Marion Barter mystery: Ric Blum claimed his entire family was ‘exterminated’

Neighbours of the convicted conman — linked to missing mum Marion Barter — tried to raise the alarm when his bizarre stories began to unravel. Other lies were more disturbing.

Ric Blum’s neighbours Ingrid Neubarth and Martin Miezis. Picture: Luke Marsden.

Six valuable consignments of rare coins went missing while a convicted conman – now a central figure in the disappearance of a Queensland mother – was working in the mail room of a major Australian auction house.

Ric Blum was never suspected of being connected to the missing coins until a rival auctioneer later tipped off the firm that their former employee had stolen and sold its prized mailing list of customers.

The new fraud suspicions can be revealed as associates and former neighbours described Mr Blum as a real-life Walter Mitty who couldn’t keep track of his complicated web of lies, including false claims his entire family was wiped out in Auschwitz.

An ongoing NSW coronial inquest has raised the possibility of Mr Blum’s involvement in the disappearance of schoolteacher ­Marion Barter, after he confirmed they were in a secret relationship before she vanished without trace a quarter of a century ago.

Marion Barter with her children Owen and Sally. Picture: Facebook

He denies any knowledge of what happened to her, but new ­accounts gathered by The Australian shed further light on his character and raise more questions about the extent of deception throughout his life.

Status International owner Stewart Wright said he briefly employed the avid coin collector, who was using the name Richard West, in Sydney around 1999.

Mr Blum embraced the position he was offered, turning up at 5am when most staff didn’t arrive until four hours later.

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The role included posting items to customers, and coincided with a series of parcels failing to reach their intended destination.

“I can’t make accusations but in the stuff that went to the Post Office, I think the first, second, third, fifth, seventh and 10th most valuable consignments disappeared,” Mr Wright told The Australian.

One day, Mr Blum “just disappeared”, leaving his job without saying goodbye. “He didn’t come back and subsequently a dealer in Ballina, Barry Cooper, told me he’d offered Barry Cooper a copy of my mailing list. It was probably just laying around, we always had a paper backup,” Mr Wright said.

In recent years, Status International had a new customer, Ric Blum. “I had no idea they were one and the same person (at the time). He bought a few coins,” Mr Wright said.

Another respected coin trader, who asked The Australian to withhold his identity, interacted with Mr Blum many times.

“Do you know Walter Mitty?” he said. “We felt that he was a bit of a Walter Mitty character when it came to describing what he owned and possessed.

“He described having magnificent Australian rarities. They’d be very valuable and unique, and he wouldn’t have had them; we just didn’t believe it,” he said.

On the Gold Coast, Mr Blum and his wife Diane were on friendly terms at first with neighbours Martin Miezis and his wife Ingrid Neubarth. The two couples lived side-by-side in units in Miami for about three years from 2009.

However, the relationship deteriorated as Martin and Ingrid discovered some of the many names of their charming neighbour, who they knew as Frederick De Hedervary.

In 2011, Mr Blum convinced Mr Miezis to vouch for his identity for a new passport under the name Willy David-Coppenolle.

Ric Blum. Picture: Tessa Flemming

Marion Barter before she vanished in 1997.

Mr Miezis said Mr Blum had spun a story of running into tax problems with his coins in Europe. “That’s why he wanted another passport, so he could go back to Europe and circumnavigate his original passport,” Mr Miezis said.

A copy of the passport application with Mr Miezis’s name and signature has been obtained by police. Mr Blum also asked his neighbour if he knew anyone who could create a metal press for him. “The people who made it asked him, ‘what do you want this for?’ He said, ‘to make a medallion to hang around your neck’,” Mr ­Miezis said.

“I think he was trying to make coins.”

Mr Blum, whose birth certificate shows he was born in Belgium, told his neighbours he was born in Paris.

Other lies were more disturbing, Ms Neubarth said.

“He said … his whole family were exterminated in Auschwitz. I said ‘what about you, how come they didn’t see you?’.

“He said ‘I was two years old and I was at the next-door neighbours’. And every time he told the story it changed.”

When Ms Neubarth asked him which concentration camp, he had to think for a moment before answering.

“If that happened to your family, you would know, you wouldn’t have to think about it first,” she said.

A death notice shows a funeral service for Mr Blum’s father Désiré David was held at a Catholic Church in Belgium in 1943.

In his evidence at the inquest, Mr Blum said his brother, stepfather and mother all died in 1989 and 1990.

“He was just a pathological liar,” Ms Neubarth said.

“He said that he was in Woodstock and the Isle of Wight festival. If you ever heard the music he listened to, you knew he was never in Woodstock. He listened to Susan Boyle.

“Besides, he could not recall one single artist that played in Woodstock.”

Years before Mr Blum was publicly linked to Barter’s disappearance, Ms Neubarth emailed the welfare, immigration and transport departments to report her suspicions about his multiple names and purported disability that he used to obtain a pension and parking permit.

“I saw him every morning on my walks. He and his wife walked from Miami to North Burleigh which is about 5km each way.

“They got out of the car, not with a walker or a stick, nothing, just normal.”

A letter from the transport department mistakenly placed in the letterbox of Ingrid and her husband was addressed to “Willy Wouters”. It was another alias used by Mr Blum.

“I never came across anybody like that,” Ms Neubarth said.