May 23, 2024 • 20 mins
Where is Bronwyn Winfield? The devoted mum has been missing since 1993 – and the man behind The Teacher’s Pet is on the case.
Go to theaustralian.com.au/bronwyn to listen. Plus, you can read more about this case and see exclusive stories, maps, timelines, graphics, video and more.
This episode of The Front is presented by Claire Harvey, produced by Kristen Amiet and edited by Josh Burton. The multimedia editor is Lia Tsamoglou and original music is composed by Jasper Leak.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
From The Australian. I'm Claire Harvey. This is an episode
of our daily news podcast The Front. Six years after
The Teacher's Pet made waves around the world, The Australian's
National Chief Correspondent Hedley Thomas is back with a brand
new podcast investigation. This time, Headley's delving into the cold
(00:25):
case of Bronwyn Winfield, a young mum who disappeared from
an idyllic surf town on the New South Wales North
Coast more than three decades ago. In today's episode, Hedley
explains how this story found him and if he thinks
it can be solved. In twenty eighteen, Australian journalism blew
(01:04):
up with a huge story told in a grouping new way,
an investigative podcast by The Australian's National Chief correspondent Hedley Thomas.
The Teacher's Pet has had more than eighty million downloads
around the world and it resulted in the arrest, charge
and murder conviction of its subject, Christopher Michael Dawson. He
(01:28):
is now appealing. What almost no one knows is that
at that time another big story was brewing in the background.
Family members and friends of another missing woman, Bronwyn Winfield
was struck by the similarities between her case and that
of Lynnette Simms, whose disappearance headly investigated in the Teacher's
(01:51):
pet In those early days, years before Lynn's husband Chris
Dawson would be brought to justice, Bromwin's loved one reached
out to Hedley, urging him to look into her nineteen
ninety one disappearance from Lennox Head in the New South
Wales Northern Rivers region, but Bromwin's name was already on
(02:13):
Hedley's radar.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
It was late twenty seventeen Claire I was interviewing the
former Deputy State Coroner for New South Wales, Karl Milavanovitch,
about the case of Chris Dawson and the allegations that
he'd murdered his wife Lynn all those years ago in
nineteen eighty two. And while I was talking to Karl,
he expressed his grave concerns about a number of cases
(02:37):
involving missing women, women who had suddenly disappeared. They had
ties to the community, they had small children. Lynn was
one of those, and he mentioned the case of Bromwin Winfield.
He told me that he had run an inquest into
that case in two thousand and two, and he'd made
a recommendation about it.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Here's the moment first heard Bromwyn Winfield's name from Karl Milvanovich.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
I did an inquest of a lady called Bromwyn Windfield,
and she had two kids as well, and she went
to bed one night, and she disappeared next day. And
there was some suggestion from a neighbor that.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
And I didn't have time then to deal with it,
but I wanted to revisit it at some point, and
I guess for the last six and a half years,
I've been collecting bits and pieces and talking to people
connected to the case, reaching out to Bromwin's family. What
also happened was that as the episodes of the Teacher's
(03:42):
Pet began unfolding from May twenty eighteen, people who were
listening they were reminded of something that had just eaten
away at them for some time, that there hadn't been
a proper resolution of Bromwin's disappearance, the deeply suspicious circumstances
surrounding it, and they urged me to get involved in it.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Today, all the information and evidence headly collected over the
years has made it out of the folder. He created
on that day in twenty seventeen and into a new
podcast investigation for The Australian. It's called Bronwyn and it
is hauntingly similar to the disappearance of Lynn Dawson. Loving
young moms, sudden disappearances, families left in the grief and
(04:29):
shock of ambiguous loss.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Sadly, it's the case that across Australia police forces through
the eighties and nineties, and no doubt earlier, were unwilling
to look at foul play as the probable reason for
the sudden disappearances of loving, dedicated young mums, particularly those
going through a marital breakdown, So when they disappeared, the
(04:57):
paperwork was just filed in the bottom drawer mark missing person,
not given a high priority as a possible homicide. And
this is what Karl Milivanovitch identified in a number of
these missing women cases that he dealt with as a
senior coroner before his retirement. When he flagged that to
me when I met him at his home in late
(05:18):
twenty seventeen, it was a bit of a light bulb
moment because you think, gosh, how many other cases are there?
This was a systemic problem. It's no longer the case today.
If a young mum like Bromwin suddenly disappeared at the
same time as she's newly separated from her husband, there
would almost certainly be a very committed police investigation, looking
(05:42):
at all of the unusual circumstances and making sure that
witnesses were soon interviewed. But unbelievably, for the first five
years after Bromwin's disappearance, the police did not even take
a statement from anybody. They spoke to just a couple
of neighbors. They didn't bring anyone down to the police
(06:03):
station to take a formal statement. They didn't properly search
the house or the car. It's hard to believe how
poor the original investigation was.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Bromwn Winfield was just thirty one years old when she
disappeared from the home built by her husband John.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Bromwyn was to everybody who knew her, an incredibly caring
and devoted young mum. She had two daughters. They were Lauren,
who was five, and Crystal ten. Bromwan was close to
her brother her cousins. She'd had a difficult childhood because
(06:47):
her own mother, when Bromwin was two, had postnatal depression
and she disappeared from her own young children, and very sadly,
when Bromwin herself disappeared, some twenty nine years after her
own mother had disappeared, there was for the police a link.
They thought, well, is she doing what her own mother
(07:10):
had done. The circumstances were very, very different. Bromwyn was
of very sound mind. She had plans, She was making plans,
She had appointments the next day. The kids were going
back to school on the Monday.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
John was Bromwin's second husband and the relationship had been
strained for some time.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
She wanted to leave her husband John, and indeed she did.
She moved into a townhouse that she couldn't really afford,
but she knew she had to get away, only a
short drive from the family home, the home that John
had built. He's a very skilled bricklayer. He could build
houses from scratch and this house was his pride and joy.
(07:56):
She disappeared on the Sunday evening. She had very little money,
She didn't have means to support herself, but she and
her husband were going to be having an argument over
who got the spoils from the marriage. How would that
property settlement unfold? And on the evening she disappeared. Her
husband had left Sydney to fly back. He'd been working
(08:17):
in Sydney building a house, and he became aware that
Bromwin had moved from the rented townhouse with the girls
back into the family home, the home that she had
had to leave when they separated. She was there for
two nights and then on the Sunday, John arrived and
that's the last time anybody ever saw or heard from Bromwin.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Yeah, she tucked to her children into bed that night, Headley,
how do we know that were the children interviewed by police.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Bromwin's eldest daughter did talk to police several years later,
but the children were also in touch with their auntie
and uncle. They spoke to their neighbors and friends. And
it's not disputed by John that the children were in
bed that Sunday night. In fact, John readily acknowledges that
he was at the house too, and according to some accounts,
(09:13):
he acknowledged that he actually had a disagreement with Bromin
on the Sunday night. But his story is that she
got into a car after she had made one or
two phone calls from the bedroom, a car turned up.
He doesn't know what sort of car it was. He
said he couldn't see the driver, doesn't know who was
driving it. She got into that vehicle and left. Now,
(09:37):
it was a very unusual thing for her to do,
to go away for a break. She hadn't told her
friend she was going away for any sort of break.
She left behind pretty much everything, and she had very
little in the way of money. That's why her family
was very concerned immediately. But local police did a very
(09:58):
poor job in the early stages. They really just treated
Bromwin as if she was doing what her mother had done,
that she was a runaway mom, abandoning her family, her
husband and her kids. Crystal has described having heard raised
voices her parents arguing, and then she must have fallen
(10:19):
asleep because she was woken up along with Lauren, late
at night, probably around ten thirty pm, maybe a little
bit earlier. John left the house with his daughters and
drove through the night to Sydney, arriving the next morning.
The children were duet school on the Monday. It was
in school holidays, and they ended up staying in Sydney
(10:41):
for ten or eleven days. And then John, at the
urging of Bromwan's brother drove back up to Lennox and
did report Bromwyn missing to police.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Coming up, why it's taken so long for Bromwyn Winfield's
case to be taken seriously? The podcast Bronwyn is available
now at bronwynpodcast dot com. That's b ro Nwyn podcast
dot com. Subscribers to The Australian are the first to
hear episodes of Headly Thomas's brand new investigative podcast series.
(11:17):
Plus they get breaking news alerts direct to their phones.
All are lively commentary and access to special events. Check
us out at The Australian dot com dot au and
we'll be back after this break. There were eleven days
(11:48):
between Bronwyn Winfield was last seen and the time her
husband John reported her missing to police. On his account,
Bronwyn had said she was going away for a few
days to take some time for herself. So why the delay?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
I think that's a very good question, Claire, And as
best I can understand from talking to Bromwin's family and friends,
they were waiting for John to make that move and
they were urging him to do so for some time. Andy,
who is Broman's brother, he had told John that if
(12:25):
he didn't report Broman missing to the police. Andy would.
A woman called Deb Hall, who was Bromin's very good
friend and nearest neighbor. She told me that she said
words the same effect. She was very, very concerned about
Bromwin and what had happened. She knew how devoted Bromin
was as a mum, the plans that Bromwin had made.
(12:48):
She was happy to be back in her house. She
had flagged no plan or intention to leave the house,
and Deb couldn't see when Deb went through the house
that Broman had actually anything with her except for her handbag,
which wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
In two thousand and two, the former Deputy State Coroner
Karl Milvanovitch, who you heard about at the top of
his episode, found Bronwyn Winfield was dead. He recommended to
the New South Wales Director of Public Prosecutions that John
Winfield be charged with her murder. Nicholas Cowdery, who was
the DPP, then didn't pursue it. He said there was
(13:28):
no evidence John had killed Bronwyn or played any role
in her death. It's a decision that's baffled Bronwin's loved
ones for decades. This is a feature of the justice
system that I think some people might not know so
much about. Can you explain Headley, how it can be
(13:48):
that a coroner can make a recommendation about a case
like this that doesn't turn into a prosecution.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
I think that there's such a mismatch between what happens
when a coroner runs an inquest involving sometimes many days,
sometimes a week of public hearings with witnesses appearing and
giving evidence under oath, and then the coroner, who's often
an experienced senior magistrate, makes certain findings and recommendations, and
(14:19):
then there's this behind closed door paperwork review by unknown
lawyers in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
They review the recommendation, and presumably they go through the evidence.
Often the police brief is very extensive. But how much
of the evidence do they go through? Do they read
(14:41):
all the transcripts and witness statements. Are they at a
sufficiently senior level to really appreciate what the senior coroner
has appreciated. We don't know, because that process is very opaque.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
You reached out to John Winfield. What did he say?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
John Winfield got back to me and he acknowledged the
letter that I had written to him seeking his side
of the story. He said that he had previously answered
something like four hundred and fifteen questions from a homicide
squad detective and he stood by all the answers he
gave to those, and we'll unpack those in several episodes
(15:21):
of the podcast series. He said also, and I think
this is very interesting because it's a reflection of some
of the things that have been said over the years
by him about Bromwin. That her side of the family
has a long generational history of mental illness, on the
male and female side. That's how he put it. Now,
(15:43):
I've talked to Bromwyn's good friends in Lennox Head, I've
talked to family members. The police have obviously talked to
many people because when the police did do a very
thorough investigation starting in nineteen ninety eight, many dozens of
statements were taken by a detective side Glenn Taylor, and
in none of those interviews or statements does anyone say
(16:05):
Bromwin was showing signs of mental illness. It just doesn't register.
Bromen was a very capable, intelligent, motivated young mum. It
seems that having separated from John she knew what she
wanted to do. She just wanted to start again with
her two girls, but without John, and the next stage
in that process was working out what she would walk
(16:28):
away with, what portion of the house and all the
assets that they had jointly strived to achieve together she
would be able to have to start again.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
What's your instinct, Headley, Is this case solvable?
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Well?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
I think all these cases are potentially solvable. It would
only take some fresh new information that is really probative
that somebody has not disclosed, has for whatever reason, decided
to keep to themselves for many years. If somebody comes
forward with that to the police, directly to me, then
(17:03):
if it's corroborated and checked out, that can make a difference.
It could show that somebody else, somebody other than John Winfield,
was responsible. For example, I mean, we don't know what
happened on that Sunday night. John's story is she got
into a car driven by a stranger, and that's that.
Who knows. Maybe somebody has some information about that, Maybe
(17:24):
they have information about something else that John hasn't told us,
But of course they can be solved. Bromwyn disappeared nine
years after Lynn disappeared. People believe that Lynn's case could
never be solved, and it was.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
There is an important difference in the stories of Lynn
Sims and Bromwyn Winfield. John Winfield has never been charged
and there's no suggestion that he's anything like Chris Dawson.
But the similarities between Lynn and Bromwin are inescapable, loving,
coctive mothers whose children were robbed of their right to
(18:03):
a safe, secure maternal bond.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I think we need to be very careful to not
conflate them or see them as being cut from the
same cloth. John Winfield has always emphatically denied any involvement
in foul play. He certainly has never been charged with anything.
The coroner recommended to the then DPP Nicholas Cowdery that
(18:28):
he should be charged and considered for prosecution over Bromwin's
suspected murder, but in the DPP's assessment back in two
thousand and three, there was insufficient evidence. Of course, there's
nobody and some might argue that Bronwin has been living
a life somehow incognito, having never been seen. In my opinion,
(18:54):
that is just completely implausible. Bromwin's almost certainly dead. What
we don't know is when she died and how she died.
But the idea that a very committed mum of thirty
one years old could spend the next thirty one years
somehow eking out a life, remaining unnoticed, being able to
(19:18):
support herself, and never contact two little girls with whom
she had a very beautiful and loving relationship is just
ridiculous in my view.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Bete Thomas is The Australian's national Chief correspondent and the
creator of our new investigative podcast series, Bronwyn. Subscribers to
The Australian are the first to hear it. You can
register to listen to the first two episodes now at
Bromwyn podcast dot com. We've also got exclusive stories, maps, timelines,
graphics and video and for all Australia's best journalism twenty
(20:12):
four seven go to The Australian dot com dot AU.
Thanks for joining us on the front this week. Our
team is Kristin Amiot, Leat Sammaglu, Josh Burton, Jasper Leigue,
Tiffany Dimack, Matthew Condon and me Claire Harvey.
From The Australian. I'm Claire Harvey. This is an episode
of our daily news podcast The Front. Six years after
The Teacher's Pet made waves around the world, The Australian's
National Chief Correspondent Hedley Thomas is back with a brand
new podcast investigation. This time, Headley's delving into the cold
(00:25):
case of Bronwyn Winfield, a young mum who disappeared from
an idyllic surf town on the New South Wales North
Coast more than three decades ago. In today's episode, Hedley
explains how this story found him and if he thinks
it can be solved. In twenty eighteen, Australian journalism blew
(01:04):
up with a huge story told in a grouping new way,
an investigative podcast by The Australian's National Chief correspondent Hedley Thomas.
The Teacher's Pet has had more than eighty million downloads
around the world and it resulted in the arrest, charge
and murder conviction of its subject, Christopher Michael Dawson. He
(01:28):
is now appealing. What almost no one knows is that
at that time another big story was brewing in the background.
Family members and friends of another missing woman, Bronwyn Winfield
was struck by the similarities between her case and that
of Lynnette Simms, whose disappearance headly investigated in the Teacher's
(01:51):
pet In those early days, years before Lynn's husband Chris
Dawson would be brought to justice, Bromwin's loved one reached
out to Hedley, urging him to look into her nineteen
ninety one disappearance from Lennox Head in the New South
Wales Northern Rivers region, but Bromwin's name was already on
(02:13):
Hedley's radar.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
It was late twenty seventeen Claire I was interviewing the
former Deputy State Coroner for New South Wales, Karl Milavanovitch,
about the case of Chris Dawson and the allegations that
he'd murdered his wife Lynn all those years ago in
nineteen eighty two. And while I was talking to Karl,
he expressed his grave concerns about a number of cases
(02:37):
involving missing women, women who had suddenly disappeared. They had
ties to the community, they had small children. Lynn was
one of those, and he mentioned the case of Bromwin Winfield.
He told me that he had run an inquest into
that case in two thousand and two, and he'd made
a recommendation about it.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Here's the moment first heard Bromwyn Winfield's name from Karl Milvanovich.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
I did an inquest of a lady called Bromwyn Windfield,
and she had two kids as well, and she went
to bed one night, and she disappeared next day. And
there was some suggestion from a neighbor that.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
And I didn't have time then to deal with it,
but I wanted to revisit it at some point, and
I guess for the last six and a half years,
I've been collecting bits and pieces and talking to people
connected to the case, reaching out to Bromwin's family. What
also happened was that as the episodes of the Teacher's
(03:42):
Pet began unfolding from May twenty eighteen, people who were
listening they were reminded of something that had just eaten
away at them for some time, that there hadn't been
a proper resolution of Bromwin's disappearance, the deeply suspicious circumstances
surrounding it, and they urged me to get involved in it.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Today, all the information and evidence headly collected over the
years has made it out of the folder. He created
on that day in twenty seventeen and into a new
podcast investigation for The Australian. It's called Bronwyn and it
is hauntingly similar to the disappearance of Lynn Dawson. Loving
young moms, sudden disappearances, families left in the grief and
(04:29):
shock of ambiguous loss.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Sadly, it's the case that across Australia police forces through
the eighties and nineties, and no doubt earlier, were unwilling
to look at foul play as the probable reason for
the sudden disappearances of loving, dedicated young mums, particularly those
going through a marital breakdown, So when they disappeared, the
(04:57):
paperwork was just filed in the bottom drawer mark missing person,
not given a high priority as a possible homicide. And
this is what Karl Milivanovitch identified in a number of
these missing women cases that he dealt with as a
senior coroner before his retirement. When he flagged that to
me when I met him at his home in late
(05:18):
twenty seventeen, it was a bit of a light bulb
moment because you think, gosh, how many other cases are there?
This was a systemic problem. It's no longer the case today.
If a young mum like Bromwin suddenly disappeared at the
same time as she's newly separated from her husband, there
would almost certainly be a very committed police investigation, looking
(05:42):
at all of the unusual circumstances and making sure that
witnesses were soon interviewed. But unbelievably, for the first five
years after Bromwin's disappearance, the police did not even take
a statement from anybody. They spoke to just a couple
of neighbors. They didn't bring anyone down to the police
(06:03):
station to take a formal statement. They didn't properly search
the house or the car. It's hard to believe how
poor the original investigation was.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Bromwn Winfield was just thirty one years old when she
disappeared from the home built by her husband John.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Bromwyn was to everybody who knew her, an incredibly caring
and devoted young mum. She had two daughters. They were Lauren,
who was five, and Crystal ten. Bromwan was close to
her brother her cousins. She'd had a difficult childhood because
(06:47):
her own mother, when Bromwin was two, had postnatal depression
and she disappeared from her own young children, and very sadly,
when Bromwin herself disappeared, some twenty nine years after her
own mother had disappeared, there was for the police a link.
They thought, well, is she doing what her own mother
(07:10):
had done. The circumstances were very, very different. Bromwyn was
of very sound mind. She had plans, She was making plans,
She had appointments the next day. The kids were going
back to school on the Monday.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
John was Bromwin's second husband and the relationship had been
strained for some time.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
She wanted to leave her husband John, and indeed she did.
She moved into a townhouse that she couldn't really afford,
but she knew she had to get away, only a
short drive from the family home, the home that John
had built. He's a very skilled bricklayer. He could build
houses from scratch and this house was his pride and joy.
(07:56):
She disappeared on the Sunday evening. She had very little money,
She didn't have means to support herself, but she and
her husband were going to be having an argument over
who got the spoils from the marriage. How would that
property settlement unfold? And on the evening she disappeared. Her
husband had left Sydney to fly back. He'd been working
(08:17):
in Sydney building a house, and he became aware that
Bromwin had moved from the rented townhouse with the girls
back into the family home, the home that she had
had to leave when they separated. She was there for
two nights and then on the Sunday, John arrived and
that's the last time anybody ever saw or heard from Bromwin.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Yeah, she tucked to her children into bed that night, Headley,
how do we know that were the children interviewed by police.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Bromwin's eldest daughter did talk to police several years later,
but the children were also in touch with their auntie
and uncle. They spoke to their neighbors and friends. And
it's not disputed by John that the children were in
bed that Sunday night. In fact, John readily acknowledges that
he was at the house too, and according to some accounts,
(09:13):
he acknowledged that he actually had a disagreement with Bromin
on the Sunday night. But his story is that she
got into a car after she had made one or
two phone calls from the bedroom, a car turned up.
He doesn't know what sort of car it was. He
said he couldn't see the driver, doesn't know who was
driving it. She got into that vehicle and left. Now,
(09:37):
it was a very unusual thing for her to do,
to go away for a break. She hadn't told her
friend she was going away for any sort of break.
She left behind pretty much everything, and she had very
little in the way of money. That's why her family
was very concerned immediately. But local police did a very
(09:58):
poor job in the early stages. They really just treated
Bromwin as if she was doing what her mother had done,
that she was a runaway mom, abandoning her family, her
husband and her kids. Crystal has described having heard raised
voices her parents arguing, and then she must have fallen
(10:19):
asleep because she was woken up along with Lauren, late
at night, probably around ten thirty pm, maybe a little
bit earlier. John left the house with his daughters and
drove through the night to Sydney, arriving the next morning.
The children were duet school on the Monday. It was
in school holidays, and they ended up staying in Sydney
(10:41):
for ten or eleven days. And then John, at the
urging of Bromwan's brother drove back up to Lennox and
did report Bromwyn missing to police.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Coming up, why it's taken so long for Bromwyn Winfield's
case to be taken seriously? The podcast Bronwyn is available
now at bronwynpodcast dot com. That's b ro Nwyn podcast
dot com. Subscribers to The Australian are the first to
hear episodes of Headly Thomas's brand new investigative podcast series.
(11:17):
Plus they get breaking news alerts direct to their phones.
All are lively commentary and access to special events. Check
us out at The Australian dot com dot au and
we'll be back after this break. There were eleven days
(11:48):
between Bronwyn Winfield was last seen and the time her
husband John reported her missing to police. On his account,
Bronwyn had said she was going away for a few
days to take some time for herself. So why the delay?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
I think that's a very good question, Claire, And as
best I can understand from talking to Bromwin's family and friends,
they were waiting for John to make that move and
they were urging him to do so for some time. Andy,
who is Broman's brother, he had told John that if
(12:25):
he didn't report Broman missing to the police. Andy would.
A woman called Deb Hall, who was Bromin's very good
friend and nearest neighbor. She told me that she said
words the same effect. She was very, very concerned about
Bromwin and what had happened. She knew how devoted Bromin
was as a mum, the plans that Bromwin had made.
(12:48):
She was happy to be back in her house. She
had flagged no plan or intention to leave the house,
and Deb couldn't see when Deb went through the house
that Broman had actually anything with her except for her handbag,
which wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
In two thousand and two, the former Deputy State Coroner
Karl Milvanovitch, who you heard about at the top of
his episode, found Bronwyn Winfield was dead. He recommended to
the New South Wales Director of Public Prosecutions that John
Winfield be charged with her murder. Nicholas Cowdery, who was
the DPP, then didn't pursue it. He said there was
(13:28):
no evidence John had killed Bronwyn or played any role
in her death. It's a decision that's baffled Bronwin's loved
ones for decades. This is a feature of the justice
system that I think some people might not know so
much about. Can you explain Headley, how it can be
(13:48):
that a coroner can make a recommendation about a case
like this that doesn't turn into a prosecution.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
I think that there's such a mismatch between what happens
when a coroner runs an inquest involving sometimes many days,
sometimes a week of public hearings with witnesses appearing and
giving evidence under oath, and then the coroner, who's often
an experienced senior magistrate, makes certain findings and recommendations, and
(14:19):
then there's this behind closed door paperwork review by unknown
lawyers in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
They review the recommendation, and presumably they go through the evidence.
Often the police brief is very extensive. But how much
of the evidence do they go through? Do they read
(14:41):
all the transcripts and witness statements. Are they at a
sufficiently senior level to really appreciate what the senior coroner
has appreciated. We don't know, because that process is very opaque.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
You reached out to John Winfield. What did he say?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
John Winfield got back to me and he acknowledged the
letter that I had written to him seeking his side
of the story. He said that he had previously answered
something like four hundred and fifteen questions from a homicide
squad detective and he stood by all the answers he
gave to those, and we'll unpack those in several episodes
(15:21):
of the podcast series. He said also, and I think
this is very interesting because it's a reflection of some
of the things that have been said over the years
by him about Bromwin. That her side of the family
has a long generational history of mental illness, on the
male and female side. That's how he put it. Now,
(15:43):
I've talked to Bromwyn's good friends in Lennox Head, I've
talked to family members. The police have obviously talked to
many people because when the police did do a very
thorough investigation starting in nineteen ninety eight, many dozens of
statements were taken by a detective side Glenn Taylor, and
in none of those interviews or statements does anyone say
(16:05):
Bromwin was showing signs of mental illness. It just doesn't register.
Bromen was a very capable, intelligent, motivated young mum. It
seems that having separated from John she knew what she
wanted to do. She just wanted to start again with
her two girls, but without John, and the next stage
in that process was working out what she would walk
(16:28):
away with, what portion of the house and all the
assets that they had jointly strived to achieve together she
would be able to have to start again.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
What's your instinct, Headley, Is this case solvable?
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Well?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
I think all these cases are potentially solvable. It would
only take some fresh new information that is really probative
that somebody has not disclosed, has for whatever reason, decided
to keep to themselves for many years. If somebody comes
forward with that to the police, directly to me, then
(17:03):
if it's corroborated and checked out, that can make a difference.
It could show that somebody else, somebody other than John Winfield,
was responsible. For example, I mean, we don't know what
happened on that Sunday night. John's story is she got
into a car driven by a stranger, and that's that.
Who knows. Maybe somebody has some information about that, Maybe
(17:24):
they have information about something else that John hasn't told us,
But of course they can be solved. Bromwyn disappeared nine
years after Lynn disappeared. People believe that Lynn's case could
never be solved, and it was.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
There is an important difference in the stories of Lynn
Sims and Bromwyn Winfield. John Winfield has never been charged
and there's no suggestion that he's anything like Chris Dawson.
But the similarities between Lynn and Bromwin are inescapable, loving,
coctive mothers whose children were robbed of their right to
(18:03):
a safe, secure maternal bond.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I think we need to be very careful to not
conflate them or see them as being cut from the
same cloth. John Winfield has always emphatically denied any involvement
in foul play. He certainly has never been charged with anything.
The coroner recommended to the then DPP Nicholas Cowdery that
(18:28):
he should be charged and considered for prosecution over Bromwin's
suspected murder, but in the DPP's assessment back in two
thousand and three, there was insufficient evidence. Of course, there's
nobody and some might argue that Bronwin has been living
a life somehow incognito, having never been seen. In my opinion,
(18:54):
that is just completely implausible. Bromwin's almost certainly dead. What
we don't know is when she died and how she died.
But the idea that a very committed mum of thirty
one years old could spend the next thirty one years
somehow eking out a life, remaining unnoticed, being able to
(19:18):
support herself, and never contact two little girls with whom
she had a very beautiful and loving relationship is just
ridiculous in my view.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Bete Thomas is The Australian's national Chief correspondent and the
creator of our new investigative podcast series, Bronwyn. Subscribers to
The Australian are the first to hear it. You can
register to listen to the first two episodes now at
Bromwyn podcast dot com. We've also got exclusive stories, maps, timelines,
graphics and video and for all Australia's best journalism twenty
(20:12):
four seven go to The Australian dot com dot AU.
Thanks for joining us on the front this week. Our
team is Kristin Amiot, Leat Sammaglu, Josh Burton, Jasper Leigue,
Tiffany Dimack, Matthew Condon and me Claire Harvey.
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