I found clues about the missing hard drive of the Christchurch terrorist — in a real estate listing

What looks like an ordinary property listing for a flat in New Zealand holds a chilling clue about the man who carried out one of the most shocking acts in recent memory.

An investigative journalist has found chilling clues in the property listing for the New Zealand flat where terrorist Brenton Tarrant lived. Picture: Supplied

On March 15, 2019, a terrorist opened fire on two mosques in Christchurch, killing 51 people. Officially, he acted alone. But what if that wasn’t the full story?

In my new podcast Secrets We Keep: Lone Actor, I dig into the digital underworld that shaped Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian who was radicalised online and armed with a global ideology. I’ve traced him through the darkest corners of the internet and followed his travels in Eastern and Central Europe.

For years, the official story has focused on Tarrant as a “lone actor”. There has never been an official inquiry in Australia as to what had led him to violence.

The deeper I got into his digital history, the clearer it became that he was part of something bigger — a global movement of extremists connecting online.

One of the strangest leads I came across during the investigation started with a link. It took me to a real estate website.

It was a listing for a unit in Anderson’s Bay, a quiet suburb of Dunedin. The address was familiar. This was the apartment Tarrant lived in before the attack.

The real-estate listing from the Christchurch terrorist’s flat gives clues to his trajectory. Picture: Supplied

There are still some questions about what led Australian terrorist Brenton Tarrant to violence. Picture: John Kirk-Anderson/Pool/AFP

His 2019 attack on two Christchurch mosques is the worst mass shooting in New Zealand’s history. Picture: Anthony Wallace/AFP

At first, the photos seemed ordinary. A small, sunlit flat with a kitchen, bathroom, and sparsely furnished rooms. But in the study, was an important lead.

On a desk was a computer. It was logged in. The screen was visible.

Zooming in, it was possible to make out a Word document saved to the desktop. Its title: The Great Replacement. That’s the name of the manifesto the terrorist wrote and later released before the attack.

And the background image on the desktop was a painting from the 1860s called Among the Sierra Nevada by Albert Bierstadt, which had become popular with extremists in parts of the internet the terrorist had frequented.

I realised that this was a photo of the terrorist’s computer. The same one New Zealand Police have said was never recovered.

A photo of a bedroom in the listing for Brenton Tarrant’s former flat in Dunedin. Picture: Supplied

A photo of the kitchen in the Dunedin property. Picture: Supplied

Downloading the image, it’s possible to check the metadata. It was still intact.

The photo had been taken on March 4, 2019 — 11 days before the shooting.

There were other icons on the screen.

There was Tor, an anonymity browser often used to access the dark web. Eraser, software for permanently deleting files.

The scene of a living area holds some clues about the property’s former inhabitant. Picture: Supplied

Zooming in, it’s possible to see the programs the Christchurch terrorist had installed on his computer. Picture: Supplied

This was the setup of someone hiding things, someone who didn’t want investigators to know the full extent of his digital life.

There was also Discord, a messaging app created for gamers.

The presence of Discord was significant because it had been used by an international network of neo-Nazi groups which collectively became known as the Skull Mask network.

Founded on an extremist forum called Iron March, the network grew preaching ideas like race war and societal collapse – including in Australia.

The rise of this network overlapped with a crucial window in the Christchurch terrorist’s radicalisation trajectory.

Investigative journalist Joey Watson. Picture: Joey Watson

Then-New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern comforts the Christchurch community after Tarrant’s 2019 massacre at two mosques that killed 51 people, injured many more, and shocked the world. Picture: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

Tracking the terrorist on the image board website 4chan, and in posts he made on Australian extremist groups, I’d seen how connected he was to these communities, where he was foreshadowing the violence he was planning.

And by following in his footsteps in Central and Eastern Europe, I’d seen how he’d immersed himself in some of Europe’s darkest history, a consumed extremist propaganda from the other side of the world.

These pictures of the computer hard drive, shows how keen he was to remain undetected.

Even with everything I’d learnt about him, it made me wonder what might still be missing.

Joey Watson is an investigative journalist. For more on this story, you can listen to Secrets We Keep: Lone Actor free on the LiSTNR app.

Originally published as I found clues about the missing hard drive of the Christchurch terrorist — in a real estate listing