![]() “I believe there’s more (women) out there. We’ve exposed a way bigger fish than what I ever expected to find,” Leydon told CNN. “It’s not just my mom who has been affected by this now. Blum acknowledged he had affairs but denied any wrongdoing. Instead, the court heard Blum was a married father-of-two living on a disability pension with his wife in a small coastal town in New South Wales with criminal convictions in France and Belgium for fraud, forgery, and confidence tricks. Other women told the inquest of their encounters with Blum, claiming that he had presented himself as a single, wealthy coin dealer who, in some cases, promised a “new life” abroad. Courtesy Bryan Seymourīlum, now 83, emphatically denies killing Barter or having any involvement in her disappearance in 1997, though he told the court he had an affair with her for four months before she disappeared.ĭuring the inquest, Blum was asked several times about multiple “coincidences,” including that Barter had changed her name in the days before she left Australia to an alias that Blum had used in an ad looking for companionship – that Barter answered. Ric Blum told the NSW Coroner's court that he last saw Barter in June 1997, just before she left Australia. New South Wales State Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan had been due to hand down her findings on Wednesday into a case that had tested evidence unearthed by the podcast and its listeners and information gathered by police.īut on Monday, the hearing was postponed “following further investigations,” according to a court spokesperson who declined to elaborate.ĭuring the inquest, multiple witnesses gave evidence into Barter’s disappearance, but proceedings were dominated by the questioning of one man, Ric Blum, who for the first time responded directly to the question: “Did you kill Marion?” To date, nobody has been charged with wrongdoing related to her mysterious disappearance. ![]() Did her mother leave of her own accord, and did she truly want to vanish?įor more than three years, journalists working with Leydon and a band of amateur sleuths have chased down clues, charting their progress in the podcast, “The Lady Vanishes,” with 14 million downloads, according to the podcast’s executive producer.Īfter the podcast aired, New South Wales police launched a formal review of the case which gathered enough evidence to warrant a deeper investigation and eventually an inquest that ended last month. If Barter had vanished without a trace, Australian police may have taken her case more seriously, but when her daughter, Sally Leydon, reported her missing, she wasn’t added to the missing persons list, and later a police officer told her Barter wanted no contact with her family.įor Leydon, there were too many unanswered questions, and 25 years later she is still searching for answers. The Netflix shows details the deteriorating relationship between Chris and Shanann, who began suspecting her husband was having an affair and felt he was suddenly pulling away from her.Marion Barter won plaudits for her warmth as an elementary school teacher, but in 1997 the 51-year-old mother-of-two became restless, quit her job, sold her house, and flew from Australia’s beach-lined Gold Coast to start a new life in Europe. Watts was having an affair with a woman named Nichol Kessinger. Shanann was strangled and the children were smothered. They also contain elaborate details about what police found when they got there.Ĭhris Watts is the subject of a new Netflix series called “American Murder: The Family Next Door.” Watts was convicted of murdering his wife and daughters, who were found in oil drums. The voluminous police reports provide some photos from the crime scene and elsewhere. Be forewarned that some of the details in this story are graphic and very disturbing because of the nature of the crime. ![]() The Colorado father and oil worker was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife Shanann, their unborn child, and their two children, Celeste and Bella, ages 4 and 3. Chris Watts (l) and a crime scene photo (r).
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