Bronwyn podcast: Missing woman’s relative on the hunt for justice

A young relative of missing Lennox Head mother Bronwyn Winfield has vowed to use her skills in forensic science to secure justice for the second cousin she never met.

Newly qualified forensic scientist Madi Walsh is helping Hedley Thomas in his podcast about Bronwyn Winfield, the second cousin she never knew. Picture: John Feder

A young relative of missing Lennox Head mother Bronwyn Winfield has vowed to use her skills in forensic science to secure justice for the second cousin she never met.

Madi Walsh, 21, grew up on Sydney’s northern beaches hearing family stories of a relative who had gone missing and may have been murdered. Her mother, Rebecca Walsh, and aunty, Megan Read, are cousins of Bronwyn.

Each family event produced more tales of the beautiful mother who had vanished without a trace from Lennox Head, on the NSW far north coast, in May 1993, and theories about her fate.

Was she a missing person? Or was her body buried somewhere under a concrete slab?

“Every Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, the stories would be told,” Ms Walsh said on Tuesday. “I remember we were driving home from my grandparents’ house when I was about 10 years old and I asked Mum: Who was Bronwyn?

“It was a running story. Here was this beautiful, caring, loving mother, a wonderful person, and she just disappeared. Nobody seemed to know what happened to her. It agitated me. I needed to find answers, to find the truth.”

Ms Walsh said her early interest in crime and justice stemmed directly from the mystery surrounding her relative. The case, she added, still created tension and stress within the wider family.

“Over time, people in the family have different ideas about what happened to Bronwyn and there will be disagreements,” she said. “I guess, as human beings, we try to fill the void with explanations, with answers.

“This is something that can change a family over time. But we all want the same thing in the end – justice and closure.”

Ms Walsh said now that Bronwyn’s case was back in the public eye, family members were discussing an imminent reunion and reconciling their differences.

Ms Walsh this year completed her Bachelor of Forensic Science at the University of Technology Sydney, a degree she chose, in part, to help try to resolve the case.

“I’ve always had a curiosity with crime and, you know, justice as well,” she said.

“Knowing that if I went into forensics and I was on the frontlines … maybe I could find real evidence and then in turn create peace for my family. Well, that was an ultimate goal.”

Ms Walsh has been lending her newly acquired expertise, and her research skills, to journalist Hedley Thomas and his Bronwyn podcast, becoming – as some of her relatives have described her – “the Robin to Hedley’s Batman”.

She said possibly her greatest strength as a prospective investigator was remaining unbiased.

“In forensics you learn you can’t be biased,” Ms Walsh said. “You have to look at everything without judgment … look at how everything is presented to you. You can’t pick sides.

“My family is obviously going to have their sides and their ideas. But when I looked at all the case information I had to view it from an unbiased standpoint. I didn’t know Bronwyn, so I am not emotionally connected … in that way. Not in the way my family does. So I’m able to view it … as though it’s a case I’m being presented at university … I’m able to form my own opinions.”

As for her association with Thomas, she confirmed she regularly received what she has now dubbed “Hedley homework”.

“It grows by the day, the homework,” she laughed. “The list is never-ending. But it’s good. It … keeps me busy, that’s for sure. He’s very lenient. Sometimes I have to text him – ‘I’m clocking off for the night, I’m going out’.

“Though I had a movie night with my friends recently and I missed the whole movie because I was on the phone with Hedley. No. He’s great. He lets me live. Mostly.”

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

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