Bronwyn podcast: Soul doctors, curses and clairvoyants. Who saw that coming?

For one episode only, the Bronwyn podcast hurtles deep into the spirit world, and her brother wants something known about a purported family curse | LISTEN

Bronwyn’s brother Andy Read, with wife Michelle. Picture: John Feder

Andy Read has experienced many lows over the disappearance of his sister, Bronwyn Winfield, but he wants to make one thing clear: he doesn’t believe his family is cursed.

In a new episode of The Australian’s Bronwyn podcast, Mr Read is keen to respond to revelations his niece, Bronwyn’s daughter Chrystal, recently lost her life savings to a scam.

Chrystal gave more than $300,000 to a “trainee soul doctor”, convinced there was something called the “Read Family Curse” and that the money would help lift it.

Despite the many twists and turns since Bronwyn vanished 31 years ago, this was a development Mr Read did not expect, or welcome. “I reject any suggestion that there has been or is currently any curse on the good name of the Read family,” he insisted.

Soul doctors, curses and clairvoyants: for one bridging episode only, the Bronwyn podcast hurtles deep into the spirit world and its intersection with a mother’s 1993 unsolved disappearance from the idyllic beachside town of Lennox Head in NSW.

First, and unrelated to the scam that cost Chrystal her savings, there is the tarot card reader whom Bronwyn was visiting before she vanished.

His name was David Addenbrooke, but Lennox locals knew him as Pendragon.

NSW police didn’t think Bronwyn’s estranged husband, Jon Winfield, was much of a suspect in the early days of the investigation, but they had their eye on Pendragon, putting him under surveillance for two days and nights.

Turns out he was a flamboyant local theatre director, author, teacher and father, who would have either amused or bored covert investigators to death by chain smoking and yelling at his cat, says his son, Andy Addenbrooke.

Lennox Head theatre director David Addenbrooke, who moonlighted as a tarot card reader using the name Pendragon.

David Addenbrooke, aka Pendragon, later in life.

“It’s kind of giggle-worthy. Not that the situation is giggle-worthy, just knowing my Dad,” Andy said.

“Even though he was a clairvoyant and tarot reader, he was more of a counselling sort of person. People would come and have a chat. It was just really helping people out.”

Andy Addenbrooke did have a potentially very useful piece of information: Bronwyn’s chats with his late father would have all been recorded, and she would have taken those recordings home to listen to them.

“I don’t know if the police ever found tapes because my Dad recorded every session for the client,” he said.

Who knows what Bronwyn disclosed in those quasi-counselling sessions, and who might have found those tapes.

Chrystal Winfield, daughter of missing NSW woman, Bronwyn Winfield.

But it’s with Chrystal, now in her 40s, that things really take a turn to the spiritual.

She has been in contact with clairvoyants, and wholeheartedly believed that by giving a stranger she met on the streets of Sydney all her money, she would end her run of bad luck. The opposite occurred, of course.

Chrystal trusted the trainee soul doctor with $70,000 in cash that was meant to be returned to her after being blessed and cleansed. Instead, the trainee fell asleep on a train and was robbed, she was told.

Then there was the gold bullion she handed over. As the trainee soul doctor’s group performed a magic trick for her in a park, they switched the container carrying the gold with an identical one.

Later, against the group’s instructions, she opened the container and found her gold had turned into cement. The Read curse had struck again.

Bronwyn’s cousin Megan Read said she had spoken to Chrystal about the purported curse. “That was a joke within the family and wasn’t meant as a real curse. I don’t think anyone will take that seriously do you?” she said.

However, Bronwyn’s sister Kim Marshall said the curse was “something that Chrystal and I have discussed a lot and I put lots of warnings out to some key family members … They didn’t act.”

Chrystal felt “something always seems to pull her down, something always seems to stop her having success”, Kim said.

“And I think that’s really what the curse is about.”

Megan Read says: “She’s had a lot of bad luck in her life, yes. She had a bad upbringing. But I don’t see that as a curse.”

Normal programming will resume at the end of the month, with the launch of the podcast’s second season, as any good clairvoyant should know.

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