Ms McDougall’s uncle, retired detective Barry McIntosh, told the ABC Expanse podcast<\/a> he has one last chance to find answers.<\/p>\n Listen to the podcast<\/a><\/p>\n In 2007 four people disappeared from an isolated blue farmhouse on the outskirts of the WA town of Nannup. They left behind a letter on the door and a trail of bizarre clues.<\/p>\n He began investigating his niece’s disappearance at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when he was sent a copy of the police investigation file.<\/p>\n “I found a lot of things that were missed,” Mr McIntosh said.<\/p>\n As a result of that investigation he conducted his own search in July 2024 and uncovered the lead that he believes points to a final resting place.<\/p>\n Bizarre circumstances around the disappearance<\/p>\n In October 2007 police opened an investigation into the disappearance of the four after the alarm was raised by Ms McDougall’s parents who believed she was leaving to take up residence in Brazil months before.<\/p>\n Cath McDougall, Mr McIntosh’s sister, went to the post office every day for weeks in the hope of hearing from Chantelle.<\/p>\n “There was never any letter and I started to feel sick,” Cath said.<\/p>\n Jim and Cath McDougall tried to stay close to their daughter despite living on the other side of the country. (ABC News: Ted O’Connor)<\/p>\n It is not known whether the four emigrated to Brazil under false identities, dropped off the grid, or were involved in a cult-inspired murder-suicide<\/a>.<\/p>\n A 2016 coronial inquest<\/a> could not determine if the four were alive or dead.<\/p>\n The case remained open and the McDougall family swung between hope and despair.<\/p>\n “You can’t not think about it. It’s in your head when you wake up. All the time, it’s always there,” Chantelle’s father Jim McDougall said.<\/p>\n Police admit they searched the wrong area<\/p>\n When Mr McIntosh travelled to WA to conduct his own search in 2024 he was targeting an area of bushland between the Jane and Boorara-Gardner national parks, near Northcliffe.<\/p>\n He believes this area is significant for a number of reasons.<\/p>\n Official investigations into the Nannup four’s disappearance revealed Mr Kadwill, who was operating an online cult<\/a>, told a follower of a family suicide pact involving a plan to walk into the wilderness and take a fast-acting drug.<\/p>\n Simon Kadwill was the leader of a religious cult when he disappeared from Nannup. (WA Police)<\/p>\n In the days surrounding the disappearance, two bus tickets linked to the four were purchased for Northcliffe.<\/p>\n Three months later, in October 2007, prisoners were clearing a track in bushland near Northcliffe when they came across items of clothing and detected a “smell of death”.<\/p>\n The prison officer reported the find to local police who went to the location and found a T-shirt that looked like it had been there for years.<\/p>\n They also said they could not smell anything.<\/p>\n Police revisited the area again in 2015.<\/p>\n But when Mr McIntosh spoke to the prison officer he realised a mistake had been made.<\/p>\n Barry McIntosh has spent years working to find out what happened to his niece. (ABC: Expanse)<\/p>\n Following questions from the Expanse podcast, WA Police confirmed that they were in the wrong place when they searched the area in 2015.<\/p>\n The search coordinates were based on the memory of a police officer who was involved in the 2007 search because police never officially recorded the location.<\/p>\n If that officer’s memory was correct, the T-shirt police found was not the clothing the prisoners saw, and the smell would have been in another location.<\/p>\n The T-shirt was taken as evidence but it can no longer be found.<\/p>\n Mr McIntosh was disappointed the error was not picked up for more than 15 years.<\/p>\n “I put one email and one phone call [in] from the other side of the country to speak to the prison officer and got the correct coordinates,” he said.<\/p>\n Northcliffe could hold the answers<\/p>\n There is one more piece of information Mr McIntosh has uncovered since then.<\/p>\n When he and another retired Victorian police officer, Peter Greaves, searched the area in 2024 using drone mapping and cadaver dogs they detected the scent of human remains.<\/p>\n Search efforts in WA in 2024 were hampered by heavy rain and dense bushland. (Supplied: Barry McIntosh)<\/p>\n After examining the watertable they believe they can identify the exact location of a burial site.<\/p>\n “The area where the dogs were indicating, there was an edge of an erosion channel there,” Mr Greaves said.<\/p>\n “Sometimes the scenario can happen where the dogs might be a hundred metres from where the burial might be.”Request for police search denied<\/p>\n After this discovery Mr McIntosh sent a letter to WA Police in 2024, requesting a controlled burn to clear the bushland and a fresh search.<\/p>\n In October 2025, after the Expanse podcast contacted police, Mr McIntosh received a reply saying a new search had been proposed.<\/p>\n In October 2025 Mr McIntosh received an email from WA Police saying a new search had been proposed. (Supplied: Barry McIntosh)<\/p>\n Two months later, however, police said the area Mr McIntosh and Mr Greaves searched in 2024 was the correct area, but police would not be conducting further searches.<\/p>\n “At this stage no search is planned, but saying that, of course, everything would be based on information that is provided,” Detective Sergeant Jeremy Spivey said.<\/p>\n Mr McIntosh says he is not giving up and has started an online fundraiser for another search later in 2026.<\/p>\n “I estimate the search cost of $10,000,” he said.<\/p>\n “Once I’ve knocked that out I’ve pretty much done everything I can do.”<\/p>\n Families turn to private investigations<\/p>\n In recent years there have been a number of other cases in which private investigations have delivered new leads in cold cases.<\/p>\n Most recently a Tasmanian filmmaker assembled a team of volunteers to find missing backpacker Celine Cremer in remote Tasmanian bushland where the Belgian disappeared in 2023.<\/p>\n Her remains were found<\/a> by a volunteer bushwalker.<\/p>\n In 2023, the remains of Corey O’Connell were found in bushland<\/a> near Nannup, WA, after a two-year search conducted by his family.<\/p>\n Drone pilot Daniel Wood assisted in the search and took thousands of aerial photographs of the area where Mr O’Connell was last seen.<\/p>\n Corey O’Connell’s remains have been found. (Supplied)<\/p>\n His remains were found in an area that had already been searched on foot.<\/p>\n “He was found in very dense bushland, very scrubby, sort of near a dried up riverbed about 400 metres, I think it was, from the last known position,” Mr Wood said.<\/p>\n While families of missing people might feel desperate for answers, Acting Detective Inspector Jessica Securo said WA Police did not encourage people to undertake their own investigations.<\/p>\n Watch Expanse: The Nannup Four on ABC iView<\/a><\/p>\n Learn more about the baffling disappearance of four people from a remote WA farmhouse, a case that has puzzled Australia for nearly two decades.<\/p>\n “I discourage family members from engaging with, say, private investigation firms,” she said.<\/p>\n “That’s what the police are here to do \u2014 to take the information and investigate that information.”<\/p>\n But Asha Carmody, who founded not-for-profit Exhuming The Truth, said she had heard from families who felt police had exhausted their resources, leading to a halt in progress.<\/p>\n Ms Carmody uses her criminology background to help families search for answers and has helped to close missing persons cases.<\/p>\n “They can’t live without answers,” she said.<\/p>\n “That’s why people pick up their own cases and go on with it because they need answers to be able to not move on, but move forward.”<\/p>\n Chantelle McDougall and her daughter Leela went missing from Nannup in 2007. (Supplied: McDougall family)<\/p>\n As for Chantelle and Leela McDougall’s family, only time will tell if this final search will bring them the answers they desperately want.<\/p>\n While they wait they continue to swing between despair and hope that they will ever find closure.<\/p>\n “It’s just not knowing,” Mr McDougall said.<\/p>\n “The emptiness, really \u2014 that just kills you.”<\/p>\n Follow Expanse: The Nannup Four on ABC listen<\/a> to hear every episode of season six.<\/a><\/p>\n Do you know more?<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/d35a85c1ea53a7d01b3c1a0ef6dc02ac.jpeg\")
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