The Bizarre Case of Marion Barter | UNRESOLVED 

[Music] thank you [Music] how can a woman who’s been missing for over 22 years with no contact with her family and friends with her bank accounts first drained and then going completely quiet and with no one claiming her pension not be considered a missing person by police this is a question that the New South Wales Police Department in Australia has been trying to answer and it was a question that was forced upon them when a podcast and team of Internet sleuths found evidence that burst this case wide open in 1997 Marion barter was a primary

school teacher in the Southport School in Queensland she was 51 years old she loved Bali and going to the Opera but perhaps more importantly for Marion she was looking for that ultimate soulmate she’d been married three times and though she almost always maintained a good and healthy relationship with her ex-husbands none of them had turned out to be the love of her life and that was what Marion was desperately searching for she kept her hopes up that she would eventually find him though but the happy and warm mother of two suddenly changed

in March of 1997. it was like a switch had been flipped she quit her job sold her house and announced to her family that she was going on sabbatical and traveling around Europe her family tried to be understanding and supportive after all she was 51 years old and she was an adult so they just hoped that she would be safe and find what she was looking for but her daughter Sally Laden became incredibly uneasy about the whole thing when she bumped into her mother and had the strangest experience Laden pulled into a local McDonald’s one

evening and this McDonald’s was part of a petrol station Laden wasn’t going to get petrol but she could see the pumps when she got out of the car to head into the restaurant and that was when she saw something that just totally left her dumbfounded she saw her mother Marion at one of the pumps looking like she was about to start putting a petrol into her car but when she saw Laden Marion froze the two women looked at each other for a split second but then rather oddly Marion put the pump down jumped back into her car

and reversed the wrong way out of the station Laden had no idea why her mother had done that and she had no idea who the man was that had been sitting in the front passenger seat of her mother’s car Laden hadn’t been able to get a good look at him either because of the way the lights at the station had reflected off the windscreen but nothing about the situation felt right Laden was also really worried about her mother she later described Marion as a woman who quote needed to have a man in her life and that she wasn’t quote

street smart or a Savvy woman and by then Marion had almost entirely pulled away from the family but they did their best to try and show that they were there for her if she needed them and they couldn’t exactly stop her from doing the things she wanted to so on Sunday June 22nd of 1997 Marion was last seen at a bus stop in Queensland and then she went to the airport and got on her flight looking at the flight manifest investigators were able to find out that she was heading to the UK and on her passenger card she’d stated that she was

divorced and was intending to relocate and live in Luxembourg Marion hadn’t said anything to her family about wanting to live in Luxembourg and as far as they knew she was just going on holiday around Europe but there was something else on her passenger card that just didn’t sit right with them and it made the whole thing even stranger Marion had signed her passenger card as Flora Bella Natalia Marion remakel in fact she’d legally changed her name to that just one month prior to leaving Australia it would take investigators

years to find this particular piece of information out so at the time that Marion had left the country her family had no idea that she had done this and they had no idea that Marion’s trip to Europe was anything other than a vacation so they also had no reason to ask her what was going on when she called them and Marion did keep in contact for a while she’d regularly call her daughter in the first few weeks that she was supposedly traveling around Europe and she would send postcards and gifts from wherever she was at the time so as far

as the family was concerned Marine was just having a great time but then all of that suddenly stopped on August 1st Marion said that she was calling from a phone booth in Tunbridge Wells in England and she and Laden talked until Marion ran out of change but during that call Marion told her daughter that she was going to stop sending postcards and letters she told her that this had nothing to do with her or the family even going as far as to tell Laden that she was the best daughter but it was just that Marion

needed some time to herself and she needed to rest lady may not have liked what Marion had to say but she was halfway across the world and Laden didn’t really have a way to reach out to her unless Marion told her where she was staying and gave her contact information Laden was stuck and just a few weeks after this phone call the last of the presents and the postcards from Marion would come from Sussex Marion wrought that she was having a quote wonderful time and then she said that she was being quote Brave and had

rented a car so she could drive across to Amsterdam she then wrote I’m in a holiday mood and beginning to unwind with all this beauty surrounding me and that was it just a few days later Marion didn’t call to wish her son Owen a happy 23rd birthday and that was the final straw for the family Laden realized that her mother would never have missed her son’s birthday and she knew that something must have happened to her but she still had no idea where Marion was and it wasn’t like she could take to the streets to start looking for her

Lydon first contacted Marion’s Bank to see if they could pinpoint where she was taking money in and out from at first the bank didn’t really want to cooperate they didn’t want to give out any of Marion’s information even to her own daughter but when they saw the unusual activity going on in Marion’s bank accounts they thought they’d better let Leyden know on August 2nd the very next day after Marion had made the last phone call to her daughter money started disappearing from Marion’s accounts and remember she

had just sold her house to go on this trip so there was quite a bit of money this was concerning enough on its own but it became even more so when the bank told Laden where the money was being taken out from every day for three weeks five thousand dollars was taken out of Marion’s accounts in two locations in New South Wales Australia not somewhere in Europe leaden immediately went and reported Marion as missing to the police and only a few days after she’d made the report a massive eighty thousand dollars was

electronically transferred out from Marion’s account and the bank wasn’t able to track where it went this put the family on high alert naturally but it didn’t seem to do the same for the police instead they reached out to Laden and she later described the phone call as this quote I got called probably a week to 10 days after telling me that they had located my mom and that she didn’t want anyone to know where she was or what she was doing this didn’t sit right with Laden but the police told her that they’d also spoken

to a bank teller who’d said that Marion had talked to her about how she wanted to start a new life and they found the whole thing perfectly believable for the investigators the case was done and dusted but Laden and the rest of the family couldn’t let it go and they desperately tried to make contact with Marion by then her bank accounts were empty so they had no other way of tracking her possible movements and Marion herself never reached out the money she’d deposited into bank accounts in England in preparation for her

travels were left untouched and her Trail went cold within the year the family had nothing on her Laden spent the whole of her wedding day a day that Marion had been helping her plan before she’d even left for Europe expecting for her mother to show up but she never did and then the doubts set in in Laden’s mind she’d started asking herself if something really had happened or if this was just Marion’s way of breaking ties with the family and she wondered if she was actually going against Marion’s wishes by trying to find her

no answer felt like the right one so Laden stayed on the case hoping that one day she’d find her mother and hear her say the words herself and then Laden would take it from there she kept going to the police telling them that she just wanted to know her mother was all right and finally in 2011 Byron Bay senior detective Constable Gary Sheehan started looking into the case again it wasn’t an official investigation he only looked into it either in his own time or when there was a slow day and the original files were gone so he had

to start from scratch but it was Sheen who discovered that Marion had changed her name just before going on her trip to Europe it took investigators four years to find just this piece of information but instead of looking into it further the police decided that Marion had done this on purpose to fake her own disappearance and then they closed her case again Laden and the family were more the confused and concerned over this new turn of events none of them could come up with a reason why Marion would suddenly change her name or why she

wouldn’t tell them but now they at least had a new direction to pursue but unfortunately Marion’s Trail quickly went cold once again between 2011 and 2019 Leiden only managed to get her hands on the official documentation that allowed Marion to change her name and that was about it but then a Freedom of Information officer at 7 News Alison Sandy heard about Marion’s case and she began the work to turn it into a podcast within a month of release the lady vanishes had over 1 million downloads and that number now is over 12 million and when faced

with a puzzle that seems impossible to solve the internet did what the internet does best and they tried to solve it thousands of new tips and ideas came in but it was amongst all of that noise that one voice came forward with a piece of information that turned the whole case upside down Johnny Condors a cookbook writer and a former social worker just couldn’t get this case of her mind and there was one part of it in particular that she kept coming back to and that was the name remakeol she later said quote when they said the

name I got this weird feeling in my gut and that was a feeling that would fuel Joni’s drive to solve this mystery she ran the name through active online databases trying to find out different combinations hoping she would get something and then she got a hit she described the moment as quote my heart just went into my throat and I felt like I could hardly breathe Johnny had found an Australian Lonely Hearts ad from 1994 that read quote 47 years old single large brunette sober non-smoker University graduated multi-home owner intelligent

multilingual genuine morally aligned searching for a lady with a free heart looking for a permanent relationship and or marriage and the ads was signed Fernand Nicola remickel Johnny believed that she was on to something here so she looked up the name again this time also adding remikel’s age to the search criteria and she only got the one hit that hit came from an address in Luxembourg the same place that Marion had said that she was planning on moving to in her outgoing passenger card for many that was one

coincidence too many and they started taking this ad a lot more seriously another listener of the podcast actually went down to the library to get his hands on a physical copy of the ad and from that he got a phone number he then found out that the number was in use in 1995 when it was the phone number for a company called bellina coin Investments the company had been owned by a married couple Frederick and Diane de hedervery Johnny now had another name and she wasn’t giving up she was able to get her hands on the immigration file for

Frederick where she found a list of over 30 known aliases attached to his file later proving that Frederick had legally changed his name 12 times Johnny and Laden put everything they could find together and laid in handed it to the police this time it determined that her concerns were not going to be taken lightly and finally 22 years after Marion barter had first gone missing the police assembled a task force to look into her case with the groundwork already done for them the police began looking into some of Frederick’s documentation but they

actually first found an expired Queensland driver’s license for Fernand ramakul but while the task force were chasing him Joni was back on the case and she phoned trace of Marion more specifically she found someone traveling into Australia under the name and passport for Flora Bella Natalia Marion remakel that puts her arriving in the country the very next day after she’d made the last phone call to Laden and the same day that the money had started disappearing from Marion’s accounts on her passenger card Flora Bella stated

that she was only visiting for eight days and that she was a housewife who lived in Luxembourg and so the coincidences that tied Marion to fernandra Michael became even stronger Johnny was later able to get her hands on Marion’s passenger card and Laden recognized her mother’s handwriting so then they knew that Marion had come back after all those gifts postcards and only speaking to her daughter the day prior and not seeing a word about returning to Australia but that was all the way back in 1997 so where is she now that was a question

investigators put to fernandra may call when they launched an inquest into him in 2021 by then Fernand was in his 80s and though he looked like everyone’s grandfather when he took to the witness stand he was adamant that he had nothing to do with Marion or why she had disappeared but the court brought forward a string of ex-waves and girlfriends to prove just what kind of a man Fernandes remakeol really was all of them had met him under similar circumstances usually through a lonely hearts ad and then Fernand or Rick bloom

or Nick West or whoever he was going by that day would offer to whisk the woman away on a fantastic Adventure filled with excitement and romance he would then encourage the woman to sell their houses or use their savings to be able to afford this new lifestyle or maybe even invest it in fernan’s new business which was bound to succeed and would definitely provide a comfortable life for the new couple Fernand denied doing any of this but one of his Ex-Wives Monique Cornelius who was the Widow of the actual Fernando

Michael produced a letter written by the fake Fernando Michael in the 1980s when he was using the name Frederick quote how hello my beloved one to my heart that you received this letter if only I am Frederick not Fernand if my sentiments are found to Echo in your heart if you decide to marry me one day my father will say to you and then you go on I love you Monique and you are an authentic magician who possesses the gift to beautify every moment that I have not with you there were many long-winded compliments throughout this

letter you say yes I am crazy that I scream oh I have made it you beautiful bastards I’ve made it it is Australian and so explicit of our wild nature never mind Monique you’re a song in a man’s testicles my enchantress I have never in my life made love like that with anyone before you make the whole thing so lyrical so beautiful Monday I leave the UK and Ireland for a few days to buy our boat I will look at a 40-foot Sloop which will suit us perfectly for what we want to do me I simply want to get to know this

country which is as sweet as your smile pretty as your eyes and warm like the love that I have for you I’m intimately persuaded that you will not regret your decision to leave with me and to start a new life Monique followed this up with a statement to the police where she said Frederick is always lying he invents and tells stories and always other stories constantly to cover his tracks that’s how he manipulates he manipulated me and lied to me for example at the beginning of our relationship he told me that he

worked for the British Embassy in Luxembourg as a special agent Fernand responded to this by saying that everyone in the inquest was lying to put it in his own words quote she’s lying lying lying Diane de hedervare his fourth wife said that they both lived in Luxembourg and a village near tonbridge Wales the last place that Marion had called from and Fernand had asked her to invest in his coin business where he wanted to trade in Rare Coins the next woman Janet aldenbra said that Rick West had reached out to her after her husband had

divorced her and she was granted sole ownership of her home Rick convinced Janet to move in with him to the French Riviera where they could get a fresh start in life and she agreed but when they went to make the move Rick said that he should be given the power of attorney over Janet and her property quote in case something happens when they left for their new life Rick had all of Janet’s identity papers and title deeds in his bag and he never gave them back to her the couple first did the Rounds Around all of the places that

Marion would later write or send postcards from and then Rick left her to take care of some business in Manchester while he was there he was then robbed and all of Janet’s documentation was stolen Fernand also denied that but with the type of person he is formally established from the many experiences of the woman in his life and the similarities between their stories and Marions the inquest and investigators keep asking for nand one question where is Marion barter Fernandes denies knowing anything about where she went he said they had a

relationship in 1997 but Marion was a sex addict and her needs had killed the relationship so he called it off he claims he had no idea what happened to her after that and he had nothing to do with the money that was taken out of her accounts in October of 2022 the inquest held testimony from a former bank manager who claimed to have spoken to Marion barter the day that she made the final withdrawal from her account John Hazlett said that she was 90 sure that the woman who was now on the missing person’s billboard across town

had come into the bank that day with a flower in her hair John testified that Marion called caught herself by a different name and she said that she was going to Bali to find herself Jonah also said that the amount of money that Marion was withdrawing was enough to raise suspicions and that’s why as the bank manager Joan had verified Marion’s identification before she would allow the money to be taken out but wasn’t Marion or someone working with Fernand to get the last of Marion’s money did he have all of her

documentation and had someone pose as Marion or was she convinced that she was investing in a new life with an exotic man who was finally going to be the love of her life that she had been so desperately searching for her that’s what the coroner has to figure out and the courts are due to issue a statement in November of 2022 to explain just how involved they believe fernandra Michael is in Marion barter’s disappearance during the first days of the inquest back in 2021 Laden and the court watched a video documenting an interrogation of

Fernand where he denied knowing anything about what happened to Marion to investigators and the video Hit Laden hard she burst into tears and had to fight to keep herself composed but it was a difficult experience quote my body was having a complete meltdown like I’ve never experienced before I felt the pain of 25 years searching for answers and stress all came to a head and hit me like a freight train but Laden followed up this statement with one of Hope and one that shows just how much she believes that one day

she’ll find the answers she’s been looking for quote the truth is like water it will always find a way [Music] foreign