Ric Blum, the key witness at the inquest into the disappearance of Marion Barter, has denied most of the testimony of four female witnesses to a coroner in Lismore, even as more evidence was heard.
“It is all lies,” Blum said as he gave evidence during the New South Wales inquest on Thursday. “People have made up their mind after hearing the podcast.”
The podcast, The Lady Vanishes, is about the disappearance of Barter and has been downloaded 16m times.
But the counsel assisting the inquest, Adam Casselden SC, said “the podcast was not in existence in 1998, 1999 or 2000”, when each of the witnesses had made complaints to the police.
On Wednesday he described Blum as having “a tendency to pursue dishonest relationships with vulnerable women”.
Blum, 84, began Thursday morning stuttering, faltering and having difficulty answering questions but rallied as the day progressed.
The inquest heard that Marie Christine Landrieu had been married to Blum’s cousin and had been widowed for seven months when he got in touch with her in 2012. Before that he had not seen her for 20 years.
Blum denied that he had arrived in Belgium in February 2012 with the intention of seducing her. He denied telling Landrieu that he owned a house in Bali. He denied her statement to the inquest that he had persuaded her to withdraw €100,000 from her bank account to buy a house in Bali where they would live together.
He never, he told the inquest, “had any intention of purchasing a house in Bali”.
Instead he said that she had given him €50,000 in an envelope that he believed was owed to him by her banker husband who had managed his inheritance from his mother.
He denied Landrieu’s statement to court that he had also stolen jewellery, coins and stamps worth €25,000 from her.
But Blum said that when they were staying in a hotel in Seminyak, in Bali, he did not tell Landrieu he was leaving for Australia.
“She left to get a massage and I left in a taxi for the airport,” he told the inquest. “I didn’t have any reason to stay.”
Casselden pointed out “striking similarities” in the accounts of Janet Oldenburg, Ghislaine Danlois-Dubois and Ginette Gaffney Bowen – women he had been involved with and had appeared as witnesses – “where you just disappeared without saying goodbye”.
Danlois-Dubois had told the inquest on Wednesday that Blum had stolen €70,000 that she had withdrawn from her bank to start a new life in Australia with him. She had believed they would marry in Bali.
Blum denied any discussions of getting engaged to Danlois-Dubois.
When shown an engagement announcement and an invitation to an engagement party at a restaurant where guests would wear Indian-style dress, he told the inquest: “I have never seen that, I have never participated in that, I don’t remember any such thing.”
“Could you be caught out in a lie about being engaged to Ghislaine Danlois-Dubois?” Casselden asked.
Blum said: “I was never engaged.”
The inquest heard Barter had changed her name to Florabella Remakel before she left Australia for Europe on a sabbatical from teaching. She disappeared after withdrawing well over $100,000 from her bank accounts in Australia.
“Were you engaged to Florabella Remakel in 1997, Mr Blum?” Casselden asked.
Blum replied: “No.”
Bradley Smith QC, acting for Barter’s daughter, Sally Leydon, asked Blum: “In May 1997 … when you were in a sexual relationship with Marion, [did you] suggest that she should start a new life with you in Luxembourg with her or the UK?”
Blum replied: “No”
Casselden also asked if Blum participated “in a ceremony of sorts with Marion in Europe where she may have believed she was married”.
Blum replied: “I saw her three times in my life, maybe four.”
Smith referred to the evidence of Danlois-Dubois and Landrieu that he persuaded them to withdraw money from their accounts, before asking Blum if he had done so to Barter, or “deceived” her in any way “for your own financial advantage” in 1997.
Blum replied: “No sir, never”.
Casselden also asked Blum to be “full and frank about your relationship with Marion Barter in 1997”. “Would you like to say anything further in relation to the disappearance of Marion Barter?” Casselden asked
Blum was, by now, completely lucid.
“I myself believe that she is still alive,” Blum told the inquest.
Asked by the coroner, Teresa O’Sullivan, why he believed that, Blum said: “In a long conversation before she went to England she said that she wanted to separate from her family.”
“She didn’t want anything to do with any member of her family,” he said. “She was a bit of a strange person.”
There has been no proof of life for Barter since October 1997. Blum is due to return to the stand on Friday.
This article was amended on 2 June 2023 to correct the spelling of Ghislaine Danlois-Dubois’ name.
