Bronwyn Winfield was ‘stalked, harassed’ before vanishing
Bronwyn Winfield told a potential new love interest her estranged husband was sitting outside her unit and following her | EPISODE 3 OUT NOW
Missing NSW mother Bronwyn Winfield told a male friend and potential new love interest that her estranged husband, Jon, was stalking and harassing her, saying he was sitting outside her unit and following her.
Gary Jackson was a brickies’ labourer for Mr Winfield in Lennox Head on the NSW far north coast before Bronwyn vanished from the town 31 years ago.
He went to New Zealand for nine months after helping Mr Winfield build a house, returning in March 1993, the same month Bronwyn and Jon separated.
Within a day or so of arriving back, Mr Jackson went to hamburger and sandwich shop Eden’s Takeaway and saw Bronwyn there, he said in a police statement detailed in a new episode of The Australian’s investigative podcast Bronwyn.
She asked him to meet her at the surf club after work, and when he joined her there later that afternoon, she spoke about her recent separation.
“She told me that she had seen a tarot reader and he told her that some tall guy who was a Sagittarian would return to her life,” Mr Jackson said.
“She had obviously formed the opinion that this person was me.
“She told me that she had left Jon not long before and had taken a flat on her own. We sat on the beach and spoke for about half an hour and then I went home.”
Bronwyn worked casual shifts at Eden’s Takeaway while raising two daughters, Chrystal and Lauren, then 10 and 5.
Mr Jackson was staying at the home of the store’s managers, his friends Robyn and Peter Shanahan – it was the same house he had helped Mr Winfield build before moving to New Zealand.
In the couple of days after their chat on the beach, Bronwyn rang him at home, leaving messages when he wasn’t there.
On one occasion, he went to Bronwyn’s flat when there were two children home, he told police.
“Bronwyn commenced to tell me that Jon had been constantly harassing her on the phone and wanted her to go back to the house,” he said.
“She said he would ring up and when she terminated the call, he wouldn’t hang his phone up and this would leave the line open. She told me he did this on purpose so that she could not use her phone.
“She also told me he would often sit out the front of her house in his car and sit there for lengthy periods, watching the flat.
“She also said that whenever she walked down the street to go to the shops, he would follow her and was generally stalking her.”
He saw Bronwyn about three or four times, visiting only in daylight “because I didn’t want to be implicated in their problems and I didn’t want to be used as a pawn in any divorce proceedings”.
Mr Jackson returned to New Zealand at the end of April 1993, and didn’t see or hear from Bronwyn again. He sent her a letter after leaving Australia; recovered by police, it was posted on April 29.
Bronwyn disappeared just over two weeks later, on the night of May 16, 1993.
About a month after sending the letter, Mr Jackson phoned the Shanahans to say hello.
The couple asked if Bronwyn was travelling with him, as she was missing, he said.
Known to friends as “Jacko”, Mr Jackson gave his police statement in August 1998, more than five years after Bronwyn went missing. Police ruled him out as a person of interest.
Detectives came to suspect Mr Winfield. In 2003, a coroner recommended he be prosecuted, but the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions declined, citing insufficient evidence. Mr Winfield has always denied any involvement.
Mr Jackson’s police statement is silent on whether he and Bronwyn had a romantic or sexual relationship, but other witnesses say Mr Winfield suspected they were more than friends.
Bronwyn’s brother, Andy Read, told the podcast Mr Winfield phoned him after the marriage broke down and had a “crazy conversation” about Mr Jackson. “Jacko was a friend of the people that owned the takeaway shop that Bronwyn used to work (at) and he gave her a lift home,” Mr Read said.
“Because he’d given her a lift home on a motorbike, all of a sudden Jon’s ringing me, ‘Oh, she’s gallivanting around town, she’s in another relationship with some bloke’. He was very flustered about that, didn’t handle it well.
“Bronwyn would ring me and say ‘Oh, Jon’s parked up the road’. Obviously there must have been some confrontation because Bron had rung to say, ‘Oh, he’s accusing me of having a relationship’.”
Bronwyn’s cousin, Megan Read, said she believed Mr Jackson was “just a mate … After she left Jon, he used to come around, just chit-chat to her. He liked Bronnie, as a friend only.
“You hear Jon talking about how she was seen riding around Lennox Head on the back of a motorbike, and he claimed it was probably him that she went off with. Well, no.”
Do you know something about this case? Contact Hedley Thomas confidentially at bronwyn@theaustralian.com.au
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