Listeners are advised that this podcast series BROM contains coarse language and adult themes.

This podcast series is brought to you by Me Headley Thomas and The Australian.

Some fifteen years ago, Mitch Watson spoke to me about his work with police dogs helping catch criminals and locate cadavers.

Mitch, I saw on your website a photograph of you in Queensland Police uniform with a beautiful looking dog, a big German Shepherd.

I was a general purpose dog Kendler, and I also had a dog do cadav work as well.

You've probably heard about the horse Whisperer.

There was a book and then a movie about a cowboy with the remarkable ability to calm and train horses.

Think of Mitch Watson as the dog whisperer.

Some people haven't innate sort of relationship with dogs.

From dealing with tens of thousands of domestic dogs of all breeds and dealing with different behavioral issues.

Since leaving the police, you are involved with lots of dogs that are family pets.

They're not police trained dogs, are they?

No?

Have you had a chance to listen to the exchange from the inquest in two thousand and two between the lawyer for John Winfield and the then detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor in relation to how a dog, a.

Family pet might react.

To a hypothetical body in the boot of a car.

Yes, in a few moments you are going to hear that particular exchange again.

It unfolded in episode twenty six.

There's something about it that has nagged at me.

It's bound up in the insistence of the barrister Craig Legget, the almost desperate efforts of Craig Leggett, under instructions from his client John Winfield, to rubbish a proposition or theory of police that Broman's body was transported somewhere.

Craig Leggett ridiculed the idea that her body could have been concealed in the Ford Falcon's boot for a road trip to Sydney when the family pet, a dog called Mopsey, was in the car on the back seat with the two girls.

Now, I just want to explore a second last issue with you, and it's this, with your experience, considerable experience over the years, the likelihood of Broman's body being in the boot of the car on the evening of sixteen May with Mopsi the dog in the back seat.

It's just so highly improbable as to be fanciful, isn't it.

That would be your view, wouldn't it.

See we've only got mister Winfield's version.

You're not serious, are years saying that the dogs are like a type of sniffer dog or something like that or what?

You're not seriously contending?

Are you that it's likely that Bronwan was in the boot of the car being driven to Sydney with Mopsi the dog in the back seat?

Well?

Really or is that a possibility?

Is it?

I've put things there.

I didn't make any direct comment whether she was put in the boot or not.

Well, I'm just asking you for your experience.

Now, you're just not prepared to concede that in your experience, it's highly improbable that Bronwan was in the boot being taken to Sydney with the dog in the back seat.

That strikes you as fanciful, doesn't it.

Look I've had probably over thirty to forty murder investigations in my service, and I mean, you wouldn't believe what people do with bodies.

I see, unbelievable.

It would be a very bold move, wouldn't it to have a dog in the back seat with a body in the boot?

As I said, you would not believe what people are capable of under stressful situations, what they're going to do with the dead body.

Yes, and sometime between the body going in the boot and arriving in Sydney with the two little girls in the back seat, the body is disposed of.

That's the theory, is it.

It's just fanciful, isn't it.

That exchange that you just heard could be a bit of a red flag in my view.

At the inquest, John and his lawyer held a hard line position.

It hadn't changed since nineteen ninety three, and it was that John had absolutely nothing to do with Bromman's disappearance, full stop.

John's story was and still is, that Bromwan had walked out of the Lenox head house about nine thirty pm to take a break of a few few days.

Why then, was John seemingly determined for his lawyer to emphatically lampoon a theory about a method of body disposal, that method being the family car and a concealment in the car's boot.

Craig Leggett did not try to rely on any expert evidence from dog handlers or animal behavior experts before he teed off about it.

The exchange does seem redolent of a client John wanting his lawyer to work really hard to distance John from the Ford Falcon's boot, but overdoing it, and in overdoing it, he's drawing attention to it, protesting too much.

I asked Mitch Watson about dog behavior in this regard.

He sees hundreds of dogs a year at his Harry's Hounds in Brisbane.

The lawyer was suggesting that it was fanciful, ridiculous there would be a body in a boot with the dog not reacting in a very obvious way.

I see the position of the barrister and I just can't see how it could arrive at that opinion without any level of knowledge on the subject.

We're talking about a newly acquired puppy that wouldn't have been in the family for a long time.

In those circumstances, how do you think the dog could be reacting.

Completely neutral and it wouldn't identify that there was a body in the back of the car.

It might be aware of the smell of its other owner in the car.

Correct, and if there wasn't like separation anxiety, which I'm assuming it wouldn't have been, then the dog would just sit there just normally and just passive and just not create any sort of change in behavior.

So stretch it to the point of view that this dog, newly a quiet dog, was somehow trained like a kadava dog, would respond like a kadava dog is quite fanciful.

Really, it needs training, and that's what law enforcement agencies spend a lot of money on.

Training these dogs to do these behaviors.

For whatever they're searching, whether it be exposers or cadabs or drugs.

They're inclined to find that odor because the reward means so much to them.

They're toil food and that's their reward.

But it has to be trained to pair the odor with the behavior and then get the reward.

So if it's never really presented with that odor, then there's just no reason for it to do that behavior.

It's not like a light switch is just turned on or off.

The timeline of when the person was allegedly placed in a boot, it would have to be in a decomposition sort of state.

If it was a number of days later, a trained dog then would identify it and present a behavior.

An ordinary dog, in my view, would not present any sort of change of behavior.

And what about just several hours later.

I'd be very very surprised, very surprised.

During the inquest in two thousand and two, nobody from Roman's family nor from the police suggested the theory that the building site at Illowong in the Shire, which John returned to for his bricklaying work, was a potential burial site for Bromman's body just before the pouring of concrete for the garage and patio slabs.

Mech hypothetically, if a body is buried beneath concrete, say several inches thick, and in the ground beneath concrete, drilling occurs so that holes are created through the concrete and into the earth.

If a cadava dog is sniffing above the holes that are drilled into that concrete, will the kadava dogs naturally detect a cadava because of the scent coming up through those drill holes.

It would have to be right on the money with the drill hole over the body.

I just can't see that being an accurate outcome in.

Your opinion, then, would you want to fully excavate a concrete slab to be certain that there's nothing beneath it?

Absolutely, if it was my relative that was in that area and I was concerned, I would like it to be fully exposed and see what the truth is if there's anything there.

Anything short of that is not satisfactory.

You could be tracking an a fender, you could be searching for an item with a search dog and it could still miss it.

You need the planets to align to get it right.

It's not an exact science all the time with utilizing dogs to search for things in unusual situations.

It was my relative in there by God, let's do this properly.

Rip it up.

You'll recall Chris Darcy from an earlier episode when he and his team from search dog Sydney came to Lennox Head for a search of Ainsworth with the help of former Australian Navy Captain Ashley McDonald, a highly trained diver.

We disturbed the lake bed and Chris Darsi relied on his highly trained dogs to try to pick up a scent on the surface of the lake.

We went to this effort before we properly appreciated and understood the evidence surrounding another scenario, Chris, if one of your Kardava dogs was in the back seat of a car with a body in the boot, how would one of your Kardava dogs respond.

They'd continually bark, and they'd be trying to access it and penetrate it by trying to dig through the foam in the back sleep.

And that's a very different reaction to what you might expect a family pet that's untrained to do.

That's correct, because the dog is not trying to give an alert to any specific scent.

There would be a potential recognition by a family pet of another person in the vehicle that the dog can't see but is aware of because of the scent.

Yes, the dog could be restless, it could be whiny, It could just be a matter of that smells the sense and then simply lies down again and goes back to slot because that's what it normally does in the car.

But certainly not reacting in a way that could indicate to someone else in the car that there was something of concern, for example, in the boot.

No, I don't think anybody would be able to tell that the dog's reacting any differently to what it normally does.

I'd say that would be common behavior that they've witnessed the dog too previously.

George Radmore made it his mission sixteen years ago to try to take the brief of evidence for Bromwin Winfield's suspicious disappearance to the next level to a prosecution for murder of a known person.

Bromwin's case became a priority reinvestigation as the then senior detective with a small team took it on in two thousand and nine.

One of the.

Earliest tasks that they oversaw was a visit by forensics and crime scene specialists to the house at Sandstone Crescent.

Deb Hall and Murray Nolan remembered it well.

They all do.

They also brought the Dava dogs up in that investigation and went right over the house.

Was George Radmore that month where all his crew from the unsold homicide squad I think it was, and I'm friends now from a Margaret Olivey in the house at this stage and they about the situation.

Glenn Taylor had been retired for a good six and a half years when he was contacted at his balon A home by George Radmore.

The Young Sign Homicide team leader came to see me and we spoke obviously about my investigation, and then I did out some phone calls with him.

They had a team of detective up here looking into the motor again.

The person thing they asked was whereas all the material?

Whether they actually located that or what happened to it, I don't know.

The real George Radmore sounds like this.

The mail was not cooperating with the investigation and actually provided some misleading information.

It was on the front page of the Northern Star at the time.

I've got a newspaper.

Clipping of them out in front of our place in their white suits.

We found the article.

It quoted George Radmore, then a detective senior sergeant.

He didn't mince his words when he spoke to the reporter in late May two thousand and nine, seven years after the end of the inquest which recommended a prosecution of John Winfield.

These are the detective's words.

It's not his voice.

We're here to conduct prime scene investigations for forensic evidence associated with the suspected murder of Bronwyn Winfield in nineteen ninety three.

It would be fair to say that this was the last place she was last seen alive.

Already, we've had new information come forward that we were not anticipating.

Some of that new information came out of a note sent by Glenn Taylor to Andy and Michelle read the year before two thousand and eight.

The retired detective's email was friendly and mostly personal.

As a result of Glenn's still unresolved murder investigation, he had come to like and respect Andy and Michelle, and in two thousand and eight, Bromwin's case was still very march on Glen's mind.

Despite his retirement, he remained bitterly disappointed that the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions had rejected the recommendation of the Deputy State Coroner that a known person, John Winfield, be prosecuted.

In Glen's email to the Reeds, he shared his family's news, including the school and university achievements of his children.

Your kids would have grown up a lot now.

I hope everyone is well at your end, Liz said to say, Hi, we are all getting on with life.

I just don't know why they decided not to indict John Winfield.

And then Glenn's email went on to briefly describe a recent random meeting with a woman.

Glenn had recognized her at a mutual friend's birthday party near Lennox Head.

She was someone he had tried to talk to during his investigation a decade earlier.

In nineteen ninety, they started chatting Glenn Taylor in this email Michelle.

That particular email.

Yeah, can you just read to me the email from where it says I got talking?

Okay?

I got talking to her and she said that she didn't want to get involved in the police investigation at the time and still doesn't.

She told me that when she broke up with John Winfield, he had placed his hands around her throat and had choked her.

Glenn was describing what he was told by a woman called Glena.

You heard a little about Lena during one of the inquest episodes.

Because she had a relationship and she was actually living in the house with John.

All of a sudden she disappeared and she left him moved out.

But what's the timeframe of you trying to find out who Lena is?

Glenn, Glenn's started doing the interviews for the coronial inquest, but she wouldn't participate.

She said, no way, no way, I don't want to say anything.

I don't want to do anything.

I don't want to see nothing.

She would not.

She refused, okay, and then.

He saw her.

Years later, he and his wife are at this party and Saura and spoke to her, and off the cuff they made that comment, and he sent it to us because we still think that she needs to be interviewed.

Lena's potential significance in Bromwin's case looms large.

Now.

I have had some lengthy off the record conversations with Lena.

The most recent one occurred shortly before the release of this episode.

Later you are going to hear how she feels about coming forward.

But first, let's go back to Lennox Head and the start of Lena's connection to John Winfield's nineteen ninety four and Bromwin had been missing for more than seven months, but Judy Singh was keeping a suspicious eye on her near neighbor, the man Judy says she saw driving his Ford Falcon late on the night of Sunday May sixteenth, nineteen ninety three, with what appeared to be a body wrapped in what looked like sheets.

He eventually was seeing another lady a couple of doors up and on the other side of the road.

I think you're talking about Lena.

Yeah, that was her name, Lena.

Lena lived in a modest house she had newly bought.

Back then.

It was almost opposite Judy Singh's place.

Crystal and Lauren and Lauren's friend Amy would sometimes wave to Lena as she drove out of Sandstone Crescent to go to work.

On weekday mornings, the girls would visit Lena in her house.

One thing led to another and Lena met John.

A relationship started here is Bromwin's cousin, Megan.

Reid Russell said.

She said that she's set them up together, John and Lena, and she moved in very shortly after.

Lena was working for a new South Wales government agency in Ballina and John was still bricklaying around the town.

Coincidentally, Lena knew Bev Brooker, the woman whose inheritance has made John a multi millionaire.

Lena and Bev worked for the same government agency, but Lena did not know that there was local suspicion of John about the fate of Bromwin.

Back then, Lena was led to believe that Bromwin had disappeared from a party in town while John was away working in Sydney.

Here's Lena's other neighbor from that time, Marilyn Hannigan.

Her husband, Bruce, was a retired police detective from Victoria.

Yeah, we were pretty concerned at the time about Lena, who lived on the other side of us.

She had thought he'd done nothing wrong, and that was before she moved in.

Bressad tried to talk to her and say be careful.

When she'd moved in.

He just said to her, if you've got to get out of that house and get over here to smash my window if you have to.

He had said to her, anytime of the day or night, and she said, oh, take it from there, meaning that he would know.

Who to call.

We were fairly concerned about her safety.

Most of all, she was a tiny little girl.

Did she indicate anything to you about what was going on?

No, nothing like that.

Before Lena abruptly ended the relationship with John and moved out of the house in which Broman was last seen alive.

Andy and Michelle had dropped in there on their way back from a road trip north, and that's when they noted there were photographs of a woman they later understood was Lena, as well as the girls, Lauren and Crystal in the house, but.

Not one picture of their gun.

Here's Bromwin's sister, Kim Marshall.

And on my other visit to the house, I was very shocked to find that all the photophones had been replaced with photos of another woman who I may have found out was Lena on the sideboard.

I couldn't believe it.

Why are two kids being raised in the manner that they're being forced to get their mother?

Before the two thousand and two inquests, Andy Reid found Lena and he had a long conversation with her.

Andy gave some evidence at the inquest about Lena and her very adverse reflections on her former lover, John Winfield.

But she has been very elusive, and she said she frightened and scared.

Andy, what do you remember about your conversation with Lena?

She was quite civil with me.

She did tell me that when she left, she packed all her stuff up after John left for work one morning and left the house and never spoke to him again.

She said to me, volatile one minute and calm the next.

He said, Doctor Jacklin misdied is what she called him.

She said, I never want to be in the room with him again.

I never want to see the bike again.

Did you ask her to give a statement to the police.

Do you ask her to come forward?

Yes?

She said no to me that she wouldn't give a statement.

She was scared of the fella.

The investigation by George Radmore with the Unsolved Homicide Unit in Sydney from two thousand and nine came after direct approaches by Andy and Michelle.

We would ring the Solved Thomas Ide Squad at Parramatta and asked to speak to whoever it was looking into her particular case.

Had you stopped contacting Ballanapolis by then?

Yes?

Well, people had moved on from up there.

Glen had left the force.

And then Glenn Taylor in two thousand and eight drops you an email six years after the inquest and he says he's bumped into Lena, Yes, and he adds the detail that Lena told him that John had tried to choke her.

Andy and Michelle shared Glenn's two thousand and eight email with the detectives as part of the Reed family's bid to have the case looked at again.

Any kind of information or something comes up that we think vital, he always passes it on what they do with it.

I'm not sure.

I'd say she's probably pivotal.

She was in a relationship with him and something's happened.

From what she has told Glenn, we believe it's a similar thing to what may have happened to Bromwin.

I think her information would be vital.

It would just be another incident in the many we've heard about where violence has been shown to a woman by him.

Glenn has voiced the statement that he gave in two thousand and nine for the investigation headed by George Radmore.

On Saturday, June twenty first, two thousand and eight, my wife and I were invited to attend the fiftieth birthday party of Wendy at her property near Woodburn.

About an hour after I had arrived at the property, Wendy was introducing her guests.

I recall being introduced to a female who said her name was Lenine.

I happened to start talking to Lena, and a short time into the conversation I said to her, did you used to go out with a man named Jonathan Winfield?

Lena said, why do you want to know?

I said, I think I may have spoken to you before.

I used to be the detective sergeant at Ballina, and I was in charge of the Bromwin Winfield disappearance.

Lena said, I remember talking to you.

Yes, I did go out with Jonathan Winfield.

I said, I know it has been a while now, but I believe that a task force may be looking at a number of unsolved homicides.

Broman Winfield's matter maybe one of them.

Lena said, I.

Didn't even know about Bromwin until towards the end of my relationship with John.

I said, do you know that Bromwin was Jonathan Winfield's third wife.

Lena said yes, but I didn't find that out until later either.

Lena said he was nice at first, but at the end it was quite messy.

He became very angry with me and he pushed me around too.

I said, what did he do?

Lena said he was really possessive.

I saw the other side of him when we broke up.

I was glad to get out of the relationship.

He just got a bit rough with me.

It's not worth going over it now.

I said, would you talk to the detectives if they came to speak to you.

Lena said, I don't think so.

I have moved on I have my own life to lead.

Having interview Jonathan Winfield's previous wives, I believe the information told to me by Lena was important.

Andy remembered something George Radmore told him.

He said, I've worked on plenty of these cases.

He said, the day got a scary evidence of bromwin turns up in the ground anywhere.

If a body or anything ever turned up, he'd be dragged away within forty eight hours.

Mate.

That's how confidence they were.

In my first telephone interview with Broman's cousin Megan, before we met just days later at her home on Sydney's Northern Beaches in September twenty twenty three, she heaped praise on the detective.

Now Megan gave George Radmore a very different timeline and witness account about John's purported movements at a crucial time.

Meghan's newer version is nothing like what she had said previously.

The differences are so striking it is hard to reconcile them.

You are about to learn of this particular aspect of the brief of evidence for the first time.

It's not the first time, however, that Meghan's roles and her evidence have been controversial.

You'll recall that Andy has previously revealed that he even asked the detective Sergeant Graham Diskin to stop talking to Meghan.

Andy was concerned way back in nineteen ninety three that Meghan had been passing confidential information to John back then, resulting in John learning of the family's suspicions and the potential strategies of police.

Meghan emphatically rejects any suggestion that she was helping John while remaining in friendly contact with him.

For a while.

Here's Meghan explaining some of her involvement in the police cold case reinvestigation headed by George Radmore from two thousand and nine.

I spent a good year with George Radmore, That's the whole thing.

He would come down to monov Our police station and meet me there.

And it wasn't until George Radmore became involved that he asked me the right questions because there was so much stuff that would never ever presented to the coroner that I had.

The whole timeline was wrong.

You see, he left, not said, and he came threat to my house with the kids.

He had never been to my house before ever.

Because John and I went close.

I know where it was because my husband was ready to catch the bus to the train station at seven fifteen in the morning.

Okay, now I know that Perry was sitting down.

Having his breakfast and I was feeding the children when John appears at our back door with the children, and I was like what.

And to this day, I can tell you I will never be able to get the sight of his face out of my mind.

And his behavior.

I can only think of those cartoon characters with the eyes that bulge out, you know.

And he looked like he was having a breakdown.

He was stopping at the mouth.

He was white, gray in color.

He was just babbling.

And my ex husband had no time for anybody, and he just said, get to the point, what are you're doing kind of thing.

And the children were dressed in pajamas, only no other clothes were brought with her.

They were holding it a little puppy, a malchese called Moxie.

They looked like they were in shock, and they just stood behind him sort of thing, and never said a word.

And it wasn't till he disappeared for a while that I sort of questioned as much as I could.

It was manic, and I kept diaries, and I wrote things down in all the diaries, and each time I say in my diary that they all need to go and get some help psychological oil.

The timeline has always been that Andrew believes that they came straight to him that day after she disappeared.

Well, that's not true.

They were in my birthstep.

I no, they were.

And he went running to the car and came back, and he brought out a piece of paper which was just a fool's cap page of writing, and he showed it to us and I started reading it, and I think I only read about one or two paragraphs, and I said, so what this is just talking about an old dream or something about our past.

She was talking about my grandmother, my maternal grandmother.

It wasn't of any relevance, but he was trying to continuate that she lost her mind.

I think, Megan, I'm.

Just trying to fill in some of the gaps in that timeline.

And the timeline is always.

So important, absolutely, But your statement describes getting a contact from him on the twenty fourth of May ask him if he could come and stay with the kids the following day, the twenty fifth of May.

Is that's what's written in my diary, and of.

Course Bromman disappears on the sixteenth of May, so she disappears nine days prior.

To his arrival on your doorstep.

And I'm just no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no, that's just where it's all wrong.

Until now.

You heard a very different story about John's movements.

On the morning of Monday, May seventeen, and according to the better known version, John drove from Lennox Head with his two daughters and the dog to his daughter Jody's workplace, a hair salon called Intercuts in the sutherland Shire and then to his former wife Jenny's house, where John spoke to her mother in law, Joan Mason, mid morning on May seventeen.

In Meighan's first statement to police in August nineteen ninety eight and signed by her in the presence of her parents and the detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor, Meghan commits to several events from May nineteen ninety three.

In that first statement by her, Meghan says that on May twenty two, nineteen ninety three, she learned that Bromman was missing, and she says that on May twenty four, John called.

Her to ask if he and the.

Girls could come and stay the following evening May twenty five.

That would make sense as John would have been able to make a brief detour north of Sydney on his drive back to Lennox Head.

Megan says that her first belief statement, the one witnessed by Glen Taylor in nineteen ninety eight, is wrong.

She says it's wrong because it omits reference to what Meghan insists was John's visit to her house on the morning of Monday May seventeen, nineteen ninety three.

Meghan says that her personal life was in turmoil when she was with her parents and giving her statement in nineteen ninety eight to Glen Taylor.

Meghan's marriage to her husband Perry had recently ended.

She says there is a big hole in her nineteen ninety eight statement.

Gwent Taylor changed out and he speaks my mother and father and myself at my parents' house at that stage, I was in the middle of Supreme Court, was my ex husbin, my mother in law was SEENI from me and dollars was not pretty.

But I remembered clearly when they arrived and how they arrived.

Because I've always maintained that they showed up and they driven all night from the night before, and that was a Sunday night.

They had no.

Clothing than what they were wearing, which which pajamas.

I am telling you they showed up that morning in that state.

He arrived at my house on the morning of the seventeenth.

That's not what you say in your statement.

No, they didn't ask me that.

But that can't be right, can it.

No, I'd cheat my life.

It's just so odd that the statement is so.

Wrong that I never really got to tell anybody anything.

It was in my diary that I gave them, but the police have lost that page was written in there and they took it apart in the.

Setday of twenty second.

You've got to note your diary that has found out bron gone.

That's when Andrew had told me that she was.

Missing from the twenty fourth of May, which is a Monday.

In your diary, you write John rang asked if he and kids can come tomorrow and stay.

Yeah, that's right.

In her nineteen ninety eight statement, Megan ads John told.

Me that Bromwin had gone off for some guy in a car.

He said that she was due back home in Lonockshead in a few days.

At that time, John was a shaking, crying mess.

I'd never seen him like this before, and I can't explain his behavior.

He put it across that he was upset because Bromwin had taken.

Off for some man.

Meghan now says that those things happened, but she also insists that that was John's second visit to her home in May, and that his first visit was on the morning of Monday, May seventeenth.

He came back twice today.

But if true, why isn't that in Meghan's original nineteen ninety eight statement.

I asked her about.

This, Andrew was the point of contract from the trash.

He never even spoked me about what happened.

The police only heard she shouted a story and they never listened to me.

And Andrew apparently told him that I have ADHD, that I was from medication.

Iogy certain the rest of it was, ever, not tradition to we.

Maddie Walsh and I have spent a lot of time talking about her Auntie Meghan's disclosures.

In our view, Andy has tried to manage his cousin Meghan, and Andy even told police in nineteen ninety three to treat her with caution.

He asked that she'd be taken out of the investigation's information loop.

Meghan's claims that she was not listened to back then in nineteen ninety three are of course credible.

But five years later, when Meghan gave a statement to Glen Taylor, she was being listened to.

Andy was not at Meghan's parents' house when Glen Taylor typed up the details and Meghan signed her statement in August nineteen ninety eight.

Nowhere in that statement does Meghan suggests John visited her on Monday in May seventeenth, nineteen ninety three.

You'll recall that at the inquest in two thousand and two, Meghan was subjected to some torrid cross examination by John Winfield's lawyer, Craig Leggett.

Her credibility and truthfulness were directly challenged.

Now, what I'm suggesting to you is that, for some reason best known to you, in the witness box today you are embellishing.

You are to use the vernacular being a drama queen.

Now I want to give you an opportunity to address that allegation.

This morning, you said on oath that Bronwan told you on a number of occasions that John would kill her if she made a claim on the house.

Nor in your written statement have you said that.

Why?

Well, I don't know.

I sat down with the police and I told them what I thought at the time.

There's nothing in your diary is that thing?

Does there have to be?

The inquest heard that some of Meghan's diary entries were made some time after the events which were being described, so they were not being made contemporaneously.

In oral evidence at the inquest, Meghan did not suggest that John had turned up at her house on the morning of Monday May seventeen.

At the inquest, Meghan broadly repeated what she had said in her nineteen ninety eight statement to the detective Glenn Taylor.

But when George Radmore was running the Unsolved Homicide Unit's cold case reinvestigation from two thousand and nine, Meghan went down a different route and.

That changed everything.

And that's why George spent so much time with me.

They didn't even realize that he had been to me.

She in the morning.

Nobody realized thath and I was told by George Radmore that they actually did the drive from his place to my house in time mar next to the John and the hour, so she he was brilliant.

In another more recent conversation which I had with Megan, she added.

I hadn't even told George after he interviewed me, oh jeez, dozens of times, dozens of times for hours on end about that first stay that they came down, until Crystal was with me when I went in to sign my statement and he said, oh my god, why didn't you tell me?

And I said, well, I kind of did, but in my adhd brain unless I've got the dates in front of me.

I'm apparently a very scattered historian, but I know what happened and when they happened in my mind, but I couldn't put your date to it.

Crystal at that point in time, told George that that was true.

She remembered it.

Megan showed me an email from George Radmore, who assured her that her contributions were necessary.

To get the full picture.

Already, you have provided everyents that I previously did not know existed, and it's very important to the investigation.

It would certainly have been easier if your statement had been taken in more detail during the investigations.

However, we cannot change that now.

I just wish Perry would come out my ex husband and back me up.

I asked Maddie Walsh to sit with Megan as she read from the twenty page statement which George Radmore took from Megan in two thousand and nine.

I recall that around the time of the separation that Bromin was seeking money as a retainer for a solicitor to act on her behalf.

I received a phone call from my mother, Leah Reid, informing me that Bromin had rung and asked her for money.

Mum told me that it was for the retainer for the solicitor during his phone call.

I remember the amount being three thousand dollars Brown asked for, but I could be wrong about the amount.

I ran Bromwin after this phone call from Mum and I spoke to her about the call.

Brown was upset and angry that Mo and Dad would not give her the money.

She was crying on the phone during this call and was venting about their decision.

Meghan says in the two thousand and nine statement that the next time she recalled talking to Bromwin, she had found a way to retain the solicitor, and that he had told her she could move back into the house and he would organize a restraining order to keep John at a distance.

Meghan says in the statement that shortly before Broman's disappearance.

There were times when I would bring John specifically to find that information for Bromwin, and John was asking me to find that information on Bromwn for him.

My loyalty was to Bromwin, and I was not tell him things about Bromwin that she did not want him to know.

Maddie remains fond of her auntie Meghan, but Maddie checks and sometimes challenges Meghan's disclosures, particularly in relation to Bromman's case.

What's your position on Megan's assertions about this Monday morning, seventeenth of May visit by John to her house.

This was not something she brought up in her original witness statement that was taken in nineteen ninety eight by Glenn Taylor.

This is something that she brought up many years later, in around two thousand and nine twenty ten with George Radmore.

It never got brought up before, and it suddenly made its appearance around two thousand and nine and twenty ten and no one else can remember this happening.

Didn't say that he ever stopped by there, and I feel like it.

Would be a really important stepping stone in his timeline had it actually occurred, because that would determine what time he actually left, because that would have been his first stop when coming through Sydney.

It was just almost impossible that John showed up on her doorstep the morning of the seventeenth of May.

Do you think that Megan is going to be unhappy with you again for disagreeing with her evidence.

Yes, this is something that we've gone back and forth on when she first told me her recollections and when I first read all the witness statements at hand, and I had doubts from the very beginning.

I think she's just misrecalled, and I think the best bet is to go off her witness statement from nineteen ninety eight and not the one that she redid to her.

It's such an important recollection.

I don't know why it was brought up so much later.

Not sure whether she heard other people's recollections and read other people's witness statements and then somehow managed to conjure up a version that she felt happened.

So It's definitely been a massive back and forth with Meghan and I for a very long time about her recollection of events, and it is a touchy subject.

But I have to stand by the other evidence and everything other people have said and kind of come to my own conclusion and not be biased and go, well, you're my aunt, and that just means I'm going to believe you with what you say here.

But I just can't.

It doesn't work.

It's not possible.

In my mind, there's no way that it could have happened.

Maddie reached out to Megan's former husband to ask him what, if anything, he wouldcalled about John's purported visit.

I called Perry because Meghan said that Perry was having selective amnesia where he's not remembering because he doesn't want to support her.

I asked him, in terms of helping Bromwin's case, can you recall if John showed up with the girls one morning in May?

And he said that he did not recall John showing up on their doorstep early in the morning.

My mum also states that he's not the type of person to, out of hate or out of a grudge, not tell the truth.

And I believe her with that.

My grandma says the same thing, and I don't believe he would hold important information back if it meant determining a timeline and things like that.

He has said time and time again, I don't remember this happening.

I don't think it'd be something easy to forget either.

He was the only one that could back her up in terms of whether John came to her house the morning of the seventeenth.

John going to one of Bromwin's relatives plays as his first stop on his way through to Sydney.

To me seems un because their first question would be where's Bromwin.

I don't understand how it wasn't in her original statement if it happened.

Yeah, I agree.

It seems like such a harring thing to witness, and what she remembers from it, it seems so vivid.

I would think that would be one of the first things she would have told Glenn Taylor.

It's just very hard to believe that it did occur, and it's a pretty common thing that we witnessed with her where she remembers things differently.

She told me that she went outside and saw in the boot of his car.

She was like, and she wasn't in there.

Megan was saying that Bromman's body was not in the boot of John's Ford Falcon on the morning of Monday, May seventeen.

And I was like, well, that's because you're remembering a different time.

She told me that, like overtext.

That's a big call.

She was like, oh yeah, but I like, I also saw into the boot of his car and there was nothing in there.

She said, I never thought she was at Illawong because she saw into the boot of that car that morning and there was nothing in there.

Island, What where did this come from?

You have never once said that.

In her two thousand and nine statement, Meghan does not suggest that she could see in the boot.

She indicates the opposite.

While we were sitting at the table, John jumped up and said something similar to wait, there's something I've got to show you and send the boot.

He then ran, not walked out to his car, which was parked outside the house.

I didn't follow him out, but just sat at the table with Perry, and I didn't see whether or not he actually went to the boot of the car.

He came back in with a notepad of mind paper with what I recognized if bron was writing on the notepad.

John was trying to make out like the writing was evidence of Bron and losing her mind.

Meghan says in this statement in two thousand and nine that John stayed for less than half an hour.

When George Radmore asked her why there was no diary entry about John having turned up, Meghan replied that the page was missing, adding that it was likely she didn't make any entry that day.

Meghan told George Radmore that in the weeks and months following Bromman's disappearance.

I continue to speak to John reagularly.

Over this time, I was indicating that I was a friend to him to keep the information coming.

Although I believed that he had done something to Bromwin at that time, I had adopted to keep your enemy's close theory with my relationship with John after Bromen's disappearance.

Our relationship was quite cordial during this period, and I think that he trusted me and he believed that I was on his side to some extent during this period, even though that was not the true situation.

I had maintained this facade since their separation, so it was not unusual that I would continue to be his friend and have sympathy for him after Bromwan's disappearance.

I was never giving John information about the investigation, all assisting him in any way to thwart the investigation.

John was staying away from both Andrew and my parents during this phase, and he was using me as a conduct to the Reed family because I was being friendly to him and not challenging his version of how Bronwyn disappeared.

John was under a great deal of pressure at this period due to the suspicions of Andrew and Michelle Reid in particular, and the police investigation.

I knew John was under pressure because of the phone calls that I had with John and from what Andrew was telling me about his own conversations with Joss Andy.

One of the statements George Radmore talk during his cold case investigation in two thousand and nine was from Megan Reid, and in that statement, Meghan claims that on the morning of Monday, May seventeen, John Winfield went to her house with the two girls and the dog.

And that's very different to what Meghan said at the inquest and what she said in her original nineteen ninety eight statement.

Do you have a view about the accuracy of Meghan's claim in relation to John.

Her husband Perry.

He has told Maddie numerous times it didn't happen.

And I don't know for the life of me why she's off on this tangent.

If you read her statement that she redid with Radmore, she spent over twenty hours with the bloke doing it.

She had five cracks out of it.

They had five meetings to take a statement.

I don't know how anything in that second statement could be deemed as accurate Fairy Chiles.

It's not in her two thousand and nine statement.

But Meghan has told Maddie that on that morning Monday, May seventeen, Meghan looked in the boot and Rommin was not in the boot.

And Maddie has said, Megan, you've got your date wrong.

You didn't see John on that Monday morning.

When you did see John, there wouldn't have been anything in the boot.

Yes.

Is this troubling for you that a member of the Reed family.

Of course it is, But what's it about?

What relevance?

And she wants to go down this path?

Unbelievable, unbelievable.

She has mentioned to me a lot that detectives say to her, and people say to her that she is the most important witness, and people are trying to just credit her because they're jealous of how important she is in the case.

And I do have to bite my tongue.

Have you sometimes wondered whether Megan says things to make her own role more relevant?

Yes, whether she wants to be the hero or whether she wants to be the victim, it doesn't matter.

But you'll never hear the same story.

Twice Michelle Reid sat down and did a second statement.

During the Unsolved Homicide Units two thousand and nine investigation.

George Radmore came to our house and we spent one whole day here and he went through everything where a fine tooth comb.

I asked her to read some of it for this episode.

At no stage during any phone calls that I have with Bromwin did she ever tell me about any new relationship or any romantic interests following the separation with John.

Relationship wise, she only ever talked to me about the kids and John, and also mentioned her friends from playgroup.

And her neighbor Debbie.

I don't know whether or not Bromwin would.

Have told me about going out on a date or meeting someone, but there's no reason why she wouldn't have told me.

Bromwin's concerns for Cristal and what would happen to Cristel if anything happened to her were paramount in her mind.

She did not go into specifics about what she thought may happen to Christal, but it was clear that she was highly concerned about her welfare.

Told me during one of our phone conversations following her separation that she had been to a solicitor, in fact two solicitors, and she was intending to seek custody of both Krystal and Lauren.

I remember her telling me that a solicitor had sent a letter on her behalf to John where he was staying at Illawong, which outlined what she wanted from the custody and property settlement.

Certainly a main objective from the separation and pending divorce was the custody of the kids.

Michelle raised a few things that were not in her original nineteen ninety eight statement.

I now recall him telling me that he was at Jody's place when he rang and found out that Bromen had moved.

Back into the house.

It is clear to me that John's intention in returning to Lennox said was to reclaim the house that Bromin had just moved back into.

Michelle's statement then touched on some new evidence.

When she was a witness at the inquest.

Michelle said that when John had turned up at her home without warning late on the afternoon of Monday, May seventeen, he told her that he had to wait.

For the Motor Registry to open to register the car.

I clearly recall him saying this, and I am one hundred percent certain that he told me this.

I have never known until today, when told by Detective Radmore that the payment for the registration of the car was not made until three seven pm.

I know that I did see the notepad containing writings of Bromen at some time while he was in Sydney.

I seem to recall him showing it to both Andrew and I.

I recall him specifically pointing out the section at the end where she writes about having a break.

John was trying to use this as evidence of Bromin's intention to go away on a holiday, as he had told us.

I was not convinced of this, and she also had written down plans for the coming week on other pages.

If Bromwin had been planning to go away, I'm certain that Andrew and I would have known about it.

John was definitely agitated when he arrived at our house on Monday the seventeenth of May, different to what I had ever seen him before.

He wouldn't really look at me.

I think that he could tell Andrew and I did not believe that Bromwin would have left the kids and gone on a break in the manner that he had described.

I have kept some notes of various things that have happened during the time subsequent to Brohman's disappearance.

I gave these notes to Detective Sergeant Radmore on the twenty first of July two thousand and nine during a meeting at our house.

I have seen a document which George Radmore wrote during his investigation, with its clear focus on John as an alleged killer who had somehow got away with it.

It is clear that Jonathan knew that Bronwin was back in the house.

He immediately made plans to fly home with all his belongings.

This indicates that he intended to stay for an extended period and not return immediately or even within a short time frame.

Police will allege that his intention was to return and reclaim the house when Bronwin refused to leave, and even may have threatened him with a restraining order to keep him away from the house.

Jonathan has lost control and fatally injured Bronwin in some way.

I believe that there is sufficient evidence to clearly establish the financial impact of losing the house and the occupancy of the house as the motive for Bronwin's murder.

Every person has a right to silence, and as frustrating as this is, we cannot force him to answer questions.

I believe that it is unlikely that he will ever agree to a formal interview.

The senior detective at the time turned his mind to John's unusual decision to leave his children with his former wife's mother in law at a house in the Shire around mid morning Monday, May seventeenth, nineteen ninety three.

There is no logical reason for doing this, and it indicates a desperation to get rid of the kids for approximately four to five hours.

Winfield is the only person who can explain this, but he is unwilling to do so.

George Radmore and his detectives did not know then about the suspicious circumstances which have led us to suspect the building site at Illawong in the Shire.

Turning to missing documents in the case, he told Michelle and Andy.

We have searched everywhere possible for the case file where the original running sheets and investigation records were stored.

This has not been located, and I believe that it is unlikely that the records will be found.

A number of the running sheets were produced at the inquest.

We have copies of these documents.

They have been reviewed and all relevant matters investigated.

Bronwyn states in her writings on the notepad that she suffered postnatal depression after Lauren's birth.

However, this is the only potentially valid reference to any form of mental illness.

All her medical records have been checked and there is no mention anywhere of such an illness.

There is ample evidence that Jonathan Winfield was spreading the mental illness theory to explain her disappearance, but this does not hold water.

I agree with the proposition that the original investigation was not conducted thoroughly enough at the time.

However, this is easy to say in hindsight and it serves no real current purpose to be critical of the original investigators.

All that I can personally promise is that the Northern Region Unsolved Homicide Team will investigate this case as far as reasonably possible and make ourselves available to you to answer any concerns or issues that you may have.

We will apply modern investigative techniques and utilize a full range of resources that are deemed appropriate in an attempt to achieve a final result in this matter.

But Lina remained reluctant to talk to detectives during George Radmore's investigations.

We believe that she has significant evidence to provide, However, she is unwilling to do so.

He is Lena's former neighbor and friend, Marilyn Hannigan.

Again, that was.

One thing that the last detective that rang said.

He said Lena wouldn't tell us anything.

Days before the Bromwin podcast series launched in May twenty twenty four, Michelle and Andy met detectives who oversaw a recent review of Broman's case.

Andy urged those detectives to try Lena again, fifteen years after George Radmore's ill fated attempts.

We asked them to find her and interview her because we believe she had vital information.

There was a female police officer who quickly said, if someone doesn't want to talk to us, we can't make them.

And I suppose they're protecting that woman because she's scared, pretty sad.

Isn't it many women out there who are in the same boat.

We can only appeal to her to talk to the police, and if she does, she does, and if she doesn't, well, I would understand, but I'd like to think she might.

Lena has asked me to pass on a message to Andy and Michelle and to John's children.

She has listened to every episode of the Bromin podcast series.

Lina said that she looked forward to the day that Brommin's case would be solved.

I asked her if she was like to be interviewed for an upcoming episode.

She considered it and then politely declined.

Lena is fearful of possible consequences.

Lena told me that she had not heard from any detectives since the Radmore investigation in two thousand and nine and twenty ten.

Andy, we know from a police statement that was given to us that they went back to the DPP twice at the time of George Radmore's investigation and soon after it had culminated.

Yes, that's correct.

What's your understanding of the outcome of George Radmore's investigation.

Yeah, well, I believe that George's investigation was very farer and again it was not backed by the DPP.

I said that it was insufficient evidence.

Bronwyn is written and investigated by me Headley Thomas as a podcast production for The Australian.

If anyone has information which may help solve this cold case, please contact me confidentially by emailing Bronwyn at the Australian dot com dot au.

You can read more about this case and see a range of photographs and other artwork at the website Bronwyn podcast dot com.

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The production and editorial team for Bromwin includes Claire Harvey, Kristin Amiot, Joshua Burton, Bridget, Ryan Bianca, far Marcus, Katie Burns, Liam Mendez, Sean Callen, Matthew Condon, Karina Verger and David Mary, with assistance from Isaac Iron's.

Audio production for this podcast series is by Wasabi Wudeo and original theme music by Slade Gibson.

We have been assisted by Madison Walsh, a relation of Bromwin Winfield.

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