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June 14, 2025 61 mins

Marion Barter sold her house to travel the world, leaving behind her entire family. Then she was never seen again. From a mystery man and last minute name change to an unknown Medicare alert and bank withdrawals, her daughter Sally Leydon has been trying to find out exactly what happened to her missing mother.

 

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Find out more about Sally’s new podcast, The Missing Matter, here.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective see aside of life the average persons never exposed her.
I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty
five of those years, I was catching killers. That's what
I did for a living. I was a homicide detective.
I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking
the public into the world in which I operated. The

(00:23):
guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from
all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest,
just like the people I talk to. Some of the
content and language might be confronting. That's because no one
who comes in the contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world.

(00:46):
Today I spoke to Sally Laden, the daughter of missing
woman Marion Barter. Marion disappeared in bizarre circumstances twenty seven
years ago. Sally doesn't know what happened to her mum,
but she's determined to find out, and today we spoke
to her about the enduring pain a loved one's disappearance
can cause. We also spoke about the shocking truth about

(01:07):
the failings of the police investigation and a mysterious man
called Rick Blum, who came into Marion's life around the
time she disappeared. Rick Blum has denied any involvement in
the disappearance of Marion. Sally is determined to find out
what happened to her mother and just maybe today's chat
may prompt something. Sally Laden, welcome to I catch killers.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Hello, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
It's a pleasure. And look, I want to say upfront,
condolences for what you've gone through with your mother having
disappeared twenty seven years ago. And I've seen enough of
people and the uncertainty and not knowing what happened and
the pain of having a loved one just disappear.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, well, thank you for that. It's is a hard
road to part to walk, I guess, but yeah, thank
you for having me and having a chat with me
about it.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Well. I don't think people fully appreciate what happens when
someone just disappears, or you haven't got answers, or someone's
died in suspicious circumstances, you haven't got answers. And I'm
sure some people say, well, twenty seven years ago, why
are you still campaigning? Can you just explain that to them,
because I fully understand. I've seen enough of victims families

(02:20):
and it's not something that you ever get closure from.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
No, and you live with it forever. And I feel
like I didn't really want to leave that burden of
searching for my children. I've got three children and that's
their grandmother. They never met her. She already disappeared by
the time I had babies, and even by the time
I was getting married. I got married a year after
she went missing. And it is a rollercoaster, and there

(02:46):
are times where I've had to tap out and just
focus on being a mum or building houses or working
in our business, and then when I have the energy
to come back in, I jump back in and go
a little bit further until you know, you get knocked
down again, and you can kind of get knocked down
so much, but I have this personality and ability, I
guess to just pull myself out and keep going because

(03:09):
for me, my mum matters, and she shouldn't. Quite often
A quoted of saying, you know, she's not a lost puppy,
and it might be twenty seven years I'm actually fifty
two now. She technically at the time the Currenter has
deemed that when she passed she was fifty two as well.
And my eldest daughter is twenty three about to turn
twenty four. And I was twenty three turning twenty four

(03:30):
when mum disappeared. So in our world we've actually come
full circle in life again to where you know, Ella's
the same age as I was. I'm the same age
as Mum was, and we still don't know what's happened
to her, and so I'll I'll keep going. People joke
that I'm a Tourian and I do have this stubbornness
in me, so part of it.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
I think people that listen to the podcast today will
find out that you need to need to be stubborn
because for all the kicks that you've had, you keep
getting up and keep fighting. Why have you campaigned so hard?

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Well, I guess at the outset it was about my mum.
But as time has grown, I've realized that, you know,
everybody needs a voice in the missing space, and you know,
the ambiguity, ambiguity that we live with, those of us
living in with as missing loved one, it's really important
that we do remember them and that we keep fighting
for the truth. I think, you know, as I've been

(04:27):
kicking along, I have found things. So I keep finding things.
I keep digging deeper, and you know, the more people
that I sort of calls out for people to help
me as well, and people have come to that table,
and you know, it's with those little bits of information
that it just keeps going and this story just keeps
growing every day. So I'm here, I am keeping on,
keeping on.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
Well, some things have been uncovered, and I dare say,
and we'll get into this more in the in the
podcast that Yeah, as a form of police officer now
working in the media in this space on true crime
understanding the police organization, I can say comfortably that if
you weren't campaigning then going so hard, it would have

(05:08):
been forgotten.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, or she was forgotten. She's been forgotten multiple times,
like even at the very outset, you know. So I
walk into Byron Bay police station. I didn't use the
words missing. I just said, something's wrong. My mum's supposed
to be overseas. I've just found out that money's coming
out of her bank account in large sums every day
for three and a half weeks in Byron Bay and

(05:30):
in Burley something's wrong. She missed my brother's birthday. That
was very out of character for her and something that
I've always wanted to get out for anybody who finds
himself in this position, the language is actually important. But
equally the police probably need to start looking at that
as well. And because their argument to you know, in
court was will Sally didn't walk in and say her

(05:52):
mother was missing, And I'm like, well, you know, as
a twenty three year old, twenty four year old, I
didn't know what was happening. I just knew that my
mum was supposed to be overseas and money's coming out
of her bank account and Brian Bay. The reaction from
the lady on the phone when I rang Telly Banking,
she nearly had a heart attack. She's like, what, I
can't tell you this, but holy moly, there's money coming
out of her bank account and Byron Bay. So you know,

(06:13):
it started at that very outset. They only marked my
mum's on occurrence only at that stage within twenty four
hours of me going to the police station.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
It's a failing from the start and not beating up
on the individuals, but these mistakes made that if people
in those circumstances and it doesn't need to be an
experienced police office. Anyone with common sense, and one would
hope that anyone in the police with common sense would realize, okay,
this is something. What the details that you just provided there.
As a junior constable, you'd think, okay, this is something

(06:45):
that we better have a look at. But tell us
about the circumstances of your mum's disappearance. Brief details, because
we're going to break it down. So it's complex. But
where was she the fact she went overseas and then
so she was a school teacher.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
She'd just won Best Teacher in Queensland award. Ida Butcher's
actually gave her that award in November of nineteen ninety six.
She came second in Australia overall. So she was achieving
well at school. She was doing well. She loved her
little boys that she taught. She taught four and five
year olds at TSS on the Gold Coast, which is
the Southport School. It's a private boys school, probably one

(07:24):
of the best in Queensland. She wasn't very happy. There
was times in the new year, around the March February
time period where she just wasn't getting along with a
few people at school, and I always sort of thought
to myself, potentially there was a bit of tall poppy
syndrome happening. She won this award and people didn't like that.

(07:46):
And I've even heard comments since then that people were saying, oh, well,
it was the parents who were voting for her, and
so even little comments like that, I'm like, what does
it really matter who voted for her?

Speaker 1 (07:57):
She wins, probably want to hope.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
So but anyway, she decided to sell her house and
go on a trip overseas. I did think it was
odd that she left halfway through a year, because she
was a very dedicated teacher. But she was also quite
upset about a few things that were happening at school.
Someone had accused her of touching a boy and that
just absolutely wiped her for six She was in tears

(08:21):
about it. I was just gobsmacked because I know my
mum very well and she would never have done anything
of the sort. So that was all happening. She decided
to sell the house and told my husband and I
he was my fiance back then. We just got engaged
that she was going to come back in a year,
and she was going to buy an apartment or a
unit at Maine Beach, which is on the Gold Coast,

(08:42):
not far from her house, and by doing so, she'd
have to give us a couple of big pieces of
her furniture because she wouldn't be able to house them
in the unit when she got back. The rest of
her treasures were going into a shipping container, and foolishly
I never asked her where the shipping container was going.
She just said to me, if I decide to stay
overseas and teach, I will get you to send it

(09:05):
over to me. Okay, And I thought, okay, and like
everything made sense to me. She did sell the house
really quickly, so she sold it in three weeks for
less than fifteen thousand dollars that she paid for it.
And if you wind back to nineteen ninety seven, we're
talking around one hundred and seventy one hundred and sixty
thousand dollars for a house. Just for some perspective, so

(09:26):
that was a bit that was a bit odd. I
did think that was a bit weird, but you know,
I wasn't the kind of child, I guess young adult
that asked my mum will probed into my mom's business
too much. Anyway, there was a night that she'd asked
me if I would come and help her start packing
up the house. And I was going to TAFE because
ironically I was trying myself to get into the Queensland Police,

(09:48):
so I was studying at TAFE while working from I
do joke. I do joke about that. I should have
I should have persisted. But any who, Chris went around
my partner, yeah, and he helped mum pack up. And
so he was helping her. He was putting some records
from the under the TV cabinet into some boxes, and
she walked down and said, what's the time, and he

(10:10):
gave her the time, and she said, oh, okay, we'll
just drop what you're doing. I need you to go.
And he goes, no, no, Marry and it's okay, I'll
just keep packing this box and finish and he goes, no, no,
you just need to leave it. I need you to go.
So he left, quite bewildered as to why she was
sort of kicking him out of the house in such
a hurry. Came and picked me up from Tafe. We

(10:30):
stopped at a service station on the way home that
had a McDonald's attached to it because it's late. We
don't we didn't have time to cook dinner. McDonald's feel
every time I say that now because I don't need McDonald's.
But why did you have McDonald's Anyway? Life changes? But yeah, anyway,
so we were sitting at McDonald's and my mum's car

(10:53):
pulled up in the petrol bowser and Chris actually was
the one who saw her. I had my to the
bowser and I stood up and I started waving at her.
And she's standing at the car with the door open
like she's about to put petrol in the car, and
just stares at me like a deer in headlights, as
if to say, oh my god, what are you doing
sort of thing. Anyway, she got back in the car,

(11:16):
didn't put petrol in the car, and drove off. But
she went around to the left, which got meant that
she went through the drive through and instead of driving
straight past us. And I think she did that because
there was a man in the car, and I clearly
could see that there was a guy. He was very tall,
his head was nearly touching the roof. But the reflection

(11:36):
from the lights, the bright lights at nighttime in the
petrol station meant that I didn't get a very clear
look at him, but he was big, and I guess
always figured that if she'd driven past the window where
we were standing, I would have got a full view
of who that was. I did ask her the next
day and said, who was the man in the car?
She said, just a friend I've met at the art center.

(11:57):
He was just taking me out to say goodbye before
I go over. And I went, okay, no problem, Ibe,
you respect her privacy. I kind of joked and went, oh,
maybe she's got a boyfriend. She doesn't want to tell
me about it, but you know, I just left it
at that essentially. So on the she came and had
dinner with us. She asked if i'd make her a

(12:18):
lamb roast, and she came to our house with her
friend Leslie. She'd moved in with Leslie because she'd sort
of had to leave the house a couple of weeks
before she was ready to move to go on the trip.
I should say, Leslie lived close to school, so it
sort of made sense that whereas we were like thirty
minutes away, so it was probably better for her to
stay with Leslie and so Leslie and drove Mum out

(12:38):
to our house. I made her a lamb roast and yeah,
that was the last time I saw her. Gave her
a hug and a kiss. She looked a bit sad
that she was leaving.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
How what a period of time was that.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
Twenty second of June nineteen ninety seven. Is that when
she left? Okay, So she was there on the Saturday
night and then she left the next day.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
All right, so she's going overseas. She's fifty one, fifty two,
and she wasn't that happy with her life at that
particular point in time. And she won the day a
career break, I suppose. And you stayed in contact with
her when she was overseas.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
So again whinding back to nineteen ninety seven, not many
people had mobile phones, so I was pretty new. There
was no Internet apart from the dial up variety, so
it wasn't like you could just FaceTime someone jump on Facebook.
So I was really reliant on her to contact me,
which she did. So she sent me a couple of postcards,
and she sent me a letter as well, and she

(13:35):
did ring me. So after the threadbat disaster happened, Chris
and I had been skiing. We're driven down to go skiing,
and we were there and we were driving back when
we heard about the Threadbeat disaster. And when we got
home there was an answering machine message. The light was
flashing and I pressed it and it was Mum and
she said, oh, I've just heard word over here about
the Threadbat disaster. I was just checking to see if
you guys are okay. And I was really sad because

(13:57):
I just bought my wedding dress here in Sydney on
our way home in the car, and I really wanted
to tell her because she was here when we got engaged, right,
so she came to our engagement party on the ninth
of June. She left on the twenty second of June,
so she was aware of what we were doing. She
knew that I was trying to get into the police.
She's asking all those sorts of questions and being engaging

(14:18):
with us in those letters and postcards. And then she
rang and said to me, look, you know I'm going
to stop sending lots of postcards. I'm sending post ups
to everyone, which she did from evidence, and she said,
I just need to have a break, and I said, yes,
go and have a break. You don't need to send
us a hundred postcards. It's hard to get a stamp
and find a postbox. Go and have a break. That's fine.

(14:38):
We're all for all fine here. And that was the
last time I spoke to her. She was at a
payphone and the money kept dropping out, and she'd ring
back and she'd talk for a bit, and then the
money would drop out again, And when we got to
the last bit, she said, this is all the money
I've got now, so I'll just let you talk until
the phone drops out. So I'm literally just talking away

(14:58):
in the phone cut off. And that was the last
time I spoke to her.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Okay, now, what do you know the date that was?

Speaker 2 (15:06):
So the timeline of that is the thirty first. Well,
we know that the three beds I used to happened
around midnight on the thirtieth of June nineteen ninety seven,
and we were coming back. So she we think that
she's called and left the message on the thirty first,
and then she's wrung me again on the first. Her
passport came back into Australia the next day, right.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
So explain this and this is where and I've got
to say I've read through the full coroner's report and
I think it was one hundred and sixty nine pages
or whatever, the coroner's findings, and there's so many twists
and turns on this, so I found it fascinating. But
she came back into the country the next day, So
she'd been overseas for six weeks or.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
So, So six weeks out of the whole year that
she said she was going.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
For and she's come back into the country. How did
we'll do it in sequence of events? Because and you
know so much now that you didn't know back then.
So okay, that's the last time you spoke to your
mum back then? When did you realize that she had
come back into to Australia.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
So what happened was I was that tafe, as I said,
when I was trying to get into the police force.
I guess for me, she'd given me that out that
she was having some time out. She wasn't going to
be sending postcards, she wasn't going to be sending letters.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
So you're not overly at that point.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
I was like, okay, I'll talk to you. When I
talked to you, but then you know, that's the first
of August. I guess probably a month went by. Where
Now in September, I'm like, oh, she hasn't contacted me.
That's getting long now, like I haven't spoken to her
for a while. And then October came around. I was like, Okay,
now I'm starting to get a bit worried, Like she's
been gone for two months now, I haven't spoken to her.

(16:45):
Surely she'll contact Owen, my brother for his birthday, which
was the eighteenth of October, And so I called him
to see if she had called on the Saturday, which
was his birthday, and he said no, and I said, okay,
I sort of gave her a bit of grace to go.
K's behind us. Maybe she's got her dates mixed up.
She'll bring him tomorrow. So I rang him again and

(17:06):
he said, no, she hasn't called me. And it was
just that a friend came over for dinner that night
and we were talking about it, and I was saying,
I'm worried, like now, I don't know, she would never
miss his birthday, so what are we going to do?
And she suggested that I ring the bank because I
had her bank account details and see if she was
using her bank account and here. I am thinking it

(17:27):
would be overseas and that she'd say yes or no.
I rang and she said, I can't tell you anything
due to privacy. And then she paused and she said, oh,
my god, did you say your mum's overseas? And I
said yes, and she said, oh, there's money coming out
of her bank account and Barron Bay OK. So she goes,
you can't tell anybody. I'm telling you this because I'll
lose my job, you know. So there was all that
rushing through my head as well, and I was just

(17:47):
grateful that she told me, and so my husband and
I we actually worked weekends in our jobs and it's
our We've gone back. I have gone back with a
fine toothcomb to look at the timeline, and it's my
opinion that we actually drove to Byron on the twentieth.
The police report says it was the twenty second, But
if you look at that really closely, they've done a

(18:08):
lot of work, I guess, and ringing people and talking
to people in a forty five minute period by when
he said that he did it, and he's lodged it,
so I'm not sure about that. That's all a bit gray,
and no one can really say, yeah, your name. But
Chris and I think we went on the Monday and
we went down there with a school photo of mums
and we walked around everywhere to see if someone had

(18:29):
seen her.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
What literally walked literally walked around with a photos or
going the shops.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
Or we went into Wowors, we went into the chemists,
we went into a nature path shop, health food shop,
anywhere I thought mum would go if she was actually
in Byron. I was just my head was say.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
And that's on the basis, so you think your mum's
overseas and then you've spoken to the bank because you've
got concerns because she didn't fine on Owen's birthday, which
she normally would hadn't heard from it for months. The
bank tells you that, oh she's drawing money here, and
then you've gone the bar and buy Yeah, I can
understand why your head's spinny.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, I like. And in the inquest it was sort
of like throwing against Chris and I because Chris had
a different opinion. He thought maybe someone had stolen her
card and was using her carding baron. For me, I
just was like, as someone seeing her, like is she here,
Like what's happening. So I didn't have that thought process
at all, and it wasn't until we went to the
bank and I walked in and he said, how can

(19:25):
I help you? We were the only people in there.
There was no one else and there was only one
person serving. And I handed him the photo and I said, look,
my mom's supposed to be overseas, but I've just been
told by you're telebanking that money's been coming out of
her bank account. Here can you help me? And he
picked up the photo and he shook it and he said,
m that rings a bell. So his body language to
me was really off. He took the photo and walked

(19:47):
around the back of some tables, went into a room,
closed the door behind him, came out, went over to
the photocopy. He took a photo of it and came
back to me and said, what would you like me
to say to her if I see her? So I
was like having a meltdown. And we drove straight around
to Barron Bay Police and I walked in there and said, something's.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
Wrong the background of your mother. You're a daughter, so
you know as well as anyone this is not the
type of normal behavior for it.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
No and it was just really off. I just had
a really bad feeling walked in there. You know, a
big mistake I made, and I hope other people will
learn from this as you make sure you take down
every single detail. Because I didn't remember the name of
the guy who gave me the report, I didn't get
a business card, I didn't do a statement. I literally
just told him everything, thinking that that was how you

(20:34):
do it.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
Well, let's put it out there, because I don't like
people not understanding what the practices are in police. But
if you go into a police station, the report something,
get the name of the officer that you're speaking to,
time and date, and make a note of it. And
if it's a matter that you're reporting, asked for an
event number, so you've got an event number. I'm not
telling you now. You know that now, but for other people,

(20:58):
because I think so many times people and I honestly
believe it's because we're brought up to trust police, like
you go and the police will saw that you've got
the problem. You go to the police and you assume
that the police are going to solve this problem. But
I think that safeguard getting the name of the officer,
you speak to making people accountable, and you know, wherever

(21:20):
you work, if someone what's your name, you know, okay,
you're going to be accountable for this. I think that's
a good practice, So let's put that out there. You've
gone in and you explained when we first started the podcast.
You've said you've got concerns about your mother. What were
you told by the police at the time.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
I wasn't told anything. He just listened and wrote things
down in his notebook, and then Chris and I left,
and I really really kicked myself a lot for not
just taking down more detail. I got a phone call
about a week to ten days later. Again kick myself
for not writing it down, taking note of who I

(22:01):
spoke to on the phone. When people ask me, my
opinion of my memory is that it was the same
man that I spoke to at the desk, but I
can't prove that because I didn't write anything down. But
that phone call was a gentleman calling me to tell
me that they'd found my mother and she didn't want
anything to do with us. Exact words, where we found

(22:22):
your mother. She doesn't want anyone knowing where she is
or what she's doing. And that is burnt into my brain.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
So, but that's not true, is it.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
No, well, no it's not. They've told me now that
they've never spoken to her, they've never sighted her. So
and the kicker for me, Gary is my brother took
his own life shortly after my mum went missing, and
I firmly believe he had problems, like he had his
own issues and demons he was working through. But you know,

(22:54):
he was about to he was about to get married.
He was in a very good headspace in my heart,
and I think he did not cope very well when
he was told that.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
I'm sorry to hear that, but I understand what you're saying. There.
To be told that your mom's back in the country,
she just doesn't want to speak to you. That's a
burden for anyone to carry.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
And even just the way it was said to me,
like no one sat down and said, listen, I understand
this was going to be hard for you to hear
your mother doesn't want to have anything to do with
you anymore. Like just to be told on the phone
so brash, and even you know, since then, I know
you're going to tell me not to jump forward. But
you know, we've got records now from Queensland Police Missing

(23:41):
Person's Unit, because they actually were involved as well with
my grandfather's involvement. He lived up on the Sunshine Coast
and he had contacted missing persons through the Salvation Army
and they were working with Queensland Missing person and they
actually wrote like I've got a letter from the Salvation
Army just saying, oh, you know, bank security confirm that

(24:02):
it was definitely your daughter Marion who went in and
spoke of starting a new life and withdrew the balance
of of her bank account and bank security are like
the police, so must be true. And that in her
notebook she hasn't taken down the name of the bank
teller who served mum who claims that it was definitely

(24:23):
my mum who went in and telling my grandfather was
definitely your daughter Marion is the word choice. And the
kicker there too is that she didn't withdraw all the
money out of heran account. There was still money sitting
in her bank account up until.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Last year, and it had sat dormant since with for
all of that large amount.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Oh yeah, they sat dormant. And then they were still
taking bank fees out of my mum's bank account right
up until the end of the inquest to.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Me with the comments like that, you can a piece
of information, you can interpret it many ways, but interpreted
that your mother just doesn't want I see you, Well,
I don't know how anyone could say that unless they've
spoken to your mother. But that's just an assumption and
that sort of information shouldn't be passed on to members
of the public if police have passed it on the

(25:11):
information the way that you said, but in the circumstances
to contact you and tell you that they've spoken to
your mother, And it doesn't appear that that's correct that
to me, And I could be wrong here. I'm only
surmising understanding the workings and the organization of the police.
It's like someone that, oh, well, we can close that

(25:33):
line of inquiry.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Yeah, well, I've seen the line of inquiry from when
I initially went into byron Ba Police and they actually
marked her as an occurrence only and the wording is
no action until the person is actually listed as missing
and new action due to other work priorities. And I'm
reading that going okay, so does that mean she's not

(25:54):
a priority? And you know, the word choices in the
language on the police report is, oh, well, she was
fifty one, she's been married and divorced three times. She's
capable of this behavior without talking to my mum, never
ever speaking to her. And I think for me when
people ask me, why do I keep pushing and keep going.
That's one of the main things I want people to
learn that language is actually and what you spay and

(26:17):
what your words woulds do actually can cause a lot
of problems for somebody, especially if you're living in this
ambiguous bubble over here where you don't know what's happened
and you're always guessing and you and your mind just
goes million miles an hour.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
But I hear what you're saying, and I just want
to say to you, don't blame yourself. You've done the
right thing. You've gone to the police with genuine, legitimate
concerns and there's been a failing in the system, not
a failing from your point of view, like at you
accept what police tell you on face value, and I
told you not the jump ahead on the jump ahead

(26:52):
a little bit in that during the coronial inquest that
wasn't held for years and years after the Detective Chief
Inspector Brea, who I know and I rate him as
a good detective, and he was heading up the missing
person's unit at the time that he gave this evidence.
He said in a statement that forms part of the
evidence of the Crannial brief, and this is from Detective

(27:15):
Chief Inspector Brown, it is my view that Marion Barter
should not have been classified as located, as her whereabouts
were still unknown and there was still justification to hold
concerns for her safety or well being. So that's someone
that's reviewed it years later. So it's not just give
you some credit here. It's not just you saying things

(27:35):
could be done better or me trying to beat up
on the police on the matter. That's someone that's still
serving police officer that reviewed the situation and came up
with that opinion and gave that evidence the cranial inquest
in his statement. So that must add to the frustration.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
Yeah, look, frustration. And I was really glad I was
there when Glenn gave his statement on that, and I
sort of felt like something like finally someone could actually say, yes,
what Sally did is correct, because if I can add
to my mum's family, her sisters in particular, and in

(28:15):
particular one of those sisters how to go with me
when I listed moms missing, and she had my grandfather
as well, and she said, you know, I don't know
why you guys are doing this. She's just having a holiday,
she's just having a break. Why would you go on
list her as missing. And so they sort of had
a crack at me, and they don't talk to me anymore,
like ever since I've done the podcast. The lady vanishes

(28:35):
and I understand it's traumatic, and I understand it's upsetting,
and I understand that not everybody is like me who
can just keep plugging along and going with it, and
it is upsetting for them. It's their sister. She was
the eldest. But you know, at the same time, it's
important that you know, we do look for her and
we make out that what's happened to her, make sure

(28:55):
she's safe and well. And so for years and years
and years, I just wanted to find her to make
sure she was like, Hey, I'd even say, you know,
I don't need to see you. I don't need to
talk to you if you don't want to talk to me.
As sad as that is, just let me know you're okay,
and I can rest my heart because I can't. I
can't rest until I know, and you know, I'm on
heart medication now. Like it's been really hard for me

(29:16):
to do what I'm doing. This is not easy, but
I just feel I have to do it for her.
I have to. I have to do it for her,
and I have to do it for every other missing
person as well, because they need a voice. My mum's
not here to tell her story.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
Well, I think you're entitled to her. I mean, you're
her daughter, like it's some clot closest relative, and you've
got concerns for your mum's well being. So there's a
whole range of things that came out, and we'll talk
more about the police investigation, but there was when did
you find out that your mum and just before she

(29:49):
went overseas change change the name, and do you want
to explain when you when you became aware of that.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, So in that timeline of she's wrung us on
the phone in the August and Owen's birthday in October
as soon as I as soon as I knew that,
and I went to the police in Byron Bay. I
was that tafe and we had a whole heap of
different people in my class, because we had some customs

(30:14):
agents who were trying to become a cop, and we
had other people working in the prisons who were trying
to be So I was among a lot of people
in that field. And we had a guy and I
wasn't really friends with him, but I just knew he
worked in customs and I said to him, can you
do a passport check for me? This is after I've
been told that she's they found her, okay. So that
phone call came in, as I said, about a week

(30:37):
to ten days after I'd been to the police. And
he then came back to me and he said, your
mum's passport came back into the country on the second
of August. So that's when I found out about it. Now.
The interesting thing there, and I didn't know this at
that time, but my mum had changed her name, and
so when I told him, I gave him Marion Barta

(30:58):
and her date of birth is the third of the
tenth forty five, So that's all I gave him to
go on, and he's come back and told me that
he didn't tell me anything else. And it wasn't until
twenty eleven that we found out that she'd actually changed her.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Name, okay, and what did she change her name to.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Well, Flora Bella Natalia Marion Ramchel.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
Okay, and that has some significance.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
Huge significant.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
What we're going to find out find out later okay,
dealings with the police. So you've reported in initial report
in October ninety seven, and then after no further investigation
was undertaken until July two thousand and seven, correct, So
when we say no investigation, we're talking zero zero investigation.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
And it was just that I so that in that
time period, if I can give everyone the idea, we
built a house, we got married, and we had three
children in that ten years. So I was quite busy
with life and trying to be the best person I
could as well. Ohen died, my grandfather died, so we
had a lot going on. And it just got to

(32:09):
the point where I was pregnant with my third baby
and he was due in June. So I was in
my first trimester essentially, and my girlfriend was over and
I said to her, I need to do something. It's
month tenth anniversary this year and no one's doing anything.
So I contacted I had done just for clarity I

(32:31):
had in two thousand and four, I actually reached back
out to the Salvation Army after my grandfather was passed,
like well, he was very sick with cancer, so it
was either just before he passed or after he passed,
and I reached out to them asking for the information
about what they told my grandfather, and they came back
and said, we've got no records of anything, and we've

(32:54):
tried to find your mother and there's nothing we can find.
So we're really sorry. God Bless was probably it. And
then a short time after that, the lady I was
working with in that circumstance, she contacted me and said, look,
Woman's Day magazine would like to do an article about
missing mums on Mother's Day. Would you like to be involved?

(33:14):
So I did do that article. I was pregnant with
my second daughter, Darcy, and I remember I had Ella
on my lap in the photo and I remember saying
to my husband, well, he had sort of indicated he
didn't want her in the magazine, and I said, I
really want her in the magazine because if Mum reads
it and she sees that she's a grandmother, I just
wanted her to see And so that was quite stressful.

(33:38):
So I had done that little bit of media, that
was it, and nothing came of it. I didn't hear anything.
Salvation Amy came back to me about a month later
and said, look, we haven't heard anything. We're really sorry.
And then it was two thousand and seven, as I said,
I've got my girlfriend Nina looking after the kids while
I jump on the phone to the AFP Missing Person's

(33:58):
Unit because I thought, I'm going to go to them.
They're the top dogs. Let me go to them and
see what they can do to help me, because I
really just had nothing. And anyway, I spoke to a
really beautiful lady named Rebecca cotts Beck since passed, but
we became really good friends and she we spoke for
probably two hours in that initial conversation, and then she

(34:19):
rang me back and asked me if I would be
the face of Missing Persons Week.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
They I remember when they were doing.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
That, and so that's like middle like first week of August,
and I said, well, I would love to. She said, look,
I think it'd be really great opportunity for you to
get your story out there. You've kept such great records
of everything. I think it'd be really really good. So
I started prepping myself. I was doing lots of writing
and lots of conversations and dragging myself back through it,
which is probably not the best thing to do when

(34:46):
you're pregnant. But we got to the end. I had
my third cesarean, and she told me that I need
to prepare myself because they're going to bounce me around
from state to state to do all these interviews in
that week. And so I there storing my breast milk.
Sorry Gary with.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
Her worse on I catch kill us, but go on.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
And we're just so I can my husband can come,
he can take time off work to feed the baby
because I'm going to have a brand new baby. I've
got two toddlers. Blah blah blah. Anyway, she calls me
a couple of days before and says they've pulled you.
I'm really sorry. I said, what do you mean they've
pulled me? She said, oh, it's apparently about missing persons
with mental health this year, and your mum didn't have

(35:26):
mental health, so they said they can't use you. He said, look,
we've already got your tickets for the plane and everything's
still come down. I remember it really well, actually, because
Kevin Rudd was sitting in front of us on the plane,
and we got to Camber on a little buzzy plane
and sat in the audience, and you know, I walked
out of there and the police commissioner was outside, and

(35:47):
Rebecca actually introduced me to him, and he came up
to me and he said, oh, well, Sally, my brother's missing.
I don't know where he is. And sometimes that's just
how people are, you know, people will have the right
to be missing. And then he I don't know. The
conversation she kept going. He goes, well, my mum knows
where he is, but we don't know where he is.
He's missing to us. So anyway, that was a really
rough time of life, right, that was not fun. And

(36:09):
I guess for me, every time I go through those things,
it takes so much energy and so much effort, and
then I just come flat splat on the ground and
I have to really suck myself back up and to
keep going again and go, Okay, what avenue can I
do next? So at that point it's interesting actually because
in the inquest, when you do actually get information from

(36:31):
the brief of evidence, we can actually see that after
Rebecca Cott's rings Missing Persons New South Wales and asks
for Mom's file so that they can put her on
as the head of the face of missing persons. That year,
there's a very quick change on the cops event from
occurrence only to missing.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
What I okay, just pure coincidence, you think.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Apparently, So they were asked about it at the inquest
and it was like, I know that there's nothing in that.
It was just happened to be exactly the same time.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
Ten years later they've decided to change it. Yeah, and
that current's only to missing.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
And that was the first time because I.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Was really I couldn't quite work out what the thing
was that changed it from occurrence to missing. But you've
just explained it very well. And I call me snical,
but a coincidence, no, I think an inquiry has been
made by AFP police have looked at that. New South
Wales police have looked at it and gone, oh, we
better tidy this one.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
She's not actually a missing person to us. And so
that was the first time she'd been put onto missing
persons list, but it was only New South Wales. Then
this is two thousand and seven. So then in two
thousand and nine I get an oyc, so I offer
us in charge, which is the first time I had
actually had that. There'd been a couple of come in

(37:52):
and float in and out, and I remember a few
of their names, but I don't really have any real
depth of conversation with any of them. Gary Sheen became
the oh I see on the case, and I did
have a lot to do with him. We spoke a
lot on the phone. He was interested, He sat down.
He wanted to know everything about the case, everything we
were up to. He did some digging. He found that
there'd been an Armadale crime stoppers call come into Armidale

(38:15):
saying that my mum's body was buried in Armidale. So
he organized and got approval to go out with some
Cadava dogs. But it was like so many years before,
so those sorts of things started to come in about.
He then told me that he'd found a I don't
know what you call it now, my brain's not working,

(38:36):
but there'd been a ping on her Medicare card to
get used in Grafton. So but the problem there, which
was a pretty big problem, they were looking for a
doctor and so all this flurry about trying to find
the doctor surgery and trying to find doctors who were
working back in nineteen ointy seven to see who it was.
And in actual fact we had the name.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
So when was the ping on the Medicare card.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
So the thirteenth of August in ninety seven, ninety seven, Okay, right,
so the ping happens they're looking for a doctor. Turns
out fast forward to twenty twenty was actually an optometrist,
not a doctor, and he actually came as a witness, understand,
and he did say that she would have had to
fill in a new customer card which would have had

(39:22):
an address on it and a phone number on it.
And if you think about the facts, that's eleven days
after her pass what's come back into Australia. So we
really desperately wanted to find that card crucial because it
could have told us where she was or who she
was with at least. And yeah, they didn't find it
because they were looking for a doctor instead.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
So the fact between ninety seven and two thousand and
seven there was no inquiries done, so there was no
looking whether she's accessed a bank account, any records in
regards to her a residential address, Medicare card that type
of thing, all the things that you would make inquiries
back then. And yeah, it's a lot easier now, or

(40:04):
it's harder now to disappear, but there was still a
lot of lines of inquiry that could have been covered
to find out where she was and if someone's writing
the report off that they've found her, if the report's
done properly, it should be where she's living, what her
circumstances are to write the report off. But there was
none of that, was it.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
And well there's no documentation with New Southwest Police to
say that anyone rang me, so there's question in their
world as to do that phone call actually happened. And
I was like, well, it definitely happened, because that's what
started the ball rolling with my grandfather taking over and
going to the Salvation Army and yeah, so look, it
was a big fat mess, to be honest, and I

(40:47):
just honester goodness. I just thought by walking in there
and telling them I had concerns and walking away that
even though they said to me, oh, we've located her,
for some weird reason, in my head, I just thought
she'd still be, you know, in this system, and she
just wasn't.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
And taking on face value what the police have told
you and that if they've located, they know where she
is or whatever. Okay, we're bringing it to two thousand
and seven, and you've got an officer in charge who's
making inquiries, making inquiries about like when she came into
the country or the type of inquiries that could have
been done ten years before.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
Two thousand and seven was when I went to the AFP,
and then it was two years after that that I
got the OIC. So I had like a bit of
a looking to nine. Now. Yeah, so there's a guy
Steve McAllister. He was actually working with Missing Persons Unit
at that time and he was president at the inquest
as well, and gave evidence and he remembered my mom's
case and he said I remember because I was a

(41:44):
big soccer fan and Marian was married to Johnny Warren.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
Another side issue, Johnny Warren for people that don't know
who's a hero of mine, Captain soccer roop.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
I still people cry when I go, oh, yeah, Johnny
was married to my mum. They go there he was not.
I go, yeah he was. I've met him. He actually
taught me how to play soccer a little bit when
I was little.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
So that's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Yeah, it is cool.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
But okay, so that is something that yeah, because it
was such a high profile. So people understand that when
they got Johnny Warret.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
And when they got married, they were front page of
the newspaper. So mum was right in the thick of
it when john was at his best, you know, captain
of the soccer whose captain of his local team here
in Sydney, and you know, doing really great things in
the world of soccer. And yeah, so anyway, so two
thousand and nine, we've got Gary on board. He's finding

(42:34):
all these things. So he'd found the medicare, he'd found
out about the crime Stoppers call. And then in twenty
eleven he spoke to Immigration in Brisbane and he got
a file that showed him that my mum's name had
been changed to Florabella Ramchel.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
And that was only a matter of months before she
went overseas in ninety seven.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
She changed it on the fifteenth of May nineteen ninety seven.
She left on the twenty second of May. Twenty second
to you.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
So that's a bit of a headspin for you.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
Well, and my birthday is the twelfth of May. Other's
day is always falls around my birthday. So it really
blew my mind. And this is a lot to deal
with from an emotional site it as well, because I'm thinking,
why did she not tell me? Well, I mean we
were pretty close. I moved up from Sydney to go
and live with my mum. I'd see her weekly, you know,
multiple times a week. She come and have dinner with

(43:22):
me every Thursday night where I worked. So twenty eleven
we find out about the name change. And I'm going
to fast forward here from this moment to twenty sixteen.
So twenty sixteen, I've got a lady who's following my
Facebook page. I set the Facebook page up in twenty thirteen.

(43:46):
I had less than a thousand followers on it. And
if you go back and read all the very beginning
of that, I was close to giving up, and then
i'd come back again. I'd close to giving up, and
it was just such a roller coaster ride of crazy.
And she contacted me and she said, look, Sally, I've
just gone on to the National Missing Person's Register and
your Mum's not on there. And so I thought that's
so weird. So I had a look, wasn't on there?

(44:08):
So I rang my friend Rebecca Cotts again. I said, hey, Beck,
I've just had a lady contact me. And she said
that mum's name's not on the missing person's register. I
can't see it either. Can you have a look. And
she said she has a look, and she says, oh, well,
this actually something on the file that I haven't seen before.
I have to get approval to give it to you.
Let me go and do that and see what they say,

(44:29):
and I'll come back to you. So anyway, she comes
back to me and she said, I've got approval. I'm
going to send it to you. And it was a document,
so it's on AFP letterhead, but that document actually has
that on the seventh of December twenty eleven, my mum
was located, and on the eighth of November that year,
so a month before ish. The case had been suspended

(44:54):
on those dates again, eighth of November nineteen twenty and eleven,
and then she was located on the seventh of December
twenty eleven, and that I had been it says underneath it,
there's a notation that says that I had been notified
of that decision.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
So I want to scream for you, how how do
you deal with that?

Speaker 2 (45:19):
Not very well? Not very well. It's emotionally draining. And
so I jumped straight on the phone to Gary Sheen,
Oh I see, and said, I've just had something comes
through from Rebecca. I explained the situation and I said,
I've got this document in front of me and told him.

(45:40):
He said, can you read it to me? So I
read it to him and he said can you read
it again? I read it again, and he said, okay,
I'm going to make a call. I'm going to come
back to you. So he rang me back. I don't
remember if it was straight away all the day after,
but he did ring me back pretty quickly, and he said,

(46:00):
I've spoken to them and it seems it's a typo.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
Who's them?

Speaker 2 (46:09):
I couldn't even tell you. Actually, I don't know who.
I don't know who them is. But he said, I'm
going to ring them again. I'm going to have a
deeper chat about it and see what's happening. So anyway, so.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
A type that's a long typo that someone's been located,
that was on missing persons and located. That's more than
the typo.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
I would suggest the fact that I actually couldn't cope
with the fact that they said, okay, well they suspended
it on the eighth of November. But you're even telling
me that you told me on the seventh of December.
You didn't tell me anything. I've never heard that information,
hence the shock value of it. But I was like
a month like that's anyway. It was just a yeah again,

(46:47):
mind blowing. And he did ring me back and he said,
I've spoken to them, And how it works is we've
got two boxes, so you're either missing or you're found.
And because we deem that your mother is missing because
she sold her house, she quit her job, and she
changed her name, we have no choice but to marko
is located.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
Is that a computer telling them that?

Speaker 2 (47:09):
And I just came back and I said, well, maybe
you need a third box, you know, like maybe we
need that box in the middle. And the thing that
upsets me a lot about my mum's case is all
the assumptions they're assuming that because she sold her house,
and they're assuming because she changed her name and that
she went overseas that she wanted to go missing. That's
a massive assumption to make on someone that you don't know.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
Sally, I make I'll make the assumption. If we're talking assumptions,
it looks like every assumption that was made was to
reduce the work to get your mum off the missing
persons not having to do inquiries that possibly should have
been done. And I'm not about beating up on individual
police or it's an organizational problem. There's a problem when

(47:53):
this type of thing happens and you've carried the weight
of these mistakes being made. But you're either the most
unluckiest person in the world or these things. So, Okay,
you found out now that your mum's not missing, that
she's Yeah, so you go through life thinking, oh, well,

(48:14):
she's not missing. My mother just doesn't want to talk
to me. And my mother that I was close with
my whole life just doesn't want to talk to me.
Where does it ramp up again to become a missing
person's well, because when you receive that, do you just go, well,
am I just banging my head against the brick wall?
What am I meant to do?

Speaker 2 (48:32):
Do? I? Yeah, one hundred percent, you do? And I
think for me that was that lady contacting me through
my Facebook page was early twenty sixteen, and then the
language that I was getting for the remainder of that
time from police was my hands are tied. I am
doing this in my spare time, so I'm madly trying

(48:53):
to shoot ideas, like you know, okay, well, why don't
we check did she do a tax return? Like she's
come back in on the second of August, she's left
before the end, before end of financial year. Maybe if
she's come back, and if money is such a drive,
thinking that she's going to the bank every day for
three and a half weeks to take out five thousand
dollars every day, Clearly she wants money if it's her,

(49:13):
so she might have been entitled to a tax returns,
so therefore she might have done that. Can we check
if she's touched her superannuation? Can we get the passenger list?
I was thinking of all the things I couldn't do
because I was bound by privacy, right, so her privacy
madded my hopes to find my mother. Clearly didn't it.

(49:34):
So I was giving him and feeding him all these ideas,
and he wouldn't tell me much about what he'd found,
or he's like, what I've heard was that he couldn't
access ATO. The only people that can access ATO, sorry,
the police can only access ato information if the person's
in jail or in prison. He couldn't access it. So
that was one part of it, and we had to

(49:56):
wait to see if the coroner could access that information.
Then he told me he'd looked at the passenger list,
but there was nothing that stood out, and he told
me that she hadn't touched a super and that was
probably about it. And then so that's twenty sixteen. We
just sort of plodding along again and I'm sort of

(50:18):
tapping away on Facebook and I'm trying to get some people,
you know, do you know anything? And can you share
my story please? Someone knows something. Again, very stressful time
of life, busy with three children who are now teenagers
and going into high school, and you know, trying to
manage life as well and not rocking myself in the
corner because I think for me at the very beginning,

(50:40):
I remember watching a story on missing persons very early on,
and there was two women and one of their sons
and the little boy just kept crying the entire time
on the show, and I just, for me, I just
didn't want my kids to have to live that, and
I didn't want I just wanted to be strong, and
I just wanted to be a person to go, you

(51:02):
know what, my mum matters. She's your grandmother. I know
you've never met her before, but it's really important that
we do the right thing for everybody. I want everyone
to know what's happened to her. And I was still
probably by that point, I was starting to believe that
maybe she wasn't alive because I didn't just didn't believe.
I didn't believe she wouldn't turn up for Owen's funeral.
I didn't believe she wouldn't turn up for my wedding

(51:22):
when I had kids, like all these big key moments
in life that she wasn't there for. So we sort
of plotted along from twenty sixteen up until twenty nineteen. Well,
actually that's the end of twenty eighteen, and that's when Alison,
Sandy and I were put in touch with each other.
And Allison works for Channel seven and a friend of

(51:44):
hers had sort of wrung me, who knew from a
parent of school, saying, you know, if I could get
you onto sixty minutes or Sunday night program, would you
be interested? And I said, absolutely I would. My grandmother,
So my mom's mum was living by herself in her
beachfront property up and the Sunshine Coast, and she never
spoke about it, like we did not talk about my mum,

(52:04):
and I didn't want to upset her. When I did
that Woman's Day article way back, I got into trouble.
You know, you didn't tell us you were doing it,
and I was like, well, no one ever asked me
what I'm doing. I don't want to. I don't know
how to bring it up with you guys, because you
don't want to talk about it. So I wasn't prepared
to do anything. And the irony of that is, as
soon as she passed away, I said to my kids
and my husband, I'm going to approach sixty minutes and
see if they would like to do a story on it,

(52:25):
because someone knows something. And so I wrote to them
probably five or six times, and they didn't respond to
me at all, and I just thought, I'm just another
missing person story that no one's really interested in. And
I met Alison. We went out for a coffee and
we pretty quickly decided then that the amount of information
I had and the details that we were working with
and there was more investigation that we could have done

(52:47):
on the name, we decided to do a podcast. Okay,
So the podcast launched on the first of.

Speaker 1 (52:53):
April and the name of the podcast, The.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
Lady vanishes, and so the ball sort of started rolling again.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
And I see there in twenty eighteen reference to a
ministerial file, So whether a leather was fired off to politicians?
Did that occur as well?

Speaker 2 (53:13):
Well, I didn't really know too much about that. I
knew that that was something that Gary was looking into,
and he was cranky about it. He said, if this
is going down a rabbit hole, that's not true. I
remember him saying that to me. But I didn't really
know what was going on because they weren't talking to me.
They weren't communicating what it was exactly for me. So
I was left in the dark with that information and

(53:34):
I don't believe it when anywhere. So I'm a bit
still gray in what actually was going on with that.
But at that point we launched the podcast first of April,
we sort of put a call out. I guess Joni
who you'll hear about soon enough, Johnie Cokondos. She's researcher

(53:56):
who has been helping me for in our six years
and she was listening to the Lady Vanisher's. She's an
avid listener of true crime. She's been listening for twenty years.
And she said, the difference between you, Sal and other
podcasts I've heard before was you actually asking for people
to help. And so when I heard that, I just
thought I might just sit down and have a bit

(54:16):
of a play. And I was playing with the name
Ramckurl because when she looked into it, there was no
Ramackeurls in Australia except for my mum. And we were like, oh,
this is a pretty rare name. Turns out there's only
one hundred and one Ramic Curls in the world. Put
into perspective, so no Jane does or you know Jane
Smith or anything. It's a very rare name. And she

(54:40):
herself her husband's grandmother went missing or great grandmother went missing,
and she and the family had worked for fifteen years
to try and find her, and they actually did find her,
and what had happened to her. She'd been deceased, but
they did find her. And she just thought to herself,
I've got these tools here that potentially I can help Sally.
I'll just have a bit of a play around and

(55:00):
see what I find. She was sick, she had the flu,
and she was up at midnight and she punched it
in and this ad binged up on her screen. She's
so excited she jumped ran and jumped in on her husband.
She said in Oh my god, I found something. I
found something. And so that ad was in the La
Courier Australian. It's a French speaking newspaper that runs out

(55:20):
of Sydney, and it was a gentleman with the initial
M and then f ramachel and it sort of just
goes along, you know, single forty seven I think he
I think it was he was forty seven. The ad
was written in nineteen ninety four and it Stilla talks
about his single, good looking, non smoker, non drinker, a

(55:43):
polygue loot speaking multiple languages and bon chik boncha, which
is like a term that he put in there, which
we've found out means good taste, good style, and looking
for a relationship, potential marriage. And it had a po
box in Ballina, New South Wales with a phone.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
Number okay to keep our listeners on a song with it.
You've got the surname, a unique surname. It's the same
surname as your mother changed her name to correct. And
there's an advertisement ninety four of a gentleman around your
mother's age putting out interested in meeting someone.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
Correct and he's in Ballina. And for the geographical sense
of of the exercise, my mum's money was coming out
in Byron Bay. Ballina is the next town on northern
New South Wales. So our heads were spinning at that point.
We know that the police tried to find records of
who owned that phone number back then, and they kept

(56:41):
hitting brick walls, tell us you don't have records going
that far back, and that was all legit like that
was the case. But it actually took a gentleman who
is a local. He'd listened to the lady Vanishes as well,
and he just took himself down to the local library
and hand scanned all the phone books at the time
and then ran it through micro fish and he found

(57:01):
the phone number and it was linked to a business
called Baalana Coin Investments had the address of where the
property was in Ballina as well, so link. Yeah. So
I've found some amazing people through this who have just
helped me or helped us, like everybody in the mix
be able to get to where we are today. And

(57:23):
anyway that the owners of that business were called Frederic
Heavedariry and Dianda Heavedariry. Frederic to Heavidairy turns out to
be Rick Blum.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
Okay, all right, well, Rick Blum, or that's what we'll
call it. Call him here. Let's because I wanted to
see how it's all tied in you. You've explained it
very clearly to me, having read film in the pieces
that I didn't fully understand through the report from the coroner.
So we've got this person by the name of Rick Blum.

(57:56):
Now you've told us how it became involved in the
investigation in the inquest that was run. I just want
to read something out. I'm being careful here that before
we start talking about Rick Blom, I want to put
on record he's not been charged with anything relating to
your mother's disappearance. So we put that on record. The
state coroner, in her findings regarding mister Blom stated, and

(58:19):
he gave evidence at the inquest into your mother's disappearance
thirteen days and this is what the coroner said in
her findings. I do not accept as accurate anything mister
Blom has said in evidence, in the absence of independent
corroborating evidence, that's fairly powerful, powerful comments to make about

(58:39):
the witness.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
Your thoughts, Oh my thoughts, Look, I have a lot.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Can I retract that question? Can I just say, because
we're going to wrap up part one in a sect,
but let's just I want to make another comment because,
as I said, I went through the coroner's findings and
it's very comprehensive. The coroner also made these comments about
the person we know is Rick Blom quote from the

(59:15):
coroner's findings. Throughout his adult life, mister Blum has routinely
changed his name. He admitted before the court to using
a number of different aliases over the years, including the following.
And I'll try and pronounce it these properly, but they're
a wide range of names. So Bernard DuPont, Fernando, Nicholas, Remarkale, Frederick,
David Dexavier, Rick Blum, rich Richard's, Richard, Lloyd west Richard

(59:43):
Lloyd Westbury, Rick Richard, Rick west Wiley, Copperyle Wiley, David Copperiley, Wiley, Wooters, Shane, Frederick,
David Dexavier and Zabdel Zilling. They're fourteen names. Yeah, so
let's let's just conclude, just.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
To help you with some of the pronunciations, please.

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
Because I want let's do it this way with the
with the pronunciations. If people are listening to this podcast,
maybe these names mean something to them.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
So the Heavin Dairy, Heavindary is their surname, Bernard du
pont yep. And what are the ones were there? Oh,
Willy Willy.

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
Wooters, Willy Wooters and.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
Willy Copperoll so Copperanole is his birth name.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Okay, fourteen names, and we.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
Have actually found fifty two aliases.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
I don't think we can read those all out, but.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
I didn't even have the list here with me. But
that's that's what we have found in our investigations so far.
But they are the ones that were read out in
the inquest.

Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
Okay, and look, we're joking about this, but it's not
not a joke. And I'm reading this out and this
is all I'm choosing my words carefully because these are
comments from the coroner that had the inquest running over
an extended period of time. We're going to take a
break here. When we get back, I want to find
out more about Rick Blom and also talk about all

(01:01:15):
the extraordinary stuff that was uncovered during the inquest. And
I'm going to ask you an important question. I'd like
to just get your thoughts on it. So let's take
a break and we'll be back for part too shortly
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