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Expanse
06 Expanse: The Nannup Four | Northcliffe
00:35:26
A family friend and former policeman continues to search for answers for Jim and Cath McDougall decades after the Nannup four vanished. The family and friends of Chantelle McDougall try to find their own answers, as one last glimmer of hope emerges.
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- [00:02]
A
I'm Alan Kohler and I want to take you straight to the source. Every Friday, I sit down with the people running companies, shaping industries and influencing the Australian economy to talk risk, power, profit pressure. Not just their success, but their strategy and what it means for the rest of us. Because that's business. Search, subscribe and stay ahead. Find that's Business with Alan Koehler on the ABC Business Daily Feedback on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcast,
- [00:32]
B
ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more. It's December 25, 2007, and the McDougals are sat around the table at Jim and Cath's house for family Christmas, the day they'd eat too much, drink too much and play cricket. The atmosphere is heavy this year.
- [01:03]
C
She rang every year, and like back in the day when mobile phones weren't such a thing, she knew where we were every year for Christmas.
- [01:15]
B
Chantelle's sister Colleen, their mum and dad and brother are all trying to have a nice Christmas with their spread of roast meats, salads, pavlova and Christmas crackers.
- [01:26]
C
Of course, my brother's, you know, such a joker he's got going. If Chantelle doesn't ring by 1pm, then she's out of the will.
- [01:36]
B
It's been five months since any of them have heard from Shantelle. Last time Colleen spoke to her was when she'd answered the phone before handing it to Cath. The call where Chantelle had said she was going to Brazil with her partner, Simon Cadwell, as they knew him then, and their daughter Leila. Ever since Shantelle left home at 17 years old, wherever she was living in the world on Christmas Day, she would always call home.
- [02:06]
C
We'd pass the phone around and everybody would talk to her.
- [02:09]
B
This year, her mum, Cath, was just holding it together, waiting. As the time ticked by, the room was tense. Would it ring?
- [02:23]
C
Of course. There was no phone call that Christmas.
- [02:27]
B
Shantelle's absence was an invisible presence in the room. Everyone could feel it.
- [02:35]
C
I was quite shattered. I got through lunch, but then I retreated. No phone call. It was, yeah, really hard.
- [02:44]
B
The silence that Christmas was loud. It was filled with questions, questions that Colleen, Chantelle's sister, couldn't help staring in the face.
- [02:55]
C
What's stopping her? What's the problem? This year? Brazil has phones too.
- [03:01]
D
Yeah.
- [03:02]
B
What was stopping her from contacting us?
- [03:05]
C
Suspicions started to arise.
- [03:09]
B
I'm Dominique Bayans, and this is the final episode of the NAN up 4 Northcliffe. By 2009, two years on, with no sign of the 4 the disappearance is with the Missing Persons Unit in Western Australia. Police had searched the Blue House but they didn't do a full forensic examination because too much time had passed. They also missed opportunities to check CCTV footage after a possible sighting of the four. But where the nanop four went after they left the Blue House remained a mystery.
- [03:54]
C
Police have made inquiries nationally and abroad
- [03:57]
B
and even followed up reports the group may have joined a religious sect. Anyone with information about the four is
- [04:03]
C
asked to contact the Missing Persons Unit.
- [04:06]
B
Jim and Cath were beside themselves but had nowhere to turn on one of their visits to Chantelle in nanoparticles, Gary had a conversation with Jim about the Glasshouse Mountains in the Queensland hinterland. It's another place that attracts alternative people living in off grid communities. Jim thought Gary seemed interested in moving there. So in July that year they hooked the caravan up to their four wheel drive and headed north to Queensland armed with stacks of posters with Chantelle and Leela's face on them.
- [04:43]
C
Feel like you've got to try something. I put them up just about everywhere I went. We even had them stuck on the side of the car.
- [04:51]
D
It's one of those things you don't want to give up hope.
- [04:54]
B
Jim and Kat spent three months driving from Victoria to Queensland putting those posters up in every town along the way. It's crushing to think how desperate they must have been that they traveled through thousands of kilometres because of a one off conversation they had four years before.
- [05:16]
C
Nothing ever became of them.
- [05:19]
D
It was worth a try. Desperation, I guess.
- [05:24]
B
And time kept marching on. Two more years passed and in 2011 Jim and Cath were headed off on another trip. This time their path would take them back to Western Australia. So they reached out to WA police
- [05:44]
D
again and I rang them up and said we'll be in WA in a couple of months.
- [05:47]
B
The police officer tells them to come in when they're passing through.
- [05:51]
D
We went up the second floor or somewhere. I mean when there's room in this whole wardrobe was then she said that's all your files in that wardrobe's full of your stuff. What we've done.
- [05:59]
B
Jim and Kath have a chance to ask questions, find out what happened to some of Shantelle's things.
- [06:06]
D
Then they said we want you to come down the street and have a talk to you. And they said the best avenue now is for me to instigate a coronial inquest. So I said well how do I do that? She'd just write a letter to the coroner.
- [06:22]
B
Four years with still no hint of Chantelle and Leila and Jim and Cath have no answers and one final hope for getting some. In October 2011 they wrote to the Western Australian coroner requesting an inquest into Chantelle and Leela's disappearance. A chance for everything that had come to light to be systematically reviewed, looked at again with fresh eyes. In anticipation of an inquest the case was handed to another team and an investigation called Omega started. It re examined all the previous information, tried to follow things up that had been missed. A search was conducted of their property and surrounds. A police dive squad searched five dams on the property. In September 2016, Omega's final report was handed over to the state coroner to decide if an inquest would go ahead. Jim and Cath were still waiting. Then they got their glimpse of hope.
- [07:34]
D
The coroner accepted my letter and we instigated an inquest at Busud. There was Catherine I, my son and his wife and my daughter. We all went to the inquest together.
- [07:48]
B
The family made the trip from Victoria to Bath Busselton, that same coastal city Chantelle would take Leela for homeschool group in 2007 the McDougal family, surrounded by a crowd of media, huddled into Busselton's small courthouse to finally hear the answers they were looking for.
- [08:08]
C
Just going over and over it, it's very difficult but I want to find out what happened or where they are and so I'll just keep doing it until I find something.
- [08:17]
B
The atmosphere was tense.
- [08:19]
D
The coroner sat in that corner in the big chair in the middle where the people asking questions and he was up the back and yeah, so it was just they went through all the people that were there.
- [08:28]
B
One by one witnesses were called forward.
- [08:31]
D
There was just so many things. They took notes all day on things we didn't know.
- [08:36]
B
Medical records from before they disappeared showed that Shantel, Tony and Gary had obtained strong sedatives and anti anxiety medication and that Gary was also prescribed antipsychotics and an opioid which can be fatal when combined with other nervous system depressants as in sedatives. The inquest heard about Gary's unsettling emails in the months before the disappearance. He had told someone online that he was planning a family suicide pact but later changed his mind and said they'd move to an isolated area instead where they can't reached and his unusual beliefs which even the coroner had trouble understanding calling them bizarre. The inquest laid out the police investigations which had found that eight days after the nanop 4 disappeared a young Canadian man called Alexander Fominoff killed himself. He was one of Gary alias Simon's followers and had visited him in nanop with his friend Kirk. A bit over a year later, Kirk and his girlfriend, Christina Parrott also took their own lives. According to police, suicide notes left by the two backpackers didn't indicate they were unhappy or depressed, but that by dying they were moving on to a higher plane. Which sounds uncomfortably familiar. Police had tried to track any final movements of the Nanop 4, but while there were some possible sightings and travel movements in the days around their disappearance, nothing conclusive, certainly nothing that could point to where they'd gone or what happened. Police investigator Gregory Balfour told the inquest
- [10:36]
C
there were several reported sightings of the
- [10:38]
B
family that weren't followed up around the days of the disappearance. There were some sightings of Tony Popich in Perth, where his mobile was also pinged. Someone presumed to be Tony or Simon travelled to either Northcliffe in the southwest or Kalgoorlie to the northeast. The bus and train tickets had been booked under a false name using phones connected to the four. The name used was Roberts, the same name as the road they lived on. That same week, Tony's brother was delivered a package. It was details for Tony's bank account and superannuation policy and a note apologising for being a crap brother. And then there were all those things. They sold the money just sitting in their bank accounts like they'd been saving for something. But then nothing. The last person to see Shantelle went to the Blue House to buy the last of her pet dogs. They noticed that nothing appeared to have been packed up. When they asked Shantelle whether Leela would like to say goodbye, Shantelle said Leela was unwell and seemed like she was trying to hurry them out. Shantelle went into her room and when she came back seemed more anxious and said she might need to take her daughter to hospital. It's like Gary Shantelle and Tony were on board a runaway train hurtling towards some destination. I just can't figure out where what that destination is. The sum of all these investigations was ultimately not enough for the coroner to make a definitive finding. The coroner said while the group's spiritual beliefs pointed towards suicide, he found it hard to believe a self styled cult leader wouldn't make his death a highly publicised message to followers. He delivered a 53 page report and at the end of it said he could not find beyond reasonable doubt that any of the Nannup Four were dead or alive. It was a massive blow for the family who thought this would finally bring them the answers they were looking for.
- [13:10]
D
I've read it over and over and over. It is what it is, basically. You know, you can't blame him because he didn't say, they're definitely passed away. We will never finalise this stuff, you know, we just hope she turns up.
- [13:27]
B
Peter Greaves, the copper who helped the McDougals when Chantelle first went missing, has retired now, but he hasn't given up investigating. In fact, he's been working with chantelle's uncle, Barry McIntosh, another retired copper, trying to uncover anything new. And they've got a theory. They think they might know where Shantelle and Leela are. See, one of those strange things in the lead up to the disappearance was that bus ticket under the name J Roberts to a town called Northcliffe, an hour and 15 minutes drive south of Nanup. Much like Nanup, it's surrounded by ancient forests and attracts people who want to live away from society.
- [14:18]
A
Then you go through, like, the big Kauri forest, there's massive, big trees. It's just very isolated.
- [14:24]
B
In October 2007, a few months after the Nannup 4's disappearance, there was a group of inmates from a nearby prison tasked with clearing the tracks in a section of bushland near northwest.
- [14:37]
A
Work party came back after for lunch and then they packed up and left and informed the prison officer they'd found discarded clothing.
- [14:46]
B
The prison officer thought this was so significant, he actually recorded it in his diary. And there was something else that one prisoner noticed.
- [14:56]
A
One of the prisoners amongst the crew said there was a very distinct smell of death.
- [15:05]
B
That prison officer took the conversation seriously enough that he raised it with the local police station so the officers on duty could take a look. They did. And when they went there later on that month, they found a T shirt that looked like it had been there for years, but they couldn't smell a thing. There's no record that police searched the bush or did forensic testing on that T shirt. In fact, the whereabouts of that T shirt is now unknown. When the investigation for the inquiry visited in 2015, bushfires had swept through the area, burning everything in the vicinity to a crisp. So they found nothing either. And Chantelle's uncle Barry reckons they'd also been in the wrong spot. And the inquiry confirmed they couldn't track down the prisoner workers to verify the details. But Peter Greaves and Barry McIntosh couldn't shake the feeling Northcliffe was important.
- [16:10]
A
When Poppock's movements are traced back after the family have disappeared the last time he is actually seen is catching a bus to Northcliffe and he gets off the bus there and that's the last time anybody's had any trace of them whatsoever.
- [16:28]
B
They also believe the four visited the area twice for family picnics.
- [16:33]
A
And Gary Felton, Simon Cadwell had an affinity with this specific place outside of Northcliff because it had some sort of intrinsic value around his belief systems that he felt that that was a place where you communed with the stars in their alternate universe.
- [16:51]
B
If they disappeared in July and the prisoners were in that area in October and smelt that smell of death, does that line up? Would they have smelt that? Yeah, yeah.
- [17:03]
A
That's why it became a fairly high priority to have a look in that area and see if that was going to lead anywhere.
- [17:11]
B
So the pair of retired Victorian police officers started fundraising and Peter sank in a bunch of his own cash too. They think they've finally got the means to answer the question that's haunted Jim and Kath McDougall for 17 years.
- [17:28]
A
I can see with the way they live their lives, that it still has a very big impact on them all of the time. You can see that it's still their roar in the back of their minds all the time.
- [17:42]
B
In July 2024, Peter and Barry board a flight from Victoria headed west to carry out their own search.
- [17:51]
A
There was a level of pressure that I felt about that particular thing because I was so hoping that we would be able to come to a resolution to give Jimmy and Kath some closure.
- [18:06]
B
They have one week to to find something that has eluded everyone else for the better part of two decades. They arrived in Northcliffe on a cold, wet winter's day and head straight out about 20 kilometres past Northcliffe into the forest. The forest is too thick to drive to, so they pull on their gear and head out on foot. It's not long before their boots and clothes are heavy with mud.
- [18:38]
A
It's so thick that in places you couldn't push through it. So you actually had to get down on your hands and knees and push the. The bush apart to be able to get through, like tunnel through underneath it. And then probably every maybe 15, 20 meters, you might find a. A little clear patch that might be two or three meters round where you could actually stand up and have a look around to work out where you were going to go to next.
- [19:03]
B
They're trying to work out exactly where they are. Before they arrived, they hired a drone operator with a fancy bit of kit which could identify disturbances in the ground areas where a body could be buried. They're using the drone map and information they have about where those prisoners were, working to create a search area.
- [19:26]
A
On the first day we went out, we did the usual take the boots off and wade through the river and then put everything back on again. But by the time we got back, we were soaked, so we just didn't bother for Nanon. We just walked straight through with everything on.
- [19:41]
B
Every night they returned to their accommodation freezing cold and drenched to the skin.
- [19:47]
A
It was inhospitable to say the best. We'd have to hang all our clothes in front of the wood fire and try and dry everything out because we were soaked through to the skin.
- [20:01]
B
They spend days looking for disturbances picked up by the drone mapping, but all they find are sections of old mountain bike tracks or fallen trees. Then, on day five, they brought in a team of cadaver dogs, dogs that
- [20:20]
A
search for for bodies. They can pick up a scent under the ground that may have been there for years.
- [20:26]
B
The search team gathered together in a clearing near a large flat rock.
- [20:31]
A
We described the terrain to them. We described what sort of things that they needed to be in mind of and how we were going to get across the river, obviously with the dogs and all of the gear and everything else. With instructions that if anybody found anything, they were to call out, bring it to attention, not touch anything. Treated as a crime scene, the group
- [20:50]
B
methodically worked through thousands of square metres of bushland, stopping every 80 metres to reconvene.
- [20:57]
A
We also had metal detectors as well, so we were looking at potentially if there was any burials there that we'd be able to pick up things like shoes, belt buckles.
- [21:09]
B
The search was uphill and in the first two runs, the dogs didn't pick up anything.
- [21:16]
A
But then the last run we did up the hill, two dogs indicated a particular area of interest and they kept coming back to that specific area.
- [21:25]
B
So they pull up and start digging. They dig for half an hour, running the metal detector over the area, but they can't find anything.
- [21:35]
A
We were very disappointed, Very disappointed.
- [21:38]
B
Time and money's up. Peter and Barry had flown thousands of kilometres across the country to find answers for the McDougals. And after a week of pushing through vindictive scrub, the pair of retired police officers had no choice but to pack up and board their flight home.
- [21:58]
A
I remember getting on the plane to come home and thinking that I felt very deflated by it and also thinking, like, what else could we have done? What other scenario could we have run?
- [22:14]
B
But there's something they didn't know. When those Cadaver dogs picked up that scent.
- [22:18]
A
The area where the dogs were indicating there was an edge of an erosion channel there which had water that was groundwater coming from higher on the hill and seeping down over that. Sometimes that scenario can happen where the dogs might be 100 meters from where the burial might be. But they're picking up the scent of the smells coming through the water table under the ground and coming out onto the surface again.
- [22:47]
B
So that scent the dogs picked up might have been carried under the ground on a watercourse and given them a false reed about 100 metres from the actual site. Once they worked this out, Peter and Barry mapped back to where it could have come from. And the pinpoint lines up with some other intel they have. Peter believes they might have the location of a final resting place. They haven't been able to get back to Western Australia since. But in 2024, Barry McIntosh wrote to the WA Police Commissioner requesting a controlled burn to get rid of the almost impenetrable bush to allow a thorough search of the area. For almost a year, they heard nothing back about a search. But then once we started asking questions of the police, a reply came through. It said, police are reviewing the information and doing some more inquiries and another search is proposed. Then in early 2026, after we made further inquiries, police said they won't be doing another search after all. It's another disappointment for the McDougals, who continue to wait, hoping that one day they will get the answers they desperately want. I'm acutely aware that Jim and Cath have been through this before. The discovery, the hope, the letdown. One of the questions I've been pondering constantly since I met Jim and Cath is how they carry on. I think it's the obvious question people ask when they see someone experience tragedy. I'm realising the answer is because they have no other choice.
- [24:44]
C
Well, sometimes I think it's very hard to get up and keep going. But I always think of the other grandchildren and children.
- [24:51]
D
Two choices. Be strong or be weak.
- [24:54]
B
They're words that have stuck with me as I've been driving around the Southwest, meeting people in my own backyard who still grapple with the fallout of the disappearance. When I meet Jim and Cath MacDougall, Jim's still going on his four wheel driving trips and tinkering with his vintage cars. His eyes light up when he tells me about it. And Cath is still sewing and planning trips to Melbourne with her girlfriends, where they buy hard to find fabrics. All I can think is how did something so extraordinary happen to two of the most ordinary people. Two people who wanted the most regular things out of life, to have a family, provide for them, go on a few adventures, have some hobbies. For almost 20 years, they've been thrust into a roller coaster ride with no end in sight. They've had to become detectives, media experts, exposing their heartbreak time and time again to keep Chantelle and Leila's story alive.
- [26:04]
D
Usually we try and think of happy things. Yeah, tell her joke, tell her jokes. It's just not knowing, the emptiness, really, that just kills you.
- [26:14]
B
They still struggle to comprehend how their vivacious daughter got swept up in a life they never wanted for her.
- [26:22]
C
One day I'll be hopeful, next day I'm convinced that they've been killed or something. It's been so long, and I just can't believe that Chantelle wouldn't have tried to get in touch with me.
- [26:35]
B
This kind of loss is isolating.
- [26:38]
C
My friends will say, I just don't know what to say to you. And I say, don't worry. I said, there's not much you can say, really. That's probably the hardest. People probably don't understand what it's like.
- [26:55]
B
As our time together is drawing to a close, Cath tells me a story.
- [27:01]
C
I remember a couple of weeks after they disappeared, I had this dream and it is so vivid, I can still see it as clear as clear today. And it was Chantelle walking towards me saying, don't worry, Mum, I'll be all right. But who knows, because you don't find out anything. And I just keep hoping and I keep thinking about that lovely smiling face walking towards me.
- [27:31]
B
It would be a lie to say I understand Chantelle completely and how she got where she did. But what I feel I can say with some confidence is the headlines that have told her story got it wrong. This story can't be condensed into the headline of a bizarre death cult. Yes, there are parts of this story which do leave me thinking that Gary Felton was operating like a cult leader. But it was also a complex path of unequal power dynamics, of a teenager meeting a much older man who claimed to have all the answers, bound together by the birth of a child, isolated from family and friends. I remember something cult expert Raphael Aron told me. I think it's really important to understand that we're all vulnerable. The vulnerabilities cult leaders prey on generally are an awareness of the need for people to belong. There was somebody once said that the need to belong is so great that it matters not what you belong to rather than you belong. And that's a human trait that we have.
- [28:39]
C
He's my love boy.
- [28:41]
D
Is he?
- [28:42]
C
Yes, I love him.
- [28:44]
A
Do you?
- [28:45]
C
Yeah.
- [28:46]
B
It's easy to see Chantelle as a victim, but there were parts of her that were strong. No way she's going to go and do the way she loved her daughter, the way she contributed in her community, how she pushed back against Gary and maintained some form of relationship with her parents and friends. Have you liked having nannies stay?
- [29:09]
C
Yes.
- [29:10]
B
Even though it seemed like he didn't want her to. Next time you can come over too. It's easy to fall into the trap of asking questions like why didn't she leave? How could she put her daughter in that situation? But I keep thinking how it's only recently we've begun to understand the concept of a coercive relationship. How a person can be strong but also not leave.
- [29:35]
C
And then we fall in love.
- [29:36]
B
Arguments fall in love. Argument fall in love. Chantel may have truly believed she was moving to Brazil, excited about the prospect of a new life in this off grid community with her young daughter. There's also the painful idea that Chantelle believed Simon's teachings, that by taking your own life you would move on to a higher plane. Shantelle's family and the people I've spoken to are adamant she would never hurt Leila. But I wonder if Chantelle didn't see it as hurting Leela, that they were simply transcending this world. I've grappled with these questions for months. No matter what the answer is, the fact remains that five year old Leela didn't get a say in any of it.
- [30:30]
A
Namaste.
- [30:33]
B
Then there's Tony, a man who led a normal life until he didn't. A polite, gentle and hard working person who was also a bit lost, who met a man who claimed to have the answers. And then we're left with Simon Cadwill, a self proclaimed prophet who turned out to be just a guy named Gary Felton from the outskirts of London in England. When I hear his old friends talk about him, I think about how we aren't just one thing. Gary Felton could have been a good mate, but he could also be so controlling of the women in his life. He was an atheist who began taking LSD which maybe altered his mind with disastrous consequences. I think a lot about a conversation I had with Chantelle's Denmark friend Tracy Page. How her beliefs have changed over time. How when you're in your 20s, you're searching for meaning and often looking in the wrong places. It's only with age that you realise the purpose of life is just to be here in the precious daily monotony of it all. Hello Charlie and Leela. I met a long time local in Nanop who remembered Leela and told me she always imagined that maybe they did get to Brazil and Leela would turn up again one day as an adult on her own terms. I understand why people want to think that way. The alternative is too sad and painful. Mostly I think about the people left behind who I'm sure go over those same stories looking for ways they could have changed things, the choices they did or didn't make that led them here. There's homeschooling mum Diane Abbott, who wonders how no one saw this coming. Chantelle's school friend Donna Cameron, who would love to go back in time to that busy street in Melbourne, take Chantelle's hand and whisk her away. Auntie Pauline Taylor's deep regret about the simple act of putting an ad on a notice board. And Jim and Kath McDougall who desperately wish they had asked more questions, but they were all doing the best they could with the information they had. Yeah, let Nanny have a turn before
- [33:13]
C
it goes down the hole.
- [33:14]
B
Yes, off we go Nanny. We can never know where the choices we make will lead us. Most of us are just trying to do the next right thing
- [33:28]
C
and then
- [33:29]
A
what happens in the end?
- [33:31]
C
Capri Ever after the End.
- [33:38]
B
I'm Dominique Baens, host of Expanse the Nanop four. Please subscribe and leave a review wherever you're listening. It really helps others find us. If you can add to this story or have information you think might be important, please get in touch. You can also give information to Crimestoppers Australia anonymously on 180033 000. If you're struggling or need support in Australia, you can call lifeline anytime on 1311 14. If you're outside Australia, search for your local crisis support line. This season of Expanse was developed in collaboration with ABC's regional WA team on Wadandi and Bibbulman Country. Sound design is by Grant Walter, who is also a producer, along with Megan woods, with additional production and research by Jessica Hinchliffe, Kate Stevens and Louise Milan. Our supervising producer is Pia Wersu. Executive producer is Blythe Moore. Field recordings this season. Thanks to Geoff Kemp, Anthony Pancia, Nico White, Rees Jones and Ted o'. Connor. Thank you to Andrew George Murray Adam, Tom Edwards and Isaac Egan for their work on our Vodcast, which you can find on ABC iView and YouTube and the ABC Southwest WA team for all their help behind the scenes. And a special thank you also to everyone who so generously shared their knowledge, memories and time. Especially to Jim and Cath MacDougall, without whom this would not be possible and whose love for their daughter and grand granddaughter will never fade. You've been listening to an abc podcast. Discover more great abc podcasts, live radio and exclusives on the abc listen apple.