288-Death at the Lane Cove River
Futility Closet
Greg Ross
4.8 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2020
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On New Year's Day 1963, two bodies were discovered on an Australian riverbank. Though their identities were quickly determined, weeks of intensive investigation failed to uncover a cause or motive for their deaths. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the Bogle-Chandler case, which riveted Australia for years.
We'll also revisit the Rosenhan study and puzzle over a revealing lighthouse.
Intro:
Alphonse Allais' 1897 Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man is silent.
In 1975 muralist Richard Haas proposed restoring the shadows of bygone Manhattan buildings.
Sources for our feature on the Bogle-Chandler case:
Peter Butt, Who Killed Dr Bogle and Mrs Chandler?, 2017.
"A New Twist in the Case That Puzzled a Nation," Canberra Times, Sept. 3, 2016, 2.
Damien Murphy, "New Twist in Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler Murder Mystery," Sydney Morning Herald, Sept. 2, 2016.
Tracy Bowden, "Two Women May Hold Answer to How Dr Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler Died in 1963," ABC News, Sept. 2, 2016.
Tracy Bowden, "Two Women May Hold Key to Bogle-Chandler Case," 7.30, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sept. 2, 2016.
Frank Walker, "Deadly Gas Firms as Chandler-Bogle Killer," Sydney Morning Herald, Sept. 17, 2006, 41.
D.D. McNicoll, "Riddle by the Riverside," Weekend Australian, Sept. 9, 2006, 21.
Malcolm Brown, "The Gas Did It: Bogle-Chandler Theory Blames Toxic Cloud," Sydney Morning Herald, Sept. 8, 2006, 3.
Anna Salleh, "Bogle-Chandler Case Solved?", ABC Science, Sept. 8, 2006.
Michael Edwards, "Experts Divided Over Bogle Death Theory," PM, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sept. 8, 2006.
Lisa Power, "Daring Affairs Came to a Gruesome End," Daily Telegraph, Sept. 7, 2006, 28.
Skye Yates, "New Year's Curse," Daily Telegraph, March 26, 2001, 63.
Tony Stephens, "New Year Murder Theory in Bogle Affair," Sydney Morning Herald, Jan. 2, 1998, 6.
Joseph Lose, "Lovers 'Poisoned', Not LSD; Bodies Found Neatly Covered," [Auckland] Sunday News, Jan. 28, 1996, 7.
"Breakthrough in 30-year Murder Mystery," [Wellington, New Zealand] Sunday Star-Times, Jan. 21, 1996, A1.
Jack Waterford, "Mystery Unsolved After 25 Years," Canberra Times, Jan. 1, 1988, 2.
"Court Told of Close Association," Canberra Times, May 25, 1963, 3.
"Chandler in Witness Box," Canberra Times, May 23, 1963, 3.
"Woman Called to 2-Death Inquest," The Age, March 1, 1963.
Cameron Hazlehurst, "Bogle, Gilbert Stanley (1924–1963)," Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 13, 1993.
Malcolm Brown, "Sweeney, Basil (1925–2009)," Obituaries Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University (accessed March 2, 2020).
Listener mail:
Vaughan Bell, "I Seem to Be What I'm Not (You See)," Lancet Psychiatry 7:3 (March 1, 2020), 242.
Roderick David Buchanan, "The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 56:1 (Winter 2020), 52-53.
Jennifer Szalai, "Investigating a Famous Study About the Line Between Sanity and Madness," New York Times, Nov. 27, 2019.
Emily Eakin, "Her Illness Was Misdiagnosed as Madness. Now Susannah Cahalan Takes on Madness in Medicine," New York Times, Nov. 2, 2019.
Hans Pols, "Undercover in the Asylum," Science, Nov. 8, 2019, 697.
Gina Perry, "Deception and Illusion in Milgram's Accounts of the Obedience Experiments," Theoretical & Applied Ethics 2:2 (2013), 79-92.
Hannah Dwan, "Fighting Baseball on the SNES Had Some of the Funniest Names in Gaming," Telegraph, Oct. 5, 2017.
Wikipedia, "MLBPA Baseball" (accessed March 7, 2020).
This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Steven Jones. Here's a corroborating link (warning -- this spoils the puzzle).
You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on Google Podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, or via the RSS feed at https://futilitycloset.libsyn.com/rss.
Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- you can choose the amount you want to pledge, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website.
Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode.
If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [email protected]. Thanks for listening!
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Futility Closet Podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. |
| 0:14.7 | Visit us online to sample more than 11,000 quirky curiosities from blank art to ghostly buildings. This is episode 288. I'm Greg Ross. |
| 0:24.2 | And I'm Sharon Ross. On New Year's Day, 1963, two bodies were discovered on an Australian |
| 0:30.5 | Riverbank. Though their identities were quickly determined, weeks of intensive investigation failed |
| 0:35.7 | to uncover a cause or motive for their deaths. |
| 0:38.9 | In today's show, we'll tell the story of the Bogle Chandler case, which riveted Australia for years. |
| 0:44.6 | We'll also revisit the Rosenhand study and puzzle over a revealing lighthouse. |
| 0:59.3 | And just a quick programming note, we'll be off next week, so we'll be back with a new episode on March 30th. |
| 1:02.5 | Early on New Year's Day, 1963, 15-year-old Michael McCormick was following the Lane Cove River |
| 1:09.0 | to the Chatswood Golf Links in Sydney when he saw a man in a dark gray suit lying face down on a grassy verge by the riverbank. |
| 1:16.9 | He said later, I thought he was a hobo who had been drinking and was sleeping it off, but I saw his face turning blue. |
| 1:22.6 | It did not look right. He went on to the golf course where he met a friend and the two of them spent an hour |
| 1:28.0 | collecting golf balls. Afterward, he told his friend about the man and the two of them returned |
| 1:32.5 | to the spot. The man was still there. His face had turned a darker blue and they noticed a |
| 1:37.5 | trickle of blood at his nose. McCormick's friend said he thought the man was dead. They went to a |
| 1:42.5 | nearby kiosk and reported what they'd found. |
| 1:45.2 | The police arrived to find a puzzling scene. The man's suit was only draped over him. When the coat was |
| 1:51.2 | removed, it revealed a rectangular portion of brown carpet lying on top of his shirt. His trousers |
| 1:56.7 | were merely draped over his legs. When those were removed, the man was naked from the waist down, |
| 2:01.5 | except for his shoes and socks. There was no sign of injury. It wasn't immediately clear what had |
| 2:06.7 | killed him. The puzzle quickly grew more alarming. Further downstream, a constable spotted a leg |
| 2:12.9 | protruding from under an array of flattened beer cartons. Beneath them lay the body of a woman in her late 20s, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Greg Ross, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Greg Ross and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.