It’s not unusual for families to go on road trips, so when the Tromp family left their home on Monday 29th August, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
The Tromp family were a hard-working, ordinary family. They owned a successful redcurrant farm and an earth-moving business. On that Monday, parents Mark, 51, and Jacoba, 53, along with their three children Riana, 29, Mitchell, 25 and Ella, 22, left their farm near Melbourne, Australia, in Ella’s grey Peugeot SUV.
They didn’t tell anyone they were leaving, so sometime after the family had left on their road trip heading towards New South Wales, the police were called to the house to investigate. Once there, they found the doors unlocked with passports, mobile phones and credit cards all left behind in the house. Police also found other cars belonging to the Tromps at the property with keys still in the ignitions.
There was one mobile phone that wasn’t left at the property. It was Mitchell’s phone. He had taken it with him, but it was found 30km away, having been thrown from the car window. The family believed it was being used to track them.
So what was going on? What made this normal family just up and leave, taking nothing with them?
At 7 a.m. on Tuesday 30th August, after the Tromp family had driven 800km to the town of Bathurst, Mitchell left the family.
Later that morning, the two daughters, Riana and Ella, also decided to leave their parents. So, they stole a car and drove to a nearby town called Goulburn, where they reported their parents missing. It was at a fuel station in the town that the sisters decided to part ways, with Ella wanting to go back home to feed her horses.
That Tuesday night, Ella arrived back at the family farm, where she found the police. Mitchell then turned up the following morning (Wednesday 31st August) having taken multiple trains to make it home.
Riana was found in the back of a utility vehicle in Goulburn. She had climbed in the back for unknown reasons and was found by the driver in a catatonic state, not knowing her name or where she was. She was taken to Goulburn Hospital and remained in psychiatric care for a while.
The search for parents Mark and Jacoba Tromp continued and on Wednesday, they separated from each other. Then, on Thursday, Jacoba was found in Yass, wandering in an agitated state, where she was taken to the hospital. She was then transferred to Goulburn so she and Riana could be together while they continued their mental health treatment.
Then, finally, on Saturday evening, six days after the Tromps first left their home, Mark Tromp was found at the side of the road near Wangaratta airport. After being questioned by the police and assessed by a mental health officer, he was released into the care of a family member and returned home.
What happened to the family is still unclear to this day. The family believed that someone was after them and that they were in danger which is why they left without taking anything with them, but they never said why they felt that way. Mitchell and Ella said in an interview:
“I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s really hard to explain or put a word on it but they were just fearing for their lives and then they decided to flee.”
“It was just a build-up of different, normal, everyday events – just pressure – and it slowly got worse as the days went by.”
Some people theorised that the family were running from debt collectors, whereas others thought that the chemicals they used on the redcurrant farm had caused a type of psychosis. Both of these theories were ruled out by investigators.
One of the most prevalent theories is that the family had experienced ‘folie à deux’ or ‘madness of two’ which is a type of shared psychosis experienced by close-knit families/relationships. Riana said:
“You do start thinking the same… you have a few things and they do build up… you can get sick in some way.”
Possibly alluding to the fact this is what she believed had happened.
Not all the family members were affected though. Mitchell said:
“I just had to go with the family because I wanted to see where they were going. I couldn’t leave them.”
After the unexplained events, the family kept a low profile and returned to their normal lives. Riana and Ella were charged with car theft for the car that they stole in Bathurst, but the charges against Riana were dropped because of her mental health at the time, and the charges against Ella were also eventually dropped.
While we may never know what really happened to the Tromp family and why they felt they had to flee so suddenly, it’s nice knowing that this mystery did have a happy ending and everyone made it home safely.
Sources:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-37293494
https://www.mamamia.com.au/tromp-family/
https://www.thedevilsmargaritapodcast.com/episodes/long-sip4-tromp-family
