What Jon Winfield failed to mention when he sat down with detectives

Missing NSW mother Bronwyn Winfield’s estranged husband Jon left out key facts in his only police interview about her disappearance.

Bronwyn Winfield, left, and her estranged husband Jon.

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Missing NSW mother Bronwyn Winfield’s estranged husband Jon left out key facts in his only police interview about her disappearance.

Mr Winfield failed to mention, when he sat down with detectives, that he’d hurriedly left Bronwyn’s two young daughters with a woman he’d never met the day after she vanished.

He also claimed he went “sightseeing” and just hung about in the days that followed, but a builder says the bricklayer worked for him at an isolated Sydney house where concrete was about to be poured.

A new episode of the Bronwyn podcast, released on Saturday, questions whether Mr Winfield forgot important details or if it was deliberate avoidance.

Bronwyn went missing from her home at Lennox Head on the NSW far north coast on the night of Sunday, May 16, 1993, leaving behind the daughters she doted on, Chrystal, 10, from a previous relationship, and Lauren, five.

Police have long suspected she was murdered.

Mr Winfield was the last person to see or hear from her, but has always denied any involvement in her disappearance.

Five years later, in August 1998, he was interviewed at Ballina police station by Detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor and Detective Senior Constable Wayne Temby.

Asked if Bronwyn said she needed a break when they last spoke, Mr Winfield replied: “I can’t remember what we talked about.”

But Bronwyn’s sister-in-law, Michelle Read, said that the day after Bronwyn disappeared a “jittery” Mr Winfield initially said “Bronwyn’s left me”, then said: “Well, actually, she needed a break. She’s going on a holiday.”

Mr Winfield also suggested Bronwyn wrote in a letter he found in the couple’s car that she needed a break.

However, there is evidence Bronwyn was referring in the letter to a planned visit to her mother, Barbara, and grandmother, in Hobart.

He said Bronwyn made some phone calls and suddenly left the house in a car driven by an unknown person. He then spontaneously drove Chrystal and Lauren through the night to Sydney.

Asked where he went first in Sydney the next day, he said he wasn’t sure of the order but knew he called in to see his daughter, Jodie, 19, from a previous relationship, at her hair salon.

He also called in to see Bronwyn’s brother and sister-in-law, Andy and Michelle Read, and went to a motor registry and registered the couple’s Ford Falcon sedan.

He left out a very important stop he made at the home of his former wife, Jenny Mason, that morning.

She was out shopping and Mr Winfield implored her mother-in law, a woman he’d never met, to take the two girls for several hours so he could go and do something.

Andy and Michelle Read were shocked when Detective Sergeant Taylor discovered the visit through his investigations.

“That blew me away. These kids, they would never have met Jenny, let alone Jenny’s mother-in-law,” Ms Read has said.

The detectives interviewing Mr Winfield wanted to know what he did in the 10 or so days he was in Sydney before he returned to Lennox Head.

“Probably just hang about, just sort of sight seeing, and everything, you know,” he said.

But builder Glenn Webster employed Mr Winfield and said the bricklayer was back on the job working for him during this period.

They had a job at a relatively isolated building site in Illawong where a concrete pour was imminent, Mr Webster said.

Mr Winfield said he reported Bronwyn missing to police after returning to Lennox Head from Sydney.

But neighbour Deb Hall said Mr Winfield initially refused to report Bronwyn missing.

“I said ‘Jon, I am really concerned about Bronwyn. We need to report her missing’. (He said) ‘no, no, no, no, no, I’m not going to do that’. He was just adamant,” Ms Hall said.

“I said, ‘all right, Jon, it’s like this. If you’re not reporting her missing, I will’. And he’s gone, ‘no, not all, if anyone’s going to do it, it’ll be me’.”

Detective Taylor, now retired, told the Bronwyn podcast there were “certainly a lot of things we didn’t know and a lot of things he didn’t reveal during the interview”.

He added: “Things like his movements when he first got down to Sydney, or he was extremely vague in the interview. And yes, it had been five years. But some things I mean, you just think, well, how could you forget that?

“No mention of going to the ex-wife’s home and two kids in pyjamas. I mean, you’d think that would have to be still fresh in your mind even after five years.

“When we interviewed him, we weren’t aware of that. We didn’t even know about these people.”

Do you know something about this case? Contact Hedley
Thomas confidentially at [e-mail]