A few questions/thoughts.
How did Sally's friend find out when Marions passport had re entered the country, if it was now Florabella's passport? With a different name? Would the friend have searched by passport number? If so, wouldn't the different name have caused confusion? When she changed her name on her passport, a new passport would have been issued, right? So would she have been able to use both documents? The older Marion Barter document, and the newer Florabella Remakel? How stringent were the checks then? Did she travel with her previous husband? Could there be Marion Brown, Marion Warren and/or Marion Wilson passports?
Garry Sheehan has confirmed that the passport never left Australia again. In the most recent podcast, there was discussion around the ability to travel between Australia and New Zealand at the time without a passport. Could the Florabella passport have left New Zealand?
Alison pointed out an error in the police statement- that it said that Sally was living in Byron Bay. Did everyone else hear it that way? I thought it was saying the Marion was living in Byron Bay. I sat up at that one- I thought it meant the police at the time had an address from the bank.
Early on in the podcast, it was stated that Marion withdrew money from the commonwealth bank in Byron and Burleigh Heads, and the Colonial State bank in Ashmore. So Sally has forgotten that it was the colonial bank she contacted, not the commonwealth, even when the podcast talked of a colonial state bank in Ashmore?
I really do think it was Marion who returned to Australia, or someone she was working with. After writing prolifically, she rings Sally and specifically says "you wont be hearing from me". The very next day, she returns. The timing is too cooincidental. Not receiving postcards/ calls was specifically set up to not ring alarmbells. It sounds like she had some kind of a plan. From what Sally has said, it sounds like Marion was in a bad place- anxious, very stressed. It was during this time of stress she changed her name. Some of the things that happened, like withdrawing $5000 a day, might seem like a bad plan to us, but who knows how it seemed to Marion? Stress can do pretty bad things to your thought processes. The letter that Marions father received from the Salvos stated that she had withdrawn the balance of her account from the colonial bank in Ashmore on Oct 15 1990 and spoke of starting a new life. The podcast made a big deal of the 1990 date- but I really think it was a typo. I think this because in the phone call to Jack Wilson, he was told to tell Sally to stop looking in Byron, and that she was cranky about the car. The car sale was current, not in 1990.
Glad to hear that the podcast confirmed that Garry Sheehan did travel to the Gold Coast, interviewing staff at TSS as well as people such as Lesley as part of his investigation. His failure to come back for a formal statement was duly made, but yet again further evidence of his investigation was shared.
