FATE OF MISSING MUM A MYSTERY
Sally Leydon last heard from her mother back in 1997. An inquest is now a possibility as police probe the case into teacher Marion Barter, aka Florabella Remakel, who will be put back on the national missing persons registry
“THEY’VE now identified what I always thought to be the case, that she is in fact missing and they haven’t ever sighted her or spoken to her.”
It’s the recognition Sally Leydon has long been seeking, years of searching for answers to what happened to her mother, Marion Barter.
Police have confirmed they’re following up inquiries and will send information to the New South Wales Coroner to make a decision about whether to hold an inquest or not.
And for the first time since she went missing 22 years ago, Marion Barter, aka Florabella Remakel, will be placed on the national missing persons registry.
In 1996, Marion Barter was at the top of her game, plying her trade at one of the Coast’s most exclusive schools, The Southport School (TSS), named best teacher in Queensland and runner-up nationally. She was at the height of her career.
That’s why it came as a complete shock to Ms Leydon when her mother quit her job in June 1997, giving only four days notice, saying she needed a break and wanted to travel overseas.
The mystery and intrigue surrounding her disappearance only deepens from there. It includes:
* Ms Leydon receiving a number of calls from her mother during her trip to Europe. The last time she hears from her is at the end of July 1997 when Ms Barter tells her she does not want to continually ring people to check up on them.
* A number of months went by without any contact. Worried that her mother hadn’t called her younger brother for his birthday, Ms Leydon called her mother’s bank. For three-and-a-half weeks, $5000 had been withdrawn from her account every day in Byron Bay. And three days in the middle consecutively, at Burleigh Heads, throughout August 1997.
* Ms Leydon heads to Byron Bay with a photo of her mother. No-one had seen her. She makes a missing person’s report to local police.
* A week later the police call and tell her they had found her mother and that she didn’t want anyone to know where she is or what she is doing.
* Fifteen years go by, when Ms Leydon finds out her mother had legally changed her name from Marion Barter to Florabella Remakel before she took off on her overseas holiday in 1996.
* Someone calls Crime Stoppers in 2002 about a woman by the name of Marion who went missing in northern NSW, saying she had been murdered and buried in bushland near Armidale.
* In 2016, Ms Leydon is told by NSW Police that the case was closed.
* In 2019, The Lady Vanishes podcast by Channel 7 is launched and police say they are reviewing the case.
In the past month there has been another breakthrough with NSW police confirming they are following up inquiries and will be sending information to the Coroner for assessment.
It is bittersweet for Ms Leydon who is taking the news with trepidation, unsure what the Coroner will recommend. She hopes it could finally lead to answers to the questions she has been asking for 22 years.
Detective Inspector Brendon Cullen said the Coroner would make the decision about whose jurisdiction the case should fall and whether or not an inquest into Ms Barter’s disappearance will occur.
“It’s not going to an inquest, it’s going there (to the Coroner) for them to assess the information that we have,” Insp Cullen said.
“We have a couple of inquiries we need to finalise first and in the near future we will be sending that information.
“And it’s information, it’s not a brief of evidence, it’s just information.
“The investigation is still ongoing. As far as reinterviewing people the case is getting a bit old. Where people need to be reinterviewed, they will be.”
Ms Leydon said the process had left her a little miffed.
“The reason it has gone to the Coroner is because they’re trying to get a jurisdictional hearing. What that means to me is that they’re trying to give it to Queensland, saying ‘we don’t want it’, in a nutshell.
“I have a problem with that. I asked for that to be done in 2016, I wrote to every single Minister in parliament in NSW, I wrote to both premiers, I wrote to my local member and I just got slapped in the face at every turn.
“I even went to Queensland Police and asked for the case to be reopened here.
“There is a lot of evidence that I’m really hoping the Coroner can read through the lines of that and see that there is more to it than meets the eye and I think NSW is to lead the investigation.
“I’m really hoping that the Coroner can look at that make the decision based on that, and it’s the right decision for mum.
“I’m not keen to sit there and go through the whole process again with Queensland Police.”
Ms Leydon said she hoped the Coroner would make some recommendations that would help in the search for her mother.
“I really believe that based on everything, based on common law of people not being seen or sighted or spoken to by their loved ones for more than seven years.
“Overseas there’s a thing called Absentia, which is taken into play for people missing without a trace for seven years and it means for their family, all the privacy issues are lifted.
“The family can then look at things like bank records, travel records, so that you can try and establish some sort of timeline.
“That’s what we’re desperately trying to do at the moment, to track events that we know happened. To establish what may have happened, things that we could potentially tick off.
“If I get that information then I’m very happy to do that work.
“I know police say they’re short on resources, I have this massive team of people behind me now. I have these girls who I’ve never met be
We will be fighting to the end, until we find out what’s happened
fore who are helping. I’ve had to break them down into little groups, it’s beyond whatever I thought it would be.
“I asked the question about my DNA being sent overseas to run against any Jane Doe’s, just to make sure that if she didn’t come back into the country and someone else used her passport, at least we can check off any Jane Does in the UK and Luxembourg.”
Insp Cullen said a recent review with the Homicide Squad led them to ask for Ms Barter to be put back on the register.
“There’s compelling reasons why she shouldn’t (be on the missing persons register) but, again, there’s also unique circumstances around this case, in that it’s been such a long time, no-one has seen her. It’s a unique case.
“For those reasons, we haven’t got a lot to lose by putting her on there, until we can confirm one way or the other I suppose.
“She could be anywhere, but we are keeping an open mind and we will do what we can.”
All of this movement in her mother’s missing person case and the recent breakthrough has been an emotional rollercoaster for Ms Leydon.
“It’s bittersweet. Everyone is excited that we’ve got that win, and it is a win for sure, but it’s a bittersweet one. They’ve now identified what I always thought to be the case, that she is in fact missing and they haven’t ever sighted her or spoken to her.
“The chances of her being alive, in my opinion, are extremely slim. I don’t see how she can vanish and the NSW Police and the AFP have been looking for her and they can’t find her.
“Nothing has been heard from her, nothing has been touched. She did, or someone did, touch her Medicare card in September of 1997. That doesn’t give you a lot of hope that something good is going to come out of this.
“I didn’t believe that she would just leave and never be seen again. I didn’t think she was clever enough to be able to go and change her name and go and create a whole new life for herself and just vanish off the face of the earth.
“I’m hoping that putting her back on the missing person’s list means that they will do more, that she just won’t go on there and sit dormant.
“I’m not going to let that happen. We will be fighting to the end, until we find out what’s happened.”