Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective see aside of life the average persons never exposed her.
Speaker 1: I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty
Speaker 1: five of those years, I was catching killers. That's what
Speaker 1: I did for a living. I was a homicide detective.
Speaker 1: I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking
Speaker 1: the public into the world in which I operated. The
Speaker 1: guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from
Speaker 1: all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest,
Speaker 1: just like the people I talk to. Some of the
Speaker 1: content and language might be confronting. That's because no one
Speaker 1: who comes in the contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world.
Speaker 1: Today I spoke to Sally Laden, the daughter of missing
Speaker 1: woman Marion Barter. Marion disappeared in bizarre circumstances twenty seven
Speaker 1: years ago. Sally doesn't know what happened to her mum,
Speaker 1: but she's determined to find out, and today we spoke
Speaker 1: to her about the enduring pain a loved one's disappearance
Speaker 1: can cause. We also spoke about the shocking truth about
Speaker 1: the failings of the police investigation and a mysterious man
Speaker 1: called Rick Blum, who came into Marion's life around the
Speaker 1: time she disappeared. Rick Blum has denied any involvement in
Speaker 1: the disappearance of Marion. Sally is determined to find out
Speaker 1: what happened to her mother and just maybe today's chat
Speaker 1: may prompt something. Sally Laden, welcome to I catch killers.
Speaker 2: Hello, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure. And look, I want to say upfront,
Speaker 1: condolences for what you've gone through with your mother having
Speaker 1: disappeared twenty seven years ago. And I've seen enough of
Speaker 1: people and the uncertainty and not knowing what happened and
Speaker 1: the pain of having a loved one just disappear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, thank you for that. It's is a hard
Speaker 2: road to part to walk, I guess, but yeah, thank
Speaker 2: you for having me and having a chat with me
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 1: Well. I don't think people fully appreciate what happens when
Speaker 1: someone just disappears, or you haven't got answers, or someone's
Speaker 1: died in suspicious circumstances, you haven't got answers. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure some people say, well, twenty seven years ago, why
Speaker 1: are you still campaigning? Can you just explain that to them,
Speaker 1: because I fully understand. I've seen enough of victims families
Speaker 1: and it's not something that you ever get closure from.
Speaker 2: No, and you live with it forever. And I feel
Speaker 2: like I didn't really want to leave that burden of
Speaker 2: searching for my children. I've got three children and that's
Speaker 2: their grandmother. They never met her. She already disappeared by
Speaker 2: the time I had babies, and even by the time
Speaker 2: I was getting married. I got married a year after
Speaker 2: she went missing. And it is a rollercoaster, and there
Speaker 2: are times where I've had to tap out and just
Speaker 2: focus on being a mum or building houses or working
Speaker 2: in our business, and then when I have the energy
Speaker 2: to come back in, I jump back in and go
Speaker 2: a little bit further until you know, you get knocked
Speaker 2: down again, and you can kind of get knocked down
Speaker 2: so much, but I have this personality and ability, I
Speaker 2: guess to just pull myself out and keep going because
Speaker 2: for me, my mum matters, and she shouldn't. Quite often
Speaker 2: A quoted of saying, you know, she's not a lost puppy,
Speaker 2: and it might be twenty seven years I'm actually fifty
Speaker 2: two now. She technically at the time the Currenter has
Speaker 2: deemed that when she passed she was fifty two as well.
Speaker 2: And my eldest daughter is twenty three about to turn
Speaker 2: twenty four. And I was twenty three turning twenty four
Speaker 2: when mum disappeared. So in our world we've actually come
Speaker 2: full circle in life again to where you know, Ella's
Speaker 2: the same age as I was. I'm the same age
Speaker 2: as Mum was, and we still don't know what's happened
Speaker 2: to her, and so I'll I'll keep going. People joke
Speaker 2: that I'm a Tourian and I do have this stubbornness
Speaker 2: in me, so part of it.
Speaker 1: I think people that listen to the podcast today will
Speaker 1: find out that you need to need to be stubborn
Speaker 1: because for all the kicks that you've had, you keep
Speaker 1: getting up and keep fighting. Why have you campaigned so hard?
Speaker 2: Well, I guess at the outset it was about my mum.
Speaker 2: But as time has grown, I've realized that, you know,
Speaker 2: everybody needs a voice in the missing space, and you know,
Speaker 2: the ambiguity, ambiguity that we live with, those of us
Speaker 2: living in with as missing loved one, it's really important
Speaker 2: that we do remember them and that we keep fighting
Speaker 2: for the truth. I think, you know, as I've been
Speaker 2: kicking along, I have found things. So I keep finding things.
Speaker 2: I keep digging deeper, and you know, the more people
Speaker 2: that I sort of calls out for people to help
Speaker 2: me as well, and people have come to that table,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's with those little bits of information
Speaker 2: that it just keeps going and this story just keeps
Speaker 2: growing every day. So I'm here, I am keeping on,
Speaker 2: keeping on.
Speaker 1: Well, some things have been uncovered, and I dare say,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into this more in the in the
Speaker 1: podcast that Yeah, as a form of police officer now
Speaker 1: working in the media in this space on true crime
Speaker 1: understanding the police organization, I can say comfortably that if
Speaker 1: you weren't campaigning then going so hard, it would have
Speaker 1: been forgotten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or she was forgotten. She's been forgotten multiple times,
Speaker 2: like even at the very outset, you know. So I
Speaker 2: walk into Byron Bay police station. I didn't use the
Speaker 2: words missing. I just said, something's wrong. My mum's supposed
Speaker 2: to be overseas. I've just found out that money's coming
Speaker 2: out of her bank account in large sums every day
Speaker 2: for three and a half weeks in Byron Bay and
Speaker 2: in Burley something's wrong. She missed my brother's birthday. That
Speaker 2: was very out of character for her and something that
Speaker 2: I've always wanted to get out for anybody who finds
Speaker 2: himself in this position, the language is actually important. But
Speaker 2: equally the police probably need to start looking at that
Speaker 2: as well. And because their argument to you know, in
Speaker 2: court was will Sally didn't walk in and say her
Speaker 2: mother was missing, And I'm like, well, you know, as
Speaker 2: a twenty three year old, twenty four year old, I
Speaker 2: didn't know what was happening. I just knew that my
Speaker 2: mum was supposed to be overseas and money's coming out
Speaker 2: of her bank account and Brian Bay. The reaction from
Speaker 2: the lady on the phone when I rang Telly Banking,
Speaker 2: she nearly had a heart attack. She's like, what, I
Speaker 2: can't tell you this, but holy moly, there's money coming
Speaker 2: out of her bank account and Byron Bay. So you know,
Speaker 2: it started at that very outset. They only marked my
Speaker 2: mum's on occurrence only at that stage within twenty four
Speaker 2: hours of me going to the police station.
Speaker 1: It's a failing from the start and not beating up
Speaker 1: on the individuals, but these mistakes made that if people
Speaker 1: in those circumstances and it doesn't need to be an
Speaker 1: experienced police office. Anyone with common sense, and one would
Speaker 1: hope that anyone in the police with common sense would realize, okay,
Speaker 1: this is something. What the details that you just provided there.
Speaker 1: As a junior constable, you'd think, okay, this is something
Speaker 1: that we better have a look at. But tell us
Speaker 1: about the circumstances of your mum's disappearance. Brief details, because
Speaker 1: we're going to break it down. So it's complex. But
Speaker 1: where was she the fact she went overseas and then
Speaker 1: so she was a school teacher.
Speaker 2: She'd just won Best Teacher in Queensland award. Ida Butcher's
Speaker 2: actually gave her that award in November of nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 2: She came second in Australia overall. So she was achieving
Speaker 2: well at school. She was doing well. She loved her
Speaker 2: little boys that she taught. She taught four and five
Speaker 2: year olds at TSS on the Gold Coast, which is
Speaker 2: the Southport School. It's a private boys school, probably one
Speaker 2: of the best in Queensland. She wasn't very happy. There
Speaker 2: was times in the new year, around the March February
Speaker 2: time period where she just wasn't getting along with a
Speaker 2: few people at school, and I always sort of thought
Speaker 2: to myself, potentially there was a bit of tall poppy
Speaker 2: syndrome happening. She won this award and people didn't like that.
Speaker 2: And I've even heard comments since then that people were saying, oh, well,
Speaker 2: it was the parents who were voting for her, and
Speaker 2: so even little comments like that, I'm like, what does
Speaker 2: it really matter who voted for her?
Speaker 1: She wins, probably want to hope.
Speaker 2: So but anyway, she decided to sell her house and
Speaker 2: go on a trip overseas. I did think it was
Speaker 2: odd that she left halfway through a year, because she
Speaker 2: was a very dedicated teacher. But she was also quite
Speaker 2: upset about a few things that were happening at school.
Speaker 2: Someone had accused her of touching a boy and that
Speaker 2: just absolutely wiped her for six She was in tears
Speaker 2: about it. I was just gobsmacked because I know my
Speaker 2: mum very well and she would never have done anything
Speaker 2: of the sort. So that was all happening. She decided
Speaker 2: to sell the house and told my husband and I
Speaker 2: he was my fiance back then. We just got engaged
Speaker 2: that she was going to come back in a year,
Speaker 2: and she was going to buy an apartment or a
Speaker 2: unit at Maine Beach, which is on the Gold Coast,
Speaker 2: not far from her house, and by doing so, she'd
Speaker 2: have to give us a couple of big pieces of
Speaker 2: her furniture because she wouldn't be able to house them
Speaker 2: in the unit when she got back. The rest of
Speaker 2: her treasures were going into a shipping container, and foolishly
Speaker 2: I never asked her where the shipping container was going.
Speaker 2: She just said to me, if I decide to stay
Speaker 2: overseas and teach, I will get you to send it
Speaker 2: over to me. Okay, And I thought, okay, and like
Speaker 2: everything made sense to me. She did sell the house
Speaker 2: really quickly, so she sold it in three weeks for
Speaker 2: less than fifteen thousand dollars that she paid for it.
Speaker 2: And if you wind back to nineteen ninety seven, we're
Speaker 2: talking around one hundred and seventy one hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars for a house. Just for some perspective, so
Speaker 2: that was a bit that was a bit odd. I
Speaker 2: did think that was a bit weird, but you know,
Speaker 2: I wasn't the kind of child, I guess young adult
Speaker 2: that asked my mum will probed into my mom's business
Speaker 2: too much. Anyway, there was a night that she'd asked
Speaker 2: me if I would come and help her start packing
Speaker 2: up the house. And I was going to TAFE because
Speaker 2: ironically I was trying myself to get into the Queensland Police,
Speaker 2: so I was studying at TAFE while working from I
Speaker 2: do joke. I do joke about that. I should have
Speaker 2: I should have persisted. But any who, Chris went around
Speaker 2: my partner, yeah, and he helped mum pack up. And
Speaker 2: so he was helping her. He was putting some records
Speaker 2: from the under the TV cabinet into some boxes, and
Speaker 2: she walked down and said, what's the time, and he
Speaker 2: gave her the time, and she said, oh, okay, we'll
Speaker 2: just drop what you're doing. I need you to go.
Speaker 2: And he goes, no, no, Marry and it's okay, I'll
Speaker 2: just keep packing this box and finish and he goes, no, no,
Speaker 2: you just need to leave it. I need you to go.
Speaker 2: So he left, quite bewildered as to why she was
Speaker 2: sort of kicking him out of the house in such
Speaker 2: a hurry. Came and picked me up from Tafe. We
Speaker 2: stopped at a service station on the way home that
Speaker 2: had a McDonald's attached to it because it's late. We
Speaker 2: don't we didn't have time to cook dinner. McDonald's feel
Speaker 2: every time I say that now because I don't need McDonald's.
Speaker 2: But why did you have McDonald's Anyway? Life changes? But yeah, anyway,
Speaker 2: so we were sitting at McDonald's and my mum's car
Speaker 2: pulled up in the petrol bowser and Chris actually was
Speaker 2: the one who saw her. I had my to the
Speaker 2: bowser and I stood up and I started waving at her.
Speaker 2: And she's standing at the car with the door open
Speaker 2: like she's about to put petrol in the car, and
Speaker 2: just stares at me like a deer in headlights, as
Speaker 2: if to say, oh my god, what are you doing
Speaker 2: sort of thing. Anyway, she got back in the car,
Speaker 2: didn't put petrol in the car, and drove off. But
Speaker 2: she went around to the left, which got meant that
Speaker 2: she went through the drive through and instead of driving
Speaker 2: straight past us. And I think she did that because
Speaker 2: there was a man in the car, and I clearly
Speaker 2: could see that there was a guy. He was very tall,
Speaker 2: his head was nearly touching the roof. But the reflection
Speaker 2: from the lights, the bright lights at nighttime in the
Speaker 2: petrol station meant that I didn't get a very clear
Speaker 2: look at him, but he was big, and I guess
Speaker 2: always figured that if she'd driven past the window where
Speaker 2: we were standing, I would have got a full view
Speaker 2: of who that was. I did ask her the next
Speaker 2: day and said, who was the man in the car?
Speaker 2: She said, just a friend I've met at the art center.
Speaker 2: He was just taking me out to say goodbye before
Speaker 2: I go over. And I went, okay, no problem, Ibe,
Speaker 2: you respect her privacy. I kind of joked and went, oh,
Speaker 2: maybe she's got a boyfriend. She doesn't want to tell
Speaker 2: me about it, but you know, I just left it
Speaker 2: at that essentially. So on the she came and had
Speaker 2: dinner with us. She asked if i'd make her a
Speaker 2: lamb roast, and she came to our house with her
Speaker 2: friend Leslie. She'd moved in with Leslie because she'd sort
Speaker 2: of had to leave the house a couple of weeks
Speaker 2: before she was ready to move to go on the trip.
Speaker 2: I should say, Leslie lived close to school, so it
Speaker 2: sort of made sense that whereas we were like thirty
Speaker 2: minutes away, so it was probably better for her to
Speaker 2: stay with Leslie and so Leslie and drove Mum out
Speaker 2: to our house. I made her a lamb roast and yeah,
Speaker 2: that was the last time I saw her. Gave her
Speaker 2: a hug and a kiss. She looked a bit sad
Speaker 2: that she was leaving.
Speaker 1: How what a period of time was that.
Speaker 2: Twenty second of June nineteen ninety seven. Is that when
Speaker 2: she left? Okay, So she was there on the Saturday
Speaker 2: night and then she left the next day.
Speaker 1: All right, so she's going overseas. She's fifty one, fifty two,
Speaker 1: and she wasn't that happy with her life at that
Speaker 1: particular point in time. And she won the day a
Speaker 1: career break, I suppose. And you stayed in contact with
Speaker 1: her when she was overseas.
Speaker 2: So again whinding back to nineteen ninety seven, not many
Speaker 2: people had mobile phones, so I was pretty new. There
Speaker 2: was no Internet apart from the dial up variety, so
Speaker 2: it wasn't like you could just FaceTime someone jump on Facebook.
Speaker 2: So I was really reliant on her to contact me,
Speaker 2: which she did. So she sent me a couple of postcards,
Speaker 2: and she sent me a letter as well, and she
Speaker 2: did ring me. So after the threadbat disaster happened, Chris
Speaker 2: and I had been skiing. We're driven down to go skiing,
Speaker 2: and we were there and we were driving back when
Speaker 2: we heard about the Threadbeat disaster. And when we got
Speaker 2: home there was an answering machine message. The light was
Speaker 2: flashing and I pressed it and it was Mum and
Speaker 2: she said, oh, I've just heard word over here about
Speaker 2: the Threadbat disaster. I was just checking to see if
Speaker 2: you guys are okay. And I was really sad because
Speaker 2: I just bought my wedding dress here in Sydney on
Speaker 2: our way home in the car, and I really wanted
Speaker 2: to tell her because she was here when we got engaged, right,
Speaker 2: so she came to our engagement party on the ninth
Speaker 2: of June. She left on the twenty second of June,
Speaker 2: so she was aware of what we were doing. She
Speaker 2: knew that I was trying to get into the police.
Speaker 2: She's asking all those sorts of questions and being engaging
Speaker 2: with us in those letters and postcards. And then she
Speaker 2: rang and said to me, look, you know I'm going
Speaker 2: to stop sending lots of postcards. I'm sending post ups
Speaker 2: to everyone, which she did from evidence, and she said,
Speaker 2: I just need to have a break, and I said, yes,
Speaker 2: go and have a break. You don't need to send
Speaker 2: us a hundred postcards. It's hard to get a stamp
Speaker 2: and find a postbox. Go and have a break. That's fine.
Speaker 2: We're all for all fine here. And that was the
Speaker 2: last time I spoke to her. She was at a
Speaker 2: payphone and the money kept dropping out, and she'd ring
Speaker 2: back and she'd talk for a bit, and then the
Speaker 2: money would drop out again, And when we got to
Speaker 2: the last bit, she said, this is all the money
Speaker 2: I've got now, so I'll just let you talk until
Speaker 2: the phone drops out. So I'm literally just talking away
Speaker 2: in the phone cut off. And that was the last
Speaker 2: time I spoke to her.
Speaker 1: Okay, now, what do you know the date that was?
Speaker 2: So the timeline of that is the thirty first. Well,
Speaker 2: we know that the three beds I used to happened
Speaker 2: around midnight on the thirtieth of June nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 2: and we were coming back. So she we think that
Speaker 2: she's called and left the message on the thirty first,
Speaker 2: and then she's wrung me again on the first. Her
Speaker 2: passport came back into Australia the next day, right.
Speaker 1: So explain this and this is where and I've got
Speaker 1: to say I've read through the full coroner's report and
Speaker 1: I think it was one hundred and sixty nine pages
Speaker 1: or whatever, the coroner's findings, and there's so many twists
Speaker 1: and turns on this, so I found it fascinating. But
Speaker 1: she came back into the country the next day, So
Speaker 1: she'd been overseas for six weeks or.
Speaker 2: So, So six weeks out of the whole year that
Speaker 2: she said she was going.
Speaker 1: For and she's come back into the country. How did
Speaker 1: we'll do it in sequence of events? Because and you
Speaker 1: know so much now that you didn't know back then.
Speaker 1: So okay, that's the last time you spoke to your
Speaker 1: mum back then? When did you realize that she had
Speaker 1: come back into to Australia.
Speaker 2: So what happened was I was that tafe, as I said,
Speaker 2: when I was trying to get into the police force.
Speaker 2: I guess for me, she'd given me that out that
Speaker 2: she was having some time out. She wasn't going to
Speaker 2: be sending postcards, she wasn't going to be sending letters.
Speaker 1: So you're not overly at that point.
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, I'll talk to you. When I
Speaker 2: talked to you, but then you know, that's the first
Speaker 2: of August. I guess probably a month went by. Where
Speaker 2: Now in September, I'm like, oh, she hasn't contacted me.
Speaker 2: That's getting long now, like I haven't spoken to her
Speaker 2: for a while. And then October came around. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: now I'm starting to get a bit worried, Like she's
Speaker 2: been gone for two months now, I haven't spoken to her.
Speaker 2: Surely she'll contact Owen, my brother for his birthday, which
Speaker 2: was the eighteenth of October, And so I called him
Speaker 2: to see if she had called on the Saturday, which
Speaker 2: was his birthday, and he said no, and I said, okay,
Speaker 2: I sort of gave her a bit of grace to go.
Speaker 2: K's behind us. Maybe she's got her dates mixed up.
Speaker 2: She'll bring him tomorrow. So I rang him again and
Speaker 2: he said, no, she hasn't called me. And it was
Speaker 2: just that a friend came over for dinner that night
Speaker 2: and we were talking about it, and I was saying,
Speaker 2: I'm worried, like now, I don't know, she would never
Speaker 2: miss his birthday, so what are we going to do?
Speaker 2: And she suggested that I ring the bank because I
Speaker 2: had her bank account details and see if she was
Speaker 2: using her bank account and here. I am thinking it
Speaker 2: would be overseas and that she'd say yes or no.
Speaker 2: I rang and she said, I can't tell you anything
Speaker 2: due to privacy. And then she paused and she said, oh,
Speaker 2: my god, did you say your mum's overseas? And I
Speaker 2: said yes, and she said, oh, there's money coming out
Speaker 2: of her bank account and Barron Bay OK. So she goes,
Speaker 2: you can't tell anybody. I'm telling you this because I'll
Speaker 2: lose my job, you know. So there was all that
Speaker 2: rushing through my head as well, and I was just
Speaker 2: grateful that she told me, and so my husband and
Speaker 2: I we actually worked weekends in our jobs and it's
Speaker 2: our We've gone back. I have gone back with a
Speaker 2: fine toothcomb to look at the timeline, and it's my
Speaker 2: opinion that we actually drove to Byron on the twentieth.
Speaker 2: The police report says it was the twenty second, But
Speaker 2: if you look at that really closely, they've done a
Speaker 2: lot of work, I guess, and ringing people and talking
Speaker 2: to people in a forty five minute period by when
Speaker 2: he said that he did it, and he's lodged it,
Speaker 2: so I'm not sure about that. That's all a bit gray,
Speaker 2: and no one can really say, yeah, your name. But
Speaker 2: Chris and I think we went on the Monday and
Speaker 2: we went down there with a school photo of mums
Speaker 2: and we walked around everywhere to see if someone had
Speaker 2: seen her.
Speaker 1: What literally walked literally walked around with a photos or
Speaker 1: going the shops.
Speaker 2: Or we went into Wowors, we went into the chemists,
Speaker 2: we went into a nature path shop, health food shop,
Speaker 2: anywhere I thought mum would go if she was actually
Speaker 2: in Byron. I was just my head was say.
Speaker 1: And that's on the basis, so you think your mum's
Speaker 1: overseas and then you've spoken to the bank because you've
Speaker 1: got concerns because she didn't fine on Owen's birthday, which
Speaker 1: she normally would hadn't heard from it for months. The
Speaker 1: bank tells you that, oh she's drawing money here, and
Speaker 1: then you've gone the bar and buy Yeah, I can
Speaker 1: understand why your head's spinny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like. And in the inquest it was sort
Speaker 2: of like throwing against Chris and I because Chris had
Speaker 2: a different opinion. He thought maybe someone had stolen her
Speaker 2: card and was using her carding baron. For me, I
Speaker 2: just was like, as someone seeing her, like is she here,
Speaker 2: Like what's happening. So I didn't have that thought process
Speaker 2: at all, and it wasn't until we went to the
Speaker 2: bank and I walked in and he said, how can
Speaker 2: I help you? We were the only people in there.
Speaker 2: There was no one else and there was only one
Speaker 2: person serving. And I handed him the photo and I said, look,
Speaker 2: my mom's supposed to be overseas, but I've just been
Speaker 2: told by you're telebanking that money's been coming out of
Speaker 2: her bank account. Here can you help me? And he
Speaker 2: picked up the photo and he shook it and he said,
Speaker 2: m that rings a bell. So his body language to
Speaker 2: me was really off. He took the photo and walked
Speaker 2: around the back of some tables, went into a room,
Speaker 2: closed the door behind him, came out, went over to
Speaker 2: the photocopy. He took a photo of it and came
Speaker 2: back to me and said, what would you like me
Speaker 2: to say to her if I see her? So I
Speaker 2: was like having a meltdown. And we drove straight around
Speaker 2: to Barron Bay Police and I walked in there and said, something's.
Speaker 1: Wrong the background of your mother. You're a daughter, so
Speaker 1: you know as well as anyone this is not the
Speaker 1: type of normal behavior for it.
Speaker 2: No and it was just really off. I just had
Speaker 2: a really bad feeling walked in there. You know, a
Speaker 2: big mistake I made, and I hope other people will
Speaker 2: learn from this as you make sure you take down
Speaker 2: every single detail. Because I didn't remember the name of
Speaker 2: the guy who gave me the report, I didn't get
Speaker 2: a business card, I didn't do a statement. I literally
Speaker 2: just told him everything, thinking that that was how you
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: Well, let's put it out there, because I don't like
Speaker 1: people not understanding what the practices are in police. But
Speaker 1: if you go into a police station, the report something,
Speaker 1: get the name of the officer that you're speaking to,
Speaker 1: time and date, and make a note of it. And
Speaker 1: if it's a matter that you're reporting, asked for an
Speaker 1: event number, so you've got an event number. I'm not
Speaker 1: telling you now. You know that now, but for other people,
Speaker 1: because I think so many times people and I honestly
Speaker 1: believe it's because we're brought up to trust police, like
Speaker 1: you go and the police will saw that you've got
Speaker 1: the problem. You go to the police and you assume
Speaker 1: that the police are going to solve this problem. But
Speaker 1: I think that safeguard getting the name of the officer,
Speaker 1: you speak to making people accountable, and you know, wherever
Speaker 1: you work, if someone what's your name, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: you're going to be accountable for this. I think that's
Speaker 1: a good practice, So let's put that out there. You've
Speaker 1: gone in and you explained when we first started the podcast.
Speaker 1: You've said you've got concerns about your mother. What were
Speaker 1: you told by the police at the time.
Speaker 2: I wasn't told anything. He just listened and wrote things
Speaker 2: down in his notebook, and then Chris and I left,
Speaker 2: and I really really kicked myself a lot for not
Speaker 2: just taking down more detail. I got a phone call
Speaker 2: about a week to ten days later. Again kick myself
Speaker 2: for not writing it down, taking note of who I
Speaker 2: spoke to on the phone. When people ask me, my
Speaker 2: opinion of my memory is that it was the same
Speaker 2: man that I spoke to at the desk, but I
Speaker 2: can't prove that because I didn't write anything down. But
Speaker 2: that phone call was a gentleman calling me to tell
Speaker 2: me that they'd found my mother and she didn't want
Speaker 2: anything to do with us. Exact words, where we found
Speaker 2: your mother. She doesn't want anyone knowing where she is
Speaker 2: or what she's doing. And that is burnt into my brain.
Speaker 1: So, but that's not true, is it.
Speaker 2: No, well, no it's not. They've told me now that
Speaker 2: they've never spoken to her, they've never sighted her. So
Speaker 2: and the kicker for me, Gary is my brother took
Speaker 2: his own life shortly after my mum went missing, and
Speaker 2: I firmly believe he had problems, like he had his
Speaker 2: own issues and demons he was working through. But you know,
Speaker 2: he was about to he was about to get married.
Speaker 2: He was in a very good headspace in my heart,
Speaker 2: and I think he did not cope very well when
Speaker 2: he was told that.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to hear that, but I understand what you're saying. There.
Speaker 1: To be told that your mom's back in the country,
Speaker 1: she just doesn't want to speak to you. That's a
Speaker 1: burden for anyone to carry.
Speaker 2: And even just the way it was said to me,
Speaker 2: like no one sat down and said, listen, I understand
Speaker 2: this was going to be hard for you to hear
Speaker 2: your mother doesn't want to have anything to do with
Speaker 2: you anymore. Like just to be told on the phone
Speaker 2: so brash, and even you know, since then, I know
Speaker 2: you're going to tell me not to jump forward. But
Speaker 2: you know, we've got records now from Queensland Police Missing
Speaker 2: Person's Unit, because they actually were involved as well with
Speaker 2: my grandfather's involvement. He lived up on the Sunshine Coast
Speaker 2: and he had contacted missing persons through the Salvation Army
Speaker 2: and they were working with Queensland Missing person and they
Speaker 2: actually wrote like I've got a letter from the Salvation
Speaker 2: Army just saying, oh, you know, bank security confirm that
Speaker 2: it was definitely your daughter Marion who went in and
Speaker 2: spoke of starting a new life and withdrew the balance
Speaker 2: of of her bank account and bank security are like
Speaker 2: the police, so must be true. And that in her
Speaker 2: notebook she hasn't taken down the name of the bank
Speaker 2: teller who served mum who claims that it was definitely
Speaker 2: my mum who went in and telling my grandfather was
Speaker 2: definitely your daughter Marion is the word choice. And the
Speaker 2: kicker there too is that she didn't withdraw all the
Speaker 2: money out of heran account. There was still money sitting
Speaker 2: in her bank account up until.
Speaker 1: Last year, and it had sat dormant since with for
Speaker 1: all of that large amount.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they sat dormant. And then they were still
Speaker 2: taking bank fees out of my mum's bank account right
Speaker 2: up until the end of the inquest to.
Speaker 1: Me with the comments like that, you can a piece
Speaker 1: of information, you can interpret it many ways, but interpreted
Speaker 1: that your mother just doesn't want I see you, Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know how anyone could say that unless they've
Speaker 1: spoken to your mother. But that's just an assumption and
Speaker 1: that sort of information shouldn't be passed on to members
Speaker 1: of the public if police have passed it on the
Speaker 1: information the way that you said, but in the circumstances
Speaker 1: to contact you and tell you that they've spoken to
Speaker 1: your mother, And it doesn't appear that that's correct that
Speaker 1: to me, And I could be wrong here. I'm only
Speaker 1: surmising understanding the workings and the organization of the police.
Speaker 1: It's like someone that, oh, well, we can close that
Speaker 1: line of inquiry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I've seen the line of inquiry from when
Speaker 2: I initially went into byron Ba Police and they actually
Speaker 2: marked her as an occurrence only and the wording is
Speaker 2: no action until the person is actually listed as missing
Speaker 2: and new action due to other work priorities. And I'm
Speaker 2: reading that going okay, so does that mean she's not
Speaker 2: a priority? And you know, the word choices in the
Speaker 2: language on the police report is, oh, well, she was
Speaker 2: fifty one, she's been married and divorced three times. She's
Speaker 2: capable of this behavior without talking to my mum, never
Speaker 2: ever speaking to her. And I think for me when
Speaker 2: people ask me, why do I keep pushing and keep going.
Speaker 2: That's one of the main things I want people to
Speaker 2: learn that language is actually and what you spay and
Speaker 2: what your words woulds do actually can cause a lot
Speaker 2: of problems for somebody, especially if you're living in this
Speaker 2: ambiguous bubble over here where you don't know what's happened
Speaker 2: and you're always guessing and you and your mind just
Speaker 2: goes million miles an hour.
Speaker 1: But I hear what you're saying, and I just want
Speaker 1: to say to you, don't blame yourself. You've done the
Speaker 1: right thing. You've gone to the police with genuine, legitimate
Speaker 1: concerns and there's been a failing in the system, not
Speaker 1: a failing from your point of view, like at you
Speaker 1: accept what police tell you on face value, and I
Speaker 1: told you not the jump ahead on the jump ahead
Speaker 1: a little bit in that during the coronial inquest that
Speaker 1: wasn't held for years and years after the Detective Chief
Speaker 1: Inspector Brea, who I know and I rate him as
Speaker 1: a good detective, and he was heading up the missing
Speaker 1: person's unit at the time that he gave this evidence.
Speaker 1: He said in a statement that forms part of the
Speaker 1: evidence of the Crannial brief, and this is from Detective
Speaker 1: Chief Inspector Brown, it is my view that Marion Barter
Speaker 1: should not have been classified as located, as her whereabouts
Speaker 1: were still unknown and there was still justification to hold
Speaker 1: concerns for her safety or well being. So that's someone
Speaker 1: that's reviewed it years later. So it's not just give
Speaker 1: you some credit here. It's not just you saying things
Speaker 1: could be done better or me trying to beat up
Speaker 1: on the police on the matter. That's someone that's still
Speaker 1: serving police officer that reviewed the situation and came up
Speaker 1: with that opinion and gave that evidence the cranial inquest
Speaker 1: in his statement. So that must add to the frustration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, frustration. And I was really glad I was
Speaker 2: there when Glenn gave his statement on that, and I
Speaker 2: sort of felt like something like finally someone could actually say, yes,
Speaker 2: what Sally did is correct, because if I can add
Speaker 2: to my mum's family, her sisters in particular, and in
Speaker 2: particular one of those sisters how to go with me
Speaker 2: when I listed moms missing, and she had my grandfather
Speaker 2: as well, and she said, you know, I don't know
Speaker 2: why you guys are doing this. She's just having a holiday,
Speaker 2: she's just having a break. Why would you go on
Speaker 2: list her as missing. And so they sort of had
Speaker 2: a crack at me, and they don't talk to me anymore,
Speaker 2: like ever since I've done the podcast. The lady vanishes
Speaker 2: and I understand it's traumatic, and I understand it's upsetting,
Speaker 2: and I understand that not everybody is like me who
Speaker 2: can just keep plugging along and going with it, and
Speaker 2: it is upsetting for them. It's their sister. She was
Speaker 2: the eldest. But you know, at the same time, it's
Speaker 2: important that you know, we do look for her and
Speaker 2: we make out that what's happened to her, make sure
Speaker 2: she's safe and well. And so for years and years
Speaker 2: and years, I just wanted to find her to make
Speaker 2: sure she was like, Hey, I'd even say, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't need to see you. I don't need to
Speaker 2: talk to you if you don't want to talk to me.
Speaker 2: As sad as that is, just let me know you're okay,
Speaker 2: and I can rest my heart because I can't. I
Speaker 2: can't rest until I know, and you know, I'm on
Speaker 2: heart medication now. Like it's been really hard for me
Speaker 2: to do what I'm doing. This is not easy, but
Speaker 2: I just feel I have to do it for her.
Speaker 2: I have to. I have to do it for her,
Speaker 2: and I have to do it for every other missing
Speaker 2: person as well, because they need a voice. My mum's
Speaker 2: not here to tell her story.
Speaker 1: Well, I think you're entitled to her. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: her daughter, like it's some clot closest relative, and you've
Speaker 1: got concerns for your mum's well being. So there's a
Speaker 1: whole range of things that came out, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about the police investigation, but there was when did
Speaker 1: you find out that your mum and just before she
Speaker 1: went overseas change change the name, and do you want
Speaker 1: to explain when you when you became aware of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So in that timeline of she's wrung us on
Speaker 2: the phone in the August and Owen's birthday in October
Speaker 2: as soon as I as soon as I knew that,
Speaker 2: and I went to the police in Byron Bay. I
Speaker 2: was that tafe and we had a whole heap of
Speaker 2: different people in my class, because we had some customs
Speaker 2: agents who were trying to become a cop, and we
Speaker 2: had other people working in the prisons who were trying
Speaker 2: to be So I was among a lot of people
Speaker 2: in that field. And we had a guy and I
Speaker 2: wasn't really friends with him, but I just knew he
Speaker 2: worked in customs and I said to him, can you
Speaker 2: do a passport check for me? This is after I've
Speaker 2: been told that she's they found her, okay. So that
Speaker 2: phone call came in, as I said, about a week
Speaker 2: to ten days after I'd been to the police. And
Speaker 2: he then came back to me and he said, your
Speaker 2: mum's passport came back into the country on the second
Speaker 2: of August. So that's when I found out about it. Now.
Speaker 2: The interesting thing there, and I didn't know this at
Speaker 2: that time, but my mum had changed her name, and
Speaker 2: so when I told him, I gave him Marion Barta
Speaker 2: and her date of birth is the third of the
Speaker 2: tenth forty five, So that's all I gave him to
Speaker 2: go on, and he's come back and told me that
Speaker 2: he didn't tell me anything else. And it wasn't until
Speaker 2: twenty eleven that we found out that she'd actually changed her.
Speaker 1: Name, okay, and what did she change her name to.
Speaker 2: Well, Flora Bella Natalia Marion Ramchel.
Speaker 1: Okay, and that has some significance.
Speaker 2: Huge significant.
Speaker 1: What we're going to find out find out later okay,
Speaker 1: dealings with the police. So you've reported in initial report
Speaker 1: in October ninety seven, and then after no further investigation
Speaker 1: was undertaken until July two thousand and seven, correct, So
Speaker 1: when we say no investigation, we're talking zero zero investigation.
Speaker 2: And it was just that I so that in that
Speaker 2: time period, if I can give everyone the idea, we
Speaker 2: built a house, we got married, and we had three
Speaker 2: children in that ten years. So I was quite busy
Speaker 2: with life and trying to be the best person I
Speaker 2: could as well. Ohen died, my grandfather died, so we
Speaker 2: had a lot going on. And it just got to
Speaker 2: the point where I was pregnant with my third baby
Speaker 2: and he was due in June. So I was in
Speaker 2: my first trimester essentially, and my girlfriend was over and
Speaker 2: I said to her, I need to do something. It's
Speaker 2: month tenth anniversary this year and no one's doing anything.
Speaker 2: So I contacted I had done just for clarity I
Speaker 2: had in two thousand and four, I actually reached back
Speaker 2: out to the Salvation Army after my grandfather was passed,
Speaker 2: like well, he was very sick with cancer, so it
Speaker 2: was either just before he passed or after he passed,
Speaker 2: and I reached out to them asking for the information
Speaker 2: about what they told my grandfather, and they came back
Speaker 2: and said, we've got no records of anything, and we've
Speaker 2: tried to find your mother and there's nothing we can find.
Speaker 2: So we're really sorry. God Bless was probably it. And
Speaker 2: then a short time after that, the lady I was
Speaker 2: working with in that circumstance, she contacted me and said, look,
Speaker 2: Woman's Day magazine would like to do an article about
Speaker 2: missing mums on Mother's Day. Would you like to be involved?
Speaker 2: So I did do that article. I was pregnant with
Speaker 2: my second daughter, Darcy, and I remember I had Ella
Speaker 2: on my lap in the photo and I remember saying
Speaker 2: to my husband, well, he had sort of indicated he
Speaker 2: didn't want her in the magazine, and I said, I
Speaker 2: really want her in the magazine because if Mum reads
Speaker 2: it and she sees that she's a grandmother, I just
Speaker 2: wanted her to see And so that was quite stressful.
Speaker 2: So I had done that little bit of media, that
Speaker 2: was it, and nothing came of it. I didn't hear anything.
Speaker 2: Salvation Amy came back to me about a month later
Speaker 2: and said, look, we haven't heard anything. We're really sorry.
Speaker 2: And then it was two thousand and seven, as I said,
Speaker 2: I've got my girlfriend Nina looking after the kids while
Speaker 2: I jump on the phone to the AFP Missing Person's
Speaker 2: Unit because I thought, I'm going to go to them.
Speaker 2: They're the top dogs. Let me go to them and
Speaker 2: see what they can do to help me, because I
Speaker 2: really just had nothing. And anyway, I spoke to a
Speaker 2: really beautiful lady named Rebecca cotts Beck since passed, but
Speaker 2: we became really good friends and she we spoke for
Speaker 2: probably two hours in that initial conversation, and then she
Speaker 2: rang me back and asked me if I would be
Speaker 2: the face of Missing Persons Week.
Speaker 1: They I remember when they were doing.
Speaker 2: That, and so that's like middle like first week of August,
Speaker 2: and I said, well, I would love to. She said, look,
Speaker 2: I think it'd be really great opportunity for you to
Speaker 2: get your story out there. You've kept such great records
Speaker 2: of everything. I think it'd be really really good. So
Speaker 2: I started prepping myself. I was doing lots of writing
Speaker 2: and lots of conversations and dragging myself back through it,
Speaker 2: which is probably not the best thing to do when
Speaker 2: you're pregnant. But we got to the end. I had
Speaker 2: my third cesarean, and she told me that I need
Speaker 2: to prepare myself because they're going to bounce me around
Speaker 2: from state to state to do all these interviews in
Speaker 2: that week. And so I there storing my breast milk.
Speaker 2: Sorry Gary with.
Speaker 1: Her worse on I catch kill us, but go on.
Speaker 2: And we're just so I can my husband can come,
Speaker 2: he can take time off work to feed the baby
Speaker 2: because I'm going to have a brand new baby. I've
Speaker 2: got two toddlers. Blah blah blah. Anyway, she calls me
Speaker 2: a couple of days before and says they've pulled you.
Speaker 2: I'm really sorry. I said, what do you mean they've
Speaker 2: pulled me? She said, oh, it's apparently about missing persons
Speaker 2: with mental health this year, and your mum didn't have
Speaker 2: mental health, so they said they can't use you. He said, look,
Speaker 2: we've already got your tickets for the plane and everything's
Speaker 2: still come down. I remember it really well, actually, because
Speaker 2: Kevin Rudd was sitting in front of us on the plane,
Speaker 2: and we got to Camber on a little buzzy plane
Speaker 2: and sat in the audience, and you know, I walked
Speaker 2: out of there and the police commissioner was outside, and
Speaker 2: Rebecca actually introduced me to him, and he came up
Speaker 2: to me and he said, oh, well, Sally, my brother's missing.
Speaker 2: I don't know where he is. And sometimes that's just
Speaker 2: how people are, you know, people will have the right
Speaker 2: to be missing. And then he I don't know. The
Speaker 2: conversation she kept going. He goes, well, my mum knows
Speaker 2: where he is, but we don't know where he is.
Speaker 2: He's missing to us. So anyway, that was a really
Speaker 2: rough time of life, right, that was not fun. And
Speaker 2: I guess for me, every time I go through those things,
Speaker 2: it takes so much energy and so much effort, and
Speaker 2: then I just come flat splat on the ground and
Speaker 2: I have to really suck myself back up and to
Speaker 2: keep going again and go, Okay, what avenue can I
Speaker 2: do next? So at that point it's interesting actually because
Speaker 2: in the inquest, when you do actually get information from
Speaker 2: the brief of evidence, we can actually see that after
Speaker 2: Rebecca Cott's rings Missing Persons New South Wales and asks
Speaker 2: for Mom's file so that they can put her on
Speaker 2: as the head of the face of missing persons. That year,
Speaker 2: there's a very quick change on the cops event from
Speaker 2: occurrence only to missing.
Speaker 1: What I okay, just pure coincidence, you think.
Speaker 2: Apparently, So they were asked about it at the inquest
Speaker 2: and it was like, I know that there's nothing in that.
Speaker 2: It was just happened to be exactly the same time.
Speaker 1: Ten years later they've decided to change it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that current's only to missing.
Speaker 2: And that was the first time because I.
Speaker 1: Was really I couldn't quite work out what the thing
Speaker 1: was that changed it from occurrence to missing. But you've
Speaker 1: just explained it very well. And I call me snical,
Speaker 1: but a coincidence, no, I think an inquiry has been
Speaker 1: made by AFP police have looked at that. New South
Speaker 1: Wales police have looked at it and gone, oh, we
Speaker 1: better tidy this one.
Speaker 2: She's not actually a missing person to us. And so
Speaker 2: that was the first time she'd been put onto missing
Speaker 2: persons list, but it was only New South Wales. Then
Speaker 2: this is two thousand and seven. So then in two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine I get an oyc, so I offer
Speaker 2: us in charge, which is the first time I had
Speaker 2: actually had that. There'd been a couple of come in
Speaker 2: and float in and out, and I remember a few
Speaker 2: of their names, but I don't really have any real
Speaker 2: depth of conversation with any of them. Gary Sheen became
Speaker 2: the oh I see on the case, and I did
Speaker 2: have a lot to do with him. We spoke a
Speaker 2: lot on the phone. He was interested, He sat down.
Speaker 2: He wanted to know everything about the case, everything we
Speaker 2: were up to. He did some digging. He found that
Speaker 2: there'd been an Armadale crime stoppers call come into Armidale
Speaker 2: saying that my mum's body was buried in Armidale. So
Speaker 2: he organized and got approval to go out with some
Speaker 2: Cadava dogs. But it was like so many years before,
Speaker 2: so those sorts of things started to come in about.
Speaker 2: He then told me that he'd found a I don't
Speaker 2: know what you call it now, my brain's not working,
Speaker 2: but there'd been a ping on her Medicare card to
Speaker 2: get used in Grafton. So but the problem there, which
Speaker 2: was a pretty big problem, they were looking for a
Speaker 2: doctor and so all this flurry about trying to find
Speaker 2: the doctor surgery and trying to find doctors who were
Speaker 2: working back in nineteen ointy seven to see who it was.
Speaker 2: And in actual fact we had the name.
Speaker 1: So when was the ping on the Medicare card.
Speaker 2: So the thirteenth of August in ninety seven, ninety seven, Okay, right,
Speaker 2: so the ping happens they're looking for a doctor. Turns
Speaker 2: out fast forward to twenty twenty was actually an optometrist,
Speaker 2: not a doctor, and he actually came as a witness, understand,
Speaker 2: and he did say that she would have had to
Speaker 2: fill in a new customer card which would have had
Speaker 2: an address on it and a phone number on it.
Speaker 2: And if you think about the facts, that's eleven days
Speaker 2: after her pass what's come back into Australia. So we
Speaker 2: really desperately wanted to find that card crucial because it
Speaker 2: could have told us where she was or who she
Speaker 2: was with at least. And yeah, they didn't find it
Speaker 2: because they were looking for a doctor instead.
Speaker 1: So the fact between ninety seven and two thousand and
Speaker 1: seven there was no inquiries done, so there was no
Speaker 1: looking whether she's accessed a bank account, any records in
Speaker 1: regards to her a residential address, Medicare card that type
Speaker 1: of thing, all the things that you would make inquiries
Speaker 1: back then. And yeah, it's a lot easier now, or
Speaker 1: it's harder now to disappear, but there was still a
Speaker 1: lot of lines of inquiry that could have been covered
Speaker 1: to find out where she was and if someone's writing
Speaker 1: the report off that they've found her, if the report's
Speaker 1: done properly, it should be where she's living, what her
Speaker 1: circumstances are to write the report off. But there was
Speaker 1: none of that, was it.
Speaker 2: And well there's no documentation with New Southwest Police to
Speaker 2: say that anyone rang me, so there's question in their
Speaker 2: world as to do that phone call actually happened. And
Speaker 2: I was like, well, it definitely happened, because that's what
Speaker 2: started the ball rolling with my grandfather taking over and
Speaker 2: going to the Salvation Army and yeah, so look, it
Speaker 2: was a big fat mess, to be honest, and I
Speaker 2: just honester goodness. I just thought by walking in there
Speaker 2: and telling them I had concerns and walking away that
Speaker 2: even though they said to me, oh, we've located her,
Speaker 2: for some weird reason, in my head, I just thought
Speaker 2: she'd still be, you know, in this system, and she
Speaker 2: just wasn't.
Speaker 1: And taking on face value what the police have told
Speaker 1: you and that if they've located, they know where she
Speaker 1: is or whatever. Okay, we're bringing it to two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, and you've got an officer in charge who's
Speaker 1: making inquiries, making inquiries about like when she came into
Speaker 1: the country or the type of inquiries that could have
Speaker 1: been done ten years before.
Speaker 2: Two thousand and seven was when I went to the AFP,
Speaker 2: and then it was two years after that that I
Speaker 2: got the OIC. So I had like a bit of
Speaker 2: a looking to nine. Now. Yeah, so there's a guy
Speaker 2: Steve McAllister. He was actually working with Missing Persons Unit
Speaker 2: at that time and he was president at the inquest
Speaker 2: as well, and gave evidence and he remembered my mom's
Speaker 2: case and he said I remember because I was a
Speaker 2: big soccer fan and Marian was married to Johnny Warren.
Speaker 1: Another side issue, Johnny Warren for people that don't know
Speaker 1: who's a hero of mine, Captain soccer roop.
Speaker 2: I still people cry when I go, oh, yeah, Johnny
Speaker 2: was married to my mum. They go there he was not.
Speaker 2: I go, yeah he was. I've met him. He actually
Speaker 2: taught me how to play soccer a little bit when
Speaker 2: I was little.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is cool.
Speaker 1: But okay, so that is something that yeah, because it
Speaker 1: was such a high profile. So people understand that when
Speaker 1: they got Johnny Warret.
Speaker 2: And when they got married, they were front page of
Speaker 2: the newspaper. So mum was right in the thick of
Speaker 2: it when john was at his best, you know, captain
Speaker 2: of the soccer whose captain of his local team here
Speaker 2: in Sydney, and you know, doing really great things in
Speaker 2: the world of soccer. And yeah, so anyway, so two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine, we've got Gary on board. He's finding
Speaker 2: all these things. So he'd found the medicare, he'd found
Speaker 2: out about the crime Stoppers call. And then in twenty
Speaker 2: eleven he spoke to Immigration in Brisbane and he got
Speaker 2: a file that showed him that my mum's name had
Speaker 2: been changed to Florabella Ramchel.
Speaker 1: And that was only a matter of months before she
Speaker 1: went overseas in ninety seven.
Speaker 2: She changed it on the fifteenth of May nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 2: She left on the twenty second of May. Twenty second
Speaker 2: to you.
Speaker 1: So that's a bit of a headspin for you.
Speaker 2: Well, and my birthday is the twelfth of May. Other's
Speaker 2: day is always falls around my birthday. So it really
Speaker 2: blew my mind. And this is a lot to deal
Speaker 2: with from an emotional site it as well, because I'm thinking,
Speaker 2: why did she not tell me? Well, I mean we
Speaker 2: were pretty close. I moved up from Sydney to go
Speaker 2: and live with my mum. I'd see her weekly, you know,
Speaker 2: multiple times a week. She come and have dinner with
Speaker 2: me every Thursday night where I worked. So twenty eleven
Speaker 2: we find out about the name change. And I'm going
Speaker 2: to fast forward here from this moment to twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: So twenty sixteen, I've got a lady who's following my
Speaker 2: Facebook page. I set the Facebook page up in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2: I had less than a thousand followers on it. And
Speaker 2: if you go back and read all the very beginning
Speaker 2: of that, I was close to giving up, and then
Speaker 2: i'd come back again. I'd close to giving up, and
Speaker 2: it was just such a roller coaster ride of crazy.
Speaker 2: And she contacted me and she said, look, Sally, I've
Speaker 2: just gone on to the National Missing Person's Register and
Speaker 2: your Mum's not on there. And so I thought that's
Speaker 2: so weird. So I had a look, wasn't on there?
Speaker 2: So I rang my friend Rebecca Cotts again. I said, hey, Beck,
Speaker 2: I've just had a lady contact me. And she said
Speaker 2: that mum's name's not on the missing person's register. I
Speaker 2: can't see it either. Can you have a look. And
Speaker 2: she said she has a look, and she says, oh, well,
Speaker 2: this actually something on the file that I haven't seen before.
Speaker 2: I have to get approval to give it to you.
Speaker 2: Let me go and do that and see what they say,
Speaker 2: and I'll come back to you. So anyway, she comes
Speaker 2: back to me and she said, I've got approval. I'm
Speaker 2: going to send it to you. And it was a document,
Speaker 2: so it's on AFP letterhead, but that document actually has
Speaker 2: that on the seventh of December twenty eleven, my mum
Speaker 2: was located, and on the eighth of November that year,
Speaker 2: so a month before ish. The case had been suspended
Speaker 2: on those dates again, eighth of November nineteen twenty and eleven,
Speaker 2: and then she was located on the seventh of December
Speaker 2: twenty eleven, and that I had been it says underneath it,
Speaker 2: there's a notation that says that I had been notified
Speaker 2: of that decision.
Speaker 1: So I want to scream for you, how how do
Speaker 1: you deal with that?
Speaker 2: Not very well? Not very well. It's emotionally draining. And
Speaker 2: so I jumped straight on the phone to Gary Sheen,
Speaker 2: Oh I see, and said, I've just had something comes
Speaker 2: through from Rebecca. I explained the situation and I said,
Speaker 2: I've got this document in front of me and told him.
Speaker 2: He said, can you read it to me? So I
Speaker 2: read it to him and he said can you read
Speaker 2: it again? I read it again, and he said, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to make a call. I'm going to come
Speaker 2: back to you. So he rang me back. I don't
Speaker 2: remember if it was straight away all the day after,
Speaker 2: but he did ring me back pretty quickly, and he said,
Speaker 2: I've spoken to them and it seems it's a typo.
Speaker 1: Who's them?
Speaker 2: I couldn't even tell you. Actually, I don't know who.
Speaker 2: I don't know who them is. But he said, I'm
Speaker 2: going to ring them again. I'm going to have a
Speaker 2: deeper chat about it and see what's happening. So anyway, so.
Speaker 1: A type that's a long typo that someone's been located,
Speaker 1: that was on missing persons and located. That's more than
Speaker 1: the typo.
Speaker 2: I would suggest the fact that I actually couldn't cope
Speaker 2: with the fact that they said, okay, well they suspended
Speaker 2: it on the eighth of November. But you're even telling
Speaker 2: me that you told me on the seventh of December.
Speaker 2: You didn't tell me anything. I've never heard that information,
Speaker 2: hence the shock value of it. But I was like
Speaker 2: a month like that's anyway. It was just a yeah again,
Speaker 2: mind blowing. And he did ring me back and he said,
Speaker 2: I've spoken to them, And how it works is we've
Speaker 2: got two boxes, so you're either missing or you're found.
Speaker 2: And because we deem that your mother is missing because
Speaker 2: she sold her house, she quit her job, and she
Speaker 2: changed her name, we have no choice but to marko
Speaker 2: is located.
Speaker 1: Is that a computer telling them that?
Speaker 2: And I just came back and I said, well, maybe
Speaker 2: you need a third box, you know, like maybe we
Speaker 2: need that box in the middle. And the thing that
Speaker 2: upsets me a lot about my mum's case is all
Speaker 2: the assumptions they're assuming that because she sold her house,
Speaker 2: and they're assuming because she changed her name and that
Speaker 2: she went overseas that she wanted to go missing. That's
Speaker 2: a massive assumption to make on someone that you don't know.
Speaker 1: Sally, I make I'll make the assumption. If we're talking assumptions,
Speaker 1: it looks like every assumption that was made was to
Speaker 1: reduce the work to get your mum off the missing
Speaker 1: persons not having to do inquiries that possibly should have
Speaker 1: been done. And I'm not about beating up on individual
Speaker 1: police or it's an organizational problem. There's a problem when
Speaker 1: this type of thing happens and you've carried the weight
Speaker 1: of these mistakes being made. But you're either the most
Speaker 1: unluckiest person in the world or these things. So, Okay,
Speaker 1: you found out now that your mum's not missing, that
Speaker 1: she's Yeah, so you go through life thinking, oh, well,
Speaker 1: she's not missing. My mother just doesn't want to talk
Speaker 1: to me. And my mother that I was close with
Speaker 1: my whole life just doesn't want to talk to me.
Speaker 1: Where does it ramp up again to become a missing
Speaker 1: person's well, because when you receive that, do you just go, well,
Speaker 1: am I just banging my head against the brick wall?
Speaker 1: What am I meant to do?
Speaker 2: Do? I? Yeah, one hundred percent, you do? And I
Speaker 2: think for me that was that lady contacting me through
Speaker 2: my Facebook page was early twenty sixteen, and then the
Speaker 2: language that I was getting for the remainder of that
Speaker 2: time from police was my hands are tied. I am
Speaker 2: doing this in my spare time, so I'm madly trying
Speaker 2: to shoot ideas, like you know, okay, well, why don't
Speaker 2: we check did she do a tax return? Like she's
Speaker 2: come back in on the second of August, she's left
Speaker 2: before the end, before end of financial year. Maybe if
Speaker 2: she's come back, and if money is such a drive,
Speaker 2: thinking that she's going to the bank every day for
Speaker 2: three and a half weeks to take out five thousand
Speaker 2: dollars every day, Clearly she wants money if it's her,
Speaker 2: so she might have been entitled to a tax returns,
Speaker 2: so therefore she might have done that. Can we check
Speaker 2: if she's touched her superannuation? Can we get the passenger list?
Speaker 2: I was thinking of all the things I couldn't do
Speaker 2: because I was bound by privacy, right, so her privacy
Speaker 2: madded my hopes to find my mother. Clearly didn't it.
Speaker 2: So I was giving him and feeding him all these ideas,
Speaker 2: and he wouldn't tell me much about what he'd found,
Speaker 2: or he's like, what I've heard was that he couldn't
Speaker 2: access ATO. The only people that can access ATO, sorry,
Speaker 2: the police can only access ato information if the person's
Speaker 2: in jail or in prison. He couldn't access it. So
Speaker 2: that was one part of it, and we had to
Speaker 2: wait to see if the coroner could access that information.
Speaker 2: Then he told me he'd looked at the passenger list,
Speaker 2: but there was nothing that stood out, and he told
Speaker 2: me that she hadn't touched a super and that was
Speaker 2: probably about it. And then so that's twenty sixteen. We
Speaker 2: just sort of plodding along again and I'm sort of
Speaker 2: tapping away on Facebook and I'm trying to get some people,
Speaker 2: you know, do you know anything? And can you share
Speaker 2: my story please? Someone knows something. Again, very stressful time
Speaker 2: of life, busy with three children who are now teenagers
Speaker 2: and going into high school, and you know, trying to
Speaker 2: manage life as well and not rocking myself in the
Speaker 2: corner because I think for me at the very beginning,
Speaker 2: I remember watching a story on missing persons very early on,
Speaker 2: and there was two women and one of their sons
Speaker 2: and the little boy just kept crying the entire time
Speaker 2: on the show, and I just, for me, I just
Speaker 2: didn't want my kids to have to live that, and
Speaker 2: I didn't want I just wanted to be strong, and
Speaker 2: I just wanted to be a person to go, you
Speaker 2: know what, my mum matters. She's your grandmother. I know
Speaker 2: you've never met her before, but it's really important that
Speaker 2: we do the right thing for everybody. I want everyone
Speaker 2: to know what's happened to her. And I was still
Speaker 2: probably by that point, I was starting to believe that
Speaker 2: maybe she wasn't alive because I didn't just didn't believe.
Speaker 2: I didn't believe she wouldn't turn up for Owen's funeral.
Speaker 2: I didn't believe she wouldn't turn up for my wedding
Speaker 2: when I had kids, like all these big key moments
Speaker 2: in life that she wasn't there for. So we sort
Speaker 2: of plotted along from twenty sixteen up until twenty nineteen. Well,
Speaker 2: actually that's the end of twenty eighteen, and that's when Alison,
Speaker 2: Sandy and I were put in touch with each other.
Speaker 2: And Allison works for Channel seven and a friend of
Speaker 2: hers had sort of wrung me, who knew from a
Speaker 2: parent of school, saying, you know, if I could get
Speaker 2: you onto sixty minutes or Sunday night program, would you
Speaker 2: be interested? And I said, absolutely I would. My grandmother,
Speaker 2: So my mom's mum was living by herself in her
Speaker 2: beachfront property up and the Sunshine Coast, and she never
Speaker 2: spoke about it, like we did not talk about my mum,
Speaker 2: and I didn't want to upset her. When I did
Speaker 2: that Woman's Day article way back, I got into trouble.
Speaker 2: You know, you didn't tell us you were doing it,
Speaker 2: and I was like, well, no one ever asked me
Speaker 2: what I'm doing. I don't want to. I don't know
Speaker 2: how to bring it up with you guys, because you
Speaker 2: don't want to talk about it. So I wasn't prepared
Speaker 2: to do anything. And the irony of that is, as
Speaker 2: soon as she passed away, I said to my kids
Speaker 2: and my husband, I'm going to approach sixty minutes and
Speaker 2: see if they would like to do a story on it,
Speaker 2: because someone knows something. And so I wrote to them
Speaker 2: probably five or six times, and they didn't respond to
Speaker 2: me at all, and I just thought, I'm just another
Speaker 2: missing person story that no one's really interested in. And
Speaker 2: I met Alison. We went out for a coffee and
Speaker 2: we pretty quickly decided then that the amount of information
Speaker 2: I had and the details that we were working with
Speaker 2: and there was more investigation that we could have done
Speaker 2: on the name, we decided to do a podcast. Okay,
Speaker 2: So the podcast launched on the first of.
Speaker 1: April and the name of the podcast, The.
Speaker 2: Lady vanishes, and so the ball sort of started rolling again.
Speaker 1: And I see there in twenty eighteen reference to a
Speaker 1: ministerial file, So whether a leather was fired off to politicians?
Speaker 1: Did that occur as well?
Speaker 2: Well, I didn't really know too much about that. I
Speaker 2: knew that that was something that Gary was looking into,
Speaker 2: and he was cranky about it. He said, if this
Speaker 2: is going down a rabbit hole, that's not true. I
Speaker 2: remember him saying that to me. But I didn't really
Speaker 2: know what was going on because they weren't talking to me.
Speaker 2: They weren't communicating what it was exactly for me. So
Speaker 2: I was left in the dark with that information and
Speaker 2: I don't believe it when anywhere. So I'm a bit
Speaker 2: still gray in what actually was going on with that.
Speaker 2: But at that point we launched the podcast first of April,
Speaker 2: we sort of put a call out. I guess Joni
Speaker 2: who you'll hear about soon enough, Johnie Cokondos. She's researcher
Speaker 2: who has been helping me for in our six years
Speaker 2: and she was listening to the Lady Vanisher's. She's an
Speaker 2: avid listener of true crime. She's been listening for twenty years.
Speaker 2: And she said, the difference between you, Sal and other
Speaker 2: podcasts I've heard before was you actually asking for people
Speaker 2: to help. And so when I heard that, I just
Speaker 2: thought I might just sit down and have a bit
Speaker 2: of a play. And I was playing with the name
Speaker 2: Ramckurl because when she looked into it, there was no
Speaker 2: Ramackeurls in Australia except for my mum. And we were like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is a pretty rare name. Turns out there's only
Speaker 2: one hundred and one Ramic Curls in the world. Put
Speaker 2: into perspective, so no Jane does or you know Jane
Speaker 2: Smith or anything. It's a very rare name. And she
Speaker 2: herself her husband's grandmother went missing or great grandmother went missing,
Speaker 2: and she and the family had worked for fifteen years
Speaker 2: to try and find her, and they actually did find her,
Speaker 2: and what had happened to her. She'd been deceased, but
Speaker 2: they did find her. And she just thought to herself,
Speaker 2: I've got these tools here that potentially I can help Sally.
Speaker 2: I'll just have a bit of a play around and
Speaker 2: see what I find. She was sick, she had the flu,
Speaker 2: and she was up at midnight and she punched it
Speaker 2: in and this ad binged up on her screen. She's
Speaker 2: so excited she jumped ran and jumped in on her husband.
Speaker 2: She said in Oh my god, I found something. I
Speaker 2: found something. And so that ad was in the La
Speaker 2: Courier Australian. It's a French speaking newspaper that runs out
Speaker 2: of Sydney, and it was a gentleman with the initial
Speaker 2: M and then f ramachel and it sort of just
Speaker 2: goes along, you know, single forty seven I think he
Speaker 2: I think it was he was forty seven. The ad
Speaker 2: was written in nineteen ninety four and it Stilla talks
Speaker 2: about his single, good looking, non smoker, non drinker, a
Speaker 2: polygue loot speaking multiple languages and bon chik boncha, which
Speaker 2: is like a term that he put in there, which
Speaker 2: we've found out means good taste, good style, and looking
Speaker 2: for a relationship, potential marriage. And it had a po
Speaker 2: box in Ballina, New South Wales with a phone.
Speaker 1: Number okay to keep our listeners on a song with it.
Speaker 1: You've got the surname, a unique surname. It's the same
Speaker 1: surname as your mother changed her name to correct. And
Speaker 1: there's an advertisement ninety four of a gentleman around your
Speaker 1: mother's age putting out interested in meeting someone.
Speaker 2: Correct and he's in Ballina. And for the geographical sense
Speaker 2: of of the exercise, my mum's money was coming out
Speaker 2: in Byron Bay. Ballina is the next town on northern
Speaker 2: New South Wales. So our heads were spinning at that point.
Speaker 2: We know that the police tried to find records of
Speaker 2: who owned that phone number back then, and they kept
Speaker 2: hitting brick walls, tell us you don't have records going
Speaker 2: that far back, and that was all legit like that
Speaker 2: was the case. But it actually took a gentleman who
Speaker 2: is a local. He'd listened to the lady Vanishes as well,
Speaker 2: and he just took himself down to the local library
Speaker 2: and hand scanned all the phone books at the time
Speaker 2: and then ran it through micro fish and he found
Speaker 2: the phone number and it was linked to a business
Speaker 2: called Baalana Coin Investments had the address of where the
Speaker 2: property was in Ballina as well, so link. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: I've found some amazing people through this who have just
Speaker 2: helped me or helped us, like everybody in the mix
Speaker 2: be able to get to where we are today. And
Speaker 2: anyway that the owners of that business were called Frederic
Speaker 2: Heavedariry and Dianda Heavedariry. Frederic to Heavidairy turns out to
Speaker 2: be Rick Blum.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, well, Rick Blum, or that's what we'll
Speaker 1: call it. Call him here. Let's because I wanted to
Speaker 1: see how it's all tied in you. You've explained it
Speaker 1: very clearly to me, having read film in the pieces
Speaker 1: that I didn't fully understand through the report from the coroner.
Speaker 1: So we've got this person by the name of Rick Blum.
Speaker 1: Now you've told us how it became involved in the
Speaker 1: investigation in the inquest that was run. I just want
Speaker 1: to read something out. I'm being careful here that before
Speaker 1: we start talking about Rick Blom, I want to put
Speaker 1: on record he's not been charged with anything relating to
Speaker 1: your mother's disappearance. So we put that on record. The
Speaker 1: state coroner, in her findings regarding mister Blom stated, and
Speaker 1: he gave evidence at the inquest into your mother's disappearance
Speaker 1: thirteen days and this is what the coroner said in
Speaker 1: her findings. I do not accept as accurate anything mister
Speaker 1: Blom has said in evidence, in the absence of independent
Speaker 1: corroborating evidence, that's fairly powerful, powerful comments to make about
Speaker 1: the witness.
Speaker 3: Your thoughts, Oh my thoughts, Look, I have a lot.
Speaker 1: Can I retract that question? Can I just say, because
Speaker 1: we're going to wrap up part one in a sect,
Speaker 1: but let's just I want to make another comment because,
Speaker 1: as I said, I went through the coroner's findings and
Speaker 1: it's very comprehensive. The coroner also made these comments about
Speaker 1: the person we know is Rick Blom quote from the
Speaker 1: coroner's findings. Throughout his adult life, mister Blum has routinely
Speaker 1: changed his name. He admitted before the court to using
Speaker 1: a number of different aliases over the years, including the following.
Speaker 1: And I'll try and pronounce it these properly, but they're
Speaker 1: a wide range of names. So Bernard DuPont, Fernando, Nicholas, Remarkale, Frederick,
Speaker 1: David Dexavier, Rick Blum, rich Richard's, Richard, Lloyd west Richard
Speaker 1: Lloyd Westbury, Rick Richard, Rick west Wiley, Copperyle Wiley, David Copperiley, Wiley, Wooters, Shane, Frederick,
Speaker 1: David Dexavier and Zabdel Zilling. They're fourteen names. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: let's let's just conclude, just.
Speaker 2: To help you with some of the pronunciations, please.
Speaker 1: Because I want let's do it this way with the
Speaker 1: with the pronunciations. If people are listening to this podcast,
Speaker 1: maybe these names mean something to them.
Speaker 2: So the Heavin Dairy, Heavindary is their surname, Bernard du
Speaker 2: pont yep. And what are the ones were there? Oh,
Speaker 2: Willy Willy.
Speaker 1: Wooters, Willy Wooters and.
Speaker 2: Willy Copperoll so Copperanole is his birth name.
Speaker 1: Okay, fourteen names, and we.
Speaker 2: Have actually found fifty two aliases.
Speaker 1: I don't think we can read those all out, but.
Speaker 2: I didn't even have the list here with me. But
Speaker 2: that's that's what we have found in our investigations so far.
Speaker 2: But they are the ones that were read out in
Speaker 2: the inquest.
Speaker 1: Okay, and look, we're joking about this, but it's not
Speaker 1: not a joke. And I'm reading this out and this
Speaker 1: is all I'm choosing my words carefully because these are
Speaker 1: comments from the coroner that had the inquest running over
Speaker 1: an extended period of time. We're going to take a
Speaker 1: break here. When we get back, I want to find
Speaker 1: out more about Rick Blom and also talk about all
Speaker 1: the extraordinary stuff that was uncovered during the inquest. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you an important question. I'd like
Speaker 1: to just get your thoughts on it. So let's take
Speaker 1: a break and we'll be back for part too shortly