In 2018 an Australian podcast became a global sensation, topping the charts in multiple countries, with tens of millions of downloads to date. The Teacher’s Pet, published by the Australian newspaper and hosted by its journalist Hedley Thomas, investigated the disappearance of a mother of two, Lynnette Simms, from her Sydney home, ultimately pointing the finger at her husband, Chris Dawson, and at flaws in the initial police investigation of her death. The podcast led to a swell of public interest and pressure: the case was reopened, and in 2022 Dawson was convicted of his wife’s murder.
By then Thomas was already working on a new podcast, covering familiar territory. It’s no coincidence: after the success of The Teacher’s Pet several people were struck by the similarity between Simm’s disappearance and that of another Australian mother of two, Bronwyn Winfield, who lived near Byron Bay, south of Brisbane. Once again the initial police investigation fell short. And once again the woman’s husband came under scrutiny but evaded prosecution.
Once again Thomas got to work, and Bronwyn is the result. Winfield was last seen at her home in the small surfing village of Lennox Head on May 16th, 1993. Her husband, Jon, from whom she was separated at the time, was the last person to speak to her. He reported her missing on May 27th, a full 11 days after her disappearance, claiming she had told him she was going on vacation. But Winfield never came back, leaving behind two young daughters, as well as several family members and neighbours who appeared to immediately suspect foul play.
Jon Winfield, according to the podcast, was possessive, a man quick to anger if the house was not kept impeccably neat and tidy, and jealous of other men. Bronwyn had finally found the courage to leave him a few months before she disappeared, but she returned from a rental apartment with her daughters when Jon went to Sydney for work, determined to stake her claim on their shared home.
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Jon returned to the house when he found out, and the two began to argue. Bronwyn put the girls to bed. They never saw her again. Their father told them she had left to take a break; that was also the explanation he gave to other inquirers, adding that his estranged wife’s mother had had mental-health issues and implying that his wife had inherited them. The director of public prosecutions at the time decided there was insufficient evidence to charge Jon – who strongly denies any wrongdoing.
And here we are again. It’s hard to listen to yet another tale of a woman vanishing and society shrugging its shoulders, but Thomas comes at it with keen journalistic instinct and a doggedness that marks this series out from true-crime titillation. Bronwyn feels more like a crusade for justice than a story crafted for listeners. For that matter, it feels barely crafted at all: the audio quality varies in interviews, there’s an uncomfortable amount of seemingly wild conjecture, and Thomas sacrifices any neat arc for exhaustive detail, unedited interviews and a kind of circular storytelling that comes at the salient points from every angle, at times to the detriment of this listener’s attention. That said, he also unearths a key witness previously ignored by police, and breaks open a case that had been cold for 30 years.
Currently nine episodes in, Bronwyn is still dropping weekly as the investigation develops, the case ongoing, with real people whose lives hang in the balance. So far the podcast serves to illustrate how easy it seems to be for a community to turn a blind eye to distasteful truths. Lennox Head, where Winfield lived and most likely died, is a small town teeming with secrets, complicit in the failure to find justice for her. That’s changing, though. Its inhabitants may have stayed silent for decades, but they’re ready to talk now.
