Life Uncut - The Lady Vanishes - Where is My Mum Marion? Uncut with Sally Leydon

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Today we've got a lot to unpack. First up is how we feel that international women's day doesn't stand for what it used to and how now the day can be tokenistic. We’ve got a huge problem with the sex shaming that a nursing advisory board has put on NSW nurses and their OnlyFans profiles and we share the weirdest ways you found out your partner was cheating on you. Where on this planet do you find these people? But today's deep dive is a little different for us. You might remember a few weeks ago, Britt recommended a podcast called 'The Lady Vanishes.' It is a podcast investigating the disappearance of Marion Barter 26 years ago. On today's episode we are joined by Marion's daughter Sally Leydon. We talk about where they are at with finding out what happened to Marion, how she is being helped by a group of internet sleuths and what they have collectively uncovered. If you have any info or would like to be a part of the facebook group, you can find it here: https://www.facebook.com/MissingMarionBarter/ Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because we love love! xxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Darug Wollongong land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. And I'm Brittany. And we have a huge episode for you today. But we also have a huge problem with something that happened in the news and that is the

sex shaming that a nursing advisory board has put on New South Wales nurses. Absolutely wild. We have some feelings about it. We also did a call out from last week's episode and you sent in the weirdest ways you found out that your partners or I should say ex-partners were cheating on you. And they are unbelievably hilarious and simultaneously so messed up. On top of that, we are speaking with Sally Layden. Now, Sally's the daughter of Marion Barda.

She's a woman that disappeared 26 years ago. You might remember a few weeks ago that I recommended that podcast, The Lady Vanishes, and you guys, everyone jumped on board. So many people wanted to listen. So many of you were invested. So I'm really excited to bring this episode to you today because we're going to be speaking with Marion's daughter, Sally, who has been on the quest to find her mom for 26 years. And this is a cold case that over the past 26 years, it has reignited and they have kind

have chipped away and discovered more and more around the story as to why Marion, Sally's mom, actually vanished and disappeared. Isn't it nice to see you in the flesh here? What do you mean? You see me in the flesh every day. Yeah, I know. But here in like our pre-organized meeting time, not like in the middle of Bondi Moor where we ran into each other on the weekend. Okay. Laura and I ran into each other in the wild, which she thinks is wild. She's like, this is the weirdest thing ever. Well, slightly weird. It's weird because we know each other so well. We know where each other is pretty much at all hours of the day my tracker on your phone what yes the gps on my car we know what we're doing we know where we are 9 a.m i think it was like 8 30 a.m i can't remember

now but i was in the mall in bondi taking the girls to play arts and crafts center on saturday morning and i hear this hey lola derby oh i saw lola derby first i clocked that little potato head running around the mall because she was chasing a sick pigeon she was chasing yeah it was this pigeon that was like dying and i was trying to get the kids to stop trying to touch it was fucked yeah it was weird it was actually funny it was that real moment of like how different our lives are which we know we talk about it all the time oh yeah we know our lives are different but it was like I had just come out from the gym alone having a little drink having my protein ball been out and about early and Laura's wrangling these two kids that are chasing this dead diseased

pigeon she's in the mall in the mall and she's like what are you doing I was like I just went to the gym and I'm just gonna duck home grab Delilah get down to the beach like what are you doing? She's like, oh, I'm going to art class. Yeah. And I was like, oh, how long did you do that for? She goes, three hours. And I'm like, three hours? Yeah. Do you have to go for three hours? And you're like, yeah, I pre-booked. And then I looked at her, she goes, you hate my life, don't you? You looked at me in that moment, like, Laura, your life is my living hell. And then I'm there like yelling at my kids, stop touching the pigeons. And that was, yeah that was my Saturday your life is not my living hell just sometimes but there was not

correct there is no part of me that wanted to go to an art class for three hours with two children but that's okay yeah it's fine you know it's our differences that bring us together who's to say that you can't be friends with people at different life stages Laura's like we still do it there was also no part of me that wanted to go to art class for three hours and to be fair we only went for an hour and 15 I actually got the times wrong I thought it went for three hours but the second session started three hours later so it was fine. I'm so glad you said that because I actually thought about it all day. I even spoke to Keisha about it. I spoke to Ben about it. I was like what do you do for three hours at art class? Like I couldn't move past that you were going to an art

class with your kids for three whole hours. You play with magic sand. You do potato cutout paintings. We got dolls and we put nappies on and off the dolls. That's what we did for you know whole of my Saturday morning. But it makes more sense now that you guys are both looking at me like my life is fucked. No. Being a mum to two children is great. We should all try it. Everything is fine. I love parenting. Well, there's a few things we wanted to talk to you guys about today. Now, I firstly wanted to kick off this episode by saying happy International Women's Day. Tomorrow. To tomorrow. To Wednesday. It is International a women's day and who does anyone feel the way that we feel about it because we have some feels

i did bring you guys in some baked goods to celebrate that's what we do isn't it okay perfect i'm so happy to celebrate the inequality by eating donuts as hr i brought you donuts thank you i feel really celebrated as a woman thank you for your work he's a donut producer keisha thank you for your work he's a donut i do not that's it for the rest of the year we appreciate you as women here have a donut and don't talk to me again until 2023 okay so we have as you can probably extrapolate from that. We have some conflicting feelings about International Women's Day. Now it's not about what the day is supposed to represent. We understand what the day is supposed to represent and what we kind of have an issue with is how corporate it has become and how corporate

companies have adopted International Women's Day and it has become a true tokenistic day of being like, wow, we appreciate our women, but really not actually doing anything to bridge the gap. It's just outdated. If you think about it, why do we do it? Who does it? And what's the point? In the last few years, I've gone along to international women's day celebrations and I've been a part of, you know, having a great day with women, but I don't see the point in putting one day where the heads of all these companies come out, they throw a luncheon or something like that. They post some photos, they write a quote about women being strong and then nothing changes. We go back to work. We get on with our life for the rest of the year.

We still have our gender pay gaps and nothing happens except you got an extra croissant that day. I didn't really know where it stemmed from. Like when did International Women's Day start? And so a little bit on the history of it. International Women's Day was created in 1909 and it was founded by a group of socialist women in New York. The reason why they created it is because they wanted to demand shorter working hours, better pay and voting rights. I mean, I think we can say that in the hundred years since that has happened, we have come a very, very long way and things have immeasurably improved for women. Is it equal? No. But the problem is, is that International Women's Day is no longer about international equality or women's

rights. It is about this pat on the back. But then if you work in a workplace where you do feel like it's quite tokenistic, I think the litmus test of it is how many women are in upper management positions in your workplace? How many people have key senior roles in your workplace? What are the maternity leave situations, is there equal paternity leave for men in your workplace, which would then allow mothers and fathers to be able to have equal time off? Well, it comes back to equal opportunity. Absolutely. And then the other part of this is as well, the other thing that really gets in the go with International Women's Day is that I feel like it only celebrates a very specific

type of woman, right? It celebrates women who are in the workforce, who are hustling hard. What about women who are stay-at-home mums, women who are contributing to society in caretaker roles you never see those women on the front page of any magazine because we don't glorify or celebrate that as an equal contribution to society as what we do women who have like really kind of kicking the ceo or successful career entrepreneurial side of things i don't want it to sound like we're out here bashing international women's day we just think it's lost its way a little bit i'm all about celebrating women i'm all about celebrating anyone equally yeah and i think like we can all agree like i'm pretty sure everyone listening to

this will agree that appreciation doesn't come in the form of instagram posts and donuts that's not how women feel appreciated in their workplaces and if anything it feels fucking patronizing is what it feels if a company is saying we appreciate women and then aren't actually doing anything internally show me the money yeah okay so here it is australian women hold 15 percent of chair positions. Women hold just 6% of CEO roles in ASX listed companies and Australian women make up only 33% of key management personnel. I know you said it Britt, but I want to reiterate it again. We are absolutely not saying that we shouldn't be celebrating women. Of course, we're a female led podcast. We just hate the way that it's been taken over by corporates and it's turned into a

day that is wildly performative and has completely lost its meaning. Also on that, we do have a male employee too. So it's not like we hate men and we're all just female company. Like we have male employees. We have one male employee. We just keep him in the shadows and don't ever talk about him. He's in the basement. Well, I have something I want to talk to you about too. This happened last week. This is the heading. New South Wales nurses told to stop posting explicit content on OnlyFans. Oh, and do we have some feelings? Well, yeah. We're really getting up in arms today, aren't we? Well, some of my feelings are from the fact that, you know, I've been an an emergency worker for 13 years. I worked in emergency alongside nurses my entire adult life.

I know what they go through. I know what they do. I know how hard they work. I know the shit that they do, literally. Cleaning up shit. Literally. And I know what they're paid. And we're going to get into the details of the email that came out from the midwifery board, the nursing board. But it's wild to me that in this day and age, this board can come out and tell nurses that they cannot have an OnlyFans account. They cannot make money outside of work in their personal life because during the day they're a nurse. I mean, it's very shamey, isn't it? It's very like, well, we won't hire you if we think that you're being a bit too slutty on the outside world. It's just so unbelievably shamey. And also mutually exclusive. It's trying to say, well, if you're

a sex worker, then you can't be a very good caretaker. That's what it's saying. You can't do your job properly if you're doing sex work. What takes this another level of just being absolutely unbelievable is what the email contained. Now the email that was sent out to everybody, it had some scare scenarios in it. For examples to the nurses at home that happens to be reading it. This is what it said. Scenario one, one where a male senior manager recognizes a junior employee from OnlyFans and blackmails her for special treatment in exchange for preferential rostering at the hospital. So the scenario is, okay, what if you're on OnlyFans and then your boss sees you and then he starts to blackmail you what are you going to do then as if it is the

person on OnlyFans fault that they're being sexually blackmailed at work by a manager how is the problem here the person on OnlyFans? Well do you know what this also implies this also implies that because you're a sex worker you should expect to be sexually harassed at work it's like because you have chosen to share parts of your body or you know whatever whether it's you're actually showing sex or you're just showing photos or nudes or whatever your OnlyFans is is that if your upper management come across that, then you should expect them to bring that into the workplace, which we all know the onus then doesn't lie on the person who has the only fans account. That issue lies in the manager. The second scenario is a nurse inexplicably

starts promoting her only fans to her colleagues. Firstly, there are male nurses too. This email states female. It's predominantly at her. It's saying her. There are male nurses, which creates conflict in the workplace. My question is why? Because are they trying to say that if a colleague knows that there's a sexy content that they're going to start to treat them differently? Are they going to be looking at them differently? Are they going to be expecting different things at work? Like what's the point of creates conflict in the workplace? I think maybe if you were posing in your uniform, like if you're posing in your scrubs, if you're doing content that implies you're a nurse and sexualizing the industry, okay,

then I can understand why that would become a blurred line. However, if you're keeping those two things completely separate, you would also want to assume that you're coming into your role as being a nurse. You're coming into a hospital or wherever you work and are able to keep those two occupations completely separate. Well, they're saying it started because like a patient recognized the nurse. That's it. That's literally it. Nothing inappropriate, but they recognize them and then they said something and this whole thing has ensued. Let me tell you, if you are on the street and you have a heart attack and there is no one else around except a nurse who happens to have an OnlyFans, you're going to want that nurse to save your life. The next part of this is wages.

Nurses have been trying to be paid what they are worth for a very long time. They've done stop works, they've protested, they've got unions, they have been constantly trying. Then COVID came in, nurses were coming out of retirement, people are going above and beyond to literally help people. they are so altruistic. So the entry level wage for a nurse is $67,000. Well, this is within New South Wales only. The thing is, is this is not standardized across Australia, which makes it even worse. You know, within New South Wales system is 67. But when we were looking this up, it kind of fluctuated between sort of 65 and 75 as well. Right. But the thing is, ultimately, if you're not being paid enough in your nine to five job or nursing is not a nine to five job.

If you're not being paid enough in the shift work that you have to do, that you are taking on extracurricular activities in order to make a decent living. I don't think we can penalize people for what that is and how unbelievably shameful this email was. The implication was that if you are a sex worker, you are not able to give quality care. Or even if you are a sex worker and you are there giving care, that the shame or the embarrassment of a patient noticing or recognizing you should be so great that you shouldn't want to do it. That's what this is implying. Totally and there are so many people I couldn't really find many here in Australia but this is a movement that's only sort of being brought up now in the UK and in the US there

are multiple women who are nurses who had been nursing for a long time who then needed to make more money because they have children because the cost of living they started an OnlyFans and they have lost their job directly their management have said you cannot be here anymore because we know you have an OnlyFans luckily for those women they make a shit ton more OnlyFans and they're doing just fine. But that's not the point. It's the principle involved here. I think the general consensus and from what I've seen around a lot of the publications and media that have come out over the week, the general consensus is that this is an incredibly unfair thing and that it has crossed a line in terms of telling people what they can and can't do outside of their

employment. Something that we did a call out for on Thursday's episode, which let me tell you, we have received some fucking doozies. What is the weirdest way that you found out your partner was cheating on you you know I remember how I sort of figured it out originally but I pretended I didn't know this is my ex I had a double life he got a new soap dispenser and like the holder for the you know how you can get holder for the toothbrushes and the soap and they can be all matching and ceramic and beautiful he bought a new bathroom set he bought a new bathroom set and I was like there is no way this dude has gone and bought this beautiful ceramic bathroom set I knew it was a woman's purchase for sure and I knew that and I was like I was like oh I got some

a new soap dispenser and he was like oh yeah and I was like why did you do that and he's like I just thought that the bathroom needed to be just up and in deep inside it was like and it wasn't the two toothbrushes that were sitting there side by side and neither of them it wasn't the photo of her on the bedside table it was the soap dispenser all right well some of these are equally as horrific I want to kick it off he kept getting messages from someone who was saved in his phone as Shrek he sent me a photo of his hotel room except it was a live photo and you could hear a girl jumping on the bed chatting in the background you gotta be careful those live photos his mum texts me saying that the family would really miss me we had not broken up yet

and I had no idea that he had a new girlfriend imagine imagine him already telling his mum oh we've split up and I have a new girlfriend but not actually telling you yet that is so funny okay I left a brand new bottle of face cream at his house it was all gone in less than three weeks there's no way he's using that shit oh there was blonde hair in the shower drain but i'm brunette this one's not funny can we have a minute of silence oh dear my friend found out at her partner's funeral when the other girlfriend showed up to mourn him who takes the front like i want to laugh wait who's on the front who sits in the front seat Who does the eulogy?

Had two funerals. Okay, I found a pathology from an STI check in his bag, but we'd been together for years. That was a problem. That's the Delta. I would love to also know the reasons that they gave off the back of this. I saw his dog at the dog park. It was with another girl.

Our dog started playing together, so I got talking. She said she was there helping out her new boyfriend by walking his dog. Oh, sprung at the dog park. My God, I found a condom wrapper in his shorts while I was doing our laundry. He said he used it for wanking. How do you dispute that though? Because maybe he was trying to.

He didn't want to make a mess. Yeah. I don't think so. I don't think people use condoms for wanking. They need the sensitivity. Why would you desensitise your penis to wanking? No, because maybe he wanked and he had that there instead of like a sock in his house.

I'm not wanking a sock. Maybe he. I'm a devil's advocate. We had a dog camera to monitor our pooch while we're at work. He obviously forgot when he brought someone else back to our house. He had her name in his phone saved as Domino's and I thought it was really strange that Domino's was texting at 11pm on a Saturday night. I always get those $5 messages.

Oh, do you know what? Fair. Like there's so many now like spam text messages that you get from people. And if you're a frequent flyer. Yeah, I get text messages from Iconic at like 11pm at night. I'm not cheating with Iconic. Maybe it was. Maybe it literally was Domino's saying we've got too far tomorrow.

He got a lot better in bed. Imagine if you know your boyfriend's like a five in bed and then all of a sudden he comes home with all these new moves and he's an eight. You know. If he's doing the handstand wheel mill, you know something's up. You know he's learnt that. No, maybe he's just been watching porn or he's gotten some tips and tricks.

And tits. Tips and tricks and tits. And I got last one. He sent a dick pic to a group on Instagram to all of the girls instead of individually. So what he's done is he's gone. He's got his side hustle group. Well, he's taken a photo of his dick and then he's gone to text it to like multiple people

at the same time, but it's created a group and he's created a group of all of his girlfriends and sent them a group dick pic. Do you know what? You can't even get out of that. You just own that, delete all and move on with your life. You start from scratch. I need new girlfriends. Okay.

Last one. A random girl started adding songs to our shared Spotify playlist. They were all bedroom songs. Why would you add a random chick to your Spotify playlist? Oh, who knows? Why would he do that? I don't know. That makes no sense.

None. Do you know how I found out my boyfriend was cheating on me? He had a Samsung phone, right? And like I knew he'd been cheating. I knew it. I fucking knew it. I needed to find out. And it was the woman's undies I found on his bed for the floor.

No, I found the undies. He lied about them. I knew. I knew he was cheating on me. Anyway, so his phone went ping this one night and I looked down and he had a Samsung phone, which is very different. the messages on Samsung are very different to the way messages work on Apple. It kind of, your messages on Samsung look more like an email inbox. Anyway, the notification came up and it had,

do you want to take this phone number out of spam? And I was like, spam? And I opened it. And what he had been doing is every girl he had been cheating on me with, he'd just been putting them to spam. And there it was, like literally all these girls he'd been cheating on me with We're all just there sitting in spam. That is so clever. Yeah. There you go. He was shit.

Hats off. Please, if you have more of these, keep them coming through. We're not laughing at you. We're laughing with you. We are equally sharing your pain. We're laughing at him. We're laughing at them. We're laughing at the person who did it.

The drop idiot. The person who cheats and can't even fucking cover up their own cheating. Idiots. For those of you who haven't heard the story of The Lady Vanishes, it's a true crime podcast that Channel 7 have produced and that only a few weeks ago you might remember I recommended everyone at Life Uncut because I just got so obsessed with it. It's like 80 episodes now.

Oh, yeah, yeah. It's been going for years. It's happening live, which is why people are so invested. So right now everyone that's been listening to this podcast for years is on the cusp of finding out the answer. Like everyone is waiting with bated breath for the next episode to drop. The Lady Vanishes has over 15 million downloads and has amassed a huge volume of people all over the world now

that are determined to find justice for missing Australian woman, Marion Barter. If you guys haven't heard this story, firstly, spoiler, if you're going to go and listen to the entire series of our recommendation, maybe don't listen to this episode because we are going to talk about everything up to date. But just to give you a rundown, when Sally was 24 years old in 1997, her mum, Marion Barter, went overseas on a holiday and she was literally never seen again. She initially was sending postcards and calling, but then she simply stopped responding. She missed her son's birthday and Miss Sally's wedding the next year, even though she had helped with some of the planning. Sally just knew that something wasn't right. I guess it's a daughter's intuition.

Sally reported her mum missing and found out there had been money withdrawals from her bank account back here in Australia and that she had changed her name by deed poll, had re-entered Australia on this new passport all of which Sally had no idea about before she left. After years of basically investigating herself, having her mum on and off the missing persons register and so much super sleuthing by Sally and the community that had formed around this case, her mum's case finally made it to a coronial inquest into her disappearance and potential murder. It's a case that spans decades, continents and numerous police forces. It's about manipulation, coercive control and scam artists, but at the centre of it all is just a daughter trying to find out what happened to her

mum. Sally, welcome to Life Uncut. Hi guys. I wanted to start off by asking you about Marion, about your mum. What was she like as a person? What do you remember of her? Well, mum was a school teacher, so she was very kind and giving and generous with her time, particularly to children. And she was a great cook. She always had this amazing cookbook and we always ate really well as children and she loved fashion she had a different style to what you would say is your mainstream fashion but she always had a way of dressing herself and I remember as a 17 18 year old I was like I want to try and do what mum does and flash on the uh you know Laura Ashley floral dress with my Doc Martens just didn't work sometimes it just doesn't land does it didn't

work so she pulled it off way better than I did but she was just you know she had a wicked laugh and she loved to garden green thumb and yeah she was she was a mum she was a busy mum she was single most of our childhood and you know we had a quarter acre block and she had to mow the grass and keep the house and work all day full time and have Owen and I we were only 17 months apart so she had a lot on her plate at the same time but yeah she was she's a good mum. What was your relationship like with your mum at the time that she decided to go overseas and eventually go missing? Yeah, we were probably the closest we've ever been, to be honest, because she had moved up to the Gold Coast and I was still living in Sydney. And I was just feeling like I needed a

change of space. So I decided to come and move up with her. So we moved in to get back in together after me going to college and things like that after school. And yeah, we were very close. I was working at David Jones and she used to come in and see me every Thursday night. And we'd go into the restaurant and have a cup of soup and the sandwich together and we became good friends and then I met Chris my partner and moved out but she was very much a part of our lives and we got engaged just before literally she went overseas so we had our engagement party on the 9th of June and she flew out on the 22nd of June just to give you a bit of timeline and she was there she brought a cake her friends came they helped serve food and you know so I would say we were in a very

very good headspace. What was going on in your mum's life at the time when she decided to take this big extended trip to Europe? Firstly, was that an unusual thing that she had wanted to do? And was there anything that was happening in her life that was the catalyst for making her want to leave and just go on this, you know, once in a lifetime trip? Yeah, she was working at a school called TSS, which is the Southport School here in the Gold Coast. And there were problems there. She was a very dedicated school teacher and she had been, from where I sit, when she took the role on, she was coming in to run the reception class, which back then was the equivalent of prep.

We didn't have prep up here in Queensland. There was a few issues with staffing and who was she to report to and things like that. And there was a little bit of tall poppy syndrome when she won the Best Teacher in Queensland award in 1996. It sounds very Australian, yeah. But also, you know, when you're winning awards like Best Teacher of Australia, it just shows how dedicated you are to your job. Yeah.

Well, she was Best Teacher in Queensland, came second overall in Australia. Wow. So a pretty big accolade for someone who worked really hard. And then I just saw cracks. I was at her house one night and she was telling me that someone had accused her of touching a boy. Oh, wow. And she was mortified and was in tears. And so normally I'd just go home, but I stayed with her and she just collapsed on the couch

with her hands sort of raised up, like in this exhausted position and fell asleep. That really worried me because I'd never seen her that upset before. And she was completely distraught by that allegation. And so when she sort of turned around and said to me, hey, I'm going to go on this trip, everything seemed quite reasonable to me. You know, I was 24 and I just got engaged. Chris and I had built a house. So we were all settled.

Owen was settled. he was engaged to his partner in Sydney and she decided she was going to sell a house which a lot of people are like oh my god I can't believe she sold the house just to go on a trip overseas but she was planning on going for a year and the house was a three-bedroom home with a swimming pool and she's living by herself so she told me that she was going to buy a unit when she came back and go and live at Main Beach on the Gold Coast and so therefore she gave me a lot of her big furniture as well because she didn't have room for it when she came back so everything was kind of yep I yep I get that that's fine I had no problem with her going overseas and you know going on the

Orient Express which is what she'd wanted to do and so we you know had her over for a lamb roast at her request and I gave her a kiss and a hug and she got in the car and you know I remember that time well reflecting back and she had tears in her eyes and I just thought she was sad because She wasn't going to see me for a while. But, you know, my wedding was due the following October and I had no expectation that would be the last time I would ever see her. Looking back now and knowing, like we're fast forwarding, knowing that maybe there is something else at play,

there was some sort of coercive control in a relationship because that's what the speculation is at the moment. Do you think she knew at that time that she might not be coming back? Because when you say, you know, she had tears in her eyes and you felt like there was a bit of a moment there. Do you think there's any part of her that knew that this was her last goodbye? That's a really good question.

I, going through this process of having to dig deep and dig deep into your mum's personal history and life, which I had not done before, I have realised just looking at her past relationships that my mum was a person who definitely fell into that realm of being controlled very easily, potentially being gaslighted easily. and it's interesting when you go back and rewind what's happened in life before so like if I speak

about my stepfather my mum had only been on two or three dates with him before he said oh look I need to leave my wife can I come and live with you and so she announced to Owen and I oh we've got this man coming to live with us and so that was a big moment for me in life and I remember Owen and I got home and we'd been at our dad's and we just walked straight out the back and this guy was in the kitchen cooking a meal and I just went out on our trampoline and we were just bouncing looking at him through the window going who is this person and why is he in our house so when you think about those sorts of things that was a very quick turnaround for somebody to rock up and start living in your home and being in your mum's bed and not really knowing who this

person is so I kind of think back and it does stem back well before that as well but yeah I was sad for her because I think that she was easily led and easily swayed I guess to do things if she thought it was something in her best interest and someone could convince her of that I think she's definitely someone who would just play on that very quickly I think it's one of these things like when you're a child you kind of accept things at face value that your parents do and it's only as an adult where you can look back on some behaviors and you go wow that really isn't necessarily a normal way you know that's not how maybe if you were in that situation you wouldn't be bringing in a stepfather figure after only a couple of dates but usually this lends itself to

people who are hugely empathetic but also really in need of relationships for validation that there's something missing in them and it gives them purpose it's not a reflection that they're a bad person it's a reflection that they're in need of a hole to be filled what time was it in this trip that she'd taken overseas when did you feel like something had gone wrong Marion was keeping in contact with you she was sending postcards you were getting phone calls when did something change for you where you were like I think that there is a problem here so she rang me on the 1st of August and her passport came back in on the 2nd of August I didn't know that but in that phone call she had said to me look I'm going to have a rest now I've been busy sending

heaps of postcards to everybody and sending people birthday presents I just need a holiday and I said go and have a holiday go and have a break like don't you don't need to sit here and keep writing and ringing everybody we're fine here and she was in those postcards and letters to me she was wanting me to do things like get things back to TSS that she had and she'd put in storage by accident and she was concerned about those things which for me was a big key indicator that something wasn't quite right when she didn't come back because why would you be worried about not a $50 set of kitchen scales if you're planning on leaving and never coming back again. So anyway, I'd sort of said, you know, I guess that bought her a little bit of time to say,

hey, I'm not going to be writing and sending postcards. And so that timeline is around that early August. And then my brother's birthday hit in the October and I rang him and I said, have you heard from mum? And he said, no, I haven't. And so I rang him back the next day because the UK were a day behind us and I said have you heard anything since and he said no and that's when the alarm bells just rang for me we had a friend over for dinner that night and she suggested that I ring mum's bank and say you know can you actually have a look my mum's traveling overseas by herself she's 51 and she's missed my brother's birthday which is really out of character so she actually said to me initially oh look I'm sorry I can't tell you anything this

is the bank lady can't tell you anything due to privacy and then she paused and she said did you say your mum's overseas and I said yes and she said oh my god there's money coming out of her bank account in Byron Bay and it was the worst feeling on the planet I just didn't know what to do and so Chris and I jumped in the car the next day and drove to Byron Bay took her photo with us she told me that there was five thousand dollars every day for three and a half weeks coming out of her bank account. Which is unusual because I mean was your first thought okay someone has taken my mum's bank card and he's taking money out or was your first thought my mum has snuck back into the country without telling us and he's taking the money out because I feel like

I would jump to someone's scamming her it couldn't possibly be her my mum wouldn't have been here without me knowing I would think someone was just scamming. I think Chris probably had that thought process in his head as we were driving down but I just felt like something was wrong I was like something's not right I couldn't actually put my finger on it and it wasn't until we went to the bank and I walked in with mum's photo and I said do you have CCTV footage on your ATM machines and he said uh no we don't why do you ask and I said well my mum's actually supposed to be overseas and I've just been told by one of your telebankers that money's been coming out of her bank account here in Byron Bay and he took the photo and he shook it and he said that rings a bell and he

walked around the back of the offices and went into the office closed the door behind him came out went over and took a photocopy of the photo and walked back over to me and said what would you like me to say to her if I see her and so I told him my name and gave him my number and we literally drove straight to Byron Bay police and said something's wrong you know my mum's like I don't know where she is. I don't know what's happened to her. And she's supposed to be overseas on a holiday and money's been coming out of her bank account here in strange increments. And I just got a really bad read on the guy at the bank. So at that point in time, when you got to Byron Bay Bank, was she still taking money out? Was the money still coming out at that point in

time or had it stopped? Yeah, I didn't have any dates on the transactions. So I now know that those transactions were happening in the August and September. So it was actually months before I went to the bank, which was in the October. Yeah, because my initial thought is like, do you do a stakeout? Do you just stay and hope that then she shows up? When you got to the police station and you gave this information over, what was their response? Not a lot. It was a guy who served me and I just remember standing at the counter. I have vague recollection that I might have sat down to the side. I can't really recall that firmly, but he just took down my details and I just told the story that she'd been going on a holiday overseas by herself and the phone

called to the bank lady and we left. And I stupidly made the assumption that, you know, she would be placed as a missing person and that they would start investigating it and didn't turn out like that. So this was the start of basically, I don't want to say you against the police, but it almost was. This was the start of you saying, please, someone take this seriously. my mum is missing and them saying she's not, she's on holiday. She sold a house. She went overseas. This was the start of what has spanned into almost a 22 year fight, correct?

Yeah. Well, she's been missing 26 years. So it was difficult because I came home and a week later, or again, it's a long time ago, but you know, we're talking within a short period of time. I had a phone call from a gentleman who said that my mum had been located and that she didn't want anyone to know where she was or what she was doing and so me not really knowing what to do with that information told my grandfather and then he took over with the investigation I had one of mum's sisters have a go at me and tell me how ridiculous I was for reporting her missing and she's probably just having a break or having a holiday but I just knew in my gut there was something wrong I had Chris and I had seen a guy in a car with her at McDonald's

just prior to her leaving and she sort of wigged out in that situation where she was trying to like got out of the car to fill up her car with fuel and then saw us in the restaurant and then got back in the car and drove off without filling up with fuel and it was really dark because the reflection on the windscreen was making it hard to see in the car but the guy was really tall, his head was almost touching the roof if not and she instead of driving back past the windows where we were standing where I would have got a really good view of this person she went round through the drive-thru and went out the other way so I had all these thoughts going through my head like who was the guy in the car why were you she'd kicked Chris out like he was over there helping

her pack up her house and she came in and said what's the time and she said oh he told her the time and she said oh you've got to go you've got to go and he goes I'll just finish packing this for you Mary and she said no just drop it I need you to go so in a bit of a panic she told me that she met that man at the Gold Coast Art Centre. So it was, I don't know, I just, I believed what she was telling me and I had no reason to question her or judge her on what she was doing. And 26 years later, we're still sitting here. I still don't know where she is. I just want to go back a little bit because you mentioned something about when you were at the bank and the teller came out and said, if she shows up, do you want me to say something to her? Do you now think that it was her

going and taking that money out of the bank? Or do you think it was somebody pretending to be her? It's a very good question. I just don't know. It's definitely a possibility that it was somebody else going in and IDing as her and taking out the money. But I have no confirmation on that. Unfortunately, you know, what frustrates me is if we had got CCTV footage or even coming into the airport, you know, if they'd actually been able to get her flight records and details coming in to the country, we would have had some sighting of her and we would have seen if she was with somebody or what was happening or what she was wearing. Unfortunately, all those opportunities were lost. So it does sound like at the time, each of these little things that you're saying,

the odd behavior, the quickly not wanting you to see the man, quickly kicking Chris out of the house when he was supposed to be there packing her, you know, after she gets a phone call. I'm sure each one of them individually felt like nothing. But now looking back, you're like, okay, when you put it together there was quite a bit of odd behavior going on and it seems to be surrounding this man that man in that car did you ever find out who that man was that you saw the night just before she left do you know who he is or do you think he has anything to do with it i think he has everything to do with it but i don't have any confirmation on who that is at this point so that's a big that's a big part of where you're at in your investigation is trying

to find some information on this man but it's almost impossible i guess when you have nothing else to put out into the world other than you saw him they met in an art center and he's tall and dark it's not like I had a conversation with him or saw what he was wearing or jewelry he had on or anything like that it was just simply a figure and mum just saying that you know it was a man that she'd met at the art center and that sort of all connected for me because my mum frequented the art center she liked going to the ballet and the opera and she loved antiques and they had lots of antique fairs there as well. So chances of her meeting someone at something like that was in the realm of possibility for me. Now, there wasn't any CCTV footage and there wasn't

any sightings of your mum, but there is a piece of the puzzle that was uncovered and that was her passenger, her incoming passenger card. And the handwriting on that card seems to match Marion's handwriting. Do you think it's presumed that she did come back into the country? I 100% believe she came back. I've seen all of the passenger cards and there is different writing on there. But I think through our investigation, we've been able to ascertain that that was actually customs because mum had written that she was going to England, whereas you've actually got to put your next port of call.

So for her, it was South Korea. And, you know, writing home duties is not her handwriting and they didn't spell Luxembourg correctly. And my mum would definitely know how to spell Luxembourg. As a teacher. Oh, well, you know, I would hope so. Yeah, you hope so. But it's also one of those things that if you're travelling with someone,

you could be sitting next to them and they could be filling it out for you. You know, how many times do you travel with a partner or a friend and they're just doing all the incoming cards, you know? That's been a huge conversation in our Facebook page as well and people chewing over because there's a lot of debate. A lot of people think it wasn't mum that came back and it was someone who stole her identity and came back and used her passport.

I, on the other hand, have seen the writing. I've got lots of letters that date right back to the 70s of mum writing Australia and the Australia is what does it for me because she does a pointed A at the beginning of the Australia and the A at the end is a rounded capital A and she does that on every single one so it's hard to tell I'm not an expert in handwriting but knowing my mum's handwriting I would say it was her. A piece of the information I find truly unusual is that it turns out before Marion left, she changed her name. So she changed it to Florabella Ramichael, which is what we know now. Ramichael is a very, very rare name. They managed to track down one Ramichael like in the world pretty much. Why do you think

your mum changed her name before she left and to something as unusual as Florabella Ramichael? well I think it again comes back to being controlled and a bit of gaslighting and we did a bit of research on that as well and if you wanted to get married over in Luxembourg you actually keep your maiden name or the name that you are currently so I'm of the opinion that she perhaps was told to change her name so she could become a Ramakel in Luxembourg when they got married so for those who aren't up to speed with the story on her passenger card coming back in She says she's married, her name's Ramakal, that she's only coming for eight days to see family and that she's permanently living in Luxembourg. Wow. It must just be so bewildering for you to

have like your mum left single to go on an adventure by herself and then all of a sudden she snuck back into a country married with a different name, different handwriting. It must have just been such an unusual moment. I'm sure to this day you are still scratching your head about what and why are you of the opinion that she met a man here that lived in Luxembourg by the name Ramakel that has coerced her into moving overseas with him and and you think that that is where it all started over in Luxembourg it's so hard for me in my head now because I know certain things and so what I was probably thinking before I knew what I know now is different but I would of thought when I read that at that time because we hadn't found a lot of what we have found since

was that she potentially has met somebody over here potentially the guy in the car and they've gone overseas and to get married and you know my mum had been married and divorced three times so my grandfather used to call her marrying Marion and so there was a lot of that sort of undertone in the family as well like you hear her sisters on the podcast they talk about how she always needed a man in her life and you know it was kind of a degrading way of talking about her because like you said before Laura some people just need to have a relationship with somebody and I think she was just a lonely person who was just seeking a friendship and a partnership with somebody and the family were more of the opinion of like oh here we go again yeah I hate to say it but like

so many people who feel judgment from their friends because maybe they've made poor relationship decisions, then keep that information from their friends and family for fear of more judgment. It's a tale as old as time. It's just that in this instance, something terrible has happened and the secrecy around it has made it impossible to find out what that is. Can you tell us what Marion's connection was to a man named Rick Blum? So after we did the podcast in 2019, we obviously had a lot of true crime fans listening and a lady by the name of Joni Condos, who had herself a missing person in her family. So she had just recently been going through a lot of things like Trove and National Archives to try and find

information on their grandmother because she went missing in 1922. So a long time before and very difficult to find information about people back in those times before we had social media. And a bit like the same with me, like we didn't have Facebook, we didn't have mobile phones, like they were very very new so we didn't have that to back ourselves through we couldn't track where she was like my kids whenever I go anywhere now they put me on life 360 so they can see exactly where I am you know we didn't have any of that so Joanie came on and just did a trove search for the name Ramakel because we couldn't find any Ramakels here in Australia the spelling is bizarre so she just did a trove search ironically one night and found an ad in a newspaper called the La Courriere

Australian, which comes out of Sydney. It's a French speaking newspaper. And there was an ad in there for a guy named Fernand Ramakel, who had a PO box at Lennox Heads. So remembering that my mum's money came out of Byron Bay and that he was a polyglot, good looking, well to do and looking for a partnership potential marriage. And it has his age in there as well, right? So that's what we had to work with and that's when we all went off on this mad tangent trying to find an F Ramakel who was that age who potentially was French speaking etc etc and we found a man who lived in Luxembourg who was an ex-football player for Luxembourg and my mum I don't know if you know this she was married to Johnny Warren who was the captain of the Socceroos so all these coincidences

were flinging through our brains like a million miles an hour and that ended up with Channel 7 and myself going over to Luxembourg and knocking on this guy's door. Turns out Rick Blum was literally using that guy's identity in a fake Queensland driver's licence here in Australia. This is all making so much sense for me because I've listened to the entire 80 episodes and I can understand that some people might be like, this is crazy, listening now being like,

what is happening? so essentially now 26 years later we have discovered that this man rick blum has had multiple fake identities he it seems to be that he has stolen multiple people's identities and one of them was this f ramakel that you found so you did go to luxembourg to confront this f ramakel thinking he had a connection he did have a connection in terms of his identity but it wasn't him someone stole his identity who is rick blum and that's where we're at now that rick blum looks like he's the man that your mum may have answered the ad for correct yes that's in a nutshell that's pretty much it and what i say to brian seymour who i went to luxembourg with and

i just shake my head and go oh my god we actually knocked on this guy's door not having a clue like we just picked him out because of his age and his name and the fact he lives in luxembourg and he's actually connected not through his own self but because this gentleman has actually assumed his identity. And what's even more bizarre is after we'd been and seen Fernand, we actually knocked on his ex-wife's door as well, Monique Cornelius, and turns out Rick Blum had an affair with her as well.

So he did have a proper connection with them physically. Rick Blum, who stole the identities, he actually, it didn't just pick a name out of nowhere, he did know them. Correct. Which probably made it easier for him to assume their identity having some understanding of who they are, where they're from, their lives. Can you tell us since finding this Rick Blum person, there have been more women that have come forward that have had connections to him. What is your understanding of who he is? Oh, wow. Um, how much time do you have?

Oh, look, when I first read his statement to police and he admitted to having an affair with my mum just months and weeks before she went overseas and that he had the same name as my mum the same initials that my mum had changed her name to and he had a connection to Luxembourg used to live in Luxembourg his daughter his youngest daughter was born in Luxembourg so I was in shock and disbelief of what I was reading essentially and couldn't quite fathom how that could actually be the case and how my mum's actually fallen into this hole and now I don't know how to get her out. A super frustrating part of the story the podcast The Lady Vanishes and just listening to you talk is the fact that the local police never really took it seriously on

multiple occasions firstly when you reported your mum missing and secondly when we found out who Rick Blum was seven other women have come forward telling their stories direct connections to Rick Blum and all seven of those women had said that they had gone to police themselves over time to report this man and none of them were taken seriously either so now we have your mum plus seven other women that have come forward with reports of scamming coercive control manipulation and not one of those women were taken seriously by the police here how does it make you feel now and what are the police doing to know that finally it's all come out all the dots have been joined, that there are all these people connected to this one master manipulator and

potentially, I hate to say it, but potentially a murderer. Look, the fact of the matter is this guy's 83 and he's still living with his wife for 47 years in Ballina. And from the outside looking in, I don't have any communication at the minute with the homicide squad. It's still before the corona. So I'm hoping that they're doing things. I don't know because I am not privy to the information. And I'm fine with that. I'm happy that these women, because I've done a podcast and talked about my mum's story and they've somehow found it or, you know, I think the police actually found the two women here in Australia because there was a link to this man who they'd actually found through his identities. It's a very long convoluted

issue there. It's hard to explain, but they had done statements to police. And, you know, in speaking to Janet Oldenburg just last week she mentioned to me and she said you know they never came back to me the detective said oh I'm going to have a look into this for you and I never heard from him ever again and it worried me that I had heard all of these women had gone to police they'd given statements I didn't even give a statement like I didn't even get asked to give a statement until I don't know 22 years down the track I gave a statement and same with my husband Chris you know when you think about that people's minds lose track of time they lose track of what actually happened on that day so it's super important to get all that detail down but I was

just miffed that so many of these women had actually given statements to police and there was no follow-up and no follow-through and that goes from Victoria Police, New South Wales, Queensland all the way over to Belgium, Brussels. I walked into Luxembourg Police when we were there they weren't interested in taking my DNA it had to come through New South Wales police I went to Kent police in the UK where mum was last known to be and they were like we're happy to help you but we can't because it's got to come from New South Wales police so it was just very difficult and it's been a very hard journey to actually get through the privacy issues firstly I think that's an issue that I want to sort of raise with the Australian you know whoever it is at the top of

the tree who has control over this because if someone's missing typically overseas or anywhere in the world except for Australia there's a thing called absentia and that means that after seven years if you haven't been heard from or spoken to from your missing loved one your privacy is no longer an issue and your next of kin can actually access that privacy information and that doesn't happen here in Australia so I could have got the information and when you think about the seven year point after seven years to 10 years is from what I found is when people start, you know, getting rid of information, they start destroying bank records and storage facility information and all the things that I needed to know, you know, were all taken away from me because of the privacy

issues. One of the big things, and I think it comes back to this understanding that your mum changed her passport name, that there was some intent there for her to potentially live another life the police have really held on to that as being like the core part of their as to why she was not deemed missing person that she intentionally wanted to deceive and intentionally wanted to you know go missing and not have connection to her family why do you think that that that the fact that she wanted to just completely walk away from everything is not the case well if I can just add there when I first reported her missing in 1997 they didn't do any investigation on it whatsoever so they didn't get her bank records and put them on her file they didn't look at CCTV or even look

at her passport coming back into the country so we didn't even know about the name change until 2011 some 13 years later we didn't even know that she'd changed her name and that's frustrating for me because that's all the time frame of where we could have done the investigation and they did believe that that was the case that she just was walking away she's chosen to quit her job she sold her house and she changed her name so she deliberately wanted to be missing but I just don't believe that was the case I think there's more to it and I'm hoping that the digging that we're doing at the moment will be able to prove that it's just a round robin that just keeps going round and round and round and I have been caught up in the world of my mum being missing and the

podcast and going through an inquest, which has now taken nearly two years, that has been huge and stressful. But during that time, and as I've grown in my own self as a person and learnt a lot along the way, there are things that I want to see implemented in the future for change to make this easier for people. I don't know if you guys know Lauren O'Keefe. So she actually does, runs MPAN, which is Missing Persons Advocacy Network in Melbourne. And last year I was invited to come down and be a part of a group of families with missing loved ones. The purpose of us coming was we were making these narrative cards that we could give to people if someone in their life went missing. And it was all about just key points for those people to look at what to do

if someone goes missing. What do you do? Who do you go to? What should you be doing? Taking notes, writing down information, checking CCTV footage, checking their phones, doing mobile searches for pings lots of different things that I didn't have access to when my mum went missing but there's certainly elements there which I've learnt along the way that I want to try and help others who find themselves in this horrible position and try and make their journey a little easier Sally your mum's been missing for 26 years and this has been something that you have been fighting for to have answers for 26 years when so many people around you have maybe moved on or not been fighting as hard even you said her sister's response was she obviously wants to change her

name she obviously wants to change her life what was it that has kept you fighting to try and find answers about your mum when so many other people have just accepted this look I think it's just the love of a mother really I was worried that something bad had happened to her and that my gut feeling was that that was the case and she's my mum you know I'm my kids are sad you know that they don't know where their grandma is or what's happened to her they never got the chance to meet her and there's a lot of sadness with those things like yes she didn't come to my wedding like I was driving up in the soft top car up to my wedding with my dad and my dad's like keep an eye out for your mom I'm sure she'd be here like she'd be looking for you and I was like dad I'm

about to walk down the aisle you know I don't need that emotional heart wrench and then you know then my brother died and that was like the most horrific day of my life and my dad's never fully recovered from that and he always felt that it was really sad and I remember at his funeral one of my mum's sisters was there and we'd handed out white roses to the people he was closest with which put on his coffin and we gave one to Deirdre and she went up and she said this is from your mother and put it on his coffin and I was like just a mess you know I was really sad for Owen because he wasn't processing things well and he didn't communicate well. And for me, talking about my story has been my good mental health kick for me because talking about things helps me cope with

it a little bit better. And what is the flow on effect? Because one thing I think a lot of people don't think about is that you have dedicated 26 years. Every aspect of your life has been consumed almost by trying to figure out what happened, trying to answer the questions, trying to get people to take you seriously. What has that been like for your family? How have they reacted to this situation? Well, it's just pretty much Chris and the kids and myself, my brother, obviously I don't have any siblings anymore. So, and I don't have anything to do with mum's side of the family. So it's just pretty much me and Chris and it's been hard on him. Like if you think about it, we literally got engaged two weeks before she left. So his

entire life with me my mum has been missing and there's been times where it's very stressful and you know I I'm not always level-headed and smooth sailing I do have moments where I'm not coping very well and he's a great backbone for me and we've been through a lot together and thick and thin but you know as my kids get older they understand more and you know I listen to my 21 year old tell her sister who's 18 about how much we've been through in the last four years and since the podcast happened and it became, you know, in every magazine and every newspaper, people talking about it when she goes to uni, oh, gosh, I didn't know that about your grandmother

and my younger daughter is the same. My little boy, he'd get in the car and go, oh, can we listen to the podcast this morning? So very different ways of them coping but I'm a big believer that communication is key and communicating with them openly and honestly has been essential to keeping everyone level-headed and understanding what's happening. Now here we are, it's at a coronial inquest, we have this man, Rick Blum, who looks like

he could be a very crucial part to this information. What do you think now, after 26 years, after all this information, what do you think happened to your mum if you had to have a guess? I would say that she's met somebody and they've talked her into having this amazing life overseas I feel like she's been told there's certain little bits of information I have and mentioned to a couple of her friends about buying a school over in the UK and that you know did you know you could buy one and those sorts of little bits of information just tell me that maybe there was a story given to her that this is a potential thing that we could do together I feel she's had to come back into Australia to get the money to potentially buy this school

and I think something has gone terribly wrong here in Australia so yeah well her passport's never left the country again so it came back in on the 2nd of August in 97 it expired 10 years later and it's never been seen again since she changed her name by depol so that gives us a cookie crumble to go okay well we know she did that not sure why but then we sort of can make assumptions I guess based on the information we have in front of us but yeah so we have a position that I think she was probably planning on going back and I don't think she made it back. Sally, how do you get closure?

If you don't ever get the answers that you're looking for, if you never get to know what happened to your mum, how do you get personal closure? Yeah, well, in the world of the missing, we refer to it as ambiguous loss, which is a loss that even if you find out or you hear what's happened to her, even if you find a body, right?

So you've got someone missing and then finally their body washes up on the sand. you still don't know what happened to that person. You don't know who did it, the what, the why, the how. And that is an ambiguity that you have to deal with for life. And it's actually a massive trauma. If you look at the realms of ambiguity, it's actually a massive trauma for people to go through. And my worry is that a lot of people don't understand it. And closure is a word that we all use because it means something. It means that you've got closure. But unfortunately for us, you know, we don't know. Even my brother's suicide, there's an ambiguity of that because

he didn't leave us a note. He didn't tell us why he was deciding to do that. So you're always guessing. You're always wondering what was the key or what was the nail in the coffin for him that made that decision that he wanted to take his life. So it is very difficult. It's a raw trauma. I cope by, as I said before, telling my story, but I love going to the gym and looking after myself and you know I've got a few playlists that I've made myself which I call mindset and you know they're the sorts of things that help me cope with the not knowing because I don't think you ever really get over it to be honest. You've gotten to the point that you are here now where we're hoping to have solved the case your podcast The Lady Vanishes might be the first podcast to

actually assist in solving a missing person case which is absolutely incredible but we didn't want to get you on here today just to talk about your story. We wanted to get you on here today because we want to help you and we know we have a large platform. What do you want to say to everyone listening that can help you? Someone might know something somewhere. What pieces of information are you hoping for now to help finish this and put it to bed? Yeah, well, I think you guys have a unique listener. So probably a little bit different to what we're putting out on the news at Channel 7 so I wanted to be able to get the story told further and further because we found that a lot of the people who are coming forward is one example over in Belgium it was actually not

the victim herself but it was actually her daughter-in-law who had listened to a podcast who actually then said oh my gosh that's that guy let's talk about it go back to the police and that's how that all started again. Wow. So yeah I just thought that your audience might be able to have a think about you know do they know this person does their grandmother auntie mother have they had any experience with this person because the more people that can come forward and help us the more chance we're going to have of actually getting some answers so yeah so that's that would be amazing and I'm always happy and very grateful for people to let me share my story with them I will rattle some of the names off now so some of the identities that this man has stolen

are Willie Wouters, Rich West, Richard Westbury, Fernand Ramekel, Frederick D. Heddervery. But there's actually 51 of those. So for anyone that's listening, that might be like this woman overseas that thought, oh, my mum or my grandma had a connection to a man. Where can people go now to find out all of his identities, to find out the information, to see if there is a connection of some sort? Yeah, well, we've got all the details on both the Lady Vanishes Facebook page and also missing person, Marion Barter. There's a lot of detail on there. We've been very fortunate that the Australian newspaper

have actually been telling a story every single day. It's been in the paper for the last 10 days with just different information that we have found. One of the things I want to put a shout out to is Joni and the Super Sleuths, I call them. And they're a group of women who just were talking to me in the very early stages of all this happening. And collectively, we've become like family.

And they're a massive key for me keeping my sanity as well. they're there all the time we're always in chats and able to chat about just daily life as well as what's going on and helping me with petitions and anything that i need help with that i can't physically do myself i put my hand up and ask them and they're always there for me so of the people totally yeah definitely definitely strengthen numbers i say sally the last thing i wanted to ask you is about the coronal inquest that's currently underway what does that mean exactly So when they come to a conclusion on the coronial inquest, what's the hopeful outcome? Well, sadly, there's not a lot of good outcome that comes.

I guess you get an end result. So how it works is you go through the process where people come on, they get interviewed, they give witness statements, et cetera, et cetera. And then the inquest ends once all the witnesses are finished. And then there's a pause for quite some time. So we're talking from April to October last year in which the Crown Solicitor's Office and my lawyers and the New South Wales Police put together submissions of what they believe has happened and what has come out of the inquest. It has to be factual, it has to have been in the

inquest for that to be in a submission. That then goes to the coroner for her to decide what she's going to say and what she thinks has happened to my mum. Now she was due to give her findings on the 30th of November last year but the inquest was vacated at the last minute because of this new information that had come forward so they're now investigating that and we're at this point now waiting for another date to find out what's actually happening moving forward so it's a it's a crucial time for anyone to come forward with any information now is the time while um the cranial inquest is still underway before you do get a sort of a final answer but sally we hope you find some peace and we hope that you do get an outcome that you can move forward with you guys

are awesome thank you and thanks for your heartwarming care as well because that's obviously what gets people through these things is just people who want to listen and people who actually want to help because having doors shut in your face all the time and people not wanting to help and listen is excruciatingly painful and being able to tell my story on podcasts and to all your gorgeous listeners I'm hoping that even if they don't have anything that they know about it might actually just give them a bit of understanding of what happens when someone goes missing all right we never finish an episode without our suck and our sweet our highlight and our low light of each and every week britney you can go first i literally just said you go first while i think

of one okay i'll go first my suck for the week was that matt was away during the weather and like the weekends are the one it's like the two days that we have as a little family so i hate it whenever i'm away or he's away and so i was i was lonely oh okay that's your song okay sweet i wasn't really lonely. I had a really nice time with the girls, but I just, you know, I hate it when he goes away. I'm such a loser now. Like I don't like sleeping on my own. I get scared at night by myself. But I get scared at home by myself now. Yeah. I get, I get scared in the dark by myself as a grown ass woman. And then I was like, maybe Molly can come and sleep in bed with me because my three-year-old will keep me safe. Big, brave, bad three-year-old. My sweet for the week

was that on Friday night. So I was supposed to go out for dinner with my girlfriends, but then Matt's his weather thing was very very last minute and couldn't get a babysitter and they ended up cancelling their dinner plans going out to a restaurant and they all came over to my house and we had Aperol spritz and I ordered Italian in because fuck cooking and we just had a really cute time I got to meet my girlfriend's new baby it looked very cute and it was just a really nice night yeah it was lovely and they stayed till really late so I didn't have to be on my own in the dark I made them sleep my suck Delilah got de-sexed this week it's been really rough I cried when she went into the operation because they made me sign something

that's like she could die, but I know that that's like standard, you know. Anyone has an operation that's like just so you know the worst thing that could happen. Also, they don't wear cones now. I don't know if you know this. You know when dogs had operations, they used to have to wear those big cones? Yeah, and then they felt so shamed in their little shame cone, the cone of shame.

Well, now they don't have to do that. You can get them like a onesie and put it on like a pajama onesie. Like a liposuction onesie. Yeah, it's just like this thing that like it has a neck and it goes over their legs and a tail flap and everything and it's just so they can't scratch the thing. Anyway, well, we're really getting off track. My sweet for the week is I booked flights to go and see Ben.

So I'm going in a couple of weeks. We're taking a holiday here from radio. So just two weeks. We've got a little break. Oh, the Easter. Yeah, the Easter holidays. We take two weeks, give or take a day, and I'm going to see Ben and I'm very excited because I'm in love because I have a boyfriend.

I have a boyfriend and I'm in love. And you're going back to Scotland. Yeah. When's Ben going to come here? In June. Do you know what? Every two months we're trying to see each other every two months and I think if we can maintain that, then we'll be happy.

100%. I think that that's like – I mean, fuck, that's more than I saw Matt in the first year of our relationship. Totally. Although that sounds like a very expensive relationship. It is. Yeah. Yeah.

Good. Better make it last. Better go sell HelloFresh. All right, guys, that is it from us today. If you enjoyed the episode, please jump on, leave a review if you listen on Apple Podcasts. You can also subscribe, hit the little plus button in the corner and by subscribing to the podcast episode,

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