Voices for the Victims
The Teacher’s Pet creator Hedley Thomas returns with a new podcast investigation for The Australian.
Bronwyn Winfield disappeared 31 years ago from the idyllic surf town of Lennox Head. She was a devoted mother of two little girls, and was going through a painful separation from her husband, Jon Winfield.
Jon Winfield has always maintained Bronwyn just went away and denies any wrongdoing.
Subscribers to The Australian and registered users hear episodes of ‘Bronwyn’ first. Plus, you can read
37 most recent episodes
Visit website →A blockbuster new podcast from The Australian and our investigative star reporter Hedley Thomas: Sick To Death is the horrifying true story of a surgeon who made catastrophic mistakes - and went unchallenged by a broken system. Hedley Thomas is here
In the final episode for some time, the owners of a Sydney property learn that the missing mother’s remains may have been concealed under concrete there.
Andy, Michelle and Madi reflect on some of the major milestones over the past 18 months of podc
Megan performs a dramatic backflip by changing her evidence about Jon’s moves in Sydney in the hours after his wife Bronwyn’s disappearance. Megan expresses doubts about whether Bronwyn's body was in the car’s boot during a road trip from Sandstone C
Retired detective Glenn Taylor who has worked harder on Bronwyn’s case than any other police officer faces a problem. Will his video-taped formal interview in Ballina’s police station in 1998 with murder suspect Jon Winfield be ruled out in the event
After a break of almost three months between episodes, Andy and Michelle come away from a meeting for the loved ones of homicide victims with newly found patience and confidence in the restarted police investigation into Bronwyn’s 1993 disappearance.
The family of slain gangster Stewart John Regan has been frustrated by an unwillingness on the part of the NSW Police Unsolved Homicide Unit to share information about its investigation into his death. It's the same police unit leading the investigat
After a bizarre last ditch bid by Jon Winfield to curry favour from a Ballina detective, the coroner heading the inquest into Bronwyn’s presumed murder sums up the case against the surfing bricklayer.
He describes Bronwyn’s predicament in May 1993,
Jon’s daughter Jodie returns to the witness box for a searching cross examination on Day 4 of the inquest.She volunteers that she looked in the boot of the Ford Falcon on the morning that she says her father arrived at the Shire hair salon, Intercutz
Did Bronwyn have a secret boyfriend with whom she was having a clandestine relationship before he spirited her away from her daughters and her Lennox Head home? Was Jon’s neighbour Murray affected by painkillers or cannabis when he says he saw Jon le
Bronwyn’s state of mind and powerful maternal instincts for her two daughters face a determined challenge as Jon’s side depicts the missing mother in a negative light.
Bronwyn’s care for Chrystal and Lauren comes into sharp focus when Jon’s lawyer a
Jon’s lawyer Craig Leggat does his homework, analysing witness statements and other documents to discover significant and inconsequential flaws in the evidence. He knows that if things go badly in the inquest, Jon faces a murder charge. But if defect
Bronwyn’s friend and cousin Megan Read drops new bombshells while under oath on Day 2 of the inquest. Megan gives evidence at the coronial inquiry about having been told by Jon Winfield that he saw and spoke to Bronwyn in Brisbane, several years afte
The inquest into Bronwyn’s disappearance hears that when detective Glenn Taylor attended Jon and Bronwyn’s former family home at Lennox Head, dozens of photographs lined the walls. Glenn only started investigating the unsolved case five years after B
For more than 140 years, the Lismore courthouse has stood firm through a procession of natural disasters. Withstanding everything nature has thrown at the town, the courthouse has witnessed a tragic roll call of cases. Cases such as the alleged shoot
In this special live event recorded at the Art Gallery of NSW on a warm late summer evening, listeners and Bronwyn's family gather for a Q&A with the podcast team, including Hedley Thomas, David Murray, Matthew Condon, Madi Walsh and Claire Harvey.
News of Jon Winfield’s windfall and changes to the Will of his near-neighbour, Bev, shock the Lennox Head community and galvanise Bev’s friends and relations.
Bev’s cousin Cathy comes forward and says she was isolated from knowledge of what had happ
Lennox Head locals are suspicious of Jon’s motives with a well-off elderly woman who lives alone and has a terminal illness. Jon has been spending a lot of time at her ocean-facing house, helping with renovations and an expensive makeover. As she’s d
Investigations reveal Jon’s fast work to get federal government welfare payments diverted from Bronwyn’s bank account to his account when she went missing. The single parent pension and other payments to Bronwyn to help her raise the children were cu
Andy seeks expert advice about the x-raying of a concrete slab at a house in Illawong in The Shire – the place he refers to as God’s Country, where he and Bronwyn grew up.
After getting more intel about a concrete pour in May 1993, Andy and Madi vis
The ‘smoking gun’ is data from the phone company about any local calls made from Sandstone Crescent on the night of May 16, 1993. Jon insists that Bronwyn made a couple of local calls, then a car came to pick her up and she disappeared. But if no loc
Jon disparages Bronwyn’s mother Barbara as a sex worker. In one of his final comments in his 1998 interview with police investigating the disappearance of Jon’s estranged wife five years earlier, Jon’s smear of the grandmother of Lauren and Chrystal
Police Commissioner Karen Webb and her top Homicide detectives come under fire.
Bronwyn’s brother, Andy Read, calls out a lack of effort, urgency and competence in the police investigations of his sister’s case, which has been hopelessly bungled all
A politician and a leading newspaper speculate that a serial killer could have murdered Bronwyn and 66 other women on the New South Wales north coast over the past three decades.
Bronwyn’s daughter Chrystal – who still supports Jon Winfield – welcom
For 31 years, key parts of Jon’s story have been taken for granted.
Even while he has been a longtime murder suspect, nobody challenged Jon’s claims that he made two long-distance telephone calls from the house at Sandstone Crescent on the night Bro
What was going on in Jon’s marriage to Bronwyn leading up to the separation in 1993?
Why did he suddenly take a flight from Sydney one Sunday afternoon to return to the house in Lennox Head when Bronwyn moved back in with her daughters? What did Bro
A surprise message opens a long-closed door to Jon’s secret past.
Sonia Lee has been listening to every episode in the Bronwyn podcast series while weighing the right time to come forward for the first time. She made a promise to her grandmother on
In this episode of The Australian's daily news podcast, a family ‘curse’, an audacious scam, and a remarkable young woman helping to solve the mystery of Bronwyn Winfield’s likely murder.
Find out more about The Front podcast here. You can read abo
Distressing evidence from Jon Winfield’s first wife, Jennifer Mason, was part of the police brief which the then-Detective Sergeant Glenn Taylor believed would result in a prosecution over Bronwyn’s disappearance.
A dispute over the identity of her
A short walk from the sandy northern beaches of Lennox Head is a lake loved by locals and visitors alike.
It is deep only in a few places, but nobody can see the bottom - the waters of eerie Lake Ainsworth are always dark because of staining from th
Bronwyn’s friends and loved ones reel as the revelation of Judy Singh’s sighting of what appeared to be a body wrapped in a sheet, being driven away by her estranged husband Jon Winfield in 1993, is understood.
Detectives fly north to take a stateme
A new witness emerges with a chilling account of seeing what she fears was Bronwyn Winfield's body wrapped in sheets in the back of a car, in a development that could change everything in the 31 year mystery.
Retired nurse and former Lennox Head res
As celebrities from Hollywood stars Chris Hemsworth to Simon Baker wax lyrical about Lennox Head, locals like Scruffy speculate about Bronwyn and the whereabouts of her remains.
Analysis of a missing person report made to police by her estranged hus
Analysis of police internal running sheets and other files from 1993, when Bronwyn disappeared in Lennox Head, reveals remarkable red flags – yet local detectives still didn’t treat the case as probable foul play.
After making fundamental errors wit
Bronwyn's estranged husband, Jon, hastily packs the family car for an unplanned drive through the night to Sydney with the two girls. His neighbour, Murray Nolan, hears the car's distinctive brakes and is surprised to see the Ford sedan quietly rolli
Jon's second wife reveals some home truths about her brief failed marriage and why she decided to file for divorce, triggering a bitter row over the house she and Jon built in Sandstone Crescent, Lennox Head. The house is close to where Bronwyn would
It’s a toxic relationship. Friends and family recall Bronwyn’s sadness and frustrations over what appears to be coercive control and emotional violence.
Bronwyn’s efforts to keep the family home ‘immaculate’ while raising children take a toll. Crumb
In an idyllic surf town, Bronwyn Winfield is a loving young mother determined to divorce her husband Jon and start again with her two daughters.
She writes about her life and describes a deeply unhappy marriage. She tells friends and relatives that