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ABC News

National

Rory Callinan, Julia Andre, Lucy Stone and staff

Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey Train carried out a deadly police shooting. Their twisted backstory is revealed

Gareth Train Nathaniel Train Trains (Person) Police Queensland Education Department Western Downs

Dragging his school-teacher wife by her hair up the stairs.

WARNING: This story contains content that readers may find distressing.

Gutting wild pigs at the back of the school so a river of blood and offal ran onto the football oval.

Sitting in his yard on a chair watching his pig dogs mate or disciplining primary school children by marching them home to their parents with their arms twisted behind their backs.

Former colleagues and neighbours recount many troubling signs that something was not right about Gareth Train and his wife Stacey before they joined his brother Nathaniel on a deadly shooting rampage in Queensland's Western Downs.

This week's shocking crime, which saw the trio gun down two young constables and a neighbour, appeared especially baffling given Stacey and Nathaniel Train had held key roles as school principals for years.

But for some who had contact with the Trains, especially in the education system, the deadly shootout did not come as a complete surprise.

Karen Sullivan encountered the couple when they worked at a far western Queensland school in the early 2010s.

"He [Gareth] was just crazy, he was a control freak,'' she said.

"They didn't bring a good vibe to the community. He [Gareth] always had it in him."

An ABC investigation has traced the movements of the Trains as they worked at different government schools around the state uncovering accounts of disturbing behaviour that saw students leave the schools they taught at in droves.

The trio moved between jobs in regional or remote schools with the Education Department while fostering an unusual love triangle that saw Stacey leave her marriage to Nathaniel and take up with his older brother Gareth.

Stacey and Nathaniel met through the Baptist church in Toowoomba where Nathaniel's father was a pastor.

According to a friend, Stacey married Nathaniel at age 18 and family sources said Stacey quickly became estranged from her family.

While they worked as teachers around Queensland the pair had two children, who were estranged from their parents.

In the early 2000s they resided in the same property as Nathaniel's brother Gareth.

Gareth briefly worked as a child safety support officer for the Department of Communities in child safety and disability services in the South Burnett region.

His employment only lasted two months in 2009, according to the department.

By the early 2010s, Stacey had moved in with Gareth and was residing with him at Quinalow, a tiny country settlement about 144km north-west of Brisbane where she taught at the local school.

Meanwhile, Nathaniel was working as a principal at Innisfail East School in Far North Queensland.

Interviewed for a newspaper article, he boasted of the results his school had received despite the impact of cyclones.

In 2011, Gareth and Stacey moved to the small town of Camooweal, a scatter of old houses, a pub and mostly empty shops straddling the Barkly Highway about 13km from the Northern Territory border in far west Queensland.

It was here in the town, which has a population of about 200, that the couple's unusual behaviour stood out.

'We would hear the boars screaming'

Jane, who asked that her real name not be used, was a local resident who worked at the school in a support staff role. She recalled her first meeting with the pair.

"We were invited to tea to their house, to welcome them to the town. The first thing I noticed was they had their pig dogs inside the house in cages and Gareth had a big collection of hunting knives and he then told us he was a social worker,'' she said.

Gareth and his dogs soon gained notoriety in the town.

Jane's son Paul (also not his real name) said Gareth became known for taking his dogs to the local swimming hole which was frequented by children, and making a show of hunting down wild pigs.

"We would often find the gutted carcases of pigs there. Sometimes we would see Gareth with his knives running around with the dogs chasing the pigs,'' Paul said.

"We would hear the boars screaming as he gutted them."

It wasn't the only place the primary school students were exposed to Gareth's pig butchering skills.

Paul, who attended the local school while the Trains were there, said Gareth hung the pig carcases up in his back yard which backed onto the school.

"Then he would butcher them and the blood and offal would be running directly out of their yard onto the school oval. There would be a smell of offal and blood running onto the footy field."

Paul said the school children complained but nothing was done about the stench.

He also recalled Stacey or "Mrs Train" instituting a special program to stop bullying which only seemed to encourage the bullies.

"If you complained you immediately got detention,'' he said.

"I had lots of mates whose parents pulled them out of the school."

Jane said Gareth quickly took over the school.

"He ended up dominating the parents and friends committee,'' she said.

Karen Sullivan, whose children also attended the school, said she recalled Gareth letting his dogs out to attack other dogs and driving erratically past people who were walking along the road.

"He would come over the grid at 100km and he would miss me by an inch,'' she said.

Outside of the school, the Trains never socialised with anyone.

"[Gareth] was always there with her. He was a control freak. She could never say anything,'' Ms Sullivan said.

She also recalled Gareth inserting himself into the school by becoming the secretary, the gardener and the cleaner, and during parent-teacher meetings, Gareth either sat in on them or stood just outside the room.

She said Gareth started to physically discipline children when he was on school grounds.

"If he heard them swearing, he would send them home. He would put their arms up behind their backs in an arm lock and march them home.

"I caught him doing it one day and told him, 'if you touch my son like that you will be in trouble'. We ended up with no kids at the school."

Evidence of domestic abuse

Stacey appeared to be totally subservient to Gareth's behaviour and some locals recall evidence of domestic abuse.

One resident, Minnie Kenna, who worked at the school as an attendance officer, recalled seeing Gareth assault Stacey.

"He [Gareth] was dragging her [Stacey] by the hair up the stairs into her house. It's a high house and he was just dragging. I thought 'it's none of my business' and I didn't like to interfere so I didn't say anything."

Ms Kenna said she knew Gareth was strange after witnessing him watch the dogs mating.

"I thought, 'what sort of a person sits in a chair watching them?' I thought, 'you are different'."

By 2014, the school community was in an uproar with parents like Ms Sullivan and others saying they made numerous complaints to the education department about the couple.

She said many children left the school.

"I took my kid out of the school and so did lots of my friends. She [Stacey] was not a good teacher."

Ms Sullivan said she complained to Education Queensland authorities in Mount Isa, local politicians and even asked the local priest to see if he could find a solution.

Education Queensland said all three individuals had worked for the department and resigned but did not address questions about whether complaints had been received about the couple.

In 2015, the Trains moved from Camooweal to a school in the suburb of Happy Valley in Mount Isa.

That year, the couple spent $95,000 on the rough bush block at Wains Road in remote Wieambilla about 270km west of Brisbane — the property that would become the scene of one of the state's worst police shootings.

The 43-hectare property, which came with a rundown two-bedroom wooden house, two water tanks and a dam, is in an area known for residents with an enthusiasm for privacy.

Property searches show the couple did not reside on the block.

In 2016, Stacey was appointed to the principal's role at Pompuraaw on Cape York.

A similar scenario soon unfolded in the isolated Indigenous community with local families becoming increasingly unhappy with the Trains, according to a community worker.

She said the couple left after about a year.

Education Queensland said Gareth resigned from the department's employment in May 2016.

Refusal to be vaccinated

Also in Far North Queensland, Nathaniel Train had shifted to a school at Yorkey's Knob just north of Cairns where he featured in a local newspaper with Christmas baubles and glitter hanging from his beard. He was described as a "good natured" and "mild mannered" principal.

He held various principal roles in north Queensland until 2020 when he resigned and moved to New South Wales.

In 2021, he resigned as executive principal from Walgett Community College Primary School after suffering a cardiac arrest.

The NSW education department confirmed he refused to get the COVID-19 vaccination as required by the department.

Nathaniel expressed concerns about the educational policy he claimed to have observed at the school and spoke to the ABC in May 2022 about them.

He sent several emails to the department during his time and made a raft of allegations about teaching and discipline issues at the school.

He left his new partner and was the subject of a missing person's report to NSW police after his family lost contact with him on October 9. He was last seen in Dubbo on December 16, 2021.

By this time, Stacey and Gareth had moved to the Tara region about 260km west of Brisbane, where Stacey was appointed head of curriculum at the Tara Shire State College.

The Education Department said Stacey resigned from her role at Tara in December 2021.

In that same year, Gareth is believed to have been posting on Australian conspiracy websites in support of anti-government and anti-vaccination stances.

The posts written in Gareth’s name have not been verified as being written by him, but police say they are investigating the Trains’ online activity.

Last week, neighbours living across the road from the Wieambilla property owned by Gareth and Stacey, saw a car drive into the property.

One said the presence of a vehicle was unusual as they believed the property had not been lived in for some time.

On Monday, Queensland Police constables Rachel McCrow, Matthew Arnold, Keeley Brough and Randall Kirk went to the property as part of an investigation into the missing person's report filed about Nathaniel Train.

What happened next is now part of a police investigation, but shortly after the four officers arrived, the Trains opened fire. McCrow and Arnold were killed.

Six hours later, when the siege was finally over, six people would be dead, including the Trains.

Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said all three of the Trains were "considered to be offenders" and the deadly shootout remains under investigation.

She said she did not have the "full extent of information" of whether the Trains were known to police, domestic violence allegations or what weapons they were armed with.

"There are complexities here, the Trains have lived in different states ... so there's a lot of work to be done," she said.

She said the Trains' involvement and history in the school system would also be investigated and it could take months "to get to a point where we know exactly what occurred and why".

However, Camooweal resident Ms Kenna said the explanation for the shootout was straight forward.

"She [Stacey] would have been sticking by him [Gareth]. She would have been scared of him."

On Wednesday, Gareth and Nathaniel's father Ronald Train provided a telling insight into his sons' mindset.

Gareth was "very difficult to control, very overpowering and I just think that in the end he took over that relationship that Nathaniel and Stacey had because Gareth and Nathaniel were fairly close, because they were the two brothers next to each other," he told Channel Nine's A Current Affair.

But Ronald Train said he hadn't spoken to his two sons in more than 20 years. The pattern of estrangement and isolation from their families followed all three throughout their lives, including from their own children.

A trio of loners who will be condemned for their cold-blooded crimes.