Bronwyn Winfield feared losing her kids before she vanished

Bronwyn Winfield shared intimate details about her troubled marriage with a close friend she met at a playgroup | LISTEN

Bronwyn Winfield shared intimate details about her troubled marriage with a friend before she disappeared.

Missing Lennox Head mother Bronwyn Winfield feared losing her children in a potential custody dispute with her estranged husband before she disappeared, ­according to her friends.

In her frantic final weeks, Bronwyn, 31, who had split from her husband, local bricklayer Jon Winfield, was seeking legal options for both child custody and a financial settlement when she vanished from the seaside village on the NSW far north coast on May 16, 1993.

Friends were adamant she would never have left her two daughters, Chrystal, then aged 10, and Lauren, 5. Bronwyn walked out on the marriage to Jon in March 1993 and lived in a small, rented townhouse on the outskirts of town with her daughters.

In mid-May, while Jon was working in Sydney, she returned with the girls to the family home in Sandstone Crescent, in south Lennox.

Bronwyn had told friends that her husband – having gone through two previous divorces – would fight to keep the house he had built with his own hands. On finding out his wife had moved back into the Sandstone Crescent property, he flew back from Sydney on May 16, 1993. It was the last day anybody saw Bronwyn.

She had an appointment with a solicitor about the impending divorce the following morning but never showed up for the meeting.

Bronwyn met “Joan” in the early 1990s at a children’s playgroup – of which Bronwyn was president – in Lennox Head, the small surfing haven just south of Byron Bay. The two mothers became close friends. At the playgroup, Bronwyn shared intimate details about her troubled marriage with her new friend and talked about Jon’s need for obsessive cleanliness around the house.

Joan would later tell police that the Winfields were discussing monetary settlements before Bronwyn vanished. “She … told me Jon had offered her either $5000 or $10000 to move out of the house and call it quits,” Joan relayed to Ballina detective Glenn Taylor in 1998. “She had no intention of taking the offer and she organised a valuation on the house. It was valued at $245,000.00.

“She got the valuation done when Jon was not around so that he wouldn’t know about it.”

But the children were at the forefront of Bronwyn’s mind.

Joan – a pseudonym – told The Australian’s Bronwyn podcast that Bronwyn was concerned about keeping her children in any future custody battle.

“She was worried because she’d overheard Jon talking to his father saying it would be better if he had the kids because he had (a) better chance of having the house if he had the kids,” Joan said. “She was pretty worried about it.”

Bronwyn had given birth to Chrystal before she met Jon ­Winfield, and Lauren was Bronwyn and Jon’s child. Joan said there was “no way that she (Bronwyn) wanted Jon to have the kids.”

Another friend, Tracey Brown, who co-owned Edens Takeaway in downtown Lennox where Bronwyn worked part-time, recalled the child custody issue being raised by Bronwyn around March or April 1993, when Bronwyn was living in the rented townhouse. She remembered that it was a stressful time for Bronwyn.

Tracey said in her police statement after Bronwyn disappeared: “I vaguely recall Bronwyn mentioning something about custody for the youngest child, Lauren,” Tracey told police.

“I think Jon was going to put in for custody of this child.

“Bronwyn was an exceptionally good mother to her children. Everything she did was for her children.

“There is no way known in my opinion that Bronwyn would ever leave those children.”

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