Bronwyn podcast: ‘Where were we all?’: ex-colleague haunted by failure to help missing mum

A child protection worker and former work colleague of missing Lennox Head mother Bronwyn Winfield now says she wished she’d shown more compassion towards her friend before she vanished | LISTEN

Kellie O’Brien, a former colleague of Bronwyn Winfield, right, and Jon Winfield surfing at Sharpes Beach last month.

A child protection worker and former work colleague of missing Lennox Head mother Bronwyn Winfield now says she wished she’d shown more compassion towards her friend before she vanished.

Kellie O’Brien, now a senior community figure in the surfside village of Lennox Head, on the NSW far north coast, saw Bronwyn at a party the night before the young mother disappeared in mid-May 1993. Both women worked together at Eden’s Takeaway in town.

In 1998 Kellie, one of the founders of the All Girls Surfriders Club in Lennox Head, gave a formal statement to Detective Glenn Taylor about Bronwyn’s disappearance, and said her friend was acting strangely at the party and only wanted to talk about the breakdown of her marriage to estranged husband Jon Winfield.

However, Kellie told The Australian’s investigative podcast, Bronwyn, that she wished she had been more supportive of her friend in her emotional time of need.

“My reflection is as the person I am now, I look at the (police) statement and I think how terribly non-compassionate I was for Bronwyn,” Kellie said.

“And I think, ‘Oh goodness, where was the support for her and some kindness around what (was a) very challenging situation she was going through?’. Where was the network for Bronwyn?”

Kellie was only in her early 30s when she worked with Bronwyn at Eden’s Takeaway, a fast-food outlet on Ballina Street, Lennox Head’s main thoroughfare.

In her police statement, Kellie described the party the night before Bronwyn, 31, disappeared.

“Bronwyn came to the party on that night and I can only explain her behaviour as weird,” Kellie told Detective Taylor.

“She was flitting from one group of people to another and sort of laughing and giggling to herself for no reason. She had only had a couple of drinks, so it wasn’t the alcohol that made her act strangely.

“Bronwyn was attempting to seek everyone’s attention at the party, but most people avoided being too involved with her because everyone was sort of fed up with hearing about her life and marriage problems.”

As a co-worker, Kellie had become acutely aware of Bronwyn’s chaotic personal life in early to mid-1993, when the young mother left husband Jon and the family home in Sandstone Crescent and rented a small townhouse on the road out of town.

Kellie told police: “Approximately two weeks before she moved out I noticed that Bronwyn’s behaviour was becoming very irrational.

“She would often cry over very small things and would always be talking about herself and wrapped up in her own little world.

“She would often waffle on about things and she appeared to be stressing out over her marriage breakdown.

“After moving out of the house and into the townhouse I noticed that she was getting worse.”

Kellie also remembered that Bronwyn got tangled up in subsequent legal issues – property settlements and child custodial rights – and that it appeared to be “the biggest thing that had ever happened in her life”.

Kellie for years questioned her thoughts in the police statement. “And I look back and I think, ‘oh, really? Where were we all?’,” she reflected.

Kellie also knew Jon Winfield through the town’s tight-knit surfing community. Back in the early 1990s, according to locals, the two primary attractions of Lennox Head were surfing and fishing.

She said in her statement: “He (Jon) was a very homely person and was not at all sociable. I often saw him with his children and I got the opinion that he was a good father.”

One thing has not changed down the years.

Kellie steadfastly believes Bronwyn would never have voluntarily left her own children.

She said in her 1998 statement: “I am of the opinion that Bronwyn would never have disappeared of her own volition. I fear that she has met with some form of foul play.

“She was a very dedicated mother to her children and there is no way in this world that she would leave without them.

“She also had a vested interest in the house and was very entrenched in legal proceedings to obtain a future for her and her children.”

Kellie, now in her early 60s, has not deviated from that former opinion.

“She (Bronwyn) was very committed to providing the stability for the children and herself. It’s unfathomable to me that it’s a run-off (situation) and (she’d) leave the children,” she told the Bronwyn podcast.

“She just really adored the children. And it’s just not something people do, in my experience.

“People go through journeys. And for me, I’m a person with a very strong sense of justice. I work in the field of child protection. There is such a massive loss for the children of Bronwyn and I would prefer to know that they have some sense of closure about what did happen to their mum.

“Things settle, heal, but they don’t actually heal for the people where it matters most. And it’s hurt most.”

Kellie said that at the time it had been too easy to walk away from Bronwyn’s troubles.

“I actually just said to my partner, it’s exactly like a sexual abuse scenario,” she told Hedley Thomas in the podcast. “And people, they turn a blind eye, or they just don’t believe that it may have happened.

“And I think for other people in Jon’s family or community, you don’t want to believe that something so abhorrent could have happened … we also don’t want to believe that Bronwyn could have cut and run and left the children.

“And if there’s no evidence, then people sort of go, ‘Oh well, I don’t know’. Hands up in the air. What do you do?

“It then just enters this kind of twilight zone. And then one decade, two decades, three decades pass.”

Bronwyn vanished on Sunday, May 16, 1993. She was due to work a shift at Eden’s Takeaway the following Tuesday.

Kellie remembered her friend never turned up for work.

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

Click here to sign up for our free Bronwyn newsletter