June 15, 2025 • 48 mins
In this episode of The Missing Matter, Sally and Joni arrive in Amsterdam, following in Marion’s footsteps through rain-soaked streets, smoky hotel rooms, and winding tram rides. With one of them unexpectedly sidelined, the other takes on the city solo—navigating hidden corners, historic museums, and cryptic conversations in search of answers. What unfolds is a mix of emotion, determination, and discovery in a city that holds more than just memories.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Appo Jay Production.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Missing Matter podcast. We're
going to take you for a trip into Amsterdam in
this episode, and we're going to tell you why we
were there and what we found and some of the
things we did. So it was dark and raining when
we left our London accommodation and we caught an uber
(00:36):
to Saint Pancras International train station to hop on the
Eurostar heading to Amsterdam.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
It was very.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Early Joni, another early morning for us. It was raining again.
It was about just four hours, about four hours twenty
to get from London into Amsterdam. And the reason we
chose to do the trains it was a little bit
cheaper and obviously we're on a tight budget. It also
gave us an ability to sit down and actually do
(01:11):
our work on the Eurostar with their trade tables and
things like that.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
It made it a little bit easier.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I remember I had to wear a mask because Johnny
was starting to feel a bit sick, and I was like,
we both cannot get sick.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
If one of us is sick, that's okay, we can manage.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
But if both of us get sick, that it's going
to turn as a custard. Yeah, that time when you
aren't sick, but you know that the steam train is
coming for you, and you're wishing to wherever you can
wish to to actually stop this from happening, because that
is such bad timing. I was just literally just praying
to whoever that by the time we got to Amsterdam
(01:48):
would literally all go away. But I knew, I just
you know that tingling in the throat, a bit of
a headache coming on, block DearS starting, and I thought, oh,
we're going to be in trouble. Him to.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Get passengers good morning, a momentary or at ASDA sample
station currently eleven twenty Absterdam Centaur was the final call,
the kindly regressive to disapprocha train on the rable and
what you do, don't forget your personal belongance. I thank
the gap between them and platform.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
So we arrived in Amsterdam and we head straight to
our accommodation. We had a funny moment, didn't we wear.
We popped into the uber and the driver actually was
telling us how he was a world champion kickboxer Moroccan Moca.
He was so nice and he's following along on Instagram,
so hopefully he will hear this one day. But he
(02:49):
was so nice, like we actually had cards of Mum
and these other cards that we had made. He actually
offered to put them in his cab so that people
when they got into the cab they would actually see
these postcards. And we thought that was a great way
of just getting Mum's story out there, making some awareness
about what we were doing in Amsterdam. We actually arrive
(03:09):
at our hotel and it was probably our nicest accommodation.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Actually, it was.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Magnet, very beautiful, and we walked in and I opened
the windows and we were engulfed with marijuana smoke.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
And then I looked out the window.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Oh goodness me, all I can smell is marijuana.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Jeez?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
The bees. Oh that's because over the rock.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
The energy shop is mushroom seas smoke supplies.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Right, yes, I can see.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Then I think there's a cafe down below us on
the right hand side.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
I actually can't believe how strong it is. That's crazy.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
So that was interesting because I'm used to seeing them
all in my garden.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, well, it was quite weird, and I was quite
worried about how much it was in our room.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
I'll never forget you like you you come in. We'd
had she I was worried about being sick. Sale was
worried about me being sick. She flung the curtains open,
she flung open the windows, and then all of a sudden,
she's like, oh, what is this right, that's it, and
she just slammed those windows shut again. She's like, we
(04:32):
love We both loved Amsterdam.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I would have said that's my favorite favorite city to
walk around. I did a lot of walking, so I
got to see a fair bit. But you know, lots
of canals, lots of little bridges, lots of bikes, and
apparently the bikes actually ruled the universe over there, so
if you're walking you have to give way to the bikes.
They don't give way to you, they will run you over,
so you have to be very, very careful. We went
(04:55):
to Amsterdam purely for the fact that Mum had actually
indicated that her next stop was Amsterdam and she was
going there to see the Sunflowers, meaning she was going
to Vince and Vango's museum. She was a big fan
of this. I remember my grandmother had a massive print
of the Sunflowers in her lounge room. Vince and Vango
(05:15):
has always been a big part. Even my Annie Rob
who's on my dad's side, like she has Starry Starry Night,
a massive big print of that in her house. So
as a child, I remember growing up with a lot
of Vince and Wango around me. And for me it
was a bit of a sad moment because I didn't
know if Mum actually made it there, and in my
heart of hearts, I don't think she did. So for me,
I kind of wanted to go and see the sunflowers
(05:36):
for her as much as I wanted to be there
and see what it was that she.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Wanted to see with her eyes. And it's also just
before she left.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Her last sort of art push with the boys was
Van Goy.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Well. She always brought it into everything she did, so
she was very arty with the boys at school and
very cultural with that sort of thing as well. So
she wasn't afraid to sit there until four and five
year olds about and she'd play the music, you know,
to go with the painting, which has a lot of
power to it, you know. I recently just posted a
picture one of the girls we met actually in the UK.
(06:12):
Laura actually gave me a scarf which was had the
sunflowers on it, and she'd actually imprinted on it Marion Matters,
and I posted about it because it's just become winter
here and I've been able to start wearing the scarf
and I just wanted to thank her for doing that,
and that was a really beautiful, thoughtful present that she
gave me when we did catch up, and I just
put the music behind it, and then I played the
(06:33):
whole piece of music going out to see my dad,
and I had goosebumps roll down my body.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
So it is quite powerful for me to be able.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
To have that experience, and I'm very grateful to be
able to go and see it.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
Starry, starry, name, pink, sure, pilid, blue and gray look
out on a summer's day with eyes that know the darkness.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
So the reason why we're in Amsterdam was also to
look at coin dealers because mister Blue, whom had been
coming in and out of Amsterdam, that was one of
his main points of call between the UK and Europe
and also Australia and Europe, so that seemed to be
the place where he would sort of funnel in and out.
(07:19):
We also have the issue of his cousin's widow who
was called Charlotte in the media, and she said that
he actually caught a train at four am from Belgium
to leave through Amsterdam to go to Bali because he
wanted to avoid seeing anybody in Belgium. And she wondered
(07:41):
whether the one hundred thousand euro that she had provided
to him was something actually happened in Amsterdam to that money,
and then she arrived later in the day to catch
the plane out to.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Bali with him.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
That's why the coin dealers really interested me. Also the
flea market too, just to see whether there was coin
dealers there and whether there was anyone that sort of
knew him there.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Look for me.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
I think Joanie and I have very different ways of
working this case, and that's really important, and that's probably
why it works so well, because I have the emotional
side and she has the detailed, structured side of research,
and we gel them together. And it's interesting because even
on the weekend we were doing more research up and
(08:26):
down the north coast of New South Wales and we
would sit there sometimes for twenty minutes and not argue,
but we would debate whether and the reasons why we
should do something or another thing. And so I think
the fact that we are able to do that and
make a decision and move forward on it and just
act on it because we both come to a resolution
(08:47):
as to what's the right path for.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Me the coin dealers.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
It turned out I ended up having to do the
coin side of this in Amsterdam because Jooni was in bedsick.
She was quite unwell. Joanie's a really tough check. She
comes from Mount Macedon. She's, you know, a hard working
human who's pretty pretty tough.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
And she cried and I thought, oh my god, she's crying,
and I don't know what to do. She's crying. I
didn't expect her to cry, but you were quite heartbroken.
At the same time.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
I think that we'd got there and you were sick,
and you're like, I'm letting you down, Like this is
not good, Like I.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Need to be here, I need to do it us.
You are not letting me down.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
We'd found a soup shop the day before which we
had some soup and I'll just get you some soup.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
I'll bring it back. I guess too.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I had to go out because two of us could
not get sick, and we were in a very small
room together, so it kind of worked out.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
I guess that I left and went and did the
work that both of us were wanting to do. But
I do know how sad you were that you didn't
get a chance to do that because you'd work so
hard on organizing it and where we were going and.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
What we were doing.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
And I had to sort of catch up pretty quick
as to the why because I'm organizing the hotels and
I'm organizing where we're going and all these other bits
and pieces, whereas Jooney was focused on you know, who
we were going to talk to and why left her
in the hotel to a bath and try and recover
while I head out and.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Do what I need to get done today.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I guess the coin side of things is we know
that Rick Blum had a company called balanacoin invest Now
he claims that he did know transactions through that business
that it wasn't active. It was questioned through the inquest
as to why you would pay for a business name
and register a business that's all comes with expense if
(10:35):
you're not actually trading. So it was kind of interesting
and for us, in the back of our minds, is
is there something sitting behind that that the police have
not looked into yet are their bank accounts overseas? I mean,
I'm from my perspective, the police are telling me in
the report that my mum had eighty thousand dollars electronically
transferred and potentially transferred overseas to start a new life
(10:58):
with her new partner. You know, where did they get
that information from? And why are they putting it into
a police report At the very instance, I'm walking into
the police station and saying something's not right, but then
not taking any.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Action on it.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
So for us, we wanted to investigate as to what
was sitting behind the coin businesses and do these people
know Rick Blum.
Speaker 6 (11:20):
Mister Bloom's interest in coin collecting. Diane gave evidence that
mister Bloom has always had an interesting coins and has
had his own small collection. She said he sometimes sold
coins for other people and would receive a small commission.
She was not aware of him turning his interest in
coins into a business. She was aware in general terms
(11:42):
of his company, Ballaner Coin Investments, but said that it
never actually operated as a going concern. She agreed she
was a director, but commented that this was just on
paper and said she had forgotten about it. There is
no evidence before the court to suggest otherwise, al that
this company generated any income. Mister Bloom says that he
(12:03):
occasionally sold coins, but not for any significant sum.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
In regards to the coin dealing, I just want to
take everybody back a moment, right to the start of
the coin dealing stuff, because you know there was many
years there where obviously.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
You didn't know where your MAMO was.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
And then when Rick Bloom came along or Frederick de
HEDEVERI it was quite early in the piece when we
found out that he actually had a company called Baliner
Coin invest.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
So for those who haven't listened to the Lady Vanishers
and knows the finer details, we launched the Lady Vanishers
on the first of April twenty nineteen. You come to
us mid May twenty nineteen with the ad that you
found in the newspaper which links us to the name
Ramichel Lennox heads and there's a phone number in there.
(12:53):
Then I get an email from a gentleman who wants
to remain anonymous, who says, I've gone down to the
local library at Balaner, I've hand scanned thousands of searchers
for phone numbers, and I found a link to the
phone number which linked that phone number to a company
called Ballana coin invest. You and I then did a
massive search with him. He actually did the assex search
(13:14):
on that name with it.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
He did that and he found the name of the
owner of Baloin coin invest was Frederic to Heavidairy and
Diane to Heavendairy.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yes, that was an absolute game changing moment so coin invest.
I thought to myself, coin invest would it be like Bitcoin?
Would it be? And I'm thinking no, I don't think so,
because he's of an older age coin invest maybe a
coin dealer. So I was thinking this sort of in
the background when I first saw the assex document. So
(13:44):
then I thought, okay, let's see, let's try and see
if this is the case. So, if you remember, I thought,
let's look and see who the local coin dealers were
in the balin Aire at that time. I then thought, well,
I'll try and track him down to see if he
knew because I couldn't. Obviously, I couldn't find Frederick de
Heeadevary anywhere as a coin dealer. There was no advertisements.
(14:06):
Looking back over that time, the ballin retire and I
worked pretty closely together to try to locate this person
and what his dealings were. So then I thought, well,
I'm going to have to go to Sydney and look
for coin dealers there that may have known who the
old dealers were up in northern New South Wales. So
(14:28):
I rang around the local coin dealers there and I
happened to speak to a dealer, a very old, very
well known dealer called Jim Noble from Noble Numismatics, and
I actually called him and.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
This is what he said. He said, oh yes, Rick.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Now at this stage I wasn't expecting him to actually
know anything. So when he I don't know if you remember,
but when he said oh yes, Rick, I thought, oh,
I think I'm going to have to try and backpedal
very quickly out of this conversation. This is what he said, Oh, Rick,
HEDIVERI the Belgian. Yes, he's living in the foothills of
(15:11):
Byron Bay. He's in his early eighties now. He's looking
to put some coins in for an auction in the
next month or so. He goes by a few names,
so you never know who you're talking to on the phone.
He was just laughing the whole time, like he thought
it was hilarious. Then he said I must get up there.
I couldn't because of the virus. So remember it was
(15:34):
Corona and we were just coming out the other end
of it. So for me, that was a real game
changer because I thought to myself, there could be a
lot of stuff, as you said, sitting behind the whole
coin dealing thing.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
What I did know was we had catalogs.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
We had invoicing, we had bank details, we had dates
of auctions, We had dates that coins were bought and sold,
how they were sold. So we basically had almost like
a bit of a train on a person that you
wouldn't ordinarily get because in order to purchase a coin
with some of them, you need to actually go to
(16:13):
the auction. So that was when its zeroed in for me,
and I thought, well, okay, nineteen ninety seven, we need
to see exactly what he purchased over that whole time,
because we had your mum's timeline, and then if we
could overlay even his coin timeline, we would be able
to pinpoint exactly where he was. So I came across
(16:35):
a coin description where basically it lays out mister Bloom's
entire family history.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
So that was very helpful.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
So it says ex collection of Franz Ernst and I'm
going to completely butcher the name, so and even bother
Bishop of Tournay, the cure of the parish of Saint
Pierre in Tournay. He died in nineteen thirty nine, by
descent acquired by the grandfather died in nineteen forty nine,
which we knew that was accurate, and by succession then
(17:08):
to the current collector's grandmother, Maria Coppenole. Now I was
able to contact nobles and actually get the collector's cards
or the description of that coin, and so I was
then able to match the handwriting of Rick Bloom to
that collection. So therefore I knew that anything that had
(17:32):
ex cop and Ole collection at the base of the
coin at was going to be coming from his collection.
So then the world again opened up. And at the
end of the day, as one of the dealers said
to me, a coin shrinks fifty thousand euro into a
nondescript piece of metal in the zipper of your wallet,
(17:55):
A perfect way to effectively launder ill gotten gains. I'm
not saying that mister Bloom did this, and that was
the reason why he was a coin dealer. From what
I understand, he was very knowledgeable and to put that
in later, it's an interesting thought.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
You're talking about buying a coin that is worth fifty
thousand euros. That's a gold coin that sits in your wallet,
and when you're coming through customs, they're not looking at
your coins in your wallet ands terms, is what that's saying.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Yeah, So it's effectively a very good way to move
money from country to country or continent to continent, because
as we've seen within the passenger cards, it's a maximum
ten thousand Australian that you can bring in here. The
other thing that we also found out was Stuart Right
from Status International. Stuart's gone on the record. This is
(18:47):
an article in the Australian newspaper that everyone can read.
So he stated that he did have a bank account
on file for mister Bloom because he was a current
customer of him, and this was back in twenty twenty one.
So records indicate that between the period two thousand seventeen
and twenty twenty Rick Bloom spent approximately seventeen thousand dollars
(19:12):
Australian with Status International and most of these payments were
made via EFT or direct transfer. Mister Wright also said
that mister Bloom worked for him for three months in
two thousand and was paid in cash, and that was
when mister Bloom was living at the Student accommodation on
George Street. He only put this together when looking at
(19:33):
mister Bloom's other legal names, so he didn't actually realize
that Rick Frederick de Heeveri was also known as Richard West,
so that dealer knew him as Richard West or Rick West.
He was sacked and this is according to Stuart Wright.
He was sacked after it was discovered that he had
(19:55):
allegedly been mailing the customer's high value orders to his
own post office box rather than to the customers themselves.
So that is on the record, that is in the media,
and that is what Stuart Wright alleges.
Speaker 7 (20:10):
David Murray from the Australian Status International owner Stuart Wright
said he briefly employed the Avid coin collector who was
using the name Richard West in Sydney around nineteen ninety nine.
Mister Blum embraced the position he was offered, turning up
at five am when most staff didn't arrive until four
hours later the role included posting items to customers and
(20:33):
coincided with a series of parcels failing to reach their
intended destination. I can't make accusations, but in the stuff
that went to the post office, I think the first, second, third, fifth,
seventh and tenth most valuable consignments disappeared, mister Wright told
The Australian. One day, mister Blum just disappeared, leaving his
(20:53):
job without saying goodbye. He didn't come back, and subsequently
a dealer in Ballina, Barry Cooper, told me he'd offered
Barry Cooper a copy of my mailing list. It was
probably just laying around. We always had a paper backup,
mister Wright said. In recent years, Status International had a
new customer, Rick Blum. I had no idea they were
(21:15):
one and the same person. At the time he bought
a few coins, mister Wright said. Another respected coin trader,
who asked The Australian to withhold his identity, interacted with
mister Bloom many times. Do you know Walter Mitty?
Speaker 1 (21:28):
He said.
Speaker 7 (21:29):
We felt that he was a bit of a Walter
Mitty character when it came to describing what he owned
and possessed.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
So we leave the room, the engulfed room of marijuana,
and head out and we've got tickets to go and
see the sunflowers, which was pretty exciting. And we're trying
to fumble our way through with everyone speaking Dutch and
us not really knowing where we're going, and we decided
to get on a tram and that turns out to
(21:58):
be quite funny, quite a funny moment because we jump
on the tram and I've got cameras and I've come
trying to capture everything, and I've got my backpack and
my bag and it's heavy, and anyway, we get on
the tram and then we're sort of fumbling. At one
point we've been on the tram for a couple of stops.
We're tapping our card just to get on and off.
We're trying to work out if that's how it works.
(22:18):
And anyway, Joanie's sort of sitting up at the back
door and I'm in the middle. I've sort of walked
into the middle of the tram. And then the tram
stops and Joanie gets off, and I'm fumbling, going, oh
my god, I have to get my credit card out
to tap the thing to get off, and before I
know it, the door shut and the tram takes off,
and I'm like, oh my goodness, I'm in the middle
(22:39):
of amsinam, I don't know where I am, and I've
already lost her.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Bye bye, Sol, she missed.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
She couldn't get the door open, so off she goes.
She'll be most happy.
Speaker 6 (22:54):
Bye bye see.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Okay, So Johnie couldn't work out to get the door
open on the tram, so I started walking back to them,
and then she got out, and so I went back
to her and tapped off, but the doors shut and
then the.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Trams are go off.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
So we've been here for two minutes and we've already.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Lost each other. So that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
But anyway, I am just fucking see a sign saying
Fango's Museum, So I'm.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Heading up there and I'll meet her. He's particularly chilli here.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
So we arrive at the museum and wow, like, what
an amazing thing to witness, you know, all his original artworks,
and it's just the whole museum is flooded with his artwork,
which was pretty special to see. Obviously, the sunflowers was
a big attraction. There was probably the best part of
thirty people standing around with headphones on, listening to the
(23:54):
stories about his artwork and his life, which was quite
a sad life. And so we finished going through the
museum and we've got some gifts, and we walked downstairs
and we thought one of the things we wanted to
do when we went to these places because we'd experienced
this years before when I went to the UK and
(24:16):
I was with Christina, and Christina had sort of introduced
me to the idea that there are guest books in
a lot of these places that you visit, and so
that became a bit of a theme for us as well,
Let's check if they've got a guest book, how far
back does the guest book go, and does there have
anything in there that might be of interest. We do
(24:37):
have the or the only guest book that we actually have,
which is in our brief of evidence, so I'm not
allowed to talk about it, but it does come from
Jane Austen's house, and there is an insert in there
that for me personally, I looked at and I thought
was a bit odd.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Everyone else just said, no, there's nothing to see here.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
So hopefully one day I can actually show everyone that
and get everyone's opinion on it. Because I do think
it's actually of interest. But again, sorry, I can't talk
about it because it's behind that locked door. But we
went and asksome and we tried to record it. It was
a little bit noisy in there, but we did try
to capture what the lady said, and this is what she.
Speaker 8 (25:11):
Said, good museum, we've seen the sun clowns and we're
just going just going to ask if they have a
guest book.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
So, JOONI, you went up to the counter and asked
the lady. And it's always a weird thing, isn't it.
I think you say something along the lines on this
is a really weird request. But was anyone working here
in nineteen ninety seven? So that's generally how we rolled
with that line of question. And then if they say
yes or no, they usually asked why are you asking,
(25:43):
and we then head into well, we're just wondering if
there was a guest registry. We know it's a long
time ago, but is it in archives because this is
a pretty important, famous thing for people to come and see.
We're wondering if you actually kept records. No, we didn't
have to.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Okay, Okay, yep, yes, okay, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Because a very strange question. My mum's a missing person.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
One of her last postcards said she was on her
way to Amsterdam's come and see the sun flowers red.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Yeah, so we were years ago.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah, and she went to Jane Austin's house and they
actually do have guest books there.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Like things like that.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
So we're asking if we can have a look at
guestbooks to see if she actually came. She was quite young,
whereas in say the UK, when I went with Channel seven,
we went to tom Bridge Castle and there's five people
in that room and every single one of them was
working there in nineteen ninety seven, so they remembered the
brochure that I'd brought and things like that, so we
(26:45):
didn't get that same vibe in there. It was kind
of like a bit of a really sorry, but no,
we don't have it.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
So we left.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
But we did see the sun flowers and you know
that was that was pretty special.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
No, I was just happy that I was there for
my mum.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
I think, you know, my mind was taken back to
a bit sad because I just honestly feel like she
didn't get to go.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
There, and.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
You know, I feel like in the way she was
talking and what she was talking about in the lead
up going on the Orient Express and all these things.
For me, in my heart, I just don't think any
of that happened, and it made.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Me quite sad.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
I mean, look, the hard thing about transiting and looking
for somebody who's maybe potentially transiting through Europe and we
found this Jooney, and we talk about it in the
next episode. A fair bit actually coming into Brussels is
that no one's checking anything. Like you literally get off
a train, you can bounce around from anywhere, apart from
maybe coming out of the UK you go through customs.
(27:43):
But it was so simplified, like we were just literally
bouncing out of countries in and out of just on
trains and no one was.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Looking at anything.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
So it's hard in that fact to then go and
try and source records to see if my mum actually
did make it to Amsterdam, right, we don't know. All
we've got is her saying next stop Amsterdam, and then
next thing is the next point have is her returning
back to Australia, So we don't know what she did
in that you know, two to three weeks period.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
And I don't think we're ever going to find that out.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Unfortunately, so we have confirmed that Amsterdam they don't hold records,
so there's no incoming records at all.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
When we were planning where we were going to go,
that was one of the things I wanted to know.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Did she go to Amsterdam?
Speaker 2 (28:26):
We then found out through your hard work to see
that well, they actually don't hold records. So we thought, well,
let's still go because mum said she was going there,
and let's see if there's any connectors to coin options
or something that happened around that time that potentially fits
in with the timeline.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
For clarity.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
My mum actually sent three postcards that she actually references
going to Amsterdam. We've done something a bit a bit
next level, but I wanted to make this real and
bring this really in for everybody. So if you're here
hearing the postcards being read out, we've actually used AI
(29:11):
to recreate my mum's voice, So you guys listening now,
you are hearing my mum's voice, which we took audio
from my twenty first birthday video on VHS and we've
transcribed it into AI. So this is the good side
of AI. And you know what super emotional for me
is the first time i'd heard my mum's voice since
(29:33):
she's disappeared. So in my postcard, the Sally's Craft postcard,
she that was in Alfriston, and she talks about next
stop Amsterdam is what we're going to quote.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Next stop Amsterdam.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Then we have on the seventh of July, she sent
a postcard to her second cousin, so my grandmother's cousins,
and that was the one of the cat shop for
those who have followed along well, and she says, I'm
off shortly to Amsterdam and the Orient Express on the
fifteen of July. So she actually gives us a date.
Speaker 7 (30:07):
I'm off shortly to Amsterdam and the Orient Express on
the fifteenth of July.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Then on the eleventh of July, I get a postcard
that's stamped from London with London Tower Bridge on the
front cover, and she says, eagerly looking forward to seeing
Vango's flowers and revisit Holland. Eagerly looking forward to seeing
Vangos's flowers and revisit Holland. So she went to Holland
(30:38):
with Ray Barta on their honeymoon just for clarity.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Okay, so we've got a busy day.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
We leave van Goes Museum and we snapshot a photo.
I remember this day as clear as if it was yesterday.
We stopped, there's a bike there where we're getting a
beautiful photo.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
It's sunny.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
It stopped raining for five seconds, because it's rained every
single day so far. We head past a shop that
has soups and delicious, really am so so we just
sat there and had this amazing piece of bread with
a cup of soup. The other thing we wanted to
(31:26):
do at nighttime. So this was not about pleasure or
anything of the sort. It was about trying to do
things that my mum would like to do in her shoes.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
So I was trying to walk in her shoes.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
And something that she quite often talked about was Ant
Frank and the Diary of Ann Frank was something that
I remember very well as a child and my mum
always talking about it. And realized when we were looking
at what to do in Amsterdam to fill in our
time at nighttime and things like that, there was an
opportunity to go to and Frank's house. And you know
(32:03):
that was a very humbling experience for me personally. I
know you weren't feeling well at this point, your wheels
were falling off.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
I honestly can't actually remember a lot of that. Yeah, right,
said unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
So we were standing outside lining up and we had
umbrellas up because it was I remember that.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
And you walk in.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
And you actually get headphones, and as you walk into
each room, it connects to the headphones, so it's every
it's silent everywhere, like no one's talking, everyone's just listening.
And for me personally, you sort of walk up and
you walk in behind the bookcase that they had the
hidden bookcase of where they were hiding all day long
while the workers were there and doing their thing downstairs,
(32:45):
And I personally remember stepping on a floorboard and it
creaking as I was walking around, and I had that
moment of oh my gosh, like they're trying to be
quiet upstairs. Imagine stepping on a floorboard and someone hearing
it and going what.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Is that upstairs? So that it was quite a moment.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
We were going to go out for dinner after that,
and you were too unwell, so I took you home
and put you to bed, and I went downstairs and
I remember I had something at the bar, like it
wasn't wasn't much, but we just you were needing to
go to bed. That was hard for you, and I'm
really grateful for you. You were a soldier, you were
(33:26):
an absolute soldier in that moment. So yeah, so I
head out on the streets of Amsterdam by myself. I'm
a bit nervous, and I've left Johnie in bed. Hopefully
she'll feel better by the time I get back to
go and do what I need to do.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Okay, So it's nine o'clock.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
I think it's the eleventh October, and unfortunately Joanie is
sick with the flu.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Yeah, she's not.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Very well at all actually, which is not great for her,
and I am worried about her.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
All right, So I am on my way.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
To go to the first point dealer on our lists,
going solo. A little bit nervous, but anyway, the plan
is to go in there and see if anyone knows
or remembers mister Blonde and if he was a customer
(34:44):
of theirs, and potentially if they had an overseas bank
account registered to his account, what his details, because what
we know, based on Grahandchild's statement, is that the eighty
thousand dollars was electronically trans I heard potentially being Verbie
(35:07):
commers to an overseas account. I can't remember the exact word,
but like to buy a house with your new partner.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
So we only have accounts would be Commonwealth Bank.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
So if we can find if he had an account overseas,
we can give that to the police and they potentially
can look into that because we still haven't found where
Mom's money went to. You know the downside of this
is like last night, we were reading a couple of
comments online and there were people commenting about how we
(35:44):
were just here on a fun trip and we were
just there for you know, oh, look at them, they
get to go overseas and do all these wonderful things.
That was actually really hard to read because Jooni's sick,
she's away from her family. I'm away from my family.
We were gone for, you know, over three weeks. That
particular morning, Darcy had been messaging me because it was
her birthday the next day and I wasn't home for it.
(36:07):
And although she'd said I'm okay for you to not
be here, it's still hard when you're not home and
you know your daughter's having a birthday. I'd like to
tell those people who think we're here for fun. That
this is not very fun at all, and it's very difficult,
bouncing in and out of countries, not eating properly, not
sleeping properly, to try and get this information, and not
(36:27):
to mention the fact that we're putting ourselves in positions
or we have to go and ask people questions that
they probably don't want to answer.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
So it is quite tricky and it's not fun. And
you know, we're away from our families.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
It's Darcy's birthday tomorrow and I'm missing out and I've
you know, she's been messaging me saying she misses me
and loves me. I know Ethan's been, you know, missing
his mum as well. You know. So it's a lot
on our families and a lot on us personally.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
To come and do this.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
So we're doing the absolute best we can to find,
you know, the answers.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
So I did the research and looked at all the
coin dealers that were actually there in the nineteen nineties
into the two thousands, not brand news that had sort
of popped up because they would have no idea, like
there's absolutely no point going there. So I looked at
the ones that were historically there, and they were the
ones that I listed to go and have a look
at and go and have a chat to them. There
(37:30):
was three stops where I needed Saal to go. Considering
my situation, it was the good we sell Cantur.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
So I wanted to do this trip with my friend
who's been helping me for five years now. We're going
to do this really thoroughly and make sure we tick
all the boxes and make sure we've done everything we can,
and then we'll have a rest before Christmas. And then
next year I'm organizing a walk, so it would be
my mum's eightieth birthday next year in October, and we're
doing a walk all around the world. Actually, I've got
(37:58):
people in the UK and in Seattle, in America, in
New Zealand, all over Australia. We're going to do a
walk for the Missing because it's I've got a hashtag
I use now the missing matter, and they do matter,
because a lot of people just go, oh, we'll have
a look for them for a bit and then they
just get pushed to the side and they're not important anymore.
So I'm trying to bring awareness to missing persons as well.
(38:20):
So and I think after the walk, I can have
a rest, you know, thank you for and hopefully you'll
find something.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Here and keep your fingers crossed for me.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
I've only got today, so I've got it on a
bit of a mission, but thank you very much. What
you can do maybe is to call our headquarters because
we have more than one of the fifty stores.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
Also in Belgium and Germany.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Call the headquarters in Glaswow.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yeah they can in the total system. Okay, find his
name if they pop up.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Okay, all right, and would they be receptive for me
bringing up yes, yes, of course, Yeah, I got your card.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Oh, okay, can you call the headquarters? Hang on, I'll
write it down.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Out of all the places I went that day. He
was very engaging, he was very interested. He offered to
contact head office and see if we could get the information.
They came back to us and said, no, we can't
give it to you due to privacy. He was interested
in the case, you know. And this is me standing
there as the daughter saying that my mum is a
(39:27):
missing person and giving them a card showing her face,
and people are like, oh.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
My god, this is your mum. Oh my goodness, like
what's happened?
Speaker 2 (39:36):
And there's an interest, and sometimes you walk in and
you say it and they go, I don't know anything,
see you later. So because I'm so far away, Okay,
it's going to take me thirty eight minutes to walk
to the next one, I'm going to go straight past
(39:59):
Anne Frank's house. Johnny and I went there late last
night at seven.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Point o in time.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
So next stop was Schmidt. So he was a dealer
from many, many years ago. So again just the same thing,
just looking to see whether he knew anything about Rick
Bloom or any of his alienses and whether he had
new dealings with him before he left.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
The destination is on your left, Munton Handles c SMID.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
So I'm just wondering if you happened to notice question.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
So the same person, we just studied different ages. Okay,
all right, thank you for having a work regards to
my person in Australia.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
And that gentleman is he has been arrested in job
and France for armed Corge line activity and a massacar
He had a look at the photograph and.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
He doesn't know him.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
So look, I guess to knock it off. I'm going
to sit down and have a coffee in a minute and.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Send journey theo Peter's new msmatics. He again had been
around for a long time and so again just looking
to see whether he'd had any dealings, whether he knew
mister Bloom or knew anything about mister Bloom's coin dealings
or interactions in Amsterdam.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
And interestingly too for me, he was on the other
side of town, so I had to walk probably the
best part of twelve k.
Speaker 5 (41:47):
What did he say, Australia and I.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Think some of the corn dealers who for a while,
I guess I have a clear it's quite unusual. I
have a question as to which plan is familiar to
any of you, DA or the self.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
With you much of you.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
He is a man who is in Australia, who.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Build and born. Yeah he has multiple yeah, oh yeah,
that's okay.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
Maybe in the world is if you've gone around.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
The place and one of people, I kind of feel
weird telling people and it's about Mum.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
In the worry that what if they actually do know him?
And I mean he he just sort of put his
finger to his eye like a crying kind of starting.
Speaker 8 (42:56):
Route to hotel Aysteria and he seemed sad to mean
he didn't recognize him.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
He was situated just across from the water and where
all the ships would come in and dock, which I
find quite interesting. And he had a massive, big window
with big coins, big lots of notes on the stamps
and things like that, really in your face what he
was about, right, And I remember walking back at that moment,
I'd been out all day. I'm saying it's probably around
(43:25):
I'd stopped and had some lunch, grabbed a coffee, and
then kept going. And I remember as I was walking back,
I was recording myself and my phone goes, you have
five percent battery left, and I actually started to go
I actually don't know where I am. I don't know
where the hotel is. I need my phone to get
(43:45):
me there through my maps. And when you're on maps,
I've learned too, it sucks the battery life out of
your phone, like no tomorrow. So I'm sitting there madly
on a piece of paper, looking at maps, trying to
describe myself which bridge I had to turn over, which
where I had, because you're literally in Amsterdam.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
It's over a.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Bridge, go a little bit over another bridge, go a
little bit over another bread.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
So I'm scribing myself on this little scrap piece of paper.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
How I had to get home back to the hotel
to charge my phone because I actually had no battery.
But I did manage to get myself back to the hotel,
charge my phone, and then pretty much back out I went.
Had to walk all the way back down to where
i'd just come from pretty much to go and catch
people at the flea market. So their website said that
(44:28):
opens for six just asked the man and he said
there closing.
Speaker 3 (44:32):
Now, So.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
I have to go and see the deal.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
Is you put my.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
I'm just try and hold my phone.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
I sent Sally down to the flea market because that
flea market seemed to be a bit of a theme
for mister Rick Bloom, just in Australia and also in Europe.
So if you remember Andre Flumm, so they he had
arranged to actually meet them at the flea market in
Belgium to try and offload some of Andre Flum's coin collection.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
So I just thought there was a huge.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
Massive flea market in Amsterdam, so I thought that may
have been where he may have been known as well.
So that's why I sent Sally down to the flea
market there.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
And it was hard to It was getting late afternoon.
I remember walking over the bridge and there's a boat
going underneath me with all these women sitting there drinking,
shanned on and I was like, Wow, that looks way
more fun.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
To work.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
That looks like way more fun what I'm currently doing.
Hip going any coin dealers?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
And a guy walks up to me and I said,
I'm really sorry to interrupt you, but I'm trying to
find the way the flea market is.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
He said, it's around the very back.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
So I had to walk all the way around the back,
and it was the most interesting flea market vibe i'd seen.
There was like pie and piles of clothes just on
the ground, like you would literally could jump in the
jeans for example, on the floor. And I just was
looking for a coin dealer. We knew that there had
been a coin dealer who you frequented the flea market,
(46:19):
and my hunt was to go and find him. Can
you tell me, please, if there's anyone around it sells coins,
coins like antique coins.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Okay, thanks, Oh he didn't come today, okay, thank you.
And then he knows it sells coins, didn't come to me.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Well, they'll just be right. So I'm walking around. I
speak English, They're all speaking in native tongue.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
I'm a bit lost. I walked past.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
There's beanies, there's marijuana, lollipops, there's you know, it's just
a wild scene of multiple different people selling create like records,
you name it. And I just had to keep walking
around asking people, is there anyone here that sells coins?
Do you know if there's anyone here that sells coins? Oh, well,
that's disappointing. There's literally no one here. There was a
(47:22):
guy who does sell coins there, and as the story
goes in the saluh Laden life story, he was not
there that day.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
He didn't turn up this week. Okay, well, nice cigar.
That's about it.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Now.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
In the next episode of The Missing Matter, well.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
The next episode we go to Brussels. We are going
to visit Glaine where she drops a bombshell. Glaine is
probably the closest to my mum in her journey with
Rick Blum or her time with Rick Blum in reverse.
What we hadn't heard before was the bombshell show. I'm
(48:14):
sure
Appo Jay Production.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Missing Matter podcast. We're
going to take you for a trip into Amsterdam in
this episode, and we're going to tell you why we
were there and what we found and some of the
things we did. So it was dark and raining when
we left our London accommodation and we caught an uber
(00:36):
to Saint Pancras International train station to hop on the
Eurostar heading to Amsterdam.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
It was very.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Early Joni, another early morning for us. It was raining again.
It was about just four hours, about four hours twenty
to get from London into Amsterdam. And the reason we
chose to do the trains it was a little bit
cheaper and obviously we're on a tight budget. It also
gave us an ability to sit down and actually do
(01:11):
our work on the Eurostar with their trade tables and
things like that.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
It made it a little bit easier.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I remember I had to wear a mask because Johnny
was starting to feel a bit sick, and I was like,
we both cannot get sick.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
If one of us is sick, that's okay, we can manage.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
But if both of us get sick, that it's going
to turn as a custard. Yeah, that time when you
aren't sick, but you know that the steam train is
coming for you, and you're wishing to wherever you can
wish to to actually stop this from happening, because that
is such bad timing. I was just literally just praying
to whoever that by the time we got to Amsterdam
(01:48):
would literally all go away. But I knew, I just
you know that tingling in the throat, a bit of
a headache coming on, block DearS starting, and I thought, oh,
we're going to be in trouble. Him to.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Get passengers good morning, a momentary or at ASDA sample
station currently eleven twenty Absterdam Centaur was the final call,
the kindly regressive to disapprocha train on the rable and
what you do, don't forget your personal belongance. I thank
the gap between them and platform.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
So we arrived in Amsterdam and we head straight to
our accommodation. We had a funny moment, didn't we wear.
We popped into the uber and the driver actually was
telling us how he was a world champion kickboxer Moroccan Moca.
He was so nice and he's following along on Instagram,
so hopefully he will hear this one day. But he
(02:49):
was so nice, like we actually had cards of Mum
and these other cards that we had made. He actually
offered to put them in his cab so that people
when they got into the cab they would actually see
these postcards. And we thought that was a great way
of just getting Mum's story out there, making some awareness
about what we were doing in Amsterdam. We actually arrive
(03:09):
at our hotel and it was probably our nicest accommodation.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Actually, it was.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Magnet, very beautiful, and we walked in and I opened
the windows and we were engulfed with marijuana smoke.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
And then I looked out the window.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Oh goodness me, all I can smell is marijuana.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Jeez?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
The bees. Oh that's because over the rock.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
The energy shop is mushroom seas smoke supplies.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Right, yes, I can see.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Then I think there's a cafe down below us on
the right hand side.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
I actually can't believe how strong it is. That's crazy.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
So that was interesting because I'm used to seeing them
all in my garden.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, well, it was quite weird, and I was quite
worried about how much it was in our room.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
I'll never forget you like you you come in. We'd
had she I was worried about being sick. Sale was
worried about me being sick. She flung the curtains open,
she flung open the windows, and then all of a sudden,
she's like, oh, what is this right, that's it, and
she just slammed those windows shut again. She's like, we
(04:32):
love We both loved Amsterdam.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I would have said that's my favorite favorite city to
walk around. I did a lot of walking, so I
got to see a fair bit. But you know, lots
of canals, lots of little bridges, lots of bikes, and
apparently the bikes actually ruled the universe over there, so
if you're walking you have to give way to the bikes.
They don't give way to you, they will run you over,
so you have to be very, very careful. We went
(04:55):
to Amsterdam purely for the fact that Mum had actually
indicated that her next stop was Amsterdam and she was
going there to see the Sunflowers, meaning she was going
to Vince and Vango's museum. She was a big fan
of this. I remember my grandmother had a massive print
of the Sunflowers in her lounge room. Vince and Vango
(05:15):
has always been a big part. Even my Annie Rob
who's on my dad's side, like she has Starry Starry Night,
a massive big print of that in her house. So
as a child, I remember growing up with a lot
of Vince and Wango around me. And for me it
was a bit of a sad moment because I didn't
know if Mum actually made it there, and in my
heart of hearts, I don't think she did. So for me,
I kind of wanted to go and see the sunflowers
(05:36):
for her as much as I wanted to be there
and see what it was that she.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Wanted to see with her eyes. And it's also just
before she left.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Her last sort of art push with the boys was
Van Goy.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Well. She always brought it into everything she did, so
she was very arty with the boys at school and
very cultural with that sort of thing as well. So
she wasn't afraid to sit there until four and five
year olds about and she'd play the music, you know,
to go with the painting, which has a lot of
power to it, you know. I recently just posted a
picture one of the girls we met actually in the UK.
(06:12):
Laura actually gave me a scarf which was had the
sunflowers on it, and she'd actually imprinted on it Marion Matters,
and I posted about it because it's just become winter
here and I've been able to start wearing the scarf
and I just wanted to thank her for doing that,
and that was a really beautiful, thoughtful present that she
gave me when we did catch up, and I just
put the music behind it, and then I played the
(06:33):
whole piece of music going out to see my dad,
and I had goosebumps roll down my body.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
So it is quite powerful for me to be able.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
To have that experience, and I'm very grateful to be
able to go and see it.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
Starry, starry, name, pink, sure, pilid, blue and gray look
out on a summer's day with eyes that know the darkness.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
So the reason why we're in Amsterdam was also to
look at coin dealers because mister Blue, whom had been
coming in and out of Amsterdam, that was one of
his main points of call between the UK and Europe
and also Australia and Europe, so that seemed to be
the place where he would sort of funnel in and out.
(07:19):
We also have the issue of his cousin's widow who
was called Charlotte in the media, and she said that
he actually caught a train at four am from Belgium
to leave through Amsterdam to go to Bali because he
wanted to avoid seeing anybody in Belgium. And she wondered
(07:41):
whether the one hundred thousand euro that she had provided
to him was something actually happened in Amsterdam to that money,
and then she arrived later in the day to catch
the plane out to.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Bali with him.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
That's why the coin dealers really interested me. Also the
flea market too, just to see whether there was coin
dealers there and whether there was anyone that sort of
knew him there.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Look for me.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
I think Joanie and I have very different ways of
working this case, and that's really important, and that's probably
why it works so well, because I have the emotional
side and she has the detailed, structured side of research,
and we gel them together. And it's interesting because even
on the weekend we were doing more research up and
(08:26):
down the north coast of New South Wales and we
would sit there sometimes for twenty minutes and not argue,
but we would debate whether and the reasons why we
should do something or another thing. And so I think
the fact that we are able to do that and
make a decision and move forward on it and just
act on it because we both come to a resolution
(08:47):
as to what's the right path for.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Me the coin dealers.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
It turned out I ended up having to do the
coin side of this in Amsterdam because Jooni was in bedsick.
She was quite unwell. Joanie's a really tough check. She
comes from Mount Macedon. She's, you know, a hard working
human who's pretty pretty tough.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
And she cried and I thought, oh my god, she's crying,
and I don't know what to do. She's crying. I
didn't expect her to cry, but you were quite heartbroken.
At the same time.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
I think that we'd got there and you were sick,
and you're like, I'm letting you down, Like this is
not good, Like I.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Need to be here, I need to do it us.
You are not letting me down.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
We'd found a soup shop the day before which we
had some soup and I'll just get you some soup.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
I'll bring it back. I guess too.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I had to go out because two of us could
not get sick, and we were in a very small
room together, so it kind of worked out.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
I guess that I left and went and did the
work that both of us were wanting to do. But
I do know how sad you were that you didn't
get a chance to do that because you'd work so
hard on organizing it and where we were going and.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
What we were doing.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
And I had to sort of catch up pretty quick
as to the why because I'm organizing the hotels and
I'm organizing where we're going and all these other bits
and pieces, whereas Jooney was focused on you know, who
we were going to talk to and why left her
in the hotel to a bath and try and recover
while I head out and.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Do what I need to get done today.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I guess the coin side of things is we know
that Rick Blum had a company called balanacoin invest Now
he claims that he did know transactions through that business
that it wasn't active. It was questioned through the inquest
as to why you would pay for a business name
and register a business that's all comes with expense if
(10:35):
you're not actually trading. So it was kind of interesting
and for us, in the back of our minds, is
is there something sitting behind that that the police have
not looked into yet are their bank accounts overseas? I mean,
I'm from my perspective, the police are telling me in
the report that my mum had eighty thousand dollars electronically
transferred and potentially transferred overseas to start a new life
(10:58):
with her new partner. You know, where did they get
that information from? And why are they putting it into
a police report At the very instance, I'm walking into
the police station and saying something's not right, but then
not taking any.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Action on it.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
So for us, we wanted to investigate as to what
was sitting behind the coin businesses and do these people
know Rick Blum.
Speaker 6 (11:20):
Mister Bloom's interest in coin collecting. Diane gave evidence that
mister Bloom has always had an interesting coins and has
had his own small collection. She said he sometimes sold
coins for other people and would receive a small commission.
She was not aware of him turning his interest in
coins into a business. She was aware in general terms
(11:42):
of his company, Ballaner Coin Investments, but said that it
never actually operated as a going concern. She agreed she
was a director, but commented that this was just on
paper and said she had forgotten about it. There is
no evidence before the court to suggest otherwise, al that
this company generated any income. Mister Bloom says that he
(12:03):
occasionally sold coins, but not for any significant sum.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
In regards to the coin dealing, I just want to
take everybody back a moment, right to the start of
the coin dealing stuff, because you know there was many
years there where obviously.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
You didn't know where your MAMO was.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
And then when Rick Bloom came along or Frederick de
HEDEVERI it was quite early in the piece when we
found out that he actually had a company called Baliner
Coin invest.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
So for those who haven't listened to the Lady Vanishers
and knows the finer details, we launched the Lady Vanishers
on the first of April twenty nineteen. You come to
us mid May twenty nineteen with the ad that you
found in the newspaper which links us to the name
Ramichel Lennox heads and there's a phone number in there.
(12:53):
Then I get an email from a gentleman who wants
to remain anonymous, who says, I've gone down to the
local library at Balaner, I've hand scanned thousands of searchers
for phone numbers, and I found a link to the
phone number which linked that phone number to a company
called Ballana coin invest. You and I then did a
massive search with him. He actually did the assex search
(13:14):
on that name with it.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
He did that and he found the name of the
owner of Baloin coin invest was Frederic to Heavidairy and
Diane to Heavendairy.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yes, that was an absolute game changing moment so coin invest.
I thought to myself, coin invest would it be like Bitcoin?
Would it be? And I'm thinking no, I don't think so,
because he's of an older age coin invest maybe a
coin dealer. So I was thinking this sort of in
the background when I first saw the assex document. So
(13:44):
then I thought, okay, let's see, let's try and see
if this is the case. So, if you remember, I thought,
let's look and see who the local coin dealers were
in the balin Aire at that time. I then thought, well,
I'll try and track him down to see if he
knew because I couldn't. Obviously, I couldn't find Frederick de
Heeadevary anywhere as a coin dealer. There was no advertisements.
(14:06):
Looking back over that time, the ballin retire and I
worked pretty closely together to try to locate this person
and what his dealings were. So then I thought, well,
I'm going to have to go to Sydney and look
for coin dealers there that may have known who the
old dealers were up in northern New South Wales. So
(14:28):
I rang around the local coin dealers there and I
happened to speak to a dealer, a very old, very
well known dealer called Jim Noble from Noble Numismatics, and
I actually called him and.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
This is what he said. He said, oh yes, Rick.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Now at this stage I wasn't expecting him to actually
know anything. So when he I don't know if you remember,
but when he said oh yes, Rick, I thought, oh,
I think I'm going to have to try and backpedal
very quickly out of this conversation. This is what he said, Oh, Rick,
HEDIVERI the Belgian. Yes, he's living in the foothills of
(15:11):
Byron Bay. He's in his early eighties now. He's looking
to put some coins in for an auction in the
next month or so. He goes by a few names,
so you never know who you're talking to on the phone.
He was just laughing the whole time, like he thought
it was hilarious. Then he said I must get up there.
I couldn't because of the virus. So remember it was
(15:34):
Corona and we were just coming out the other end
of it. So for me, that was a real game
changer because I thought to myself, there could be a
lot of stuff, as you said, sitting behind the whole
coin dealing thing.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
What I did know was we had catalogs.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
We had invoicing, we had bank details, we had dates
of auctions, We had dates that coins were bought and sold,
how they were sold. So we basically had almost like
a bit of a train on a person that you
wouldn't ordinarily get because in order to purchase a coin
with some of them, you need to actually go to
(16:13):
the auction. So that was when its zeroed in for me,
and I thought, well, okay, nineteen ninety seven, we need
to see exactly what he purchased over that whole time,
because we had your mum's timeline, and then if we
could overlay even his coin timeline, we would be able
to pinpoint exactly where he was. So I came across
(16:35):
a coin description where basically it lays out mister Bloom's
entire family history.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
So that was very helpful.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
So it says ex collection of Franz Ernst and I'm
going to completely butcher the name, so and even bother
Bishop of Tournay, the cure of the parish of Saint
Pierre in Tournay. He died in nineteen thirty nine, by
descent acquired by the grandfather died in nineteen forty nine,
which we knew that was accurate, and by succession then
(17:08):
to the current collector's grandmother, Maria Coppenole. Now I was
able to contact nobles and actually get the collector's cards
or the description of that coin, and so I was
then able to match the handwriting of Rick Bloom to
that collection. So therefore I knew that anything that had
(17:32):
ex cop and Ole collection at the base of the
coin at was going to be coming from his collection.
So then the world again opened up. And at the
end of the day, as one of the dealers said
to me, a coin shrinks fifty thousand euro into a
nondescript piece of metal in the zipper of your wallet,
(17:55):
A perfect way to effectively launder ill gotten gains. I'm
not saying that mister Bloom did this, and that was
the reason why he was a coin dealer. From what
I understand, he was very knowledgeable and to put that
in later, it's an interesting thought.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
You're talking about buying a coin that is worth fifty
thousand euros. That's a gold coin that sits in your wallet,
and when you're coming through customs, they're not looking at
your coins in your wallet ands terms, is what that's saying.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Yeah, So it's effectively a very good way to move
money from country to country or continent to continent, because
as we've seen within the passenger cards, it's a maximum
ten thousand Australian that you can bring in here. The
other thing that we also found out was Stuart Right
from Status International. Stuart's gone on the record. This is
(18:47):
an article in the Australian newspaper that everyone can read.
So he stated that he did have a bank account
on file for mister Bloom because he was a current
customer of him, and this was back in twenty twenty one.
So records indicate that between the period two thousand seventeen
and twenty twenty Rick Bloom spent approximately seventeen thousand dollars
(19:12):
Australian with Status International and most of these payments were
made via EFT or direct transfer. Mister Wright also said
that mister Bloom worked for him for three months in
two thousand and was paid in cash, and that was
when mister Bloom was living at the Student accommodation on
George Street. He only put this together when looking at
(19:33):
mister Bloom's other legal names, so he didn't actually realize
that Rick Frederick de Heeveri was also known as Richard West,
so that dealer knew him as Richard West or Rick West.
He was sacked and this is according to Stuart Wright.
He was sacked after it was discovered that he had
(19:55):
allegedly been mailing the customer's high value orders to his
own post office box rather than to the customers themselves.
So that is on the record, that is in the media,
and that is what Stuart Wright alleges.
Speaker 7 (20:10):
David Murray from the Australian Status International owner Stuart Wright
said he briefly employed the Avid coin collector who was
using the name Richard West in Sydney around nineteen ninety nine.
Mister Blum embraced the position he was offered, turning up
at five am when most staff didn't arrive until four
hours later the role included posting items to customers and
(20:33):
coincided with a series of parcels failing to reach their
intended destination. I can't make accusations, but in the stuff
that went to the post office, I think the first, second, third, fifth,
seventh and tenth most valuable consignments disappeared, mister Wright told
The Australian. One day, mister Blum just disappeared, leaving his
(20:53):
job without saying goodbye. He didn't come back, and subsequently
a dealer in Ballina, Barry Cooper, told me he'd offered
Barry Cooper a copy of my mailing list. It was
probably just laying around. We always had a paper backup,
mister Wright said. In recent years, Status International had a
new customer, Rick Blum. I had no idea they were
(21:15):
one and the same person. At the time he bought
a few coins, mister Wright said. Another respected coin trader,
who asked The Australian to withhold his identity, interacted with
mister Bloom many times. Do you know Walter Mitty?
Speaker 1 (21:28):
He said.
Speaker 7 (21:29):
We felt that he was a bit of a Walter
Mitty character when it came to describing what he owned
and possessed.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
So we leave the room, the engulfed room of marijuana,
and head out and we've got tickets to go and
see the sunflowers, which was pretty exciting. And we're trying
to fumble our way through with everyone speaking Dutch and
us not really knowing where we're going, and we decided
to get on a tram and that turns out to
(21:58):
be quite funny, quite a funny moment because we jump
on the tram and I've got cameras and I've come
trying to capture everything, and I've got my backpack and
my bag and it's heavy, and anyway, we get on
the tram and then we're sort of fumbling. At one
point we've been on the tram for a couple of stops.
We're tapping our card just to get on and off.
We're trying to work out if that's how it works.
(22:18):
And anyway, Joanie's sort of sitting up at the back
door and I'm in the middle. I've sort of walked
into the middle of the tram. And then the tram
stops and Joanie gets off, and I'm fumbling, going, oh
my god, I have to get my credit card out
to tap the thing to get off, and before I
know it, the door shut and the tram takes off,
and I'm like, oh my goodness, I'm in the middle
(22:39):
of amsinam, I don't know where I am, and I've
already lost her.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Bye bye, Sol, she missed.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
She couldn't get the door open, so off she goes.
She'll be most happy.
Speaker 6 (22:54):
Bye bye see.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Okay, So Johnie couldn't work out to get the door
open on the tram, so I started walking back to them,
and then she got out, and so I went back
to her and tapped off, but the doors shut and
then the.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Trams are go off.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
So we've been here for two minutes and we've already.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Lost each other. So that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
But anyway, I am just fucking see a sign saying
Fango's Museum, So I'm.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Heading up there and I'll meet her. He's particularly chilli here.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
So we arrive at the museum and wow, like, what
an amazing thing to witness, you know, all his original artworks,
and it's just the whole museum is flooded with his artwork,
which was pretty special to see. Obviously, the sunflowers was
a big attraction. There was probably the best part of
thirty people standing around with headphones on, listening to the
(23:54):
stories about his artwork and his life, which was quite
a sad life. And so we finished going through the
museum and we've got some gifts, and we walked downstairs
and we thought one of the things we wanted to
do when we went to these places because we'd experienced
this years before when I went to the UK and
(24:16):
I was with Christina, and Christina had sort of introduced
me to the idea that there are guest books in
a lot of these places that you visit, and so
that became a bit of a theme for us as well,
Let's check if they've got a guest book, how far
back does the guest book go, and does there have
anything in there that might be of interest. We do
(24:37):
have the or the only guest book that we actually have,
which is in our brief of evidence, so I'm not
allowed to talk about it, but it does come from
Jane Austen's house, and there is an insert in there
that for me personally, I looked at and I thought
was a bit odd.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Everyone else just said, no, there's nothing to see here.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
So hopefully one day I can actually show everyone that
and get everyone's opinion on it. Because I do think
it's actually of interest. But again, sorry, I can't talk
about it because it's behind that locked door. But we
went and asksome and we tried to record it. It was
a little bit noisy in there, but we did try
to capture what the lady said, and this is what she.
Speaker 8 (25:11):
Said, good museum, we've seen the sun clowns and we're
just going just going to ask if they have a
guest book.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
So, JOONI, you went up to the counter and asked
the lady. And it's always a weird thing, isn't it.
I think you say something along the lines on this
is a really weird request. But was anyone working here
in nineteen ninety seven? So that's generally how we rolled
with that line of question. And then if they say
yes or no, they usually asked why are you asking,
(25:43):
and we then head into well, we're just wondering if
there was a guest registry. We know it's a long
time ago, but is it in archives because this is
a pretty important, famous thing for people to come and see.
We're wondering if you actually kept records. No, we didn't
have to.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Okay, Okay, yep, yes, okay, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Because a very strange question. My mum's a missing person.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
One of her last postcards said she was on her
way to Amsterdam's come and see the sun flowers red.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Yeah, so we were years ago.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah, and she went to Jane Austin's house and they
actually do have guest books there.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Like things like that.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
So we're asking if we can have a look at
guestbooks to see if she actually came. She was quite young,
whereas in say the UK, when I went with Channel seven,
we went to tom Bridge Castle and there's five people
in that room and every single one of them was
working there in nineteen ninety seven, so they remembered the
brochure that I'd brought and things like that, so we
(26:45):
didn't get that same vibe in there. It was kind
of like a bit of a really sorry, but no,
we don't have it.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
So we left.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
But we did see the sun flowers and you know
that was that was pretty special.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
No, I was just happy that I was there for
my mum.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
I think, you know, my mind was taken back to
a bit sad because I just honestly feel like she
didn't get to go.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
There, and.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
You know, I feel like in the way she was
talking and what she was talking about in the lead
up going on the Orient Express and all these things.
For me, in my heart, I just don't think any
of that happened, and it made.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Me quite sad.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
I mean, look, the hard thing about transiting and looking
for somebody who's maybe potentially transiting through Europe and we
found this Jooney, and we talk about it in the
next episode. A fair bit actually coming into Brussels is
that no one's checking anything. Like you literally get off
a train, you can bounce around from anywhere, apart from
maybe coming out of the UK you go through customs.
(27:43):
But it was so simplified, like we were just literally
bouncing out of countries in and out of just on
trains and no one was.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Looking at anything.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
So it's hard in that fact to then go and
try and source records to see if my mum actually
did make it to Amsterdam, right, we don't know. All
we've got is her saying next stop Amsterdam, and then
next thing is the next point have is her returning
back to Australia, So we don't know what she did
in that you know, two to three weeks period.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
And I don't think we're ever going to find that out.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Unfortunately, so we have confirmed that Amsterdam they don't hold records,
so there's no incoming records at all.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
When we were planning where we were going to go,
that was one of the things I wanted to know.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Did she go to Amsterdam?
Speaker 2 (28:26):
We then found out through your hard work to see
that well, they actually don't hold records. So we thought, well,
let's still go because mum said she was going there,
and let's see if there's any connectors to coin options
or something that happened around that time that potentially fits
in with the timeline.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
For clarity.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
My mum actually sent three postcards that she actually references
going to Amsterdam. We've done something a bit a bit
next level, but I wanted to make this real and
bring this really in for everybody. So if you're here
hearing the postcards being read out, we've actually used AI
(29:11):
to recreate my mum's voice, So you guys listening now,
you are hearing my mum's voice, which we took audio
from my twenty first birthday video on VHS and we've
transcribed it into AI. So this is the good side
of AI. And you know what super emotional for me
is the first time i'd heard my mum's voice since
(29:33):
she's disappeared. So in my postcard, the Sally's Craft postcard,
she that was in Alfriston, and she talks about next
stop Amsterdam is what we're going to quote.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Next stop Amsterdam.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Then we have on the seventh of July, she sent
a postcard to her second cousin, so my grandmother's cousins,
and that was the one of the cat shop for
those who have followed along well, and she says, I'm
off shortly to Amsterdam and the Orient Express on the
fifteen of July. So she actually gives us a date.
Speaker 7 (30:07):
I'm off shortly to Amsterdam and the Orient Express on
the fifteenth of July.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Then on the eleventh of July, I get a postcard
that's stamped from London with London Tower Bridge on the
front cover, and she says, eagerly looking forward to seeing
Vango's flowers and revisit Holland. Eagerly looking forward to seeing
Vangos's flowers and revisit Holland. So she went to Holland
(30:38):
with Ray Barta on their honeymoon just for clarity.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Okay, so we've got a busy day.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
We leave van Goes Museum and we snapshot a photo.
I remember this day as clear as if it was yesterday.
We stopped, there's a bike there where we're getting a
beautiful photo.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
It's sunny.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
It stopped raining for five seconds, because it's rained every
single day so far. We head past a shop that
has soups and delicious, really am so so we just
sat there and had this amazing piece of bread with
a cup of soup. The other thing we wanted to
(31:26):
do at nighttime. So this was not about pleasure or
anything of the sort. It was about trying to do
things that my mum would like to do in her shoes.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
So I was trying to walk in her shoes.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
And something that she quite often talked about was Ant
Frank and the Diary of Ann Frank was something that
I remember very well as a child and my mum
always talking about it. And realized when we were looking
at what to do in Amsterdam to fill in our
time at nighttime and things like that, there was an
opportunity to go to and Frank's house. And you know
(32:03):
that was a very humbling experience for me personally. I
know you weren't feeling well at this point, your wheels
were falling off.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
I honestly can't actually remember a lot of that. Yeah, right,
said unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
So we were standing outside lining up and we had
umbrellas up because it was I remember that.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
And you walk in.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
And you actually get headphones, and as you walk into
each room, it connects to the headphones, so it's every
it's silent everywhere, like no one's talking, everyone's just listening.
And for me personally, you sort of walk up and
you walk in behind the bookcase that they had the
hidden bookcase of where they were hiding all day long
while the workers were there and doing their thing downstairs,
(32:45):
And I personally remember stepping on a floorboard and it
creaking as I was walking around, and I had that
moment of oh my gosh, like they're trying to be
quiet upstairs. Imagine stepping on a floorboard and someone hearing
it and going what.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Is that upstairs? So that it was quite a moment.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
We were going to go out for dinner after that,
and you were too unwell, so I took you home
and put you to bed, and I went downstairs and
I remember I had something at the bar, like it
wasn't wasn't much, but we just you were needing to
go to bed. That was hard for you, and I'm
really grateful for you. You were a soldier, you were
(33:26):
an absolute soldier in that moment. So yeah, so I
head out on the streets of Amsterdam by myself. I'm
a bit nervous, and I've left Johnie in bed. Hopefully
she'll feel better by the time I get back to
go and do what I need to do.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Okay, So it's nine o'clock.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
I think it's the eleventh October, and unfortunately Joanie is
sick with the flu.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Yeah, she's not.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Very well at all actually, which is not great for her,
and I am worried about her.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
All right, So I am on my way.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
To go to the first point dealer on our lists,
going solo. A little bit nervous, but anyway, the plan
is to go in there and see if anyone knows
or remembers mister Blonde and if he was a customer
(34:44):
of theirs, and potentially if they had an overseas bank
account registered to his account, what his details, because what
we know, based on Grahandchild's statement, is that the eighty
thousand dollars was electronically trans I heard potentially being Verbie
(35:07):
commers to an overseas account. I can't remember the exact word,
but like to buy a house with your new partner.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
So we only have accounts would be Commonwealth Bank.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
So if we can find if he had an account overseas,
we can give that to the police and they potentially
can look into that because we still haven't found where
Mom's money went to. You know the downside of this
is like last night, we were reading a couple of
comments online and there were people commenting about how we
(35:44):
were just here on a fun trip and we were
just there for you know, oh, look at them, they
get to go overseas and do all these wonderful things.
That was actually really hard to read because Jooni's sick,
she's away from her family. I'm away from my family.
We were gone for, you know, over three weeks. That
particular morning, Darcy had been messaging me because it was
her birthday the next day and I wasn't home for it.
(36:07):
And although she'd said I'm okay for you to not
be here, it's still hard when you're not home and
you know your daughter's having a birthday. I'd like to
tell those people who think we're here for fun. That
this is not very fun at all, and it's very difficult,
bouncing in and out of countries, not eating properly, not
sleeping properly, to try and get this information, and not
(36:27):
to mention the fact that we're putting ourselves in positions
or we have to go and ask people questions that
they probably don't want to answer.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
So it is quite tricky and it's not fun. And
you know, we're away from our families.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
It's Darcy's birthday tomorrow and I'm missing out and I've
you know, she's been messaging me saying she misses me
and loves me. I know Ethan's been, you know, missing
his mum as well. You know. So it's a lot
on our families and a lot on us personally.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
To come and do this.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
So we're doing the absolute best we can to find,
you know, the answers.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
So I did the research and looked at all the
coin dealers that were actually there in the nineteen nineties
into the two thousands, not brand news that had sort
of popped up because they would have no idea, like
there's absolutely no point going there. So I looked at
the ones that were historically there, and they were the
ones that I listed to go and have a look
at and go and have a chat to them. There
(37:30):
was three stops where I needed Saal to go. Considering
my situation, it was the good we sell Cantur.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
So I wanted to do this trip with my friend
who's been helping me for five years now. We're going
to do this really thoroughly and make sure we tick
all the boxes and make sure we've done everything we can,
and then we'll have a rest before Christmas. And then
next year I'm organizing a walk, so it would be
my mum's eightieth birthday next year in October, and we're
doing a walk all around the world. Actually, I've got
(37:58):
people in the UK and in Seattle, in America, in
New Zealand, all over Australia. We're going to do a
walk for the Missing because it's I've got a hashtag
I use now the missing matter, and they do matter,
because a lot of people just go, oh, we'll have
a look for them for a bit and then they
just get pushed to the side and they're not important anymore.
So I'm trying to bring awareness to missing persons as well.
(38:20):
So and I think after the walk, I can have
a rest, you know, thank you for and hopefully you'll
find something.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Here and keep your fingers crossed for me.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
I've only got today, so I've got it on a
bit of a mission, but thank you very much. What
you can do maybe is to call our headquarters because
we have more than one of the fifty stores.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
Also in Belgium and Germany.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Call the headquarters in Glaswow.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yeah they can in the total system. Okay, find his
name if they pop up.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Okay, all right, and would they be receptive for me
bringing up yes, yes, of course, Yeah, I got your card.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Oh, okay, can you call the headquarters? Hang on, I'll
write it down.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Out of all the places I went that day. He
was very engaging, he was very interested. He offered to
contact head office and see if we could get the information.
They came back to us and said, no, we can't
give it to you due to privacy. He was interested
in the case, you know. And this is me standing
there as the daughter saying that my mum is a
(39:27):
missing person and giving them a card showing her face,
and people are like, oh.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
My god, this is your mum. Oh my goodness, like
what's happened?
Speaker 2 (39:36):
And there's an interest, and sometimes you walk in and
you say it and they go, I don't know anything,
see you later. So because I'm so far away, Okay,
it's going to take me thirty eight minutes to walk
to the next one, I'm going to go straight past
(39:59):
Anne Frank's house. Johnny and I went there late last
night at seven.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Point o in time.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
So next stop was Schmidt. So he was a dealer
from many, many years ago. So again just the same thing,
just looking to see whether he knew anything about Rick
Bloom or any of his alienses and whether he had
new dealings with him before he left.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
The destination is on your left, Munton Handles c SMID.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
So I'm just wondering if you happened to notice question.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
So the same person, we just studied different ages. Okay,
all right, thank you for having a work regards to
my person in Australia.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
And that gentleman is he has been arrested in job
and France for armed Corge line activity and a massacar
He had a look at the photograph and.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
He doesn't know him.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
So look, I guess to knock it off. I'm going
to sit down and have a coffee in a minute and.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Send journey theo Peter's new msmatics. He again had been
around for a long time and so again just looking
to see whether he'd had any dealings, whether he knew
mister Bloom or knew anything about mister Bloom's coin dealings
or interactions in Amsterdam.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
And interestingly too for me, he was on the other
side of town, so I had to walk probably the
best part of twelve k.
Speaker 5 (41:47):
What did he say, Australia and I.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Think some of the corn dealers who for a while,
I guess I have a clear it's quite unusual. I
have a question as to which plan is familiar to
any of you, DA or the self.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
With you much of you.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
He is a man who is in Australia, who.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Build and born. Yeah he has multiple yeah, oh yeah,
that's okay.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
Maybe in the world is if you've gone around.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
The place and one of people, I kind of feel
weird telling people and it's about Mum.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
In the worry that what if they actually do know him?
And I mean he he just sort of put his
finger to his eye like a crying kind of starting.
Speaker 8 (42:56):
Route to hotel Aysteria and he seemed sad to mean
he didn't recognize him.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
He was situated just across from the water and where
all the ships would come in and dock, which I
find quite interesting. And he had a massive, big window
with big coins, big lots of notes on the stamps
and things like that, really in your face what he
was about, right, And I remember walking back at that moment,
I'd been out all day. I'm saying it's probably around
(43:25):
I'd stopped and had some lunch, grabbed a coffee, and
then kept going. And I remember as I was walking back,
I was recording myself and my phone goes, you have
five percent battery left, and I actually started to go
I actually don't know where I am. I don't know
where the hotel is. I need my phone to get
(43:45):
me there through my maps. And when you're on maps,
I've learned too, it sucks the battery life out of
your phone, like no tomorrow. So I'm sitting there madly
on a piece of paper, looking at maps, trying to
describe myself which bridge I had to turn over, which
where I had, because you're literally in Amsterdam.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
It's over a.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Bridge, go a little bit over another bridge, go a
little bit over another bread.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
So I'm scribing myself on this little scrap piece of paper.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
How I had to get home back to the hotel
to charge my phone because I actually had no battery.
But I did manage to get myself back to the hotel,
charge my phone, and then pretty much back out I went.
Had to walk all the way back down to where
i'd just come from pretty much to go and catch
people at the flea market. So their website said that
(44:28):
opens for six just asked the man and he said
there closing.
Speaker 3 (44:32):
Now, So.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
I have to go and see the deal.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
Is you put my.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
I'm just try and hold my phone.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
I sent Sally down to the flea market because that
flea market seemed to be a bit of a theme
for mister Rick Bloom, just in Australia and also in Europe.
So if you remember Andre Flumm, so they he had
arranged to actually meet them at the flea market in
Belgium to try and offload some of Andre Flum's coin collection.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
So I just thought there was a huge.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
Massive flea market in Amsterdam, so I thought that may
have been where he may have been known as well.
So that's why I sent Sally down to the flea
market there.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
And it was hard to It was getting late afternoon.
I remember walking over the bridge and there's a boat
going underneath me with all these women sitting there drinking,
shanned on and I was like, Wow, that looks way
more fun.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
To work.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
That looks like way more fun what I'm currently doing.
Hip going any coin dealers?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
And a guy walks up to me and I said,
I'm really sorry to interrupt you, but I'm trying to
find the way the flea market is.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
He said, it's around the very back.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
So I had to walk all the way around the back,
and it was the most interesting flea market vibe i'd seen.
There was like pie and piles of clothes just on
the ground, like you would literally could jump in the
jeans for example, on the floor. And I just was
looking for a coin dealer. We knew that there had
been a coin dealer who you frequented the flea market,
(46:19):
and my hunt was to go and find him. Can
you tell me, please, if there's anyone around it sells coins,
coins like antique coins.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Okay, thanks, Oh he didn't come today, okay, thank you.
And then he knows it sells coins, didn't come to me.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Well, they'll just be right. So I'm walking around. I
speak English, They're all speaking in native tongue.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
I'm a bit lost. I walked past.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
There's beanies, there's marijuana, lollipops, there's you know, it's just
a wild scene of multiple different people selling create like records,
you name it. And I just had to keep walking
around asking people, is there anyone here that sells coins?
Do you know if there's anyone here that sells coins? Oh, well,
that's disappointing. There's literally no one here. There was a
(47:22):
guy who does sell coins there, and as the story
goes in the saluh Laden life story, he was not
there that day.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
He didn't turn up this week. Okay, well, nice cigar.
That's about it.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Now.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
In the next episode of The Missing Matter, well.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
The next episode we go to Brussels. We are going
to visit Glaine where she drops a bombshell. Glaine is
probably the closest to my mum in her journey with
Rick Blum or her time with Rick Blum in reverse.
What we hadn't heard before was the bombshell show. I'm
(48:14):
sure
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