THE 8 CHILD MASSACRE

so today's video is going to be another solved true crime kiss today we're going to be doing another australian kiss i always ask my channel members what kind of cases you guys want to see and two of the most overwhelming comments on one of my last status updates was australian cases and cases where the mental health system has failed primarily the perpetrator so i found this case that kind of measures all of that into one story so today we're going to be talking about the cairns child killings or the 8 child massacre but before we get into the story i just want to thank our sponsor for making this video possible nordvpn nordvpn is my personal favorite virtual private network service i've used them for years to stay safe on the internet it works by giving you another ip address from another country and you appear as though you are operating from the ip address and this can act as a barrier between you and all your information and people that might be trying to access it or hack it and you actually get to pick where in the world this new ip address comes from which also comes with so many different benefits on top of internet safety you can access the internet as if you are in the country that you choose so i choose an american ip address a lot because i love watching american netflix a lot of the youtube videos that i want to watch that are banned in the uk are always available in america there's so many reasons to get a vpn but safety is the most important especially if you use like public wi-fi's like restaurant wi-fi trains cafes you never know how secure those networks are you never know how safe you're gonna be connecting to free wi-fi just random free wi-fi that you know nothing about it's kind of scary so i always use nordvpn to protect me from those and nod vpn very kindly offering you guys a huge discount off of a two-year plan plus a bonus gift when you go through my link which is nordvpn.com forward slash eleanor and use the code eleanor at checkout you're welcome for your discount by the way thanks again to node vpn for sponsoring this video now let's just get into the case before we do i just want to give my usual disclaimer that i mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that i talk about in this video this video is for educational purposes and everything that i'm about to say is just information that i have found on the internet and i'm compiling into one video just a couple of content warnings this case does involve the murder of children and it also involves very brief themes of sexual assault sexual abuse and of course in this case we will be talking a lot about the mental health system being failed by the mental health system different mental illnesses possible self-harm you know all these different mental health kind of themes so if any of that is triggering to you please do click out of this video and look after yourself i'm sure i'll see you with a different case sometime that's a little bit more suited to you but for now be kind to yourself and i'll see you again later so with all that being said let's just jump into the case so this case takes place in cairns which is in far north queensland in australia even more specifically it was in the suburb of menorah in cairns and menorah has been described as just a very typical north queensland suburb it was very normal there was nothing extraordinary about it just a normal place where normal people lived and normal things happened but on december 19th 2014 around 11 a.m police received a very frantic phone call from a young man 20 year old lewis warrior was the eldest of eight children he was the only one old enough to like move out and start his own life but he would often come back to his mother's home to visit her and all of his younger siblings and so that's exactly what he was doing on this morning it was a sunday morning he was gonna go there and see everyone but when he arrived he found one of the most traumatizing scenes when he got there his mother was standing out on the veranda she was like staggering around and as he got closer he realized that she was covered in blood she had stab wounds all over her like all her clothes were just soaked in blood she was mourning in pain couldn't really get a word out so he called the police police and paramedics arrived as quickly as they could and they got his mother into an ambulance where she was checked over on her way to the hospital and this woman was just covered in stab wounds i think there were about 35 in turtle all over her body primarily to like her neck chest very like vulnerable areas so as soon as lewis's mother was taken to the hospital police decided to go inside the house just to kind of establish context here because this was a very surprising thing for lewis and for police to find on a sunday morning just his mother covered in stab wounds something must have gone on inside that house but when police entered the front door of this house they had no idea the true extent of this situation this was about to get eight times more horrifying they started walking through this house and in almost every single room there was at least one murdered child there were eight bodies found in this house in turtle eight murdered children all equally as brutalized as lewis's mother was there were stab wounds all over them they were covered in blood the walls the floors were covered in blood all of these eight children were pronounced dead at the scene it seemed that the only survivor of this whole attack was lewis's mother and through talking to lewis a little bit further police were able to conclude that the woman that had been transported to hospital his mother her name was rayna thiede and she was also the mother to seven of those eight children found dead in the house those were all lewis's younger siblings apart from one which was actually her niece so lewis's cousin they were all relatives all eight of these children so of these eight victims four of them were girls and four of them were boys their names were mali angelina chante raiden azaria daniel rodney and patronella they were between the ages of 14 and the youngest of these eight victims was actually just 18 months old a year and a half pretty much still a baby and lewis warrior the one that had discovered this scene or at least discovered the first part of the scene he actually had to be the one to go down to the morgue and identify all seven of his younger siblings that had been murdered they were still covered in blood this this must have been the most traumatizing thing if seeing your mother in that state wasn't bad enough he then had to see all of his seven siblings like that plus his cousin and he compared it to a horror movie he could see all these injuries on them like their bodies had been covered up as much as they could be but in order to identify them he saw wounds on their neck and on their chest all eight of these children all eight of the victims all shared one funeral it took place in like a big convention center and had over 4 000 people come to pay their respects one of which was actually the prime minister of australia at the time tony abbott it was especially heartbreaking i mean even personally for me researching this case just seeing all the different sized coffins some of them were just so small like it's so heartbreaking to think about so now police had the job of taping up this awful crime scene that took place in this house and getting to work solving this case they knew that their biggest lead in this case was of course the only survivor reina thiede the mother of most of these children but because she was in such a bad way she was so injured the hospital didn't let police talk to her for a while but they knew that she was going to be such a big piece in this puzzle because i mean she was the only witness she probably witnessed the whole massacre of all these children and she was probably attacked by the exact same person so maybe she could describe this person they knew that she was going to be a big big help but for a while they weren't allowed to speak to her they just had to wait for her to be treated and get back in good physical health before they could interview her so in the meantime they felt that the next best thing was to interview 20 year old louis warrior because this seemed as though that family had been targeted specifically it didn't look like they'd been robbed it didn't look like there was any other motive than to just break in there and kill them all so they wanted to ask lewis if the family had any enemies or if he just knew anything from an inside perspective of who could want to do this to his mother and all of his siblings but he said that he just had no idea he had no idea who would want to do something like this to his family he said that his mother was a lovely caring woman she was friendly she didn't have any enemies she was a great mother that was like her biggest passion in life her kids were like her pride and joy and all the kids were really well-mannered really respectful like they were not a troublesome family if anything they were quite the opposite reina was quite popular she was very well liked she used to host things at her house she was known to be a really really good cook everyone loved her cooking so she would host dinner parties she would make food for people and go and deliver it to their houses lewis just could not understand why anyone would want to do this to such a lovable woman but he did mention one thing to police about maybe one potential suspect he told them to look into a particular relative of theirs this relative was an 18 year old boy he had a criminal past and at the time of the massacre he'd actually just gotten out of prison so lewis was a little bit not that he majorly suspected him but he thought maybe this was a robbery gone wrong you know this cousin of his or relative of his even was quite a dodgy guy so if anyone maybe look into him so this message was sent back to the police station and police over there started getting to work tracking down this relative but in the meantime police that were still at the scene decided to go up and down the street questioning all the neighbours asking if anyone saw or heard anything and like none of them did none of them heard or saw anything suspicious anywhere but one of the neighbors did tell police that they'd seen reina and a few of her kids out on the veranda the night before or in the early hours of the morning around 2am she said that reynad looked as though she was just tidying up and the kids were just kind of playing out on the veranda it was a kind of weird time for this to be taking place but nothing seemed to miss it didn't seem like they were worried or anyone else was there so this gave police a better idea of the timeline of the murder they knew that it must have happened at some point on that sunday morning because everything was fine at 2am and then the phone call from lewis to the police was made at 11 am so something happened between 2 and 11. so as all of these interviews were going on police were still searching the inside of the house for for anything maybe weapons or any kind of clues or even just an idea of how this attack took place so for example most of the children were actually found in their beds they were murdered in their beds so maybe they were murdered in their sleep and maybe they were totally unsuspecting maybe this happened in the middle of the night a few knives were actually found around the home i don't know if they had blood on them or anything because they actually had to seal them up and then take them for testing to see if they were the murder weapon so that's a couple of different possibilities maybe they were just knives that belonged to that household or maybe the killer had washed off the knives only to leave them at the crime scene anyway the knives were sent off for testing analyzing they had to wait for results to come back on that and as all of this was going on so this was a very very fast-paced case fast-paced case of course police got the call at 11am that morning but by the afternoon that street where the house was where the massacre took place it was covered in reporters different journalists cars literally it was like jammed not just reporters though but just random people from cairns that were hearing about this that just felt so touched by what they were hearing people were coming down to leave flowers and teddy bears and little toy figurines for the kids people were so touched by this because well obviously it was eight children that were just murdered for seemingly no reason all in their own homes and it was even six days before christmas this is a time that is meant to be joyous you're meant to spend it with your family and now this family had been completely torn apart a few of these eight children as well had different dads so there were so many different families affected here so many men left without their kids so many grandparents left without grandchildren like this was horrific on so many different levels so many generations were missing loved ones now so people were bringing christmas cards down for the family there was even one little clip i saw of a news report where someone had brought down a little rabbit stuffed toy with a little santa hat on its ear and i just think even the fact that it was so close to christmas makes it hit so much harder the whole of australia fell for those children that day you know people that had never even heard of the family were crying they were trying to pay their respects in any way that they could meanwhile back at the hospital reina thiede the mother of this family was being checked over and treated for her injuries and like i said she had a lot she had a punctured lung a lot of them a lot of blood loss so they're checking her over and that was when doctors noticed something a little bit weird about her injuries the angles at which she'd been stabbed didn't seem natural you know if this was a spur of the moment altercation and she'd just been like stabbed in the chest it would have been from a different angle the angle that the knife physically entered her body just wasn't right it wasn't natural instead it seemed as though a lot of these wounds could have been self-inflicted rayna had stabbed herself 35 times and this was a huge realization to make because this turned the whole case on its head it gave it a whole new meaning up until this point police had seen rayna as the only surviving victim of this massacre but if her wounds were self-inflicted then what does that mean for the case does that mean that she was the killer and maybe she was just trying to inflict wounds on herself to make herself look like a victim when really this is all just a cover-up for her own massacre doctors still weren't letting police in to interview her but they tried to ask their own questions here and there as they were treating her but they noticed that she seemed like she wasn't really there like the things she was saying it was like she was she was intoxicated she was slurring her words so they did a toxicology report on rayna and it found that she had absolutely no alcohol no drugs no substances in her system whatsoever she was fully sober but either way doctors quickly informed police that they'd made this discovery about her wounds and police were so shocked to hear this because now the mother of most of these victims was seeming like the suspect so now police decided to go back out to the neighborhood and do those daughter dollar inquiries again but this time obviously from a different angle now they wanted to learn more about reina they wanted to know more about her relationship with her kids they wanted more context behind what kind of person she was or how this family operated day-to-day and all the neighbors told the police that for the most part like the whole time they'd known her she'd just been such a dedicated nurturing loving kind mother to her seven children and she was really good at being a mum as well she raised her kids really well they were all really polite kind kids she was proud of her family but within the last couple of months her neighbors had noticed a couple of changes in her we'll come back to those changes in a little bit but as for the actual day of the murder the woman that lived behind rayna so her house backed onto reyna's house they were like backwards neighbors that was an even more confusing way to explain it wasn't it anyway this neighbor whose house backed onto it she said that normally she can hear noises in the house like especially first thing on the morning when all the kids are waking up but on that particular morning that sunday she hadn't heard a single thing the house had been silent on sunday morning all the neighbors however said that the night before they heard a lot of shouting you know there was some kind of altercation there was some kind of fight or an argument going on and obviously that other neighbor then told the police that she'd seen raynor and the kids out on the veranda at 2am and everything seemed normal so this was quite a weird sequence of events to put the timeline together there was an argument and then everything was fine at 2am and they were just out on the veranda tidying up or whatever and then the next morning all the kids are found dead and it's completely silent at the house it seemed you know like just a weird sequence of events the argument happened and then everything was okay but somehow they still ended up in an eight child massacre police also heard reports from neighbors saying that on the day before the murders so this is the saturday evening neighbors had heard reyna thie day out in the streets just piercing up and down her own street yelling at nothing she was out there for hours saying a whole load of different things and she was addressing most of it to papa god and some of these statements were absolutely terrifying like reyna was saying that she was the chosen one and she had the power to kill or curse anyone and one of the neighbors actually briefly heard her saying if you hurt my kids i heard them first you stab my kids i'll stab them first if you kill my kids i'll kill them first from this information psychologists have since concluded that it sounds like raynauth idea was in some kind of schizophrenic episode the night before the murders and maybe it was during this episode that she committed the massacre herself i mean that would explain why she had so many injuries on herself as well so police looked into it a little bit further and they found that reyna thy day had a very extensive history of different mental illnesses however her record showed that she'd never really gotten any kind of help for these illnesses she was severely overlooked by the mental health care system in australia she'd been given no treatment no counseling no medication absolutely nothing and it was now looking as though those mental health issues that should have been cared for and and looked at were now the reason for such a savage massacre but it wasn't just mental health issues that raynath idea was struggling with at this point in time she was going through a lot of financial issues i mean she was a single mother to seven kids that she lived with but she also had another son this was financial stress it was emotional stress as well trying to care for seven kids in your household one of them is as young as a year and a half i mean i i can't imagine how stressful that is she'd also been through a breakup pretty recently before this as well the father of her most recent few children had left and of course now that meant she had less money less help looking after the kids it was a huge huge change she might have felt all these different feelings that you feel with a breakup as well the heartbreak and the anxiety and being out there by yourself now and there had been so many warning signs in the run-up to this event that were either missed or overlooked for example her whole outlook on life her whole perspective completely changed in the months before the massacre reyna's religious views were suddenly becoming very extreme and strict she believed that she was the chosen one like she was some kind of special prophet she would travel from church to church and ask for advice and seek counsel and share her sins reina herself pretty much all her life before this incident had smoked marijuana and quite a lot of it as well she used to smoke like 20 joints a day and about a month before the massacre she decided to ban any and all recreational substances from her household so that was alcohol weed any other kind of drug literally anything and everything was banned and this was a woman that so avidly used it her whole life since she was a teenager she'd been smoking marijuana and for her to have this sudden and complete switch in mindset towards it should have been something that was maybe looked into by her friends and family you know why did her mind change so suddenly and severely even in the days before the massacre she had this sudden urge to cleanse her house and herself and she felt like there were demons or something like that so she was doing like an extreme clear out she was getting rid of all of their stuff that was probably what she was doing at 2am on the veranda because she just kept like picking up kids toys and just any and every belonging that she had and she would just throw them out in the yard she wouldn't take them to a tip or she wouldn't donate them she wouldn't sell them she would just leave them out in the yard and this was her cleansing her space just getting rid of hers and all of her kids belongings so after hearing all of this from rayna's friends family neighbours police were pretty sure that she was you know she was it she was the murderer she was their prime suspect and they just had to wait for her treatment to be over to be able to talk to her finally after a couple of weeks the hospital gave her the all clear and police were allowed to arrest her then and there at the hospital and bring her to the police station the first thing they did before they actually interviewed her like questioned her interrogated her was they brought in a psychiatrist because it was very clear that this woman had severe mental illness and was likely in an episode at the time of the murder so this was a lot more complex than just sitting an evil cold-hearted killer down and like interrogating them in a questioning room this was not the same thing and they had to go about it way more sensitively so this psychiatrist came in and they were asking marina about the night of the massacre and they concluded that she was for sure in an episode and she felt as though she was getting messages from god and from higher powers telling her that the world was going to end and this was probably what was inspiring all these radical changes in the months running up to the massacre she believed the world was ending and so she wanted to make sure that her soul and her house and her children were as pure as they possibly could be so that they would go to heaven when the world ended and she said that that is why she killed all seven of her children and her niece because she was trying to save them from the end of the world the actual trigger for the murders themselves now i don't know how accurate this is i don't know if this is just something that news outlets said before they got the official verdict back from the police and the court that she was in a schizophrenic episode so i don't know if this is true but a lot of the reports said that the trigger for the actual massacre was the fact that two of her daughters came home late they came home past their curfew they'd been out all day and they missed their last bus home and sir rayna was marching up and down the street trying to find them she called the police and demanded that they go out and find her daughters and i think that it was at this point when she was waiting for her daughters to come home that she was marching up and down the street and chanting all these things about you hurt my kids i'll hurt them first the daughters eventually came back off their own accord that night i suppose they just found another way to get home and it was very shortly after that that the massacre took place reina herself has said that her trigger that night to commit this massacre was when she got the signal from god god was going to send down a dove and when she heard that dove's call that was her cue to kill all of her children and her niece and save them from the end of the world some sources say that she actually started the killings with the family's pet duck she went out into the garden slaughtered the duck and then came back inside for the children not much is known about how she actually carried out this massacre and because they are children i probably wouldn't go into too much detail anyway but it's believed that she just went from room to room to room from child to child to child some rooms even had a couple of children in and she was just frenzied just stabbing them multiple multiple times on all different parts of their body as well some of the kids would have like 14 stab wounds to the chest and 10 to the back so either she was moving them or they were trying to get away it's oh it's heartbreaking to think about and even then i said there were 14 to the front 10 to the back each of these kids was stabbed approximately like 20 times each this was brutal frenzied savage this would have taken a lot of physical effort and energy from reyna which again is another reason why they could confirm that she was in this schizophrenic episode because the physical strength that she had was unnatural so she went between each of the children killed all of them first and then she turned on herself she said that the reason she attacked herself after that wasn't because she was trying to cover up the murder she wasn't trying to make herself look like a victim at all the reason she was doing it was because she was trying to commit suicide like i said she had a punctured lung and she explained that because she was actually trying to stab herself in the heart for what she'd done she was trying to take her own life because she didn't like the fact that she'd taken eight other lives she said she knew that she would be hated for what she did she knew she would be hated for murdering all eight children but she knew that it was something that she had to do you know her beliefs at that time she knew she had to do it anyway finally about a week later 37 year old rayna thiede was released fully from the hospital and psychiatrists and all of that kind of health care and she was released to the police where she was charged with all eight murders on april 6 2017 so just over two years after the massacre actually took place this case went to brisbane's mental health court for a trial and i'm sure you can imagine how this went rayna's team very much said look we know what she did was awful and she does show genuine remorse but at the time of the massacre she was in this episode she was not in control of her actions she was not responsible for what she did they even told the court about how long reina had been struggling with all these different mental health issues all these illnesses and she'd got no help from the system no treatment no psychiatric assessments no medication she'd just been so let down and overlooked by the system not only all of her mental health issues but she'd also been a victim of domestic violence sexual abuse i think mainly from her partners or previous partners and she tried to get help for that as well but she was let down there and ultimately all of these letdowns all the times that she was overlooked and unsupported her team said that all of that is what led to this massacre had she just got some help maybe 10 years earlier when she was first showing signs of having schizophrenia then maybe this would have been contained and controlled and she wouldn't have done this but i mean i know that is so easy to say in retrospect i understand that nobody could have predicted that this was going to happen nobody could have looked at her as a patient 10 years ago and said she's going to go on to murder eight people if we don't look after her of course they how were professionals supposed to know that this was how this was going to end but it is so disappointing to see someone get so let down by the mental health system and the justice system to the point where it comes to something like this her defense argued that rayna thiede had no previous criminal history so it wasn't like she was just a troublesome person that was causing issues and like you know this was very clearly down to her mental illness she wasn't the type to go out and be violent or murder anyone they said that she was definitely in an episode when she committed these murders if she was mentally coherent at the time she wouldn't have done it and so they said they understood that because she murdered eight children she needed to serve some kind of time but they asked that that time not be in a prison but rather in some kind of psychiatric unit where she could get proper care and the jury came back with the verdict that reyna thiede could not be found criminally responsible for what she'd done because she was so mentally ill and the judge actually decided to throw in her two cents and this is a quote from her it was probably that long history of using cannabis that caused the schizophrenia to develop like i said reina had been smoking like 20 joints a day since she was a young teenager and there are studies that say that like excessive marijuana use can lead to things like psychosis and late onset of things like schizophrenia so reyna thigh dare was sent to brisbane mental health facility and there she will be detained for the foreseeable future you know until she is assessed and they say that she is no longer a danger to herself and others she'll be there indefinitely probably for the rest of her life but at least she's getting the proper care there i mean staff have said that she is progressing quite slowly and she has had a couple of relapses most notably on the two-year anniversary of the massacre she relapsed really badly and she was threatening to kill other patients she was saying that she was going to kill everyone in the psych ward she had to be detained and cared for but ultimately i think she's doing well she she hasn't harmed anyone from what i know since this awful massacre took place inside that house they decided that they they physically did not want that building up in menorah anymore it was just too awful of a memory so they decided to knock it all down completely demolish it and in its place they have built a memorial park with eight different trees to represent each of the eight different children people go there to leave flowers for the kids leave them toys there's fences that are literally lined with like teddies stuck to the fences at one point they did put a couple of swings in this park so that other kids could use it and kind of remember the kids in a very light fun playful way but then they later decided that maybe that's not the vibe that they wanted for a memorial park so they took them out and now it's literally just like a big green open space with these trees to go and pay your respects lewis warrior rayna's oldest son the 20 year old that went and found her on the veranda and found the scene on that day he has since said that he forgives his mother for what she did he says that people unfairly judge her they don't think about what she's been through in her life because she did she went through so much she was in so many abusive relationships and the reason that was quite kind of brushed over in this case is because i know nothing about that i couldn't find anything about that online so details and stuff i'm not in a place to give details when i don't know the details so i do want to kind of stress to you that she had quite a traumatic life herself and then all of these mental illnesses that were just kind of swept under the rug and not cared for so he feels that she's unfairly judged people don't look into her past and understand how it got to the point that it did i mean massacring eight children i don't think i could ever understand but you can understand the fact that she was in a schizophrenic episode and she was she was found literally not criminally responsible by the courts he says that it's been a real journey for him to be able to find this forgiveness because he blamed himself for a lot of it for quite a while he felt like he should have been there to protect them and if he was there to protect them then none of this would have happened he said that he used to get this recurring nightmare where all of his siblings would be hiding behind him and he's trying to look after them while his mother is running towards them like trying to attack them and he's just got to protect everyone i can't imagine how horrifying that must be to have nightmares about your own mother trying to kill your own siblings and you're in between them birth like it just sounds awful it sounds like such a traumatic and confusing thing for lewis to have had to go through he says that he will live the rest of his life in honor of his siblings he wants to make them proud he knows that they're looking down on him smiling watching him go through all of his life and he says that he's gonna make them proud but that is all i have for this video thank you so so much for watching as always please keep it respectful in the comments this is a case about eight children and it is a very sensitive topic with all the mental health things that we talked about so keep your comments respectful do share your opinions but do so respectfully please thanks again to nordvpn for sponsoring this video remember they're offering you guys a huge discount off a two-year plan plus a bonus gift when you sign up through my link which is not vpn.com forward slash eleanor and use the code eleanor at checkout huge thank you to all of my channel members for helping me decide the cases that i cover especially my tier 2 members whose names are all on screen right now if you want to become a channel member you can just click the join button on a desktop or there'll be a link in the description of this video but yeah thank you so so much for watching this video if you enjoyed please leave a thumbs up down below because that would really help me out if you want to subscribe there'll be a link to do so right here if you want to subscribe to my second channel there'll be a link to do so right here and if you want to watch another true crime video there'll be a playlist 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Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 994,413

Rating: 4.9328427 out of 5

Keywords: eleanor, neale, eleanor neale, eleanor neale true crime, mystery, unsolved, unsolved mystery, true crime, solved, documentary, killer, murder, serial killer, buzzfeed, buzzfeed unsolved, podcast, true crime podcast, netflix, storytime, forensic files, dateline, interview, news, cairns, australia, raina, raina thaiday, thaiday, lewis warria, true crime daily, 8 child massacre, cairns child killings, child killings, child, court, mental health, schizophrenia, eight, psychotic, episode, 2021, manoora

Id: n-gWUQc2OgE

Length: 34min 51sec (2091 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 09 2021