• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Strange Deaths: The Bogle-Chandler Case

AngelAlice

AngelAlice

bemused & saddened observer
Joined
Apr 7, 2006
Messages
762
Not sure if it belongs here, but if not some kind Mod can move it.

I'm on vacation atm and was spending the day browsing around when I stumbled on this....

http://www.boglechandler.com/

On the morning of 1 January 1963, two youths went hunting for golf balls near Fuller's Bridge, on the Lane Cove River in suburban Sydney. They found the body of Dr Gilbert Bogle beside a dirt track running beside the river. When police arrived, the body of Mrs Margaret Chandler was found several metres away.

Both Dr Bogle and Mrs Chandler had been at a New Year's Eve party in Chatswood, several kilometres from the Lane Cove River.

Mrs Chandler's husband, Geoffrey, had attended the Chatswood party. However he'd left to attend another party and meet a girlfriend. Despite returning to the Chatswood party, he'd left again with the understanding that Dr Bogle would take his wife home.

When the bodies were discovered, it was apparent that Dr Bogle and Mrs Chandler had been poisoned. Forensic testing could find no trace of poison, however, and speculation about the nature of Bogle’s work led many to believe that he had been assassinated.

However in 2006 the documentary film-maker Peter Butt presented an alternative theory. He suggested that Dr Bogle and Mrs Chandler had been killed accidentally when hydrogen sulfide gas leaked from the nearby Lane Cove River.

So what actually happened, and how? This website attempts to explain both the known facts and the speculation.
Click to expand...


The details are just beeezaaare. The prevailing theory is swamp gas or something, but have no idea how an accidental death could result in the bodies being covered up as they were. Anyone know any more or have any thoughts?

(later edit: interesting interactive exploration can be found here: http://www.rebeccayoung.org/)
 
There was a very good documentary (with a touch of docudrama) about this on the ABC here in Australia some time ago. It seems conclusive that there was a gas eruption from the body of water where the bodies were found. The couple were indeed lovers (of the íllicit' variety) and went for a quickie beside the water. It is assumed that there was a gas bubble that came out of the water (similar to what happened on a huge scale at Lake Nyos in Cameroon in 1986) which quickly replaced the lighter oxygen, asphixiating the pair.

Yes, the strange part was that the bodies were covered up. It can be assumed that some passer-by, who did not want to get involved, covered them up for modesty's sake, and then went on his/her merry way.

It all make sense to me.
 
So these are Strange Deaths, not Strange Murders...
 
Mmm...I agree the toxic gas explanation is plausible, but I wouldn't say it's anything like conclusive. There are a few quite big holes in it really.

For one thing, it would have to have been a fairly intense concentration of hydrogen sulfide gas to not just disorient or sicken these people but kill them, and yet there were other people in the area at the time, and they were all fine. I mean they didn't just conspicuously fail to die, they failed to even feel ill or even - most strangely - to notice the awful rotten egg smell of hydrogen sulfide (which as a lot us probable remember from school is preeeetty hard to overlook even in small quantities). The explanation that these dead guys were in a pocket of ground where the gas would collect seems weak given the circs. If others present had at least smelled the gas I'd agree it made sense, but since they didn't even do that I'd say it's a big problem for this explanation.

And then to add weight to this we have the curious fact of the bodies being covered, and in such an odd way. The woman was almost completely buried in soggy cardboard so as not just to make her 'decent', but to actually conceal her from view. An odd thing for an innocent passerby to do. And even more oddly, the guy's jacket and trousers (which he'd presumably removed in order to have sex) were VERY carefully draped over him so as to give a superficial impression he was actually wearing them. All the seams were lined up with the curves of his limbs. Doing that takes time. And yet this meticulous passerby who did all this, risking being found in the act and looking very suspicious, didn't bother to even turn the guy on his back to see if he was still alive!?

Possible I grant you, because people do weird things under stress - but I still think there's huge areas of doubt and puzzle.
 
it sounds unbelievably macabre and unthinkable in context, but i'm sure there's a story elsewhere on this board where some unsupervised young children found a body and actually played with it, i wonder if the deaths were reasonably innocuous in themselves but there was some kind of later interference.
 
AngelAlice said:
For one thing, it would have to have been a fairly intense concentration of hydrogen sulfide gas to not just disorient or sicken these people but kill them, and yet there were other people in the area at the time, and they were all fine.
Click to expand...
They fancied carrying out the affair by having a snog in a public area with others nearby? Kinky :p Perhaps there weren't others nearby at the time.
 
kamalktk said:
AngelAlice said:
For one thing, it would have to have been a fairly intense concentration of hydrogen sulfide gas to not just disorient or sicken these people but kill them, and yet there were other people in the area at the time, and they were all fine.
Click to expand...
They fancied carrying out the affair by having a snog in a public area with others nearby? Kinky :p Perhaps there weren't others nearby at the time.
Click to expand...

The place was a popular 'lovers' lane', and there were at least four other people hanging out at the time these two met their end - including some guy walking his greyhounds, who was probably a peeping tom (wonder if 'walking your greyhound' is some kind of Aussie slang ;))
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top