Bronwyn podcast listeners reveal: Body would have fit in boot
Podcast listeners have tracked down replicas of a vehicle used by missing mother Bronwyn Winfield and her estranged husband Jon and established that a body could ‘easily’ have fit in the boot.
Podcast listeners have tracked down replicas of a vehicle used by missing mother Bronwyn Winfield and her estranged husband Jon and established that a body could “easily” have fit in the boot.
Crop dusting pilot Terry Freeman and his wife, Heather, from Bunbury in Western Australia, conducted a series of tests on classic Ford Falcons.
The vehicles were the same as or similar to the one used by the Winfields when Bronwyn vanished from her home in Lennox Head on the NSW north coast 31 years ago.
Ms Freeman, who is only slightly smaller than Bronwyn, comfortably fit in the boot despite the space also accommodating a gas tank and spare tyre.
Mr Winfield has always emphatically denied any involvement in Bronwyn’s disappearance and suspected murder.
Since 1998, however, when detectives started reinvestigating five years after Bronwyn went missing, he has been a police suspect.
One possible scenario considered by police is that Bronwyn’s body was transported for some distance in the boot of the family’s vehicle, a 1987 Ford Falcon XF sedan.
The vehicle was a former taxi powered by both petrol and liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG.
A tank for the LPG and associated piping was positioned in the boot of the Falcon, but there was still significant open storage space for luggage or other items.
The Australian had previously conducted tests on a Ford Falcon XF sedan, finding it was possible to fit a body in the boot, but in that instance the vehicle did not have a gas tank.
Questions therefore remained about whether Bronwyn’s body could have fit in the boot with the LPG tank.
For months, Mr Freeman has been listening carefully to The Australian’s investigative podcast, Bronwyn.
His interest in the unsolved case has led him to provide valuable assistance to Bronwyn’s brother, Andy Read, and to the podcast.
“I’ve got time. Everybody I mention to what I’m doing, they prick their ears up and they’re right behind it,” he said.
Mr Freeman had owned four or five of the Falcon sedans or related models, a “very spacious vehicle and great tourer” built from 1979 to 1988.
At first, Heather Freeman climbed into an earlier model Falcon XD sedan with a standard 70-litre LPG tank in the boot.
A missing persons report lists Bronwyn’s height as 5ft 8, or 172.7cm, while Heather’s is 5ft 5, or 165cm.
“There’s probably enough room for two Heathers in that boot. (She’s) built slightly, like Bronwyn was. She easily fitted into that boot space. Her knees were hardly bent at all,” Mr Freeman said.
Next, the Freemans conducted tests on a Ford Falcon XF sedan with a larger 100-litre LPG tank, common in former taxis like the Winfield’s vehicle.
“I easily just climbed in and climbed out. I had a lot of room in there,” Ms Freeman said.
Despite being taller, Bronwyn could easily have fit in the boot too, she said.
Mr Freeman said the vehicle was “the same as the Winfields had, it’s even white”.
Bronwyn went missing on the night of Sunday, May 16, 1993.
Mr Winfield said she was picked up in a car driven by an unknown person.
He then drove from Lennox Head to Sydney with Bronwyn’s daughter from a previous relationship, Chrystal, 10, and their daughter, Lauren, 5.
Bronwyn’s brother, Mr Read, looked inside the boot of the Winfields’ Ford Falcon at his Sydney home on the afternoon of Monday, May 17.
It seemed odd to Mr Read that the children’s clothes were in pillow cases, not suitcases.
The trim that would usually cover the base of the boot was missing.
“It struck me how clean the boot space was,” Mr Read said.
A coroner, Carl Milovanovich, terminated an inquest after a week of hearings in 2002 and recommended a known person, Mr Winfield, be charged over Bronwyn’s alleged murder.
Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery refused, citing insufficient evidence.
Do you know something about this case? Contact Hedley Thomas confidentially at bronwyn@theaustralian.com.au
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