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From Sydney Morning Herald:
Sex, drugs and a murder mystery
August 20, 2006
When the bodies of scientist Gilbert Bogle and his lover were found on a North Shore river bank, one of Sydney's most tantalising whodunits began. Now, 43 years later, new evidence could solve the puzzle once and for all, Frank Walker reports.
THE MYSTERY
IT was shortly before 9am on New Year's Day, 1963, on a bush path along the banks of the Lane Cove River near Fullers Bridge in the heart of Sydney's North Shore.
Two teenage boys, who had been collecting golf balls from the bush behind Chatswood Golf Club, were walking along the banks of the river towards Fullers Bridge when they stumbled on the body of a man lying just off the path.
It was face down, covered with a suit coat and pants and a piece of mat taken from the boot of his car. The boys ran for help. Police arrived by 10am and realised the body had been carefully covered, as though done respectfully. He was naked except for a white shirt. His face was purple, rigor mortis had set in and there was a small trickle of blood from his right nostril. He was brilliant CSIRO scientist Dr Gilbert Bogle.
Police searched the area and, 15 metres away, down in the mud of the river bank, found the body of a woman. The body was covered by three flattened beer cartons. She lay on her back, her right arm covering her breasts, her other arm by her side. Her dress was bunched around her waist, her bra pulled down and her pants missing. She had scrapes to her knees, elbows and nose. Her body was still slightly warm. Police quickly identified her as Margaret Chandler, wife of Geoffrey Chandler, another CSIRO scientist.
Both of them had been violently ill before they died. Vomit and excreta were found near the bodies. Police deduced the couple were poisoned and that the poison hit them while they were having sex. The man died first and the woman staggered to the river bank where she died.
Clearly, someone had covered the bodies before they were found. Police never found that person.
As more tantalising details emerged, the mystery of who killed Bogle and Chandler only became deeper. It became a sensation that gripped Sydney for decades. It had everything: sex, North Shore wife swapping, brilliant scientists engaged in shadowy experiments, a charming playboy, a pretty young wife allowed to go off with men by her husband who had his own girlfriend, the hint of bizarre cults in conservative suburbs, a possible CIA or KGB assassination and a double-death mystery that was never solved.
Bogle and Chandler had been at a New Year's Eve party in Waratah Street, Chatswood, hosted by CSIRO photographer Kenneth Nash and his wife Ruth. There were 22 guests and by all accounts it was a rather staid evening. Bogle, 38, was there by himself. His wife Vivienne was home in Turramurra with their four young children.
Margaret Chandler, 29, arrived with her husband Geoffrey, 38, from their home in Croydon. Their two children were with Margaret's mother in Granville for the night. The couple were unusual even for the swinging '60s. He permitted and even encouraged her to have affairs. She had met Bogle at a barbecue two weeks earlier and was charmed by him. Geoffrey later said he had told her before the party: "If you want to have Gib as a lover, if it would make you happy, you do it."
Bogle and Chandler chatted and laughed all night, at one time disappearing into the bushes of the garden. Chandler left the party alone before midnight and drove to a raging party at Balmain where he met up with his girlfriend Pamela Logan. They went to her flat and Chandler returned to the Chatswood party about 3am. He chatted to his wife and, after making sure Bogle would give her a lift home, left the party alone at 4am. Bogle and Margaret Chandler left at 4.15am. They drove to the Lane Cove River and parked in a known lovers' lane where they were last seen alive at 5am as dawn was breaking. They parked the car and walked about 70 metres along a track by the river where their bodies were found three hours later. Bogle was estimated to have died between 5.30am and 6am. Chandler died shortly afterwards, sometime between 6am and 6.30am.
Police were baffled. Their initial suspect Geoffrey Chandler seemed to have a watertight alibi. When he left the Chatswood party he drove back to Pamela Logan's home at Darlington, getting there at 4.35am. She went with him to Granville to pick up his children at his mother-in-law's house. She stayed outside as he went into the house at 5.30am to get the children. Then they all went back to Darlington where they had breakfast at 6.30am. He went home with the children about 10am and they were asleep when police called at 1pm.
Forensic tests came up with nothing. Despite all possible tests for poisons, none was found. After 50 witnesses, 63 exhibits and 762 pages of testimony, coroner J.J. Loomes concluded: "It gives me no satisfaction to sit here and tell you that all we know about this is that two people died from acute circulatory failure, the cause of which is unknown."
There the mystery stayed, its legend and associated wild theories growing over the decades. In 1996 there was a breakthrough. Fresh tests on the couple's remains done in the US detected traces of the hallucinatory drug LSD in their systems. Whether it was enough to kill them was unclear, but for the first time there was forensic evidence pointing to what could have happened that New Year's dawn.
Now, new research for a program to be broadcast on ABC TV on September 7 purports to have solved the mystery of who covered the bodies. It was a man who exercised his greyhounds illegally on the golf course who didn't dare come forward. He is now dead. Producers say they have found a witness to the deaths who was overlooked by the original police investigation.
The program also includes information on a review that using today's scientific knowledge on forensic material gathered at the time, discovered the poison that killed the couple. And finally, the program concludes it can now answer the ultimate question: Who killed Bogle and Chandler?
THE THEORIES:
THE LOVE DRUG OVERDOSE
Police immediately suspected the couple died of a drug overdose as they had both been violently ill. But tests failed to detect traces of any known drugs or poisons. Thirty years later new tests found traces of LSD in their system. So, did someone spike their drink at the party as a joke? Did a jealous man or woman tip a slow-working poison into their drinks at the party? Did Bogle share LSD with Chandler after they left the party to spice up their love encounter, and underestimate the effect ?
LSD was a new hallucinatory drug in 1963 and there are suggestions CSIRO scientists were experimenting with it and could have cooked up a brew for themselves. It was seen as an aphrodisiac. Only later did scientists discover it could cause terrifying hallucinations, that some people did crazy things under its effect, and that it could kill.
THE CUCKOLDED HUSBAND
Did Geoffrey Chandler kill his wife? Could he have faked his alibi? He was seen in his car outside the party waiting for them to leave. But he was on the other side of town when they died. He freely admitted he encouraged his wife to have affairs, so he had no reason to be jealous. He wrote a book So You Think I Did It in which he put forward the theory that Bogle was killed because of his secret research work for CSIRO. He asks why Bogle and his wife went to the river bank when it was clear to them they could have used the Chandler home for their tryst, as neither he nor the kids would be home for hours. Chandler says the deaths have haunted his life and those of his children ever since. He has lived with being the chief suspect for 43 years and is glad there could at last be an answer. He co-operated with the ABC program, so it is unlikely the program points the finger at him.
THE JILTED LOVER
The mystery woman in this tangled web is a former lover of Bogle's, 38-year-old Margaret Fowler. Their torrid love affair began three years earlier but he broke it off three months before his death, tired of her possessiveness and irrational behaviour. She was not invited to the Chatswood party but some said they saw her loitering out the front of the house. Could she have slipped into the house and poisoned their drinks? Fowler told friends Bogle had erection problems, which might explain the need for drugs. She was called to give evidence at the coroner's inquiry but was mysteriously discharged after just a few seconds in the stand. She has since died.
THE PRANK GONE WRONG
Everyone at the party knew Bogle was a notorious philanderer. One theory is that someone at the party spiked his drink to get back at him, so he would be unable to perform with Chandler. Then they spiked hers as well.
THE SPY CONSPIRACY
Bogle was involved in top secret research on masers, the forerunner of laser beams. He was due to leave the CSIRO in a few weeks to work in the US with Bell Laboratories, which was working on highly secret defence contracts. Bogle had been cleared by ASIO for top-secret work, and the FBI had given him the once over before he got the Bell job. Some reports over the years suggested Bogle was bumped off by the KGB to stop his research, or that the CIA killed him as he was a double agent, flogging secrets to the Soviets. Chandler was just in the way. This was the height of the Cold War and conspiracy theories were rife.
One suggestion is that Bogle was handing over his secret-agent role to Chandler and they had gone to the river to retrieve an object hidden at a "drop" under the water that could only be reached at low tide. The car's mat was to be used to walk on the mud, not to make love on. But something went wrong and enemy agents stripped them, killed them by holding a noxious substance over their faces, and left them covered up while they made their getaway.
THE NEW YEAR'S DAY CURSE
Bogle and Chandler weren't the only ones to die on New Year's Day. Ruth Nash, hostess of their 1963 new year's party, died on New Year's Day, 1974. Two years later, on New Year's Day 1976, Kenneth Nash shot himself.
Link to article
Sex, drugs and a murder mystery
August 20, 2006
When the bodies of scientist Gilbert Bogle and his lover were found on a North Shore river bank, one of Sydney's most tantalising whodunits began. Now, 43 years later, new evidence could solve the puzzle once and for all, Frank Walker reports.
THE MYSTERY
IT was shortly before 9am on New Year's Day, 1963, on a bush path along the banks of the Lane Cove River near Fullers Bridge in the heart of Sydney's North Shore.
Two teenage boys, who had been collecting golf balls from the bush behind Chatswood Golf Club, were walking along the banks of the river towards Fullers Bridge when they stumbled on the body of a man lying just off the path.
It was face down, covered with a suit coat and pants and a piece of mat taken from the boot of his car. The boys ran for help. Police arrived by 10am and realised the body had been carefully covered, as though done respectfully. He was naked except for a white shirt. His face was purple, rigor mortis had set in and there was a small trickle of blood from his right nostril. He was brilliant CSIRO scientist Dr Gilbert Bogle.
Police searched the area and, 15 metres away, down in the mud of the river bank, found the body of a woman. The body was covered by three flattened beer cartons. She lay on her back, her right arm covering her breasts, her other arm by her side. Her dress was bunched around her waist, her bra pulled down and her pants missing. She had scrapes to her knees, elbows and nose. Her body was still slightly warm. Police quickly identified her as Margaret Chandler, wife of Geoffrey Chandler, another CSIRO scientist.
Both of them had been violently ill before they died. Vomit and excreta were found near the bodies. Police deduced the couple were poisoned and that the poison hit them while they were having sex. The man died first and the woman staggered to the river bank where she died.
Clearly, someone had covered the bodies before they were found. Police never found that person.
As more tantalising details emerged, the mystery of who killed Bogle and Chandler only became deeper. It became a sensation that gripped Sydney for decades. It had everything: sex, North Shore wife swapping, brilliant scientists engaged in shadowy experiments, a charming playboy, a pretty young wife allowed to go off with men by her husband who had his own girlfriend, the hint of bizarre cults in conservative suburbs, a possible CIA or KGB assassination and a double-death mystery that was never solved.
Bogle and Chandler had been at a New Year's Eve party in Waratah Street, Chatswood, hosted by CSIRO photographer Kenneth Nash and his wife Ruth. There were 22 guests and by all accounts it was a rather staid evening. Bogle, 38, was there by himself. His wife Vivienne was home in Turramurra with their four young children.
Margaret Chandler, 29, arrived with her husband Geoffrey, 38, from their home in Croydon. Their two children were with Margaret's mother in Granville for the night. The couple were unusual even for the swinging '60s. He permitted and even encouraged her to have affairs. She had met Bogle at a barbecue two weeks earlier and was charmed by him. Geoffrey later said he had told her before the party: "If you want to have Gib as a lover, if it would make you happy, you do it."
Bogle and Chandler chatted and laughed all night, at one time disappearing into the bushes of the garden. Chandler left the party alone before midnight and drove to a raging party at Balmain where he met up with his girlfriend Pamela Logan. They went to her flat and Chandler returned to the Chatswood party about 3am. He chatted to his wife and, after making sure Bogle would give her a lift home, left the party alone at 4am. Bogle and Margaret Chandler left at 4.15am. They drove to the Lane Cove River and parked in a known lovers' lane where they were last seen alive at 5am as dawn was breaking. They parked the car and walked about 70 metres along a track by the river where their bodies were found three hours later. Bogle was estimated to have died between 5.30am and 6am. Chandler died shortly afterwards, sometime between 6am and 6.30am.
Police were baffled. Their initial suspect Geoffrey Chandler seemed to have a watertight alibi. When he left the Chatswood party he drove back to Pamela Logan's home at Darlington, getting there at 4.35am. She went with him to Granville to pick up his children at his mother-in-law's house. She stayed outside as he went into the house at 5.30am to get the children. Then they all went back to Darlington where they had breakfast at 6.30am. He went home with the children about 10am and they were asleep when police called at 1pm.
Forensic tests came up with nothing. Despite all possible tests for poisons, none was found. After 50 witnesses, 63 exhibits and 762 pages of testimony, coroner J.J. Loomes concluded: "It gives me no satisfaction to sit here and tell you that all we know about this is that two people died from acute circulatory failure, the cause of which is unknown."
There the mystery stayed, its legend and associated wild theories growing over the decades. In 1996 there was a breakthrough. Fresh tests on the couple's remains done in the US detected traces of the hallucinatory drug LSD in their systems. Whether it was enough to kill them was unclear, but for the first time there was forensic evidence pointing to what could have happened that New Year's dawn.
Now, new research for a program to be broadcast on ABC TV on September 7 purports to have solved the mystery of who covered the bodies. It was a man who exercised his greyhounds illegally on the golf course who didn't dare come forward. He is now dead. Producers say they have found a witness to the deaths who was overlooked by the original police investigation.
The program also includes information on a review that using today's scientific knowledge on forensic material gathered at the time, discovered the poison that killed the couple. And finally, the program concludes it can now answer the ultimate question: Who killed Bogle and Chandler?
THE THEORIES:
THE LOVE DRUG OVERDOSE
Police immediately suspected the couple died of a drug overdose as they had both been violently ill. But tests failed to detect traces of any known drugs or poisons. Thirty years later new tests found traces of LSD in their system. So, did someone spike their drink at the party as a joke? Did a jealous man or woman tip a slow-working poison into their drinks at the party? Did Bogle share LSD with Chandler after they left the party to spice up their love encounter, and underestimate the effect ?
LSD was a new hallucinatory drug in 1963 and there are suggestions CSIRO scientists were experimenting with it and could have cooked up a brew for themselves. It was seen as an aphrodisiac. Only later did scientists discover it could cause terrifying hallucinations, that some people did crazy things under its effect, and that it could kill.
THE CUCKOLDED HUSBAND
Did Geoffrey Chandler kill his wife? Could he have faked his alibi? He was seen in his car outside the party waiting for them to leave. But he was on the other side of town when they died. He freely admitted he encouraged his wife to have affairs, so he had no reason to be jealous. He wrote a book So You Think I Did It in which he put forward the theory that Bogle was killed because of his secret research work for CSIRO. He asks why Bogle and his wife went to the river bank when it was clear to them they could have used the Chandler home for their tryst, as neither he nor the kids would be home for hours. Chandler says the deaths have haunted his life and those of his children ever since. He has lived with being the chief suspect for 43 years and is glad there could at last be an answer. He co-operated with the ABC program, so it is unlikely the program points the finger at him.
THE JILTED LOVER
The mystery woman in this tangled web is a former lover of Bogle's, 38-year-old Margaret Fowler. Their torrid love affair began three years earlier but he broke it off three months before his death, tired of her possessiveness and irrational behaviour. She was not invited to the Chatswood party but some said they saw her loitering out the front of the house. Could she have slipped into the house and poisoned their drinks? Fowler told friends Bogle had erection problems, which might explain the need for drugs. She was called to give evidence at the coroner's inquiry but was mysteriously discharged after just a few seconds in the stand. She has since died.
THE PRANK GONE WRONG
Everyone at the party knew Bogle was a notorious philanderer. One theory is that someone at the party spiked his drink to get back at him, so he would be unable to perform with Chandler. Then they spiked hers as well.
THE SPY CONSPIRACY
Bogle was involved in top secret research on masers, the forerunner of laser beams. He was due to leave the CSIRO in a few weeks to work in the US with Bell Laboratories, which was working on highly secret defence contracts. Bogle had been cleared by ASIO for top-secret work, and the FBI had given him the once over before he got the Bell job. Some reports over the years suggested Bogle was bumped off by the KGB to stop his research, or that the CIA killed him as he was a double agent, flogging secrets to the Soviets. Chandler was just in the way. This was the height of the Cold War and conspiracy theories were rife.
One suggestion is that Bogle was handing over his secret-agent role to Chandler and they had gone to the river to retrieve an object hidden at a "drop" under the water that could only be reached at low tide. The car's mat was to be used to walk on the mud, not to make love on. But something went wrong and enemy agents stripped them, killed them by holding a noxious substance over their faces, and left them covered up while they made their getaway.
THE NEW YEAR'S DAY CURSE
Bogle and Chandler weren't the only ones to die on New Year's Day. Ruth Nash, hostess of their 1963 new year's party, died on New Year's Day, 1974. Two years later, on New Year's Day 1976, Kenneth Nash shot himself.
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