Family members of two high-profile cold cases connected to Ballina have appeared before the NSW Inquiry into Unsolved Murders and Long-term Missing Persons.

Kim Marshall, the sister of Bronwyn Winfield, who disappeared from Lennox Head in 1993, gave evidence, as did Sally Leydon, the daughter of Gold Coast teacher Marion Barter, who was in a relationship with a Ballina Shire man when she vanished in 1997.

The Upper House inquiry, looking into cases between 1965 and 2010, held a hearing in Grafton on Wednesday [July 1].

Both Ms Marshall and Ms Leydon spoke of their disappointment that police quickly became convinced that the missing women had disappeared of their own accord.

They described the police investigations as inadequate and were unhappy that police thought their loved ones had chosen to leave – both the missing women were mothers.

Ms Marshall (main photo above) and Ms Leydon called for police to be better funded, particularly the homicide unit, in order to crack more cold cases.

Sally Leydon, the daughter
of Marion Barter.

Ms Leydon said today, 36 NSW police officers were investigating 750 unsolved murders.

She said shortly after her mother disappeared in 1997, $80,000 was moved out of her Byron Bay bank account, but police never identified where the money went.

Ms Leydon took part in a podcast about her mother’s case in 2019, which renewed interest in her disappearance. Police raised the reward for information about Marion Barter to $1 million this May.

“That podcast took off. It should not be like this, every single case matters,” she told the inquiry.

Ms Leydon said since the podcast, there had been new leads, and she encouraged police to rethink how they work with community investigators, including podcasters.

“I think we need to have a discussion about it as a whole,” she told Ballina News Daily.

“We all have a voice, and I think we need to work actively with the police. There are a lot of inadequacies that have happened, and I have always proclaimed that I want to move forward.”

She said the parliamentary inquiry was a chance to introduce much-needed reforms.

Kim Marshall described the investigation into her sister’s 1993 disappearance as an “institutional failure” that “compounded the family’s trauma”.

Ms Marshall said police accepted the claim of Bronwyn Winfield’s husband that his wife had had a breakdown and left, and, like her mother, was a schizophrenic, yet there was no medical evidence to support the assertion.

Ms Marshall told the inquiry her sister had instead been in touch with domestic violence support workers before her disappearance.

She said the lack of answers meant that her elderly mother spent the second half of her life “suspended in agony”.

Ms Marshall also called for more funding for homicide detectives.

“They have a backlog of unsolved homicides. I want to see NSW Police better funded in the homicide unit,” she said following her inquiry appearance.

Ms Marshall told the inquiry that frontline police should not be left with the task of arranging support for the families of missing persons. She instead called for allied health professionals to work closely with the police and support families.

NSW Upper House Parliamentarians at the Grafton hearing. The inquiry was established in October 2025 to inquire into and report on unsolved murders and long-term missing persons cases in New South Wales between 1965 and 2010.

The inquiry is chaired by NSW Upper House MP Jeremy Buckingham, who said it was vital to hear from family and friends, not just government agencies.

“They are here to tell the truth, to tell their truth, to put on the record their experiences, the failures that they saw, and how things can be improved in the future,” he said.

He said the inquiry would make recommendations to the government aimed at improving the system.

Mr Buckingham paid tribute to those who had appeared before the inquiry.

“This is the most awful of subject matters, we’re talking about people who have had loved ones murdered in circumstances where those crimes have not been solved, or people have disappeared with no explanation,” he said.

“That’s horrendous circumstances for anyone to live through – so telling that story takes courage.”