Final Bronwyn Winfield encounter amicable, says Jon Winfield

Jon Winfield’s claim he had an ‘amicable’ discussion with his estranged wife the night she disappeared is contradicted by family.

Bronwyn Winfield with Jon Winfield and their daughter Lauren.

Bricklayer Jon Winfield’s claim to police that he had an “amicable” discussion with his estranged wife Bronwyn the night she disappeared is contradicted by statements from family and friends.

In his only police interview, five years after Bronwyn went missing, Mr Winfield characterised their final encounter at their family home in Lennox Head as peaceful.

Mr Winfield was working in Sydney but flew home on the evening of Sunday, May 16, 1993, after hearing Bronwyn had moved back into the property with her daughters Chrystal, 10, and Lauren, 5.

Bronwyn has never been seen or heard from again, but Mr Winfield has always denied any ­involvement.

Detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor, interviewing Mr Winfield at Ballina police station in August 1998, asked if the couple’s conversation was on “good terms” that night.

“Amicable, yeah, because, um, because yeah, I mean, the kids were still up,” Mr Winfield replied.

A transcript of the interview has been obtained by The Australian’s national chief correspondent, Hedley Thomas, for the Bronwyn podcast, examining Bronwyn’s unsolved disappearance from the NSW far north coast town 31 years ago.

Police running sheets from 1993, also obtained for the podcast, include an entry where the Winfields’ neighbour, Debbie Hall, suggests a different scenario.

Ms Hall told police Mr Winfield said he and Bronwyn had an “altercation”, defined as a noisy disagreement, at the Sandstone Crescent home on the Sunday night. Louise Winfield, the wife of Mr Winfield’s brother Peter, made similar comments in her witness statement. It is dated ­August 14, 1998, nine days after Sergeant Taylor interviewed Mr Winfield, her brother-in-law.

“I became aware that Jon did go to Lennox Head. My memory of the following events are very vague, but I recall Jon telling us that he and Bronwyn had a fight and that Bronwyn had walked out,” she said.

Chrystal Winfield, Bronwyn’s daughter from a previous relationship, also told Sergeant Taylor in 1998 she “heard Mum and Dad arguing in the kitchen” and that she “could hear Mum crying”.

The next thing she remembered was her father waking her and saying he was driving her and Lauren to Sydney.

The Winfields had a lot to discuss – Bronwyn had brought in a locksmith to gain entry to the house after Mr Winfield changed the locks, and she’d been speaking to lawyers about obtaining a divorce and dividing assets.

But Mr Winfield could shed no light in his police interview on what he and Bronwyn talked about. “Oh, got no idea … We may not have even had too much discussion, I really can’t remember, to tell you the truth. She didn’t ask me anything about Sydney. I didn’t really ask her anything about Lennox,” he said. Their chat was “just probably about the kids”. After the girls went to bed, Bronwyn made phone calls in the bedroom then “all of a sudden” he heard a car pull up.

“She opened the front door and she was off, that was it. She didn’t say ‘I’m going’, or anything like that, no,” he said, adding that she hadn’t bothered to close the door on the way out.

Asked what time Bronwyn left, he said “about quarter to midnight, I think, oh, 11 o’clock, I don’t know”. He had previously said Bronwyn left about 9.30pm.

Sergeant Taylor put it to Mr Winfield that he had previously said he and Bronwyn had discussed her having a break from the children. Mr Winfield avoided answering, instead responding that Bronwyn had “left a letter in the car too”. At this point in the interview, Mr Winfield made a perplexing comment. “I mean, I go to pick her up, she left a letter in the back of the car, um, and in that letter she said that she needed a break,” he said.

According to the established timeline, he had no physical contact with Bronwyn for weeks before his return to Lennox Head that night – so could not have picked her up in the vehicle in the recent past.

He said in his police interview that after Bronwyn left the house he made a “spontaneous” decision to drive through the night with the girls to Sydney. The girls were meant to be in school on Monday.

Do you know something about this case? Contact Hedley Thomas confidentially at [e-mail]