Speaker 1: Listeners are advised that this podcast series Bromwin contains coarse
Speaker 1: language and adult themes. This podcast series is brought to
Speaker 1: you by me Headley Thomas and The Australian. The tone
Speaker 1: in the male caller's voice was intimidating. The brief voicemail
Speaker 1: he left was unusually abrupt. Kathy Hardy, a woman in
Speaker 1: her sixties, heard it one day in October twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two on her mobile phone. At the time, Kathy and
Speaker 1: her husband Les, living in regional Victoria, had been wondering
Speaker 1: about her cousin, Beverly Brooker. They had heard nothing since
Speaker 1: Bev's birthday in March twenty twenty two, no texting or
Speaker 1: calls for seven months from Kathy's lifelong friend Bev, living
Speaker 1: just down the road from her handyman builder John Winfield.
Speaker 2: I've got a mysterious message on my phone. Please do
Speaker 2: not ring this number. BEV is no longer available on
Speaker 2: this number.
Speaker 3: Have nothing more to do with it.
Speaker 2: And it was quite gruff, and it was abrupt, and
Speaker 2: there was no introduction to the speaker or anything. We
Speaker 2: dismissed it and left it. It was a bit menacing
Speaker 2: almost to me. I felt it was a bit of
Speaker 2: a warning.
Speaker 3: Don't try and get in contact with this.
Speaker 1: As I understand it, Bev's phone was used to try
Speaker 1: to telephone you, but you didn't pick up, and the
Speaker 1: caller using Bev's phone left of voicemail, which you've described.
Speaker 2: That's correct, and the call was very brief. It was
Speaker 2: less than ten seconds. We mostly spoke by text anyway,
Speaker 2: So yes, it was out of the blue.
Speaker 1: And as best you can, Kathy, can you just say
Speaker 1: what the caller said.
Speaker 2: It was like, do not ring this number. This number
Speaker 2: is no longer available. Bev is not contactable on this number.
Speaker 2: It didn't say she was dead. It just warned me
Speaker 2: off using the number. There was no warmth in the voice.
Speaker 2: It was quite almost aggressive. Made me think twice, who
Speaker 2: is this?
Speaker 3: They didn't say who they were.
Speaker 1: Within hours of the release of the previous episode called
Speaker 1: Suburban Gothic and the accompanying newspaper articles about John Winfield's
Speaker 1: extraordinary multimillion dollar windfall after the death of Bev brain cancer,
Speaker 1: on September fifteen, twenty twenty two, I heard for the
Speaker 1: first time from Bev's cousin Kathy Hardy. Before Bev became
Speaker 1: terminally ill, she had left everything in her estate to Kathy,
Speaker 1: but Kathy didn't know this until just the other day,
Speaker 1: and shortly before this episode was released, we recorded this interview.
Speaker 2: I had no idea until I read the paper on Friday.
Speaker 1: This is the article in the Australian based on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Correct your reaction.
Speaker 3: Oh, I was GOB's mate. I really was speechless. I
Speaker 3: had no idea.
Speaker 1: In the previous episode, you'll recall that Jeff Outerbridge from
Speaker 1: the town of Balina, spoke of his sister Beverly Brooker
Speaker 1: and her ties with John Winfield. John Winfield took total
Speaker 1: charge of the funeral and cremation arrangements. John was the
Speaker 1: executor and trustee of Bev's will, and he excluded most
Speaker 1: of Bev's family and friends from what felt like a
Speaker 1: secretive and unusually low key service. According to Jeff, he
Speaker 1: said that John would claim this was what Bev really wanted.
Speaker 1: She made a significant change to her will six months
Speaker 1: before she succumbed to misothelioma. The cancer had spread from
Speaker 1: her lungs to her brain. Treatment options by then were palliative.
Speaker 1: With the change to her will, Bev left almost everything
Speaker 1: in her estate to John Winfield. John had not featured
Speaker 1: in the previous version of her will. The two introverts
Speaker 1: and near neighbors. Bev and John first became friends after
Speaker 1: he offered to do handyman work at her ocean facing
Speaker 1: house near Lennox Head, and he was helping to organize
Speaker 1: the care for her when she was very ill. Not
Speaker 1: long before she died, Bev's solicitor told Jeff Outterbridge of
Speaker 1: the purported role of John Winfield in Bev's life, but
Speaker 1: Jeff is still incredulous about it.
Speaker 4: And the solicitor said to me, there's a name on
Speaker 4: this paperwork that you won't recognize, and it is Bev's partner.
Speaker 4: And I looked at him with a funny face and went,
Speaker 4: I don't think so, because Bev doesn't have a partner.
Speaker 4: I thought, this blake doesn't know what he's talking about.
Speaker 1: The story of John Ann Bromwin is stranger than fiction.
Speaker 1: The story of John and Bev is similarly remarkable. This
Speaker 1: is part two of the story of how Bev's wealth
Speaker 1: fell almost entirely into the hands of the executor of
Speaker 1: her estate, her handyman John, while the only other beneficiary,
Speaker 1: Bev's cousin Kathy, was completely oblivious for more than two
Speaker 1: years to the fact that Bev had even died. It
Speaker 1: looks like a textbook study of maladministration of an estate
Speaker 1: by an executor, John, who clearly put his financial interests first.
Speaker 1: He appears to have deliberately kept Bev's cousin Kathy in
Speaker 1: the dark about the fact of Bev's death and of
Speaker 1: Kathy's rights and entitlements. It raises serious questions about John's
Speaker 1: influence on Bev when she was dying of brain cancer
Speaker 1: and when she changed her will six months before her passing.
Speaker 1: Bev's original will in twenty eleven left everything to her
Speaker 1: cousin Kathy Hardy. Bev's new will left almost everything to John,
Speaker 1: and the changes that Bev made to her will occurred
Speaker 1: at a time when Bev was behaving very strangely as
Speaker 1: the tumor in her brain was quite possibly affecting her cognition.
Speaker 1: A Winfield family friend, John Heaton, has asked on the
Speaker 1: Facebook discussion group for the Bromwin podcast series, what does
Speaker 1: any of this have to do with an investigation into
Speaker 1: what happened to Broman? The answer is, it quite possibly
Speaker 1: has a lot to do with Bromwin. In my view,
Speaker 1: and we are not suggesting for a moment that Bev
Speaker 1: met with foul play. But while evidence of the handling
Speaker 1: of Bev and her assets by John is not directly
Speaker 1: relevant to Brohman's disappearance, it goes to questions of character
Speaker 1: and an important legal concept which criminal defense lawyers and
Speaker 1: prosecutors call evidence of a tendency that turns on whether
Speaker 1: a person such as an accused, acts in a particular
Speaker 1: way in different situations, such as with assets, money, property.
Speaker 1: You could not make up the twists and turns in
Speaker 1: this case. For reasons you are about to hear and
Speaker 1: which I was not expecting. We are going to spend
Speaker 1: more time on Bev Handyman, John cousin Kathy, and Bev's
Speaker 1: two brothers in Barna, Jeff and Paul, before we start
Speaker 1: the string of episodes which will reconstruct the two thousand
Speaker 1: and two inquest into the presumed death in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: three of Bromwin Joey Winfield. Now let's go back to
Speaker 1: October twenty twenty two. At that time, Kathy was perplexed
Speaker 1: about having been warned off contacting Bev on her mobile phone.
Speaker 1: She didn't have contact details for Bev's brothers Jeff and Paul.
Speaker 2: Most of the communication miss th ree Bev, so when
Speaker 2: we were coming up, she'd let them know we knew
Speaker 2: about them and what they were up to.
Speaker 3: Three Beev.
Speaker 1: But Bev's silence was troubling.
Speaker 2: There were no no Christmas messages, no Birthday messages, and
Speaker 2: we started to think something's not quite right.
Speaker 3: But we couldn't find a death notice. We couldn't find anything, so.
Speaker 2: We were just sort of at a loss to know
Speaker 2: what to do next, and we did lots of searches,
Speaker 2: and so it sort of left us in a quandary
Speaker 2: and we just sort of.
Speaker 3: Sat on it. Really, it was not very satisfactory.
Speaker 2: We did, or we thought we could do, to try
Speaker 2: and find her, but to no avail. It was one
Speaker 2: of those friendships where it was intermittent, but we could
Speaker 2: take up from where we left off. We had a
Speaker 2: lot in common in our parentage and she was my
Speaker 2: link to the rest of the family. My brother and
Speaker 2: I were brought up in Sydney and most of the
Speaker 2: cousins were on the north coast of New South Wales,
Speaker 2: and she was that link to let me know who
Speaker 2: was doing what and how things were going. Beverly's got
Speaker 2: my mother's name a middle name, so there was their
Speaker 2: closeness there, and I was grateful to have their friendship,
Speaker 2: and we always made sure that when we went up
Speaker 2: that way that we called in and visited.
Speaker 1: Now the dates are important. Bev had been dead for
Speaker 1: about a month when her phone was used by a
Speaker 1: mail with a gruff voice to leave that message on
Speaker 1: Kathy's phone. John Winfield had control of Bev's mobile phone.
Speaker 1: Two years later, in October twenty twenty four, Kathy's mobile
Speaker 1: phone rang.
Speaker 2: Basically, I got a phone call who was late October,
Speaker 2: so just last year, quite a gap.
Speaker 1: Kathy didn't recognize the number, so it went to voicemail.
Speaker 2: That was an office girl in a solicitor's office in
Speaker 2: Ballana telling me that I was a beneficiary of a
Speaker 2: will and they'd like me to contact them. They wanted
Speaker 2: my bb details and a mailing address. They only had
Speaker 2: my phone number that I didn't know how much at
Speaker 2: that point. They just said, you've been the beneficiary of
Speaker 2: some money. And I listened back to the voicemail and
Speaker 2: that was my first time that I actually got clarification
Speaker 2: that she'd actually died.
Speaker 3: They didn't say when.
Speaker 1: Kathy telephoned and spoke to someone at the law firm
Speaker 1: in Ballina.
Speaker 3: We asked for a copy of the will as well.
Speaker 2: She sent all that through and that was a huge
Speaker 2: shock to me, absolute shock.
Speaker 3: In fact, I burst into tears.
Speaker 2: I was really upset because that's the first time I
Speaker 2: really had clarification that she was dead and that she
Speaker 2: thought enough of me to give me that much money.
Speaker 3: I was blown away.
Speaker 1: By late October twenty twenty four, the Bromwin podcast series
Speaker 1: was nearing the end of season two. My investigation had
Speaker 1: been gaining traction for five and a half months since
Speaker 1: the first episode was released in May twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: and folk in lennox Head were talking furtively about John
Speaker 1: and the two deceased women in his life, Bromwin and Bev.
Speaker 1: In Victoria, Kathy's husband, Les Hardy, was shocked for another reason.
Speaker 1: He could see that John Winfield was named in Bev's
Speaker 1: will as almost sole beneficiary as well as the executor
Speaker 1: of her estate. Les Hardy is a subscriber to The Australian.
Speaker 1: He and Kathy had been reading about a blow called
Speaker 1: John Winfield and his missing wife since May twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 5: When I got the will, I said, OK, this company right,
Speaker 5: can it this bloke here?
Speaker 1: Kathy wanted to know more about her cousin and friend Bev.
Speaker 2: I had so many questions. I wanted to know when
Speaker 2: she did. I didn't know when she died. I wanted
Speaker 2: to know what she died of. I wanted to know
Speaker 2: where she was buried. And so a few days later
Speaker 2: I rang back the solicitors again and I asked to
Speaker 2: speak to the solicitor who.
Speaker 3: Made the will.
Speaker 2: I asked him what she died of and he told me,
Speaker 2: and I asked when she died and.
Speaker 3: He told me that.
Speaker 2: I asked, so, this John Winfield person, is he the
Speaker 2: person that's in the paper?
Speaker 3: And he said, yes, he is.
Speaker 1: We had no idea. Why did you ask about John Winfield?
Speaker 3: Well, I was curious.
Speaker 2: I get the weekend paper and we've been reading about
Speaker 2: this situation with John Winfield. And we were interested because
Speaker 2: it was on the north coast of New South Wales.
Speaker 2: It was a lanic said skinner's head, and because I
Speaker 2: knew they've lived there, my ears pricked up.
Speaker 3: I was interested in it.
Speaker 2: I thought, well, surely there's not two John Winfield's in
Speaker 2: the town. And then I said, so, what was the relationship?
Speaker 3: And he said they were neighbors as far as he knew.
Speaker 3: They went in a relationship, but they were close.
Speaker 2: I was a bit concerned because who is this fellow
Speaker 2: who were few suspicious things about what had happened in
Speaker 2: his past, And I wondered what made Bev connect with
Speaker 2: this person in the first place. And I was concerned
Speaker 2: for the boys, my cousins.
Speaker 1: We are going to come back to Kathy and Les
Speaker 1: Hardy a little later.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, I just can't believe it. Why don't
Speaker 6: you find this out?
Speaker 1: Bromwin's cousin and good friend, Megan Reid, was done by
Speaker 1: the disclosures about Beverly Brooker. John's conduct in excluding Beb's
Speaker 1: friends and relations from her funeral service in Balina in
Speaker 1: late twenty twenty two, has called to stir and the
Speaker 1: revelations about Bev's will and the multi million dollar estate
Speaker 1: which went almost entirely to John Winfield, have fired people up.
Speaker 6: Keeping the family away that is really calculated.
Speaker 1: It is just so suspicious, especially when she had brain cancer.
Speaker 1: The alternative scenario is that he really cared for her.
Speaker 6: And sorry, I know him. I don't think he's capable.
Speaker 1: The family is deeply suspicious that the funeral service was
Speaker 1: conducted in such a low key way with just really
Speaker 1: nobody who knew Bev. There, Like, was that really Bev's
Speaker 1: will and wish? Or was that John's wish?
Speaker 6: They could have contested that will. Definitely contested it on
Speaker 6: the ground that she had brain cancer. What strikes me
Speaker 6: as even more suspicious of this notebook that is unusual.
Speaker 1: John and Bev were not living together. Lawyers and experts
Speaker 1: in financial planning have suggested to me that the diary
Speaker 1: entries in relation to Bev's illness are integral parts of
Speaker 1: John's evidence of his conduct in the event of the
Speaker 1: will being disputed. The diary is John's insurance policy, and
Speaker 1: according to one expert in financial planning, this is the
Speaker 1: way that John is trying to show that he was
Speaker 1: a big part of Bev's life. I asked a voice
Speaker 1: actor to express parts of a note that I received
Speaker 1: from a senior financial planner.
Speaker 7: To me, it shows intent to get his hands on
Speaker 7: the estate. He has seen an opportunity with a single,
Speaker 7: vulnerable woman. He probably spoke to her every day while
Speaker 7: working there. He is trying to show he was integral
Speaker 7: to her care, but it wouldn't be too hard to
Speaker 7: record her appointments. For example, Bev might say, I have
Speaker 7: my own college's appointment tomorrow at too. He records that.
Speaker 7: Next day, he asks how it went, and he records that.
Speaker 7: It gives the impression he is more important or involved
Speaker 7: than he probably was, at least until the end. Overlaying that,
Speaker 7: of course, is her high level of vulnerability with brain cancer.
Speaker 7: This can change how people react to things and could
Speaker 7: impact their decision making.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, John may have been assiduous and
Speaker 1: diligent in his care for Bev, noting every appointment, her medication,
Speaker 1: the visits that she was receiving from the cancer Council.
Speaker 6: For him to do something like that, I can't imagine
Speaker 6: that at all. I mean, why wouldn't he allow the family?
Speaker 6: That's not right.
Speaker 8: How did he.
Speaker 6: Suddenly get guardianship and I don't want to see my family?
Speaker 6: I don't believe that from a minute, like a bad movie.
Speaker 6: I talked to Crystal about it straight away. I said,
Speaker 6: you won't the one taking notefully to know wasn't me.
Speaker 6: She laughed, and I said, Crystal, hate to tell you
Speaker 6: but it really does look dodgy. And she said, oh,
Speaker 6: I think they were with friends.
Speaker 1: Crystal knew about it. That's interesting, yea, she knew.
Speaker 9: She knew about her.
Speaker 6: And I said, your father's never been good friends with anybody.
Speaker 6: And she said, oh, you don't know. It's changed so much.
Speaker 6: And I said, well, how is he doing with the podcast?
Speaker 6: She said, oh, he's absolutely fine about it because he's
Speaker 6: got so many friends out as this huge socialize. And
Speaker 6: I said, did you see in the paper that said
Speaker 6: that John's selling the house?
Speaker 1: And I said, do you.
Speaker 6: Think he's doing a runner? And she said no, She laughed.
Speaker 6: She said no. She said, there's nowhere in the world
Speaker 6: he'd leave here. He's got a life here. He wouldn't leave.
Speaker 6: He believes in himself so much, and he believes he's innocent.
Speaker 6: If he believes it enough, he'll think the whole world
Speaker 6: will too.
Speaker 1: As we were talking about wills, I asked Megan about
Speaker 1: something I recalled being told the past by her and
Speaker 1: by Andy and Michelle read what has Crystal been told
Speaker 1: about John's will?
Speaker 6: Tells her that not just once, repeatedly, he tells her,
Speaker 6: so she's not confused by it at the time. That
Speaker 6: he's leaving her absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1: And why is that?
Speaker 6: Has a mother walked out and anything that she had,
Speaker 6: he's spent looking after her, and so therefore she shouldn't
Speaker 6: get anything, which is just looking ridiculous. And I said,
Speaker 6: don't you find that weird? And she said, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 6: Dad's just making sure that.
Speaker 9: I know my situation.
Speaker 6: He's brainwashed her into believing that she's not really entitled
Speaker 6: to anything, and I don't really understand that.
Speaker 1: Let's return to Kathy and Les Hardy. Kathy was upset
Speaker 1: by what she heard in episode twenty two, the extraordinary
Speaker 1: control demanded by John over the conduct of Bev's funeral,
Speaker 1: the exclusion of Bev's friends and relations from the funeral service.
Speaker 1: It was beyond the pale. Kathy was very surprised by
Speaker 1: the disclosure that she had been the sole beneficiary in
Speaker 1: the previous will. And Kathy hadn't been told about this
Speaker 1: by the solicitor in Balner when he informed her in
Speaker 1: October twenty twenty four of Bev's death. When Kathy called
Speaker 1: me to talk about it, I shared details from a
Speaker 1: property search that we had done on Bev's ocean facing house.
Speaker 1: We have the property record for the house in Skinner's Head,
Speaker 1: Beverly's former house, and it's showing that the sale date,
Speaker 1: that is the date on which it was acquired by
Speaker 1: John Winfield, was the twenty seventh of April twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: John's newcastle the inheritance, and this time at zero cost
Speaker 1: to him. The property had gone into John Winfield's name
Speaker 1: seven and a half months after Bab's death, according to
Speaker 1: the property records.
Speaker 5: And the moment that he was granted probate, he transferred
Speaker 5: that property to his name.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't for another eighteen months after that that
Speaker 2: I was informed by the solicitors that I was a beneficiary.
Speaker 1: It's remarkable when John is the executor and trustee of
Speaker 1: the will, he has these legal responsibilities. Now, in the
Speaker 1: previous episode, you heard Jeff Outerbridge explain that he asked
Speaker 1: a solicitor for advice on whether he and his brother
Speaker 1: Paul could contest the will, but because neither brother was
Speaker 1: named in either of Bev's wills, the legal advice that
Speaker 1: they got was that it would be hard for them. However,
Speaker 1: the one person who could make a legal challenge to
Speaker 1: the will before the assets of the estate were distributed
Speaker 1: with something that's called probate was Kathy Hardy. It is
Speaker 1: important to emphasize something at this point. Les and Kathy
Speaker 1: Hardy are comfortably off, unlike the brothers. Bev had told
Speaker 1: Les and Kathy when they visited her in twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: at her house that she had named Kathy in her will.
Speaker 5: I can remember actually telling her putting the will, she's
Speaker 5: not that much younger than you, you might outliver.
Speaker 1: Kathy speculated back then that a gift of perhaps five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars might be coming to her from cousin Bev,
Speaker 1: but Kathy didn't covet it. Now, however, Kathy and Les
Speaker 1: are of the same mind as Kathy's cousins Jeff and
Speaker 1: Paul Outerbridge. They all smell a rat with the radical
Speaker 1: change in Bev's will to benefit John Winfield.
Speaker 5: Out of all the people who could have challenged that will,
Speaker 5: Kathy is the person who could have, and she was
Speaker 5: denied the opportunity because she wasn't even told anything about
Speaker 5: the circumstances, and even worse, she wasn't even informed of
Speaker 5: her cousin's death. And the idea that we wouldn't have
Speaker 5: attended the funeral is just terrible, because we certainly would have.
Speaker 1: Not only was she not informed, she was told in
Speaker 1: a voicemail to back off. How does John justify that
Speaker 1: he knows, because he's the executor of the will, that
Speaker 1: Kathy is the only other beneficiary, so he knows that
Speaker 1: Kathy's very important to Bev, and yet he doesn't tell
Speaker 1: Kathy about Bev having died. And it's impossible to not
Speaker 1: suspect that that's because he just wanted to conceal it
Speaker 1: from Kathy.
Speaker 2: That's the only thinking you can have on that he's
Speaker 2: trying to cover up as much as he could. It's
Speaker 2: quite deedious, really, it's almost to me feels like a
Speaker 2: bit of a scam.
Speaker 1: So hypothetical, let's imagine things turned out differently. You were
Speaker 1: alerted to the fact that there was to be a
Speaker 1: funeral service Bev had died. You went to the funeral,
Speaker 1: You caught up with Jeff and Paul. You were subsequently
Speaker 1: about the will. Jeff then showed you the earlier will,
Speaker 1: which left everything to Kathy, and that will, of course,
Speaker 1: had been fundamentally changed shortly before Bev died. Jeff also
Speaker 1: informed you that Bev was becoming incredibly confused forgetting really
Speaker 1: obvious and important things and was not herself, and that
Speaker 1: everything had gone to John bar two hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: for Kathy. Do you believe you would have returned to
Speaker 1: Victoria and said, oh, well, that's the way it is,
Speaker 1: or would you, with Jeff and Paul, have considered a
Speaker 1: course of action to challenge the will before probate was granted.
Speaker 3: Definitely.
Speaker 2: Obviously we would have on behalf of myself, but on
Speaker 2: behalf of the other two people involved. You could see
Speaker 2: that some injustice had been done, and we would have
Speaker 2: tried to do something.
Speaker 3: About it immediately if we'd had the opportunity. Definitely.
Speaker 2: If you don't treat other human beings like that, he's
Speaker 2: ad Johnny come lately.
Speaker 3: As far as.
Speaker 2: Her life goes, he's preyed on someone. Really, she wasn't
Speaker 2: a recluse so much as she's just a quiet person.
Speaker 2: She had friends from work, she was out and about,
Speaker 2: but she just kept herself to herself. When her mother
Speaker 2: passed away, quite a number of colleagues came to that
Speaker 2: funeral to support her, and she never talked about him.
Speaker 2: She never told her friends her family about him. He
Speaker 2: was not someone who was considered part of her life.
Speaker 2: So who is this person and how come he's all
Speaker 2: of a sudden been left this.
Speaker 3: Amount of money.
Speaker 2: We definitely would have got involved because we're suspicious now,
Speaker 2: and we would have been suspicious then.
Speaker 1: It's not just a legal thing, it's a moral thing.
Speaker 5: If we'd gone to that funeral and there were only
Speaker 5: a people there, we would have been gobsmacked, and all
Speaker 5: of the other weird things that went on, we would
Speaker 5: have said, this is just outrageous, and it is outrageous.
Speaker 5: The brothers thought about challenging the will, and Jeffrey actually
Speaker 5: told us yesterday when they did go to the solicitor.
Speaker 5: The solicitor that they sought advice from, said, you possibly
Speaker 5: would not have been successful, but your cousin probably would be.
Speaker 5: But of course the cousin Kathy didn't know, and Jeffrey
Speaker 5: didn't have Kathy's number, although he had asked John for
Speaker 5: it on at least two occasions, and he wouldn't provide it.
Speaker 5: I don't think we're talking out of turn here. The
Speaker 5: brothers don't have any resources. These people haven't had the
Speaker 5: education and the opportunities that Kathy and I have had,
Speaker 5: and they see the world through different prism.
Speaker 1: After the revelations from the previous episode, Kathy spoke to
Speaker 1: the solicitor in Ballina again. She wanted him to give
Speaker 1: her Jeff Outterbridge's phone number.
Speaker 2: I just said that I'm now aware that there was
Speaker 2: another will and that I was so beneficiary and I'd
Speaker 2: like to talk to Jeff about it and find out
Speaker 2: more information and how he's feeling.
Speaker 1: But the solicitor declined to pass on her own cousin's
Speaker 1: contact details.
Speaker 2: He said, no, the more I think about it, the
Speaker 2: more no, I don't think I can help you. And
Speaker 2: I just said, okay, that's fine, old ring Headley Thomas,
Speaker 2: and see if I can get it that way.
Speaker 5: We have some questions here when the will was changed,
Speaker 5: What inquiries were ate about Beb's health she was obviously
Speaker 5: ill at the time. What advice was being offered to
Speaker 5: the execus about him fulfilling his juiciary duties towards us.
Speaker 5: That is a fundamental question and it needs answering. People
Speaker 5: need to be held accountable, don't they. I asked Kathy why.
Speaker 5: In her opinion, her cousin had intended to leave everything
Speaker 5: that she owned to Kathy, as set out in Bev's will,
Speaker 5: which had been valid for eleven years until just six
Speaker 5: months before Bev's death.
Speaker 2: Years ago, Bev's parents' marriage broke up and Bev's mum
Speaker 2: struggled to look after four children, and so my parents,
Speaker 2: who were much better off, decided that they would support
Speaker 2: the two girls by paying for them to go to
Speaker 2: back in the sixties, a secretarial school.
Speaker 3: Ensuring them of a job for their future.
Speaker 2: She'd lost her sister, and my parents had helped a
Speaker 2: lot in that sit situation as well. There've been a
Speaker 2: close connection for a long time, and I thought, is this.
Speaker 3: There of giving back?
Speaker 1: Does it strike you both as something highly unusual or
Speaker 1: perhaps in Bev's nature to have altered her will when
Speaker 1: she was ill and given almost everything she owned to
Speaker 1: her neighbor John.
Speaker 3: I said, as highly unusual.
Speaker 2: She was a person who planned her life, she was
Speaker 2: careful with her money, she thought everything through, and this
Speaker 2: seems to be very much a spur of the moment
Speaker 2: kind of decision. And I'm not saying that for my
Speaker 2: benefit either. I'm not about the money. I'm not an
Speaker 2: avarice person. But I just think that it's very odd,
Speaker 2: after eleven years that you would do that particularly so
Speaker 2: when you were unwell.
Speaker 1: And Les recalled the last time they saw Beverly. It
Speaker 1: was June twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: And we had a lovely afternoon tea together and a chat.
Speaker 2: She said, I'd love you to come and have a
Speaker 2: look at my house, and it's on the way back
Speaker 2: to Barron Bay.
Speaker 3: And she was so proud of it. And for a
Speaker 3: girl who came from.
Speaker 2: A broken marriage and she lived by herself for most
Speaker 2: of her life, it was a real achievement.
Speaker 8: Were there any signs of renovation then absolutely none.
Speaker 2: Red brick and I had a lot of brick inside
Speaker 2: That was Nita's a.
Speaker 3: Pin great for her, perfect and it was in a
Speaker 3: nice area. She was proud of it, and we were
Speaker 3: proud for.
Speaker 5: Her, absolutely, and we also learned something else about it
Speaker 5: by going there. We didn't realize she was such a rockabilly.
Speaker 5: We really had a laugh together. She had all these
Speaker 5: pictures of Elvis Presley and other people from that era
Speaker 5: with the walls, and she liked revealing that aspect of
Speaker 5: her character to us.
Speaker 1: How would you describe Beb's physical and mental condition in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen when you saw her for the last time.
Speaker 3: She looked fabulous.
Speaker 2: I've got photos to prove it, and she sounded fabulous.
Speaker 3: She was really happy.
Speaker 2: She was excited that we were here with her, and
Speaker 2: we hadn't seen each other for a while, and she
Speaker 2: was in grateful.
Speaker 5: Beverly was a really good looking lady. If she was
Speaker 5: ever going to attract a man, she could easily have
Speaker 5: done so in her forties and fifties if that was
Speaker 5: the purpose of her life.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't.
Speaker 5: She enjoyed being single and doing her own thing. Beverly
Speaker 5: did not disclose her illness then or were subsequently to Kathy.
Speaker 2: She gave us no indication that she had something wrong
Speaker 2: with her none at all.
Speaker 3: She is a bit stoic like that.
Speaker 2: If I had have had knowledge of it, I would
Speaker 2: have been up there like a shot, because I would
Speaker 2: have wanted to have spent some time with her. You
Speaker 2: think you would have let your brothers know. She wasn't
Speaker 2: estranged from them at all. They kept in very regular contact.
Speaker 1: We can't explain it.
Speaker 5: This person who on the evidence, didn't contact Kathy about
Speaker 5: her death, didn't ask her brother Paul to go to
Speaker 5: the hospital to be with her, let Jeffrey know. At
Speaker 5: the last moment, what was going on controlled the funeral
Speaker 5: to keep people away from it, and did he actually
Speaker 5: encourage her not to contact people who may have had
Speaker 5: a different outlook on what was going on the circumstances
Speaker 5: that don't look very good really. Before interviewing athy An
Speaker 5: Les for the first time, I had unfinished business with
Speaker 5: Jeff and Paul Outerbridge in Ballina, as well as Paul's
Speaker 5: wife Sarah. Something that you did not hear in the
Speaker 5: previous episode was Jeff's recounting of a promise by John
Speaker 5: to do something with Bev's ashes.
Speaker 10: His text message was about my sister's ashes because she
Speaker 10: was cremated and he was going to have her ashes
Speaker 10: interred into the wall over the eastbound cemetery, the same
Speaker 10: wall that my mother is in.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm not.
Speaker 10: Going to do it straight away, It'll be done in
Speaker 10: twelve months time, which I thought was strange.
Speaker 8: Why would you wait twelve months?
Speaker 4: He actually gave me the date and I thought, well least,
Speaker 4: but it all worked out right down to the very day.
Speaker 4: He was telling me how things were going to go,
Speaker 4: and that was it. He might have done something completely
Speaker 4: different with her ashes, might have spread her ashes in
Speaker 4: the garden at the house.
Speaker 1: The first anniversary of Bev's death was September fifteenth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three.
Speaker 4: I should go and have a look ostpose and see
Speaker 4: if she's actually in that war. I was only jogatitt
Speaker 4: Cemetery just the other day. That's where my partner is there,
Speaker 4: and that's where my mother is there, and I go
Speaker 4: over there from time to time.
Speaker 1: As this episode was being put together, Jeff visited the
Speaker 1: cemetery with my friend and young colleague, Isaac Irons. Bev's
Speaker 1: ashes were placed in the wall, albeit one year and
Speaker 1: eleven months after Bev had died. So the plant.
Speaker 4: Reads in loving memory of Beverly Eileen Brooker, quite achiever,
Speaker 4: quality human, devoted public servant, loved and well remembered by all.
Speaker 4: You'll find me in the garden. And that's Bev's plark.
Speaker 10: And how does it make you feel?
Speaker 8: It's very nice. There's no mention of any family members.
Speaker 8: It just says loved and will remembered by all.
Speaker 4: I was quite surprised to see a picture of Bev
Speaker 4: on there, better than some of the other plerks that
Speaker 4: are here. Would have been nice to know it was
Speaker 4: happening better late than ever I guess so.
Speaker 11: This was put in place in August between.
Speaker 4: Twenty four apparently, So yeah, you found out today, found
Speaker 4: out today.
Speaker 1: I think it's place.
Speaker 4: You'll come back to visit, oh for sure, because I'm
Speaker 4: going to be just up here at my partners. My
Speaker 4: mum's on the other side of the same wall. So definitely,
Speaker 4: now that I know it's here, I will pay my respects.
Speaker 4: If my brother hadn't made inquiries and found out about
Speaker 4: this today, we still wouldn't have known that it had
Speaker 4: already been organized and done. No contact from John, and
Speaker 4: she didn't deserve to have the funeral that she had.
Speaker 8: It was me and I was having any say.
Speaker 1: In the matter.
Speaker 4: I would have made sure that there would have been
Speaker 4: a lot of people there, all her work colleagues, more family.
Speaker 4: It would have been packed. It was just very disappointing,
Speaker 4: and according to John, that's how Bev wanted it. No,
Speaker 4: I think he had a lot of control in the matter.
Speaker 4: It was all his way or no way.
Speaker 1: Jeff held a certificate. It was an acknowledgment from Bev's
Speaker 1: new South Wales government employer that she had served fifty
Speaker 1: years for the department. Bev would have been at least
Speaker 1: sixty five in the accompanying photograph of her with a
Speaker 1: younger manager offering his congratulations half a century of service
Speaker 1: in the one place. The certificate was a nice touch,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately someone had spelt Beverly's name wrong.
Speaker 8: When she started out, she was tea lady. She had
Speaker 8: to make everyone tea smogo.
Speaker 12: We all start something.
Speaker 1: You got to start somewhere. Yeah. One hour earlier, at
Speaker 1: Jeff's house, his younger brother, Paul outer Bridge, spoke of
Speaker 1: John with thinly veiled contempt during our interview via zoom.
Speaker 1: Have you seen John since the funeral?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 11: No, why would I. I can't say his name. I
Speaker 11: call him the snake, cunning as a cut snake. I
Speaker 11: can't drive past the house. I can't go down the.
Speaker 1: Road because it upsets you too much.
Speaker 11: Yeah, he does, he does. Totally gutted. It hasn't been easy.
Speaker 11: I was totally blind to the situation, and I knew
Speaker 11: nothing about this other guy that we're talking about. Apparently
Speaker 11: was on the scene for seven years or so.
Speaker 1: Paul wants me to know that, as far as he
Speaker 1: was concerned, his relationship with his sister Bev was good.
Speaker 1: She was quite a bit older, than him, but they
Speaker 1: got along just fine.
Speaker 11: There wasn't any bad tension between us at all.
Speaker 1: There was no major falling out.
Speaker 11: No no falling out at all. My wife, Sarah, she
Speaker 11: used to take Beverly out the square dancing.
Speaker 1: Jeff told me Paul that he was instructed by John
Speaker 1: that Jeff couldn't disclose to you how close to the
Speaker 1: end Bev was, and that you weren't to know about that.
Speaker 11: I just felt kind of left out. I thought my
Speaker 11: sister would let me be there for the final few
Speaker 11: hours of her life.
Speaker 1: Here's Jeff.
Speaker 4: I don't think Bev was of soeund mind to be
Speaker 4: honest near the end, because she did have brain cancer.
Speaker 8: She was making strange decisions. My partner was in.
Speaker 4: Hospital at the time, and Bev would come to the
Speaker 4: hospital to visit and we'd walk outside and talk.
Speaker 8: Her behavior was very odd, odd and strange. But she even.
Speaker 4: Forgot Paul's birthday, yeah, first time ever. And she forgot
Speaker 4: all about Paul himself. She didn't remember Paul, and she
Speaker 4: changed her will during that time when she was making
Speaker 4: strange decisions and acting very.
Speaker 11: Odd, and she'd always ring me or I'd have a
Speaker 11: card in the mailbox. Birthday card, but there was nothing
Speaker 11: this year.
Speaker 4: I wished him happy birthday and I said, what did
Speaker 4: BEV say to you? And he said, oh, I haven't
Speaker 4: heard from Bev. And I thought, Oho, there's something funny
Speaker 4: going on here. This is strange. I'll ring her tomorrow,
Speaker 4: which I did, and I said what did Paul say
Speaker 4: for his birthday? And there was silence. There was no answer.
Speaker 4: I said, are you there, Bev? Because everything went silent,
Speaker 4: and she said, yes, I'm here. And I said what
Speaker 4: did Paul say for his birthday? And she said, who's Paul?
Speaker 4: She didn't know who Paul was brother? And I said,
Speaker 4: Paul your brother. You know what did he say when
Speaker 4: you're ranging for his birthday? And she said, oh, I
Speaker 4: remember Paul. She never rang Paul for his birthday, couldn't
Speaker 4: remember Paul, and that was the first time ever she
Speaker 4: missed it.
Speaker 1: Paul also recalled the unusual spectacle at Bev's funeral of
Speaker 1: the woman introduced by John Winfield as his daughter. Paul, Jeff,
Speaker 1: and Paul's wife Sarah have since been showing photographs of
Speaker 1: Lauren Winfield. The three confirmed that she was the woman
Speaker 1: at the funeral.
Speaker 11: Probably two things that stick in my mind. When we
Speaker 11: were watching the photos of Beverly at the time, she
Speaker 11: wasn't watching them really. She was on my left, the
Speaker 11: far left, and Jeffrey was on my right. I could
Speaker 11: see her for my peripheral vision that she wasn't looking
Speaker 11: at the movies or the pictures. She was looking at us,
Speaker 11: And I was thinking that.
Speaker 8: Was a little bit weird.
Speaker 11: Why is she looking at us all the time? She
Speaker 11: was looking right at us, Me and my brother along
Speaker 11: the front seat. She didn't look behind or anything. She
Speaker 11: was fully attention on us. She might have been writing
Speaker 11: something down at the time. I remember Paul telling me
Speaker 11: that she was taking notes. That sounds pretty true. I
Speaker 11: wouldn't have said that the brother if it wasn't happening.
Speaker 11: Sarah and my wife found Palm Brothers to a Sister
Speaker 11: and we thought that'd be nice to.
Speaker 8: Be read out.
Speaker 11: So she asks Lauren would that be okay? And she
Speaker 11: said yes, we'll fit it in somewhere along the way.
Speaker 11: So we did that and Sarah read the palm mount
Speaker 11: about brothers and how they are to their sister, their
Speaker 11: journey through life. He didn't want that at all, because
Speaker 11: I heard him, so.
Speaker 1: He is Sarah Outerbridge Paul's wife. She's found the poem.
Speaker 13: Dear sister, Together on life's journey, we have traveled, you
Speaker 13: and me sharing all the joys of life, keeping each
Speaker 13: other company, sharing lots of happy times, and sometimes sharing tears,
Speaker 13: always leaning on each other together through the years, and
Speaker 13: no matter where life leads us, His sister know it's true.
Speaker 14: It's been a joy to.
Speaker 9: Travel down the road of life with you. He was
Speaker 9: quite upset.
Speaker 14: I asked his daughter, and she said, I think that
Speaker 14: will be okay, And I said, I think it should
Speaker 14: be okay. He said to her, what's she doing? What
Speaker 14: she doing? And I just kept going.
Speaker 1: Sarah did not know then of John Winfield's missing wife,
Speaker 1: Bromwin and John's emphatic denials that he murdered her. That
Speaker 1: knowledge came a week or so later, when Jeff received
Speaker 1: a copy of Bev's will and it bore John Winfield's name.
Speaker 14: And then I just google it. I just put in
Speaker 14: John Winfield and I've come from when Wingfield the picture.
Speaker 14: It really freaked me out because the picture came up
Speaker 14: of Bromway where she's getting out of the car. The
Speaker 14: likeness blew me away.
Speaker 9: Because I've seen.
Speaker 14: Beverly many times with that same look.
Speaker 4: Originally, she had very frizzy hair, and we used to
Speaker 4: refer to her as Marge Simpson. When I saw the
Speaker 4: photos of Bromwin, I thought straight away, oh my god,
Speaker 4: she's got hair like Bev.
Speaker 14: Same hair, same skin, same small build. It was just
Speaker 14: freaked me out because it just looked like Beverly.
Speaker 1: Sarah recalled seeing John respond to questions from Bev's cousin
Speaker 1: Luke at the funeral. Luke was asking John about the
Speaker 1: nature of Bev's terminal illness.
Speaker 14: And then he got aggressive and through the documents, literally
Speaker 14: throwing that Luke, so here you go. Have a look.
Speaker 14: His voice changed, And I've been around aggression, so I
Speaker 14: know exactly what that's about.
Speaker 4: Luke's sister is a nurse and his sister's husband is
Speaker 4: a doctor, and they wanted to know what sort of
Speaker 4: history of cancers were in the family. So Luke approached
Speaker 4: John about the question about what sort of cancer Bev had.
Speaker 8: But I believe he hit a brick wall, didn't he.
Speaker 11: He snapped back at Luke and got a bit angry
Speaker 11: and much of some words back at him.
Speaker 4: They might be the papers that I've got now that
Speaker 4: might be where I got them from right.
Speaker 1: Could be yeah, But why would John have brought medical
Speaker 1: papers for BEV to her funeral?
Speaker 8: Honestly, don't know. Strange, like you said, why would he
Speaker 8: be carrying.
Speaker 11: That piece of paper in the first place? Could she
Speaker 11: change the world by yourself? I very much doubted. Was
Speaker 11: she cursed and tricked? I really think so? Something's kind
Speaker 11: terribly wrong here? Am I thinking of my sister. We'd
Speaker 11: be looking after two brothers in one way or another.
Speaker 11: She had no family, she had no children, she didn't
Speaker 11: have a husband. But to leave it to some person
Speaker 11: that I've never heard of in my entire life, to
Speaker 11: some strangers just popped up in the last few years
Speaker 11: of a life.
Speaker 8: When we were.
Speaker 11: Watching the photos, there wasn't one photo of him. So
Speaker 11: what kind of relationship does that? Like I've always said,
Speaker 11: there wasn't any relationship to me anyhow, There's seems to
Speaker 11: be this empowering body of control, and everywhere you turn
Speaker 11: it's like his way or the highway. I don't know
Speaker 11: how her mind was six months out, or how much
Speaker 11: influence this guy had over it. I didn't have any
Speaker 11: hang ups with my sister at all. To be left
Speaker 11: out of the will just cold, with nothing, just devastated me.
Speaker 8: The funeral, that's the hard part.
Speaker 11: That's the hard party, that's the hard part.
Speaker 4: The fact that we were left out of the will
Speaker 4: is one thing now, but it's the proceedings that was
Speaker 4: the hard part, that was rubbing into the wound.
Speaker 11: Yeah, the question was asked something about Beverly's house, and
Speaker 11: he just gripped up and said, I have no interest
Speaker 11: in her house. Why would I need another house while
Speaker 11: I've got one on you own? But I guess he
Speaker 11: knew the answer to that question anyhow, he already had
Speaker 11: the house.
Speaker 8: I already knew the answer, and not.
Speaker 14: Include her loved ones. You can have nothing to do
Speaker 14: with your family for years and news years, but when
Speaker 14: you die, your partner, any decent partner, would involve the siblings,
Speaker 14: even if they've never had anything to do with each
Speaker 14: other for ages. A funeral brings people together, So to birthdays.
Speaker 4: It's not too hard for somebody to make a phone
Speaker 4: call or send a text to say Bev's ashes are
Speaker 4: going to be interred into the wall on such and
Speaker 4: such a date.
Speaker 8: Nothing.
Speaker 4: It's just a decent thing to do to contact the
Speaker 4: family and say this is what's happened, and that's where
Speaker 4: Bev is no contact.
Speaker 11: He had everything under control. I think was going his way.
Speaker 4: Didn't do too bad for a handy man who was
Speaker 4: doing some work on the house. After the service, we
Speaker 4: went down to the RSL Club for a get together
Speaker 4: with the family and.
Speaker 8: Have a couple of drinks.
Speaker 1: He didn't come to that.
Speaker 4: Never spoke to him since I didn't want to have
Speaker 4: any confrontation, so I walked away. I contacted him twice
Speaker 4: after the service, rang him and left two messages. First
Speaker 4: message was, is there any way I can have the
Speaker 4: family photographs? Because when my mom passed away, Bev took
Speaker 4: all the family photographs and she was going to compile
Speaker 4: albums for us. Well, we never saw the albums, and
Speaker 4: we never saw the photos and never heard from John.
Speaker 8: John didn't get back to me.
Speaker 1: When Sarah reflects on the final chapter in Beverly Brooker's life,
Speaker 1: she describes a woman who appeared to shrink, not physically,
Speaker 1: but in the way she withdrew from the people who
Speaker 1: were important in her life. And some of that, perhaps
Speaker 1: even all of it, could have been because of Bev's illness.
Speaker 1: Bev was dying. People handle this unavoidable fate in different ways.
Speaker 1: Sarah cannot put her finger on exactly when Bev started
Speaker 1: to become more reserved and withdrawn. She is just suspicious
Speaker 1: about it having happened before.
Speaker 14: She apparently had this relationship. She was always independent. She
Speaker 14: was never going to get another man. For a start.
Speaker 14: She wasn't interested in dating because I'd always say to her,
Speaker 14: I'll sit y up on tindat and that speed dating
Speaker 14: they had that at the RSL. No, she didn't want
Speaker 14: to know, man, how she was changed. She seemed to
Speaker 14: be very withdrawn, very very quiet. That's the part that
Speaker 14: blows me in Lane. What she was about changed dramatically.
Speaker 4: To me, I wouldn't care if our c and Kathy
Speaker 4: got everything is mentioned in the first will.
Speaker 8: She was the sole beneficiary, and that's fine.
Speaker 4: But to have this bloke step in and put his
Speaker 4: hands up and say it's all mine, that's what leads
Speaker 4: a dirty bit of taste.
Speaker 1: In my mouth.
Speaker 8: I'm a big believer in karma. What goes around comes around.
Speaker 1: My longtime friend and colleague, David Murray, spoke to a
Speaker 1: legal expert in Wills and the States about the turn
Speaker 1: of events. My name is.
Speaker 15: Lucy McPherson, I'm the partner of the estate litigation department
Speaker 15: at our with Marshall Lawyers.
Speaker 12: Thanks, Lucy, I've sent you some background on this case.
Speaker 12: My first question is was it John Winfield's responsibility as
Speaker 12: a trustee and executor to inform the other beneficiary it
Speaker 12: was Beverly's cousin, that Beverly had died and that the
Speaker 12: cousin was a beneficiary.
Speaker 15: In short, yes, it was mister Winfield's responsibility. It is
Speaker 15: the executor's duty to ensure that all beneficiaries in the
Speaker 15: state are informed of their entitlement in a will, and
Speaker 15: whilst this is not explicitly set out in legislation, it
Speaker 15: is an implied duty because an executor of an estate
Speaker 15: has a number of duties to beneficiaries, including a duty
Speaker 15: to act in their best interest, and it is part
Speaker 15: of that duty to act in their best interest that
Speaker 15: there's this implied duty to keep beneficiaries informed about their
Speaker 15: entitlement and about the administration of the estate.
Speaker 12: Was it John Winfield's responsibility? Has the trustee and executor
Speaker 12: to ensure that all beneficiaries actually received what they'd been
Speaker 12: left in Beverly's will?
Speaker 15: Absolutely, I mean this is the cornerstone of the executor's
Speaker 15: duty to administer the estate. It is the executor's obligation
Speaker 15: to ensure that all beneficiaries receive what they are entitled
Speaker 15: to under the will, and this is part of the
Speaker 15: executive's responsibility to administer the estate in accordance with the
Speaker 15: law and in accordance with the terms of the will.
Speaker 15: At the cornerstone of all of this is this idea
Speaker 15: that executive stands in a fiduciary relationship to the beneficiaries
Speaker 15: of an estate, and fiduciary really, in simple terms, it
Speaker 15: means a relationship of trust. The executor has an obligation
Speaker 15: to do things like avoid conflicts of interests so avoid
Speaker 15: conflicts between their personal interests and the interests of the estate,
Speaker 15: obligations not to make profit from the estate assets, for instance,
Speaker 15: and also importantly an obligation not to act for their
Speaker 15: own benefit against the estate.
Speaker 12: So who's responsible for ensuring trustees and executors fulfill these obligations?
Speaker 15: So the Supreme Court has the ultimate oversight to ensure
Speaker 15: that executives and trustees act appropriately and in accordance with
Speaker 15: their legal obligations and their duties. When an executor is
Speaker 15: behaving badly. Somebody who has an interest in the administration
Speaker 15: of the estate, generally a beneficiary, has legal standing to
Speaker 15: approach the Supreme Court. The key question for the court
Speaker 15: is really whether the conduct of the executor has placed
Speaker 15: the administration of the estate into jeopardy, and the court's
Speaker 15: overriding concern in all of that is really promoting the
Speaker 15: interests of the beneficiaries of the estate, promoting the orderly
Speaker 15: administration of the estate, and the rights of those who
Speaker 15: are beneficially entitled in the estate are set.
Speaker 12: Has John Winfield potentially breached his obligations?
Speaker 15: I believe that he has potentially breached his obligations the
Speaker 15: delay distributing the cousin's entitlement in the estate. And it
Speaker 15: doesn't appear as though interest has been paid on the
Speaker 15: legacy either, And.
Speaker 12: Are there any ramifications for that?
Speaker 15: There are a number of different ramifications for executors who
Speaker 15: do not fulfill their obligation or behave badly during the
Speaker 15: course of the administration of an estate, which includes court
Speaker 15: intervention and.
Speaker 3: Also adverse cost orders.
Speaker 15: So the court can revoke the grant of probate, removing
Speaker 15: the executor from that position. And it's not unusual in
Speaker 15: a situation where an executor has been removed from offers
Speaker 15: or mismanagement or misconduct for a court to order that
Speaker 15: that way, would executor pay the legal costs of the
Speaker 15: party who was required to bring the application before the court.
Speaker 12: In this case, Beverly Brooks health had been deteriorating over
Speaker 12: time and her family has questions about her soundness of mind.
Speaker 12: Could they be grounds for challenging the will?
Speaker 15: Absolutely, deteriorating health and questions about an individual's capacity to
Speaker 15: understand the nature of the act of making the will
Speaker 15: are often ground for challenging the validity of that will.
Speaker 15: It must be proven that the will maker, at the
Speaker 15: time of giving instructions to make the will and at
Speaker 15: the time of signing the will, understood the act of
Speaker 15: making a will. They must also understand the extent of
Speaker 15: property over which they have disposing power, so they must
Speaker 15: be able to identify in broad terms the assets that
Speaker 15: they hold that will ultimately be distributed. They also must
Speaker 15: understand the claims over which they should give affect, and
Speaker 15: what that means is who they would generally be expected
Speaker 15: to provide for under the terms of set will. It
Speaker 15: must be satisfied that the willmaker didn't have a disorder
Speaker 15: of the mind that would create some sort of delusion
Speaker 15: influencing the act of making a will. That question of
Speaker 15: whether Beverly was of found mine at the time that
Speaker 15: she made her will is a ground to challenge the
Speaker 15: validity of the will. Certainly in circumstances where the family
Speaker 15: are concerned about her capacity to understand these matters, it
Speaker 15: does raise some questions about whether the will should be
Speaker 15: challenged on those grounds. So somebody like Beverly's cousin is
Speaker 15: somebody who in this scenario would have appropriate legal standing
Speaker 15: to brand action to challenge the will.
Speaker 1: It has been a hectic week. After Kathy Hardy got
Speaker 1: her cousin than Jeff Outbridge's telephone number from me, they
Speaker 1: were soon on the blower and reconnecting. David Murray then
Speaker 1: had a further chat to Jeff. At first, Jeff was
Speaker 1: wary of Dave. Jeff suspected that he was being set
Speaker 1: up by someone acting for John Winfield.
Speaker 8: Well, I'm not sure about whether I should say.
Speaker 1: Anything or not.
Speaker 4: I don't know who I'm talking to, but I just
Speaker 4: don't trust this guy, and I don't know what he's
Speaker 4: up to.
Speaker 8: So you're not associated with John. I think that's probably
Speaker 8: always better to check Jeff. I'm a bit suspicious mate.
Speaker 1: After I contacted Jeff again to reassure him that David
Speaker 1: was working with me, not John, everything was okay, all.
Speaker 8: Right, David, Sorry to be so coy about it all
Speaker 8: in the beginning there.
Speaker 1: Jeff then opened up about his conversation with Kathy and Les, and.
Speaker 12: You'd been looking for her for some time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've been trying to track it down and I
Speaker 4: was unsuccessful. Headley did tell me that, he said, I
Speaker 4: think we might have some contact details for her. Now,
Speaker 4: we'll try and make contact with her, and he did,
Speaker 4: and they've been talking a few times. And that's when
Speaker 4: Kathy and Les rang me last night to say, Hey,
Speaker 4: what's going on with this whole thing? Kathy and Les
Speaker 4: they're victorians, but they're good honors, down to earth, trustworthy people.
Speaker 4: Probably talk for about forty five minutes, and we've promised
Speaker 4: each other that we can stay in contact now.
Speaker 8: They didn't know anything about Bev's passing.
Speaker 4: He didn't notify them, and they got a message back
Speaker 4: from John saying don't ever bring this number again. I
Speaker 4: don't want to be contacted the fact that John didn't
Speaker 4: even contact them and tell them that she'd passed away,
Speaker 4: And of course I couldn't contact her because I didn't
Speaker 4: have her contact details, and he wouldn't give me her
Speaker 4: contact details. The time lapse, he's let the whole thing
Speaker 4: run out so that no one can contest the will.
Speaker 4: All the beneficiaries are supposed to be paid before John
Speaker 4: does anything for himself, and apparently that hasn't been the case.
Speaker 4: The first thing he did was transfer the house into
Speaker 4: his name. He knew the time was ticking away, and
Speaker 4: he delayed everything until after the time had run out,
Speaker 4: and then he paid the money. He's out to get
Speaker 4: everything for himself that he can. They're going to seek
Speaker 4: legal advice because of the way the whole thing's been handled,
Speaker 4: and it's all been handled incorrectly. It hasn't been dealt
Speaker 4: with in accordance with law. They can now fight it
Speaker 4: because he's done the wrong thing.
Speaker 8: They can appeal it. Now.
Speaker 4: He will be in trouble for not doing his job.
Speaker 4: Probably she should have not even been allowed to change
Speaker 4: that will at the time.
Speaker 8: When she did, Les did say, look, u'se guys been
Speaker 8: the losers in this whole thing.
Speaker 4: Family deserve it first, and if it goes to Kathy
Speaker 4: and Les, a good luck to him. I know they
Speaker 4: don't need the money, but I'd rather see family have
Speaker 4: it than this guy.
Speaker 12: And how do you feel about this getting exposed now?
Speaker 4: I think it's a good thing because my friends that
Speaker 4: I talked to, and I was actually talking to a
Speaker 4: couple of here this morning at a bike show in Austinville,
Speaker 4: and my mate's wife said, Oh, you're famous.
Speaker 8: You're famous, You're on the podcast. But I said, I
Speaker 8: don't know about being famous. The more people know, the better.
Speaker 4: Everyone has been commenting to me about it in a
Speaker 4: positive way.
Speaker 8: That this is a good thing.
Speaker 4: Every little bit of information helps to go towards putting
Speaker 4: it together.
Speaker 8: A profile on what this guy is like paints.
Speaker 16: Him in the picture that he really is what he is.
Speaker 16: I don't think he was much of a care The
Speaker 16: solicitor told lez that they were not in a relationship.
Speaker 16: John and Bev were not in a relationship. They were
Speaker 16: not partners.
Speaker 12: That's very interesting because that's very different to what you
Speaker 12: were told.
Speaker 4: She's never had a partner since she divorced her husband.
Speaker 4: I was told by a person that worked at the
Speaker 4: solicitors that this guy was her partner.
Speaker 1: Dickens say in later episodes, as more information comes to light,
Speaker 1: we are likely to revisit Bev's case. It has been
Speaker 1: made clear to John and Lauren that if they want
Speaker 1: to make any comment or share their side of the
Speaker 1: story about Bromwin or Bev or anything else in the podcast,
Speaker 1: they are welcome. Now, let's return to the investigation into
Speaker 1: Bromwan's disappearance. That is our overriding priority.
Speaker 9: Well, it was just honest and straightforward. I'm used to
Speaker 9: listening to people and trying to figure out whether they're
Speaker 9: telling the truth, and quite often patients don't tell me
Speaker 9: the truth. But I knew she was telling me the truth.
Speaker 9: It was the truth that she'd experienced.
Speaker 1: Dr winsom Araha is talking to me from her home country,
Speaker 1: New Zealand on a zoom link. You have not heard
Speaker 1: her name before, and that's because she had asked for anonymity.
Speaker 1: She is describing her impressions of Judy Singh from having
Speaker 1: met her some sixteen to eighteen years earlier. Doctor Araja
Speaker 1: spoke to me shortly before the release of this episode,
Speaker 1: the twenty third in the Bromwin Investigative podcast series. But
Speaker 1: I have known about her for some time. Right back
Speaker 1: in episode seven, Judy Singh spoke about having seen a
Speaker 1: figure which she believed was Bromwin's body, allegedly wrapped in
Speaker 1: sheets in a car driven by John Winfield. And from Judy,
Speaker 1: a nurse, you heard her brief references to a Kiwi
Speaker 1: doctor they met in northern New South Wales when they
Speaker 1: were both working at a regional hospital. Judy spoke about
Speaker 1: the doctor from New Zealand having gone with her to
Speaker 1: Byron Bay Police Station to make a report about what
Speaker 1: Judy saw back in nineteen ninety three. Here's a reminder
Speaker 1: of some of what Judy told me.
Speaker 17: I ran into a doctor right and I told her
Speaker 17: the story in a little cafe called the Being Seen
Speaker 17: in Ballina. Many years later, she came back to the
Speaker 17: hospital and I was actually working in that little hospital
Speaker 17: in McLain and she said to me, did you go
Speaker 17: back to the police after you had that interview? And
Speaker 17: I said no, I didn't, and she said, well, we're
Speaker 17: going today anyway. She taught me into going to the
Speaker 17: Byron Bay Police station this time, thinking somebody there might
Speaker 17: listen to us. Then I spoke to a gentleman there
Speaker 17: and I said, you know, I'm just always haunted by
Speaker 17: this story about this woman. At the end of the
Speaker 17: stry they didn't do an official interview. I said, is
Speaker 17: there anyone here that wants to write something down? She's
Speaker 17: hardly interested in any of it.
Speaker 1: Soon after I spoke to Judy, I found doctor Aurorha
Speaker 1: in New Zealand and we spoke off the record for
Speaker 1: the first time her request. I did not record that conversation,
Speaker 1: but I made a good file note of it. The
Speaker 1: contact was really just to corroborate a small part of
Speaker 1: what Judy Singh had told me. If the New Zealand
Speaker 1: doctor had said to me, look, I don't know what
Speaker 1: you are talking about. I've never heard of this woman
Speaker 1: Judy or her strange story, then it would have made
Speaker 1: it very difficult to have proceeded with what Judy had
Speaker 1: told me she saw in a Ford falcon late one
Speaker 1: night in May nineteen ninety three. But doctor Roha in
Speaker 1: fact had a solid memory. When I talked to her
Speaker 1: last year, she confirmed key details. Judy Singh's bombshell interview
Speaker 1: was then duly aired in the podcast and published widely
Speaker 1: in The Australian and in videos that we produced As
Speaker 1: a result, a senior New South Wales Police officer asked
Speaker 1: me for the Kiwi doctors contact details. I provided these
Speaker 1: two police. That's where I left things. Doctor Aurha and
Speaker 1: I did not speak or communicate again until very recently.
Speaker 1: For the past several months, Bromman's brother Andy Reid, has
Speaker 1: been persistently curious. He wanted to know had detectives from
Speaker 1: the police Unsolved Homicide Unit taken a formal statement from
Speaker 1: the doctor in New Zealand. Andy is like a dog
Speaker 1: with a bone about these things. It's understandable he and
Speaker 1: his sister have been badly let down by shoddy, lazy
Speaker 1: police work in the past. He does not want anything
Speaker 1: to fall through the cracks again. Andy did not know
Speaker 1: the identity of the doctor because of her request at
Speaker 1: the time for anonymity. Here's doctor Aurorja again from our
Speaker 1: recent zoom conversation talking about Judy Singh. The GP has
Speaker 1: of course waived her earlier request for privacy. I asked
Speaker 1: her how things had fared with detectives from the Unsolved
Speaker 1: Homicide Unit of New South Wales Police. Can you let
Speaker 1: me know what's happened.
Speaker 9: We're just playing telephone tag really for quite a while.
Speaker 9: Finally were arranged to have a time to talk and
Speaker 9: I talked and then he asked if i'd make a statement.
Speaker 9: And I was really busy at the time, and I'm
Speaker 9: busy all the time, but I was particularly busy at
Speaker 9: that time.
Speaker 1: Doctor Roja said she had been trying unsuccessfully so far,
Speaker 1: to establish the precise dates on which she was working
Speaker 1: in the regional hospital in New South Wales, as this
Speaker 1: would indicate when she must have met Judy Singh. The
Speaker 1: police want these details. Perhaps a listener with access to
Speaker 1: this kind of information can help.
Speaker 9: So there were two hospitals involved. There was Grafton Hospital
Speaker 9: and the little one where I only worked for a
Speaker 9: few days really with Judy.
Speaker 1: And that was McLain. Was it, yes, Tell me how
Speaker 1: you had got to know her in the first place.
Speaker 9: Well, just we were working together and she invited me
Speaker 9: out to her place and so I bought some lunch
Speaker 9: and we had she had lunch. I said, I was
Speaker 9: going up to see my nephews up in Barron Bay.
Speaker 9: We just hit it off. She's lovely, very real, very
Speaker 9: natural and very real.
Speaker 1: Doctor Rouha recalled some of what she and Judy talked
Speaker 1: about when they caught up that day.
Speaker 9: The fear that she had when he looked at her
Speaker 9: and he saw her, and she described stepping back into
Speaker 9: the shadows and turning the light off. That made me
Speaker 9: feel she was intimidated by him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, I've met her, and I also believed that
Speaker 1: she was a truth teller. Had affected her quite profoundly.
Speaker 9: She had just seen something that was really bad and
Speaker 9: she wanted to get it off, really literally help by
Speaker 9: getting it off her chest. She felt that she would
Speaker 9: help others. Really, she was perturbed about it. It was
Speaker 9: clearly weighing on her because I didn't say, hey, it
Speaker 9: sounds far fetched and ridiculous, because it didn't. I don't
Speaker 9: think she knew her very well, the neighbor. She didn't
Speaker 9: give me an impression that she knew her well.
Speaker 12: What do you.
Speaker 1: Remember about the Bay and Bay police station visit.
Speaker 9: I remember we came into the foyer together and she
Speaker 9: was hesitant, and I was encouraging her. Come this far,
Speaker 9: let's do it. I feel that I spoke to somebody there,
Speaker 9: but just gave a very brief synopsis. I said, a
Speaker 9: person may have witnessed a murder or something like that,
Speaker 9: and she was the one who had the information. We
Speaker 9: parted there at the police station. We said goodbye, and
Speaker 9: then I took off, and then I never saw her again.
Speaker 9: And I don't know whether she's said anything or what
Speaker 9: she did.
Speaker 1: I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, But you
Speaker 1: then left to meet your nephew, and she either stayed
Speaker 1: in the police station or she left at the same time.
Speaker 9: Yes, I wasn't sure whether she's going to do it.
Speaker 9: I felt that we'd had a long enough and meaningful
Speaker 9: enough discussion, and it wasn't a five minute discussion that
Speaker 9: we had. It was quite involved. We talked about a
Speaker 9: lot of things in detail. We especially drilled down on
Speaker 9: this a bit. We've had lots of meaningful conversations with
Speaker 9: many thousands of people in the interim in the last
Speaker 9: eighteen years or whatever. It was tons of heartfelt, meaningful conversations.
Speaker 9: And I did feel there was a sense of disquiet
Speaker 9: for her, that this information had been burdening her and
Speaker 9: it hadn't gone anywhere. Maybe she said to me that
Speaker 9: she'd been to the police before. I can't recall. I
Speaker 9: had a feeling that she must have talked to other
Speaker 9: people about it. I'm sure I wasn't the first person
Speaker 9: she'd disclosed it to I felt that she just needed
Speaker 9: someone to spare along, to say you're doing the right thing.
Speaker 9: It's important and other people might disregard it, but you
Speaker 9: think it's important, and I think it's important, so let's
Speaker 9: act on it. To some extent, it was a sense
Speaker 9: of vulnerability because she was on her own and was
Speaker 9: worried about him having seen her. Definitely got that sense
Speaker 9: of what's the word menace? Menace is the word. I
Speaker 9: can recall that because you remember things like that when
Speaker 9: you're a woman, and she's on her own, and she
Speaker 9: said it with what I thought was honesty and integrity,
Speaker 9: And if I can corroborate anything that she's trying to say,
Speaker 9: then I'm happy to do that. She was a straightforward
Speaker 9: medical woman and certainly not a drama queen, nothing like that.
Speaker 9: I've never been told that somebody had witnessed a murder,
Speaker 9: and so that's not something I forget easily, and especially
Speaker 9: as she had credibility. She was a sound person of
Speaker 9: sound mind. We had a rapport and there was no
Speaker 9: way that it wouldn't take it seriously. I trust my
Speaker 9: instincts with people like that. It wasn't a five minute
Speaker 9: discussion two or three hours together got a long time.
Speaker 1: While doctor Aurha has emailed information to police, a formal
Speaker 1: science statement has not yet been taken from her, some
Speaker 1: seven months after the podcast episode was aired, and his
Speaker 1: concerns were not unfounded. I hope that when they follow
Speaker 1: you up, you say, look, let's just get this done.
Speaker 9: I'm quite happy to do that because I'm interested in justice,
Speaker 9: and especially injustice and when things aren't followed through properly.
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 Bronwyn 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 Amiot, Joshua Burton, Bridget, Ryan Bianca, far Marcus, Katie Burns,
Speaker 1: Liam Mendez, Sean Callen, Matthew Condon and David Murray, with
Speaker 1: assistance from Isaac Iron's. Audio production for this podcast series
Speaker 1: is by Wasabi Audio and original theme music by Slade Gibson.
Speaker 1: We have been assisted by Madison Walsh, a relation of
Speaker 1: Bromwin Winfield. We can only do this kind of journalism
Speaker 1: with the support of our subscribers and our major sponsors
Speaker 1: like Harvey Norman. For all of our exclusive stories, videos, maps,
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