Inside the disappearance of devoted mum Bronwyn Joy Winfield
Bronwyn Joy Winfield was a young, bubbly, life-loving young woman who rose above a difficult childhood to become a devoted mother. She disappeared in 1993 – never to be seen again. In a new podcast, Hedley Thomas investigates | Listen now.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Bronwyn Joy Winfield, 31, could have walked down the short driveway of her home on Sandstone Crescent any time she wished, past the palm tree in the front yard and the elaborate low-brick letterbox, then looked right and glimpsed the Pacific Ocean.
She could have drawn in both the sea air and the view over Boulder Beach, which produced some of her husband Jon’s favourite surf breaks.
The house, built by Jon on an estate with street names like Sandstone Crescent, Basalt Court and Granite Street, just south of the township of Lennox Head on the NSW Far North Coast, stood on a ridge that offered partial water views. There were tinnies and small fishing boats parked on virtually every second driveway.
Bronwyn had left behind a good network of friends and family in Sydney. The mother of two small daughters and stepmother to Jon’s older daughter, embedded here as she was in seaside suburbia, was far away from her past spent mainly in the industrial port of Wollongong and Sydney’s southern beaches like Cronulla.
So in the early 1990s, on the horseshoe of Sandstone Crescent, married to a bricklayer with an excellent reputation in the industry, a car in the driveway and a family to raise, she just might have thought she had it all.
But everything was not as it seemed.
The devoted young mother has not been seen or heard from since 1993, and her disappearance is the subject of The Australian’s new investigative podcast series, Bronwyn, by Hedley Thomas, who is delving deep into the cold case.
Thomas’s project has been brewing for several years as friends and family of Bronwyn – as well as other sources – reached out about her disappearance while Thomas was working on his 2018 investigative podcast The Teacher’s Pet.
Bronwyn, born in Wollongong, south of Sydney, in April 1962, had had an unstable childhood. A mother with psychiatric issues who walked out on the family. An alcoholic father. A peripatetic home life – being bumped from the houses of friends and relatives and never really laying down solid roots.
At 20, Bronwyn gave birth to a daughter, Chrystal, to her then partner, and after a failed short-term marriage to another man, she met Lennox Head builder Jon Winfield.
Winfield had been married twice before. He was handsome, fit, and loved nothing more than going for a surf in his spare time.
His favourite haunt was the beach known as Boulders, a 600m arc of coastline between the Lennox headland and Ballina, literally festooned with thousands of basalt boulders.
Its consistent surf break had a reputation way beyond Lennox, a coastal village of around 5,000 people between Ballina to the south and the glitzy and glamorous Byron Bay to the north.
In the late 1980s Bronwyn left behind busy Sydney for the surf, sun and sand of Lennox. And her new man.
She would later write about the early days of their relationship: “I was in love with him and would have done anything for him – he was (or so it seemed) honest, trustworthy and didn’t mind the fact that I had Chrystal and he was wonderful to both of us.” (Jon had a daughter – Jodie – to another relationship.)
They soon married, had a child together – Lauren – in 1988, then ultimately settled in Lennox Head. She had next to no family support to help raise the kids.
As for husband Jon, she wrote in a diary note that he became distant, working and surfing while she was left at home in Sandstone Crescent.
She wrote that she “begged him to spend time with us”, and that she had grown “dreadfully lonely”.
Bronwyn wrote that the house in Sandstone Crescent, built with her husband’s bare hands, was “Jon’s castle”, and had in turn become her “prison”.
To the outsider, the marital fracturing unfolding at Sandstone Crescent was probably similar to countless cases of domestic disharmony across the nation.
But close family and friends knew otherwise.
Some later told police that Bronwyn feared for her safety in the presence of her husband. That she told them he was possessive and dominant, had assaulted her and threatened to kill her if she badmouthed him around town. He was said to have lifted her up in a chair, then dropped it with her in it. That she was scared of Jon.
Bronwyn said he was also fanatical about cleanliness in the house, going off about things as small as biscuit crumbs on the tiles.
According to police statements and interviews by Hedley Thomas, she said to several relatives – if anything happens to me, please take care of the children and particularly Chrystal, who was another man’s child.
Unanimously, everyone said she was wholeheartedly devoted to her children, vigilant about their care and safety, and would never voluntarily leave them.
Bronwyn and Jon formally separated on March 21, 1993, and she and the children moved into a narrow, rented townhouse at the western end of Byron Street on the road out of town. The cramped complex, with its view of other townhouse rooves and garages, was far removed from the briny breezes riffling up Sandstone Crescent.
Less than two months later, with Jon working in Sydney, Bronwyn took the advice of family members and solicitors and moved back into the house at Sandstone Crescent. Jon had changed the locks but she called in a locksmith and gained access to the home.
She had been to three separate lawyers, seeking advice about her rights in a planned property settlement with Jon, an intended division of their assets.
On hearing that his estranged wife was occupying the house, Jon Winfield flew from Sydney to Ballina Airport.
That night – Sunday, May 16 – Jon returned to Sandstone Crescent.
Bronwyn was at home with her daughters Chrystal and Lauren.
The children were tucked into bed around 8.30pm, as usual.
A couple of hours later, Chrystal and Lauren were gathered up by Jon and placed in the family’s white Ford Falcon.
Jon drove through the night to Sydney. He told Bronwyn’s brother Andy and Andy’s wife Michelle in Sydney the following afternoon, Monday May 17, that Bronwyn had left the house about 9.30pm in an unknown person’s car to go away for ‘a break’ of a few days.
Jon has always denied any involvement in Bronwyn’s disappearance. He made a sworn statement in 1998 and confirmed that version to police again in 2010. He told The Australian stands by these answers he gave.
Bronwyn had an appointment to see a local solicitor that Monday morning. She was determined to sort her life out. To establish custody of the children and any financial entitlements that were owed her due to the collapse of her marriage.
She never turned up for that meeting.
And Bronwyn Joy Winfield, the young, bubbly, life-loving young woman who rose above a difficult childhood to become a devoted mother but was, for whatever reason, unlucky in love, was never seen again.
Do you know more? Email us at bronwyn@theaustralian.com.au
To hear directly from the Bronwyn podcast team each week, click here.
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