Donald Day Jr proudly sought to withdraw from the world and what he believed were its evils.
In the remote backblocks of the US state of Arizona, he spoke of living off the grid, started a Facebook group for “Outlaw Homesteads”, and found himself isolated from members of his local community due to his beliefs and theories.
In remote Queensland, Australian couple Gareth and Stacey Train, along with Gareth’s brother, Nathaniel, were living similar lives on their own isolated block of land.
Yet despite living half a world away from each other and eschewing much of modern society, the Trains and Day managed to connect. In Day’s alleged words after their deaths, the couple were like family to him.
How – and why – that happened is now being pieced together by law enforcement agencies in two countries, who have spent a year investigating Australia’s first fundamentalist Christian terrorist attack.
That investigation culminated in Day’s arrest at a local petrol station, almost a year after he allegedly made threats of violence towards law enforcement.
A grand jury indictment, charging him with two counts of making interstate threats, details the online links between Day and the Trains, who killed police officers Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold as well as a neighbour, Alan Dare, in Wieambilla, Queensland, before they themselves were gunned down.
Posting under the username Geronimo’s Bones, Day allegedly made a series of online comments and posts after the shootings, referring to the pseudonyms used by Gareth and Stacey Train. That allegedly included the threat that, “like my brother Daniel, like my sister Jane , it is no different for us. The devils come for us, they fucking die.”
The indictment alleges the communication contained a “true threat of violence” and that the messages amounted to “a threat to injure … any law enforcement official who comes to Day’s residence”.
As news of Day’s arrest spread through the community of Heber-Overgaard, locals shared stories of him.
One said Day regularly bought pumpkins from her to feed his pigs; another claimed Day was a fan of his take-away barbecue.
But what also emerged was a picture of a man whose increasing alienation with society drew him closer to those he met online who felt the same way. People like the Trains, the Wieambilla killers whose violence allegedly prompted some of Day’s threats.
Day had animals on his remote property that he relied upon for food, just as the Trains had.
Both the Trains and Day lived about 30km from the nearest town.
Those towns, Tara and Heber-Overgaard, each have populations of less than 5000 – large enough to stock supplies that could last several weeks, but small enough that locals happen to notice outsiders.
And both the Trains and Day appear to have become even more concerned about the fate of the world and isolated from others during the pandemic.
Day is charged with not only threatening to kill law enforcement in the wake of the Wieambilla shootings, but for allegedly making threats in February against the director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Day told one person he met online that he only travelled into Heber-Overgaard about once a month. When he did, he liked to eat at June’s Cafe, which, as the pandemic ravaged the US in 2020, posted a sign on the door warning people to “ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!”
“Employee’s [sic] are MASK FREE, UNMUZZLED, BUT HAVE HAD ALL THEIR IMMUNIZATIONS!” the sign read.
Day suggested to this friend he met online that they catch up at June’s for a coffee. The pair connected after Day posted a long message on the Heber-Overgaard community Facebook page.
“Apart from my time out of country, I have resided in Arizona for most of my life. I have always been deeply in love with Arizona, for its natural beauty, its people, its culture and its quiet dignity,” Day posted on 7 June.
“Yet today, I do not recognize her, as she once was. Now, she has become a mere shadow of her former self- She has become a haven for drug addicts, child molesters, corrupt politicians, corporate policy enforcers, corporate parasites, odious drag queens and all manner of anti-american communists, whom all seek to utterly destroy her.”
The other man, who did not respond to a request for comment, replied to Day, “Amen, u are preaching to the choir here ! The radical left is ruling and no one cares ! The latest is this WOKE crap !”
Day then wrote that he had failed to recruit others to his causes.
“I have tried on several occasions to raise the morale and the spirit of the local community, and have asked like-minded and right-minded folk to join in the fray against the political and corporate infection that has diseased the [Mogollon Rim region], yet at any council meeting I’ve attended and spoke at, all that I encountered were the blank stares and glassy eyes of zombies,” he said.
A few weeks after this post, Day was removed as a member of the community Facebook page.
Phillip Williams, the moderator of the page, told the Mountain Star he banned Day due to his antagonistic online behaviour.
“My only communication was online with the community page, and he was a conspiracy theorist; he was [a] very scary kind of guy, but he had great literary skills,” Williams said.
It remains unclear why it had taken so long for Day to be charged with offences allegedly committed in February and last December. Queensland police also declined to comment on when it had first started working with the FBI on the investigation.
But it is likely Day was being closely watched, given his links to the Trains were known within days of the shooting, and, as is noted in the indictment, he had previously acknowledged owning firearms including a rifle and a shotgun.
Seamus Hughes, from the US National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center, told the ABC that the charges of interstate threats faced by Day used to be uncommon but were now being used at a “pretty regular clip”.
“It’s a very elastic charge – it’s usually when law enforcement says ‘we have someone we’re concerned about, we think it may turn violent’,” Hughes said.
“What we’ve seen in the past is that the Department of Justice will use this charge basically as an initial salvo to arrest an individual, get him into the federal system and perhaps add other charges at a later date.”
Each of the two charges faced by Day carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a fine of up to US$250,000, and up to three years of supervised release.
Months before his arrest, he awoke one morning on his remote property to discover something had killed his chickens during the night.
“I hunted the perpetrator down, and hung its carcass from a tree,” Day posted on Facebook in June.
“To let other predators know what will happen to them, should they think to kill my animals.”
Last week, it was Day who was hunted down by the FBI.
It will be months before he knows his fate. But for now, he is being held in a federal prison, far away from the regional property in northern Arizona he had called home.
