Chilling witness account emerges in Bronwyn Winfield mystery
Retired nurse Judy Singh has come forward on the Bronwyn podcast with an extraordinary story of seeing a figure that ‘resembled a body’ being transported late one night in 1993.
A chilling account from a new witness of seeing what she fears was missing mother Bronwyn Winfield’s body wrapped in sheets in the back of a car could reignite investigations into the 31 year mystery.
Retired nurse Judy Singh has come forward on the Bronwyn podcast with an extraordinary story of seeing a figure that “resembled a body” being transported late at night in mid-May, 1993.
The Ford Falcon was being driven by Ms Winfield’s estranged husband, Jon Winfield, Ms Singh told the podcast.
If her recollection about timing is correct, it was the night Bronwyn vanished from Lennox Head on the NSW far north coast, leaving behind two girls, 10 and 5.
“I know that he had something in that car that resembled a body. Just made me feel sick. Just a body shape in the back seat,” she said.
The Bronwyn podcast was launched by The Australian last month and has been piecing together events that occurred in the idyllic surf town decades ago through documentary evidence and new interviews.
Mr Winfield has always denied any involvement in his wife’s disappearance and suspected murder and he has never been charged in connection to it.
He was the last known person to see or hear from his wife.
In 2002, deputy state coroner Carl Milovanovich recommended Mr Winfield be prosecuted over his wife’s alleged murder. The then-director of public prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdery KC, refused on the grounds of insufficient evidence.
NSW police told The Australian last month there had been no new leads in the past decade that could take the case forward.
Ms Singh lived about 50m from the Winfields and says she tried to report what she saw from her upper level balcony to local police within weeks, and at Byron Bay station years later when she was accompanied by a doctor from New Zealand. The doctor has verified the account of going to the station.
The police she dealt with were “hardly interested” and never got back to her, Ms Singh said.
Police have been heavily criticised from their own ranks and from Bronwyn’s family and friends in the podcast series over inadequacies in the initial investigation.
Ms Singh became emotional as she recounted what she saw, and said the image of the wrapped figure in the back seat had never left her.
Mr Winfield looked up to the lamp light on Ms Singh’s balcony and was clearly identifiable as the vehicle’s driver, she said.
“Without a doubt in my mind, it was him,” Ms Singh said.
“He looked up when he saw me. And I could see this mummy-like thing.
“I hate saying mummy because it is somebody’s Mummy, but it was a long white (thing) with a rounded head right in the very corner of the back of the car as it went past.”
The 69-year-old former Lennox Head resident contacted The Australian’s Hedley Thomas on June 9 and in subsequent interviews described what she witnessed.
“I said to my son, `this is my opportunity to tell somebody again’,” she said.
“Before you leave this earth you don’t want to have regret or something kind of plaguing you that wasn’t right.”
Mr Winfield, a bricklayer and keen surfer, still lives in Lennox Head, says he gave police a statement in 1998, confirmed the version in 2009 and stands by it today.
Over several days, The Australian reconstructed the moment using computer generated images, video animation and by using an actual 1987 Ford Falcon XF sedan, the same model as the Winfield family car.
The exercise with the Falcon demonstrated a body of Bronwyn’s size could easily fit in the car along with a surfboard as described.
Ms Singh’s surname was Willebrands when she and her children lived in a rented home in Granite St, Lennox Head, very close to the Winfield house in adjoining Sandstone Crescent.
She placed the time of her sighting of Mr Winfield as being around midnight.
An interior light was on in the vehicle, allowing her to see inside as it drove slowly past her house, she said.
“I was having trouble with my pregnancy. I was worried about miscarriage, actually, and just sitting up. My children had gone to bed. I just couldn’t sleep worrying about it all,” she said.
“I saw the car pull out at the end of the street and the light was on in their car. It was fairly squeaky brakes on that car.
“He drove very slowly along the street, but he had left the car light on and I could see directly into the car.
“I had a small lantern on the balcony rail, and he kind of looked up this night, and I saw this, what looked to be like a mummy in the back of the car.”
She added: “The head of the mummy was in the corner. Pressing up against the door. She was quite upright.”
A surfboard also rested on its side in the car, with its nose in the front passenger side and tail in the back seat behind the driver.
The separate body-like shape was behind the front passenger street and stretched out over the centre console.
She suspects something stopped one of the car’s doors from fully closing, causing the interior light to come on.
“It was a square Falcon. And I remember it well. It always had squeaky brakes,” she said.
The Winfields owned a 1987 Ford Falcon XF sedan, according to inquest transcripts and Mr Winfield’s own account to police.
The XF was the last of the square Falcons, and Ford sold about 280,000 of the vehicles.
Ms Singh said the shape in the back seat appeared to be wrapped in material ‘like a bedsheet” that was “either very pale green or cream not white” in colour.
“You could see the form,” she said.
“I thought, well, even if he was taking out belongings, you wouldn’t make it look like a body.
“The kids were in bed. I had two older children. And this thing in my head kept saying ‘oh it looked like a mummy’. I thought, ‘oh shit’. When I heard that she had been reported missing, that might have been their Mummy.
“That’s what sticks in my mind about the shape of what I saw.”
On the critical issue of timing, Ms Singh said the sighting was “a couple of weeks after my birthday”.
Ms Singh’s birthday is May 1. Bronwyn disappeared two weeks and one day later, on Sunday, May 16, 1993.
If her recollection is correct about when the sighting occurred, other evidence strongly supports it being the night Bronwyn went missing.
That’s because Mr Winfield was working in Sydney and had not been in Lennox Head for several weeks prior to May 16.
He was there that night after flying into Ballina, and was back in Sydney the next morning after driving the Falcon through the night with Bronwyn’s girls, Chrystal and Lauren.
He says the last time he saw or heard from Bronwyn was at 9.30pm when she was picked up by an unknown person in a car after suddenly saying she needed a short break away.
The Winfields’ next-door neighbour, Murray Nolan, says that at 10.40pm he heard the Falcon’s distinctive squeaky brakes and looked out his window to see it backing out with its lights and engine off.
Bottoming out and leaving a gouge mark on the road, the car then rolled down Sandstone Crescent to the bottom of the hill before its lights and engine came on and it drove off.
Ms Singh describes a different trip, with the car driving away from the Winfield family home down Granite St past her house.
“I’m thinking this was later (than the sighting by Mr Nolan),” she said.
“It was long, wasn’t a surfboard because the surfboard would have sharp edges. I’ve been through that in my head as well.
“It had to be something round, like a head or a ball. But then it was long and, you know, covered.
“I don’t know what colour sheets Jon had but it was like a shroud, you know, like a body. I’ve dealt with a lot of dead bodies in my life as a nurse. I can’t be mistaken because the light was on in the car.”
There was nobody else in the car, she said.
On May 27, 1993, 11 days after Bronwyn disappeared, Mr Winfield went to police in Ballina to report her missing.
It triggered visits to Sandstone Crescent by detectives Graeme Diskin and Wayne Temby.
Residents were talking among themselves about the disappearance and the police presence at the house.
Ms Singh was informed of the situation by neighbour Virginia Beves, and went to Ballina station to tell them what she saw.
It was “very close” to when she’d allegedly witnessed Mr Winfield in the car.
“I talked to the Ballina police first, and they took me behind the counter. They gave me a card,” she said.
“I kept that card for a long, long time, in case somebody rang me and I could give them the particulars that were written on the card.”
Asked how police responded, she said: “Hardly interested. Almost had to beg them to let me say something.
“Those early, early weeks was when I went there. I actually just wanted to get it off my conscience and my mind. Even though I had stuff going on myself. I went away feeling so despondent and thinking about those dear little girls.”
As the year progressed, her daughter was born and had severe medical issues. Ms Singh had to stop working and came into financial difficulties.
“It was really touch and go and I just got tied up,” she said.
The second time she tried to alert police was in the early 2000s. A New Zealand doctor she befriended encouraged her to report it after hearing her story. The two women drove to Byron Bay police station together.
“I spoke to a gentleman there and I said, you know, like. ‘I’m just always haunted by this story about this woman at the end of the street’.
“They didn’t do an official interview. I said, like, ‘is there anyone here that wants to write something down?’ Police are hardly interested in any of it.”
She recalled the police officer in Byron came from Tamworth.
“I told him who I was when I lived in Tamworth, and I said ‘my sister used to work at the Tamworth police station. She was a superintendent’s private secretary’.
“He said, ‘you’re not Judy?’ And I said ‘yes’. He said ‘that is amazing’. He knew my sister.”
Contacted by Thomas in New Zealand last week, the doctor confirmed she went to Byron police station with Ms Singh.
The doctor volunteered that having observed Ms Singh and heard what she had to say, she believed the nurse. The doctor said she regarded her as someone with sincere and honest concerns about what she saw.
Before the podcast started, Thomas had heard about Ms Singh and what she potentially witnessed from someone who knew her, Kerry McLean.
The Australian was trying to find Ms Singh when, coincidentally and independently, she suddenly made contact.
Ms Singh had not listened to the Bronwyn podcast, but after seeing it advertised she had been encouraged by her son to come forward.
“I nearly died recently and thought I’m taking this to the grave. It’s always some relief when you can get something out, you know. For the sake of those girls,” she said.
Former homicide detective Glenn Taylor has said the initial police investigation was “disgraceful” and that very little was done.
Bronwyn’s family and friends have also complained bitterly that she was treated as a runaway mum rather than a potential murder victim before Mr Taylor took over and started seriously investigating for the first time in 1998, five years after she vanished.
Do you know something about this case? Contact Hedley Thomas confidentially at bronwyn@theaustralian.com.au
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