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

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Hi all, just joined in today. Have been VERY interested from the beginning of the podcast. I won't be adding much, to be honest, I am hear to listen in to you all as it all unfolds. Can I just say that I really appreciated hearing your banter as today's inquest went on. I have no one around me really who is even slightly interested in this case, where as I am a little bit obsessed. I have listened to the podcasts and reruns of the inquests over and over. My partner would say I am deeply obsessed. lol. I don't have any conclusions though, so this is why I am interested in your reading your threads on here. Just wanted to say and thanks.....
 
And am I right in saying that the only reason she thinks it was that time of year Sept/Oct was because it was busy?
And the only reason she perceived the busy foot traffic in the branch was because of tourists visiting to see Silverchair?
And the only reason she thinks it was 1997 was because Silverchair was there? (Although it appears Silverchair was there in 96 and not 97).

Lots of assumptions without any curiosity and research (neither then nor now), to back up, prove or disprove her assumptions. Not useful, rather dangerous.
 
caitlincurious said:
I agree with you, but I think it’s possible to remember circumstances and not visuals. The power of suggestion could have led her to connect the photo of Marion with the unusual circumstances buried in her memory. It’s then possible that she has confabulated a series of disconnected events into one narrative that fits the idea of Marion.
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I agree with you. It is possible BUT I think if they are to accept any part of her evidence, they will need to consult an expert witness on memory forensics or whatever those people are called…
I don’t think they’re inclined to accept the evidence, they wanted to wrap her up and get it over with ASAP.
 
Ok so if she did see Marion then whatever happened to Marion occurred in australia which means that at some point in the last 25 years the police should have investigated!! The answers were here but given the passage of time, much like Joan’s memory, is gone!
 
gwebb9 said:
Hi all, just joined in today. Have been VERY interested from the beginning of the podcast. I won't be adding much, to be honest, I am hear to listen in to you all as it all unfolds. Can I just say that I really appreciated hearing your banter as today's inquest went on. I have no one around me really who is even slightly interested in this case, where as I am a little bit obsessed. I have listened to the podcasts and reruns of the inquests over and over. My partner would say I am deeply obsessed. lol. I don't have any conclusions though, so this is why I am interested in your reading your threads on here. Just wanted to say and thanks.....
Click to expand...
You are our kind of people!
 
Diane would have presumably been very tanned at that time of year where she lived. I don’t believe this woman saw Marion at all though... I think she saw the poster, it rang a bell because of what she’d been asked before, then had a few wines when she got home and called crime stoppers.
 
Passingthru said:
This case confuses me so much. I really wish the police had originally investigated, so many of these questions would have clear answers if they hadn’t dropped the ball.
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Yeah, I get that. The confusion, the frustration with the police not taking it seriously from the beginning. SL and her family must feel this so much more.
 
I have been following this since Sally first put a plea up on a missing person's fb page.
Today when the witness said that "Marion" had lost her bank card I thought maybe Ric had stolen it and she was trying to drain her accounts as quickly as possible. But after watching more I just don't believe the witness at all.
I too suspected DH but after rewatching her evidence after RBs I can see how beaten down she would have been over the years and just stopped asking questions.
 
If it were me I would be ruling out (or in I guess) the possibility of MB being in Byron Bay around January 1996. This witness has locked in and justified her memories based on a verifiable date (Silverchair playing Homebush in BB), which is very similar to the fixing of the phone call from MB from Tunbridge Wells (fixed to 31 July 1997). Now from my timeline MB was awarded the Queensland Excellence in Teaching Award in 1996 (don't recall any date being mentioned but it is usually done around October). I also have a random new passport application from MB (prior to the Florabella one) for 6 July 1996 (mention in some evidence). Apart from this no significant dates mentioned.
I'm not saying that the witness was credible as there were too many inconsistencies, but rule it out definitively.
 
Personally I didn’t see much value in today’s evidence. As someone who did a similar role for 10 plus years, and much less long ago, I can remember only a handful of names that went with particularly infamous fraud causes. I would not be able to remember what year it was, if they provided a licence etc with any degree of certainty. I think AUSTRAC became more stringent post 9/11 too. I would be very surprised if a bank withdrawal of $5000, even consecutive ones would have raised a red flag in 97 from an AML perspective. I suspect CBA would have looked at it, concluded the consecutive amounts were due to the wirhdrawal limit on the product, and cleared it from the AML alerts list. I don’t think we’ll ever know with a degree of certainty who withdrew the money from Byron Bay.
 
First time poster. Been watching for a few months and listening to the podcast. I've never followed a missing persons case before. Today's court session didn't really seem to go anywhere. I do have a few questions though.. Were tanning booths or spray tans big back then? What date did Marion come back to Australia and what date did the money start leaving her bank. From the photos we've seen she seems fair skinned, the only way she would be tanned after coming back from Europe would be a spray tan or tanning booth. I wish they would of shown a photo of ddh.
 
Housemartyn said:
I just feel the witness today was trying to cover her own back and wasn't the least bit credible.
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I thought she did a decent job. It’s very hard to get up in the stand and give evidence about a work matter that has very little relevance to you personally, let alone recall something from 25 years ago. You’d be surprised how many suspicious looking transactions bank staff come across on any given day. You’d remember it the next week, maybe a few months later. If it was particularly high value, upwards of a couple of hundred grand, maybe you’d remember a year or so later, but not 25 years later. I worked in a similar role, I recall some big multi million dollar cases, some that were connected to very serious crimes at the time, and then a few funny ones. If you asked me about a $80,000 theft case I worked 10 years ago, I more than likely could not recall any detail. I think she’s doing her best to help, but it may not be Marion she is recalling
 
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