June 1, 2025 • 37 mins
One of the last notes Sally received from her mum was written on hotel notepaper from a room at the Hotel Nikko Narita in Japan.
In this episode, Sally and Joni travel there to uncover answers: did her mum ever stay at this hotel? Did she get married here? And what immigration records might finally unlock the secret of Marion’s disappearance?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Apod Jake Production.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome back to episode four of The Missing Matter. My
name's Sally for those of you who are jumping in
for the first time, I am the daughter of long
term missing person Marian Barter. Next month in June, it
will be twenty eight years since my mum vanished. She
went on a trip of a lifetime and we've never
(00:35):
seen her again since. And with me is my research extraordinary.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Johnny Condos, Hello everybody, Thanks for joining us again on
this episode. I'm a good friend of Sale now also
a researcher, been involved in this case since twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
The reason where doing this is because it hasn't finished yet.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
We've still got more.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
To do, right, no endless.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
So last year in.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
October I set about to go overseas on a research
trip to find some more clues and speak to a
few people. And the next few episodes you're going to
hear about what we did and how we did it
and what we stumbled across on the way. Do you
(01:26):
want to tell everyone why we needed to go to Japan?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Japan was a bit of a strange sort of inclusion
into the trip, but it was also so essential because
we don't actually know concretely if your mum even went
to Japan. So some people might think, well, why bother.
We all know that she flew on Korean air. It's
(01:49):
assumed that she landed in Korea and then she picked
up her bags, they went through transit whatever, and then
she popped out in London. But we have information from
her saying that she was like a pack horse and
she would never do that again. So that to us
indicated that the cases were not just simply being transited
(02:14):
through Korea, that there was more. There was more to
Asia than just Korea for a short you know, to
our stopover or a little rest in a hotel like
the Hotel Nico for example. So therefore, when you got
the Hotel Nico Narita letter on that note paper, I
guess it was always assumed right that within your family
(02:37):
that she had gone to Japan.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Well, she says in it doesn't she. I've just had
an interesting time visiting in the East.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
East is sal and Chris, greetings from beautiful but very
wet Uk. I finally arrived in England after a most
interesting visit to the East. Cloud is somewhat by far
too much luggage. I felt like a pack horse.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
It's eight days from the time she left Australia coming
out out of Brisbane Airport, as you say, on Korean
air landing in South Korea, and then her posting me
that letter on that notepaper, and in using the envelope
from the hotel as well, which was posted in tom
Bridge in the UK. So we have got a very
(03:23):
narrow window where we thought, when you are looking at
cases like this, you actually want to get the smallest
amount of timeline you possibly can, because that's when you
can actually find the information. You know, I think you
and I when we were first discussing it, it was
a case of this element is about mum, whereas the
other elements were more focused on Rick Blum, which will.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
We agree, So we needed to start there.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Obviously, Japan is the closest to Australia, so we hopped
on a plane and off we went.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
So it was definitely about your mum. It was about
seeing whether she had stayed at the hotel Nico Narita.
It was seeing whether there was any immigration records, so
coming in and out of Japan too, because you know,
within the inquest documentation it was stated that immigration Japan
and also through all of their connections back to New
(04:19):
South Wales Police that she didn't go there, but neither
did Rick Bloom according to the documents that we saw
within the brief of evidence. So that tells me that
there is an issue because we know that Rick Bloom
went to Japan. So that's also why we wanted to
go face to face and actually see utilizing Sally's documentation
(04:43):
that she got as part of the process post in quest,
which you would have heard last episode. So we just
wanted to see whether there was anything there.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
So in the last episode you would have heard me
talk about all the hoops I had to jump through
to get the grant of probate right, and that was
really key essential so that we could take that document
with me overseas as the next of kin appointed by
the Supreme Court here in Australia to be able to
access that information. And so for those of you who
haven't put the dots together, Rick Blum we know flew
(05:16):
out on Tuesday, the seventeenth of June. He flew on
JL which is Japan Airlines. He was using a passport
in the name of Richard Lloyd Westbury, which was not
his name at the time either. Now his name at
the time was Frederick David de Heevideri, so that was
(05:37):
his legal name in Australia. But remembering that my mum
had actually changed her name to Florabella Ramckel, which we
now know that Rick Blum had a driver's license, a
Queensland driver's license in the name for Nan Ramckel, So
the only two Ramckels in the entire country of Australia
are those two people. So he leaves on the Tuesday,
(06:00):
the Friday, is the last day of term. My mom
then comes and has a roast dinner with us on
the Saturday night is my memory, with her friend Leslie,
and then she flies out the next day on the
twenty second. Now mum flies out on Korean air and
her first stop south Korea. So the other thing I
want to sort of talk about again and I have
spoken about a few times, is that Interpol do not
(06:22):
hold records after your first point of land. So if
Mum was landing in South Korea, that's what's documented on
Interpol anytime after that until such time as she comes
back into Australia, which we now know is Hong Kong
on Catha. So that tells us she didn't have a
return ticket on the same airline, so we don't know
where she went from South Korea to Hong Kong six
(06:44):
weeks later. What happened in between outside of her sending
us letters and postcards and her friends, which she did
numerous times. So what I have is a letter that
mum wrote to me on Hotel Nico and Nerita paper,
and that's in an envelope from the hotel as well,
which she posted in Tonbridge in the UK. Rick Blum
(07:06):
says in his interview with police, they asked him where
did you stay when you landed in Japan? And he
just said, straight off the cuff, without even a thought,
I say at Hotel Niko Narita, because that's where I
always stay. We've actually used AI to recreate this police interview.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
And so you traveled to Narita in Japan?
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (07:29):
Do you remember that?
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (07:31):
Do you remember? We stayed at the Narita, at the
Narita Hotel.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
I think it's it was called.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
It's the hotel owned by Japan Airlines there at Narita.
Who did you stay there with, mister Blum?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Nobody myself.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
On the twenty second of June nineteen ninety seven, Marion
left Eagle Farm Airport in Brisbane. Yes, and she too
traveled to Japan. Marion sent correspondence to a daughter Yes,
soon after leaving on stationary from the Hotel Nico Narita. Yes,
the hotel that you stayed in.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Possibly, I'm not one hundred percent sure.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
This is why it was important that we went.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
We really wanted to go and see did Mum actually
land in Japan, because in my heart of hearts, I
think she did and we needed to go down that track.
So what's on tomorrow, Well, it's Mum's birthday, so I
have to find a cake celebrate her and hopefully that
(08:36):
brings us a little bit of luck finding some information.
So it will be at Hotel Nico and Narita. Simon,
my cousin is coming. He's taken three days off to
come and help us while we're there, and the key
(08:57):
is to try and see if we can find any
proof of marriage between them. It's going to be difficult
because there's two people in that and they might not
give us the records about another person, but hopefully they'll
let us know there's any records for Mum and we'll
be at the hotel. So we're staying at the actual hotel.
I've brought the letter that Mum wrote to me, so
(09:19):
I've got that and I can show them that and
see if anyone remembers anyone was working there in nineteen
ninety seven.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
That is still possible, so they might know or remember something.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
So through this journey, I've really been so blessed to
find so many kind and generous humans.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
There was a.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Time, and I can't remember, I can't remember exactly when
this happened, but Chris and I were going through to
Sydney and it was a time when we're all wearing
masks and we've gone through and the woman Chris always
has my ticket on his phone, and the lady is
standing behind the counter.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
As soon as he scanned mine.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
She said, oh my god, Sally, I thought it was you,
and then said I listened to the podcast and I'm
so sorry for everything you've gone through, and.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
She actually started crying.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
She gave me a hug, and then we got up
to the lounge and my name got called out and
I went round to the counter and one of the
ladies said to me, oh, the lady downstairs has just
upgraded you to business and I went, oh my god,
that is so nice of her, not expected at all,
but thank you so much. Anyway, one of the girls
close to us in this was going through a pretty
(10:34):
bad situation last year and her world had just literally
turned on its head. So I sort of just went
straight into let's do something mode, and of course put
the call out and everyone just came amazingly once again. Anyway,
one of her sons, it was his eighteenth birthday. I
put a call out and said, if anyone was able
to make a cake, I'd be happily pick it up
(10:56):
and I'll take it to them. So anyway, I've driven
to her house and remembering too, we were wearing masks.
I come to the door and she presents me with
this professional box with a massive cake in it, which
was divine.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I was like, are you a professional cake.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Maker because this looks amazing, and she said, but I
wanted to let you know we have met before, and
I said, oh have we? She said, I'm the lady
who saw you that time when you came through the
Cornice lounge and I went, oh my god, how are you.
So we started chatting and I was telling her about
our trip at that point, because it was a couple
of weeks before, and she said, give me the flight
(11:32):
details and I'll see if I can get you and
Johning into the lounge.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
So we arrive at the airport, we walk.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Into the corners lounge and sitting at the table with
her partner is longtime friend of mine. Her name is Elkie,
and we were chatting and Elkie just started talking to
me about this moment in time that she remembered.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
I was there the morning that mister and missus Wilson
walked into bryce street of my grandparents' house.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
And we're told by the Salvation Army that they had.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
Found and that she had said she didn't want anything,
and they had looked back to Jesus Wilson.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
That was the story, and I was sitting in the
front room.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
It makes me want to vomit a little bit, yeah,
because you know, they never found her.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
They never found it was said. I listened to the inquest.
I said, that's a look, that's a lie.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
That never happened. That's a lie.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Because I was there that morning, I.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Felt a bit nervous. I felt a bit weird for me.
This is a big thing. It had taken you and
I nearly all year and a lot of planning to
get to that actual point, and I couldn't quite believe
that we were leaving our families.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
It just under a month.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Yeah, it was quite a big thing for us to do,
I think, just to put ourselves in that position, and
it was a little.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Mental sid command.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
Just passing to such like coach on the side at
thirty six.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Thousand wrong in Tokyo on time. What is our main
game coming to Nareda. We want to find evidence.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Any marriage, any any kind of evidence of her in Japan.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
We need to clarify that she definitely came into reapration. Yeah,
not really everything cross that we'll be able to get
that information because that is important because that contradicts what
was the findings at the inquest into Tokyo Passages.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Group must now take the.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
We've arrived in Japan, and we sort of wanted to
follow the footsteps of Rick Blum and experience the whole
bus out to Narita. Yes, I'm staying in the hotel.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Can I please get an envelope in middle? Do you
normally have them in the room? I think there is
an en bit of author Oh you think there is
upstairs in the room? Is that normal?
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Is it normally.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Inside the room.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Oh okay, I just this is My mum sent me
this back in nineteen ninety seven from you, and she
wrote to me on your notepaper. But she's actually a
missing person. So I've come here to retrace and try
and find out what's happened to her. So that's why
(14:43):
I wanted to ask you about the envelopes, if they
were in the room, or if she would have had
to ask you for an envelope at the desk. Let's
talk about our first day. We woke up to a
rainy day. There was lots of bamboo surrounding the hotel,
and I remember looking out the window. We are in
(15:04):
Hotel Niko Narita, my mama's birthday today.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I honestly never thought that I would be here.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
That's kind of a spin out for me and Janie
and I are about to head off. We're gonna go
downstairs today. We've got the chapel here and we want
to go and see if we can get records of
any sort of marriage or any indication that mum was here.
And then we're heading off into Narita to go into
(15:35):
the town square. We're meeting my cousin Simon who's taken
a few days off to come and help us, which
is super kind of him. That's Degree's son and he
lives over here and he is married to his Japanese wife, Emiko,
and they have two boys, and I think we're catching
up with them as well at some point having dinner.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
And we've got.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
This is what's been spinning me out, is the note
paper because it's identical. I've just done a comparison to
mums because I've bought the letter that mum sent me
and the notepaper is identical, which is just bizarre to
think after twenty seven years.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
And I want to.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Prove that my mum actually did come here because that.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Was not the result from the inquest.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
We're here on a mission to prove that theory wrong.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
So let's hope we go and get some answers. Today,
on our first official day of the research trip.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
We had a very busy day planned.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
We only were staying two nights at hotel in Nico
and Nrita before heading into Tokyo, and we had planned
to meet early with my cousin Simon, so we were
just sitting there having a coffee. We literally were heading
over to Narita City Hall, and there we spoke to
a lovely man who took an interest in helping us.
He did speak English, and he was there to help
(17:01):
us understand the rules around getting married in Japan.
Speaker 7 (17:05):
And so they do a search for records just to
say whether there's a marriage interesting Marian within that day range.
They need to fill in some special forms and be
different for every country, so he has to spend some
time to say, Australia, this is what we need, and.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Since I'm in Japan, it's easier. I'm the request.
Speaker 7 (17:30):
I think I might need some of these type of documents, right,
actually maybe I should get a copy.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
So I would go to him on.
Speaker 7 (17:37):
One of these days and he would talk to his
boss where he explain the story, show him the libiot,
and they might come back and say they need something else,
something again, and eventually they would fill in the form.
He said it would take at least one or two weeks,
possibly a month for them to process the request. And
all they'll do is say yes or no. They're not
going to show us the certificate or the interviews.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
But if we can get a.
Speaker 7 (17:59):
Yes, if you give you just know yes the birth
place and that's pretty into partment and interesting information.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
I mean, there was a lot of theories around the
whole marriage and the whole wedding thing within Japan where
people would have gone. There was a whole hipp of
research that was done by researchers about this, but we
really needed to find actual proof of this and records
and things like that. So that's why we went to
the city hall because the whole idea of it was
(18:29):
if they were only there for a very short time,
and if they, I say, Marion and Rick Bloom were
staying at Hotel Nico Nerita, then that would be the
obvious place where any records coming from the chapel within
the grounds of Hotel Nico Nearita would have landed. So
we basically we were going there to see whether there
was any records there.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
So we were basically.
Speaker 7 (18:53):
Were most impossible legal marriage and toolhi.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Is and we assumed that we wanted it.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
I wanted to hear it from somebody who works here,
and I thought, I just said to Journing because we
saw the tops up, whether it was worth coming here.
We both are the same opinion that you'd have to
be legally bound to do it, and he wouldn't have done.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
That, and you have to get a certificate of single.
There's a whole lot of time.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
And we went through this morning. It's all different.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, and you have to have a passport in your
name from your country.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
And also it doesn't make sense to me because I know,
why would you link link It's no benefit to him.
All it needs is to look down the island and
chapel that's right. I mean she was happy to marry Rayne,
you know, like to be fair.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
And so after that, you remembering it was mum's birthday.
You'd actually found a Buddhist temple, this beautiful Buddhist temple.
And if you haven't been to a temple before, you
actually have to cleanse or you're supposed to cleanse yourself
with the water before you actually enter. So people wash
it over their face and wash it all over their
hands before entering. And I remember there was just a
(20:01):
haze of smoke.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Do you remember that?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
And it was all like I kept going, it's everywhere,
like it was all over us for the remainder of this, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Because they burn it burns twenty four to seven. Yeah,
while we went there was for the And I apologize
if any of these words are said incorrectly. The Agoma prayer,
which is a very special prayer and it's a ritual
brought back from China, and it involves burning of special
(20:30):
firewood and making a big flame for the fulfillment of
the wishes of the audience and the worshipers or whoever comes.
So it's quite stunning. It's been around for one thousand
and eighty years. I just really felt that if we
did have the time, it would be quite nice for
(20:52):
you to go and just do that and give something
of your mum for that blessing. So that's what you did,
and what did you bring?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Well, we have to purchase like the little piece of
wood and then you write on it.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I just wrote the missing matter Marion matters, and I
asked them.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
To help me find my mum.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
So.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Happy the same mum.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Would be seventeen on them today, eternal, eternally.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
I loved.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Very sad that I haven't boundary yet.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
A Buddhist temple.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
And just written a wish for you.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Did I find you?
Speaker 2 (22:00):
I'm gonna go in and sit down now for about
twenty five minutes with there's smoking ceremony, and just take
twenty five minutes to think of you and think of
the journey that we're on finding and so then you
(22:23):
pop that in amongst all the other wishes, and then
they actually burned the wishes in their smoking ceremony.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
So I lit a.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Candle for Mum, being that it was her birthday, and
then we took our shoes off and we went and
sat in on the Buddha blessing, which was quite emotional
for me, to be honest, I did have tears in
my eyes because it was just like the drums and
everything were just pounding through my chest as I'm sitting
right next to it.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
You see that symbol next to the drum, and they're.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
All sitting there humming, and I could just it was
just quite a powerful thing to do. So I'm really
grateful that you took time to think about that, because
I was too busy doing all the other stuff to
think about doing just stopping for a minute and having
a breather, because you know, it was an important day.
It was Mum's birthday, and you know, I feel like
that was a really beautiful thing to be able.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
To do for her.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
So once we left the temple, we all went back
to Hotel Nicnareta and I just sat down and we
decided we'd have a coffee and I bought a.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Little cake for mum.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And after we had the cake and just had a
moment to think about her again, we approached concierge at Hotelnicna,
Rita and asked them if they could help us talk
to somebody at the chapel. And we walked into this
room and they sat us down with all wedding videos
playing around us, and wedding dresses on display and suits
(23:54):
on display, and there was a hair dressing salon and
I'm like, oh, wow, so people literally come here, they
pick a dress, they whack it on with their suit,
they walk downstairs and go and get married.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
I was like, oh, this is actually a thing.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yes, But they came down and usd us to sit
and wait, and then someone from the chapel came down
and got us, and he took us down into the.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Actual chapel and we're standing in there.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
They had told us that there used to be an
older chapel and we were standing in the very new chapel.
So this chapel was not there in nineteen ninety seven.
There was a different chapel that was no longer in action.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Or being used.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
He was very clear to us that you can't just
walk in and get married in air so two foreign
people walking in wouldn't be allowed to just walk in
and get married.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
They didn't have records.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
We asked him if they had archives, and they did
go off in check and triple check, but they came
back and said, unfortunately, they don't have records going back
to nineteen ninety seven. Unfortunately we didn't find anything with
relation to whether or not mum was married in Japan
to Rick Blum.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
So our next stop was Tokyo.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Up the next morning, we're heading back to the airport
and downstairs at the airgeport in Narita, you actually walked
down to catch the train.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Well, primarily we were going into Tokyo obviously to find
out about the immigration and whether try and at least
see if we could apply for those records based on
the documentation that you had post the death certificate and
all the probate sort of processes.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
So this is you reaching out to them before we'd
left Australia to find out what information was available and
whether we could access or not.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
That's correct, Yeah, So I had a number of phone
calls with them that is basically what we were aiming
to do on that day was to try to get
the movement records. Simon came with us, and Simon's son
as well.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
If he speaks fluent, he was.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
To do, yeah, to do the interpreting.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
But and so we arrive.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
And then we were called up to a little booth
and the gentleman behind the counter he didn't really understand.
He couldn't speak English. I can't speak Japanese.
Speaker 8 (26:28):
So if this is true, and if if there's a
record of it, but they say they keep records, so
if it exists, it exists.
Speaker 6 (26:35):
But what's the earliest year that they do have records
for if you could ask?
Speaker 2 (27:00):
And there was a form that he gave me that
he started asking me to fill in, but we soon
realized that the form wasn't really relevant because he was
asking me to fill it in from my perspective, not
from mum's perspective. And we literally just wanted him to say.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Whether or not she landed in Japan or not, and
he would not tell.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Us that she wrote to me on a notepaper from Japan,
so I don't have any proof that she came here.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
And I'm trying to get proof that she arrived in Japan.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
I don't even need to see the documents really, I
just like if he could tell me that she definitely
came to Japan, I'd be happy with that, and the
date that she left. It's just that she because she's
a missing person, so it's important to get clarification to
know that if she was in Japan, she definitely stayed here, because.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
That's what she's written to me.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
So that's the whole purpose. There's not really a lot
in it.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
I don't see the value in me paying lawyer another
lawyer to.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Tell me whether she was here or not. If he
could just say that to me, that would be very helpful.
I don't know what to do. I don't can you
just say to him?
Speaker 2 (28:08):
So what's my options is to find a lawyer, pay
for a lawyer, and then get the lawyer to send these.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Forms to these people.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Has he got a card or something like gift to him?
Speaker 8 (28:20):
Like you, it's an option, So it's not you, But
you can go through here, which is the place which
is basically here, so there's no need because it will
be from the lawyer. So okay, it's a different route.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Yeah, you're a thank you a couple of thousands.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
And I remember being quite grinded by this because he
kept laughing, and I'm like, this is actually quite stressful
for me.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
From my perspective.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
I've just gone through absolute helen back to get this
death certificate in both names so that we can access
her in coming and out going passenger information all over
the world, was my thought, because I had this piece
of paper from the Supreme Court in Australia which deemed
me to be able to do that, and he said
that document does not apply here in Japan. Australian documents
(29:18):
don't apply here. Really, sorry. The best bet is to
for you to engage with a Japanese lawyer and then
they will have to access that information to get the file.
And I was just beside myself. I'm like, okay, so
I need to jump through more hoops just to find
out whether my mum landed here in nineteen ninety seven
or not. We had a really tight window, as I
(29:40):
talked about before, We had that eight days and it
was like, why is this so difficult?
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Why can't you? And even Simon kept jumping in.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
He's like, she's a missing person, she's deceased, so she doesn't.
She's not alive anymore. And he kept saying, oh, you
need to get her to sign a document to allow
you to do it. I'm like, you're not understanding. She's
not alive for me to ask her to sign a document.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
If you post it to them in the.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Mail, there'll be some deercut there.
Speaker 7 (30:04):
They're opening the see this form and it's like they'll
take a check book and you just want them to
throw it over there to the next instead, which would
be easier for them if they can just kind of give.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
It a glance without all the other added complications.
Speaker 7 (30:16):
Simple just like them, and maybe don't you could not
do any idea at all, right, that's another option. Maybe
I could do one without it's even happens, and they.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Might just look at it and toss it.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
With him and then you know land.
Speaker 7 (30:35):
You could also try Histralian lawyer letter saying you know
this from the head, you know please, something like that
to make it kind of scary, and then it's actually
makes it a little less likely because I'll pass it
on to the day become bureaucratic. But that's why the
simple one, just going through the cracks, it's probably the
(30:58):
best chance.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
So One of the other little side projects that we
did while we were there was just looking into any
coin shops or antique places or anything like that where
we were hoping that there could have been someone there
that over the years that may have had some kind
of interaction with Rick Bloom. I don't know if you
remember that he actually spoke about giving some Japanese coins
(31:24):
to one of the managers at the Amsterdam airport with
Japan Air. So 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 you didn't know
where you MAMO was, and then when Rick Bloom came along,
(31:46):
or Frederick de HEEVERI it was quite early in the
peace when we found out that he actually had a
company called Balina Coin invest So we go.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Back in a timeline just to help people who haven't
been listening to the Lady Vanishers. You met me in
May of twenty nineteen, so we launched the podcast the
first of April twenty nineteen. You find the ad in
the paper with the name RAMACKURL linked to a Lennox
Head post office box and phone number.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
That was in the May of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Then I get an email from a gentleman who wants
to remain anonymous, who says, I've gone down to the
local library at Balana. 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 Baalano Cooin Invest. You and I then did a
massive search with him. He actually did the assex search
(32:39):
on that.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Name, didn't he with it? Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
He did that and he found the name of the
owner of Balin cooin invest was Frederick de Heavidery and
Diane to Heavidairy.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Yes. So I rang around the local coin dealers there
and I happened to speak to a very old, very
well known dealer called Jim and I actually called him
and this is what he said. He said, oh yes, Rick.
Now at this stage I wasn't expecting him to actually
(33:10):
know anything. I was expecting him to know Barry Cooper,
That's who I was aiming to try and connect with.
So when he I don't know if you remember, but
when he said, oh, yes, Rick, the Belgian, Yes he's
living in the foothills of Byron Bay. He's in his
early eighties now. He's looking to put some coins in
(33:30):
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 you thought it was hilarious that
I was asking about this person. Like people are probably wondering, well,
so what Like he was a coin dealer, you know,
a big deal. What's this got to do with Marian
(33:52):
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. A perfect way to affectively lawned ill
gotten gains. I'm not saying that mister Bloom did this,
and that was the reason why he was a coin dealer.
(34:13):
From what I understand, he was very knowledgeable.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
You're talking about buying a coin that is worth fifty
thousand euros.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Yeah, that's through gold.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Coin that sits in your wallet, and when you're coming
through customs, they're not looking at your coins in your wallet.
And the little amans terms is what that's saying.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Yeah, yeah, so an ancient coin. I mean it could
just be a beaten up old coin that you wouldn't
even look twice at within a mix in your hand.
That was how it's explained to me. 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 you are
(34:53):
Australian that you can bring in him. So therefore I
just thought that we'd see if there was someone exists
in Tokyo, especially that may have known him, that we
should really go along. So that was what we did.
I want to ask you a question, do you know
I don't know Frederic. They had a very or his
(35:20):
name was Willie Wooters. No coin dela, yes, okay, never,
he's never traded with.
Speaker 7 (35:32):
You, not traded, No, No, okay.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Every day for people come to my shop, I can't remember.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Everybody halfa I can, okay, many men come every day, of.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Course, yes, no, I understand. So we ended our trip
in Japan going to the Meiji jing Ju Temple in Shabu. Yeah,
one of the things that we did want to do
was to have Sally write a message on a plaque
and hang it on the wall there of the temples.
So that was what we did on that final day.
(36:19):
She actually wrote the Missing Matter Marion Matters.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
And I had it in me.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I said to you, let's pull up how to write
it in Japanese. Some people actually who were Japanese could
read it as well. So I'm there with my black
pen writing it in Japanese.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
We hung it up.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
There and among the thousands, and just the hope that
one person might read it and think what is that
about and just take a moment. And I guess at
the end of the day, this whole podcast and the
whole talking about all of this, it just comes back
to the fact that missing persons do matter, and that
the people who are missing shouldn't be forgotten. So hence
(36:57):
why this storyline is about my mum, but it stems
back from all missing persons and you know we really
should remember them and that they do matter. So we
left there with hundreds and thousands of wishes and prayers.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
We did and on our way to London to London
in the next episode of The Missing Matter, or.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
We went to London because we had a few things
we needed to do. We needed to go to the library,
and we also needed to go and visit a massive
coin dealer in the UK that we have some information
that really potentially connects Mum and Rick Blum at the
same time in London, and of course
Apod Jake Production.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome back to episode four of The Missing Matter. My
name's Sally for those of you who are jumping in
for the first time, I am the daughter of long
term missing person Marian Barter. Next month in June, it
will be twenty eight years since my mum vanished. She
went on a trip of a lifetime and we've never
(00:35):
seen her again since. And with me is my research extraordinary.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Johnny Condos, Hello everybody, Thanks for joining us again on
this episode. I'm a good friend of Sale now also
a researcher, been involved in this case since twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
The reason where doing this is because it hasn't finished yet.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
We've still got more.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
To do, right, no endless.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
So last year in.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
October I set about to go overseas on a research
trip to find some more clues and speak to a
few people. And the next few episodes you're going to
hear about what we did and how we did it
and what we stumbled across on the way. Do you
(01:26):
want to tell everyone why we needed to go to Japan?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Japan was a bit of a strange sort of inclusion
into the trip, but it was also so essential because
we don't actually know concretely if your mum even went
to Japan. So some people might think, well, why bother.
We all know that she flew on Korean air. It's
(01:49):
assumed that she landed in Korea and then she picked
up her bags, they went through transit whatever, and then
she popped out in London. But we have information from
her saying that she was like a pack horse and
she would never do that again. So that to us
indicated that the cases were not just simply being transited
(02:14):
through Korea, that there was more. There was more to
Asia than just Korea for a short you know, to
our stopover or a little rest in a hotel like
the Hotel Nico for example. So therefore, when you got
the Hotel Nico Narita letter on that note paper, I
guess it was always assumed right that within your family
(02:37):
that she had gone to Japan.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Well, she says in it doesn't she. I've just had
an interesting time visiting in the East.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
East is sal and Chris, greetings from beautiful but very
wet Uk. I finally arrived in England after a most
interesting visit to the East. Cloud is somewhat by far
too much luggage. I felt like a pack horse.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
It's eight days from the time she left Australia coming
out out of Brisbane Airport, as you say, on Korean
air landing in South Korea, and then her posting me
that letter on that notepaper, and in using the envelope
from the hotel as well, which was posted in tom
Bridge in the UK. So we have got a very
(03:23):
narrow window where we thought, when you are looking at
cases like this, you actually want to get the smallest
amount of timeline you possibly can, because that's when you
can actually find the information. You know, I think you
and I when we were first discussing it, it was
a case of this element is about mum, whereas the
other elements were more focused on Rick Blum, which will.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
We agree, So we needed to start there.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Obviously, Japan is the closest to Australia, so we hopped
on a plane and off we went.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
So it was definitely about your mum. It was about
seeing whether she had stayed at the hotel Nico Narita.
It was seeing whether there was any immigration records, so
coming in and out of Japan too, because you know,
within the inquest documentation it was stated that immigration Japan
and also through all of their connections back to New
(04:19):
South Wales Police that she didn't go there, but neither
did Rick Bloom according to the documents that we saw
within the brief of evidence. So that tells me that
there is an issue because we know that Rick Bloom
went to Japan. So that's also why we wanted to
go face to face and actually see utilizing Sally's documentation
(04:43):
that she got as part of the process post in quest,
which you would have heard last episode. So we just
wanted to see whether there was anything there.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
So in the last episode you would have heard me
talk about all the hoops I had to jump through
to get the grant of probate right, and that was
really key essential so that we could take that document
with me overseas as the next of kin appointed by
the Supreme Court here in Australia to be able to
access that information. And so for those of you who
haven't put the dots together, Rick Blum we know flew
(05:16):
out on Tuesday, the seventeenth of June. He flew on
JL which is Japan Airlines. He was using a passport
in the name of Richard Lloyd Westbury, which was not
his name at the time either. Now his name at
the time was Frederick David de Heevideri, so that was
(05:37):
his legal name in Australia. But remembering that my mum
had actually changed her name to Florabella Ramckel, which we
now know that Rick Blum had a driver's license, a
Queensland driver's license in the name for Nan Ramckel, So
the only two Ramckels in the entire country of Australia
are those two people. So he leaves on the Tuesday,
(06:00):
the Friday, is the last day of term. My mom
then comes and has a roast dinner with us on
the Saturday night is my memory, with her friend Leslie,
and then she flies out the next day on the
twenty second. Now mum flies out on Korean air and
her first stop south Korea. So the other thing I
want to sort of talk about again and I have
spoken about a few times, is that Interpol do not
(06:22):
hold records after your first point of land. So if
Mum was landing in South Korea, that's what's documented on
Interpol anytime after that until such time as she comes
back into Australia, which we now know is Hong Kong
on Catha. So that tells us she didn't have a
return ticket on the same airline, so we don't know
where she went from South Korea to Hong Kong six
(06:44):
weeks later. What happened in between outside of her sending
us letters and postcards and her friends, which she did
numerous times. So what I have is a letter that
mum wrote to me on Hotel Nico and Nerita paper,
and that's in an envelope from the hotel as well,
which she posted in Tonbridge in the UK. Rick Blum
(07:06):
says in his interview with police, they asked him where
did you stay when you landed in Japan? And he
just said, straight off the cuff, without even a thought,
I say at Hotel Niko Narita, because that's where I
always stay. We've actually used AI to recreate this police interview.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
And so you traveled to Narita in Japan?
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (07:29):
Do you remember that?
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (07:31):
Do you remember? We stayed at the Narita, at the
Narita Hotel.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
I think it's it was called.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
It's the hotel owned by Japan Airlines there at Narita.
Who did you stay there with, mister Blum?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Nobody myself.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
On the twenty second of June nineteen ninety seven, Marion
left Eagle Farm Airport in Brisbane. Yes, and she too
traveled to Japan. Marion sent correspondence to a daughter Yes,
soon after leaving on stationary from the Hotel Nico Narita. Yes,
the hotel that you stayed in.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Possibly, I'm not one hundred percent sure.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
This is why it was important that we went.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
We really wanted to go and see did Mum actually
land in Japan, because in my heart of hearts, I
think she did and we needed to go down that track.
So what's on tomorrow, Well, it's Mum's birthday, so I
have to find a cake celebrate her and hopefully that
(08:36):
brings us a little bit of luck finding some information.
So it will be at Hotel Nico and Narita. Simon,
my cousin is coming. He's taken three days off to
come and help us while we're there, and the key
(08:57):
is to try and see if we can find any
proof of marriage between them. It's going to be difficult
because there's two people in that and they might not
give us the records about another person, but hopefully they'll
let us know there's any records for Mum and we'll
be at the hotel. So we're staying at the actual hotel.
I've brought the letter that Mum wrote to me, so
(09:19):
I've got that and I can show them that and
see if anyone remembers anyone was working there in nineteen
ninety seven.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
That is still possible, so they might know or remember something.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
So through this journey, I've really been so blessed to
find so many kind and generous humans.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
There was a.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Time, and I can't remember, I can't remember exactly when
this happened, but Chris and I were going through to
Sydney and it was a time when we're all wearing
masks and we've gone through and the woman Chris always
has my ticket on his phone, and the lady is
standing behind the counter.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
As soon as he scanned mine.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
She said, oh my god, Sally, I thought it was you,
and then said I listened to the podcast and I'm
so sorry for everything you've gone through, and.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
She actually started crying.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
She gave me a hug, and then we got up
to the lounge and my name got called out and
I went round to the counter and one of the
ladies said to me, oh, the lady downstairs has just
upgraded you to business and I went, oh my god,
that is so nice of her, not expected at all,
but thank you so much. Anyway, one of the girls
close to us in this was going through a pretty
(10:34):
bad situation last year and her world had just literally
turned on its head. So I sort of just went
straight into let's do something mode, and of course put
the call out and everyone just came amazingly once again. Anyway,
one of her sons, it was his eighteenth birthday. I
put a call out and said, if anyone was able
to make a cake, I'd be happily pick it up
(10:56):
and I'll take it to them. So anyway, I've driven
to her house and remembering too, we were wearing masks.
I come to the door and she presents me with
this professional box with a massive cake in it, which
was divine.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I was like, are you a professional cake.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Maker because this looks amazing, and she said, but I
wanted to let you know we have met before, and
I said, oh have we? She said, I'm the lady
who saw you that time when you came through the
Cornice lounge and I went, oh my god, how are you.
So we started chatting and I was telling her about
our trip at that point, because it was a couple
of weeks before, and she said, give me the flight
(11:32):
details and I'll see if I can get you and
Johning into the lounge.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
So we arrive at the airport, we walk.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Into the corners lounge and sitting at the table with
her partner is longtime friend of mine. Her name is Elkie,
and we were chatting and Elkie just started talking to
me about this moment in time that she remembered.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
I was there the morning that mister and missus Wilson
walked into bryce street of my grandparents' house.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
And we're told by the Salvation Army that they had.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
Found and that she had said she didn't want anything,
and they had looked back to Jesus Wilson.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
That was the story, and I was sitting in the
front room.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
It makes me want to vomit a little bit, yeah,
because you know, they never found her.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
They never found it was said. I listened to the inquest.
I said, that's a look, that's a lie.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
That never happened. That's a lie.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Because I was there that morning, I.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Felt a bit nervous. I felt a bit weird for me.
This is a big thing. It had taken you and
I nearly all year and a lot of planning to
get to that actual point, and I couldn't quite believe
that we were leaving our families.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
It just under a month.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Yeah, it was quite a big thing for us to do,
I think, just to put ourselves in that position, and
it was a little.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Mental sid command.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
Just passing to such like coach on the side at
thirty six.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Thousand wrong in Tokyo on time. What is our main
game coming to Nareda. We want to find evidence.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Any marriage, any any kind of evidence of her in Japan.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
We need to clarify that she definitely came into reapration. Yeah,
not really everything cross that we'll be able to get
that information because that is important because that contradicts what
was the findings at the inquest into Tokyo Passages.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Group must now take the.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
We've arrived in Japan, and we sort of wanted to
follow the footsteps of Rick Blum and experience the whole
bus out to Narita. Yes, I'm staying in the hotel.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Can I please get an envelope in middle? Do you
normally have them in the room? I think there is
an en bit of author Oh you think there is
upstairs in the room? Is that normal?
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Is it normally.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Inside the room.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Oh okay, I just this is My mum sent me
this back in nineteen ninety seven from you, and she
wrote to me on your notepaper. But she's actually a
missing person. So I've come here to retrace and try
and find out what's happened to her. So that's why
(14:43):
I wanted to ask you about the envelopes, if they
were in the room, or if she would have had
to ask you for an envelope at the desk. Let's
talk about our first day. We woke up to a
rainy day. There was lots of bamboo surrounding the hotel,
and I remember looking out the window. We are in
(15:04):
Hotel Niko Narita, my mama's birthday today.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I honestly never thought that I would be here.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
That's kind of a spin out for me and Janie
and I are about to head off. We're gonna go
downstairs today. We've got the chapel here and we want
to go and see if we can get records of
any sort of marriage or any indication that mum was here.
And then we're heading off into Narita to go into
(15:35):
the town square. We're meeting my cousin Simon who's taken
a few days off to come and help us, which
is super kind of him. That's Degree's son and he
lives over here and he is married to his Japanese wife, Emiko,
and they have two boys, and I think we're catching
up with them as well at some point having dinner.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
And we've got.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
This is what's been spinning me out, is the note
paper because it's identical. I've just done a comparison to
mums because I've bought the letter that mum sent me
and the notepaper is identical, which is just bizarre to
think after twenty seven years.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
And I want to.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Prove that my mum actually did come here because that.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Was not the result from the inquest.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
We're here on a mission to prove that theory wrong.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
So let's hope we go and get some answers. Today,
on our first official day of the research trip.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
We had a very busy day planned.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
We only were staying two nights at hotel in Nico
and Nrita before heading into Tokyo, and we had planned
to meet early with my cousin Simon, so we were
just sitting there having a coffee. We literally were heading
over to Narita City Hall, and there we spoke to
a lovely man who took an interest in helping us.
He did speak English, and he was there to help
(17:01):
us understand the rules around getting married in Japan.
Speaker 7 (17:05):
And so they do a search for records just to
say whether there's a marriage interesting Marian within that day range.
They need to fill in some special forms and be
different for every country, so he has to spend some
time to say, Australia, this is what we need, and.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Since I'm in Japan, it's easier. I'm the request.
Speaker 7 (17:30):
I think I might need some of these type of documents, right,
actually maybe I should get a copy.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
So I would go to him on.
Speaker 7 (17:37):
One of these days and he would talk to his
boss where he explain the story, show him the libiot,
and they might come back and say they need something else,
something again, and eventually they would fill in the form.
He said it would take at least one or two weeks,
possibly a month for them to process the request. And
all they'll do is say yes or no. They're not
going to show us the certificate or the interviews.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
But if we can get a.
Speaker 7 (17:59):
Yes, if you give you just know yes the birth
place and that's pretty into partment and interesting information.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
I mean, there was a lot of theories around the
whole marriage and the whole wedding thing within Japan where
people would have gone. There was a whole hipp of
research that was done by researchers about this, but we
really needed to find actual proof of this and records
and things like that. So that's why we went to
the city hall because the whole idea of it was
(18:29):
if they were only there for a very short time,
and if they, I say, Marion and Rick Bloom were
staying at Hotel Nico Nerita, then that would be the
obvious place where any records coming from the chapel within
the grounds of Hotel Nico Nearita would have landed. So
we basically we were going there to see whether there
was any records there.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
So we were basically.
Speaker 7 (18:53):
Were most impossible legal marriage and toolhi.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Is and we assumed that we wanted it.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
I wanted to hear it from somebody who works here,
and I thought, I just said to Journing because we
saw the tops up, whether it was worth coming here.
We both are the same opinion that you'd have to
be legally bound to do it, and he wouldn't have done.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
That, and you have to get a certificate of single.
There's a whole lot of time.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
And we went through this morning. It's all different.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, and you have to have a passport in your
name from your country.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
And also it doesn't make sense to me because I know,
why would you link link It's no benefit to him.
All it needs is to look down the island and
chapel that's right. I mean she was happy to marry Rayne,
you know, like to be fair.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
And so after that, you remembering it was mum's birthday.
You'd actually found a Buddhist temple, this beautiful Buddhist temple.
And if you haven't been to a temple before, you
actually have to cleanse or you're supposed to cleanse yourself
with the water before you actually enter. So people wash
it over their face and wash it all over their
hands before entering. And I remember there was just a
(20:01):
haze of smoke.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Do you remember that?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
And it was all like I kept going, it's everywhere,
like it was all over us for the remainder of this, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Because they burn it burns twenty four to seven. Yeah,
while we went there was for the And I apologize
if any of these words are said incorrectly. The Agoma prayer,
which is a very special prayer and it's a ritual
brought back from China, and it involves burning of special
(20:30):
firewood and making a big flame for the fulfillment of
the wishes of the audience and the worshipers or whoever comes.
So it's quite stunning. It's been around for one thousand
and eighty years. I just really felt that if we
did have the time, it would be quite nice for
(20:52):
you to go and just do that and give something
of your mum for that blessing. So that's what you did,
and what did you bring?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Well, we have to purchase like the little piece of
wood and then you write on it.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I just wrote the missing matter Marion matters, and I
asked them.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
To help me find my mum.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
So.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Happy the same mum.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Would be seventeen on them today, eternal, eternally.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
I loved.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Very sad that I haven't boundary yet.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
A Buddhist temple.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
And just written a wish for you.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Did I find you?
Speaker 2 (22:00):
I'm gonna go in and sit down now for about
twenty five minutes with there's smoking ceremony, and just take
twenty five minutes to think of you and think of
the journey that we're on finding and so then you
(22:23):
pop that in amongst all the other wishes, and then
they actually burned the wishes in their smoking ceremony.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
So I lit a.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Candle for Mum, being that it was her birthday, and
then we took our shoes off and we went and
sat in on the Buddha blessing, which was quite emotional
for me, to be honest, I did have tears in
my eyes because it was just like the drums and
everything were just pounding through my chest as I'm sitting
right next to it.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
You see that symbol next to the drum, and they're.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
All sitting there humming, and I could just it was
just quite a powerful thing to do. So I'm really
grateful that you took time to think about that, because
I was too busy doing all the other stuff to
think about doing just stopping for a minute and having
a breather, because you know, it was an important day.
It was Mum's birthday, and you know, I feel like
that was a really beautiful thing to be able.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
To do for her.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
So once we left the temple, we all went back
to Hotel Nicnareta and I just sat down and we
decided we'd have a coffee and I bought a.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Little cake for mum.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And after we had the cake and just had a
moment to think about her again, we approached concierge at Hotelnicna,
Rita and asked them if they could help us talk
to somebody at the chapel. And we walked into this
room and they sat us down with all wedding videos
playing around us, and wedding dresses on display and suits
(23:54):
on display, and there was a hair dressing salon and
I'm like, oh, wow, so people literally come here, they
pick a dress, they whack it on with their suit,
they walk downstairs and go and get married.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
I was like, oh, this is actually a thing.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yes, But they came down and usd us to sit
and wait, and then someone from the chapel came down
and got us, and he took us down into the.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Actual chapel and we're standing in there.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
They had told us that there used to be an
older chapel and we were standing in the very new chapel.
So this chapel was not there in nineteen ninety seven.
There was a different chapel that was no longer in action.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Or being used.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
He was very clear to us that you can't just
walk in and get married in air so two foreign
people walking in wouldn't be allowed to just walk in
and get married.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
They didn't have records.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
We asked him if they had archives, and they did
go off in check and triple check, but they came
back and said, unfortunately, they don't have records going back
to nineteen ninety seven. Unfortunately we didn't find anything with
relation to whether or not mum was married in Japan
to Rick Blum.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
So our next stop was Tokyo.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Up the next morning, we're heading back to the airport
and downstairs at the airgeport in Narita, you actually walked
down to catch the train.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Well, primarily we were going into Tokyo obviously to find
out about the immigration and whether try and at least
see if we could apply for those records based on
the documentation that you had post the death certificate and
all the probate sort of processes.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
So this is you reaching out to them before we'd
left Australia to find out what information was available and
whether we could access or not.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
That's correct, Yeah, So I had a number of phone
calls with them that is basically what we were aiming
to do on that day was to try to get
the movement records. Simon came with us, and Simon's son
as well.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
If he speaks fluent, he was.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
To do, yeah, to do the interpreting.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
But and so we arrive.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
And then we were called up to a little booth
and the gentleman behind the counter he didn't really understand.
He couldn't speak English. I can't speak Japanese.
Speaker 8 (26:28):
So if this is true, and if if there's a
record of it, but they say they keep records, so
if it exists, it exists.
Speaker 6 (26:35):
But what's the earliest year that they do have records
for if you could ask?
Speaker 2 (27:00):
And there was a form that he gave me that
he started asking me to fill in, but we soon
realized that the form wasn't really relevant because he was
asking me to fill it in from my perspective, not
from mum's perspective. And we literally just wanted him to say.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Whether or not she landed in Japan or not, and
he would not tell.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Us that she wrote to me on a notepaper from Japan,
so I don't have any proof that she came here.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
And I'm trying to get proof that she arrived in Japan.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
I don't even need to see the documents really, I
just like if he could tell me that she definitely
came to Japan, I'd be happy with that, and the
date that she left. It's just that she because she's
a missing person, so it's important to get clarification to
know that if she was in Japan, she definitely stayed here, because.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
That's what she's written to me.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
So that's the whole purpose. There's not really a lot
in it.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
I don't see the value in me paying lawyer another
lawyer to.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Tell me whether she was here or not. If he
could just say that to me, that would be very helpful.
I don't know what to do. I don't can you
just say to him?
Speaker 2 (28:08):
So what's my options is to find a lawyer, pay
for a lawyer, and then get the lawyer to send these.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Forms to these people.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Has he got a card or something like gift to him?
Speaker 8 (28:20):
Like you, it's an option, So it's not you, But
you can go through here, which is the place which
is basically here, so there's no need because it will
be from the lawyer. So okay, it's a different route.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Yeah, you're a thank you a couple of thousands.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
And I remember being quite grinded by this because he
kept laughing, and I'm like, this is actually quite stressful
for me.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
From my perspective.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
I've just gone through absolute helen back to get this
death certificate in both names so that we can access
her in coming and out going passenger information all over
the world, was my thought, because I had this piece
of paper from the Supreme Court in Australia which deemed
me to be able to do that, and he said
that document does not apply here in Japan. Australian documents
(29:18):
don't apply here. Really, sorry. The best bet is to
for you to engage with a Japanese lawyer and then
they will have to access that information to get the file.
And I was just beside myself. I'm like, okay, so
I need to jump through more hoops just to find
out whether my mum landed here in nineteen ninety seven
or not. We had a really tight window, as I
(29:40):
talked about before, We had that eight days and it
was like, why is this so difficult?
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Why can't you? And even Simon kept jumping in.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
He's like, she's a missing person, she's deceased, so she doesn't.
She's not alive anymore. And he kept saying, oh, you
need to get her to sign a document to allow
you to do it. I'm like, you're not understanding. She's
not alive for me to ask her to sign a document.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
If you post it to them in the.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Mail, there'll be some deercut there.
Speaker 7 (30:04):
They're opening the see this form and it's like they'll
take a check book and you just want them to
throw it over there to the next instead, which would
be easier for them if they can just kind of give.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
It a glance without all the other added complications.
Speaker 7 (30:16):
Simple just like them, and maybe don't you could not
do any idea at all, right, that's another option. Maybe
I could do one without it's even happens, and they.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Might just look at it and toss it.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
With him and then you know land.
Speaker 7 (30:35):
You could also try Histralian lawyer letter saying you know
this from the head, you know please, something like that
to make it kind of scary, and then it's actually
makes it a little less likely because I'll pass it
on to the day become bureaucratic. But that's why the
simple one, just going through the cracks, it's probably the
(30:58):
best chance.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
So One of the other little side projects that we
did while we were there was just looking into any
coin shops or antique places or anything like that where
we were hoping that there could have been someone there
that over the years that may have had some kind
of interaction with Rick Bloom. I don't know if you
remember that he actually spoke about giving some Japanese coins
(31:24):
to one of the managers at the Amsterdam airport with
Japan Air. So 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 you didn't know
where you MAMO was, and then when Rick Bloom came along,
(31:46):
or Frederick de HEEVERI it was quite early in the
peace when we found out that he actually had a
company called Balina Coin invest So we go.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Back in a timeline just to help people who haven't
been listening to the Lady Vanishers. You met me in
May of twenty nineteen, so we launched the podcast the
first of April twenty nineteen. You find the ad in
the paper with the name RAMACKURL linked to a Lennox
Head post office box and phone number.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
That was in the May of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Then I get an email from a gentleman who wants
to remain anonymous, who says, I've gone down to the
local library at Balana. 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 Baalano Cooin Invest. You and I then did a
massive search with him. He actually did the assex search
(32:39):
on that.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Name, didn't he with it? Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
He did that and he found the name of the
owner of Balin cooin invest was Frederick de Heavidery and
Diane to Heavidairy.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Yes. So I rang around the local coin dealers there
and I happened to speak to a very old, very
well known dealer called Jim and I actually called him
and this is what he said. He said, oh yes, Rick.
Now at this stage I wasn't expecting him to actually
(33:10):
know anything. I was expecting him to know Barry Cooper,
That's who I was aiming to try and connect with.
So when he I don't know if you remember, but
when he said, oh, yes, Rick, the Belgian, Yes he's
living in the foothills of Byron Bay. He's in his
early eighties now. He's looking to put some coins in
(33:30):
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 you thought it was hilarious that
I was asking about this person. Like people are probably wondering, well,
so what Like he was a coin dealer, you know,
a big deal. What's this got to do with Marian
(33:52):
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. A perfect way to affectively lawned ill
gotten gains. I'm not saying that mister Bloom did this,
and that was the reason why he was a coin dealer.
(34:13):
From what I understand, he was very knowledgeable.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
You're talking about buying a coin that is worth fifty
thousand euros.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Yeah, that's through gold.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Coin that sits in your wallet, and when you're coming
through customs, they're not looking at your coins in your wallet.
And the little amans terms is what that's saying.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Yeah, yeah, so an ancient coin. I mean it could
just be a beaten up old coin that you wouldn't
even look twice at within a mix in your hand.
That was how it's explained to me. 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 you are
(34:53):
Australian that you can bring in him. So therefore I
just thought that we'd see if there was someone exists
in Tokyo, especially that may have known him, that we
should really go along. So that was what we did.
I want to ask you a question, do you know
I don't know Frederic. They had a very or his
(35:20):
name was Willie Wooters. No coin dela, yes, okay, never,
he's never traded with.
Speaker 7 (35:32):
You, not traded, No, No, okay.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Every day for people come to my shop, I can't remember.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Everybody halfa I can, okay, many men come every day, of.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Course, yes, no, I understand. So we ended our trip
in Japan going to the Meiji jing Ju Temple in Shabu. Yeah,
one of the things that we did want to do
was to have Sally write a message on a plaque
and hang it on the wall there of the temples.
So that was what we did on that final day.
(36:19):
She actually wrote the Missing Matter Marion Matters.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
And I had it in me.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I said to you, let's pull up how to write
it in Japanese. Some people actually who were Japanese could
read it as well. So I'm there with my black
pen writing it in Japanese.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
We hung it up.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
There and among the thousands, and just the hope that
one person might read it and think what is that
about and just take a moment. And I guess at
the end of the day, this whole podcast and the
whole talking about all of this, it just comes back
to the fact that missing persons do matter, and that
the people who are missing shouldn't be forgotten. So hence
(36:57):
why this storyline is about my mum, but it stems
back from all missing persons and you know we really
should remember them and that they do matter. So we
left there with hundreds and thousands of wishes and prayers.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
We did and on our way to London to London
in the next episode of The Missing Matter, or.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
We went to London because we had a few things
we needed to do. We needed to go to the library,
and we also needed to go and visit a massive
coin dealer in the UK that we have some information
that really potentially connects Mum and Rick Blum at the
same time in London, and of course
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