‘Meat suits’: Cop killer’s descent into madness

The bizarre delusions of a trio of cop killers seemed unimaginable as they carried out their diabolical plan that left the nation horrified.

Now an expert has given insight into how their minds worked in the months leading up to the horror ambush.

Constables Matthew Arnold and Rachel McCrow were gunned down moments after arriving at 251 Wains Rd in Wieambilla while conducting a welfare check for Nathaniel Train.

The former school principal had been living at his brother Gareth and his wife Stacey’s rural Queensland property when police came on December 12, 2022.

But what the two constables and their colleagues, constables Randall Kirk and Keely Brough – who managed to escape the fatal ambush with their lives – didn’t know was that the Train family were experiencing a shared delusion.

The trio believed in their own form of extremist Christianity known as premillennialism, which caused them to believe the Second Coming of Jesus Christ would occur after total destruction of the world.

The Train family had been heavily armed and prepared when the police arrived that day.

The Trains also murdered their neighbour Alan Dare, who had been investigating smoke he’d seen coming from their property.

A mammoth coronial inquest into the events of December 12 continues in Brisbane Magistrates Court, where the Trains’ shared delusions were put under the microscope by consultant forensic psychiatrist Andrew Aboud.

What are delusions?

Dr Aboud explained delusional disorders were usually onset in adulthood and the person experiencing them might have any other noticeable cognitive deficit.

“It’s not something the suddenly happens, it very gradually overtakes the individual,” he said.

Dr Aboud said the Trains were experiencing persecutory beliefs and religious beliefs of the “delusional intensity”.

The trio’s shared delusions – known as folie a trois – stemmed from Gareth’s own delusions.

The inquest was told Gareth was considered the primary, while Nathaniel and Stacey later became the secondaries in the shared delusions.

“Delusions are not contagious, it’s not like a viral illness. Instead, it’s like a very unique set of dynamics, Dr Aboud said.

How Gareth’s mind worked

Dr Aboud said he believed Gareth had a personality disorder earlier in his life before progressing to a delusional disorder.

The inquest was told it was possible Gareth had sustained a mild brain injury at birth after his mother was involved in a traffic accident while pregnant with him.

Dr Aboud said Gareth began to believe in conspiracy theories, including the allegation the Port Arthur massacre was a staged ploy for the government to take away people’s guns, in his early 20s.

Gareth also became obsessive with guns, bodybuilding, history and the military.

“Even at that early age, he was mistrustful of other people, he had a tendency to think he knew best,” Dr Aboud said.

“He started to behave as if he saw himself as superior to other people, he was quite egocentric.

“He could be arrogant, quite hypersensitive to criticism.

“I believe he’d developed a paranoid personality disorder, and there were also some narcissistic traits that went with it.”

Gareth’s ‘opus’ of delusions

Dr Aboud said he believed Gareth’s delusional disorder escalated when he and Stacey moved to 251 Wains Rd in Wieambilla bout 2016.

He said after they moved to the property, Gareth continued researching his “increasingly bizarre and delusional ideas”.

The inquest was told that Gareth had a range of “beliefs” about certain topics, including how biochemical neurological weapons were being designed by ASIO to infect masses of people.

His delusions also included a belief that humans were being turned into non-humans wearing meat suits through the Covid-19 vaccination program.

Dr Aboud said Gareth had also become fascinated with MKUltra, a military program run by the CIA between the 1950s to 1970s that had been labelled as human experimentation using medications or drugs to assist with interrogations.

He said Gareth then “progresses” his interest in MKUltra to Raytheon, a company that manufactures weapons.

Dr Aboud said Gareth “becomes concerned” Raytheon was producing bioweapons – which they don’t – and these delusions triggered his concerns about the Covid-19 vaccination turning people into “non-humans”.

Dr Aboud said Gareth’s delusions were also starting to include beliefs that the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Jesuits and Mossad were involved in his persecution.

“Many of these have little or no direct relationship with any Christian belief or even premillennialism-type beliefs, but they were pulled together by Gareth as being somewhat related and being the underpinnings of what I called his opus,” Dr Aboud said.

“In Gareth’s case, he pulled together a whole number of persecutory beliefs under a religious theme.”

Stacey’s descent

Dr Aboud said Stacey had “dependent personality traits”.

“I do not think she had a personality disorder at all,” he said.

“She was a highly intelligent, rather impressive young woman.”

Dr Aboud said Stacey was a person “primed to need the support of a strong male figure and she ended up relying on Gareth for that”.

The inquest was told when Stacey started writing about Gareth’s delusions in her diary, she also started to incorporate his beliefs into her own understanding of the world.

Stacey had been writing about a “sequence of signs” in her diary that they believed indicated the Second Coming was near.

She’d even calculated the expected date of the Second Coming to be about April or May 2023.

Those signs included the invasion of Ukraine, Covid-19, natural disasters and other political events.

Nathaniel’s life-altering moment

Dr Aboud said he believed Nathaniel started to take on Gareth’s delusional beliefs in late 2020 and didn’t seem to reject them.

The inquest was told Nathaniel visited the Wieambilla property in early January 2021, with the trio referencing this event as “church” whenever they communicated.

Gareth later texted his brother to tell him the “great deception has begun”.

“His communications with Nathaniel are not met with Nathaniel disagreeing with him,” Dr Aboud said.

The inquest was told Nathaniel suffered a cardiac arrest in August 2021 and would have died had he not been given medical attention.

While in hospital, the trio spoke on the phone and Gareth encouraged Nathaniel to reject any further medical help over fears a “monkey heart” would replace his own organ.

“He’s significantly undermined any confidence Nathaniel might have in the medical profession and in any treatment he might have,” Dr Aboud said.

“(Gareth) was speaking exactly what he genuinely believed.

“So his undermining of the medical profession and encouraging his brother not to take medications and not to have what he called a monkey heart put into him was all genuine.

“It’s Gareth telling his brother ‘I’m looking out for you, and you need to know these things’.

“(Gareth) had the opportunity to reinforce these things at a time when his brother was particularly psychologically vulnerable.”

Dr Aboud said the cardiac arrest would have been a significant life event for Nathaniel, forcing him to re-evaluate all of his beliefs.

Dr Aboud said Nathaniel started to align with his brother’s delusions at his own hand.

“I think it’s important to make the distinction that Nathaniel did not come under form of mind control,” he said.

“He was forming his own beliefs but they were consistent with Gareth’s delusional beliefs.”

What happened on December 12?

Dr Aboud said without realising it, Gareth had shared his delusions with the two most important people in his life.

Dr Aboud said from about mid-2022, the trio shared the same set of “religious and persecutory beliefs”.

The inquest was told police had attended the Trains’ property in August 2022 looking for Nathaniel after an arrest warrant was issued for him after he ditched unregistered guns at the border 12 months earlier.

Police left a “calling card” for Gareth and Stacey to contact them if they’d heard from Nathaniel.

Dr Aboud said it was this “calling card” that might have triggered their response to start fortifying their property.

He said they’d believed that up until this point they were safe and were likely to make it to their calculated salvation date in 2023.

“But their perception of the police leaving the calling card was that they now were having to go into a state of high alert,” Dr Aboud said.

“They were unable to conceive this was a benign process of any nature.

“As far as they were concerned it was a very dark and morbid process.”

Dr Aboud said the moment the four constables jumped the front gate, the Trains were determined to stop them.

He said if they had not been fatally shot by SERT officers and instead arrested, he would expect the trio would have been referred to the Mental Health Court.

Dr Aboud said he believed the Trains felt they were being ambushed.

“Their perception is completely different once you understand their mental state and what was happening for them,” he said.

“It’s possible … that they might not have thought that they were shooting at true human beings but in fact shooting at evil.

“So to our normal reality, it was they who ambushed the police and that is factually what happened and we all know that’s what happened, but in their minds, it was the other way around.”