He was feisty, fiercely independent and regularly fighting with the government and the media.
Huge cases we're looking at now is cases that didn't make it too a prosecution during his time as DPP.
Dave Murray is The Australian's National Crime correspondent and he's working with Headley and our team at The Australian on the podcast Bronwyn.
Nicholas Cowdery is Australia's longest serving DPP. He was the Director of Public Prosecutions in New South Wales from nineteen ninety four to two thousand and eleven, so some sixteen and a half years.
Dvps are very powerful figures in the Australian legal system. They run an independent agency which is government funded but legally protected from influence or pressure from politicians. Back then, the DPP was appointed for life, a measure designed to ensure no future government could turf out a chief prosecutor. Cowdery would have kept going and could still even be DPP today, but there was a quirk in the system which meant if he didn't retire before his sixty fifth birthday,
he'd be denied a pension. Left the job when he was sixty four years and three hundred and sixty four days of age, and the government subsequently changed the law so DPPs are appointed for ten year terms and can't be reappointed again. That's designed to protect DPPs from worrying about whether or not politicians like their work. It's a tough job. The DPP is supposed to only recommend charges where there's a reasonable prospect of conviction, but they also
have to factor in the unpredictability of juries. Sometimes a jury might convict even if the evidence is not everything the prosecution would like it to be.
In December, Kelly Lane was convicted of murdering her two day old baby daughter Teagan in nineteen ninety six.
The case of Kelly Lane is a good example. It's one of those cases people still argue about even after conviction, because baby Teagan disappeared without a trace. Lane's family didn't eat even though she was pregnant. Kelly Lane had had other pregnancies before and after Teagan, and her story was that after giving birth, she gave Teagan away. Just like in the cases of Bromwin and Lynn. There was no forensical crime scene evidence and there were no eyewitnesses to
an alleged murder, but Kelly Lane was charged. In twenty eighteen, Nicholas Cowery talked about the case on the ABC's documentary Exposed, reported by Caro Meldrum.
Hannah, this was an unusual case in that it was the possibility of a murder charge without a body, and that meant that the other circumstantial evidence had to be pretty compelling to justify bringing the proceedings.
What was your own view?
My own view was that there was a case of murder to be prosecuted. It raised all sorts of values, the relationship between a new mother and child, the idea of child killing, which is so abhorrent to the community generally, the nature of the accused and her conduct over a period of time that made it important. That meant it it got priority over other cases.
This next moment in the documentary caused a big controversy and saw Nicholas Cowdrey resigned his post as chairman of the White Ribbon Foundation, which campaigns to end men's violence against women.
I don't think Kelly Laine was a risk to the community and that she would go around killing other people's babies. She seemed to bear a bit of a risk to the virile, young male portion of the community. That's not grounds for putting her in prison.
Of course, Cawtery later apologized for those remarks, saying they weren't respectful. In the case of bromwin Winfield, she disappeared in nineteen ninety three one Sunday night, after having tucked her two little girls into bed. Her husband was the last person to see her alive. Of course, he has denied any involvement, but later on police interviewed him and
ultimately the case proceeded to the coroner. Can you just explain for us, Dave, what happened to that coronial inquest and then what happened after that.
The coronial inquest was led by the New South Wales Deputy State Coroner, Karl Milovanovitch. There were five days of hearings that was in accord in Lismore, and at the end of that the coroner recommended that a nun person Mister when Phil Bromwin's husband, be prosecuted over her alleged murder. Now, the coroner had to meet two tests to do that.
The first was that the evidence to be capable of satisfying a jury beyond reasonable doubt that a non person had committed an indictable offense, so a serious offense such as murder. And the second thing was that there had to be a reasonable prospect a jury would convict. The coroner concluded that was the case, that both those tests had been met and so he referred it on to the DPP.
The family wasn't happy with the pro former response they got from the DPP's office, saying a prosecution wouldn't be happening. They demanded a proper explanation. That's what prompted Nick Carterery's letter to Andy Reid.
He actually said there was no evidence that Jonathan Winfield Bromwin, the husband, had killed her or had any role in her disappearance. And he listed a few factors in explaining this. A couple of those were that there was nobody in this case and so no cause of death. They're the same kind of things he raised in the separate case of Lyn Dawson or lind Sims as we know her.
Now coming up, why the coroner wanted John Winfield prosecuted. Bronwyn is available now to our registered users and subscribers at bronwynpodcast dot com. You can contact our team with any information at Bronwyn at the Australian dot com dot au and we'll be back after this break. Nicholas Cowdery is seventy eight now, and Dave gave him a call to find out what he recalled of the case.
I was interested in talking to Nicholas Cardu. I gave him a call. He was driving at the time. He had a little trouble hearing me at first, but we got there. I explained to him the Bronwyn Winfield case and the circumstances behind it, and I asked him if he remembered it. He said that he didn't have any recollection at all of the Winfield case.
I had sixteen and a half years of cases, and I don't remember all of them. If that's what I said at the time, it would have been based on the evidence that was available.
Now he must have covered hundreds, many hundreds, thousands of cases as DPP, so that isn't entirely surprising, though I think for Bromin's found me it is obviously such an important decision they may have been surprised if he didn't remember it.
The DPP makes an independent decision about those things, taking into account, of course, the recommendation and taking into account the evidence at the inquest.
I was also interested in asking him whether his approach to cases of missing women would change now if he had the chance. He's seventy eight years old, he is retired. Would he have done things any differently? And he has a straight away no, he would do it exactly the same.
I would look at the facts that we're able to be proved on the evidence, and I would look at the law, and I would look at the prosecution guidelines. They were taken into account then and they are taken into account now by the DPP.
Of course, we don't know what happened to Bromwinn Winfield. Nobody has ever been charged, her body has never been found. But we can probably assume, can't we, Dave, that she has met with her death. That's what the coroner found, and that she may well have been the victim of violence by someone who we don't know.
The coroner was certainly comfortable to conclude that Roman Winfield was no longer alive, and he said that she had died honor about the sixteenth of May nineteen ninety three, and that's when she was last seen by her husband, Jonathan Winfield.
You've been covering crime for a long time, Dave. Now, violence against women is the big theme of Australian society. It's something that everybody is talking about. There have been dozens of murders of women this year in Australia. What's your view about those judgment calls that were being made in the nineteen eighties and the nineteen nineties about not proceeding with charges in the cases of women who disappeared.
Clearly there has to be the evidence there to go ahead with such a serious charge and prosecution of the most serious offense you can get, murder. So anyone would say,
of course it's important that the evidence be there. But looking back now, we can see that society used things differently now than we did back then, and police, for example, I think, perhaps looked at these cases and thought these were cases of runaway mumps, so people who might have run off with a new boyfriend or something like that. And that's certainly a concern that's been raised by the former coroner Karl Milovanovitch, that there was a systemic issue there.
So I think it's really valuable now to go back and look at these past cases and say where these actually assessed the right way. These are sometimes circumstantial cases, obviously with nobody that they're missing, women have never been found, But did we actually sit down and assess all of the evidence fully and properly in the right way.
You also sat through the trial of Christopher Dawson for murder Dave. Of course, he is now appealing before the Court of Criminal Appeal saying that the judgment was unsound and that he should be released from prison. What's your view in that matter where nobody was found. It was an entirely circumstantial case of the likelihood of getting convictions in these matters where there is nobody.
My opinion in any case has always been to reserve judgment until you get all of the evidence. You can't really do that sitting on the sidelines and just picking up little bits and pieces when you actually, I think, sit down in a trial, a full trial like we did with Chris Dawson, and you see all of the evidence, and then at the end of that you can really weigh it all up, assess it and make a conclusion.
And I think at the end of that case the evidence was overwhelming that Chris Dawson was guilty of his wife Lin's murder. But that of course does not mean that Jonathan Winfield had anything to do with the disappearance of his wife, and he firmly denies it. I think once again here we are trying to gather all the evidence, look at all the evidence before you come to a conclusion.
Dave Murray is The Australian's National Crime correspondent. You can read all his reporting and all our stories as well as listen to the podcast Bromwyin right now by joining our subscribers at the Australian dot com dot au