Australia Australia - Marion Barter, 51, missing after trip to UK, June 1997 #15

[gymtonic]

I don't know anything about Centrelink payments as I live in the UK but is it possible that some social welfare payments have different terms and conditions than others? Meaning that a person on lifelong disability welfare can travel with no penalty or disruption to payments?

For example, here in the UK (until recent history) someone who is considered life long disabled and on a disability benefits could be consented to travel overseas for long periods and it wouldn't affect their claim at all. Whereas someone who is claiming unemployment benefits as a job seeker would have their claim cancelled for leaving the UK (if the Social Security found out, which they may not).

Yes, this is so. It Is not true that CENTRELINK DSP payments these days are always suspended if you travel overseas. There is a set of criteria including stated reasons for travel and time period applied, meaning Centrelink can approve travel without putting a stop on payments. JobSeeker is different though.

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

Marion's postcard says she left some of her luggage at Heathrow and then got on a train to Tunbridge Wells, which suggests she did know she was initially going to be in the Kent/East Sussex area, which then makes sense for Barclays in Rye as an agent bank for her money. I think ID would have been a sticking point though, as her money was held in the name of Barter and her valid passport and drivers license was FNMR. If MB (and not RB) was in possession of the legal name change document, that may have been ok, but that money was never accessed.

I wonder... if Marion ever went into the branch at Rye and spoke to a living human being, would they have not flagged up this whole name change and financial situation is coming off as very odd!? Maybe they just straight up said to her we cannot release any funds to you until you provide x, y, z documentation? Maybe she never had cause to want to remove the funds. She would have been funding herself on traveller cheques, cash point withdrawals, and credit card payments I guess? At what point would Marion have figured out she had a problem with this fake identity situation?

 

[Oodlesofnoodles]

I don't know anything about Centrelink payments as I live in the UK but is it possible that some social welfare payments have different terms and conditions than others? Meaning that a person on lifelong disability welfare can travel with no penalty or disruption to payments?

For example, here in the UK (until recent history) someone who is considered life long disabled and on a disability benefits could be consented to travel overseas for long periods and it wouldn't affect their claim at all. Whereas someone who is claiming unemployment benefits as a job seeker would have their claim cancelled for leaving the UK (if the Social Security found out, which they may not).

I don't think so. His wife is on the carers pension, I'm assuming she's "caring" for him. I don't think it's been said when he was approved for disability pension but its extremely hard for people to get on. They also take into consideration of you assets for your payments and if he was to work he could only work a certain amount of hours a week. His wife being on the carers payment is the same but she would only be able to work 20hrs per week and must include travel time to and from work. There's also only a certain amount of days your allowed away from the person your caring for.

 

[Getro callum]

I had some dealing with banks overseas and it wasn’t that easy to do stuff over the phone ..becouse there was no email etc proving your ID was extremely difficult…doing faxes sometimes wasn’t allowed, I vaguely remember having to do justice of peace stuff…I can imagine myself doing something as random as flying home to sort access to my account out..

If she didn’t come home .. she was either dead not long after speaking to sally or had some other reason for not being in contact /having no other activity booked overseas in the weeks after speaking to Sal. And I doubt RB would have flown home after the person using MBs passport ..he usually heads home first..

I mean if she didn’t leave o/s. RB would have had to organise someone taking her place pretty damn fast.. seems unlikely…

Would be interesting if she found out he left and followed him home and he didn’t know about it..

Very interesting !

E

One possible theory is that he wanted it on record that they were having trouble with their livers.

"Oh, did she die of something going wrong with her liver? I remember now. She did complain of something about her liver. She even had a scan."

Yes! This makes perfect sense!!

 

[gymtonic]

Marion's postcard says she left some of her luggage at Heathrow and then got on a train to Tunbridge Wells, which suggests she did know she was initially going to be in the Kent/East Sussex area, which then makes sense for Barclays in Rye as an agent bank for her money. I think ID would have been a sticking point though, as her money was held in the name of Barter and her valid passport and drivers license was FNMR. If MB (and not RB) was in possession of the legal name change document, that may have been ok, but that money was never accessed.

I always found it interesting that in this communication she said she left her luggage at the airport and travelled NORTH by train to Tunbridge Wells. TW is not north of Heathrow. Typo? Disoriented? Something else?

 

[Getro callum]

I don't think so. His wife is on the carers pension, I'm assuming she's "caring" for him. I don't think it's been said when he was approved for disability pension but its extremely hard for people to get on. They also take into consideration of you assets for your payments and if he was to work he could only work a certain amount of hours a week. His wife being on the carers payment is the same but she would only be able to work 20hrs per week and must include travel time to and from work. There's also only a certain amount of days your allowed away from the person your caring for.

It’s much stricter here in Australia than it is in the UK. And I definitely believe he would have been on disability from the earliest time as his accident was from when he was younger. Assuming he was always on disability pension DdH would probably have always been on carers pension. It was pretty good income before the cost of living got so high. And from experience the carers pension was very strict in the early 2000s and any anomaly (ie sudden assets/overseas travel etc was detected and pensions could be cut).

 

[Getro callum]

I

Yes, this is so. It Is not true that CENTRELINK DSP payments these days are always suspended if you travel overseas. There is a set of criteria including stated reasons for travel and time period applied, meaning Centrelink can approve travel without putting a stop on payments. JobSeeker is different though.

Yes that’s rights but for certain pensions there were time limits on travel..

 

[Estelle]

I dont think she even saw the ad he placed.

Marion was living in QLD at the time the ad was in a NSW paper.
She was also dating GE at the time.

AC did ask Blum if he had placed an Ad in the QLD paper also.....possibly eluding to the fact that there was no way Marion would have answered his Ad UNLESS he also placed the same one in a QLD paper.

He was full of BS

Placing that Ad was his undoing. I bet he regrets it every day while the rest of us rejoice in his stupidity!

Le Courrier Australien is not a QLD paper. It is an Australian paper as its name says. So it would have been available in QLD.

Le Courrier Australien is the oldest foreign newspaper operating in Australia since 1892, and has readers following their news in Australia, France, Canada, Belgium, and New Caledonia. The English version of the site has also just been rebranded as LCANews.com with the hopes of making it easier for English readers.

Le Courrier Australien is now available in 3 languages

In their 130th year of operation, Le Courrier Australien has announced the launch of its newspaper in a third language

www.facci.com.au

 

[Getro callum]

RB was using fake passports well into the 2000's - he had 10 that we know of...

Using a passport in the name of FNMR would have been a piece of cake to this cad. Illegal immigration is nothing to a piece of work like him. He is a potential murderer.

But were these fake passports or passports issued legally under fake names… I know that getting an Irish passport was not half as strict as getting an Australian one.

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

I don't think so. His wife is on the carers pension, I'm assuming she's "caring" for him. I don't think it's been said when he was approved for disability pension but its extremely hard for people to get on. They also take into consideration of you assets for your payments and if he was to work he could only work a certain amount of hours a week. His wife being on the carers payment is the same but she would only be able to work 20hrs per week and must include travel time to and from work. There's also only a certain amount of days your allowed away from the person your caring for.

Is anybody looking or monitoring that situation though? Or would they rely on 'grass ups'? Also could this explain RB's multiple and frequent but short trips? Plus he was travelling on fake documentation so they wouldn't pick up him leaving the country anyhow.

I wonder if he had disability claims in other countries, such as the UK and such as Belgium or wherever the heck he said he was squashed by a horse?

I guess he had got himself categorised as profoundly physically and mentally disabled in a category that will not improve and should not be expected to perform any tasks and would need a lifelong carer and appropriate accommodation? He might have even been drawing on small pensions released early on medical grounds if he actually had a paid job anywhere in the world.

 

[Getro callum]

Agreed but it was Mrs FNR (no M) I think? And for this reason it makes me wonder about MC's involvement.

This is exactly what I was thinking… too much of a coincidence

 

[Getro callum]

Is anybody looking or monitoring that situation though? Or would they rely on 'grass ups'? Also could this explain RB's multiple and frequent but short trips? Plus he was travelling on fake documentation so they wouldn't pick up him leaving the country anyhow.

I wonder if he had disability claims in other countries, such as the UK and such as Belgium or wherever the heck he said he was squashed by a horse?

I guess he had got himself categorised as profoundly physically and mentally disabled in a category that will not improve and should not be expected to perform any tasks and would need a lifelong carer and appropriate accommodation? He might have even been drawing on small pensions released early on medical grounds if he actually had a paid job anywhere in the world.

If he had started collecting Australian disability pension as soon as he became a citizen in the 70s ..he would have easily kept being classed as disabled year after year and bypassed all the current strict checks.

This would explain the need for different names as well as every time he came into lump sums of money he needed to squirrel it away under a false identity… hiding from Centrelink.

.. give the case to the ATO/Centrelink . They probably would probably do a better job of locking him away than the police!

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

Yep tax evasion, benefit fraud, and travelling on fake documents might land him locked up a whole lot quicker than anything to do with robbing women.

 

[Estelle]

I always found it interesting that in this communication she said she left her luggage at the airport and travelled NORTH by train to Tunbridge Wells. TW is not north of Heathrow. Typo? Disoriented? Something else?

She also said she had a lot of luggage so she rented a car.

 

[Getro callum]

I wonder... if Marion ever went into the branch at Rye and spoke to a living human being, would they have not flagged up this whole name change and financial situation is coming off as very odd!? Maybe they just straight up said to her we cannot release any funds to you until you provide x, y, z documentation? Maybe she never had cause to want to remove the funds. She would have been funding herself on traveller cheques, cash point withdrawals, and credit card payments I guess? At what point would Marion have figured out she had a problem with this fake identity situation?

I’m sure RB was holding the lion share of her cash on hand (controlling) and he may not have envisioned a problem at the UK bank with her mis matched Id/addresses…. he may have done his ‘I was robbed’ phone call possibly even doing this from back in OZ and when the UK money couldn’t be accessed he got her to return back to change something/paperwork release more to Barclays…

Or maybe she outsmarted him and ran home to retrieve the remaining funds..

 

[Estelle]

But were these fake passports or passports issued legally under fake names… I know that getting an Irish passport was not half as strict as getting an Australian one.

RB used his international driving licence obtained in Luxembourg to procure his QLD driving licence.

 

[Getro callum]

She also said she had a lot of luggage so she rented a car.

He would have definitely convinced her to store her luggage..knowing it had no financial benefit and couldn’t be arsed with the ruse he was going to be around her for very long..

 

[Estelle]

Is anybody looking or monitoring that situation though? Or would they rely on 'grass ups'? Also could this explain RB's multiple and frequent but short trips? Plus he was travelling on fake documentation so they wouldn't pick up him leaving the country anyhow.

I wonder if he had disability claims in other countries, such as the UK and such as Belgium or wherever the heck he said he was squashed by a horse?

I guess he had got himself categorised as profoundly physically and mentally disabled in a category that will not improve and should not be expected to perform any tasks and would need a lifelong carer and appropriate accommodation? He might have even been drawing on small pensions released early on medical grounds if he actually had a paid job anywhere in the world.

IIRC post traumatic stress disorder was mentioned. However, I have had PTSD in the past but I recovered without medication but after counselling. I would never have thought to go on a pension. What else did he have wrong with him?

 

[Getro callum]

This is the reason why I have the theory he used MB to help hatch a plan for his future prospects with his 'singing testicles' lover.

Somewhere in all this is MC and her reasoning for producing all the correspondence that was so damning to him at the inquest.

Their friendship was years long. They were still corresponding even when the DeH's had moved to Tasmania - this was years after she looked after '"a little boy who looked like frederick" and says she stopped the relationship when she found out he was married .... yeah right.


IMO he hatched a plan to swindle FR with the help of MC and used Marion as the scapegoat. Somewhere along the way it all turned to *advertiser censored* and MC had to find a way out of a disaster so she set up to out him and remove herself from any potential criminal activity. That letter was used to embarrass him and let everyone see he had used her too.

She played him at his own game. Neither will implicate the other now

I did wonder this.. it’s a little coincidental that the only person testifying who really knew what a low life RB is her… why did it seem like she was the only one who actually saw through him… she even seemed to know his character better than his own wife ..

 

[Estelle]

If he had started collecting Australian disability pension as soon as he became a citizen in the 70s ..he would have easily kept being classed as disabled year after year and bypassed all the current strict checks.

This would explain the need for different names as well as every time he came into lump sums of money he needed to squirrel it away under a false identity… hiding from Centrelink.

.. give the case to the ATO/Centrelink . They probably would probably do a better job of locking him away than the police!

I wonder if he has even yet been reported to ATO/CentreLink yet! Perhaps one of you would like to do it???