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Chapter 1: What recent developments have emerged in the case of the Nannup Four?
A warning before we start. This episode does contain mentions of suicide. I'm Gemma Bath, and this is True Crime Conversations. A few weeks ago, we brought you the case of the missing Nanup Four. We're dropping back into your ears with an important and shocking update on the case. First, some context.
As you heard in our episode, The Australian Family Cult That Vanished Overnight, Chantal MacDougall, Simon Cadwell, their daughter Leela, and friend and housemate Tony vanished from Nannup, a small WA town, in 2007. Simon was known as somewhat of a cult leader who believed in a doomsday and moving to a higher plane once you die.
He had followers online, but those under his roof were most under his control. When the four disappeared, they left a note on their front door saying they'd moved to Brazil. However, no trace of that happening was found. Their passports weren't used to leave the country.
Chapter 2: Who are Barry McIntosh and Peter Greaves in relation to this case?
In 2018, an inquest heard about a family suicide pact Simon had been discussing online, suggesting another dark answer as to potentially what could have happened to the group. Medical records from before they disappeared showed that Chantelle, Tony and Simon obtained strong sedatives and anti-anxiety medications.
Simon was also prescribed an antipsychotic and opioids, which can be fatal when combined with sedatives. The inquest also revealed that Simon was living under a false identity. He grew up in the UK and his real name was Gary Felton. Ultimately, the coroner ruled that he couldn't find beyond reasonable doubt that any of the Nanop 4 were dead or alive.
In 2026, ABC journalist Dominique Bayens has been re-investigating this case. And last time we had her on, she hinted that she was sitting on some pretty huge news in this case. She's ready to tell us about it. Here's Dom with an update on the missing Nanop 4. Dom, thanks for joining us back on True Crime Conversations.
I want to pick up our chat with two very dogged police officers, retired detectives. Tell me about Barry and Peter and how they intersect with this story.
Well, they've really been part of it since the very beginning. So To introduce them, Barry McIntosh, he is a retired Victorian detective. He had over 35 years' experience in the Victorian police force. He's also the uncle of Chantelle McDougall, one of the... I guess we call them the Nanup Four, one of the people who disappeared from Nanup in 2007.
And Peter Greaves is his friend and also a close family friend of the McDougall family. He's also a retired detective. So Between them, they have this absolute wealth of knowledge of policing, and they both worked in all different areas, homicide, drugs, you know, just an absolute wealth of policing experience.
But very early on, they were connected to the case, of course, because Barry is Chantel's uncle. And very early on, when Chantel's parents were really concerned, they hadn't heard from her. She told them they were moving to Brazil, but they hadn't, you know, she hadn't got in touch to let them know that they'd arrived safely.
I believe that it was Barry that recommended Chantel's parents to go to Peter Greaves and and report Chantel missing and get his help with that. So very early on in the weeks and months after the disappearance, Peter Greaves was helping Chantel's parents and also doing his own, I guess, early investigation.
He was able to look into Chantel's bank account and very quickly learnt that Chantel hadn't touched her bank account since the time that they said they were leaving for Brazil. He also discovered that no one had travelled on her passport or Leela's passport.
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Chapter 3: What evidence suggests the Nannup Four may be connected to Northcliffe?
and who then took on the investigation from there. So I guess that's a bit of their really early involvement, and the case was then passed on to WA Police, who took that on, conducted early missing persons investigations, and eventually a homicide investigation that led to the coronial inquest. And at the time, the inquest found that...
the coroner couldn't find, you know, I couldn't make a decision on whether the four were alive or dead. So, you know, I guess that didn't provide much closure for the McDougall family. So after that, Barry McIntosh and Peter Greaves came back in and Barry McIntosh requested a copy of the police investigation.
And actually at the very start of the COVID pandemic, he had the time and space to really go over the investigation and look for things that he felt had been missed. And he did find a pretty... I guess, a glaring thing that I get into that he felt police had missed or got wrong. And that brings us up to the current day and where we're at now.
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Let's set the scene a bit before we get to this big revelation. I want to talk about a key bit of evidence that kind of places us in the area that is searched. So obviously the four go missing from Nanup, which is where they'd been living. But there is a bus ticket or bus ticket evidence that kind of places them in Northcliffe where kind of Barry's evidence kind of unfolds.
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Chapter 4: What key details emerged from the police investigation of the Nannup Four?
This area, this town or area of bushland near Northcliffe, which for people who aren't familiar with the southwest of WA, Northcliffe is a town about an hour's drive south of NANOP, southeast of NANOP. And much like now, probably even more so, it's very isolated, very remote kind of area. But there are a number of reasons why Barry McIntosh believes that that Northcliffe area is significant.
The first being that in the lead up to the disappearance, Simon Cadwell, who we now know as Gary Felton, was operating an online cult. And in the months before their disappearance, he was speaking to one of his online followers of plans for a family suicide pact.
And in his words, he said the plan was for the four of them to wander into a remote area and take their own lives and for the bodies to be buried. I find even saying it out loud, I find it quite, you know, difficult to talk about, but that is what is recorded is what he said. Yeah.
I do need to mention that that follower, you know, challenged him on that and said, you know, if you do that, that is tantamount to murdering Leela, his daughter. And at that point he became more closed off with that follower and said actually he'd changed his mind. they would just move somewhere where people couldn't find him. But that is what he had told them his plan was.
So that is the first reason why Barry believes this area is significant. The second reason is because in the days around the disappearance, there were two bus tickets booked connected to the four. These bus tickets were both booked under the same fake name, J. Roberts, which also happens to be the name of the road that they lived on at the time.
Now, one of these bus tickets to Northcliffe was not used, but the one that was booked the next day, the day after, that first ticket was used. So one of the group, it is believed, we don't know exactly which one, but someone connected to the group, one of the group took a bus to Northcliffe. So that is the second reason why that Northcliffe area is significant.
And then finally, in the days, sorry, in the months after the disappearance, there was a group of prisoners from a nearby prison conducting track clearing in an area of bushland near Northcliffe. And while they were conducting that clearing, They reported finding items of clothing and a smell of death in the area.
Now, they told the prison officer who was supervising them of that, and he reported that to police at the time, to local police, who then went to the bushland and said, They, I guess, conducted their own search, but they said they found a T-shirt, but it looked like it had been there for years rather than months. and they couldn't smell a thing.
Many years later, when the case was reviewed again, police did another search of that Northcliffe bushland.
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Chapter 5: How did the inquest findings impact the families involved in the Nannup case?
That search was based off the memory of one of those original officers that went to that area to check it out when it was reported by those prisoners. So there were two searches conducted of bushland in the Northcliffe area. relating to this case. Which brings us to Barry McIntosh and when he went over the files.
When he got his hands on the police file, he immediately went to look at the notes, I guess, around that Northcliffe search. And pretty quickly he established that he believed that police had actually been in the wrong area all along when they went to check out that area.
They didn't search the area that the prisoners were looking at.
Yeah, that's what Barry believed very early on in the piece. He thought, actually, looking at this, I think they've searched the wrong area. He actually tracked down the prison officer who was supervising those prisoners on that day to work out the exact coordinates.
And it wasn't until I was able to sit down with WA Police recently that they confirmed that, yeah, actually that the 2015 search that they conducted of the bushland, that was in the wrong area. That search was based off the memory of an officer who searched in 2007 and but they can't confirm the exact location of that early search because the coordinates of that search weren't recorded.
But if the memory of that officer is correct, it means that neither of those searches were in the right place. The reason that they couldn't smell anything was because They were nowhere near the spot where those prisoners were conducting that clearing that day. How did you react to this news? Because that's a pretty baffling mistake.
It is really hard to go, you know, think of the what-ifs and think, ah, if... if that is right and they were in the wrong place, you know, they were about a kilometre or so out from where those prisoners were carrying out track clearing. And, you know, there's a chance that it was nothing at all or, you know, it might not have been them there. We don't know. But it's disappointing, I guess.
It's disappointing for the family to feel that there is, I guess, this lead that could have been investigated and now it turns out it wasn't. And, you know, that's really disappointing.
And it would have only been within a few months as well, like three months after the disappearance. So the chances of finding intact bodies... that soon, there was a chance. Whereas, you know, the latest search or the searches that have been done recently, it gets a lot harder. Can you tell us about the search that Barry and Peter conducted themselves?
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Chapter 6: What were the significant mistakes made during the initial search efforts?
Because they went out there in 2024.
Yeah, so when Barry had a look over the police investigation file and, you know, found that error, he immediately wanted to go there himself and search that area. So him and Peter Greaves, who we remember from early on in the piece, who helped with that early investigation from Victoria, They travelled to Western Australia, to Northcliffe together. They hired drone technology.
They brought with them a team of volunteer cadaver dogs, which are dogs which can smell out human remains. And over about the course of a week, they conducted their own search of that area of bushland. And they really methodically, you know, the way they described it to me, it was like they were conducting a professional investigation.
They were methodically going over areas of bushland and I guess grasslands. crossing them off as they went along. But on one of the final days of the search, one of the dogs picked up a scent and it was interesting. I actually spoke with one of the members of that cadaver dog team and the way that he described it, it was quite vivid.
He said that one of the dogs picked up a scent at the bottom of this big hill and it was kind of this puddle of water and there's sort of water coursing down the hill. And he said the way that they've trained their dogs to indicate a scent is for the dogs to lay flat when they detect something. So he said one of the dogs laid down and that indicated a scent in the area.
So then they brought another dog into that area from a different direction and he said that dog also laid down. on the ground indicating assent. And then they brought in another dog from a different direction because I guess the way he explained it, they don't want the dogs to ā I guess for them it provides more accuracy if they're bringing them in from different directions.
So they brought in another dog from a different direction and that dog also laid down and so on and so forth. Peter Greaves and Barry McIntosh, they dug around that area and unfortunately were not able to find anything. And because...
The terrain that they're working with, it's really hard to describe unless you've seen it yourself, but it's such thick bushland and it was the middle of winter and they're at the bottom of this hill, which the dogs weren't able to get up because the bushland is so dense.
I guess what they believe has happened is because there is this water travelling down the hill, I guess there's this erosion channel, as they described it to me, coming down this hill and they believed that the scent could have been carried over perhaps a couple of hundred metres. So they weren't able to get up this hill and do a thorough search of that area.
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Chapter 7: What steps are Barry and Peter taking to conduct a new search?
Welcome to No Filter. It's nice to be here. Today we're diving into the world of G Flip.
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Hearing that dog evidence was really chilling, that all of them laid down, so that's got to mean something. Did Peter and Barry pass this on to WA Police? Have they done any extra searches? Was it kind of enough evidence for them?
Yeah, so not long after that search, Barry McIntosh wrote to WA Police and requested that another search of that bushland. Initially, police did reply to him and say that another search was proposed by police, but they needed time and I guess to work out the exact area and that sort of thing. But unfortunately, a few months later, they changed their mind.
And the reason they gave to me was because Barry and Peter had searched that area in 2024. And that was, in fact, the correct coordinates that the prison officer gave that that area has been searched. And so there's no point in in police doing another search.
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Chapter 8: How do the families of the Nannup Four cope with ongoing uncertainty?
My understanding from how it's been described to me is that the search would take maximum two to three days. It's not a big area of bushland. They've, I guess, been able to, with that scent from the cadaver dogs and going back to the prison officer and having more conversations, they've really been able to kind of pinpoint a pretty small area of bushland. Wow. It wouldn't take much.
Yeah, like I said, a couple of days, three days at most, as I understand it. But because Barry and Peter are in Victoria, it's not, you know, it takes time and it takes money and you've got to organise a team of cadaver dogs. You've got to organise the drone technology. accommodation, all that sort of thing.
So it's more of a logistical challenge, I guess, of actually organising it rather than the search itself, if that makes sense.
Well, I can see on the GoFundMe that Barry's trying to raise $9,000. So he's basically just waiting for the funds to then be able to do this final search to hopefully then get answers. Is that where we're at?
Yeah. So now where it stands today is Barry's put together the online fundraiser, the GoFundMe, and he's trying to raise, I think, yeah, he's put $9,000 there and that will allow him to pay for travel, to pay for travel for the cadaver dogs, that sort of thing. So, yeah, if he's able to raise those funds, he plans to get back to WA later this year and hopefully, yeah,
cross off that area because you know it's a lead but I'm also aware that um you know it might not be them but it as you know I was having a chat with the um cadaver dog trainer and he said you know I stand by my dogs 100% I'm really confident in their abilities but at the same time It might not be them. It could be somebody else.
But he said it's important that we go back to that area and do another search so that we can find out and at least, at the very least, cross it off the list.
How do Chantel's parents feel about this? So many years later, having such a breakthrough, such a kind of glimmer of hope. How are they coping with it?
Honestly, I think this is something that they've dealt with before. This has been their life for nearly 20 years. And so I'm really aware when we're talking about this as hope on the horizon or potentially answers on the horizon, they have been through this before of having hope and potentially having answers and then feeling let down and, you know,
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