From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Friday, June seven. Nine Entertainment chairman Peter Costello, the former Federal Treasurer, has knocked a journalist to the ground at Canberra Airport.
Mister Cassello, my name is Liam Mendez from The Australian.
The incident occurred when The Australians reporter Leam Mendes approached Costello for comment on the crisis engulfing nine's chief executive Mike Sneezebe over sexual harassment allegations against a former senior executive. Costello barges towards Mendes and pushes him to the ground.
Why won't you support mister sneezebe publicly good? Well, you've got to answer the questions, mister Castello don't. And you've just assaulted me. You've just pushed me. It's all on camera, mister Cassello.
Costello has denied the incident was an assault, claiming Mendors simply fell over.
Mister Costello, did you assault a journalist at Canbra Airport?
When questioned in Parliament House by journalists including The Australians, Rhiann and down. Costello told them to be careful not to fall.
Mister Costello, when you consider your position, get in front and I'll come and talk to you all out.
Yeah, there's much as you'll fall over your coup. When I came to a Cambra airport, there was a reporter walking backwards with his phone filming. As I walked past him, he walked back into an advertising pack card and he fell I did not strike him. If he's upset about that, I'm sorry.
But I did not strike him.
And it was a public place which I was entitled to walk through. And as I said to you, he hit the advertising balot he fell over. I'm sorry about that. I wish that hadn't have happened. But you know this is I've seen it happened a million times. There's already speculation that this could put your chairmanship at risk. What is your response to Rosa The journalist said, you assaulted me and you loved and walked away.
You can watch the video and read what triggered the encounter right now at the Australian dot com dot au. The fourth episode of the Australian's latest investigative podcast series is out today Bronwyn tells the story of missing lennox Head mum Bronwyn Winfield, who disappeared from the idyllic surftown in the early nineties. Today, Bromwin's creator, The Australian's Headley Thomas, joins me with a big revelation in this new episode
Stay with Us. On May sixteenth, nineteen ninety three, thirty one year old Bronwyn Winfield tucked her two little girls into bed at the family home in lenox Head on the New South Wales North Coast and vanished. Still there are no answers, many of our listeners will know. The Australian's National Chief correspondent Headley Thomas is trying to change that in his new investigative podcast series simply called Bronwyn.
So far in this series, we've heard about Bronwyn's unhappy marriage to John Winfield, who built the lenox Head house Bronwyn described as a prison. These are Bromwin's diaries being read by a voice actor. When we moved to lenox Head, I was even more lonely. The house that was Bill became John's castle and my prison. We've heard how Bronwyn was seeking a divorce from John and custody of her daughters. We've delved into her complex family history and the red herrings.
The Ment Police didn't conduct a thorough investigation until years after Bronwyn had disappeared. We know a coroner recommended John Winfield be prosecuted for her murder, and now in episode four, we're examining who else knew what and when Headley. Since we launched the podcast, one of the things you were very keen to ensure that we did was to set up a special email address where listeners could contact you.
That's Bronwyn at the Australian dot com dot au. We share access to that mailbox and I can see you in the reading and responding to the people who get in touch. What's been the sense that you've got from the audience and the people who are motivated to reach out to you.
I get a range of reactions from people who knew Bromwan and want to share anecdotes and memories of their time with her, People who actually also knew Bromwan's children and remembered them as babies and recall how exceptionally close and devoted Brommin was to her girls. And also people
who do know something. Sometimes they don't want to be interviewed themselves, but they're making suggestions to me about talking to someone they know with information, and that's led to a number of new chapters and new interviews that have been part of the series even at this early stage.
One of the people who you've been in touch with is John Winfield's former wife. We're calling her D, and she's featured in an earlier episode of bromwin What was D's account of being married to John Winfield?
D spoke to me about being a young woman married to John, having fallen in love with him and been involved with him in a relationship for several years before they tied the knot, and then divorcing him after just eighteen months of marriage, and D was pretty candid about the problem at the heart of the relationship. She said
that John was very possessive, just always questioning her. When they would walk down the street, when they would go out somewhere together, she would be perhaps holding his hand, they would be having what she thought was a nice outing, but then she would be asked, why are you looking at him? What do you see in that person? Why were you staring at that guy? And she says, I wasn't. After a while that became unbearable for her. She didn't
want to go on with the marriage, and they split up. Interestingly, they had moved together to Lennox Head. They lived in a caravan for some time in Sandstone Crescent, where they had bought a block of land and were building a house. This is the place that John has always loved. He's wanted to live in Lenox and surf there. It's his favorite beach break, and he believed that he was going to live there with d But after they separated, she had to go to court. There was a lot of
dispute because she said she was a good savior. She had her own money. She had put money into the relationship and into the property that they had been building together. When it came time for them to part, and she thought she would be able to leave with what she had put in, he didn't want to give her anything, and she said that she had to sue him to
get any money. And that's why when she reflects on Bromwin's situation, she thinks about John's attachment to the first house that he was building with her, just down the road from where he would build a house with Bromwin several years later.
Episode four of Bronwin features a snippet of the nineteen eighty nine dark comedy Woar of the Roses. Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas's play a couple whose divorce turns bitter, and at the center of the dispute is the marital home. I've thought about this a lot.
I really don't want to be married to you, and I may have let you have the house, but now you'll never get it. You will never get that house. Do you understand that you will never get that house?
And that's the movie that Murray Nolan brom Win, Winfield's next door neighbor, was watching on the night of May sixteenth, nineteen ninety three. He remembers that he was watching that movie because something interrupted him. It was the sound of the Winfields car leaving their driveway next door. Why was that unusual for Murray.
Murray had just got out of hospital. He'd taken off on a particularly gnarly wave and been dumped and hit The reef, broke his back and, as his wife deb told me, crushed his spine like a can. He was at home at night on the sofa watching the television, and he heard the squeaky brakes of the car that he knew so well, he said, the distinctive noise of the white Ford Falcons brakes as they squeaked as the car eased down the sloping driveway always made him realize
when Bromin or John were leaving the house. But this night, when he heard the noise and then he looked outside, he could see that the car didn't have the headlights on and the engine wasn't turned on either, so the car was leaving silently. But as the car went from the driveway and onto the bitchmen of the road, it scraped, So there was something Murray's surmise, that was heavier than usual in the boot of the car, and the boot scraped the bitchermen and left a groove in the bitchmen.
And then the car rolled silently down the hill of Sandstone Crescent until it got to the bottom, and the car then stopped and the engine was turned the lights were turned on, and the car drove away. So it was a very unusual way for the car to leave the house. Murray hadn't seen that before.
That was about twenty minutes to eleven pm. On that Sunday night. We know that Bromwin was never seen again, and one thing we don't know is whether she was in that car when it departed. John Winfield has told the police that he left the house that night with the couple's two young daughters and drove to Sydney after he says Bromwin left the house and got into a car with someone he didn't know. What have police thought over the years about what was going on inside that car?
Headley Well, The police theory is that Bromwin's body was probably in the boot of that vehicle. John emphatically denies that, and he says that Bromwin had left about an hour earlier, and that was because a car driven by an unknown person had pulled up and she'd got in it to go away for a break of a few days. John doesn't deny that he was driving the white Ford Falcon at that time. In fact, he admits that he was driving the vehicle because that's around the time he must
have left the house to go to Sydney. He left in a hurry with his two girls at about twenty to eleven and he bought fuel at a service station in nearby Ballina, at eleven oh six pm.
Coming up, what it will take for the justice system to revisit Bronwin Winfield's case. Subscribers to The Australian here knew episodes of Bronwin first. They can also read articles written about the case by Headley, as well as our National crime correspondent David Murray and senior reporter Matthew Condon. Plus subscribers get exclusive access to photos, maps, timelines and more. Check us out at the Australian dot com dot a U. We'll be back after this break. Bronwyn Winfield loved her
little girls, Crystal and Lauren. They're now grown women, but they've chosen not to be interviewed for Hedley's investigation. There's good reason for that. Lauren Winfield is close to her father John. For Crystal, it's more complicated. You've spoken to Christal in the course of researching and reporting this podcast, Headley, but she hasn't been interviewed. We see in the family photos. She's a blonde little girl, obviously with a very close
relationship with her mum, Bromwyn. Why hasn't Cristel wanted to talk to you for this podcast?
Look, I think that question is one very personal to Crystal, but from what I've understood in the conversations that We've had, as well as conversations I've had with her mother's brother and other members of Bromn's side of the family, Crystal maintains a connection with her sister, Lauren, who was five years old when Bromwyn disappeared. Kristal was only ten. She also maintains a connection with her stepfather, John, she calls John Dad, and Crystal's own biological father has been deceased
for some years. There's a strong view on Broman's side of the family that Crystal is really torn and while she wants answers, she does want to upset her stepfather. She doesn't want to strain the relationship that she has with Lauren.
Bronwyn Winfield story bears a striking similarity to that of Lynnette Simms, who vanished from Sydney's Northern Beaches in nineteen eighty two. Lynn's husband, the former rugby league star Chris Dawson, was convicted of her murder in twenty twenty, two, years after the coroner, Karl Milvanovitch recommended Dawson be prosecuted for the crime.
Christopher Michael Dawson on the charge to the donor about eight January nineteen eighty two at Dayview or elsewhere in the state of New South Wales. You did murder Lynette Dawson. I find you guilty of messa doubt.
Both stories fell through the cracks of a complex and opaque criminal justice system. Dawson is now appealing his conviction, which came after Headley's twenty eighteen podcast investigation The Teacher's Pet, shed fresh light on what had happened four decades ago. You always go into these podcast investigations Heady with the
goal of getting some answers potentially solving a crime. As I said, you're getting contacted by people who knew Bromwin via that email Addre Bromwin at the Australian dot com dot what's needed for this case to progress beyond where it is now, which is the DPP in New South Wales declining to prosecute John Winfield.
I think all of these cold cases always require fresh sets of eyes to review them, and that goes for the office of the DPP as well. There's a lot to be critical of the police about in this case because for the first five years they really did a terrible job and failed to act on a lot of red flags suggesting that Bromwin would not have voluntarily just abandoned her children, her house, her job, her friends and
home to start some new life. That wasn't plausible to people who knew Bromwan back then, and it looks much less plausible now in the context of a relationship that was falling apart at that time. And the police, when they came on board, did do a much more thorough job with this case and took it to a coronial proceeding, and then there was a finding by a coroner, and then there was subsequent investigations by police. While all of
that was going on, the DPP declined to prosecute. But what we don't know in all of these sorts of considerations is whether the DPP has made its decision correctly, whether it's made its decision based on all the information and understanding of the case that they could possibly have, or whether the decision was made in error. And the reason we don't know is because that process is always concealed.
It's an opaque process. It's not transparent. There isn't any way for victims or for police to properly understand why apart from the blanket statement of insufficient evidence, these cases don't run. Now with the benefit of hindsight looking at all of the statements and evidence and new evidence that's available that the DPP was probably not aware of at
the time. It's the kind of case that you think, well, is someone considering it again and looking and wondering whether this could be another case like Lynn's case involving her husband, Chris Dawson, which should have been prosecuted way back in the eighties or nineties, and when it was properly considered again in twenty twenty two, it led to a prosecution.
Hilly Thomas is the Australian's National Chief correspondent and the creator of the Bronwyn Podcast. Episode four is live for subscribers now at bronwynpodcast dot com. That's bronwynpodcast dot com. Thanks for joining us on the front this week. Our team is Kristen Amier, Joshua Burton, Leott Sammaglue, Jasper League, Tiffany Demac, Matthew Condon and me Claire Harvey.