October 25, 2024 • 68 mins
A surprise message opens a long-closed door to Jon’s secret past.
Sonia Lee has been listening to every episode in the Bronwyn podcast series while weighing the right time to come forward for the first time. She made a promise to her grandmother on her death bed to tell the truth about her biological father when the time was right.
A man she has never known— but is now hearing so much about.
In a remarkable interview with Hedley Thomas, Sonia Lee reveals her biological father is Jon Winfield, and his then-girlfriend was 15 and left heartbroken when Jon denied being the father. He refused to help her or his baby.
Bronwyn’s sister-in-law, Michelle Read, recovers an historic document from the files of the police Unsolved Homicide unit, confirming Jon’s conduct. Sonia Lee says Jon needs to stop lying. She hopes her truth can help solve Bronwyn’s cold case.
Read more about this case and see photographs, maps, timelines and more at bronwynpodcast.com.
If you have information which may help solve this cold case, you can contact our team confidentially by emailing bronwyn@theaustralian.com.au
If you need support, Lifeline can be reached on 13 11 14.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, Bromwyn listeners, and welcome to season two. It's Claire
Harvey from The Australian. Just like season one, episodes in
miss season two will be available to our subscribers first
over at bromwinpodcast dot com. Our subscribers heard this episode
in early October. This kind of journalism where we try
to solve cold cases, just can't be done without the
(00:23):
support of our subscribers, so we reward them with early
access to our episodes and all our stories, pictures, videos,
maps and graphics. If you're listening later via Apple, Spotify
or another podcast player and you're wondering where episodes eleven
and twelve are, there're subscriber exclusives which are available to
(00:43):
listen now at bromwinpodcast dot com. In those exclusive episodes
eleven and twelve, there's more than two hours of new audio,
new information, and case revelations. This weekend, we're releasing episode
fifteen to our subscribers. Subscribing is the most powerful way
you can support Headley and our journalism. It's a dollar
(01:04):
a week for the first four weeks and you can
cancel anytime. Check us out at bromwan podcast dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Listeners are advised that this podcast series Bromwan contains course
language and adult themes. This podcast series is brought to
you by me Headley Thomas and the Australian Father's Day
(01:55):
in Australia fell on September one, a fortnight after our
return for Manuel leave at home in Brisbane. I pictured
John Winfield in his ocean facing house which looks a
little like a fortress near Lennox Head. Everything inside the
property must have been spotlessly clean and in its proper place.
(02:17):
After months of scrutiny and public intrigue arising from the
first season of the Bromin podcast series, John might have
been fondly acknowledged that Father's Day by his two daughters
living nearby, Jody, the eldest, whose mother is John's first
wife Jenny, and Lauren, the youngest, whose mother Bromin was
John's third wife. Cristel, Broman's first daughter, lives some seven
(02:42):
hundred kilometers south in Sydney, and although she does not
share John's DNA, Cristel had started calling John dad when
she was five. Her biological father, Mark Davis, died when
Cristel was in her twenties. Over the past three decades,
Crystal's views about the fate of her mother and the
(03:03):
alleged role of John have changed many times. In episode twelve,
which dealt with the recent defrauding of Crystal by a
self proclaimed sole doctor, Crystal.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Wrote, both Mom and I were very trusting people, and
as a result, I was recently scammed my entire life
savings by strangers. It wouldn't surprise me if she trusted
the wrong person, someone she'd just met, and they were
responsible for her disappearance. I also have other theories, but
(03:35):
this seems likely to me as I know she never
would have left us for long. Imagine growing up with
some people around you thinking your dad murdered your mom.
I never wanted our next generation to go through what
my sisters and I experienced, ostracized and at times ridiculed
for being the daughter of JW. If anyone knows JW best,
(03:59):
it's us people that actually lived with him and Mum
behind closed doors. This has destroyed our lives at times,
and honestly, at the end of the day, there is
no body. It's all circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
I feel this.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Podcast has only explored one possibility when there are other
possibilities to her disappearance. Our mum would never want this
kind of pain and heartache on her daughters and grandchildren.
She'd be devastated, as I know, she would just want
a happy life for us, just like we want for
our children. Thank you to those that have been there
(04:36):
for us throughout these years. It's hard enough growing up
without a mum, but having so much gossip about it
made it so much harder for us, and that's coming
from the daughter of a nurturing mum aka Brodwin Winfield.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Currently, Crystal is not on board with the new South
Wales Police position that John murdered Bronwin. This episode was
going to revolve around John's side of the story, the
version that he gave in the one and only recorded
interview he did with a detective that was in nineteen
ninety eight. I have the lengthy record of it and
(05:16):
for weeks I've been pouring over the detail and comparing
it with known facts as well as highly probable scenarios.
That exercise has been very worthwhile. It has yielded promising
new angles.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
Hi Headley, here's the documents sent to us in two
thousand and.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Nine on Father's Day. While working out what to do
with some of the new and yet to be revealed
evidence in this case and where it should sit. In
season two of Bromman, I opened an email and his
wife Michelle Lead had taken some time between episodes to
do a thorough search of her files and email inbox,
(05:56):
just in case she had missed something of relevance.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Stumbled on them today going through my email archives. I
honestly don't remember ever seeing them, Michelle.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
The largest file is titled Chronology. It is a Microsoft
word document and the metadata shows that it was first
printed in November two thousand and eight. It originated in
the New South Wales Police Unsolved Homicide Unit and one
of its authors must have been the highly respected senior
(06:28):
Detective George Radmore. George Radmore and other police from the
Unsolved Homicide Unit dedicated many hundreds of hours to the
case a decade after the Baalinot Detective Glenn Taylor's investigation.
Here is Bromwin's cousin, Meghan Reid, recalling some of her
contact back then with the now retired George Radmore. Meghan
(06:51):
spoke as Maddie Walsh went through folders of the evidence
with me at Meghan's home on Sydney's Northern Beaches. Months
before the podcast they started.
Speaker 6 (07:01):
Here we have witness statements from nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Yours isn't in nut war and yours are the plastic value.
Speaker 7 (07:09):
I'd layne in two and nine twenty ten with George.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Add Moore, who I had a great relationship with. This
was the one case really upsetting.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
It wasn't sold.
Speaker 6 (07:20):
I'll think a lot of those emails are between Meagan
and George Radmore.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
That's from George.
Speaker 8 (07:27):
Thank you for your efforts last week. I know it
was draining, but it is necessary to get the full picture. Already,
you have provided evidence that I previously did not know existed,
and it is very important to the investigation. It makes
it all the more difficult and time consuming to try
to remember things from sixteen years ago, which is why
(07:49):
the documentation that I have requested is so important. It
would certainly have been easier if your statement had been
taken in more detail during the original investigation. However, we
cannot change that now.
Speaker 7 (08:05):
George Radmore had successfully put away quite a few people
without bodies, and that's why they assigned him to it.
He's brilliant, He really is brilliant, and he was so disappointed.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Michelle Reid told me that the forty three page word
document titled Chronology was provided to her and Andy by
George Radmore. Perhaps the detective wanted Michelle and Andy to
fact check some of the details. The secondary heading on
the document states.
Speaker 8 (08:37):
Strikeforce Chelmsbrook Murder of Bronwyn Winfield.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
There are several hundred separate entries spanning almost forty years.
Everything that the police regarded as potentially relevant to their
investigation is in the Chronology document. The entries are in
columns under these headings day and time, then occurrence or event,
(09:03):
then reference document, and then matters arising. The first entry
is dated nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 8 (09:13):
Jonathan Winfield and Sybil Green meet while students at high school.
Nineteen seventy Jonathan and Sybyl commence sexual relationship while Sybil
fourteen years old. Nineteen seventy two, Sybil falls pregnant to
Jonathan while still fifteen years old. Parents decide they should marry.
(09:37):
Winfields suddenly ban Sybil from seeing Jonathan in March or
April nineteen seventy two. November nineteen seventy two, Sybil gives
birth to Sonya early nineteen seventy three. Jonathan denies paternity.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Before going further, some important points need to be clarified.
Sybil Green is a pseudonym. We are not identifying the
woman who was just fifteen when she conceived a child
during a relationship with John. John is older than the
woman we are calling Sybil by a couple of years.
(10:17):
When I opened the email from Michelle read and read
the names in the chronology document, I checked the records
of the Australians Bronman Facebook discussion group as an administrator
to see if Sonya and her mother had joined. I
didn't approach Sonya or her mother, but soon after Michelle's
fortuitous discovery of the chronology document, Sonya approached us.
Speaker 6 (10:43):
I got a message, am I a message request from
a lady called Sonya.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
And that's why this episode is fundamentally different now to
the one that I had planned. Instead of revolving around
John's claims and John's shifting version in his nineteen ninety
eight police interview of who, What, When, where and why
at the time of Bromwin's disappearance, this first episode of
(11:09):
season two is the story of a woman fathered by John,
a woman who wants nothing to do with her father
apart from her objective to help Bromwin and her family
get justice. I'm talking here to Maddie Walsh a fortnight
after Father's Day as she sat in her car in
Sydney and I hunched over my laptop at home in Brisbane.
(11:33):
And there's some video at Bromwin podcast dot com.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
All right, yeah, that's fine.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Saturday morning.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
Saturday morning.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Tell me about this Facebook message.
Speaker 6 (11:48):
Well, I actually got it at five pm yesterday, but
I didn't process it until today. And it says hello
Andy and read JW. Does Jodie realize she is not
his firstborn child. I'm asking you this as if she does, great,
(12:10):
But if not, then I'm thinking that could throw a
spanner in the works of her bond with her father.
Perhaps the words needed for her and Lauren to question
his truths pre nineteen seventy two. I don't really have
any info in him, except that the look in his
eye and the way he treated women as a seventeen
year old was not well received by a certain fifteen
(12:31):
year old girl's mother, my grandmother. On her deathbed, I
made a promise that I would reach out when the
time was right. As a fifty one year old. I'm
not sure when that time is, but now kind of
feels right. I've been tossing up all week as to
who to contact, as strangely enough, Crystal is the only
one I feel any type of connection with, but I
(12:52):
don't think she is in the right frame of mind.
My kindest regards to you, Andy, You're an amazing brother, and.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Maddie, you are rock sol girl.
Speaker 6 (13:00):
Your parents must be over the moon beaming proud.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
I know who this woman is, and I'm so glad
that she's made contact.
Speaker 6 (13:10):
I didn't realize who she was until I spoke to
you about it.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Well, when you called me a short time ago and
you said, hey, I got this message from a woman
called Sonya, I immediately knew what you were going to
tell me.
Speaker 6 (13:22):
Yeah, which is crazy that she reached out.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
She is the daughter of a woman who was fifteen
when she became pregnant in nineteen seventy two. And my
understanding is that the parents of John and Sonya's mother
(13:47):
agreed or decided that they should marry.
Speaker 6 (13:50):
So was that after his daughter was born.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
That must have been before she was born. He was
older than her. From the documents I've seen, Maddie, Sonya
was born in November nineteen seventy two. The relationship had
just fallen apart, and they'd gone from being prepared to
(14:15):
marry to estrangement. And this poor young girl is having
John's baby. So when you got that message from Sonya,
what were you thinking?
Speaker 6 (14:30):
I was still stuck trying to figure out how she
knew this and how she was related.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
And she does describe a little cryptically in that key sentence,
doesn't she It.
Speaker 6 (14:45):
Wasn't as though she said I am John's first daughter.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
She's asking whether Jody knows that Sonya is actually John's
first child? But why is that important to Sonya?
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Too?
Speaker 6 (15:00):
Kind of breakdown that layer of trust that John and
Jody have shown that they have with each other, that
maybe Jody will take a step back and reevaluate what
her father has told her and all the truths he
has supposedly told her, and maybe rethink that not everything
is the truth.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
That does sound like it's part of her motivation.
Speaker 6 (15:26):
And I don't know many people who know about this.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yeah, it's been a very well kept secret. I don't
think she's had any contact at all with her father.
Speaker 6 (15:35):
I get that impression because she says pre nineteen seventy two,
I don't really have any info on him, which means
since she was born, she hasn't ever known him. Quite possibly,
her mother told her who her father was, but she
never had a relationship with him. And since this podcast
has come out, she's heard about him and she's felt
(16:00):
that she should reach.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Out this deathbed point. What do you take from that.
Speaker 6 (16:05):
Well, it's almost as though her grandmother, Sonya's grandmother knew
that John wasn't a good person. Her grandmother had this
inkling that something wasn't quite right with him, and the
fact that she felt the need to tell Sonya on
her deathbed. We don't know much about John previous to
his first two wives. This is the earliest recollection of
(16:30):
any kind of relationship. It seems as though his behavior
wasn't good.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Then he's taken no responsibility for the care and upbringing
of his first child.
Speaker 6 (16:42):
He doesn't seem like Sonya wants to know her father.
It's almost as though she wants Jodie to know the
truth about her father and Lauren to know that their
father isn't as great as he may seem. If she
really doesn't know, and she doesn't know this information, it
might cause her to take a little step back and
(17:04):
kind of really think about it.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Sonya's mother would have been John's first wife if things
had turned out differently.
Speaker 6 (17:13):
If everything else played out, four wives or by the
time he was thirty Now, honestly, to me, that's weird behavior.
Who knows about this and just hasn't mentioned it. If
Lauren's aware, if Jodie's aware, I don't know. Would he
have confided that in them when they got older.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
It also seems from the tone of that message that
she's formed a view of John, which is the same
view that the police and others have formed of John
as being responsible for Bromwin's disappearance.
Speaker 6 (17:50):
It's just stuff coming out of the wouldwork like this
that changes a lot in terms of someone's character and
skeletons in the closet could.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Say, I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of
someone who's to become involved in a physical relationship with
a girl. She's far too young, But he's also very
young too. He's not a man in his thirties. His
brain is still developing at that age. However, on the
(18:22):
character point, the failure to be prepared to try to
support her contribute to her upbringing and education and her needs.
Speaker 6 (18:35):
This does add into John's behaviors and patterns as well
of John's parents and his mother, and the constant need
to push the women away if they step on the
wrong toes or something happens. We know he tried to
pay off Jenny with Jodie for John to have City.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Maddie is referring to evidence given to the police by
John's first wife, Jennifer in the lead up to the
two thousand and two inquest. You heard some of it
in episode ten.
Speaker 9 (19:14):
I remember John's mother saying something like no woman walks
out on my son. I recall John's parents turned up
one day with John and they.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
Picked up Jody and walked out the door.
Speaker 9 (19:25):
Grandma Winfield said, when you get your act together, you
can have a back. I blame myself now, but at
the time I didn't understand the laws properly, and I
was depressed and having problems with my life. And after
this John and myself initiated divorce proceedings. John offered me
twenty thousand dollars so he could keep custody of Jody.
(19:46):
I told him to stick his twenty thousand dollars and
take good care of Jody, and that's how John ended
up having custody of her. The way I was at
the time, I was mentally depressed and I'd become suicidal.
John wouldn't allow me to visit already at school, and
they constantly pushed me away from her. I used to
sit outside the school watching Jody play at lunchtime in
(20:06):
the school grounds.
Speaker 6 (20:09):
There's this controlling nature that kind of threads through the family,
trying to gain control of the situation and pushing people
away when it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Go the way they want.
Speaker 6 (20:21):
It would have been John's parents at that stage making
the decisions for John, I would assume, especially his mother,
given how much we know he adored her and how
much of a part she had in his life. I
do definitely think it would have been more of his
mother's decision to get Sonya and her mother out of
his life. Why are the women not being kept around?
(20:44):
Is it based on they're not perfect enough for John?
Or no, they're not perfect enough for John's mother.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Shortly before her disappearance, Bromwin wrote about John, his and
her unhappiness, perfectionism, and John's mother. Here it is in
the first episode.
Speaker 10 (21:04):
I drifted away from John as he became more and
more depressed about the house being less than immaculate and
the death of his mother, the only woman he thought
was perfect. Eventually I switched off and became cold inside.
He had a heart of ice and always criticized me
no matter what I did. The man was cold and
(21:24):
heartless and gave nothing but expected everything.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Have you replied to Sonya, No, not yet. What do
you intend to say?
Speaker 6 (21:36):
Well, I was going to thank her for reaching out.
I'm not sure it could have been easy. This is
her father. She's never had a relationship with him, and
I'm pretty sure she knows she never will. But she
also has sisters out there, half sisters.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
I feel like she wants to help.
Speaker 6 (21:57):
She feels as though this is the starting of his lies.
I mean it's time. She said she was waiting for
the right time. Then I really think that time is now,
I guess before it's too late.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Feeling like she has a connection with Crystal and admiring
from Afar, you and Andy as she's listening to everything.
At the same time, it seems she suspects that her
biological dad killed a beautiful woman called Bromin.
Speaker 6 (22:30):
Maybe she has that thought in the back of her
mind that he.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Could have been her mother.
Speaker 6 (22:36):
With Jenny's statement as well, and how John was violent
with her.
Speaker 9 (22:43):
He'd yell at me and he made him scared of him.
He said to me, I'll kill you if you say
that again. And at the time he had his hands
around my throat and was squeezing. I remember I managed
to say go ahead. Into my surprise, he kept squeezing
me around the throat. I managed to kick him in
the groin and I got away from him and hitting
the outside laundry.
Speaker 6 (23:06):
After hearing the podcast, maybe she counts herself lucky that
she didn't grow up with her father like John.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Does she say anywhere in her note to you that
it's confidentially No, she didn't. Can you just mention to
her that you've shared it with me and we've talked
about it, and that we would really like to chat
to her. Yeah, we're happy to chat to her on
background or off the record at first, if she wants
to get comfortable.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Yeah, definitely, for sure.
Speaker 6 (23:35):
I just think it's honestly insane. The developments that have
happened with in this case are crazy. We need to
dive right back into John's childhood. It might be hard
to get there, but I think that will answer a
lot his relationship with his parents when he was younger,
(23:55):
what he went through in school, everything that was really
going on during John's childhood and upbringing, and the family dynamic. Ultimately,
I really think it would answer a lot of questions
as to his character and why he is the way
he is, and why he keeps such picked secrets like
this to keep it so tightly under wraps. Even John's
(24:19):
parents not to have a relationship with their granddaughter, their
first granddaughter, is also a little bit unbathomable because she
was just an innocent baby.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Recording stopped, Maddie wrote back to Sonya, and then I
(24:56):
phoned her. We worked out that at the exact time
she was assigning to reach out to Andy and Maddie,
the police chronology document naming her as John's daughter was
being recovered by Michelle and sent to me. Sonya sounded
completely unemotional, unaffected. During our twenty minutes on the phone.
(25:17):
She matter of factly told me that her biological father
was a bad liar. His lying had shattered Sonya's mother
when John publicly denied being the father of the baby
growing inside the girl. The cruel result was the false
claim that a fifteen year old dealing with unplanned pregnancy
and whose first and only love back then had been John,
(25:40):
had slept around with different guys. Nothing could be further
from the truth. Part of Sonya's point is that significant
lies define a person's character. Exposing these lies might help
resolve Bromwin's case. It might prompt people aware of other
lies relevant to Broman's disappearance to come forward, and it
(26:03):
possibly explains why detectives on Bromin's case went to the
trouble of investigating John's conduct from the nineteen seventies. They
took a statement from the mother of Sonya. We agreed
to meet the following morning in Southport at the offices
of the Gold Coast Bollton newspaper, where I started forty
years ago as a copyboy. I was taken aback when
(26:26):
I saw her waiting for me in the lobby near
the elevator. Sonya is a physical near replica of John Winfield.
She's just younger. The likeness is incredible and at first disconcerting.
An accused murderer who has always emphatically denied wrongdoing and
(26:47):
emphatically denied that Sonya was his daughter, would surely admit
to being her father within moments of seeing her. Now,
I would wage a good money that a DNA test
would confirmternity. Margaret is Sonya had thoughtfully brought a family
pack of biscuits for us to snack on and leave
(27:10):
behind for the papers reporters.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
Grandma raised me well.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
We rowed the lift and crossed the floor of the
newsroom with the editor, Ryan Keene, who let us use
his office. I'm just going to use my phone, Ye
to do the recording. Sonya started telling her story. The
mother of two teenage boys tethered it to her grandmother,
(27:35):
who died in April twenty eighteen. In her last months,
Sonya was with the elderly woman almost every.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Day, and during that time a lot of conversations. We
had stories, who told secrets, who shared. Back in nineteen
seventy two, things were great financially, and my grandma pregnancy
thought it would be a great idea to separate the
(28:04):
two of them for my mother's benefit mental and emotional reasons,
which at the time wasn't told to my mother. In truth,
she thought her heart had been broken John was breaking
up with her was in fact my grandmother separated the
(28:25):
two of them for the final stages of the pregnancy.
She never said a nice word about him. She never
said a nice word about the Winfields. They were always
the words she uses, hoity tweety. My grandmother sent something
and removed my mother and myself from that circle. Fraternity
(28:49):
was always denied on his part. Abortion wasn't legal back then,
and it wasn't affordable within the family. My grandparents had
no money. They lived day to day. He drove a taxi,
so whatever fair he brought home at the end of
the day went to buy the food and what not
for the kids. So it was arranged for my mother
(29:12):
to go to South Australia where it could be done financially.
They weren't in a position for her to get to
South Australia. The pregnancy had gone along too far, so
termination wasn't possible in a safe sense. Then I was
to be adopted. I was supposed to be taken from
(29:37):
mom to become adopted. My grandfather became involved on the
day of my birth and refused that. Part of the
conversation was difficult for my grandmother to have emotionally, and
she kept getting very upset I think that was guilt
on her part because she thought it was the best
(29:59):
thing to do, and had my grandfather not stepped in,
that would have happened. Moving forward through the seventies eighties,
my bond with my grandmother was inseparable. She was like
my mom. I pretty much went from the hospital to her.
Mom was sixteen. She didn't know anything. My grandma had
(30:21):
already raised two girls, so she knew exactly what was
going on. My grandfather fell ill. He had many strokes
and many heart attacks before he passed away. I was eight.
He was like my dad, so I didn't miss having
a mom and dad figure. It's just that my real
mom was really really young. So when Grandma is sitting
(30:43):
with me passing away and telling me the truth of
the story, to me as an adult, it hadn't affected
my life for forty seven years, and it hasn't affected
my life since then. I've known that he didn't want me.
I'm known that his parents thought horrible things about my
(31:05):
mother and vocalized those things. It wasn't just her having sex.
He was involved as well. But he was the golden
child within his family and very very, very heavily influenced
by his mother. The first time I ever saw his
face was on the front page of The Australian.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
When you saw the man you know is your father
for the first time. It was a photograph of him
in relation to this podcast, Romlan correct must have come
as quite a shop.
Speaker 4 (31:46):
Honestly, I text my mom straight away and said, I'm
growing my hair.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
You've just taken your calf after when I first saw
you downstairs in the lobby. Even it was struck by
the likeness.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
That part with my mum has been difficult. There's a
photo on my great aunt's TV and it's a photo
of me in a school uniform at twelve or thirteen.
And that photo on the front page where he has
a mustache when he's younger. That's me. That is that
(32:23):
photo less than mustache. And until I saw that, I
never actually got what mum was saying, because sometimes she'd
say to me, I, forgot's sake, can you go and
put a shirt on. I just can't see your arms
or your shoulders because I'm that much for her a resemblance.
(32:45):
But I didn't see it until four months ago. It
wasn't really spoken about within our house. His name is very, very,
very rarely mentioned. I can remember as a teenager and
I was a silly smoker, and I came home with
(33:08):
a packet Wingfield cigarettes. My grandmother blew her stack. I
still didn't get it until on her deathbed and she
spoke about it, and I was like, ahuh, is.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
There a name of a man on your birth certificate?
Speaker 4 (33:27):
It's blank or father unknown. I believe that your maternal
family was one hundred percent responsible to prove paternity. There
was no money for the test needed to prove what
they needed to prove. She would have been fourteen when
(33:51):
their relationship started, fifteen.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
As it progressed, John had moved on by late nine
teen seventy two. Sonya was born in November of that year.
He is more from Jennifer Mason's statement to police, which
you heard in episode ten.
Speaker 9 (34:12):
In approximately December nineteen seventy two, when I was sixteen
years of age, I met a young man named John
Winfield and we.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
Formed a relationship.
Speaker 9 (34:21):
We'd only been going out for about three months when
I fell pregnant. John Winfield and I married when I
was about three months pregnant.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
When Sonya was born, her father would have been a
few months shy of his eighteenth birthday. Her mother had
just turned sixteenth.
Speaker 4 (34:40):
I've known what the girls have looked like for many
many years. Strangely enough, would have been a very very
early two thousands. I was mistaken for Jodie in a
music shop in Byron Bay. I had long hair then,
and it wasn't until many years later that I realized,
(35:01):
oh my gosh, she's mistaken me for Jodie Winfield. Fifteen
years ago, I was mistaken again as one of the girls.
I don't recall which one. Someone came up and said,
I know you, I know you and your sister from
down ATLANTICX. And I don't have a sister, So I said,
(35:23):
I'm not me, mister. Sorry, I don't have a sister.
Oh sorry, I just got the resemblance is uncanny. So yeah,
it's been a minute.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
You mentioned that you had seen photographs of the daughters,
and I think you're referring to Jody, Lauren and Crystal.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
Correct. My wife, her best friend from school's friends with Jody.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Sonya explained that for about twenty years she had avoided
going to her wife's best friend's house in Lennox Head.
She recently asked that best friend.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
Do you know these people, but I know she does.
When she was like, oh my god, he's that They
refer to him as JTM. She knows him from the
local lenox Head IgA.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
I asked if her wife's friend had talked to Jodi
Wimfield about the existence of her half sister Sonya.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
No.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
Never, she would never air my laundry. She just knows
her socially through Lenox Head their friends.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Sonya had seen photographs of her half sisters Jody and
Lauren because of the mutual friend in Lennox Head, coincidentally
tagging them on Facebook. That friend was unaware at the
time of the biological ties.
Speaker 4 (36:50):
Gosh, this is my boys were in nappies a long
time ago, and so I clicked on and I was like,
oh my gosh, I can see the resemblance.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Have you wanted to reach out to Jodie or the
other girls?
Speaker 4 (37:06):
Never? Never, I feel so thankful that my grandmother had
the foresight that she had. I feel very, very sorry
for the girls more Crystal. I think that's because she
knew her mum. You know your mom at ten, you
(37:31):
miss your mom at ten. I feel really sorry for Crystal.
She must have so many stories going around in her mind.
But as far as any of the Windfield, I don't
like them. I don't dislike them. They exist and I exist.
We just exist separately. My grandmother had said to me
(37:55):
that they're all kidding themselves if they don't believe that
you exist. He knows you're his.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
When you were growing up, Sonya, and when you were
old enough to understand that you were being raised by
your mother and your grandparents, did you ask questions? Did
you yearn to know who was your biological father?
Speaker 4 (38:24):
There was a gentleman in my life who is still
in my life. He's been a fantastic father to me.
He's been an exceptional dad to me. He's been all
I've known and all I have needed as a father.
We have an awesome relationship as father and daughter. I
(38:48):
didn't come from him, He didn't make me, but we're
father and daughter.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Were you at the same time ever yearning to know
who your dad was biologically No?
Speaker 4 (38:59):
Never, I've never felt the need to reach out to
establish any connection. My grandmother was troubled. She was worried
for me maturing, not knowing things like my medical history.
And I said to her, Grammy, you're just being eastily
(39:20):
you're on your Deathbedge, you're overthinking, You're worrying, Like, just
relax and enjoy your life. She said to me, you're
very blunt in your decision to just cut And I
think that I'm very blunt in my decision because from
nineteen seventy two until two thousand she lived in the
(39:46):
same house. If he wanted to reach out, he could
have reached out at any moment in his life.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
When Bromwin disappeared in May nineteen ninety three, John's daughter
was six months away from her twenty first birthday. In
September of that year, John wrote to the family of
one of Roman's former boyfriends, Mark Guthrie. Mark and his
family believed at the time that he was the biological
(40:15):
father of Crystal, who was then aged ten. John took
the moral high ground in his letter. He explained to
Mark Guthrie what paternal responsibility really meant. Here's a reminder
from episode ten. John wrote to the family and to
their solicitor. I have a copy of the letter. These
(40:39):
are John's words, but it's not John's voice. One.
Speaker 11 (40:43):
Mark has never personally or in writing approached us in
regards to access to Crystal. Two. We have always been locatable.
We have always been in the telephone book. Had he
really wanted to, Mark could have found us at any time.
Not only have you failed to mention the possibility of
(41:04):
child support, something that has been my responsibility for almost
eleven years, but you have failed to consider Crystal's feelings
and what she wants to do.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
About this delicate situation.
Speaker 11 (41:19):
I have a responsibility to Crystel to introduce her to
her real biological father, and I will. The lack of
any offers of financial support in almost eleven years also
tells me that mister Guthrie is not sure of fatherhood. Consequently,
that would lead us to the child support agency, and
(41:42):
a deduction from Mark's wages to the tune of one
hundred and forty five dollars per month backdated maintenance to
December nineteen eighty two with an interest adjustment would be
the best part of ten thousand dollars maintenance if I
am is payable up to the age of sixteen years,
(42:04):
so we could develop into a nice little nest egg
for Crystal in her later years. Yours, sincerely, John Winfield.
Speaker 4 (42:16):
If you have never had it, you can't miss it.
So as a person I've never had him, so I
don't know him, so I've never missed him. I don't
know what it means to miss having a sister. I
do know that I have no inclination to have them
in my life. That was his choice back in the seventies.
(42:40):
You can make a choice, that's fine, but you can't
live your life denying. If the girls need to question
anyone's truths, his truths, start questioning them. Poor Crystal, as
a human, How can you put somebody through that.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
I spoke to Crystal yesterday and I said, have you
ever known of any other siblings? And she said, no, no,
there's no one else. When do you think you understood
that your biological father's surname was Wingfield? Sonia said that
she was in her early twenties and her mother needed
(43:21):
to have.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
Surgery and she was extremely paranoid that she wasn't going
to make it. And that's the first time she told
me his actual full name. I recall the conversation. I
said to her, why are you telling me this? You
know I'm not interested. Why now, in this moment of
our lives, are you telling me? And I was more
(43:45):
worried about surgery. I know she loved him. I know
she was smitten by young sexy sir for John first
loves that. Whether she was his, I don't know. There
could be older kids than me. All I know is
(44:08):
in seventy two he denied me, which broke my mother's heart.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Many of us would jump straight onto Google and start
looking for someone, but you never did that. You didn't
want to check him out. You didn't understand the case
that the police had tried to build. Sonya recalled having
to go to Balana with her mother for a meeting
(44:34):
with detectives investigating Bromin's alleged murder.
Speaker 4 (44:38):
I mean I didn't want to go because I wasn't interested.
I still don't really know why I was in there
that day.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Her mother made a police statement at the time.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
I never researched. I was never interested. I did feel. However,
on one episode of the plot cast, you were driving
in Lennox and I was in the car with you
in my mind.
Speaker 12 (45:08):
Literally around the corner at five ten minutes, I can
take you there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll take you
for a drive. We call this the Headlands. That's where
I see John walking around here.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
A millionaires role.
Speaker 12 (45:24):
I call it he bought a dual block, one for
himself and one for Jody. Always get him confused, Sorry, Ledley,
now here we are here. Yeah, he bought that block
and that block the house next saw that to jobs.
That's a fortress.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
That is very odd looking.
Speaker 12 (45:43):
It a big needs of him inside.
Speaker 4 (45:47):
That's his car and the driveway.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
That's him there right, very ecclusive. As you can see.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
You're sitting up there in your smug castor.
Speaker 12 (46:01):
Seemed like a terrible person do.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
This has weighed on you for a long time.
Speaker 12 (46:07):
Because I have a sister, and if it hadn't been
my family, I just don't know how I would be
able to handle that.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
She was a friend and a good friend at the time.
We'd still be friends today. I know we would.
Speaker 4 (46:23):
I was sitting on the footstool next to my bed.
I got on Google Maps, and before you'd finished speaking,
I'd worked out his address. I google Maps searched the
house and there was a photo of him on the
Google Maps of his house standing over what looked like
a shower area, an outside shower. That's the first and
(46:46):
the last time.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Yeah, I know that photo you're talking about. We paused
to open the packet of biscuits she had brought.
Speaker 4 (46:55):
Grandma always said, you have to blame someone to the table,
no matter where you're going, you have to take something
to the table, old Scotch finger.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
How's your mum doing.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
The relationship between my mum and I is amazing.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Sonya told me her mother had been following the case
again with the podcast.
Speaker 4 (47:18):
Regarding the podcast, I think she's like everybody else, wondering
what the police were are and will be doing. We're
very hopeful that you guys will get a good outcome
for the girls, whatever that may be. She's content that
(47:40):
I'm content. Every now and then I'm forced to think
of him because my mum will bring something garp. There
was a time I lost patience with her, which was
not long after she found out that Bronwin Winfield was
a missing person. She found out by chance. She saw
(48:02):
her missing person sign on the IgA notice board at
Lennox Head, noticed the surname, put three and three together,
worked it out that Ron win Winfield and John Winfield
was the same John Winfield that was my father. For
a long time, it was all she wanted to speak about,
(48:25):
and for all of that long time I would avoid
speaking to her. Because it was all she wanted to
speak about. I said to my grandma the one day
on the phone, I just I can't do it anymore.
I cannot listen to it anymore. It's not what life is.
Life is different. And that's the decision he chose back
(48:48):
in the seventies, and thank god you chose what you
chose in the seventies. Mattie said something, and I thought
to myself, I know that there's documents with my name
on it, whether it's a statement or whether it's just
a note that I was in the station that day.
(49:10):
I thought that I would reach out purely because you
would never have found me. I have nothing to hide.
All you have is the name of Sonya. I don't
even go by that name, but I go by the
name of Lee. I've done nothing wrong, though, I have
nothing to be ashamed of. And that's what Grandma said
(49:30):
to me. Well, you'll know when the time is right
to reach out. Whether she meant reaching out to one
of the girls, whether she meant reaching out to one
of Bronwyn's family, I don't know who she meant reaching
out to. This might sound a bit silly, but you
mentioned that you had read the document with my name
(49:54):
on it about the same time that I had started
thinking about maybe now is the right time.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
Coincidences like these sometimes seem more likely to be calmer.
Speaker 4 (50:07):
It might give the girls a different light to see
their father in. You know, if you can't be honest
and open about it now that yes, I got a
girl pregnant on the beach in Cronulla in nineteen seventy two,
I own it. I did it, and I lied about it.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
When you say he lied about it, are you referring
to his denial of patunity.
Speaker 4 (50:28):
Because he may as well have lied about the whole relationship,
which is I think what broke my mother's heart.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
The shame and stigma of teenage pregnancy must have shaped
some of the decisions made by Sonya's grandparents.
Speaker 4 (50:44):
They thought that they would pretend that I was Grandma's baby,
because no one had actually seen Mom pregnant as such,
because she was a very slim girl, quite slight. So
there was this thing I will just say that it's
Grandma's new baby. My auntie, who was like eight at
(51:07):
the time, was playing silly buggers on the stairs and fell.
Mom came out, Grandma came out, the neighbors saw Mom's
big belly and the couple was won.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
And then where were you raised?
Speaker 4 (51:22):
In the shire?
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Sonia told me that she had listened carefully to the
first ten episodes of the Broman podcast series, as well
as these subscriber only bonus episodes of eleven and twelve.
Have you formed a view?
Speaker 4 (51:39):
I think I formed my grandmother's view. My opinion of
him is what she feed into me.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
What did she feed into you of him?
Speaker 4 (51:54):
How different my life would have been with him in it?
For the negative?
Speaker 2 (52:02):
For what reasons? What did she describe in his personality
or character?
Speaker 4 (52:07):
His controllingness? She said, him and his mother had a
look in their eye, a look that you wouldn't cross.
And the day she saw that look was the day
she knew and she saw the look about three and
a half, four months into the pregnancy, she said. Prior
(52:30):
to the pregnancy, he was very welcomed within the house.
It's come over for dinner all the time. The whole
couple think they were boyfriend and girlfriend for a long time.
They were in a relationship. It's not like she had
just a small version of John. He loved her cooking.
(52:51):
He would often come to the home and you know,
they'd sit down and then Pa would run him home
again in the gab So she knew him well and
she said he was lovely at stuff.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
Sonya spoke of the nineteen eighties movie Puberty Blues. The
Australian classic is based on the book of the same name,
written in the seventies by Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lett.
It weaves a story about teenage girls growing up in
the Shire and around Cronulla in a culture of underage sex,
panel vans, surfing and deeply entrenched misogyny.
Speaker 4 (53:54):
Who is he one of the boys he's sending down
at the beach Worksy's old man and he's got a
panel band. Oh god, do I look it right?
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Routable?
Speaker 4 (54:06):
If you meet Bruce Bruce, Debbie hie, yeah, ghetto Bruce,
go for it.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
Well, come on, he won't fight.
Speaker 4 (54:23):
Will you go around with me? Yeah? Give have a
good time.
Speaker 13 (54:36):
I was conceived on Valentine's Day seventy two, so I
was born nine months after that. It just all blew up,
And Grandma believes it all blew up over money.
Speaker 4 (54:49):
They'd spoken about married joining. His mother's bond was unbreakable.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
At the same time. Your grandmother wanted to separate her
daughter and John.
Speaker 4 (55:01):
Not until mid pregnancy when it started to get nasty.
On the Winfields part. It was all about what John
said and what John's mother said, and Mum having any
say in her pregnant self was not going to be allowed.
She was going to be controlled. Grandma remembers Mom coming
(55:24):
home and they'd been out for dinner. He used to
like to eat Chinese food. The meal was sweet and
sour pork. Grandma said that. Mom's like, oh, John's such
a gentleman. He pulls my chair out for me and
he justhes my food up for me. He only lets
me have a couple of spoons of rice though, And
(55:45):
Grandma was like what, and she said, oh, yeah, he
likes me to watch my weight. I can remember Grandma saying,
That's the minute I knew I was right.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
Sonya's mother was badly smeared in the blame game which
followed her pregnancy. The decision of John and the Winfield
family to walk away from responsibility and formally deny a
paternity cut deeply. Sonya's mother was still besotted with John.
She had changed her life. She was forced to hide
(56:17):
from local busybodies. As her belly grew with John's baby,
her wounding over John's claim that he was not the
father of her unborn baby was made worse. Sonya's mother
was characterized as a girl who must have cheated on John.
She was tarnished as a girl who was carrying an
unknown man's baby.
Speaker 4 (56:39):
I remember Grandma saying, missus Winfield. The words were something
along the lines of an easy piece of work. Of course,
she goes all the way to the city for tech,
so here's no saying that it's John's baby, because she's
(57:03):
an easy piece of work.
Speaker 2 (57:06):
Sonya knew from our first conversation on the telephone that
I had read about her on Father's Day in a
sixteen year old police document recovered by Bromwin's sister in law,
Michelle read, that's the document that mentions Sonya and her
birth in nineteen seventy two. I told Sonya in that
call that Michelle was going through her emails to make
(57:29):
sure that she hadn't overlooked anything. Michelle was wanting to
ensure that season two of Bromin leaves no stone unturned,
at least as far as her own documents and files
are concerned. I wondered whether you were aware of the podcast,
and whether you were connected in any way to what
(57:52):
was unfolding, and whether your mom was I decided to
just let it rest for a bit and just see
what would happen. And then you came forward.
Speaker 4 (58:02):
I pressed send, and I was like, Okay, well, there
you go. You've done it. But I felt so relieved
that I pressed send.
Speaker 2 (58:12):
And what happens with these podcasts investigations is people listen
and hear other good people coming forward for the first
time disclosing information that they've held pretty close for a
long time, and that has a very powerful effect on
listeners who also have information. And he think I'm alone.
(58:37):
Other people are sharing information that's more or less valuable
than mine. I should just do it.
Speaker 4 (58:43):
I had a feeling the same time that you were
reading the document.
Speaker 2 (58:49):
Hypothetical seem John Winfield makes contact with you and says, look,
i'm your father and I want to you and tell
you a bit about why I haven't been in touch.
How do you respond?
Speaker 4 (59:07):
I would probably not respond. I don't feel he's worthy
of a response from me. I'm not a Winfield. I
know who I am, and I don't need anything from him,
whether it be an apology, whether it be I still
(59:27):
don't believe your mind. I'm complete. If anything that he's
reaching out for is something that's going to benefit him,
whether it be emotionally, mentally, whatever that's on him, I'm
blessed he's not in my life.
Speaker 2 (59:44):
Do you have any anger towards.
Speaker 4 (59:47):
I don't have anything toward him except oh my god,
I've got to grab my hair. And that is just
purely for my mum. Obviously, I'm not the most girliest
of girls you've ever come across, and Mum is and
was a very girly girl. She was very glamorous in
(01:00:08):
the seventies, you know, very petite and beautiful with gorgeous
blond hair. Nothing like me. When I saw him on
the front page of the paper, I was like, you
can't deny. You're going to look like a fool. Every
time I walked into a room up until I was thirty,
(01:00:29):
my mother would be like, oh my god, it's so
much like him. When I told my wife over lunches
today that I was catching up with you today, and
she said, oh my god, I've got goosebumps, I said,
I do you think I should pre warn Headley, he's
going to feel like he's sitting opposite John. The resemblance
(01:00:49):
is uncanny. There literally is nothing. I don't like him.
I don't dislike him. I don't respect him. I don't
disrespect him. He's just a guy I saw on the
front page of the newspaper for the first time four
months ago, who happened to get my mother pregnant. That's
all he is to me. He'll never be my dad.
(01:01:10):
He'll never be my father, will never be mates, will
never sit down and have a copper together. I will
never break bread with him, purely because my grandmother would
be disgusted in me if I did.
Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
From everything I've been told about John, he's extraordinarily tight
with money. He would possibly be concerned that any acknowledgment
by him of your existence could reduce the wealth that
he has and the estate that he has.
Speaker 4 (01:01:45):
It's always about money with Winfield. Grandma always said that,
and in nineteen seventy two it was about eleven dollars
a week or seventeen dollars a week or whatever. In
twenty twenty four it's about ocean front estates. I remember
Grandma saying something along the lines of eleven dollars seventeen
(01:02:10):
dollars per week that they didn't want to have to
pay for you to.
Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Be As you listen to the story with the knowledge
that the person at the center of it, the person
suspected by police and read family of having murdered Promin,
knowing that he's your father, are you affected?
Speaker 4 (01:02:35):
I don't think of him as my father. I've managed
to successfully be unaffected by it. As I said, I
feel for.
Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
Crystal, there seems to be still a curiosity in you,
because otherwise why would you be listening to it.
Speaker 4 (01:02:50):
Back when I was in ballin a police station, I
didn't understand why I was there, but I also left
there thinking this is going to be finished off soon.
Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
Would love me to show you some of the start
of that documentary. Referring to yes please, I started to
make a point apparently your dad's sorry, I shouldn't callim
your dad Sonya's face changed, she appeared uncomfortable and excused
herself to go to the bathroom.
Speaker 4 (01:03:22):
Just threw me a bit before when you said your dad.
Of course he's not and it will never be. No
one's actually said those words ever before your you know,
But I yeah, sorry about that I understand. Yeah, that's okay.
(01:03:43):
I'm happy if that helps you in any way with
your investigations. It's actually really nice to know that my
grandmother's eye for detail was so detailed when my mom
was that young. There's photos of me and my mom,
and some of those photos are very very similar to
(01:04:07):
photos I've got on your website of Bridman and the
girls when the girls were young. I have a very
similar photo and it's like, oh.
Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
My God, like.
Speaker 4 (01:04:20):
Thank you, Goma, But it could have been me and
my mom. I think she was spot on with the
controlling and the dominating.
Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
What would you say to Lauren, Crystal and Jodi about
their beliefs and what they've been.
Speaker 4 (01:04:38):
Told, even if they deep down inside, no, the answer
is going to hurt them. Ask the question anyway. Jody's
coming up to an age where she's going to, whether
she likes it or not, biologically, start questioning things. As
you're coming up to fifty and you're going through menopause
(01:04:59):
and everything, think inside dey's changing, and you can have
the lowest of lows and the highest of highs. And
if there's a time in her life where she's wondering
what the true answers to the questions are this is
the time where she should lighten her load, just be open.
(01:05:23):
There's a level of dishonesty, whether it's the story of
whatever happened to Bronwyn, whether it's the story of John
Winfield and his life, that it just seems to get
these extra levels of layers of unbelievable things on top
of them. The girls should just be allowed to know
their truths.
Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
You said before that you were very hopeful there would
be a good outcome. What do you believe is a
good outcome.
Speaker 4 (01:05:57):
For the girls? Then? What happened to Bronwyn, the good,
the bad, the ugly, whatever it may be, they deserve
to know. It's got to be the heaviest load for
them to carry.
Speaker 2 (01:06:23):
Bronwyn is written and investigated by me Headley Thomas as
a podcast production for The Australian. If anyone has information
which may help solve this cold case, please contact me
confidentially by emailing Bronwyn at the Australian dot com dot au.
(01:06:43):
You can read more about this case and see a
range of photographs and other artwork at the website Bronwyn
podcast dot com. Our subscribers and registered users here episodes first.
The production and editorial team for bromwin includes Claire Harvey,
Kristin Amiot, Joshua Burton, Bridget Ryan Bianca, far Marcus, Katie Burns,
(01:07:08):
Liam Mendez, Sean Callen and Matthew Condon and David Murray.
Audio production for this podcast series is by Wasabi Audio
and original theme music by Slade Gibson. We have been
assisted by Madison Walsh, a relation of Bromin Winfield. We
can only do this kind of journalism with the support
(01:07:29):
of our subscribers and our major sponsors like Harvey Norman.
For all of our exclusive stories, videos, maps, timelines and
documents about this podcast and other podcasts including The Teacher's Pet,
The Teachers Trial, The Teacher's Accuser, Shandy's Story, Shandy's Legacy
and The Night Driver. Go to the Australian dot com
(01:07:52):
dot au and subscribe
Hi, Bromwyn listeners, and welcome to season two. It's Claire
Harvey from The Australian. Just like season one, episodes in
miss season two will be available to our subscribers first
over at bromwinpodcast dot com. Our subscribers heard this episode
in early October. This kind of journalism where we try
to solve cold cases, just can't be done without the
(00:23):
support of our subscribers, so we reward them with early
access to our episodes and all our stories, pictures, videos,
maps and graphics. If you're listening later via Apple, Spotify
or another podcast player and you're wondering where episodes eleven
and twelve are, there're subscriber exclusives which are available to
(00:43):
listen now at bromwinpodcast dot com. In those exclusive episodes
eleven and twelve, there's more than two hours of new audio,
new information, and case revelations. This weekend, we're releasing episode
fifteen to our subscribers. Subscribing is the most powerful way
you can support Headley and our journalism. It's a dollar
(01:04):
a week for the first four weeks and you can
cancel anytime. Check us out at bromwan podcast dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Listeners are advised that this podcast series Bromwan contains course
language and adult themes. This podcast series is brought to
you by me Headley Thomas and the Australian Father's Day
(01:55):
in Australia fell on September one, a fortnight after our
return for Manuel leave at home in Brisbane. I pictured
John Winfield in his ocean facing house which looks a
little like a fortress near Lennox Head. Everything inside the
property must have been spotlessly clean and in its proper place.
(02:17):
After months of scrutiny and public intrigue arising from the
first season of the Bromin podcast series, John might have
been fondly acknowledged that Father's Day by his two daughters
living nearby, Jody, the eldest, whose mother is John's first
wife Jenny, and Lauren, the youngest, whose mother Bromin was
John's third wife. Cristel, Broman's first daughter, lives some seven
(02:42):
hundred kilometers south in Sydney, and although she does not
share John's DNA, Cristel had started calling John dad when
she was five. Her biological father, Mark Davis, died when
Cristel was in her twenties. Over the past three decades,
Crystal's views about the fate of her mother and the
(03:03):
alleged role of John have changed many times. In episode twelve,
which dealt with the recent defrauding of Crystal by a
self proclaimed sole doctor, Crystal.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Wrote, both Mom and I were very trusting people, and
as a result, I was recently scammed my entire life
savings by strangers. It wouldn't surprise me if she trusted
the wrong person, someone she'd just met, and they were
responsible for her disappearance. I also have other theories, but
(03:35):
this seems likely to me as I know she never
would have left us for long. Imagine growing up with
some people around you thinking your dad murdered your mom.
I never wanted our next generation to go through what
my sisters and I experienced, ostracized and at times ridiculed
for being the daughter of JW. If anyone knows JW best,
(03:59):
it's us people that actually lived with him and Mum
behind closed doors. This has destroyed our lives at times,
and honestly, at the end of the day, there is
no body. It's all circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
I feel this.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Podcast has only explored one possibility when there are other
possibilities to her disappearance. Our mum would never want this
kind of pain and heartache on her daughters and grandchildren.
She'd be devastated, as I know, she would just want
a happy life for us, just like we want for
our children. Thank you to those that have been there
(04:36):
for us throughout these years. It's hard enough growing up
without a mum, but having so much gossip about it
made it so much harder for us, and that's coming
from the daughter of a nurturing mum aka Brodwin Winfield.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Currently, Crystal is not on board with the new South
Wales Police position that John murdered Bronwin. This episode was
going to revolve around John's side of the story, the
version that he gave in the one and only recorded
interview he did with a detective that was in nineteen
ninety eight. I have the lengthy record of it and
(05:16):
for weeks I've been pouring over the detail and comparing
it with known facts as well as highly probable scenarios.
That exercise has been very worthwhile. It has yielded promising
new angles.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
Hi Headley, here's the documents sent to us in two
thousand and.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Nine on Father's Day. While working out what to do
with some of the new and yet to be revealed
evidence in this case and where it should sit. In
season two of Bromman, I opened an email and his
wife Michelle Lead had taken some time between episodes to
do a thorough search of her files and email inbox,
(05:56):
just in case she had missed something of relevance.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Stumbled on them today going through my email archives. I
honestly don't remember ever seeing them, Michelle.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
The largest file is titled Chronology. It is a Microsoft
word document and the metadata shows that it was first
printed in November two thousand and eight. It originated in
the New South Wales Police Unsolved Homicide Unit and one
of its authors must have been the highly respected senior
(06:28):
Detective George Radmore. George Radmore and other police from the
Unsolved Homicide Unit dedicated many hundreds of hours to the
case a decade after the Baalinot Detective Glenn Taylor's investigation.
Here is Bromwin's cousin, Meghan Reid, recalling some of her
contact back then with the now retired George Radmore. Meghan
(06:51):
spoke as Maddie Walsh went through folders of the evidence
with me at Meghan's home on Sydney's Northern Beaches. Months
before the podcast they started.
Speaker 6 (07:01):
Here we have witness statements from nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Yours isn't in nut war and yours are the plastic value.
Speaker 7 (07:09):
I'd layne in two and nine twenty ten with George.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Add Moore, who I had a great relationship with. This
was the one case really upsetting.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
It wasn't sold.
Speaker 6 (07:20):
I'll think a lot of those emails are between Meagan
and George Radmore.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
That's from George.
Speaker 8 (07:27):
Thank you for your efforts last week. I know it
was draining, but it is necessary to get the full picture. Already,
you have provided evidence that I previously did not know existed,
and it is very important to the investigation. It makes
it all the more difficult and time consuming to try
to remember things from sixteen years ago, which is why
(07:49):
the documentation that I have requested is so important. It
would certainly have been easier if your statement had been
taken in more detail during the original investigation. However, we
cannot change that now.
Speaker 7 (08:05):
George Radmore had successfully put away quite a few people
without bodies, and that's why they assigned him to it.
He's brilliant, He really is brilliant, and he was so disappointed.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Michelle Reid told me that the forty three page word
document titled Chronology was provided to her and Andy by
George Radmore. Perhaps the detective wanted Michelle and Andy to
fact check some of the details. The secondary heading on
the document states.
Speaker 8 (08:37):
Strikeforce Chelmsbrook Murder of Bronwyn Winfield.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
There are several hundred separate entries spanning almost forty years.
Everything that the police regarded as potentially relevant to their
investigation is in the Chronology document. The entries are in
columns under these headings day and time, then occurrence or event,
(09:03):
then reference document, and then matters arising. The first entry
is dated nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 8 (09:13):
Jonathan Winfield and Sybil Green meet while students at high school.
Nineteen seventy Jonathan and Sybyl commence sexual relationship while Sybil
fourteen years old. Nineteen seventy two, Sybil falls pregnant to
Jonathan while still fifteen years old. Parents decide they should marry.
(09:37):
Winfields suddenly ban Sybil from seeing Jonathan in March or
April nineteen seventy two. November nineteen seventy two, Sybil gives
birth to Sonya early nineteen seventy three. Jonathan denies paternity.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Before going further, some important points need to be clarified.
Sybil Green is a pseudonym. We are not identifying the
woman who was just fifteen when she conceived a child
during a relationship with John. John is older than the
woman we are calling Sybil by a couple of years.
(10:17):
When I opened the email from Michelle read and read
the names in the chronology document, I checked the records
of the Australians Bronman Facebook discussion group as an administrator
to see if Sonya and her mother had joined. I
didn't approach Sonya or her mother, but soon after Michelle's
fortuitous discovery of the chronology document, Sonya approached us.
Speaker 6 (10:43):
I got a message, am I a message request from
a lady called Sonya.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
And that's why this episode is fundamentally different now to
the one that I had planned. Instead of revolving around
John's claims and John's shifting version in his nineteen ninety
eight police interview of who, What, When, where and why
at the time of Bromwin's disappearance, this first episode of
(11:09):
season two is the story of a woman fathered by John,
a woman who wants nothing to do with her father
apart from her objective to help Bromwin and her family
get justice. I'm talking here to Maddie Walsh a fortnight
after Father's Day as she sat in her car in
Sydney and I hunched over my laptop at home in Brisbane.
(11:33):
And there's some video at Bromwin podcast dot com.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
All right, yeah, that's fine.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Saturday morning.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
Saturday morning.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Tell me about this Facebook message.
Speaker 6 (11:48):
Well, I actually got it at five pm yesterday, but
I didn't process it until today. And it says hello
Andy and read JW. Does Jodie realize she is not
his firstborn child. I'm asking you this as if she does, great,
(12:10):
But if not, then I'm thinking that could throw a
spanner in the works of her bond with her father.
Perhaps the words needed for her and Lauren to question
his truths pre nineteen seventy two. I don't really have
any info in him, except that the look in his
eye and the way he treated women as a seventeen
year old was not well received by a certain fifteen
(12:31):
year old girl's mother, my grandmother. On her deathbed, I
made a promise that I would reach out when the
time was right. As a fifty one year old. I'm
not sure when that time is, but now kind of
feels right. I've been tossing up all week as to
who to contact, as strangely enough, Crystal is the only
one I feel any type of connection with, but I
(12:52):
don't think she is in the right frame of mind.
My kindest regards to you, Andy, You're an amazing brother, and.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Maddie, you are rock sol girl.
Speaker 6 (13:00):
Your parents must be over the moon beaming proud.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
I know who this woman is, and I'm so glad
that she's made contact.
Speaker 6 (13:10):
I didn't realize who she was until I spoke to
you about it.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Well, when you called me a short time ago and
you said, hey, I got this message from a woman
called Sonya, I immediately knew what you were going to
tell me.
Speaker 6 (13:22):
Yeah, which is crazy that she reached out.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
She is the daughter of a woman who was fifteen
when she became pregnant in nineteen seventy two. And my
understanding is that the parents of John and Sonya's mother
(13:47):
agreed or decided that they should marry.
Speaker 6 (13:50):
So was that after his daughter was born.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
That must have been before she was born. He was
older than her. From the documents I've seen, Maddie, Sonya
was born in November nineteen seventy two. The relationship had
just fallen apart, and they'd gone from being prepared to
(14:15):
marry to estrangement. And this poor young girl is having
John's baby. So when you got that message from Sonya,
what were you thinking?
Speaker 6 (14:30):
I was still stuck trying to figure out how she
knew this and how she was related.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
And she does describe a little cryptically in that key sentence,
doesn't she It.
Speaker 6 (14:45):
Wasn't as though she said I am John's first daughter.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
She's asking whether Jody knows that Sonya is actually John's
first child? But why is that important to Sonya?
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Too?
Speaker 6 (15:00):
Kind of breakdown that layer of trust that John and
Jody have shown that they have with each other, that
maybe Jody will take a step back and reevaluate what
her father has told her and all the truths he
has supposedly told her, and maybe rethink that not everything
is the truth.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
That does sound like it's part of her motivation.
Speaker 6 (15:26):
And I don't know many people who know about this.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yeah, it's been a very well kept secret. I don't
think she's had any contact at all with her father.
Speaker 6 (15:35):
I get that impression because she says pre nineteen seventy two,
I don't really have any info on him, which means
since she was born, she hasn't ever known him. Quite possibly,
her mother told her who her father was, but she
never had a relationship with him. And since this podcast
has come out, she's heard about him and she's felt
(16:00):
that she should reach.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Out this deathbed point. What do you take from that.
Speaker 6 (16:05):
Well, it's almost as though her grandmother, Sonya's grandmother knew
that John wasn't a good person. Her grandmother had this
inkling that something wasn't quite right with him, and the
fact that she felt the need to tell Sonya on
her deathbed. We don't know much about John previous to
his first two wives. This is the earliest recollection of
(16:30):
any kind of relationship. It seems as though his behavior
wasn't good.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Then he's taken no responsibility for the care and upbringing
of his first child.
Speaker 6 (16:42):
He doesn't seem like Sonya wants to know her father.
It's almost as though she wants Jodie to know the
truth about her father and Lauren to know that their
father isn't as great as he may seem. If she
really doesn't know, and she doesn't know this information, it
might cause her to take a little step back and
(17:04):
kind of really think about it.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Sonya's mother would have been John's first wife if things
had turned out differently.
Speaker 6 (17:13):
If everything else played out, four wives or by the
time he was thirty Now, honestly, to me, that's weird behavior.
Who knows about this and just hasn't mentioned it. If
Lauren's aware, if Jodie's aware, I don't know. Would he
have confided that in them when they got older.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
It also seems from the tone of that message that
she's formed a view of John, which is the same
view that the police and others have formed of John
as being responsible for Bromwin's disappearance.
Speaker 6 (17:50):
It's just stuff coming out of the wouldwork like this
that changes a lot in terms of someone's character and
skeletons in the closet could.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Say, I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of
someone who's to become involved in a physical relationship with
a girl. She's far too young, But he's also very
young too. He's not a man in his thirties. His
brain is still developing at that age. However, on the
(18:22):
character point, the failure to be prepared to try to
support her contribute to her upbringing and education and her needs.
Speaker 6 (18:35):
This does add into John's behaviors and patterns as well
of John's parents and his mother, and the constant need
to push the women away if they step on the
wrong toes or something happens. We know he tried to
pay off Jenny with Jodie for John to have City.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Maddie is referring to evidence given to the police by
John's first wife, Jennifer in the lead up to the
two thousand and two inquest. You heard some of it
in episode ten.
Speaker 9 (19:14):
I remember John's mother saying something like no woman walks
out on my son. I recall John's parents turned up
one day with John and they.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
Picked up Jody and walked out the door.
Speaker 9 (19:25):
Grandma Winfield said, when you get your act together, you
can have a back. I blame myself now, but at
the time I didn't understand the laws properly, and I
was depressed and having problems with my life. And after
this John and myself initiated divorce proceedings. John offered me
twenty thousand dollars so he could keep custody of Jody.
(19:46):
I told him to stick his twenty thousand dollars and
take good care of Jody, and that's how John ended
up having custody of her. The way I was at
the time, I was mentally depressed and I'd become suicidal.
John wouldn't allow me to visit already at school, and
they constantly pushed me away from her. I used to
sit outside the school watching Jody play at lunchtime in
(20:06):
the school grounds.
Speaker 6 (20:09):
There's this controlling nature that kind of threads through the family,
trying to gain control of the situation and pushing people
away when it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Go the way they want.
Speaker 6 (20:21):
It would have been John's parents at that stage making
the decisions for John, I would assume, especially his mother,
given how much we know he adored her and how
much of a part she had in his life. I
do definitely think it would have been more of his
mother's decision to get Sonya and her mother out of
his life. Why are the women not being kept around?
(20:44):
Is it based on they're not perfect enough for John?
Or no, they're not perfect enough for John's mother.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Shortly before her disappearance, Bromwin wrote about John, his and
her unhappiness, perfectionism, and John's mother. Here it is in
the first episode.
Speaker 10 (21:04):
I drifted away from John as he became more and
more depressed about the house being less than immaculate and
the death of his mother, the only woman he thought
was perfect. Eventually I switched off and became cold inside.
He had a heart of ice and always criticized me
no matter what I did. The man was cold and
(21:24):
heartless and gave nothing but expected everything.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Have you replied to Sonya, No, not yet. What do
you intend to say?
Speaker 6 (21:36):
Well, I was going to thank her for reaching out.
I'm not sure it could have been easy. This is
her father. She's never had a relationship with him, and
I'm pretty sure she knows she never will. But she
also has sisters out there, half sisters.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
I feel like she wants to help.
Speaker 6 (21:57):
She feels as though this is the starting of his lies.
I mean it's time. She said she was waiting for
the right time. Then I really think that time is now,
I guess before it's too late.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Feeling like she has a connection with Crystal and admiring
from Afar, you and Andy as she's listening to everything.
At the same time, it seems she suspects that her
biological dad killed a beautiful woman called Bromin.
Speaker 6 (22:30):
Maybe she has that thought in the back of her
mind that he.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Could have been her mother.
Speaker 6 (22:36):
With Jenny's statement as well, and how John was violent
with her.
Speaker 9 (22:43):
He'd yell at me and he made him scared of him.
He said to me, I'll kill you if you say
that again. And at the time he had his hands
around my throat and was squeezing. I remember I managed
to say go ahead. Into my surprise, he kept squeezing
me around the throat. I managed to kick him in
the groin and I got away from him and hitting
the outside laundry.
Speaker 6 (23:06):
After hearing the podcast, maybe she counts herself lucky that
she didn't grow up with her father like John.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Does she say anywhere in her note to you that
it's confidentially No, she didn't. Can you just mention to
her that you've shared it with me and we've talked
about it, and that we would really like to chat
to her. Yeah, we're happy to chat to her on
background or off the record at first, if she wants
to get comfortable.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Yeah, definitely, for sure.
Speaker 6 (23:35):
I just think it's honestly insane. The developments that have
happened with in this case are crazy. We need to
dive right back into John's childhood. It might be hard
to get there, but I think that will answer a
lot his relationship with his parents when he was younger,
(23:55):
what he went through in school, everything that was really
going on during John's childhood and upbringing, and the family dynamic. Ultimately,
I really think it would answer a lot of questions
as to his character and why he is the way
he is, and why he keeps such picked secrets like
this to keep it so tightly under wraps. Even John's
(24:19):
parents not to have a relationship with their granddaughter, their
first granddaughter, is also a little bit unbathomable because she
was just an innocent baby.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Recording stopped, Maddie wrote back to Sonya, and then I
(24:56):
phoned her. We worked out that at the exact time
she was assigning to reach out to Andy and Maddie,
the police chronology document naming her as John's daughter was
being recovered by Michelle and sent to me. Sonya sounded
completely unemotional, unaffected. During our twenty minutes on the phone.
(25:17):
She matter of factly told me that her biological father
was a bad liar. His lying had shattered Sonya's mother
when John publicly denied being the father of the baby
growing inside the girl. The cruel result was the false
claim that a fifteen year old dealing with unplanned pregnancy
and whose first and only love back then had been John,
(25:40):
had slept around with different guys. Nothing could be further
from the truth. Part of Sonya's point is that significant
lies define a person's character. Exposing these lies might help
resolve Bromwin's case. It might prompt people aware of other
lies relevant to Broman's disappearance to come forward, and it
(26:03):
possibly explains why detectives on Bromin's case went to the
trouble of investigating John's conduct from the nineteen seventies. They
took a statement from the mother of Sonya. We agreed
to meet the following morning in Southport at the offices
of the Gold Coast Bollton newspaper, where I started forty
years ago as a copyboy. I was taken aback when
(26:26):
I saw her waiting for me in the lobby near
the elevator. Sonya is a physical near replica of John Winfield.
She's just younger. The likeness is incredible and at first disconcerting.
An accused murderer who has always emphatically denied wrongdoing and
(26:47):
emphatically denied that Sonya was his daughter, would surely admit
to being her father within moments of seeing her. Now,
I would wage a good money that a DNA test
would confirmternity. Margaret is Sonya had thoughtfully brought a family
pack of biscuits for us to snack on and leave
(27:10):
behind for the papers reporters.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
Grandma raised me well.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
We rowed the lift and crossed the floor of the
newsroom with the editor, Ryan Keene, who let us use
his office. I'm just going to use my phone, Ye
to do the recording. Sonya started telling her story. The
mother of two teenage boys tethered it to her grandmother,
(27:35):
who died in April twenty eighteen. In her last months,
Sonya was with the elderly woman almost every.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Day, and during that time a lot of conversations. We
had stories, who told secrets, who shared. Back in nineteen
seventy two, things were great financially, and my grandma pregnancy
thought it would be a great idea to separate the
(28:04):
two of them for my mother's benefit mental and emotional reasons,
which at the time wasn't told to my mother. In truth,
she thought her heart had been broken John was breaking
up with her was in fact my grandmother separated the
(28:25):
two of them for the final stages of the pregnancy.
She never said a nice word about him. She never
said a nice word about the Winfields. They were always
the words she uses, hoity tweety. My grandmother sent something
and removed my mother and myself from that circle. Fraternity
(28:49):
was always denied on his part. Abortion wasn't legal back then,
and it wasn't affordable within the family. My grandparents had
no money. They lived day to day. He drove a taxi,
so whatever fair he brought home at the end of
the day went to buy the food and what not
for the kids. So it was arranged for my mother
(29:12):
to go to South Australia where it could be done financially.
They weren't in a position for her to get to
South Australia. The pregnancy had gone along too far, so
termination wasn't possible in a safe sense. Then I was
to be adopted. I was supposed to be taken from
(29:37):
mom to become adopted. My grandfather became involved on the
day of my birth and refused that. Part of the
conversation was difficult for my grandmother to have emotionally, and
she kept getting very upset I think that was guilt
on her part because she thought it was the best
(29:59):
thing to do, and had my grandfather not stepped in,
that would have happened. Moving forward through the seventies eighties,
my bond with my grandmother was inseparable. She was like
my mom. I pretty much went from the hospital to her.
Mom was sixteen. She didn't know anything. My grandma had
(30:21):
already raised two girls, so she knew exactly what was
going on. My grandfather fell ill. He had many strokes
and many heart attacks before he passed away. I was eight.
He was like my dad, so I didn't miss having
a mom and dad figure. It's just that my real
mom was really really young. So when Grandma is sitting
(30:43):
with me passing away and telling me the truth of
the story, to me as an adult, it hadn't affected
my life for forty seven years, and it hasn't affected
my life since then. I've known that he didn't want me.
I'm known that his parents thought horrible things about my
(31:05):
mother and vocalized those things. It wasn't just her having sex.
He was involved as well. But he was the golden
child within his family and very very, very heavily influenced
by his mother. The first time I ever saw his
face was on the front page of The Australian.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
When you saw the man you know is your father
for the first time. It was a photograph of him
in relation to this podcast, Romlan correct must have come
as quite a shop.
Speaker 4 (31:46):
Honestly, I text my mom straight away and said, I'm
growing my hair.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
You've just taken your calf after when I first saw
you downstairs in the lobby. Even it was struck by
the likeness.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
That part with my mum has been difficult. There's a
photo on my great aunt's TV and it's a photo
of me in a school uniform at twelve or thirteen.
And that photo on the front page where he has
a mustache when he's younger. That's me. That is that
(32:23):
photo less than mustache. And until I saw that, I
never actually got what mum was saying, because sometimes she'd
say to me, I, forgot's sake, can you go and
put a shirt on. I just can't see your arms
or your shoulders because I'm that much for her a resemblance.
(32:45):
But I didn't see it until four months ago. It
wasn't really spoken about within our house. His name is very, very,
very rarely mentioned. I can remember as a teenager and
I was a silly smoker, and I came home with
(33:08):
a packet Wingfield cigarettes. My grandmother blew her stack. I
still didn't get it until on her deathbed and she
spoke about it, and I was like, ahuh, is.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
There a name of a man on your birth certificate?
Speaker 4 (33:27):
It's blank or father unknown. I believe that your maternal
family was one hundred percent responsible to prove paternity. There
was no money for the test needed to prove what
they needed to prove. She would have been fourteen when
(33:51):
their relationship started, fifteen.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
As it progressed, John had moved on by late nine
teen seventy two. Sonya was born in November of that year.
He is more from Jennifer Mason's statement to police, which
you heard in episode ten.
Speaker 9 (34:12):
In approximately December nineteen seventy two, when I was sixteen
years of age, I met a young man named John
Winfield and we.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
Formed a relationship.
Speaker 9 (34:21):
We'd only been going out for about three months when
I fell pregnant. John Winfield and I married when I
was about three months pregnant.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
When Sonya was born, her father would have been a
few months shy of his eighteenth birthday. Her mother had
just turned sixteenth.
Speaker 4 (34:40):
I've known what the girls have looked like for many
many years. Strangely enough, would have been a very very
early two thousands. I was mistaken for Jodie in a
music shop in Byron Bay. I had long hair then,
and it wasn't until many years later that I realized,
(35:01):
oh my gosh, she's mistaken me for Jodie Winfield. Fifteen
years ago, I was mistaken again as one of the girls.
I don't recall which one. Someone came up and said,
I know you, I know you and your sister from
down ATLANTICX. And I don't have a sister, So I said,
(35:23):
I'm not me, mister. Sorry, I don't have a sister.
Oh sorry, I just got the resemblance is uncanny. So yeah,
it's been a minute.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
You mentioned that you had seen photographs of the daughters,
and I think you're referring to Jody, Lauren and Crystal.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
Correct. My wife, her best friend from school's friends with Jody.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Sonya explained that for about twenty years she had avoided
going to her wife's best friend's house in Lennox Head.
She recently asked that best friend.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
Do you know these people, but I know she does.
When she was like, oh my god, he's that They
refer to him as JTM. She knows him from the
local lenox Head IgA.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
I asked if her wife's friend had talked to Jodi
Wimfield about the existence of her half sister Sonya.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
No.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
Never, she would never air my laundry. She just knows
her socially through Lenox Head their friends.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Sonya had seen photographs of her half sisters Jody and
Lauren because of the mutual friend in Lennox Head, coincidentally
tagging them on Facebook. That friend was unaware at the
time of the biological ties.
Speaker 4 (36:50):
Gosh, this is my boys were in nappies a long
time ago, and so I clicked on and I was like,
oh my gosh, I can see the resemblance.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Have you wanted to reach out to Jodie or the
other girls?
Speaker 4 (37:06):
Never? Never, I feel so thankful that my grandmother had
the foresight that she had. I feel very, very sorry
for the girls more Crystal. I think that's because she
knew her mum. You know your mom at ten, you
(37:31):
miss your mom at ten. I feel really sorry for Crystal.
She must have so many stories going around in her mind.
But as far as any of the Windfield, I don't
like them. I don't dislike them. They exist and I exist.
We just exist separately. My grandmother had said to me
(37:55):
that they're all kidding themselves if they don't believe that
you exist. He knows you're his.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
When you were growing up, Sonya, and when you were
old enough to understand that you were being raised by
your mother and your grandparents, did you ask questions? Did
you yearn to know who was your biological father?
Speaker 4 (38:24):
There was a gentleman in my life who is still
in my life. He's been a fantastic father to me.
He's been an exceptional dad to me. He's been all
I've known and all I have needed as a father.
We have an awesome relationship as father and daughter. I
(38:48):
didn't come from him, He didn't make me, but we're
father and daughter.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Were you at the same time ever yearning to know
who your dad was biologically No?
Speaker 4 (38:59):
Never, I've never felt the need to reach out to
establish any connection. My grandmother was troubled. She was worried
for me maturing, not knowing things like my medical history.
And I said to her, Grammy, you're just being eastily
(39:20):
you're on your Deathbedge, you're overthinking, You're worrying, Like, just
relax and enjoy your life. She said to me, you're
very blunt in your decision to just cut And I
think that I'm very blunt in my decision because from
nineteen seventy two until two thousand she lived in the
(39:46):
same house. If he wanted to reach out, he could
have reached out at any moment in his life.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
When Bromwin disappeared in May nineteen ninety three, John's daughter
was six months away from her twenty first birthday. In
September of that year, John wrote to the family of
one of Roman's former boyfriends, Mark Guthrie. Mark and his
family believed at the time that he was the biological
(40:15):
father of Crystal, who was then aged ten. John took
the moral high ground in his letter. He explained to
Mark Guthrie what paternal responsibility really meant. Here's a reminder
from episode ten. John wrote to the family and to
their solicitor. I have a copy of the letter. These
(40:39):
are John's words, but it's not John's voice. One.
Speaker 11 (40:43):
Mark has never personally or in writing approached us in
regards to access to Crystal. Two. We have always been locatable.
We have always been in the telephone book. Had he
really wanted to, Mark could have found us at any time.
Not only have you failed to mention the possibility of
(41:04):
child support, something that has been my responsibility for almost
eleven years, but you have failed to consider Crystal's feelings
and what she wants to do.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
About this delicate situation.
Speaker 11 (41:19):
I have a responsibility to Crystel to introduce her to
her real biological father, and I will. The lack of
any offers of financial support in almost eleven years also
tells me that mister Guthrie is not sure of fatherhood. Consequently,
that would lead us to the child support agency, and
(41:42):
a deduction from Mark's wages to the tune of one
hundred and forty five dollars per month backdated maintenance to
December nineteen eighty two with an interest adjustment would be
the best part of ten thousand dollars maintenance if I
am is payable up to the age of sixteen years,
(42:04):
so we could develop into a nice little nest egg
for Crystal in her later years. Yours, sincerely, John Winfield.
Speaker 4 (42:16):
If you have never had it, you can't miss it.
So as a person I've never had him, so I
don't know him, so I've never missed him. I don't
know what it means to miss having a sister. I
do know that I have no inclination to have them
in my life. That was his choice back in the seventies.
(42:40):
You can make a choice, that's fine, but you can't
live your life denying. If the girls need to question
anyone's truths, his truths, start questioning them. Poor Crystal, as
a human, How can you put somebody through that.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
I spoke to Crystal yesterday and I said, have you
ever known of any other siblings? And she said, no, no,
there's no one else. When do you think you understood
that your biological father's surname was Wingfield? Sonia said that
she was in her early twenties and her mother needed
(43:21):
to have.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
Surgery and she was extremely paranoid that she wasn't going
to make it. And that's the first time she told
me his actual full name. I recall the conversation. I
said to her, why are you telling me this? You
know I'm not interested. Why now, in this moment of
our lives, are you telling me? And I was more
(43:45):
worried about surgery. I know she loved him. I know
she was smitten by young sexy sir for John first
loves that. Whether she was his, I don't know. There
could be older kids than me. All I know is
(44:08):
in seventy two he denied me, which broke my mother's heart.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Many of us would jump straight onto Google and start
looking for someone, but you never did that. You didn't
want to check him out. You didn't understand the case
that the police had tried to build. Sonya recalled having
to go to Balana with her mother for a meeting
(44:34):
with detectives investigating Bromin's alleged murder.
Speaker 4 (44:38):
I mean I didn't want to go because I wasn't interested.
I still don't really know why I was in there
that day.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Her mother made a police statement at the time.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
I never researched. I was never interested. I did feel. However,
on one episode of the plot cast, you were driving
in Lennox and I was in the car with you
in my mind.
Speaker 12 (45:08):
Literally around the corner at five ten minutes, I can
take you there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll take you
for a drive. We call this the Headlands. That's where
I see John walking around here.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
A millionaires role.
Speaker 12 (45:24):
I call it he bought a dual block, one for
himself and one for Jody. Always get him confused, Sorry, Ledley,
now here we are here. Yeah, he bought that block
and that block the house next saw that to jobs.
That's a fortress.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
That is very odd looking.
Speaker 12 (45:43):
It a big needs of him inside.
Speaker 4 (45:47):
That's his car and the driveway.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
That's him there right, very ecclusive. As you can see.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
You're sitting up there in your smug castor.
Speaker 12 (46:01):
Seemed like a terrible person do.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
This has weighed on you for a long time.
Speaker 12 (46:07):
Because I have a sister, and if it hadn't been
my family, I just don't know how I would be
able to handle that.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
She was a friend and a good friend at the time.
We'd still be friends today. I know we would.
Speaker 4 (46:23):
I was sitting on the footstool next to my bed.
I got on Google Maps, and before you'd finished speaking,
I'd worked out his address. I google Maps searched the
house and there was a photo of him on the
Google Maps of his house standing over what looked like
a shower area, an outside shower. That's the first and
(46:46):
the last time.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Yeah, I know that photo you're talking about. We paused
to open the packet of biscuits she had brought.
Speaker 4 (46:55):
Grandma always said, you have to blame someone to the table,
no matter where you're going, you have to take something
to the table, old Scotch finger.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
How's your mum doing.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
The relationship between my mum and I is amazing.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Sonya told me her mother had been following the case
again with the podcast.
Speaker 4 (47:18):
Regarding the podcast, I think she's like everybody else, wondering
what the police were are and will be doing. We're
very hopeful that you guys will get a good outcome
for the girls, whatever that may be. She's content that
(47:40):
I'm content. Every now and then I'm forced to think
of him because my mum will bring something garp. There
was a time I lost patience with her, which was
not long after she found out that Bronwin Winfield was
a missing person. She found out by chance. She saw
(48:02):
her missing person sign on the IgA notice board at
Lennox Head, noticed the surname, put three and three together,
worked it out that Ron win Winfield and John Winfield
was the same John Winfield that was my father. For
a long time, it was all she wanted to speak about,
(48:25):
and for all of that long time I would avoid
speaking to her. Because it was all she wanted to
speak about. I said to my grandma the one day
on the phone, I just I can't do it anymore.
I cannot listen to it anymore. It's not what life is.
Life is different. And that's the decision he chose back
(48:48):
in the seventies, and thank god you chose what you
chose in the seventies. Mattie said something, and I thought
to myself, I know that there's documents with my name
on it, whether it's a statement or whether it's just
a note that I was in the station that day.
(49:10):
I thought that I would reach out purely because you
would never have found me. I have nothing to hide.
All you have is the name of Sonya. I don't
even go by that name, but I go by the
name of Lee. I've done nothing wrong, though, I have
nothing to be ashamed of. And that's what Grandma said
(49:30):
to me. Well, you'll know when the time is right
to reach out. Whether she meant reaching out to one
of the girls, whether she meant reaching out to one
of Bronwyn's family, I don't know who she meant reaching
out to. This might sound a bit silly, but you
mentioned that you had read the document with my name
(49:54):
on it about the same time that I had started
thinking about maybe now is the right time.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
Coincidences like these sometimes seem more likely to be calmer.
Speaker 4 (50:07):
It might give the girls a different light to see
their father in. You know, if you can't be honest
and open about it now that yes, I got a
girl pregnant on the beach in Cronulla in nineteen seventy two,
I own it. I did it, and I lied about it.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
When you say he lied about it, are you referring
to his denial of patunity.
Speaker 4 (50:28):
Because he may as well have lied about the whole relationship,
which is I think what broke my mother's heart.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
The shame and stigma of teenage pregnancy must have shaped
some of the decisions made by Sonya's grandparents.
Speaker 4 (50:44):
They thought that they would pretend that I was Grandma's baby,
because no one had actually seen Mom pregnant as such,
because she was a very slim girl, quite slight. So
there was this thing I will just say that it's
Grandma's new baby. My auntie, who was like eight at
(51:07):
the time, was playing silly buggers on the stairs and fell.
Mom came out, Grandma came out, the neighbors saw Mom's
big belly and the couple was won.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
And then where were you raised?
Speaker 4 (51:22):
In the shire?
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Sonia told me that she had listened carefully to the
first ten episodes of the Broman podcast series, as well
as these subscriber only bonus episodes of eleven and twelve.
Have you formed a view?
Speaker 4 (51:39):
I think I formed my grandmother's view. My opinion of
him is what she feed into me.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
What did she feed into you of him?
Speaker 4 (51:54):
How different my life would have been with him in it?
For the negative?
Speaker 2 (52:02):
For what reasons? What did she describe in his personality
or character?
Speaker 4 (52:07):
His controllingness? She said, him and his mother had a
look in their eye, a look that you wouldn't cross.
And the day she saw that look was the day
she knew and she saw the look about three and
a half, four months into the pregnancy, she said. Prior
(52:30):
to the pregnancy, he was very welcomed within the house.
It's come over for dinner all the time. The whole
couple think they were boyfriend and girlfriend for a long time.
They were in a relationship. It's not like she had
just a small version of John. He loved her cooking.
(52:51):
He would often come to the home and you know,
they'd sit down and then Pa would run him home
again in the gab So she knew him well and
she said he was lovely at stuff.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
Sonya spoke of the nineteen eighties movie Puberty Blues. The
Australian classic is based on the book of the same name,
written in the seventies by Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lett.
It weaves a story about teenage girls growing up in
the Shire and around Cronulla in a culture of underage sex,
panel vans, surfing and deeply entrenched misogyny.
Speaker 4 (53:54):
Who is he one of the boys he's sending down
at the beach Worksy's old man and he's got a
panel band. Oh god, do I look it right?
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Routable?
Speaker 4 (54:06):
If you meet Bruce Bruce, Debbie hie, yeah, ghetto Bruce,
go for it.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
Well, come on, he won't fight.
Speaker 4 (54:23):
Will you go around with me? Yeah? Give have a
good time.
Speaker 13 (54:36):
I was conceived on Valentine's Day seventy two, so I
was born nine months after that. It just all blew up,
And Grandma believes it all blew up over money.
Speaker 4 (54:49):
They'd spoken about married joining. His mother's bond was unbreakable.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
At the same time. Your grandmother wanted to separate her
daughter and John.
Speaker 4 (55:01):
Not until mid pregnancy when it started to get nasty.
On the Winfields part. It was all about what John
said and what John's mother said, and Mum having any
say in her pregnant self was not going to be allowed.
She was going to be controlled. Grandma remembers Mom coming
(55:24):
home and they'd been out for dinner. He used to
like to eat Chinese food. The meal was sweet and
sour pork. Grandma said that. Mom's like, oh, John's such
a gentleman. He pulls my chair out for me and
he justhes my food up for me. He only lets
me have a couple of spoons of rice though, And
(55:45):
Grandma was like what, and she said, oh, yeah, he
likes me to watch my weight. I can remember Grandma saying,
That's the minute I knew I was right.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
Sonya's mother was badly smeared in the blame game which
followed her pregnancy. The decision of John and the Winfield
family to walk away from responsibility and formally deny a
paternity cut deeply. Sonya's mother was still besotted with John.
She had changed her life. She was forced to hide
(56:17):
from local busybodies. As her belly grew with John's baby,
her wounding over John's claim that he was not the
father of her unborn baby was made worse. Sonya's mother
was characterized as a girl who must have cheated on John.
She was tarnished as a girl who was carrying an
unknown man's baby.
Speaker 4 (56:39):
I remember Grandma saying, missus Winfield. The words were something
along the lines of an easy piece of work. Of course,
she goes all the way to the city for tech,
so here's no saying that it's John's baby, because she's
(57:03):
an easy piece of work.
Speaker 2 (57:06):
Sonya knew from our first conversation on the telephone that
I had read about her on Father's Day in a
sixteen year old police document recovered by Bromwin's sister in law,
Michelle read, that's the document that mentions Sonya and her
birth in nineteen seventy two. I told Sonya in that
call that Michelle was going through her emails to make
(57:29):
sure that she hadn't overlooked anything. Michelle was wanting to
ensure that season two of Bromin leaves no stone unturned,
at least as far as her own documents and files
are concerned. I wondered whether you were aware of the podcast,
and whether you were connected in any way to what
(57:52):
was unfolding, and whether your mom was I decided to
just let it rest for a bit and just see
what would happen. And then you came forward.
Speaker 4 (58:02):
I pressed send, and I was like, Okay, well, there
you go. You've done it. But I felt so relieved
that I pressed send.
Speaker 2 (58:12):
And what happens with these podcasts investigations is people listen
and hear other good people coming forward for the first
time disclosing information that they've held pretty close for a
long time, and that has a very powerful effect on
listeners who also have information. And he think I'm alone.
(58:37):
Other people are sharing information that's more or less valuable
than mine. I should just do it.
Speaker 4 (58:43):
I had a feeling the same time that you were
reading the document.
Speaker 2 (58:49):
Hypothetical seem John Winfield makes contact with you and says, look,
i'm your father and I want to you and tell
you a bit about why I haven't been in touch.
How do you respond?
Speaker 4 (59:07):
I would probably not respond. I don't feel he's worthy
of a response from me. I'm not a Winfield. I
know who I am, and I don't need anything from him,
whether it be an apology, whether it be I still
(59:27):
don't believe your mind. I'm complete. If anything that he's
reaching out for is something that's going to benefit him,
whether it be emotionally, mentally, whatever that's on him, I'm
blessed he's not in my life.
Speaker 2 (59:44):
Do you have any anger towards.
Speaker 4 (59:47):
I don't have anything toward him except oh my god,
I've got to grab my hair. And that is just
purely for my mum. Obviously, I'm not the most girliest
of girls you've ever come across, and Mum is and
was a very girly girl. She was very glamorous in
(01:00:08):
the seventies, you know, very petite and beautiful with gorgeous
blond hair. Nothing like me. When I saw him on
the front page of the paper, I was like, you
can't deny. You're going to look like a fool. Every
time I walked into a room up until I was thirty,
(01:00:29):
my mother would be like, oh my god, it's so
much like him. When I told my wife over lunches
today that I was catching up with you today, and
she said, oh my god, I've got goosebumps, I said,
I do you think I should pre warn Headley, he's
going to feel like he's sitting opposite John. The resemblance
(01:00:49):
is uncanny. There literally is nothing. I don't like him.
I don't dislike him. I don't respect him. I don't
disrespect him. He's just a guy I saw on the
front page of the newspaper for the first time four
months ago, who happened to get my mother pregnant. That's
all he is to me. He'll never be my dad.
(01:01:10):
He'll never be my father, will never be mates, will
never sit down and have a copper together. I will
never break bread with him, purely because my grandmother would
be disgusted in me if I did.
Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
From everything I've been told about John, he's extraordinarily tight
with money. He would possibly be concerned that any acknowledgment
by him of your existence could reduce the wealth that
he has and the estate that he has.
Speaker 4 (01:01:45):
It's always about money with Winfield. Grandma always said that,
and in nineteen seventy two it was about eleven dollars
a week or seventeen dollars a week or whatever. In
twenty twenty four it's about ocean front estates. I remember
Grandma saying something along the lines of eleven dollars seventeen
(01:02:10):
dollars per week that they didn't want to have to
pay for you to.
Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Be As you listen to the story with the knowledge
that the person at the center of it, the person
suspected by police and read family of having murdered Promin,
knowing that he's your father, are you affected?
Speaker 4 (01:02:35):
I don't think of him as my father. I've managed
to successfully be unaffected by it. As I said, I
feel for.
Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
Crystal, there seems to be still a curiosity in you,
because otherwise why would you be listening to it.
Speaker 4 (01:02:50):
Back when I was in ballin a police station, I
didn't understand why I was there, but I also left
there thinking this is going to be finished off soon.
Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
Would love me to show you some of the start
of that documentary. Referring to yes please, I started to
make a point apparently your dad's sorry, I shouldn't callim
your dad Sonya's face changed, she appeared uncomfortable and excused
herself to go to the bathroom.
Speaker 4 (01:03:22):
Just threw me a bit before when you said your dad.
Of course he's not and it will never be. No
one's actually said those words ever before your you know,
But I yeah, sorry about that I understand. Yeah, that's okay.
(01:03:43):
I'm happy if that helps you in any way with
your investigations. It's actually really nice to know that my
grandmother's eye for detail was so detailed when my mom
was that young. There's photos of me and my mom,
and some of those photos are very very similar to
(01:04:07):
photos I've got on your website of Bridman and the
girls when the girls were young. I have a very
similar photo and it's like, oh.
Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
My God, like.
Speaker 4 (01:04:20):
Thank you, Goma, But it could have been me and
my mom. I think she was spot on with the
controlling and the dominating.
Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
What would you say to Lauren, Crystal and Jodi about
their beliefs and what they've been.
Speaker 4 (01:04:38):
Told, even if they deep down inside, no, the answer
is going to hurt them. Ask the question anyway. Jody's
coming up to an age where she's going to, whether
she likes it or not, biologically, start questioning things. As
you're coming up to fifty and you're going through menopause
(01:04:59):
and everything, think inside dey's changing, and you can have
the lowest of lows and the highest of highs. And
if there's a time in her life where she's wondering
what the true answers to the questions are this is
the time where she should lighten her load, just be open.
(01:05:23):
There's a level of dishonesty, whether it's the story of
whatever happened to Bronwyn, whether it's the story of John
Winfield and his life, that it just seems to get
these extra levels of layers of unbelievable things on top
of them. The girls should just be allowed to know
their truths.
Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
You said before that you were very hopeful there would
be a good outcome. What do you believe is a
good outcome.
Speaker 4 (01:05:57):
For the girls? Then? What happened to Bronwyn, the good,
the bad, the ugly, whatever it may be, they deserve
to know. It's got to be the heaviest load for
them to carry.
Speaker 2 (01:06:23):
Bronwyn is written and investigated by me Headley Thomas as
a podcast production for The Australian. If anyone has information
which may help solve this cold case, please contact me
confidentially by emailing Bronwyn at the Australian dot com dot au.
(01:06:43):
You can read more about this case and see a
range of photographs and other artwork at the website Bronwyn
podcast dot com. Our subscribers and registered users here episodes first.
The production and editorial team for bromwin includes Claire Harvey,
Kristin Amiot, Joshua Burton, Bridget Ryan Bianca, far Marcus, Katie Burns,
(01:07:08):
Liam Mendez, Sean Callen and Matthew Condon and David Murray.
Audio production for this podcast series is by Wasabi Audio
and original theme music by Slade Gibson. We have been
assisted by Madison Walsh, a relation of Bromin Winfield. We
can only do this kind of journalism with the support
(01:07:29):
of our subscribers and our major sponsors like Harvey Norman.
For all of our exclusive stories, videos, maps, timelines and
documents about this podcast and other podcasts including The Teacher's Pet,
The Teachers Trial, The Teacher's Accuser, Shandy's Story, Shandy's Legacy
and The Night Driver. Go to the Australian dot com
(01:07:52):
dot au and subscribe
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The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.