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
this 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 bromwanpodcast 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 Broman 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 poring 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 4 (07:01):
Here we have witness statements from nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 6 (07:06):
Yours isn't in nut war and yours are the plastic value.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
I'd be Lyne in two and nine twenty ten with
George add Moore, who I had a great relationship with.
Speaker 6 (07:16):
This was the one case really upsetting. It wasn't sold.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
I'll think a lot of those emails are between Meagan
and George Radmore.
Speaker 6 (07:24):
That's from George.
Speaker 7 (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 3 (08:05):
George Radmore had successfully put away quite a few people
without bodies, and that's why they assigned.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Him to it.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
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 7 (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 7 (09:13):
Jonathan Winfield and Sybil Green meet while students at high school.
Nineteen seventy Jonathan and Sybil 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 4 (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 6 (11:38):
All right, yeah, that's fine.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Saturday morning.
Speaker 6 (11:42):
Saturday morning.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Tell me about this Facebook message.
Speaker 4 (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 Maddie, you are rock sol girl. 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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
It 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 6 (15:00):
Too?
Speaker 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 8 (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 picked.
Speaker 6 (19:23):
Up Jody and walked out the door.
Speaker 8 (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 4 (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 go the way they want. 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
(20:31):
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? 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 9 (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 4 (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. I feel like she.
Speaker 6 (21:56):
Wants to help.
Speaker 4 (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 4 (22:30):
Maybe she has that thought in the back of her
mind that he could have been her mother. With Jenny's
statement as well, and how John was violent with her.
Speaker 8 (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 4 (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. I just think it's honestly insane.
The developments that have happened with in this case are crazy.
We need to die 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
(23:53):
he was younger, 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
(24:16):
tightly under wraps. Even John's parents not to have a
relationship with their granddaughter, their first granddaughter is also a
little bit unbothomable 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 Bought 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 6 (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 10 (27:43):
Day, and during that time a lot of conversations. We
had stories, who told secrets, who shared.
Speaker 6 (27:53):
Back in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 10 (27:55):
Things were great financially, and my grandma, if pregnancy, thought
it would be a great idea to separate the two
of them for my mother's benefit mental and emotional reasons,
which at the time wasn't told to my mother. In truth,
(28:17):
she thought her heart had been broken John was breaking
up with her. Was in fact my grandmother separated the
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 Hoiti tweety. My grandmother sent something
(28:43):
and removed my mother and myself from that circle. Fraternity
was always denied on his part. Abortion wasn't legal back then,
and it wasn't affordable within the family.
Speaker 6 (28:58):
My grandparents had no money. They lived day to day.
Speaker 10 (29:01):
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 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
(29:23):
gone along too far, so termination wasn't possible in a
safe sense.
Speaker 6 (29:29):
Then I was to be adopted.
Speaker 10 (29:34):
I was supposed to be taken from 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.
Speaker 6 (29:52):
Kept getting very upset.
Speaker 10 (29:55):
I think that was guilt on her part because she
thought it was the best 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.
Speaker 6 (30:11):
She was like my mom.
Speaker 10 (30:13):
I pretty much went from the hospital to her. Mom
was sixteen. She didn't know anything. My grandma had 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.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
I was eight.
Speaker 10 (30:33):
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
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
(30:54):
my life since then.
Speaker 6 (30:57):
I've known that he didn't want me.
Speaker 10 (31:00):
I'm known that his parents thought horrible things about my
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
(31:20):
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 10 (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 6 (32:03):
That part with my mum has been difficult.
Speaker 10 (32:07):
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.
Speaker 6 (32:21):
That's me. That is that photo less than mustache.
Speaker 10 (32:26):
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.
Speaker 6 (32:42):
For her a resemblance.
Speaker 10 (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
(33:08):
with a packet Wingfield cigarettes.
Speaker 6 (33:11):
My grandmother blew her stat.
Speaker 10 (33:14):
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 6 (33:27):
It's blank or father unknown.
Speaker 10 (33:32):
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 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's more from Jennifer Mason's statement to police, which you
heard in episode ten.
Speaker 8 (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 6 (34:19):
Formed a relationship.
Speaker 8 (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 6 (34:40):
I've known what the girls have looked like for many
many years.
Speaker 10 (34:44):
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, oh my gosh,
she's mistaken me for Jodie Winfield. Fifteen years ago, I
(35:09):
was mistaken again as one of the girls.
Speaker 6 (35:13):
I don't recall which one.
Speaker 10 (35:15):
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, I'm not.
Speaker 6 (35:24):
Me, mister.
Speaker 10 (35:25):
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 6 (35:44):
Correct.
Speaker 10 (35:45):
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 10 (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 10 (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 10 (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 8 (37:06):
Never?
Speaker 10 (37:08):
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 miss
(37:31):
your mom at ten. I feel really sorry for Crystal.
She must have had 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
(37:54):
said to me that they're all kidding themselves if they
don't believe that you exist.
Speaker 6 (38:01):
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 10 (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 10 (38:59):
Never, I've never felt the need to reach out to
establish any connection.
Speaker 6 (39:07):
My grandmother was troubled.
Speaker 10 (39:11):
She was worried for me maturing, not knowing things like
my medical history. And I said to her, Gramma, you're
just be Eastily, You're on your deathbedge, you're overthinking, You're worrying, Like,
just relax and enjoy your life.
Speaker 6 (39:27):
She said to me, you're very blunt in.
Speaker 10 (39:30):
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 same house. If
he wanted to reach out, he could have reached out
(39:51):
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 10 (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 surgery.
Speaker 10 (43:23):
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 worried about surgery.
(43:48):
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 in seventy two
(44:09):
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 10 (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 6 (44:51):
I never researched. I was never interested.
Speaker 10 (44:56):
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. A millionaires role, I
call it. He bought a dual block, one for himself
and one for Jodie. Always get him confused. Sorry, Ledley,
(45:34):
now here we are here. Yeah, he bought that block.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
And that block the house next saw that to jobs.
That's a fortress. That is very odd looking.
Speaker 12 (45:43):
It a big needs a hin inside.
Speaker 6 (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 6 (45:57):
You're sitting up there in your smug castor seemed like
a terrible person.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Don't 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.
Speaker 6 (46:20):
I know we would.
Speaker 10 (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.
Speaker 6 (46:45):
That's the first and 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 10 (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.
Speaker 6 (47:02):
Old Scotch finger.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
How's your mum doing.
Speaker 10 (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 10 (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.
Speaker 6 (47:38):
She's content that I'm content.
Speaker 10 (47:42):
Every now and then I'm forced to think of him
because my mum.
Speaker 6 (47:47):
Will bring something garp.
Speaker 10 (47:50):
There was a time I lost patience with her, which
was not long after she found out that Bronwin Winfield
was a missing person.
Speaker 6 (48:00):
She found out by chance.
Speaker 10 (48:01):
She saw 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.
Speaker 6 (48:17):
That was my father.
Speaker 10 (48:20):
For a long time, it was all she wanted to
speak about, 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
(48:43):
what life is. Life is different. And that's the decision
he chose back 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
(49:05):
whether it's just a note that I was.
Speaker 6 (49:07):
In the station that day.
Speaker 10 (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 10 (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.
Speaker 6 (50:19):
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 10 (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 10 (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.
Speaker 6 (50:58):
So there was this thing.
Speaker 10 (50:59):
I will just say that it's Grandma's new baby. My auntie,
who was like eight at 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.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
One And then where were you raised?
Speaker 6 (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 10 (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 10 (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 6 (52:07):
His controllingness?
Speaker 10 (52:09):
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 to the pregnancy,
(52:32):
he was very welcomed within the house.
Speaker 6 (52:34):
It's come over for dinner all the time.
Speaker 10 (52:36):
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. 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
(52:59):
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 10 (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 vand oh god, do I look it right?
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Routable?
Speaker 4 (54:06):
If you meet Bruce Bruce Debbie.
Speaker 2 (54:09):
Hi, Yeah, ghetto Bruce boy, go for it?
Speaker 4 (54:14):
Well, come on, he won't fight.
Speaker 6 (54:23):
Will you go around with me? Yeah? Give have a
good time.
Speaker 10 (54:36):
I was conceived on Valentine's Day seventy two, so I
was born nine months after that.
Speaker 6 (54:43):
It just all blew up.
Speaker 10 (54:44):
And Grandma believes it all blew up over money. 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 10 (55:01):
Not until mid pregnancy, when it started to get nasty.
Speaker 6 (55:06):
On the Windfields part.
Speaker 10 (55:07):
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.
Speaker 6 (55:17):
To be allowed. She was going to be controlled.
Speaker 10 (55:22):
Grandma remembers Mom coming 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,
(55:45):
And Grandma was like what, and she said.
Speaker 6 (55:48):
Oh, yeah, he likes me to watch my weight.
Speaker 10 (55:51):
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 10 (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 he'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 6 (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 you 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 10 (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 10 (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.
Speaker 6 (59:29):
I'm complete.
Speaker 10 (59:31):
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 10 (59:47):
I don't have anything toward him except oh my god,
I've got to grab my hair.
Speaker 6 (59:54):
And that is just purely for my mum.
Speaker 10 (59:58):
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 the seventies, you know, very
petite and beautiful with gorgeous blond hair.
Speaker 6 (01:00:14):
Nothing like me.
Speaker 10 (01:00:16):
When I saw him on the front page of the paper,
I was like, you can't deny.
Speaker 6 (01:00:21):
You're going to look like a fool.
Speaker 10 (01:00:23):
Every time I walked into a room up until I
was thirty, my mother.
Speaker 6 (01:00:29):
Would be like, oh my god, it's so much like him.
Speaker 10 (01:00:33):
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 is uncanny. There
literally is nothing. I don't like him. I don't dislike him.
(01:00:56):
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.
Speaker 6 (01:01:07):
That's all he is to me. He'll never be my dad.
Speaker 10 (01:01:10):
He'll never be my father, will never be mates, will
never sit down and have a copper together.
Speaker 6 (01:01:16):
I will never.
Speaker 10 (01:01:17):
Break bread with him, purely because my grandmother.
Speaker 6 (01:01:21):
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 10 (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.
Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
For you to 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 6 (01:02:35):
I don't think of him as my father.
Speaker 10 (01:02:38):
I've managed to successfully be unaffected by it.
Speaker 6 (01:02:42):
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 10 (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 10 (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.
Speaker 6 (01:03:40):
Yeah, sorry about that I understand. Yeah, that's okay.
Speaker 10 (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 you've got on your website of Bridman and the
girls when the girls were young.
Speaker 6 (01:04:13):
I have a very similar photo and it's like, oh.
Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
My God, like.
Speaker 6 (01:04:20):
Thank you, Goma, But it could have been me and
my mom.
Speaker 10 (01:04:24):
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 Jody about
their beliefs and what they've been.
Speaker 10 (01:04:38):
Told, even if they deep down inside, no, the answer
is going to hurt them.
Speaker 6 (01:04:45):
Ask the question anyway.
Speaker 10 (01:04:47):
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 and everything think inside you is changing and you
can have the lowest of lows.
Speaker 6 (01:05:06):
And the highest of highs.
Speaker 10 (01:05:09):
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. There's a level of dishonesty, whether it's the
story of whatever happened to Bronwyn, whether it's the story
(01:05:30):
of John Winfield and his life, that it just seems
to get these extra levels of layers of unbelievable things
on top of them.
Speaker 6 (01:05:40):
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 6 (01:05:57):
For the girls?
Speaker 10 (01:05:58):
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
this 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 bromwanpodcast 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 Broman 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 poring 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 4 (07:01):
Here we have witness statements from nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 6 (07:06):
Yours isn't in nut war and yours are the plastic value.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
I'd be Lyne in two and nine twenty ten with
George add Moore, who I had a great relationship with.
Speaker 6 (07:16):
This was the one case really upsetting. It wasn't sold.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
I'll think a lot of those emails are between Meagan
and George Radmore.
Speaker 6 (07:24):
That's from George.
Speaker 7 (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 3 (08:05):
George Radmore had successfully put away quite a few people
without bodies, and that's why they assigned.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Him to it.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
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 7 (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 7 (09:13):
Jonathan Winfield and Sybil Green meet while students at high school.
Nineteen seventy Jonathan and Sybil 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 4 (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 6 (11:38):
All right, yeah, that's fine.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Saturday morning.
Speaker 6 (11:42):
Saturday morning.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Tell me about this Facebook message.
Speaker 4 (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 Maddie, you are rock sol girl. 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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
It 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 6 (15:00):
Too?
Speaker 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 8 (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 picked.
Speaker 6 (19:23):
Up Jody and walked out the door.
Speaker 8 (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 4 (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 go the way they want. 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
(20:31):
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? 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 9 (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 4 (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. I feel like she.
Speaker 6 (21:56):
Wants to help.
Speaker 4 (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 4 (22:30):
Maybe she has that thought in the back of her
mind that he could have been her mother. With Jenny's
statement as well, and how John was violent with her.
Speaker 8 (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 4 (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. I just think it's honestly insane.
The developments that have happened with in this case are crazy.
We need to die 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
(23:53):
he was younger, 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
(24:16):
tightly under wraps. Even John's parents not to have a
relationship with their granddaughter, their first granddaughter is also a
little bit unbothomable 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 Bought 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 6 (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 10 (27:43):
Day, and during that time a lot of conversations. We
had stories, who told secrets, who shared.
Speaker 6 (27:53):
Back in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 10 (27:55):
Things were great financially, and my grandma, if pregnancy, thought
it would be a great idea to separate the two
of them for my mother's benefit mental and emotional reasons,
which at the time wasn't told to my mother. In truth,
(28:17):
she thought her heart had been broken John was breaking
up with her. Was in fact my grandmother separated the
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 Hoiti tweety. My grandmother sent something
(28:43):
and removed my mother and myself from that circle. Fraternity
was always denied on his part. Abortion wasn't legal back then,
and it wasn't affordable within the family.
Speaker 6 (28:58):
My grandparents had no money. They lived day to day.
Speaker 10 (29:01):
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 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
(29:23):
gone along too far, so termination wasn't possible in a
safe sense.
Speaker 6 (29:29):
Then I was to be adopted.
Speaker 10 (29:34):
I was supposed to be taken from 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.
Speaker 6 (29:52):
Kept getting very upset.
Speaker 10 (29:55):
I think that was guilt on her part because she
thought it was the best 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.
Speaker 6 (30:11):
She was like my mom.
Speaker 10 (30:13):
I pretty much went from the hospital to her. Mom
was sixteen. She didn't know anything. My grandma had 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.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
I was eight.
Speaker 10 (30:33):
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
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
(30:54):
my life since then.
Speaker 6 (30:57):
I've known that he didn't want me.
Speaker 10 (31:00):
I'm known that his parents thought horrible things about my
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
(31:20):
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 10 (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 6 (32:03):
That part with my mum has been difficult.
Speaker 10 (32:07):
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.
Speaker 6 (32:21):
That's me. That is that photo less than mustache.
Speaker 10 (32:26):
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.
Speaker 6 (32:42):
For her a resemblance.
Speaker 10 (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
(33:08):
with a packet Wingfield cigarettes.
Speaker 6 (33:11):
My grandmother blew her stat.
Speaker 10 (33:14):
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 6 (33:27):
It's blank or father unknown.
Speaker 10 (33:32):
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 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's more from Jennifer Mason's statement to police, which you
heard in episode ten.
Speaker 8 (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 6 (34:19):
Formed a relationship.
Speaker 8 (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 6 (34:40):
I've known what the girls have looked like for many
many years.
Speaker 10 (34:44):
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, oh my gosh,
she's mistaken me for Jodie Winfield. Fifteen years ago, I
(35:09):
was mistaken again as one of the girls.
Speaker 6 (35:13):
I don't recall which one.
Speaker 10 (35:15):
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, I'm not.
Speaker 6 (35:24):
Me, mister.
Speaker 10 (35:25):
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 6 (35:44):
Correct.
Speaker 10 (35:45):
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 10 (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 10 (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 10 (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 8 (37:06):
Never?
Speaker 10 (37:08):
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 miss
(37:31):
your mom at ten. I feel really sorry for Crystal.
She must have had 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
(37:54):
said to me that they're all kidding themselves if they
don't believe that you exist.
Speaker 6 (38:01):
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 10 (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 10 (38:59):
Never, I've never felt the need to reach out to
establish any connection.
Speaker 6 (39:07):
My grandmother was troubled.
Speaker 10 (39:11):
She was worried for me maturing, not knowing things like
my medical history. And I said to her, Gramma, you're
just be Eastily, You're on your deathbedge, you're overthinking, You're worrying, Like,
just relax and enjoy your life.
Speaker 6 (39:27):
She said to me, you're very blunt in.
Speaker 10 (39:30):
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 same house. If
he wanted to reach out, he could have reached out
(39:51):
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 10 (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 surgery.
Speaker 10 (43:23):
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 worried about surgery.
(43:48):
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 in seventy two
(44:09):
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 10 (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 6 (44:51):
I never researched. I was never interested.
Speaker 10 (44:56):
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. A millionaires role, I
call it. He bought a dual block, one for himself
and one for Jodie. Always get him confused. Sorry, Ledley,
(45:34):
now here we are here. Yeah, he bought that block.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
And that block the house next saw that to jobs.
That's a fortress. That is very odd looking.
Speaker 12 (45:43):
It a big needs a hin inside.
Speaker 6 (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 6 (45:57):
You're sitting up there in your smug castor seemed like
a terrible person.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Don't 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.
Speaker 6 (46:20):
I know we would.
Speaker 10 (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.
Speaker 6 (46:45):
That's the first and 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 10 (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.
Speaker 6 (47:02):
Old Scotch finger.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
How's your mum doing.
Speaker 10 (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 10 (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.
Speaker 6 (47:38):
She's content that I'm content.
Speaker 10 (47:42):
Every now and then I'm forced to think of him
because my mum.
Speaker 6 (47:47):
Will bring something garp.
Speaker 10 (47:50):
There was a time I lost patience with her, which
was not long after she found out that Bronwin Winfield
was a missing person.
Speaker 6 (48:00):
She found out by chance.
Speaker 10 (48:01):
She saw 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.
Speaker 6 (48:17):
That was my father.
Speaker 10 (48:20):
For a long time, it was all she wanted to
speak about, 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
(48:43):
what life is. Life is different. And that's the decision
he chose back 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
(49:05):
whether it's just a note that I was.
Speaker 6 (49:07):
In the station that day.
Speaker 10 (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 10 (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.
Speaker 6 (50:19):
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 10 (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 10 (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.
Speaker 6 (50:58):
So there was this thing.
Speaker 10 (50:59):
I will just say that it's Grandma's new baby. My auntie,
who was like eight at 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.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
One And then where were you raised?
Speaker 6 (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 10 (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 10 (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 6 (52:07):
His controllingness?
Speaker 10 (52:09):
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 to the pregnancy,
(52:32):
he was very welcomed within the house.
Speaker 6 (52:34):
It's come over for dinner all the time.
Speaker 10 (52:36):
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. 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
(52:59):
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 10 (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 vand oh god, do I look it right?
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Routable?
Speaker 4 (54:06):
If you meet Bruce Bruce Debbie.
Speaker 2 (54:09):
Hi, Yeah, ghetto Bruce boy, go for it?
Speaker 4 (54:14):
Well, come on, he won't fight.
Speaker 6 (54:23):
Will you go around with me? Yeah? Give have a
good time.
Speaker 10 (54:36):
I was conceived on Valentine's Day seventy two, so I
was born nine months after that.
Speaker 6 (54:43):
It just all blew up.
Speaker 10 (54:44):
And Grandma believes it all blew up over money. 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 10 (55:01):
Not until mid pregnancy, when it started to get nasty.
Speaker 6 (55:06):
On the Windfields part.
Speaker 10 (55:07):
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.
Speaker 6 (55:17):
To be allowed. She was going to be controlled.
Speaker 10 (55:22):
Grandma remembers Mom coming 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,
(55:45):
And Grandma was like what, and she said.
Speaker 6 (55:48):
Oh, yeah, he likes me to watch my weight.
Speaker 10 (55:51):
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 10 (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 he'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 6 (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 you 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 10 (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 10 (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.
Speaker 6 (59:29):
I'm complete.
Speaker 10 (59:31):
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 10 (59:47):
I don't have anything toward him except oh my god,
I've got to grab my hair.
Speaker 6 (59:54):
And that is just purely for my mum.
Speaker 10 (59:58):
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 the seventies, you know, very
petite and beautiful with gorgeous blond hair.
Speaker 6 (01:00:14):
Nothing like me.
Speaker 10 (01:00:16):
When I saw him on the front page of the paper,
I was like, you can't deny.
Speaker 6 (01:00:21):
You're going to look like a fool.
Speaker 10 (01:00:23):
Every time I walked into a room up until I
was thirty, my mother.
Speaker 6 (01:00:29):
Would be like, oh my god, it's so much like him.
Speaker 10 (01:00:33):
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 is uncanny. There
literally is nothing. I don't like him. I don't dislike him.
(01:00:56):
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.
Speaker 6 (01:01:07):
That's all he is to me. He'll never be my dad.
Speaker 10 (01:01:10):
He'll never be my father, will never be mates, will
never sit down and have a copper together.
Speaker 6 (01:01:16):
I will never.
Speaker 10 (01:01:17):
Break bread with him, purely because my grandmother.
Speaker 6 (01:01:21):
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 10 (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.
Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
For you to 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 6 (01:02:35):
I don't think of him as my father.
Speaker 10 (01:02:38):
I've managed to successfully be unaffected by it.
Speaker 6 (01:02:42):
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 10 (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 10 (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.
Speaker 6 (01:03:40):
Yeah, sorry about that I understand. Yeah, that's okay.
Speaker 10 (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 you've got on your website of Bridman and the
girls when the girls were young.
Speaker 6 (01:04:13):
I have a very similar photo and it's like, oh.
Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
My God, like.
Speaker 6 (01:04:20):
Thank you, Goma, But it could have been me and
my mom.
Speaker 10 (01:04:24):
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 Jody about
their beliefs and what they've been.
Speaker 10 (01:04:38):
Told, even if they deep down inside, no, the answer
is going to hurt them.
Speaker 6 (01:04:45):
Ask the question anyway.
Speaker 10 (01:04:47):
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 and everything think inside you is changing and you
can have the lowest of lows.
Speaker 6 (01:05:06):
And the highest of highs.
Speaker 10 (01:05:09):
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. There's a level of dishonesty, whether it's the
story of whatever happened to Bronwyn, whether it's the story
(01:05:30):
of John Winfield and his life, that it just seems
to get these extra levels of layers of unbelievable things
on top of them.
Speaker 6 (01:05:40):
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 6 (01:05:57):
For the girls?
Speaker 10 (01:05:58):
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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