Bronwyn Winfield’s family fears she is buried under a house in Sydney

In a case riddled with theories, family and friends have not discounted that missing mother Bronwyn Winfield may have been buried three decades ago at building site in suburban Sydney | LISTEN

Jon Winfield was working as a bricklayer at a site in Sydney’s south at the time of his wife's disappearance.

In a case riddled with theories, family and friends have not discounted that missing mother Bronwyn Winfield may have been buried three decades ago at building site in suburban Sydney.

Bronwyn, 31, vanished from her home in Lennox Head, on the NSW far north coast, on May 16, 1993.

At the time of her disappearance, Bronwyn’s estranged husband, Jon Winfield, was working as a bricklayer on a house site in the Sutherland Shire south of the Sydney CBD.

Her family has always had suspicions her body was driven from Lennox Head and interred in the foundations of a house in the suburb of Illawong.

Bronwyn’s brother, Andy Read, who still lives in the Shire, told The Australian’s Bronwyn podcast that there had been plenty of theories bandied about over the years about the fate of his sister. A coroner determined in 2002 that she died around the time of her disappearance.

“We tossed up the idea that possibly he (Jon) could have driven all the way down here with Bronwyn in the boot of that car,” Mr Read said.

In March 1993, with her marriage breaking down, Bronwyn and her two daughters – Chrystal, then 10, and Lauren, 5 – moved out of the family home in Sandstone Crescent, south of Lennox village, and into a flat in town.

Bronwyn had struggled to make ends meet.

By mid-May, Jon Winfield had changed the locks on the Sandstone Crescent house and was working as a bricklayer on a house site in Illawong, a bushy suburb that backs on to national parks northwest of Cronulla, south of Sydney.

The house was being constructed by Sydney builder Glenn Robert Webster.

Mr Webster and Mr Winfield, an accomplished bricklayer, had worked on projects together when Mr Winfield and Bronwyn were living in the Shire around 1987. (They would marry in December 1987.)

While Mr Winfield was in Sydney working on the Illawong site, Bronwyn decided to move back into the Sandstone Crescent home with her daughters.

She engaged a locksmith to get access to the house.

She was there for a couple of days before Mr Winfield found out. He then flew north on Sunday, May 16, 1993, and confronted his wife in the home.

Mr Winfield would later tell police that Bronwyn told him she needed a break from the children and left with a stranger. He then decided to drive back to Sydney with the children in the family’s white Ford Falcon.

Bronwyn has never been seen since.

Arriving in Sydney on Monday, May 17, Mr Winfield took the children to the home of his former wife Jennifer, before turning up at Bronwyn’s brother Andy and his wife Michelle’s house.

“We went up to the back of the car and he opened the boot,” Mich­elle told the podcast. “That’s when he got out the two small ­pillowcases that had … you know … like three or four items of clothing chucked in each pillowcase, but nothing was adequate for Sydney weather.

“I said, ‘Why is everything shoved into a pillowcase?’ I had a quick look inside, and I said ‘There’s not that much in here’. There were a couple of T-shirts and singlets and bits and pieces, but nothing substantial.

“And I said, ‘Jon, why didn’t you … pack properly? Where’s the kids’ clothes?’

“And then he said, you know, ‘I had the kids … I had to drive in the night-time because it’s better for them if I drive at night. So I just quickly got stuff together and took off.’ And that was his excuse.”

In a statement to police in 1998, Mr Webster (there is absolutely no suggestion of wrongdoing by Mr Webster, who remains a professional and highly respected builder in Sydney) said that during the Illawong house project, “Jon suddenly left”.

“Jon didn’t tell me where he was going,” Mr Webster told police. “I don’t remember how I found out but I later established that Jon had gone up to Lennox Head.”

Mr Webster said “it didn’t take long” before Mr Winfield was back in Sydney with Chrystal and Lauren.

In the statement, he said he didn’t recall Jon being “any different” when he saw him and didn’t recall whether he mentioned “anything about Bronwyn”.

Mr Winfield briefly continued working on the house.

Mr Webster said to police: “I vaguely recall him telling me that he wasn’t able to finish the job.”

He couldn’t recall any reasons given, if any, by Mr Winfield.

Mr Winfield has always strenuously denied any involvement in the disappearance of Bronwyn. He has never been charged in relation to the case of his missing wife.

However, Andy Read, himself an experienced builder, often wondered whether his sister had been buried at a building site.

“It’s quite easy to hide something underneath any part of a slab,” he told the podcast. “There was a lot of excavation. It (the Illawong house) was at that stage of coming short of what we call ‘out of the ground’.

“You would hide (a body) underneath in the preparation or in the soil or the sand. You’ve got footings all the way around the edge. It’s seriously not a hard issue to hide someone like that.”

Just last month, in June, a former Lennox Head neighbour of the Winfields, Judy Singh, said that on the night of the vanishing she had been sitting on her balcony in nearby Granite Street and seen a white Ford Falcon drive slowly past with its interior light on. Ms Singh said she saw what looked like a body wrapped up like a “mummy” in the back seat of the car.

She alleged Mr Winfield was driving the Falcon.

Ms Singh reported what she saw to police soon after, and again many years later, but police failed to act on her information.

Late last month, detectives from the NSW unsolved homicide squad in Sydney took a formal statement from Ms Singh.

This sighting promoted speculation that perhaps Bronwyn’s body had been secreted closer to home in Lake Ainsworth, a recreational freshwater lake just north of Lennox Head village.

For Bronwyn’s family, however, the house building site ­theory has never gone away.

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

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