‘I know it sounds nuts’: Wieambilla killers saw arrest as ‘worse than death’

An “apocalypse” in the form of a massive heart attack helped turn a successful teacher who respected police into a delusional recluse who fatally shot a junior officer.

Consultant forensic psychiatrist Andrew Aboud gave evidence on Monday at an inquest into the shootings at Wieambilla in regional Queensland, that claimed six lives.

The coroner also heard the Trains were “psychotically driven” to a fatal shootout with police as they saw arrest as worse than death.

Aboud said one of the shooters, Nathaniel Train, 46, was left with a sense he “missed out on an apocalypse” and suffering memory problems after a heart attack in August 2021, leaving him open to influence from his psychotic older brother Gareth Train.

“Gareth seeks to fill him in … he was told not to take medications, he was told not to let a ‘monkey heart’ be put in him,” Aboud said.

He said Gareth, 47, was a narcissist with a paranoid personality disorder suffering from psychotic delusions.

Gareth spoke to Nathaniel while he was in hospital and quoted lines from the 2011 action film The Grey that the family must “live or die on this day”.

Aboud said the line was “ominous” when looking at the events of December 12, 2022 when Gareth and his wife Stacey along with Nathaniel were killed during a shootout with heavily armed police.

Aerial imagery of the scene of the shooting in Wieambilla.Credit: Nine

Nathaniel and Gareth had earlier in the day shot dead constables Matthew Arnold, 26 and Rachel McCrow, 29 during an ambush of four junior officers sent to their rural property to serve an arrest warrant.

An unknown member of the Train family also fatally shot neighbour Alan Dare, 58, before specialist police with armoured vehicles and helicopters entered their 100-acre bushland block west of Brisbane.

State Coroner Terry Ryan heard the Trains died from “victim precipitated suicide”, commonly called “suicide by cop”, due to a “shared psychotic delusion” that police were demons coming to forcibly transform them into subhuman “meat puppets”.

“Their intentions at the time were not to be apprehended by police, that would be a fate worse than death,” Aboud said.

He said his conclusion from reviewing vast amounts of evidence was that the Trains had a shared “moral insanity” via a “folie à trois” led by Gareth as the primary sufferer.

Aboud said it was possible the Trains could have been found unfit to stand trial and confined to high-security psychiatric wards if they were apprehended.

He said one thing that could have caused the Trains to flee would have been a belief about a date in early 2023.

“They might have seen a possibility … they would reach religious salvation through the second coming of Christ,” Aboud said.

Ryan heard Gareth Train would not have been convinced by logic or argument to drop his “persecutory” delusions of being targeted by governments and secret societies.

Aboud said the increased isolation at Wieambilla likely caused Gareth’s pre-existing belief the moon landings were fake and the Port Arthur massacre was a “false flag” staged event to justify gun buy-backs to be expanded into a wide range of conspiracy theories.

Investigating officers found videos at Wieambilla of Gareth using firearms to shoot at planes flying over his property, accusing them of being from the spy agency ASIO trying to use “chemtrails” to poison him with neurological weapons.

“The beginning of COVID was incorporated into this. [The belief] it was used to get people mass vaccinated and to change people’s DNA,” Aboud said.

He said Nathaniel travelled to Wieambilla in January 2021 and his brother presented his “grand opus” that a variety of political and religious conspiracies were secretly connected.

“The great deception has begun ... This is all Satan’s mindf--- game and the choice is a free-will one,” Gareth told Nathaniel.

Stacey Train would later send private messages to her friends describing how there was a war going on in heaven between good and evil.

“I know it sounds nuts,” she said.

Lifeline 13 11 14

beyondblue 1300 22 4636

AAP