Untraceable Poison? The Bogle-Chandler Mystery
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A blanket of fog hovered over Lane Cove River in North Sydney, Australia. It was New Year's Day, 1963. Summertime in the southern hemisphere, not far from the riverbank, two bodies were discovered in an area commonly used as a lover's lane. Dr. Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler were by all accounts happily married, just not to each other. The story of their mysterious deaths captivated the public.

Not only due to the scandalous nature of their relationship, there were also bizarre aspects of the case that remain unanswered today. Experts believe they'd been poisoned, but never identified a single toxic substance in the victims' bodies. It wasn't even clear whether the deaths were accidental or foul play.

But some evidence reinforced the theory that a third person was present at the scene before the bodies were discovered. Newspapers suggested it had something to do with Gilbert's work as a renowned physicist or his top secret clearance, which beg the question, was Dr. Bogle the target of an assassination?

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Learn more at cox.com slash value. Must have at least 500 megabits per second speeds and Cox Unlimited mobile taxes and fees excluded from price guarantee. Mobile data speeds reduced after 20 gigs usage per month. On New Year's morning of 1963, Sergeant Arthur Andrews manned the Chatswood police station on the north side of Sydney. So far, things had been quiet. There were the usual holiday shenanigans, nothing serious, but it wouldn't be quiet for long.

At 9:10 a.m., the sergeant received a frantic call. A Lane Cove National Park employee reported that some teenage boys had discovered a dead body in the woods near the Lane Cove River. When he arrived, Sergeant Andrews followed the employee about 200 feet down the trail. The corpse was exactly how the teens described it, lying face down in the dirt, arms out at his sides. The face was bluish purple.

It was a man, his shirt was on, his pants were missing, and he was covered with a gray suit draped neatly over his body, and under that was a square section of carpet. It would have been nearly impossible for a dying man to do that to himself, even stranger. There were no obvious signs of violence, no cuts, bruises, ligature marks, or gunshot wounds.

Two constables joined Andrews at the scene and began scouring the immediate area. Closer to the river, in a small hollow about 50 feet away, they discovered a second body: a woman in a party dress, partially covered by flattened beer cartons. Sergeant Andrews went back to the first body and checked the man's wallet.

That's when he realized the dead man was Dr. Gilbert Bogle. The Dr. Bogle, the prominent scientist. Since 1956, Gilbert had worked in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, or CSIRO.

the National Science Agency of Australia. Perhaps realizing this might be a high-profile case, the sergeant quickly got Sydney's Criminal Investigation Bureau involved. Their first stop was Gilbert's house. When Vivian Bogle greeted them at the door, they realized the partially naked woman at the river couldn't have been his wife. After breaking the news that her husband had been found dead,

Police asked Vivian a delicate question. A woman was found with him. Did she have any idea who it could be? Vivian didn't know. She'd stayed at home with the couple's four children on New Year's Eve, but, she told police, she knew where her husband had been, a party at the home of his colleague, Ken Nash.

Officers confirmed with the Nash's that Gilbert had attended their party. Then they asked the looming question, had they seen a young woman in a floral dress? The Nash's likely knew exactly who they meant, Mrs. Margaret Chandler.

Margaret was married to Jeffrey Chandler, who also worked at the CSIRO. To detectives, it seemed like their first big break. They knew in cases like these, the killer was usually a jealous husband, and that set their sights on one person.

Jeffrey Chandler. Police descended on the Chandler home around 1 o'clock that afternoon and brought him to the station. Detectives asked him point blank if he knew where his wife was. Jeffrey responded that he didn't. So, detectives slid an afternoon edition of the local newspaper across the table. On the front page was a story about a scientist and a woman found dead. His wife, Margaret Chandler.

Then, they demanded to know where he had been the previous night. Over the course of a 10-hour interrogation, Jeffrey detailed his movements on New Year's Eve. He said he and Margaret dropped off their children with his in-laws and arrived at the Nash's party a little after 10 p.m. At 11.30, Jeffrey left the party alone, ostensibly to buy cigarettes.

This, he admitted, had actually been a cover. While he was out, he attended a different New Year's party over in Balmain, roughly 25 minutes away from Ken Nash's neighborhood. It wasn't until 2.45 a.m. that he returned to Ken's party and met back up with Margaret. According to eyewitnesses, as well as Jeffrey's own recollection,

He spent another hour at the party. During that time, he pulled Gilbert aside. Perhaps to Gilbert's surprise, Jeffrey told him, loudly enough for Margaret to hear, that he would look after the Chandler's children. Then Jeffrey left the party for good around 4.15 a.m. without his wife. Jeffrey explained to police he knew Margaret was interested in Gilbert and he was okay with it.

they had an understanding. After all, Jeffrey had another lover too. Her name was Pamela Logan. Pamela had been present at the second party Jeffrey stopped at in Balmain. After he left Margaret in the care of Gilbert Bogle, he drove over to Pamela's apartment. About an hour later, the two of them went to fetch the Chandler children from his in-laws. With the children in the car,

Jeffrey and Pamela drove back to Pamela's home where they ate breakfast. He took the boys back to his place around 10.30 a.m. At that point, he fell asleep and didn't wake up until the police banged on his door. The story likely raised a few eyebrows at the police station.

Had he really agreed to let another man take his wife home? At the time, in polite Australian society, affairs were taboo and shunned.

Of course, they still happened in secret, but no one spoke about them publicly. But eventually, Pamela did back up Jeffrey's story about the affair and his whereabouts when Margaret died. Police also located two witnesses who saw Jeffrey driving his vintage Vauxhall automobile around the city that night.

It was such a distinctive car that people couldn't miss it. Both sightings were far from the scene of the crime, and investigators had to admit Jeffrey seemed to have a strong alibi. If the case was going to be solved, they would have to find more clues. Back at Lane Cove River, investigators recovered Gilbert's car, but the officer who inspected it reported finding nothing amiss, either inside or outside the vehicle.

Items of clothing were also found close to the river's edge, and this discovery may have bolstered the emerging story that the pair had gone to Lover's Lane to commence an affair, but investigators still didn't know who or what could have killed them. Then,

One sergeant found vomit and feces near the site where Gilbert was lying. So the bodies were promptly transported to the Sydney morgue. Perhaps the victims themselves would hold the key to unlocking their mysterious deaths. Dr. John Lang, director of forensic medicine at the Department of Public Health, conducted the autopsies on January 2nd. First, he confirmed the times of death.

Gilbert had died sometime between 5.30 and 6 in the morning. Margaret died later, between 6 and 6.30. As police noted at the scene, there was no evidence of a violent physical attack. Though Margaret's nose had been scraped, it appeared she'd sustained the injury from stumbling around. Besides that...

The two of them had no other marks, bruises, cuts, or other signs of a struggle. Lang was able to determine a cause of death: acute cardiac failure associated with a lack of oxygen and pulmonary edema . Only, he couldn't be certain whether it was heart failure that caused them to stop breathing, or vice versa. But he knew Gilbert was just 38 years old, Margaret was 29.

It was almost impossible that they would both naturally die of heart attacks at almost exactly the same time. Lange had to consider the possibility they had died unnatural deaths, that they were poisoned. Experts put the victim's blood and organs through a battery of tests, looking for every imaginable toxin and poison. When the results came in,

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Epic, a Minecraft movie on Macs. Anything you can imagine is possible. The Disney Plus Hulu Max Bundle. Plans starting at $16.99 a month. All these and more streaming soon. Terms apply. Visit DisneyPlusHuluMaxBundle.com for details. While Dr. Lange performed autopsies on Gilbert and Margaret, he was searching their bodies for a very specific type of mark. The telltale pinpricks from a hypodermic needle. He never found them.

or any other signs that a toxic substance had been introduced. But considering both of the dead parties were relatively young and healthy, and had died from cardiac failure almost simultaneously, it was reasonable to suspect they'd been poisoned. He checked for evidence of food poisoning. Negative. Besides, investigators visited Ken Nash's house,

where they confiscated glasses, bottles, punch bowls, and anything else that could have been spiked with poison at the New Year's party. They also tore apart the Chandler's home looking for possible chemicals and searched Gilbert's lab at CSIRO. When all of those yielded nothing, the forensic team hired an arachnologist.

a spider expert, to check the bodies for suspicious bite marks and scour the crime scene for any eight-legged culprits. But after an exhaustive search, the arachnologist came up empty-handed too. Plus, blood tests confirmed Gilbert and Margaret did not die from venom. Dr. Lang had a couple more tricks up his sleeve though. He tested the bodies...

for any signs of radioactive material and checked for radiation poisoning. Again, as a last resort, he even examined their eardrums. He'd heard some rumblings about some kind of deadly high-frequency sound waves. It was just a rumor, but at this point, Lang had nothing to lose. If it had been some supersonic killer, Gilbert and Margaret's eardrums would have more than likely burst.

but their inner ears looked perfectly intact. Once Dr. Lang had tried everything that he could think of, the case was passed along to the next expert, Ernest Samuel Aug, a government analyst whose team specialized in finding traces of poison. They examined the mouths, stomachs, livers, spleens, brains, and gastrointestinal tracts for signs of certain chemicals.

Pathologists put the blood, hair, and organs through a battery of tests looking for every imaginable toxin.

After they ruled out the usual culprits, they ran more tests. They even checked for the venom of an Australian snail, which can deliver a powerful neurotoxin. The snail had only caused one recorded death back in 1935, but the forensics team were growing desperate. Ogg would later say that his lab was equipped to detect every deadly toxin known to science. And yet, in the end...

he and his team found nothing. Not a single test came back positive. He even referred the case to another team of pharmacologists at the University of Sydney, and their investigation was inconclusive too. But the press wasn't going to let a lack of answers keep them from selling newspapers. The Bogle Chandler case coincided with a battle between two Sydney tabloid newspapers.

The Sun and the Daily Mirror, the media dug into Gilbert's work at CSIRO. The organization examined a wide range of issues, everything from energy to agriculture to manufacturing. During World War II, they helped with military applications such as radar. While Gilbert specialized in cryogenics, his work was useful in other fields as well.

He became involved in the research and development of masers, which were essentially low-energy forms of lasers. They use electromagnetic waves instead of light. Being involved in such cutting-edge work, it hadn't taken long for Gilbert to distinguish himself. According to one researcher, by 1962, he was regarded as, quote, the most brilliant member of the staff. That same year,

he caught the attention of a prominent organization in the US, the Bell Research Lab, a prestigious research facility in both industrial and military technology. At the end of 1962,

they had hired Gilbert to come to New Jersey to study quantum electronics. He'd planned to move to the States that April. Bell Laboratories was widely known to have defense contracts, and in preparation, Gilbert had to be vetted by the FBI. Rumors spread that he was also tied to the CIA,

From there, the Daily Mirror suggested that he might have been assassinated by Soviet operatives to stop his research on Mazers getting to the Americans. One paper suggested Gilbert was developing a terrifying new invention—

A death ray. Three decades earlier, there'd been a period of fascination with the hypothetical weapon. It was believed that a death ray would be able to decimate any target with an energy beam. So governments around the world attempted to build one. None other than Nikola Tesla threw his hat into the ring in 1934.

He told the press he'd built something called a teleforce and claimed its deadly beam moved at 270,000 miles per hour. He never produced his so-called invention, but not everyone was convinced the death ray was purely science fiction. Australian officials tried to rein in the rumors of undercover operatives and assassinations. After all,

They still weren't even sure how Gilbert and Margaret had died. There was a very real possibility they'd fallen victim to a bizarre accident. But an accident didn't explain why both bodies were so neatly covered. Remember, Margaret was discovered under flattened beer cartons.

Gilbert was covered by a large carpet square, and on top of that was his jacket and pants. Whoever had set the suit on Gilbert had lined it up precisely with his arms and legs. In fact, one of the witnesses who found his body thought Gilbert was wearing the suit. So most of the public was convinced neither of the victims had covered themselves like that. And if they didn't do it, who did?

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The Bogle-Chandler inquest took place in the spring of 1963 and was led by the city coroner, J.J. Looms. One of the many questions Looms hoped to answer was this. Was there or was there not a third person present at Gilbert and Margaret's deaths? Two police sergeants testified to finding no evidence at the scene suggesting a third unknown person had been present.

They both agreed it was possible, though. Sergeant Clark believed Margaret was the one who covered Gilbert before pulling the cartons onto herself, perhaps to stay warm. He admitted there was no proof to back up his theory, but

But he figured if somebody really wanted to hide the bodies, the river was right there. Investigators did manage to find witnesses who may have seen Gilbert and Margaret just before they died. One man said he was exercising his greyhounds at the adjacent golf course. When he arrived, he saw a car like Gilbert's green Ford Prefect, and near it, a second car, a light-colored station wagon.

When the dog owner left around 5:10 a.m., Gilbert's car was still there, but the station wagon was gone. Another witness, Kenneth George Chalice, an admitted voyeur, testified that he saw Gilbert and a woman inside a prefect by the river. Like the dog owner, Chalice saw a station wagon too.

He also claimed he saw another man walking around that morning. He was, quote, fairly well built. And when he saw Chalice coming, the man slid down a riverbank. Chalice identified the spot where it happened, just 20 or 30 yards from where the bodies were found. In another key moment of the inquest, Margaret's husband, Jeffrey, gave evidence. Once again, he detailed his movements in the early hours of New Year's Day, and

And once again, his statements were backed up by Pamela Logan and other witnesses who saw him driving around. Jeffrey added, Margaret was a loving mother and their marriage had been a happy one. At one point early on in the inquest,

Coroner Looms had summoned another woman named Margaret. Margaret Fowler had worked in the library at CSIRO and had once carried on an affair with Gilbert until he dumped her. When she learned he would be moving to the U.S. for work, she reportedly became inconsolable.

and told a friend she didn't want to live without Gilbert. Strangely, only moments after Margaret Fowler took the stand at the inquest, she was dismissed. Looms claimed her testimony wasn't relevant to the case. Police were also able to corroborate her alibi for the night of the mysterious deaths. Some of the fringe theories concerning Gilbert's line of work were addressed on the stand.

According to a senior officer at CSIRO,

Gilbert never worked on a death ray or any other project that might pose a threat to international security. Looms and the state went on to question 50 witnesses, review 63 pieces of evidence, and transcribe 762 pages of testimony over the course of two months. By the end of May, the inquest returned an open finding.

The coroner knew Gilbert and Margaret died of acute circulatory failure, and that was about it. Looms couldn't determine what exactly happened or who was involved. The Bogle-Chandler mystery remains unsolved to this day.

Though a few more noteworthy theories have been introduced over the years. In 1970, a book was published called "Without Hardware" by Catherine Dalton. The author's husband, Dr. George Dalton, invented the fast breeder nuclear reactor, which generates more nuclear fuel than it consumes. According to Catherine, George died in 1961 at the hands of an international conspiracy.

She'd watched his physical and mental health deteriorate for years. And although George officially died of cancer, Catherine claimed he was slowly poisoned. She suggested someone wanted him dead because of his work on a top secret nuclear project. She also claimed Gilbert Bogle was a good friend

and that he knew all about her husband's mysterious death. She believed Gilbert planned to alert the authorities once he arrived in the US and was assassinated because he knew too much. She concluded that Margaret Chandler was collateral damage. After the book was published, Jeffrey Chandler told the press he agreed with parts of Catherine's theory.

He even insisted that in 1969, he'd received a series of strange phone calls. An anonymous man with a European accent claimed he had proof that this international conspiracy existed and was responsible for Margaret's death. Whatever that proof was, we may never know. But Jeffrey seemed convinced. He told the press, quote,

Gilbert Bogle was more than a brilliant CSIRO scientist. He was involved in undercover activities, the full extent of which no one, including myself, publicly knows. In 1980, a reporter for the National Times sent a FOIA request to the FBI, hoping to access any documents on the Bogle Chandler case. The request was denied.

The FBI said the file was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, citing national security reasons. These new theories did not name any specific substance that might have killed Gilbert and Margaret and stumped three groups of forensic experts. But our next two theories do.

in the late 1980s and 90s. With Coroner JJ Looms long since retired, a new generation of Australian forensic scientists wondered about the Bogle Chandler case. Dr. Godfrey Oatley, the new South Wales Health Department's new Director of Forensic Medicine, had his own theory. He thought Gilbert and Margaret could have died

from an accidental overdose of LSD. In 1963, LSD's use as a recreational drug was relatively new.

At the time, many thought its use was limited to hippies and counter-culturists, but it was also a hallucinogen of choice among pioneering scientists. Many speculated that Gilbert may have had access to the chemical at work. Perhaps he wanted to experiment with his new lover, and they unwittingly took too much. According to reports, the forensics team had tested for LSD during their initial investigation.

and the results were negative. But years later, Dr. Oatley said the methods for detecting LSD had gotten far more sensitive. In 1996, news broke that a new testing technique did find traces of LSD in the Bogle Chandler samples. It seemed the only mystery left to solve was whether they'd taken the drug intentionally or not. A second round of testing, however...

came up negative. Another theory as to what killed Gilbert and Margaret was proposed in 2006, when Australian writer and investigator Peter Butt produced a documentary called Who Killed Dr. Bogle and Mrs. Chandler? According to the film, the murderer was none other than

than the Lane Cove River itself. Peter contended that the stream wasn't the idyllic place it appeared to be. Long ago, it had been polluted by industrial waste from a factory upstream. A dam was later built, which might have kept the polluted water stagnant. Besides that, organic matter would decompose in the mangrove trees along the banks, causing gas bubbles in the mud and muck.

For years, people reported the smell of rotten eggs along the river. And there were mass deaths of fish. Both are evidence of toxic gas bubbles of hydrogen sulfide in low concentrations. The gas has the distinctive smell of sulfur. But in high enough doses, high enough to kill a person, the gas actually paralyzes the olfactory nerves, causing a loss of smell.

which could explain why even a celebrated scientist like Gilbert Bogle might not notice its presence. Another key characteristic of hydrogen sulfide gas is that it's heavier than ambient air, so it settles to the ground, especially on calm, cool mornings like that of January 1st, 1963. That day, as Gilbert and Margaret reclined along the riverbank,

A giant bubble of hydrogen sulfide may have erupted on the river. As the toxin attacked their brain's ability to use oxygen, acute symptoms would have set in: vomiting and defecation. They might have stumbled away, disoriented, trying to escape whatever was sickening them.

and wound up 50 feet away from one another. In some ways, the theory is actually supported by the initial toxicology report. Gilbert and Margaret's blood had a strange purple hue, which can be one marker for hydrogen sulfide poisoning. At the time, however, it wasn't considered a viable option.

and wasn't investigated. You may be thinking that if their blood was tested for LSD in 1996, there must be samples to check for hydrogen sulfide as well. Unfortunately, the toxic gas dissipates too quickly in blood and tissue, so it's impossible to test conclusively for it now. The gas theory did get some blowback.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation spoke with two skeptical experts, one of whom pointed out that deaths from hydrogen sulfide are rare. This type of poisoning typically only occurs in occupational accidents, for example, when working at chemical refineries.

The other skeptic pointed out that hydrogen sulfide could have been produced by the victims' own bodies during the decomposition process, giving their blood that purplish tinge. What does this mean? Simply that we still don't know for sure what led to Gilbert and Margaret's deaths. But who knows? There may be more evidence, witnesses, or some other explanation out there waiting to be discovered.

Thank you for watching Conspiracy Theories. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. And be sure to check us out on Instagram, at The Conspiracy Pod. If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Amongst the many sources we used, we found reporting by the Sydney Morning Herald, as well as the documentary, Who Killed Dr. Bogle and Mrs. Chandler, extremely helpful to our research. Until next time, remember...

The truth isn't always the best story, and the official story isn't always the truth. This episode was researched and written by Adam DaSilva and Mickey Taylor, edited by Sarah Batchelor and Tara Wells, fact-checked by Cheyenne Lopez and Laurie Siegel, engineered by Nick Johnson, video edited and sound designed by Ryan Contra. I'm your host, Carter Royan.