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‘Diabolical' twist after Aussie woman vanishes
Sally Leydon believed her mum was dead long before Magistrate Teresa O'Sullivan handed down her findings on the matter in February 2024.
Still, to hear those words nearly three decades after she first went missing, without any indication of how or why or where she died, was a heavy, heavy moment.
'2024 is one of the worst years I've had in my life actually,' Sally told Gary Jubelin's I Catch Killers podcast this week.
'Being told that your mother is deceased, and then having to work out the next steps in that as a missing person case that is convoluted and confusing … it has been an absolute diabolical time for me.'
Sally last saw her mother, Marion Barter, in 1997, just before the 51-year-old schoolteacher dramatically quit her job to travel overseas.
A dead phone line, and mysterious bank transactions
On August 1, Sally received a phone call from her mum, who told her she was calling from a payphone in Tunbridge Wells in the UK.
The pair talked about Sally's upcoming wedding, but were cut off when the pay phone went dead.
It was the last time Sally would ever speak to Marion, though it was later discovered that the missing woman did return to Australia under a different name just a day later.
Unbeknown to anyone, it was later discovered that in May Marion had changed her name to 'Florabella Natalia Marion Remakel' and obtained a passport under that name.
This was the name she used while flying back into Australia in August 1997.
At the time, though, Sally had assumed her mum was still overseas, but when she hadn't heard from her for another few months, she called Marion's bank – only to discover that money was being withdrawn from her account in Byron Bay.
'We drove straight to Byron Bay Police and I walked in there and said, 'something's wrong',' Sally recalls.
Then, in a mistake she says still haunts her, Sally didn't take down the name of the officer she spoke with. She didn't ask for an event number – she just assumed the police would begin investigating.
'I hope other people learn from this: you make sure you take down every single detail,' she told Jubelin.
'Because I didn't remember the name of the guy who gave me the report. I didn't get a business card. I didn't get to make an official statement. I literally just told him everything, thinking that that was how you do it.'
'She doesn't want anyone knowing where she is'
Then, 10 days later, when Sally was back at home, she got a phone call.
'My memory is that it was the same person that I had spoken to at the front desk [of the police station] but I can't prove that because I didn't write anything down,' she laments.
'But that phone call was a gentleman calling me to tell me that they'd found my mother and she didn't want anything to do with us,' Sally continues.
'His exact words were: we found your mother. She doesn't want anyone knowing where she is or what she's doing.'
Police have since confirmed to Sally that they never spoke to or saw her mother Marion. The identity of the person that made that call is a mystery, and tragically, Sally's brother took his own life shortly after hearing that piece of news.
'He had his own issues and demons he was working through, but he was about to get married,' Sally explains.
'He was in a very good head space and in my heart, I think he did not cope very well when he was told that.'
A daughter's mission
In the intervening 27 years since her disappearance, Sally has not stopped searching for answers – unearthing a series of bizarre twists and turns along the way that have reshaped the way she thinks about her mother's disappearance.
Hindered by a police investigation that the coronial inquest in 2024 deemed 'inadequate', Sally has taken on much of the investigation and advocacy into her mother's case herself, launching a podcast about the disappearance entitled The Lady Vanishes in 2019.
One of the most compelling pieces of evidence Sally uncovered in the course of her podcast was the involvement of her mother with a man named Ric Blum (among other aliases), shortly before she left for her overseas trip.
Blum has denied any involvement in Marion's disappearance, and maintains they ceased their romantic involvement shortly before she travelled overseas.
Magistrate O'Sullivan found in the 2024 inquest that Blum had lied and deceived the inquest, based on evidence surrounding his travel history (which lined up with that of Marion), as well as the testimony of several other women with whom Blum had allegedly had relationships with.
O'Sullivan found Marion had been 'exploited' by Blum. She said she was 'convinced' that Blum 'does indeed know more' but did not recommend charges against him.
The magistrate recommended the NSW police commissioner ensure the investigation of Barter's disappearance is referred to or remains within the state crime command 'unsolved homicide team' for ongoing investigation.
'I have to keep going'
In spite of the toll the investigation has taken on Sally, she is committed to providing a 'voice' for her mother, and other missing persons.
'I feel like I didn't really want to leave that burden of searching for her for my children,' Sally explains.
'I've got three children and that's their grandmother. They never met her. She'd already disappeared by the time I had babies. I'm actually 52 now, and the coroner has deemed that at the time she passed, Mum was 52 as well.
'My eldest daughter Ella is 23, about to turn 24, and I was 23, turning 24 when Mum disappeared. So in our world, we've actually come full circle in life again. Ella is the same age as I was, and I'm the same age as mum was, and we still don't know what's happened to her. And so I'll keep going.'
