Three years after her death, Rachel’s father is waiting for closure

3 months ago 5

“She was perfect. I’m not just saying that. She was.”

As rain bears down on a tin roof from the cloudy western Sydney sky above, Wayne McCrow clutches a flimsy cardholder hanging on a black lanyard. Inside is Queensland Police badge number 4041205. It belonged to his daughter, Constable Rachel McCrow.

“She comes with me everywhere,” he says. “Every morning I say a prayer for her. Every evening I talk to her.”

Wayne McCrow still carries his daughter’s police badge with him wherever he goes.

The 70-year-old is every bit the proud father you would expect him to be.

Almost three years on from Rachel’s murder – in what has since been described as Australia’s first religiously motivated terror attack, at a remote property at Wieambilla on Queensland’s Western Downs – he still wears the keepsake around his neck.

“I show people. I sit in the shopping centre and have a drink or a coffee or milkshake, Maccas. And I’ll get this out and talk about her a lot. People love it, you know. They remember.”

McCrow battles Parkinson’s disease and lives in an aged care facility in Parramatta.

He was too ill to travel interstate to attend Rachel’s funeral, but he has watched from afar as every harrowing detail of her death has been uncovered. And he is still desperate for answers.

“This is the first time I’ve talked about it to anyone, really, except someone in the shopping centre,” he tells Nine News.

“I know there are a lot of people wondering what’s going to happen, who are just hanging on to wait for the coroner’s report.”

A memorial procession for Rachel McCrow and her colleague, Constable Matthew Arnold.

On Friday, a Queensland coroner will hand down their findings, more than a year on from the five-week inquest into the Wieambilla massacre.

Rachel and colleague Constable Matthew Arnold were responding to a missing person report on Wains Road when they were gunned down by former New South Wales school principal Nathaniel Train, brother Gareth, and Gareth’s wife, Stacey.

Two other police officers, constables Randall Kirk and Keely Brough, managed to escape.

Neighbour Alan Dare, who came to investigate, was also killed, before police shot dead the three extremists.

It was a traumatic series of events, etching December 12, 2022, into Queensland history as one of the state’s darkest days.

McCrow recalls the gut-wrenching phone call he received as reports emerged of the horror that had unfolded on a barren rural block turned battleground.

“I remember getting this phone call about 4.30, 5 o’clock, or something around that time. And the man on the other end said he was a policeman from somewhere, I can’t remember,” he says.

“I can remember ... just like shock. Just my body. I screamed and threw the phone. It was shattering.”

Before she was a country cop, Rachel was McCrow’s “baby girl”, who always called him “Dadda”.

Rachel McCrow, who was killed just 18 months after joining the police service as a junior officer.

Shuffling through kindy photos, selfies, and snaps from the sideline of a junior soccer match, he describes his daughter as someone who “loved life, and loved people”.

“She was just radiant, she could pick up on people, what to say and what to do. Always had manners, never swore in front of me.”

The 29-year-old completed her police academy training in Townsville before joining the service as a rookie officer in June 2021.

“When she joined and I was a bit sceptical, a bit worried about her, she said: ‘Don’t worry, Dad. I should’ve done this a long time ago, you know. I really love doing this.’”

Little did Rachel know, just 18 months later she would find herself face to face with pure evil.

“I thought, ‘she’s going to be something, this girl’. And then she was taken by some crazies.”

Rachel was shot in the leg first, but fought back.

“They had rifles. She wasn’t going to get the distance with her little gun. She was yelling at them, calling them bastards and shooting at them.”

Before she died, Rachel recorded messages of love for her family. “She loved us all,” McCrow says.

Her police body camera then rolled on during her point-blank execution.

It’s McCrow’s wish that after hearing the evidence of almost 70 witnesses at the inquest, Queensland’s coroner will have pieced together what could have been done to prevent his daughter from walking into the path of killers.

Witness testimony revealed NSW Police did not pass on threatening emails written by Gareth Train to their Queensland counterparts.

“There are a few things I’m disappointed in that could have led to her death, when they’re all put together. That was one of them,” McCrow says.

“They’re on the front line, like soldiers, [they need] better systems.”

McCrow is hopeful that on Friday, he will feel some closure. But he is determined that Rachel’s legacy will carry on well beyond the court proceedings.

When asked how he would like Australia to remember his “baby girl”, he smiles.

“Why not make a public holiday: The Rachel Day and Matthew Day. And throw Alan Dare in there too. The Wieambilla people.”

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