Missing mum Bronwyn Winfield given legal advice before disappearing

Bronwyn Winfield was told by a solicitor she was entitled to a ‘significant share’ of assets from her failed marriage, including her husband’s ‘castle’. Five weeks later, she disappeared | LISTEN

Bronwyn and Jon Winfield and their daughter Lauren; Jon Winfield surfing at Sharpes Beach, Skennars Head, last Wednesday; the matrimonial home of Bronwyn and Jon Winfield. Picture: Liam Mendes

A devoted mother who vanished 31 years ago was told by a solicitor just weeks before she went missing that she was entitled to a “significant share” of assets from her failed marriage, including the house she called her husband’s “castle”.

After initially moving out of the family home, Bronwyn Winfield was told by another lawyer that she could return to the house, where her husband, Jon Winfield, had changed the locks in a sign she wouldn’t be welcome back.

She saw three different solicitors after separating from her husband on March 21, 1993, The Australian’s new investigative podcast, Bronwyn, reveals.

Bronwyn was seeking advice about her rights in a planned property settlement with Mr Winfield.

“You can be assured that you are entitled to a significant percentage of the assets,” one lawyer, Tony Mannering, advised in a letter to her dated April 6, 1993.

Five weeks later, on the night of May 16, Bronwyn disappeared from Lennox Head on the NSW far north coast.

Her approaches to solicitors was part of the brief of evidence at an inquest that led to Coroner Carl Milovanovich recommending in 2002 Mr Winfield be prosecuted for her alleged murder.

Then-NSW director of public prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery QC refused, citing insufficient evidence; Mr Winfield has never been charged with any offence in connection to her disappearance.

He has always denied any involvement, and told The Australian he gave police a statement in 1998, confirmed that version in 2010, and stands by it today.

Bronwyn Winfield spoke to Mr Mannering at his office in Ballina in early April 1993, a fortnight after she and her two young daughters had moved out of the family home in Sandstone Crescent, Lennox Head.

Mr Mannering took detailed notes, then summarised the facts and circumstances of their marriage and assets in the letter to her, obtained by the podcast.

The couple married in 1987.

Bronwyn had been married once before, and Mr Winfield twice before, the letter states.

Bronwyn owned furniture and a car worth about $5000 when they got together, while Mr Winfield had a car worth $1000 and “some $50,000 being his share of the proceeds of the sale of a former home owned by him (with) a previous wife”.

Assets at the time of separation included the former matrimonial home at Sandstone Crescent, which she valued at between $250,000 and $300,000.

It was not encumbered by mortgage or debt and was in her husband’s name alone.

Bronwyn had been doing some casual paid work in a friend’s hamburger and sandwich shop called Eden’s Takeaway on the beach, and Mr Winfield was a bricklayer.

“Throughout the marriage, you and your husband adopted traditional family roles in that you were the homemaker and mother,” the solicitor wrote.

Mr Mannering described some of the things that would be taken into account in a fair property settlement.

Their respective financial contributions to the marriage, and the work of Bronwyn as homemaker and parent, were part of this.

“In this regard, we note your instructions that you have been the parent to perform the majority of the parental duties for the three children, including your husband’s daughter,” he wrote.

“Further, you have been the party to the marriage who undertook the majority of the household tasks and duties.”

Bronwyn had a daughter from a previous relationship, Chrystal, then 10, and a daughter with Mr Winfield, Lauren, then 5.

Mr Winfield also had an older daughter, Jodie, who had moved to Sydney.

“We note our suggestion that you do not leave property matters for too long but contact us again in, say, one month’s time to assess when you will make your claim on your husband for the finalisation of property matters,” Mr Mannering wrote.

“In respect of dissolving your marriage, you can make an application for dissolution after 12 months has expired from the date of your separation.”

Bronwyn also asked for advice from a solicitor named Graham Holland in Byron Bay, north of Lennox.

The third solicitor she saw, Chris McDevitt, was based in ­Lismore.

Bronwyn and Mr McDevitt discussed that she was about to move back into Sandstone Crescent house from the cramped townhouse where she was living.

The lawyer told her she had every legal right to do so, the podcast reveals.

Mr McDevitt sent a formal legal letter to Mr Winfield dated Friday, May 14, two days before she vanished.

“Bronwyn is hopeful that you will both be able to reach an agreement in relation to financial ­matters and we will be writing to you further with a proposal in this regard in the near future,” the letter stated.

It was sent to the address of Mr Winfield’s brother, Peter Winfield, in Sydney.

It was where Jon Winfield was living while working in Sydney, and it’s unlikely he saw the letter before Bronwyn disappeared.

“We are instructed by Bronwyn that in her view, your marriage is at an end and that there is no prospect of a reconciliation,” the letter stated.

“In the meantime, we require your immediate agreement for Bronwyn to retain the use and possession of the Ford motor vehicle pending finalisation of your financial matters.”

Bronwyn’s next appointment in Mr McDevitt’s office was scheduled for Monday, May 17.

A page from her notepad records the time Bronwyn jotted down for the meeting: 11am.

But she disappeared the night before.

On hearing his wife had moved back into the home, Mr Winfield flew from Sydney to Ballina and returned to Sandstone Crescent on Sunday, May 16.

That night, Bronwyn, 31, put her daughters Chrystal and Lauren to bed.

She was never seen or heard from again.

Mr Winfield woke the two little girls, put them in the family’s Ford Falcon, and left the home around 10.40pm, driving through the night to Sydney.

He told Bronwyn’s brother, Andy Read, the next day, Monday, that Bronwyn left the house around 9.30pm the previous night in an unknown person’s car for a “break” for a few days.

As she didn’t meet her solicitor or contact him again to make another appointment, plans for divorce and a sale of the house were quietly shelved.

Mr Winfield kept the home on Sandstone Crescent.

Mr Read has told the podcast he had encouraged Bronwyn to move back into the house.

“That’s something I’ve always lived with since the day,: he said.

“I was the one that sort of, in that week when she found out that Jon had actually left Lennox and the house was vacant, and here she is on absolute struggle street.

“I said ‘Well. Bron, possession is nine-tenths of the law’.

“She’s just struggling for money, not getting any support from him really. I said ‘Go and get back in the house. Get back in the house. And then it’s gonna force the issue. It’s gonna force everything to be resolved.”

Friends and neighbours say Mr Winfield kept the house spotless during the marriage, and would seethe over things like spilt drinks and crumbs. Children would play with their friends in the garage so no one would make a mess.

And after two previous failed marriages, he did not want to lose the house, witnesses have told the podcast.

Bronwyn wrote about how his obsession with the house he built with his bare hands contributed to strain on their relationship, in notes discovered after her ­disappearance.

“I drifted away from Jon as he became more and more depressed about the house being less than immaculate and the death of his mother, the only woman he thought was perfect,” she wrote.

“I couldn’t leave him at the time as he was so unhappy and depressed and hated life and probably me. I tried to plead and talk to him to open up and get things off his chest but nothing would help him.

“The house that we built became Jon’s castle and my prison.”

In 1999, a year after police started seriously investigating Bronwyn’s disappearance for the first time, Mr Winfield sold the home.

Now aged 69, he still lives in Lennox Head, in a newer house closer to his favourite surfing beach, Boulders.

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