Speaker 1: You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker
Speaker 1: every morning to hear the latest episode. Just say play
Speaker 1: the news from the Australian. From the Australian, Here's what's
Speaker 1: on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Thursday, September five.
Speaker 1: Jim Chalmer says the government is keeping Australia out of
Speaker 1: recession after the economy recorded its weakest growth since nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one. The Treasurer says the Reserve Bank is wrong
Speaker 1: to say the economy is running hot. It's all part
Speaker 1: of a barney between the Bank and the government about
Speaker 1: who's to blame for the rising cost of living. Talk
Speaker 1: of a family curse and an audacious scam. Those are
Speaker 1: the new twists in our blockbuster podcast investigation Bronwyn, led
Speaker 1: by Hedley Thomas. Journalism can help solve crime, but it
Speaker 1: can also expose the pain and grief buried within families.
Speaker 1: Today we meet a remarkable young woman walking both sides
Speaker 1: of this story. How does the stack of gold bullion
Speaker 1: become a box of cement? That's not a joke or
Speaker 1: a riddle, it's the reality. For Crystal Winfield Neil, a
Speaker 1: single mum living in Sydney, Crystal is the eldest daughter
Speaker 1: of Bronwyn Winfield, who disappeared from Lennox Head on the
Speaker 1: New South Wales North Coast just over three decades ago.
Speaker 1: The bungled initial police investigation and Bromwyn's suspected murder of
Speaker 1: the subject of The Australian's investigative podcast series Bronwyn, created
Speaker 1: by our national Chief correspondent Hedley Thomas. Growing up without
Speaker 1: her mum has been hard on Crystal. Recently, she turned
Speaker 1: to a spiritual teacher, a self described soul doctor for guidance.
Speaker 2: Crystal has been searching for a way to bring permanent
Speaker 2: positivity into her thinking and into her daily life.
Speaker 1: That's Crystal's aunt and Bromwin's half sister, Kim Marshall.
Speaker 2: She was approached by a strange person unknown to her
Speaker 2: in the street a number of months ago, and she
Speaker 2: has this understanding that this person who sat down with
Speaker 2: her understored and knew what she was going through.
Speaker 1: Kim's talking in one of two special new episodes of Bromwyn,
Speaker 1: which are available now exclusively for the Australian subscribers at
Speaker 1: bromwynpodcast dot com.
Speaker 2: And she thought meeting these people which were in numbers
Speaker 2: and different types of people that they would help her
Speaker 2: on a spiritual path to actually no longer having this
Speaker 2: weighted burden.
Speaker 1: At first, Crystal's financial contribution to the Soul Doctor's cause
Speaker 1: was modest, just a couple of hundred dollars. They told
Speaker 1: her they provided charitable assistance to people in India. But
Speaker 1: fast forward a couple of months and Crystal has been
Speaker 1: scammed out of more than three hundred thousand dollars, her
Speaker 1: entire life savings.
Speaker 2: She believes that by her giving them the seventy thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: they were going to take it away and bless it
Speaker 2: and then they would return it to her, But apparently
Speaker 2: that is no longer the case. But then there's the
Speaker 2: other act of kindness that she did is where she
Speaker 2: was asked to purchase a large number of gold and
Speaker 2: that gold bullion is no longer gold bullion. It is
Speaker 2: now actually a container full of cement.
Speaker 1: At some point, the gold bullion Crystal purchase to be
Speaker 1: blessed by the Soul Doctors was switched with an identical
Speaker 1: container full of cement. Crystal recently opened up about being
Speaker 1: scammed in the podcast's official discussion group. A voice actor
Speaker 1: is reading her posts.
Speaker 3: Honestly, our family has been through a lot. Both Mum
Speaker 3: and I were very trusting people and as a result,
Speaker 3: I was recently scammed my entire life savings by strangers.
Speaker 1: It's the first time we've heard directly from Crystal in
Speaker 1: this podcast series. She declined to be interviewed when Headley
Speaker 1: first started investigating, but she's recently found her voice in
Speaker 1: our lively Facebook group, where nearly twenty thousand listeners are
Speaker 1: chatting and crowdsolving as the investigation unfolds.
Speaker 3: Prised me as she trusted the wrong person, someone she
Speaker 3: has just met, and they were responsible for her disappearance.
Speaker 3: I also have other theories, but this seems likely to
Speaker 3: me as I know she never would have left us
Speaker 3: for long.
Speaker 1: In episode eleven, which is live now exclusively for Ours subscribers,
Speaker 1: Headley Thomas and Cristel's cousin Mattie Walsh, who's been working
Speaker 1: with heavily on the podcast, discuss these developments. In episode twelve,
Speaker 1: also live now for subscribers, Headly answers some of our
Speaker 1: listeners burning questions. Crystal Winfield Neil trusted the Soul Doctors
Speaker 1: because of an old bit of family law.
Speaker 4: I heard about this curse when I actually went to
Speaker 4: Sydney last year, and I may not be fully accurate
Speaker 4: on it, but apparently there is what is known as
Speaker 4: a read curse.
Speaker 1: Members of Crystal's extended family, like her Auntie Kim and
Speaker 1: uncle Andy Bromwin, Winfield's brother, say the curse is just
Speaker 1: a bit of a joke, but the told Bromwin's unsolved
Speaker 1: disappearance has taken on her extended family is no laughing matter.
Speaker 5: Well, it's been like opening up old wounds. Before the podcast,
Speaker 5: I didn't really understand the depths of a lot of
Speaker 5: these family issues and what Bromwin's disappearance did.
Speaker 1: Madison Walsh is Bromwin's cousin on the Reed side. She
Speaker 1: was born a decade after Bromwyn disappeared and has been
Speaker 1: working with Headley on the podcast investigation.
Speaker 5: And it's also a really tough subject because someone so
Speaker 5: close to them has gone missing. Watching it unfold, you
Speaker 5: have to keep in mind that this is the furthest
Speaker 5: we've ever gone with Bronwin's case. This is the furthest
Speaker 5: of the investigation has ever gone. So you, in a
Speaker 5: way have to sacrifice a little bit of your personal
Speaker 5: information and let it out there so that people can
Speaker 5: feel something towards the case, so they feel more connected
Speaker 5: to it, so they know that we're not always a
Speaker 5: joint family unit, and we all have good days and
Speaker 5: bad days, and not everyone agrees with each other's opinions,
Speaker 5: and there's moments where family members aren't communicating because it's
Speaker 5: just too hard, and it causes more arguments and it
Speaker 5: does good discussions. It's tough. It is tough to be
Speaker 5: in the middle of that, and things like the curse
Speaker 5: come up, and most family members think, oh, it's just
Speaker 5: tongue in cheek, it's just a funny thing that we
Speaker 5: like to bring up every now and then as a joke.
Speaker 5: But then other family members take it a bit more
Speaker 5: seriously and maybe do think, hang on, is there a curse?
Speaker 5: But at the end of the day, it's all based
Speaker 5: on opinion. It's all based on how you feel, and
Speaker 5: everyone has a right to have their own opinions and
Speaker 5: feel how they want, and at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: not everyone's going to agree with you. And that's basically
Speaker 5: been the biggest lesson to learn.
Speaker 1: Mattie's connection to bromwin Winfield inspired her to pursue a
Speaker 1: career in forensic science when she graduated in May. She
Speaker 1: never expected her first gig out of UNI to be
Speaker 1: a true crime podcast investigation.
Speaker 5: It was about a year ago and my aunt was
Speaker 5: being interviewed by Hedley at her home not far from mine,
Speaker 5: and she said that Hedley was coming over to interview
Speaker 5: her and asked if I wanted to come and join,
Speaker 5: because she knew of my forensics background and knew of
Speaker 5: my interest, and I went. I just sat there, and
Speaker 5: at certain points he asked for my import and he
Speaker 5: discovered that I at that point was still studying forensic science,
Speaker 5: and he asked me if I wanted to help him
Speaker 5: out and work with him on the podcast. And I
Speaker 5: was quite shocked that he was asking me because I
Speaker 5: was twenty And it's been going well ever since.
Speaker 1: Maddie had heard of Headley. Of course, he's the creator
Speaker 1: of the global Juggernaut podcast The Teacher's Pet, which resulted
Speaker 1: in the arrest of Christopher Michael Dawson over the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two disappearance of his wife Lynn Simms. Dawson has
Speaker 1: now been convicted of murder and child sex offending, and
Speaker 1: he's in prison. Thanks to Headley's work One of the
Speaker 1: interesting developments in true crime of journalism is the advent
Speaker 1: of audio. These big long form podcast investigations and they
Speaker 1: really are form of entertainment journalism packaged up in this
Speaker 1: very easy to consume form. Has been the subject of
Speaker 1: a podcast like this changed your perspective on how serious
Speaker 1: all of this is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely seeing the inner workings of a podcast and
Speaker 5: seeing how much work goes into it and how many
Speaker 5: conversations and how many interviews don't make it to the
Speaker 5: final cut is in insane because there's so much work
Speaker 5: that goes into creating a condensed episode that everyone will
Speaker 5: find entertaining and want to listen to. It's definitely interesting
Speaker 5: to witness. And now when I listen to podcasts and
Speaker 5: I hear family members speaking and hearing certain opinions and
Speaker 5: certain ideas, you have to also keep the perspective that
Speaker 5: that's not everything. That's just one opinion and one thought,
Speaker 5: but there's still more to the.
Speaker 1: Story coming up. What it's like when highly invested true
Speaker 1: crime fans start obsessing about your family. Bromwin is an
Speaker 1: investigation that's only possible thanks to the subscribers of The
Speaker 1: Australian who get to hear episodes first, and to read
Speaker 1: all our amazing stories about this cold case. Join us
Speaker 1: at Romwan podcast dot com. We have a very lively
Speaker 1: Facebook group with nearly twenty thousand people in it who
Speaker 1: are discussing this podcast every day. They're very frank with
Speaker 1: their opinions and they can be posh. How have you
Speaker 1: felt watching them discuss this very real life story in
Speaker 1: that way?
Speaker 5: Look as a family member, It's interesting to witness because
Speaker 5: with a Facebook group, everyone is sitting behind a screen.
Speaker 5: They can say what they want, and some opinions are
Speaker 5: harsh and some are just the truth, and you can't
Speaker 5: really delete every comment you don't like and criticize people
Speaker 5: for saying what they think. They are so invested in
Speaker 5: this podcast, it's almost like I feel some people are
Speaker 5: searching for the perfect murder in a way. So often
Speaker 5: they ask questions or they have opinions that really will
Speaker 5: never know the answers to. So it's often hard to
Speaker 5: look at that and go, why are we being criticized
Speaker 5: when we will never know that? Why are we being
Speaker 5: criticized when in hindsight everything is twenty twenty vision, In
Speaker 5: hindsight everything is different. You have to look at it
Speaker 5: and take it with a grain of salt, and they
Speaker 5: can share their opinion and it's a discussion group. It's
Speaker 5: open to people to say what they think and give
Speaker 5: their perspectives on the episodes and give their perspectives on
Speaker 5: what they think of certain characters within the podcasts. At first,
Speaker 5: it was very like I was like, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 5: they're very honest. They don't care that you're sitting there
Speaker 5: also looking at this Facebook group and you read everything
Speaker 5: that they say. It's been challenging to step back a
Speaker 5: little bit and understand that they're not as connected as
Speaker 5: I am. They really are just looking for entertainment.
Speaker 1: You can hear episodes eleven and twelve of from One
Speaker 1: Now by subscribing at bromwe podcast dot com.