A Deadly Rendezvous

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This is Andrea Gunning from Betrayal.

Are there two sides to every story?

Academy Award nominee Robin Wright stars in the girlfriend on Prime, a psychological thriller that will make you question everything.

Laura has the perfect life and a son she'd die for.

But when he brings home his new girlfriend Cherry, played by Olivia Cook, something feels off.

Also starring Lori Davidson, The Girlfriend is a twisted game of cat and mouse where nothing is what it seems.

Don't miss the girlfriend, streaming now exclusively on Prime.

Sometimes the truth is just a matter of perspective.

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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson.

I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime.

And I'm Paul Holz, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them.

Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.

And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st-century lens.

Some are solved, and some are cold.

Very cold.

This is Buried Bones.

Hey, Paul.

Hi, Kate.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

You've been in this new gig with Authorum for a while now.

And I think that people might wonder what you actually do because you've said consulting for them, and you have made this like blood oath, even though we are never in the same city, to me that you won't leave

your very bones ever.

We're in this in the long haul here, but I'm loaning you out.

So will you let us know kind of what is the process with Offram?

Is this cold cases?

What do you end up doing with them specifically?

Well, you know, basically, I'm doing what I used to do when I was active within law enforcement.

I'm just now doing it sort of from a civilian perspective, but applying the same skill sets, experiences, expertise that I did when I was working the cases for the sheriff's office, district attorney's offices out there in Contra Costa County.

And, you know, really what I do is I talk to law enforcement agencies.

I have an approach.

The way I approach casework is something that I've learned over time, as well as learned through formal training within crime scene investigation, crime scene reconstruction.

And I take a look at the case files.

You know, if law enforcement is really needing some assistance in understanding understanding what happened and where the best evidence is in the case, I ask for the autopsy reports, autopsy photos, crime scene reports, crime scene photos, forensic lab results, and I start there.

And I assess, you know, based on the injuries, the cause of death to the victim, other things that I'm seeing at autopsy, I can then take that

information and then interpret the evidence that I see at the crime scene, like blood patterns at the crime scene.

And I can start reconstructing the interactions between the offender and the victim.

And then this becomes informative in terms of

where is going to be the best evidence that can help solve the case.

And typically, you know, of course, it's looking for evidence that the offender has left on inside the victim, at the crime scene, etc.

I review the lab reports that have been done up to this point in time.

And sometimes these are cases that are from the 1970s.

And so looking at very old technology and seeing what was done, what were the results, what needs to be redone using modern technology, and then make recommendations, you know, in terms of this is the best evidence that I feel is what should be done, submitted to Othrum,

in order to move forward with the genealogy process.

And of course, I'm also talking to these detectives and giving investigative advice, you know, and it's not just restricted to the DNA side.

It's across the entire spectrum of investigative tactics, investigative resources.

And if genealogy results come back, you know, I provide advice to the agency, the investigators, on how to proceed with that information.

Because there's very specific steps in terms of how law enforcement needs to move forward in order to hopefully identify the offender and then generate probable cause to make an arrest.

So these are not specifically cold cases then, right?

No, absolutely.

And that's one of the, if you want to call it misperceptions about this genealogy tool is that it's only a cold case tool.

And

obviously it's been highly successful with the older cases.

But if there is an active public safety threat, let's say there's a serial rapist on the loose, you absolutely want to use this tool in order to try to catch that rapist rapist before he victimizes again.

And so that is part of what I will help the investigators with.

You know, we are saving lives utilizing this genealogy process and employing the technology that Othrum can bring to the table.

Well, I know this really flips a switch for you because as much as you enjoy doing podcasts, you know, and doing various things, I know you really, really love being in the field.

Right.

And you want to be involved in active cases from the 70s all the way through.

And so I know that this is like a little bit of an itch that you needed to scratch.

And so that's great.

Like I said, as long as you come back home to us, we're okay.

And you said yes.

Yes, yes, I have committed to you.

No, but it really has.

You know, it's interesting is even though I've obviously been very busy since I retired from law enforcement and doing the true crime podcast, doing the true crime TV documentaries, and I had done some consulting with law enforcement.

I will say that, you know, by taking on this formal position with Authorum, it has enhanced my mood.

You know, it's like I got a little more pep in my step because now I feel like this might sound bad, but I feel like I'm contributing again, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

Well, and it keeps you updated.

I mean, you're going to learn every single tiny new development in technology because Authorum's on top of it.

They're the ones doing it and developing it, right?

Yeah, you know, it's just fascinating to see, you know, the technology that Authorum has been using, and then they're constantly evaluating new technologies that haven't been utilized in casework yet.

You know, so they're very progressive.

It is amazing just to see, you know, coming out of the public sector,

we're slow moving, right?

With new technology and everything else, we're typically, quite frankly, 20 years behind the private sector.

And now being on the private side,

there's the sort of the public bureaucracy isn't there.

And so they can move quickly.

And you still have to abide by proper scientific principles.

You need to validate new technologies,

demonstrate that these technologies are something that can be used in casework without harming the evidence and all the various types of principles that are solid within forensic science.

But

it is fascinating to watch the private sector and

how much quicker it can move as emerging technologies start making their way out of the research, the R and D side, and into actually a practical application.

Aaron Powell, well, we're going to need your science-y skills, if that's a word.

Science-y skills.

Science-y?

We need your science-y skills because this is a case that I would say is 70%

mystery relationships, odd circumstances, and then 30% I don't understand science.

And you're going to have to explain it to us in a very simple way.

And this is sort of like an operum type story, I think.

So I'm excited to take you back to 1963 Australia.

Let's set the scene.

Okay, we are going to jump right into it.

One of, I think, some of the most interesting stories that we talk about are the Lover's Lane stories.

It seems like an endless supply of these.

And I know we go back to Zodiac Zodiac to talk about Lover's Lane sometimes.

And we've covered, I feel like, at least three or four of these.

I don't think any have been as mysterious as the ones that I'm about to tell you about.

But, you know, let's just talk generally real quick about Lover's Lane.

You've got generally two people who are vulnerable late at night, rural area, because they want privacy.

And this just seems like, you know, the perfect opportunity of a crime of opportunity, I guess.

Well, that's exactly it.

These victims, they've isolated themselves, right?

Because they want that privacy.

And

they're focused on each other typically when they're isolated.

And so it's very easy for an offender to approach them, whether they're in a vehicle or whether they're just at a particular location.

and to get close to where now the offender can exhibit some sort of control through force and or fear and then take advantage of the victims being there and being vulnerable.

So it's something that offenders purposefully seek out.

And of course, there's instances where the offender just stumbles across, you know, a lover's lane type of scenario.

But oftentimes, the offenders have prior knowledge of the location.

And so that becomes very telling in terms of, well, is this an offender that has local knowledge?

Is this an offender that has some prior relationship with one or the other of the victims that are out there?

And that's just part of the assessment in taking a look at this type of case.

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Well, with this type of case, like I said, one big head-scratching mystery as far as I'm concerned.

So here we are, New Year's Day, always an exciting morning, 8.30 in the morning, really early, 1963.

And we're in a suburb of Sydney, Australia, called Chatswood on the banks of a river called Lane Cove River.

This is a Lover's Lane area, but it's morning time, so we're probably not going to see too many lovers out here in the open.

We have two teenage boys who are walking along the riverbank.

They want to collect golf balls, and this is the easiest way to get to a local golf course.

To get golf balls, I presume to sell to golfers later on.

And they see a man lying down in the grass.

It's New Year's Day.

He probably is recovering from drinking too much.

It's summer, January in Australia, so it's warm.

And they just assume that he's passed out drunk in the grass after, you know, having a fun night the night before.

We have actually had this happen to us in Australia before.

You remember the man who, it was a big mystery, sitting upright on the beach?

Yes.

People thought he was drunk.

And then the next thing we know, he slumped over and he's dead.

And then they're trying to figure out who this guy is.

And it took decades.

So I feel like we're kind of flashing back to this, except we will find out who this man is.

So we've got these two boys who do not want trouble with a guy who could be still half drunk.

They go to the golf course, they get the golf balls, they come home.

This is about an hour and a half later.

He's still there.

And then the boys think something is going on.

They kind of creep closer to him.

He is pale.

His lips are purple.

and they freak out, as I would.

They go to a kiosk, which in Australia is kind of like a snack bar for us.

I might not be describing that right, but that's the closest I think we could get.

It's at a nearby park, and the police are called.

They get to the scene.

They check his pulse.

He is dead.

Okay.

So now the mystery begins.

So his face is pale.

His lips are purple.

Is the purple, I don't read that description all that much.

We don't talk about that.

Is that just blood loss or what is that?

This sounds just like a normal dead body at this point in time.

Obviously, with the lack of blood flow in a dead body,

you know, the blood settles with gravity.

You know, this is what we call lividity.

And so if he's, you know, this is where it's like, well, I'd need to see how he was positioned, how he was laying.

Are the lips purple because he's somewhat face down and you've got more blood kind of settling towards you know the front of the face but then the description should be that his face is looking flushed with the lips looking dark the fact that his face is looking pale tells me he's most likely mostly face up you know and

the this is just lack of blood flow to the lips and they're no longer you know looking that nice pinkish you know color well let me tell you this next bit of detail and then I'll show you a picture.

Sorry, it's not an actual picture of the victim.

It is a police officer reenacting exactly what they believe the position that the man was found in.

But it could be helpful for you.

Okay.

And there's also a little bit of a map.

Okay, so he is dead.

They examine him further and they notice immediately that

he has socks on and he has a shirt on, but he does not have any underwear on.

Remember, Lover's Lane.

He has a suit jacket and he has pants, and they have both been placed on top of him, like covering him up.

So it looks like he's wearing them, but he's not.

And so that's why I didn't want to show you the photo because that's what the police officer is doing.

So do you have any questions about that?

You understand he's half naked.

He's laying down face down

and he's covered up with a suit jacket and pants that are his as maybe a modesty thing?

I'm not sure.

Well, covering any time a victim has been covered up,

you know, that's something that behaviorally is significant.

In this scenario, I'm assuming that the suit jacket is placed over him like it looks like he's wearing it.

You know, it's almost like anatomically correct, as well as the pants.

Yep.

You know, this may be the offender just trying to...

from people walking by like the boys, you know, if there's just a casual glance, they're just going to think, oh, that guy is, you know, he's asleep.

He's passed out.

Yep.

You know, just to try to further delay the discovery of this dead body.

And I think that that's likely what's going on here.

But, you know, is it a modesty thing?

I don't think so.

Is it a taunt with the information right now?

I don't think so.

I think it literally is just, well, I've got a naked dead guy here.

People are going to, you know, know right away that there's something wrong.

I need more

time to, you know, separate myself, if the offender is the one that covered him up, separate myself from this crime scene.

And try to dress a dead body is very hard.

So let's just approximate the dress by utilizing the man's own clothes.

Well, it fooled the teenage boys because they walked right by him before.

I don't know how closely they got to him, but if he hadn't been covered up, they certainly would have noticed a half-naked man laying there, just wearing socks and a shirt.

So let me show you the reenactment, as I would call it.

Okay, you see the police officer there?

Yep.

They believe this is exactly the way that this guy was found.

Gilbert Bogle, we'll find out his name.

Okay.

So I'm looking at a photo of this man laying face down.

The photo shows his head closest to the camera and his feet furthest away.

His right arm is up

and

out to the right with his hand there.

It has a shirt on.

Head is turned to his right

and he's literally just laying on his stomach, you know, face down.

Now, his face being turned the way it is, he's not, you know, it's not straight down into the ground, but turned all the way to the right.

And this is where the description I was talking about earlier related to his face looks pale.

That's because the blood, you know, he's turned to his right.

So the right part of his face

is high and the left part of his face is low.

And so the blood is going to be settling down to the left side of his face, which you can't see.

So all the parts of the face that you can see, the blood has drained out of, if you will.

And that's why his face from the position he's lying in looks pale.

And his lips also would look pale.

And in all likelihood, when they moved the victim, the left side of the face would be more purplish looking and would have clear areas where

that side of his face is actually in the ground.

You know, that's where the compression of the tissue doesn't allow this blood, you know, that's draining down into it to be there.

And that type of, once this lividity sets, blood will, if the dead body is moved shortly after, you know,

the blood is settled, the blood can repartition with gravity.

But after a certain point,

this blood sets, this lividity sets.

And so this is where I would be able to take a look at the lividity patterns in a dead body and determine if that dead body had been moved after death and after the lividity settled, because then it's not consistent with the position of the body as found.

Well, I think this is an interesting reenactment because if you look at those pants, they are laid perfectly out.

Like I could absolutely see why the boys walked by him.

And if you look at the grass, it's flattened out.

I mean, this is not, he is not in brush.

He hasn't been tossed in brush.

He's open.

So it fooled these boys.

In this approximation of how the victim was found, there's no question that the person who is putting his suit pants and suit coat over the victim is doing this just to try to delay discovery of the body.

Now, you know, if this grass is representative of how trampled down the grass was around the victim's body, you know, that indicates that there is probably a fair amount of some sort of activity surrounding the victim and the victim's body.

Whether that's the,

you were talking to a lover's lane, is that the victim with another person and they were at this location and then that other person is gone and maybe is a victim that's at a different location?

Or was there some sort of interaction between this dead male and the offender?

Let's say there's a fight or a struggle in which now you have a lot of the surrounding brush that is being trampled during that fight.

Of course, you haven't told me anything about his injuries yet, so I can only speculate as to whether or not it indicates that there was combat between the victim and an offender.

Right.

And we'll get to injuries and we'll get to his partner in just a minute.

And I'll show you a map, but I have to let this unfold organically like the police officers would.

Okay, something interesting.

He has something weird in between the suit and his shirt.

They describe it as underfelt.

It's the material that goes between a floor and a carpet.

Okay.

So, you know, I would say a carpet pad for me, but it says it's a square that's been laid over him.

It could be something that was found and the offender just wanted to put something, you know, on his back, but it's, of course, very clear that he was not the one who did this because it was on his back.

He didn't cover himself up in this way, is what the the investigators believe.

It's weird, but they just are noting everything.

My initial thought with that is this felt was probably something that was either at the scene, or if this is a location in which the offender had access to, let's say, his vehicle.

You know, his initial thought is, I need to cover up this body.

And so he brings the felt out, and then he gets the idea to utilize the man's own clothing.

That would be my initial guess as to why this felt is there.

You know, I've got one case that I can think of in which a woman's body had been transported in the offender's vehicle and this foam padding had stuck to the woman's face because of the blood.

And so when the offender pulled the body out, the woman's body out, that foam just went with the woman and her body.

And that happens, you know, especially in the haste that these offenders are trying to cover up the crime and get away.

Here, right now, with what I know, I don't know if this man's body was transported from a different location and placed here, or if this is where the man was killed.

With the felt, I can't say.

Is that something out of the offender's environment?

Or was it from the crime scene and the offender just took advantage that it was there?

This October, we're doing something very different.

We'll be recording buried bones live at sea.

That's right.

Kate and I will both be part of the first ever True Crime Podcast Voyage, hosted by Virgin Voyages and iHeart Podcasts.

This is five nights of mystery, luxury, and Halloween fun.

Sailing to the Dominican Republic and Bimini Bahamas, adults only.

No kids, no stress.

Expect a live podcast recording of buried bones, crime-themed trivia, behind-the-scenes sessions with iHeart hosts, and yes, plenty of surprises.

And it's all wrapped in the full Virgin Voyages experience: 20-plus eateries, Michelin star chef-curated menus, luxe staterooms, Wi-Fi and entertainment included.

It's not just a cruise.

It's a celebration of thoughtful true crime storytelling, and we want you to join us.

Book your cabin now at virginvoyages.com/slash true crime.

That's virginvoyages.com/slash true crime.

We'll see you on board.

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Well, let's continue on because the police now want to know who he was here with.

They search, and about 40 feet away from the man along the riverbank, they find another body.

The teenagers had not seen this body.

There's a lot going on.

There's like mangroves and all kinds of, you know, vegetation.

Even though it looks sort of clear where the man was, she was a little more hidden.

Her dress is not fully on.

It's down around her waist.

Her body had been covered by flattened cardboard beer boxes, which we assume came from the area.

She's on her back, so she's laying face up.

But for some reason, the investigators think that she had been covered up also.

I'm not clear why they think that because I don't know why she wouldn't, if she wanted to pull the cardboard over her, I don't know why she would, but they feel like somebody else covered her up.

Let me tell you two more pieces of information and then I'll let you loose on this.

Her feet and her knees are muddy.

She had two abrasions, one on her nose and one on her shoulder.

The man and the woman's underwear, the woman's underwear, was off.

His belt was off.

They all three are found near her.

So both pairs of underwear and his belt are off, and there is also vomit and feces near both people.

And that is that so far.

I told you, head scratcher.

The initial things that I am wanting to try to determine is

assuming the

two dead victims were together, and I'm assuming that we're talking lover's lane type of thing, and then somebody comes and kills the two, is where was the initial contact?

You know, is one or the other victims' bodies a location of where, let's say, during life, they are engaged in,

let's say, some sort of consensual sexual encounter, and then an offender comes up to them, and one or the other,

ultimately is separated.

Or is there a third location where the offender initially contacts the victims and each of the victims' bodies are now in two separate locations?

And is the offender moving these victims' bodies to try to hide them?

I think the

both victims' bodies being covered

strongly suggests that the offender is trying to delay discovery.

So that's the initial thing that I would want to try to determine in looking at this case, because there could be evidence at a completely different location

than where the two victims' bodies are discovered.

Now, with the woman, obviously, you know, the face up,

the dress being down, you know, her underwear is off.

Is there a possibility that, you know, some of that could have occurred with a consensual encounter with her partner, but it also could be the offender, you know, this is a sexually motivated crime.

And in this particular scenario, I would always assume that there is a sexual motivated crime with either one of the victims.

Can't say it's just the woman, you know, I've got a man that's also nude from the waist down.

But the woman, you know, the mud on her knees and on her feet, you know, with the feet, is this something that it looks like she was upright in the mud or was stomping around in the mud?

I doubt, you know, going there with her partner that they are purposely going to try to go into some muddy location as part of their consensual encounter.

So, this likely is something that's happening later in the series of events that happened.

The abrasion to her nose, you know, that's that's a little bit interesting from just, well, what does it look like?

Because sometimes you can have abrasions to the nose during like asphyxiation attempts.

You know, if something is being pressed against her face or during a struggle, of course, you know, that an abrasion could easily happen, whether it's, you know, from the offender's own garments or her face is being pressed down into the ground during a struggle.

You know, who knows what's going on there.

But that's probably at this point all I can discern without you telling me more.

Well, I know you want to hear about the autopsy and, you know, all of those results.

And normally I would say, sure, Paul, but I'm going to wait because I do want to tell you about, I think the dynamic between these two people is going to be important it's not going to take long and then we can get into the nitty-gritty of the investigation.

These are interesting people to say the least.

So the bodies are quickly identified through IDs as Dr.

Gilbert Bogle, he's 38, and Mrs.

Margaret Chandler, who's 10 years younger.

They are married to other people.

They are together.

And he is a physicist who works at a place called the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, which is CSIRO.

I love acronyms.

It's an Australian government agency that does research across a bunch of different areas of science.

Margaret had worked there before she got married to a guy named Jeffrey, and they had two kids.

And one is only nine months old.

Jeffrey is a lab tech.

Her husband, he works there.

So now you've got three people who are connected through this research organization.

So Gilbert Bogle is this rock star physicist.

He's from New Zealand.

He was a Rhodes Scholar.

He is actually supposed to leave to work at Bell Laboratories in the U.S.

in just a few weeks.

He, as I said, is married.

He's got four kids.

The youngest is four months old.

So these are two people who are together in Lover's Lane.

Of course, the press latch is on once this all comes out.

And of course, the lead is that this incredible physicist who probably has all sorts of secrets from the government of Australia to be able to sell whenever he wants, and it turns into a big conspiracy, there's that angle, but there also becomes the angle of, of course, you've got two married people and you've got a lab tech as a husband who is jealous and certainly jealous that his wife is sleeping with a physicist at their company.

You know, she's having an extramarital fair.

The interesting thing is they were in an open marriage.

They're part of this subculture in Sydney called the Sydney Push.

I had never heard of this before.

From the 1940s to the 1970s, it's a movement of intellectuals like Jeffrey Bogle and academics and journalists who would get together in Sydney's pubs and private residences for parties and debates.

But there's this free love aspect to it.

And open relationships are very acceptable.

And everybody in their circle knew that both of these couples were engaged in an open relationship.

Now, we can stop there because the words open relationship to me are a red flag when we're talking about murder, but it really does seem like this was the kind of relationship where it didn't bother any of these couples to switch partners.

Aaron Powell, you've mentioned two potential investigative motives, if you will.

And

this idea that Gilbert has state secrets or whatever, and maybe he was killed for those purposes.

Now you've got what on the surface appears to be almost your typical lover's triangle, but that gets mitigated somewhat by the culture that they're in, these open marriages.

And of course, Jeffrey, the husband of Margaret, would have to be extensively interviewed, you know, about not only potentially his role in the homicide, but also trying to establish how accepting he is of Margaret

going and seeing Gilbert.

But then there's

other potential motive,

which is your random.

As I mentioned before, somebody just happened to stumble across them.

You can't rule anything out at this stage in the investigation with the information that we have.

Aaron Powell, well, let me tell you the details of what ends up happening.

This is a very new affair.

I don't even know if you called it.

If it's an open relationship, I don't even know if you called it an affair.

We would say, I guess we'll say relationship.

This is a new relationship.

Margaret and Gilbert had just met 10 days earlier at a Christmas party.

The night of New Year's Eve, Margaret and Gilbert and Jeffrey, her husband, all go to a party at a photographer's house who works for this research organization.

Gilbert's wife stays home because they had a little kid.

And this guest list is from like the upper echelons of the scientific community.

And Margaret's husband is this lab tech who looks at Margaret and says, this is not my scene.

I want to go to a different party where there are younger people.

He has been seeing someone for five months openly.

Her name's Pamela Logan.

He says, Pamela's at that party.

I'm going to go over there.

And Margaret, his wife, had been chatting up Gilbert.

And he said, see how things go with Gilbert.

I'm going to go meet up with Pamela and I'll see you later.

And of course, you know, grain of salt, but this is what everybody witnessed at this New Year's Eve party.

There was no acrimony.

They kind of kissed goodbye and separated.

And, you know, Jeffrey said, I'm going to go to a less pretentious party.

And we have later on when we talk about an alibi, Pamela backs him up and says, yeah, we met up because the police focus on Jeffrey.

There's no actual evidence against him.

He says he meets up with Pamela and then he goes back to meet up with his wife at the first party and she says I want to stay Gilbert's here and he says okay I'm I'm gonna go pick up Pamela from the second party the two of them go and pick up Jeffrey and Margaret's kids from Margaret's house parents house and then Pamela stays in the car and so you know Gilbert and Margaret everybody sees them the victims leave together from this party Jeffrey is with somebody he's either at Margaret's parents' house picking up kids or he's with Pamela the woman he's sleeping with or he's

at one of two parties where there are tons of people who witness this.

It doesn't mean anything happened.

It just means like the police are stymied at this point because the jealous husband angle isn't really working for them.

I know that was a lot.

Sorry, Paul.

They're busy couples.

Yeah, no, for sure.

You know, and of course, it's this is Jeffrey's alibi, you know, and

it's, as we've discussed in prior cases, it's really trying to assess the veracity of his alibi.

Now, on the surface, it sounds pretty good at this point in time that, yeah, his whereabouts are accounted for, and there doesn't appear to be any emotional issues that would cause concern that Jeffrey was having problems with Margaret and Gilbert being together.

But we're talking about a stretch of time

before the victim's bodies are found.

So what happened from the time that nobody can account for Jeffrey, Jeffrey's whereabouts, and the time that the victim's bodies are found?

You know, Pamela has a strong connection to Jeffrey, and is she somebody that would be willing to lie, you know, in order to protect him?

Margaret's parents, being family, you know, potentially would also protect Jeffrey.

But the issue there is it's their daughter that has has ended up dead.

You know, so if they're suspicious of Jeffrey, I think that they would be more willing to say, hey, you know, there were some other issues going on.

But also, we don't know after both couples leave these groups that they're with, was there any interaction between anybody?

You know,

Jeffrey, Margaret, and Gilbert were all of a sudden things went sideways very quickly, but we don't have any witnesses to that.

You know, that's always a possibility.

And Jeffrey and Pamela say they went back to, I think it was Pamela's house, and that was that.

And what's interesting is, well, I mean, luckily for Jeffrey, people saw him all over town, off and on all night.

He apparently drove a really unusual type of car that people, it was a vintage Vauxhall, which I looked up and it's pretty cool.

And everybody remembered it.

So he's driving around all over town with this hot woman, Pamela.

And so people remember it.

I'm not saying anything didn't happen.

I'm just saying that this is, you know, he seems more solid than many of the husbands we talk about.

Of course, early on in the investigation, Jeffrey is going to be a prime person that has to be looked at strongly by investigators.

But as the information about Jeffrey's whereabouts comes into play and how accepting of

this kind of open marriage environment or culture that they are in, Jeffrey gets reduced as being a suspect.

He's not eliminated as a suspect in my mind, but most certainly now other potential investigative avenues need to probably be more strongly pursued than Jeffrey.

Yeah.

And one thing that I think was a red flag for the media, not for the police, but for the media, was that when he is taken to see his wife at the morgue, he doesn't show very much emotion when he sees her body.

And I just think, I mean, that's just silly to judge somebody off of their knee-jerk reaction of seeing their dead loved one laying on a slab.

I just, I can't, I don't think you can predict that.

And he just said, what am I supposed to do?

I'm surrounded by a huge crowd of police officers.

I'm not going to break down and cry there.

But police did wonder about that reaction too.

No, but, you know, again, everybody reacts differently.

And of course,

you know, men, we have a tendency to be

more hiding our emotions, especially if we're around other men.

You know, so there's nothing about that that I would put any weight on.

You know, it'd be noticed, but it's like,

I can kind of understand,

you know, internally, he may be getting, maybe breaking up, but he's not showing it externally.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: And, you know, back to the theory that Dr.

Bogle was killed because of his research as a physicist in state secrets, and he's taking off for the U.S.

in a few weeks.

His colleagues said this guy didn't know anything.

This was not a state secret kind of person.

He didn't have that kind of knowledge.

So the police scratched that off their list.

Now things get interesting because now we have to figure out how they died.

So the medical examiner looks at their bodies and there is nothing wrong with them.

There's no defensive wounds.

I mean, except for the scratch that I mentioned to you about from Margaret and some abrasions on her knees, which could have come from, you know, in her time with Gilbert before she died.

And frankly, the scratch could have also.

I mean, we don't know, but there's nothing wrong with either one of them, their bodies.

They're doing an autopsy and they're looking and they're saying, there just seems like nothing.

So they think poison.

And this is why it's an interesting story.

What do you think?

Well, I have to rely upon the medical examiners or the pathologists' findings.

You know, if there's no obvious cause of death, then of course toxicology is going to be key to try to figure out what caused them to die.

If it is a poisoning, let's say Gilbert and Margaret are together and then they're both starting to succumb to whatever poison.

This is where you could see where one or the other ends up walking away.

And that's why the two bodies are distributed.

But then the offender, they didn't cover themselves up.

The offender is there.

Right.

You know, so is the offender just watching, waiting for them to die if he administered or she administered a poison?

You know, I don't know.

This is this is sounding a little goofy to me.

But of course, I'm sure you're going to reveal at some point, you know, what the toxicology results are.

Well, it is very frustrating for everybody involved, this toxicology route that they go down.

Well, first of all, they say, well, if this is poison, clearly Jeffrey poisoned them.

I think, I don't know, poor Jeffrey.

I mean, he was pursued vigorously by the police.

So the toxicologist had limited resources.

This is 63, 1963.

There was somebody who wrote a book who I'll mention later, but this is a quote from the book.

And it says that the toxicologist with his limited resources was, you know, looking to see what kind of poison would have caused this.

He spent 13 months.

This was a long investigation, day and night.

He went through every possible poison looking for the killing agent.

He spoke to experts around the world, the FBI, Britain, and nobody could help him.

And it's a conundrum.

And I can describe what he did find.

So, if you think somebody's been poisoned, do you really have to do that?

Do you have to, is there one test per poison with hundreds of poisonous plants?

And of course, like man-made poisons, do you literally have to run 100 to 200 tests to figure out what happened?

There's not one catch-all that'll, you know, tell you about three tests or three poisons.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Basically,

most poisons are grouped into a certain class of compounds.

And so, in modern toxicology, we have screening methods.

So, if we want to find opiates, as an example, the screening method will see

the various types of opiates that somebody could have ingested or injected in the system.

And so, you get this positive for opiates.

Now, you can key in on using a specific type of test methodology to identify which opiate is in that person's system.

Now, there are substances that kind of stand alone.

And yes, you need to specifically perform tests for those particular substances or you won't detect them.

You know, and the problem, of course, is that you have a limited sample to begin with.

And in 1963, the testing methods aren't going to be very sensitive.

So every time the toxicologist is performing a test, whether it be off of the blood or the urine or tissue, vitreous humor, whatever substance out of the body was collected, they're consuming some of that sample.

You know, so you can only do so many tests.

You can at a certain point completely consume the sample and not identify what toxin, what poison is in these victims' bodies.

So this is where, you know, I'm kind of curious to see, you know, what this toxicologist did find.

And is that going to be revealing as to what substance

may have been used?

Aaron Powell, well, when the police hear this could be poisoned, they are immediately dispatched back to the crime scene.

They go to the riverbank, they want to see: is there a vial?

Is there a bottle?

Are there syringes?

We're in Australia.

Where are the venomous spiders?

I'm assuming there are probably snakes everywhere.

They test all the plates, the food scraps, cutlery, empty bottles from the party where they were, where Gilbert and Margaret were.

They get help from scientists around the world for ideas on what kind of poisonous compound they could test for.

And they start testing for hundreds of compounds.

And here's what they find to help guide them a little bit.

The toxicologist says, here's the weird thing.

The blood appears to be a purple color in both of them.

A key to him that he thinks that this purple color blood means poison, and both of them have it.

Both have purple blood.

He said that any number of poisons could have caused this.

A newspaper report says that examiners found a knotted area near the heart on both Gilbert and Margaret that looks to them like strychnine poisoning.

Gilbert's got more of it, you know, in his system, but Margaret, it's easy to miss this little knotted area, negative for strychnine.

So that is like the physical manifestation of if this is poison, what they're saying it actually looks like in their body.

What do you think about that?

Well, it's a physical observation, you know, and I'm not familiar with what would turn blood purple,

but it's definitely something, you know, today

that could be researched and see what, you know, what various chemicals would cause that type of color change.

We know, for example, carbon monoxide, you know, that turns the blood very bright red.

Okay.

You know, so there's that, you know, this is not

an unheard of phenomenon.

This purple color change, you know, that's where I would be googling the hell out of that and generating a list of possible substances that would cause that, that have this type of potent effect.

Assuming, you know, they're they're seen and they're fine leaving the party that night, you know, this, whatever poison this is, is fast acting.

You know, that's right.

Right.

It's not like they were hospitalized and succumbed to, you know, organ failure and all that.

This is something that is probably interrupting, a poison that is interrupting the nervous system,

you know, preventing them from being able to breathe or something along those lines.

So it's, it is a very potent chemical that is in their bodies.

Basically, it's 100% fatal for both, you know, the two victims that were exposed to it, if this is truly a poisoning.

Well, the toxicologist makes an interesting observation.

He agrees with you.

This had to have been fast acting.

He said what he had been testing for based on like the purple color, strychnine and that kind of stuff, he said if that had been slipped into their drinks at the party, they would not have felt well enough to have sex.

And they found fresh semen on Gilbert's jacket.

which indicated to them that they were having sex.

So he said, whatever happened to them happened there on the riverbank.

I don't think this was something that happened at one of these wild parties.

And it sounds like that's something that you think is probably likely also.

Aaron Powell, the covering of the bodies

indicates the offender is likely there, you know, at least after they're dead and is trying to hide the bodies.

Now, the victims voluntarily go to this location in order to engage in consensual sex.

You know, what is their relationship with who the offender is?

For the offender to be able to apply a poison to them, get them to ingest something.

Is this, you know, a friendly encounter?

You know, maybe it's another person in this open marriage type of thing that hey, is coming over and is saying, hey, you know, it's now my turn with Margaret or whatever, right?

And, but has bad intention and it's like, hey, let's have a drink before the three of us engage in a consensual encounter.

I don't know.

It is odd, but it's something where the offender's there definitely after the victims are dead, but may have been there prior to the victims being dead and somehow is administering a poison to both victims at the scene.

So that's the big mystery for me is how does the offender do that?

Yeah, it's interesting.

This is making all kinds of headlines around the world, of course.

And they're asking for help from around the world to Australia's benefit here.

Okay, so they find a receipt in Margaret's pocket for a dog deworming tablet, set of tablets.

She had bought from a Dachshund breeder.

They have several dogs.

And they asked the breeder, would these deworming tablets hurt people if it had been like some odd murder-suicide pact using dewormer pills?

And of course, the breeder said, yeah, it would have made them upset.

I'm not sure this would have killed them.

And of course, there was no evidence in their digestive system.

So they are really kind of up shit creek at this point, the police.

And while the toxicologist is spending 13 months running tests on hundreds of different compounds based on this purple blood, the police want to know, okay, so they were poisoned.

How did that happen?

Somebody covered them up.

So they keep trying to figure out, okay, you know, maybe this is a different person than the killer.

Maybe there's no killer at all.

And they start looking, kind of trying to track down Nair to Wells.

And they said that they want to look for someone who at least knew that the couple was dead because the bodies had been covered up.

They zero in on a voyeur named Raymond Chalice, who often hangs out on Lover's Lane, Gross.

Raymond contacted the police himself and said, listen, I saw these people.

They were on the riverbank, but he didn't actually see them have sex.

He didn't see them die.

And he,

listen to this, the police say, well, this is not the guy who gave them poison.

This is not the guy who killed him.

This is not the guy who covered him up because he only has one arm.

And they don't think that he could have covered them up.

I don't know why they, you know, dismissed this guy, but he only has one arm.

And so they dismiss him.

And plus, he had come to the police and said, I saw them, but, you know, they were alive when I saw him and I was gone.

Sure.

You know, and in some ways, he's inserting himself into the investigation, but he also could just be, you know, a

good witness

and is doing the right thing.

The one arm thing, you know, I don't know what to make of that.

You know, right now, it's hard to assess any physical attributes the offender has because we don't know how the victims died.

Right.

You know, and a one-armed person can easily lay out clothing on top of a dead body.

You know, so I don't know about that.

You know, but this one-armed guy is at least able to, you know, just take in his information at face value, place the victims at a location at a certain time and still be alive.

So whatever happened to them happened after that point in time, if the guy's telling the truth.

Okay, let's move on to developments that I think will probably be interesting for you.

So, one thing that I had neglected to tell you, oops, accidentally, the police had wanted to drag the river where they were to see if anything had been dumped, you know, syringes, anything like that.

But they couldn't because the river was so black and murky with pollution that they could not go into the river.

It was not safe.

And now comes the most, what I think people consider the most plausible cause of death, which is they believe, and this is now stretching into 2006 and a book that came out in 2016, the belief is that it is possible.

that this couple had been made sick by organic material decomposing from the pollution of the Lane Cove River, hydrogen sulfide, that they had all the earmarks for it.

And it was a river that was making people sick.

Anytime anybody spent any time near the river, it was making people physically ill.

And I have a lot of info, lots of science-y off-ram-type info.

You know, hydrogen sulfide or dihydrogen sulfide, yes, that is a noxious gas.

It smells like rotten eggs.

Like, if you want to go and

engage in consensual sexual encounter, this is not the environment you want to be in.

You know, I do not see Gilbert and Margaret,

if there is a high level of dihydrogen sulfide or hydrogen sulfide in the air, it's not going to be a place where they want to be.

It's going to smell horrific.

This is an open environment.

You know, so it's the theory that they are breathing in this noxious gas, or is it something that the mud itself, you know, has a higher concentration?

And because they're down, laying on the ground during this consensual encounter, that they are now getting a high exposure of it.

You know, I have questions about this.

You know, that first, it's like, why Gilbert and Margaret and not other people who are going to this lover's lane?

Why did they end up dead and not others?

You know, maybe people are falling ill due to the pollution.

Yeah.

I mean, it's definitely something that

I wouldn't, I'm not ruling it out, but I just am skeptical, is probably the way I'd put it at this point.

And you go back to the victims' bodies were covered.

And if they had just died from pollution, who's covering their bodies and why are they covering the bodies?

You know, that to me tends to suggest that there's some malfeasance by the person who's covering their bodies.

So that's that's odd.

I'm not liking this toxic gas due to pollution theory and that this was just an accidental death right now.

Unless some transient wanders through and is like, well, two dead bodies.

People know I'm here a lot.

I just want to get away and I'm just going to cover them up.

Something odd like that, which is not unheard of.

But right now, I'm skeptical.

Well, not a transient guy, a greyhound trainer.

What?

Like as in Greyhound the dog?

Yep.

There's a man named Eddie Batiste.

He would illegally run his his dogs, the greyhound dogs, that would race and people would gamble on.

He used the golf course to run these dogs illegally.

This is the same golf course where the teenage boys would show up and get the golf balls.

He was there that night running the dogs after the golf course had shut down.

He is very religious.

He is very straight-laced.

And his son said, I believe when my dad came back through, he saw the bodies and he covered them up because he is very religious.

He said, my dad wouldn't admit it, but everybody knows that's what happened.

And he didn't call the police because he was doing something illegal.

So he covered them up out of propriety.

And when he died, there was an obituary in a Greyhound trade magazine that said

he was the one who covered up the bodies.

He just felt like it was right.

And I don't know if he thought that they died of pollution or what.

So isn't that interesting?

You had said that.

And then this is what this son says.

That's absolutely what my dad would have done.

Yeah, but it's one thing to say that's what my dad would have done.

But did the dad do it?

Did this man at some point ever come forward and say, yeah, I was going to, I mean, running the Greyhounds, you know, back in 1963, how much longer did this man live?

And why not just come forward and say, yeah, I did it.

Yeah, I was doing that illegal thing with the Greyhounds.

Nobody, you know, 10 years later, nobody's going to go after him for that.

Why not just say, yeah, I did this?

You know, it's such a high-profile case with such a mystery.

I'm the one who did it.

And it would help further the investigation as opposed to the speculation by the son.

Yeah, I understand what you mean.

You know, the son did not give specifics on why he felt so strongly that this happened, how he knew that his dad would have taken that route, and his dad was gone that night.

I think his son just put the pieces together.

But let me give you more information because we do have eyewitness accounts later on.

There are people who were there and didn't want to come forward because they were scared, also.

And I can tell you what they said.

But let me do the sciencey.

Is it okay to do the sciencey stuff first?

Sure.

You're so frustrated.

I can't make it easy all the time on you, Paul.

Okay, so we're back to hydrogen sulfide.

So here's the history of the Lane Cove River, which is not a place you want to swim, at least in this time period.

So in the 40s, people living near the river said this is an awful smell coming off of it.

There's discoloration in their bathroom hardware and paint.

They said that they think their children are struggling to breathe.

In 1947, there are complaints that large numbers of dead fish and black sand on the riverbanks by a bridge are popping up and this is where the bodies are eventually found.

So in the wake of these complaints, that's a long time ago, but in the wake of the complaints in 1948, the local commission issues a study on the river.

The scientist who carries out the investigation says he didn't feel well while he was doing this.

He said when he was investigating, he witnessed an explosion from the riverbank with a lot of black muck bubbling up.

And he said truckloads of dead fish came up.

His study found that the river bottom had high concentrations of hydrogen sulfate from a nearby flour mill that had been dumping waste into the river for 60 years.

And in an area of the river that was dammed right where Margaret and Gilbert were, the gas could build up and the river bottom could suddenly release large amounts of hydrogen sulfite and it goes on and on and on.

But essentially, this is like, it sounds like the most polluted river.

They have found incredibly high levels of hydrogen sulfite.

And to address, and then I'm going to let you loose on this, to address what you had said about the rotten eggs, they acknowledge this.

The scientists acknowledge this, but this is what they say happens.

At a low concentration, hydrogen sulfite doesn't have a smell.

At a concentration that can can make someone sick to your stomach, rotten eggs, exactly what you said.

But at the very highest concentration, it smells sickly sweet.

And before you know it, it can instantly paralyze the olfactory nerve and disrupt your ability to absorb oxygen.

A person poisoned by large concentrations, the same amount that they found coming from this river, would panic, become disoriented, and then die.

By the way, then your blood would be discolored purple with hydrogen sulfide is what a more recent toxicologist had said.

Aaron Ross Powell, yeah, and that does make sense to me from

the different concentrations of this chemical and how it changes

the smell.

Because that's something when we were heavily involved in processing drug labs early on in my career, you know, that was something that we had to be very cognizant of is that some of these chemicals that our noses would say, hey, be careful.

At a certain point, you can no longer smell it, and then you're really in danger.

So I think my skepticism is reduced for sure.

Okay.

With what you had just described, I am absolutely puzzled why anybody would want to go near this river, you know,

voluntarily, you know, for a consensual encounter.

It sounds like the last place anybody would want to go.

But what if it's they describe it as like sickly sweet?

Like, I don't know if that's like rolling around in a magnolia bush or something, but it's not the rotten egg smell, they say.

Right.

It is the sweeter smell.

I don't know.

And the investigators bring that up too.

So, you know, as we move forward here, you know, we know that this could have happened very quickly.

In addition, if you needed any more convincing, they said that they were very close to the water level where they were found.

And sulfide, hydrogen sulfide is heavier than air.

So a person, someone laying down would be exposed to higher concentrations more than a person standing up.

And the air was so still that night that the gas could have collected and concentrated at a low-lying area.

And the exact spot where they are found is underneath a little outcropping where the mangroves are on the other side.

And there's kind of like a little bowl where they think the gas could have collected.

So all of this is kind of comes out in this book in 2016 by a guy named Peter Butt.

He's the one who kind of came up with this theory to begin with and he came out with witnesses who are really interesting.

So and now it sounds like you are saying that you kind of buy this pollution, killed these two people potentially.

You know, there's a toxicologist that they brought over from America in 2000 who looked at the lab reports, the pathology reports, and said, I think they inhaled something.

I don't think they ate anything.

And I think it's hydrogen sulfide.

So I don't know.

That's where we are until we hear from these witnesses.

Yeah, you know, as I mentioned, as you provided sort of a foundation for the findings.

Yeah, my skepticism is now, okay, I'm starting to buy into this, but I want to hear more before I'm willing to sign off that this is just an accidental death.

Now you can tell me what you think about this.

So this this book comes out.

Peter Butt, who is also a filmmaker, in the book, he quotes a retired psychologist who says that in early 1965, so this is two years after their deaths, two years later, a woman who had been an eyewitness to the deaths told him.

this psychologist, what she saw that night.

And the psychologist in turn told this filmmaker, the woman who wasn't a patient, she was just somebody that this man helped one night has never come forward to authorities.

So this is not just secondhand, it's thirdhand information, but you can tell me what you think about it.

So according to the psychologist, this woman went with another woman to the riverbank in the wee hours of New Year's Day.

And the reason she hasn't come forward is because the woman she went with was her girlfriend as in partner.

And this was not going to be, you know, a positive thing if anybody found out about it.

And on top of that, you know, same-sex relationships were illegal in Australia at this point.

And she was from a very Catholic family.

The two women were on the riverbank for a little bit.

So, I mean, now you got another couple.

It must not have smelled that bad because you've got other people who were there for a while.

The woman who talked to the psychologist said, I left my purse behind.

Where they were, they were going to walk back.

They backtracked.

And when they got back to the riverbank, there was a couple having sex, you know, Gilbert and Margaret having sex on the ground by the riverbank.

The two women freaked and they hid in the bushes not to be weird but they just wanted to get the flipping person leave and not get caught and arrested or something or get fined they stayed for a little bit low on the ground and there was a little depression where they had you know were able to scoot down to kind of stay out of sight they had been close to the hydrogen sulfide they were feeling very ill and she said that she and her girlfriend heard the woman say, why have you stopped?

To Gilbert, the man having sex with her.

They don't hear the man say anything.

And the woman says, keep on going.

Then they look and they can see her.

She grabs her throat.

She makes a strangling noise and she staggers away.

The man lurches away a little bit and the witnesses run to go get the person, then take off.

And they can smell something weird, kind of rotten, kind of sweet.

So this is what they say happened.

They saw the actual deaths happen.

The victims separated, you know, and the women grabbed the person, took off, and never looked back.

What do you think about that?

Well, it appears that the details that she's providing add up with the findings, you know, with the crime scene.

You know, I think part of the way that I would want to assess her statements, just to increase confidence, is have her take me to this location.

You know, versus am I dealing with somebody who's read the accounts and has constructed something?

Okay, take me to the location.

Where did you see them having sex?

You know, what directions did you see each one of them, you know, start stumbling off?

And if everything is adding up, if she was able to do that, then yeah, I would put 100% credibility into what she's saying.

Right now, I'm definitely thinking she saw things.

I just want to kind of get that extra confidence and go, yep, okay, you know,

I've got a good witness here.

Well, I will say, you know, that is the end of this story.

This is still kind of an unsolved case, but this is the most plausible theory that has popped up.

It has all come from this guy, Peter Butt's documentary, and in his book, Jeffrey shows up in the documentary, and he said, I think this was an industrial accident that killed my wife and Gilbert.

And, you know, he said, we would have continued on.

Everything would have been fine if they had been smarter, I guess, about where they picked a lover's lane.

But the people that had showed up to this riverbank, it just, everybody felt really sick and nauseous.

I just had no idea the fact that they were laying down would have exposed them so much more than these two women who were even,

they said as soon as they started crotching down, it just felt like within a minute they could just, it just felt woozy, felt bad.

So, anyway, an interesting story.

I mean, there's no real conclusion to this except to say we have talked about poisoning stories.

Remember the two little girls who died, the sisters who died?

Right.

Poisoning mysteries are, I think, in some ways, some of the most interesting stories that we talk about.

We just don't know what happened.

And all of these circumstances were so odd.

And what a terrible way to die.

Of all the terrible ways to die, to think about that.

Like, you know, it is so unexpected.

It is happening and you're exposed, you know.

It's one of those fears, like you hear about whether it be couples that are on a honeymoon or families that go on vacation and carbon monoxide gets them inside whatever facility they're staying in.

They fall asleep and they're done.

I think I'm fairly convinced with this theory.

Now, would they be able to absolutely prove it?

Probably not.

The level of pollution in this river, I mean, the water is described as black.

I have this vision.

I had to look this up, but you know, that movie, From Here to Eternity, and there's that famous scene of the couple that are

on the beach and the waves are coming over them as they're kissing.

And it's like, Gilbert and Margaret laying down and that close to this crappy black water.

It's just like, you know,

I think I would have picked a different location, a little more romantic location.

Well, an interesting story.

Medical mysteries I bring to you every so often, Paul Holes, to challenge you.

And

this is a good one.

Yeah, no,

I always want to, I want the bad guy.

That's the frustrating thing

with these accidental deaths.

It's like, oh, there's no bad guy except if you want to blame the various companies that were polluting the river over decades.

And we will, but yes, I agree.

Yeah.

You know, maybe, maybe, you know, people could have been charged for that type of environmental negligence.

And who knows?

Anyways, fascinating case.

Good.

Well, I will bring you yet another one next week.

Awesome.

I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks.

Thank you.

This has been an Exactly Right Production.

For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com/slash buried bones sources.

Our senior producer is Alexis Emerosi.

Research by Maren McClashin, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel.

Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

You can follow follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones Pod.

Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, A Gilded Age Story of Murder and the Race to Deco the Criminal Mind, is available now.

And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.

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