Speaker 1: Listeners are advised that this podcast series Bromwe contains coarse
Speaker 1: language and adult themes. This podcast series is brought to
Speaker 1: you by Me Headley Thomas and The Australian. Goodbye every week.
Speaker 2: Okay mate, hell are we Maddy?
Speaker 3: I'll take you my down to born that have been
Speaker 3: quieted out there.
Speaker 1: It has been thirty one and a half years since
Speaker 1: Glen Webster built his own home in a place called Illiwong.
Speaker 1: Glenn and his wife had a young family. Back then,
Speaker 1: Illiwong was a new estate. It had started to see
Speaker 1: solid family homes rising out of the bushland. The nearby
Speaker 1: Georges River and Warnora River provided easy access for boaties,
Speaker 1: but it is a fair drive west from the beaches
Speaker 1: of Cronulla in the Shire to get there. We met
Speaker 1: Glen Webster at a newer, much larger house a short
Speaker 1: distance from Shelley Beach south of Crenulla. Glenn and his
Speaker 1: team of tradees had been doing a major renovation of
Speaker 1: an impressive pile perched high above gunner Matta Bay and
Speaker 1: Port Hacking a property. App estimated that you wouldn't get
Speaker 1: much change out of twenty million dollars for this place,
Speaker 1: and that's before the costly reno. Building residential and kimmercial
Speaker 1: properties in the Shire has been Glenn's passion for more
Speaker 1: than forty years. It's how he met John.
Speaker 3: Still know like been on the tools, Yeah, I must have.
Speaker 3: It's this point thing isn't just coordinate it all?
Speaker 1: Before visiting Glenn on the job, I read his police
Speaker 1: statement again. It dated September twenty one, nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: He was still living at that time in the house
Speaker 1: in Illawang which John had helped build back in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three. Glenn's statement from twenty six years ago disclosed
Speaker 1: that he was working as a carpenter in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: seven when he and John met. They had a mutual
Speaker 1: friend called John mcmonagall, who was also mates with John
Speaker 1: Winfield's brother Peter. Before John Winfield did the brick laying
Speaker 1: at Glenn's house at Illawong, he helped build Glenn's first
Speaker 1: family home at Menai. In Glenn's police statement, he recalled
Speaker 1: that he had met on three or four occasions, but
Speaker 1: he had never been to their home and he said
Speaker 1: John lived a very private life. Have you had any
Speaker 1: contact with police recently? They haven't conducted. When did your
Speaker 1: last spoke to.
Speaker 3: Him, last time went at Coral at Police station.
Speaker 1: So your original statement was ninety eight, But then that
Speaker 1: must have been during the review by George Radmill.
Speaker 4: What ye was that two thousand and eight, nine ten.
Speaker 5: That you've probably about year heap be about right then, So.
Speaker 1: I thought they might have reached out in the recent review. Okay.
Speaker 1: Glenn led us down many steps to some outdoor seating
Speaker 1: beside the water. Over the decades he has built dozens
Speaker 1: and dozens of houses, including several for his own family.
Speaker 1: He cast his mind back to the home at Illawong
Speaker 1: and John Winfield's connection to it.
Speaker 3: John started the brick work there.
Speaker 1: What we were looking at were some documents from the
Speaker 1: council showing the timing of inspections and the sign off
Speaker 1: of some of the details around the garage slab and
Speaker 1: the patio slab.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: What it showed is that on the Thursday, the thirteenth
Speaker 1: of May, the council had approved for pouring, but it
Speaker 1: was still awaiting that poor I've heard from somebody who
Speaker 1: spoke to John on the Monday the seventeenth of May.
Speaker 4: And this person said to John, what are you doing
Speaker 4: back here?
Speaker 1: Like what's going on? Why are you in such a rush?
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. He just come back from Balan and
Speaker 1: he said, oh, I've got to go. There's a concrete Paul.
Speaker 1: So you get the inspection document giving you the green
Speaker 1: tick to do something on the Thursday the thirteenth.
Speaker 4: This person was saying.
Speaker 1: On the Monday the seventeenth of May, John tells someone,
Speaker 1: I'm back because there's a concrete polm going to be
Speaker 1: here for a poor. So that's indicating that the poor
Speaker 1: hasn't occurred on the weekend.
Speaker 4: Just gone. It's still ahead of you. Does that work
Speaker 4: for you.
Speaker 2: Have a year?
Speaker 6: I would have thought personally, I would have probably done
Speaker 6: it on the weekend because I was working.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I could have done it.
Speaker 7: Would they have come out and poured it on a
Speaker 7: weekend on a Saturday. I'm trying to think she did
Speaker 7: my concreting back then. Contractors probably could have came out
Speaker 7: and done it. Yeah, yeah, okay, we just all that out.
Speaker 1: We don't have a document. I remember you saying you
Speaker 1: might be able to find one, but there was nothing.
Speaker 6: If you went for some pos and stuff and I
Speaker 6: didn't really have that much it, Well, I did find
Speaker 6: something but there's no dates on the poet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for looking. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: I had to look prior over it then a bit
Speaker 3: of a dig last night.
Speaker 1: It's amazing that there are documents still around after three decades.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 2: There was a lady that's worked at the council for
Speaker 2: twenty five years and she runs the Scout facility or
Speaker 2: the old Scout hall, it's now the men's shed. And
Speaker 2: I know her through my involvement with Lily Pilly clubhouse,
Speaker 2: when I rang the council and rang her and explained
Speaker 2: to who I was, and then she said, yeah, yah, yeah.
Speaker 2: She was able to track down the records because she'd
Speaker 2: been there for so long she cold to even just
Speaker 2: rattle straight off the top of her head.
Speaker 5: The four inspectors from back.
Speaker 1: Then, Glenn with that darage slab poor Andy and I
Speaker 1: were talking about that with Maddie, just thinking about the
Speaker 1: logistics of that, and obviously we're looking at whether it's
Speaker 1: possible that Bromin's body was put under the rio on
Speaker 1: the Monday and then the poor possibly occurred the next day.
Speaker 1: If what John told the source who spoke to me
Speaker 1: is accurate, as I understand that building site was kind
Speaker 1: of empty unless John was there with you helping him.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 6: I used to go there in the mornings and go
Speaker 6: back of there in the afternoons.
Speaker 1: So who would have been there if John were not there?
Speaker 1: Just John, nobody else. So he's to set our in
Speaker 1: cup for the day. Any would work and just labor
Speaker 1: for himself. Yeah, yeah, then I'd go back in the
Speaker 1: afternoon start again. And what sort of activity human activity.
Speaker 4: Was around that site around that time?
Speaker 3: Quite a big block of lane.
Speaker 6: It was subdivided into about three or four blocks, and
Speaker 6: I think I was the first time to be built there.
Speaker 4: So it would have been quiet, yeah what I thought.
Speaker 1: So, Yeah, just thinking about the logistics of that with
Speaker 1: the sort of theory that we've been discussing.
Speaker 5: Is it possible?
Speaker 6: Probably unlikely the nature of the material out there, It's
Speaker 6: not like it's sand.
Speaker 1: Dealing with the slab first, because if that's what John's
Speaker 1: rushed back for and that's what he's talked about someone
Speaker 1: that's what's on his mind. Why is it unlikely in
Speaker 1: your mind for the slab for the gap.
Speaker 6: It's sandstone and rock and it's a hard material.
Speaker 1: When I was talking to Andy about this before the
Speaker 1: way he explained it was you would take the steel
Speaker 1: mesh off, take the plastic off, dig a hole, and
Speaker 1: he thought it was probably easy to dig, as it
Speaker 1: would have been phil.
Speaker 3: No, it wasn't.
Speaker 4: No, it wasn't easy to dig.
Speaker 1: So you're saying the ground was tough ground to dig in.
Speaker 1: Every building site is different. Achieving a perfectly even level
Speaker 1: for a concrete slab often means the introduction of phil,
Speaker 1: dirt that has been brought in to complement the natural ground.
Speaker 1: The natural ground is always harder to dig, but the
Speaker 1: phil is another story. It's relatively easy to put your
Speaker 1: pick and shovel into. There was a front patio as
Speaker 1: well that also took a concrete pour, same problem.
Speaker 6: In your mind, that one was probably a lot deeper,
Speaker 6: So that one was a billy that would have been
Speaker 6: like fill in there, right.
Speaker 5: The porch was back towards the left hands right.
Speaker 4: In your memory.
Speaker 1: Did the poor for that patio occur at the same
Speaker 1: time as.
Speaker 3: The garage, Yes, that would have happened the same time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was signed off at the same time. Why
Speaker 4: would John have been needed for the poor.
Speaker 6: I would have thought he would be just down there
Speaker 6: carrying on bricklaying.
Speaker 4: So you didn't necessarily need him for the poor.
Speaker 3: He was purely there to lay bricks.
Speaker 1: So I wonder why he's saying to someone, I've got
Speaker 1: to be back. There's a paw as a concrete Paul.
Speaker 1: Why is John making such an effort and using the
Speaker 1: poor as the explanation. But the other option that you've raised, Glenn,
Speaker 1: is this raised area and that's at the back of
Speaker 1: the house. Is that right correct? Can you just explain
Speaker 1: that what's in that debris pile?
Speaker 6: What's there timidus bricks, dirt and then it's slab at
Speaker 6: the top.
Speaker 1: And the documents that Andy got from the council with
Speaker 1: Maddie's help, shows that the concrete was poured there sometime
Speaker 1: in August.
Speaker 8: That would have been the last one thing we were
Speaker 8: wondering is well, doesn't it introduce a lot more risk
Speaker 8: if you're trying to conceal a body on a building
Speaker 8: site and you come back the day before a poor,
Speaker 8: but you don't put the body where the poor is
Speaker 8: going to be.
Speaker 4: You put it out the back where there's a debris pile.
Speaker 1: You don't know when there's going to be a poor there,
Speaker 1: and it ends up being another three months away, because
Speaker 1: you were talking Maddie about the risk of animal activity.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and the smell of decomposition animals would be very
Speaker 9: very prevalent in the area.
Speaker 3: In sects. Maybe your answers under a fund for ender.
Speaker 2: We've got the cover sheet of the file. It shows
Speaker 2: all the dates and all the information.
Speaker 5: Question regarding the raised patio.
Speaker 9: How easy would it be to get a body into
Speaker 9: that kind of area, Like was it easily accessible?
Speaker 5: John put it back the dar up right to the corner.
Speaker 1: It must be a bit of a headspin for you, Glenn,
Speaker 1: this whole saga, knowing John as you did back in.
Speaker 6: The day, it is a bit. I never had a
Speaker 6: problem with John Patrol. Yeah, he played his cards very
Speaker 6: close to his chest. We always got on just his mates.
Speaker 1: And he was a very good tradesman, wasn't Here's a tradesman, Yeah,
Speaker 1: very neat and tidy.
Speaker 6: YEA three my houses, the last one in two thousand
Speaker 6: and two.
Speaker 4: Have you heard from him recently?
Speaker 3: Probably two and ten. Last time I've ever talked to him.
Speaker 4: Do you remember talking to him about brommin or what happened?
Speaker 3: No, I never ever brought it down.
Speaker 10: I've got another place to mate that he's pretty close
Speaker 10: to only pumped into him last week or so. He's
Speaker 10: known him a lot longer than me and is only
Speaker 10: just finding out stuff that he evin knew about.
Speaker 1: Do you remember when John was leaving the rush back
Speaker 1: to Balana and we know he flew up on the Sunday,
Speaker 1: Do you recall what he said to you or conversation.
Speaker 4: Before he left or yeah?
Speaker 3: Nothing sort of. There was no red flag for me.
Speaker 5: He actually turned back up on a Monday.
Speaker 2: Michelle was looking after the girls and he went to
Speaker 2: work that first week.
Speaker 1: John comes back on the Monday the seventeenth of May.
Speaker 1: And who was brick laying for Glenn until John leaves again?
Speaker 2: I believe it was still John because he was leading
Speaker 2: my place and going to work and then coming back
Speaker 2: and having dinner with the.
Speaker 5: Kids and us.
Speaker 3: John was downing person there.
Speaker 2: So he probably was working at Glenn's for just that
Speaker 2: week he was at our place. And then finally when
Speaker 2: I pressured him to get the girls back home and
Speaker 2: get him in school and don't report from and missing,
Speaker 2: is when he's told Glenn, I thought, I can't finish
Speaker 2: the house, but I've got to go and going home,
Speaker 2: you said, right off he went.
Speaker 11: So that it makes sense he would have been there
Speaker 11: during the concrete for that first week.
Speaker 5: Still work it.
Speaker 11: He goes back, he's looking after the girls. The girls
Speaker 11: have been put back into school. That's when Glenn is
Speaker 11: getting another team to finish the brick clans the house
Speaker 11: good house to live in?
Speaker 1: Mate.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Mean it's not a nice thought. How do you feel
Speaker 4: about that?
Speaker 6: You planned the seed and you start thinking about possibilities.
Speaker 4: I guess yeah, do you think it's possible.
Speaker 3: I don't think anything's possible.
Speaker 4: Do you know who lives there now? Now that.
Speaker 1: I asked Glenn whether he was asked by detectives to
Speaker 1: describe or comment on the Illawong building site when he
Speaker 1: spoke to the police some fifteen years ago during the
Speaker 1: cold case review by the then Detective Inspector George Radmore,
Speaker 1: Not at all, Glenn Webster replied. He said that the
Speaker 1: angle was not mentioned. Andy confirmed something that was bugging
Speaker 1: him for reverse charge long distance telephone calls from a
Speaker 1: home in the Shire to Broman's flat in Byron Street
Speaker 1: in the four weeks before her disappearance, and the total
Speaker 1: duration was forty eight minutes. We established that those calls
Speaker 1: were made from a property which Glenn and his wife
Speaker 1: were renting at the time. John would stay over there
Speaker 1: while he was bricklaying for the Websters. One call on
Speaker 1: April eighteen went for almost half an hour. The last
Speaker 1: reverse charge call was May eighth at eight fifteen pm,
Speaker 1: and it went for nine minutes. Before we left Glenn
Speaker 1: to his work, he and Andy stood together for photographs.
Speaker 1: Just take your classes off, mate, thanks back up at
Speaker 1: street level. I tried to put the known events of
Speaker 1: Monday May seventeen into a chronological order. These are the
Speaker 1: events about which I'm confident from documents and police statements.
Speaker 1: Sometime that Monday morning, John arrived with the two girls
Speaker 1: in the Shire south of Sydney in the family Ford Falcon,
Speaker 1: its registration had lapsed. He went to a house in
Speaker 1: the shire, knocked on the door and asked a woman
Speaker 1: he had never met, the mother in law of John's
Speaker 1: first wife, Jenny, and he asked that older woman to
Speaker 1: look after Lauren and Crystal for the day. Joan Mason
Speaker 1: said the girls were in pajamas. In nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: Joan Mason told police that John had said to her
Speaker 1: he needed some temporary child minding help as he had
Speaker 1: to do a very big job. It was extremely strange
Speaker 1: behavior on John's part in my view. The two girls
Speaker 1: did not know Joan Mason from a bar of soap.
Speaker 1: They had probably met Brad's new wife, Jenny, because she'd
Speaker 1: become friends with Bromwin, but there would have been a
Speaker 1: very limited connection and Jenny was out shopping. John and
Speaker 1: Jenny had not been together four years. As you have
Speaker 1: heard from previous episodes, theirs was a very sad and
Speaker 1: at times toxic relationship. It produced their daughter, Jody, who
Speaker 1: was raised by John's parents until Bromwin and John got together.
Speaker 1: Michelle and Andy Reid, the aunt and uncle of Lauren
Speaker 1: and Cristel, also lived near by in the Shire. The
Speaker 1: Reed's house should have been the first stop for John
Speaker 1: when he needed somewhere to leave the girls for a
Speaker 1: few hours. That's the first red flag indicating something else
Speaker 1: was possibly going on with John on that Monday. But
Speaker 1: what happened next? Where did John go after leaving the
Speaker 1: girls at Jenny Mason's house with her mother in law Joan.
Speaker 1: Jenny was very surprised when she got home from shopping
Speaker 1: to see Bromwin's daughters playing in the backyard. What was
Speaker 1: John doing prior to his return in the afternoon to
Speaker 1: pick up the girls to then go to Michelle and
Speaker 1: Andy's house for the first time that day. As you
Speaker 1: have heard, John had woken the girls up in Lennox's head,
Speaker 1: put some clothes into pillowcases and driven away from a
Speaker 1: messy house on Sandstone Crescent very late the night before,
Speaker 1: then driven an unregistered car through the night and most
Speaker 1: of the morning to the Shire. The evidence of what
Speaker 1: lawyers call flight is compelling. John offered no real explanation
Speaker 1: for his unusual urgency when interviewed by the detective Sergeant
Speaker 1: Glen Taylor in August nineteen ninety eight, but John did
Speaker 1: tell Glen Taylor in that interview that John had registered
Speaker 1: the Ford Falcon on the afternoon of Monday May at
Speaker 1: a place called Miranda in the Shire. Miranda is where
Speaker 1: the premises of RTA for the registration of cars was situated.
Speaker 1: But when the detective checked John's credit card statement in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen nineties, it did not show a credit
Speaker 1: card charge for registration on Monday May seventeen. The May
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three Commonwealth Bank credit card statement for John
Speaker 1: Winfield shows a charge on May twenty four of two
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty two dollars, and that's one week after
Speaker 1: John's arrival in the shire. As a result of this,
Speaker 1: Glen Taylor told me that he strongly suspected John had
Speaker 1: lied about registering the car at Miranda on May seventeen.
Speaker 1: The detective's formal signed police statement in nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 1: makes this point about the date discrepancy, but dates on
Speaker 1: credit card statement in the nineteen nineties did not necessarily
Speaker 1: match the dates of the actual purchases. There was a
Speaker 1: lag sometimes of several days. The old fashioned machines which
Speaker 1: were used when we bought things on our credit cards
Speaker 1: were operated manually. They were not electronically connected to bank
Speaker 1: accounts like they are today. I'm grateful to Glenn for
Speaker 1: letting me know that he was innocently mistaken about the
Speaker 1: date on which John had registered the vehicle. From further
Speaker 1: checks done with the RTA, Glenn subsequently discovered that the
Speaker 1: registration of John's Ford Falcon did occur on Monday May seventeen. However,
Speaker 1: this doesn't change much. There was ample time for John
Speaker 1: to drive from Jenny Mason's house to the house at
Speaker 1: Illawan do whatever he needed to do, then drive to
Speaker 1: the RTA at Miranda in the afternoon, pay to register
Speaker 1: the car, and then turn to get the children from
Speaker 1: Jenny Mason's house to go to Michelle and Andy's house.
Speaker 1: John did not disclose to Andy and Michelle that he
Speaker 1: had taken the children to his ex wife's house, where
Speaker 1: they had been for several hours. John did tell Michelle
Speaker 1: that he had got the car registered that day. Glen
Speaker 1: Taylor told me that in the nineteen ninety eight recorded
Speaker 1: interview that he did with John Winfield, the person of
Speaker 1: interest was very vague about his movements on that Monday,
Speaker 1: John failed to mention dropping the kids off at his
Speaker 1: ex wife's house. Glenn said that probably because of that vagueness,
Speaker 1: Glenn didn't press John hard in the interview about everything
Speaker 1: that he did that Monday. Glenn told me, however, that
Speaker 1: he accepts John was telling the truth about the Ford
Speaker 1: Falcons registration that day. Glenn is now deeply suspicious about
Speaker 1: the property at Illawong. Just before driving away from the
Speaker 1: remarkable house overlooking Gunner Matta Bay being renovated by Glenn
Speaker 1: Webster in the Shire, the builder answered a further question
Speaker 1: about John being left at Illawong to work alone.
Speaker 3: I would set any up, see him in the morning, make.
Speaker 11: Sure he's right gay And so he'd worked a line
Speaker 11: and after he'd set it up, Yeah, got it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's pretty much if he's in the job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably soon he's temper round t.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he liked boon by himself.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I see ye.
Speaker 4: Thanks for clarifying that. See you guys to describe.
Speaker 1: It made me wonder why if John needed to go
Speaker 1: to Illowong to just lay some bricks before stopping by
Speaker 1: in Miranda to register the car, did he need to
Speaker 1: make an unusual detour to his ex wife's house to
Speaker 1: leave his two girls there for several hours. Why couldn't
Speaker 1: he have grabbed the girls some takeaway food and drink
Speaker 1: and then driven them with him to illawa On whether
Speaker 1: they could have read or slept in the car or
Speaker 1: played outside if he was determined to lay a few
Speaker 1: rows of bricks before going on to Miranda. Back in
Speaker 1: Andy's car, we talked about some of the angles arising
Speaker 1: from the conversation with Glenn Webster.
Speaker 4: What did you take from all that?
Speaker 5: She showed?
Speaker 2: The garage is pretty much hard on deck, so he thinks.
Speaker 5: Any possibility of quickly stashing a body.
Speaker 2: He thinks it to be on the west side of
Speaker 2: the porch and towards the back because it's elevated.
Speaker 5: What do you think of that theory?
Speaker 2: If she was going to be put under a slab
Speaker 2: boy and then that sounds like the place.
Speaker 9: But I'm also thinking by that stage, by the time
Speaker 9: he would have got there, she would have full well
Speaker 9: been in rigging mortis. Depending on how he put it
Speaker 9: into the car. I am quite confident she would be stuck.
Speaker 5: In that position.
Speaker 2: Someone can't physically larry completely across a boot.
Speaker 5: Then she would have been like that, with possibly her
Speaker 5: legs tucked up a.
Speaker 2: Bit right, you say, riga mortis set in and you're
Speaker 2: rather person on their back.
Speaker 5: You're picking them up like you can carry a small child,
Speaker 5: your arms tucked under the legs.
Speaker 2: You've got your hand under their back and under their
Speaker 2: armpit type thing, and you lift them up.
Speaker 5: Where you go. The porch might be.
Speaker 2: Two meters step or two point four meters streep, maybe
Speaker 2: front to back, and it's probably six meters wide.
Speaker 4: There's plenty of room, plenty of plenty of root.
Speaker 2: Two point two meter five five point eight meters void.
Speaker 1: Underneath that slad, Andy and his sister Kim Rushall are
Speaker 1: very different. Andy speaks clinically and without apparent emotion or
Speaker 1: effect about a possible crude burial place for his older
Speaker 1: sister Bronwyn. It is as if he is on a
Speaker 1: mission and must keep a brave face, not let the
Speaker 1: mask slip, lest his true feelings slow his bid to
Speaker 1: achieve justice for Bromwin. Sometimes it is confronting when Andy
Speaker 1: is a matter of factly talking about how his sister's
Speaker 1: body might have been handled. But while Andy is resolute,
Speaker 1: he is not without feeling. I have seen and heard
Speaker 1: him choke back tears. On those occasions, Andy has been
Speaker 1: talking about his two mothers, Jennifer, who raised him and Barbara,
Speaker 1: who gave birth to him. Barbara and her legacy hover
Speaker 1: over this case. Her plight, her mental illness almost certainly
Speaker 1: influenced early investigations into Bromwin's disappearance. Kim mar She'll, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, is a lot more open about herself
Speaker 1: and her feelings and emotions. Perhaps that's another key factor
Speaker 1: in their disagreements. But Andy and Kim have been incredibly
Speaker 1: helpful in different ways. They haven't always agreed with what
Speaker 1: the other has told me, but they have put their
Speaker 1: differences aside to support the podcast series and me. They
Speaker 1: have respected my independence and need to reflect the recollections
Speaker 1: and views of a range of people. When this investigation
Speaker 1: was in its infancy, Kim told me something interesting about
Speaker 1: John Winfield's recent behavior on the telephone.
Speaker 11: You told me last night about what Crystal has told
Speaker 11: you she must do.
Speaker 4: Is that something that you can talk about.
Speaker 12: My answer to that question is that I have an
Speaker 12: obligation to actually stay focused on what I have always
Speaker 12: said out to do, and I've made it very clear upfront,
Speaker 12: very early on to every person, family or other. So
Speaker 12: I will actually talk about.
Speaker 4: That, Okay, all right.
Speaker 12: Crystal was reiterating again John stand on how he would
Speaker 12: always stick to his story and that story hasn't changed.
Speaker 12: Crystal informed me that Jonathan had given her a set
Speaker 12: of instructions as to how she was to continue having
Speaker 12: any communications with him, and that caused alarm bells for me,
Speaker 12: being that he said that she was not to use
Speaker 12: her phone that she uses on a daily basis, that
Speaker 12: she was only to call him from a separate external phone,
Speaker 12: and he suggested that she just a separate phone, and
Speaker 12: that he had then given her a new private number
Speaker 12: that he had obtained and that was the only way
Speaker 12: she was to ever contact him in the future. He
Speaker 12: said the reason was because then the scammers wouldn't have
Speaker 12: an ability to hack his personal details.
Speaker 1: Kim made a prediction back.
Speaker 12: Then, Crystal's heart will always continue to ache because she's
Speaker 12: putting Lauren's relationship as a priority over actually finding out
Speaker 12: the true answers of what happened to their mother. So
Speaker 12: she just really doesn't want to have anything to do
Speaker 12: in relation to hearing about what happened to her mother.
Speaker 12: There's been several periods of time where she changes that opinion,
Speaker 12: and that's what's confusing for me. I get the indications
Speaker 12: that she wants to actually go forward with finding out
Speaker 12: what happened, and then suddenly she reflects and she withdraws
Speaker 12: from her desire to do that and shifts back to
Speaker 12: staying in a world where things will never be worked out,
Speaker 12: never be solved, and it's such a struggle, and she
Speaker 12: writes about it, we talk about it.
Speaker 1: After twenty episodes, Crystal's position has become more fixed. Her
Speaker 1: contacts with her uncle Andy and her Auntie Michelle have
Speaker 1: become more strained and fewer. Their catch ups have stopped,
Speaker 1: and it's partly because of what Crystal sees as an
Speaker 1: unfair targeting of John, her stepfather.
Speaker 12: I always encourage her that she needs to have some
Speaker 12: really good therapy to try and have an independent person
Speaker 12: that she can work through with that there's always going
Speaker 12: to be a degree of bias whoever she talks to
Speaker 12: in the family, right I really feel for her. I
Speaker 12: am going to see this through and unfortunately, if I
Speaker 12: end up having a fragmented family once again, which is
Speaker 12: what I started with, so be it. I don't actually
Speaker 12: know right at this moment whether I will ever be
Speaker 12: able to restore bonds with Andrew that I thought I
Speaker 12: had built, but now look like they're gone again.
Speaker 4: Sorry about that, and that's the thing for Crystal.
Speaker 1: Crystal's statement to the police in nineteen ninety eight is
Speaker 1: a powerful and distressing document. She was fifteen at the
Speaker 1: time and had walked into the Ballina police station after
Speaker 1: school one day to try to help police find her mum.
Speaker 1: Crystal's strength that day rings loudly through the paragraphs of
Speaker 1: the statement, taken by the detective Glenn Taylor. Shortly before
Speaker 1: the release of this episode, one of Cristel's friends in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, who lived near the house at Sandstone Crescent,
Speaker 1: reached out. She was prompted to contact me by episode
Speaker 1: nineteen and the analysis of the Winfield family's Ford Falcon
Speaker 1: sed Ann, a former taxi which probably had a large
Speaker 1: tank for liquefied petroleum gas in the boot. We wanted
Speaker 1: to test hypothetically whether the car's boot would have had
Speaker 1: room for Bromman too, given that there probably would have
Speaker 1: been an LPG tank of up to one hundred liters
Speaker 1: capacity the taxi standard. I have talked at length to
Speaker 1: the woman who has so recently come forward, Cristel's former friend.
Speaker 1: She has, however, requested anonymity, and she asked me to
Speaker 1: omit some of the detailed information which she has provided,
Speaker 1: as she does not want her identity to become widely known.
Speaker 1: Here's what she told me. These are her words, it's
Speaker 1: not her voice.
Speaker 13: I grew up near the Winfield's house. Crystel is younger
Speaker 13: than me, but we were friends and went to the
Speaker 13: same schools. We would hang out sometimes and played together.
Speaker 13: Cristel had told me that herself and Lauren were not
Speaker 13: allowed to look in the boot of the car the
Speaker 13: morning John rushed them to Sydney. I clearly remember her
Speaker 13: telling me she had heard her parents arguing that night
Speaker 13: when she went to bed, and remembers John waking her
Speaker 13: up early morning and telling her they were going to
Speaker 13: Sydney and throwing some clothes and things into pillowcases or
Speaker 13: garbage bags. John was angry and they were not allowed
Speaker 13: to look in the boot of the car. This was
Speaker 13: always alarming to me. Whether or not Bron's body was
Speaker 13: in the boot, her handbag or both, or something else
Speaker 13: possibly incriminating. I do not know this information, and whatever
Speaker 13: else I remembered was told to the police in two
Speaker 13: thousand and nine. When they called me one day, Cristel
Speaker 13: told me John had been very angry with her when
Speaker 13: the case reopened in nineteen ninety eight for going to
Speaker 13: the police without her sister Jody, and she felt too
Speaker 13: uncomfortable to stay with him. I found this pressure from
Speaker 13: John also to be quite alarming. When I visited the
Speaker 13: Winfield's house, Crystal and Lauren were not allowed to play
Speaker 13: inside the house, only in the garage. The garage was
Speaker 13: always tidy, not like the usual garage. The car was
Speaker 13: never parked inside, only on the driveway, no oil stains, etc.
Speaker 13: John was intense and insistent about everything being neat, clean,
Speaker 13: and in its place. I recall one day he got
Speaker 13: aggravated at Crystal and Lauren eating ice blocks in the
Speaker 13: garage and one had dripped onto the concrete floor. I
Speaker 13: remember his enraged reaction making them eat outside on the
Speaker 13: grass instead. One day, John let Crystal inside the door
Speaker 13: connecting the garage to the house to retrieve something. On
Speaker 13: this rare occasion, John told me I was allowed inside too.
Speaker 13: I was startled. What I'm allowed inside? Yes, of course
Speaker 13: I found this very odd, as I had never been
Speaker 13: inside before. From memory, the door seemed to always have
Speaker 13: been locked from inside the house, or at least it
Speaker 13: was always closed. The girls had to knock to get
Speaker 13: John's attention if they needed anything. I was nervous entering
Speaker 13: the house and immediately taken her back. At how neat
Speaker 13: it was. The tiled floor sparkled, everything was in its place,
Speaker 13: a polished statue, possibly of a black panther. Everything white
Speaker 13: and black, spotless, not a speck of dust. John sat
Speaker 13: on the leather couch two seats up from his new girlfriend,
Speaker 13: as I followed Crystal to her room. I could not
Speaker 13: remember seeing any toys, maybe a Teddy Bear on the bed,
Speaker 13: a large chest and cupboard. I was too scared to
Speaker 13: step on the carpet. It was by far too neat.
Speaker 13: I always tried to remain open, mostly for the sake
Speaker 13: of supporting Crystal. Surely the police would have found evidence
Speaker 13: if he had murdered Bronwin. But as time went on
Speaker 13: it was very clear the police work was incompetent, and
Speaker 13: we all knew something since it happened. Crystal was always
Speaker 13: in a difficult position and she didn't want to lose
Speaker 13: her sisters as well, particularly Lauren.
Speaker 11: You'd never been to the house at Illawong until we
Speaker 11: talked about it during the podcast in an earlier episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 2: Once I'd known the address, I went and had a
Speaker 2: a snake.
Speaker 5: To drive by.
Speaker 4: And you didn't have contact with Glenn Webster either until recently.
Speaker 5: Never ever really had any conversations or anything.
Speaker 4: Have you found him in terms of cooperation?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Great.
Speaker 2: He's been very open and very very helpful, very happy
Speaker 2: to contribute any way you can.
Speaker 4: Andy, We've just left Cronella's Street.
Speaker 5: Where's the beach straight behind us? Do you want to
Speaker 5: say it.
Speaker 4: Was Roman keen on the beach.
Speaker 2: Oh, she tacked the kids down.
Speaker 5: You remember that phoe of my wedding. This is the church, oh,
Speaker 5: where Michelle and myself got married.
Speaker 2: Then Gosford Streets in that photo in the photo with everyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a block there.
Speaker 2: It's when my son had his first unit and I
Speaker 2: did it all up, renovated and put himself a house
Speaker 2: out of Dannet from Southron right around the boat harbor.
Speaker 5: I think it's yea clam beach, God's country, mate.
Speaker 4: I reconcile the beach.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you that I know.
Speaker 2: But they're still struggling to get sure. And curb mc
Speaker 2: gutters up there. Can you notice all the curb mc
Speaker 2: gutters made.
Speaker 1: What beach is this?
Speaker 5: That's all one.
Speaker 2: Stretch of same that starts as South Cronella and then
Speaker 2: you have North Cronella.
Speaker 5: And the wall. We call that the wall because there's
Speaker 5: a big sea wall there.
Speaker 4: This is Alura.
Speaker 1: Glenn Webster's name came up on the phone display on
Speaker 1: the dashboard of Andy's car. Left Glenn just fifteen minutes earlier.
Speaker 3: Glenn Webstuff.
Speaker 14: Great, hey, mate, I just asked if they did have
Speaker 14: any records going back.
Speaker 15: To that time.
Speaker 8: I just thought, you know, you don't have any records.
Speaker 1: As we were driving Glenn back on the building site
Speaker 1: had telephoned one of the longtime concrete reps on the
Speaker 1: off chance there was still paperwork to show when exactly
Speaker 1: the concrete poor occurred at Illawong in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 5: Okay, so I wouldn't have any records of that far back. Yeah, okay, okay,
Speaker 5: thanks for trying, mate, thank you, thank you. God.
Speaker 1: That was good of him. Yeah, that's nice, And he
Speaker 1: proudly pointed out some of the local landmarks that he
Speaker 1: had built with his employer in Trek.
Speaker 5: This is one of my jobs years ago, a shitty
Speaker 5: little clubhouse.
Speaker 2: I've demoed that whole building across to here where it
Speaker 2: says club entry.
Speaker 5: Does that mean demolished?
Speaker 1: But mate, I just looked at let's crooked straight as
Speaker 1: to die in trick building.
Speaker 2: Mate, this weekend there'll be packed. You won't get a
Speaker 2: part hug. If it's warm, it'll be chockers.
Speaker 4: This is where you grew up.
Speaker 2: And yeah, coming down the crown, I got a surfing
Speaker 2: and kids are roll then new electric bogs. Mate, we
Speaker 2: have to do it hard bake round the pedal. Now
Speaker 2: you want to go past the takeaway You want to
Speaker 2: see Bron's little flat.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, but are you hungry?
Speaker 5: That's Oak Park there.
Speaker 2: That used to be an old takeaway shop and that
Speaker 2: was the flat, the flats on the back of the shopping.
Speaker 4: That's where Brown lived.
Speaker 2: That's where Brian, John and Lauren and Crystal live.
Speaker 5: That's the flat on the back of the shop, goes
Speaker 5: right across the back of the shop.
Speaker 16: There's single level places there. Ye, it looks really small.
Speaker 16: It's not very big at all, mate, No, did you
Speaker 16: see them there? That's where Lauren came home to from hospital.
Speaker 2: And she was a baby because he used that type
Speaker 2: from and used to have to do the bottles on
Speaker 2: the stove and everything. And so I finally got the
Speaker 2: shits for that after coming in sooner struggling away.
Speaker 5: So I bought her a microwave so she could make
Speaker 5: Laurence bottles.
Speaker 1: I remembered something that Andy and Michelle told me when
Speaker 1: we first started recording in their house at the start
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 17: He was so proud of himself that he'd let her
Speaker 17: have the car, which was a ship box of taxi
Speaker 17: that was worth probably four hundred dollars five hundred dollars
Speaker 17: back then, if John spent one thousand dollars on a
Speaker 17: vehicle that was over the top, he was very frugal.
Speaker 1: We looked from the street at the dilapidated extension to
Speaker 1: a shop, and his mind went to the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: when John and Bromin were in what looked like a
Speaker 1: blossoming relationship. Roman's family and friends, however, look back now
Speaker 1: and say John was too controlling from the start. Some
Speaker 1: say they worried that it would not end well.
Speaker 2: But it's a small flat, small little joined to be
Speaker 2: living in in it. That's where Jody first moved in
Speaker 2: with him.
Speaker 5: Jody had her own.
Speaker 2: Room, three little bedrooms in that joint.
Speaker 1: God, it doesn't look like it.
Speaker 2: Nod that used to be a takeaway shop in.
Speaker 5: The front of that really.
Speaker 1: When Andy was out of his shot at his house
Speaker 1: earlier that day, Michelle told me he had cried when
Speaker 1: he heard his system Melyssa's voice in episode eighteen. They
Speaker 1: haven't been in contact for twenty years.
Speaker 18: I think it's wonderful what Andrew has done. He has
Speaker 18: been relentless.
Speaker 19: I admire everything that he's done in his efforts to
Speaker 19: find our sister.
Speaker 1: So much of that episode must have been difficult for
Speaker 1: Andy to hear. It focused heavily on the police statement
Speaker 1: of his mother, Barbara and her mental health struggles. The
Speaker 1: episode featured Andy's youngest sister, Kim, talking about Barbara's life
Speaker 1: and Barbara's separation from her children, Bronwin and Andy for
Speaker 1: a decade.
Speaker 4: Do you think it might be easier to pretty connect
Speaker 4: with Melissa?
Speaker 2: Hopefully you may get some stage. I'd like to think
Speaker 2: that she opened up and possibly breach an egg. It'd
Speaker 2: be fantastic. She knows where I am.
Speaker 5: I'm going to say, spot where we last sat down
Speaker 5: and she was.
Speaker 2: On our back for anger and we were chatting away and.
Speaker 14: How long ago was that? Oh five, so almost twenty years.
Speaker 14: We don't need to do this, or we can do this.
Speaker 11: If you want to say anything about your father to
Speaker 11: defend his reputation, your call.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to give you the opportunity if you
Speaker 4: wanted to.
Speaker 5: It does just bug me that you know they're trying
Speaker 5: to or Kim's attempts to portray my.
Speaker 2: Father, you know, in the wrong light around what happened
Speaker 2: and how it unfolded. I don't think it's very fair
Speaker 2: at all that he portrayed in the manner that any
Speaker 2: locked Barb out of anywhere or anything like that happened,
Speaker 2: because that just wasn't the way it went down.
Speaker 5: It wasn't the way it happened.
Speaker 1: You've heard Kim honoring her mum, Barbara, your mom, Barbara.
Speaker 4: What do you say about Philip as a dad?
Speaker 5: Dad was.
Speaker 2: Always there, especially for Brin, you know, like Melissa says,
Speaker 2: you know, hearing her brought back a lot in that episode.
Speaker 2: But Dad was her rock, He was her go too,
Speaker 2: and he was always there for us. He was there
Speaker 2: for all of us, all for of us. He's a
Speaker 2: good man, and it's just a shame that Kim wants
Speaker 2: to try and portray him in some sort of bad light.
Speaker 2: She didn't really know the man, so I'm not sure
Speaker 2: what the mode if he's there. I don't understand she's
Speaker 2: defensive for a mother, but definitely what she's portrayed isn't
Speaker 2: the way the whole thing fell apart. You know, Dad
Speaker 2: was very upset. He was devastated that Bob got that
Speaker 2: ill and was that.
Speaker 5: Sick and couldn't teens to the children.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure it was a terribly, terribly hard decision to.
Speaker 5: Finally say, after.
Speaker 2: Months of separation and Mum trying to get health back
Speaker 2: and to get into some sort of normal shape, but
Speaker 2: a terribly hard situation to make the decision that we
Speaker 2: weren't going to keep on seeing Barb.
Speaker 5: I know from being a parent, and be a.
Speaker 2: Terrible decision to make that decision that your children weren't
Speaker 2: going to be involved with their mum. But from all
Speaker 2: knowledge and conversations that I've had with anyone about it,
Speaker 2: Dad only made that decision that we weren't going to
Speaker 2: go on and keep seeing Barb once she'd had the
Speaker 2: massive over days and wasn't any sort of state to.
Speaker 5: Be around us, I suppose.
Speaker 2: And then she obviously went overseas for that period of time,
Speaker 2: and I think it might have been up to four
Speaker 2: years before she returned stage Dad and met Jenny, who
Speaker 2: I sort of refer to mum because she's the person
Speaker 2: that sort of raised me. I knew nothing different until
Speaker 2: I was ten years of age or so.
Speaker 11: What was the catalyst for your father to contact Barbara
Speaker 11: when it was time and his view for you to
Speaker 11: know that you had a.
Speaker 4: Mother called Barbara. She was your biological mum.
Speaker 2: It was actually Barbara reaching out and talking to Dad
Speaker 2: and telling him that she wasn't some sort of state
Speaker 2: to be okay, that's from discussions I had had with Dad. Yeah,
Speaker 2: she'd breached out and sort of convinced Dad that she
Speaker 2: was well enough.
Speaker 20: About ten pm one evening in nineteen seventy five, I
Speaker 20: received a phone call at home from my ex husband Philip.
Speaker 20: He told me that my children wished to see me.
Speaker 20: I was thrilled because I had not I've seen them
Speaker 20: since nineteen sixty four. Kim was four years old at
Speaker 20: the time, and I've organized to fly both of us
Speaker 20: to Sydney and we booked into the Wentworth Hotel. Philip
Speaker 20: told me that the children could stay over the weekend
Speaker 20: and he would pay for the room alongside mine. We
Speaker 20: had a wonderful reunion and we've kept in constant contact
Speaker 20: ever since. I've been to Bronwin's first wedding, and Andrew's wedding,
Speaker 20: and all the grandchildren's christenings. Ever since. I go to
Speaker 20: Sydney and stay with Andrew and his wife Michelle on
Speaker 20: a regular basis.
Speaker 2: Kim was just about four years of age. I suppose
Speaker 2: she was reaching out. She would have thought it was
Speaker 2: nice for her children to meet Kim. I believe that
Speaker 2: was the catalyst for allowing us to see.
Speaker 11: It must have been hard pe to get your head out.
Speaker 5: You've suddenly got two months suddenly.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, that's rights. I tried to do my
Speaker 2: best to include Mom, to include Barb in things we did,
Speaker 2: always tried to have Barb involved in my life in
Speaker 2: some sort of way. I must admit there was never
Speaker 2: that true feeling of a sort of maternal bond, you know,
Speaker 2: like I'd never had that because all my formerty years
Speaker 2: had been you know, Mam had raised Sorry Jenny, but
Speaker 2: you know who I refer to as the lady. That's
Speaker 2: the lady that raised me. That's the person that sort
Speaker 2: of bestowed the morals and the way I am today.
Speaker 5: She's your mum, She's mom.
Speaker 4: How are you and Kim? Now?
Speaker 2: She contacted me after episode seventeen and we had a.
Speaker 5: Conversation, but I was just straight out asked her.
Speaker 2: I said, I'm not sure why you had the nerve
Speaker 2: to try and portray or basically say.
Speaker 5: Something that you knew was in fact and wasn't true.
Speaker 2: That I'd sent you up there on a fact finding mission.
Speaker 1: Here's a reminder of what Tim said in episode seventeen, and.
Speaker 5: Why did Andrew put me in that house?
Speaker 3: He put me in that house.
Speaker 12: He made me go up there so I could have
Speaker 12: eyes on Jonathan.
Speaker 5: So now I understand, and this has nothing to do
Speaker 5: with everything, but.
Speaker 19: I understand that he knew that Jonathan had done something,
Speaker 19: and he still set me up to live in that house.
Speaker 2: Why would you put that out there to hundreds of
Speaker 2: thousands of people that are listening to a podcast to
Speaker 2: know something that's not true. And our answer to me was, oh,
Speaker 2: that's just the trauma talking. I don't know why I
Speaker 2: said it, but it's the traue. We got into a
Speaker 2: bit of a tiff about so what you own the
Speaker 2: trauma on this whole thing, do you? You're the only
Speaker 2: one that's been traumatized by this. She'd been involved in
Speaker 2: it recently, but she was only your kid back then
Speaker 2: when she went up twenty when the whole thing unfolded.
Speaker 5: Didn't send her up there at all.
Speaker 2: We only found out, I think after the fact that
Speaker 2: when she was there, and I remember having a conversation,
Speaker 2: and I think it's once I knew she was there.
Speaker 5: I mentioned to her, said to her.
Speaker 2: That you need to be careful, but possibly you might
Speaker 2: actually find something out.
Speaker 5: I don't know, but you need to keep your wits
Speaker 5: about you.
Speaker 1: You previously told me that you found out very late
Speaker 1: that she was going there, that you didn't know about
Speaker 1: the plan.
Speaker 2: I didn't actually ask her to go to Andy Chad.
Speaker 2: I found out about it very very late. I remember
Speaker 2: saying to her, or maybe you could possibly find out something.
Speaker 5: Don't push the wrong button, don't go too far.
Speaker 11: And it was perhaps a couple of days, very soon
Speaker 11: before she went in that you heard about it.
Speaker 4: Does that seem right? Or do you reckon? You found
Speaker 4: out later than that?
Speaker 5: Oh, I think we actually found out later that.
Speaker 2: Throughout this process, I've tried to keep the moral high ground.
Speaker 2: You're not run around trying to improve any form of
Speaker 2: memory or anything like that with grandiose statements and fabricate
Speaker 2: anything for everyone with a bit of respect. So it
Speaker 2: is just frustrating when there's some people that are trying
Speaker 2: to drag you down and make accusations. Don't know why,
Speaker 2: that's up to them explain, but any it's hard on
Speaker 2: shell people that want to hide behind you. People just
Speaker 2: say some pretty scathing things that they don't know anything
Speaker 2: really about it, so they don't know the.
Speaker 5: Depths that we've gone to to get as far as
Speaker 5: we have. There's a lot of good people were found,
Speaker 5: young Maddie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we won't sack.
Speaker 5: No, I'm not sucking. And the ship. These people that
Speaker 5: have been helping us have been fantastic.
Speaker 1: Here's a small sample of voices of some of the
Speaker 1: people who have helped me and this podcast investigation.
Speaker 4: And we're squeaking breaks.
Speaker 3: And so that's why I was sitting here.
Speaker 4: I thought, I'll give your wrongs.
Speaker 5: Car.
Speaker 4: It's like I heard it before I saw it.
Speaker 3: So I'm sitting on my un here two bolls there.
Speaker 3: I'm actually watching War the Roses.
Speaker 19: I was listening to podcasts and you said, if there's
Speaker 19: anything that you should be investigating or or any ideas,
Speaker 19: email me, and I thought, right, that's all I need.
Speaker 5: So I've got online found your email address.
Speaker 19: My friend lived in that street down the road, a
Speaker 19: little bit double story place up high.
Speaker 21: And I thought we would it be going late at
Speaker 21: night with something that looked like I just called it
Speaker 21: a mummy. And I've said this to my son so
Speaker 21: many times about this, and I thought, well, even if
Speaker 21: he was taking out belongings, you wouldn't make.
Speaker 5: It look like a body.
Speaker 21: I know that he had something in that car that
Speaker 21: resembled a body, just a body shape in the back seat.
Speaker 22: She was a friend and a good friend at the time.
Speaker 22: We'd still be friends today, I know we would. I
Speaker 22: did feel so sorry for her though, she was gone
Speaker 22: through so much heartache with him, which is why I
Speaker 22: keptn't trying to encourage her to go.
Speaker 18: Circumstance.
Speaker 23: I believe it's extremely likely that foul play occurred in
Speaker 23: the house that night. John was obviously in a bit
Speaker 23: of a panic that his wife, Rollin had moved back
Speaker 23: into the home.
Speaker 4: Today's answered a lot about how the lake works. It's
Speaker 4: slowly giving out some of their secrets.
Speaker 7: That water is bloody cold, even when you're only standing
Speaker 7: in it up to your knees.
Speaker 11: Then I'm just trying to work out the most efficient
Speaker 11: and fail safe way to actually identify the objects.
Speaker 4: I'll drag it along the bottom.
Speaker 24: I'm contacting you to offer my assistance with legal research
Speaker 24: analysis for Bronman. I love true crime and working to
Speaker 24: solve a problem or mystery. I also find undertaking work
Speaker 24: that is in the public interest, very rewarding.
Speaker 4: I've got time, Hadley.
Speaker 2: Everybody I mentioned to what I'm doing, they picked there
Speaker 2: is up, there are right behind it.
Speaker 1: I easily easily just climbed in and climbed out.
Speaker 4: I had a lot of dreaming there.
Speaker 1: You sound very definite about your memory of the availability
Speaker 1: of local call data.
Speaker 18: That's one thing I'm one hundred percent sure about because
Speaker 18: I used to do that with my job all the time.
Speaker 1: Multi talented Maddie, Yep.
Speaker 25: He's just a guy I saw on the front page
Speaker 25: of the newspaper for the first time four months ago
Speaker 25: who happened to get my mother pregnant.
Speaker 5: That's all he is to me. He'll never be my dad.
Speaker 25: He'll never be my father, will never be mates. We'll
Speaker 25: never sit down and have a copper together. I will
Speaker 25: never break bread with him, purely because my grandmother would
Speaker 25: be disgusted in.
Speaker 1: Me if I did. We pulled up in a side
Speaker 1: street outside a small business. The name painted on the
Speaker 1: glass was immediately familiar.
Speaker 5: It's the salon there.
Speaker 1: The hair salon intercuts where John's daughter Jody worked at
Speaker 1: the time of Bromwin's disappearance. There are phone records from
Speaker 1: the bill of Bromwin's rented flat at Byron Street showing
Speaker 1: the calls she had made to Jody weeks earlier, but
Speaker 1: in a subsequent telephone call they had a row. Jody
Speaker 1: discovered that Bromwin had moved back into the house on
Speaker 1: Sandstone Crescent. Soon after Bromwin disappeared, someone purporting to be
Speaker 1: her telephone the salon intercuts. The female caller asked that
Speaker 1: her message be passed on to Jody, who was on
Speaker 1: a day off. It was a message that Bromwin called,
Speaker 1: and this person purporting to be Bromlin said that she
Speaker 1: had gone and that she was never coming back. When
Speaker 1: Andy heard about it from Jody and John, he headed
Speaker 1: straight down there.
Speaker 2: I got here on that night and I parked with
Speaker 2: that girl sitting in that white car.
Speaker 5: I watched and waited for the last.
Speaker 2: Client to walk out of that shop, and then I
Speaker 2: walked over there, knocked on the door, introduced myself, told
Speaker 2: Tanya Robinson who I was, and asked her about the
Speaker 2: phone call. I spoke to her and I said, John
Speaker 2: and Jody, you told me that there was a phone
Speaker 2: call to the salon, And she says to me, yes,
Speaker 2: that's correct. There was a phone call around lunchtime, well
Speaker 2: just after lunch, and it was a female voice. I
Speaker 2: can't one hundred percent tell you whether it was Bromwin,
Speaker 2: but it was a female voice saying and stating that
Speaker 2: I'm in Queensland and tell.
Speaker 5: Jody I'm not coming back.
Speaker 2: So I left with that information, went back home Michelle
Speaker 2: and told her what I'd found out, and she took
Speaker 2: haend notes and write anything down.
Speaker 5: But all this time it's still called exactly the same salent.
Speaker 1: In early July, as we were putting together Episode ten,
Speaker 1: and his hopes of a discovery were raised at Lake
Speaker 1: Ainsworth at Lennox Head. With the help of volunteers led
Speaker 1: by Ashley McDonald, an expert scuba diver and retired captain
Speaker 1: in the Royal Australian Navy, and Chris Darcy, a qualified
Speaker 1: searcher and kadava dog handler, we scanned the lake bed
Speaker 1: for clues.
Speaker 2: I should have always thought she's up there, that she
Speaker 2: was dumped up in the lake or whatever.
Speaker 5: You know, That's what I'd always sort of thought.
Speaker 2: But knowing our suspicions and how I had said to you,
Speaker 2: the other possibility is this place because you came forward
Speaker 2: and told me about the information you received. Now knowing
Speaker 2: what Glenn has said, this is the easier option. The
Speaker 2: garash lab would have been thigger and possibly could have
Speaker 2: been three layers of mesh, so it would have been
Speaker 2: more work to lift up the reinforcement. You possibly would.
Speaker 5: Have had a top and bottom layer a mesh.
Speaker 2: The eastern back corner of the porch was where it
Speaker 2: was back filled. That's easier because that's just pedestrian traffic,
Speaker 2: no vehicle traffic. It would have only been one hundred
Speaker 2: mili concrete or one twenty max and one layer of mesh.
Speaker 5: That's all much required structurally.
Speaker 4: If that's where she is.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to visualize it is she entombed in concrete.
Speaker 2: No should be under concrete in dirt, so.
Speaker 3: The dirt goes first.
Speaker 9: John would have dug into the dirt to put her
Speaker 9: in and then covered her with dirt, and then she
Speaker 9: would have been then covered with that layer of plus
Speaker 9: sick and then covered with the mesh, and then the concrete.
Speaker 4: Animal activity wouldn't bother.
Speaker 2: It locked in because it would have complete brickwork all
Speaker 2: the way around it. With the slab sitting on the
Speaker 2: brickwork as a capping as a complete lead.
Speaker 4: If she was.
Speaker 2: There, she sealed a lie in the back corner of
Speaker 2: a perfectly sell cavity of brickwork with a concrete.
Speaker 3: Lead, she'll still decompose, but there's no way.
Speaker 9: Any animals can to move her bones and things like that.
Speaker 4: Would there be any external smell?
Speaker 5: No, not at all.
Speaker 1: How would you go about testing that side to see
Speaker 1: if there's anything there?
Speaker 4: Wouldn't that be a difficult process.
Speaker 2: You could nearly just drill a hole through the ground,
Speaker 2: gap through the slab, and down into the ground to disturb.
Speaker 2: So you can drill a series of holes and get
Speaker 2: a checked by a dog. The place is unharmed. All
Speaker 2: you've got to do is just regrout the hole and
Speaker 2: fill it up. If it's a smaller type tile, then
Speaker 2: you might have to break some tiles to be able
Speaker 2: to draw lyles through it.
Speaker 5: That would mean you'd have a little bit of remediation
Speaker 5: to do. It's a relatively easy search to happen.
Speaker 16: You will note.
Speaker 9: Pretty quickly if she's not there, If the dogs don't
Speaker 9: sense anything, she's not there because she kind of moved.
Speaker 5: Is there a scan that can be used?
Speaker 1: Andy telephone to contact in the building industry as we
Speaker 1: drove west towards Illawong. The guy is a concrete scanning
Speaker 1: specialist with whom Andy has worked on sides across the shire.
Speaker 5: Andy, you mane cool, my good. Just got a quick question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, does any of your equipment through say a tile
Speaker 2: one hundred or one hundred and twenty mel slab? What would
Speaker 2: that detect underneath the slab? If there was something in
Speaker 2: the ground with any of your gear, would it pick
Speaker 2: up bones?
Speaker 4: Bones?
Speaker 5: Yeah? The trouble is they might be deep.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't be any more than four hundred maybe four hundred below.
Speaker 5: So you found something of you. We're trying to.
Speaker 2: Work out if there was a body lying under the slab,
Speaker 2: would it show up?
Speaker 26: If what you're asking me is what I think you're
Speaker 26: asking me, You're really looking for a disturbance in the
Speaker 26: ground where there's been something dug and you're not going
Speaker 26: to see bones. You're really looking for a disturbance in
Speaker 26: the ground, changes in what's happening below the slab.
Speaker 5: I guess this thing it.
Speaker 2: Was about six hundred millifil we'd only be looking into
Speaker 2: the six hundred because we know it wouldn't be any
Speaker 2: deeper than that because the ground had been fairly hard
Speaker 2: and it'd be too hard.
Speaker 26: A job just sounds possible in principle. Yes, where us
Speaker 26: is this job?
Speaker 5: Killow? Thank you?
Speaker 1: The call ended, and I wondered what Andy's friend with
Speaker 1: the concrete scanning equipment and expertise was thinking. His mind
Speaker 1: must have been racing with possibilities.
Speaker 2: If she was ever put there, then the ground will
Speaker 2: show up to be very loose because she's decomposed. It'd
Speaker 2: be a dark shadow underneath the slab because the ground
Speaker 2: is subsided away from hard up under the concrete and
Speaker 2: the plastic. As she decomposed, the sand and the dirt
Speaker 2: would seek down and there'd be a void space underneath
Speaker 2: the slab.
Speaker 5: I've had him do jobs for me.
Speaker 2: The slab will show up and you'll see the reinforcement.
Speaker 5: They can tell you exactly how deep it is.
Speaker 2: If the ground had stuck away from that slab and
Speaker 2: there's nothing underneath the slab, the radar goes dark in color.
Speaker 9: I remember researching it, and as you recall that in
Speaker 9: some cases it wasn't successful. When went to dig there
Speaker 9: were no roomains, so they thought there.
Speaker 4: Were It's quite a drive that's the word one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I noticed how we crossed the bridge.
Speaker 2: We always say that if we haven't needed to, we
Speaker 2: can book dates on those bridges.
Speaker 5: Keep the riff raff out.
Speaker 4: I thought the riff raff was in.
Speaker 5: No, it's all. That's all on the fat side, bak.
Speaker 2: This wasn't originally part of the show until I have
Speaker 2: started opening up.
Speaker 1: And he turned into the street. He slowed to a
Speaker 1: crawl outside a double story brick house.
Speaker 5: So see the veranda. It's the garage on ground.
Speaker 2: There's the front door with the bay window, and then
Speaker 2: that front area of the slab over there, because the
Speaker 2: ground starts sloping away on that far.
Speaker 15: Side, looks like a neat and tidy house. Yeah, it's aged. Well,
Speaker 15: so just slow down here on the.
Speaker 5: Reflat front window.
Speaker 2: In that back corner in front of that window is
Speaker 2: where he's mentioning that he possibly thinks's that point.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was backfields.
Speaker 4: Just go forward and do it too, and he.
Speaker 11: As you look at it again, Now, what's your view
Speaker 11: about the logistics and the feasibility the plausibility of what
Speaker 11: we're talking about.
Speaker 2: Like Glenn was saying, he only came in the morning
Speaker 2: and in the afternoon he'd come, he'd set things up,
Speaker 2: so he'd probably laid bricks out, make sure there's sand,
Speaker 2: make sure there was cement, make sure everything was there,
Speaker 2: and then John would just come and work away on
Speaker 2: that house on his own. So John could have very
Speaker 2: easily backed the car up over there. That tree wouldn't
Speaker 2: have been there. You would have backed the car up
Speaker 2: over there, disturbed the back of that porch or whatever.
Speaker 2: Hardly anyone would have been around, and then you would
Speaker 2: have just taken around of the boot, rolled straight across
Speaker 2: the ground there under the back of that porch.
Speaker 5: They've added soil into.
Speaker 2: That back area to level it, to level it and
Speaker 2: then pull the slab on top. So it's backfield okay,
Speaker 2: in that back east corner, got it all right?
Speaker 5: See the land falls away.
Speaker 16: Yeah.
Speaker 1: At the start of the day I spoke to Andy
Speaker 1: and Maddie about possibly trying to explain things to the owners,
Speaker 1: about trying to talk to them about John and Bromwyn
Speaker 1: and events of three decades ago and how those events
Speaker 1: are being brought into sharp focus by a suspected murder
Speaker 1: and a podcast investigation which is now circling their beautiful
Speaker 1: family home in the suburban street near two rivers and
Speaker 1: parks and schools.
Speaker 9: Can you imagine if someone came up to your door
Speaker 9: and Tony, this may be a person underneath your approach
Speaker 9: geor which, Yes, I don't know if i'd like to
Speaker 9: hear that.
Speaker 5: How would you even approach that?
Speaker 4: I just feel like I'd like to take a bit
Speaker 4: more time. I don't think we should approach today.
Speaker 1: So maybe this episode is going to be the last
Speaker 1: one of this season two. Yeah, there'll be a whole
Speaker 1: lot more coming, but I feel like with the amount
Speaker 1: of material that we've developed and so.
Speaker 4: Much more that is still to come, we're just.
Speaker 11: Going to have to take some time and a break
Speaker 11: and come back with the third season of this and
Speaker 11: there could be another eight, ten or more episodes earlier
Speaker 11: than New Year.
Speaker 2: Who would have thought that we'd have to do what
Speaker 2: nineteen episodes and still hear nothing from the police about
Speaker 2: getting act different, mobilizing and actually doing something.
Speaker 11: You'd had no further word from anybody. Did you listen
Speaker 11: to that episode of The Front?
Speaker 25: Yes?
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 18: From the Australian Here's what's on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 18: It's Tuesday, November five, What if anything is going on
Speaker 18: with the New South Wales Police's investigation into missing woman
Speaker 18: Bromwin Winfield. This is Andy Reid, whose sister Bromwyn Winfield
Speaker 18: vanished from her Lennox Head home more than thirty years ago.
Speaker 5: I just can't believe that they can be so slow
Speaker 5: on this matter.
Speaker 18: He's venting his frustrations to The Australian's National Chief correspondent
Speaker 18: Headley Thomas about the conduct of New South Wales Police.
Speaker 18: Our reporter Alexei Dimitriadi hit up Commissioner Karen Webb and
Speaker 18: Homicide Commander Danny Doherty at a press conference in recent days.
Speaker 5: In terms of for.
Speaker 27: That matter that's on investigation as the Carol avestigation and
Speaker 27: it's world documented. There's a podcast in Israel and following
Speaker 27: that story. But in terms of the un termine have
Speaker 27: an investigation is current when that's oncoming.
Speaker 18: Heally, I've heard senior police saying over the years, very frankly,
Speaker 18: that the conviction of Chris Dawson would not have happened
Speaker 18: without the teacher's pet. Do you think there are remnants
Speaker 18: of a bit of a cultural cringe or a bit
Speaker 18: of humiliation in the police that they were shown up
Speaker 18: in that instance and that they don't really want this
Speaker 18: to be true. They don't really want it to be
Speaker 18: the case that there is more to be done here
Speaker 18: and that a journalist is doing it.
Speaker 1: It's possible. I think there's also a high degree of
Speaker 1: caution because these cases can inevitably end up before a judge,
Speaker 1: and in the Teacher's Pet case, parts of my work
Speaker 1: were criticized by a senior judge and parts of the
Speaker 1: police response with the Teacher's Pet podcast were also criticized
Speaker 1: by a judge. So there may be a bit of
Speaker 1: an overcorrection by a new South Wales Police currently as
Speaker 1: a result to that.
Speaker 5: But I think that they've just gone too far.
Speaker 1: They've gone from being really cooperative and in a very
Speaker 1: constructive way in the Teacher's Pet and owning the issue
Speaker 1: in the public arena, to looking like they're trying to
Speaker 1: curl up and be the smallest possible target, almost to
Speaker 1: the point of appearing to be disinterested in Bromin's case.
Speaker 4: And if you're the family.
Speaker 1: Of a woman who has been missing thirty one years,
Speaker 1: a woman who was separating from her husband when she
Speaker 1: suddenly disappeared from their two daughters, their home, all of
Speaker 1: her possessions, family and friends. You're looking at these two
Speaker 1: cases and saying, well, is Bromwin's life to the New
Speaker 1: South Wales Police worth less than Lin's.
Speaker 5: It's very frustrating that I haven't wanted to come forward.
Speaker 2: I've made the first representation to Parliament. I was a
Speaker 2: parliament House last week. Have it a meeting with Mark Speakman,
Speaker 2: my local member who's actually the.
Speaker 5: Ship Wales opposition leader as well.
Speaker 2: He said he's more than happy to make representations on
Speaker 2: my behalf to the police Minister, to Attorney General, to
Speaker 2: the commissioner.
Speaker 5: With the cat amongst the pigeons, so to speak.
Speaker 4: I don't know what's taken him so long.
Speaker 5: He's a busy fella.
Speaker 2: We know there's further things that need investigating.
Speaker 5: We've got to do it. That's what we've got to do.
Speaker 2: Something somewhere along the line's going to get the police
Speaker 2: into action. Doady gets up there and makes broad ranging statement.
Speaker 1: And he is referring to a media conference at which
Speaker 1: the police Commissioner said nothing, and the most senior homicide
Speaker 1: detective in New South Wales, Danny Doherty, said.
Speaker 27: He probably read about an Australia or listener on the podcast. However,
Speaker 27: we can't comment on WHPE investigations, current discussions.
Speaker 2: Live investigation happening, and they haven't spoken to everyone like
Speaker 2: investigation happening.
Speaker 4: I was thinking, also, any about the impact on you
Speaker 4: and your family. You've become public property in this investigation.
Speaker 4: Has it been worth it for you?
Speaker 5: It takes its tile, I must say.
Speaker 2: Went to the doctors the other day and he made
Speaker 2: me stay there and do a bloody, a zero or
Speaker 2: five minute and a ten minute blood pressure test because
Speaker 2: it's not happening with blood pressure. And I had to
Speaker 2: tell him and I confide in doing what I've been
Speaker 2: going for and he just went shit. He said, Any,
Speaker 2: I've been treating you since two thousand and eight. He
Speaker 2: couldn't believe. He said, trist you've boomed through a lot
Speaker 2: mate and he fall over in Italy and having to
Speaker 2: get flown home and spinal surgery and crushing your foot
Speaker 2: and breaking your tailbone, and said christ stage four canc
Speaker 2: He said, you put through everything.
Speaker 5: But I said, I think we're cann handle a bit
Speaker 5: of blood pressure.
Speaker 2: Will stay in trouble that for you and take a
Speaker 2: bucket full of brown snakes to get rid of me.
Speaker 5: May I got to see this through.
Speaker 2: We just check plowing on known't we? I suppose that's
Speaker 2: all we can do. Keep pushing for justice for Braun.
Speaker 1: Bronwyn is written and investigated by me Headley Thomas as
Speaker 1: a podcast production for The Australian. If anyone has information
Speaker 1: which may help solve this cold case, please contact me
Speaker 1: confidentially by emailing Bronwin at the Australian dot com dot au.
Speaker 1: You can read more about this case and see a
Speaker 1: range of photographs and other artwork at the website Bronwyn
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. Our subscribers and registered users here episodes first.
Speaker 1: The production and editorial team for bromwin includes Claire Harvey,
Speaker 1: Kristin Amiet, Joshua Burton, Bridget, Ryan Bianca, far Marcus, Katie Burns,
Speaker 1: Liam Mendez, Sean Callen, Matthew Condon and David Murray. Audio
Speaker 1: production for this podcast series is by Wasabi Audio and
Speaker 1: original theme music by Slade Gibson. We have been assisted
Speaker 1: by Madison Walsh, a relation of bromin Winfield. We can
Speaker 1: only do this kind of journalism with the support of
Speaker 1: our subscribers and our major sponsors like Harvey Norman. For
Speaker 1: all of our exclusive stories, videos, maps, timelines, and documents
Speaker 1: about this podcast and other podcasts including The Teacher's Pet,
Speaker 1: The Teachers Trial, The Teacher's Accuser, Shandy's Story, Shandy's Legacy,
Speaker 1: and The Night Driver. Go to the Australian dot com
Speaker 1: dot au and subscribe