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The Lady Vanishes · LiSTNR

The Findings

March 5, 2024·1 hr 13 min·6 clips
Coroner Teresa O'Sullivan finds Marion Barter returned to Australia under a new name and took steps to hide it.
The day begins outside court. Alison Sandy and Brian Seymour bring the listener to the New South Wales Coroner's Court in Lidcombe, where supporters in green wait in brutal heat and others follow online. Sally had asked people to wear green for her mum, so the crowd is not background noise. It is part of the day. Brian says that after 30 years as a journalist, he has never worked on anything quite like Marion Barter's disappearance. The old questions are still there. The cold open returns to the mother, teacher, and friend who vanished without any clear sign she meant to disappear. The episode handles suspicion carefully. Voices suggest something happened, but the narration stays with the work, the waiting, and the missing pieces. Sally carries the hardest part. When she and Chris leave the coroner's court, cameras follow them to a nearby park and a group of supporters. The finding lands in real time. Sally tells a reporter it is the first time in 27 years she has officially heard that her mother is deceased. Closure does not quite fit. She says the missing-person world does not use that word, then talks about ambiguous loss: knowing something happened without knowing the how, where, what, or why. She thanks the people there and the many more following from elsewhere, saying their support helped bring the investigation to this point. The episode stays close to the room, the heat, the cameras, and a daughter trying to understand what comes after an official answer that still leaves so much open.

As heard by us

A restrained court-day episode centered on Sally Leydon's first official answer after 27 years without her mother.

At the New South Wales Coroner's Court at Lidcombe, The Lady Vanishes follows the day Sally Leydon is told officially that her mother, Marion Barter, is deceased after 27 years missing.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want the findings in Marion Barter's case, not just the long trail of questions around her disappearance.

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