Australia Australia - Marion Barter, 51, missing after trip to UK, June 1997 #10

[mishy66]

Mishy, I wasn't replying to you. I wanted this person to know that a "vessel" can be a plane or ship and to find out if that timeline is what others have.

Just because someone tags you does not mean that they are replying to you directly. "Tagging" means that you like a post or that you found it interesting and want to comment on it. That is all. It does not necessarily mean the person who tagged you wants a reply from you. The reply can be from anyone.

In that case you should have tagged @Zanzibar who made the post that I was commenting to.
HOW can Zanzibar see your comment if it was meant for her, on my post if you didn't tag her?
I think you have your tagging confused

 

[Estelle]

In that case you should have tagged @Zanzibar who made the post that I was commenting to.
HOW can Zanzibar see your comment if it was meant for her, on my post if you didn't tag her?
I think you have your tagging confused

I could not find her original post.

 

[brjakj]

Deleted

 

[Ezzabee]

New here and been catching up over the last few days...my head officially hurts!
I have so many theories!!
I think either she was left in Europe, alone, nothing to her name etc (should be searching for jane doe etc in these countries) or if she did willingly come back she was bumped off and the car was used in transporting her (alive and deceased) which is why it needed to be sold.
Hope the police are trying to locate this vehicle for forensic testing....

Does anyone know if the UK police or Interpol etc have been involved since the inquest began?

 

[mishy66]

I could not find her original post.

The arrow beside the persons name takes you to the original postings.
This is how you tag the messenger of that post, by following the arrow up and finding the post that you want to tag so you can make a comment to THAT person, not tag people in the middle of a conversation between others.

 

[gymtonic]

I too have a QLD drivers licence, however the expiry date has nothing to do with my date of birth?

I am not too sure when you got your first licence, but I have spoken to 5 friends now who say that their licence expiry date is their birthday and all 5 of us got our original licences in the 80s. Consequently all subsequent expiry dates are our birthdays regardless of when we renewed.
I can explain the anomaly for your licence by hazarding a guess that the system changed at some point before you got your first licence? Possibly when it became computerised they were able to handle it differently. Definitely all of use remember the DL expiry dates being birthdays in the 80s.

 

[Meligator]

Tangentially related to IK travel dates, I keep thinking about how RBs inquest he made specific mention of a friend of IKs who traveled on a Greek ship, I think he said. Could be filibuster, but I can’t help but think this detail is important in covering some lie. Like it was somehow important to include mention of this friend of IKs who they stayed together with in AU.

 

[gymtonic]

100% Don't know what the policies were exactly in 1997, but I could only assume you would need either:-

1. Current Driver's Licence issued by your resident country + International Drivers Permit (which as far as I am aware, you can only apply for and get in your home country)

or 2. If in 1997 an IDP was not required (I think there is/was an agreement in place between UK & Aus where you don't need an IDP for the first 12 months of arriving in UK), then I can only assume you would need to pair that with your passport.

I know currently to hire a car in UK/Europe I would need to present my current licence and a passport and in many EU countries an IDP aswell.

And then the rules, of course, are different again if you hold a European drivers licence.

The only light I can shed on this is that I have never had an International Drivers Licence but I did hire cars in the UK in the 1990s, so I would only have had passports and Queensland DL.

 

[gymtonic]

Tangentially related to IK travel dates, I keep thinking about how RBs inquest he made specific mention of a friend of IKs who traveled on a Greek ship, I think he said. Could be filibuster, but I can’t help but think this detail is important in covering some lie. Like it was somehow important to include mention of this friend of IKs who they stayed together with in AU.

Thanks for reminding me of this bit @Meligator. During the testimony my ears always pricked up when there was some extraneous and outlier information supplied by RB, and this was one of them. IMO seemed like RB already knew where the holes were in his narrative and was ready with a story to like "head it off at the pass". Where it fits in the jigsaw I haven't settled yet.

 

[gymtonic]

I read that as Ilona E J WOUTERS as being her name not the baby's. The baby was Evelyn Wouters. Maybe it was a type of mother/daughter card?

I find it strange that she put she was in NSW for 4 months but that was for the baby but IK would have been here 12 months. I also thought it strange that she went to all that trouble and then left permanently but she came back here eventually and then unfortunately died. I guess if the father was WW, she would have been upset that she was now on her own with a young baby so went back to her parents in Belgium first but then married the same year to a man with an English sounding name in Hungary. Maybe she met him in Australia.

Just putting it out there to be torn apart..
What if ...the whole IK/ WW into Oz on separate planes, followed by sham marriage and residency, followed by IK out of Oz with a baby and "Divorced", followed by IK/ MJR "marriage" and so on....is part of some scam Australian migration/residency/baby adoption scheme??
As I said whacky "what if?" to be torn to shreds!

 

[xdfg]

Okay, I was today years old when I found out you get fined if you don't vote in Aus.

Yeah, we have compulsory voting. So, with this in mind, and assuming the police didn't consider her missing, there should be either:

• A record of a missed vote, and a corresponding fine, or
• A record of vote lodged in Australia, along with a possible new voting address on the electoral roll, or
• A record of a vote lodged from overseas.

When living overseas, you go to the Australian embassy to lodge your vote in Australian elections. I wonder how far back records are kept for that.

My point is, if nobody official considered her missing, this information could pull up a piece of the puzzle.

 

[gymtonic]

Just a quick google about withdrawing funds from a high interest account shows several reasons Marion (or imposter) might have made the $5000 withdrawals. In the US a bank doesn't have to report savings withdrawals of that size to the IRS (our tax department) whereas larger withdrawals must be reported. (paper trail) I also found these lines from AUS 7News (2019):

Former Commonwealth Bank staff told 7NEWS there were strict identification procedures for withdrawing large sums of cash and a manager would have been alerted to the transactions.​

No bank employees were interviewed as part of the police investigation.​

The branch manager at the time has since died, and the Commonwealth Bank has declined to share any records.
​

I was just talking to another Queensland friend of the era about what it was like in the 90s (Drivers Licences and Banking) and how it had changed and she said "Yeah remember when you could set up an account without any ID at all?!" I think when we go searching for current information on what the system is now, we have to bear in mind that we need to cast out minds back to what it was like then in QLD and Northern NSW. The daily limit was something you often set yourself as a safety net i.e. if it's your money how much do you want to able to withdraw without triggering any red flags...how much are you prepared to lose by scamming? What I can't get my head around is that $5000 a day is an extraordinary amount for 1997 as a daily limit.

 

[KeenSleuth17]

Ok so I’ve listened to the most recent podcast a few times … just coz… and I’m interested about RB having been escorted to the interview room during the break that day. Has that been discussed here?
It’s got me interested as to his current situation- Does anyone else think RB might be in some kind of detention, maybe immigration detention, currently?

 

[gymtonic]

New here and been catching up over the last few days...my head officially hurts!
I have so many theories!!
I think either she was left in Europe, alone, nothing to her name etc (should be searching for jane doe etc in these countries) or if she did willingly come back she was bumped off and the car was used in transporting her (alive and deceased) which is why it needed to be sold.
Hope the police are trying to locate this vehicle for forensic testing....

Does anyone know if the UK police or Interpol etc have been involved since the inquest began?

I am with you on the Jane Doe searching, and have been looking at the files on UK Missing Persons Unit. There is a Jane Doe (with age match) after July 1997 in Sussex, but the Identikit is only vaguely similar. However, I am assuming the police would have done much more thorough searching so it's really been a lead to follow for me. BTW Interpol was involved in the 70s/ 80s, producing a criminal record report (NAA files.) for WW

 

[Liselle]

Ok so I’ve listened to the most recent podcast a few times … just coz… and I’m interested about RB having been escorted to the interview room during the break that day. Has that been discussed here?
It’s got me interested as to his current situation- Does anyone else think RB might be in some kind of detention, maybe immigration detention, currently?

Maybe someone might have been waiting with baseball bats AGAIN!!

 

[gymtonic]

Ok so I’ve listened to the most recent podcast a few times … just coz… and I’m interested about RB having been escorted to the interview room during the break that day. Has that been discussed here?
It’s got me interested as to his current situation- Does anyone else think RB might be in some kind of detention, maybe immigration detention, currently?

I seem to remember that was just after the testimony of RB bringing back Euros and conversion into dollars (blah, blah it was convoluted as usual!) and I was actually screaming at the TV....."Gotcha! It can't be Euros because they had not yet been introduced". IMO someone picked up on that and directed him to an interview room to question him, because he returned after the break and amended his testimony. He said he had thought about it himself and realised it couldn't be right, but IMO the police questioned him!

 

[Estelle]

The arrow beside the persons name takes you to the original postings.
This is how you tag the messenger of that post, by following the arrow up and finding the post that you want to tag so you can make a comment to THAT person, not tag people in the middle of a conversation between others.

Thanks, mishy. I have written thousands of posts here and I have never known that before.

 

[Zanzibar]

17 Hampden Street, Paddington, Sydney.

Google Maps

Yes I’m aware there’s an address in Paddington Sydney, I used to live very close to there, however since the document mentions London and it is written like a London address and someone on here mentioned there was no similar address in London I found these ones that are in London and further afield.

 

[Roseberry]

I

New here and been catching up over the last few days...my head officially hurts!
I have so many theories!!
I think either she was left in Europe, alone, nothing to her name etc (should be searching for jane doe etc in these countries) or if she did willingly come back she was bumped off and the car was used in transporting her (alive and deceased) which is why it needed to be sold.
Hope the police are trying to locate this vehicle for forensic testing....

Does anyone know if the UK police or Interpol etc have been involved since the inquest began?[/QUOTE
I agree, it would appear there would be no advantage in abandoning them alive overseas with the natural conclusion of them finding their way back home and alerting police. The only argument I can find for bringing them back to Aus is that it’s possibly easier to disappear someone in Aus rather than Europe but if it does happen in Europe a boat would be very useful. Also suspecting that the women serve several purposes - not only their money, but the ability to furnish new ID with name changes and the possibility of being mules on their return if they collect that left luggage now filled with some sort of contraband.

No doubt there’s a big search underway for that crucial car - I heard about that with a sinking feeling…
From there it’s a property search - ideally private, remote land held for a long time to avoid discovery - in an easily drivable radius from the banks.

Apologies if I’ve posted my reply to this incorrectly - I’m new to this too and still struggling with how it works. The pointers above on posting from the pros are great btw.

 

[Eyespywithmylittleeye]

Random. The Le Courrier Australien had their office at 396 Kent Street, Sydney in the 1970's. In the 1990s when the ad was placed they were at 149 Castlereagh Street, Sydney. Does anyone know where the cafe was that DW's parents had in the '70s? Thanks if anyone can assist.[/QUOTEIve been going nuts trying to find this mystery cafe.