Bronwyn Joy Winfield and Lynnette Joy Simms: Two cases, two lives lost
Lyn Simms and Bronwyn Winfield were married to handsome, physically fit men with a penchant for order; Lyn to teacher Chris Dawson, and Bronwyn to builder Jon Winfield. Their inexplicable disappearances are eerily similar.
Lyn Simms, 33, spent much of her life on Sydney’s northern beaches before she disappeared in January 1982, leaving behind two young daughters.
Bronwyn Winfield, 31, spent much of her life on Sydney’s southern beaches around Cronulla and Wollongong before she disappeared in May 1993, leaving behind two young daughters and a step-daughter.
Lyn and Bronwyn were married to handsome, physically fit men with a penchant for cleanliness and order, and who kept a close eye on the household budget. Lyn to former Sydney rugby league star and physical education teacher Chris Dawson, and Bronwyn to builder Jon Winfield.
Both women grew tired of their husbands’ penny-pinching and the controlling behaviour.
Both women would inexplicably disappear, supposedly claiming to their husbands that they needed time away to sort themselves out, to get a clear head.
And both men would at some point claim their missing wives must have had some sort of mental breakdown. Or that they had joined a “commune”.
In each case, too, the issue of assets and property ownership in the event of divorce played a part.
Lynette Joy Simms and Bronwyn Joy Winfield have never been seen or heard from since they vanished.
The disappearances are so similar – albeit 11 years apart – that at times the chronology seemingly, and eerily, almost follows the same script.
There are of course some differences in both scenarios. In Lyn’s case, Dawson was conducting an exploitative sexual relationship with a schoolgirl pupil prior to Lyn vanishing, and Dawson would immediately move his teenage lover into the marital home in Bayview Heights. Dawson would go on to marry his former pupil and they’d have a child together before that marriage, too, fell apart.
But in both cases, NSW Deputy State Coroner Carl Milovanovich would hold inquests into the women’s disappearances – Bronwyn in 2002, and Lyn in 2003 (her second inquest) – and recommend in both instances that “a known person”, namely, their respective husbands, be charged with their murders.
As it transpired, the office of the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions concluded at the time that there was not sufficient evidence at the time to move against Chris Dawson or Jon Winfield. The presiding director at the time of both inquests was Nicholas Cowdery.
Another huge difference in each case, too, is that Chris Dawson was ultimately charged with murdering his wife Lyn and was found guilty of that crime in the NSW Supreme Court in 2022, four decades after Lyn’s disappearance. Dawson was sentenced to 24 years in jail. He is presently appealing his conviction.
Importantly, Jon Winfield has always denied having any involvement in Bronwyn’s disappearance.
He provided a sworn statement to police in 1998 and confirmed this version to other investigators over a decade later. Jon Winfield told The Australian he stands by his version.
The Dawson case, however, may have forever remained in the cold case basket if it hadn’t been for The Teacher’s Pet podcast by The Australian’s Hedley Thomas. The podcast investigation, which became a global hit after its release in 2018 and subsequently racked up over 80 million downloads, brought new witnesses to the table and intense media focus on a forgotten case.
As he was researching Lyn’s story, Bronwyn Winfield’s name kept coming up.
Carl Milovanovich had mentioned to Hedley the curious case of the Lennox Head mother who had disappeared off the face of the earth without explanation. Bronwyn’s case had only been cursorily covered by the local press on the Far North coast of NSW and had never made national news.
Then, as The Teacher’s Pet was progressively released during 2018, a neighbour of Bronwyn Winfield in Sandstone Crescent heard the podcast and felt compelled to reach out to Thomas and say – look, here is a woman who vanished just like Lyn.
“I’d already heard about Bronwyn from Carl,” Thomas said. “And then the next contact was from Bronwyn’s former neighbour and friend, Deb Hall. She still lived at Lennox Head.
“She wrote to me, and it was a very thoughtful, heartfelt letter on behalf of her friend, because she had been listening to (The Teacher’s Pet) podcast. She was concerned that nothing has been done about Bronwyn for many years. She believed that it was a very similar kind of case.
“So Bronwyn flowered out of Lynn’s case. Here are two dead women. I’m deep into an investigation of Lyn…and all these breadcrumbs get laid out in relation to Bronwyn and her case and her circumstances.
“They died a decade apart because I believe Bronwyn has been dead since 1993. But it’s almost like they speak to each other in terms of the similarities. I don’t mean they speak to each other as ghosts or anything like that. I mean the cases bounce off each other.”
There were other touchstones.
In each case, early police investigations wrote them off as simply missing persons investigations. Paperwork was sparse and shoddy.
In each instance, the husbands’ stories about their wives’ movements and motivations were virtually accepted without question. That acceptance of the male narrative allowed each case to sink below the radar.
Until two diligent police detectives – Damian Loone in Lyn’s case, and Glenn Taylor in Bronwyn’s case – came along, revised the files, and acting on professional instinct and the desire for justice for each of the women’s families, pushed for further official action.
Thomas, having put Lyn’s case to rest, has now trained his substantial investigative skills on Bronwyn’s disappearance. The impact of Bronwyn the podcast remains to be determined.
Of course, Chris Dawson’s conviction for the murder of Lyn Simms is irrelevant to the disappearance of Bronwyn Winfield.
As Brian Jordan, a retired Family Court judge, said in an interview for the podcast, every investigation must be approached with caution and care.
Jordan told Hedley Thomas: “You’ve got to be mindful of the trap. You’ve been vindicated, your instincts were right. Your investigations were central to the eventual successful prosecution of that man.
“Doesn’t guarantee that you’re infallible on another matter that you’re pursuing, does it?
“So caution is always required in these sorts of matters.”
Here’s yet another touchstone in both cases.
Detectives Loone and Taylor both retired to Ballina, the seaside town and home of the Big Prawn on NSW’s Far North Coast. It’s a short 15-minute drive from Bronwyn’s former home in Sandstone Crescent, Lennox Heads.
Both men are members of the same lawn bowls club.
And sometimes you might see them in the clubhouse, enjoying a beer together. Yarning about old cases. Comparing notes.
Quite simply, you could not make that up.
Bronwyn is a podcast series with new episodes released in June and July, 2024.
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