Pod Insights Casefile True Crime Case 316: Gilbert Bogle & Margaret Chandler About this episode When the bodies of Doctor Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler were found along the banks of Sydney’s Lane Cove River on New Year’s Day 1963, scandal and suspicion erupted. The two were married – but not to each other – raising immediate questions of foul play. Yet as investigators peeled back the layers of this bizarre case, they found themselves tangled in a mystery far stranger than anyone had imagined.
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Narration – Anonymous Host https://www.instagram.com/caseys.snaps/
Research & writing – Elsha McGill
Creative direction – Milly Raso
Production & music – Mike Migas http://mikemigas.com/
Audio editing – Anthony Telfer
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Transcript 14,205 words · 3 speakers
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1:59 Speaker 00 It was nearing 8am on Tuesday, January 1, 1963, as sixteen-year-old Michael McCormack made his way east along the bushy banks of Sydney's Lane Cove River. Located in the suburb of Chatswood, near a popular picnic area known as Fuller's Bridge, the area was once a thriving spot for swimming, fishing, rowing, and flower picking. Over the years, rising pollution levels put an end to many of these recreational pursuits, with people turned off by the discoloured water and its offensive smell. Yet, the surrounding bushland of the Lane Cove National Park continued to attract many hikers and day trippers.
2:43 Speaker 00 As Michael walked along the lower bush track that ran parallel to the waterway, he noticed a man lying face-down in the grass on the riverbank. He was neatly dressed in a dark-coloured suit, with his arms slightly out by his side. Michael's first thought was that the man must have had too much to drink at a New Year's Eve celebration the previous night, and was sleeping it off. But, as he edged close, Michael realised that the man's face appeared to be turning blue.
3:16 Speaker 00 Although it didn't look right to Michael, he told himself the man was probably just drunk, and continued on. He had plans to meet his friend Dennis at the nearby Chatswood Golf Club to look for discarded golf balls, and he didn't want to keep him waiting.
3:34 Speaker 00 Michael caught up with Dennis near the sixth tee of the golf course, which backed onto the river, and the pair spent about an hour hunting for balls, before deciding to call it a day. They made their way back along the lower river track the same way that Michael had come, only to discover that the drunk man was still in the exact same position Michael had seen him in an hour earlier. Michael approached the man again, only to realise that the colour of his face had gone a bit darker.
4:08 Speaker 00 He also didn't appear to be breathing. Fearing that the man might be dead, Michael told Dennis that they'd better get going. Dennis stopped him, saying: "We had better tell the man over in the shop."
4:25 Speaker 00 The teens walked to the nearby Lane Cove kiosk and told the shopkeeper what they'd found. The shopkeeper accompanied them back to the scene to see the man for himself. As the trio gathered around him, Michael noticed something he hadn't seen before. A piece of carpet was sticking out from underneath the man's jacket.
4:49 Speaker 00 While at first glance the man appeared to be neatly dressed, Michael looked closer and realised this wasn't the case at all. The man's jacket had simply been draped over his shoulders and down his back to make it look like he was wearing it. It had been placed so perfectly that the right sleeve followed the bent angle of his right arm. Likewise, his trousers had been neatly laid over both of his bare legs, the seams perfectly placed to make it appear as though he was dressed, when he was not.
5:25 Speaker 00 The shopkeeper summoned the police, who arrived at the scene at around 10am. The attending sergeant removed the man's jacket and found that underneath he was wearing a white shirt with the top buttons undone.
5:40 Speaker 00 A necktie hung loosely around his neck and a piece of dirty brown carpet had been draped over his torso, with his jacket then placed meticulously on top.
5:51 Speaker 00 He wore shoes and socks, but no underwear, and his trousers had been placed on top of his bare legs. The man's body was in a clear state of rigor mortis, indicating that he'd been deceased for some time. Yet, despite a trickle of blood that was seeping from his right nostril, there were no obvious signs of violence anywhere on his body. The only thing out of the ordinary was a puddle of vomit that lay nearby.
6:21 Speaker 00 Mystified by the scene, the police began a thorough search of the area to try and determine what had unfolded. An officer made his way down the riverbank towards the mud flats about fifteen metres south from where the man's body lay. Parallel to the riverbed, he came across an indentation in the mud that was about five feet long and two feet wide. It had been covered up by several flattened-down beer cartons that had obviously been in the area for some time. The officer picked one of the pieces of cardboard up. Sergeant, he called out to his superior. I can see part of a woman's head.
7:27 Speaker 00 The sergeant joined the officer on the riverbed. From underneath the beer cartons, the head and shoulders of a young, dark-haired woman lay on display. She was on her back as though asleep, her head turned slightly to the left with her right arm resting on her stomach and her left arm by her thigh.
7:48 Speaker 00 There was a small abrasion on her nose which had been lightly bleeding. The woman was wearing an imitation pearl necklace, but her shoulders were otherwise bare, the straps of her dress having been pulled down to expose her breasts. The sergeant lifted the woman's arm, noticing that she was wearing a wedding ring. He felt for a pulse, but there was none, and she wasn't breathing. Although she was clearly deceased, her body was still slightly warm to the touch, and rigor mortis hadn't yet set in.
8:25 Speaker 00 The sergeant pulled the rest of the beer cartons aside, revealing that the woman's bra had been rolled down across her stomach. She was wearing a white dress with a red rose pattern on it, which had been rolled up around her waist. Underneath the dress, she wore a white half-slip that was torn and muddy. She had no underwear or shoes on, and her feet and knees were smeared with mud. A pair of men's underwear layered her feet, stained with faeces. Vomit and excrement dotted the surrounding area, adding to the already foul odor of the thick black mud and surrounding mangroves.
9:06 Speaker 00 Other than some small scratches on one of the woman's shoulders, there were no defensive marks or signs of violence anywhere on her body, and it didn't look like her clothing had been forcefully removed. Her shoes and underwear were found on the exposed riverbed directly below where the man's body was found, placed in a neat line along with the man's belt. Detectives soon arrived at the scene and were baffled by what lay before them. Here, they had two semi-naked bodies just fifteen metres apart, both oddly covered up, but with no overt signs of violence on either of them. Both of the deceased appeared to have been healthy young individuals.
9:50 Speaker 00 An unexpected medical event such as a heart attack or brain aneurysm could kill one person, but the chances of it happening to two was next to impossible. The vomit and faeces at the scene suggested a more obvious cause of death. The pair had been poisoned.
10:10 Speaker 00 A cursory search of the area didn't reveal any pills, powders, hypodermic needles, or anything else to suggest what had made the couple so sick. Police divers took to the water to search for any discarded evidence, but the water was too muddy and polluted, and the search had to be called off. The only prints in the mud belonged to the woman and were consistent with her having walked to the riverbed before collapsing onto all fours. The surrounding area didn't show any obvious signs of disturbance such as flattened grass or drag marks to suggest that anyone else was involved.
10:50 Speaker 00 Detectives wondered if they could be dealing with a double suicide or a murder suicide. But this didn't explain the precise way in which the bodies had been covered up.
11:02 Speaker 00 They considered a third, more plausible theory. What they were dealing with was a double homicide.
11:14 Speaker 00 Police searched the area for the woman's handbag or purse, but couldn't find one. A search of the dead man's pockets didn't turn up any drugs or poisons, but it did reveal his wallet. Inside were several five-pound notes, a driver's licence, and personal papers, all in the same name: Dr Gilbert Bogle.
11:38 Speaker 00 The 39-year-old lived in Taromara, a suburb in Sydney's upper north shore, approximately 10 kilometres north of the crime scene.
11:48 Speaker 00 Detectives were sent to Gilbert's address, where they knocked at the door of the attractive brick home. A woman holding a baby in her arms answered and introduced herself as Vivian Bogle. She was soon joined by three more young children, the oldest of whom was just 11. The detectives handed Vivian Gilbert's wallet and explained where they had found it. Vivian's eyes immediately filled with tears. She'd been worried sick about her husband ever since he'd failed to return home from a New Year's Eve party the previous evening.
12:27 Speaker 00 Vivian told the detectives that Gilbert worked as a physicist for the government-run Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, known as the CSIRO, where he'd been a much-loved member of the faculty for the past seven years.
12:44 Speaker 00 A gifted physicist, originally from New Zealand, Gilbert had completed a doctorate in philosophy at England's Oxford University after being awarded with a highly coveted Rhodes Scholarship. It was there that he met and married Vivian before accepting the position of senior research officer in the CSIRO's Division of Physics at the National Standards Laboratory in Sydney.
13:09 Speaker 00 During Gilbert's time with the CSIRO, his superiors were so impressed with him that he was given an indefinite appointment with the organisation, with his chief deeming him to be the most brilliant member on staff.
13:24 Speaker 00 Gilbert was equally admired outside of the workplace.
13:29 Speaker 00 Not only did he speak several languages, play the clarinet and have four great children, he was an extroverted character and a conversationalist who got along well with everyone he met.
13:42 Speaker 00 Vivian Bogle told the detectives that at around nine o'clock the night before, Gilbert had left home to attend a party thrown by one of his colleagues, Ken Nash and his wife Ruth. Vivian couldn't go to the party because their baby was sick and she had to stay home and tend to the children.
14:03 Speaker 00 She woke up at around 5am only to find that Gilbert still wasn't home. When he still hadn't surfaced by 6:45, her worry grew. Vivian called the Nash residence to see if they could shed any light on her husband's whereabouts. Ruth Nash told Vivian not to stress. She said the party had run into the early hours of the morning and Gilbert had only left a short while earlier.
14:34 Speaker 00 With Vivian receiving the news that her husband had been found dead next to the Lane Cove River, her worst fears had come true.
14:44 Speaker 00 As she tried to get her head around the reality of it, the detectives delivered the second blow, explaining that a deceased woman had also been found just a few metres from Gilbert's body. Vivian was stunned. She had no idea who the woman could be.
15:05 Speaker 00 Back at Lane Cove, detectives checked the parking area near Fuller's Bridge, which was about seventy metres from where the bodies were found. There, they found an old Ford Prefect with its doors unlocked and its keys tucked into the driver's side sun visor. A check of the Ford's registration confirmed that the car belonged to Gilbert Bogle. On the back seat was a leather case with a clarinet inside, and strangely, an abstract painting depicting what appeared to be a two-headed woman, surrounded by a severed foot and hand.
15:43 Speaker 00 The car didn't smell of gas or any other unusual odour. There was nothing inside the car that could explain how the pair had died, nor was there anything that could help identify the mystery woman.
15:58 Speaker 00 Detectives visited the home of the party hosts, Ken and Ruth Nash. The Nashes lived on Waratar Street in Chatswood, which was about five kilometres east of Fuller's Bridge. They were stunned to hear that Gilbert Bogle had been found dead.
16:17 Speaker 00 Gilbert had been one of twenty-two guests who had attended their annual New Year's Eve celebration the previous night, and when they'd last seen him, he'd been in perfect health. The Nashes recalled that Gilbert had arrived at around 9:30pm with his clarinet in hand. He also brought with him a Picasso-inspired drawing of an abstract figure, the one that had been found in the back of his car. He had drawn this at Ken and Ruth's request.
16:49 Speaker 00 To keep things interesting, they had asked their guests to bring some kind of abstract art project they could display for the evening. Most guests let the Nashes keep their projects at the end of the night, but Gilbert wanted to take his home.
17:06 Speaker 00 The detectives asked Ken and Ruth if there happened to be a dark-haired woman at their party who wore a white rose-patterned dress. The husband and wife exchanged a look. "Yes", they said, "there was a guest who fit that description." Her name was Margaret Chandler, but they didn't know her very well. She was the 29-year-old wife of another CSIRO employee, 32-year-old Geoffrey Chandler. The Chandler had been a late addition to the Nashers' guest list, having been invited to the party just a week before, at Gilbert Bogle's request.
17:47 Speaker 00 They'd arrived at around 10:30pm, dressed in more casual attire than the Nashers had requested on their invite, and without any artwork to contribute.
17:59 Speaker 00 Ken and Ruth told the detectives that Margaret Chandler had been reserved at the party, perhaps even a bit shy.
18:07 Speaker 00 She mostly sat on the lounge, sipping a drink. In contrast, Gilbert Bogle was the life of the party, as per usual. He mingled freely, dancing and sometimes speaking to other guests in Spanish and Italian.
18:24 Speaker 00 The Nashers didn't particularly notice Gilbert paying Margaret any more attention than he did the other guests. However, they did notice that the two left the party at around the same time, shortly after 4am, and Margaret's husband wasn't with them.
18:45 Speaker 00 With this revelation, the detectives started putting the pieces together. They were familiar with the area of Lane Cove where the two bodies were found, as the parking lot near Fuller's Bridge was a well-known lover's lane. Officers were routinely dispatched there to keep an eye out for any peeping toms, or anyone who might be illegally dumping rubbish in the surrounding bushland. It stood to reason that Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler could have left the party together and stopped at Lane Cove to have some time alone.
19:21 Speaker 00 Given that they were both in a state of undress, detectives considered whether they had willingly taken their clothes off to engage in consensual sex when they both became gravely ill.
19:34 Speaker 00 The problem with this theory was that the area they were found in wasn't exactly a picturesque or romantic spot. The polluted river gave off an unpleasant smell, while rubbish was strewn throughout the bush track and riverbed. If the pair had wanted some privacy, it seemed odd that they'd walked seventy metres from the parking lot to this undesirable location when they could have just stayed in the comfort of Gilbert's car.
20:03 Speaker 00 It also didn't explain what had happened to them once they reached the bush track. The Nashers said that neither Gilbert or Margaret had drunk much throughout the evening, and neither seemed intoxicated or sick when they left the party.
20:19 Speaker 00 This meant that something had occurred in the period of time when they left the party at around 4am, and when Michael McCormick first walked past Gilbert's body at 8am.
20:31 Speaker 00 Forensic examiners estimated that Gilbert had died shortly after leaving the party at around 5am, with Margaret dying an hour or two later. Although, it was also possible that she'd died around the same time, but her body had been better preserved due to the way it was covered up.
20:51 Speaker 00 A medical officer at the scene examined their bodies for stab marks, bullet holes, strangulation, or any other signs of assault. He found nothing, further solidifying the theory that the pair had been poisoned. And detectives suspected they knew who was responsible.
21:13 Speaker 00 It was nearing 1pm on New Year's Day when detectives arrived at a modest weatherboard home in the Sydney suburb of Croydon, located roughly eighteen kilometres south of Fuller's Bridge. A sign in the front yard read "Ducks and Pups for Sale". It was the home of Margaret and Jeffrey Chandler.
21:36 Speaker 00 The couple had bought the house several years prior and were renovating it slowly while raising their nine-month-old and two-year-old sons. Margaret was a former nurse turned stay-at-home mum while Jeffrey worked as an engineer at the CSIRO. He'd started with the company as a technical assistant but had slowly risen the ranks while studying diligently for his master's degree in engineering.
22:03 Speaker 00 His hard work paid off and coupled with Margaret's smart budgeting, they'd managed to pay off their mortgage in just two years.
22:12 Speaker 00 They lived simply, their only indulgence being their shared love for vintage cars.
22:19 Speaker 00 The detectives knocked on the door and a slightly dishevelled Jeffrey Chandler answered, having obviously just woken up. In his arms was his grizzling baby son while his older son stood by his side. The detectives asked Jeffrey if his wife was at home. He said she was not.
22:41 Speaker 00 They asked if he knew where she was. Jeffrey responded, "No". He said the last time he'd seen Margaret was at around four o'clock that morning when he'd left the Nash's New Year's Eve party. Jeffrey asked if there had been an accident. The detectives told him "No" and asked if he would accompany them to the police station. Jeffrey agreed but didn't ask why, nor did the detectives offer him any explanation.
23:14 Speaker 00 At the station, a detective presented Jeffrey with the afternoon edition of the Daily Mirror newspaper. The front page headline read: Scientist/Woman in Death Mystery.
23:28 Speaker 00 The article went on to explain that Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler had been found dead on the banks of Langcove River, the cause of their death unknown. Jeffrey Chandler showed no reaction as he read the story. He took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it up in a stony silence.
23:52 Speaker 00 The detective asked Jeffrey how he knew Gilbert Bogle.
23:57 Speaker 00 Jeffrey explained that they had worked together at the CSIRO for several years, but in different departments. He said they didn't know each other well, but would say hello in passing.
24:11 Speaker 00 Jeffrey explained that Margaret had only met Gilbert, or Gibb as he was known, ten days earlier at a CSIRO Christmas barbecue. Margaret had been looking forward to the event. Having given birth only months earlier, she hadn't been out much and was looking forward to some adult interaction.
24:33 Speaker 00 Gilbert Bogle attended the barbecue alone, as his wife was at home nursing their sick baby. He soon started chatting with Margaret, and the two immediately hit it off. After the barbecue, Ken and Ruth Nash invited some of the guests back to their place for drinks. There, Gilbert suggested that the Nashes invite the Chandler to their upcoming New Year's Eve party, and they obliged. Jeffrey wasn't particularly excited about the invite, but he could tell that Margaret was. In the days following the barbecue, she seemed to have a renewed spark.
25:14 Speaker 00 Margaret told Jeffrey that Gilbert Bogle had been the most interesting person there. She admitted she felt quite attracted to him, and that she found the prospect of sleeping with him alluring. Jeffrey told her:
25:30 Speaker 00 "If you want to take Gibb as a lover, if it would make you happy, you do it."
25:38 Speaker 00 Jeffrey explained to the incredulous detectives that while he and Margaret had a happy marriage, they had an arrangement in which they were both free to pursue intimate relations with other people. He said they had attended the Nashers' New Year's party with the understanding that Margaret was free to take Gilbert Bogle home at the end of the night if she so desired.
26:02 Speaker 00 Jeffrey had even agreed to stay elsewhere and take care of the children so that the two could have some privacy.
26:10 Speaker 00 Jeffrey told the detectives that on New Year's Eve, he and Margaret had dropped their two sons at Margaret's parents' house before arriving at the Nashers' party at around 10pm. Jeffrey could tell straight away that the party was not his scene. He felt inadequately dressed in his shirt sleeves and sandals while all the other men were in suits. He was also the only one there with a beard.
26:39 Speaker 00 Overall, the party was quieter and more formal than what Jeffrey was used to, and although it was pleasant enough, he found it quite pretentious and wasn't eager to stick around. However, he'd made a promise to Margaret and he intended to keep it. Jeffrey told the detectives that at around 11:30pm, he slipped out of the party to go and buy cigarettes without telling Margaret or anyone else that he was leaving. As he drove along looking for a shop that was still open, he got further and further away from the Nashers' house until he decided he might as well stop in at another party he'd been invited to.
27:22 Speaker 00 This one was at the Baumene home of Ken Buckley, a friend who worked as an economic history lecturer at the University of Sydney.
27:32 Speaker 00 Ken Buckley's party was much more to Jeffrey's tastes. There were about 100 guests and it was a more laid-back and casual affair. He also had an extra incentive to pop by. His girlfriend was going to be there.
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32:14 Speaker 00 Jeffrey Chandler told the detectives that he'd been romantically involved with a 21-year-old woman named Pamela Logan for about five or six months. Pamela worked as a secretary at the University of Sydney, where the CSIRO building was located, and the two had met through mutual acquaintances. Jeffrey told the detectives that he'd been at the Bauman Party for about an hour when they decided to go back to Pamela's place, which was about six kilometres away in the suburb of Darlington.
32:48 Speaker 00 Jeffrey agreed to drive his car with Pamela following behind in her own. She'd only recently gotten her driver's licence and still had trouble navigating the streets on her own.
33:01 Speaker 00 By the time they got to Pamela's house, she wasn't feeling very well, so Jeffrey made her a cup of coffee and left at around 2am. He drove back to Chatswood and slipped back into the Nash's Party, where nobody seemed to have taken much notice of his absence.
33:20 Speaker 00 Jeffrey said he apologised to Margaret for being gone for so long, but she didn't appear to be phased at all. A supper of chicken, ham, sausage, cheese and vegetables was then served. Afterwards, Jeffrey asked Margaret if she still had the same opinion of Gilbert Bogle as she did before. She said that she did, and that Gilbert had offered to drive her home if Jeffrey hadn't returned.
33:51 Speaker 00 A little while later, shortly before 4am, Jeffrey saw Margaret and Gilbert chatting together on the couch. He went over and told them he was ready to leave. When Margaret made no move to join him, Jeffrey asked Gilbert if he could take her home.
34:11 Speaker 00 Gilbert looked at him quizzingly, as though he was trying to make sure he interpreted the question correctly. After a pause, he responded: "All right."
34:24 Speaker 00 Jeffrey told the detectives he then left without saying goodbye to anyone else. He felt a bit embarrassed to be leaving by himself and didn't want to draw any attention to this fact. Jeffrey sat in his car and lit a cigarette, waiting a few minutes just in case Margaret changed her mind. When she didn't come out, he drove off.
34:49 Speaker 00 Jeffrey claimed that he drove straight back to Pamela Logan's house via the Sydney Harbour Bridge. He got to Pamela's house at around 4:30 AM, woke her up, and asked if she'd go with him to pick up his children.
35:05 Speaker 00 Pamela seemed slightly annoyed by this request, but she agreed. The two then drove to Margaret's parents' house, where Jeffrey dropped Pamela to wait around the corner. Jeffrey retrieved his kids, picked Pamela up, and took them all back to Pamela's house in Darlington.
35:25 Speaker 00 They stayed there for a couple of hours before returning to the Chandlers' home in Croydon. Jeffrey said he was surprised to find that Margaret wasn't home, but he assumed she must have gone out for a drive with Gilbert Bogle and would be back soon. He went to sleep with the boys, and the next thing he knew, the detectives were knocking at his door.
35:52 Speaker 00 The detectives weren't buying Jeffrey's story at all. They found it difficult to believe that a happily married couple could have such an arrangement. It seemed much more believable that Jeffrey could have sensed a mutual attraction between Margaret and Gilbert, and killed them in a jealous rage. Either that, or he wanted Margaret out of the picture so he could freely pursue the relationship with his younger girlfriend, and Gilbert Bogle was just collateral damage. Perhaps Jeffrey had discreetly slipped something into the pair's food or drink before they left the party together, and the effects had only taken their toll once the two were canoodling by the riverside.
36:38 Speaker 00 Just before four thirty PM on New Year's Day, detectives visited Pamela Logan's house in Darlington. They asked her if she had spent time with Jeffrey Chandler the previous evening. "Yes," Pamela replied. "Why do you want to know?" Pamela told the detectives the exact same story as Jeffrey. She also said that when he'd returned to her house at around four thirty AM, he mentioned that he'd arranged for another man to take his wife home. Pamela lived in a share house, and one of her housemates had also been at the Baumane party the night before.
37:20 Speaker 00 This housemate confirmed that Jeffrey Chandler had been at the party and brought the children over in the morning. They'd all eaten breakfast together before the Chandler had left at around ten AM. With Pamela backing Jeffrey's alibi to the tea, the detectives were left scratching their heads. They visited Margaret's parents, who confirmed that Jeffrey had arrived at their house at around five AM to pick up their children. This was the same time that Gilbert Bogle was thought to have died. Although this man to Jeffrey couldn't have been present when Gilbert and Margaret became
38:02 Speaker 00 fatally ill, it didn't rule out the possibility that he'd managed to poison them before they left the Nashers' party. Given that the Chandler' house had been empty at the time, it made detectives even more curious about why Margaret and Gilbert had ended up in the spot that they had. Perhaps they were driving back to the Chandler' home when they were overcome with illness. Gilbert might have urgently parked his car and the two had run into the bush to be sick in private. Then again, if they were so violently ill, why go seventy metres into the bush when there were plenty of other spots closer by?
38:48 Speaker 00 The news that Margaret had been found to dead left her parents utterly devastated. Margaret was one of four children in their close-knit family, and as the only girl, she was particularly beloved. But equally crushing to them was Jeffrey's claim that he and Margaret had an open marriage. While they'd always had a good relationship with Jeffrey, the thought that he had been liaising with other women while encouraging Margaret to pursue relations with other men left them flabbergasted. They couldn't imagine Margaret would ever agree to such an arrangement.
39:29 Speaker 00 Back at the police station, Jeffrey Chandler explained to the detectives that he and Margaret had made the mutual decision not to regulate their marriage according to the rules of suburbia. He said that neither of them were jealous, possessive, or demanding in nature, and they recognized each other's rights as individuals. According to Jeffrey, the fact that they were married and intended to stay married did not eliminate their interest in other people.
40:01 Speaker 00 While he didn't think Margaret knew about his relationship with Pamela Logan specifically, she knew he was involved with other women. He also made it clear that he never intended to pursue a future with Pamela, and she expected nothing of him. But the detectives were skeptical of Jeffrey's claims, believing there was every chance he was using this as an excuse for his own bad behaviour. If the police didn't believe him, Jeffrey said they could ask his friend, Bill Berry, as he'd had a brief affair with Margaret in the past. Bill backed up Jeffrey's claims completely.
40:44 Speaker 00 He said he'd slept with Margaret a few times about four years prior, and that Jeffrey had been fully aware, even making jokes about it.
40:55 Speaker 00 Bill claimed that Jeffrey Chandler was an easygoing and placid fellow, and definitely not the jealous type. The affair only came to an end when Bill started dating his future wife.
41:10 Speaker 00 The police interrogated Jeffrey Chandler for close to thirteen hours, but he never veered from his original story, and there was no evidence to tie him to the scene at Lane Cove. Eventually, he was free to go, but the next morning he was summoned to the city morgue to identify Margaret's body. Police hoped that this might prompt a reaction, or perhaps even elicit a confession. Several detectives gathered around the room, their eyes on Jeffrey as the coroner lifted back the sheet to reveal Margaret's body.
41:49 Speaker 00 "She's a bit dishevelled, isn't she?" Jeffrey remarked.
41:54 Speaker 00 He made no other show of emotion.
42:01 Speaker 00 Meanwhile, forensic investigators searched the home of Ken and Ruth Nash for any evidence that Margaret Chandler and Gilbert Bogle could have been poisoned before they left the party. If Jeffrey Chandler wasn't responsible, maybe one of the other party-goers was. Or maybe their deaths hadn't been intentional at all, but the result of contaminated food or drink, or a practical joke gone horribly wrong.
42:30 Speaker 00 Officers confiscated all of the leftover food scraps and drinks that had been served, and were surprised to discover that very little alcohol had been consumed. Between the twenty-four people present, only four bottles of spirits and sixteen bottles of beer had been drunk throughout the entire evening.
42:52 Speaker 00 Testing revealed no traces of poison or food-borne bacteria in any of the consumables served at the party. Officers also seized a collection of medicines and household chemicals taken during a search of Jeffrey Chandler's home, as well as the home of Pamela Logan. They also confiscated the clothes that Jeffrey had worn to the party, and swabbed the insides of his pockets for any poison residue.
43:21 Speaker 00 Without knowing exactly what had killed Margaret Chandler and Gilbert Bogle, police weren't sure what to do next. Because their bodies were discovered on a public holiday, detectives had to wait thirty-six hours for their autopsies to be conducted. The carpet square that had been draped over Gilbert's body was determined to have come from the boot of his car, indicating he'd taken it with him so they'd have a comfortable place to lay down. Microscopic examination revealed that the pair hadn't had full sexual intercourse, but fresh semen was detected on Gilbert's jacket and genitals, confirming that some form of sexual activity had taken place.
44:05 Speaker 00 This meant that whatever had happened, the pair had been healthy and well when they arrived at the riverbed seeking privacy. The fact that they'd been unable to put their clothes back on indicated that something had struck them down rapidly and without warning.
44:24 Speaker 00 Initial toxicology testing showed no alcohol in either of their systems. Tissue samples were taken from various organs and then tested against numerous readily available poisons, including strychnine, cyanide, arsenic, and other household chemicals, agricultural products, and prescription medications such as barbiturates and sleeping pills. But to the great shock of everyone involved, none of their tissue samples showed any traces of poison.
45:01 Speaker 00 While this didn't rule out the possibility that Margaret and Gilbert had been poisoned, it just meant the toxicologists had to dig deeper. Whatever had killed the pair, it wasn't an ordinary run-of-the-mill drug or toxin.
45:17 Speaker 00 Investigators considered whether it was something that only a highly educated professional in the medical or scientific field would have knowledge of or access to. Someone such as a CSIRO employee.
45:33 Speaker 00 Police searched the Chandler's home again and found a receipt in one of Margaret's handbags for Hyderex. It had been issued by Wind Swept Kennels on Saturday, December 29, 1962, just three days before she died. Detectives visited the business owner, a well-known Dachshund breeder named Sheridan Porsy. Sheridan confirmed that she'd had multiple dealings with the Chandler's in the past, as Margaret was a dog lover who had dotingly raised several Dachshunds. She viewed the Chandler's as a normal family and described Jeffrey as a gentle man.
46:15 Speaker 00 The Chandler's dog had recently had puppies, and Sheridan confirmed that Margaret had brought the litter over for her to have a look at. She remembered the visit well, because Margaret hadn't quite been her usual self. While she usually took pride in her appearance, on this visit, she seemed a little unkempt. It also seemed like something was worrying her. The two women started chatting, and Margaret mentioned that she'd had an argument with her husband, but Sheridan made a joke which had alighted the mood. Sheridan confirmed that she'd given Margaret some Hyderex pills, which were used to treat tapeworm in dogs.
47:00 Speaker 00 They were brand-new to the market, and Sheridan had warned Margaret to keep them away from her children, as they were not safe for human consumption. However, Sheridan said she only gave Margaret four of the pills, and this wouldn't have been enough to kill a person. Regardless, as far as the detectives were concerned, this was their first solid lead. They considered whether Jeffrey Chandler could have used the Hyderex to spike Margaret and Gilbert's drinks to prevent them from being physical with one another. Maybe he'd given them too much without realising their potency, and this plan had fatally backfired.
47:44 Speaker 00 Police returned to the Chandler's house to search for the Hyderex pills, but couldn't find them anywhere, and Jeffrey claimed he knew nothing about them.
47:57 Speaker 00 Investigators remained convinced that Margaret and Gilbert had both been poisoned by the same thing. They just had to figure out what. They interviewed the other guests who had attended the New Year's Eve party at the Nash residence. None of them had fallen even remotely ill, even though one guest had eaten food directly off of Gilbert's plate. No one recalled anything unusual about Gilbert or Margaret's behaviour towards the end of the night either. One guest had given Gilbert a handshake goodbye and noted that he'd been in good spirits and appeared perfectly sober and healthy.
48:39 Speaker 00 However, the detectives were slightly dubious about one guest. Thirty-nine-year-old Joan Gordon, not her real name, worked as a research scientist at the CSIRO. She had left the party at the same time as Gilbert, making her one of the last people to have seen him alive. Joan described Gilbert as a kind man. She said the two occasionally ran into each other at work or at the tennis club, and he always made a point of being nice to her and giving her compliments. He'd even kissed her at the Nash's party when the clock struck midnight.
49:19 Speaker 00 The significance for police was that Joan Gordon was the only single woman who attended the New Year's Eve party. She also suffered from a chronic skin condition which resulted in an apparent lack of self-esteem. Police theorised that Joan could have been infatuated with Gilbert Bogle and was overcome with jealousy when she saw him leave the party with another woman. As a scientist, she certainly knew a thing or two about poisons, and she could have followed Gilbert and Margaret to Lane Cove and killed them both. Joan told detectives that she drove straight home after the party,
50:00 Speaker 00 but given that she lived alone, there was no one to verify her alibi. Police remained suspicious of Joan, but it didn't seem likely that she would have been driving around in possession of some kind of undetectable poison. Secondly, even if she did have the poison and had followed Gilbert and Margaret down to the river, how would she have managed to administer it?
50:26 Speaker 00 While everyone detectives spoke to painted Gilbert Bogle as a loyal family man, several women came forward to report otherwise. At least two married women reported that Gilbert had asked them out or made moves on them in the past, while another claimed she'd been having an affair with Gilbert for the past three years.
50:49 Speaker 00 Margaret Fowler was a married librarian who worked at the CSIRO's Scientific Library. She claimed that she'd begun a physical relationship with Gilbert in 1959, and the two would occasionally have sex at work or at a private location in a public park. During these encounters, he'd always keep his shirt, shoes and socks on and remove only his pants and underwear, just like he'd done at Lane Cove on New Year's Day. Margaret Fowler quickly found herself falling in love with Gilbert, even though he treated her poorly and made it clear the relationship was purely sexual.
51:32 Speaker 00 She once threatened to take her own life after he rejected her. Eventually, Margaret's husband, Robert Fowler, who was a colleague of Gilbert's, agreed that his wife was free to have sex outside of their marriage as long as it didn't happen under their roof. She went against her husband's wishes, and one night, Robert came home to find Gilbert jumping over the balcony with his shoes in hand.
52:01 Speaker 00 From the stories Margaret Fowler told, it was clear to the detectives that she was infatuated with Gilbert Bogle, possibly to the point of delusion. But it also proved that Gilbert was no stranger to taking women to public parks for sexual encounters. Bizarrely enough, it also turned out that Margaret Fowler had shared the occasional kiss with Jeffrey Chandler. Jeffrey told detectives that at the CSIRO Christmas barbecue where his wife had met Gilbert for the first time, Margaret Fowler had been in an emotional state. She told him that she'd been having an affair with Gilbert, and he'd recently called it
52:46 Speaker 00 off. Detectives wondered whether Margaret Fowler could have been motivated to murder Gilbert and his new romantic interest, under the mindset that if she couldn't have him, then no one could. Alternatively, maybe her jealous husband, Robert, wanted Gilbert out of the picture for good. The couple's whereabouts on New Year's Eve were looked into. It turned out they'd attended a party in Taromara, 12 kilometres north of the Nash's party in Chatswood, where they'd stayed until 4am before walking the short distance home. There was no way either of them could have ran into Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler
53:30 Speaker 00 in those early morning hours. The case immediately became a media sensation, with the local tabloids publishing story after story to keep feeding the intense public interest. Sydneysiders were left scandalised by the lurid details about open marriages, late-night affairs, and suspected murder plots, even more so when it was revealed that Jeffrey Chandler was a member of a libertarian subculture known as the Sydney Push.
54:06 Speaker 00 Unofficially formed in the 1940s, The Push was the name given to an amorphous group who had a shared interest in the anti-authoritarian movement and left-wing politics. Members of The Push consisted of university students, academics, musicians, artists, journalists, and public servants. While there was no formal shape or goal for The Push, members would typically attend meetings before frequenting one of several pubs around Sydney, with many of those pub visits eventually turning into late-night parties.
54:42 Speaker 00 Although members of The Push were mostly well-educated and had good jobs, many outsiders viewed them as beatniks who lived outside the rules of conventional society.
54:55 Speaker 00 They had a reputation for believing in free love and being heavy drinkers, and Geoffrey Chandler's association with the group made the story of his wife's death all the more titillating for conservative members of the public.
55:10 Speaker 00 It didn't help that publicly Geoffrey appeared to show little emotion or respect for his dead wife.
55:18 Speaker 00 Margaret's brother told the police that just two days after Margaret died, Geoffrey had introduced him to Pamela Logan and described her as his girlfriend.
55:30 Speaker 00 In addition to the rampant speculation that the pair had been murdered by a jealous lover or spouse, wild theories also started surfacing about Gilbert Bogle's possible involvement in top-secret information. A man of great intelligence, he'd recently been offered a fellowship position working at the Bell Telephone Company in the United States, and before he died, his family had intended to move there in just a few weeks' time.
56:00 Speaker 00 The possibility was raised that Gilbert could have been working as a spy, or had been the target of espionage-related nerve gas, or even a death ray.
56:11 Speaker 00 It was the height of the Cold War and public concern about nuclear bombs was at its peak. Investigators considered these theories but found nothing to support any of them. They even looked into the possibility that Geoffrey Chandler could have been involved in military research and had been given access to a laboratory in which chemical and biological warfare was being looked into.
56:38 Speaker 00 At the time, Sydney's two major afternoon tabloids, The Sun and The Daily Mirror, were in the midst of a vicious war to take out the number one spot. Reporters from both publications pulled out all the stops to be the first to break any developments in what was coming to be known as the Bogle-Chandler case.
57:00 Speaker 00 Reporters lurked around the Chandler's home as well as the CSIRO building, desperate for any new detail they could turn into a story.
57:10 Speaker 00 The public interest in Geoffrey Chandler was so intense that he began moving between the homes of friends and acquaintances to avoid the media onslaught.
57:20 Speaker 00 Gilbert Bogle's wife, Vivian, promptly packed up her four children and returned to her homeland of New Zealand, refusing to believe that her husband was anything but the faithful family man she knew him to be.
57:35 Speaker 00 The advantage of the public interest was that people were eager to come forward with any information that could help with the case. Various witnesses made statements confirming they had seen Geoffrey Chandler's distinctive 1924 model vintage Vauxhall driving west from the suburb of Berwood sometime between 4:45am and 5am, roughly 20 kilometres from Lane Cove. These statements further supported Geoffrey's version of events, proving he was nowhere near Fuller's Bridge at the time that Margaret and Gilbert died. But for investigators, this just left the question: if Geoffrey didn't kill them, then
58:20 Speaker 00 who did?
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1:01:33 Speaker 00 When the tabloids started reporting on the Hydorex tablets that Margaret Chantler had purchased in the days before her death, members of the public began speculating that she could have brought them with her to the party, where she and Gilbert Bogle took them together in some kind of suicide pact. Maybe the reason her handbag hadn't been found at the scene was because she ditched it to get rid of the evidence. But testing of Margaret and Gilbert's tissue samples came back negative for any sign of the drug in either of their systems. Geoffrey Chandler clarified that the reason police couldn't find Margaret's handbag was because she hadn't been carrying one at all on the night that she died.
1:02:17 Speaker 00 She'd left it at her parents' house at the last minute after deciding that it clashed with her outfit. Whatever poison had killed the pair, it hadn't been in Margaret's possession.
1:02:31 Speaker 00 Loved ones of the deceased insisted there was no way either of them would have taken their own lives. Gilbert was a happy, popular and well-adjusted man who had great career satisfaction and loved his wife and children. Not only was he looking forward to his upcoming move to America to work with the Bell Telephone Company, but before offering Gilbert the position, Bell had conducted a thorough background check into his personal life. They found nothing to suggest he was in any way suicidal, depressed, or mentally ill.
1:03:09 Speaker 00 Similarly, Margaret's medical history revealed no such concerns. Although some of Margaret's loved ones had noticed a change in her personality and appearance since giving birth to her second child, they were adamant she would never voluntarily leave her two sons without a mother. Jeffrey admitted he'd been neglecting Margaret's needs and that their otherwise happy marriage had been at a lull, but he said her encounter and potential liaison with Gilbert Bogle had seemingly reinvigorated her. On Friday, January 11, 10 days after Gilbert and Margaret's bodies were found,
1:03:50 Speaker 00 a team of police divers returned to Lane Cove for a second attempt at searching the river for clues.
1:03:58 Speaker 00 Donning special equipment, they launched themselves into the murky water, but it was still too dark to see anything. They used their hands to crawl along the muddy river floor, feeling for a syringe, bottle, anything that could account for the two mysterious deaths. Nothing was found.
1:04:23 Speaker 00 While police weren't prepared to rule any theory out, the fact that Gilbert and Margaret barely knew each other made the idea of a suicide pact highly unlikely. Given that neither showed any signs of wanting to end their own lives and had zero history of violence, it seemed equally improbable that one would have killed the other before killing themselves.
1:04:48 Speaker 00 Yet, the fact that both of their bodies had been so carefully covered up sparked debate about who could have done such a thing.
1:04:57 Speaker 00 Some investigators thought that if the pair was murdered, a killer would have dragged their bodies a few metres off the track instead of leaving them out in the open. The precise way in which Gilbert's clothes were placed over his body ruled out the possibility that he'd covered himself up. However, Margaret was a trained nurse, and some wondered whether she could have covered Gilbert's body to keep him warm before stumbling to the riverbed where she pulled the broken beer cartons over herself. Others thought this made no sense. If Margaret wanted to cover herself, wouldn't she have pulled her rumpled dress back on instead of using dirty, weathered pieces of cardboard?
1:05:44 Speaker 00 After considering all possible scenarios, investigators unequivocally agreed that a third person had been involved. Not necessarily as a perpetrator, but at the very least, someone else had been present at the scene and had covered the bodies up, perhaps to preserve their dignity.
1:06:05 Speaker 00 Detectives asked anyone who had been at Lane Cove on New Year's morning to come forward. One man, who identified himself only as Mr. Roberts, called to say he'd seen Dr. Bogle's Ford Prefect parked near Fuller's Bridge at around 4:30 AM with a woman inside.
1:06:25 Speaker 00 He hung up the call before providing any further information, and the call couldn't be traced.
1:06:32 Speaker 00 Four days later, the same man called back after his car, a Ford Escort, had been identified as being in the area at the time in question.
1:06:43 Speaker 00 This time, he identified himself as Kenneth Shelly. Shelly provided an in-person statement in which he said that he'd arrived at the Lankove River around 4am on January 1. He claimed he often went there to look for plants for his garden, but, under pressure from the police, he cracked and admitted he was really there to spy on couples having sex.
1:07:10 Speaker 00 Shelly said that at around 4.30am, he'd been walking along Lady Game Drive, which runs parallel to the river, when a Ford Prefect, matching the description of Gilbert Bogle's car, passed him and stopped halfway off the road. A man and woman were in the front seat. Shelly locked eyes with the man, who he later identified as Gilbert Bogle, and noted that he looked very pale. He also got the impression that Gilbert was about to say something to him, but then stopped.
1:07:46 Speaker 00 Shelly kept walking, and when he returned half an hour later, the prefect was gone. He continued on and found it was now parked near Fuller's Bridge, with no one inside. Shelly got into his car and drove along the dirt track where Gilbert's body was later found. He didn't see Gilbert or Margaret, but he did claim to see a tall, well-built man with long blonde hair, who jumped out of the bushes and then disappeared down the riverbank.
1:08:19 Speaker 00 Kenneth Shelly vehemently denied being the one who covered up the two bodies. Although investigators found him to be a suspicious character, they thought he was likely telling the truth.
1:08:33 Speaker 00 Shelly only had one arm, and it seemed highly improbable that he could have placed the clothes so precisely over Gilbert Bogle's body in the way they were.
1:08:46 Speaker 00 Weeks passed and the mysterious case remained in the headlines as the tabloids continued to discuss various theories. Despite the ongoing speculation, there still hadn't been any breakthroughs in the investigation. By the third week, the police put out another call for anyone who had been near Fuller's Bridge in the early morning hours of January 1 to come forward. One tipster reported having seen a green and white Ford sedan parked in the area. After this detail was broadcast by the media, the owner of the car presented himself as Eddie Batiste.
1:09:28 Speaker 00 Eddie was a greyhound trainer who claimed he'd passed over Fuller's Bridge just after 4:30am on New Year's Day. He said he'd driven along the upper bush track of the Lane Cove River, where he parked his car and then took his dogs for a walk to the golf course. Eddie claimed he never went on the lower bush track where Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler's bodies were found. He recalled seeing a Ford Prefect parked near Fuller's Bridge, but claimed he didn't see either of its occupants. Detectives were a little suspicious of Eddie.
1:10:08 Speaker 00 If he had nothing to hide, they wondered why it took him three weeks to come forward. They considered whether Eddie's greyhounds had actually sniffed out the two bodies and Eddie had felt compelled to cover them up to protect their modesty. Inquiries with those who knew Eddie revealed that he was known to be a bit of a prude, while his son also claimed that Eddie had arrived home on New Year's morning in an agitated state. But Eddie firmly denied having ever seen the two bodies, and police had no evidence to prove otherwise. Like everything else in the case, his potential presence at the scene became yet another unfounded supposition.
1:10:55 Speaker 00 By the end of the investigation's first month, toxicologists had conducted tests on all the standard poisons available in Australia, checking everything from aphrodisiacs to weed killers to carbon dioxide, and eliminated each one.
1:11:13 Speaker 00 They moved on to the rarer poisons, enlisting help from international police forces such as Interpol and Scotland Yard. It was speculated that the pair could have been bitten by a venomous creature such as a funnel web spider. Every possibility was seriously considered, but eventually, in mid-March, the families were given the go-ahead to proceed with funerals for their loved ones.
1:11:41 Speaker 00 Gilbert was buried in a northern Sydney cemetery, while Margaret was cremated two days later.
1:11:49 Speaker 00 By late April, four months had passed, and rigorous testing of Margaret and Gilbert's organs, tissue and blood samples, as well as swabs of their skin and clothing, had revealed nothing to indicate the presence of any poisonous substance.
1:12:06 Speaker 00 Investigators had interviewed over 200 people, and still, no answers had come to light.
1:12:16 Speaker 00 The only thing left to do was hold an official coronial inquest. In May 1963, the inquest commenced in what was then known as Sydney's Central Court of Petty Sessions.
1:12:31 Speaker 00 Curious members of the public lined up outside the courthouse, hoping to get one of the 50 seats available in the public gallery, so they could catch a real-life glimpse of the people who had filled their newspapers for the past four months.
1:12:47 Speaker 00 Over the next three weeks, the court heard from close to fifty witnesses, including Geoffrey Chandler, Pamela Logan, Ken and Ruth Nash, and an array of investigators and analysts who had been involved with various aspects of the case.
1:13:04 Speaker 00 The collective hope was that a seemingly insignificant fact would be dropped that would solve the mystery of how Gilbert and Margaret had died, once and for all. Witnesses appeared in chronological order, starting with the New Year's Eve party, before moving on to the discovery of the bodies, the official police investigation, the toxicology testing, and so on. Sixty-three exhibits were tended and dissected, witnesses were cross-examined and carefully probed, and any criticisms were openly debated.
1:13:40 Speaker 00 Tensions were high at the end of the month as the coroner, Jack Looms, presented his findings.
1:13:48 Speaker 00 Looms declared:
1:13:51 Speaker 00 "Every person I felt could give any information as to the deaths of these unfortunate persons has been summoned to appear. A mass of evidence, in addition to the scientific and medical evidence, has been presented. One would like to think that no stone has been left unturned."
1:14:13 Speaker 00 Despite all this, the coroner said he was no closer to ascertaining the manner and cause of Gilbert and Margaret's deaths than he was before the inquest started. Forensic pathologists still couldn't even determine exactly how the pair had died. All Looms could say for sure was that the two had suffered from acute cardiac failure associated with anoxia and pulmonary edema. In other words, their hearts had stopped beating and they'd stopped breathing. But it couldn't be determined why, or even in what order, those two things happened.
1:14:54 Speaker 00 Coroner Looms clarified that it wasn’t his role to theorise or provide an opinion unless it could be supported by evidence, nor was it a court of morals. He commended the investigative efforts, stating:
1:15:10 Speaker 00 “Everything humanly possible has been done. There is one thing, however, I feel I can say with absolute certainty, and that is that each of these unfortunate persons died an unnatural death. But as to the manner or cause, I am unable to say.”
1:15:33 Speaker 00 The lack of answers brought by the inquest left everyone who had been following the case in a state of shock and only added to the public’s speculation and growing fears that a murderer could be on the loose. A press conference was called in which the police commissioner reassured the public that the investigation was ongoing and that a new team of detectives would take over to review the case with fresh eyes.
1:16:00 Speaker 00 One week later, a letter arrived at the police station from a Brisbane-based zoologist who introduced a new theory.
1:16:09 Speaker 00 Dr Robert Rendine worked in a lab that specialised in Conus geographus, a highly venomous species of predatory cone snail. After reading about the Bogle-Chandler case, Dr Rendine believed that the pair showed symptoms that were akin to being poisoned by Conus geographus, and he suggested that someone with this knowledge could have used the species as an unsuspecting murder weapon. Police looked into Dr Rendine’s theory and discovered something unexpected.
1:16:43 Speaker 00 His research assistant was a young woman named Clara Barry. Despite living in Queensland, Clara had a surprising connection to Geoffrey and Margaret Chandler. She was married to Bill Barry, the friend of Geoffrey’s whom Margaret had once had an affair with. She was also an expert on Conus geographus venom.
1:17:08 Speaker 00 Detectives flew to Queensland to interview Clara Berry. She said that despite their toxicity, she didn't believe it was possible to kill someone with a cone shell. Doing so would require the venom to be stabilised, extracted, and then injected. It wouldn't be toxic if it was mixed into a drink or eaten. But for the investigative team, suspicions were officially aroused. Even more so after they contacted the airlines and discovered that a passenger by the name of G Chandler had flown from Sydney to Brisbane just weeks before New Year's Day 1963.
1:17:51 Speaker 00 Samples of the toxin were taken back to Sydney to test against Margaret and Gilbert's tissue samples. It was a suspenseful 10-day wait before the results of the toxicology test were delivered. There was no match.
1:18:08 Speaker 00 While the case remained in the headlines and various scientists, medical professionals, and concerned members of the public continued to come forward with their own theories and suggestions about what could have killed the pair, nothing of note was uncovered. In the years that followed, detectives continued to seriously consider every possibility. But eventually, the chief toxicologist ran out of viable tissue samples to test against, and the case ran cold. Conspiracy theories continued to thrive over the following two decades, with the case becoming somewhat of an urban legend. But the truth of the matter remained unknown.
1:18:52 Speaker 00 Then, in the late 1980s, came a potential breakthrough.
1:19:00 Speaker 00 At the time of Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler's deaths in 1963, there had been some whispers that the two could have been experimenting with the psychedelic drug Lysuronic Acid Diethylamide, more commonly known as LSD, and accidentally overdosed. Some thought they could have taken the drug willingly, or that someone could have slipped it into their drinks. Some tabloids even incorrectly claimed that several guests at the Nash's New Year's party had been frequent users of LSD, when in reality, the party had been a relatively sober event.
1:19:39 Speaker 00 The possibility that Margaret and Gilbert could have overdosed on LSD was never given much weight, due to the fact that LSD had never caused any known overdoses. While people had died using the drug, this was typically due to misadventure, such as jumping from heights while under its influence, not as a direct result of the drug itself. Furthermore, LSD wasn't even considered an illegal substance at the time. It was mostly used for scientific and medical research, rather than as a recreational drug, and it wasn't readily available.
1:20:19 Speaker 00 Gilbert Bogle's lab at the CSIRO had been searched, following unfounded speculation that he could have been manufacturing the drug himself. But nothing used in the production of LSD was found, and toxicology tests revealed no trace of LSD in either of the deceased's systems.
1:20:40 Speaker 00 Then, in 1987, an inmate at a British prison asked his girlfriend to sneak a capsule of LSD in and transfer it to his mouth via a kiss.
1:20:52 Speaker 00 She granted his request, but the man accidentally swallowed the capsule, which was estimated to be around 400 times the usual dosage. He subsequently died, making him the first person on record to have taken a lethal overdose of LSD.
1:21:11 Speaker 00 A scientist who examined the man realised he'd read about similar symptoms before, in the Bogle-Chandler case, and he suspected they could have fallen victim to a similar overdose. He believed that the reason toxicology testing returned a negative result was that the proper testing techniques were not available at the time. LSD is a synthetic drug, and when extracted from the body and exposed to sunlight, it decomposes before it can be identified in any physical test. Instead, testing needs to be done in a dark room, a fact that the pathologists who conducted
1:21:52 Speaker 00 the autopsies on Gilbert and Margaret hadn't been aware of. In 1989, an article in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper by award-winning journalist Philip Knightley sensationally claimed: "New scientific evidence has broken one of Australia's most baffling homicides. Today, the cause of death can be confidently established: the couple overdosed on LSD." The article reported that the New South Wales Health Department's Division of Forensic Medicine agreed that an LSD overdose was the likely cause of the pair's deaths.
1:22:34 Speaker 00 Knightley wrote that Gilbert Bogle and his colleagues had been creating the drug at the CSIRO labs, and their deaths had been part of a government cover-up to conceal this fact. He stated that the CSIRO staff had been using LSD as "a party drug for sexual debauchery in which wife-swapping was not unusual", and that Gilbert had brought a supply of the drug to the New Year's Eve party. He and Margaret took it to heighten their sexual awareness without knowing the safe amount for consumption, and subsequently overdosed and died.
1:23:15 Speaker 00 In reality, there was nothing to substantiate this theory.
1:23:20 Speaker 00 Colleagues of Gilbert's fiercely denied that he would have had any access to or interest in LSD, while Geoffrey Chandler said he didn't even know about LSD at the time, and Margaret wouldn't have been interested in such a thing. But the theory persisted, and in 1996, a renowned American forensic toxicologist claimed he had advanced equipment that could detect if LSD was present in Gilbert and Margaret's systems. Relic tissue samples were sent to the United States, where they were subject to new forensic techniques.
1:23:58 Speaker 00 A first test indicated the presence of LSD.
1:24:03 Speaker 00 Sydney newspapers were quick to declare that the mystery had finally been solved once and for all, yet a second, more sensitive test was conducted, and this one came up negative. It was yet another in a long series of red herrings.
1:24:25 Speaker 00 In 2004, Australian filmmaker Peter Butt began looking into the Bogle-Chandler case for a possible documentary.
1:24:34 Speaker 00 Having followed the case for 20 years and already read everything that was publicly available, Peter wrote to the New South Wales Police requesting access to the full case files.
1:24:46 Speaker 00 While he waited for a reply, something occurred to him that had never crossed his mind before.
1:24:54 Speaker 00 As a schoolboy, Peter remembered learning that mangroves produce gases, including the potentially toxic hydrogen sulfide. Low concentrations of hydrogen sulfide are detectable by the human nose, thanks to its offensive stench of rotten eggs, but as concentrations increase, the gas overcomes the olfactory receptors in the nose that are responsible for picking up odours, and it can no longer be detected.
1:25:24 Speaker 00 At low levels, the gas is harmless, but as concentrations increase, it can be as deadly as hydrogen cyanide. Once hydrogen sulfide reaches a level of 300 parts per million, it can cause fluid to build up in a person's lungs, leading to dizziness, clumsiness, and diarrhoea. At 700 parts per million, it paralyzes the respiratory centre, causing rapid unconsciousness and death. Over 800 parts per million, and all it takes is one or two breaths for a person to die instantly.
1:26:03 Speaker 00 Peter Butt recalled that hydrogen sulfide is heavier than air and will linger in open spaces close to the ground if the air is cool and still, just like it was in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 1963.
1:26:20 Speaker 00 Although it had been the peak of summer, the week following Christmas Day had been the coldest on record for this time of year, and mornings around Lane Cove had been dank and misty.
1:26:33 Speaker 00 His curiosity aroused, Peter visited the site at Lane Cove River where Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler had died, and saw that mangroves lined the waterway, their aerial roots sticking out of the mud in a way Peter likened to "dead man's fingers".
1:26:51 Speaker 00 It occurred to him that the answer to this 41-year mystery could have been sitting in front of everyone's face this entire time.
1:27:02 Speaker 00 Peter Butt began researching the river's history and discovered that the once-thriving waterway began to lose favour with visitors around the late 1930s due to its increasingly polluted state.
1:27:16 Speaker 00 Growing industrialisation and the construction of a sewer line along the river had proved to be environmental hazards, with increasing sediment prompting the spread of mangrove swamps. Green weeds thrived in the waterway, with fish and eels dying by the truckload.
1:27:35 Speaker 00 By 1939, local residents started complaining that the river smelt like rotten eggs, particularly in the early morning hours. Similar complaints cropped up year after year, until 1947, when residents started reporting that the stench was impacting their health. Not only was it causing vomiting and breathing difficulties, but some residents noted that it was causing the paint on their homes to peel off.
1:28:06 Speaker 00 Health inspectors from the Lane Cove Council investigated the matter at the time, but couldn't find the cause of the problem. They assumed it was likely a combination of rotting algae and industrial waste. A marine scientist was tasked with investigating the matter further. He collected samples over several months and determined the odour was actually hydrogen sulphide. A five-kilometre stretch of the riverbed, from Fuller's Bridge to the river mouth, was saturated with it.
1:28:41 Speaker 00 It wasn't just the result of the mangroves, but chemical action in the water caused by decaying marine life and increasing industrial pollution from the factories that disposed of their waste fluid directly into the river. The hydrogen sulphide levels were at their highest about 400 metres from the Lane Cove weir, right near where Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler had died.
1:29:11 Speaker 00 The New South Wales Police refused Peter Butt access to the case file on the basis that the case was still open. But when he explained his theory that the two could have been poisoned by hydrogen sulphide, they agreed to make a rare exception. As Peter looked through all the scientific and forensic evidence, he was shocked to discover that several gases had been considered and tested by toxicologists in the Bogle-Chandler case, but not hydrogen sulphide. The gas was only mentioned once during a 1971 review of the case, when it was ruled out based on various factors, including that there was no obvious source of the gas,
1:29:54 Speaker 00 and that even if there were, it wouldn't kill two people in an open environment.
1:30:02 Speaker 00 Peter Butt began reaching out to various experts, including Dr. Thomas Milby, an American forensic toxicologist specialising in poisonous gases, who had served on the World Health Organisation's Hydrogen Sulfide Committee.
1:30:18 Speaker 00 Dr. Milby had investigated over a hundred cases involving hydrogen sulphide poisoning, and was well aware that the gas was capable of killing people out in the open if the environmental conditions were right. He was so intrigued by Peter's theory that he flew to Sydney to see the Lankove death scene for himself.
1:30:41 Speaker 00 Environmental awareness had led to improvements in the river, and the hydrogen sulphide levels in the mud were no longer at dangerous levels. But the waterway still suffered from neglect and pollution. If hydrogen sulphide had been released from the river bottom on New Year's Day 1963, Dr. Milby told Peter that the bowl-shaped depression in the riverbed where Margaret and Gilbert lay would have been the worst place to be.
1:31:11 Speaker 00 The private spot they'd chosen was at water level between the bank and a small mangrove swamp, where in the cool, still air, higher concentrations of the gas could accumulate and get trapped. Breathing heavily during a sexual encounter, the gas could have overcome them very suddenly and they could have found themselves suffocating.
1:31:34 Speaker 00 Quickly overcome with delirium and desperate for air, Margaret could have grabbed Gilbert's underwear by mistake before stumbling down the riverbank where she collapsed.
1:31:46 Speaker 00 Dr Milby studied the autopsies and concluded to Peter:
1:31:52 Speaker 00 "I saw nothing in either report that would, in my opinion, exclude the possibility of hydrogen sulfide as being the culprit that killed them."
1:32:03 Speaker 00 Dr Milby explained that hydrogen sulfide poisoning isn't easy to detect during an autopsy because it produces no characteristic abnormalities other than fluid in the lungs, congestion of the internal organs, and small purple spots on the skin. If no other cause of death is found, the only telltale sign of hydrogen sulfide poisoning is a greenish or purple colour in the blood, but this doesn't always occur and nothing in either of the autopsies had mentioned a discoloration to the blood.
1:32:37 Speaker 00 Peter then made contact with the chief toxicologist who had worked on the Bogle-Chandler case, Vivian Marney, without making any mention of his new theory. Vivian agreed to talk Peter through every step of his testing process. He recalled each detail meticulously, concluding that he found nothing in either Gilbert or Margaret's tissue samples except caffeine.
1:33:04 Speaker 00 He then told Peter something he'd only ever discussed with his superior: "One thing I am certain of," he said, "they both died of the same thing. I base this on the appearance of their blood. Both their bloods had a distinctive purple colouration."
1:33:25 Speaker 00 Vivian said he'd tried to find a reason for the discoloration, but careful analysis hadn't brought him any closer to the answer. He was a little sceptical upon learning of Peter Butt's hydrogen sulphide theory, until Peter looped him in on a detail he'd never been privy to before. Nobody had ever informed Vivian about the semen found on Gilbert Bogle's body and jacket that proved the two were engaging in a sexual act before they died. This meant he'd been investigating all manners of poison that didn't fit the timeline or circumstances, including that they could have been suffering the effects of a poison when they'd arrived at the river.
1:34:09 Speaker 00 Annoyed that this information had been kept from him, Vivian researched the hydrogen sulphide theory for himself. He told Peter that if Gilbert and Margaret went to the riverbank with the intention of having sex, it was highly unlikely they would have drank from the river or eaten anything before lying down together. That meant that whatever had killed them was present in the depression where they lay, and had acted very swiftly. The only sensible explanation was that while they were in close contact with one another, they'd positioned their faces near a heavy concentration of a very toxic gas.
1:34:51 Speaker 00 Vivian told Peter that if he'd known about their sexual interaction forty-two years ago, he would have attributed the purple colour of their blood to something like hydrogen sulphide, and, quote, "The case would have been over in a week."
1:35:11 Speaker 00 Peter Butt revealed his findings in a television documentary titled, "Who Killed Dr. Bogle and Mrs. Chandler?", and later in a book and podcast series dedicated to the case.
1:35:24 Speaker 00 After the documentary was first aired by the Australian Broadcasting Commission in 2006, two people contacted Peter who claimed to have been at Lane Cove on New Year's Day 1963.
1:35:37 Speaker 00 They both recalled just how heavily polluted and putrid smelling the water had been. One of their dogs had rolled in the mud, and the stench of rotten eggs was near impossible to remove.
1:35:51 Speaker 00 But another curious revelation came before the documentary even aired. After seeing the film advertised, a woman named Lorraine Blackwood contacted Peter Butt with something to get off her chest. Lorraine was 11 years old at the time that Gilbert and Margaret died. She told Peter that a few days after the mysterious deaths, she was exploring an area of bushland about five kilometres from the death scene with her sister and some other boys, when they found a woman's cream-coloured handbag next to a stormwater drain. Inside was some make-up, a handkerchief and two bottles of white pills prescribed to a Mrs Margaret Chandler.
1:36:36 Speaker 00 Lorraine claimed she brought the bag home and her mother panicked, not wanting to get involved in the notorious case. She hid it in the garage before getting rid of it entirely.
1:36:49 Speaker 00 Margaret's husband Geoffrey Chandler had told police that Margaret didn't bring a handbag with her to the Nash's party, leaving this detail supplied by Lorraine up for debate.
1:37:01 Speaker 00 But for Peter Butt, the most compelling aspect of Lorraine's story was the location where the handbag was supposedly found. It was opposite the home of the nephew of Eddie Batiste, the greyhound trainer who police suspected might have covered the bodies of Margaret and Gilbert, and not far from where Eddie himself lived.
1:37:23 Speaker 00 Eddie Batiste had died in 1976, but Peter tracked down his children who agreed that their father probably wouldn't have told the police if he had seen the bodies. His daughter described him as a very secretive man, while his son said he was a moralist, who had an aversion to the sight of bare human flesh. Eddie Batiste's obituary was published in the magazine National Greyhound News, and it stated that he was the one who had found Margaret and Gilbert's bodies. He had allegedly told this to a close friend.
1:38:00 Speaker 00 Whether Eddie really was the one who covered the bodies remains unknown.
1:38:09 Speaker 00 The enduring mystery of the Bogle-Chandler case has become somewhat of folklore among Australians familiar with the story. But, as Coroner Jack Looms stated at the inquest in 1963: "One can never lose sight of the fact that the deceased, whoever it may be, is someone's mother, someone's father, someone's sister, or someone's brother. And very often, the ones left behind are the ones to suffer, or find their reputation damaged."
1:38:43 Speaker 00 Looms acknowledged he'd found it incredibly difficult to balance the need for answers with his desire to protect the privacy of those involved. If indeed the pair did die by hydrogen sulphide poisoning, then the personal lives of many were publicly aired and their reputations tarnished for no reason.
1:39:04 Speaker 00 Gilbert Bogle's wife Vivian avoided the public attention by promptly moving to New Zealand, with the press once describing her as "the unknown living victim of the tragedy", but others were also affected.
1:39:19 Speaker 00 Ruth Nash, the co-host of the fateful New Year's Eve party, died on New Year's Day 1974. Two years later, on New Year's Day 1976, her husband Ken shot himself.
1:39:35 Speaker 00 Geoffrey Chandler sacrificed his privacy by releasing a book about the case in 1969 titled "So You Think I Did It". Geoffrey wanted to set the record straight about various elements of the case, including his seemingly emotionless reaction upon being told that Margaret was dead. Geoffrey explained that he'd been disgusted by the way police had pushed a newspaper article in his face, rather than delivering the news with humanity. He wrote: "Whatever their reasons or motives, the manner of the revelation dealt me a blow of such shocking cruelty, I can find no words to describe it. I sat there in the station, waiting,
1:40:21 Speaker 00 the children half-asleep beside me. Nobody explained anything." From that point on, he was determined not to give them the reactions they so obviously wanted.
1:40:36 Speaker 00 Jeffrey later told filmmaker Peter Butt that both he and his two sons suffered "quite severe psychological and emotional damage arising from this event."
1:40:48 Speaker 00 In the prologue of "So You Think I Did It," Jeffrey wrote: "This book is written for my sons to get the record straight. Margaret longed for her children and went through much to give them birth. She looked forward to glorious years of enjoyment with them. Instead, she was cruelly deprived. They too. Our eldest has a cloudy memory of his mother. Our youngest, nothing. My sons deserve something better than the fragmented facts and wild speculations that accompanied their mother's death. I want my sons to know the truth, because the truth is the one thing that cannot harm them."
1:41:36 Speaker 00 Prior to his death in 2009, Jeffrey agreed that Peter Butt's theory about hydrogen sulphide poisoning seemed like the most realistic explanation. Many other scientists and investigators agree. This possibility was bolstered further in 2012 when a retired psychologist from Canberra contacted Peter Butt with another surprise revelation. He claimed that back in 1965, a young woman he'd met through a chance encounter confided in him that she'd been at Lane Cove on New Year's morning 1963 and had seen a man and woman whom she believed to be Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler having sex on the riverbank.
1:42:22 Speaker 00 They'd stopped all of a sudden, with Margaret grabbing her throat, making a strangling noise and staggering off, while Gilbert rolled away. The air reeked of rotten eggs.
1:42:36 Speaker 00 The woman who claimed to have witnessed this initially thought the pair were on drugs and she left the scene, becoming dizzy and stumbling as she did so. When she heard about the Bogle-Chandler deaths in the following days, she was too afraid to come forward because she hadn't been alone on the river. She'd been with her female partner and the pair didn't want their relationship outed as same-sex relationships were frowned upon at the time. In 2016, Peter Butt made a public appeal for this woman or her partner to come forward and make an official statement, but they never did.
1:43:19 Speaker 00 The truth about exactly what happened to Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler on that riverbank will likely never be known for certain. With no viable blood or tissue samples left to test, everything is circumstantial. As one reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald once stated: "In many ways, the answers are lost in another time, another place, a different country. So many things have changed."
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