Speaker 1: Apodge production.
Speaker 2: Sally Leyden had the support of dozens of loved ones
Speaker 2: as a coroner. Today confirmed what she's known all along.
Speaker 3: Today I'll be delivering my findings in the inquest into
Speaker 3: the disappearance and suspected death of Floribella Natalia Marion Ramical
Speaker 3: known as Marion Barter, and who I'll be referring to
Speaker 3: as Marian.
Speaker 4: That was New South Wales State Coroner Magistrate Teresa O'Sullivan
Speaker 4: in a story that has more twists, turns and intrigue
Speaker 4: than a thrillery to.
Speaker 5: A decision tonight, a lot of Australia's highest profile mysteries
Speaker 5: that stretches from Queensland to Newself.
Speaker 2: More than half her life without her mum, and a
Speaker 2: lengthy inquest.
Speaker 1: But tonight Sally Leyden has no answers. I can't comment
Speaker 1: it time.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, unable to say where and unable to say
Speaker 2: how about confirming the mother last seen at a Southport
Speaker 2: best song.
Speaker 1: It was a middle of winter.
Speaker 2: Mother Marion Barton disappeared in nineteen ninety six. She'd been
Speaker 2: dating mad Rick flu Live. She also found New South
Speaker 2: Wales police bungled the missing person's investigation.
Speaker 5: Coron has just told me officially my mum's deceased. So
Speaker 5: that's the first time I've heard that in twenty seven years. Okay, well,
Speaker 5: I'm a bit nervous to be honest. Welcome and thanks
Speaker 5: everybody for jumping on and taking time to listen, because
Speaker 5: people listening is actually what helps make a difference in
Speaker 5: the case of a missing person, and the support of
Speaker 5: the people is actually why I'm here today. And I've
Speaker 5: got my trustee right hand woman sitting next to me,
Speaker 5: Joony Condos.
Speaker 1: Hello, Hello, Hello everybody.
Speaker 5: You've flown up from Melbourne to come and have a
Speaker 5: chat with me and discuss what we've been doing.
Speaker 1: We've been pretty busy, haven't we.
Speaker 5: Sure have the findings into my mum's inquest ended on
Speaker 5: the twenty ninth of February last year, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 5: I remember when they announced the date, I do and
Speaker 5: I went, oh my god, it's a leap year.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, you know.
Speaker 5: I was like that date's come around once every four years.
Speaker 5: And it was a difficult time for me and for
Speaker 5: you because well, yours time had sort of ended because
Speaker 5: we'd both been gagged.
Speaker 1: Right, I can't comment at this time. I'm sorry. We
Speaker 1: use the word gagged.
Speaker 5: But you know, we'd signed documents with the coroner's court
Speaker 5: to say that we would not talk about any of
Speaker 5: the information discuss it with anybody, And at that point
Speaker 5: I actually had to ask permission for Jonie to be
Speaker 5: allowed to join me because I was struggling. Like we'd
Speaker 5: gone from talking multiple times a day about the case
Speaker 5: and about all the information and about what Joonie was
Speaker 5: still finding and what I was finding and I was hearing,
Speaker 5: and all of a sudden they told me I couldn't
Speaker 5: talk to anybody. So the only person I was allowed
Speaker 5: to talk to was my husband, Chris, and my kids.
Speaker 5: Actually just Ella, Ella, that's a lot for her. This
Speaker 5: is her grandmother and she's seeing her mum go through
Speaker 5: huge stress, and she was very worried about me. And
Speaker 5: the fact that we were both not able to talk
Speaker 5: to anybody did cause a few problems because previously we
Speaker 5: were very open and telling everybody everything, and then all
Speaker 5: of a sudden, you and I were encapsulated into this
Speaker 5: little hole by ourselves where we could not talk to
Speaker 5: anybody that was to media, to the people that were
Speaker 5: helping us, the super sluice, and people did get upset
Speaker 5: with us because we weren't being as open as we
Speaker 5: liked to be. I was in a contract with Channel
Speaker 5: seven and that extended right up until a year after
Speaker 5: the findings. So you know, it's only just been in
Speaker 5: February this year that I've been openly allowed to talk
Speaker 5: and tell everybody what we've been doing and what's been
Speaker 5: happening behind the scenes.
Speaker 6: I mean, we sort of used the word gagged. We
Speaker 6: did sign legal documents. It was because we were privy
Speaker 6: to the brief of evidence that came from New South
Speaker 6: Wales Police into the coroner. So therefore all of that
Speaker 6: information and was in a very very difficult position because
Speaker 6: you had a whole lot of information. You were working
Speaker 6: with a media outlet who wanted that information for the podcast,
Speaker 6: and it was very very tricky to be stuck in
Speaker 6: the middle of the two pressures coming one from the left,
Speaker 6: one from the right to try and ingest and digest
Speaker 6: all that information that was in the brief of evidence,
Speaker 6: and a lot of that stuff you hadn't even heard
Speaker 6: before about your own mother.
Speaker 4: Leading up to her trip an unbeknown to friends and family,
Speaker 4: she had officially changed her name to the elaborate Flora
Speaker 4: Bella Natalia Marion Ramakel returning to Australia later in the
Speaker 4: year without contacting her loved ones. She made a series
Speaker 4: of large cash withdrawals from her bank account before she
Speaker 4: completely disappeared.
Speaker 5: In the weeks leading up to her disappearance, Marian was
Speaker 5: seen with a tall male who was unknown to us
Speaker 5: and to a family amateurs.
Speaker 4: Sleuths were unleashed on the investigation trying to piece together
Speaker 4: the Marion Barter mystery, and one of those sleuths made
Speaker 4: a critical breakthrough linking Marion to a Belgian born convicted
Speaker 4: con man by the name of Rick Blum. Blum confirmed
Speaker 4: that he had been in a relationship with Barter in
Speaker 4: the months before she disappeared.
Speaker 3: This evidence, along with his lies and deception throughout the inquest,
Speaker 3: has convinced me that he does indeed no more than
Speaker 3: he's saying.
Speaker 6: When Sally first initially applied for all the documents from
Speaker 6: New South Wales Police, basically when it was printed out
Speaker 6: it was just all black paper, so the redactions were
Speaker 6: so massive that it was almost not even worthwhile even
Speaker 6: going through the stress of trying to get the information.
Speaker 6: So then to see those documents and see all the
Speaker 6: redactions lifted off and to see that the reality was
Speaker 6: underneath there. There really wasn't much so to come at
Speaker 6: that point and to be able to have some kind
Speaker 6: of outlet, I was outside of the family system. I
Speaker 6: was sort of outside of Channel seven and the media
Speaker 6: as well in a lot of ways. So to be
Speaker 6: able to have that person, I think that was outside
Speaker 6: of everything, that was interested across everything, and we could
Speaker 6: banter backwards and forwards, I think was very good.
Speaker 5: Well, I think it was a lifeline for me. Really,
Speaker 5: you were a lifeline for me because I couldn't talk
Speaker 5: to anybody. I started to have trust issues. I was
Speaker 5: getting fed a lot of things. People were telling me things.
Speaker 5: They were pretty crazy mentally, mind boggling things. And you
Speaker 5: were a support person and a savior for me a
Speaker 5: lot of things. And I think because you've got a
Speaker 5: background in social work too, you were very understanding about
Speaker 5: the facts that people coming to me with theories that
Speaker 5: weren't proven or weren't factual, but just an idea based
Speaker 5: on one.
Speaker 1: Or two elements.
Speaker 5: And how hard that is for a family member to process,
Speaker 5: because I process everything like you know, you tell me
Speaker 5: something and I'm going to sit there and think about it.
Speaker 5: You tell me my mum was burnt and put in
Speaker 5: the back of a car, I'm going to start thinking
Speaker 5: about that, and so I'm going to start processing that.
Speaker 5: So you protected me in a lot of that realm
Speaker 5: because people would comment, and you know, I think you've
Speaker 5: always been very kind and polite to those people, because
Speaker 5: everyone means well by their ideas and thoughts, but you know,
Speaker 5: there is a back end to that of the person
Speaker 5: who's receiving it. And the podcast grew phenomenally overnight, and
Speaker 5: you know, launched us into this world of millions of
Speaker 5: people who just want to help find my mum, which
Speaker 5: was absolutely amazing.
Speaker 6: And I think, look, a lot of people were so
Speaker 6: well intentioned and had amazing awesome skills as well, So
Speaker 6: there was a lot of people there that were absolutely
Speaker 6: excellent as web sleuths or researchers or people interested in
Speaker 6: finding open source information. Was absolutely fantastic. But I think
Speaker 6: this sort of tension was was because we had oversight
Speaker 6: of all the documents that others couldn't see. From the
Speaker 6: brief of evidence, we could immediately knock out some of
Speaker 6: the possibilities that had come to us too from the
Speaker 6: open source.
Speaker 1: Knowing what we know what we couldn't share.
Speaker 6: That that was and you couldn't share it was difficult
Speaker 6: because then the person would go away and do another
Speaker 6: three four five days work on an aspect, and you're
Speaker 6: sitting there thinking, if only I could let you know
Speaker 6: this piece of information so you didn't kind of waste
Speaker 6: your time in a way.
Speaker 5: So I'd be on the phone to you and I
Speaker 5: would go actually going into territory I can't talk about okay,
Speaker 5: and you'd go.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's just cut it.
Speaker 5: Stand by now because we're not going to discuss it.
Speaker 5: Because I was really paranoid about that. I was like,
Speaker 5: I am going to do the right thing. I am
Speaker 5: not talking to anybody about it. If I find myself
Speaker 5: in that situation, I'm literally walking away. So we get
Speaker 5: to the findings, and that week like, oh my god,
Speaker 5: Chris's dad passed away on the Sunday, you know, and
Speaker 5: this is hard for my kids. You know, my kids
Speaker 5: had no grandmother, so both Chris's mom had passed away
Speaker 5: and my mom was missing.
Speaker 1: And then one of.
Speaker 5: Their grandfathers passes away, and then we had to leave
Speaker 5: them to come to Sydney, to come down for the
Speaker 5: findings because I refused to bring them again.
Speaker 1: I brought them down.
Speaker 5: As most people would know, the coroners had set a
Speaker 5: date in twenty twenty two for the findings, and I
Speaker 5: flew my entire family and Ella's partner, so there were
Speaker 5: six of us. We got two rooms at the hotel.
Speaker 5: We had to have a bigger car so we could
Speaker 5: get us all around. We literally landed. I went to
Speaker 5: visit my auntie on the way up to see my
Speaker 5: dad quickly before the findings was happening the following day
Speaker 5: and I got a phone call from my lawyer as
Speaker 5: I'm walking around Coles and he said, oh, I'm just
Speaker 5: letting you know that they've vacated. I said what does
Speaker 5: that mean. He said, they've canceled it. And I said, well,
Speaker 5: we're here. He goes, what You're in Sydney already, and
Speaker 5: I like, yes, we've come down a couple like a
Speaker 5: couple of days earlier to go and see my.
Speaker 1: Dad and see honey Rob.
Speaker 5: And you know, he goes, oh my god, well, yeah,
Speaker 5: they've just told me that they vacated. I said, well,
Speaker 5: have they got a new date and he says no.
Speaker 5: So I'm walking around Coles I've just looked at Chris
Speaker 5: and went, oh my god, it's three weeks before Christmas.
Speaker 5: We've just spent six thousand dollars to fly our family down,
Speaker 5: get a car, a couple of nights accommodation in the city,
Speaker 5: and no one told us that they canceled. Chris rings
Speaker 5: Detective Inspector Nigel Warren and said, Nigel, we've just had
Speaker 5: a phone call from the lawyers saying that it's been vacated.
Speaker 1: We're in Sydney. We've just flown down and dragged the.
Speaker 5: Kids down to come to this and he said, did
Speaker 5: no one tell you? We had a meeting last Thursday
Speaker 5: and it was decided then that we were going to
Speaker 5: do more investigation.
Speaker 1: The coroner wanted to vacate.
Speaker 5: And I said, so you knew on Thursday and that's Monday,
Speaker 5: and no one told me that it was being paused, canceled, rescheduled.
Speaker 5: I said, do we have a new date and he said, no,
Speaker 5: we don't, and I remember.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you do too. I do.
Speaker 5: We went into the city that night for dinner and
Speaker 5: I was absolutely I was so mad.
Speaker 1: I was upset. I was crying. I was like, I've
Speaker 1: just prepared.
Speaker 5: Myself that the corain is going to tell me my
Speaker 5: mum is deceased, and trying to process that with my children.
Speaker 1: And then I arrive in Sydney, we go through the rigmarole,
Speaker 1: we go through the.
Speaker 5: Cost and expense of it all, and we don't even
Speaker 5: get told that they've canceled.
Speaker 1: Mind you, they didn't.
Speaker 5: Even to this date still they've never had an apology
Speaker 5: to say we're really sorry that we failed to bring
Speaker 5: you to advise you of that, would even ring my
Speaker 5: lawyers and tell them they'd set aside that time for
Speaker 5: the week as well. And you know, so there's just
Speaker 5: really a lack of care when it comes to that
Speaker 5: sort of thing. And I remember ringing you, and I'm
Speaker 5: standing on the tram platform in the middle of near
Speaker 5: Wynyard station and all the family are sitting there waiting
Speaker 5: to get dinner.
Speaker 1: And you and I were pow wowing, and I was
Speaker 1: beside myself.
Speaker 6: I was just so angry. I think I even saw
Speaker 6: like red spots in front of my eyes because I
Speaker 6: just I just thought to myself, you've got to be
Speaker 6: kidding me. To me, it was the disrespect of not
Speaker 6: only yourself, who can you know you're quite mabile, you
Speaker 6: can go up and down, but your whole family and
Speaker 6: your children having to process. And I put myself in
Speaker 6: your position and thought if that was me with my husband,
Speaker 6: with my son and having to tell my son, you know,
Speaker 6: and get him ready, and you were trying to prepare
Speaker 6: three of your.
Speaker 1: Children for this.
Speaker 6: I looked at that and I thought, that is bureaucracy
Speaker 6: gone mad, like that is a situation that just should
Speaker 6: never have happened, because the coerennial process is actually meant
Speaker 6: to be about the family and about providing answers to
Speaker 6: the family.
Speaker 1: That's ultimately what.
Speaker 6: It's therefore, so the fact that you were not even informed,
Speaker 6: I just shook my head like that was someone's job.
Speaker 5: I guess I'm a person who has to process everything.
Speaker 1: I need to know what's happening.
Speaker 5: I need to know how it's going to go so
Speaker 5: that I can prepare myself and I can actually be solid.
Speaker 5: That's just who I'm programmed to be. And I had
Speaker 5: organized and booked a table at Doyle's as a celebration
Speaker 5: of life, and we kept that booking because we couldn't
Speaker 5: change our flights.
Speaker 1: There were six of us we still had to stay.
Speaker 5: We still had to roll through the punches while we
Speaker 5: were in Sydney even though it didn't happen, and going
Speaker 5: to Doyle, so it just felt empty. I just felt like,
Speaker 5: you know, we're here, Chris got COVID. It was just
Speaker 5: a big fat mess, a big fat mess. And then
Speaker 5: you know, then we had the flip side of them.
Speaker 5: Vacating was quite good at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: which I came to recognize because we ended up bringing
Speaker 5: all of these witnesses to the table and that was
Speaker 5: important and I was happy that that actually had started
Speaker 5: to transpire because prior to that, they were like, nothing
Speaker 5: to see here, move on. You know, these are the
Speaker 5: two reasons while we're having the inquest. But I think
Speaker 5: the coroner then saw that there was a purpose to
Speaker 5: bringing these women who had also had dealings with reck
Speaker 5: Blum in their life under multiple different names and aliases
Speaker 5: and multiple different ways that he interacted with them. It
Speaker 5: was important to hear their side of the story as well.
Speaker 1: It could talk in a way that every woman would
Speaker 1: have lots of stories. Until I found out that well.
Speaker 5: You half fifths, we come to that week when it
Speaker 5: actually did happen. Fast forward another eighteen months or however,
Speaker 5: long it was. I can't remember now, it was quite
Speaker 5: a long time. But the police obviously had to do
Speaker 5: their investigation. They need to talk to international police, and
Speaker 5: it was quite a convoluted kind of situation. But Brian
Speaker 5: Chris's dad passes away on the Sunday. He was not
Speaker 5: well Friday night and we were with friends for dinner,
Speaker 5: and she's actually a theaterter, so Chris was sort of
Speaker 5: talking to her and she's jumping on the phone to
Speaker 5: Chris's brothers while we're at dinner, and very stressful, not
Speaker 5: as very fun and full well knowing that the following Thursday,
Speaker 5: we were going to the Fine Digs for my mum's inquest.
Speaker 5: So we flew down and I was very touched by
Speaker 5: the sentiment that Jackson, who is Ella's partner, they've been
Speaker 5: together for five years, that his grandparents had actually gone
Speaker 5: to a wedding down in Melbourne and they were on
Speaker 5: their way back to Brisbane and they made the choice
Speaker 5: to actually stop in Sydney and came with us to
Speaker 5: the findings. And I felt like I had family with
Speaker 5: me with them doing that, and you know, such beautiful
Speaker 5: humans like I'm forever grateful to them. They're just amazing people,
Speaker 5: and you know you got to meet them journey the.
Speaker 1: Night before, right, Yeah, that's right. And we had a
Speaker 1: couple of others join us.
Speaker 6: Yes, So there was myself, sal her family, and then
Speaker 6: the wonderful Sherry and the two twins from Byron Bay
Speaker 6: who were involved in the the Hayes case. So they
Speaker 6: actually came all the way down for the findings. And
Speaker 6: there was also a very special person there who we
Speaker 6: didn't realize at the time would possibly be the last
Speaker 6: time that you saw your friend who also visited.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So one of my really good friend's longest friend. You know,
Speaker 5: we've been in his life and he's been in ours,
Speaker 5: and he text me, I sit on, I'm in Sydney.
Speaker 5: Can we catch up anyway, around eight point thirty he
Speaker 5: sort of poked his head around the bar and looked
Speaker 5: at me and then came.
Speaker 1: Running over and gave me a big hug.
Speaker 5: That was my friend Rick, And it broke my heart
Speaker 5: because the following Wednesday I got a phone call from
Speaker 5: his ex partner telling me that he had died. So
Speaker 5: I literally came home from the findings, had to fly
Speaker 5: back down the following week to go to his funeral.
Speaker 1: So that was chaos, absolute chaos.
Speaker 5: Today, more than two decades since she vanished a coronial
Speaker 5: inquest into Marion's disappearing.
Speaker 4: Coroner O'Sullivan's somber conclusions in a court room in Lidcombe
Speaker 4: in Sydney's West yesterday tied off some chapters in this
Speaker 4: painful saga, but left the door ajar for the hunt
Speaker 4: for Marion's killer.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the findings.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about what happened at the findings, because that
Speaker 5: was a pretty big day.
Speaker 6: As we're driving in, all I could see was green everywhere,
Speaker 6: basically just to sea of green. People walking in, people
Speaker 6: sitting down having coffee, all in green.
Speaker 5: And that's mum's favorite color, right, So yeah, I asked,
Speaker 5: I asked everybody, everybody to wanted to come. I was
Speaker 5: amazed how many people came just to see. It was
Speaker 5: a sea of green, and it made me feel instantly comforted.
Speaker 1: There's lots of media there.
Speaker 2: Sally laid it and had the support of dozens of
Speaker 2: loved ones as a coroner. Today confirmed what she's known
Speaker 2: all along.
Speaker 6: Yes, there was a lot of media there and I
Speaker 6: think possibly my observation or opinion was that I think
Speaker 6: it did catch the court a little bit unawares as well.
Speaker 6: So when they all showed up and there was basically
Speaker 6: like a sea.
Speaker 5: Of green walked down and he goes, what is going
Speaker 5: on because the whole corridor was just full of us
Speaker 5: and they were like, how are we going to fit
Speaker 5: you all in? And then others actually had to go
Speaker 5: into the overflow overflow.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that was just an absolutely awesome sight.
Speaker 1: Power to the people. Marion matters, right, Marion matters, And
Speaker 1: you better just know that people care about her.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, not just me, now that millions of
Speaker 5: people care about my mum and they want to know
Speaker 5: what's happened to her.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, And that was incredibly powerful.
Speaker 5: I had an interaction with Chris with Nigel Warren again,
Speaker 5: who now is the o I c the officer in
Speaker 5: charge of mum's case, and we were chatting and I
Speaker 5: said to him, so where are we at, you know,
Speaker 5: what's happening and he pretty much said to me, well, Sally,
Speaker 5: we've got eight hundred cases and we need to prioritize.
Speaker 5: And then we got in there and the coroner actually
Speaker 5: said that you know, she was not very happy with
Speaker 5: New South Police and how they handled the case.
Speaker 2: She also found New South Wales police bungled the missing
Speaker 2: person's investigation, recommending it now be referred to homicide detective and.
Speaker 5: Pretty much said that, you know, due to your inaction
Speaker 5: and not following procedure and the Commissioner's handbook properly because
Speaker 5: remembering you know. For those that don't know, they actually
Speaker 5: listed my mum as an occurrence only back in October
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety seven. When I went into the police and said,
Speaker 5: something's wrong. My mom's overseas and money's coming out of
Speaker 5: her bank account in Byron Bay. She's missed my brother's
Speaker 5: birthday and that's out of character. They marked her as
Speaker 5: an occurrence only. And an occurrence only is if your
Speaker 5: house gets broken into and someone steals your TV. That
Speaker 5: is what an occurrence is, and they market as such
Speaker 5: in the file and it said no action required. So
Speaker 5: they had marked my mum as no action required until
Speaker 5: the person is listed as missing and it was in
Speaker 5: action due to other work priorities. That was the language
Speaker 5: we saw a lot, wasn't it in all the documentation
Speaker 5: that we had, And I was like, this is where
Speaker 5: it really was grinding my gears because I was like,
Speaker 5: my mom does matter, and she counts she's not a
Speaker 5: lost puppy, she's a human being and she's missing, and
Speaker 5: all her money's been taken, and all her jewelry, all
Speaker 5: her belongings that were in that shipping container that have
Speaker 5: never been located, artwork, you know, like why is this
Speaker 5: not important? And I mean I had the problem where
Speaker 5: I did the podcast and then they kept saying to me,
Speaker 5: we hate the podcast, we hate the podcast.
Speaker 1: The podcast is a big problem for.
Speaker 5: Us, and that caused problems as well going forward. But
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, we came out of the court
Speaker 5: and people were hugging me.
Speaker 1: It wasn't celebratory.
Speaker 6: I wouldn't say that, but it was sort of like, okay,
Speaker 6: it's almost like a line in the sand, like we've
Speaker 6: gotten to this point. Their findings were quite solid, like
Speaker 6: it was a lot to digest. It was nearly sixty pages,
Speaker 6: I think, and we actually walked past another like a
Speaker 6: one of the investigators that was part of the initial team.
Speaker 6: She had found out that we were planning to go
Speaker 6: overseas so she just said, I really hope you find something.
Speaker 6: So that to me did take me aback from the
Speaker 6: point of view that she was talking to a daughter
Speaker 6: of a missing person, and another community member that had
Speaker 6: been helping you, you know, for so many years. And
Speaker 6: I actually suddenly thought to myself, Okay, we are literally
Speaker 6: alone in this mission. And I thought to myself, too, Okay,
Speaker 6: obviously that means that there's nothing that's actively being worked
Speaker 6: on or else.
Speaker 1: Why would that be said?
Speaker 5: Well, and then we left right and we walked everyone
Speaker 5: sort of left, and I got pulled in with my
Speaker 5: legal team for about ten minutes and had a private
Speaker 5: chat to them.
Speaker 1: You know, this is the sneaky thing. We opened the
Speaker 1: door and there was a media.
Speaker 5: The same woman that was actually in the court trying
Speaker 5: to get me to talk to her was standing at
Speaker 5: the door while I'm talking to the legal team, and
Speaker 5: she's scurried down the pathway of the corridor as soon
Speaker 5: as we opened the door, and I was like, do
Speaker 5: not tell me. You were just standing there listening like
Speaker 5: it was just such a bizarre day, you know. And
Speaker 5: then to come downstairs and to see an absolute feel
Speaker 5: of media standing there wanting to hear me talk and
Speaker 5: I wasn't allowed to and we already had a plan
Speaker 5: in place that I was just to walk past the media,
Speaker 5: get in my car and drive around to a park
Speaker 5: around the corner, and we told a few of the
Speaker 5: people who had come to support me, and everyone sort
Speaker 5: of just made their way around there. But you know,
Speaker 5: even walking up to the car, I've got, you know,
Speaker 5: someone throwing a microphone in my face asking me what
Speaker 5: do I feel and what do I think? And I'm
Speaker 5: just like, I'm really sorry, I can't talk to you.
Speaker 5: I cannot a comment at this time.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Has this brought you any closure at all?
Speaker 1: Do you miss your mum?
Speaker 5: What kind of question is that? Are you trying to
Speaker 5: get an emotion out of me? Like I'm I'm a
Speaker 5: person who's quite private with my emotion. I am strong,
Speaker 5: but I'm also very sensitive, and I just like to
Speaker 5: grieve in my own personal way, and I like to
Speaker 5: do it in my own private way. I don't even
Speaker 5: really do it in front of kids and Chris. I
Speaker 5: just so that was pretty rough. And we went around
Speaker 5: and Channel seven News was set up there and we
Speaker 5: did a news report that night for the TV that night,
Speaker 5: and I remember just being focused on the fact that
Speaker 5: no one had apologized to me. I haven't even had
Speaker 5: an apology. If I can put it, put it out there.
Speaker 5: You know, I still haven't from the police had any
Speaker 5: apology for how I've been treated. You know, I've just
Speaker 5: been told my mum's deceased for the first time. It's
Speaker 5: twenty six years and I've had to fight tooth and
Speaker 5: nail to get people to listen to me. I had
Speaker 5: to fight to it now for them to even say
Speaker 5: she was missing, let alone that she's deceased. And then
Speaker 5: they passed it over like I mean, the recommendation from
Speaker 5: the coroner was that it goes to the unsolved homicide team,
Speaker 5: which indicates to me, if it's a homicide, it's murder.
Speaker 5: She has died by foul play of some description. Otherwise,
Speaker 5: as we have spoken about before, she would have put
Speaker 5: it back with the missing persons unit. There is a
Speaker 5: very different line in the sand for that too. You're
Speaker 5: either murdered or you're missing. And if she thinks that,
Speaker 5: she would have put her with the missing person's unit,
Speaker 5: but she put her with homicide unsolved homicide, And you know,
Speaker 5: it was pretty heartbreaking to know that they had just
Speaker 5: pretty much blink told me that she wasn't a priority
Speaker 5: to them. You know, I think we got to the
Speaker 5: end of doing the interview and Alison and Brian and
Speaker 5: the Lady Vanisher's Channel seventeen had put the podcast into
Speaker 5: a book format and that was getting released, I think,
Speaker 5: and they were just sort of tidying up the last
Speaker 5: episodes for that, and I just was left. I felt
Speaker 5: like I was at a bit of a crossroads as
Speaker 5: to what to do now.
Speaker 6: From my perspective, I guess we came out of the
Speaker 6: court and for me, all I saw was pretty much
Speaker 6: every single media outlet there in Australia, and I was
Speaker 6: so excited and that's probably the wrong word, but to
Speaker 6: actually have the ability to have all of those journalists
Speaker 6: standing there that were going to be reporting on this
Speaker 6: outcome and the potential images, photos, and I actually realized, oh,
Speaker 6: you can't actually stand on the steps of the actual
Speaker 6: building itself and talk to all of the media and
Speaker 6: get your story out broader because that.
Speaker 1: Is what we need.
Speaker 6: Oh no, because we're literally going to be whipped around
Speaker 6: the corner into a park to miss out on that opportunity.
Speaker 6: And look, I understand the rationale of why, but I
Speaker 6: just felt very very upset about that.
Speaker 1: How do I feel? I don't actually know.
Speaker 5: Coron has just told me officially my mum deceased, So
Speaker 5: that's the first time I've heard that in twenty seven years,
Speaker 5: which is a long time. As you can appreciate, it's
Speaker 5: hard enough when someone does die, but to not have
Speaker 5: them in your world for such a long time and
Speaker 5: not know and then get to the point where you
Speaker 5: find out that they have died and we now need
Speaker 5: to move to the next stage of what that involves
Speaker 5: for me.
Speaker 6: I guess people could be kind of wondering sala like
Speaker 6: why we're doing this here now in this space, and
Speaker 6: I guess why they're not seeing like another episode ping
Speaker 6: on their podcast apps from The Lady Vanishers, which did
Speaker 6: an extraordinary job, an enormous amount of interviews, fantastic work,
Speaker 6: picked it up from basically a story that was known
Speaker 6: to you and your family but nobody else, and turned
Speaker 6: it into an absolute juggernaut of a podcast in the
Speaker 6: true crime world. I feel like it's kind of brave
Speaker 6: that we're sitting here together in another studio doing something
Speaker 6: a bit different. But I just wondered, Yeah, I guess
Speaker 6: a lot of people would be asking and wondering why
Speaker 6: we're here and while we're not with the Lady Vanishers
Speaker 6: doing yet another episode, and.
Speaker 5: I definitely, I'm sure people are going to be asking
Speaker 5: that question. And I was with Channel seven for six
Speaker 5: years and gave them my everything, and they gave me
Speaker 5: a huge amount back. It was amazing, It was stressful,
Speaker 5: It was mind blowing some of the things that we
Speaker 5: did together. And you know, Ran and I spent a
Speaker 5: huge amount of time together, and I have huge respect
Speaker 5: for him and for Allison for doing everything that they
Speaker 5: did to help.
Speaker 1: Project my story.
Speaker 5: When no one else was listening to me, Allison listened
Speaker 5: and she sat with a coffee and she knew this
Speaker 5: was a good story to tell, and she helped me
Speaker 5: and brought Brian into the space and helped me tell well.
Speaker 5: And look, Lady Vanishel's had fifty seven episodes, and a
Speaker 5: lot of the episodes at the end there were sort
Speaker 5: of looking into Rick Blum more predominantly than about my mum.
Speaker 1: Who was the missing person.
Speaker 5: And I was actually finding out quite stressful that the
Speaker 5: intro to the podcast was all about the daughter looking
Speaker 5: for her missing mother and the daughter on a mission.
Speaker 5: But then we're talking about Alona Reid and her children
Speaker 5: and her ex partners and bringing them into the mix.
Speaker 5: And I understand that that is an important side to
Speaker 5: my mum's story. But I maybe made the suggestion of
Speaker 5: perhaps doing a spinoff podcast that wasn't really about my mum,
Speaker 5: Like the intro is all about Mary, but then it
Speaker 5: was all about Reck Blum, and I was like, maybe
Speaker 5: we should do a spinoff podcast that was sort of
Speaker 5: more about Rick Blum and we could link them together.
Speaker 5: And you know, that just wasn't going to work. To
Speaker 5: be honest, I didn't know that that was going to
Speaker 5: be the last episode. I heard it on the episode
Speaker 5: whenever else did that that was going to be the
Speaker 5: last one.
Speaker 6: This is the final episode of The Lady Vanishes, to
Speaker 6: be fair.
Speaker 5: At that point in time, you know, Allison and Brian
Speaker 5: had been busy doing other podcasts as well. They'd done
Speaker 5: Shot in the Dark, which was really amazing and brought
Speaker 5: attention to another victim. I felt like I had been
Speaker 5: given a lot of their time and energy and effort,
Speaker 5: and you know, potentially this was you know, we got
Speaker 5: to an inquest, which is what I had always said
Speaker 5: to them at the very beginning. I just wanted my
Speaker 5: goal was to get to an inquest, and the inquest
Speaker 5: had finished, so I understood the concept that you know,
Speaker 5: maybe we'll wrap up the Lady Vanishers and they were
Speaker 5: writing their book, they released the book. Yeah, you and
Speaker 5: I just were left to go and work out what
Speaker 5: we wanted to do. And that's how we got to
Speaker 5: the last twelve months of what we've been doing. Like
Speaker 5: when you and I decided that what we were going
Speaker 5: to do this last twelve months, there was no chat about, hey,
Speaker 5: let's go into our own podcast. We actually just I
Speaker 5: just wanted to do it in my own quiet time,
Speaker 5: go and find the information that we actually required. And
Speaker 5: it was really the drive from the people following, going,
Speaker 5: when are you going to tell us? How are you
Speaker 5: going to tell us you should do a podcast? You
Speaker 5: should do a podcast? And I was like, oh my goodness.
Speaker 5: People actually still want to know what we're doing and
Speaker 5: what's happening. So that's pretty much what's driven the concept
Speaker 5: of us thinking and even considering doing something crazy like this.
Speaker 6: I'm really excited about this next phase in the journey
Speaker 6: with sal Thank you to everybody that's followed along with
Speaker 6: us over the years and for sticking with us. We
Speaker 6: really hope that you do stick with us through this journey.
Speaker 1: It's been a whirl win of a year.
Speaker 5: And you know, in the next upcoming ten episode, you're
Speaker 5: going to hear about every place we visited on our
Speaker 5: you know, three weeks away, we went to six different countries.
Speaker 1: We did a.
Speaker 5: Search, which you know was a massive thing for me
Speaker 5: to have to do mentally, and you know, we're going
Speaker 5: to talk about that. And we did some live shows,
Speaker 5: which was just an amazing experience for me personally, and
Speaker 5: it showed me that people really care and wanted to
Speaker 5: help project us into this space so that we could
Speaker 5: actually go and do the research that still needed to
Speaker 5: be done. And I just I want to do a
Speaker 5: shout out as well to oh Media because one of
Speaker 5: the big bosses there was listening to the podcast and
Speaker 5: actually reached out to her quite some years ago and
Speaker 5: asked if we could do a billboard, and she came
Speaker 5: to the party and we had a double sided, both
Speaker 5: sides of the road billboard for Mum down in Grafton,
Speaker 5: and we did actually have one of those electronic billboards
Speaker 5: inside the shopping center at Lismore too. But I remember
Speaker 5: the floods happened just shortly after that and they all
Speaker 5: went underwater, and I was having dreams about Mum's poster
Speaker 5: floating down in the water, like it was just horrendous.
Speaker 5: Like I know that sounds weird for some people to think,
Speaker 5: but I was like, oh my gosh, like I've just
Speaker 5: finally got to this stage of having some really good
Speaker 5: pubblicity in that space where.
Speaker 1: I know she was in that backyard.
Speaker 5: And you know, I just wanted to say thanks to
Speaker 5: Omdia because the billboard is still up in Grafton. You know,
Speaker 5: I still get people stopping and taking photos and sending
Speaker 5: it to me, going.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's still still there, and that's important.
Speaker 5: I mean, the we've progressed now from two hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty thousand dollars to a five hundred thousand dollar reward.
Speaker 5: It still says two hundred and fifty thousand on the poster,
Speaker 5: but you know, that just shows you how long it's
Speaker 5: been there. And I think it's amazing that it's just
Speaker 5: still there after all this time and bringing awareness to
Speaker 5: Mum's case.
Speaker 1: The podcast is called The Missing.
Speaker 5: Matter because in my world that has become my song.
Speaker 5: You know, it's not just about my mum. My Mum
Speaker 5: is Marian and Marian matters. This is not just about
Speaker 5: my mum. This is about all the bes thing, and
Speaker 5: so I'm hoping that by sharing my journey and my
Speaker 5: experiences and my understanding of what I've had to go
Speaker 5: through over the last twenty seven years. And my mum
Speaker 5: is still a miss person. I still don't know where
Speaker 5: she is. I still live with that ambiguous loss every
Speaker 5: single day. But I want those people who are in
Speaker 5: that space to know that they can reach out to us.
Speaker 1: They can talk to us anytime.
Speaker 5: We're not experts, we can certainly give you empathy and
Speaker 5: care and kindness and an ear when you need it.
Speaker 5: And their voices matter, you know. We're hoping that by
Speaker 5: doing this we can bring more awareness to this space,
Speaker 5: because the missing do matter, and we need to make
Speaker 5: sure that their voices are heard and their stories are
Speaker 5: out there for people to understand and learn about.
Speaker 1: In the next episode of The Missing.
Speaker 5: Matter, you have to stop and think that the coroner
Speaker 5: gives her findings. You actually get the findings document. There's
Speaker 5: no instruction book, there's no care pack. You're left on
Speaker 5: your own to work it out. I've tried to capture
Speaker 5: these moments for you guys, so that you can actually
Speaker 5: be with me while I'm actually going through that process.
Speaker 5: I got to Medicare here at Green Slopes about two
Speaker 5: hours and twenty minutes ago. I went up to the
Speaker 5: counter and I said, look, I'm still waiting, and people
Speaker 5: who came in after me were being say I am
Speaker 5: just feeling extremely emotional and extremely stressed.
Speaker 1: I swear to God, we must have knocked on the
Speaker 1: wrong door. Oh we've gone to the wrong house. And
Speaker 1: you know what else, what else?
Speaker 5: What else?
Speaker 1: Spa speA