Four people who disappeared from a tiny Western Australian town in 2007 in connection with a new-age spiritual cult may be dead, a coronial inquest has found, but there is not enough evidence to prove their deaths beyond a reasonable doubt.
The group, led by the British spiritualist Gary Felton, disappeared from a property near Nannup in WA’s south-west around July 2007, telling friends and neighbours they were moving to Brazil. None of them has been seen since 16 July 2007.
There is evidence to suggest they formed a suicide pact but not enough to rule out the possibility that they are still living, somewhere, possibly under assumed names.
Felton, then 45, was born in the UK and had been going under the name Simon Anthony Kadwill since stealing the original Kadwill’s birth certificate in 1986. He had a UK passport under that name and travelled extensively in the 1990s as part of a “spiritual awakening”.
He wrote a number of books, which the coroner, Barry King, said he had “briefly skimmed” for the purpose of the three-day inquest in December 2017, describing some of the assertions they made as “bizarre”.
The books spoke of a selfless few ascending through death from the three-dimensional physical plain to a five-dimensional “vibrating plane” called the Aquarian age.
In 1997 Chantelle Jane McDougall attended a seminar held by Felton in Melbourne and became a follower. In 2001 they had a daughter, Leela, and in 2003 they moved to the rental property in Nannup. Another man, Antonio Konstanin Popic, bought a caravan and moved on to the property in 2006. Both Popic and McDougall were subservient to Felton, who spent most of his time communicating with his followers on online forums.
In May 2007 Felton told one of those followers that the group had a “plan for a family suicide with a quick-acting drug”. He later told the same follower that he was planning to kill himself and he did not want MacDougall to know.
Felton was not seen, in person or online, after 24 June.
As July approached, MacDougall and Popic sold their cars, began withdrawing money, sold their dogs, rehomed their chickens and said goodbye to their families. They had been stockpiling drugs that could have been used as a fatal cocktail.
MacDougall was last seen on 15 July. Popic is believed to have travelled to Perth that day and on to Northcliffe or Kalgoorlie.
On 16 July Popic’s brother received a package from him containing power of attorney forms, bank statements, superannuation policy details and a note apologising for being a “crap brother”.
About the same time, the landlords of the Nannup property arrived to find it vacated but in pristine condition, with a note saying the group had left suddenly owing to a lack of sleep created by the electromagnetic field given off by a new transformer, which Felton in particular had objected to.
The note instructed them to sell off any remaining furniture if they wished. Another note, in Popic’s caravan, told the landlords they could keep the caravan.
In lengthy findings released on Tuesday, King said there was evidence pointing toward the group’s collective suicide but other evidence — particularly a lack of a formal declaration of suicide by Felton, whose death would have been a “powerful message” to his followers, indicated he may still be alive.
“I have not been able to find that the death of any of the members of the group has been established beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said. “To be clear, this does not mean that I have found that any member of the group is alive.”
• Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia1300 78 99 78
