Australia Australia - Marion Barter, 51, missing after trip to UK, June 1997 #6

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I am hearing this type of questioning as being relative to the police and the coroner having to establish what happened to Marion Barter .

Is she missing by design or default . ( her own or someone else ) etc

I have to keep reminding myself this is the main theme for a Coroner inquiry .

It is in this context i understand the questioning .
 
Yesterday, I was surprised by Sally when asked about the man in the car with her mother, she said he has white hair (as she had been shown RB's photo) and this man had dark hair, had she not realised that RB would have had dark hair in 1997 and now being 83yo, would have white hair. Her comment did not make sense to me. What about your thoughts on that?

Then today, Sally agreed that her mother had known a Moroccan or Algerian man. She was then reminded that she had been quoted in media that this man was dark.
But IMO how could she tell the difference between a suntanned European and a Moroccan in the dark from metres away? It is now assumed this man was not RB.

Is this important anyway to this case?
 
Did it appear to you that Sally had not told her grandfather that she had been told by police that her mother was safe and well and that she didn't wish to be contacted? I thought it was odd that Sally did not spend Christmas that year with her dying father. I wonder what happened there. Perhaps Sally did not believe what the police told her.
 
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Estelle said:
Yesterday, I was surprised by Sally when asked about the man in the car with her mother, she said he has white hair (as she had been shown RB's photo) and this man had dark hair, had she not realised that RB would have had dark hair in 1997 and now being 83yo, would have white hair. Her comment did not make sense to me. What about your thoughts on that?

Then today, Sally agreed that her mother had known a Moroccan or Algerian man. She was then reminded that she had been quoted in media that this man was dark.
But IMO how could she tell the difference between a suntanned European and a Moroccan in the dark from metres away? It is now assumed this man was not RB.

Is this important anyway to this case?
Click to expand...

That wasn't my understanding of what she said? She said she didn't know if her mother knew anyone Moroccan or Algerian.
I don't think it's necessarily assumed that the man was not RB? Or am I missing something?
 
Casselden is 'the Crown' meaning he puts the inquest together and presents it to the Coroner.

Some of the questions seem strange. I know I want to hear more about RB but they're not trying to find RB guilty Marion's death. The purpose is to determine if Marion is alive or not, and if so:
  • time of death
  • location of death
  • cause of death
  • manner of death.
Agree that in this part of the day, the questions seem pointy and frustrating. I can only assume that Casselden is trying to determine at what point police knew Marion had allegedly returned from overseas, where they got the information, and if they did all they could to verify the facts, or if someone could have posed and planted the info.

But I also believe Casselden made some excellent points earlier through questioning things like all the 'did Marion have an interest in Korean food' etc, all that was obviously to determine that Marion was being coaxed by someone who did have interest in those things.

I am not discounting Casselden yet. He is being thorough and I believe all this is needed in order to eventually and potentially bring charges to a person of interest. Moo.
 
A missing person is different to a murdered person which is different to a person being conned.

When the police looked for her, I think she was alive and told the bank she was starting a new life - because she believed she was. So she was no longer missing, she wasn't murdered and the issue raised with police wasn't that they were concerned she was being conned (which is no fault to Sally at all, no one could have known)

I think the point is that Marion was alive and sighted and then was possibly murdered not long after.

The crown will cover every aspect because the coroners inquest is about determining the circumstances around Marion's disappearance and possible death, not the trial of any one person. Every one needs to be questioned, all aspects need to be looked at.

I still have faith that this inquest will provide answers.
 
I'm reading the NAA papers and I can't believe that with his track record, he's never been caught. RB was the OG Tinder Swindler (anyone seen that yet?). These guys are so hard to convict because people voluntarily hand over their money. It's near impossible to convict someone for manipulating others. They have to be caught doing something overtly criminal. I hope to god they have significant dirt on RB.

I can only imagine he had at least as may victims as aliases. So far I've come across 20 aliases.
 
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Peralta said:
I'm reading the NAA papers and I can't believe that with his track record, he's never been caught. RB was the OG Tinder Swindler (anyone seen that yet?). These guys are so hard to convict because people voluntarily hand over their money. It's near impossible to convict someone for manipulating others. They have to be caught for doing something overtly criminal. I hope to god they have significant dirt on RB.
Click to expand...

Similarly, in the US convictions of fraud and kidnapping have been overturned in cases where it was unable to be demonstrated that the victims did not participate of their own free will, or that they were physically detained. Of course most of us know that the reality is much more complicated - mental entrapment can be as powerful as physical

Personally I am not prepared to assume Marion was murdered - possibly just seriously conned to the point she couldn't contemplate returning to her previous life out of embarrassment. I do think RB is involved in her disappearance, despite his saying he hadn't seen her since early 1997. Keep in mind all we have seen on public file is his record up until 1980 - we have little idea of the extent of his crimes and cons in the 90s-2000's bar Ginnette.

I also think it's not useful to jump to the inclusion that everything the conman RB has said is plucked from the podcast. Being 83yo he is obviously a professional liar at this stage. Professional liars know that the best lies are based on elements of truth. And the police should be able to verify some of what he has said e.g. the ad he says Marion put in the gold coast bulletin, or the moving boxes etc.

RB knows the devil is in the detail. By admitting to 2 potential relationships with Marion, he intends to appear honest and cooperative to the police, to make it seem LESS likely he had anything to do with Marion disappearing. Lawyers often suggest to admit to lower level misconduct for this reason. Of course, we all know better.

Just my thoughts! And I'm yet to catch up on days 2 and 3.

Will put this in the thread too
 
The evidence of Ginette Gaffney-Bowan is very interesting. Soon after meeting her, he had gained a free garden studio from her to stay in when in Sydney. He had gained access to her house by offering to cook her a meal.

By the third week, she had given him access by card to one of her bank accounts, he withdrew $30,000 as a startup cost for their coin business partnership and all that was accounted for was a fax machine. He then tried to manipulate him into her selling her house at Greenwich and giving him the proceeds to buy a lovely apartment in Paris from where they would operate the coin business. She is lucky she had two daughters living in Sydney otherwise she may have been vulnerable to that idea too. All this, despite his belittling her.

RB moves fast! I think Ginette is very embarrassed by her past connection with RB now and tries to make it sound like she was interested in business only. I can see that he could have behaved the same way with Marion.
 
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Just interesting that they spent so much time focused on what the police told the family and when… do they not have the running sheets/file to draw this evidence from? Or does the information contained in those vary significantly from what Sally is saying/her grandfather noted.

So if Marion did in fact go off to start a new life and not want contact with her family, where is she now? She’s still a missing person as of today. No one has seen or heard from her since supposedly 1997 (though who knows what more RB knows about her whereabouts).
 
Re the hair colour- I took that questioning yesterday as Casseldon saying is the man you have seen a photo of the same man you saw in the car that night. Sally responded it was hard for her to know given he had noticeable white hair now and therefore looked quite different to that man she saw who did not have white hair.
 
StrangerDanger said:
Re the hair colour- I took that questioning yesterday as Casseldon saying is the man you have seen a photo of the same man you saw in the car that night. Sally responded it was hard for her to know given he had noticeable white hair now and therefore looked quite different to that man she saw who did not have white hair.
Click to expand...

That makes sense. They could have made the photo look younger perhaps using Identikit.
 
I felt sorry for Sally with the tone of questioning. It does come across as combative and looking for fault when Sally has been incredibly even given she’s always just wanted answers. Many of the questions on all sides seem to have been meandering and not based on actual records. Given the police officer’s admittance that she didn’t remember the case at all but then saying she did remember the phone call from the bank she was treated politely so quite a contrast. Sally’s ability to comment on her own father’s health however was questioned.

It comes across a bit like ‘we expect you to have perfect records of your 25 year single handed search for your mother while we ignored you’ (which Sally actually has done amazingly with) ‘but we’re allowed to have many missing files and pieces of information on our side.’

It would put me off fighting a coronial hearing, that’s for sure.
 
I wonder if the police can make a case to immigration to deport him back to Belgium? I'm think there is precedent for that. Then he can be properly tried in Belgium. If I'm not mistaken, he was still a person of interest over there, including being sought by Interpol at one time.

Or whether they have enough charges here for a lengthier jail time.
 
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Select Page 165 on this file from the NAA – it's a very good read.

It details his movements... entering Aus in 1969 and being approved for citizenship in 1976. Interpol came looking in 1980 so Brisbane police finally realised he had a long police record in Belgium.

And in the period between his arrival in Aus in 69, the citizenship approval in 76 and the Interpol/Brisbane police investigation in 1980, he had left and reentered several times undetected as he was using aliases and different passports. Including earning new police charges in Europe and spending time in jail in France!!!

As he did not disclose any of this on his arrival in Aus or citizenship papers, they believe his citizenship was obtained fraudulently and officials considered revoking citizenship. Not sure of the outcome, obviously he was still in and out of Australia after 1980.
 
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