Long-silent sister says Bronwyn Winfield’s husband ‘controlling from the start’

A long-silent sister of Bronwyn Winfield has shed more light on the possessive and jealous nature of the missing NSW mother’s estranged husband, murder suspect Jon Winfield.

Bronwyn Winfield, seated on the left, with husband Jon Winfield.

A long-silent sister of Bronwyn Winfield says the missing NSW mother’s estranged husband, murder suspect Jon Winfield, was possessive and controlling from the start.

Melissa Read has come forward on the Bronwyn podcast after years of distance from her family. She said Bronwyn had built up the financial and emotional strength to leave Mr Winfield, and it would have driven him “absolutely berserk” to think she was going to move on with someone new.

“I would say that his world was already rocked by the fact that he was being replaced,” Ms Read said.

“She definitely wanted to remain separated and ultimately to divorce Jon, 100 per cent. She was done with Jon.”

Ms Read was 24 and living in Sydney when Bronwyn went missing from Lennox Head on the NSW far north coast in May 1993.

She is now 55 and goes by a new surname The Australian has not revealed for privacy reasons. She told her son she had a sister only as she prepared to speak on the podcast.

“I probably took the easy road. I decided to leave Australia and I moved to the other side of the world, where nobody knew about it,” she said.

“And in fact there’ll be a lot of people that are in my life now who will be very, very surprised if I ever share this with them. It’s something you never get over. It’s there with you every day. You look for faces in a crowd. Slowly hope fades. It leaves a big hole.”

After Bronwyn and brother Andy Read’s parents separated, their father, Phillip Read, remarried and had a daughter, Melissa.

The sisters shared a very close bond, family members confirm.

Ms Read says she is full of admiration for Andy Read’s tireless efforts to find their missing sister.

But she is also plagued by feelings of guilt that “we didn’t do more” for Bronwyn, who was 31 and the devoted mother of two girls, Chrystal, 10, and Lauren, five, when she disappeared.

“To listen to the podcast brings up a lot emotions. It’s very hard to know how you respond when somebody one day isn’t there anymore. I wish that I had gone straight up there. I wish that we’d pushed the police to do more,” she said.

Coroner Carl Milovanovich halted an inquest in 2002 and recommended Mr Winfield be charged over Bronwyn’s alleged murder.

The NSW Director of Public Prosecutions refused on the grounds of insufficient evidence. Mr Winfield, now 69, continues to strenuously deny any involvement.

“I was very close with Bronwyn. We spent a lot of time together. And when Jon arrived, it did put pressure on our friendship,” Ms Read said.

“From the get-go there was always an element of control. I think it might have been a little bit of jealousy for any sort of friendships that Bronwyn may have had. I said to Bronwyn, ‘Bron, hmm, he seems … a little bit possessive’. She sort of glossed over it.”

Six weeks after Bronwyn went missing, Ms Read and a boyfriend did go to stay with Mr Winfield at the family home in Lennox Head.

“He just didn’t want to talk about it or discuss it, and certainly not in front of the children, which was always the excuse. But even when the children were not there, he didn’t want to engage about it,” she said.

Bronwyn lived in a rented unit in Lennox Head with her two daughters, but moved back into the family home with the girls while Mr Winfield was working in Sydney, using a locksmith to enter after he changed the locks.

Mr Winfield returned to Lennox Head on hearing Bronwyn was back in the house, and she disappeared the same night.

He told Bronwyn’s family and police that she made a phone call then was picked up by a car driven by an unknown person.

“After the initial shock of how she apparently left and disappeared, lots of questions came up. A lot of questions about how she left, who she left with, why Jon didn’t even look out the window,” Ms Read said.

“It didn’t make any sense. Jon being Jon, he would have wanted to know exactly where she was going and who she was going with and what she was doing, because that was who he was by nature.”

The podcast includes snippets of Bronwyn speaking in a television documentary that followed the fight for survival of her and Melissa’s father, Phillip, after a liver transplant.

“Just to hear her voice was a real trigger for me. When you haven’t heard a voice for so long and you hear the voice, it almost brings it to life again.

“I think it was really hard for Bronwyn because we lost our father. She was very close to our father. He was almost her due north, her support. He supported her a lot. And for the first time, Bronwyn started to step out alone.”

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