The Australian couple behind the Wieambilla attacks regularly corresponded with men with a similar fundamentalist theology
Hours after Gareth Train and his wife, Stacey, killed two police officers and injured a third during a horrific planned attack on their remote Queensland property this week, they posted the haunting video to YouTube.
“They came to kill us, and we killed them,” said Gareth, his face partly covered in darkness.
"If you don't defend yourself against these devils and demons, you are a coward."
In contrast to the litany of would-be manifestos posted by extremist mass shooters, the video does not appear to be aimed at a wider audience. Instead, Trains, who police say carried out Monday night's shooting along with Gareth's brother Nathaniel, appears to be addressing a member of the audience. "See you when we get home, Don," Gareth says at the end of the 41 second clip.
"Don", it appears, is an Arizona-based conspirator who forms an online friendship with Trains. Immediately after the shooting, "Don", who uses an online moniker that the Guardian chose not to name, posted the video himself.
“The devil came to kill them, and they had to kill the devil themselves and are now on the run,” he said.
“It makes no difference to us. The demons are coming for us, they really are dead, it's that simple.” Although the two said they had never met in person, Gareth Train and "Don" repeatedly referred to each other as "brothers" in online posts seen by the Guardian. The videos and posts made by the men demonstrate a common preoccupation: obvious hatred of the police, fundamentalist Christian ideology, and loose ties to the beliefs associated with the so-called sovereign citizen conspiracy movement. evil and ask our Father to burn the cities and call our Brother Yeshua to return," Gareth Train wrote in one post, referring to "Don" and his wife, "Annie".
The cross-border relationship also offers chilling insight into the paranoia both partners seemed to gripe in the lead-up to the shootings. In a video posted less than a week earlier, “Don” lays out a conspiracy-laden narrative borrowing from right-wing “great reset” theories that predict a coming end-times scenario with “forced” vaccinations, and bans on Christianity, “freedoms” and "private property".
He stated the likes of himself and Train would refuse "no matter [the cost]" including "running and shooting with bounties on our heads... whether we survive or not".
In a commentary on the “Don's” video on Dec. 7, Stacey Train commented: “Our Heavenly Father chose us for this time – such a privilege. Daniel and I look forward to coming home. See you when we get there, our dear brothers and sisters.”
Gareth and Nathaniel Train were raised in a fundamentalist Christian family and were the first to regularly post on conspiracy websites during the pandemic. But the video posted by Gareth and Stacey Train, which was first disclosed by the independent website Crikey on Friday, provides new insight into the perpetrators of one of the worst acts of violence against police in recent Australian history.
“They have to kill us. They had to kill us because they couldn't break our spirits,” Gareth said, his voice changing, in one video posted about a month before the shooting.
In another photo, he names several police officers in Queensland and NSW, and appears to be referring to visits he says were made to his property by police ahead of the shootings.
In one comment apparently written by Stacey Train – who has previously been married to Nathaniel – she referred to the recent “welfare checks” that officers carried out on their property, saying “these idiots are stepping into a world of hurt, they know nothing. from".
The two officers who were killed were part of a four-member group responding to a routine missing persons report for Nathaniel, the former school principal who was last in contact with his family on October 9. A neighbor also died when he came to investigate the commotion. Police have likened the shooting to an ambush, and are investigating whether the call to the property may have been a deliberate lure by the two men and Stacey Train.
Asked this week whether the family was known to police before the shooting, police commissioner Katarina Carroll said the answer was "complicated".
But conversations between Trains and "Don" in the days before the shooting reveal a marked increase in the couple's paranoia. Gareth referred to "covert agents and tactics for some time now", writing "Our Father gave a clear sign".
"The monsters and their heads are about to split open," he said.
"Don" replies that he and his wife are also "working on this" and that "it's time". It's not clear from the conversation what "Don" means when he says "it's time".
In another video he says: "We taught those bastards how we should be treated... They were too retarded to know who they should leave behind... Ah, great adventure builds morale."
In their last video, shrouded in darkness, Train Stacey tells "Don" that they will be "home soon" and that they love him.