Why did it take us to find him, when every other agency had the same information?
Six years after 51 people were killed in New Zealand's worst peacetime mass killing, two researchers have found that the Royal Commission meant to explain how it happened was quietly reshaped before it began — its mandate narrowed from what authorities could or should have known to only what they knew. That single word, 'could,' carried within it the entire possibility of prevention. Working without funding, the researchers uncovered more than 400 public online posts the official inquiry never retrieved, raising a question that no suppression order can silence: if the gaps were never truly examined, how can anyone be certain they have been closed?
- The Royal Commission's terms were quietly rewritten just weeks after the attack, stripping out the language of accountability and replacing a broad mandate for prevention with a narrower audit of existing knowledge.
- An unfunded university team found over 400 4chan posts attributed to the gunman — public, accessible, and directly contradicting his own testimony — that government agencies and the official inquiry never retrieved.
- The permanent suppression of the inquiry's underlying data has sealed the evidence from any future researcher, expert, or community member who might challenge its conclusions or build on its findings.
- The gunman has since inspired more than 100 people to plan or carry out attacks, and his glorification continues to spread online while the official posture treats the event as something already reckoned with.
- The researchers' forthcoming book represents a direct challenge to that posture — an attempt to answer the questions the inquiry declined to ask and to dismantle the mythology that has grown up around the attacker in its absence.
When New Zealand's government promised a searching inquiry into the Christchurch mosque attacks, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said investigators would examine what authorities 'could or should have known' before the gunman killed 51 people on March 15, 2019. By the time the Royal Commission's terms were finalized three weeks later, that language had disappeared. The mandate now asked only what agencies 'knew' — a shift that two researchers argue left the country with almost no framework for preventing future attacks.
Chris Wilson, an associate professor at the University of Auckland, and Michal Dziwulski, a former corrections adviser and terrorism studies researcher, have spent years reconstructing what the inquiry missed. Their forthcoming book, He Told Us, traces the gunman's five-year radicalization and documents warning signs that went unexamined. Dziwulski explained the stakes of the language change plainly: asking what authorities could have known opens an inquiry into systems, gaps, and failures; asking only what they knew reduces it to whether existing information was acted upon. Cabinet advice given three days after the attack had recommended the broader approach. It was not taken.
The weight of their criticism rests partly on what they found themselves. Working without funding, the pair traced more than 400 posts on 4chan attributed to the gunman — posts that directly contradicted his claim to the inquiry that he had not used extreme right-wing websites, and that exposed the carefully constructed persona he had presented as fabrication. Government agencies had access to the same public information. The Royal Commission never obtained it. Wilson's question is simple and uncomfortable: if an unfunded university team could find this years later, why didn't anyone at the time — and what does that say about whether the necessary improvements have actually been made?
The researchers also questioned the inquiry's conclusion that the gunman acted alone, noting that a messaging application found on his computer received only passing mention, and that the commission lacked expertise in terrorism, extremism, and digital radicalization. Most troubling, the permanent suppression of the inquiry's underlying evidence means no one can revisit it. No researcher can challenge the findings. No community can learn from them.
Meanwhile, the gunman continues to be glorified online, having inspired more than 100 people to carry out or plan attacks of their own. Wilson argues that treating the event as something New Zealand has moved past is not working — the inspiration spreads, and the gaps that allowed it remain unexamined. He Told Us, published June 9, is an attempt to answer the questions the official inquiry chose not to ask.
In the weeks after New Zealand's worst peacetime mass killing, the government promised a searching inquiry into how the Christchurch mosque attacks might have been prevented. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said repeatedly that investigators would examine what authorities "could or should have known" before the gunman opened fire on March 15, 2019, killing 51 people. But by the time the Royal Commission's terms of reference were finalized on April 8, 2019, the scope had shifted. The final mandate asked only what agencies "knew"—a narrowing that two researchers now say left the country with almost no understanding of how to prevent future attacks.
Chris Wilson, an associate professor of politics and international relations at the University of Auckland, and Michal Dziwulski, a former Department of Corrections adviser completing a master's degree in conflict and terrorism studies, have spent years reconstructing what the inquiry missed. Their forthcoming book, He Told Us, traces the gunman's radicalization over five years and documents warning signs that went unheeded. In interviews about their research, they argue that the shift in the inquiry's focus—from what could have been known to what was known—fundamentally changed what the investigation could accomplish.
Dziwulski explained the distinction plainly: examining what authorities could or should have known opens the inquiry to a much broader examination of systems, gaps, and failures. Asking only what they knew narrows the investigation to a narrower question of whether existing information was acted upon. The difference matters enormously for prevention. Cabinet advice given three days after the attack had recommended a broad inquiry, but by the time the terms were finalized, they had been "narrowed and completely changed," Dziwulski said.
The researchers' criticism gains weight from what they have uncovered themselves. Working as an unfunded university team, they traced more than 400 posts on the image board 4chan that they attribute to the gunman—public communications that the Royal Commission never obtained, despite the fact that government agencies had access to the same information the researchers used to find them six years after the attack. These posts directly contradicted the gunman's claim to the inquiry that he had not used extreme right-wing websites. They also exposed the carefully constructed persona he had presented—a reluctant, working-class everyman—as fabrication.
Wilson posed the question that haunts their research: if every agency had the same information available, why did it take an unfunded university team to find these posts years later? And if that work was not done, how can anyone be confident that the necessary improvements have actually been made? The researchers also challenged the inquiry's conclusion that the gunman acted alone, pointing to Discord, a messaging application he downloaded in the weeks before the attack and which appeared on his bedroom computer in photographs, but which the Royal Commission mentioned only in passing.
Dziwulski noted that the inquiry lacked expertise in terrorism, extremism, and digital media—gaps that mattered when investigating someone who had radicalized primarily online. More troubling still, the permanent suppression of the inquiry's underlying information means no further analysis is possible. No researcher can revisit the evidence. No expert can challenge the findings. The community is left unable to learn from what happened.
Wilson's broader concern extends beyond the inquiry itself. The gunman continues to be glorified online, where he has inspired more than 100 people to carry out or plan their own attacks. The current approach—keeping him buried, treating the attack as something New Zealand has moved past—is not working, Wilson said. The glorification persists. The inspiration spreads. Without a full accounting of how he radicalized and what was missed, the country remains vulnerable to the same gaps that allowed him to act. The book He Told Us, published June 9, represents an attempt to strip away the mythologized status that has built up around him online and to answer the questions the official inquiry did not ask.
Notable Quotes
The current approach to keeping him buried and New Zealand almost moving on as if the attack didn't happen is not working, because he continues to be glorified online.— Chris Wilson, University of Auckland researcher
When you're looking at just what agencies knew and then what they did based on that, it just narrows the scope of the inquiry significantly.— Michal Dziwulski, co-author of He Told Us
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does it matter whether the inquiry asked what agencies "knew" versus what they "could or should have known"?
Because the first question is narrow and backward-looking—it only examines whether existing information was acted on. The second is forward-looking and systemic. It asks what gaps existed, what signals were missed, what structures failed. Prevention requires understanding the second question.
But the agencies had the same 4chan posts your team found. Doesn't that suggest they simply weren't looking?
Exactly. And that's the point. If they weren't looking then, what's changed now? The inquiry never examined why. It never asked what systems should be in place to catch this kind of radicalization. It just asked what they knew and moved on.
The gunman has inspired over 100 people to plan attacks since then. Does your research suggest how that happened?
He's become a figure online—a symbol, almost. The inquiry's suppression of information, the silence around how he actually radicalized, has left a vacuum. Mythology fills vacuums. We're trying to replace that mythology with the actual story: a person who was radicalized gradually, whose warning signs were visible, and who could have been stopped.
What would a proper inquiry have looked like?
It would have examined not just what agencies knew, but what they should have been monitoring. It would have involved experts in digital extremism, not just investigators. It would have asked hard questions about Discord, about his online networks, about the gaps in how we detect radicalization. And it would have left the evidence accessible so others could learn from it.
Do you think the narrowing was intentional?
I can't say. But I can say that Cabinet advice recommended a broad inquiry, and by the time the terms were finalized, they were narrowed. Whether that was deliberate or bureaucratic drift, the effect is the same: we're left almost no safer.