Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, May twenty eighth. The new Australian made nuclear
Speaker 1: subs will be substantially bigger than the US Navy's Virginia
Speaker 1: class submarines. That's a revelation in the Australian today. As
Speaker 1: we prepare for a big day of defense news, We're
Speaker 1: hosting a Defending Australia summit with top defense brass former spies,
Speaker 1: ex political prisoners and ambassadors. It'll all be live on
Speaker 1: Sky News Australia today. The Coalition is promising to cancel
Speaker 1: the visas of anti Semitic student protesters if it wins
Speaker 1: the election. Foreign students who engage in campus protests should
Speaker 1: be booted out, says Opposition Home Affairs spokesman James Patterson.
Speaker 1: That's an exclusive on the Australian dot com dot a
Speaker 1: you right now. Former New South Wales's Director of Public
Speaker 1: Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery told the family of a missing mum
Speaker 1: Bromwyn Winfield that there was no evidence her husband killed her,
Speaker 1: despite a senior coroner finding there was a reasonable prospect
Speaker 1: a jury would convict him. John Winfield was never changed
Speaker 1: and denies any wrongdoing. That's today's episode.
Speaker 2: My advice to police in the coroner, after very careful
Speaker 2: consideration of all the evidence presently available, is that there
Speaker 2: is not sufficient evidence to charge Jonathan Winfield or any
Speaker 2: other person.
Speaker 1: Those are the words written by former New South Wales
Speaker 1: Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery in a letter to
Speaker 1: a Sydney man named Andy Reid in two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: They're being read by a voice actor. That's the moment
Speaker 1: Andy and his wife Michelle lost hope that they'd get
Speaker 1: answers in the disappearance of Andy's sister, Bronwyn. Bronwyn Winfield
Speaker 1: was thirty one, the mother of two little girls aged
Speaker 1: ten and five, and stepmom to an eighteen year old,
Speaker 1: the daughter of her husband, John Winfield. They lived together
Speaker 1: in a beach town, Lennox Head, on the wild New
Speaker 1: South Wales north coast. John was a surfey and a bricklayer.
Speaker 1: Bronwyn worked part time at the local takeaway food shop,
Speaker 1: but in nineteen ninety three, after tucking her children into
Speaker 1: bed one Sunday night, Bronwen disappeared. The last person to
Speaker 1: report seeing her was John Winfield, and the mystery of
Speaker 1: what happened to this devoted young mum is the subject
Speaker 1: of our newest podcast here at The Australian. It's called
Speaker 1: Bronwyn and it's reported and investigated by our national Chief
Speaker 1: correspondent Headley Thomas, who also created The Teacher's Pet.
Speaker 3: Where do you want to go?
Speaker 2: Today?
Speaker 4: Thirty one years since the sudden disappearance of a mother
Speaker 4: of two little girls. I'm driving on a winding road
Speaker 4: south of Byron Bay to the house that Bromwin had
Speaker 4: called her prison, past former dairy and sugar cane farms resident.
Speaker 1: There are some startling similarities between the stories of Bromwin
Speaker 1: Winfield and Lynn Simms. Lynn was the subject of Headley's podcast,
Speaker 1: The Teacher's Pet. Both young mums of two little girls,
Speaker 1: both utterly devoted, both going through a difficult time in
Speaker 1: their marriages, and in both cases the coroner recommended their
Speaker 1: husbands be charged with murder, and a Director of Public
Speaker 1: Prosecutions declined to recommend a charge. And here's another similarity.
Speaker 1: The coroner who recommended the charge in both Lynn and
Speaker 1: Bronwin's cases was the same person, Karl Milavanovitch, and the
Speaker 1: DPP who declined was the same person, Nicholas Cowdery.
Speaker 2: While Jonathan Winfield is the last known person to have
Speaker 2: seen her alive, there is no evidence that he killed
Speaker 2: her or had any role in her disappearance. Suspicion cannot
Speaker 2: be substitution for evidence.
Speaker 1: Nick Cowdery Casey was as close as you can get
Speaker 1: to a legal superstar.
Speaker 5: The Beast of Malaglow Ivan Malatt is serving seven life
Speaker 5: terms for the backpacker murders five young women and two men.
Speaker 1: Mohammed skaff was a member of a rape gang that
Speaker 1: terrorized young women in Sydney in the year two thousand.
Speaker 1: He led the agency that prosecuted some of Australia's most
Speaker 1: notorious criminals. He was feisty, fiercely independent and regularly fighting
Speaker 1: with the government and the media.
Speaker 3: Huge cases. What we're looking at now is cases that
Speaker 3: didn't make it too a prosecution during his time as DPP.
Speaker 1: Dave Murray is The Australian's National Crime correspondent and he's
Speaker 1: working with Headley and our team at The Australian on
Speaker 1: the podcast Bronwyn.
Speaker 3: Nicholas Cowdery is Australia's longest serving DPP. He was the
Speaker 3: Director of Public Prosecutions in New South Wales from nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety four to two thousand and eleven, so some sixteen
Speaker 3: and a half years.
Speaker 1: Dvps are very powerful figures in the Australian legal system.
Speaker 1: They run an independent agency which is government funded but
Speaker 1: legally protected from influence or pressure from politicians. Back then,
Speaker 1: the DPP was appointed for life, a measure designed to
Speaker 1: ensure no future government could turf out a chief prosecutor.
Speaker 1: Cowdery would have kept going and could still even be
Speaker 1: DPP today, but there was a quirk in the system
Speaker 1: which meant if he didn't retire before his sixty fifth birthday,
Speaker 1: he'd be denied a pension. Left the job when he
Speaker 1: was sixty four years and three hundred and sixty four
Speaker 1: days of age, and the government subsequently changed the law
Speaker 1: so DPPs are appointed for ten year terms and can't
Speaker 1: be reappointed again. That's designed to protect DPPs from worrying
Speaker 1: about whether or not politicians like their work. It's a
Speaker 1: tough job. The DPP is supposed to only recommend charges
Speaker 1: where there's a reasonable prospect of conviction, but they also
Speaker 1: have to factor in the unpredictability of juries. Sometimes a
Speaker 1: jury might convict even if the evidence is not everything
Speaker 1: the prosecution would like it to be.
Speaker 4: In December, Kelly Lane was convicted of murdering her two
Speaker 4: day old baby daughter Teagan in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: The case of Kelly Lane is a good example. It's
Speaker 1: one of those cases people still argue about even after conviction,
Speaker 1: because baby Teagan disappeared without a trace. Lane's family didn't
Speaker 1: eat even though she was pregnant. Kelly Lane had had
Speaker 1: other pregnancies before and after Teagan, and her story was
Speaker 1: that after giving birth, she gave Teagan away. Just like
Speaker 1: in the cases of Bromwin and Lynn. There was no
Speaker 1: forensical crime scene evidence and there were no eyewitnesses to
Speaker 1: an alleged murder, but Kelly Lane was charged. In twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: Nicholas Cowery talked about the case on the ABC's documentary Exposed,
Speaker 1: reported by Caro Meldrum.
Speaker 5: Hannah, this was an unusual case in that it was
Speaker 5: the possibility of a murder charge without a body, and
Speaker 5: that meant that the other circumstantial evidence had to be
Speaker 5: pretty compelling to justify bringing the proceedings.
Speaker 2: What was your own view?
Speaker 5: My own view was that there was a case of
Speaker 5: murder to be prosecuted. It raised all sorts of values,
Speaker 5: the relationship between a new mother and child, the idea
Speaker 5: of child killing, which is so abhorrent to the community generally,
Speaker 5: the nature of the accused and her conduct over a
Speaker 5: period of time that made it important. That meant it
Speaker 5: it got priority over other cases.
Speaker 1: This next moment in the documentary caused a big controversy
Speaker 1: and saw Nicholas Cowdrey resigned his post as chairman of
Speaker 1: the White Ribbon Foundation, which campaigns to end men's violence
Speaker 1: against women.
Speaker 5: I don't think Kelly Laine was a risk to the
Speaker 5: community and that she would go around killing other people's babies.
Speaker 5: She seemed to bear a bit of a risk to
Speaker 5: the virile, young male portion of the community. That's not
Speaker 5: grounds for putting her in prison.
Speaker 1: Of course, Cawtery later apologized for those remarks, saying they
Speaker 1: weren't respectful. In the case of Bromwin Winfield, she disappeared
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety three one Sunday night, after having tucked
Speaker 1: her two little girls into bed. Her husband was the
Speaker 1: last person to see her alive. Of course, he has
Speaker 1: denied any involvement, but later on police interviewed him and
Speaker 1: ultimately the case proceeded to the coroner. Can you just
Speaker 1: explain for us, Dave, what happened to that coronial inquest
Speaker 1: and then what happened after that.
Speaker 3: The coronial inquest was led by the New South Wales
Speaker 3: Deputy State Coroner, Karl Milovanovitch. There were five days of
Speaker 3: hearings that was in accord in Lismore, and at the
Speaker 3: end of that the coroner recommended that a nun person
Speaker 3: mister when Phil Bromwin's husband, be prosecuted over her alleged murder. Now,
Speaker 3: the coroner had to meet two tests to do that.
Speaker 3: The first was that the evidence to be capable of
Speaker 3: satisfying a jury beyond reasonable doubt that a non person
Speaker 3: had committed an indictable offense, so a serious offense such
Speaker 3: as murder. And the second thing was that there had
Speaker 3: to be a reasonable prospect a jury would convict. The
Speaker 3: coroner concluded that was the case that both those tests
Speaker 3: had been met and so he referred it on to
Speaker 3: the DPP.
Speaker 1: The family wasn't happy with the pro former response they
Speaker 1: got from the DPP's office, saying a prosecution wouldn't be happening.
Speaker 1: They demanded a proper explanation. That's what prompted Nick Carterery's
Speaker 1: letter to Andy Reid.
Speaker 3: He actually said there was no evidence that Jonathan Winfield Bromwin,
Speaker 3: the husband, had killed her or had any role in
Speaker 3: her disappearance. And he listed a few factors in explaining this.
Speaker 3: A couple of those were that there was nobody in
Speaker 3: this case and so no cause of death. They're the
Speaker 3: same kind of things he raised in the separate case
Speaker 3: of Lyn Dawson or lind Sims as we know her.
Speaker 1: Now coming up, why the coroner wanted John Winfield prosecuted.
Speaker 1: Bronwyn is available now to our registered users and subscribers
Speaker 1: at bronwynpodcast dot com. You can contact our team with
Speaker 1: any information at Bronwyn at the Australian dot com dot
Speaker 1: au and we'll be back after this break. Nicholas Cowdery
Speaker 1: is seventy eight now, and Dave gave him a call
Speaker 1: to find out what he recalled of the case.
Speaker 3: I was interested in talking to Nicholas Cardu. I gave
Speaker 3: him a call. He was driving at the time. He
Speaker 3: had a little trouble hearing me at first, but we
Speaker 3: got there. I explained to him the Bronwyn Winfield case
Speaker 3: and the circumstances behind it, and I asked him if
Speaker 3: he remembered it. He said that he didn't have any
Speaker 3: recollection at all of the Winfield case.
Speaker 2: I had sixteen and a half years of cases, and
Speaker 2: I don't remember all of them. If that's what I
Speaker 2: said at the time, it would have been based on
Speaker 2: the evidence that was available.
Speaker 3: Now he must have covered hundreds, many hundreds thousands of
Speaker 3: cases as DPP, so that isn't entirely surprising, though I
Speaker 3: think for Bromin's faunidly it is obviously such an important
Speaker 3: decision they may have been surprised if he didn't remember it.
Speaker 2: The DPP makes an independent decision about those things, taking
Speaker 2: into account, of course, the recommendation and taking into account
Speaker 2: the evidence at the inquest.
Speaker 3: I was also interested in asking him whether his approach
Speaker 3: to cases of missing women would change now if he
Speaker 3: had the chance. He's seventy eight years old, he is retired.
Speaker 3: Would he have done things any differently? And he has
Speaker 3: a straight away no, he would do it exactly the same.
Speaker 2: I would look at the facts that we're able to
Speaker 2: be proved on the evidence, and I would look at
Speaker 2: the law and I would look at the prosecution guidelines.
Speaker 2: They were taken into account then and they are taken
Speaker 2: into account now by the DPP.
Speaker 1: Of course, we don't know what happened to Bromwinn Winfield.
Speaker 1: Nobody has ever been charged, her body has never been found.
Speaker 1: But we can probably assume, can't we, Dave, that she
Speaker 1: has met with her death. That's what the coroner found,
Speaker 1: and that she may well have been the victim of
Speaker 1: violence by someone who we don't know.
Speaker 3: The coroner was certainly comfortable to conclude that Roman Winfield
Speaker 3: was no longer alive, and he said that she had
Speaker 3: died honor about the sixteenth of May nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 3: and that's when she was last seen by her husband,
Speaker 3: Jonathan Winfield.
Speaker 1: You've been covering crime for a long time, Dave. Now,
Speaker 1: violence against women is the big theme of Australian society.
Speaker 1: It's something that everybody is talking about. There have been
Speaker 1: dozens of murders of women this year in Australia. What's
Speaker 1: your view about those judgment calls that were being made
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties and the nineteen nineties about not
Speaker 1: proceeding with charges in the cases of women who disappeared.
Speaker 3: Clearly, there has to be the evidence there to go
Speaker 3: ahead with such a serious charge and prosecution of the
Speaker 3: most serious offense you can get, murder. So anyone would say,
Speaker 3: of course it's important that the evidence be there. But
Speaker 3: looking back now, we can see that society used things
Speaker 3: differently now than we did back then, and police, for example,
Speaker 3: I think, perhaps looked at these cases and thought these
Speaker 3: were cases of runaway mumps, so people who might have
Speaker 3: run off with a new boyfriend or something like that.
Speaker 3: And that's certainly a concern that's been raised by the
Speaker 3: former coroner Karl Milovanovitch, that there was a systemic issue there.
Speaker 3: So I think it's really valuable now to go back
Speaker 3: and look at these past cases and say where these
Speaker 3: actually assessed the right way. These are sometimes circumstantial cases,
Speaker 3: obviously with nobody that they're missing, women have never been found,
Speaker 3: But did we actually sit down and assess all of
Speaker 3: the evidence fully and properly in the right way.
Speaker 1: You also sat through the trial of Christopher Dawson for
Speaker 1: murder Dave. Of course, he is now appealing before the
Speaker 1: Court of Criminal Appeal saying that the judgment was unsound
Speaker 1: and that he should be released from prison. What's your
Speaker 1: view in that matter where nobody was found, it was
Speaker 1: an entirely circumstantial case of the likelihood of getting convictions
Speaker 1: in these matters where there is nobody.
Speaker 3: My opinion in any case has always been to reserve
Speaker 3: judgment until you get all of the evidence. You can't
Speaker 3: really do that sitting on the sidelines and just picking
Speaker 3: up little bits and pieces when you actually, I think,
Speaker 3: sit down in a trial, a full trial like we
Speaker 3: did with Chris Dawson, and you see all of the evidence,
Speaker 3: and then at the end of that you can really
Speaker 3: weigh it all up, assess it and make a conclusion.
Speaker 3: And I think at the end of that case the
Speaker 3: evidence was overwhelming that Chris Dawson was guilty of his
Speaker 3: wife Lin's murder. But that of course does not mean
Speaker 3: that Jonathan Winfield had anything to do with the disappearance
Speaker 3: of his wife, and he firmly denies it. I think
Speaker 3: once again here we are trying to gather all the evidence,
Speaker 3: look at all the evidence before you come to a conclusion.
Speaker 1: Dave Murray is the Australian's National Crime correspondent. You can
Speaker 1: read all his reporting and all our stories as well
Speaker 1: as listen to the podcast Bromwyin right now by joining
Speaker 1: our subscribers at the Australian dot com dot au