I'm a bit overwhelmed on here by all of the separate identities that have been used etc. and to be honest I'm staying away from digging into all of that too deeply because I'm not sure it tells us that much about what happened to Marion. I'm enjoying reading all the info you've unearthed, though!
I've been thinking about what I said re: Marion potentially realising something was wrong and returning of her own volition to check it out, but now I have doubts about that. If it really was her that filled out the return passenger card, which all indications suggest that it was, the info leans more towards her being blinded by some kind of scheme. She either genuinely believed that they were going to be living in Lux or lied for some reason, both of which suggest to me that she was still being duped at that point.
One thing that I really can't get over and always sticks out to me is that she lists herself as 'married' on her return passenger card. We are fairly certain, from all of our research, that it would have been impossible for her to have married FR within the limited timeframe she spent out of Aus, no matter where they travelled in the interim. This is due to complications and time with applications for marriage licences etc., and it's pretty much set in stone that this would not have been legally achievable.
Why are there such major differences in the occupation/residence she lists on her outgoing card and incoming card? This is a crucial point to me, because I do believe that she did this.
Did they have some kind of marriage ceremony somewhere that was not legal (but she believed it to be so)? Was this listed for other reasons? He couldn't have married her legally anyway because he was already married, so what was his game plan? If it was to gain access to her assets, this seems like a very poor way to do it because it would never have been recognised by the courts. If it was to convince her to set up a joint account with him elsewhere, with the understanding that they were married, there must be a paper trail of the money suddenly being in an account he had access to.
Why did they go to England in the first place? We know he did this with JO, but in JO's case this was to get her out of the country so that he could return and access her funds. If the date Marion returned was a date they had mutually planned, this cannot have been the case.
I also doubt he could have accessed her banking without her, so this could all have been done within Australia. There seems to have been no need for them to go to England. It only adds further complications, unless it was part of a larger scheme. Even if it was to create some time and distance between Marion and her family, there must have been easier ways to do this.
The cogs involved in this scheme are monumental and numerous, and it would have been to his benefit to keep things as simple (and easy to remember) as possible. Obviously his plan worked, so we can't fault its operations to some extent, but so much of it seems...messy (if that makes any sense?)
I'm just thinking aloud here, but I think these kinds of questions are the lynchpin of the case.
