On December 19 2014, Raina Thaiday took the innocent sound of birds chirping as a sign from God that she should begin the brutal massacre of eight children.
The Cairns mother thought a dove’s call was signalling that it was time to stab her niece and seven children, aged two to 15 years, to “save” them from the end of the world – a delusion borne from cannabis-induced schizophrenia.
The Mental Health Court has ruled Thaiday will not face prosecution over the deaths of the children due to her defence of unsound mind.
The 37-year-old had been smoking up to 20 cones of cannabis a day since she was a teenager, but gave up about a month before killing the children as a part of a “cleansing” ritual.
The delusions led her to believe she was “the anointed one” and developed an obsession with “cleansing” her home in the lead up to the tragedy, throwing furniture onto the lawn and preaching to neighbours.
Psychatrist Dr Pamela van den Hoef said it was Thaiday’s “unshakeable false beliefs that drove her to do what she did”.
“She firmly and unshakeably believed, against evidence to the contrary, that she was in some way special, that she could personally and directly communicate with the almighty [and] that he was delivering messages to her in various ways,” she said.
“She believed at that time and for some days and weeks beforehand that the end of the world was coming, and she had to act.”
Neighbours said they saw Thaiday talking to herself and declaring, “I am the chosen one”.
“I have the power to kill people and to curse people, you hurt my kids I hurt them first,” she was heard saying.
“You stab my kids, I stab them first. If you kill them, I’ll kill them.”
Psychiatrists believe the “tipping point” for the severely ill mother was brought about by two of her children not returning from a shopping trip on time the night before, resulting in Thaiday making a distressing phone call to police.
The next day, Thaiday first killed the family’s pet duck before turning on the children and, realising what she’d done, eventually stabbing herself 35 times and waiting on the front porch to die where she was found by her adult son who called 000.
Justice Jean Dalton ruled that a convincing body of evidence showed Thaiday suffered a psychotic episode which left her with no capacity to control or understand her own actions and her case was “as serious as schizophrenia gets”.
“To her way of thinking at that time what she was doing was the best thing she could do for her children, she was trying to save them,” he said.
The court heard Thaiday’s state of psychosis persisted for nine months, despite several different anti-psychotic medications, and doctors reported in 2015 that she was becoming fanatically religious again and “fasting”.
She was since relapsed twice, once on the two-year anniversary of the massacre, and said she had thought of killing her fellow patients in the high-security facility.
Several psychiatrists agreed Thaiday’s persistent and prolonged use of cannabis triggered her schizophrenia.
“The long-term cannabis use has brought about the schizophrenia in a person who was predisposed (to the condition),” Dr Frank Varghese said.
Although Thaiday had given up drugs and alcohol as part of her fanatical obsession with cleaning in 2014, the symptoms had already acquired “a life of their own”.
Dr Varghese said Thaiday’s case was “schizophrenia at its very depth and at its worst”.
“This is quite a unique case and a horrendous case, the likes of which I’ve never seen before,” he told the court.
