The family of Stacey Train have spoken out after their daughter helped gun down two police officers and an innocent neighbour in cold blood.
Stacey, her husband Gareth and brother-in-law Nathaniel (who is also her ex-husband), died during a confrontation with specialist officers on Monday evening after they had earlier ambushed four police officers that afternoon at their property in rural Queensland.
Constables Rachel McCrow, 29, and Matthew Arnold, 26, were hit after the four officers were sprayed with bullets by the Train trio, who were reportedly laying in wait in the bushes at the isolated Wieambilla property, about three hours west of Brisbane.
The officers had been asked to attend the property by NSW Police after receiving a tip-off that a missing person – who was Nathaniel Train – may be at the home.
Constable Keely Brough managed to narrowly escape by running in different directions and hiding in bushland. Constable Randall Kirk suffered a gunshot wound to his leg but managed to make it back to his car and escape.
The Trains then emerged from the scrub and shot Constables McCrow and Arnold “execution-style” before taking their guns and attempting to hunt down the other officers.
They also killed their neighbour Alan Dare when he came over to investigate what was happening.
The trio were eventually killed in a shootout with 16 special operations police officers.
As information about the twisted lives of the Trains continues to come to light, Stacey’s family has revealed exactly how the former educator became entwined with the Train brothers.
She grew up in a churchgoing family before branching off on her own to the independent church run by the brothers’ father, Ronald Train.
One of Stacey’s relatives, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Guardian that she was a quiet girl and often the odd one out.
They revealed that they “wish she never” attended the Train church, claiming “this would have never happened”.
It was in this church that she met Nathaniel Train, who she married in her late teens and had two children with.
She later left him for his brother Gareth.
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“I knew Gareth was an a**ehole when he took over his brother’s wife,” the relative told the publication, adding it was “all downhill from there”.
“Now she is dead because of them,” they said.
Stacey became estranged from her family, but the relative claimed her mother would still call her every year for her birthday – but would quickly hang up if Gareth answered the phone.
The split and relationship with Gareth caused a rift in the Train family – particularly between the brothers and their father, who was a pastor for 27 years at a church which has strict views on marriage.
Nathaniel and his father had not spoken for 23 years, with Ronald confirming that fact in a Facebook comment under a missing person’s appeal for Nathaniel.
But Ronald told A Current Affair he had “absolutely no idea” Gareth and Stacey had struck up a relationship and were married.
“My second son Gareth is on the Asperger’s line. Very difficult to control, very overpowering,” he said.
“I just think he took over that relationship that Nathaniel and Stacey had.”
Police had previously considered whether Stacey had been forced into opening fire on police by the Train brothers, but it soon became clear that was not the case.
“There was a thought that Stacey may have been an unwilling participant but she was shooting at police with the best of them,’’ a police source told The Australian.
“She got shot and went down and was still shooting at police as she was laying on the ground. She was then shot and killed.”
It was reported that Stacey was shot dead by police as she ran from the rural property after the Train brothers were gunned down.
Unsettling new details about killers’ lives
On Thursday, disturbing new details were brought to light about the lives of the Train trio, with people who knew the killers exposing strange and unsettling claims about their past.
All three had previously worked for the Queensland Department of Education and moved between different rural towns to work in a number of regional schools.
In 2011, Gareth and Stacy moved to the town of Camooweal in far northwest Queensland, just a few kilometres from the Northern Territory border, according to the ABC.
It wasn’t long before people in the town started noticing something was amiss with the couple.
One local resident, who did not wished to be named, told the ABC that Gareth would often bring his dogs to the local swimming hole where kids liked to hang out and hunt wild pigs.
“We would often find the gutted carcasses of pigs there. Sometimes we would see Gareth with his knives running around with the dogs chasing the pigs,’’ he said.
“We would hear the boars screaming as he gutted them.”
The Trains’ house also backed on to the local school, which the resident attended at the time.
He said that Gareth would take the pigs and butcher them in his backyard, resulting in “blood and offal” running directly on to the school oval.
“There would be a smell of offal and blood running on to the footy field,” he said.
Another resident, Minnie Kenna, who worked at the school at the time, told the ABC she had witnessed Gareth “dragging” Stacey by her hair up the stairs and into their 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,” she said.
Police investigate tip-off
Meanwhile, police are now investigating whether the Trains may have deliberately lured police to their property with a deceitful tip-off.
Nathaniel had been reported missing by his estranged wife on December 8.
She had last seen him in December 2021 but he stayed in touch until October, when he seemingly vanished.
Sources have now told The Australian that investigators are looking into whether one of the Trains called police and told them that Nathaniel Train was at the property in Wieambilla after seeing the appeal for information.
“They are looking at this possibility that they called NSW Police and told them they ‘think they know where he is,’’’ the source said.
“NSW Police acted on that and asked their Queensland counterparts to look into it as part of a routine missing persons’ inquiry.
“He was the bait.”