Speaker 1: That yet Kelly Rachel announce her.
Speaker 2: She's on us first year.
Speaker 3: So the four officers arrive at the property.
Speaker 2: They are Constables Rachel Mcrowe twenty nine, Matthew Arnold twenty six,
Speaker 2: Keeley Broth twenty eight, and Randall Kerr twenty eight, very
Speaker 2: young junior police officers.
Speaker 3: They find that the gate is locked.
Speaker 2: They jump the fence and they start walking up the
Speaker 2: fairly long driveway towards the house.
Speaker 1: The property these four officers are walking to is owned
Speaker 1: by Gareth Train and his wife Stacy. The police are
Speaker 1: responding to a routine welfare check for Gareth's brother Nathaniel.
Speaker 2: They didn't see the two brothers, Gareth and Nathaniel lying
Speaker 2: on the ground in full camo, aiming rifles at them,
Speaker 2: and so what followed has been described as both an
Speaker 2: ambush and an execution. As Arnold was stepping over the fence,
Speaker 2: the brothers shot and killed him. They shot mcrow three times.
Speaker 2: Kirk managed to run behind a tree and from there
Speaker 2: get back to the police cars, which were under heavy fire.
Speaker 2: He was shot in the hip and then he managed
Speaker 2: to get away and drive for help.
Speaker 4: I'm in the car.
Speaker 2: Gareth took Arnold's handgun off him, and as she planned
Speaker 2: for her life, he killed the wounded mcrow, who was
Speaker 2: on the ground.
Speaker 1: With two officers down, The trains continued their ambush.
Speaker 2: Roth was hiding in the long grass while all this
Speaker 2: was happening, and then the brothers set fire to the
Speaker 2: remaining police car and also that long grass in which
Speaker 2: he was hiding.
Speaker 3: They were trying to drive her out into the open.
Speaker 1: At this point a neighbor he's the noise of gunfire
Speaker 1: and sees smoke. He comes to help, shot dead too.
Speaker 1: The remaining two police officers managed to get away and
Speaker 1: call for backup.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, these two of them, I think I've been
Speaker 5: shot at cut.
Speaker 2: And over the next six hours a siege ensued. They
Speaker 2: refused to negotiate or surrender, and eventually all three trains
Speaker 2: were shot and filled by the.
Speaker 3: Police had to drive away a bit.
Speaker 1: This siege, where six people, including two police officers, lost
Speaker 1: their lives, has been labeled Australia's first fundamentalist Christian terrorist attack.
Speaker 1: The train family believed the end of days had come
Speaker 1: from Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM Today.
Speaker 1: Journalist and author of the Believer, Sarah Krasmastin on what
Speaker 1: the trains believed and what the inquest into the killings
Speaker 1: can tell us about extremism in Australia. It's Monday, August five, Sarah.
Speaker 1: The very first question I think that everyone had after
Speaker 1: this attack was why why had these three people shot
Speaker 1: and killed police and their neighbor. And it became clear
Speaker 1: very quickly that they had held very strong religious and
Speaker 1: conspiratorial beliefs. So tell me about what was reported about
Speaker 1: that initially.
Speaker 2: So understandably there was a huge volume of coverage.
Speaker 4: This lonely dirt road was the only way in of Nathaniel,
Speaker 4: Gareth and Stacy trained sovereign status. They called it remote,
Speaker 4: isolated and heavily fortified so they could protect it with
Speaker 4: deadly murderous force.
Speaker 2: Much of that report emphasized the bizarre quality of where
Speaker 2: the trains lived in Wimbilla, and it's.
Speaker 3: An area known as the Blocks.
Speaker 2: So we heard about how this place where they lived
Speaker 2: was quote harsh and isolated and the perfect place for
Speaker 2: this devastating crime.
Speaker 3: There were keepout signs on the gates.
Speaker 2: They lived on isolated bush blocks with no electricity or
Speaker 2: running water or sewerage, and that this was kind of
Speaker 2: a mecha for people with alternative lifestyles. Again, very distancing,
Speaker 2: putting all of this fear and kind of this freaky
Speaker 2: coating on the crime that could only happen in this
Speaker 2: one exceptional place.
Speaker 5: The area where the murders took place is known by
Speaker 5: Wyambilla locals as the Blocks, a bit of a mecha
Speaker 5: for people seeking alternative lifestyles. It's littered with keepout signs,
Speaker 5: harsh isolated, the perfect scene for the most devastating crime.
Speaker 2: That dovetailed with what we were learning in the reporting
Speaker 2: that was uncovering rapidly the online activity of the Trains.
Speaker 5: One of the offenders, Gareth Train, was heavily involved in
Speaker 5: the online conspiracy community.
Speaker 3: Is that an avenue that you'll be investigating, Yes, definitely, definitely. So.
Speaker 2: We heard that Gareth had had an increasing obsession with
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories and that they had also been voiced to
Speaker 2: a certain extent by Nathaniel and Stacy. During the siege
Speaker 2: and following the murders, Gareth and Stacy posted their online
Speaker 2: video under their middle names Daniel and Jane, and Gareth
Speaker 2: said that they came to kill us and we killed
Speaker 2: them and referred to police as demons and devils. We
Speaker 2: know that Gareth had espoused very strong anti government, anti police,
Speaker 2: anti vaccine views. Gareth was described as a doomsday prepper
Speaker 2: that he was getting ready to live out the apt
Speaker 2: acalypse on his property. He supported the Sovereign Citizen movement,
Speaker 2: and he made a number of claims.
Speaker 3: About everything from the.
Speaker 2: Need to build an arc to the fact that Princess
Speaker 2: Diana had been killed in a blood sacrifice and that
Speaker 2: Port Arthur.
Speaker 3: Was a false flag operation.
Speaker 2: COVID, however, seems to have triggered for all three of
Speaker 2: them an increasing fixation on various extremist beliefs and conspiracy theories. Initially,
Speaker 2: Queensland Police did not label these killings as domestic terrorism,
Speaker 2: but after looking a bit more into the train's preoccupation
Speaker 2: with fundamentalist Christian premillennialism, they did change that assessment and
Speaker 2: they labeled this as Australia's first religiously motivated terrorist attack
Speaker 2: and also his first fundamentalist Christian attack.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting as you say this attack, it's been
Speaker 1: described as Australia's first Christian fundamentalist terror attack, and I
Speaker 1: wonder when you think about that, to what extent do
Speaker 1: you see Gareth and Nathaniel and Stacy as Christian and
Speaker 1: to what extent with a conspiracy theorists, how do you
Speaker 1: unpick those two parts of their motivations and their psyche.
Speaker 2: That's the key question, and to a large extent, the
Speaker 2: work of the inquest over the next five weeks, and
Speaker 2: I think it's also to sub extent unanswerable.
Speaker 3: It's useful to explain a.
Speaker 2: Bit about the brother's childhood and their background. They were
Speaker 2: raised in a conservative Christian family. Their father, Ronald Train,
Speaker 2: had a spiritual rebirth and founded his own fundamentalist evangelical church,
Speaker 2: where he was the pastor.
Speaker 3: For nearly thirty years.
Speaker 2: When the brothers were in their twenties, both Nathaniel and
Speaker 2: Gareth stopped any contact with the parents. This has been
Speaker 2: explained in terms of the way in which allegations that
Speaker 2: the brothers made about childhood's sexual abuse were received by
Speaker 2: the family. Stacy also became increasingly estranged.
Speaker 3: From her family.
Speaker 2: Eventually her marriage to Nathaniel ended and she married Gareth.
Speaker 2: This was, especially in the early reporting, described as a
Speaker 2: bizarre love triangle or a love tryst. It evoked a
Speaker 2: huge amount of interest in the general public, so the
Speaker 2: evidence that led to this being labeled as religiously motivated
Speaker 2: violent extremism was the premillennialist nature of a lot of
Speaker 2: the beliefs that Gareth had expressed online and that had
Speaker 2: been found in Stacy's diary. I hadn't heard of it
Speaker 2: before I researched the story. But premillennialism is based on
Speaker 2: a literal interpretation of certain verses of the Book of
Speaker 2: Revelation that describe a period of apocalypse that will be
Speaker 2: followed by the second coming of Christ. So the Trains
Speaker 2: understood COVID as a sign of those end times, and
Speaker 2: they also understood premillennialism as requiring and even sanctioning violence
Speaker 2: against certain devils and demons in order to bring about
Speaker 2: this kind of transformational period and eventually perfect utopia. So
Speaker 2: because of the nature of those beliefs, which again I
Speaker 2: should say are not common to Christianity is typically practiced,
Speaker 2: their offending was labeled as religiously and not ideologically motivated.
Speaker 2: But now that the inquest is underway, we might get
Speaker 2: a little bit more understanding of what was ideological, what
Speaker 2: was religious, and what was pathological.
Speaker 3: After the break.
Speaker 1: Was this attack caused by a shared delusion Sarah. The
Speaker 1: coronial inquest into the Wimbilla killings. It's been set up
Speaker 1: to understand the fundamentals of the police response and what
Speaker 1: happened in that six hour siege, but tell me a
Speaker 1: bit more about its scope and what else we might
Speaker 1: actually learn by the end of this So to.
Speaker 2: The extent that it's possible, the inquest is going to
Speaker 2: be looking at everything that coalesced on that day as
Speaker 2: it hears from about sixty different witnesses in her overview,
Speaker 2: which kind of set out the roadmap for how the
Speaker 2: inquest is going to run over the next few weeks.
Speaker 2: Counsel assisting the court, Ruth O Gorman Casey, provided fresh
Speaker 2: details about you know, the trend's beliefs and introduced in
Speaker 2: particular future witness doctor Andrew aboud who's a clinical forensic psychologist.
Speaker 2: And she explained that doctor Aboude will testify and that
Speaker 2: be on the twelfth of August, that the trio we're
Speaker 2: experiencing delusions and other symptoms consistent with shared psychotic disorder
Speaker 2: follia twat so three people sharing the same delusion, and
Speaker 2: that's characterized typically by a close relationship where one person's.
Speaker 3: Delusion or delusions are transmitted to.
Speaker 2: The others and kind of set off a similar psychotic
Speaker 2: state of mind. So, according to doctor Aboud, Gareth's behavior
Speaker 2: was connected to a genuine psychiatric condition, and we'll hear
Speaker 2: more about that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So in your reporting, what views have you come
Speaker 1: to about the dynamic between Nathaniel and his brother, Gareth
Speaker 1: and his wife Stacey. Does the idea that they were
Speaker 1: all sharing a delusion? Does that tally with what you
Speaker 1: understand of them.
Speaker 3: We'll have to wait and see what the psychiatric evidence is.
Speaker 3: My first impression, knowing.
Speaker 2: What I do know now about the physical domestic violence
Speaker 2: and the coerce of control that Gareth had exercised over
Speaker 2: Stacy during the course of their marriage, complicates the picture
Speaker 2: of her participation and perhaps would extend to I guess
Speaker 2: the legitimacy of the claim that she was operating under
Speaker 2: psychosis rather than out of compliance or fear. We might
Speaker 2: not get a clear answer to that, but I think
Speaker 2: it's important in any assessment of her mental state to
Speaker 2: put it in the context of the marriage that she
Speaker 2: had and what's known about the coerce of control in
Speaker 2: that situation.
Speaker 1: And just finally, Sarah, we know that conspiratorial thinking spiked
Speaker 1: during COVID and that was actually a trigger for the trains.
Speaker 1: So knowing that they are very much not alone in
Speaker 1: this type of thinking, how should we judge the risk
Speaker 1: of an attack like this happening again and should we
Speaker 1: be looking at it less as a one off event
Speaker 1: in rural Queensland and more of an ongoing threat.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm hopeful that over the next five weeks that's
Speaker 2: something that the Inquest is going to consider, because we
Speaker 2: are so lucky to have a huge amount of research
Speaker 2: in this field addressing exactly that question. The nature of
Speaker 2: the problem is that a lot of that radicalization to
Speaker 2: violence occurs online in isolation. It happens rapidly and is
Speaker 2: happening to increasingly younger people, and so it's in terms
Speaker 2: of detection, it's very hard to find what's happening before
Speaker 2: it explodes. But because the problem is multifaceted, so are
Speaker 2: the solutions. Again and again, the solutions seem to cluster
Speaker 2: around increasing social cohesion.
Speaker 3: At every level of society.
Speaker 2: So it would require all of government, bipartisan support that
Speaker 2: we would have a reduction in this of exclusivist, populist
Speaker 2: politicking that paints people our marginalized groups as other or outsiders,
Speaker 2: and inclusion kind of at every level, from not just
Speaker 2: those kind of ways in which national political debates are framed,
Speaker 2: but in the way our local.
Speaker 3: Neighborhoods are run.
Speaker 2: The effect of that would be to make people a
Speaker 2: bit more resilient to the ways in which these radicalizing,
Speaker 2: extremely dangerous forums are meeting needs in vulnerable people for
Speaker 2: self worth and dignity and connection and control over their lives.
Speaker 2: And I think that might be one of the scariest
Speaker 2: things about this event, and not necessarily something that an
Speaker 2: inquest can answer, because it indicates that the content of
Speaker 2: the extreme belief is less important than the feeling it generates. Here,
Speaker 2: the beliefless premillennialism, but it could have just as easily
Speaker 2: been something else here. The offending happened in the Western Downs,
Speaker 2: it could have happened in any Australian city or neighborhood.
Speaker 2: Here three people died, and while that's a tragedy, it
Speaker 2: could have very easily been many many more. So there's
Speaker 2: value in not just stigmatizing and distancing this as an
Speaker 2: exceptional event that happened out there about some freaky belief system,
Speaker 2: but looking more broadly at our vulnerability and brittleness as
Speaker 2: a society, because this can.
Speaker 3: Affect any of us at any time.
Speaker 1: Sarah, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, Northern Territory Police Commissioner Michael
Speaker 1: Murphy has apologized to First Nations Territory for past harms
Speaker 1: and injustices caused by members of the Northern Territory Police.
Speaker 1: In a speech at the Gama Festival in northeast Arnham Land,
Speaker 1: Commissioner Murphy acknowledged that police have abused their powers and
Speaker 1: said he would make every effort to eradicate racism in
Speaker 1: the police force. His apology comes after it was revealed
Speaker 1: that a unit of anti police had given out racist
Speaker 1: awards and shared racist text messages among officers and Karmala
Speaker 1: Harris has accused Donald Trump of trying to back out
Speaker 1: of a presidential debate. The US broadcaster ABC News was
Speaker 1: set to host the debate, but Donald Trump has instead
Speaker 1: proposed the debate happen on rival network Fox News. Ads
Speaker 1: released by the Democratic National Committee taunt mister Trump, claiming
Speaker 1: the convicted felon is afraid to debate. Miss Harris, I'm
Speaker 1: Ruby Jones. This is seven AM. Thanks for listening.