06 Expanse: The Nannup Four | Northcliffe

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 Coler on the ABC Business Daily Feed. And ABC Listen, or wherever you get your podcast. ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music, and more.

It's December 25th, 2007, and the McDougalls are sat around the table at Jim and Capshouse for Family Christmas. The day they'd eat too much, drink too much, and play cricket.

The atmosphere is heavy this year.

She'd bring 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.

“Shantel's sister Colleen, their mum and dad and brother are all trying to have a nice Christmas.”

With their spread of roast meat, salads, Pavlova, and Christmas crackers, of course. My brother's, you know, such a joke. It's going, "If Shantel doesn't ring by one PM, then she's out of the will." It's been five months since any of them have heard from Shantel. Last time Colleen spoke to her was when she danced at the phone, before handing it to

her. The call where Shantel had said she was going to Brazil with her partner Simon Cadwell, as they knew him then, and their daughter Lila. Ever since Shantel left home at 17 years old, wherever she was living in the world, on Christmas day,

she would always call home.

We'd pass the phone around and everybody'd talk to her. This year, her mum's calf was just holding it together, waiting. As the time ticked by, the room was tense. Would it ring? Of course, there was no phone call like Christmas.

Shantel's absence was an invisible presence in the room. Everyone could feel it. I was quite shattered, I got through lunch, but then I retreated. No phone call, it was really hard. The silence that Christmas was loud.

It was filled with questions. Questions that Colleen, Shantel's sister, couldn't help staring in the face.

“What's stopping her, what's the problem this year of Brazil has found, too?”

Yeah, what was stopping her from contacting us? Suspicion started to arise. I'm Dominique Bands, and this is the final episode of Expans, The Nannup Four, North Cliff. By 2009, two years on, with no sign of the four, the disappearance is with the missing person's unit in West and 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 Nannup Four went after they left the blue house, remained a mystery. Police of mating quarries nationally and abroad, and even followed up reports the group

may have joined a religious sect. Anyone with information about the four is asked to contact the missing person's unit. Jim and Kath were beside themselves, but had nowhere to turn. On one of their visits to Shantel in Nannup, Gary had a conversation with Jim about the glass house 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 fall will drive and headed north to Queensland, armed with stacks of posters with Shantel and Leila's face on them. I 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. That's one of those things you don't want to give up hope. Jim and Kath spent three months driving from Victoria to Queensland, putting those posters

It's crushing to think how desperate they must have been that they travelled thousands of

“kilometers because of a one-off conversation they had four years before.”

Nothing if I've become of them. I was worth a try, desperation I guess. And time kept marching on. Two more years passed and in 2011, Jim and Kath were headed off on another trip. This time their path would take them back to Western Australia.

So they reached out to WA police again. And I ring them up and say we'll be in WA in a couple of months. The police officers tells them to come in when they're passing through. We went up the second floor or somewhere. I mean, when there's room in this hard wardrobe, there's energy that's all your files in that

wardrobe, it's full of your stuff, what we've done. Jim and Kath have a chance to ask questions.

“Find out what happened to some of Shantel's things.”

Then they said, "We want you to come down the street and never talk to you."

And they said, "The best of you now is for me to instigate a coronial inquest." So I said, "Well, how do I do that?" She'd just run a letter to the coroner. Four years with still no hint of Shantel and Leila and Jim and Kath have no answers. And one final hope for getting some.

In October 2011, they wrote the Western Australian coroner requesting an inquest into Shantel and Leila's disappearance. A chance for everything that had come to light to be systematically reviewed, looked out 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. The 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 Kath were still waiting. Then, they got their glimpse of hope. The coroner accepted my letter and we instigated their inquest at Bussauden. There was Kathron Eye, my son, on his wife and my daughter. We all went to the inquest together.

The family made the trip from Victoria to Bussauden. That same coastal city Shantel would take Leila for home school group in 2007. The McDougall family surrounded by a crowd of media,

huddled into Bussauden's small courthouse to finally hear the answers they were looking for.

Just going over and over, it's very difficult, but I want to find that what happened them all where they are, and so I'll just keep doing it until I find something. The atmosphere was tense. The coroner said, in that corner and the big chair in the middle where the people asked them questions, and he was up the back.

And yes, I was just, they went through all the people were there. One by one, witnesses were called forward. It was just so many things. I don't talk nights all day. I think we didn't know.

Medical records from before they disappeared showed that Shantel, Tony, and Gary had obtained strong sedatives and anti-anxiety medication. And the Gary was also prescribed anti-cycotics 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 moved to an isolated area instead, where they can't be 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 40s appeared, a young Canadian man called Alexander Fominoth killed himself. He was one of Gary, Ailya Simon's followers, and had visited him in Nanop with his friend Kirk. A bit over a year later, Kirk and his girlfriend, Christina Parrot, also took their own lives. According to police, suicide notes left by the two backpackers didn't indicate they were unhappy

which sounds uncomfortably familiar.

“Police had tried to track any final movements of the Nanop for.”

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 investigated Gregory Balford told the inquest there were several reported sightings of the family that weren't followed up.

Around the days of the disappearance, there were some sightings of Tony Poppitch in Perth,

where his mobile was also pinned.

Someone presumed to be Tony or Simon travelled to either North Cliff in the South West,

“or Cal Gaulit, the North East. 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 Shantel 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 Shantel whether Leela would like to say goodbye,”

Shantel said Leela was unwell, and seemed like she was trying to hurry them out. Shantel went into a room, and when she came back, seemed more anxious, and said she might need to take her daughter to hospital. It's like Gary Shantel and Tony were on board a runaway train, hurtling towards some destination. I just can't figure out 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-starred cult leader wouldn't make his death a highly publicised message to a 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 none-up 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. I've read it over and over and out. It sees what it is, basically. You know,

you can't blame me because you didn't say they're definitely passed away. We will never

finalise this stuff, you know? We just hope she turns up. Peter grieves the copper who helped the McDougall's when Shantel first went missing has retired now, but he hasn't given up investigating. In fact, he's been working with Shantel's uncle, Barry Macintosh, another retired copper, trying to uncover anything new, and they've got a theory. They think they might know where Shantel and Lila are. See, one of those strange things in the lead

up to the disappearance was that bus ticket under the name Jay Roberts, to a town called North Cliff, an hour and 15 minutes drive south of Nanop. Much like Nanop, it's surrounded by ancient forests and attracts people who want to live away from society. Then you go through like the big carry forces and massive big trees that's just very isolated. In October 2007, a few months after the Nanop falls disappearance. There was a group of inmates from a nearby prison,

tasked with clearing the tracks in a section of bushland near North Cliff. Worked party came back after the fall lunch and then they picked up and left and informed the prison officer that had found discarded clothing. The prison officer thought this was so significant. He actually recorded it in his diary. And there was something else that one prisoner noticed. One of the prisoners amongst the crew said there was a very distinct smell of death. That prison officer took the

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 shantels 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 Grieves and Barry McIntosh couldn't shake the feeling North Cliff was important. When poppicks movements the trace back after the family of disappeared, the last time he's actually seen is catching a bus to North Cliff. And he gets off the bus there and that's the last time anybody's at any trace of them whatsoever. They also believed the four visited the area twice for family picnics. And Gary Feldman Simon Cadwell had an affinity with this specific place

outside of North Cliff because it had some sort of intrinsic value around his belief systems that he felt that that was a place where you appeared with the stars and their alternate universe. If they disappeared into lie and the prisoners were in that area in October and

“smelt that smell of death, just that line up with they have smelt that year. 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. So the pair of retired Victorian police officers started fundraising and Peter sank in a bunch of

his own cash too. They think they finally got the means to answer the question that's haunted

Jim and Kathmick dogle for 17 years. I can see with the way they live their lives, that it still has a very big impact on them all at the time. You can see that it's still their war and your back of their minds all time. In July 2024, Peter and Barry bought a flight from Victoria, headed west to carry out their own search. 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

“Jimmie and Kathsem closure. They have one week to find something that has alluded everyone else”

for the better part of two decades. They arrived in North Cliff on a cold wet winter's day. And had straight out about 20 kilometers past North Cliff 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. 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 about to get through like tunnel through underneath it and then probably every maybe 15 20 meters you might find a little clear patch there might be two or three meters round where you could actually stand up and have a look around to work at where you were going to go to next. 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 were 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.

On the first day we went out. We did the usual take the boots off and 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 men and we just walked straight through with everything on. Every night they returned their accommodation freezing cold and drenched to the skin. It was inhospitable to say the best. We'd have to hang on a close in front of the wood fire and dry and dry over the night because we were soaked through to the skin.

They spend days looking for disturbances picked up by the drone mapping but all they find

Then on day five they brought in a team of cadaver dogs.

“Dogs that search for bodies, I can pick up a scent under the ground that might have been there for years.”

The search team gathered together in a clearing near a large flat rock. We've described the terrain to them, we've described what sort of things that they need 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 said if anybody found anything now with the call out bring it to a tension not touch anything treated as crime. So the group methodically worked

through thousands of square meters of bushland stopping every 80 meters to reconvene. We also had mentally sectors as well so we were looking at potentially if there was any burials there that we would be able to pick up things like shoes, belt buckles.

The search was uphill and in the first two runs the dogs didn't pick up anything.

But then the last run we did up the hill two dogs indicated a particular area that of interest and they kept coming back to that specific area. 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. We were very disappointed, very disappointed. Time and money is up. Peter and Barry had flown thousands of kilometers

across the country to find answers for the McDougalls and after a week of pushing through vindictive scrub the pair of retired place officers had no choice but to pack up and board their

“flight home. I remember getting on the plane to come home and thinking that I thought very deflated”

by it and also thinking like what else could we have done, the what other scenario could we have run. But there's something they didn't know when those cadaver dogs picked up that scent. 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 see been down over that. Sometimes that scenario can happen where the dogs might be 100 metres 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. So that sent the dogs picked up. Might have been carried under the ground on a water course and given them a false read 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 Macintosh wrote the WA Police Commissioner requesting a control 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 please said they won't be doing another search after all. It's another disappointment for the MacDougals who continue to wait hoping that one day they will get the answers they desperately want. I'm a cutely aware that Jim and Kath have been through this before. The discovery, the hope,

the let down. One of the questions I've been pondering constantly since I met Jim and Kath

“is how they carry on. I think it's the obvious question people ask when they see someone”

experience tragedy. I'm realizing the answer is because they have no other choice.

Well sometimes I think it's very hard to get up and keep going but I always think of the other grandchildren and children. That two choices be strong or be weak. There were sort of 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 Kath MacDougal, Jim's still going on his forward driving trips and

And Kath 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 rollercoaster ride with no end in sight. They've had to become detectives, media experts,

exposing their heartbreak time and time again to keep Shantel and Leila's story alive.

“You do a trying to think of happy things? Yeah. Tell our joke. Tell her jokes?”

It's just not now in the emptiness, really. It's just closure.

They still struggle to comprehend how their vivacious daughter got swept up in a life they never

wanted for her. One day I'll be hopeful. Next day I'll convince that they've been killed or something. It's been so long and I just can't believe the Shantel wouldn't have tried to get in touch with me. This kind of loss is isolating. My friends will say, "I just don't know what to say to you." And I say, "Don't worry, I said that it's not much you can say really." That's probably the hardest. People probably don't understand what it's like.

As our time together is drawing to a close, cat tells me a story.

“I remember a couple of weeks after they disappeared. I had this dream and it is so vivid.”

I can still see it. It's clear as clear today. And Shantel walking towards me saying, "Don't worry, mum, I'll be all right." But you know, it's because I don't, you don't find out anything and I just keep hoping. And I keep thinking about that lovely smiling face walking towards me. It would be a lie to say I understand Shantel 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 Feltan 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, down together by the birth of a child, isolated from family and friends. I remember something cult expert Raphael are on told me.

“I think it's really important to understand that we're all vulnerable.”

If the vulnerability is cult leaders, pray on generally an awareness of the need for people to belong. There was somebody who wanted to say that the need to belong is so great that the matter is not what you belong to rather than you belong. And that's a human trait that we have. It's easy to say Shantel as a victim, but there were parts of her that were strong. No way, she's going to go and do that. 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, even though it seemed like he didn't want her to. 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. Shantel 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 Shantel believed Simon's teachings, that by taking your own life, you would move on to a higher plane.

Shantel's family and the people I've spoken to are adamant she would never hurt Leila.

But I wonder if Shantel didn't see it as hurting Leila,

I've grappled with these questions for months. No matter what the answer is,

the fact remains that five-year-old Leila didn't get a say in any of it. Then there's Tony, a man who led a normal life until he didn't. A polite, gentle and hardworking person who was also a bit lost, who met a man who claimed to have the answers. And then we're left with Simon Cadwell, 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 may be altered his mind with disastrous consequences.

I think a lot about a conversation I had with Shantel'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 realize the purpose of life is just to be here”

in the precious daily monotony of it all. I met a long time local in Nanop, who remembered Lila,

and told me she always imagined that maybe they did get to Brazil.

And Lila 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 true 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 home schooling mum Diane Abbott, who wonders how no one saw this coming. Shantel's school friend Donna Cameron, who would love to go back in time to that busy street in Melbourne, take Shantel's hand and whisk her away.

“Aren't you 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. I didn't have a guy now. Yeah, let me have a turn, so Paul, before I catch down the hole. Yeah, so if 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. And then we're up in the end. Happy ever after. See you. I'm Dominique Beans, host of Expans, The Nannup 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 crime stoppers Australia anonymously on 1800 triple three triple zero. If you're struggling or need support, in Australia you can call lifeline any time on 13 11 14. If you're outside Australia, search for your local crisis support line.

This season of Expans was developed in collaboration with ABC's regional WA team on Wadandi and Bibelman Country. Sound design is by Grant Walter, who is also a producer along with Meghan Woods, with additional production and research by Jessica Hinchliff, Kate Stevens, and Louise Mylon.

Our supervising producer is peer-wersu. Executive producer is blight more. Feel recordings this season thanks to Jeff Camp, Anthony Pancier, Nico White, Rhys Jones and Ted O'Connor. Thank you to Andrew George, Murray Adam, Tom Edwards, and Isaac Egan

for their work on our podcast, which you can find on ABC I view and YouTube. And the ABC South West WA team for all their help behind the scenes. And a special thank you also to everyone who's so generously shared their knowledge,

Especially to Jim and Kath McDougall, without whom this would not be possible.

“And his love for their daughter and 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 App.