Australia Australia - Marion Barter, 51, missing after trip to UK, Jun 1997 #4

[Mjjj14]

She's telling Sally to access the storage.

"On the plane I worried about a number of things especially school. I want you to pack up the kitchen scales + weights (?) in a box and deliver it A.S.A.P. (underlined twice) to ? ? along with a couple of things from George's storage In a blue plastic bag you'll find 2 teddy bears--with "

? ? looks like Jersey Hills or Jenny Hills--the last part of the second word obscured by red ellipse. Maybe Hilton?

oh that’s the other teacher who taught I think they said prep at the same school as Marion, Jenny Hills.

 

[Meligator]

Whatever happened to Marion, I really think she believed she was in some kind of danger related to Luke Glover. He was making terrible accusations of her being inappropriate with boys & of stealing. There may have been someone else involved in her disappearance—taking advantage of her vulnerability/fear—but she definitely had TSS on her mind.

 

[TootsieFootsie]

Something scared her into leaving.

 

[Laughing]

I just looked up these floods, they have their very own Wikipedia entry. They happened in July 97, started in the Czech Republic and also affected Poland and Germany.

There’s nothing I can find about it stopping the orient express, unless she meant that heavy rain would put a literal dampener on the trip and she was worried about further flooding in other parts of Europe.

And, in emergencies such as widespread floods, passenger trains are delayed & cancelled to allow freight traffic on all available tracks.

I happened to learn quite a bit about this during the big Midwestern flood in 1993. Mr. Laughing was on a study tour with the spouse of the manager of a Chicago rail yard. Stressful time.

Don't know much about Europe in 1997, but if that was anything like 1993 -- you can't imagine unless you've seen it.

jmho ymmv lrr

 

[Lord Peter Flimsy]

On two of the July 97 postcards Marion sent she said she was off to Amsterdam.

We know the Orient Express does not pass through The Netherlands so how was Marion intending to get there and if she was going to catch the Orient Express whilst in mainland Europe where exactly?

 

[TootsieFootsie]

PressReader.com - Your favorite newspapers and magazines.

MISSING MUM: - PressReader
23 May 2019 — In 1997, devoted teacher and mother Marion Barter was on a dream ... She'd been “brave” and hired a car, and was on her way to Amsterdam.

I can usually read these but this time I couldn't, so I got just the snippet.

On two of the July 97 postcards Marion sent she said she was off to Amsterdam.

We know the Orient Express does not pass through The Netherlands so how was Marion intending to get there and if she was going to catch the Orient Express whilst in mainland Europe where exactly?

 

[Lord Peter Flimsy]

PressReader.com - Your favorite newspapers and magazines.

MISSING MUM: - PressReader
23 May 2019 — In 1997, devoted teacher and mother Marion Barter was on a dream ... She'd been “brave” and hired a car, and was on her way to Amsterdam.

I can usually read these but this time I couldn't, so I got just the snippet.

It does make the latest mention of a Dutch dentist more relevant. How easy is it to play the part of a Dutchman?

 

[SaintGertrude]

And wouldn't it be amazing if it was in the George Yardley family. Someone posted that his sister lived in that area.

He was friends with Johnny Warren from playing soccer here, in Australia.

I think the Yardley Park Road was named a long time ago. Another Oast House described as like a scene from a Jane Austen book is Finchcocks Oast which is in the rurals so would be surrounded by wildlife like squirrels and rabbits.

 

[TootsieFootsie]

I thought it would be named a long time ago.
But just in case a celebrity footballer got a park and/or road named after him, I thought I'd get in first

I think the Yardley Park Road was named a long time ago. Another Oast House described as like a scene from a Jane Austen book is Finchcocks Oast which is in the rurals so would be surrounded by wildlife like squirrels and rabbits.

 

[TootsieFootsie]

I don't think I could do it

It does make the latest mention of a Dutch dentist more relevant. How easy is it to play the part of a Dutchman?

 

[Lord Peter Flimsy]

Would it be worth approaching a trade magazine to see if anyone might remember Marion? I have attached one for example Annual Subscription to the print magazine - Luxury BnB Magazine

 

[SaintGertrude]

I thought it would be named a long time ago.
But just in case a celebrity footballer got a park and/or road named after him, I thought I'd get in first

Where Marion stayed is nagging me so much now. In one postcard we hear about a quaint B&B and Marion having afternoon tea with old ladies possibly in Tunbridge Wells. (For what it is worth I have always thought Marden in Kent would be a nice place for her to have stayed). Marion's daughter Sally also had a letter on letterhead from hotel Nikko Narita which is in Japan so Marion must have stopped off there during the journey or a travelling companion gave her the paper to write on.

 

[vivienbee]

I can't explain why, it's more just a feeling and complete conjecture on my part, but I really felt when listening to the postcards read aloud on the podcast that Marion was alone on her travels, not with anyone else. It changed my whole perspective on the case, to be honest, not that I have any idea what I actually think happened.
If it weren't for the name change and other strange behaviour prior to her disappearance (ie. unexplained absences, meeting a strange man in a parking lot), I would be inclined to think that Marion really did go to England for a holiday and met with some kind of foul play when there, rather than having correspondence with someone ahead of time.
I just don't know anymore. It gets more and more confusing to me by the day.

This is just a floating thought and not an accusation at Sally by any means, but I wonder if it's possible that Marion saying to her "don't expect any postcards for a while" (to paraphrase) might be more of an injected memory that never actually happened. If Sally began to wonder why she wasn't in contact, it's possible that she thought to herself, "oh, she's probably just having a good time and won't write for a while", and this, muddled in with some element of guilt about not having realised sooner that something was amiss, jumbled it into a memory of her saying that. I know there's definitely things I've done like that in the past, where your memory of an event changes based on your own feelings and emotions. Just speculating.

 

[Itsapuzzle]

Couple of random thoughts. Marion/Florabella said she was staying in Australia for eight days. It's possible she came back to finalise her accounts and gets things sorted for a permanent stay overseas, could that be why she asked someone to post the card on the 7th, and she'd be back in the UK around the 10th .... just a random thought. Another thought, and Sally's super sleuths would be all over finding where Marion stayed by now, but I reckon it would be a good idea to get any video footage they've got of Marion to the Oast's and B&B's in Rye (that were operating in 1997 of course) .... more likely to remember Marion from vision and hearing her voice, than merely a still photograph.
Good idea @Lord Peter Flimsy re trade magazines.

 

[Itsapuzzle]

Hoping someone can remind me - wasn’t there a Remakel found who was on the payroll somewhere in QLD? What business was it again?

That was Trendwest Seriallyaddicted. Just googled "marion barter websleuths trendwest" and this page of the thread came up - click here, should take you to it. #866

 

[Itsapuzzle]

Oooh, one more thing, forgiveness, three in a row posts .... ah well. What about the flight passenger lists, are we going to be hearing about that, are they available .... oh boy, I'd love to see them .... or is that something that's coming out in the February hearing? Very curious to know. Cheers.

 

[Mjjj14]

Whatever happened to Marion, I really think she believed she was in some kind of danger related to Luke Glover. He was making terrible accusations of her being inappropriate with boys & of stealing. There may have been someone else involved in her disappearance—taking advantage of her vulnerability/fear—but she definitely had TSS on her mind.

I absolutely agree. I feel like that was overlooked quite a bit, it just doesn’t get mentioned much now and those allegations made by LG weren’t even mentioned at the inquest to our knowledge (I understand that we aren’t privy to the brief of evidence including statements by witnesses etc).

Again, I don’t believe the allegations to be true at all but I feel like it must have been so heavy on her mind.

 

[brjakj]

I think it’s possible that Marion came back to access her money. Her Acct in the Uk was in the name of Marion barter but her passport was under the florabella remakel name. So she may not have been able to access her money. Especially after the comment about how expensive things were. She may have brought her return flight forward to come back and get her money. Someone may have seen her constantly withdrawing money and she became a target here in Australia and met with foul play.

 

[vivienbee]

Part of me wonders, (I'm sure this has been discussed before, long before I joined the forum so apologies for any repeats), if Marion was being blackmailed.

It doesn't fit all elements of the case, I admit, but if she went to the UK to try to escape from a perceived threat, that might explain the name change, the secrecy, the weird meetings and the shadiness about her identity.

If, somehow, someone then got in touch with her in the UK, making clear to her that they would still release information about her regardless of her location, perhaps she flew back to Aus, withdrawing the money to pay off the blackmailer.

If it was information that she desperately didn't want anyone to know, she might have chosen to keep things secret from her family, getting herself into a deeper mess than she ever anticipated.
Again, just speculating, but if this was the case, I can see that this might somehow link to what was going on at TSS, hence the strange insistence in her postcards about the scales, to which she makes a comment that I have always found jarring that is something along the lines of "so he doesn't have more ammunition against me" (I think in ref. to Luke Glover (please correct me if I'm wrong.)

This, for me, is more plausible for many reasons than falling foul to a con-artist willing to travel back and forth to enact some EXTREMELY lengthy, risky, convoluted plan.

I have no idea what could lead to her being blackmailed, but people will go to great lengths to keep things from coming to light if they are ashamed of something, regardless of how monumental it seems to others. We know Marion cared deeply about her reputation, so this fits with some of the elements we understand about her character.

I'd love to hear what everyone else's thoughts are on this.

 

[Itsapuzzle]

What's the bet the Dutch dentist lived in Luxembourg, hey .... Netherlands is only 4 hours drive from Luxembourg, just because he's Dutch doesn't mean he necessarily lived in Holland. I feel like there's something to this Dutch dentist being mentioned in the postcard ... MOO of course.