Special video episodes shed new light on drama of missing mum
You’ve heard the podcast, now watch a three-episode video series featuring the team behind Bronwyn, including Hedley Thomas, lawyers, cops and family members.
Loving mothers don’t just walk out on their families – “not in this world” – but police and prosecutors haven’t yet caught up to that reality.
That’s the stark assessment of Andy Read, the brother of missing woman Bronwyn Winfield, speaking in a special new video episode of The Australian’s blockbuster cold case investigation Bronwyn.
Bronwyn Winfield vanished on Sunday, May 16, 1993 – the night her husband Jon says she walked out the front door, got in a car and was driven away, never to be heard from again.
In 2002 NSW deputy coroner Carl Milovanovich recommended “a known person” – Jon Winfield – be charged with murder.
But the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions has never laid charges against any person over Bronwyn Winfield’s disappearance.
Jon Winfield has always denied wrongdoing.
NSW Police says the matter is an active investigation with the Unsolved Homicide unit.
Today’s video is the first of three video-only instalments of Bronwyn, featuring never-before-seen footage behind the scenes of the podcast’s creation, and in-depth conversations between the journalists and Bronwyn’s family members, police, lawyers and listeners.
The episodes – filmed at Hedley Thomas’s home on the outskirts of Brisbane – will be available exclusively for subscribers to The Australian on our app and at bronwynpodcast.com.
In today’s episode, Bronwyn’s cousin and Hedley Thomas’s collaborator, Madi Walsh, says she was initially hesitant to have this long-dormant cold case probed by Australia’s foremost investigative journalist.
“When I first heard about it, I thought it was a terrible idea. She’s been missing for so long, and nothing has been done for 30 years – so I didn’t want there to be false hope,” Walsh said.
But Andy Read said The Australian’s investigation – led by a podcast that has had more than 5 million episode downloads to date – brought an end to the “harrowing” effort he’d made to get police to pay attention to Bronwyn’s case.
“I had to sort of put the whole thing aside after a while,” Mr Read said.
“I dealt with so many different members of the police service and forever it just felt like it was falling on deaf ears.
“I’m not sure they’ve learned, whether we’re talking about the police or the DPP. I don’t think they’ve learned too many lessons since 1993.
“I don’t mean to be hard on them but (violence against women) is at an absolute crisis stage at the moment. There’s been walks, marches, representations to various parliament houses and all sorts of things because it’s an epidemic and I think society’s had enough of it. That’s why it’s getting so much traction through podcasts and through the media.
“I think eventually they’ve got to be able to wake up to themselves and they’ve got to get active. That’s … the police and the DPP because we just can’t believe these little one-off stories that loving mothers of young children just walk out the door. Just doesn’t happen. Doesn’t happen. Not in this world.”
Episode 1 of the video special is live now at bronwynpodcast.com and subsequent episodes will be released later in January.
The podcast investigation will return for Season 3 in February.
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