A retired policeman is on a mission to solve one of Australia’s most baffling missing persons cases, which began 17 years ago with the disappearance of an entire household who were members of a doomsday cult.
Barry McIntosh, whose interest in the case is personal, served 35 years with Victoria Police and hopes to search a remote patch of Western Australian bushland with cadaver dogs.
Mr McIntosh is the uncle of Chantelle McDougall, who was last seen alive in July 2007 with her British-born partner Gary Felton, their six-year-old daughter Leela and friend Tony Popic.
Ms McDougall, 27, had fallen under the spell of 45-year-old Felton, a self-styled spiritualist who had assumed the identity of an English workmate called Simon Kadwell.
At the time of their disappearance, Ms McDougall and Leela had been living with Felton in a rundown farmhouse at Nannup, about 280km south of Perth, with 42-year-old Mr Popic.
Mr McIntosh is convinced Felton was involved in the deaths of his niece, her daughter and Mr Popic and is determined to find their bodies.
‘[Felton] spoke of providing Chantelle and Leela with a drug that would provide a peaceful death and that Tony would bury them all,’ he says.
‘Tony would then walk into the bush to take his own life.’
The charismatic Felton – ‘Si’ to his acolytes – was the founder of Truth Fellowship and had 40 online followers of what has been described as an international doomsday cult.
Felton called his followers The Forecourt and spoke to them through a chatroom known as The Gateway where they would discuss teachings from his book, Servers of the Divine Plan.
That book warned about Earth’s pending doom but promised a new world of higher consciousness once a 75,000-year ‘cycle’ had run its course.
Neighbours at Nannup said ‘off the planet’ Felton was obsessed with electromagnetic fields and deeply paranoid.
Felton, who did not work and relied on the subservient Ms McDougall and Mr Popic for financial support, slept during the day and stayed up all night on his computer.
Hellbound and Down 