Speaker 1: Appoge Production. Well, welcome to episode two of The Missing Matter.
Speaker 1: Ar'm here with Joony. Hello everybody, Thank you for joining
Speaker 1: us again. Yeah, thanks for joining us. And in this episode,
Speaker 1: we're actually going to do a bit of a deep
Speaker 1: dive into the drama that was my life following the
Speaker 1: findings concluding in February last year. And if I think
Speaker 1: back to that time, I literally felt like I was
Speaker 1: standing on an island by myself and I know you
Speaker 1: were there, and I know Chris was there, and there
Speaker 1: were beautiful people around me. That's nothing to do with you, guys.
Speaker 1: It was just my inner self. Felt like. I spoke
Speaker 1: to the lawyers, that was the last time I spoke
Speaker 1: to them. I spoke to the Crown Solicitor's office. They
Speaker 1: all gave me a big hug and wished me well,
Speaker 1: and that was it. Allison and Brian did their interview
Speaker 1: and left. It just doesn't stop just because we got
Speaker 1: an answer today from the coroner and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm standing here by myself. I don't
Speaker 1: have any idea what to do moving forward. There is
Speaker 1: no guidebook here, so the coroner hands down her findings.
Speaker 1: Coroner's just told me officially my mum's deceased, says what
Speaker 1: she thinks should happen.
Speaker 2: Recommending it now be referred to homicide detectives.
Speaker 1: That's it. You sort of left to sort of fumble
Speaker 1: your way through and work out what's actually happened.
Speaker 2: She'd been dating a man named Rick Bloom, who lied
Speaker 2: about his identity. She found Bloom preyed on vulnerable women
Speaker 2: and withheld crucial information about Marian from the inquest.
Speaker 1: I haven't even had an apology, if I can put it,
Speaker 1: put it out there, you know, I still haven't from
Speaker 1: the police, had any apology for how I've been treated.
Speaker 1: In my case, I heard that my mum would deceased
Speaker 1: for the first time in twenty seven years of her
Speaker 1: being missing, and that was massive for me. It was
Speaker 1: a huge moment in time, and by having that said
Speaker 1: by the coroner that allowed me to apply for a
Speaker 1: death certificate, which when you have a missing person, if
Speaker 1: you don't have a death certificate or they don't believe
Speaker 1: that your person is deceased, well you've got no chance
Speaker 1: of getting any information because their privacy matters. I kept
Speaker 1: getting told a comment that really rolled me a lot through.
Speaker 1: This whole thing is it's not a crime to go missing.
Speaker 1: And I think about all the people who have gone
Speaker 1: missing and then found, and the time that the police
Speaker 1: spend trying to find and there's yellow alerts and there's
Speaker 1: police fluffing around. It takes time and energy and money
Speaker 1: to do these things. So essentially having a death certificate
Speaker 1: was a really important part of this journey for you
Speaker 1: and me when we were discussing what still needed to
Speaker 1: be done, Because what people who are listening won't know
Speaker 1: is that you and I were sitting in the court
Speaker 1: and we were feeding the lawyers all the information that
Speaker 1: we had. We'd spoken to people, we've interviewed people, We've
Speaker 1: got all the details, and we had to do that
Speaker 1: because the police weren't doing it and we were writing
Speaker 1: dossier's Like Johnny Gosh, by the time we'd finished, we
Speaker 1: probably had a law degree. Seriously, you know, I've learned
Speaker 1: so much in this time, in this space, But you
Speaker 1: get to that point, or I got to that point
Speaker 1: where I walked out of the coroner's court and went right, oh,
Speaker 1: what do I do now? My first point of call
Speaker 1: was to call burst Essa Marriages and ask them to
Speaker 1: help me to get a death certificate. For my mum
Speaker 1: so we could start accessing her private information. So I
Speaker 1: called Queensland and they said, well, we're really sorry, we
Speaker 1: can't help you. You've got to do it online and
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, but your online document doesn't allow me
Speaker 1: to put two names. And I have a problem where
Speaker 1: my mum changed her name, but she only changed her
Speaker 1: name legally on her passport and she had an international
Speaker 1: driver's license in the new name of Florabella Ramkel. Everything
Speaker 1: else remained in the name of Barta, her bank accounts,
Speaker 1: her superannuation, her medicare, anything that I wanted to try
Speaker 1: and gain access to to find out her tax return.
Speaker 1: In the taxi ba Ato, everyone knew her as Marian Barter,
Speaker 1: so it was essential. And I kept saying this and
Speaker 1: barking about it at the inquest, and that's why the
Speaker 1: coroner kept saying Flora Bella Natalia Marian Ramkeel, formerly known
Speaker 1: as Marian Barter. So I was banging my head against
Speaker 1: the wall. I was in tears a lot of the
Speaker 1: time because none of these people showed any compassion or
Speaker 1: empathy or understanding about what it was that I was
Speaker 1: trying to ask. Goodness, I don't even know where to
Speaker 1: start with this week. Seriously, you know, when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with a missing person, that is horrendous to sit there.
Speaker 1: I'm going, I don't know where my mum is, I
Speaker 1: don't have a funeral director, i don't know what day
Speaker 1: she died. I've got a date from the coroner who's
Speaker 1: saying she died on or around the fifteenth of October,
Speaker 1: so I'm assuming that's the date you want. And that
Speaker 1: wasn't satisfactory. So nothing was working. So then I rang
Speaker 1: the coroner's court and for some weird instance of craziness,
Speaker 1: I find out that Coroner Teresa o Sullivan actually has
Speaker 1: her own dedicated team of people, and I'm like, wow.
Speaker 1: So I've just been through the coroner's process for three
Speaker 1: years and I never knew that I could contact Terresa
Speaker 1: O'Sullivan's team. I always had to go through it through
Speaker 1: the right channels, is what I was told. So that
Speaker 1: meant I had to go through my lawyers, to go
Speaker 1: through their lawyers being Crown solicitors, to go through the police.
Speaker 1: If I had something for the police, the police would
Speaker 1: tell me, you have to go through the right channel.
Speaker 1: Sally can't tell us anything anymore. It's got to go
Speaker 1: through your lawyers to Crown solicitors to get to us,
Speaker 1: and I was just like, this is so convoluted and
Speaker 1: ridiculous and time wasting, like we do not have time
Speaker 1: for this, especially after waiting that long to actually even
Speaker 1: get to the point of having an inquest right. So
Speaker 1: I was speaking to the Coroner's court. I end up
Speaker 1: emailing him back and forth and he's like, I'm really sorry,
Speaker 1: I can't help you. My question to him was I
Speaker 1: need the coroner to put in writing for me some
Speaker 1: sort of document so that I can go to Burst
Speaker 1: Desca Marriages and get a death certificate for my mum
Speaker 1: because at this point no one's giving me one. And
Speaker 1: I didn't know whether to go to Queensland because that's
Speaker 1: where she was last living as we changed her name
Speaker 1: and she changed her name in Queensland, or did I
Speaker 1: have to go to New South Wales because it was
Speaker 1: with the New South Wales Coroner's Court she said that
Speaker 1: she's deceased and she was last known to be in
Speaker 1: Byron with drawing eighty thousand dollars out of a bank account,
Speaker 1: supposedly on the fifteenth of October nineteen ninety seven, and
Speaker 1: her last digital footprints were in New South Wales, so
Speaker 1: very confusing. And again someone should have sat there and
Speaker 1: said to me, this is the process, now, this is
Speaker 1: what we need to do, will help you. But I
Speaker 1: didn't get any of that, and I'm sure I'm not
Speaker 1: the only one in these circumstances. After hitting brick walls
Speaker 1: with them again, I just had a bit of a
Speaker 1: light bulb moment. And you know, there's that saying in life,
Speaker 1: it's not what you know, it's too you know, right,
Speaker 1: And this is definitely definitely the point in toe because
Speaker 1: while I was sitting into in the findings, so we've
Speaker 1: just walked in, We're sitting down therese people everywhere, media everywhere,
Speaker 1: and I'm flustered. I'm like, wow, I'm overwhelmed, super grateful
Speaker 1: for the support by everyone, but overwhelmed at the same time.
Speaker 1: And a lady who i'll keep her name confidential, but
Speaker 1: she did come up to me and she said hello, Sally,
Speaker 1: and I went, oh, my gosh, how are you. And
Speaker 1: this lady had welcomed me to come to the coroner's
Speaker 1: court back in twenty nineteen, and I met with her
Speaker 1: and another lady from friends and family of missing persons
Speaker 1: so that was the first I'd ever heard that there
Speaker 1: was actually this little body of good humans who actually
Speaker 1: were supporting people with missing persons. And she'd done a
Speaker 1: document and a booklet to help people get through the
Speaker 1: coronial process. And so I had met her back at
Speaker 1: that point, and she was a very kind lady. She
Speaker 1: gave me information, she answered my emails, which was a
Speaker 1: very rare thing for me. So I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I finally found somebody who actually does listen
Speaker 1: and does actually respond positively, which was great. So I
Speaker 1: just had this moment in my head, maybe I should
Speaker 1: ring her. I still had her number, and I did,
Speaker 1: and I explained the situation to her, and I said,
Speaker 1: I need some help. I need the coroner's court to
Speaker 1: be able to give birth, dess and marriage as a
Speaker 1: clear understanding of what is going on in this space.
Speaker 1: That I can have both mum's names put on her
Speaker 1: death certificate. It's essential for this. Why did you need
Speaker 1: to have that happen? Well, because I needed to have
Speaker 1: access to I mentioned before, like Medicare and ATO and
Speaker 1: her bank accounts and her superannuation. They're all in marrying Barta.
Speaker 1: But essentially we were wanting to go overseas and we
Speaker 1: needed to get information about my mum and her passport
Speaker 1: was in the name of Florabella Ramckel, so I needed
Speaker 1: to be able to prove that I was next to
Speaker 1: kin and I had grant of access to Florabella Ramckel
Speaker 1: and also Marian Barter, so that's why it was really important.
Speaker 1: And then we are on the phone. I'm explaining this
Speaker 1: to her. She's completely understanding what I'm saying, and she says,
Speaker 1: I can see that that is really important. I know
Speaker 1: someone I'm going to send them corners findings and that
Speaker 1: will be clear to them. And then I had a
Speaker 1: phone call from a gentleman who worked in New South
Speaker 1: Wales birth deaths and marriages, and I just felt like
Speaker 1: he was an angel for me, because again a rare
Speaker 1: moment where someone actually comes in and just sits down
Speaker 1: and takes time to actually help me do what I
Speaker 1: need to do. And he sat on the phone with
Speaker 1: me for probably the best part of two hours, and
Speaker 1: he explained to me, I want you to fill it
Speaker 1: out your end, and I'm going to fill it out
Speaker 1: my end as well. And so we were word perfect
Speaker 1: going through the entire document and he said I want
Speaker 1: you to word it exactly like this, so it was
Speaker 1: worded such as surname ramakerl formally known as Bart. Given
Speaker 1: name Flora Bella, formerly known as Marian. Middle names you know,
Speaker 1: Natalia Mary and formally known as Marian. So we had
Speaker 1: to make sure that his document and my document areligned.
Speaker 1: And thank god I had him because at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, there was questions in there about what
Speaker 1: date did and this was for all, like my mum
Speaker 1: was married three times and this caused a big drama
Speaker 1: and a big stir because the police would often say
Speaker 1: comments like, oh, well, she's a three times divorced woman
Speaker 1: who's in her fifties. She's capable of this behavior, not
Speaker 1: her fault. You know, no one should make judgment on
Speaker 1: those sorts of things. But it has caused me quite
Speaker 1: the drama because she's had multiple names, and I had
Speaker 1: to know the day they all got married, So every
Speaker 1: single wedding, I had to know what each of the
Speaker 1: men's full names were. Yes, so I needed to know
Speaker 1: what Johnny Warren's middle name is, how old he was
Speaker 1: when they got married, what is his date of birth,
Speaker 1: what year did they get married, and where where was
Speaker 1: the location? As they got married. I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: know any of this. So he was able to pull
Speaker 1: up mum's file from their end and actually add it
Speaker 1: into the mix. And I was like, thank God, Like
Speaker 1: I would just be absolutely stuck if you had not
Speaker 1: been able to help me with that. So he was
Speaker 1: a godsend. And he's like, you just have to pay
Speaker 1: for it and you'll get the desert to figot like
Speaker 1: it's going to come as per this. And he was
Speaker 1: an age, so I was really grateful and that was awesome.
Speaker 3: Because ultimately, if he hadn't have helped you, then you
Speaker 3: would have had to have requested all of those documents
Speaker 3: from birth, deaths and marriages to be able to then
Speaker 3: put the information into your form to then send it in.
Speaker 3: So that would have been a delay and lots of money,
Speaker 3: and whether you would have got them or not is
Speaker 3: another question altogether.
Speaker 1: And this is how ridiculous it is. Right. So, and
Speaker 1: this is another drama because my mum went missing before
Speaker 1: I got married. So my name is Barta because I
Speaker 1: took on Ray Barta's name when I was only twelve.
Speaker 1: They thought that was a good idea because we'd relocated.
Speaker 1: I was starting a new school, so I was known
Speaker 1: as Sally Barter, and Mum had written her will and
Speaker 1: I was known as Sally Barter in the will. So
Speaker 1: that meant that when I'm applying for these documents and
Speaker 1: I'm now Sally Layden, I then had to go and
Speaker 1: get an official marriage certificate, which we paid for to
Speaker 1: be able to show that I was Bart and now
Speaker 1: I'm Leyden. So it just never ended. It was just
Speaker 1: this big starter's web of crazy that I was getting
Speaker 1: stuck in, and I'm like, I don't know, I've got
Speaker 1: to pay for this. I've got to pay for that.
Speaker 1: I've got to jump through this hoop and jump through
Speaker 1: that hoop. And this just continued for months. So I've
Speaker 1: gone to the post office and there's a registered male
Speaker 1: waiting for me at the post office and I get
Speaker 1: in it and I'm sitting in the car and I
Speaker 1: open it and I had to share it with everyone
Speaker 1: immediately and post about it and say, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I got it. And it's in both names. Massive, It's
Speaker 1: actually good. The spelling's correct, her date of birth is correct.
Speaker 1: Like all the things that we've had challenges with throughout
Speaker 1: the whole journey, highlight it doesn't need to come out.
Speaker 1: Goodness me. I'll read you with the post, just to
Speaker 1: bring us all back to where I was and how
Speaker 1: I was feeling in that moment. So it was the
Speaker 1: tenth of April twenty twenty four. I just posted a
Speaker 1: photo of the death certificate that shows the family name.
Speaker 1: It says deceased. It says family name Ramichel formerly known
Speaker 1: as Barta Flora Bella Natalia. Marian formerly known as Marian
Speaker 1: Sometime on or around the fifteenth of October nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven is her date of death. Her place of death
Speaker 1: unable to determine sex and age female fifty two. Place
Speaker 1: of birth Marrickville, New South Wales. I write from my
Speaker 1: missing person Marian Barter Instagram and Facebook. I want to
Speaker 1: share with you all I finally received Mum's death certificate
Speaker 1: dot dot dot. As always, there's a story to tell.
Speaker 1: I am sure you'll all feel so relieved to see
Speaker 1: both names have been included. This did not come without
Speaker 1: a fight. So I now have the death certificate in
Speaker 1: both names and the will another bittersweet day but very important.
Speaker 1: I found the solicitor you did. How that came about
Speaker 1: was I did a walk around on the Gold Coast,
Speaker 1: if you remember, that's right. And I just had it
Speaker 1: in me that I needed to find the a state agent.
Speaker 1: So we had that lady actually up in cans who Yes,
Speaker 1: that's how we found this because she actually did the
Speaker 1: property search and she was able to tell us that
Speaker 1: the name of the person who bought Mum's house yes,
Speaker 1: And then from that the girls Le Sluthy Girls actually
Speaker 1: then found a whole bunch of people with that same
Speaker 1: name who still lived on the Gold Coast. And miraculously,
Speaker 1: the first person I called was the guy who bought
Speaker 1: Mum's house. I then sort of went through the process
Speaker 1: of him trying to work out where the real estate
Speaker 1: agent was that he had the house from, because I
Speaker 1: had always said that maybe Mum had explained to the
Speaker 1: real estate agent what she was doing, and she had
Speaker 1: actually kept all the records in her garage. She just
Speaker 1: sold the business and the guys who when I worked
Speaker 1: out where it was, so he couldn't remember where it was.
Speaker 1: I sort of just went and did a walk around
Speaker 1: and asked the question and they said, yes, we've just
Speaker 1: bought it from Partner Royalty, and they said, let me
Speaker 1: ring Louise because she said that she's got a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of all her documents from all the houses she's
Speaker 1: sold in the years. So she gave me those documents
Speaker 1: and I was able to see on there that there
Speaker 1: was a document that had the solicitor's name on it,
Speaker 1: and so I rang them and when I spoke to him,
Speaker 1: he said, oh, I've heard about your mom's story in
Speaker 1: the news. I knew your mum. She taught my son
Speaker 1: at TSS. And so he said, when my secretary comes back,
Speaker 1: I'll get her to have a look and i'll get
Speaker 1: her to ring you if we have anything. I don't
Speaker 1: remember having anything, but if we do, And he literally
Speaker 1: rang me back in a minute and said, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I've just had a look and we have her will,
Speaker 1: which is weird because we don't even do wills. But
Speaker 1: he was unable to give me that well without a
Speaker 1: de certificate. So even though my mum is missing, my
Speaker 1: brother is deceased, and he is the only other person
Speaker 1: on the will, he was still unable to He told
Speaker 1: me about it, but he didn't actually give me the
Speaker 1: original copy until such time as I had the destiny.
Speaker 1: So you know, you got to go through these processes, right,
Speaker 1: So and if you hadn't have done all of that
Speaker 1: and all the circles and looping looping, then we would
Speaker 1: have been looking at the will that she made down
Speaker 1: in New South Wales.
Speaker 3: So this was a new will that you happened to
Speaker 3: discover with all of your So there's been so many
Speaker 3: instances of that kind of thing over the years.
Speaker 1: And the will didn't even matter really because the house
Speaker 1: that she sold was in the will. I was executor
Speaker 1: of the will to what to nothing. Everything's missing or
Speaker 1: stolen or gone sold. So there was literally nothing in
Speaker 1: the will except to show that she had nominated me
Speaker 1: as executor, and you know I was her next of kin,
Speaker 1: so that did give me somewhare power to be able
Speaker 1: to go and get these documents and you know that
Speaker 1: had nearly a thousand people like it and comment on
Speaker 1: it and just showing the power of actually pushing forward
Speaker 1: and still getting and garnering something that I really really needed.
Speaker 1: So from there we did some live shows, right, and
Speaker 1: that was just my mind, like that is that is
Speaker 1: an amazing time in life. I just was shocked and
Speaker 1: blown away by those shows.
Speaker 2: From Salad Jone where they are at and about their plans.
Speaker 2: Really bored now the inquest has concluded and the search continues.
Speaker 1: Buying Marry now there do please welcome. Sal was a
Speaker 1: good energy from there. We did a raffle and I
Speaker 1: was a bit crazy on the raffle because I love
Speaker 1: doing things like that and I love people winning things
Speaker 1: and prizes, and it was just a good fundraiser for
Speaker 1: us as part of the live events. And there were
Speaker 1: two ladies who won gifts and I emailed them and
Speaker 1: then they came back to me with an email, and
Speaker 1: some of them I spoke to and one of the
Speaker 1: ladies said to me, you've actually emailed myself and one
Speaker 1: of my friends. We both came to the show in
Speaker 1: Brisbane and we've both won a prize and I said,
Speaker 1: oh amazing. Would you like me to hand deliver it
Speaker 1: to you? And they agreed and said yeah, let's meet
Speaker 1: for coffee. So we met for coffee down at the
Speaker 1: gas works here in Brisbane and I'm in my very
Speaker 1: casual shorts and T shirt and they rocked up in
Speaker 1: suits and I went, holy, okay, this is very official.
Speaker 1: And then they said, oh, let us buy you a
Speaker 1: coffee and so we just sat there having a chat.
Speaker 1: And turns out that their lawyers, and they said to me,
Speaker 1: we've spoken to our boss and we've asked can we
Speaker 1: help you to get your grant of probate? And I went, oh,
Speaker 1: my god, I feel so blessed that there are such
Speaker 1: nice people in this world, because when I've just gone
Speaker 1: through all of that, to have someone in power and
Speaker 1: who knows what they're doing and the knowledge that I
Speaker 1: just don't have, and even just to take a little
Speaker 1: bit of energy from my self and give it to
Speaker 1: somebody else to be able to go, you can take
Speaker 1: that on a little bit for me. Amazing. So once again,
Speaker 1: good humans coming out in every form. So I worked
Speaker 1: with those beautiful humans for a couple of months and
Speaker 1: we sorted out getting the grant of probate done. And
Speaker 1: then the most shocking thing that I was so shocked
Speaker 1: about for me personally and quite devastated, was that the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court demands that you actually give them the death
Speaker 1: certificate for them to be able to process the grant
Speaker 1: of probate. So I've physically just got this piece of
Speaker 1: paper that I have been eager to get so I
Speaker 1: can access information about my mum. And then they're like,
Speaker 1: we need to give them the original so then I
Speaker 1: had to run off and go and get them all
Speaker 1: certified and make sure I had copies of everything. Right,
Speaker 1: So I've got them all certified and I hand over
Speaker 1: that precious document, said, here you go, he's the de
Speaker 1: certificate that I just worked really hard to get. You
Speaker 1: can have the original. I now don't have a copy
Speaker 1: of the destinicate, but I did get the grant of
Speaker 1: probate certificate from the Supreme Court. So on the second
Speaker 1: of August twenty twenty four is the day that I
Speaker 1: received the grant of probate. And for those of you
Speaker 1: who haven't connected that dot Mum actually flew back into
Speaker 1: Australia on the second of August nineteen ninety seven. But
Speaker 1: a granted probate is really important because it opens the doors.
Speaker 1: So it actually makes me the next of kin with
Speaker 1: my missing mother who's been declared de ceased by the coroner.
Speaker 1: Gives me access to her information for things like I
Speaker 1: can go and act on her behalf with the ATO,
Speaker 1: I can go and act on her behalf for Medicare.
Speaker 1: And the information that we wanted to get from those
Speaker 1: sources and from those entities is important because it could
Speaker 1: have led us down a path to having knowledge and
Speaker 1: information about what she did, where she was, what was happening,
Speaker 1: her location addresses and things like that, which is what
Speaker 1: we were hoping to get from those certificates. And also
Speaker 1: it does enable you to access a lot of the
Speaker 1: Commonwealth base information that even the New South Wales Police
Speaker 1: can't access. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: So it really did unlock a bit of a key,
Speaker 3: and that's why you really wanted it to happen.
Speaker 1: And you think about things like when I found out
Speaker 1: about mum's name change. If you go back and listen
Speaker 1: to the last episode, you would have heard me say
Speaker 1: and I saw her name for a bleeping second. I
Speaker 1: saw it probably for two minutes. And I was spelling
Speaker 1: it phonetically for years. Even on my Facebook page, I'm
Speaker 1: spelling it as Ramckel, not Reemckel. I was spelling it
Speaker 1: with an A, not an E. So we got to
Speaker 1: a point we'd started the podcast The Lady Vanishes, and
Speaker 1: we were going along and I'd met you, and then
Speaker 1: I learned about archives. I didn't know that that was
Speaker 1: a big thing and we could ring them and converse
Speaker 1: with them, and so I rang Queensland Archives and I said, Hi, there,
Speaker 1: my mum is a missing person and she changed her
Speaker 1: name to this name, Ramckeurl. I'm just wondering if you
Speaker 1: can help me with the correct spelling. I just want
Speaker 1: to make I've got the spelling right. And she said
Speaker 1: to me, I'm really sorry, we can't give you that
Speaker 1: information due to privacy. And I said, okay, well, in
Speaker 1: the event that my mum is declared deceased, does that
Speaker 1: then void the privacy issue. She goes, no, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: There's one hundred year long on that and I'll never
Speaker 1: ever get it. I said, also, my kids won't even
Speaker 1: be able to find out how this actual spelling. And
Speaker 1: just to clarify, this is before we were going to
Speaker 1: the coroner's court, so the coroner hadn't said that she
Speaker 1: was going to do a findings at this point, so
Speaker 1: I'm really just grappling at any bit of information I
Speaker 1: can get. And I rang back later on a different day,
Speaker 1: probably months later, and in instead of saying my mum
Speaker 1: was missing, I just said, Hi, my mum changed her
Speaker 1: name in nineteen ninety seven and I'm just trying to
Speaker 1: get the correct spelling. Would you be able to help me?
Speaker 1: And the lady told me every big date she did it,
Speaker 1: what the spelling is, how she did it? I was like, well, okay, interesting.
Speaker 1: So if I say she's a missing person, there's a
Speaker 1: big block on that and no one wants to tell
Speaker 1: me anything. But if I just simply asked the question, hey,
Speaker 1: my mum changed her name, can you tell me what
Speaker 1: the spelling is? Openslaver get told the whole sabang. So
Speaker 1: I found things like that to be quite unbelievable in
Speaker 1: the missing space, and why would you make it more
Speaker 1: difficult for somebody who's already going through such a difficult process,
Speaker 1: Like they just make it more difficult by doing those
Speaker 1: sorts of things. And I think people need to really
Speaker 1: listen to that and make changes and make that process
Speaker 1: easier and better. So this same problem came with the
Speaker 1: deed Pole documents. So my mum changed her name to
Speaker 1: Florabella and Natalia Marry Ramckel on the fifteenth of May
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven. And for years I was trying to
Speaker 1: get the actual document because we had a lot of people,
Speaker 1: didn't we Journey, who were saying, you need to put
Speaker 1: on that document why you're changing your name, and there
Speaker 1: needs to be a witness on that document. So who
Speaker 1: was the witness and what reason did your mum give
Speaker 1: to changing her name? So that was important and we
Speaker 1: needed to get those depot documents mainly for that. That
Speaker 1: was the reason I needed to get it. So I
Speaker 1: was in contact with the Supreme Court for years, and
Speaker 1: every time i'd put in a request for that document,
Speaker 1: I got told no, and then I'd have to give
Speaker 1: reasons as to why I wanted the document and they
Speaker 1: still said no. This went on and on and on.
Speaker 1: I finally found a lady who actually was quite lovely
Speaker 1: and helping me and emailing me and discussing with me,
Speaker 1: and she's like, look, send me the documents. I'll see
Speaker 1: what I can do. I said, I've got to this
Speaker 1: point where we've gone to the findings the coroner is like,
Speaker 1: I knew what the coroner was going to say because
Speaker 1: I was privy to that information from what the Crowns
Speaker 1: listeners were telling my lawyers and legal team. So I'd
Speaker 1: given her that information and she said, I still can't
Speaker 1: give it to you until each such time as you've
Speaker 1: got a death certificate, and then it has to be
Speaker 1: assessed whether we'll still give it to you. So it
Speaker 1: was just a big drama. I'm like, I just want
Speaker 1: to get the document of her changing her name. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I did get a document in the brief of evidence
Speaker 1: because the coroner had requested it from the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: in Brisbane and they handed it over. But the document
Speaker 1: has information there, but not everything. I Actually what I
Speaker 1: was asking them for, which I thought I would require
Speaker 1: to go with the dea certificate and the grant of probate,
Speaker 1: was the physical name change certificate, so like a birth
Speaker 1: certificate or a marriage certificate showing that this person has
Speaker 1: legally changed her name to this, because I thought that
Speaker 1: would correlate and all fit together like the jigsaw puzzle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and basically the file as well. Like I remember
Speaker 3: at the time, we were thinking if there was anything
Speaker 3: sitting behind that that hadn't been submitted to the currner's court,
Speaker 3: there could be little morsees of information there that might
Speaker 3: be helpful, such as the reason for the name change,
Speaker 3: which I didn't see within the brief of evidence itself.
Speaker 1: So we were still chewing it. That mak showing Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go. So I go to this lay all in
Speaker 1: email and she's like, Okay, send me everything you've got now,
Speaker 1: so I need the death certificate, I need granted probate
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah, and we'll process it and see,
Speaker 1: but I'll need originals. I went, okay, I'll bring them
Speaker 1: to you. Okay, So I'm out Supreme Court. Today is Wednesday,
Speaker 1: the thirteenth of November, and I've just gone and spoken
Speaker 1: to the lady who's been helping me trying to get
Speaker 1: access for mum. So they've been declined multiple times, and
Speaker 1: I spoke to her. I rang her and spoke to
Speaker 1: her last week or actually might have even been was
Speaker 1: that was last week? I rang and said I was
Speaker 1: coming into the city. Lo and behold, they approve it.
Speaker 1: And they say, oh, we've good news. We've approved it.
Speaker 1: We can give you the documents and you just need
Speaker 1: to pay this fee and we'll send it to you.
Speaker 1: And I said, that's amazing. I'll pay the fee right now,
Speaker 1: so i'd send it back. I said, I have paid,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. Can you email it to me
Speaker 1: because I would like it in email form, but i'd
Speaker 1: also like it in hard copy. So she goes, no
Speaker 1: problem at all, I'd email it to you. And guess
Speaker 1: what it was? Exactly what was in the ruth of evidence.
Speaker 1: So I just paid for a document and was put
Speaker 1: through the absolute ringer to get exactly what that was
Speaker 1: given to the coroner. So null and void didn't tell
Speaker 1: us anything. We were kind of hoping to have someone's
Speaker 1: name on there. That would have been a really important
Speaker 1: part of the search, but no. And it's so exhausting,
Speaker 1: seriously to hear the yeses and the nose, and then
Speaker 1: the yeses and the nose, and then you think you
Speaker 1: get a win, and then you just get the door
Speaker 1: slammed in your face because it's actually not what you
Speaker 1: needed anyway, and it's cost you money and time of
Speaker 1: doing it. So it seems to be just be like
Speaker 1: a common denominator.
Speaker 3: It's very much round peg in the square hole situation.
Speaker 3: Because of all the multiple and the complexities around it.
Speaker 3: I think some people just put it in the two
Speaker 3: hard basket because you know, from a process point of view,
Speaker 3: everything needs to tick, so you can't have a single
Speaker 3: cross on any of those elements or else it gets rejected.
Speaker 3: So it's a bureaucratic thing, and I think that things
Speaker 3: need to change so that there's more ability, because as
Speaker 3: you hear there sales having to really, which is one
Speaker 3: thing that I greatly admire about you is that you
Speaker 3: are an absolute networker till the cows come home.
Speaker 1: So you call on people that.
Speaker 3: Show any kind of kindness or the ability to be
Speaker 3: flexible or stretch or move to be able to try
Speaker 3: to get.
Speaker 1: Done what you need to get done. And it really
Speaker 1: shouldn't be that way. Yeah, I shouldn't have to call
Speaker 1: on people, I don't think. But people are generally happy
Speaker 1: to help to which has been amazing and I've said
Speaker 1: it a million times. I wouldn't have been able to
Speaker 1: do any of this without the help of the general
Speaker 1: public and the media too, you know, who have been helpful.
Speaker 1: If we stepped to the next phase of this moment
Speaker 1: in time, for me, I am at a position where
Speaker 1: I know that there's money sitting in my mum's superannuation account.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of money sitting there. Just to clarify,
Speaker 1: because one of the things, if you remember from the
Speaker 1: Bonus episode about where We're at, I talked about how
Speaker 1: I was making suggestions to Gary Sheen of all these
Speaker 1: other things that we should be looking at, and one
Speaker 1: of them was had she touched her super and he
Speaker 1: had told me her super was untouched, so I had
Speaker 1: no idea, Like I've never had been privy to the information.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much money my mum had in
Speaker 1: her superannuation. I managed to find going through my dad's
Speaker 1: things one time. I was going through a bunch of
Speaker 1: letters and stuff at his house and I found a
Speaker 1: letter that was actually written to mum from the Department
Speaker 1: of Education in New South Wales when she was pregnant
Speaker 1: with me. I was born in nineteen seventy three, and
Speaker 1: it talks about her going on maternity leave and her
Speaker 1: superannuation being so all I had to go on was like, well,
Speaker 1: she's been getting super since nineteen seventy two, so let's
Speaker 1: look at that. I don't know what that means. And
Speaker 1: once we got the brief of evidence, it showed us
Speaker 1: because they actually had got that information and showed us
Speaker 1: that she actually withdrew all her SUPER when she moved
Speaker 1: from New South Wales to Queensland to go and work
Speaker 1: at TSS. And I'm still a bit baffled by that
Speaker 1: today as to how you could actually do that. Even
Speaker 1: when I spoke to the ATO, they're like, I don't
Speaker 1: know how she did that. How did she actually manage
Speaker 1: to do it. So whether it was because she was
Speaker 1: single and she was trying to buy a house up
Speaker 1: in Queensland and we use the money to buy the
Speaker 1: house because we know for a file she was still
Speaker 1: holding the house in New South, that's all right, So
Speaker 1: she still had a house in Jerringong for a whole
Speaker 1: twelve months for sale. Yeah, so she had that house
Speaker 1: and bought the house at Marinda Court. So that also
Speaker 1: tells us how much money she sort of had in
Speaker 1: the mix as well, doesn't it. Because I never asked
Speaker 1: my mom how much money she had, Like I knew
Speaker 1: we were okay, but I never really we didn't discuss it.
Speaker 1: So that was important in getting the information from the
Speaker 1: ATO as to what her superannuation was looking like. And
Speaker 1: I knew that there was an amount in there wasn't
Speaker 1: a big amount you can probably imagine. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you all in nineteen ninety four, when she
Speaker 1: started at TSS, she put five hundred dollars fresh into
Speaker 1: that account she's missing three years later. Yeah, okay, So
Speaker 1: that gives you an idea of how much super it
Speaker 1: was going to be.
Speaker 3: Two hundred and fifty dollars and then she upped it
Speaker 3: to five hundreds, so she doubled the amount yeap to
Speaker 3: go into her super with TARSS.
Speaker 1: So she had the two houses she had Marinda Court,
Speaker 1: and then she also had Croft Place in Durangong and
Speaker 1: then she sold Croft Place, so she would have had
Speaker 1: an injection of money there, but that didn't go into
Speaker 1: her super. So I had to jump through huge hoops
Speaker 1: to access the small portion of money from mum Super.
Speaker 1: And oh my god, I thought I was going to
Speaker 1: have a complete melt down at this point, because this
Speaker 1: started in August, the Taxation Department didn't actually pay it
Speaker 1: out until December. And I don't know if you want
Speaker 1: to think about that for a second, but that's just
Speaker 1: an ongoing trauma of me sitting on the phone for
Speaker 1: sometimes up to two and a half hours for them
Speaker 1: to put me through to the next person. For them
Speaker 1: to put me through to the next person, I've got
Speaker 1: to explain the whole rigmarole about her having one name
Speaker 1: and the other name. And I can tell you that
Speaker 1: while we were in Luxembourg, Chris actually got the letter
Speaker 1: in the mail and he said that they have completely
Speaker 1: ignored the whole fact that her name was Marian barter
Speaker 1: and said, we've done all these checks under Florabella Ramckel,
Speaker 1: and it just listed off, like I think there's ten
Speaker 1: or so things that they've listed off that Florabella and
Speaker 1: Italia Marian Ramickel has not done a tax return in
Speaker 1: the last three years. I'm like, no shit, she's actually
Speaker 1: a missing person. She's been missing for twenty seven years
Speaker 1: and you're not reading. Like every time I do this,
Speaker 1: I have to do a full on document which actually
Speaker 1: shows everybody exactly what's happening in this space. Because it
Speaker 1: is hard, it's convoluted, it's confusing, and I try to
Speaker 1: make it as clear as I possibly can for these
Speaker 1: people so that they have an understanding and there's no question.
Speaker 3: But just remember too, that whole counterbalance between us seeing
Speaker 3: basically half of one of the volumes of the brief
Speaker 3: was all of these letters coming from the superannuation which
Speaker 3: had care of Leslie Loveday in it. So basically they
Speaker 3: had sent her things the same with the bank every
Speaker 3: six months.
Speaker 1: There was all these letters that were produced.
Speaker 3: Remember, and then you're in Luxembourg and we get the
Speaker 3: correspondence saying no superannuation located for this person, and it's
Speaker 3: just crazy because you actually see that there is superannuation there.
Speaker 3: If they had have talked to each other, then it
Speaker 3: would have been sorted and done. Quickers that we're.
Speaker 1: Back and forth with then paid the accountant and they
Speaker 1: started looking into it and they're like, oh, no, they
Speaker 1: have found the money. Confirmed that they found the money,
Speaker 1: but then they couldn't access it. I had to go
Speaker 1: back and do it myself and sit on the phone again,
Speaker 1: and I was in tears in some of those phone
Speaker 1: calls and absolutely losing my mind that they were not
Speaker 1: listening to me. And it's like their robots. They just
Speaker 1: don't show any compassion or understanding of what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to explain to them. And I was like, I could
Speaker 1: care less about the money. I want to finalize her life.
Speaker 1: She has been declared deceased. This is important part from
Speaker 1: my family that we just go through the process when
Speaker 1: someone passes away. You close their bank accounts, you sell
Speaker 1: their car, you do the things that you need to
Speaker 1: do to finalize them as a person. And I felt
Speaker 1: like it was a rite of passage for me to go, Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got through this stage and now I can actually
Speaker 1: go Okay, we're going to do all these things. She
Speaker 1: had money sitting in her bank account as well, right,
Speaker 1: so I had to jumps through a million hoops with
Speaker 1: the Commonwealth Bank. They were probably the best out of
Speaker 1: all of them, but I had to fill in forms
Speaker 1: and documents and show them the death certificate, show them
Speaker 1: the grand a probate. So this is why they were
Speaker 1: all important documents. But they don't even give you the
Speaker 1: courtesy of giving you a letter to say, hey, we're
Speaker 1: paying it out. Money just showed up in my bank
Speaker 1: account and it was a couple of grand and so
Speaker 1: the next hoop for me to jump through was I
Speaker 1: speak to the ATO and I got onto a guy
Speaker 1: and he says, I'm going to have to call you back.
Speaker 1: And I said, you are going to have to swear
Speaker 1: on my children's lives that you are going to call
Speaker 1: me back, because I've just sat on this call for
Speaker 1: another two hours and I've been bumped from one person
Speaker 1: to the next. He said, there's just something on here
Speaker 1: that doesn't look right. I'm going to have to call
Speaker 1: you back, and I promise you I will ring you back,
Speaker 1: and thank goodness he did. He rang me back and
Speaker 1: he said, I'm going to apologize to you because there
Speaker 1: has been an error our end. I went, well, surprise
Speaker 1: sally laden as an error or there's a problem, But
Speaker 1: thank you for acknowledging that. And I said, I really
Speaker 1: hope that you explained to the person who made the
Speaker 1: error how diabolic all this has been for me, and
Speaker 1: that I've been fighting for this since August. It's now December.
Speaker 1: This is already hard and it's already trauma. I should
Speaker 1: not have to sit here and just be put through
Speaker 1: more pain and more stress and more time and anxiousness
Speaker 1: to go through to get something that is rightfully made
Speaker 1: available to me like it did to everybody else, Like
Speaker 1: I've had multiple people who have passed away in the
Speaker 1: same time as my mum was granted as deceased. They're
Speaker 1: will gone through all the processes of closing up everything
Speaker 1: and finishing without any hassle. But because my mum's missing,
Speaker 1: I have to jump through a million hoops to get
Speaker 1: a decertificate to get granted probate to then have access
Speaker 1: to her files. And the kicker here was that I said,
Speaker 1: how will you pay out the superinnuation? And he said,
Speaker 1: I will send you a check. So I said, well,
Speaker 1: my bank doesn't actually accept check. So is there any
Speaker 1: other way we can do it? No, that's the only
Speaker 1: way we can do it. So that afternoon I decide
Speaker 1: to go to the A and Z. Okay, folks, this
Speaker 1: is just getting wildly ridiculous. I am seriously about to
Speaker 1: lose my mind. I've just had a phone call from
Speaker 1: the A and Z bank who informed me that when
Speaker 1: they would when the girl was doing up the application
Speaker 1: for an account to be a beneficiary for my mum's
Speaker 1: state so that when the ATO finally send me a
Speaker 1: check for mum's superannuation, I can bank it into that account.
Speaker 1: When she did it, I said to her, you do
Speaker 1: need to put both names. She goes, well, I'm going
Speaker 1: to put Marion Barter because that's the name of the
Speaker 1: checks going to be. And I said, well, that's correct,
Speaker 1: but you'll probably need to put both names because she's
Speaker 1: officially Florabella Ramichel, formerly known as Marion Barta, which is
Speaker 1: on her de certificate, which is on the grant of probate.
Speaker 1: She only put Marrion bar We just thought we'd see
Speaker 1: how we go. She's come back to me saying, oh,
Speaker 1: well they've declined it, and saying, well, she's a formerly
Speaker 1: known as Flora Bella, Natalia Marian Ramckel, not Marian Barter.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, yes, that's why I explained to
Speaker 1: you that you'd have to put both names on the application,
Speaker 1: because I thought that would be the case. And she goes, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we can't put both names. We can only put one name.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I've had to go through a
Speaker 1: million hoops and fight tooth and nail to have mums
Speaker 1: both mums' names put on My god, I can't believe
Speaker 1: this is happening. I just seriously cannot believe that this
Speaker 1: is still happening. The whole name changed thing is the biggest, absolute,
Speaker 1: biggest debarkle of my entire life. Anyway, you can hear
Speaker 1: the frustration in my voice. I'm just so tired of this.
Speaker 1: I am absolutely exhausted. So then she tells me that
Speaker 1: at the next problem is that the granted probate that
Speaker 1: I just paid for through the lawyers to do this
Speaker 1: granted probate has since expired because they're only valid for
Speaker 1: ninety days. I said, how can it be expired? Only
Speaker 1: just got it in August. She goes, oh, they only
Speaker 1: have a ninety day period. I said, I only applied
Speaker 1: to the ATO after I got granted broke probate, which
Speaker 1: was on the sixth of August, and it's taken them
Speaker 1: till December to pay me the damn checks. Like I
Speaker 1: have to fight every way, every single pathway I go,
Speaker 1: and she goes, well, I'm really sorry, but that's what
Speaker 1: they're telling me. Also, your passport and everything that you've
Speaker 1: sent through has expired. I'm like, that is just not true,
Speaker 1: Like I have I have the documents anyway, So that's
Speaker 1: the next thing. And then she said to me, I
Speaker 1: need to ask you who Owen Clifford Brown is. I said, oh,
Speaker 1: Clifford Brown's my deceased brother I told you about. She goes, okay, well,
Speaker 1: we need his death certificate. I said, well, I don't
Speaker 1: have his death certificate and I don't have access to it.
Speaker 1: I would have to apply through birth, death and marriages,
Speaker 1: and even then it would have to be my eighty
Speaker 1: one year old father to apply for a death certificate
Speaker 1: because I'm not his next of kin. So I don't
Speaker 1: have his death certificate. I said. It states on my
Speaker 1: mum's death certificate that Owen Clifford Brown is deceased because
Speaker 1: he's named in the will, right, he gets three pieces
Speaker 1: of furniture whatever he wanted in mum's will. So this
Speaker 1: is why they want to get a desertificate for Owen.
Speaker 1: I just told her to can it. I said, forget it.
Speaker 1: Just don't even bother going through it. I'll have to
Speaker 1: find an alternative way to try and get this check cashed.
Speaker 1: I said to her, she's a really beautiful girl, Like,
Speaker 1: I really like this girl. She took a really big
Speaker 1: interest in the case, and she's going to listen to
Speaker 1: the podcast and everything. This is not her fault. This
Speaker 1: is just how our these departments and businesses are in
Speaker 1: not dealing with missing persons cases. People. You need to
Speaker 1: wake up and listen far out like this should not
Speaker 1: be this hard. I just said to who this is
Speaker 1: trauma on repeat Today's sixth and December twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: just does not get any easier. So at that point
Speaker 1: I felt like all my options had literally run out.
Speaker 1: I actually met up with the Lovely Ladies who actually
Speaker 1: offered to help me get the grant of probate, and
Speaker 1: she offered to receive the ATO check and put it
Speaker 1: in their account in a trust account for Mum. But
Speaker 1: thankfully they actually helped me manage all of that, which
Speaker 1: was a massive saving for me as well, and just
Speaker 1: because I just had no way around any of those.
Speaker 1: So again it came down to just good people helping me.
Speaker 1: Otherwise I would still be stuck, and I don't think
Speaker 1: we would have overseas we wouldn't have been able to
Speaker 1: do half of what we had done. So while I'm
Speaker 1: trying to deal with ATO and multiple other entities trying
Speaker 1: to get this information deepole document, Supreme Courts, you name it,
Speaker 1: I am in this world of hurt. And the last
Speaker 1: other thing that I really wanted to get, and I
Speaker 1: know you were keen for this journey as well, was
Speaker 1: to get the Medicare reports about Mum, where she went,
Speaker 1: what she was doing, and who she was with. Yes,
Speaker 1: do you remember what was the key part of that
Speaker 1: for us to get that Medicare report? So look at this.
Speaker 3: In regards to the Medicare stuff, we didn't really know
Speaker 3: exactly what we were going to receive with that information.
Speaker 3: We were hoping for a lot more detail, so names
Speaker 3: addresses how she paid as well.
Speaker 1: All week I've spent on the phone, you will know
Speaker 1: that I've been chasing information from Medicare for some months
Speaker 1: now after sending them an email, because last time I
Speaker 1: went in there they said, oh, look we don't have it.
Speaker 1: You'll have to send them an email. And without any
Speaker 1: conversation or communication from Medicare, I just received an envelope
Speaker 1: in the mail two days ago. Just the front page
Speaker 1: says sensitive personal Dear Miss Leyden read Sally Laden slash
Speaker 1: Marion Barter, thank you for your request for release information.
Speaker 1: Please find Medicare reports attached. A lot of this stuff
Speaker 1: we already had out of the brief of evidence, but
Speaker 1: there's some things in her here we didn't have, so
Speaker 1: I classify that as a win service. History they've given
Speaker 1: me is from the first of January nineteen ninety four
Speaker 1: to the first of January twenty fifteen, and it lists
Speaker 1: all of the doctors that mum saw between nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: four and nineteen ninety seven before she left. Then we
Speaker 1: have a number and item number and description for every
Speaker 1: category that she's had against her Medicare card, which is
Speaker 1: great because we can go through that and have a
Speaker 1: look and she do a bit more deep digging into
Speaker 1: what some of those mean. Then I asked for the bill,
Speaker 1: type and description of her payment, and particularly we were
Speaker 1: looking for the transaction at the optometrists that she went
Speaker 1: to on the thirteenth of August nineteen ninety seven in Grafton,
Speaker 1: because that was the last digital footprint of her physically
Speaker 1: doing something. We don't know if she was taking the
Speaker 1: money out of her bank account or if that was
Speaker 1: being done by somebody else, So that date is quite important,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to know did she pay cash, did
Speaker 1: she pay by card? How did she get her rebate
Speaker 1: sent to her? What? Did they have an address potentially
Speaker 1: of where that would be sent to. And unfortunately, because
Speaker 1: they've just done a generic print off, they haven't actually
Speaker 1: read the detail of the information that I'm requesting asking
Speaker 1: for those finer details, so I don't know if they
Speaker 1: had an address for her. They haven't told me that.
Speaker 1: What it does tell me is that that optometrist appointment
Speaker 1: with Dean Evans at the OPSM was the payment method
Speaker 1: was bog bill, so that means that she didn't have
Speaker 1: to pay for anything. That means that she didn't get
Speaker 1: a refund from Medicare, which is really devastating because I
Speaker 1: was thinking if she'd did get a refund and it
Speaker 1: was sent to her in a check, which is how
Speaker 1: they used to do it back in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: They'd post you out a check we would have an
Speaker 1: address for her. So you know, it's quite devastating because
Speaker 1: you know, if we could find out an address for
Speaker 1: her after she returned to Australia, that would have been massive, massive,
Speaker 1: massive find And those forms are trauma on repeat, so
Speaker 1: you're looking at the form online and it's asking you
Speaker 1: who is the funeral director, where is the body, what
Speaker 1: date did they die, how did they die, among other.
Speaker 3: Things, so whether it was check, whether it was by cash,
Speaker 3: and that sort of thing, just to see if we
Speaker 3: could actually work out a her health history over that
Speaker 3: whole time, because there was a little bit of interesting
Speaker 3: stuff around the liver function test that was done in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety seven, considering that there was another woman in
Speaker 3: Belgium who had a similar kind of liver test done,
Speaker 3: So that was one.
Speaker 1: Thing we wanted to look at.
Speaker 3: And the second thing was that little ping that happened
Speaker 3: on the thirteenth of August nineteen ninety seven, where after
Speaker 3: arriving back into Australia, her Medicare card was put through
Speaker 3: as Dean Evans, the optometrist said on the stand at
Speaker 3: one of those old click clack credit card type machines
Speaker 3: at the optometrist in Grafton. So we wanted just to
Speaker 3: see if there was more information there, because fortunately on
Speaker 3: the stand Dean Evans did state that there would have
Speaker 3: been a new client card done for that service and
Speaker 3: so therefore that could have had or it would have
Speaker 3: had an address and a contact phone number. Now, because
Speaker 3: that card wasn't able to be located it was too
Speaker 3: long ago, we were hoping that possibly Medicare might have
Speaker 3: changed their address or their phone number based on the
Speaker 3: client card.
Speaker 1: None of that really came.
Speaker 3: About with the documents that we got. But one thing
Speaker 3: that we were able to concretely cement, which is something
Speaker 3: that people have been wanting to sort of know for
Speaker 3: a long time, is that this was actually the sixth
Speaker 3: time in her post moving to Queensland where she had
Speaker 3: gone to an optometrist with a single visit not in
Speaker 3: her local area, and this was actually the sixth time
Speaker 3: that she had done that, So that to me shows
Speaker 3: a pattern of behavior. So this wasn't just some ping
Speaker 3: of going to see an optometrist that came out of
Speaker 3: the middle of nowhere. This was actually in line with
Speaker 3: what she'd been doing for the past couple of years
Speaker 3: since she arrived in Queensland.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that was a big standout for
Speaker 1: us was that she was billed for that service and
Speaker 1: that was a real bummer because if she'd got a
Speaker 1: check back, they would have posted the check to an
Speaker 1: address and it would have been listed as to where
Speaker 1: the check went, and that would have been a massive,
Speaker 1: massive find for us. So you know, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of undercarriage with that as well, because the police
Speaker 1: initially back in twenty eleven found this information about her
Speaker 1: going and using her Medicare card or her Medicare card
Speaker 1: being used in Grafton and they were looking for a
Speaker 1: doctor and they were not looking for an optometrist, and
Speaker 1: so that information back in twenty eleven, they would have
Speaker 1: had the records and we could have actually pulled like
Speaker 1: even OPSM said that because we found them. The lady
Speaker 1: didn't we She's now living in Coffs Harbor and we
Speaker 1: were like, did you keep records? Do you still have records?
Speaker 1: She's like no, we destroyed them. And I was like,
Speaker 1: that's so disapposed because some missed opportunity and they weren't
Speaker 1: looking properly. They just made an assumption that he was
Speaker 1: a doctor and not an optometrist. Doesn't even say doctor
Speaker 1: on there, it just sees Stevens. So, you know, another
Speaker 1: missed opportunity from the police to maybe garner some information,
Speaker 1: and that was really vital. But the flip side is
Speaker 1: Medicare sent me every single detail. They sent all of
Speaker 1: my information as well, which is a lot more than
Speaker 1: my mum's, and we were able to look at certain things.
Speaker 1: And you know, for those of you who are questioning
Speaker 1: about the liver test before, there is a little bit
Speaker 1: of information in there which we might talk about on
Speaker 1: Facebook and answer some questions on there, because we did
Speaker 1: go into deep on that. In the Lady vanishes as well,
Speaker 1: and there's a storyline behind my mum and Girlaine, who
Speaker 1: is another lady who had dealings with mister Rick Blum,
Speaker 1: who both ladies had. My Mum and Laine both had
Speaker 1: liver function tests whilst they were allegedly engaged with Rick Blum.
Speaker 1: In the next episode of The Missing Matter, the lady
Speaker 1: warned me in the letter not to try and look
Speaker 1: for her and said it would be detrimental to my children.
Speaker 1: That's when the nightmare started. A reoccurring dream I had
Speaker 1: on repeat for years, where Chris and I drove to Maurie.
Speaker 1: We found a house just outside of town where there
Speaker 1: was a dip in the road and had a big,
Speaker 1: long concrete footpath that went up to the front door.
Speaker 1: And in the dream, i have Darcy on my hip
Speaker 1: as a baby, and I'm holding Ella's hand, who is three.
Speaker 1: Chris is waiting in the car. He's got the window down.
Speaker 1: As I'm walking up to the door, I knock on
Speaker 1: the door and my mum opens the door and she
Speaker 1: closes the door in my face, doesn't say anything, and
Speaker 1: I turn around and I walk back up to Chris
Speaker 1: and she opens the door and she shoots me in
Speaker 1: the back.