In one of Australia’s most baffling missing persons cases, those left behind have to face two really stark possibilities: was it a choice or was it murder?
The winter sun streaks through the high, dense green canopy of the jarrah forest.
Old bush trails, sodden with damp foliage lead you to ever more isolated places. Somewhere out here, under the thick undergrowth, there might be the answer to a decades-old mystery.
What happened to the Nannup Four?
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Four people — Simon Kadwill, Chantelle McDougall, their daughter Leela and friend Tony Popic — disappeared from a little town called Nannup in this isolated corner of south-west Western Australia in 2007.
They left a short letter on their door saying they had gone to Brazil.
But they never travelled on their passports nor accessed their bank accounts ever again.
No-one has heard from them since.
The letter Chantelle McDougall left her landlords before disappearing from Nannup.(Supplied)
In their absence, details about a doomsday cult, secret identities, isolation and control surfaced.
But there were no answers for how four people, including a five-year-old girl, could just vanish.
Everyone was left to grapple with the question: was it a cult-inspired murder-suicide, or something else?
But there’s one question even more haunting for those who loved them. How did it come to this?
Jim and Cath McDougall have spent years trying to learn what happened to their daughter.(ABC News: Geoff Kemp)
In October 2025, Cath and Jim McDougall sit at their wooden dining table in Wodonga, Victoria.
Paperwork and photos of their missing daughter and granddaughter, Chantelle and Leela McDougall, are laid out in piles.
It’s like they are trying to create order out of a senseless situation.
Newspaper clippings, missing persons posters, old email correspondence, contact cards for police officers all neatly lined up.
The hopes and dreams they had for their daughter reduced to a stack of paper.
The McDougalls have collected media clippings and other correspondence over the years.(ABC News: Ted O’Connor)
The McDougalls have been searching for answers.(ABC News: Ted O’Connor)
“She was just the biggest character you’d ever come across,” Jim remembers.
“She’d tell her own jokes and laugh before she finished telling you the joke.”
When Jim and Cath talk about Chantelle as a little girl, their whole bodies change, their faces relax and their eyes light up.
Chantelle was a theatrical, goofy and smiley little girl.
She went from a child giving performances in the living room to an aspiring actor in high school.
Everyone remembers her smile.
“She was just full of life,” Cath said.
Chantelle’s parents say everyone remembers her smile.(Supplied)
But when Cath remembers Chantelle now, it’s painfully tinged with another memory.
In May 2007, Cath was saying goodbye to Chantelle and Leela in the Nannup caravan park.
She’d flown across the country from her home in regional Victoria.
“My stomach was churning … I could just feel there was something wrong,” Cath said.
As she drove away and crossed a bridge spanning the Blackwood River, its banks green from early winter rain, she burst into tears.
She had a gut feeling something was wrong.
A little over a month later, Chantelle and Leela vanished.
“I just wish I’d asked a lot more questions, no matter what.”
Cath McDougall still questions what more could have been done.(ABC News: Ted O’Connor)
In 1997, 17-year-old Chantelle graduated school, she left home and moved 321 kilometres away to Melbourne.
Her proud parents could never have imagined where the path she was about to step onto would take her.
Within months, Jim and Cath noticed a change.
“It was a bit of a shock to me the way she spoke and she was just a different, different person really,” Jim said.
“She became a bit more secretive.”
She had given up her dreams of acting and had met a man in his 20s called Simon Cookerman.
Cookerman attended an ashram in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick and introduced Chantelle to a book written by a self-styled spiritual guru.
The author’s name was Simon Kadwill.
Simon Kadwill moved in with Chantelle McDougall when she was 17.(Supplied)
In his book Servers of the Divine Plan, Kadwill wrote that humanity would enter a higher state of consciousness after a 75,000-year cycle.
He referred to it as “the great transition” but only for those who had learnt the “lessons of the physical plane”.
In 1998, Chantelle and Simon Kadwill met in person.
This would change the course of her life.
Still just 17, Chantelle moved in with Kadwill and his partner Deborah Fleischer to become a live-in nanny for their one-year-old son.
In a secluded house tucked into the hills on Melbourne’s outskirts, Chantelle became enmeshed in Kadwill’s world.
A world she kept hidden from her parents.
Chantelle told Jim and Cath she was exploring some spiritual ideas but kept the details vague.
“Then she started telling us a little bit about his beliefs and things and that really worried us,” Jim said.
Jim McDougall became worried after Chantelle met Simon Kadwill.(ABC News: Ted O’Connor)
The increasing secrecy and changes to Chantelle’s personality, coupled with what they knew of this man she was living with, prompted Cath to call a counsellor.
She was desperate for advice.
She was told to try and keep lines of communication open with her daughter.
“You could say I was afraid to question her too much or do anything because I didn’t want her to not talk to me,” Cath said.
This was the start of years where Cath would feel like she was walking on eggshells — determined to remain in contact with Chantelle, but at the cost of expressing just how worried she was.
Chantelle travelling in central Australia.(Supplied: McDougall family)
In late 1998, Jim and Cath were relieved when Chantelle seemed to have moved on from the strange nannying job, packed her bags and went travelling.
Like so many people her age, she was idealistic and looking for adventure.
“Just her and a case and away she went, she was gonna save the world,” Jim said.
Chantelle travelled across Australia and to the UK before landing back in Perth.
There, it became clear she had not made a break from Simon Kadwill at all.
“There was talk that Chantelle had to falsify documents to get him back into the country,” Jim said.
Far from leaving Kadwill behind, Chantelle had been meeting up with him along her travels.
A photo discovered later by Cath and Jim shows an achingly young Chantelle in the UK, standing close beside a tall man twice her age, with his arm wrapped around her slim waist.
Simon and Chantelle in England.(Supplied: McDougall Family)
When Chantelle called home for advice about getting Kadwill back into Australia, Jim was shocked.
By 2000, Kadwill had returned to Australia and moved in with Chantelle, his partner Deborah Fleischer, their son Daniel and another woman called Justine Smith.
Justine had connected with the others through a spiritual group, travelling and living with Kadwill — just like Chantelle.
“He had Chantelle in one bedroom and Deb in another bedroom and Justine in another bedroom,” Jim said.
Later that year Deborah moved out and Kadwill was in a relationship with Chantelle.
Then, in early 2001, the phone rang in the McDougalls’ kitchen.
“She rang up and said, ‘Oh, I’m having a baby’,” Cath said.
Chantelle was pregnant with Kadwill’s child.
In September 2001 Chantelle gave birth to a baby girl, Leela McDougall.
Cath packed a suitcase, heavy with hand-made baby clothes, and landed in Perth on a warm, sunny spring day six weeks later.
She was instantly smitten with Leela.
“I got a cuddle and oh it was just lovely.”
Chantelle holding Leela as a baby.(Supplied: McDougall Family)
This wasn’t her only introduction.
For the first time in the three years Chantelle had been living and travelling with him, Cath would meet Simon Kadwill.
“He asked me what planet I was from,” Cath said.
“I thought, what are you talking about?”
Despite reconnecting with Chantelle through the birth of Leela, Cath still felt that it could all be pulled away if she questioned her too closely.
So, she kept her thoughts about Kadwill’s bizarre questions to herself.
Cath flew to Western Australia to meet Leela.(ABC News: Ted O’Connor)
Jim and Cath dared to hope things might settle and they might have their bubbly, outspoken and open little girl back.
They would talk on the phone regularly and Cath would send over care parcels.
“I felt like it was a bit more like a normal relationship and family-type situation. Little did we know, it wasn’t,” Cath said.
The fluid living arrangements continued for the next few years.
Justine Smith moved out and a man named Tony Popic moved in, living in a tent in the backyard.
He had been living a nomadic lifestyle and was also drawn into Kadwill’s spiritual teachings.
Tony Popic lived with Chantelle and Leela.(Supplied: McDougall family)
The four — Kadwill, Chantelle, Leela and Tony — continued to move to increasingly isolated locations.
In late 2003 they arrived on the outskirts of Nannup, moving into a little blue farmhouse 10 minutes from town.
Chantelle and Tony were well-liked in the community.
Kadwill, on the other hand, was rarely seen outside the house.
He would spend the days sleeping and nights awake on his computer.
His books had morphed into an online forum called The Gateway, where his followers referred to themselves as “servers”.
Kadwill’s teachings had elements of doomsday predictions and he would write about the existence of “dark negative forces” and believed himself to be a higher being or messenger in a “cosmic plan”.
Nannup is 280 kilometres south of Perth.(ABC: Sharon Gordon)
The four lived in this blue house on the outskirts of Nannup.(ABC News: Anthony Pancia)
The four lived in this blue house on the outskirts of Nannup.
ABC News: Sharon Gordon/Anthony Pancia
Jim and Cath McDougall rarely saw Chantelle and Leela, but when they did Kadwill would make spending time with their granddaughter difficult.
“He basically said to me, ‘Oh I don’t want you to talk to Leela because you talk rough and you’ll corrupt her’,” Jim recalls.
“He wouldn’t let me take a picture of the kids or Chantelle and him.”
Kadwill told Jim it would take their souls away.
He would stop Cath from bathing Leela and refused to let them say goodbye when they left.
“He stood in front of the four-wheel drive holding the baby,” Jim said.
“She’s screaming because she wants to kiss Cath goodbye.”
The memory is seared into Jim’s mind.
Leela was described as a “pocket rocket of energy”.(Supplied)
Over the next four years, Kadwill’s life became increasingly insular.
He was paranoid about “psychic interference” and his peace being disturbed by electromagnetic forces.
Meanwhile, Chantelle had a handful of friends.
They were rarely invited to the blue farmhouse where the four lived, and many got the impression Chantelle socialised with them only when Kadwill “allowed” it.
One of those people was Dianne Abbott, who ran a homeschooling group 40 minutes from Nannup in the seaside city of Busselton.
Dianne Abbott was a friend of Chantelle’s and would often have play dates with Leela.(ABC News: Anthony Pancia)
Chantelle brought Leela to the group every fortnight where the mothers would join forces for the kids to play and the parents to connect.
She describes Chantelle as “smiley” and “shy” and Leela as a “pocket rocket of energy”.
“Everything was, you know, active and fast.”
She remembers the loving way Chantelle and Leela would interact.
“Chantelle listened to Leela. They just loved each other to bits.”
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Dianne met Kadwill when she was invited to the blue house for a play date.
He was polite and the conversation between them was brief.
But when Dianne returned home, she received an unexpected call from him.
“He said: ‘You know Chantelle’s got end-time syndrome?’
“And I’m like, what?
“‘She’s worried about the end of the world, that’s why we don’t go anywhere’.”
Dianne got the sense Kadwill was trying to make excuses for Chantelle.
“Like, Chantelle’s like this and this is why.
“But I didn’t think Chantelle was like anything, I thought she was just a lovely, normal person.”
Chantelle would work shifts at the Nannup Hotel.(ABC News: Anthony Pancia)
Dianne wasn’t the only person who noticed Kadwill’s controlling behaviour.
Chantelle worked at the local pub, and her colleagues would see Kadwill waiting outside while she worked.
On these occasions, Chantelle would appear nervous and on edge.
Another local, Kay Savory, tried to help Chantelle set up a business to get some financial independence.
After a run-in with Kadwill, in which he cornered her in a room and interrogated her, Chantelle stopped having contact with Kay.
Kay Savory knew Chantelle and says she had her suspicions.(ABC News: Anthony Pancia)
Then, in the lead-up to the vanishing, there was a cascading series of events that in hindsight seem to give some clues to what was coming.
The four’s landlord was having a new power pole transformer installed at the blue house, which precipitated an erratic outburst from Kadwill.
Jodi MacDonald was an electrical apprentice to her husband, Bruce, and they had just finished the day’s work when Kadwill came over.
He was agitated about the electromagnetic frequency coming from the power pole.
Jodi’s partner tried to reassure him.
Jodie MacDonald was an electrician in Nannup when the four disappeared.(ABC News: Anthony Pancia)
“It hasn’t been connected. It has got no power there to do anything.”
What followed was a bizarre performance where Kadwill attempted to show them the “defences” he had put in place.
He, Tony Popic and Leela began scrabbling around in the dirt to uncover buried silver balls.
“They were probably 10 metres apart throughout the corners of the garden, like creating a protective barrier,” Jodi said.
The blue house where the four resided.(ABC News: Anthony Pancia)
Then on May 5, just over two months before the disappearance, Simon Kadwill was pulled over by Nannup police.
Sergeant Jeff Taylor examined Kadwill’s licence and asked him more about who he was.
Taylor recalled that three years earlier, Chantelle’s ex-boyfriend Simon Cookerman had turned up in Nannup with a wild story that Kadwill wasn’t who he said he was.
At the time, Taylor ran checks on Kadwill but nothing unusual came up.
But it was still in his mind when he pulled him over in May 2007.
He said Kadwill reacted strangely to his questions.
The next day Chantelle applied for a passport for Leela.
Then, at the end of June, Chantelle called her parents and said she was moving to Brazil.
Cath was in shock.
“She never, ever expressed any interest to move there.”
Chantelle was vague about the details.
She said there was a community in Brazil they were thinking of travelling to but she didn’t have an address.
Chantelle, Kadwill and Tony began giving away their belongings.
Chantelle sold her pet dachshunds and their puppies.
Tony, Leela and Chantelle would often be seen around Nannup together.(Supplied: McDougall family)
Perth travel agent Carolyn French travelled to Nannup on July 14 to collect the last of the dogs.
She later told police Chantelle was waiting outside for her when she arrived and appeared anxious and eager for her to leave as quickly as possible.
After disappearing inside briefly, Chantelle said Leela was sick and might need to go to hospital.
Carolyn was the last person to see Chantelle before she disappeared.
Later that week the landlords of the blue house would find the letter on the door in Chantelle’s neat, curling handwriting.
It said they had moved to Brazil to escape sleeplessness caused by the electromagnetic field from the new power transformer.
On the other side of the country, Cath McDougall was waiting patiently to hear from her daughter once she had arrived in South America.
“Every day I’d go to the post office on the way home from work, thinking there’d be a letter there.
“There was never any letter.”
Cath hoped to hear from her daughter when she arrived in South America.(ABC News: Ted O’Connor)
As the weeks dragged on with no word from their daughter, Jim and Cath’s concerns grew and in October they officially reported her missing.
Early police investigations found they hadn’t touched their bank accounts and no-one had left the country using their passports.
Jim and Cath began a search for their daughter and granddaughter that would last two decades.
“The investigation went on for quite a while,” Jim said.
“Just more questions, more answers, no answers.”
In July 2009, in an act of desperation, they printed off thousands of missing persons flyers and drove from Victoria to Far North Queensland handing them out along the way.
“Nothing ever became of them,” Cath said.
“But it was worth a try,” Jim said.
Jim and Cath drove from Victoria to Queensland posting missing persons flyers.(ABC News: Ted O’Connor)
The McDougalls posted flyers across the country.(ABC News: Ted O’Connor)
Jim and Cath McDougall posted missing persons flyers across the country.
ABC News: Ted O’Connor
It was during that trip they received a call from a news reporter that would change everything.
“He says that they found the real Simon Kadwill in England and he’s been arrested,” Jim said.
But it quickly came to light that this was not the man Jim and Cath knew.
It was another man who’d had his identity stolen by a former colleague.
The Simon Kadwill they knew was actually Gary Felton.
Simon Kadwill, aka Gary Felton, had moved to Australia under a false identity.(Supplied)
He’d moved to Australia in the 1990s under a false identity.
“I just imagined all these terrible things,” Cath said.
“What is he? Is he, you know, a murderer?”
It turned out the warnings of Chantelle’s ex-boyfriend three years before had been legitimate.
He had discovered Kadwill’s true identity and tried to warn Chantelle and the police.
The McDougalls may have thought this shocking revelation would lead to a breakthrough in the search, but the years rolled on and still there were no answers.
In December 2017, a decade on from the disappearance, a coronial inquest was held.
A report from a renewed police investigation was laid out before the coroner.
Jim and Cath thought they would finally get the closure they were desperate for.
The McDougalls sought an inquiry into the disappearance.(ABC News: Ted O’Connor)
The McDougalls spent three days at the courthouse, taking notes on everything.
Medical records from before they disappeared revealed Chantelle, Tony and Felton had obtained strong sedatives and anti-anxiety medication.
Felton was also prescribed anti-psychotics and an opioid that can be fatal when combined with other nervous system depressants, like sedatives.
Police had found unsettling emails sent by Felton to one of his followers before the disappearance.
He’d told them he was planning a family suicide pact, but he didn’t think Chantelle could go through with it because she kept delaying.
When the follower told him it would be tantamount to murder, he said he’d changed his mind and they would move to an isolated area where they couldn’t be reached.
There were possible sightings and travel movements in the days around the disappearance, but nothing conclusive.
The four moved to Nannup in late 2003.(ABC News: Anthony Pancia)
Nannup is located about 280 kilometres from Perth.(ABC News: Anthony Pancia)
The disappearance sparked disturbing theories about what might have happened.(ABC News: Anthony Pancia)
Legends of thylacines are cemented in the identity of Nannup.(ABC News: Anthony Pancia)
The sum of all the investigations was ultimately not enough to make a definitive finding.
Coroner Barry King said while the group’s spiritual beliefs pointed towards suicide, he found it hard to believe Felton wouldn’t make his death a publicised message to his followers.
“If Simon [Felton] had truly been motivated to end his life by his desire to be considered a spiritual leader, making his ascension known would have been a powerful message,” the coroner said.
He could not find beyond reasonable doubt that Felton, Tony Popic, Chantelle or Leela McDougall were dead or alive.
Jim McDougall has read the 53-page report over and over, looking for answers that aren’t there.
“We just hope she turns up.”
Chantelle and Leela were often seen playing in the park and at the local pool.(Supplied: McDougall family)
Nearly a decade on from the inquest, Jim and Cath do their best to balance hope and despair.
“One day I’ll be hopeful, next day I’m convinced that they’ve been killed,” Cath said.
“It’s been so long and I just can’t believe that Chantelle wouldn’t have tried to get in touch with me.”
Watch Expanse: The Nannup Four on ABC iView
Jim and Cath still struggle to comprehend how their daughter became swept up in a life they never wanted for her.
In the face of uncertainty, they are forced to reckon with the different possibilities of what might have happened.
Chantelle may have truly believed she was moving to Brazil, excited about the prospect of a new life in an off-grid community with her young daughter.
Maybe they met with foul play.
There’s also the painful idea that Chantelle believed Felton’s teaching — that by taking your own life you would move onto a higher plane — even though they believe she could never have harmed herself or Leela.
Leela’s footprints captured in a picture for her grandparents.(ABC News: Ted O’Connor)
Jim and Cath have not given up hope on finding answers.(ABC News: Geoff Kemp)
Jim and Cath have discovered the hard way how isolating this unique kind of loss is.
“People probably don’t understand what it’s like,” Cath said.
“It’s just not knowing, the emptiness,” Jim said.
“That just kills you.”
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