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June 25, 2023 79 mins

Alison and Sally meet with Evelyn, the daughter of Ric Blum, before Alison and Evelyn travel to Belgium to unravel more of her father’s intricate past. Spotlight, Seven’s current affairs show, captures the incredible new developments. 


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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
This is the case of Marion Barter, a mother, teacher, friend,
missing for twenty six years.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
You know, no sign that she was going to vanish.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
That's for sure.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
The bizarre circumstances surrounding her disappearance.

Speaker 4 (00:29):
I'm not sure if it was intentional or there's something
more foul afoot.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
If you could imagine a teacher coming straight from say
little house on the prairie to the eighties, that was
Marian Barter.

Speaker 5 (00:40):
What I say, whether.

Speaker 4 (00:43):
You find Marian Barter dead or alive, I honestly believe
somebody has that key piece of information.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
And the relentless quest of a daughter to find her mum.

Speaker 6 (00:55):
Something had happened, Something has happened to make her leave.

Speaker 4 (01:01):
I am one hundred percent sure, one hundred percent sure
that somebody knows something.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
The Lady Vanishers episode fifty one, I'm Alison Sandy.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
And I'm Brian Seymour.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
On the eighteenth of January nineteen seventy a baby girl,
a loner. Evelyn Jacqueline Wooters was born a King George
the Fifth Hospital now known as Royal Prince Alfred Hospital
in Sydney. Her twenty three year old Hungarian born mother
was a loner Wooters knie Kinsel. Her father was thirty

(01:45):
years old and listed as a Belgian born photographer named
Willie Wooters, just one of the dozens of names he'd
be known by throughout the course of his life. The
couple had married only a year prior, and much of
the child's early life would be spent with her grandmother
in Brussels, Belgium. Everyone called her Evelyn. Old photos of

(02:11):
Evelyn as a toddler show her smiling warmly with dark
eyes and a shock of golden curls. Another has a
beaming cheekily as her young mum pulls her in tightly
for a hug. But troubled times lay ahead for this
little girl, triggered by the premature death of her mother.

(02:33):
At the age of just thirty one, Elona Reed was
found slumped in the driver's seat of her stationary car
in Melbourne at five point fifteen pm on July thirteenth,
nineteen seventy seven. She had apparently divorced Willie Wooters by

(02:55):
this stage and married Michael Reid. Alona hadn't been involved
in a crash. There were no marks on her body.
An autopsy found nothing wrong with most of her organs.
At the time, it was put down to a heart attack.

(03:15):
Her death certificate, registered in the Australian state of Victoria,
lists the cause of death as myocardial ischemia, which occurs
when blood flow to the heart is obstructed by a
build up of plaques, which can happen slowly over time
or quite rapidly if a blood clot forms or there
is a spasm in an artery. Tissue samples were taken

(03:38):
from a body to be tested for toxicity, the evidence
of poison or other substances. The coroner's report reveals there
was a gruel light material in the stomach and there
were no drugs, medicines or poisons present. However, a paper

(03:59):
trail over several months shows chronic delays to the testing,
especially to the third type of chemical tests the analyzes
for poisons, so that even by March the following year,
some eight months later, the death certificate still had not
been issued. There was a major backlog in the government
pathology laboratories. A complaint regarding the delay was made to

(04:25):
the Ombardsman by law firm Morris Blackburn because Alona Kinsell's
case was connected to a worker's compensation claim. The beneficiaries
of this claim were listed as her dependence. The Ombudsman
states that it was quote an alleged unreasonable failure on
the part of the government pathologists and others to complete

(04:46):
the necessary tests to determine the cause of death of
the late missus Reed. Alona was a hairdresser who worked
for the Edward Bill Salon. The claim is significant and
we would discuss it more in a future episode. Alona
was buried in an unmarked grave. Not only did Evelyn

(05:09):
lose her mother in nineteen seventy seven, she also lost
her maternal grandmother, and not long after a loner's brother,
Evelyn's uncle, also passed away. At just seven years old.
The age of innocence was over for Evelyn, who became
subjected to ongoing abuse, neglect, an abandonment of which she

(05:32):
would spend the rest of her life trying to overcome.
When we first found out about Evelyn a few years ago,
I rang her several times and left messages. I heard
nothing back. Earlier this year, I reached out again, and

(05:53):
this time Evelyn picked up the phone. We started talking,
and weeks later she agreed to talk to us publicly
about her father, her life, and even meet with Marion's
daughter Sally. Hello, Hi, I'm Sally. Hi.

Speaker 7 (06:10):
Amazed too.

Speaker 5 (06:13):
I feel a bit shaky too, so I'm not quite
sure what to say.

Speaker 8 (06:16):
That's okay, that's okay.

Speaker 6 (06:17):
We can just stay here and just yeah, We've got
a lot, a lot to talk about.

Speaker 8 (06:24):
I'm very sad about your mom. Like, yeah, I'm sorry, Yeah,
I'm I've just been sad.

Speaker 6 (06:30):
For your mom for a long time and I had
to I knew something wasn't right, and I just needed
to find you, and I just needed to That's what
I felt like anyway, So I'm glad I found you, perfective.

Speaker 4 (06:42):
It's amazing to me. Thank you so much for acknowledging
that I've always been so I don't know, just felt
a bit crazy for thinking that anything terrible had happened
to my mum.

Speaker 6 (06:54):
I'm sure it's I'm the same. Like, it's hard to
sort of put it into a clear perspective.

Speaker 8 (06:59):
So yeah, yeah, our moms. That's hard in itself, isn't
it not.

Speaker 4 (07:05):
Yeah, Yeah, it's been a hard journey not having a
mother growing up.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Evelyn and Sally's meeting was filmed for a special episode
Channel seven's Spotlight series with reporter Liam Bartlett, this.

Speaker 8 (07:20):
Islamus to me.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
It was nerve racking for both of them, but especially Evelyn,
who has never been on television before or spoken publicly
about her difficult and traumatic upbringing.

Speaker 4 (07:33):
I'll be right, how am I? Yeah, there's a plaza
than chess my starts running.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Evelyn and Sally share many similarities. Both have lost their
mothers in suspicious circumstances. Both worry and wonder about the
events surrounding their mother's deaths, assuming that Marian is indeed deceased,
which is what both Sally and the News Arthwall's police
have said they believe. In addition, both Sally and Evelyn

(08:05):
know that their mothers were involved with the same man
before they died, a man using different names.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (08:12):
I mean, I just always felt like something had happened
to my mother, but there's just no way to get
anywhere with it. Just the fact that I felt that
something had happened to her, and I had an instinct
that whatever it was was nefarious and dark. That that

(08:35):
alone is what made all the people in my realm
treat me like I was pretty crazy. So that was
really my experience growing up with it.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
But you still have those thoughts. You still think that.

Speaker 4 (08:51):
I still have those thoughts now, but it's different because
it caused so much pained me to be treated that
way by everyone around me that eventually I had to
go through a process where I had to let it
go so that I could live my life, because otherwise

(09:11):
I was probably going to die myself. There's no way
to live with that amount of sort of trauma and
the dysfunction of relating to people from a place of
that much trauma. So that was sort of my journey,

(09:32):
and it was a long journey and a challenging journey.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
Can I ask, I mean, this is a if I
might say, I mean, it's a difficult mix, though, isn't it?
Because he is still your biological father.

Speaker 5 (09:45):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
It's worth noting here before Evelyn answers Limb's question that
she has been estranged from Rick Bloom for most of
her life and didn't even know of his existence until
she was in her teens.

Speaker 4 (09:58):
Although I don't see him as my father, he din't, no,
I mean, I do understand, and in my thirties year,
the last time that I met with him, and you know,
I was left in a way that was very scarring
to me, where again I thought something terrible was happening.

(10:20):
I thought that maybe this person was trying to hurt
me in a bad way.

Speaker 5 (10:26):
And on the other hand, he's my biological father.

Speaker 4 (10:29):
So the combination of those two things was just it
left me scarred, and I have completely disassociated myself from
him as a relative of.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
Mine for a good reason.

Speaker 5 (10:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (10:45):
Well, someone said to me once and it was kind
of fitting at the time because we just had Ella
and someone a friend of Chris has said, you know,
anyone can be a father, but it takes a lot
to be a dad, And I think that resonates with
me with this as well, Like he can be your father,
but he's not your dad.

Speaker 5 (11:06):
No, he's not my dad.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
That's very sad. But the reality, if I might say, Sally,
it's fair, isn't it to say from your position that
you think evilence biological father has had something to do
with your mum's disappearance something.

Speaker 6 (11:27):
Look, it's hard because I can't say that he definitely has.

Speaker 8 (11:32):
But if I look at all the facts, and I'm
a pretty.

Speaker 6 (11:34):
Level headed human, I'm not someone who jumps through into craziness.

Speaker 8 (11:38):
And if I look at all the statistics.

Speaker 6 (11:40):
And all of the facts and all of the modus
operandi that I've been presented, it's pretty fair to say
that he's probably knows something that he's not telling me.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
You haven't reached the definitive conclusion because you can't.

Speaker 8 (11:53):
I can't yet, And it's hard for people to understand.

Speaker 6 (11:55):
Like everyone looks at the facts and goes, oh, well,
you know, we think he didn't like I can't say
that yet, but.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
You think on the balance of probability that he's had
something to do with your mum. I have to disappearing.

Speaker 6 (12:07):
I have to consider that my mum changed her name
to his name. She went overseas the same time as him,
she came back the same time as him, and all
of her know and whereabouts and money coming out of
her bank account and being in that location were where
he was living.

Speaker 8 (12:21):
And he's still living today.

Speaker 6 (12:22):
So I cannot not think that there is some connection
somehow to rip Blum. And he admits to having an
affair with my mum and a relationship with her. And
if you look at all the other ladies that have
come forward for no reason of their own, they've just
come forward and said, hey, this happened to me as well,
and you can imagine how compacting that is. Like, I

(12:47):
just felt like every time something happened, I would just
be and throw me back ten meters and that I'd
have to keep coming forward.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
So, Evelyn, how do you process that connection with Sally?
You've lost to your mum tragically very young age. There's
that connection. You both lost your mother's but your father
may or may not have been involved. How do you
work that out in your mind now in front of Sally?

Speaker 5 (13:17):
Well, I personally feel that my connection to Sally is
based on the fact that both of us lost our mother.

Speaker 4 (13:23):
Yeah, and I feel that way too, nothing to do
with any connection to Rick Bloom the man, but rather
what we both went through for losing our mums. And
even though you know it seems to me that he
is guilty of something, I also have to pinch myself

(13:48):
to realize that he potentially did these terrible things. But
what terrible things did he do? We none of us
really know. We have to hopefully find out. Maybe he'll
tell us.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
Have you been thinking about this meeting for a while.

Speaker 4 (14:04):
I didn't know it was ever going to get to
meet Sally, and I didn't know if Sally would want
to meet me.

Speaker 5 (14:09):
I didn't know whether.

Speaker 4 (14:12):
People would in some way try to put me in
some context with him as a relative, which I was
very frightened of. But I, after only recently becoming aware
of Sally's story long story, I just wanted to give
you're a hug.

Speaker 5 (14:34):
That's it, he too.

Speaker 6 (14:36):
As soon as I found out about you. I need
to I need to find ever learn, and I just
want to give her a big hug because I know
what the feeling is like to lose your mum. I mean,
you were obviously a lot younger than me, but I
think even if you take all that away, you still
have things in life that you have to try and
cope with as a daughter of someone who's no longer

(14:58):
there to help you and not knowing what's actually happened
to your mum, Like that, you're the same position as me.

Speaker 8 (15:05):
I mean, I know you were young. How are we
seven seven and I.

Speaker 6 (15:10):
Was twenty four, So there is that age difference between
the two of us. And I feel lucky that I
got to see my mom, you know, and grow up
with her through my teenage years. But I just had
this overwhelming want to meet Evelyn and just give her
a hug and just tell her I'm here for her,
and I am someone who understands and is grappling with

(15:30):
the enormity of what this is and the craziness of
what it is.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
And you know, on the positive side, the long fight
that Sally has been waging and all the study and
the research in the background that she's been doing may
in fact help you.

Speaker 5 (15:46):
Yeah, amazing.

Speaker 4 (15:48):
It's so encouraging after what I've been through that there's
people out there, none of the people that were meant
to support me through life, but people complete strangers out
there believe that, yeah, something's gone on, and discovering what
that something is is something important as well. So and

(16:10):
hopefully if I can get a few answers, that would
be amazing. But at the same time, my mother is
dead and it'd be good to know what happened to
sell his mum.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
So, yeah, it's tragically sad your mum at thirty one
of them, it's just sad thirty one years old. Well,
what does the death certificate say?

Speaker 5 (16:32):
I actually can't remember the medical word for it.

Speaker 4 (16:36):
Her heart stopped. I did look it up in a
medical book. It said that it was overload of toxins,
but it's actually overload of toxins, overload of topic the
heart's inability. I think, you know, to sort of like
deal with toxins in the blood as it pumps it around.
But it's a very common cause of death. It's up
there with cardiac arrest. It's the environmental toxins. A lot

(16:56):
of people their heart can't cope. So there's no way
to really pin pointed as a as any.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
Thirty one, she must have had a lot of toxin
in her body.

Speaker 5 (17:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (17:06):
Well, and when I grew up, I got told things
like she had fever when she was a child and
had a weak heart, or she died of a broken heart.
There were some welfare papers where my stepfather had reported
that she died from suicide on those documents. So I

(17:26):
didn't really ever get a clear answer about it, and
I think that maybe I would have accepted it if
it wasn't for the fact that my grandmother died the
same year.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
Evelyn says her uncle Attila also died around this time.

Speaker 4 (17:40):
My uncle being only somewhere in his twenties, so much
younger than my mother, apparently of a stroke. I mean,
it's unheard of the first time when I was in
my twenties, and I thought, maybe this really happened. Maybe
I'm just, you know, having invented all this stuff in
my head because I can't deal with the trauma of

(18:01):
losing my mother. So I took myself off to the
doctor and I thought, if that's the case, I'd better
go and get checked out.

Speaker 5 (18:08):
Yeah, So I went to the doctor, told him.

Speaker 4 (18:09):
The history, you know, of the young age of the
you know, and the doctor was horrified. Round heaps of
tests on me came back everything was normal, So, you know,
I just it was just confusing growing up trying to
get answers.

Speaker 6 (18:23):
But I haven't had a chance to talk to Evelyn
about what we found either, And I hope it's okay
to tell you, but we actually have her autopsy report
and her heart is normal.

Speaker 5 (18:34):
Okay, times I worry telling that man normal.

Speaker 6 (18:40):
Well, they ticked her heart was functioning normally and there
was no damage to the heart. So on her death
certificate it said she'd had a heart attack and that
was at the hospital, and then the autopsy report came
back that the heart was normal.

Speaker 4 (18:52):
Why would a hospital put say one thing on a
certificate and an autopsy say something different?

Speaker 5 (18:59):
How would met.

Speaker 8 (19:00):
Another question in the abyss that we're trying to grapple with.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
That's amazing, But you didn't know this?

Speaker 5 (19:06):
No, how could I know something like that?

Speaker 8 (19:10):
Yeah, well no one.

Speaker 6 (19:11):
You know, it's come through archives, That's how that information's
come about.

Speaker 3 (19:15):
So if the autopsy report four evidence, Muma's saying that
her heart was normal, but what her body's full of toxin?
But to still die in those circumstances at thirty one,
and now, knowing all that we know about Rick Blum's background,
have the police interviewed you, Evely?

Speaker 5 (19:35):
They did call me, I had a phone call.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
Surely they've taken a statement.

Speaker 4 (19:41):
No, no, nothing, nothing at all.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
They haven't asked you to to turn up as a
witness to say something of the question.

Speaker 5 (19:50):
Nothing.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
Oh that's extraordinary. Do you think that's unusual?

Speaker 8 (19:55):
I have goose bumps.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
I mean, all this this is, you know, the and
then these circumstances surrounding the death of Evelyn's mum surely
are completely pertinent to the overall case the whole story.
Would you agree?

Speaker 8 (20:13):
Well, I think it's very important.

Speaker 6 (20:15):
Evelyn is a very and a loner, very important part
of this story, and hence.

Speaker 8 (20:21):
Why when we found out what we did, I was like,
you know, I need to find you.

Speaker 6 (20:27):
I need to give you a hug, and I I
was so sad to hear what happened to your mum
and shocked at the same time. And just my gut
feeling told me something wasn't right. And I have lived
my whole life with my mum going something's not right,
so I'm used to having a feeling of that, and
then I just go on this tangent I need to
find what's happened, and I need to look into it more.

(20:50):
And sometimes it leads me down rabbit holes that are
dead end, but sometimes I end up sitting next to
the person that we've been looking for. And it wasn't
like we were on a mission to find you either.
But I'm glad we found you because I feel like
I want to be able to I don't know, I
feel like maybe being open and honest about what I've

(21:11):
had to do and what we've found.

Speaker 8 (21:12):
And even with other people.

Speaker 6 (21:14):
Who have come forward, they've said to me, thank you
for just letting me speak and letting me be heard,
because like you said, you know, people thought they're crazy
and don't be ridiculous, and that's why they haven't come forward.
They've just sat back and gone, oh, people think I'm
crazy if I say something. But it's important that we

(21:34):
all you know. Strength in numbers is what I say
to my girls, who helped me all the time, and
we've got some amazing people like you said as well,
Like I don't have any family supporting me.

Speaker 8 (21:43):
It's my husband and.

Speaker 6 (21:45):
My kids or my mum's sisters have thought that I'm
crazy and that I should just leave it alone, and
it's upsetting for them. It's upsetting for me too, but
I feel like I have to do I have to
do something.

Speaker 8 (21:58):
Yeah, so it's the whole thing makes me shake. So
I'm so sorry.

Speaker 6 (22:08):
Oh it's fine, but I just yeah, I just want
everyone needs to be looked after and cared for and
treated with sensitivity and care.

Speaker 5 (22:20):
Right.

Speaker 4 (22:22):
Yeah, it's a bit of a process. I'm sorry. I'm
not trying to take you away from what you just said.
I'm just struggling to understand how professionals can deliver something
on one report and then people in a similar profession

(22:43):
like put a different cause of death onto a death certificate.
To that there's a conflict in what they're saying there,
how does something like that even even happen?

Speaker 6 (22:55):
And if it's true, you're right, and it's happened to
me as well, it's a great question. But on the
same level, whereas they said to me that they'd spoken
to my mum and she doesn't want anyone to know
where she was or what she was doing, and that
has proven to not be true. And then my brother
committed suicide thinking my mom had left him again. So

(23:17):
there's you know, we have spoken about this before, and
it's just there's an ongoing effect when people get it wrong,
or they say the wrong thing, or they document the
wrong thing, or you know. There was a reference in
documents that I found where a very high up police
officer said that it seems that Sally's seeking a scapegoat

(23:39):
for this situation. And I was like, you imagine reading
that when I'm sitting there, going, I'm just a child
who's looking for her mum. Yes I'm an adult, and
yes I'm now nearly fifty, but I've been doing this
my entire adult life, trying to find the answers. So
I understand what you say by that. How does a

(24:02):
document be so wrong? Like how something's not right there,
so it needs to be more investigation.

Speaker 4 (24:09):
And if it's not right, then is there a known
cause of death from my mother? If it's not her heart,
you don't know.

Speaker 3 (24:20):
It paints a very different picture potentially of what happened.

Speaker 5 (24:24):
Potentially if we can find out what happened.

Speaker 3 (24:28):
Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong, great that you
know finally that you have that information. But I completely
concur I mean I can completely sympathize. I mean, well,
you know, why would you have two different pieces of
information and so far apart.

Speaker 4 (24:49):
I mean, if we can't rely on documents that are
coming out of the medical profession, then how how to
uncover the truth? If the police are saying such terrible
things to you, how does the truth get found?

Speaker 3 (25:14):
Can I ask you both sort of individually, what is
your hope for each other?

Speaker 6 (25:19):
Well, I hope we can become friends and we can
actually be there as a support for each other.

Speaker 8 (25:26):
I think that's important for me.

Speaker 6 (25:29):
And it's kind of weird because we've just met, but
I feel like I know you and I feel like
I have a really deep love for you as a
person and go you know, you've been through a lot
and I am very I have a lot of empathy
for you for what's happened to you and what you've
had to deal with, and I'd just like you to

(25:49):
know that I'm here someone if you ever want to
have a coffee or catch up or go out for
lunch or something, because that's, at the end of the day,
that's what life is about.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
You know.

Speaker 6 (25:58):
We're both in our fifties, and you've got to make
the good out of the bad, you know, and these
are good moments out of a bad situation.

Speaker 8 (26:07):
I think we will find the answers. I must say.

Speaker 6 (26:11):
When I heard about your grandma and Blona's brother again,
and this is just me being someone who's been in
an investigative mode now for half my life, I instantly
just went something again not right there, Like what's happened
to the grandmother and the brother and why did they
all die in the same year? So I think that

(26:34):
needs to be investigated a little bit more too.

Speaker 5 (26:37):
Yeah, that's pretty amazing, amazing.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
Were they all living together?

Speaker 4 (26:42):
My understanding, which is it's not that I don't remember
what I was told. It's just that I've lived a
life where what I've been told hasn't been reliable.

Speaker 5 (26:55):
But I do remember what I was told. So there
was my grandmother was in.

Speaker 4 (27:01):
Brussels, she lived with her second husband, and Attila, her son,
was staying there.

Speaker 5 (27:08):
He had a partner.

Speaker 4 (27:09):
They'd had a child, I think a girl, but I
don't have any of those details. And my mother had
been two Brussels to visit. Then she came back to
Australia passed away, and then my grandmother who was over there,
passed away, and then Attila, who lived in the house

(27:31):
with her, passed away.

Speaker 9 (27:34):
And then so they all had been the three of
them had been together together in the same house in Brussels,
in Brussels, and they just happened to all die, and
they all, yes, within how many months of each other.

Speaker 4 (27:46):
I'm not one hundred percent sure. I remember when I
was seven. It's very difficult to put the time around it.
It was a condensed sort of a time frame.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
Incredible coincidence. Is that a coincidence or is that a pattern?

Speaker 5 (28:03):
You know? I just don't. I don't know. I just
don't know.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
It's amazing, as you say, I mean, because you know
you were such a little girl when your mom died,
that everything that you've been told essentially you know you've
had to rely upon.

Speaker 5 (28:21):
Well, I haven't been able to rely upon it.

Speaker 3 (28:24):
You know what I mean. So you've had to rely
upon it to be the truth when it may not be.

Speaker 5 (28:30):
Yeah, well, I've had to.

Speaker 4 (28:33):
Rely on my intuition, and then I've had to make
a decision within myself that I'm not going to get answers,
and therefore to try and let it go to some
degree so that I can get on with living my life.
And I don't think anywhere along my road, I don't

(28:55):
think I've felt that I could rely very much for
anything that's been said to me about my family, the
history events and how they unfolded. So it's all been
just a mystery to me, all of it. Who is

(29:16):
this person, how did they interact with that person?

Speaker 5 (29:18):
Who was who? I've got even my brother's birth certificate.
He's my stepbrother.

Speaker 4 (29:26):
He was born in Brussels, so it's in French, but
I had someone read it out to me. It's is
on there very clear that Willie Waters is his father,
which is the current Bloom. However, when I confronted Bloom
with that document, he denied that Chris was his son.
And when I confronted Michael with that document. He said, no,

(29:50):
Chris is absolutely my son. So both men agreed, but
he is a birth certificate saying something completely different. And
I think the explanation I was given for that particular
scenario was that my mother was still married to Willie
Waters when she came to Australia then married Michael.

Speaker 5 (30:11):
So she committed I can't remember the word biggery.

Speaker 4 (30:17):
Yeah, and so because Chris was then born in Brussels,
they couldn't put the correct details on the birth certificate
because they thought she.

Speaker 5 (30:26):
Was still married.

Speaker 4 (30:27):
Now I've been able to uncover since then. What a nightma.
This is just one document, one example. I've been able
to uncover since then. She was in fact divorced from
Willy Waters at the time that Chris was born, and
was in fact married to Michael Reid. So again, you know,
there's this document and yet everyone you know, I mean,
this has been my life has been like that.

Speaker 6 (30:50):
And it's the same with me, Like I don't think
my mum is alive, but it's something I have to
endure to find a peace, you know, healing. So I'm
still broken by what's happened. So I and I think
he probably are too. So we need to heal that,

(31:12):
and I think knowing knowledge is power, right, and information
helps you. For me anyway, just to know is enough
for me.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
Well, you're both very much on the same bus, aren't you,
which is really terrific because you know, ever, if Sally
can solve her mystery of her mum, that will surely
help you solve your mystery too.

Speaker 4 (31:34):
I mean, I hope so. But the reason that I've
come out is because I want to help you. And
whether I find answers or not, I've got a story
and my story might help get answers for what you're

(31:54):
going through. That's what That's what I hope for. I
feel really like.

Speaker 5 (32:01):
A for want of better.

Speaker 4 (32:03):
It's a care of duty to help in any way
that I can. It's really important. I may not get
the answers. I may get some, but I may not
get them on this journey, but the things that I
know and the things that I've been through might somehow help.

(32:23):
I don't know how, but hopefully they'll they'll help uncover more.

Speaker 8 (32:28):
Yeah, I'm very grateful.

Speaker 6 (32:30):
I know it's tough to rehash it all again and
bring it out, but I think there's a good purpose
in that for both of us.

Speaker 8 (32:40):
Yeah, to help each other.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
It's lovely, right, it's nice.

Speaker 5 (32:46):
That's good, so nice to meet.

Speaker 8 (32:48):
Finally, it's a weird feeling.

Speaker 5 (32:50):
It is weird.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
Well done, ladies, girl power.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
Girl power. Indeed, when the Lady Vanish's team launched our
investigation into the disappearance of Marion Barter more than four
years ago, nobody could have foreseen how many people, mostly brave,
courageous and strong women, would join us, not only those

(33:18):
who were directly affected and impacted by knowing Rick Bloom,
also the many concerned listeners wanting to help in any
way they can. And now, nearly twenty six years after
Marion disappeared, and one week after Evelyn and Sally's meeting,
we are returning to where we now believe this incredible

(33:39):
story actually started. Evelyn and Alison are boarding a plane
bound for Belgium, such a friend Tabler. There we continue
our investigation into the life and lies of Rick Bloom.

Speaker 5 (33:57):
And I don't cry very easily, and that's because I
will and truly run up the well.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
To get from Brisbane to Brussels, we take four flights.
The first to Sydney is only one hour, then a
seven hour flight to Singapore, fourteen hours to London and
finally one hour to Brussels in the afternoon. Upon arriving,
we take a taxi to the hotel and marvel at

(34:25):
the sights of Brussels on the way.

Speaker 4 (34:28):
So pretty, it's what I remember, cobble Stone streets, the
spell of the bakeries, the war falls in.

Speaker 10 (34:38):
Particular, and just the old buildings, because we don't have
this in Australia, like you know, really old like this,
so it to us it's it's like a fairy tale city.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
Evelyn reminisces about her brief time here when she was
a child.

Speaker 5 (34:54):
It's hard to.

Speaker 4 (34:57):
Really explain, how co have youful the familiarity, how it
feels even though I'm so different and far away from
all these I can't even speak the language.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
During our time in Brussels, we get a bit of
a history lesson on Belgium, discussion of the divide between
the Flemish who speak Dutch and the French speaking Belgians,
how expensive the country's rural family is, and which places
we needed to avoid accidentally wandering into at night. It's
the rivalry between Belgians with Flemish and French origins, seems

(35:35):
to have resulted in almost all of them being fluent
in English.

Speaker 11 (35:39):
Sue architect of that speaking. It was in the end
of the nineteenth century.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
With a population of more than two and a half
million people. Brussels is the headquarters of the European Union
and NATO. It's also famous for its waffles, chocolate and
various types of beer. Needless to say, when we reach
the hotel, we're exhausted and enjoy a good night's sleep
before meeting again for breakfast the next morning. I greet

(36:08):
Evelyn enthusiastically, who looks refreshed and ready for the day's challenges,
including being interviewed by me.

Speaker 5 (36:15):
It's good to see you too. I've been looking forward
to catching up and going through this with you.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
It's like just when we went and obviously went and
into it a bit on the plane and it wasn't
ready for it. Where the pictures of you as a child,
knowing what you know with your mum and knowing what
was ahead of you.

Speaker 5 (36:41):
Yeah, it was.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Heartbreaking.

Speaker 4 (36:45):
Yeah, I mean, I guess I don't look at those
photos very often, but when I do, I see a
little girl as well, and I always feeling does I
feeling in my heart, like I want to talk to her.
I just think that poor little thing, she had no
idea what was coming down the road in front of her.

Speaker 5 (37:08):
So you know, I just often I just want to
grab her and give her a little hug.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
For me too, Me too, As I said too, I
wish I got to raise her. I wish that I
was there for you at seven. It's kind of strange
hearing Evelyn talking about herself as a child and the
third person. But when you hear her story, you understand
Evelyn is not that little girl. She's had to reinvent herself.
While she's happy to be back in Brussels, her personal

(37:36):
journey is like the road we drove in on, very bumpy.
Not far from where we stay is the Grand Place,
the city's primary architectural tourist attraction. In the center of
Old Town. The square is decorated by seventeenth century buildings,
including the town Hall, the King's House, and the Brussels
City Museum.

Speaker 10 (37:56):
Oh here we are in.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
That square of Brussels. If I can do it justice.
But it looks amazing.

Speaker 6 (38:07):
What are you.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
Thinking, Evelyn? Being here?

Speaker 5 (38:10):
It's amazing.

Speaker 4 (38:12):
There's gold came from everything.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
And it's incredible and so I don't think there's anything
more Brussels than this. We're actually gonna have to find
out what all of this is.

Speaker 8 (38:25):
But it is beautiful.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
It is amagazine, and everyone has been so friendly. Who
could have been here. We've had no trouble with people
speaking English to us, have we.

Speaker 10 (38:38):
Everyone's been so helpful.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
It's lots of people, beautiful cafes, and it's just remarkable
with everything that we're doing, and you know, it's all
very serious what the purpose of being here is. We're
still just blown away by the beauty and the coldness.

(39:02):
Her day, it was so cold here.

Speaker 8 (39:06):
Cold.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Yeah it is cold and it's gray, but it's beautiful.
Back at the hotel, Evelyn shares with me her expectations
of this trip and her hopes of finding answers to
the mysteries surrounding her family. So, first of all, this
whole thing before we left, right, you were kind of
you know, you had a headache the night before and

(39:29):
you got at four am to pack, right, So what
happened then? You just sort of and because you just
move house, so in storage, you just kind of went
through and grabbed whatever you thought might be might be
useful in tracking down I guess. I guess the whole
purpose of this is to find out a little bit
more about your Belgian history, a little bit more about

(39:51):
what happened with your grandmother's estate, and of course what
Rick Blum did while he was here, and his involvement.

Speaker 5 (40:01):
His involvement definitely.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of startling.

Speaker 5 (40:05):
Kind of startling.

Speaker 4 (40:06):
Yeah, it's a little bit diabolical to me. And I mean,
it's just so clear to me that he lies, that
he lies about all sorts of things.

Speaker 5 (40:19):
But he's definitely has.

Speaker 4 (40:20):
Lied about whether he knows me or not, and his
involvement with my family. So I'm pretty keen to get
to the bottom of that.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
Evelyn and I are joined by the Spotlight producer, Dwayne Heavily,
and I show him some of the photos that Evelyn
brought with her, including remarkable images of her parents' wedding
and candid shots of them when they were courting. Some
of these other photos are the happiness, the love that
seems to be shown and he he's got such a

(40:50):
bored grin on his space. There is laughing with your mum,
and he looks so happy.

Speaker 5 (40:57):
They look incredibly happy.

Speaker 10 (40:59):
They do.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
And there the way they're looking at each other, it's
just true love by the looks of it, you know,
like it's just Yeah.

Speaker 4 (41:07):
You can imagine when I was quite young and I
got my hands on these photos, and it wasn't long
after I found out that my stepfather wasn't my father.

Speaker 5 (41:18):
I didn't know I had another.

Speaker 4 (41:19):
Father out there, and I got my hands on these photos,
and I I thought that, you know, I would find this.

Speaker 5 (41:28):
Man out there that would be a father to me.
They would love me.

Speaker 4 (41:32):
And look after me and care for me, because they
do look so incredibly in love. I never imagined for
a second after seeing these photos there'd be someone out
there who was more like a monster that I don't
want to have anything to do with.

Speaker 5 (41:49):
Wells looks like such a loving person. Yeah, so happy.
She looks happy. And I've got these photos. I don't
have the originals.

Speaker 3 (41:59):
Mm.

Speaker 4 (42:00):
The Gelgium Consulate actually had the originals of these and
pave me photocopies of things. And these were their arrivals.
Came to Australia. Her nine yeah, so they must be
was eleventh of September sixty nine and hers eighteenth sixty
nine September. The same month, and they've both referred to

(42:20):
each other as each other's spouses.

Speaker 5 (42:23):
Yeah, I'm there.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
So sixty nine they were definitely married. But if we're
talking so, she would have only been in her early
twenties and then you know, maybe she met him about
nineteen or yeah, something like that. But yeah, she's very young.
Like that picture is just wow, and they really are
of the era. Oh yeah, this one as well, So
that's their wedding day. She looks beautiful. She's got this

(42:45):
it's almost like a daisy dress. Yeah, a daisy dress.
And her hair is just immaculate. It's just up in
all these rolls at the back, and she's got a
little Oh my god, she just look out.

Speaker 5 (42:58):
How picky looks wedding day to her.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah, it looks like a genuine marriage.

Speaker 4 (43:06):
So she would have been pregnant with me when she
traveled out here in September sixty nine if I was
born January seventeenth.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
Yeah, and then this one is of.

Speaker 5 (43:16):
Yeah, that's my grandmother.

Speaker 4 (43:18):
That's her second husband, Joseph Bireau okay, and that's my mother.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
Okay. Joseph Birerou allegedly sexually assaulted Aloner as a teenager.
When Evelyn's grandmother died, he married his stepdaughter's best friend.

(43:43):
As mentioned earlier, not long after Alner's brother, Evelyn's uncle, Attila,
also died.

Speaker 4 (43:53):
I'm not one hundred percent certain because I haven't been
able to find any relative that can really share any
information with me about Attila.

Speaker 5 (44:03):
But he somehow suspiciously.

Speaker 4 (44:07):
I say suspiciously because it's suspicious to me that a
healthy twenty four to twenty five year old young man
just suddenly drops stead in the street from stroke. I thought,
and had always been there to believe that it was
nineteen seventy seven that they all died. But I'm not
one hundred percent certain anymore that Attila didn't die maybe

(44:29):
a couple of years after my grandmother and my mother.
I'm not sure, just because I've been reading some other
documents in the past few days, particularly the one was
it Alexanders.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
Alexander Evelyn is referring to Alexandra Piriboom, who we planned
to meet up with later in the day. Alexandra is
the daughter in law of Guilaine danois another victim of
Rick Blum, who alleges he stole seventy thousand euros from
her in two thousand and six, after she answered a
personal app in particularly, she also claims that Blum had

(45:02):
a morbid fascination with poisons.

Speaker 4 (45:05):
Said that she had found it may be him with
a deceased state of nineteen eighty one. Okay, so, which
would be making about twenty four to twenty five.

Speaker 5 (45:17):
Akay, I think.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
So we've got that situation we're not quite sure of.
But then we've also got the situation that we want
to resolve to try to find out what happened to
your grandmother's estate because he was involved. Rick Blum was involved.

Speaker 5 (45:34):
Yeah, somehow he was somehow involved.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
Were you in communication with him at this time, you
wouldn't have been with you. You didn't know about him,
is that right.

Speaker 4 (45:43):
We've got documents saying that he's made a private arrangement
with a lawyer around nineteen seventy eight. I didn't find
out that my stepfather wasn't my own natural father until
I was around the age of fifteen or sixteen, So no,
I had no idea to hear about him at all.

Speaker 1 (46:04):
He just did this on his behalf, saying that you
and Chris and Chris your brother were his, and he
just made he just made applications.

Speaker 5 (46:15):
Yeah, it is on that basis.

Speaker 4 (46:16):
It appears as though he's done something I'm not clear what,
but made some sort of a private arrangement in relation
to what the documents say.

Speaker 5 (46:27):
Are both his children.

Speaker 4 (46:28):
Myself and my brother Chris in nineteen seventy eight, and
it would be great to find out what those private
arrangements were.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
Well, that's what we partially while we're here, So we're
going to do that and hopefully that Alexandra's help. Can
you tell me about when you got in contact with him?

Speaker 7 (46:45):
You reached out to him, right, I reached out to him.
It was I think around in nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 5 (46:55):
Ninety five, and they.

Speaker 4 (47:00):
Belgium Consulate in Melbourne helped me to locate him under
the name Frederick Uh.

Speaker 5 (47:07):
They were familiar with who he.

Speaker 4 (47:08):
Was because he was regularly getting his international on Belgium
houseport updated with them for trouble, so they contacted him
formed They just called him.

Speaker 5 (47:19):
They just went straight into their files, called.

Speaker 12 (47:22):
Him and asked him if he was agreeable to meeting me,
and he said yes, and so they gave me a
phone number and said that he was happy to hear
from me.

Speaker 4 (47:36):
So that's how it was set up. I called him.
He said he was.

Speaker 5 (47:41):
Going to be in Melbourne sometime soon, he'd let me
know when, and then he came. I met him at
the hotel and we went out for a for dinner.
And that was my first meeting with him.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
So what happened there, like what happened at the dinner?
Do you remember anything or when you when you started
to discuss ditch Eurasia Mom.

Speaker 5 (48:02):
But yeah, we didn't. The first dinner, we didn't really
talk too much about anything.

Speaker 4 (48:06):
I was just so excited. I couldn't believe it. I'd
found my father. So I was just giddy with excitement
about that. We had dinner, had a briefcase with him,
and he told me over dinner that it was full
of cash because he just got back from overseas where

(48:27):
he had sold coins. He told me he was a
coin collect a dealer. I guess I was sort of
excited about that too. Being a single mother at the time,
I thought, oh, that's great, m he might.

Speaker 5 (48:39):
Help me pay the electricity bill. But uh, that was
that wash.

Speaker 4 (48:44):
We just had a a nice dinner, smiling at each
other a lot. I'd never had the experience before of
looking at somebody else's face and being able to see
some of the characteristics of my own face in their face.
Obviously I didn't grow up with that cause I didn't
have my mum there, and so that was like a

(49:06):
first time experience for me when I met him.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
Is that when he gave you this picture of your
half brother and sister.

Speaker 4 (49:14):
Not that day, no that, I think that might have
been the next time that he came. So after that meeting,
the memories are a bit clouded because it's so long ago,
and I do want to have to say anything that's
not accurate. But as I as I sort of as

(49:35):
my recall is, I think he was going overseas again.
He sounded like a big troubler and we had that
dinner like it was just constantly back and forth and
selling coins and collecting coins. He sounded very impressive, and
that when he got back, which would be some months
down the road, he would contact me again, come visit

(49:57):
next time at home.

Speaker 5 (49:59):
So that's sort of what happened.

Speaker 4 (50:01):
The next time he came to the house where I
was renting in the Fountain Gate, and that's when he
gave me the picture of his children born here in
Australia and said to me, he's also got more family,
got another brother.

Speaker 5 (50:14):
And sister, and here they are beautiful picture. He was
very proud of them.

Speaker 4 (50:22):
He spoke very highly of them swimming in Commonwealth Games.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
Were they were in the nationals. I don't know, has
no idea they might have got for the Wealth Games,
but they were definitely in the nationals. They were really
good swimmers. Mite and David.

Speaker 4 (50:37):
He was very proud. He talked about them a lot.
He spent all of his spare time at the swimming pool.
He personally coached his daughter into swimming. He was side
by side with his kids all the way through this.
He was very proud.

Speaker 5 (50:53):
I was a little bit jealous.

Speaker 4 (50:56):
He said that he and he said, I haven't told
them about you. Yeah, I can't remember. Maybe his wife
wasn't comfortable or something like that.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
I'm sure you were a struggling single mom at this time, right.
Did he say anything about your mom?

Speaker 4 (51:11):
Well, yes, he told me he said terrible things about
my mother. First of all, My main question for him was,
you know, why didn't you come and find me.

Speaker 5 (51:23):
Yeah, I mean I was sort of out here in
the world on my own. He told me that.

Speaker 4 (51:30):
He didn't know I existed, and that he didn't even
know that my mother had died, and only when the
consulate contacted him that that was the first time he
had ever heard of me.

Speaker 5 (51:44):
And ever knew that my mother had passed away.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
Well that's a lie. We already know that right away, yes,
straight away.

Speaker 4 (51:49):
Yeah, Well, but I didn't know that straight away when
he said that to me. I mean, I was obviously
perplexed by the answer, but I was really young, and
I was I was a victim of a lot of trauma,
and I hadn't unpacked all that trauma when I was
at that stage, so I didn't really have the the
common sense or the ability to unpack the things that

(52:10):
he said that made me feel uncomfortable, or to even
necessarily question them further. Because I was so fearful of rejection.
I really wanted a family, So yeah, I didn't question
him too much into that.

Speaker 5 (52:29):
But he said, s that's what he said to me.

Speaker 4 (52:31):
I remember feeling perplexed by his answer, But then he
went on to t to tell me that my mother
was a slut. What justification did he have for saying
that she wasn't she wasn't that good? She would go
out to nightclubs, she enjoyed partying too often.

Speaker 5 (52:49):
Really, she was just a slut. It just came. I don't,
I don't.

Speaker 4 (52:53):
I mean, it's not like we were having any conversation
that I recall that would lead a person to say
something like that. I was just a young woman wanting
to know about his relationship with my mother, which I
thought was a person that he loved, So it wasn't
something I expected to hear. I didn't answer to him

(53:13):
when he said that, but I remember thinking to myself,
you know, how can you speak like that about somebody,
my m my mother, your ex wife. How can you
say those things about someone and.

Speaker 5 (53:29):
She's not even alive to defend herself.

Speaker 4 (53:32):
Like I remember thinking, I'm a pretty mixed up person,
but even I wouldn't speak about somebody that's not there
to defend themselves.

Speaker 5 (53:44):
In that way. I thought it was really inappropriate.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
You're being stopped deprecating. I've been through a lot, So
tell me you did reach out to him for help, right,
And what he said when you did that because she
told him that you were struggling and that he couldn't
you know you needed help financially?

Speaker 4 (54:05):
Yeah, I actually I don't remember the question directly or
his direct.

Speaker 5 (54:11):
Response to it, but the conversation.

Speaker 4 (54:14):
Went to I, I think you know he's he couldn't
help me, was the answer that I got, but I
don't remember how that got said to me at all.
And then I moved on and asked him whether or
not he knew anything about what had happened to my
grandmother's estate, and he said that he was going to

(54:34):
be going to Belgium against sometime soon.

Speaker 5 (54:38):
He had a trip planned.

Speaker 4 (54:40):
And that while he was there he he may know
a relative or a friend of a relative of my
mother's that he can get in contact with, and that
he should be able to find something out for me,
and then when he comes back he would let me know.
And then when he returned he gave me the news.

(55:01):
That's when I decided that I never wanted to expect
him again. He said to me that there's an extended
family in Belgium that knew that alone had two children,
that those children were in Australia, and that the rumor

(55:22):
that people had heard was that a private arrangement had
been made whereby Joseph Verro would have the rights to
keep the majority of the finances from my grandmother's estate
and Michael could keep the daughter.

Speaker 5 (55:44):
That's what he came back and said to me. So, yeah,
he left, he left.

Speaker 4 (55:49):
My house, and my boyfriend at the time came home
and sort of found me sitting on the floor trying
to trying to I couldn't. I couldn't actually repeat what
had been said to me, like my brain was unable
to accept that I had heard what I had just heard.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Just to clarify here, the Michael Evelyn is referring to
is Michael read alone as widower and her stepfather.

Speaker 4 (56:21):
After that incident, I never wanted to speak to him again.
And then, you know, fast forward a decade or so later,
and another boyfriend and who thought it'd been really good
for you, you know, to get in contact with your dad.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
This is your lawyer one.

Speaker 4 (56:40):
The lawyer one, Yeah, it'd be really good for you.
And I said, you know, without telling him all of
the sort of the gory details of it. I did
tell him, you know, I didn't want to have anything
to do with him because he had said these terrible
things to me and that he'd called my mother a slut.
And my boyfriend at the time was just convinced that.

Speaker 5 (57:04):
I was.

Speaker 4 (57:07):
Maybe overdramatizing it, maybe even embellishing it a little bit,
and that if I wanted to heal from my past,
then I should go back there, reconnect with this man
and try and form a relationship with him and give
him a chance.

Speaker 5 (57:24):
And it's not that I wanted to, It was just
that I sort.

Speaker 4 (57:27):
Of the irony is is that I ended up thinking,
you know, he'll get off my back and it'll probably
help my boyfriend if I just contact him, and then
he can see what sort of a guy this person is,
and then you know, we'll be done with this sort
of ongoing.

Speaker 5 (57:45):
Input. And so that's what I did.

Speaker 4 (57:49):
Yeah, I don't remember whether I still had his phone number,
whether I contacted the consulate and got an updated number.
I don't remember how it all went down, but I
found him, called him and he was really cold on
the phone. And the thing is I decided never to
speak to him again. But it's not like in that

(58:10):
decade I overheard from him again either after he had
said those things to me. So there was I guess
some sort of a mutual feeling of not wanting to
have anything to do with each other, which I can't
ex explain. I don't have an explanation for that.

Speaker 5 (58:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (58:28):
So he was cold on the telephone, and I said,
I asked him. I said, oh, you know, like I
haven't heard from you and it's been a long time.
And he responded saying something like, why would I speak
to you. I put ten thousand dollars in your bank
account to help you, and you never even called me

(58:51):
to say thank you.

Speaker 5 (58:55):
Excuse me.

Speaker 1 (58:59):
Then I'll be so you said, well, I didn't receive
ten thousand dollars.

Speaker 4 (59:03):
Yeah, and he said, well, I'm going to go to
the bank and check what happened to that and find
out from my end, because I definitely paid you ten
thousand dollars. And then he called back and he said, oh,
somehow there was a mistake and that the transaction had
been lost, and now he was sort of a bit
friendly towards me.

Speaker 5 (59:23):
So straightway, it was a mistake.

Speaker 4 (59:27):
It was just that I had the pressure of a
partner at that time that really wanted me to just
sort of, I guess, try to connect with him and
to give him the benefit of the doubt, and so
I was trying to do that, even though the very
opening conversation was just a lie and an act and

(59:52):
an untrue accusation. It was a lot of things. So
we organized to meet. We definitely met three times. There
may have been four, maybe even five times over the
next few months.

Speaker 5 (01:00:05):
I think it was after that phone call.

Speaker 4 (01:00:07):
The last three times I met with him were the
three times that I remember the most. He was at
my home, my children were there. He met my children,
and he and I were sitting on the couch chatting.
He wanted to know the contact details of my stepfather

(01:00:29):
and said that I should provide them to him so
that he can rightfully seek revenge as my fathers.

Speaker 5 (01:00:38):
As it's what a father should do. And I think
I just exc I don't quite remember how.

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):
I just excused myself to the bathroom or toilet or
something the kitchen. I just said, oh, I don't really,
I don't really, I don't really do that, something like that.
And then he said, well, the least I can do
for you, then is teach you how you can poison

(01:01:08):
people so you can protect yourself if anyone tries to
hurt you. And so then he went through a I
guess a procedure for poisoning people. I'm not comfortable repeating it,
but I remember it the.

Speaker 5 (01:01:29):
The details of it vividly.

Speaker 4 (01:01:31):
It's etched in like in Hindi when they say a
sam scar, it's like a scar on your psyche. I
can remember every single word of that procedure. And what
he said was that if I was ever in need
of doing that, that the person would develop flu like symptoms,

(01:01:54):
maybe a cold, and then within a week or two
they would be dead, and that they would be a
trace of what had been done to them.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Pause for just a moment. Here in the paper trayal
of documents that we have access to that are connected
to Ilona Kinzil's death, there is a note that Elona
had attended a doctor Zigo just six days before her
death because of her tonsils. Whether that's referring to tonsilitis
or a sore throat, we're not sure. Anyway, back to

(01:02:26):
Evelyn and what she was told about poisons by Rick Bloom.

Speaker 4 (01:02:30):
It was obviously through food, a mechanism for turning food
into poison.

Speaker 5 (01:02:38):
He seemed quite proud, boastful even that he used to bury.

Speaker 4 (01:02:44):
People alive when he was growing up. That one of
the things that he liked to do in the village.
Him and some of his friends. Someone had harmed one
of the girls in the village, so they got the
guy and they buried him alone with hungry cats. And
that this is, you know, how they used to take

(01:03:04):
care of the people.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
Just to clarify, Evelyn is not saying any of this
actually happened, just that Bloom told her these stories and
that she felt he was trying to scare her.

Speaker 5 (01:03:15):
Yeah, I was pretty scared.

Speaker 4 (01:03:17):
I'd had a pretty colorful life myself and had managed
to always surround myself with some pretty dubos characters, and
I was very conscious of never hearing anything that I
thought would put me in danger or seeing anything that
I thought would put me in danger. I always had
that self protective sort of street wise. I grew up

(01:03:39):
on the streets. I was thirteen on the streets, so
I guess I had that street wiseness. And I think
that when he started sharing things like that with me,
inside my brain, I was just thinking, oh no, stop, stop,
stop talking, stop talking, because I felt like by him
sharing those things with me, it was putting me in danger.

(01:04:01):
So yeah, I felt like I was in danger I
just from hearing those confessions.

Speaker 5 (01:04:07):
But I was unsure whether they were real or whether
he was.

Speaker 4 (01:04:09):
Just trying to brag and that was his way of
impressing me or impressing people.

Speaker 5 (01:04:16):
I couldn't tell. I couldn't tell whether he was real
or not real with what he was saying. But yeah,
I was scared.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
Is that when when he told you, you know, when
you were talking about you know, basically, are you going
to help me or not?

Speaker 10 (01:04:28):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Is that sort of around that time?

Speaker 5 (01:04:30):
Or no, are you gonna help me?

Speaker 4 (01:04:33):
That was the first the first time I met him.
I never went back to that conversation the second time
I met him, after that meeting.

Speaker 5 (01:04:40):
At my house. I mean, he told me so many things.

Speaker 4 (01:04:43):
It's hard to recall all of them because it's just
a it's a matter of when I hear things about him,
then sometimes I think back and I think, oh, that's
irrelevant to this thing that he said. Like I heard
that he's told one woman that he he was sort
of buried in some pit and torture it, and I

(01:05:03):
thought that's interesting. I I heard something similar, only he
used to do that to people.

Speaker 5 (01:05:08):
In the version he gave.

Speaker 4 (01:05:09):
Me, he told me that he he was a survivor
at five years old, that he lost his mother and
father and brothers and sisters all in Oswitch that he
was Jewish but didn't believe in God anymore, cause you know,
how could God do that to his family. I raised
my children with his story, and you know, the whole
identity is wrapped up in this idea that we are

(01:05:34):
sort of generationally from victims of a Holocaust, and it's
probably not even true. In fact, it's I don't think
it is true, you know. So there's a lot of
things that he just lie upon.

Speaker 5 (01:05:48):
Life on life.

Speaker 4 (01:05:50):
How do you ever get to the bottom of any
of it to find out if there's truth there? But
the second time around when we met, there was that
third visit that was that was the po the poisoning ones.
And then the next visit was he contacted me and
said he was going to be in town and asked

(01:06:11):
me to meet him in the city, and so I
I did that.

Speaker 5 (01:06:17):
I went to meet him. He said that he had
a proposition for me. He pre warned me that he
had a a proposition.

Speaker 6 (01:06:23):
So.

Speaker 5 (01:06:26):
I was pretty scared. I didn't know because I'd had
this one meeting.

Speaker 4 (01:06:30):
He was telling me about burying people alive and how
to poison people, and then I had the this next
meeting with a proposition. So I went to this meeting.

Speaker 5 (01:06:40):
This is where we.

Speaker 4 (01:06:42):
Were in a cafe and he was started to explain
to me that in a very philosophical sort of a
a framework that in in life we don't have a
lot of options and nu if you n if you
don't have creativity, which he said.

Speaker 5 (01:07:01):
Clearly I don't.

Speaker 4 (01:07:02):
Therefore I can't produce anything from my mind to be
self supporting as a single mum. That then the only
other way was to sell my body.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
Pausing again, Rick Bloom is telling his daughter her only
option here is to prostitute herself. Then he suggests another option.

Speaker 4 (01:07:30):
He had an idea for me that might help, and
it involved drawing up contracts regarding life insurance policies that
would be effective on people in another country, and that

(01:07:52):
I didn't need to worry about what was going to
happen to the people. That was going to be something
that he was going to take care of. He needed
the contact details of my partner at the time because
he was a barrister and he wanted help to draw
up these contracts. So that's how it was communicated. It

(01:08:15):
wasn't elaborated upon I didn't ask any questions at all.

Speaker 5 (01:08:22):
But you put him into I was I d I
did not put him in contact with my partner.

Speaker 4 (01:08:27):
No, m This was just a more terrifying experience, and
the one than the last meeting when he was explaining
to me how to poison people. This was to me
it had just gone, you know, dialed up a notch.
And I was scared cause I I didn't know what
that meant, what he was saying to me. It could
have it could be stitched together to be something absolutely diabolical,

(01:08:55):
which I'm starting to think it.

Speaker 5 (01:08:57):
Might have been, probably not starting pick me.

Speaker 4 (01:09:00):
But I've always wondered whether it is as bad as
the worst possible way he could imagine something like that,
or whether or not I was just hearing things, whether
he was trying to say something to me that was
normal but that I couldn't understand it, and I was
turning into something in my own imagination that it wasn't.

(01:09:23):
I just it's so unbelievable to think that someone could
save something like that, and that it was as bad
as it sounded. So I was so unable to process that.
I left that meeting. I said, I told him I
would think about what he was saying. I thought I

(01:09:44):
was in grave danger, and I went out to my car.

Speaker 5 (01:09:48):
I barely made it to the car. I got a.

Speaker 4 (01:09:51):
Really sharp pain in my head and I started vomiting,
and I don't know how I drove home. I had
the worst migraine. I couldn't get out of bed for
a day or so. I was unable to mentally unpack
what had been said to me. I didn't know whether
I was just had lost my mind, whether I.

Speaker 5 (01:10:10):
Was just loose completely. So that was that was the problem.

Speaker 4 (01:10:15):
And then there was the last meeting, and that's where
he rang and said that he was coming to visit
and he'd come for dinner again. He had a present
for me, which I didn't like the sound off, and
he asked me to pick him up from the airport
drop him he had some business to attend.

Speaker 5 (01:10:37):
To drop him.

Speaker 4 (01:10:38):
Somewhere nearby, and then he'd catch a taxi back to
my house for dinner. So then I went to the
airport picked him up. He opened the boot of the car,
pulled out a bottle of Bolinger.

Speaker 5 (01:10:51):
And said to me to take up I said, oh no, no,
that's okay.

Speaker 4 (01:10:56):
I just I'll wait for you to come back, and
he said, no, I know, take it, take it, take
it home, put it on ice, and just wait for me.
Do you drop me off and then I'll be back
for dinner and we'll drink it together.

Speaker 5 (01:11:07):
And so.

Speaker 4 (01:11:09):
I drove him to I wish I remember where it was.
It was around q Hawthorne that area. He got out
of the car. He he was bragging, he was someone
was giving him forty or fifty thousand dollars and all
they had was a telephone number that he could just change.
They'll never be able to find him. He jumped out

(01:11:30):
of the car. I went home, put the champagne in
the fridge, s set the table, sat there, waited, waited,
and I never heard from him again.

Speaker 5 (01:11:43):
That was the last time.

Speaker 4 (01:11:45):
So and I did try and call a few days later,
not because I uh, because I wanted to speak to him,
but just because I was just I thought that I
was losing my mind. That's what I thought this was
happening at the time. I s I thought, I am
literally I am losing my mind, like I think that,

(01:12:10):
you know, l My intuition is that there's been a
an a you know, an attempt on my life.

Speaker 5 (01:12:18):
Mate. That's my intuition because of the shampagne. That's because
of the champagne.

Speaker 4 (01:12:21):
It was, there were little holes in the foil. But
it was the combination of everything. Him telling me how
to poison people, him bragging about how he had killed people,
buried them alive, him trying to involve me in some

(01:12:42):
scam that sounded like.

Speaker 1 (01:12:44):
It involved deceiving people.

Speaker 5 (01:12:47):
More than it sounded, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:12:49):
It was it was a scam that involved life insurance policies,
and he said he was going to take care of
the people.

Speaker 5 (01:12:55):
So I didn't know what that meant.

Speaker 4 (01:12:57):
Yeah, ba see Yeah, So it was a combination of
all those things. I thought I was losing my mind,
I thought, And I thought that's what the bottle of
champagne was.

Speaker 5 (01:13:05):
I thought it was poison. So I tried to.

Speaker 4 (01:13:10):
Call him a few days later because I was trying
to really just ascertain for myself how crazy I was,
and he his mobile had been cut off.

Speaker 1 (01:13:23):
And is that when you rang his home and got
Diane or was that another time?

Speaker 3 (01:13:26):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (01:13:27):
No, Diana.

Speaker 4 (01:13:27):
That was the first round of meetings the decades before,
when I was sitting in Nari Warren.

Speaker 5 (01:13:33):
Mm.

Speaker 4 (01:13:34):
Yeah, because he he had said that he was gonna
come back to visit after he got back from overseas,
and months and months went past.

Speaker 5 (01:13:41):
I hadn't heard, and he had.

Speaker 4 (01:13:44):
He'd I don't know why he'd given me the home number,
and so I called the home number and she answered,
and I said, I asked for him. She said he
wasn't there, and I said, oh, he you know, he
said he was gonna help me with some things. And
you know it's Evelyn, his daughter, because he had told

(01:14:05):
me that she he had told her just they decided
not to tell the children.

Speaker 5 (01:14:09):
I think it was. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:14:11):
So anyway, she just said, oh sure you are or
oh sure he did something like that and hung up
on me. It was very, very cold, so that was
pretty much. That's pretty much it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:30):
Evelyn later took the bottle of champagne to her local
police station, explaining her suspicions. We'll come back to this
in a later episode. There is so much here to unpack.
To start with, Evelyn claims her father outlined a very

(01:14:51):
specific method of fatally poisoning people. She rightly doesn't want
to outline in detail what he said, as she nor
we want to give anyone a blueprint for murder. Specifically,
She says the method Rick outlined would produce flu like
symptoms and that the victim would die within one to
two weeks and there would be no trace of the

(01:15:13):
poison left in their system. Evelyn previously told us her
father gifted her a bottle of champagne that she feared
may have been tampered with due to tiny holes in
the foil cap in an attempt to poison her. This
adds to the evidence we have heard from Gulaine d'ar
lois and her daughter in law Alexandra Piraboom, who says

(01:15:36):
Rick was fascinated by a book about poisons and talked
about his interest in poisons that can kill without leaving
a trace. Julane also told us that she thinks Rick
was planning to poison her, a suspicion that grew stronger
after he insisted she have a liver function test. Medical

(01:15:59):
records show that marrying Barter also had a liver function
test during the time she and Rick were in a relationship.
Then there's the story Evelyn just told of Rick, boasting
that he used to bury people alive when he was
growing up, including a man in his village who had
harmed a girl who he then buried alive with hungry cats.

(01:16:23):
As outrageous and unlikely as that sounds, it does at
least give us more insight into how Rick Bloom's mind
works and what he might be capable of. And you
heard Evelyn recount how Rick came up with a proposition
to draw up a contract regarding life insurance policies on

(01:16:44):
individuals living overseas. Evelyn says Rick told her she would
not have to worry how it would work or what
would happen to the insured people, that he would take
care of it. Was this another fanciful, twisted story or
another avenue of investigation into this already massive and complicated saga,

(01:17:07):
which is about to get even stranger next time Evelyn
discovers her father has somehow implicated her in a family

(01:17:29):
debt of millions of francs.

Speaker 11 (01:17:34):
So there is a debt of four million francs of
debt to the to the States, access to the four millions.

Speaker 2 (01:17:57):
If you knew Marion or have any information about her
or her whereabouts, we'd love to hear from you. Our
website is sevennews dot com dot au slash news slash
the Lady Vanishers, and you can also message us here.
You can also send us an anonymous tip at the

(01:18:18):
Lady Vanishes dot org. If you like what you're hearing,
don't forget to subscribe. Please rate and review our series.
It helps new listeners find us. Presenter and executive producer
Alison Sandy, investigative journalist Brian Seymour, producer and writer Sally Eels.

(01:18:40):
Sound design Mark Wright, graphics Jason Blandford, Transcripts and translation
Estelle Sanchez. The theme and much of the music by
Nicholas Gasperini at the Dark Piano dot com. Thanks again
to the Alliance Francais. This is a Seven News auction
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