Family members hope a million-dollar (NZ$1.2 million) reward will unlock answers about their Australian mother’s suspicious disappearance, as a key person of interest refuses to talk to police.<\/p>\n
Marion Barter, 51, was last seen at a Queensland bus depot in June 1997, before embarking on an indefinite trip to England with a man she had recently begun a relationship with.<\/p>\n
Her daughter Sally Leydon filed a report with police in October that year, concerned she had not heard from her mother, while also noting AU$80,000 had been drained from Barter’s bank account.<\/p>\n
But the file was not marked as a missing-person report and lay dormant for a decade.<\/p>\n
NSW State Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan in 2024 found the teacher was on the balance of probabilities dead, describing her disappearance as “troubling”.<\/p>\n
The coroner outlined a series of extraordinary coincidences in the case, including the unusual name Barter adopted via deed poll in the month before she disappeared.<\/p>\n
She was last seen at the bus station in the hours before she took a flight under her new identity, Florabella Natalia Marion Remakel.<\/p>\n
Her outgoing passenger card stated that she was divorced and intended to live in Luxembourg.<\/p>\n
Weeks later, she was listed as returning to Australia with an incoming passenger card stating she was married and living in the small European nation.<\/p>\n
Barter changed her name because she was in a relationship with Belgian national Ric Blum and sought to share a name with him, O’Sullivan found.<\/p>\n
Fernand Nocolas Remakel was one of multiple aliases the convicted fraudster used over the years, her report said.<\/p>\n
Detectives believe, in the weeks leading up to her disappearance, Barter was observed by a family member leaving a service station with a tall male passenger.<\/p>\n
Inquiries revealed someone accessed the missing woman’s bank account following her disappearance.<\/p>\n
Lleydon said her mother “did not simply walk away from her life and she did not abandon her family”.<\/p>\n
She also maintained Blum \u2013 officially a person of interest in the case \u2013 had further knowledge surrounding her mother’s disappearance he was withholding from police. <\/p>\n
“The coroner found this man does indeed know more about what’s happened to my mum and he has been deliberately unwilling to share this information,” she told reporters on Monday.<\/p>\n
“To those people that do know something, you should know I am not giving up until I find my mum and justice is served,” she said.<\/p>\n
Detective Superintendent Joe Doueihi said police made no arrests because they did not yet have enough evidence to result in a successful prosecution. <\/p>\n
“We can’t force a person of interest to talk to police,” he said. <\/p>\n
“We hope there are people out there in the community that may have information they haven’t given to us.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Family members hope a million-dollar (NZ$1.2 million) reward will unlock answers about their Australian mother’s suspicious disappearance, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85,67,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-411433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australia","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}