Missing mum mystery: police ‘botched probe’
A former homicide detective has condemned as ‘disgraceful’ the early investigation into the sudden disappearance of a devoted NSW mother, Bronwyn Winfield.
A former homicide detective has condemned as “disgraceful” the early investigation into the sudden disappearance of a devoted NSW mother, saying there was “very little done” after she vanished in 1993 in the middle of a tense divorce from her husband.
Bronwyn Winfield, 31, would never have abandoned the two young daughters she adored, says Glenn Taylor, a former detective sergeant who was the first person to seriously investigate the case after years of neglect by police.
“I treated it as a major investigation and strongly suspected she had been murdered,” Taylor says.
Bronwyn has not been seen or heard from since a night in May 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.
Her husband, Jon Winfield, was the last known person to see her alive and said he believed she simply walked away from her two little girls.
In 2002, a coroner recommended Mr Winfield be prosecuted over Bronwyn’s alleged murder, but the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions refused, citing insufficient evidence.
Mr Winfield still lives in the same seaside town of Lennox Head on the NSW north coast where Bronwyn vanished.
He has always strenuously denied any involvement in Bronwyn going missing, has never been charged in connection to it, and raised her daughters in the town.
Most mornings, the 69-year-old retired bricklayer carves through the waves on the idyllic surf breaks alongside friends of Bronwyn.
Some of those friends openly declare their suspicion that he killed his wife.
Breaking his long public silence in an email to The Australian on the eve of the podcast, Mr Winfield blamed his wife’s disappearance on mental health problems.
“There is a generational history of mental illness, both male and female in (Bronwyn’s) family,” he wrote.
Mr Winfield answered police questions in a 1998 formal interview he agreed to at Ballina station soon after then sergeant Taylor started properly investigating Bronwyn’s case for the first time.
Twelve years later, in 2010, another experienced detective, George Radmore from the state’s homicide squad, led a reinvestigation.
Bronwyn was never found.
Mr Thomas’s project has been brewing for several years, emerging from many and varied independent approaches to the investigative journalist about Bronwyn’s disappearance during The Australian’s ground-breaking podcast The Teacher’s Pet into the disappearance of Lyn Simms.
Mr Winfield’s email to The Australian on Tuesday was written in response to attempts to contact him for an interview, including a note dropped in his letterbox.
“I have previously made a sworn statement in 1998 in which I answered 415 questions and as I said to George Radmore in 2010, I stand by these answers I gave,” Mr Winfield wrote.
He said he might bring legal action depending on the content of the podcast series.
Mr Taylor’s connection to Mr Winfield’s case began in 1998 when he and another detective were visited by Bronwyn’s brother Andy Read and his wife, Michelle, in Ballina on the state’s north coast.
The couple asked for “some fresh eyes” on Bronwyn’s disappearance from nearby Lennox Head, saying they were “just not happy that this is going to be left as a missing person (case) – we think there’s more to it”, Mr Taylor said.
“When we started looking into the matter, I mean, as a homicide investigator, it was abundantly clear very early in the initial reinvestigation that it needed a lot more work done and then a lot of formal statements.”
Mr Taylor had been a detective sergeant with the homicide squad in Newcastle before being transferred to Ballina.
When he heard about Bronwyn, he was intrigued, and then suspicious, the podcast reveals.
Bronwyn and her husband, formally separated in March 1993 and she moved out of the family home in Sandstone Crescent with the children. It was Jon’s “castle”, Bronwyn said in handwritten notes obtained as part of the podcast series investigation.
Seven weeks later, after obtaining advice from solicitors and family and friends, she moved back home while Mr Winfield was working in Sydney.
On Sunday, May 16, two days after her return, Mr Winfield went home too. Bronwyn put her daughters to bed that night, and was never seen or heard from again.
Mr Winfield woke daughters Chrystal and Lauren, 10 and 5, and left the house with them about 10.40pm in the family car to drive to Sydney.
He reported Bronwyn missing 11 days later, saying she had told him she needed a short break and she got into someone’s car at the house on the night she went missing.
Mr Taylor said there were clear and shocking shortfalls in the investigation in the first five years after the disappearance, before he became involved.
“I still believe that it was in the senior officers’ mind that this woman had, in fact, just voluntarily decided to leave,” he said.
“It was fairly haphazard, the investigation. There was very, very little done. There were no statements ever taken from any particular person like neighbours. I mean absolute critical areas, like there was no forensic investigation of the home.
“There was no forensic investigation of the motor vehicle that Jonathon Winfield had taken within hours of arriving back from Sydney at the marital house.
“And over the years, I think there was only initially a few inquiries done and then it just fell back to a missing person and nothing was done until years later.”
Mr Winfield has suggested to police that Bronwyn left to start a new life, with a new identity. But Mr Taylor has told the Bronwyn podcast that all of the missing mother’s friends and close associates who gave statements in the reinvestigation were adamant she “absolutely adored her children”.
During his investigation, Mr Taylor obtained dozens of statements, including one from Mr Winfield in which he denied involvement.
“There is just no way that she would have left those children that night and not come back to the house … She was just so attached to them,” Mr Taylor said.
“She was seeking sole custody of both the children. She was a very, very good mother, according to everyone that we spoke to.
“It was just absolutely, totally out of her character to just walk out and leave those children, not have any further contact.
“It just wouldn’t happen unless she couldn’t prevent it. That’s why it was extremely suspicious.”
He is unable to say why that wasn’t immediately the view of investigators, but suggests that sometimes “police do get extremely busy with other matters”.
Robberies, break-ins and sexual assaults consume time and resources.
“It should have been highlighted to a commander to say, ‘Look, we believe there’s something more sinister in this, we need more resources put into this’,” Mr Taylor said. “But for one reason or another, it wasn’t done.”
He vented his frustrations about initial investigations in a letter he wrote to Mr and Mrs Read in 2003, which he shared with the podcast.
“Now that I am out of the NSW police, I can give my opinion regarding the original investigation,” Mr Taylor wrote.
“One word describes it – disgraceful.
“The house in Sandstone Crescent should have been subject to a thorough and intensive crime-scene examination. The same for the Ford motor vehicle.
“There is nothing in the running sheets to indicate the vehicle was even looked at.
“There was not one single statement taken from any witness and, more importantly, no statement or interview was taken from Jon Winfield.”
Mr Winfield never left Lennox Head and maintains he has nothing to hide.
In 1999, a year after Mr Taylor started investigating, Mr Winfield sold the Sandstone Crescent house.
He moved to a newer, grander house much closer to his favourite beach, Boulders.
A flat roof gives him 360 degree views, almost certainly to the ocean.
Mr Winfield’s daughter from a previous relationship, Jodie, and the daughter he had with Bronwyn, Lauren, still live close by and are supportive and have a good relationship with their father.
Chrystal, Bronwyn’s daughter from a previous marriage, is living in Sydney and has had a strained relationship with her stepfather Jon, whom she calls Dad, as well as with Lauren and Jodie.
Mr Winfield remains lean and fit and is known to be an early riser, up at 5am or earlier to make the most of the surf breaks.
He tinkers on his two cars in his garage, goes for bike rides and walks in thongs and a T-shirt and shorts, and stops for long chats with surfie mates.
Bronwyn’s disappearance may go unsaid in these talks, but is far from forgotten.
Bronwyn is a podcast series with new episodes released in June and July, 2024.
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Do you know more? Email us at bronwyn@theaustralian.com.au
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