The one homicide detective who never stopped looking for Bronwyn Winfield
From the moment Detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor read the paperwork on missing mum Bronwyn Winfield in 1998, he immediately saw red flags. Her inquest years later would be his last in a NSW police uniform.
When NSW homicide detective Glenn Taylor was transferred on promotion to the Ballina region on the State’s far north coast in late 1996 he would have been forgiven for thinking life was about to be all prawns and pretty sunsets.
He had left behind a stellar stint in Newcastle, the rough and tumble steel town and industrial port north of Sydney for the semi-tropics with its entrenched surf culture, retirees and palm trees.
Life, he might have reasonably assumed, was about to pleasantly go back a gear.
The region’s crime profile, however, suggested otherwise.
According to NSW crime statistics collated by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research in 1997, the Richmond-Tweed police region – which included Ballina, Byron Bay, Lismore and Tweed Heads – might have seen comparatively few murders and sexual assaults than other areas throughout the State, but it absolutely topped the charts when it came to drugs.
The possession, use and trafficking of cocaine and cannabis eclipsed the regions outside of Sydney, as did stealing across a range of categories. Detective Taylor’s transfer was not going to be a cakewalk.
He brought north a strong work ethic, investigative skills and a keen sense of justice, and nothing was going to change that.
Within a short time in the thinly staffed Ballina police station in River Street, the town’s main drag, however, his attention was directed to the file of missing local mother Bronwyn Joy Winfield, formerly of Sandstone Crescent, Lennox Head, just a ten-minute drive north in a detective’s unmarked car.
And what he found in that file stunned him.
“I’d been transferred from the homicide squad to take up a promotion to in Ballina,” Taylor, now 65, remembered. “I was totally unaware of (the Winfield) matter until Andrew Read (Bronwyn’s brother) and his wife, Michelle, approached us in 1998 and said, look, is it possible to have fresh eyes on this because they’d heard absolutely nothing since that July or August of 1993.
“Nothing had been done. There were no further developments. So I started having a read. Some very, very basic, inquiries had been done back in 1993 by the detectives. And I was appalled that so little had been done. Everything was in a single Manila folder.”
Taylor learned that Bronwyn Winfield, 31, mother of two daughters – Chrystal, then 10 and Lauren, 5 – had disappeared without a trace on the evening of Sunday, May 16, 1993, from the family home in Sandstone Crescent, Lennox Head.
Separated from her husband, local bricklayer Jon Winfield, at the time, the vivacious Bronwyn had rented a small flat outside town for herself and her daughters before moving back into the family abode while Jon was on a job in Sydney.
He had had the locks changed but she called a locksmith and gained access to the house. On hearing that his estranged wife had occupied the property, he flew back from Sydney and confronted Bronwyn at Sandstone Crescent on that Sunday evening.
Her daughter Chrystal remembered she heard her parents arguing and her mother crying that night.
Jon later told police that Bronwyn had decided to take a few days away from the children and was picked up outside the house and driven away by a person unknown. Late on that same night, Winfield took the kids and drove throughout the night to Sydney.
This very cold case was rocked last week by bombshell allegations from a fresh witness on The Australian’s podcast, Bronwyn, that a neighbour, Judy Singh, had seen Jon driving the family Falcon slowly past her house in a neighbouring street on the night Bronwyn vanished with what looked like a body wrapped in a sheet in the back seat.
Singh, a trained nurse, was so adamant about what she’d seen that she reported it to police in both Ballina in 1993 and Byron Bay police years later. Nothing was done.
From the moment Detective Sergeant Taylor looked at the meagre Bronwyn missing persons file back in 1998 he immediately saw red flags.
“The initial investigation was just so poor where not one person was interviewed,” Mr Taylor said yesterday from his home in Ballina. “And there was no formal interview of the husband, Mr. Winfield. In fact, there was very little done. There were only possibly about seven or eight weeks of inquiries, and then the whole matter was just completely shelved.
“And that’s where it sat until approaches by Andrew and Michelle for us to have a further look. As I said, I couldn’t believe it. I mean there was so many red flags so very early on.
“When they literally shelved the investigation back in 1993 all the red flags were still there. There was no money touched from Bronwyn’s bank accounts. She took very little clothes, if any, when she supposedly left the house. She had an appointment at her solicitor’s office at 9am the next day and didn’t show up. She doesn’t turn up for work a couple days later. It just goes on, on and on.
“There are red flags flying everywhere. This should have been a likely murder investigation and it should have been treated that way.”
Taylor reignited the investigation and interviewed more than 70 witnesses. He compiled a substantial brief of evidence and much of his hard work was ultimately presented at an inquest into Bronwyn’s death in 2002 held by the then NSW Deputy State Coroner Carl Milanovich in Lismore.
The inquest formally found that Bronwyn was dead. And significantly, that a known person – her husband Jon Winfield – was responsible for her disappearance. It was recommended to the Director of Public Prosecutions that the matter be brought to trial. But in the absence of a body and an apparent paucity of evidence the DPP decided not to proceed.
As it turned out, Detective Taylor, on sick leave when the inquest was called, applied for a medical certificate ensuring he could attend the five-day hearing. That Friday, the last day of Bronwyn’s inquest, was officially his final day as an operational NSW police officer.
“I had to be there,” Mr Taylor said. “I couldn’t let the family down. Especially the children.”
He retired medically unfit in 2003 and went on to work as an insurance investigator.
In subsequent years, Mr Milanovich and others brought Bronwyn’s case to the attention of award-winning journalist Hedley Thomas, creator of the worldwide hit podcast The Teacher’s Pet which brought renewed attention to the disappearance of another devoted mother – Lynette Simms – in 1982. Her husband, Christopher Dawson, was convicted of her murder in 2022.
That case similarly featured a police officer who refused to give up on a particular investigation – former Sydney detective Damian Loone. He was the driving force behind the reinvestigation of the Lynette Simms case and was critical in seeing that matter ultimately delivered before the Supreme Court. Incredibly, he and Mr Taylor are both members of the Cherry Street Sports Club in downtown Ballina, and lawn bowl, albeit in different leagues.
Recently they’ve shared reminiscences about their careers. And the two major cases of missing mothers they could never quite relinquish.
Mr Taylor still wanted justice for Bronwyn and her family.
“You can’t get much more serious a crime than a murder and also to allegedly murder a young mother and leave two children behind who always think that their mother just walked out is just an horrendous thought,” Mr Taylor said.
“It’s a terribly sad situation. I know from talking to Michelle and Andrew later during my reinvestigation. They said they’d been up to see the kids. This is after Bronwyn disappeared. And when they went into the house, there was not one photograph of Bronwyn in the house.”
Jon Winfield has always strenuously denied any involvement in the disappearance of Bronwyn. He has never been charged in relation to the case of his missing wife.
“Mr Winfield absolutely has the presumption of innocence,” Mr Taylor said. “Evidence has to be tested in court before a jury.
“But I’ve always had this investigation on my mind. I’ve never been able to leave it behind.”
Do you know something about this case? Contact Hedley Thomas confidentially at bronwyn@theaustralian.com.au
