Bronwyn Winfield podcast: Neighbour saw car sneak off … and ‘I thought gee, the boot’s a bit heavy’
Murray Nolan says he’s never forgotten what he witnessed the night Bronwyn Winfield vanished: Her car, rolling down the driveway with its engine and headlights off, then scraping the bitumen | Listen to Episode 4.
Murray Nolan was home watching TV late on Sunday, May 16, 1993, when he heard the distinctive squeaky brakes of the car next door at Bronwyn and Jon Winfield’s house.
It was the night Bronwyn vanished, and Mr Nolan says he’s never forgotten what he witnessed when he got up and looked out the window: her car, rolling down the driveway to the road with its engine and headlights off.
“The car backed out with no lights on. Bottomed out on the road. Dug a big groove in the road,” Mr Nolan tells a new episode of the Bronwyn podcast.
Mr Nolan was describing what he says must have been the rear of the white Ford Falcon scraping on bitumen as the car went from the sloping driveway on to Sandstone Crescent at Lennox Head on the NSW far north coast.
The car then “rolled down the hill, turned the lights on, started the engine and drove”, he said.
It was about 10.40pm.
Mr Nolan had never previously seen Bronwyn’s car leave in the same stealthy manner with the lights and engine off.
“It did occasionally scrape before, but this time when it scraped, it actually dug a groove probably 25mm deep into the road,” he said. “I thought ‘gee, the boot’s a bit heavy’.”
Five years later, the NSW detective who seriously investigated the case for the first time, Glenn Taylor, came to suspect Bronwyn’s husband, Jon, of involvement in her disappearance.
Mr Winfield strenuously denies it and has never been charged with any offence in connection to Bronwyn going missing that night. He says there was a history of mental illness in Bronwyn’s family, and he has consistently stood by answers he gave police in a lengthy statement in 1998.
However, he doesn’t deny being behind the wheel that night.
According to Jon, about one hour earlier Bronwyn had left the home in someone else’s car after saying she needed a short break. Jon had then driven through the night with Bronwyn’s two daughters to Sydney.
Bronwyn has never been seen or heard from since, and for the past 31 years her disappearance has been a mystery.
Mr Nolan still lives in the same house with his wife, Debbie Hall, and says he always knew when Jon or Bronwyn left the house in the Ford because of the noise it made. It had “really squeaky brakes”, and on the night Bronwyn disappeared, the sound caught his attention as he watched The War of the Roses.
The 1989 black comedy is about a warring couple’s bitter fight over their house during divorce proceedings.
Bronwyn and Jon Winfield had formally separated seven weeks earlier, and were in a dispute over their house as they headed to a divorce.
Mr Nolan knew Bronwyn had been at home with her two daughters, Chrystal and Lauren, and that it was long past the children’s bedtime.
He didn’t know bricklayer Jon was back from working away in Sydney and was concerned someone was stealing Bronwyn’s car, but after it drove off, he went back to watching his movie.
The next morning, he and his wife grew increasingly curious about what was happening next door. “Deb come and saw me six o’clock on Monday morning and said ‘The car’s gone next door’. And then I said to Deb, ‘Yeah I heard the car go last night’,” Mr Nolan said.
“I waited until about 8 o’clock. There was no kids, no nothing, no Bronwyn, no car. I was a bit suspicious. As early as Monday.”
About 8am he went to see a neighbour on the other side of the Winfield residence, retiree Lloyd Hargrave, and the two men walked around the outside of Bronwyn and Jon’s house. That afternoon, Debbie asked her children if Bronwyn’s daughters had been to school that day “And they said, ‘No, mum, they weren’t’.”
The next key thing the couple remember is Mr Nolan receiving a call from Jon Winfield. “He said, ‘Would you mind going next door and breaking into the house for me and having a look around?’ ” Mr Nolan said.
“He said ‘Because I’ve been trying to ring Bronwyn, I want you to have a look and see if Bronwyn’s there’.”
With Mr Winfield saying he’d call back in 20 minutes, Mr Nolan went to see Hargrave again.
“I said ‘Mate, he’s rung me up. He wants me to break into the house.’ ”
The two men did what had been asked, and Mr Nolan told Mr Winfield when he called back that no one was in the home.
“He said ‘Can you go and put the phone back on the hook please?’ So I went back up there and put the phone back on the hook.”
Debbie Hall said when she got home from work, her husband told her what had happened.
“I’ve gone, ‘Well, I want to go up and have a look’. Something not right here,” she said.
“My normal brain’s thinking, ‘No, he wouldn’t do anything to her’. But the other half of my brain’s going, ‘yes, he would’.”
She said that unusually for Mr Winfield, a “neat freak”, the house was “dishevelled”.
Bronwyn had still been unpacking boxes, having only moved back into the house on the Friday before she went missing.
Prior to that, she had been living in a townhouse with her daughters after separating from Mr Winfield, but had moved back home to protect her property rights and save money.
“She’d had dinner on the Sunday night. There were plates in the sink, with scraps on them,” she said.
“I looked in the washing machine. There was wet washing in the washing machine. I hung the washing out. All the kids’ stuff. All kids’ clothes.”
In the main bedroom, Bronwyn’s toiletries and makeup had been left behind. “I’m looking around going she hasn’t taken any of this – why would she go on holiday without all this stuff?
“The bed was unmade. The only thing that I could see that was missing was her handbag.
“Even if it was an impromptu holiday, I would still pack some essential items. But there was nothing. It was all still there.”
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