Bronwyn Winfield podcast: Husband’s secret daughter says ‘question everything’
NEW EPISODE | A secret daughter fathered by murder suspect Jon Winfield has called on his other children to question everything, as she came forward to try to help solve the disappearance of his estranged wife.
A secret daughter fathered by murder suspect Jon Winfield has called on his other children to question everything, as she came forward to try to help solve the disappearance of his estranged wife, Bronwyn, 31 years ago.
The emergence of Mr Winfield’s previously unknown firstborn child in a new episode of the Bronwyn podcast is another stunning and unexpected development in the series that has already led to renewed police investigations.
Sonia Lee bears a striking resemblance to Mr Winfield and says his lies about not being her father had shattered her then-teenage mother, who was in love with him.
She questioned if Mr Winfield’s two other daughters and stepdaughter knew she existed, saying she was speaking publicly because it may prompt the sisters that she had never met to reconsider what they knew about their father.
“It might give the girls a different light to see their father in,” she said.
“If you can’t be honest and open about it now that ‘Yes, I got a girl pregnant on the beach in Cronulla in 1972, I own it, I did it and I lied about it’.”
Although she learnt her biological father’s name many years ago, she saw his face for the first time when he was pictured on The Australian’s front page at the start of the Bronwyn podcast earlier this year.
The series is examining the suspected murder of Bronwyn, who was 31 and had two little girls when she vanished from Lennox Head on the NSW far north coast on the night of May 16, 1993.
Sonia Lee said she was taken aback by how similar she looked to Mr Winfield, who she wants nothing from and feels nothing for after he chose to stay out of her life.
“I don’t like him. I don’t dislike him. I don’t respect him. I don’t disrespect him. He’s just a guy I saw on the front page of the newspaper for the first time four months ago who happened to get my mother pregnant,” she said.
“That’s all he is to me. He’ll never be my dad. He’ll never be my father. We’ll never be mates. We’ll never sit down and have a cuppa together. I will never break bread with him. Purely because my grandmother would be disgusted in me if I did.”
Her interview in the return of the Bronwyn podcast on Friday comes as NSW police investigate new evidence uncovered in the series.
Retired nurse Judy Singh previously came forward on the podcast to reveal she saw Mr Winfield behind the wheel of a car with a “mummy-like thing” that “resembled a body” wrapped in bedsheets in the back seat.
Material connected to Ms Singh’s chilling account and searches conducted by The Australian at Lake Ainsworth in Lennox Head were requested by a senior detective after earlier episodes.
“While the investigation is ongoing detectives are unable to disclose any details of the investigation,” a NSW Police spokesman said on Thursday.
Mr Winfield, now 69, has denied any involvement in Bronwyn’s disappearance and has never been charged in connection to it.
When Sonia Lee was born in November 1972, her mother had just turned 16.
Mr Winfield was a few months away from turning 17.
Sonia Lee’s mother had been close to marrying Mr Winfield after she fell pregnant, and he was a regular guest at her family home. But when it came to the crunch, he formally and publicly denied he was the father.
It cruelly resulted in Sonia Lee’s mother facing a false claim that she had multiple sexual partners.
Exposing the significant lie could lead others to come forward with relevant information that could help resolve Bronwyn’s case, Sonia Lee says.
Mr Winfield went on to have two other daughters: Jodie, whose mother is Mr Winfield’s first wife, Jenny Mason; then Lauren, with Bronwyn.
Bronwyn also had a daughter, Chrystal, from a previous marriage. Chrystal started calling Mr Winfield “dad” when she was five.
NSW police took a statement from Sonia Lee’s mother during their investigations into Bronwyn’s disappearance, the podcast reveals.
Now 51, Sonia Lee grew up in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire. She says it wasn’t until she was in her 20s that her mother, about to go into surgery, first revealed her biological father’s full name.
“She was extremely paranoid that she wasn’t going to make it, and that’s the first time she told me,” she said.
“I said to her: ‘Why are you telling me this? I’m not interested’. I know she loved him. I know she was smitten by young, sexy surfer Jon. First loves, all of that.
“Whether she was his, I don’t know. There could be older kids than me. All I know is in ’72 he denied me, which broke my mother’s heart.”
Later, her mother saw a missing person poster for Bronwyn on an IGA supermarket noticeboard at Lennox Head. For a while, it was all she talked about.
“She put three and three together. Worked it out, that Bronwyn Winfield and Jon Winfield was the same Jon Winfield that was my father,” Sonia Lee said.
“For all of that long time, I would avoid speaking to her because it was all she wanted to speak about.
“I said to my grandmother one day on the phone, ‘I just, I can’t do it anymore. I cannot listen to it anymore. It’s not what life is. Life is different. And that’s the decision he chose back in the ’70s. And thank God you chose what you chose in the ’70s’.”
Her beloved grandmother was instrumental in separating her mother and Mr Winfield after becoming concerned about the Winfield family’s behaviour mid-pregnancy, she said.
Her grandmother filled in many of the gaps in her family history when they spent time together before she died, Sonia Lee said.
“My opinion of him is what she fed into me,” she said.
“How different my life would have been with him in it for the negative. His controlling-ness.
“She said him and his mother had a look in their eye. A look that you wouldn’t cross. And the day she saw that look was the day she knew. She saw the look about 3½, four months into the pregnancy.
“It was all about what Jon said. And what Jon’s mother said. And Mum having any say in her pregnant self was not going to be allowed. She was going to be controlled.”
Sonia Lee added: “I was conceived on Valentine’s Day ’72. I was born nine months after that.
“It just all blew up. And Grandma believes it all blew up over money.
“I remember Grandma saying something along the lines of ‘$11 (or) $17 per week that they didn’t want to have to pay for you to be’.
“I remember Grandma saying that Mrs Winfield … (said) something along the lines of ‘an easy piece of work’.
“So, there’s no saying that it’s Jon’s baby because she’s an easy piece of work’.”
Sonia Lee said she had known what Mr Winfield’s other daughters looked like for many years after seeing social media posts of mutual friends.
People had mistaken her in the past for Mr Winfield’s other daughters, she said. Once, in a Byron Bay music shop, someone thought she was Jodie.
Another time, “someone came up and said, ‘I know you. I know you and your sister from down at Lennox’. And I don’t have a sister.”
But she’s in no doubt Mr Winfield is her biological father.
“When I saw him on the front page of the paper, I was like … You can’t deny. You’re gonna look like a fool,” she said.
“Every time I walked into a room up until I was 30, my mother would be like, ‘oh my God, you’re so much like him’.”
Asked what she would say to Jodie, Lauren and Chrystal, Sonia Lee said: “Even if they deep down inside know the answer is going to hurt them, ask the question anyway.
“The girls should just be allowed to know their truths.”
A good outcome would be the girls “knowing what happened to Bronwyn, the good, the bad, the ugly, whatever it may be, they deserve to know … It’s got to be the heaviest load for them to carry”.
The Australian’s national chief correspondent, Hedley Thomas, was preparing a new episode focusing on Mr Winfield’s one and only recorded police interview when he first found out about Sonia Lee on Sunday, September 1 – Father’s Day.
On that day, Michelle Read, the wife of Bronwyn’s brother, Andy Read, sent an email containing a 43-page police document dating back to 2008.
It was a chronology of events that had originated in the NSW Police Unsolved Homicide Unit.
Highly respected senior detective George Radmore had sent it to her when he was in charge of the case.
The first of hundreds of separate entries spanning almost four decades was dated 1969.
“Jonathan Winfield and Sybil Green (a pseudonym) meet while students at High School,” it states.
“1970 – Jonathan/Sybil commence sexual relationship while Sybil 14 years old.
“1972 – Sybil falls pregnant to Jonathan while still 15 years old. Parents decide they should marry. Winfields suddenly ban Sybil from seeing Jonathan in March or April, 1972.
“November 1972 – Sybil gives birth to Sonia. Early 1973 … Jonathan denies paternity.”
About the same time Ms Read sent the email that would expose Mr Winfield’s secret daughter, Sonia Lee was independently preparing to come forward after listening to the podcast series.
She sent a Facebook message to Bronwyn’s cousin, Madi Walsh, on September 13.
“Hello Andy and Madi. Re JW,” it began.
“Does Jodie realise she is not his firstborn child? I’m asking you this as if she does, great. “But if not, then I’m thinking that could throw a spanner in the works of her bond with her father, perhaps the wedge needed for her and Lauren to question his truths.
“Pre 1972, I don’t really have any info on him except that the look in his eye and the way he treated women as a 17 year old was not well received by a certain 15 year old girl’s mother. My grandmother. On her deathbed, I made a promise that I would reach out when the time was right.
“As a 51 year old, I’m not sure when that time is, but now kind of feels right.”
Sonia Lee told the Bronwyn podcast she had never yearned to know more about her biological father or to establish any connection.
“My grandmother was troubled. She was worried for me maturing, not knowing things like my medical history. I said to her, ‘Grandma, you’re just being silly. You’re on your deathbed. You’re over-thinking’.
“She said to me, ‘you’re very blunt in your decision to just cut’. And I think that I’m very blunt in my decision because from 1972 until 2000, she lived in the same house. If he wanted to reach out, he could have reached out at any moment in his life.”
A separate episode, due to be released on Saturday, will forensically examine Mr Winfield’s 1998 police interview.
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