Lost daughter adds branch to family tree

Jon Winfield’s long-lost daughter has never met her biological father but she looks just like him. Now she wants his other children to know the truth.

Sonia Lee, the secret daughter fathered by murder suspect Jon Winfield in Christmas photo with Santa in 1981.

Jon Winfield’s long-lost daughter has never met her biological father but she looks just like him. Now she wants his other children to know the truth.

The revelation that Mr Winfield ­fathered a child in late 1972, when he was a teenager living in ­Sydney’s Sutherland Shire, was made in the premiere episode of a new season of The Australian’s ­investigative podcast Bronwyn, about the 1993 disappearance of Bronwyn Winfield, Jon’s third wife.

“Does Jodie realise she is not his firstborn child?” a 51-year-old woman named Sonia – who goes by Lee – wrote to Bronwyn’s cousin Madison Walsh in a Facebook message in mid-September.

Sonia Lee claims to be Jon Winfield’s first child, though it’s never been confirmed by a paternity test. She shared her story with The Australian’s National Chief Correspondent Hedley Thomas more than three decades after Bronwyn vanished in an attempt to help solve her alleged murder.

She says Mr Winfield engaged in a sexual relationship with her mother – a woman known by the pseudonym Sybil Green – in 1970 when Sybil was 14. Sonia was born in November 1972, by which time Sybil had just turned 16.

This is confirmed in a timeline of events by detectives in the NSW Police Unsolved Homicides unit, which investigated Bronwyn Winfield’s disappearance, and ­pre­sumed murder, in 2008.

Mr Winfield has always emphatically denied any involvement in her disappearance or foul play.

His relationship with Sonia Lee’s mother ended months before she was born, in March or April of 1972.

By December that year, Mr Winfield had entered a relationship with a then-16-year-old Jennifer Mason, who fell pregnant with a daughter – Jodie – around three months later.

The pair married around June of 1973 and Jodie was born in ­November of that year.

Jennifer Mason told police she grew afraid of her young husband’s angry outbursts and claimed that he had threatened to kill her.

She said she left the marriage after four years and relocated to Culburra Beach on the NSW south coast with Jodie during her separation from him.

Ms Mason said Mr Winfield’s parents appeared at her Culburra Beach granny flat shortly after and took Jodie back to Sydney with them.

According to her police statement, the girl lived with her pat­ernal grandparents – Mr Win­field’s parents – thereafter.

Some years later, Mr Winfield married a 20-something-year-old woman known by the pseudonym Dee. They never had any children together.

“He was never violent to me and I wasn’t fearful of him. He was still possessive,” Dee told Hedley Thomas in episode three of the Bronwyn podcast.

That union lasted 18 months, during which time they built a home together in Lennox Head – on the same street where Mr ­Winfield would later reside with Bronwyn. Dee told police in 1998 she “had to go get a solicitor and go to court to get my share of the property”, which was sold following their separation.

Mr Winfield was 30 years old when he met Bronwyn in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire. She was 23 at the time and a full-time single mum to Chrystal, who was two.

Chrystal is not Mr Winfield’s biological child and he never formally adopted her, though she did begin calling him “Dad” when she was aged around five years old.

Bronwyn Winfield at the 1990 wedding of Andy and Michelle Read. Photo: Supplied

Mr Winfield and Bronwyn commenced a relationship in 1985 and married in 1987, “a few months before Lauren was born in Ballina” in 1988, according to a diary entry penned by Bronwyn.

The newlyweds relocated to a home on Sandstone Crescent in Lennox Head, where they lived, for a period of time, with Jodie, Chrystal and Lauren.

Bronwyn and Jon Winfield and their daughter Lauren. Picture: Supplied

Bronwyn fell pregnant for the second time during her marriage to Mr Winfield around 1990 or 1991, but that pregnancy was ­terminated.

“She’d wanted to keep the child but Jon didn’t want to,” Bronwyn’s sister-in-law, Michelle Read, explained in episode two of Bronwyn.

“Jon had just lost his mum, and he was particularly close to his mother, and he wasn’t coping with that. He insisted she have an abortion. He didn’t want any more kids.”

Bronwyn and Jon formally separated on March 21, 1993, though divorce proceedings were never initiated. They were married for six years before Bronwyn vanished from the Sandstone Crescent home.

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