Bronwyn podcast: Hairdresser says police tried to ‘put words in my mouth’

A retired hairdresser has told of her angry reaction when a detective repeatedly suggested at her salon that Bronwyn Winfield had ‘run off with a fella’ | LISTEN

Former Lennox Head hairdresser Bernadette Armstrong, standing on the right at her salon, has spoken on the Bronwyn podcast. Photo: Supplied

A retired hairdresser has told of her angry reaction when a detective repeatedly suggested at her salon that missing mother Bronwyn Winfield had “run off with a fella”.

Bernadette Armstrong’s business was opposite a takeaway shop where Bronwyn worked part-time in Lennox Head on the NSW far north coast before vanishing in 1993.

Ms Armstrong says she was visited the year Bronwyn dis­appeared by the senior policeman in charge of the initial investigation, Graeme Diskin.

Bronwyn Winfield disappeared from Lennox Head in 1993.

“He came into my salon and I didn’t know him, really, from a bar of soap,” Ms Armstrong told the Bronwyn podcast.

“I was attending to a lady’s hair. And I had another lady in the chair next to her. And he went, ‘Bernadette, I believe you know Bronwyn Winfield’. And I said, ‘Oh, yes she’s a client here’.

“He said, ‘C’mon, this is where we find the gossip’. This is how he spoke to me. ‘Come on, you’re in here all you girls and you know what she’s done?’”

Ms Armstrong said she knew Bronwyn as a devoted mother of two girls, Chrystal, then 10, and Lauren, then 5.

Listen to every Bronwyn episode here

CLICK HERE

The detective repeatedly suggested that Bronwyn willingly left her daughters, she said.

“I said ‘What are you talking about?’ And I got on the high horse straight away,” she said.

“And he said, ‘You’ve got the goss here’. I said, ‘I haven’t got the goss here, just spit it out, what do you want?’ And he went, ‘You know she’s run off with somebody, she would have told you she’s got a boyfriend’. And he went ‘Yeah, come on’. He said ‘She’s run away’.”

Ms Armstrong says she immediately tried to shut the detective down. “I said ‘Listen, stop right now … don’t you speak to me like that … I’m telling you now that I know nothing about that’.

“He said it about three times and … I said ‘Graeme … I’m busy’.

“I was wild. How dare he try to put words in my mouth? ‘Oh, she’s got a fella. She’s run off with a fella.’ That’s what he was saying.

“Get your facts right, you know, before you come into my place and start spreading gossip.

“I said ‘She was a lovely client. That’s all I know.’ I said ‘I know nothing personally about the girl’. I said ‘but I tell you what, that’s something I would never believe, that she’s left those two little girls’.

“And, you know, I’ve stuck to that. All the way through. I’m still the same.”

Bernadette Armstrong says Bronwyn’s daughters were always ‘dressed beautifully’ when they came to the salon.

She said she later complained to police at Ballina station about the approach. “I said ‘Listen, he came in here into my salon and told me what I thought or knew’.

“She would never have left the little girls. And I’ll never change that opinion, ever.”

Ms Armstrong is one several Lennox Head locals to come forward after hearing about the Bronwyn podcast. She had been “churned up” listening to the podcast, having waited years for answers to the disappearance.

“It was all about the little girls having their hair trimmed, their little fringe trimmed, and (Bronwyn) had them dressed beautifully,” she said. “She was always well dressed too, very neat and tidy. You can’t help but notice somebody like that because in Lennox, it was all hippy stuff.

“I have to tell you I’ve been on to this right from the word go. I want to see her found.

“I’ll never rest until I find out what happened to that poor girl. I did 36 years of hairdressing, I’ve done thousands of people’s hair, especially women. And do you know, out of all the people I’ve done, Bronwyn stood out to me. She struck me as the most wonderful, impeccable mother.”

Do you know something about this case? Contact Hedley Thomas confidentially at [e-mail]

To subscribe to our weekly Bronwyn podcast newsletter, click here.

To join in the discussion in our Bronwyn podcast Facebook group, click here.