Marion withdrew $80k at a Byron Bay bank. She hasn’t been seen since

The daughter of a woman who changed her name, went overseas and then disappeared believes “someone knows something” about what happened to her mother, whose presumed death has fuelled a popular podcast and is now the subject of a $1 million reward for information.

Marion Barter was aged 51 when she sold her home on Queensland’s Gold Coast, before taking a bus to the airport in June 1997 and flying to UK using a passport in the name of Florabella Natalia Marion Remakel, after changing her name a month earlier.

It’s believed she re-entered Australia in August that year, with an incoming passenger card stating she was married and lived in Luxembourg.

Barter was reported missing that October, the same month $80,000 was transferred from her account when she visited a Byron Bay bank branch. Almost 30 years later, her family are still searching for answers.

“Someone knows something,” Barter’s daughter Sally Leydon told 2GB on Monday.

“We are getting little tiny pieces of the puzzle.

“I just believe that there’s more people that know something out there that could help,” Leydon said.

Barter’s disappearance is the subject of a long-running podcast series The Lady Vanishes. Leydon regularly features on the podcast which has been downloaded more than 20 million times.

A coronial inquest probed Barter’s disappearance in June 2021 in Sydney and Byron Bay, finding in February 2024 Barter had died, but unable to definitively say when, where or how.

Witnesses at the inquest described Barter as a loving and caring person and a gifted teacher.

Her remains have never been found but the troubling circumstances surrounding her disappearance prompted a recommendation to the state’s unsolved homicide team to review and renew the investigation.

The inquest found Barter had attended a bank branch in Byron Bay on October 15, 1997, transferring $80,000. It came after smaller regular withdrawals since she had returned to Australia.

A witness at the inquest, Ric Blum, had used many other names throughout his life, one of which was Remakel.

The inquest noted it was a “highly unusual surname in Australia”.

His “weak explanation and denials” for his use of multiple aliases as part of a “fantasy” was rejected by the inquest, which found he primarily sought to “dishonestly represent himself”.

Blum gave multiple versions of how he had met Barter, claiming they first met in Switzerland in the 1960s, while her then-husband – Socceroos legend Johnny Warren – attended a training camp in the country.

He claimed they met again in the 1990s through a personal ad placed in a newspaper.

The inquest found the pair met at least three times between February and May 1997, but Blum’s evidence was otherwise too unreliable for any other findings.

The inquest did find Blum had “further knowledge” about Barter’s travel overseas and her disappearance, but “was and is deliberately unwilling to divulge this further knowledge”.

NSW began offering $1 million rewards in 2016 and there are rewards for dozens of other high-profile cold cases.

Be the first to know when major news happens. Sign up for breaking news alerts on email or turn on notifications in the app.