Rolling With The Punches

In this episode, Sal and Joni share the frustration of trying to move forward after the coronial verdict. For every step ahead, they’re pushed two steps back. Tune in to hear about the red tape, the blunders, the nightmares, the lack of empathy—and, finally, the breakthrough.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Appoge Production. Well, welcome to episode two of The Missing Matter.
Ar'm here with Joony. Hello everybody, Thank you for joining
us again. Yeah, thanks for joining us. And in this episode,
we're actually going to do a bit of a deep
dive into the drama that was my life following the

(00:30):
findings concluding in February last year. And if I think
back to that time, I literally felt like I was
standing on an island by myself and I know you
were there, and I know Chris was there, and there
were beautiful people around me. That's nothing to do with you, guys.
It was just my inner self. Felt like. I spoke
to the lawyers, that was the last time I spoke

(00:51):
to them. I spoke to the Crown Solicitor's office. They
all gave me a big hug and wished me well,
and that was it. Allison and Brian did their interview
and left. It just doesn't stop just because we got
an answer today from the coroner and I was like,
oh my god, I'm standing here by myself. I don't
have any idea what to do moving forward. There is

(01:12):
no guidebook here, so the coroner hands down her findings.
Coroner's just told me officially my mum's deceased, says what
she thinks should happen.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Recommending it now be referred to homicide detectives.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
That's it. You sort of left to sort of fumble
your way through and work out what's actually happened.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
She'd been dating a man named Rick Bloom, who lied
about his identity. She found Bloom preyed on vulnerable women
and withheld crucial information about Marian from the inquest.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
I haven't even had an apology, if I can put it,
put it out there, you know, I still haven't from
the police, had any apology for how I've been treated.
In my case, I heard that my mum would deceased
for the first time in twenty seven years of her
being missing, and that was massive for me. It was

(02:13):
a huge moment in time, and by having that said
by the coroner that allowed me to apply for a
death certificate, which when you have a missing person, if
you don't have a death certificate or they don't believe
that your person is deceased, well you've got no chance
of getting any information because their privacy matters. I kept

(02:34):
getting told a comment that really rolled me a lot through.
This whole thing is it's not a crime to go missing.
And I think about all the people who have gone
missing and then found, and the time that the police
spend trying to find and there's yellow alerts and there's
police fluffing around. It takes time and energy and money
to do these things. So essentially having a death certificate

(02:58):
was a really important part of this journey for you
and me when we were discussing what still needed to
be done, Because what people who are listening won't know
is that you and I were sitting in the court
and we were feeding the lawyers all the information that
we had. We'd spoken to people, we've interviewed people, We've
got all the details, and we had to do that

(03:20):
because the police weren't doing it and we were writing
dossier's Like Johnny Gosh, by the time we'd finished, we
probably had a law degree. Seriously, you know, I've learned
so much in this time, in this space, But you
get to that point, or I got to that point
where I walked out of the coroner's court and went right, oh,
what do I do now? My first point of call

(03:46):
was to call burst Essa Marriages and ask them to
help me to get a death certificate. For my mum
so we could start accessing her private information. So I
called Queensland and they said, well, we're really sorry, we
can't help you. You've got to do it online and

(04:06):
I said, yeah, but your online document doesn't allow me
to put two names. And I have a problem where
my mum changed her name, but she only changed her
name legally on her passport and she had an international
driver's license in the new name of Florabella Ramkel. Everything
else remained in the name of Barta, her bank accounts,

(04:26):
her superannuation, her medicare, anything that I wanted to try
and gain access to to find out her tax return.
In the taxi ba Ato, everyone knew her as Marian Barter,
so it was essential. And I kept saying this and
barking about it at the inquest, and that's why the
coroner kept saying Flora Bella Natalia Marian Ramkeel, formerly known

(04:48):
as Marian Barter. So I was banging my head against
the wall. I was in tears a lot of the
time because none of these people showed any compassion or
empathy or understanding about what it was that I was
trying to ask. Goodness, I don't even know where to
start with this week. Seriously, you know, when you're dealing

(05:09):
with a missing person, that is horrendous to sit there.
I'm going, I don't know where my mum is, I
don't have a funeral director, i don't know what day
she died. I've got a date from the coroner who's
saying she died on or around the fifteenth of October,
so I'm assuming that's the date you want. And that
wasn't satisfactory. So nothing was working. So then I rang

(05:32):
the coroner's court and for some weird instance of craziness,
I find out that Coroner Teresa o Sullivan actually has
her own dedicated team of people, and I'm like, wow.
So I've just been through the coroner's process for three
years and I never knew that I could contact Terresa
O'Sullivan's team. I always had to go through it through

(05:53):
the right channels, is what I was told. So that
meant I had to go through my lawyers, to go
through their lawyers being Crown solicitors, to go through the police.
If I had something for the police, the police would
tell me, you have to go through the right channel.
Sally can't tell us anything anymore. It's got to go
through your lawyers to Crown solicitors to get to us,
and I was just like, this is so convoluted and
ridiculous and time wasting, like we do not have time

(06:15):
for this, especially after waiting that long to actually even
get to the point of having an inquest right. So
I was speaking to the Coroner's court. I end up
emailing him back and forth and he's like, I'm really sorry,
I can't help you. My question to him was I
need the coroner to put in writing for me some

(06:37):
sort of document so that I can go to Burst
Desca Marriages and get a death certificate for my mum
because at this point no one's giving me one. And
I didn't know whether to go to Queensland because that's
where she was last living as we changed her name
and she changed her name in Queensland, or did I
have to go to New South Wales because it was

(06:58):
with the New South Wales Coroner's Court she said that
she's deceased and she was last known to be in
Byron with drawing eighty thousand dollars out of a bank account,
supposedly on the fifteenth of October nineteen ninety seven, and
her last digital footprints were in New South Wales, so
very confusing. And again someone should have sat there and
said to me, this is the process, now, this is

(07:19):
what we need to do, will help you. But I
didn't get any of that, and I'm sure I'm not
the only one in these circumstances. After hitting brick walls
with them again, I just had a bit of a
light bulb moment. And you know, there's that saying in life,
it's not what you know, it's too you know, right,
And this is definitely definitely the point in toe because

(07:41):
while I was sitting into in the findings, so we've
just walked in, We're sitting down therese people everywhere, media everywhere,
and I'm flustered. I'm like, wow, I'm overwhelmed, super grateful
for the support by everyone, but overwhelmed at the same time.
And a lady who i'll keep her name confidential, but
she did come up to me and she said hello, Sally,

(08:02):
and I went, oh, my gosh, how are you. And
this lady had welcomed me to come to the coroner's
court back in twenty nineteen, and I met with her
and another lady from friends and family of missing persons
so that was the first I'd ever heard that there
was actually this little body of good humans who actually
were supporting people with missing persons. And she'd done a

(08:26):
document and a booklet to help people get through the
coronial process. And so I had met her back at
that point, and she was a very kind lady. She
gave me information, she answered my emails, which was a
very rare thing for me. So I was like, oh
my god, I finally found somebody who actually does listen
and does actually respond positively, which was great. So I

(08:46):
just had this moment in my head, maybe I should
ring her. I still had her number, and I did,
and I explained the situation to her, and I said,
I need some help. I need the coroner's court to
be able to give birth, dess and marriage as a
clear understanding of what is going on in this space.
That I can have both mum's names put on her

(09:07):
death certificate. It's essential for this. Why did you need
to have that happen? Well, because I needed to have
access to I mentioned before, like Medicare and ATO and
her bank accounts and her superannuation. They're all in marrying Barta.
But essentially we were wanting to go overseas and we
needed to get information about my mum and her passport

(09:27):
was in the name of Florabella Ramckel, so I needed
to be able to prove that I was next to
kin and I had grant of access to Florabella Ramckel
and also Marian Barter, so that's why it was really important.
And then we are on the phone. I'm explaining this
to her. She's completely understanding what I'm saying, and she says,

(09:49):
I can see that that is really important. I know
someone I'm going to send them corners findings and that
will be clear to them. And then I had a
phone call from a gentleman who worked in New South
Wales birth deaths and marriages, and I just felt like
he was an angel for me, because again a rare

(10:10):
moment where someone actually comes in and just sits down
and takes time to actually help me do what I
need to do. And he sat on the phone with
me for probably the best part of two hours, and
he explained to me, I want you to fill it
out your end, and I'm going to fill it out
my end as well. And so we were word perfect
going through the entire document and he said I want

(10:31):
you to word it exactly like this, so it was
worded such as surname ramakerl formally known as Bart. Given
name Flora Bella, formerly known as Marian. Middle names you know,
Natalia Mary and formally known as Marian. So we had
to make sure that his document and my document areligned.
And thank god I had him because at the end

(10:54):
of the day, there was questions in there about what
date did and this was for all, like my mum
was married three times and this caused a big drama
and a big stir because the police would often say
comments like, oh, well, she's a three times divorced woman
who's in her fifties. She's capable of this behavior, not
her fault. You know, no one should make judgment on

(11:15):
those sorts of things. But it has caused me quite
the drama because she's had multiple names, and I had
to know the day they all got married, So every
single wedding, I had to know what each of the
men's full names were. Yes, so I needed to know
what Johnny Warren's middle name is, how old he was
when they got married, what is his date of birth,

(11:36):
what year did they get married, and where where was
the location? As they got married. I'm like, I don't
know any of this. So he was able to pull
up mum's file from their end and actually add it
into the mix. And I was like, thank God, Like
I would just be absolutely stuck if you had not
been able to help me with that. So he was
a godsend. And he's like, you just have to pay

(12:00):
for it and you'll get the desert to figot like
it's going to come as per this. And he was
an age, so I was really grateful and that was awesome.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Because ultimately, if he hadn't have helped you, then you
would have had to have requested all of those documents
from birth, deaths and marriages to be able to then
put the information into your form to then send it in.
So that would have been a delay and lots of money,
and whether you would have got them or not is
another question altogether.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
And this is how ridiculous it is. Right. So, and
this is another drama because my mum went missing before
I got married. So my name is Barta because I
took on Ray Barta's name when I was only twelve.
They thought that was a good idea because we'd relocated.
I was starting a new school, so I was known

(12:45):
as Sally Barter, and Mum had written her will and
I was known as Sally Barter in the will. So
that meant that when I'm applying for these documents and
I'm now Sally Layden, I then had to go and
get an official marriage certificate, which we paid for to
be able to show that I was Bart and now
I'm Leyden. So it just never ended. It was just

(13:07):
this big starter's web of crazy that I was getting
stuck in, and I'm like, I don't know, I've got
to pay for this. I've got to pay for that.
I've got to jump through this hoop and jump through
that hoop. And this just continued for months. So I've
gone to the post office and there's a registered male
waiting for me at the post office and I get
in it and I'm sitting in the car and I

(13:27):
open it and I had to share it with everyone
immediately and post about it and say, oh my god,
I got it. And it's in both names. Massive, It's
actually good. The spelling's correct, her date of birth is correct.
Like all the things that we've had challenges with throughout
the whole journey, highlight it doesn't need to come out.
Goodness me. I'll read you with the post, just to
bring us all back to where I was and how

(13:49):
I was feeling in that moment. So it was the
tenth of April twenty twenty four. I just posted a
photo of the death certificate that shows the family name.
It says deceased. It says family name Ramichel formerly known
as Barta Flora Bella Natalia. Marian formerly known as Marian
Sometime on or around the fifteenth of October nineteen ninety

(14:10):
seven is her date of death. Her place of death
unable to determine sex and age female fifty two. Place
of birth Marrickville, New South Wales. I write from my
missing person Marian Barter Instagram and Facebook. I want to
share with you all I finally received Mum's death certificate

(14:33):
dot dot dot. As always, there's a story to tell.
I am sure you'll all feel so relieved to see
both names have been included. This did not come without
a fight. So I now have the death certificate in
both names and the will another bittersweet day but very important.
I found the solicitor you did. How that came about

(14:57):
was I did a walk around on the Gold Coast,
if you remember, that's right. And I just had it
in me that I needed to find the a state agent.
So we had that lady actually up in cans who Yes,
that's how we found this because she actually did the
property search and she was able to tell us that
the name of the person who bought Mum's house yes,

(15:19):
And then from that the girls Le Sluthy Girls actually
then found a whole bunch of people with that same
name who still lived on the Gold Coast. And miraculously,
the first person I called was the guy who bought
Mum's house. I then sort of went through the process
of him trying to work out where the real estate
agent was that he had the house from, because I

(15:42):
had always said that maybe Mum had explained to the
real estate agent what she was doing, and she had
actually kept all the records in her garage. She just
sold the business and the guys who when I worked
out where it was, so he couldn't remember where it was.
I sort of just went and did a walk around
and asked the question and they said, yes, we've just
bought it from Partner Royalty, and they said, let me

(16:04):
ring Louise because she said that she's got a whole
bunch of all her documents from all the houses she's
sold in the years. So she gave me those documents
and I was able to see on there that there
was a document that had the solicitor's name on it,
and so I rang them and when I spoke to him,
he said, oh, I've heard about your mom's story in
the news. I knew your mum. She taught my son

(16:25):
at TSS. And so he said, when my secretary comes back,
I'll get her to have a look and i'll get
her to ring you if we have anything. I don't
remember having anything, but if we do, And he literally
rang me back in a minute and said, oh my god,
I've just had a look and we have her will,
which is weird because we don't even do wills. But
he was unable to give me that well without a
de certificate. So even though my mum is missing, my

(16:49):
brother is deceased, and he is the only other person
on the will, he was still unable to He told
me about it, but he didn't actually give me the
original copy until such time as I had the destiny.
So you know, you got to go through these processes, right,
So and if you hadn't have done all of that
and all the circles and looping looping, then we would
have been looking at the will that she made down

(17:11):
in New South Wales.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
So this was a new will that you happened to
discover with all of your So there's been so many
instances of that kind of thing over the years.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
And the will didn't even matter really because the house
that she sold was in the will. I was executor
of the will to what to nothing. Everything's missing or
stolen or gone sold. So there was literally nothing in
the will except to show that she had nominated me
as executor, and you know I was her next of kin,

(17:42):
so that did give me somewhare power to be able
to go and get these documents and you know that
had nearly a thousand people like it and comment on
it and just showing the power of actually pushing forward
and still getting and garnering something that I really really needed.
So from there we did some live shows, right, and

(18:04):
that was just my mind, like that is that is
an amazing time in life. I just was shocked and
blown away by those shows.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
From Salad Jone where they are at and about their plans.
Really bored now the inquest has concluded and the search continues.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
Buying Marry now there do please welcome. Sal was a
good energy from there. We did a raffle and I
was a bit crazy on the raffle because I love
doing things like that and I love people winning things

(18:42):
and prizes, and it was just a good fundraiser for
us as part of the live events. And there were
two ladies who won gifts and I emailed them and
then they came back to me with an email, and
some of them I spoke to and one of the
ladies said to me, you've actually emailed myself and one

(19:02):
of my friends. We both came to the show in
Brisbane and we've both won a prize and I said,
oh amazing. Would you like me to hand deliver it
to you? And they agreed and said yeah, let's meet
for coffee. So we met for coffee down at the
gas works here in Brisbane and I'm in my very
casual shorts and T shirt and they rocked up in

(19:23):
suits and I went, holy, okay, this is very official.
And then they said, oh, let us buy you a
coffee and so we just sat there having a chat.
And turns out that their lawyers, and they said to me,
we've spoken to our boss and we've asked can we
help you to get your grant of probate? And I went, oh,
my god, I feel so blessed that there are such

(19:46):
nice people in this world, because when I've just gone
through all of that, to have someone in power and
who knows what they're doing and the knowledge that I
just don't have, and even just to take a little
bit of energy from my self and give it to
somebody else to be able to go, you can take
that on a little bit for me. Amazing. So once again,

(20:06):
good humans coming out in every form. So I worked
with those beautiful humans for a couple of months and
we sorted out getting the grant of probate done. And
then the most shocking thing that I was so shocked
about for me personally and quite devastated, was that the
Supreme Court demands that you actually give them the death

(20:28):
certificate for them to be able to process the grant
of probate. So I've physically just got this piece of
paper that I have been eager to get so I
can access information about my mum. And then they're like,
we need to give them the original so then I
had to run off and go and get them all
certified and make sure I had copies of everything. Right,

(20:50):
So I've got them all certified and I hand over
that precious document, said, here you go, he's the de
certificate that I just worked really hard to get. You
can have the original. I now don't have a copy
of the destinicate, but I did get the grant of
probate certificate from the Supreme Court. So on the second
of August twenty twenty four is the day that I
received the grant of probate. And for those of you

(21:11):
who haven't connected that dot Mum actually flew back into
Australia on the second of August nineteen ninety seven. But
a granted probate is really important because it opens the doors.
So it actually makes me the next of kin with
my missing mother who's been declared de ceased by the coroner.
Gives me access to her information for things like I

(21:32):
can go and act on her behalf with the ATO,
I can go and act on her behalf for Medicare.
And the information that we wanted to get from those
sources and from those entities is important because it could
have led us down a path to having knowledge and
information about what she did, where she was, what was happening,

(21:53):
her location addresses and things like that, which is what
we were hoping to get from those certificates. And also
it does enable you to access a lot of the
Commonwealth base information that even the New South Wales Police
can't access. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 (22:10):
So it really did unlock a bit of a key,
and that's why you really wanted it to happen.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
And you think about things like when I found out
about mum's name change. If you go back and listen
to the last episode, you would have heard me say
and I saw her name for a bleeping second. I
saw it probably for two minutes. And I was spelling
it phonetically for years. Even on my Facebook page, I'm
spelling it as Ramckel, not Reemckel. I was spelling it

(22:37):
with an A, not an E. So we got to
a point we'd started the podcast The Lady Vanishes, and
we were going along and I'd met you, and then
I learned about archives. I didn't know that that was
a big thing and we could ring them and converse
with them, and so I rang Queensland Archives and I said, Hi, there,
my mum is a missing person and she changed her

(22:57):
name to this name, Ramckeurl. I'm just wondering if you
can help me with the correct spelling. I just want
to make I've got the spelling right. And she said
to me, I'm really sorry, we can't give you that
information due to privacy. And I said, okay, well, in
the event that my mum is declared deceased, does that
then void the privacy issue. She goes, no, it doesn't.

(23:20):
There's one hundred year long on that and I'll never
ever get it. I said, also, my kids won't even
be able to find out how this actual spelling. And
just to clarify, this is before we were going to
the coroner's court, so the coroner hadn't said that she
was going to do a findings at this point, so
I'm really just grappling at any bit of information I
can get. And I rang back later on a different day,

(23:41):
probably months later, and in instead of saying my mum
was missing, I just said, Hi, my mum changed her
name in nineteen ninety seven and I'm just trying to
get the correct spelling. Would you be able to help me?
And the lady told me every big date she did it,
what the spelling is, how she did it? I was like, well, okay, interesting.

(24:04):
So if I say she's a missing person, there's a
big block on that and no one wants to tell
me anything. But if I just simply asked the question, hey,
my mum changed her name, can you tell me what
the spelling is? Openslaver get told the whole sabang. So
I found things like that to be quite unbelievable in
the missing space, and why would you make it more
difficult for somebody who's already going through such a difficult process,

(24:29):
Like they just make it more difficult by doing those
sorts of things. And I think people need to really
listen to that and make changes and make that process
easier and better. So this same problem came with the
deed Pole documents. So my mum changed her name to
Florabella and Natalia Marry Ramckel on the fifteenth of May

(24:50):
nineteen ninety seven. And for years I was trying to
get the actual document because we had a lot of people,
didn't we Journey, who were saying, you need to put
on that document why you're changing your name, and there
needs to be a witness on that document. So who
was the witness and what reason did your mum give
to changing her name? So that was important and we

(25:11):
needed to get those depot documents mainly for that. That
was the reason I needed to get it. So I
was in contact with the Supreme Court for years, and
every time i'd put in a request for that document,
I got told no, and then I'd have to give
reasons as to why I wanted the document and they
still said no. This went on and on and on.
I finally found a lady who actually was quite lovely

(25:33):
and helping me and emailing me and discussing with me,
and she's like, look, send me the documents. I'll see
what I can do. I said, I've got to this
point where we've gone to the findings the coroner is like,
I knew what the coroner was going to say because
I was privy to that information from what the Crowns
listeners were telling my lawyers and legal team. So I'd
given her that information and she said, I still can't

(25:56):
give it to you until each such time as you've
got a death certificate, and then it has to be
assessed whether we'll still give it to you. So it
was just a big drama. I'm like, I just want
to get the document of her changing her name. So anyway,
I did get a document in the brief of evidence
because the coroner had requested it from the Supreme Court
in Brisbane and they handed it over. But the document

(26:17):
has information there, but not everything. I Actually what I
was asking them for, which I thought I would require
to go with the dea certificate and the grant of probate,
was the physical name change certificate, so like a birth
certificate or a marriage certificate showing that this person has
legally changed her name to this, because I thought that
would correlate and all fit together like the jigsaw puzzle.

Speaker 3 (26:40):
Yeah, and basically the file as well. Like I remember
at the time, we were thinking if there was anything
sitting behind that that hadn't been submitted to the currner's court,
there could be little morsees of information there that might
be helpful, such as the reason for the name change,
which I didn't see within the brief of evidence itself.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
So we were still chewing it. That mak showing Okay,
let's go. So I go to this lay all in
email and she's like, Okay, send me everything you've got now,
so I need the death certificate, I need granted probate
blah blah blah blah blah, and we'll process it and see,
but I'll need originals. I went, okay, I'll bring them
to you. Okay, So I'm out Supreme Court. Today is Wednesday,

(27:24):
the thirteenth of November, and I've just gone and spoken
to the lady who's been helping me trying to get
access for mum. So they've been declined multiple times, and
I spoke to her. I rang her and spoke to

(27:47):
her last week or actually might have even been was
that was last week? I rang and said I was
coming into the city. Lo and behold, they approve it.
And they say, oh, we've good news. We've approved it.
We can give you the documents and you just need
to pay this fee and we'll send it to you.

(28:09):
And I said, that's amazing. I'll pay the fee right now,
so i'd send it back. I said, I have paid,
thank you very much. Can you email it to me
because I would like it in email form, but i'd
also like it in hard copy. So she goes, no
problem at all, I'd email it to you. And guess
what it was? Exactly what was in the ruth of evidence.
So I just paid for a document and was put
through the absolute ringer to get exactly what that was

(28:30):
given to the coroner. So null and void didn't tell
us anything. We were kind of hoping to have someone's
name on there. That would have been a really important
part of the search, but no. And it's so exhausting,
seriously to hear the yeses and the nose, and then
the yeses and the nose, and then you think you
get a win, and then you just get the door
slammed in your face because it's actually not what you

(28:52):
needed anyway, and it's cost you money and time of
doing it. So it seems to be just be like
a common denominator.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
It's very much round peg in the square hole situation.
Because of all the multiple and the complexities around it.
I think some people just put it in the two
hard basket because you know, from a process point of view,
everything needs to tick, so you can't have a single
cross on any of those elements or else it gets rejected.
So it's a bureaucratic thing, and I think that things

(29:23):
need to change so that there's more ability, because as
you hear there sales having to really, which is one
thing that I greatly admire about you is that you
are an absolute networker till the cows come home.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
So you call on people that.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
Show any kind of kindness or the ability to be
flexible or stretch or move to be able to try
to get.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Done what you need to get done. And it really
shouldn't be that way. Yeah, I shouldn't have to call
on people, I don't think. But people are generally happy
to help to which has been amazing and I've said
it a million times. I wouldn't have been able to
do any of this without the help of the general
public and the media too, you know, who have been helpful.
If we stepped to the next phase of this moment

(30:10):
in time, for me, I am at a position where
I know that there's money sitting in my mum's superannuation account.
There's not a lot of money sitting there. Just to clarify,
because one of the things, if you remember from the
Bonus episode about where We're at, I talked about how
I was making suggestions to Gary Sheen of all these

(30:31):
other things that we should be looking at, and one
of them was had she touched her super and he
had told me her super was untouched, so I had
no idea, Like I've never had been privy to the information.
I don't know how much money my mum had in
her superannuation. I managed to find going through my dad's
things one time. I was going through a bunch of
letters and stuff at his house and I found a

(30:52):
letter that was actually written to mum from the Department
of Education in New South Wales when she was pregnant
with me. I was born in nineteen seventy three, and
it talks about her going on maternity leave and her
superannuation being so all I had to go on was like, well,
she's been getting super since nineteen seventy two, so let's
look at that. I don't know what that means. And

(31:15):
once we got the brief of evidence, it showed us
because they actually had got that information and showed us
that she actually withdrew all her SUPER when she moved
from New South Wales to Queensland to go and work
at TSS. And I'm still a bit baffled by that
today as to how you could actually do that. Even
when I spoke to the ATO, they're like, I don't

(31:37):
know how she did that. How did she actually manage
to do it. So whether it was because she was
single and she was trying to buy a house up
in Queensland and we use the money to buy the
house because we know for a file she was still
holding the house in New South, that's all right, So
she still had a house in Jerringong for a whole
twelve months for sale. Yeah, so she had that house
and bought the house at Marinda Court. So that also

(31:59):
tells us how much money she sort of had in
the mix as well, doesn't it. Because I never asked
my mom how much money she had, Like I knew
we were okay, but I never really we didn't discuss it.
So that was important in getting the information from the
ATO as to what her superannuation was looking like. And
I knew that there was an amount in there wasn't

(32:19):
a big amount you can probably imagine. So I'm going
to tell you all in nineteen ninety four, when she
started at TSS, she put five hundred dollars fresh into
that account she's missing three years later. Yeah, okay, So
that gives you an idea of how much super it
was going to be.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
Two hundred and fifty dollars and then she upped it
to five hundreds, so she doubled the amount yeap to
go into her super with TARSS.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
So she had the two houses she had Marinda Court,
and then she also had Croft Place in Durangong and
then she sold Croft Place, so she would have had
an injection of money there, but that didn't go into
her super. So I had to jump through huge hoops
to access the small portion of money from mum Super.

(33:05):
And oh my god, I thought I was going to
have a complete melt down at this point, because this
started in August, the Taxation Department didn't actually pay it
out until December. And I don't know if you want
to think about that for a second, but that's just
an ongoing trauma of me sitting on the phone for
sometimes up to two and a half hours for them

(33:26):
to put me through to the next person. For them
to put me through to the next person, I've got
to explain the whole rigmarole about her having one name
and the other name. And I can tell you that
while we were in Luxembourg, Chris actually got the letter
in the mail and he said that they have completely
ignored the whole fact that her name was Marian barter

(33:48):
and said, we've done all these checks under Florabella Ramckel,
and it just listed off, like I think there's ten
or so things that they've listed off that Florabella and
Italia Marian Ramickel has not done a tax return in
the last three years. I'm like, no shit, she's actually
a missing person. She's been missing for twenty seven years
and you're not reading. Like every time I do this,

(34:08):
I have to do a full on document which actually
shows everybody exactly what's happening in this space. Because it
is hard, it's convoluted, it's confusing, and I try to
make it as clear as I possibly can for these
people so that they have an understanding and there's no question.

Speaker 3 (34:24):
But just remember too, that whole counterbalance between us seeing
basically half of one of the volumes of the brief
was all of these letters coming from the superannuation which
had care of Leslie Loveday in it. So basically they
had sent her things the same with the bank every
six months.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
There was all these letters that were produced.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
Remember, and then you're in Luxembourg and we get the
correspondence saying no superannuation located for this person, and it's
just crazy because you actually see that there is superannuation there.
If they had have talked to each other, then it
would have been sorted and done. Quickers that we're.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
Back and forth with then paid the accountant and they
started looking into it and they're like, oh, no, they
have found the money. Confirmed that they found the money,
but then they couldn't access it. I had to go
back and do it myself and sit on the phone again,
and I was in tears in some of those phone
calls and absolutely losing my mind that they were not
listening to me. And it's like their robots. They just

(35:28):
don't show any compassion or understanding of what I'm trying
to explain to them. And I was like, I could
care less about the money. I want to finalize her life.
She has been declared deceased. This is important part from
my family that we just go through the process when
someone passes away. You close their bank accounts, you sell
their car, you do the things that you need to

(35:50):
do to finalize them as a person. And I felt
like it was a rite of passage for me to go, Okay,
we've got through this stage and now I can actually
go Okay, we're going to do all these things. She
had money sitting in her bank account as well, right,
so I had to jumps through a million hoops with
the Commonwealth Bank. They were probably the best out of
all of them, but I had to fill in forms

(36:11):
and documents and show them the death certificate, show them
the grand a probate. So this is why they were
all important documents. But they don't even give you the
courtesy of giving you a letter to say, hey, we're
paying it out. Money just showed up in my bank
account and it was a couple of grand and so
the next hoop for me to jump through was I
speak to the ATO and I got onto a guy

(36:33):
and he says, I'm going to have to call you back.
And I said, you are going to have to swear
on my children's lives that you are going to call
me back, because I've just sat on this call for
another two hours and I've been bumped from one person
to the next. He said, there's just something on here
that doesn't look right. I'm going to have to call
you back, and I promise you I will ring you back,
and thank goodness he did. He rang me back and

(36:56):
he said, I'm going to apologize to you because there
has been an error our end. I went, well, surprise
sally laden as an error or there's a problem, But
thank you for acknowledging that. And I said, I really
hope that you explained to the person who made the
error how diabolic all this has been for me, and
that I've been fighting for this since August. It's now December.

(37:18):
This is already hard and it's already trauma. I should
not have to sit here and just be put through
more pain and more stress and more time and anxiousness
to go through to get something that is rightfully made
available to me like it did to everybody else, Like
I've had multiple people who have passed away in the
same time as my mum was granted as deceased. They're

(37:39):
will gone through all the processes of closing up everything
and finishing without any hassle. But because my mum's missing,
I have to jump through a million hoops to get
a decertificate to get granted probate to then have access
to her files. And the kicker here was that I said,
how will you pay out the superinnuation? And he said,
I will send you a check. So I said, well,

(38:01):
my bank doesn't actually accept check. So is there any
other way we can do it? No, that's the only
way we can do it. So that afternoon I decide
to go to the A and Z. Okay, folks, this
is just getting wildly ridiculous. I am seriously about to

(38:22):
lose my mind. I've just had a phone call from
the A and Z bank who informed me that when
they would when the girl was doing up the application
for an account to be a beneficiary for my mum's
state so that when the ATO finally send me a
check for mum's superannuation, I can bank it into that account.

(38:46):
When she did it, I said to her, you do
need to put both names. She goes, well, I'm going
to put Marion Barter because that's the name of the
checks going to be. And I said, well, that's correct,
but you'll probably need to put both names because she's
officially Florabella Ramichel, formerly known as Marion Barta, which is
on her de certificate, which is on the grant of probate.
She only put Marrion bar We just thought we'd see

(39:07):
how we go. She's come back to me saying, oh,
well they've declined it, and saying, well, she's a formerly
known as Flora Bella, Natalia Marian Ramckel, not Marian Barter.
And I said, well, yes, that's why I explained to
you that you'd have to put both names on the application,
because I thought that would be the case. And she goes, oh, well,
we can't put both names. We can only put one name.

(39:27):
And I said, well, I've had to go through a
million hoops and fight tooth and nail to have mums
both mums' names put on My god, I can't believe
this is happening. I just seriously cannot believe that this
is still happening. The whole name changed thing is the biggest, absolute,
biggest debarkle of my entire life. Anyway, you can hear

(39:52):
the frustration in my voice. I'm just so tired of this.
I am absolutely exhausted. So then she tells me that
at the next problem is that the granted probate that
I just paid for through the lawyers to do this

(40:15):
granted probate has since expired because they're only valid for
ninety days. I said, how can it be expired? Only
just got it in August. She goes, oh, they only
have a ninety day period. I said, I only applied
to the ATO after I got granted broke probate, which
was on the sixth of August, and it's taken them

(40:35):
till December to pay me the damn checks. Like I
have to fight every way, every single pathway I go,
and she goes, well, I'm really sorry, but that's what
they're telling me. Also, your passport and everything that you've
sent through has expired. I'm like, that is just not true,

(40:56):
Like I have I have the documents anyway, So that's
the next thing. And then she said to me, I
need to ask you who Owen Clifford Brown is. I said, oh,
Clifford Brown's my deceased brother I told you about. She goes, okay, well,
we need his death certificate. I said, well, I don't
have his death certificate and I don't have access to it.

(41:17):
I would have to apply through birth, death and marriages,
and even then it would have to be my eighty
one year old father to apply for a death certificate
because I'm not his next of kin. So I don't
have his death certificate. I said. It states on my
mum's death certificate that Owen Clifford Brown is deceased because
he's named in the will, right, he gets three pieces

(41:37):
of furniture whatever he wanted in mum's will. So this
is why they want to get a desertificate for Owen.
I just told her to can it. I said, forget it.
Just don't even bother going through it. I'll have to
find an alternative way to try and get this check cashed.
I said to her, she's a really beautiful girl, Like,
I really like this girl. She took a really big

(41:58):
interest in the case, and she's going to listen to
the podcast and everything. This is not her fault. This
is just how our these departments and businesses are in
not dealing with missing persons cases. People. You need to
wake up and listen far out like this should not
be this hard. I just said to who this is

(42:19):
trauma on repeat Today's sixth and December twenty twenty four
just does not get any easier. So at that point
I felt like all my options had literally run out.
I actually met up with the Lovely Ladies who actually

(42:40):
offered to help me get the grant of probate, and
she offered to receive the ATO check and put it
in their account in a trust account for Mum. But
thankfully they actually helped me manage all of that, which
was a massive saving for me as well, and just
because I just had no way around any of those.
So again it came down to just good people helping me.

(43:02):
Otherwise I would still be stuck, and I don't think
we would have overseas we wouldn't have been able to
do half of what we had done. So while I'm
trying to deal with ATO and multiple other entities trying
to get this information deepole document, Supreme Courts, you name it,
I am in this world of hurt. And the last
other thing that I really wanted to get, and I

(43:24):
know you were keen for this journey as well, was
to get the Medicare reports about Mum, where she went,
what she was doing, and who she was with. Yes,
do you remember what was the key part of that
for us to get that Medicare report? So look at this.

Speaker 3 (43:39):
In regards to the Medicare stuff, we didn't really know
exactly what we were going to receive with that information.
We were hoping for a lot more detail, so names
addresses how she paid as well.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
All week I've spent on the phone, you will know
that I've been chasing information from Medicare for some months
now after sending them an email, because last time I
went in there they said, oh, look we don't have it.
You'll have to send them an email. And without any
conversation or communication from Medicare, I just received an envelope

(44:15):
in the mail two days ago. Just the front page
says sensitive personal Dear Miss Leyden read Sally Laden slash
Marion Barter, thank you for your request for release information.
Please find Medicare reports attached. A lot of this stuff
we already had out of the brief of evidence, but
there's some things in her here we didn't have, so

(44:36):
I classify that as a win service. History they've given
me is from the first of January nineteen ninety four
to the first of January twenty fifteen, and it lists
all of the doctors that mum saw between nineteen ninety
four and nineteen ninety seven before she left. Then we
have a number and item number and description for every

(44:59):
category that she's had against her Medicare card, which is
great because we can go through that and have a
look and she do a bit more deep digging into
what some of those mean. Then I asked for the bill,
type and description of her payment, and particularly we were
looking for the transaction at the optometrists that she went

(45:23):
to on the thirteenth of August nineteen ninety seven in Grafton,
because that was the last digital footprint of her physically
doing something. We don't know if she was taking the
money out of her bank account or if that was
being done by somebody else, So that date is quite important,
and I wanted to know did she pay cash, did

(45:47):
she pay by card? How did she get her rebate
sent to her? What? Did they have an address potentially
of where that would be sent to. And unfortunately, because
they've just done a generic print off, they haven't actually
read the detail of the information that I'm requesting asking
for those finer details, so I don't know if they

(46:08):
had an address for her. They haven't told me that.
What it does tell me is that that optometrist appointment
with Dean Evans at the OPSM was the payment method
was bog bill, so that means that she didn't have
to pay for anything. That means that she didn't get
a refund from Medicare, which is really devastating because I

(46:30):
was thinking if she'd did get a refund and it
was sent to her in a check, which is how
they used to do it back in nineteen ninety seven.
They'd post you out a check we would have an
address for her. So you know, it's quite devastating because
you know, if we could find out an address for
her after she returned to Australia, that would have been massive, massive,

(46:53):
massive find And those forms are trauma on repeat, so
you're looking at the form online and it's asking you
who is the funeral director, where is the body, what
date did they die, how did they die, among other.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
Things, so whether it was check, whether it was by cash,
and that sort of thing, just to see if we
could actually work out a her health history over that
whole time, because there was a little bit of interesting
stuff around the liver function test that was done in
nineteen ninety seven, considering that there was another woman in

(47:33):
Belgium who had a similar kind of liver test done,
So that was one.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
Thing we wanted to look at.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
And the second thing was that little ping that happened
on the thirteenth of August nineteen ninety seven, where after
arriving back into Australia, her Medicare card was put through
as Dean Evans, the optometrist said on the stand at
one of those old click clack credit card type machines

(47:58):
at the optometrist in Grafton. So we wanted just to
see if there was more information there, because fortunately on
the stand Dean Evans did state that there would have
been a new client card done for that service and
so therefore that could have had or it would have
had an address and a contact phone number. Now, because

(48:22):
that card wasn't able to be located it was too
long ago, we were hoping that possibly Medicare might have
changed their address or their phone number based on the
client card.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
None of that really came.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
About with the documents that we got. But one thing
that we were able to concretely cement, which is something
that people have been wanting to sort of know for
a long time, is that this was actually the sixth
time in her post moving to Queensland where she had
gone to an optometrist with a single visit not in

(49:00):
her local area, and this was actually the sixth time
that she had done that, So that to me shows
a pattern of behavior. So this wasn't just some ping
of going to see an optometrist that came out of
the middle of nowhere. This was actually in line with
what she'd been doing for the past couple of years
since she arrived in Queensland.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
And the other thing that was a big standout for
us was that she was billed for that service and
that was a real bummer because if she'd got a
check back, they would have posted the check to an
address and it would have been listed as to where
the check went, and that would have been a massive,
massive find for us. So you know, and there's a

(49:42):
lot of undercarriage with that as well, because the police
initially back in twenty eleven found this information about her
going and using her Medicare card or her Medicare card
being used in Grafton and they were looking for a
doctor and they were not looking for an optometrist, and
so that information back in twenty eleven, they would have
had the records and we could have actually pulled like

(50:03):
even OPSM said that because we found them. The lady
didn't we She's now living in Coffs Harbor and we
were like, did you keep records? Do you still have records?
She's like no, we destroyed them. And I was like,
that's so disapposed because some missed opportunity and they weren't
looking properly. They just made an assumption that he was
a doctor and not an optometrist. Doesn't even say doctor

(50:24):
on there, it just sees Stevens. So, you know, another
missed opportunity from the police to maybe garner some information,
and that was really vital. But the flip side is
Medicare sent me every single detail. They sent all of
my information as well, which is a lot more than
my mum's, and we were able to look at certain things.

(50:45):
And you know, for those of you who are questioning
about the liver test before, there is a little bit
of information in there which we might talk about on
Facebook and answer some questions on there, because we did
go into deep on that. In the Lady vanishes as well,
and there's a storyline behind my mum and Girlaine, who

(51:06):
is another lady who had dealings with mister Rick Blum,
who both ladies had. My Mum and Laine both had
liver function tests whilst they were allegedly engaged with Rick Blum.
In the next episode of The Missing Matter, the lady
warned me in the letter not to try and look

(51:29):
for her and said it would be detrimental to my children.
That's when the nightmare started. A reoccurring dream I had
on repeat for years, where Chris and I drove to Maurie.
We found a house just outside of town where there
was a dip in the road and had a big,
long concrete footpath that went up to the front door.

(51:53):
And in the dream, i have Darcy on my hip
as a baby, and I'm holding Ella's hand, who is three.
Chris is waiting in the car. He's got the window down.
As I'm walking up to the door, I knock on
the door and my mum opens the door and she

(52:14):
closes the door in my face, doesn't say anything, and
I turn around and I walk back up to Chris
and she opens the door and she shoots me in
the back.