Bronwyn Winfield’s estranged husband ‘had inside running’ from NSW cop

A senior detective told missing mother Bronwyn Winfield’s estranged husband about aspects of the investigation at a time when he should’ve been a key person of interest, police were told.

Ex-detective sergeant Graeme Diskin led the initial police investigation into Bronwyn Winfield’s disappearance. Picture: Gerard Walsh / Warwick Daily News

A senior NSW detective informed missing NSW mother Bronwyn Winfield’s estranged husband about aspects of the initial investigation at a time when he should have been a key person of interest, police were told.

The Bronwyn podcast reveals in a new episode that in his only police interview, Jon Winfield repeatedly said he had information on the case from the former lead investigator, detective sergeant Graeme Diskin.

The detective who took over the investigation, Glenn Taylor, speaking on Sunday after the episode’s weekend release, said it appeared Jon Winfield was not viewed as a suspect and that Bronwyn was treated like a runaway wife rather than a potential murder victim.

No statements were taken from anyone in Diskin’s earlier investigation that also lacked any forensic examination of the Winfield family house and car.

“The sheer fact no formal interviews were done, and then everything seems to cease … you would have to think that Diskin has treated her just like a runaway, and it hasn’t been taken seriously enough,” said Taylor, now retired.

“He was treating (Jon Winfield) like ‘Oh, this is terrible, your wife ran off on you’.”

Winfield, 69, has denied any involvement in Bronwyn’s dis­appearance. Giving his version of events in the police interview, he said while they were still living together, Bronwyn was getting lifts on the back of a motorbike from a workmate she had “fallen for”.

The interview took place at Ballina police station in 1998, five years after Bronwyn’s suspected murder, and a transcript has been obtained by the podcast.

Bronwyn was 31 and a devoted mother of two young girls when she disappeared from her home in Lennox Head on the NSW far north coast.

Taylor and his NSW Police Force colleague Wayne Temby were reinvestigating, and Jon Winfield became the first person to be questioned. Throughout the video-recorded interview, Winfield referred to Diskin with familiarity, as “Graeme”.

Bronwyn and Jon Winfield and their daughter Lauren.

It was Graeme who told him about a bank account in Bronwyn’s maiden name, Read, and how much money was in it, he said. “I never saw the account but I actually, I think Graeme was the one that told me about this, excuse me, I think it was still in her maiden name,” he said.

He said he knew “Graeme” spoke to one of Bronwyn’s friends. He also found out through the former lead detective that Bronwyn had been talking to lawyers, he said.

Taylor: “Are you aware that she was in contact with a, with any solicitors?”

Mr Winfield: “Well, only through what Graeme told me. Graeme told me she’d spoken to a guy in Ballina, Tony Mannering.”

Bronwyn had an appointment to see Lismore solicitor Chris McDevitt the day after she dis­appeared.

Diskin knew within a couple of weeks that Bronwyn never cancelled nor turned up, a red flag at an early stage, but it was as if Jon Winfield had the inside running on the police investigation from detectives in 1993, the podcast reveals.

Bronwyn’s brother, Andy Read, has said he told police to stop talking to her cousin, Megan Read, because he thought she was sharing information with Jon Winfield.

She has emphatically denied she was telling him anything.

Jon Winfield said in the interview that Bronwyn had a love interest, Gary “Jacko” Jackson, from her job at fast food outlet Eden’s Takeaway on Ballina Street, the main Lennox Head thoroughfare.

“I told Graeme this. I told Graeme, like, when she was working in that shop … she’d been working with a bloke in there,” he said. “All I know (is) his name’s Jacko. And apparently from what her girlfriends had told me, she’d sort of fallen for this Jacko bloke. I think Graeme contacted him at Berowra in Sydney.”

He added: “While she was still living with me, she was all about. He’s got a motorbike and he was pickin’ her up. Taking her for rides up to Byron Bay and back.”

Jackson, who was in New Zealand when Bronwyn went missing and is not suspected of any involvement, told The Australian: “I never gave Bronwyn a lift.”

Gary “Jacko” Jackson, pictured in 1999, says he never gave Bronwyn a lift on his motorbike as claimed by Jon Winfield.

In a statement to police, he said that Bronwyn had told him her estranged husband was stalking and harassing her.

Jon Winfield said Bronwyn broke the news she wanted to separate after they drove their daughter Lauren to school one day.

Bronwyn walked Lauren from the car into the school and was gone longer than expected, he said. “She came back and said ‘Oh, I just had to tell the teacher that we’re separating’,” he said.

“I was naturally surprised. We weren’t gettin’ on particularly well but I mean, geez, plenty of marr­iages go through funny times. We were never sort of fighting in front of the kids or sort of hittin’ each other or anything like that.”

Bronwyn’s attitude to their marriage may have changed after she started working in what was “virtually the first job” she had money to herself.

“It’s been suggested to me it sort of went to her head with that little bit of independence,” he said.

“Her moods would change on a daily basis. She’s not what you’d call a bad-tempered, sort of, aggressive, sort of person. But she’s, sort of, pretty stubborn. I’m probably more the bad-tempered one. I shoot off a lot of steam.”

He said they separated in March 1993, and Bronwyn moved with the children into a rented unit. She had told the kids the night before that they would be moving out, and Jon Winfield “shrugged it off … as just one of her statements”, he said. But the next day she said the removalist would be there at 2 o’clock.

Retired NSW homicide detective Glenn Taylor says Bronwyn Winfield was treated like a runaway wife. Picture: Liam Mendes

“I stayed in the house. So she moved out on her own accord. She took virtually as much as she wanted. Took lounges. I know she took the bed ‘cause I was sleepin’ on the floor there, on the single mattress,” he said.

“She was going to move out. I couldn’t stop her. So the kids had to have a place to live so I gave her money for the bond. But later on I found out that she did have money because Graeme told me she had a grand in the bank.”

He said he found out Bronwyn had moved back into the family home when he phoned her flat and she wasn’t there. Working in Sydney at the time, he then phoned the family home and she answered.

Bronwyn never told him of her plans to move back in and “that’s why it was such a shock”, he said. He had installed a new deadlock, but she brought in a locksmith to get entry, he said.

He caught a flight to Ballina the next day, Sunday May 16, and got a lift home from a friend, stopping at a police station on the way to check his rights because he expected there might be trouble. Bronwyn vanished that night.