Tipping Point

This is the case of Marion Barter, a mother, teacher friend missing for twenty six years.

You know, no sign that she was going to vanish, that's for sure.

The bizarre circumstances surrounding her disappearance.

I'm not sure if it was intentional. There something more foul afoot.

If you could imagine a teacher coming straight from say little house on the prairie to the eighties, that was Marian Barter.

What I say, whether you find Marian Barter dead or alive, I honestly believe somebody has that key piece of information.

And the relentless quest of a daughter to find her mum.

Something had happened, Something has happened to make her leave.

I am one hundred percent sure, one hundred percent sure that somebody knows something.

The lady vanishes, episode fifty six. I'm Alison Sandy.

And I'm Brian Seymour.

On February twenty nine, the world will find out what the New South Wales Coroner believes happened to Marian Barter when Teresa O'Sullivan hands down her findings after what's turned out to be more than two years of stop star inquest hearings into Marion's disappearance. It's a memorable date, a leite year day, marking an incredible journey of almost twenty seven years searching for Marion's daughter, Sally, and more than five years since the Lady Vanish's team first started collaborating.

Based on the fact of how quickly she quit school and left.

This is when we first interviewed her in twenty nineteen.

She was not happy. She was very upset, she was frazzled. Something had happened, something has happened to make her leave.

The late Rebecca Cotts, who worked for the Australian Federal Police Missing Persons Unit, also had that unsettling gut feeling.

My opinion on the case, I think obviously there's something that's happened to Mary and she hasn't just walked away from her life, and she had so much to live for and loved her kids and her family. I guess they knows the truth. Somebody out there has the key to the puzzle.

Retired super Detective Ron Iddles believed the case could be cracked.

The answers always in the file.

Somebody within the community, either here in Australia or overseas, knows exactly what's happened.

He was right, The answer was in the file. The key to unlocking the case was in the name Marion, adopted by deed Pole Flora Bella Natalia Marion Ramicel super sleuth. Joni was first to find the piece to the puzzle that changed everything, monsieur, the personal ad for a man looking for love multiple pile. It raised everyone's suspicions.

I can make definitely see, you know, even from a week or a few weeks in, I think that Marion was potentially a prime candidate for getting sort of swept up, captured, you know, sell your house, sell everything, Let's go and live in Luxembourg with the all of the lavender Bush's and the music and the art and the French speaking multiple languages.

Then police detectives brought Rick Blum into the frame. A man who admits romancing Marian in the months before her disappearance, a man with a history of fraud, multiple aliases, and a reputation across two continents as a swindler who targets vulnerable women and makes off with their money, a man who blatantly lied repeatedly while giving evidence under oath. But just how will it stack up? On February twenty nine.

Sali, Regardless of what's in the findings, how hopefully you that they will bring you some sense of closure or satisfaction.

The findings is a really important part of the case. Obviously, it brings some resolution as to what has actually happened to my mum after years and years of investigation and you know, to nearly three decades of me trying to

What does it mean to you to get to this point in the journey to find out what happened to you, mum?

Well, everybody who's been following along on the podcast will know all too well the challenges that I've been facing for twenty seven years now on trying to get some answers and some clarity and just even some people to

Sally has invited her supporters to watch online for the live stream as Coroner Teresa O'Sullivan delivers her findings. Will be providing a link on our social pages, or you can join Sally at the Coroner's Court at Lidcombe in Sydney on Thursday February twenty nine at nine thirty am Australian Eastern Daylight saving time, Sally suggests wearing a splash of green in memory of Marion. Can you talk about the support you're getting from people around the world following you and your story.

The worldwide support has been absolutely mind blowing. I never thought in a million years, by simply telling my story about my missing mum that I would have the reach that we've had and the support that has come from that.

In twenty twenty three, more than fifty five thousand people were reported missing in Australia, an average of around one hundred and fifty a day. Of course, almost all were found within hours, but across the country there are two thousand, six hundred long term missing people who have not been seen for more than three months. And in the morgues there are the unidentified and the unclaimed, the remains of seven hundred and fifty sons, daughter's friends who still don't have a name.

We do need to keep searching until we find the answers for them. So yeah, I'm very grateful to everybody around the world for helping me and sticking with me.

Hello, Hi Ger, how are you?

Hello? Laura, loved to see.

You and you too. How are you doing, Brian?

I'm good. Thanks.

Laura Richards, host of the Crime Analyst podcast and formerly of New Scotland. Yard has been with us from the first year. She works as a criminal behavioral analyst and has provided expert insights based on years of experience investigating high profile cases, which now includes Maring Barter's case.

It must feel surreal, and you know, I cast my mind back to the first conversation I have with Alison Sandy, and there was such limited information to go on other than Sally knowing that something wasn't right and an accelerated timeline, and that accelerated timeline was the big red flag really of finding who was on that accelerated timeline of marry and changing everything in the four to six months before

It's a mixture of you know, excitement, anticipation and also and also dread. So first of all, you've kind of just touched on it. But what are your overall impressions of the case of the disappearance of Marion Barda in terms of other cases you've personally been involved in, or read about or followed.

Yes, I mean this case is just somewhat overwhelming. Now, it's overwhelming in the amount of information that you have. But at the start, when I was asked by Alison Sandy to review the causity of information that you had that Marian had disappeared, and Sally was adamant that something had happened to her. All of the arrows point in the same direction to mister Rick Blum, and the parallels

Laura was also involved in the Teacher's Pet podcast which sheared new light on the nineteen eighty two disappearance of Sydney woman Lenet Dawson, created by journalist Hedley Thomas. The podcast ultimately led to her husband, Chris Dawson, being tried and convicted in twenty twenty two of her murder, and he is today at the age of seventy five, serving a twenty four year sentence behind bars.

And with Marion's case, what you've uncovered through the Lady Vanishes is so many red flags and everything points back in one direction. There's nothing that has come up that has made me think, oh, we might have to rethink this. We might have to think, oh there's X or I or Z, and we need to pursue that because that person actually is on Marion's timeline and they're very interesting.

Yeah, the last day he gave evidence, I took the opportunity to confront Ric Bloom and let me ask you. I asked him at one point, do you feel sorry for Sally with their mum being missing for so long and the children never having nit big Gwen mother, do you feel sorry for Can you get what he said?

Well, judging on how he was at the inquest. I would imagine that it became about him, that he was less interested in the impact on her, and it was much more about him than me myself and I is that what happened?

Yes, Laura really does know his subject matter for the first time. Here is a snippet where you can hear exactly what happened.

Hi the Rick, how are you feeling? Mate?

An excerpt of that confrontation in April twenty twenty two. Until now, we've been advised not to replay the fifteen minute encounter. What do you say to SALIHI just tell me something, I'll pass it on to her. Are you sorry for Sally? Do you feel anything for her at all? She doesn't seen a month of twenty five years. Do you feel sorry for Sally just as a human being? I mean, okay, you can say I feel sorry for her, that's not incriminating.

I feel sorry for me, he said, I feel sorry for me.

Wow, Yes, I mean that does not surprise me at all, because what I witnessed was him trying to go oner hympathy and hympathy is very specific to men, drawing on patriarchy and how we react to men, where we're much more like so, poor guy, he's had X, Y and Z happen, whereas if a woman shows up with the same she doesn't get the same sympathy. And Kate Mann actually coined that term hympathy, and I tend to see it with PMS poor me syndrome, which I coined in

I just want to know what happened to her? Where is she?

He is a bit more of my encounter with Bloom a couple of years ago.

Is this some sort of game? You think you've gotten away with something?

Oh? What does that?

Man?

Yes, so it's a game you've won. Bloom pulled faces. He smiled and raised his eyebrows as I spoke to him. There's no one else around, mate, man to man.

When he got to the.

I know you want to all the coroner in the world and the police tell me news.

Thing your common mind is that because you're too clever.

What's the idea?

Man, I'm tired of hearing you are. Well, you'll be.

Unsurprised that I don't really care what you're tired of, because I know what you are and you feel I'm targeting. You didn't you understand how those women feel? Will do you understand how the women felt? Remember, Rick Bloom has never apologized to any of his victims, despite admitting he lied about his identity and his family in order to

You know, Brian, with all the proliferation of true crime, and then you know the where we see so many documentaries, you often hear people say on documentaries and so forth, they talk about victims and they say, oh, her smile would light up the room.

Right.

They tend to say positive things about the victim and airbrush out the negatives. What I witness with Rick Blum is he did the exact opposite. At every opportunity, he said something negative about Marion, that she was sexually promiscuous, she was a sex addict. You know, he just said she was insatiable. He just said so many derogatory things about her that showed a callous disregard and I felt that that was very intentioned to upset Sally and the family.

The big question of course, is what will the coroner find in relation to Rick Bloom, if anything, and will she recommend the Director of Public Prosecutions consider charging him with a crime or crimes, and if so, what might they be.

So some of the major things for me having written reports like this for court and with the reminder that circumstantial evidence is just as compelling and just as strong as direct physical evidence, and many cases are built on circumstantial evidence alone. I know you know that. But oftentimes people will think, well, there's no body and there's no direct physical evidence, therefore there's no case. But that is absolutely not true. We know with Lynette Dawson, for example,

Another key piece of circumstantial evidence is the trips mister Bloom and Mary and talk in nineteen ninety seven when she disappeared, both heading to Europe at the same time. Mister Bloom confirming he stayed at the Hotel Nico in Narrita, Japan in transit, and Marian writing to Sally using paper with the letterhead Hotel Nico Narita.

Yes, and that paper is very significant because we know he was there. We know they on the timeline, which again is very significant. They both leave Australia within the same window of time, a few days, within a few days of each other. He goes to Japan, she he stays at that particular hotel, Hotel Nico in Narita. Diane talks to that trip and him flying to Japan at that time at the inquest, and we know that Marion wrote to Sally on that letterhead Hotel Nico in Narrita,

She would potentially have been missus fernand Ramagil at that time.

Yes, the id to register a marriage in that night.

Yes, it's possible, and I think that that has to be really pursued. If they can be tied together, more so from another coroborating, third party source, I think that will be very compelling. At the moment, it's still compelling to me because it means that he knew what was in her head and she's writing on a letter head that only he would have had access to, so it puts them together. Of course, going to Tunbridge Wells. I mean that was another very significant point to me knowing

Then there is the police interview with mister Bloom in September twenty twenty one, conducted by Detective Senior Constables Seneschho Pinazza and Lisa Pisodo.

It wasn't necessarily the two hour, twenty one minute interview that was that all took place of you know, and I felt, you know, unfortunately by or was conducted by officers who probably didn't really understand who they had before them. And it's a common thing that I see, particularly with coercive controllers and manipulators, that oftentimes the police don't have the measure of who they are.

In the last few minutes of the interview, do you see Pinazza asks mister Bloom, did you kill Marian Bada.

And he answered the question with a question, and when somebody does that on an interview or an interrogation, it's always an indicator of deception or buying time. If you didn't kill the person you're being asked about, it's just a straight no and being very declarative, absolute about it. He wasn't, and when he was asked again, it was no, no fading facts. And then when he was asked did he harm marry and he said I harm no one.

And there is the way mister Bloom talks about women, especially the women he has admitted lying to.

Some of them. He tried to get them to sell their homes, the lure of something better and marrying and moving abroad, the ruses that he used. There's similarities there. And then when the women don't do what he wants, he then in some cases turns nasty. So we know that there's another site. And when I say nasty, the threats, the things that Jeanette went through, where he's trying to damage her professionally and throwing things on her lawn and trying to destroy these are the sorts of things I

Well, that's one of the very telling things about rig Blum. I mean, I think of him as Willie Woods in my head. Rig Bloom is just.

The last in a long list of names with the aliases.

But I mean Jeanette Gatney and he took nuke photographs of her and threatened to disinminate and to her friends in a church congregation. Just on the way he spoke about women, Laura, it's how would you describe this man? He said that Jeanette was a drunk, Marion was a sexth graze predator, Jeanette Oldenburg was a stupid woman who thought she could launch a belly down in Korea in Europe at the age of fifty one. His daughter Evelyn, he told her that she'd have to sell her body

And couldn't remember.

The way he talks about women is consistent and awful. But what does it tell us about him? And what does it tell us about what might have happened in this case?

Yes, will it tells us that he doesn't value women very much, and he doesn't like women very much. But more so, it's everybody else's fault. It's all of them not him, and the fact that he called them all liars. I thought that was very interesting, and saying that the order women got together through the Lady Vanish's podcast. But of course each woman bal Monique I think it was, had reported him to various authorities and police, so there was a record of them reporting. So we know that

And Gary Sheen, who was the investigator on this from two thousand and nine up to twenty nineteen, when we started the podcast, he said he checked all the coins lad in New South Wales driver's.

Licenses looking for that name, the name that Marian had adopted. Why did they miss it? Why didn't they find it?

How much time and evidence did we lose because they didn't get that license?

It was just sitting there.

Yes, and I think there are many of those. Are be diplomatic and call them missed opportunities. I'd call them something else, off Mike, But What the Lady Vanishes has shown that if you are tenacious, you can look at a line of inquiry and think that it's a dead end, but actually most lines of investigation are not dead ends. You just have to see it through and put some grit into it. And it takes You've got to roll your sleeves up. It takes work, and that's what you

There's questionsenship, yeah.

Exactly, and there's questions to be asked about how his word has counted for so much and yet all the women who've reported him have just been fobbed off. And even Evelin who had that bottle, who everything she felt

Yeah, and you know she was going to give her findings nearly eighteen months ago, and then we found two more victims in Europe through the podcast, and she did the right thing and delayed in findings, and they, as you said, gave evidence and pilling of it. I mean he was engaged to July which he lied about on the stand. I wasn't produced the engagement notice that Julian had made up to invite friends and family.

I mean, the pattern is undeniable.

Where would you put rick woman in the panthe and of convin who prey on women?

Well, I think it's much more than being a comm man. And I've always said that the John Meehan's you know Dirty John Rick Blum, this is about power and control, and this is about you know, power control related crimes. It puts you up there as top level master manipulator and enjoying that parent control over people and taking it too far. It's not just about getting money, it's about utter domination. And like with John Meehern, and I suspect

And just lastly, Laura, do you think we'll ever find actually find Mary.

I hope so. I mean I hope for Sally and for the family. I hope that they do find out what happened and they are able to recover Marian and be able to say goodbye to her properly. If that doesn't happen, well, I hope that they have a place where they can go to where they can talk to Marian and be able to lay her to rest. I mean, that's what every family member wants when something like this happens.

And your podcast analysis of our case was very good. Just remind people where they can listen to that.

So Crime Analyst it's a twelve episode series. You can listen to it on all your podcast apps wherever you get your podcast, Spotify, Apple, you can even go on the Crime Analyst website which is just crime hyphen the Analysts. So it should be available to everyone in Australia and all over the world. So please do listen and have Marian and Sally in your thoughts.

Thank Laura, thank you so much.

It's a pleasure.

We also have an update on the grave of a Lona Kinsel Lum's third wife, who died mysteriously in nineteen seventy seven. After some effort, we were successful in having the ownership of a Loner's Plot transferred from a former husband, Michael Reid, to her daughter Evelyn. It continues to amaze us how much this podcast has resonated with listeners and with women, particularly. Not long ago, we received this email from a self described survivor still looking for love at age seventy to.

I've only recently discovered your podcast and I'm spending hours listening to it. I was a victim of an online romance scam in twenty seventeen, so your story is helping me understand what happened to me at that time. I'm embarrassed and ashamed and have never divulged the huge financial loss to anyone in my family. It caused me to feel suicidal, and I sought help from my doctor, who

Now to some big news. At Sally's request, we've agreed to wind up The Lady Vanish's podcast once the inquest findings are delivered. It's the right time. Episode fifty seven, our next episode will also be our last.

For everyone involved. It's been tumultuous and at times exhausting, but thank you to our loyal listeners for coming along for the ride. Sal and super Sleuth Joni are about to embark on their own mission of discovery with a series of speaking engagements and trips, and we wish them well. While there'll be no more episodes, we will keep you posted if there are any big developments.

However, we couldn't leave without a parting gift for you all. The team. Brian Seymour, Sally Ills, Mark Wright and I have written a book titled The Lady Vanishers. It is the story of this podcast. It's a condensed version of what we've revealed over the past five years, with some extra details we couldn't release, and a detailed look behind the scenes of what has been an incredible and unique journey.

So for the many listeners who have reached out trying to remember when they hurt certain pieces of evidence, all of the vital clues will now be easily accessible. Publisher Harper Collins will launch The Lady Vanishers the book on May fifteenth. If you're after a copy of the first print edition, it's available for pre order now.

For every sale via independent bookseller Schoolworks Supplies, ten percent will be donated to the go fund me account of Guilaine Dubois Danlis, one of rip Blum's victims who was duped of her life savings. Details on how to do this are in the show notes. Gilaine is now eighty nine, living meagerly in France, but finding joy in the simple things.

It's very kind of you.

I can see it.

Thank you.

Look do you understand well?

I just am glad we can do something for you.

Thank you, Thank you very much.

It's from my heart that I thank you.

I saw the toll it took on you, the line it would have caused you discomfort.

Thank you, thank you very much. It was really difficult.

Yes, you are right, but I'm still living. I am Alexandra, a man other of my children, grandchildren. They are loving me and it makes hope to continue to live. I do my best to stay in life because you know this year I will be in August, I will be.

Ninety years old.

I hope we will see us in Belgium.

This year, or like you want, I would like that we'll be back soon for one last time with the long awaited findings of the inquest into the disappearance of Marion Barter.

If you knew Marian or have any information about her or her whereabouts, we'd love to hear from you. Our website is sevennews dot com dot au, slash news slash the Lady Vanishers, and you can also message us here. You can also send us an anonymous tip at the Lady Vanishers dot org. If you like what you're hearing, don't forget to subscribe. Please rate and review our series.