‘Please, help find our daughter’

The Victorian parents of a woman who went missing from Nannup with her daughter and the internet cult leader boyfriend believe the trio are alive and hiding in Australia.

Jim McDougall said the police missing persons unit told him and wife Kathy this week that there was still no evidence their daughter Chantelle, 29, and granddaughter Leela, 8, had left the country with Englishman Gary Felton, also known as Simon Kadwell.

The trio and a friend, Tony Popic, 42, were last seen on July 13, 2007, in Busselton where they sold a car for $4000 to a local dealer and drove away in a waiting vehicle. Mr McDougall and his wife were in Nannup this week to speak to residents who knew their daughter in an effort to generate new leads for the police investigation.

Police initially thought Mr Felton and the group may have left the country for New Zealand before travelling to Rio Branco, a Brazilian city known for its religious cults, but inquiries with South American authorities found no trace of them.

A police lead linking them to Britain also turned out to be a dead end.

Mr McDougall said none of them had used a bank account, but police believed that Mr Felton had raised funds by pawning many of their possessions and, possibly, through selling his new age cult-style literature over the internet.

It emerged last year that Mr Felton had stolen the identity of former English associate Simon Kadwell and Mr McDougall said he believed that Mr Felton had probably assumed another false identity in an effort not to be found.

“I think he’s probably got them hiding somewhere while he is up to his usual tricks of getting money off people by scamming them over the internet with this cult stuff,” Mr McDougall said.

Mr McDougall and his wife have previously accused Mr Felton of brainwashing and seducing their daughter when, as a 17-year-old, she started babysitting for him.

The couple had Leela and moved to Nannup with Mr Popic in 2004.

Mr McDougall has said he believed Chantelle and Leela were too scared to contact him.

“We think that Chantelle must feel intimidated by him (Felton) and that she is worried what he will do if she calls us or the police because she was always very close to her mother and they spoke regularly,” he said.

While in WA, Mr Felton operated a secretive doomsday internet forum called The Gateway.

He was called Si in the chat forum, which involved about 40 members around the world who referred to themselves as “the Forecourt” — a religious reference to the place where believers wait for “judgment day”.