Doomsday website could be key to missing family

The mysterious Englishman at the centre of WA’s latest missing persons’ case was operating a secretive doomsday internet forum called The Gateway up until he, his partner and their six-year-old daughter vanished from Nannup with another man last year.

Simon Kadwell, also known as Kadwill or Kaddy, was called Si on the chat forum, which involved about 40 members around the world, who referred to themselves collectively as The Forecourt — a religious reference to the place where believers wait for “judgment day”.

Mr Kadwell, 45, Chantelle McDougall, 27, and her daughter Leela, were last seen in Busselton on Friday, July 13, last year with their Nannup housemate, Tony Popic, 40. The group sold a car for $4000 to a local dealership, drove away in a waiting vehicle and have not been seen or heard of since.

WA Police elevated the missing persons’ complaint about Ms McDougall and Leela this month, when claims they had gone to Brazil for a holiday were found to be false. None of the missing adults has used their bank account since their disappearance and fears for the group’s safety is growing.

The West Australian has learnt that access to The Gateway chat forum could only be obtained through Mr Kadwell’s primary website, which promoted his Truth Fellowship organisation and a range of books he had written over the past decade.

“They feel everyone else is contaminated and it is best to stay out of the world as much as possible,” a former US-based member of The Gateway said. “The group is definitely programmed to the same note. They have this sacred mission and are just biding their time until the ‘end of time’. They feel they have to hide to protect the light they carry. They really believe this.”

The woman stopped using The Gateway forum in 2006 when she was asked to leave because the group deemed her to be unsuitable.

“You have to go through a lot to get into the group,” she said. “Yet, something always felt off to me.”

Revelations earlier this month about Mr Kadwell’s unwavering belief in a doomsday scenario and divine plan has heightened the concerns of Ms McDougall’s Eastern States-based family and Mr Popic’s Perth relatives.

Jim and Cathy McDougall have not seen their daughter and granddaughter since May last year, when Cathy travelled to Nannup for a holiday.

“I wish I’d gone over now, but hindsight is a wonderful thing,” Mr McDougall told The West Australian from his home near Wodonga. “It’s just a mystery to us and we may never know.”

They believe the key to solving the missing persons’ case lies in understanding the mind of Mr Kadwell, who they accuse of brainwashing and seducing their daughter Chantelle when, as a 17-year-old, she started babysitting for him and his first Australian partner — a woman called Deborah — in 1998. The teenager had been introduced to Mr Kadwell and Deborah through friends in Victoria and would eventually follow them to WA, Britain and back again. But it was during their time living together between mid-1998 and 2000 in the “new age” town of Glastonbury,

England, that allegations about Mr Kadwell surfaced.

A new follower of the Truth Fellowship, Canadian Jean Hudon, flew to Glastonbury to meet the self-proclaimed cult leader at a retreat near the village of Chalice Well.

Within weeks, Mr Hudon, was convinced the cult leader, known then as Simon Kaddy, was a fraud.

“A number of alarm bells had already started ringing when I realised you had used your position as the leader of a spiritual group to seduce (name deleted) and satisfy your craving for beautiful young ladies,” Mr Hudon wrote in a letter to Mr Kadwell. “You have way too many normal human frailties, such as being a quite substantial beer drinker, or womaniser . . . to have anything else than a normal, average personality, Simon. What a cruel disappointment.”

By September 2000, Mr Kadwell, his partner Deborah, their son Daniel and Ms McDougall were living back in WA. The West Australian located a PO box address in Karrinyup linked to the Truth Fellowship website and its calls for donations.

The same year, Ms McDougall discovered she was pregnant to Mr Kadwell and they went to live together in a rented house on Cambridge Street, Floreat, where they continued to embrace the belief that the planet was on “red alert” and it was time for “awakening servers of the divine plan” to come forward. Mr Popic moved in with them, but it was Mr Kadwell who caught the eye of the property’s landlord.

“He was strange back then,” the woman, who did not want to be named, told The West Australian. “He wasn’t any trouble. He once wrote me a six-page letter about his beliefs. It didn’t make any sense.”

With baby Leela, the couple and Mr Popic left Floreat for Denmark, where they rented a house at Ocean Beach for more than a year, all the time keeping the Truth Fellowship’s teachings alive.

During one trip to WA to see their daughter and granddaughter, the McDougalls sensed a strong reluctance from Mr Kadwell to have them around. They could see that Chantelle was out working to put food on the family’s table, while Mr Kadwell was obsessed with his spiritual world.

“You would barely see Simon,”

Mr McDougall said. “He’d be in his room on his computer. He was pretty reclusive and you could never have much of a conversation with him. I always felt he didn’t want us in their circle.”

Eighteen months before the disappearance, the group shifted to Nannup, where Ms McDougall worked at a fish and chip shop and taught swimming.

The town’s liquor store owner, former Labor MP Tony Dean, remembered Mr Kadwell, who came in regularly to buy German beer, and Mr Popic.

“They seemed down to earth and nothing out of the ordinary,” he said. “It’s strange that they haven’t touched bank accounts. It seems something more sinister than just moving east or overseas.”

Mr Popic’s brother, East Perth real estate agent Joe Popic, hopes the group has taken off somewhere as part of their alternative lifestyle plans and they will surface again in time. “I really do feel for the little girl’s grandparents,” he said. “She’s caught up in this through no beliefs of her own.”

Using computer search engines, The West Australian has discovered that the Truth Fellowship website was last updated on June 25 last year, 18 days before the group was last seen.

Police have a nationwide alert out for the three adults and Leela.