Two brothers and a woman—with whom they each had a relationship—murdered police officers in Australia as part of a Christian fundamentalist terror plot, Queensland police say.
Gareth, Nathaniel and Stacey Train died in a stand-off after killing constables Rachel McCrow, 29, Matthew Arnold, 26, and their neighbor Alan Dare, 58, on Dec. 12. They were involved in an extreme religion known as “premillennialism,” Queensland Deputy Police Commissioner Tracy Linford said Thursday, calling the attack on the officers a “religious terror attack.”
Linford said the religious group had a connection to a similar group in the U.S., and that officers had shared information found in text messages with the U.S. police.
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Nathaniel and Stacey Train met in high school and married as teenagers in 1995. The couple had two children, after which Stacey left her husband and hooked up with his brother Gareth, which understandably caused tension in the family. Stacey Train had worked as a high school principal but quit over vaccine mandates fueled by her anti-government views backed by the religious movement, according to Australian press reports.
The incident happened when four police officers, including the two slain officers, were “lured” to the Train farm, which had been set up with a sophisticated surveillance system and military-grade training facilities including camouflaged hiding places and dirt mound barriers and mirrors strategically placed on trees, Linford said. They also found six weapons, three bow and arrows, a collection of tactical knives. Linford said there was also a trap door under the house that led to a tunnel.
They had responded to a welfare check after Nathaniel Train was reported missing. Upon arrival, the police officers were ambushed by the two brothers and the woman, and McCrow and Arnold were killed. A neighbor, Alan Dare, crossed onto the property to check on a car that had been set on fire during the incident when he was shot.
Linford said the police were caught in a carefully laid trap set by the Train family members. “We don’t believe this attack was random or spontaneous,” Linford said. “We do believe it was an attack directed at police.There was significant evidence of advanced preparation and planning.”
The surviving police officers called back-up, which led to a stand-off in which the trio were killed. The investigation after the incident focused on Stacey Train’s detailed diary and social media postings, which alluded to the group’s extremist religious beliefs likely led by the brothers’ father, pastor Ronald Train. “What we’ve been able to glean from that information is that the Train family members subscribe to what we would call a broad Christian fundamentalist belief system, known as premillennialism,” Linford said, adding that they referred to law enforcement as “monsters and demons.”
Gareth Train had also posted about the trio’s end-time preparations, referring to the fact they had been “ark homesteading for the past five years preparing to survive tomorrow,” according to the Guardian. “When it becomes clear that we are in a time like no other and you head out into the wilderness to escape persecution, know that my wife and I will offer refuge to all brothers and sisters. I will be scanning the UHF channels when that times comes.”
Linford brushed off any indication of mental illness. “We quite often do see in our terrorist investigations, people who are impacted by mental health because they are easily radicalized,” she said. “When you’ve got three acting together, it’s challenging to say that there’s a mental health issue in this instance.”
