Bronwyn Winfield: DNA tests on bone linked to missing mum

Bone fragments marked as being the possible remains of Bronwyn Winfield were taken to the US for specialist DNA testing, a former detective says.

Retired NSW Police detective sergeant Damian Loone took samples to the US for specialist DNA testing that he says were marked as possibly being the remains of Bronwyn Winfield.

Bone fragments marked as being the possible remains of missing mother Bronwyn Winfield were taken to the US for DNA testing, a former detective says.

Retired NSW Police sergeant Damian Loone says he personally delivered the samples to DNA ­experts at Orchid Cellmark in Dallas, Texas, in 2009.

Police documents suggest the remains sent to the US lab were later identified as being likely those of a missing German surfer, but questions persist around the tests, with evidence of dysfunction in the collection and retention of human remains in NSW.

Mr Loone said he was investigating at the time the separate ­disappearance of Sydney mother Lyn Dawson, now known as Lyn Simms at the request of her ­family. A shredded pink cardigan had been dug up at the former Dawson family home in Gilwinga Drive in Bayview, Sydney, that appeared to have slash marks, and Mr Loone got approval to take the garment to the US lab for mitochondrial DNA analysis.

Bronwyn Winfield went missing in Lennox Head in 1993.

Lyn Dawson vanished from Sydney’s Northern Beaches in 1982.

“The Missing Persons Unit heard I was going over there, so they got all these other fragments or swabs and whatever bones they had in their missing person files. I was basically a courier, and I took the whole lot over,” Mr Loone told The Weekend Australian.

He distinctly recalls one sample being related to Winfield, a mother of two young girls who vanished from Lennox Head on the NSW far north coast in 1993.

The Australian’s investigative podcast Bronwyn is examining Winfield’s disappearance and suspected murder.

“We had to fill out these particular forms, or the Missing Persons Unit had all these forms already filled out, with all the ­samples attached to them,” Mr Loone said.

“And one of them was the possibility that it would be Bronwyn Winfield’s DNA. Bone fragments, I believe they were.”

The cardigan results came back inconclusive. Mr Loone wasn’t informed of the outcome of tests on other samples in cases that didn’t involve him.

The late crime writer Les Kennedy wrote about the Texas testing in 2009, reporting that the cases included “bones from at least two people found in sand dunes on Sydney’s Kurnell peninsula in 2007 and remains located near Ballina on the north coast”.

Police from the unsolved homicide squad believed the north coast bones, found at an undisclosed site, may have been Bronwyn’s, Kennedy’s article stated. The article was raised at a recent inquest by NSW state coroner Teresa O’Sullivan into the 1997 unsolved disappearance of another woman, Marion Barter.

Barter’s daughter, Sally Leydon, wanted to know whether the Ballina remains mentioned in Kennedy’s article could possibly be her mother’s.

Marion Barter, pictured here with her children Sally and Owen, disappeared in 1997.

In response, NSW police put forward a series of possibilities about the remains, which ­became known as “The Ballina Bones”.

These included: a teaching specimen; a specimen left over from a post mortem incorrectly listed as a teaching specimen; remains found at an undisclosed ­location in Ballina in 1997 incorrectly marked as being located in 2005; or a bone belonging to a German backpacker who disappeared while surfing at Lennox Head in 2007. Further complicating the search for answers, it was discovered that some bones retained in NSW had been confusingly relabelled.

In 2021, Sergeant Vanessa Rolfe told investigators on the Barter case that there had been “complications” around a skeletal remains initiative.

“Back in 2005 an unknown person in Forensic Medicine decided to introduce a new numbering system and renumbered a large number of outstanding remains and did not keep the original number,” Sergeant Rolfe wrote in an email seen by The Weekend Australian. “This has caused the project major issues with tracking down original documentation and reports.”

Further police documents state that in 2008 a pelvic bone was found on South Golden Beach, about 35km north of ­Lennox Head.

A sample from the bone was collected by then-sergeant Loone in 2009 and conveyed to Orchid Cellmark in the US, the documents state. A DNA profile was later obtained that indicated the remains were those of the missing Lennox surfer.

Bronwyn’s brother, Andy Read, said on Friday the family would seek confirmation from homicide detectives on what was tested in Dallas and the results.

The Bronwyn podcast is investigating various possible scen­arios, including that Bronwyn’s remains were disposed of in Lake Ainsworth in Lennox Head or at a Sydney building site her husband Jon was working at.

Mr Winfield has always denied any involvement in his wife’s disappearance and has never been charged with any offence in connection to it.

Know something about this case? Email Hedley Thomas at [e-mail]