Australia Australia - Marion Barter, 51, missing after trip to UK, Jun 1997 #5

[poppypopcorn]

I just don't know what to make of Marion. It's like she's several completely different people - the devoted teacher who loved her class of little boys, the clingy needy woman who was desperate for a man - any man, the old-fashioned woman who liked florals and antiques, the devious schemer who changed her name without telling anyone, the rude woman who told Sally's husband to leave and was later spotted with a guy at McDonalds...

People are complex for sure but there are so many different Marions and I'm starting to think that we really can't even trust Sally's opinion of what she was like or what she would/wouldn't have done as she was clearly hiding a lot of things from her daughter too.

 

[Curiosity Cat]

I just don't know what to make of Marion. It's like she's several completely different people - the devoted teacher who loved her class of little boys, the clingy needy woman who was desperate for a man - any man, the old-fashioned woman who liked florals and antiques, the devious schemer who changed her name without telling anyone, the rude woman who told Sally's husband to leave and was later spotted with a guy at McDonalds...

People are complex for sure but there are so many different Marions and I'm starting to think that we really can't even trust Sally's opinion of what she was like or what she would/wouldn't have done as she was clearly hiding a lot of things from her daughter too.

Absolutely spot on! The sisters may have had a clearer understanding of Marion as they were older.
I started a thread called, How to Disappear. There are a few books with this title, but the one I read was by Frank Ahearn and Eileen Horan. It seemed to me that Marion wanted to disappear and this book outlines in some depth the strategies to achieve.

From what Marion said, one of the chief reasons to go to the UK was to travel on the Orient Express and it seems, from what she said...if that's to be believed, she never did!!!

 

[KiwiNZ]

[QUOTE="

Agree with the points though that nobody seemed to know why Marion chose this particular area of England to visit. I've said it before on these threads - Kent/Sussex is very nice, but it's really not a known tourist destination and certainly not somewhere that sees Australian tourists arrive for extended visits of 6 weeks or more. I asked on the FB page whether Sally or anyone else knew of a particular reason why Marion wanted to visit Kent/Sussex and they did not. Weird.
There was clearly a reason why this part of England was chosen for an extended stay. Might be the proximity to continental Europe and easy travel through the tunnel or by ferry. Might be that if she was travelling with someone, he or she had connections there. Might be that she was travelling to visit someone who stayed there. But nobody seems to know which is very, very odd.[/QUOTE]




The only reference to that part of the world that has been mentioned was Marion saying she wanted to visit Jane Austen's house, in CHAWTON HAMPSHIRE, I think it was on the podcast.

I 100% agree on the work situation, with the assumption she hadn't applied for a working visa before she left Aus, but I think her age would have been a major barrier to getting a working visa without a prior job offer. I think in the 90's holiday /working visa were only issued to under 30's, everyone else would need a job to go to and possible be on the skilled shortage list, or organized the exchange through her current school.

 

[poppypopcorn]

It also seems strange that she didn't have this all booked before leaving Australia. In the late 90s when the internet wasn't a thing, it was standard to use an agent to book your flights, first night hotel, car hire etc. An Australian travel agent would absolutely have had the contacts in the UK to book tickets on the Orient Express.

In 1995 I worked for the Scottish Tourist board as a temp - my job was to man the "north america" desk and handle just these sorts of calls from travel agents across the US and Canada. I have a client who wants to visit a distillery, can you give me a number? My client wants to play golf at St Andrews, who do I speak to? My client would like a private tour of Edinburgh Castle, can this be arranged? And so on.

Far easier to tell your travel agent to sort you out with a reservation than try to organise it yourself while you're on holiday. Or physically schlepp into London to buy a ticket. Marion SAID she wanted to go on the Orient Express but it might just have been another of Marion's stories.

 

[poppypopcorn]

Yes, @KiwiNZ, London in the 90s was stuffed with young Australians and New Zealanders on a gap year or travelling. Earls Court in West London was called Kangaroo Valley as there were so many young Aussies living there. It was called the Working Holiday Visa at that time, it's now the Tier 5 Youth Mobility Scheme. Most people on the scheme had just finished Uni and were working in temp jobs or in bars to fund their travels around Europe.

But you had to be under 30 to qualify and Marion definitely wasn't! Despite all the conflicting reports about her character, there is no indication that Marion was a law-breaker or the sort of woman to come into the UK on a tourist visa with the intention of finding a job illegally, or getting married illegally.

 

[KiwiNZ]

Yes, @KiwiNZ, London in the 90s was stuffed with young Australians and New Zealanders on a gap year or travelling. Earls Court in West London was called Kangaroo Valley as there were so many young Aussies living there. It was called the Working Holiday Visa at that time, it's now the Tier 5 Youth Mobility Scheme. Most people on the scheme had just finished Uni and were working in temp jobs or in bars to fund their travels around Europe.

But you had to be under 30 to qualify and Marion definitely wasn't! Despite all the conflicting reports about her character, there is no indication that Marion was a law-breaker or the sort of woman to come into the UK on a tourist visa with the intention of finding a job illegally, or getting married illegally.

I was one young kiwi in London in the 90's lol those were the days .. I had a UK passport but my friends on NZ passports had to jump through some hoops and there was strict rules around the working visa and strictly enforced. Even been turned around at the boarder carrying the wrong visa and a CV was a massive no no. Marion knew not to carry her CV because Sally mentioned she held onto it for her mother and would forward it later if she found work ( I need to find the reference to this on the podcast) so Marion knew on some level she couldn't just work or be seen to be there for work

 

[Curiosity Cat]

Nor would Marion have been likely, IMO, to employ someone to travel on her Remakel passport. Or get a fake passport. So IMO it was Marion who came home to Australia.

 

[poppypopcorn]

Yes I think on balance of probability that Marion DID travel to the UK. She was the one who was sending the postcards. I think she also either travelled from Australia with someone, or had made plans to hook up with someone in England. I also think it was her who travelled back to Australia at the start of August. I went down a huge rabbit hole with the timings of calls to Sally from the UK and her arriving back but I think that's down to either misremembering on Sally's part (no blame to Sally, it was a long time ago and she didn't think it was an important call at the time), or Marion calling from a stopover and lying about her whereabouts and plans. Again.

After that, who knows? I lurch between thinking that she's either definitely been murdered, or definitely wanted to start a new life, because either scenario is equally plausible.

 

[KiwiNZ]

For what its worth ... My personal opinion is that it was Marion that came back and that the bank did contact her in October and she did respond that she didn't want to see her family and had purposely avoided them on her return trip. I conclude this because from the inquest and Sally's husbands evidence, when they turned up to the police station they thought they were dealing with fraud and I can see how the police proceeded to check the movements at the bank rather than treat it as a missing persons case, only the bank needed to be satisfied that no fraud had taken place and I believe they did this, it was a major amount of money they wouldn't do nothing, they were satisfied it was Marion. Case closed. Sally by her own admission accepted this via the phone call from the police (possible in shock that the bank claimed it was her mother and not fraudulent activity), her grandfather challenged it but instead of challenging the police called the Sally Army, had he of called the police directly and challenged them this would have been a different case IMO.


I think after this Marion either thought her cover was blown and went to some great effort to change her identity again or the police have missed something that could explain another name change. Or she was murdered by someone taking advantage of her.

 

[Tintenbar]

Do we have any information on Marion's aunt?
Marion had told one of her colleagues that she would visit an aunt on her trip abroad. Is this the same person who attended the family Christmas meal when the dishes were broken and who accompanied Marion and Bronwen to Mons to locate the premises of the Sunschine Coast Grammar School?

 

[SaintGertrude]

No disrespect intended as every missing person is of worth but the reward money seems quite large. It makes me think that the police are expecting something significant to come out of this as well as finding Marion. Is $250,000 the normal kind of reward money to offer in Australia as have not heard of anything like that here in the UK. I hope something does come out of all of this as it may give someone an incentive who has not spoken up before now.

 

[KiwiNZ]

I find the testimony of Sally re the bank / police interesting - 23. Inquest Part 4

1. That Sally claims she did not take the account number to the bank when she went to ask if they had seem her mother. (which is rather odd to me)
2. In the police notes 2 bank accounts were recorded, Sally claim they did not come from her, so this indicates to me the bank was contacted by the police, and the bank actioned some investigation to confirm if fraud was been committed.
3. In the inquest they state the $80K was "transferred"
4. The police notes indicated that "she had come back with a companion with a view to move to England" Sally said she was annoyed with this assumption .. but personally I don't know how the police could dream this up and how she could claim it was an assumption, very odd assumption for police to make on their own when a man had never been mentioned by Sally .. I do wonder if this in fact came from the conversation the bank has with Marion ....

While in Sally's statement everything seems urgent and frantic .. the gaps between any actions contradict this .... asked if she followed up with the police, she said I would have thought that was their job to call me ... The police called a week after the report was taken and gave her the news her mother had been spoken to ... her grandfather took over but did not get a response from the Sally Army until 1998 ( I don't know what date he first contacted them).

 

[Curiosity Cat]

No disrespect intended as every missing person is of worth but the reward money seems quite large. It makes me think that the police are expecting something significant to come out of this as well as finding Marion. Is $250,000 the normal kind of reward money to offer in Australia as have not heard of anything like that here in the UK. I hope something does come out of all of this as it may give someone an incentive who has not spoken up before now.

There are quite a few offering $1 million dollars in Australia
Rewards Offered - NSW Police Public Site

 

[SaintGertrude]

This may be another rabbit hole but I was looking for any shortened names for Remakel and came across a passenger list, for the ship Johan Van Oldenvanbarnevelt, departing Amsterdam for Australia on 9 Jan 1958.
Here we have Joke A Rem.
I mean who on earth would call a one year old child that kind of name or is it transcribed wrongly and should read Jake.
Could Marion have come across this person from Amsterdam when they are in their 40's and thought she might fancy changing her own name for a bit of a fancy.
Playing around with the unusual name she came up with one of her own the Florabella Natalia Marion Remakel.

 

[sunnynz]

This may be another rabbit hole but I was looking for any shortened names for Remakel and came across a passenger list, for the ship Johan Van Oldenvanbarnevelt, departing Amsterdam for Australia on 9 Jan 1958.
Here we have Joke A Rem.
I mean who on earth would call a one year old child that kind of name or is it transcribed wrongly and should read Jake.
Could Marion have come across this person from Amsterdam when they are in their 40's and thought she might fancy changing her own name for a bit of a fancy.
Playing around with the unusual name she came up with one of her own the Florabella Natalia Marion Remakel.

Joke is a fairly common Dutch name. I know a woman called Joke.

 

[AStartoSteerBy]

Joke (pronounced /ˈjoːkə/) is a Dutch feminine name. It is a form of Johanna. MOO

• Joke Smit (1933–1981), Dutch feminist and politician, Joke Smit award for gender equality. Joke Smit award for gender equality
• Joke Waller-Hunter (1946-2005), Dutch UN official, known for the JWH initiative. JWH Initiative

Edit to add:
Excellent thought to look for variations of the last name.
Old records could be transcribed wrong, too.

 

[SaintGertrude]

Joke (pronounced /ˈjoːkə/) is a Dutch feminine name. It is a form of Johanna. MOO

• Joke Smit (1933–1981), Dutch feminist and politician, Joke Smit award for gender equality. Joke Smit award for gender equality
• Joke Waller-Hunter (1946-2005), Dutch UN official, known for the JWH initiative. JWH Initiative

Edit to add:
Excellent thought to look for variations of the last name.
Old records could be transcribed wrong, too.

I find it astonishing that no Remakel or variation of the name has appeared on any passenger list either leaving or coming into Australia. Mind you they did say on the podcast quite a rare name. I will keep digging for any wrongly transcribed records.

 

[SaintGertrude]

Joke is a fairly common Dutch name. I know a woman called Joke.[/QUOTE
Thanks for filling us in with this. I never knew Joke was an actual first name. Let's hope no person with the name takes on the Kerr surname

 

[Tintenbar]

[URL="https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/australia-marion-barter-51-missing-after-trip-to-uk-june-1997-5.576575/page-22#post-16977862"]Australia - Marion Barter, 51, missing after trip to UK, June 1997 #5[/URL]
what do you read opposite question 12 of the passenger card?

 

[sunnynz]

Australia - Marion Barter, 51, missing after trip to UK, June 1997 #5
what do you read opposite question 12 of the passenger card?

Hard to read. First word looks like endings?