New claims in mystery disappearance of Marion Barter
A convicted conman questioned over the possible murder of his missing lover – the former wife of a Socceroos legend – is facing new claims he ripped off a widow.
A convicted conman questioned over the possible murder of his missing lover has been accused of ripping off his dead cousin’s widow.
The new claims against Ric Blum follow allegations he deceived or exploited a string of other women after Queensland schoolteacher Marion Barter vanished more than 25 years ago.
An inquest into the disappearance and suspected death of Barter, the former wife of Socceroos legend Johnny Warren, was put on hold at the end of November to allow homicide squad detectives to conduct further investigations.
Mr Blum, 83, told the inquest he was secretly in a relationship with Barter for about four months before she went missing, but emphatically denied he killed her or knew what happened to her.
The disappearance of Barter, and some of the many aliases used by Mr Blum, made the front cover of Belgian newspaper Nieuwsblad at the weekend. In a joint investigation between the newspaper and the Luxembourg Times, a woman said after the death of her husband in 2011, she developed a close friendship with his cousin, Mr Blum.
The following year, the “charming and attentive” Mr Blum suggested they buy a house in Bali together, splitting the purchase price of €200,000.
Identified only by her first name Charlotte, the woman said she went to a bank and withdrew her share for the house in two instalments of €50,000, giving Mr Blum the cash.
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The pair then met at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport and flew to Bali to finish the deal, checking into a room in Seminyak.
Telling her he had to go to a meeting with a financial adviser about his share of the purchase, Mr Blum booked the woman, then in her 60s, into a wellness program involving massages and a hairdressing appointment.
“He even picked out the hair colour for me, because I didn’t know any English,” she said.
Mr Blum never returned from his purported meeting, and the woman says she was left stranded, with her money gone. “My tickets and passport and some cash were in the safe in the hotel room, but he had the combination,” she said.
Three days later, Mr Blum sent an email with a code to the safe and a false explanation that he was owed money by her late husband, she said.
On her return home, her expensive jewellery was missing, including her wedding ring, along with a collection of stamps and coins worth about €25,000.
A complaint to police brought no result.
Another woman, Ghislaine Dubois-Danlois, alleged Mr Blum – using the name Frederick de Hedervary – took €70,000 from her after responding to a personal ad she placed in a newspaper in Belgium.
Barter, a mother-of-two, last spoke to her family in 1997 after she quit her job as a schoolteacher and sold her home to travel overseas. The same year, she is registered as returning to Australia with a passport held under a different name her family had never heard of, Florabella Natalia Marion Remakel.
Mr Blum was jailed in France for fraud in the 1970s and has gone by at least 50 names, including Fernand Remakel.
Family and friends of Barter are calling for anyone with information about Mr Blum to come forward, drawing attention to his many identities.
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