Speaker 1: Apote production.
Speaker 2: For those of you who haven't listened to the Lady Vanishers,
Speaker 2: she might not know who I am, but my name
Speaker 2: is Sally and I am the daughter of long term
Speaker 2: missing person Marion Barta. I'm currently fifty one and to
Speaker 2: put some perspective into my situation, my mum was fifty
Speaker 2: one when she disappeared from my life. So my mom
Speaker 2: is Marion Bartera. She was a award winning school teacher.
Speaker 2: She was teaching at a school on the Gold Coast
Speaker 2: called TSS or the Southport School and in the November
Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety six she was awarded by AITA. Butcher's
Speaker 2: actually was the presenter at the awards for the Netta Awards,
Speaker 2: which was awarding teachers for excellence and one was voted
Speaker 2: the best teacher in Queensland and she actually came to nationally.
Speaker 3: The National Excellence and Teaching Awards allows us to recognize
Speaker 3: and praise teachers who show excellence.
Speaker 4: In their work.
Speaker 1: It's a marvelous way to let.
Speaker 3: The community know just how good our teachers are and
Speaker 3: it also raises confidence in the profession. Yes, I do
Speaker 3: consider teachers to be heroes and I mean it, and
Speaker 3: I'm not just flattering you because I happen to be
Speaker 3: the MC and speak of this evening how teachers have
Speaker 3: thrived beats me. Teachers deserve our nations heartfelt thanks.
Speaker 2: I had moved out and built a house with my
Speaker 2: partner who is now my husband, Chris. And yeah, mum
Speaker 2: was a busy single lady who was a dedicated school teacher.
Speaker 2: She was always there early morning setting up for the day.
Speaker 2: She'd always be the last one to leave the school
Speaker 2: grounds because she was setting up for the next day.
Speaker 2: And just a very passionate, loving, caring teacher and a
Speaker 2: mother of two myself and my brother Owen. My mum
Speaker 2: was someone who was very fashionable. She was ahead of
Speaker 2: her time in a different way. She didn't dress like
Speaker 2: everybody else. She used to do some modeling for some
Speaker 2: of the boutiques that she bought clothes from. She loved
Speaker 2: her garden and she was a really great cook. So
Speaker 2: one of my fondest memories is her making bread cups
Speaker 2: that had asparagus in the very seventies vibe, you know,
Speaker 2: and we'd go to top wear parties and everyone always
Speaker 2: asked her to take that and she made a fantastic
Speaker 2: Pavlova which I continued to make today. She loved gardening,
Speaker 2: and yeah, she loved classical music, going to the ballet,
Speaker 2: going to the opera.
Speaker 1: So nineteen ninety seven was a busy year for us.
Speaker 2: Chris and I got engaged in that April, and we
Speaker 2: were living in our new house. And then around that time,
Speaker 2: Mum was seemingly getting.
Speaker 1: Quite upset at school. I went to her house.
Speaker 2: I would frequently go to her house and I would
Speaker 2: go and see her ask as well. Because my job,
Speaker 2: I worked weekends, so I actually had a couple of
Speaker 2: days off during the week, and on those days off,
Speaker 2: I'd quite often just go and hang out with her
Speaker 2: at school and help her on excursions and things like that.
Speaker 2: She taught reception. Just to let everyone know, so four
Speaker 2: and five year old boys. I had a great location
Speaker 2: down there on the Gold Coast where the school situated
Speaker 2: really close to the water, so you know, if she
Speaker 2: was reading a book about the beach, she'd actually take
Speaker 2: the boys down and they'd take their shoes off and
Speaker 2: put their feet in the sand, and lots of sensory
Speaker 2: kind of style teaching and creative teaching.
Speaker 1: But one night I was actually.
Speaker 2: At her house and we'd had dinner, and I just
Speaker 2: sat with her because she was quite upset. She'd been
Speaker 2: telling me that she was upset with a couple of
Speaker 2: the teachers at the school over time, like I feel
Speaker 2: like it.
Speaker 1: Was over a period of time.
Speaker 2: And she told me that someone had accused her of
Speaker 2: touching a boy and she was quite mortified, as was
Speaker 2: I by that claim. And I can only put it
Speaker 2: into my understanding in my feelings, but I feel like
Speaker 2: there was a lot of tall poppy syndrome going on.
Speaker 2: She sat on the couch next to me and she
Speaker 2: fell asleep, and I remember she had her hands facing upwards,
Speaker 2: so you know when you sort of sit back in
Speaker 2: the chair and you just relax and your hands sort
Speaker 2: of flopped to the side.
Speaker 1: That's what she looked like.
Speaker 2: And she fell asleep, and she'd been in tears that night,
Speaker 2: and I just was worried at that point that something
Speaker 2: was wrong. So when she told me that she was
Speaker 2: going to quit her job and go overseas on a holiday,
Speaker 2: I was actually okay with it. I was quite open
Speaker 2: to that idea. Owen and I were quite settled in
Speaker 2: our early twenties.
Speaker 1: Owen had a partner.
Speaker 2: He'd been with her for ten years and was engaged
Speaker 2: to be married, and Chris and I had built our
Speaker 2: house and we just preshly got engaged ourselves.
Speaker 1: So you know, we.
Speaker 2: Were like, yeah, sure, go and live your best life.
Speaker 2: Go and have a great time. You're single, you don't
Speaker 2: have any ties here. We want what's best for you.
Speaker 2: And then everything sort of started to roll really quickly.
Speaker 2: So she put the house on the mine and she
Speaker 2: sold it within three weeks, and she sold it for
Speaker 2: fifteen thousand dollars less than she bought it for and
Speaker 2: it sells really quickly. And she asked me if I
Speaker 2: would come and help her pack up the house, and
Speaker 2: I said to her, I can't tonight because I'm going
Speaker 2: to Tathe, but I'll ask Chris and he'll pick me
Speaker 2: up on the way home. Because that was in Southport.
Speaker 2: Mum lived in Ashmore, which was the next suburb. So
Speaker 2: Chris was at mum's house helping her pack up when
Speaker 2: Mum came out and said to him, what's the time.
Speaker 2: He said, like, no, seven thirty. I can't remember it.
Speaker 2: He doesn't remember exactly what time it was. And she said, okay,
Speaker 2: well I need you to go, so just drop what
Speaker 2: you're doing. And you can, you can go. And he said,
Speaker 2: I'll just finish packing this box, Marian, and she said, no, no,
Speaker 2: just leave it. I need you to go. And so
Speaker 2: he left and he came and picked me up from
Speaker 2: Taithe and he said, got your mum's rude. I said,
Speaker 2: what do you mean, Like she's never rude to you.
Speaker 2: What are you talking about? And he said, she just
Speaker 2: kicked me out. I said, how bizarre, Like that's so weird.
Speaker 2: Why would she do that? So it was an odd
Speaker 2: behavior for her and definitely out of character. And Chris
Speaker 2: and I on the way home, It's around nine o'clock
Speaker 2: at night by this point when I finished Tafe typically
Speaker 2: and there was a McDonald's connected to a service station
Speaker 2: on Ferry Road there in Southport, and Chris and I
Speaker 2: stopped there to get something to eat on the way home.
Speaker 2: And as we're sitting in the restaurant, I got up
Speaker 2: to go and get Chris some dessert of some description,
Speaker 2: and that gave him a window because I was sitting
Speaker 2: with my back to the bowsers, And when I.
Speaker 1: Stood up, he gave him a window.
Speaker 2: Out to the Bowsers and he said, oh, look, your
Speaker 2: mom's just pulled up. So I've turned around and I'm
Speaker 2: standing at the glass and I'm waving at her. She's
Speaker 2: got out of the car. She's standing at the door
Speaker 2: with the door open, like she's about to start putting
Speaker 2: fuel in the car, and she's staring at me like
Speaker 2: a deer in headlights. And I noticed there's a man
Speaker 2: in the car, and all I can see is that
Speaker 2: he's really tall, and it just looked dark to me
Speaker 2: because I always said dark features, but rethinking it, and
Speaker 2: we've actually gone back to that service station and looked
Speaker 2: at the lighting and everything. It was probably because of
Speaker 2: the light reflecting off the windscreen, and it was late
Speaker 2: at night, so it.
Speaker 1: Was dark outside.
Speaker 2: But he was tall, and his head was almost touching
Speaker 2: the roof of her Honda Civic, so with small hatchback
Speaker 2: car so not a big car, that his head was
Speaker 2: almost touching the roof. And instead of getting fuel, she
Speaker 2: got back in the car and she drove off, and
Speaker 2: she instead of driving past us where we would have
Speaker 2: seen whoever that man was in the car, quite clearly,
Speaker 2: she went around the back and got stuck going through
Speaker 2: the drive through. So I ran over to the glass
Speaker 2: and I went busted. I've seen you you've got a man,
Speaker 2: like what's happening with him? As a bit of a joke,
Speaker 2: thinking it was funny. I'm like, oh my god, she's
Speaker 2: got a boyfriend. She just doesn't want to tell us
Speaker 2: about it. It's a very tongue in cheek kind of thing.
Speaker 2: But she acted weirdly. The next day, I said to her,
Speaker 2: who was the guy in the car? And she said, Oh,
Speaker 2: it's just a friend that I've met from the art center.
Speaker 2: He was taking her out for a drink, I think,
Speaker 2: is what she said, which my mind was weird because
Speaker 2: she didn't drink alcohol. But that was it.
Speaker 1: That was end of story.
Speaker 2: And I didn't push her, and I just felt, you know,
Speaker 2: as a twenty four year old, I didn't have the
Speaker 2: right to ask my mum what she's doing. It's none
Speaker 2: of my business what she was doing. And I really
Speaker 2: was very firm in our relationship on that sort of level.
Speaker 2: So that was a very interesting point. And I told
Speaker 2: the police that, and they could never find the man
Speaker 2: who was in the car. We've never had anyone come
Speaker 2: forward and say, oh, that was me. I was with
Speaker 2: Marian on that night, So that's another part of the story.
Speaker 2: Who was the man in the car with her at
Speaker 2: that time in her timeline when she was packing up
Speaker 2: her house getting ready to go overseas, and she's left
Speaker 2: the country within a month and changed her name all
Speaker 2: in that one month time period.
Speaker 1: But anyway, she did it.
Speaker 2: She packed up all her things and she put all
Speaker 2: her treasures into a shipping container, is what she told me.
Speaker 2: And she gave Chris and I some big pieces of
Speaker 2: furniture and said to me, when I come back, I'm
Speaker 2: going to buy a unit at Maine Beach, which is
Speaker 2: on the Gold Coast, and I'll be downsizing because I've
Speaker 2: got a three bedroom house with a swimming pool and
Speaker 2: I don't use the pool. The house is too big
Speaker 2: for me. I just want to downsize again. I went, fine,
Speaker 2: no problem.
Speaker 1: So that all started to happen.
Speaker 2: The REMOVALSS truck arrived at our house and dropped off
Speaker 2: the things that were coming to us. Then she had
Speaker 2: asked Chris's grandparents, who had a pool room up the
Speaker 2: back of their house, if they could store some of
Speaker 2: her school things. And I think there was a mattress
Speaker 2: and there was boxes of sheets and towels and things
Speaker 2: like that which was stored up at Nana and pars
Speaker 2: and the rest of it went.
Speaker 1: In the truck on the shipping container.
Speaker 2: In my mind, and Mum just said to me, oh,
Speaker 2: if I decide to stay over there and teach, I'll
Speaker 2: just get you toscend it over to me. And I never,
Speaker 2: as a twenty three twenty four year old, never thought
Speaker 2: to go, hey, where are you storing the shipping container?
Speaker 2: I just met Yet, no problem, Like that's a normal conversation.
Speaker 2: And my mum was a little bit you know, probably
Speaker 2: left of Senna when it came to things like that.
Speaker 2: And if she wanted to go and teach. She liked
Speaker 2: Montessori and Steiner school varieties, and she was really open
Speaker 2: to perhaps getting a job over in England and living
Speaker 2: the jane Ere and the world of Wuthering Heights kind
Speaker 2: of vibe. Where to begin. She lost her mother Alie
Speaker 2: for a little man. This was a very different house,
Speaker 2: a far different places. That was my mum, you know,
Speaker 2: So it didn't seem weird or odd to me. Auto. Oh,
Speaker 2: and I don't think that she would do that. Some
Speaker 2: of her friends had sort of commented later down the
Speaker 2: track that they thought it was a bit odd that
Speaker 2: she'd sell her house to go overseas, But it made
Speaker 2: sense to me that she said she was going to
Speaker 2: downsize and it freed her up from having a house
Speaker 2: sitting there for a year, and she wouldn't have put
Speaker 2: tenants in it because she had antique furniture and she
Speaker 2: didn't like anybody touching her things, so she was quite particular.
Speaker 2: And then my birthday is the twelfth of May. Every
Speaker 2: few years it falls on Mother's Day, and I was
Speaker 2: pretty sad to find out a long time later that
Speaker 2: my mum actually changed her name only a few days
Speaker 2: after my birthday, and she changed it via Deepole to
Speaker 2: Flora Bella Natalia Marian Ramkeel. I didn't learn about that
Speaker 2: until twenty and eleven, so I think that's thirteen years,
Speaker 2: fourteen years later that I actually found out that mum
Speaker 2: had changed her name, and that was kind of shocking
Speaker 2: to me. I didn't really understand the concept about that.
Speaker 2: But that timeline is the fifteenth of May nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: She had finished school.
Speaker 2: The term finished on the twentieth of June nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 2: and she had resigned. And I've got a letter that
Speaker 2: she gave me that says that she was asking for
Speaker 2: a reference so that she could potentially get a job.
Speaker 2: That she was renewing her teacher's registration for the following
Speaker 2: year in advance, so that meant that she had paid
Speaker 2: for her teacher's registration for nineteen ninety eight and by
Speaker 2: the Sunday, the twenty second, so she came to dinner.
Speaker 2: We've had to go back and do these really fine
Speaker 2: timelines and things that you don't really document, right if
Speaker 2: someone's not missing, you're not writing down when you speak
Speaker 2: to your mum or when she comes over for dinner.
Speaker 2: But she requested to come and have dinner at our
Speaker 2: house and requested that I cook her a roast. So
Speaker 2: she brought her friend, Leslie Loveday, who was the lady
Speaker 2: she was staying with at the time she'd sold the house.
Speaker 2: She packed up and there was a window where she
Speaker 2: wasn't quite ready to go yet, so instead of coming
Speaker 2: to our house, we offered to let her come and
Speaker 2: stay with us, of course, and we lived out the
Speaker 2: back of Madhra barr in Talli and Leslie lived around
Speaker 2: the corner from school at TSS, so it made sense
Speaker 2: that she would stay with Leslie, and they used to
Speaker 2: be neighbors and they were quite good friends, so Leslie
Speaker 2: kind let.
Speaker 1: Her stay with her for a few weeks.
Speaker 2: During that time, Mum had, in that moment, changed a
Speaker 2: couple of her accounts to come to Leslie's address care
Speaker 2: of Leslie Loveday.
Speaker 1: So she didn't do that to my place.
Speaker 2: She did it to Leslie's which I grabbed a bundle
Speaker 2: of mail from Leslie's house a little bit down the
Speaker 2: track in nineteen ninety seven, which I still kept and
Speaker 2: which has become quite important as the journey continued. But
Speaker 2: they came and had a roast dinner, and we lived
Speaker 2: in a cul de sac and we were on a
Speaker 2: battle ax block at the back. So we walked them
Speaker 2: up after dinner and she gave me a big hug.
Speaker 2: She ac she gave me a painting of hers and
Speaker 2: it's got pine trees, and she said to me that
Speaker 2: night when we were walking down the corridor and I'd
Speaker 2: had it on the wall, and she said, I want
Speaker 2: you to think of me every time you used to
Speaker 2: look at this painting. And something that's really bugged me
Speaker 2: for life is that the police. I told the police
Speaker 2: that and they wrote down that. Marian said, you can
Speaker 2: think of me. This is where I'll be I said, no,
Speaker 2: that's not what she said. She just said, you can
Speaker 2: think of me. And at the time I was like,
Speaker 2: you know, someone gives you a teddy bear, you.
Speaker 1: Can think of me. That kind of notion was how
Speaker 1: I took it.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so that was on the Saturday night and
Speaker 2: she flew out the next day. On Sunday, the twenty
Speaker 2: second of June. Leslie drove her to Railway Parade and
Speaker 2: Scarborough Street in Southport, where she caught a bus. They
Speaker 2: were early, Leslie says, and they were laughing because mom
Speaker 2: had so much luggage.
Speaker 1: Leslie sort of said to us that, you know, she remembered.
Speaker 2: I was sort of laughing so hard and they were
Speaker 2: crying as she waved off and off she went. So
Speaker 2: she went on the bus up to Brisbane International Airport
Speaker 2: where she caught a Korean Air flight to South Korea.
Speaker 2: And what I have learned through this journey is that
Speaker 2: int Pole, when you're traveling in and out of Australia
Speaker 2: or anywhere, they only record where you exit and when
Speaker 2: you first stop. So regardless of where where you say
Speaker 2: you're going, they only record you to your first destination.
Speaker 2: So as far as they're concerns she went to South Korea,
Speaker 2: and that's when it all goes a bit pair shaped.
Speaker 2: She sent up postcards, she sent letters to everybody. I
Speaker 2: got an eight page letter and it was written on
Speaker 2: notepaper from a hotel in Japan called Hotel Niko Na Rita.
Speaker 2: It's stamped from tom Bridge in the UK. So she's
Speaker 2: picked up the paper and she's written on it and
Speaker 2: posted it in tom Bridge.
Speaker 1: Is my belief.
Speaker 5: Dear Salan, Chris, Greetings from beautiful but very wet UK.
Speaker 5: I finally arrived in England after a most interesting visit
Speaker 5: to the East. Cloud is somewhat by far too much luggage.
Speaker 4: Left.
Speaker 5: But tell them both again thanks for me, love your heaps,
Speaker 5: and don't worry about me, mum.
Speaker 2: And it was quite a few weeks and she rang me.
Speaker 2: Chris and I had just been down skiing at Threadbow
Speaker 2: and we were on our way home when the thread
Speaker 2: Boat has asked.
Speaker 1: Happened just before midnight.
Speaker 6: A freak landslide picked up a chalet, sweeping it onto
Speaker 6: a lodge where senior Threadboat staff was sleeping. Witnesses it
Speaker 6: screams for help from beneath the debris. In the hours
Speaker 6: since then, silence.
Speaker 2: It's quite a cold and forlorn scene here at the moment,
Speaker 2: So I mean.
Speaker 1: It was a long drive.
Speaker 2: We broke it up and stayed at my Auntie's house,
Speaker 2: my dad's sister who lived in Sydney, and we also
Speaker 2: stayed with them on the way back, and stayed with
Speaker 2: some friends as well. And on the way home we
Speaker 2: went to Auntie Rob's place and I had a bridal
Speaker 2: magazine was obviously I just got engaged, so I was
Speaker 2: kind of excited about getting married and what we were
Speaker 2: going to do, start planning those things. And the wedding
Speaker 2: dress that I wanted was available at a shop in Parramatta.
Speaker 2: So anyway, while we were in Sydney, I rang the
Speaker 2: store and I said, do you have the dress? It
Speaker 2: was called Diana, and that's kind of ironic because Lady
Speaker 2: Diana died shortly after this.
Speaker 1: Anyway, it was a beautiful dress and.
Speaker 2: I went in there and Chris and I were pretty
Speaker 2: poor at that point. We had just built a house
Speaker 2: and we had no money, and the lady said to me,
Speaker 2: and this kind of makes me sad when I think
Speaker 2: about it, because I didn't have anyone with me to
Speaker 2: try on my wedding dress. Chris was sitting in the
Speaker 2: car downstairs and the our boot was packed to the
Speaker 2: rafters and we left Dunnie Rob's house as we were
Speaker 2: making our way home and we diverted past the shop
Speaker 2: at Paramatta so I could go and try on the dress.
Speaker 2: So other than the women who were in the shop
Speaker 2: helping me get it on and looking at me, that
Speaker 2: was it. And she said, if you come back tomorrow,
Speaker 2: it's going to be on the sale and I said, well,
Speaker 2: we're actually leaving to go back to the Gold Coast
Speaker 2: right now, and so she asked her manager and they said,
Speaker 2: we'll give it to you at the sale price. So
Speaker 2: I think I got it fifty percent off the price,
Speaker 2: which was amazing for me. I was jumping through hoops
Speaker 2: and very excited. So I walked back downstairs with my
Speaker 2: dress in a massive bag. It was a big dress too,
Speaker 2: so tried to lay that in the back of the
Speaker 2: car and Chris and I drove home. When we got
Speaker 2: in the door, we had an answering machine and the
Speaker 2: light was flashing, so I went and pressed the button
Speaker 2: and it was Mum and she's like, HI, just heard
Speaker 2: about the threadbir disaster. I was just ringing to check
Speaker 2: at you and Chris were okay. She knew that we
Speaker 2: were going away because we'd obviously booked it before she'd left.
Speaker 2: So this was around the thirty first of July, first
Speaker 2: of August. And then I was sad because I wanted
Speaker 2: to tell her I'd just bought my wedding dress, Like
Speaker 2: I really wanted to tell her that. And I was
Speaker 2: really sad that she had rung and I'd missed her
Speaker 2: because back in those days, we didn't have mobile phones. Well,
Speaker 2: the very rare person had a mobile phone, right it
Speaker 2: was a very new thing concept, and there was no
Speaker 2: internet other than the dial up variety. Anyway, she called
Speaker 2: me back and she said to me, I'm just having
Speaker 2: tea with some little old ladies. I just wanted to
Speaker 2: make sure you're okay. And that phone call was a
Speaker 2: bit of a checklist for me, Like when I think
Speaker 2: about it, she was like, did you take these back
Speaker 2: to the school? She in Amongst her things that she'd
Speaker 2: packed up and put up at Chris's grandparents place, she'd
Speaker 2: put in some Teddy bears and some Russian dolls and
Speaker 2: a set of kitchen scales. Although she weighing scales with
Speaker 2: the little ways on them, and she used to use
Speaker 2: them in math lesson and she said in the letter,
Speaker 2: I bought a set, my own set into the class
Speaker 2: and the boys broke it. So I bought another one.
Speaker 2: And I can't remember if I use petty cash or
Speaker 2: my own money. So just to save Luke Glover, who
Speaker 2: was her boss, she says the word give him any ammunition,
Speaker 2: which I think is an interesting phrase, and she said,
Speaker 2: to avoid giving him any ammunition, can you just take
Speaker 2: them back to the school. So this phone call was like,
Speaker 2: did you take them back? Did you give them to
Speaker 2: Jenny Hill, who was the teacher next door. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: And so this went on for a little bit. She
Speaker 2: was paying at a phone box and the money kept
Speaker 2: dropping out and the phone would disconnect, and I was
Speaker 2: like half midway sentence in trying to.
Speaker 1: Talk to her.
Speaker 2: Anyway, she'd ring back, and this happened a few times
Speaker 2: over and over, and I said to her, where are
Speaker 2: you and I will call you back, And that's when
Speaker 2: she said to me, oh, no, I'm just having some
Speaker 2: tea with some of the old ladies. And you know,
Speaker 2: it didn't really dawn on me. I didn't really think
Speaker 2: too hard about it. I was like, I was just
Speaker 2: excited to be talking to my mum. And anyway, she
Speaker 2: rings back the last time and says, Okay, I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna let you talk. You just talk until the phone
Speaker 2: runs out, until I run out of my money, because
Speaker 2: this is the last money I've got. And so I
Speaker 2: was just telling her all about my wedding dress and
Speaker 2: our trip away, and the phone cut out and that
Speaker 2: was the last time I ever spoke to her. So interesting.
Speaker 2: I was sort of just left it at that. She'd
Speaker 2: told me that she'd postponed her trip on the Orient Express,
Speaker 2: which is something she was really excited about doing. She'd
Speaker 2: told people at school she was doing that, her friends
Speaker 2: knew she was doing that, so that was a big
Speaker 2: ticket item for her. So it surprised me that we
Speaker 2: now know that never happened. And I wonder how that
Speaker 2: all came about, and what was the modus operandi around
Speaker 2: the whole Orient Express trip. I don't know if anyone's
Speaker 2: ever googled how much a trip on the our own
Speaker 2: Express is. It is super duper expensive, so it's a
Speaker 2: big ticket item.
Speaker 1: The moment you step aboard, everything changes.
Speaker 2: So she had told me that she was going to
Speaker 2: stop writing postcards to everybody because she was trying to
Speaker 2: have a holiday. And I said to her, you don't
Speaker 2: have to write postcards to everybody. You just go and
Speaker 2: have a break, Like it's exhausting writing postcards and then
Speaker 2: finding a stamp and then finding a postbox to put
Speaker 2: it in while you're trying to have a holiday. But
Speaker 2: she said, I'm going to have a break and so
Speaker 2: don't worry about me. I'll be fine. And I wait,
Speaker 2: no problem, go and have a holiday. We'll talk soon.
Speaker 2: So that's around the first of August nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 2: and then a few weeks go past, and I I'm
Speaker 2: starting to go, oh, it's sort of dawned on me.
Speaker 2: I have no way of contacting my mum. I don't
Speaker 2: know where she is, I don't know what hotel she's
Speaker 2: staying at. I don't know how to call her because
Speaker 2: there's no mobile phone, no text messages.
Speaker 1: And I started to get a bit worried.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, I really want her to call me.
Speaker 2: Like I started getting quite anxious. And my brother's birthday
Speaker 2: was approaching in the October, and we're now talking, but
Speaker 2: I don't know how many weeks that is.
Speaker 1: What is that ten weeks his birthday was.
Speaker 2: Coming up, and I was like, she'll definitely ring him,
Speaker 2: like she never ever ever missed your birthday, and she
Speaker 2: was massive on birthdays, so I was quite confident that
Speaker 2: at that point she would contact Owen and we'd know
Speaker 2: where she is and we know she's fine, and we
Speaker 2: can talk to her and I can give her an
Speaker 2: update on what I'm doing with the wedding and all
Speaker 2: that sort of stuff. And I rang Owen and his
Speaker 2: birthday that year was on a Saturday, so the eighteenth
Speaker 2: of October nineteen ninety seven, and I rang him and
Speaker 2: I said, did you hear from mum?
Speaker 1: And he said no.
Speaker 2: I said, okay, well that's a bit odd, don't you think,
Speaker 2: And then we sort of must have talked about it.
Speaker 2: I don't really remember the phone call that well, but
Speaker 2: I remember talking to him, and I sort of thought
Speaker 2: about it the next day and thought, well, there are
Speaker 2: a day behind us in the UK, so maybe she
Speaker 2: just got the date wrong and she'll bring him tomorrow.
Speaker 2: So on Sunday I rang, I went again, did you
Speaker 2: hear from mum? He said no? And I just spent
Speaker 2: some thing's not right, that's too long now she hasn't
Speaker 2: spoken to us for weeks. I haven't heard from her.
Speaker 2: I haven't had a postcard. Something's wrong. And we had
Speaker 2: a friend come over for dinner on the Sunday night.
Speaker 2: Her name's Renee, and her husband played in a band.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we go and see the boys play because we're
Speaker 2: all friends, but sometimes if we didn't do that, Renee
Speaker 2: would quite often come over for dinner. So she frequented
Speaker 2: our house and we were talking about it at dinner
Speaker 2: and I said, something's not right, like I'm worried. I
Speaker 2: don't know how to contact mum. And she was the
Speaker 2: one who suggested that I call the bank. She said,
Speaker 2: you got your UM's bank account details. And the reason
Speaker 2: I had those was because mum had left her car
Speaker 2: with me and we were going to sell my car
Speaker 2: and I was going to keep her car and I
Speaker 2: was going to put the money from the sale of
Speaker 2: my car into her bank account. That's why I had
Speaker 2: the bank details. So I rang the bank. It was
Speaker 2: a nighttime, so I've rung Teley Banking and I just said, Hi,
Speaker 2: my mum's actually traveling overseas by herself, and she's missed
Speaker 2: my brother's birthday and I'm actually concerned. Can you check
Speaker 2: if she's using her account? And the woman said, I'm
Speaker 2: really sorry. Due to privacy, I can't tell you anything.
Speaker 2: And then she paused and she said, did you say
Speaker 2: your mom's overseas and I said yes, and she said,
Speaker 2: oh my god, there's money coming out of her bank
Speaker 2: account and Barren Bay and I just I don't know
Speaker 2: what I felt in that moment. I think I was
Speaker 2: just incomplete shock and a wave of stress. She proceeded
Speaker 2: to tell me that five thousand dollars was coming out
Speaker 2: of her bank account every day and she was sort
Speaker 2: of counting them as she was talking to me, and
Speaker 2: my memories it was like three and a half weeks
Speaker 2: of five thousand dollars every day.
Speaker 1: And she said there's three days in.
Speaker 2: The middle where the money came out in Burly Heads
Speaker 2: on the God Coast and then back down in Byron
Speaker 2: Bay again. And that threw me for six because we
Speaker 2: lived only five minutes from Burley and I was like,
Speaker 2: what do you mean there's money coming out? Why would
Speaker 2: she be back in Australia. I was so confused, and
Speaker 2: I was worried at that point that something had happened,
Speaker 2: because that's not normal.
Speaker 1: Behavior for my mum.
Speaker 2: And the next day Chris and I, which was a Monday,
Speaker 2: the twentieth of October, Chris and I drove to Byron
Speaker 2: Bay and I took one of mum's portraits from her
Speaker 2: school photos and we walked around the street. So we
Speaker 2: went to the chemist, and we went to Woolworth. We
Speaker 2: went to a naturopath and a health food shop, which
Speaker 2: is something my mum would venture into just to see
Speaker 2: if anybody recognized her. She's quite a recognizable person. She's
Speaker 2: got an interesting look about her with a big black
Speaker 2: wavy hair, and she's quite memorable with most people. No
Speaker 2: one had seen her, and so we then went to
Speaker 2: the bank and I walked in and I said to
Speaker 2: the guy, my mum's supposed to be overseas and I've
Speaker 2: just found out through your telebanking that money is coming
Speaker 2: out of her bank account. Here, have you seen her?
Speaker 2: And he picked up the photo and he shook it
Speaker 2: and he said that rings a bell, and he walked
Speaker 2: around the back. There was desks all behind him. He
Speaker 2: walked around the back and went into an office and
Speaker 2: it had manager on the door, and he came out
Speaker 2: and he walked over to the photocopier and he took
Speaker 2: a photocopy of the photo and he came over to
Speaker 2: the desk and he said, what would you like me
Speaker 2: to say to her if I see her?
Speaker 1: And a WHOA, what's going on? Like, I don't know.
Speaker 2: You can imagine being your twenty four year old trying
Speaker 2: to work out my daughter, my eldest dough was twenty
Speaker 2: four hour and she completely throws her for six. She's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know what I would have done or how
Speaker 2: I would have coped. Mum, Like, how did you even
Speaker 2: do that? So Chris and I got back in the car.
Speaker 2: We drove straight round to Buyron Bay. Police walked in.
Speaker 2: We stood at the desk at the front. This is
Speaker 2: all a bit hazy for me. My brain was probably
Speaker 2: going a million miles an hour as to be trying
Speaker 2: to process everything. But anyway, I spoke to a guy
Speaker 2: and I told him everything that I knew and what
Speaker 2: I had just found out, and he took the details
Speaker 2: and we left and I in my mind, I was
Speaker 2: reporting her as a missing person. She was missing to me.
Speaker 2: I didn't know where she was. There was strange activity
Speaker 2: on her account, and she didn't contact my brother, and
Speaker 2: that was seriously out of character.
Speaker 1: So we went home and then about a week.
Speaker 2: Or ten days later, I received a phone call from
Speaker 2: a gentleman and he said, we've located your mother. She
Speaker 2: doesn't want anyone to know where she is or what
Speaker 2: she's doing. And exactly those words like they are burnt
Speaker 2: into my brain and I reflect back now as an older,
Speaker 2: wiser woman, and I'm like, what the hell, like, how
Speaker 2: did that happen? And how does someone speak to you
Speaker 2: like that without actually giving you anything more. He told
Speaker 2: me that she didn't want anyone to know what she
Speaker 2: was doing. I was at Tafe actually during this period
Speaker 2: of time, I was working full time and I was
Speaker 2: going to Tafe at nighttime because I wanted to join
Speaker 2: the ironically, the Queensland Police. Shame I didn't continue through
Speaker 2: that because it might have helped me a little bit
Speaker 2: in my journey. But I was at Taife trying to
Speaker 2: get into the Queensland Police and one of my teachers
Speaker 2: was a police officer.
Speaker 1: And in my class I had a.
Speaker 2: Lot of people who were already working in the space
Speaker 2: of customs and in the jails and things like that,
Speaker 2: who were trying to get into the cops. At the time,
Speaker 2: and after I'd had that call, and they told me
Speaker 2: that my mum had been located and she didn't want
Speaker 2: anyone to know where she was or what she was doing,
Speaker 2: and that was kind of it. That's where I was left.
Speaker 2: I had a guy in my class who I knew
Speaker 2: worked for customs, and I asked him if he could
Speaker 2: do a passport check on mum. Now I didn't know
Speaker 2: about the name change at this point, so I told
Speaker 2: him Marion Barter, and I told him her date of birth,
Speaker 2: and he came back to me and said her passport
Speaker 2: came back and was on shore on the second of
Speaker 2: August nineteen ninety seven. Now, if you remember, she called
Speaker 2: me on the first of August, so she rang me,
Speaker 2: telling me everything was fine and she was having a
Speaker 2: great time, and she postponed a trip on the Your
Speaker 2: Own Express, but not to worry about her. And then
Speaker 2: her passport came back into the country the very next day.
Speaker 2: That probably led police to believe and fed into their
Speaker 2: narrative that she deliberately was trying to disappear herself because
Speaker 2: she didn't contact me and she didn't tell me on
Speaker 2: the phone that she was coming back into the country
Speaker 2: the next day. So we got married the October the
Speaker 2: following year. But then when she missed Iwin's birthday, that
Speaker 2: was when the alarm bells came flying in for me.
Speaker 2: So I went to my grandfather. He had bone cancer
Speaker 2: and was not very well, but I went to him
Speaker 2: and said, this is what they've said, and he goes, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not satisfied with that. And he used to listen
Speaker 2: to the ABC radio and the Salvation Army used to
Speaker 2: come on there and do some talks for a missing
Speaker 2: persons unit. So he actually contacted a lady named Betty
Speaker 2: Brown from the Savos and they did an investigation in themselves.
Speaker 2: And then we actually have the letters because my grandfather
Speaker 2: kept them thankfully around the February of the following year.
Speaker 2: So we're now into nineteen ninety eight, and the letter
Speaker 2: pretty much says that police confirm that it was your
Speaker 2: daughter Marion who went into the bank and withdrew eighty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars and said that she was starting a new life,
Speaker 2: and that it was confirmed by bank security. So my
Speaker 2: grandparents then believed that my mum had actually chosen to leave.
Speaker 2: We didn't know about her name change at this point.
Speaker 2: The police had not looked into her movements coming in
Speaker 2: and out of the country. They hadn't verified her passport.
Speaker 2: None of that was done all the way back then.
Speaker 2: And in my mind, if we'd actually found out that
Speaker 2: she changed her name, we could have looked into that
Speaker 2: a lot sooner and a lot deeper had we known
Speaker 2: that in nineteen ninety seven when I reported her to
Speaker 2: police as a missing person, that's kind of where my
Speaker 2: journey begins as to what happened to my mum, and
Speaker 2: then I had to Probably one of the hardest days
Speaker 2: was for me October of that year.
Speaker 1: I then got married.
Speaker 2: Probably the hardest part of that day was we were
Speaker 2: in a soft top car and I was with my
Speaker 2: dad and we were driving up to the church and
Speaker 2: we actually got married at TSS. And I had said
Speaker 2: to Mum it was probably one of the last things
Speaker 2: she did for me was I asked her if I
Speaker 2: could get married in the chapel, and she said, I
Speaker 2: have to ask permission. And she asked the principal and
Speaker 2: she said to me, I said to him, I just
Speaker 2: had one more favor to ask, and he said, anything
Speaker 2: for you, Marian, And she said, Sally would like to
Speaker 2: get married in the chapel and he said, no problem,
Speaker 2: So Revstonia married Chris and I and I remember my
Speaker 2: dad saying to me, because it's kind of like a
Speaker 2: big windy path as you go up to the chapel
Speaker 2: inside the school grounds, the roofs off.
Speaker 1: My brother in law's driving the car.
Speaker 2: Scott, and my dad says to me, keep an eye
Speaker 2: out for your mother. I'm sure she'll be here, And
Speaker 2: it kind of broke me just before I was about
Speaker 2: to walk down the aisle, and that was kind of sad,
Speaker 2: sad day, and then the sad days continued from there.
Speaker 2: Chris and I had our first child after we got married,
Speaker 2: so Ella was born in two thousand and one, so
Speaker 2: she's the same age today as I was when my
Speaker 2: mom went missing.
Speaker 1: And I'm the same age my mom was.
Speaker 2: When she disappeared. So it's kind of done a full
Speaker 2: circle in our family, and we have no answers and
Speaker 2: we have no resolution yet, so hence my push and
Speaker 2: drive to keep on going. Well, the person who called
Speaker 2: me I interpreted as the police officer that I spoke
Speaker 2: to at the desk, so if anyone asked me, it
Speaker 2: was him. But you know, foolishly I didn't get a
Speaker 2: business card from him. I didn't take down his name.
Speaker 2: I didn't even feel in a statement. He didn't give
Speaker 2: me a copy of anything. He just wrote down some
Speaker 2: notes in his notebook. So when I get that call
Speaker 2: like back later, that was a shocking thing to hear,
Speaker 2: because you just don't know what's happened.
Speaker 1: You don't know how to feel about that.
Speaker 2: I had mum's sister, one of them, she's got three sisters,
Speaker 2: she's the eldest, and one of them had a crack
Speaker 2: at me and said, what the hell do you think
Speaker 2: you're doing listing or as a missing person? And was
Speaker 2: angry at my grandfather for, you know, going along with
Speaker 2: what my thoughts were in this scenario. And she said,
Speaker 2: she's just having a holiday, why would you go on
Speaker 2: list her as missing? And to me, they were older
Speaker 2: than me, they knew better, and I listened to what
Speaker 2: they said, so I sort of just went, Okay, I'll
Speaker 2: let Papa deal with it, because he's the person in
Speaker 2: charge of this in my opinion. But he was sick
Speaker 2: and he was the only person who would talk to
Speaker 2: me about it. My grandmother wouldn't talk to me, none
Speaker 2: of Them's just as we talk about it, it was
Speaker 2: like put your head in the sand, it'll all go away.
Speaker 2: So that was quite challenging. And we had Ella in
Speaker 2: the July of two thousand and one and we took
Speaker 2: her down to Sydney in the December. She met my
Speaker 2: dad for the first time and his partner, and she
Speaker 2: met Owen and his partner as well. And my world
Speaker 2: shattered the following year on the seventh of March two
Speaker 2: thousand and two, when I got a call from my dad.
Speaker 1: At about twenty past ten at nighttime.
Speaker 2: I just finished breastfeeding Ella and put her down, and
Speaker 2: he said that Owen had killed himself and that the
Speaker 2: police were at the door and he had to go
Speaker 2: down and identify the body the morgue. And I was
Speaker 2: in Queensland, so I felt really helpless at that point.
Speaker 2: And I only had one sibling, so he was it.
Speaker 2: And he and I growing up were like twins. Everyone
Speaker 2: thought we were twins because we were only seventeen months
Speaker 2: apart and looked quite similar. And I was a tomboy,
Speaker 2: so I was happy to get on my BMX bike
Speaker 2: and go riding with all the boys and hang out
Speaker 2: with the boys. So yeah, that broke my heart completely
Speaker 2: into a million pieces, and we had to.
Speaker 1: Deal with that as well.
Speaker 2: And you know, I remember going to the funeral and
Speaker 2: there was a lot of people.
Speaker 1: At the funeral. He was a very well liked person.
Speaker 2: People were sort of outside looking through the windows at
Speaker 2: this funeral. And I remember when I rocked up, my
Speaker 2: dad said here she is, My girl's here, and he said,
Speaker 2: your mother should be here. I shouldn't be doing this
Speaker 2: by myself. And so the language that was said to
Speaker 2: us in that phone call and then again by Betty
Speaker 2: Brown in her letter to grand and Papa just led
Speaker 2: us to believe that she had gone missing on her
Speaker 2: own account. And everyone believed it. Everyone thought that was
Speaker 2: how it was. But me, I was like, something's wrong.
Speaker 2: She would not miss my wedding, she would not miss
Speaker 2: me having a baby. She loved kids, and there is
Speaker 2: just not a chance. So I just always knew something
Speaker 2: was wrong. But I felt like I was being sort
Speaker 2: of handballed to the side. You just sit here and
Speaker 2: park it here, sister, We're not interested, but let it be.
Speaker 2: And so it wasn't until two thousand and seven. It
Speaker 2: was January and I was pregnant with our third baby,
Speaker 2: so our son, and I was due.
Speaker 1: To have him in June.
Speaker 2: So I was in the second trimester of my pregnancy
Speaker 2: and my girlfriend Nina was over and I just said
Speaker 2: to her, do you reckon you could help me with
Speaker 2: the kids, just for like twenty minutes. I'm just going
Speaker 2: to make a phone call. And I rang the AFP,
Speaker 2: so I was getting nowhere. I had no contact at
Speaker 2: the New Southwest Police. I didn't know who was on
Speaker 2: the case. I didn't know what oh I see meant.
Speaker 2: I didn't have a number to call. I had no
Speaker 2: compassion or empathy or care given to me. It was like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: she'll be right, mate, move on with your life.
Speaker 1: Disappeared on her own account.
Speaker 2: So I made the phone call and I the phone
Speaker 2: was answered by a lady named Rebecca cotts Beck, and
Speaker 2: I chatted for quite a while.
Speaker 1: I think that phone call went.
Speaker 2: For about two hours, and I was telling her everything
Speaker 2: that had happened. And she was the first person I
Speaker 2: reckon outside of my family and friends, who showed me
Speaker 2: empathy and care and understanding and just an ear and
Speaker 2: listening to me. And she offered to come up and
Speaker 2: visit me from Canberra, and so she came and met me,
Speaker 2: took me out for lunch. We went just down in Tenereefe,
Speaker 2: actually local to here, and she said to me, I've
Speaker 2: spoken to my bosses and we'd like to ask you
Speaker 2: to be the face of missing Persons this year. We
Speaker 2: think it'd be a really good opportunity for you to
Speaker 2: get your mum's story out there in the media. It's
Speaker 2: a really great exposure, and we just think your detail
Speaker 2: and your attention to detail and what you've remembered and
Speaker 2: everything you have is really great and we'd really love
Speaker 2: to be able to help you with that, to which
Speaker 2: I was really excited about because up until then I'd
Speaker 2: had nothing. When I say nothing, I just had had
Speaker 2: no support and I had no media. I think in
Speaker 2: two thousand and four, Women's Day did a short article
Speaker 2: about me and a couple of other mums who were missing,
Speaker 2: so this family stories about missing mums on Mother's Day.
Speaker 2: I remember that was a two thousand and four because
Speaker 2: I was pregnant with Darcy, my second baby, when we
Speaker 2: had that photo shoot, and I remember, actually, I've got
Speaker 2: Ella sitting on my lap in the photo, and my
Speaker 2: husband was really worried about putting Ella in the magazine,
Speaker 2: and I remember saying to him, if mum sees it,
Speaker 2: she needs to see she has a granddaughter, like she'll
Speaker 2: come back. Like I was in such a spin, like
Speaker 2: I really didn't know what to think or what to believe.
Speaker 2: You know, my grandfather died shortly after that, actually, so
Speaker 2: I lost my only solid person who was helping me
Speaker 2: and believed that maybe something was not quite right. He'd
Speaker 2: gone as well. So anyway, so it's a couple of
Speaker 2: years later that I've met Beck. It's mom's tenth anniversary.
Speaker 2: So that year it was like she's been gone ten years,
Speaker 2: and who's doing something about this because there's nothing. Everyone's
Speaker 2: just sort of forgotten about her, and I can't even
Speaker 2: talk about her. I can't even mention her name in
Speaker 2: her own mother's house. It's like a taboo subject. So
Speaker 2: Beck was just amazing. She was a great person and
Speaker 2: we actually ended up becoming very good friends. She sadly
Speaker 2: died of cancer a couple of years ago after a
Speaker 2: really tough battle. So after our first encounter in the January,
Speaker 2: I then worked for pretty much the next six months
Speaker 2: planning on going down and being the face of missing person.
Speaker 2: She told me that they'll fly me to Melbourne and
Speaker 2: flying me to Sydney and will bounce around the country
Speaker 2: for that week, doing all these interviews and plugging Missing
Speaker 2: Person's Week. And I said, well, Caleb's going to be born,
Speaker 2: which he was on the nineteenth of June, and Missing
Speaker 2: Person's Week is like around the first of August.
Speaker 1: So I'm madly storing my breast milk and.
Speaker 2: I'm getting prepared, and Chris is organizing to take time
Speaker 2: off work and we get a call for her I
Speaker 2: don't know. A couple of days before we were do
Speaker 2: you to fly down? And she said to me, I'm
Speaker 2: so sorry, but they've pulled you. They're not going to
Speaker 2: let you do it. And I said, who's not going
Speaker 2: to let me do it? And she said New South
Speaker 2: We was police, and they've told us that because this
Speaker 2: year is about mental health and people missing with mental health,
Speaker 2: that we can't use your story. We can't use Marian's
Speaker 2: story because she didn't have mental health issues. I'm really sorry.
Speaker 2: And I was crushed. I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I've just had a baby. I've had my third cesarean.
Speaker 2: I'm storing my breast milk so I can come and
Speaker 2: do these interviews for Missing Person's Week and make awareness
Speaker 2: and help. Someone knows something about my mum. She's someone's neighbor,
Speaker 2: she's buying milk from somewhere. If she's alive and well,
Speaker 2: like they all kept telling me she was, someone had
Speaker 2: to know where she was and they had to be
Speaker 2: some digital footprint of her, which there just was not.
Speaker 2: So I was eager to get out there and do something.
Speaker 2: But you know, you're in that realm, right like you
Speaker 2: think about my life. My mum's just gone missing. I
Speaker 2: get married the following year. I then have three babies,
Speaker 2: We build a house, we move from the Gold Coast
Speaker 2: to Brisbane.
Speaker 1: I have to reset up my business.
Speaker 2: Very very busy time of life for us, and very stressful.
Speaker 2: You know, my brother died, my grandfather died. They were
Speaker 2: my two key people in my camp. And you know,
Speaker 2: awful circumstances, really awful circumstances. So Rebecca says to me,
Speaker 2: we've already booked your flight, so you most will still come.
Speaker 2: Just come and you can sit in the audience. So
Speaker 2: I remember sitting in the audience and the lady who
Speaker 2: was talking, who was then chosen to be the Missing
Speaker 2: Person feature for that year, her brother had been missing
Speaker 2: for a week, and I remember going, I know what
Speaker 2: that feels like, like missing for an hour is absolutely
Speaker 2: gut wrenching. But I was sitting in the audience, going, oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know how I feel about this. I shouldn't
Speaker 2: feel sad that I'm not on the stage, and that
Speaker 2: her brother needs to be found as well, and he
Speaker 2: did have mental health problems. But after the whole conference
Speaker 2: was finished, I went outside with Rebecca and the police
Speaker 2: commissioner was there and she introduced me, and he said
Speaker 2: to me, oh, well, Sally, I don't know where my
Speaker 2: brother is. He's missing as well. And you know, some
Speaker 2: people just choose to go missing, and you know that's okay.
Speaker 2: The people are allowed to go missing. And I went, right, okay,
Speaker 2: and he goes, well, my mum knows where he is,
Speaker 2: but none of us know. He won't tell any of
Speaker 2: us where we are. And I went, so, he's not
Speaker 2: really missing in this true sense of the word, then
Speaker 2: is he if your mother knows where he is. And
Speaker 2: it was just such a degrading conversation. I was like,
Speaker 2: you've really just ignoring every element of what I'm actually
Speaker 2: dealing with right this second from someone who's living with
Speaker 2: the ambiguity of not knowing what's happened to my mum.
Speaker 2: So no, no one knows where my mum is. No
Speaker 2: one has spoken to her that we know. She's in
Speaker 2: the true sense of the word, a missing person. So
Speaker 2: that was at the tenth anniversary, and that took all
Speaker 2: my energy and a lot of wind out of my sales,
Speaker 2: as you can probably appreciate going through what I had
Speaker 2: to go through. And then from that moment, and this
Speaker 2: is interesting, from that moment onwards, the police started to
Speaker 2: dabble back in it again. So we now had Mum's
Speaker 2: case sitting with the New South Wales Missing Person's Unit,
Speaker 2: and Steve McAllister was the guy.
Speaker 1: That I was talking to.
Speaker 2: He rang me while I was at my grandparents' house
Speaker 2: and he asked me lots of questions in that phone call,
Speaker 2: and one of them was what's her date of birth?
Speaker 2: What's her hair color? Tell me a little bit about her.
Speaker 2: And I was like, surely you would have all of
Speaker 2: this information, right, like, surely you know she has black
Speaker 2: hair and green hazel eyes. Nope, had nothing. And I
Speaker 2: said to him at that point, and this is actually
Speaker 2: all been recorded because I wrote an email back to
Speaker 2: him telling him about my questions, I'm concerned that you've
Speaker 2: asked this, I'm concerned that you've said this, And then
Speaker 2: I actually say in it, I would like to see
Speaker 2: the original file from when I came to the police
Speaker 2: back in October nineteen ninety seven and reported my mum missing.
Speaker 2: And I said, I want to know who the person
Speaker 2: was who took that report because I didn't get his card,
Speaker 2: I don't know his name, I can't remember his name,
Speaker 2: and they couldn't answer those questions.
Speaker 1: And he's like, they've lost the file, and.
Speaker 2: I was like, what do you mean, they've lost the file?
Speaker 2: So my frustrations started to grow quite heavily at.
Speaker 1: That point with the police.
Speaker 2: As part of our investigation, I came across a piece
Speaker 2: of paper. On it I saw her passport photo the
Speaker 2: front and the back, and it had this is a
Speaker 2: true photo of Flora Bella Ramicel. It had her outcome
Speaker 2: going passenger card. I just remember like seeing lots of things.
Speaker 2: I remember looking Luxembourg three days, which actually turned out
Speaker 2: to be eight days. But in the flash of trying
Speaker 2: to see something in a short space of time, it
Speaker 2: was quite confronting for me.
Speaker 1: And at the very top of the page there.
Speaker 2: Was lots of asterisks and arrows and things like that,
Speaker 2: but it had mums' names, so it had all her
Speaker 2: names from when she first was like Maryan Wilson, which
Speaker 2: was her maiden name.
Speaker 1: She married John Warren who was a big SoC star.
Speaker 2: I was the captain of the Strain Soccaroos in the
Speaker 2: sixties and seventies and that was her first husband, so
Speaker 2: she was Marying Warren.
Speaker 1: She doesn't have a middle name, so that.
Speaker 2: Made things quite difficult as well when we're doing searches
Speaker 2: and things like that.
Speaker 4: Born in nineteen forty three, the boy from the inner
Speaker 4: city Sydney suburb of Botany knew his passion for the
Speaker 4: world game always rose above those petty disputes, making a
Speaker 4: mark both at home and abroad, and a bad.
Speaker 6: Clearance and a challenge by John Warren.
Speaker 2: But then it sort of went to my dad, Marion Brown,
Speaker 2: which is what she was known for most of my
Speaker 2: childhood when she was a school teacher in the Blue
Speaker 2: Mountains in Springwood. Then she met Ray Barter and married
Speaker 2: Ray Barter and they got married in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: In the Blue Mountains, Mom ended up getting a promotion,
Speaker 2: moved down to Sussex, Inlet on the south coast and
Speaker 2: taught down in that southern area before she got the
Speaker 2: promotion and went to the Southport School up here in Queensland.
Speaker 2: So we were looking at that document and we noticed
Speaker 2: that there was a new name on there, Florabella Natalia
Speaker 2: Marion Ramachel. And it wasn't until twenty sixteen. I had
Speaker 2: a Facebook page which I set up in twenty thirteen
Speaker 2: to try and see if we could garner some interest
Speaker 2: and see if anyone could help me find the answers,
Speaker 2: because I was literally doing it on my own and
Speaker 2: I had no idea. I'm not a sleuth. I don't
Speaker 2: know how to go and search things. I didn't know
Speaker 2: about going into archives and pulling out files. I have
Speaker 2: learned a lot over this past two decades, nearly three
Speaker 2: decades of searching for my mum, but winding back to then,
Speaker 2: I was really just putting my hands into the police
Speaker 2: and hoping for the best.
Speaker 1: And at that point I don't really remember.
Speaker 2: What he said to me, but he says that, well, clearly,
Speaker 2: she deliberately has tried to change her name, and she's
Speaker 2: tried to disappear herself, and I was not sure that
Speaker 2: that was my thoughts on the situation. I felt like
Speaker 2: something was wrong, and I kept saying, that's a weird name.
Speaker 2: Why would you change your name to Flora Bella Ramkel
Speaker 2: if you wanted to disappear, I'd be Jane Smith. And
Speaker 2: you know what the other part of that is, if
Speaker 2: I've left the country and I've gone to live in Luxembourg,
Speaker 2: why would I come back? So there was all these
Speaker 2: questions going and just rolling through my gut and thinking
Speaker 2: something's not right. So I had a lady contact me
Speaker 2: who was following my Facebook page and she said, Sally,
Speaker 2: I just wanted to let you know, I've just been
Speaker 2: onto the National Missing Person's Register and I've noticed your
Speaker 2: mom's not on there. And I was like, what do
Speaker 2: you mean she's not on there? So I rang Rebecca
Speaker 2: Cotts because I had a friend in her now right,
Speaker 2: So our friendship was now nine years old and she'd
Speaker 2: been my person if I needed anything I could call
Speaker 2: on her.
Speaker 1: And just to clarify too, Rebecca.
Speaker 2: Was working in friends and families of Missing persons for AFP,
Speaker 2: so she wasn't actually with the Australian Federal Police. She
Speaker 2: was a civilian working for them in this space supporting
Speaker 2: people with missing persons, and I rang her and I said,
Speaker 2: I've just had this lady tell me that Mom's name
Speaker 2: is not on the register. Can you please have a
Speaker 2: look and try and work out what's happened. And she
Speaker 2: had a look at the file while I'm on the
Speaker 2: phone to her, and she said, hmm, there's something on
Speaker 2: the file, but I need to get approval to be
Speaker 2: able to tell you what it is. Bear with me,
Speaker 2: let me see if I can get approval and I'll
Speaker 2: come back to you. So it's a long time ago,
Speaker 2: and it was a very frustrating period of time. So
Speaker 2: I'm going to say maybe a day. The same day,
Speaker 2: the next day, the day after, Rebecca comes back to
Speaker 2: me with approval and she brings me and says, I've
Speaker 2: been given approval to send.
Speaker 1: You what we have.
Speaker 2: So she sent me a document and the document was
Speaker 2: outlining the situation of my mom and they new South
Speaker 2: Wales Police had marked my mum as located and a date.
Speaker 2: So upon looking at this document, it's actually got a
Speaker 2: notation that my mom was located on the seventh of
Speaker 2: December twenty eleven, and that on the eighth of November,
Speaker 2: so month before that, Gary shean suspends the case of
Speaker 2: my mum. So I ran Gary and I said, I've
Speaker 2: just received a document from the AFP that says that
Speaker 2: in twenty and eleven you located my mum. Now, I
Speaker 2: won't go into the nitty gritty because there's a little
Speaker 2: bit of back and forth about some information about her
Speaker 2: living in Queensland that came into that mix, and I'm
Speaker 2: not really clear, so I don't want to sort of
Speaker 2: talk too much about that. But he said to me,
Speaker 2: can you read me the document? So I read it
Speaker 2: to him and he said, can you read it again?
Speaker 2: So I read it again, and he said, I'm just
Speaker 2: going to make a call. I'll call you back. So
Speaker 2: he called me back a short while later. I was
Speaker 2: at work and he said, I've spoken to them and
Speaker 2: they said it's a typo.
Speaker 1: I said, what do you mean, it's a typo.
Speaker 2: There's a document, a legal document says that my mum
Speaker 2: was located on the seventh of December twenty eleven and
Speaker 2: it's now twenty sixteen and I know nothing of this,
Speaker 2: what's going on? And he said, I'm just going to
Speaker 2: ring them back and get a bit more information. So
Speaker 2: then he rings me back again.
Speaker 1: Later.
Speaker 2: It might have even been the next day, and it
Speaker 2: was quite a lengthy phone call. And I did write
Speaker 2: all this down in a notebook because I got to
Speaker 2: the point in this exercise of I write down everything.
Speaker 2: I write down the date, how long the call was,
Speaker 2: what time it was, because what I quickly realized fast
Speaker 2: forward another ten years, no one ever puts anything in
Speaker 2: writing to me. They always ring it through to me.
Speaker 2: So I've got no proof of what's been said, what's happened,
Speaker 2: what's so it's very important that you start documenting everything.
Speaker 2: So I've become a bit paranoid in that realm of life,
Speaker 2: let's say, for valid reasons. He rings me back and
Speaker 2: he said, I've spoken to them again and they've explained
Speaker 2: to me that on a document within the police force,
Speaker 2: there's two boxes. You're either located or you're missing. And
Speaker 2: we believe on the basis that your mum sold her house,
Speaker 2: she quit her job, and she changed her name, didn't
Speaker 2: tell that she was coming back into the country, that
Speaker 2: she's deliberately gone missing, so we have no choice but
Speaker 2: to tick that she's been located. And I was like,
Speaker 2: what do you mean. You can't mark someone located if
Speaker 2: you haven't located them. She's in La La Land. You
Speaker 2: guys obviously need a third box. If that's the scenario,
Speaker 2: we don't know box, rather than let's make an assumption
Speaker 2: and put her over here. Because that language continued. Then
Speaker 2: I was fighting every force of nature. I've got documents
Speaker 2: where police are saying, oh, I believe Marian was located
Speaker 2: as recently as last month. Who says that stuff without
Speaker 2: proof and without actual facts. So that was really damaging
Speaker 2: to the case for me and for mum, you know,
Speaker 2: at that time, and that was twenty sixteen, and Gary
Speaker 2: had sort of said to me, that's as good as
Speaker 2: I can get. It's documented that I think it was
Speaker 2: the eighth of November, so like just a month before
Speaker 2: that located was noted on that document. He suspended the
Speaker 2: case and no action was to be taken, and then
Speaker 2: she gets marked as located.
Speaker 1: That was it.
Speaker 2: So in discussions with Gary, he was pretty much telling
Speaker 2: me on repeat his hands were tied and he couldn't
Speaker 2: help me any further.
Speaker 1: And I can't remember for sure.
Speaker 2: He might have suggested to me that I maybe go
Speaker 2: and talk to Queensland Police and see if they can
Speaker 2: help me, being that she was living in Queensland and
Speaker 2: it typically should be a Queensland case. Is kind of
Speaker 2: the vibe he was always pushing onto me. So in
Speaker 2: the December, I took myself down with my folder and
Speaker 2: rocked into Morningside Police station here in Brisbane and talk
Speaker 2: to the person at the desk. Again.
Speaker 1: I was having like deja vu.
Speaker 2: No one brings you in and sits down and says,
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry you're dealing with this. What can we do?
Speaker 2: They just sat at the table at the front desk
Speaker 2: with big perspects in front of it, took my name
Speaker 2: and number and said we'll get someone to call you.
Speaker 2: So I remember I was working and i'd driven to
Speaker 2: the post office and I was going to collect the
Speaker 2: mail and I was sitting in my car when this
Speaker 2: lady rang me and in a nutshell she said to me,
Speaker 2: we can't help you, Sally, just because you're dissatisfied with
Speaker 2: New South Wales Police. They own carriage of the case.
Speaker 2: We can't just pick up and start helping you because
Speaker 2: they own the carriage of the case. And I remember
Speaker 2: that very clearly because that was the first time i'd
Speaker 2: heard that language, that there was a carriage of the case.
Speaker 2: So then I went back and forth. Then there's lots
Speaker 2: of emails and lots of transcripts of me asking for
Speaker 2: the carriage to be released by New South Wales. If
Speaker 2: they've suspended it and you're not working on it, why
Speaker 2: can't you give it to Queensland Police to have a
Speaker 2: look at and see if we can get some traction
Speaker 2: on looking for my mum because no one else is
Speaker 2: doing anything and they refuse to No, we have carriage
Speaker 2: of it, we're not giving it to Queensland. So I
Speaker 2: was really left at that juncture, going what do I do?
Speaker 2: What are we now? We're twenty twenty five so next year.
Speaker 2: That's ten years ago, and the fight has just been
Speaker 2: huge ever since to get people to help me, to
Speaker 2: get people to listen to what I'm saying and help
Speaker 2: me find the answers as to what's happened.
Speaker 1: People just don't disappear.
Speaker 2: I mean, yes they do, but there's usually a reason why.
Speaker 2: So they either have disappeared on their own account or
Speaker 2: something has happened to them. And I wasn't about to
Speaker 2: sit back and let that go down that slide because
Speaker 2: I just my gut told me something was not right
Speaker 2: and I had to do more so in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: so a couple of years after that all happened and
Speaker 2: everything kind of just paused like there was nothing happening.
Speaker 2: And Gary had told me, this is as good as
Speaker 2: you're going to get. So they were the kind of
Speaker 2: languages that I was getting. My hands are tied, nothing
Speaker 2: I can do. I can try and help you, but
Speaker 2: I'll be doing it in my spare time because I've
Speaker 2: got other jobs to do. So that was sort of
Speaker 2: like the language that I was copying most of the time.
Speaker 2: And I was trying to think of all these different things,
Speaker 2: like can you check her superannuation?
Speaker 1: Did she do a tax return in ninety ninety seven?
Speaker 2: Can you look at the passenger lists on the flights
Speaker 2: that she came in and out of, so we can
Speaker 2: see if the same name's on the same flight, maybe
Speaker 2: we have a person of interest. I was throwing all
Speaker 2: these suggestions at them, and I'm just sitting here as
Speaker 2: the daughter of a missing person, a mum of three,
Speaker 2: working full time, trying to think of how I could
Speaker 2: find information that might help me find out what's happened
Speaker 2: to my mum, full well knowing that her bank accounts
Speaker 2: were drained and I knew something was wrong. She hadn't
Speaker 2: bought a house, she hadn't touched her super, she hadn't
Speaker 2: gone to Center Link. And this is based on what
Speaker 2: I was being told by police. So I was really
Speaker 2: reliant on them giving me that information, because when someone's
Speaker 2: missing but they're not deceased, you don't have a death
Speaker 2: certificate and you are powerless to their information. And I
Speaker 2: kept getting.
Speaker 1: Told by Gary that Florabella.
Speaker 2: He always referred to her as Florabella, which just grinded
Speaker 2: my gears to the whole because no one knew her
Speaker 2: as Florabella and there was a reason why this name
Speaker 2: had come into the mix. And he kept saying to me,
Speaker 2: Flora Bella's privacy matters. Selling her privacy is important, and
Speaker 2: I was like, but when does that stop? When does
Speaker 2: it actually be a case that I can actually help
Speaker 2: her and work on helping find out what's happened to her.
Speaker 2: And in twenty eighteen, a lady that I know from
Speaker 2: my children's primary school, who had a link into the
Speaker 2: media world, had wrung me and she said, Hey, Sally,
Speaker 2: just wondering if you're interested if I could try and
Speaker 2: get you onto sixty Minutes or the Sunday Night program.
Speaker 2: Would you be interested? And I said one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: My grandmother had recently passed at this point, and that's
Speaker 2: my mom's mum.
Speaker 1: She was living by herself and she was ninety four.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to upset her, like it got to
Speaker 2: the point where she didn't want to talk about it.
Speaker 2: I was very careful with anything that I was thinking
Speaker 2: or saying or doing, but I knew that it had
Speaker 2: more to tell and someone knows something, so I had
Speaker 2: to do something.
Speaker 1: But I just really felt it in my heart.
Speaker 2: I had to wait for her to pass before I
Speaker 2: didn't because I really didn't want to upset her. And
Speaker 2: I said, yeah, I'm really keen. I'm ready now, like
Speaker 2: this is the right time to do something.
Speaker 1: My kids are a little bit older.
Speaker 2: I can spend time now doing this because I know
Speaker 2: how consuming it is from the times that I had
Speaker 2: dived back in. She said, okay, well I'll see what
Speaker 2: I can do. And so about a week later, I
Speaker 2: hadn't heard from anybody. I rang her back and I said, Hey,
Speaker 2: just checking, has anybody sort of reached out? Have you
Speaker 2: had any interest? And she said, look, I haven't. I've
Speaker 2: put it out there if they contact you, they will.
Speaker 2: I went, okay, all right, no problem. And it was
Speaker 2: only a couple of days after that that I got
Speaker 2: a call from Alison Sandy and Allison actually used to
Speaker 2: work for this lady's husband, so that's how they were connected.
Speaker 2: And she said, would you like to meet for a coffee?
Speaker 2: And I said, sure, love to meet for a coffee.
Speaker 2: So we arranged that and I rocked up with my
Speaker 2: big blue folder with all my documents in it, and
Speaker 2: we sat down for a coffee and we pretty quickly
Speaker 2: decided that it wasn't going to be enough for a
Speaker 2: one hour TV program on Sunday night, but maybe we
Speaker 2: should look at doing a podcast. I had just heard
Speaker 2: The Teacher's Pet. That was the first podcast I'd ever
Speaker 2: listened to, and I sort of saw similarities in my
Speaker 2: mum's story about a woman who the police just sort
Speaker 2: of wrote off as well, she just wants to be
Speaker 2: left alone, she doesn't want to be found. And we
Speaker 2: came up with the concept of doing The Lady Vanishers,
Speaker 2: and I think today still it's the longest running single
Speaker 2: story episode podcast in Australia. When we were up to
Speaker 2: fifty seven episodes. It finished last year in February when
Speaker 2: we got to the end of the findings for the
Speaker 2: Inquest bar.
Speaker 7: And Barter, the Gonks teacher who disappeared twenty four years ago.
Speaker 7: Did she meet with foul play or start a new
Speaker 7: live first the Blogbuster Lady Vanishes podcast now The Inquest
Speaker 7: to Solve the Mystery. Full coverage on seven News Monday.
Speaker 2: So Allison and I met, I think it was in
Speaker 2: October of twenty eighteen, and it was an interesting time actually,
Speaker 2: because I'd spoken to Gary Shean in the December and
Speaker 2: I told him, I said, I've got a media interest.
Speaker 1: We're going to do a podcast.
Speaker 2: And he had told me prior to that, in that
Speaker 2: same conversation that his hands were tied, there's really nothing
Speaker 2: more to do. He'll only work on it any spare time,
Speaker 2: same sort of language again. I said, Okay, well, I
Speaker 2: have got a media interest and we're looking at doing
Speaker 2: a podcast. So I'll keep you informed as to what's
Speaker 2: going on with that. Because I've always worked actively with
Speaker 2: the police. Anything they want, I've given it to them,
Speaker 2: and I've been very kind and of giving of my time.
Speaker 2: I've driven back and forth whenever they want to take
Speaker 2: DNA and blah, blah blah, blah blah. I've done a
Speaker 2: lot because at the end of the day, I just
Speaker 2: want to find my mum. I don't want to be
Speaker 2: an antagonistic human and upset anybody. I'm just here to
Speaker 2: find the answers, you know. I just want people with
Speaker 2: passion and drive to have the same for me. Anyway,
Speaker 2: we went away for Christmas, and then when we got back,
Speaker 2: I went away again with my daughters because Ella had
Speaker 2: finished school and we decided we were going to go
Speaker 2: on a bit of a girl's trip. So when I
Speaker 2: got back from that, Gary rang me, which was quite
Speaker 2: out of the out of the ordinary, and said to me, oh,
Speaker 2: I just wanted to let you know I've done multiple
Speaker 2: proof of life checks runs all over Australia for your mum.
Speaker 2: And I went, you just told me your hands were
Speaker 2: tired and you weren't doing anything and there's nothing more
Speaker 2: you could do, and now you're doing proof of life checks. Okay,
Speaker 2: well that's good. I'm glad you're doing proof of life checks.
Speaker 2: That's really what I wanted you to do. And he said,
Speaker 2: I've only heard back from two so far and there's nothing.
Speaker 2: And then the first of April we launched The Lady
Speaker 2: Vanishers and we went live with Channel seven and I
Speaker 2: went down to Sydney. We were on Sunrise promoting it
Speaker 2: to get it going and look to be honest, we
Speaker 2: at that point we thought it would be a seven
Speaker 2: part podcast series, just talking about my story in the
Speaker 2: hope that someone might know something.
Speaker 3: Marion Barter is an extraordinary one that once married to
Speaker 3: a Soakaru legend. She disappeared in nineteen ninety seven and
Speaker 3: has never been seen again.
Speaker 5: Her daughter Sally, has never given up hope and her
Speaker 5: search for the truth is the subject of a brand
Speaker 5: new podcast.
Speaker 2: That was my hope and my goal at the end
Speaker 2: of it was to get to an inquest because my
Speaker 2: mum had never been to an inquest or had an inquest,
Speaker 2: and she wasn't even recognized as missing for a lot
Speaker 2: of that time, and at that point in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: she was not on the National Missing Person's Register, My
Speaker 2: DNA was not on any register, and we were really
Speaker 2: going nowhere. It was circling the drain and no one
Speaker 2: was interested and they all thought that her privacy added
Speaker 2: more than finding her.
Speaker 1: So the podcast started.
Speaker 2: It gained very fast momentum and I was shocked and overwhelmed,
Speaker 2: and you know, trying to keep up with everything. And
Speaker 2: after many many years of not having anybody really show
Speaker 2: much interest, and I had like less than a thousand
Speaker 2: followers on my Facebook page, I'm now up to twenty
Speaker 2: thousand people following my Facebook page. The Lady Vanishers had
Speaker 2: like millions of downloads and people recognizing me in the street,
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh goodness me, like, this is
Speaker 2: really huge now. And I wanted it to be big
Speaker 2: because I know someone knows more than we've found out yet.
Speaker 2: So that was why I was happy to project myself
Speaker 2: into that space for the pure fact of finding more
Speaker 2: knowledge and more information. And that has been the case.
Speaker 2: We've had so many people come forward and tell us things,
Speaker 2: and it's been imperative. We've got Jonie who so if
Speaker 2: I give you the timeline right we launch on the
Speaker 2: first of April, I put a call out on the
Speaker 2: podcast and say we would really like some help if
Speaker 2: you can help us, if you know something, can you
Speaker 2: please let us know? And we got a call from
Speaker 2: Joanie Condos and she said that she had done some
Speaker 2: research into the name Ramachel and she was sick this
Speaker 2: night and she was staying up late. She'd had the
Speaker 2: flu and she was just playing around on the computer
Speaker 2: and she had had a missing person story in her
Speaker 2: family on her husband's side, and so she had some
Speaker 2: skills in that space that she thought she could lend
Speaker 2: to my mum's case to see what she could find.
Speaker 2: And lo and behold, she found an ad in a newspaper,
Speaker 2: which was a French speaking newspaper called Lo Courier Australian.
Speaker 2: It was published out of Sydney and the date in
Speaker 2: the newspaper article was nineteen ninety four and it was
Speaker 2: a gentleman by the name of m f Ramckel who
Speaker 2: was looking for love, potential marriage. He's a polyglot, non smoker,
Speaker 2: you know, bon chique boncha, which is like good taste,
Speaker 2: good style in French. And the po box was Lennox
Speaker 2: Heads in New South Wales. And for those who are
Speaker 2: listening along and don't really know the geographical side of Australia,
Speaker 2: Byron Bay is the next suburb to Lennox Heads. My
Speaker 2: mum's money was being withdrawn out of Barron Bay. And
Speaker 2: we've got a po box with a guy looking for
Speaker 2: love with the same surname spelled exactly the same way
Speaker 2: as my mum was spelling her name, her new name
Speaker 2: that she changed her name to, who also happened to
Speaker 2: have the same initials Flora Bella Natalia Marion Ramackel.
Speaker 1: My mind was blowing. We were freaking out, going what
Speaker 1: is going on?
Speaker 2: What is going on? So investigations start into who is
Speaker 2: this FM Ramikel. We knew how old he was because
Speaker 2: he put his age in the paper and we knew
Speaker 2: it was the paper date was nineteen ninety four, so
Speaker 2: we were able to work out how old he was.
Speaker 2: And we did a search on an MF. Ramichel and
Speaker 2: we found a guy who was the same age who
Speaker 2: lived in Luxembourg. Mum's passenger card said that she was
Speaker 2: going to live in life Luxembourg, and we were just
Speaker 2: mind blowing by this whole thing. I was beside myself, actually,
Speaker 2: I just didn't know what to think. So anyway, May
Speaker 2: twenty second, I remember it well because it was one
Speaker 2: of Ella's best friend's birthdays and I was sitting on
Speaker 2: the plane wishing her a happy birthday as we're taking off,
Speaker 2: and yeah, we flew to Luxembourg and we actually knocked
Speaker 2: on the door of mister f M.
Speaker 1: Ramchel, who lives in Luxembourg.
Speaker 2: That was mind boggling, Like I reached my hand out
Speaker 2: to shake his hand, he rejected my hand. I was
Speaker 2: holding my mum's photo in my hand and I was
Speaker 2: shaking like a leaf. And I'm with an interpreter. So
Speaker 2: I said to the boys, the cameraman and Brian Seymour,
Speaker 2: who came with me, who's one of the producers of
Speaker 2: the podcast, and I said, let me go by myself.
Speaker 2: I don't want cameras in their faces and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: These people might be very innocent people. I don't know
Speaker 2: who they are, but we need to tread very carefully.
Speaker 2: But were received with a very hostile situation. His wife
Speaker 2: came out of the garage and started filming the boys
Speaker 2: in the car, which was parked down the street, while
Speaker 2: Sarah and I are at the front door, and I've
Speaker 2: got this man who was very aggressive to me, and
Speaker 2: he's saying he wouldn't speak English. I said, you speak
Speaker 2: English and nah, and he's speaking to Sarah, but we
Speaker 2: do know that he speaks fluent English. So that was
Speaker 2: frustrating and it was nerve racking, and it was questionable,
Speaker 2: why are you acting this way. He later said to
Speaker 2: me that I was acting like a gypsy, which is
Speaker 2: a very derogative term over there, that I should have
Speaker 2: come up to the door and excused myself for the disturbance.
Speaker 2: And I was like, well, I felt like I was
Speaker 2: very pleasant, you know, I put my hand out, I
Speaker 2: was pretty kind. Actually, I was just being an Australian
Speaker 2: girl going I feel really nervous, like my heart was
Speaker 2: racing a million miles an hour. And I kept saying
Speaker 2: to Brian, my husband's going to shoot me if he
Speaker 2: knew that I was doing this right now, He's going
Speaker 2: to be very mad at me. And I've got three kids.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh my god, Like what's going on.
Speaker 2: Why I'm in the middle of the fields and in
Speaker 2: the middle of nowhere and no one really knows where
Speaker 2: I am. Anyway, we meet him. He then calls the police,
Speaker 2: and we'd actually been to the police station the morning
Speaker 2: that morning before because they weren't home, and so we'd
Speaker 2: spoken to the police, and the police knew why we
Speaker 2: were there, and they had actually done a search for me,
Speaker 2: because when you live in Luxembourg, you have to register
Speaker 2: to live in the country, and so they looked up
Speaker 2: her date of birth, and they looked up under Florabella
Speaker 2: Ramichel and under Marion Barter and there was no register.
Speaker 2: So that told us that she's never been registered as
Speaker 2: living in Luxembourg. And by the time we went back
Speaker 2: to their house, we'd actually driven all the way back
Speaker 2: into Luxembourg, and we'd been there three times this day,
Speaker 2: and it's an hour out and an hour back, so
Speaker 2: that's six hours of driving there and back and there
Speaker 2: and back, and in the car, my brain's just going
Speaker 2: a million miles an hour as to what's going on,
Speaker 2: Like it was crazy. We were up at three am
Speaker 2: in the morning and like, yeah, just absolutely mental. And
Speaker 2: we got back to his house and we did all
Speaker 2: of that, and then Brian and the cameraman came up
Speaker 2: to the door, so we saw Sarah and I left.
Speaker 2: He closed the door on our face and we left,
Speaker 2: and the cameraman and Brian come up to the door
Speaker 2: and they start knocking and say, we just would like
Speaker 2: to talk to you. We've just got a few questions
Speaker 2: to ask. And he's up the top sipping his tea
Speaker 2: videoing us as we're leaving, and then we just waited
Speaker 2: in the car, and then the police came, and so
Speaker 2: he walks out and comes and addresses the police. Brian
Speaker 2: and the cameraman and Sarah went up to the police
Speaker 2: and I sat in the car because I was just like,
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: I'm just really quite scared now. I just don't know
Speaker 1: what's happening.
Speaker 2: Anyway, it was all sort of Joe Bull and they
Speaker 2: were like, we've got nothing to do with her. I
Speaker 2: don't know who she is. I should also mention that
Speaker 2: this guy, mister Ramichel in Luxembourg was also a professional
Speaker 2: football player, so we were sort of putting the dots together,
Speaker 2: going did he meet Johnny Warren when Johnny Warren was
Speaker 2: just playing professional football because they're the same age, and
Speaker 2: so there was all all these weird coincidences that were
Speaker 2: just very linked. So we've got Luxembourg mum saying she's
Speaker 2: moving to Luxembourg permanently on her outgoing passenger card, yet
Speaker 2: she comes back into the country six weeks later. We've
Speaker 2: got her changing her name to this random name of Ramackurl,
Speaker 2: which there were no ramckeurls in Australia at all except
Speaker 2: for this ad in the paper and my mum changing
Speaker 2: her name. So we were just having a chat with
Speaker 2: them out the front, and we actually spoke to his
Speaker 2: ex wife. We found her details and gave her a
Speaker 2: phone call just to ask her some questions, and her
Speaker 2: name is Monique Cornelius.
Speaker 1: Turns out that a.
Speaker 2: Gentleman by the name of Reck Blum, who has admitted
Speaker 2: to having an affair with my mum in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: seven prior to her disappearance, also was in a relationship
Speaker 2: with Monique Cornelius, who is Fernand Ramachel's ex wife, the
Speaker 2: real Fernand Ramachel. Mister Blum also admits to using Fernand
Speaker 2: Ramicel's identity and placing the ad in the paper in
Speaker 2: the La Courier Australian. He also had an international driver's
Speaker 2: license that he obtained in Queensland of the name Fernande Ramckel.
Speaker 1: In court, he actually accused my.
Speaker 2: Mum of stealing the driver's license so she could change
Speaker 2: her name to that name. So it's all very interesting.
Speaker 2: The journey itself has been quite wine boggling, And you
Speaker 2: know I said earlier that my goal was really to
Speaker 2: get to an inquest so we could do a full investigation.
Speaker 2: We did a petition. So on my way home on
Speaker 2: that flight, I came up with the idea, maybe if
Speaker 2: we do a petition, we can get some leverage. We
Speaker 2: had no reward or for information, and so everything just
Speaker 2: started to ballroll from this moment. So the ad in
Speaker 2: the paper that Jonie found super super important and that
Speaker 2: opened the case right up. How we found Rick Blum
Speaker 2: was another gentleman who was listening to the Lady Vanishers
Speaker 2: and he's always wanted to stay anonymous, but he's a local,
Speaker 2: and he took himself down to the Ballina library and
Speaker 2: because we had a phone number in the ad, and
Speaker 2: the police, like I remember Gary saying to me, oh,
Speaker 2: we've tried to find the phone number.
Speaker 1: Who owns the phone number?
Speaker 2: And it's this guy and he's retired and it definitely
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been him, and Telstra didn't have records that
Speaker 2: go back further than seven years. However, this gentleman just
Speaker 2: went down to the local library. He did hand scan
Speaker 2: thousands of entries and ran it through microfish. But then
Speaker 2: he found the phone number was connected to a business
Speaker 2: called Ballana Coin Investments that ran out of Ballana and
Speaker 2: the name of the owners of that company was Frederick
Speaker 2: de Heavidery and Diana Heavidaeriry. Frederic de Heavidery is also Reckblum,
Speaker 2: one of his fifty two aliases that he has used
Speaker 2: in Australia during his time here. He's a Belgium national
Speaker 2: who moved to Australia in the sixties and has been
Speaker 2: here ever since. So you know, at that point we
Speaker 2: had a really successful petition. So we had a lot
Speaker 2: of Australia and around the world behind me by this point,
Speaker 2: and we had over twenty seven thousand signatures on there,
Speaker 2: which then saw us get a two hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars reward by New South Wales Police noted for
Speaker 2: my mum, which was a breakthrough for me.
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, you guys haven't even recognized she's
Speaker 1: been missing.
Speaker 2: Now she's a missing person and you've got a reward
Speaker 2: out for her. And at that same point I had
Speaker 2: written to the New South Wales coroner It's Court and
Speaker 2: asked if they would consider having an inquest or holding
Speaker 2: an inquest, and they did so. After months of waiting,
Speaker 2: I finally got the okay and all this while I've
Speaker 2: got Gary Sheen telling me, well it's really not a
Speaker 2: New South Wales case. It should be a Queensland case,
Speaker 2: because you know your mum was living in Queensland. But
Speaker 2: our argument was her last know and movement. So we
Speaker 2: know that her Medicare card was used in Grafton after
Speaker 2: she came back. We know that about the withdrawals of
Speaker 2: her money in Byron Bay and in burly Heads, and
Speaker 2: then on the fifteenth of October there was eighty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars electronically transferred out of her bank account to another
Speaker 2: bank account. Mister Blum opened a bank security envelope with
Speaker 2: the Commonwealth Bank, the same bank the day before the
Speaker 2: eighty thousand dollars were withdrawn from my mum's bank account,
Speaker 2: and he.
Speaker 1: Closed it thirteen days later.
Speaker 2: No proof that he has the money or that it
Speaker 2: went there, but as a lot of coincidences or circumstances
Speaker 2: that you might go that was quite interesting, and the
Speaker 2: coroner did make mention of that in her findings spoiler alert.
Speaker 2: We ended up getting an inquest and that was extremely
Speaker 2: difficult process. I ended up on heart medication. My resting
Speaker 2: heart rate was up to one ninety beats per minute
Speaker 2: and you know it tore my family apart. Not myself,
Speaker 2: increased my been and my kids. But you know, my
Speaker 2: mum's family don't talk to me anymore since the podcast
Speaker 2: was launched, and you know, we've had to be open
Speaker 2: and honest about what's happened and how things have been
Speaker 2: handled and what's transpired. And it really puts a bomb
Speaker 2: in your world and it explodes pretty hard, and at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, you're the one left to
Speaker 2: pick up the pieces. And I'm really grateful because I've
Speaker 2: had quite a lot of people who have stood by
Speaker 2: my side very firmly for a long time, helping me,
Speaker 2: and they were there to support me and care for
Speaker 2: me and check in on me. But you know, the
Speaker 2: person who's stuck by me the longest and the hardest
Speaker 2: is Jooning. She came in and she said, I'm here
Speaker 2: until you tell me to stop. I'm going to keep
Speaker 2: going and I'm going to keep helping you. And she's
Speaker 2: been instrumental in helping me. So we had the findings
Speaker 2: in February last year, and that was the first time
Speaker 2: I've actually heard the words that my mum is officially deceased.
Speaker 2: And at that point, you know, the finding things was
Speaker 2: held at Lincoln Court in Sydney, and I put a
Speaker 2: call out on Facebook and I said, if anyone would
Speaker 2: like to come and support you know, I've got no family,
Speaker 2: so if you can come and help support me, that
Speaker 2: would be amazing, and just wear a splash of green.
Speaker 2: And we arrived at the court to an absolute sea
Speaker 2: of green. The concrete was covered with human bodies who
Speaker 2: were there to support me and give me a hug.
Speaker 2: And it was the nicest feeling I've had. Because none
Speaker 2: of Mum's sisters came. We only had one of her
Speaker 2: friends come, Catherine Greenwood, who's one of Mum's really good
Speaker 2: friends from her Sussex similar days, and Mum taught her
Speaker 2: daughter Sally. Her name is Sally as well, so her
Speaker 2: and her daughter came. But outside of that, it was
Speaker 2: just people. The people came and the people helped me.
Speaker 2: And at the end of the day, this podcast has
Speaker 2: actually been built on support of care of people. And
Speaker 2: I've always said people power was the power of the
Speaker 2: people who actually get us through and get the information,
Speaker 2: because people know stuff and it might be just the
Speaker 2: smallest little inkling of information, but it actually can follow
Speaker 2: through to huge things and that's what's really projected us
Speaker 2: onto this journey, and the inquest ended, but it didn't
Speaker 2: end for Joanie and I, but I said to her
Speaker 2: there's still more to do, and she agreed to help
Speaker 2: me continue where we are today. So what I wanted
Speaker 2: to share with everybody was the journey after the findings,
Speaker 2: because for me, being told my mum was deceased was
Speaker 2: not a surprise to me, but it meant that I
Speaker 2: could do things and propel the story and the investigation further.
Speaker 2: I then had a death certificate, something I haven't had
Speaker 2: for twenty six years. And there's more to do, There's
Speaker 2: more to look at. There's lots of things that weren't
Speaker 2: done at the inquest, Like we were asking questions and
Speaker 2: wanting more information and we were getting told the inquest
Speaker 2: is about two things, Sally. The inquest is is your
Speaker 2: mum dead or alive? And did the police do their job?
Speaker 2: They were the two points about the inquest. It had
Speaker 2: nothing to do with anybody else, any other person. It
Speaker 2: was just about those two elements, So anything else really
Speaker 2: was null and void as far as the coroner was concerned.
Speaker 2: Her job was to determine those two things, and she
Speaker 2: determined that my mum had died. On or around the
Speaker 2: fifteenth of October nineteen ninety seven, when the eighty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars was withdrawn on the second count. She determined that
Speaker 2: the failure by New South Wales Police to do their
Speaker 2: job properly between nineteen ninety seven and twenty nineteen was
Speaker 2: the main reason that my mum is still missing today,
Speaker 2: and had they followed procedure properly and had followed the
Speaker 2: Commissioner's handbook as to how you deal with and handle
Speaker 2: a missing person's case, my mum would potentially have been
Speaker 2: found