‘It never goes away’: Daughter of Marion Barter throws support behind Bronwyn Winfield investigation

Sally Leydon sees staggering similarities between the disappearance of her mother, Marion Barter, and Lennox Head woman Bronwyn Winfield.

Sally Leydon at home in Brisbane. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

The daughter of missing Queensland woman Marion Barter has thrown her support behind the search for Lennox Head mother Bronwyn Winfield.

“I do feel very close to Bronwyn’s story,” Sally Leydon told The Australian. “It seems to always have the same the same ring to it, if you like, where a family have gone to the police and said something’s not right, and it’s just been dismissed pretty quickly.

“[But] it never goes away, and [it’s] the stress and the ambiguity that you’re left to deal with.”

Bronwyn Winfield was 31 when she vanished from the Lennox Head home she shared with her husband, Jon Winfield, on Sunday, May 16, 1993. She left behind two small children: Chrystal and Lauren, who were aged 10 and five years old at the time.

Bronwyn Winfield, Jon Winfield and their daughter Lauren.

The initial police investigation was severely lacking, with crucial forensic evidence and key witness accounts missed or overlooked by detectives at the time.

Bronwyn’s disappearance is the subject of an investigative podcast by The Australian’s nat­ional chief correspondent Hedley Thomas.

“To hear witnesses come out and actually tell their story … that’s been important for me, because you get to a point where you think it’s so long in the tooth that people aren’t going to remember.

“But I’ve always said, it doesn’t matter how big or small your piece of information might be, it could turn into something important,” Leydon said.

She spoke to The Australian almost 27 years to the day after her mother was last seen.

Marion Barter vanished in 1997 after quitting her job as a schoolteacher and selling her Gold Coast home. She also secretly changed her name to Florabella Natalia Marion Remakel and withdrew large sums of cash from her bank account before leaving the country on a flight bound for Britain on June 22 of that year.

Leydon with her mother Marion Barter. Picture: Facebook

Her disappearance wasn’t seriously investigated until 2019, when Strike Force Jurunga was established by the NSW Police Force’s Unsolved Homicide Unit.

A $250,000 reward for information leading to arrest was announced by Homicide Squad Commander Detective Superintendent Danny Doherty in 2021.

On February 29, NSW State Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan found Marion Barter died on or around October 15, 1997, and that the initial police investigation into her disappearance was inadequate.

When Sally Leydon first formally reported her mother missing to Byron Bay police in late 1997, she wasn’t declared a missing person – rather, it was deemed she’d left voluntarily.

Shortly before the coroner handed down her findings on February 29, Leydon encountered NSW Homicide Squad Detective Sergeant Nigel Warren outside the Lidcombe Coroner’s Court, where she inquired about the status of the investigation into her mother’s disappearance.

“And [he] said, ‘Well, the case is … open but inactive, and we won’t be doing anything unless new evidence comes forward … We have 800 cases and we need to prioritise’,” Leydon recalls.

“But when you haven’t actually been prioritised for 27 years … it’s very difficult.

“I’ve dealt a lot with the police and … I’ve had no apologies. I haven’t spoken to them since the inquest, so I don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t know what the status of the case is. I’ve only got what Nigel said to me, which was that they need to prioritise.”

Now Leydon is calling for a parliamentary inquiry into the way missing persons cases are handled by authorities in NSW.

A petition addressed to the legislative assembly currently has almost 3000 signatures.

“We need to sit down and actually have to have a conversation with people who are in charge … and with the families of missing persons, and let them see the real harm that it does,” Leydon said.

Leydon believes missing persons investigations shouldn’t be in the remit of local police command, where time, resources, and expertise are routinely diverted into day-to-day law enforcement.

“Granted, it’s hard on the police …[but] we’re not getting listened to. They shut the door, and it’s left up to the families to go and do the investigation,” Leydon says. She launched her own podcast investigation into her mother’s disappearance in late 2018.

She’s proposed establishing a centralised and specialised missing persons investigative unit who could respond quickly and effectively to inquiries by concerned loved ones.

“We all need to work together, and I’m happy to help as much as I can in making [the system] better.”