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Huge twist in Bronwyn cold case · The Front

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  Speaker 1: the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's
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  Speaker 1: on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Friday, June twenty one.
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  Speaker 1: Renewables will have to make up the majority of Australia's
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  Speaker 1: according to energy experts who are chiming in as debate
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  Speaker 1: new bid to contest the Federal Court's findings. The TV
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  Speaker 1: of probabilities, raped fellow Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins. Lamman is
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  Speaker 1: appealing those stories alive right now at The Australian dot
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  Speaker 1: com dot a U a stunning new witness account in
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  Speaker 1: the disappearance of thirty one year old mum Bronwyn Winfield
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  Speaker 1: has emerged and it's turned the investigation on a gripping
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  Speaker 1: new path.
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  Speaker 2: Today.
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  Speaker 1: What Bronwyn Winfield's neighbor saw late one night in May
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  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, thirty one years ago, Judy Singh stood
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  Speaker 1: in the living area of her two story home on
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  Speaker 1: Granite Street in Lennox, head up well after dark. She
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  Speaker 1: was a mum, a nurse, worried about how her new
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  Speaker 1: pregnancy was progressing, and stressing about her job and money.
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  Speaker 1: Down the road in the darkness, a car started up.
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  Speaker 3: And this night I was sitting up and I saw
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  Speaker 3: the car pull out at the end of the street
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  Speaker 3: when the light was on in the car. There fairly
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  Speaker 3: squeaky brakes on that car and he drove very slowly
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  Speaker 3: along the street, but he had left the car light
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  Speaker 3: on and I could see directly into the car that
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  Speaker 3: you're listening.
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  Speaker 1: Judy told this story to The Australian's National Chief correspondent
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  Speaker 1: Headley Thomas for a new episode of the Alien's investigative
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  Speaker 1: podcast series Bronwyn.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm transfixed.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's Hedley interviewing Dudy. In recent days, listening to
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  Speaker 1: her remarkable account of what she remembers from May nineteen
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  Speaker 1: ninety three. Hedley is investigating the disappearance of thirty one
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  Speaker 1: year old mother of two Bronwyn Winfield from Sandstone Crescent
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  Speaker 1: on May sixteenth in nineteen ninety three. That night, Bronwyn
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  Speaker 1: tucked her two little girls into bed and vanished. Police
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  Speaker 1: investigations conducted over the past three decades have so far
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  Speaker 1: failed to shed any light on Bronwyn's fate. Her husband,
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  Speaker 1: John Winfield, has always maintained Bronwyn left the family home voluntarily.
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  Speaker 1: The initial police investigation failed to consider the possibility she'd
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  Speaker 1: met with foul play.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I could see directa into the car, and
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  Speaker 3: I had a small lantern on the balcony rail and
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  Speaker 3: he kind of looked up this night and I saw
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  Speaker 3: this what looked to be like a mummy in the
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  Speaker 3: back of the car, and I thought, what are it
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  Speaker 3: be going late that night with? You know, something that
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  Speaker 3: looked like I just called it a mummy. And I've
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  Speaker 3: said this to my son so many times about this thing.
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  Speaker 3: And I thought, well, if he'd pulled out and that
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  Speaker 3: was a body in that car, it would be pressing
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  Speaker 3: up against the surfboard and maybe what was causing the
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  Speaker 3: light to be on in the car. And I thought, well,
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  Speaker 3: even if he was taking out belongings, you wouldn't make
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  Speaker 3: it look like a body, do you know what I mean?
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  Speaker 2: So when you say a mummy, it was wrapped in something.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, it was either very pale green or cream, not white,
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  Speaker 3: but maybe like a bed sheet or some like that.
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  Speaker 1: Judy is quite certain it was John Winfield driving the
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  Speaker 1: family's white Ford Falcon that night. She says she could
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  Speaker 1: see into the car because the interior light was on.
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  Speaker 1: Something that's always troubled her. Why would the light be on?
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  Speaker 1: What was that shape she'd seen in the backseat. John
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  Speaker 1: Winfield denies any wrongdoing in this matter. He's never been charged.
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  Speaker 1: This isn't the first time Judy Seingh has told her story.
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  Speaker 1: She relayed what she'd seen to her friend and neighbor
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  Speaker 1: Kerry McLain, shortly after Bromwin disappeared in nineteen ninety three.
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  Speaker 1: Not long after, Judy reported it at Ballinor police station
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  Speaker 1: on the New South Wales North Coast. A decade later,
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  Speaker 1: she tried again, this time with the cops in Byron Bay.
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  Speaker 1: Police heard her claims, but Judy says they didn't take
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  Speaker 1: any interest. It wasn't until January twenty twenty three when
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  Speaker 1: Headley got an email from Kerry McLain, Jude's old friend
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  Speaker 1: from Lennox head that the pieces began to fit together.
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  Speaker 1: Kerry reached out to Headley because she knew of his
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  Speaker 1: track record in investigating cold cases. She told him she
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  Speaker 1: knew something about the disappearance of Bromwyn Winfield, including Judy's story.
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  Speaker 1: Headley tried to track Judy down, but she's moved and remarried,
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  Speaker 1: so her name has changed. Then, out of the blue,
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  Speaker 1: just over a week ago, Judy contacted Headley by email,
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  Speaker 1: saying she had heard about the podcast, although she hadn't
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  Speaker 1: listened to it, and wanted to let him know what
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  Speaker 1: she knew.
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  Speaker 3: You wonder why the police wouldn't be interested in that.
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  Speaker 3: Even now, I start getting quite churned up inside when
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  Speaker 3: I'm thinking about it. It's just one of those things
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  Speaker 3: that I've had to live with. My son Bo and
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  Speaker 3: I talk about it a lot. I said to him
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  Speaker 3: the other day, I said, you know, this is podcast
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  Speaker 3: came on, you know the Australian newspaper, And I said
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  Speaker 3: to my son, oh, there's this podcast about Bronwen.
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  Speaker 2: I haven't actually seen it.
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  Speaker 3: I said, oh, cry, what why should I do it?
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  Speaker 1: You know?
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  Speaker 3: And he said, oh it's crazy, Mom, You've.
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  Speaker 2: Been thinking about that forever.
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  Speaker 3: And I said, oh I ready and he said, oh great,
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  Speaker 3: great good. I need get off your conscience. He said, Mum,
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  Speaker 3: you've always you know, ANNGSD over this. Why ain't you're
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  Speaker 3: in here? So that's what I.
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  Speaker 1: Did coming up how this mystery sent our team on
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  Speaker 1: the hunt for a vintage Ford Falcon. Subscribers to The
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  Speaker 1: Australian here episodes of Bromwin first. This explosive new installment
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  Speaker 1: is live right now at bromwanpodcast dot com. A subscription
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  Speaker 1: as well as breaking news alerts, newsletters and special events.
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  Speaker 1: Join us at the Australian dot com dot au and
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  Speaker 1: we'll be back after this break. Judy Singh's account of
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  Speaker 1: what she saw in the early hours of May sixteenth,
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  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three is chilling, But investigative journalism involves really
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  Speaker 1: digging into any new piece of info, testing every story,
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  Speaker 1: every bit of evidence. That's how our team wound up
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  Speaker 1: searching for a white nineteen eighty seven Ford Falcon XF sedan.
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  Speaker 1: It had to be automatic because of the way the
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  Speaker 1: car's interior was configured. It had to be the exact
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  Speaker 1: make and model of John Winfield's car, so we could
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  Speaker 1: establish for ourselves whether what Judy says she saw was
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  Speaker 1: really possible. We called old colleagues, texted friends, dived into
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  Speaker 1: the car fanatics subculture on social media, rang every petrol
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  Speaker 1: head we knew trying to find the exact make and model.
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  Speaker 1: It was the Australian's National Crime correspondent David Murray who
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  Speaker 1: came up with the goods. He located and excess sudan
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  Speaker 1: in Ipswich in Queensland, only this one was blue.
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  Speaker 2: There's plenty of roomen here.
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  Speaker 1: That's our visual storytelling expert Sean Callanan, who also happens
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  Speaker 1: to be a surfer and brought a bunch of his
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  Speaker 1: boards along to Ipswich with Dave and Headley. Their aim
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  Speaker 1: was to test out Judy's account of a board and
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  Speaker 1: a body in the backseat of this car? Was that possible?
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  Speaker 1: Would a human body and a surfboard both fit in
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  Speaker 1: the back of this kind of sedan? Joining me'em in Ipswich,
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  Speaker 1: was Bianca far Marcus, who's actually The Australian's hugely talented
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  Speaker 1: video editor and has been voicing Bromwyn in this podcast.
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  Speaker 1: When we moved to Lennox Head, I was even more lonely.
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  Speaker 2: The house that was Bill became John's castle and my prison.
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  Speaker 2: Bianca reads Bromwyn's letters and notes the ones Bromwin wrote
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  Speaker 2: back in nineteen ninety three, and Bianca is the same
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  Speaker 2: height as Bromwan one hundred and seventy three centimeters. She
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  Speaker 2: has the same slender build as Bromwin. Bianca did not
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  Speaker 2: bat an eyelid when she was told we would be
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  Speaker 2: wrapping her up in a sheet, wrapping her to look
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  Speaker 2: something like an Egyptian mummy, and then picking her up
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  Speaker 2: and putting her in the back of an old Ford
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  Speaker 2: falcon along with a surfboard.
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  Speaker 3: So you could potentially fit in a board up to
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  Speaker 3: close to seven foot.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you could even go longer, be as you could
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  Speaker 2: turn it over and put the nose on the dash
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  Speaker 2: and the back of it on the back bench. The
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  Speaker 2: next bit was the most challenging. Three middle aged white
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  Speaker 2: males needed to literally wrap Bianchor up in a sheet
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  Speaker 2: and then pick her up and place her in the
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  Speaker 2: back of the car. We needed then to cover her head,
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  Speaker 2: and we needed to see if she would fit with
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  Speaker 2: the surfboard in the way Jude had described it.
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  Speaker 1: To hear how the boys fit Bianca and the board
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  Speaker 1: in the back seat. You can listen to the episode
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  Speaker 1: and watch the startling video footage right now at brominpodcast
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  Speaker 1: dot com. We also sent our visual storytelling expert Sean
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  Speaker 1: Callanan to go with Heavily to Judy Singh's house in
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  Speaker 1: order to capture in a visual sense what Judy remembers.
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  Speaker 1: Sean is one of those digital experts who can do anything,
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  Speaker 1: and when I described to him the challenge of bringing
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  Speaker 1: Judy's memories to life, he came up with the idea
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  Speaker 1: of collaborating with another of our digital design experts, Stephen Grice,
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  Speaker 1: to first sketch what Judy described, then create a computer
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  Speaker 1: image of the driver and what Judy described as a
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  Speaker 1: mummy in the back of the car. We bought detailed
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  Speaker 1: three dimensional images of the nineteen eighties forward XF the
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  Speaker 1: very same model, and together Stephen and Sean place the
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  Speaker 1: elements in the car, a driver, a surfboard, and a
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  Speaker 1: body wrapped in a sheet slumped on the back seat.
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  Speaker 1: The effect of the digital graphic they've created is chilling.
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  Speaker 1: On bromwynpodcast dot com and the Australian dot com dot
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  Speaker 1: au right now, you can see an animation of the
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  Speaker 1: car driving along the street in the darkness, with its
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  Speaker 1: interior light illuminating the body, the board and the driver.
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  Speaker 1: The next question will be how New South Wales police
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  Speaker 1: react to this development a fresh eyewitness account in this
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  Speaker 1: thirty one year old mystery. To find out, go to
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  Speaker 1: Bromwin podcast dot com right now and join our subscribers.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Episode seven of Bromwin is out for subscribers now and
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  Speaker 1: you can see how we brought this stunning witness account
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  Speaker 1: to life through three D renderings and recreations at our website.
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  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us on the front. Our team is
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Kristin amiot Leat Sammaglu, Joshua Burton, Jasper League, Tiffany Dimack
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  Speaker 1: and name Claire Harvey.