WHERE IS MARION?

MORE THAN 25 YEARS AFTER THE GOLD COAST SCHOOL TEACHER VANISHED, THE CASE CONTINUES TO TAKE SINISTER TWISTS

- Kylie Walters

Every time Sally Leydon feels hope that she might be on the verge of finding out what happened to her missing mum, it seems a new mystery pops up. And each twist and turn in the 26-year search for Marion Barter seems to be even more sinister than the last. Any hope that the former Gold Coast teacher remains alive were swept away last October, when an inquest into her disappearance heard that she was probably dead.

“It is reasonable, in our submission … to conclude Marion is deceased,” the counsel assisting the coroner, Adam Casselden, said.

Marion was a dedicated mum-of-two and a muchloved teacher at the prestigious boy’s Southport School in 1997. But at 51, something was missing. She’d been unlucky in love, having divorced three times.

“She needed to have a man in her life,” Sally told The Guardian.

In March of that year, Marion began upending her life, quitting her job, selling her home and announcing that she was heading to Europe on a sabbatical. Marion caught a plane to the UK in June, frequently calling and sending postcards to her loved ones back in Australia.