Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective see aside of life the average person is never
Speaker 1: exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talked to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes in the contact with crime is
Speaker 1: left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into
Speaker 1: this world. Today, I had a sad yet inspiring conversation
Speaker 1: with Melissa and Peter McGinnis. We talked about the death
Speaker 1: of their eighteen year old son, Jordan, who died in
Speaker 1: the horrific car crash in twenty twelve. It was a
Speaker 1: crash that could have been avoided. Other young lives were
Speaker 1: lost in the crash. Now, death on their roads, unless
Speaker 1: it impacts on you personally, is often just passed off.
Speaker 1: As road statistics, but for those close to the people killed,
Speaker 1: it's life destroying. It's hard to imagine the pain of
Speaker 1: losing your child in those circumstances. I speak to Melissa
Speaker 1: and Peter about that, But there is also another complex
Speaker 1: layer to what happened to them. See, their son, Jordan,
Speaker 1: was driving a vehicle that crashed into a parked car
Speaker 1: containing the four victims. Jordan was almost three times over
Speaker 1: the legal limit, traveling well over the speed limit, and
Speaker 1: had lost his license just days before. As I've said,
Speaker 1: it was something that could have been avoided. Today, I
Speaker 1: had a deeply personal conversation with Melissa and Peter about
Speaker 1: all the emotions they've had to process that include shame, anger, sadness,
Speaker 1: and regret. We talked about the guilt they felt and
Speaker 1: coming to terms with the fact their son's actions destroyed
Speaker 1: so many lives. There are some important, thought provoking messages
Speaker 1: in this conversation. Have a listened to what they have
Speaker 1: to say, it blew me away, and I think you
Speaker 1: might feel the same way. Melissa and Peter McGinnis, thanks
Speaker 1: very much for coming on Eye Catch Killers.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having us Gary. Thanks mate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I thought long and hard about how to
Speaker 1: have this conversation because it's a difficult conversation. But one
Speaker 1: thing that really comes out to me researching and finding
Speaker 1: out what's happened and also having conversations with you before
Speaker 1: the podcast, is that so much is encapsulated in choices
Speaker 1: we make in life, isn't it, And one choice can
Speaker 1: just have devastating effects. What's your thoughts on that? With
Speaker 1: your son Jordan the bad choice and look what's happened.
Speaker 1: Do you often reflect on the consequences of choices we make?
Speaker 4: Well, it's very much shaped our lives, hasn't it myself
Speaker 4: the last nearly thirteen years now and certainly closer to
Speaker 4: the time of the crash that Jordan caused and the
Speaker 4: tragedy you know, where we're sort of fixated on this
Speaker 4: idea of like one one choice on one thing can
Speaker 4: lead to all of this impact, you know, particularly for
Speaker 4: the the for.
Speaker 3: His victims, his victims families, which.
Speaker 4: You know, really keeps us going, you know, making sure
Speaker 4: that this kind of thing doesn't happen again to the
Speaker 4: extent that we can. But we've learned that, you know,
Speaker 4: that idea of one choice, Yes, it was one choice,
Speaker 4: a number of choices that Jordan made on that night.
Speaker 4: But it's also really it's been revealed to us through
Speaker 4: the work that we do with so many teens around
Speaker 4: the country, that often these things are.
Speaker 3: A series of choices.
Speaker 4: These choices are made in a social ecosystem, or there's
Speaker 4: patterns of decision making or recklessness that developed that sometimes
Speaker 4: you just can't see as a parent, and sometimes you
Speaker 4: just can't see yourself or inside your circle of friends.
Speaker 4: So long answer to a short question, Yeah, we do
Speaker 4: reflect on it. But you know what we've concluded, haven't we, Melissa,
Speaker 4: is that it's just so often more than just that
Speaker 4: one choice.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to and we're going to deal very
Speaker 1: deeply through the course of the podcast into the education
Speaker 1: and the messaging that you're getting out from what happened
Speaker 1: with the situation of Jordan's choices and the tragedy that
Speaker 1: unfolded following on from those choices. And I think if anything,
Speaker 1: that the messages that come out the people that have
Speaker 1: been through what you've been through, and the victims and
Speaker 1: the families of the people killed and the crash that
Speaker 1: Jordan was driving, there's consequences for actions.
Speaker 2: Isn't it It's interesting because the whole last thirteen years
Speaker 2: since Jordan's crash, all of it has come down to
Speaker 2: Jordan's choice. Everything that we've done from that day, from
Speaker 2: that day to this day, has been around the choices
Speaker 2: that Jordan made that night. So it's it can't be
Speaker 2: underestimated what choice means, what one decision. Jordan made a
Speaker 2: lot of stupid choices that night, and look at what happened,
Speaker 2: look at the amount of families that were devastated. And
Speaker 2: we think this all the time, don't we that we
Speaker 2: will never seek sympathy for ourselves. People often share sympathy
Speaker 2: with us, and we think the sympathy is reserved solely
Speaker 2: for Jordan's victims and Jordan's victims families because of the
Speaker 2: choices Jordan made, And he would never have intended to
Speaker 2: harm anyone that night, the family that he loved the most,
Speaker 2: let alone his victims and his victims families.
Speaker 1: Yet through his choice, it saddens me and I get
Speaker 1: the sense of all the times that you've spoken publicly
Speaker 1: and that that you don't allow yourself to have sympathy
Speaker 1: for yourself. I'm sitting here saying to you, I've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of tragedy in life from people's actions and that,
Speaker 1: But be kind to yourself too. You're a victim of
Speaker 1: Jordan's choices as much as much as the other people are.
Speaker 3: So I think.
Speaker 4: We, of course we forgive Jordan, and for the millions
Speaker 4: of reasons, how much we love him and miss him
Speaker 4: and admired him as a person. I think there's a
Speaker 4: difference between that concept of privately commemorating it and privately,
Speaker 4: of course we forgive him, But it's a separate thing
Speaker 4: to also own his culpability and own the choices that
Speaker 4: he's made, and part of part of the journey with
Speaker 4: carrying this weight and understanding how we can make use
Speaker 4: of it in some sort of positive way. Is I
Speaker 4: guess that separation between loving him and forgiving him and
Speaker 4: privately commemorating him, but also being really sensitive about the
Speaker 4: idea publicly that this is not, you know, a celebration
Speaker 4: of Jordan's life. We don't do what we do with
Speaker 4: you choose for any sort of healing for ourselves. What
Speaker 4: we seek is change, Gary, Okay.
Speaker 2: I think what people might not realize too is that
Speaker 2: that very day Jordan made those choices, and he destroyed
Speaker 2: so many his lives, so many lives. What he did
Speaker 2: was he transferred his culpability onto the shoulders of the
Speaker 2: people that he loved the most. And that from that
Speaker 2: very day that I sat on the door and sorry,
Speaker 2: I sat at home and we got the knock on
Speaker 2: the door from the police, we felt that really heavy
Speaker 2: weight of civic responsibility. Whilst all the information about Jordan's
Speaker 2: crash wasn't available right then and there, we knew that
Speaker 2: it would be his fault. So we instantly felt that
Speaker 2: feeling of going, my goodness, we've got a son who
Speaker 2: made choices that killed four people. I mean, what did
Speaker 2: you do with those feelings of civic responsibility? And they
Speaker 2: were instant, weren't they Like we were in the middle
Speaker 2: of going what the heck is even happening, but also
Speaker 2: feeling that weight instantly.
Speaker 3: Mind you.
Speaker 4: You know, it also should be said we didn't start
Speaker 4: youtubes immediately. Of course, it took a number of years,
Speaker 4: four years before we were even able to formulate the
Speaker 4: idea that there should be something that we could do.
Speaker 4: It will never be made right, but if just one
Speaker 4: family can be can be spared, you know, the tragedy
Speaker 4: that Jordan's victims families have been through and it won't.
Speaker 4: Then any kind of effort we can put in at all,
Speaker 4: small or large, would be well worth it.
Speaker 1: Well, you're right, Just making the difference in one person's life,
Speaker 1: or seeing one person in the right direction, can have
Speaker 1: a ripple effect that you can't even comprehend how far
Speaker 1: it reaches. Let's talk about Jordan for a bit. What's
Speaker 1: your last memory of Jordan? Both of you, like the
Speaker 1: last time before you got the horrendous knock at.
Speaker 3: The door by the police.
Speaker 1: What was your last contact and memory with.
Speaker 2: Your Okay, so the Saturday before, sorry, the Sunday before
Speaker 2: Jordan died, So six days before Jordan died, and it
Speaker 2: was not far off Christmas, and Jordan and I went
Speaker 2: shopping to buy Jordan's Christmas presents and we actually had
Speaker 2: a really lovely day and it was so rare that
Speaker 2: the two of us spent time together because you know,
Speaker 2: like what eighteen year old wants to hang out with, ma'am? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So we had this really lovely day. We went down,
Speaker 2: we had lunch together, we laughed a lot, was just
Speaker 2: him and I and I actually tell this story during
Speaker 2: part of the presentation that we do into schools, but
Speaker 2: I was We were shopping in a particular store and
Speaker 2: Jordan was just trying on everything going that we were
Speaker 2: going to buy him for his Christmas presents. And while
Speaker 2: he was just trying on his clothes, I went in
Speaker 2: and I just tried on this dress just for fun.
Speaker 2: And I came out and I said to Jordan, Hey,
Speaker 2: what do you think of this dress?
Speaker 3: Mate?
Speaker 2: And he said to me, Mum, you look really pretty
Speaker 2: in that. And I just remember thinking, oh, my goodness,
Speaker 2: did I just get a compliment from my son. So
Speaker 2: when amongst buying all of his stuff, I bought that
Speaker 2: black dress, which happened to be the same black dress
Speaker 2: that I wore nineteen days later at his funeral. So
Speaker 2: that was my last memory, this fantastic that day that
Speaker 2: I'd had with Jordan, shopping and having lunch and laughing,
Speaker 2: and you know the fact that he gave me this
Speaker 2: this compliment. And Jordan would never also leave home without
Speaker 2: giving me a kiss goodbye, so it was, for all
Speaker 2: intents and purposes, it was a really lovely day. So
Speaker 2: I'm so grateful that that was our last moment together,
Speaker 2: because of course he wasn't living at home at that time.
Speaker 2: So he had moved to Brisbane for his carpentry apprenticeship.
Speaker 2: But that event followed you and him going to Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Funny enough.
Speaker 4: That's why we always say to the many hundreds and
Speaker 4: hundreds of thousands of kids that we interact with these days,
Speaker 4: you know, don't look at that door without exchanging I.
Speaker 3: Love you, right, you hear it?
Speaker 4: A lot, Yeah, people experienced these things. Yeah, but look,
Speaker 4: it speaks to a broader issue about Jordan. But he
Speaker 4: wasn't a lot different to any other team, you know.
Speaker 4: And I guess we'll dig into this a little bit later,
Speaker 4: but certainly on the Gold Coast. I know, I'm a
Speaker 4: born and bred Gold Coaster. It was all you could
Speaker 4: do to wear a shirt when you're a teenager. And
Speaker 4: I can recall us. We were leaving, I think, to
Speaker 4: see the latest James Bond movie at the time, you know,
Speaker 4: and he's just walking out the door and his jeans
Speaker 4: and he's you know, and he's four pluggers, no shirt,
Speaker 4: very impressed with his own rig.
Speaker 3: He's a muscular kid. He loved his.
Speaker 4: Footy and I said, mate, could you least tuck a
Speaker 4: T shirt into the back, you know, take one with you.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 3: So that was our sort of the.
Speaker 4: Last last time together, and of course we exchanged I
Speaker 4: love yous as well, we always did.
Speaker 2: I think there's still instance has really sum up Jordan.
Speaker 3: Kind of, does you know.
Speaker 4: And he was a very loving young man, very loving
Speaker 4: to his younger sisters, his nieces, his cousins, his dad, sorry,
Speaker 4: his cousins, his dad on stepdad. Had beautiful relationships with
Speaker 4: everyone in his life.
Speaker 1: It says a lot about that. That's your last memory
Speaker 1: and Melissa, for you, that's that awkward transitional stage between
Speaker 1: he's going to become a man and he won't be
Speaker 1: out shopping with his mum much longer. And that's his
Speaker 1: reference to you wearing the dress. You look pretty in it.
Speaker 1: It's stepping in the manhood. He can make informed comments
Speaker 1: like that, so special moments and the joy of going
Speaker 1: to watch a film with your son and raiming him
Speaker 1: in walking out, could you, like my normal comment, could
Speaker 1: you put some shoes on that? Maybe you should wear
Speaker 1: some shoes if you're going out that type of thing.
Speaker 1: But look, I'm glad you can hang on to those
Speaker 1: those memories because they must be so important to you.
Speaker 3: The last of the contacts and memories and we've.
Speaker 4: Got numerous, I mean obviously years, a lifetime of memories
Speaker 4: with him. As we often say, don't he's no angel.
Speaker 4: He's very much like any other team. But that's the point.
Speaker 4: It's very much like any other team. So in so
Speaker 4: many ways, like his life, our lives like really hold
Speaker 4: up a mirror to almost any family or any teenager
Speaker 4: in Australia.
Speaker 1: It's the average teenager, average family, and this is what happens.
Speaker 1: I'll bring you to the time that you found out
Speaker 1: that Jordan had been involved in the car crash. Can
Speaker 1: you can you talk us through that because it's something
Speaker 1: that no one wants to experience. And I've been involved
Speaker 1: from the police point of view, doing the knock on
Speaker 1: the door and it's just horrendous. If you're comfortable, can
Speaker 1: you tell us tell us about you when you found
Speaker 1: out that about the crash.
Speaker 2: So Jordan was living in Brisbane at the time, where
Speaker 2: Gold Coast based, and Jordan had been at his work
Speaker 2: Christmas party the evening beforehand, and it's got to be
Speaker 2: said that his bosses did everything right at the end
Speaker 2: of the party there or sent home in cabs and
Speaker 2: for reasons that we don't know, and we'll never know.
Speaker 2: Jordan decided to drive home from Brisbane to the Gold Coast.
Speaker 2: We'd exchanged a couple of texts with Jordan that night.
Speaker 2: He said he was having a fantastic It was like
Speaker 2: his first ever work Christmas party. Yeah right, a passage. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He was a carpenter, apprentice carpenter. So he was with
Speaker 2: all of his mates and they'd been out in the
Speaker 2: hot sun digging holes and you know, so they're enjoying
Speaker 2: a few beers and you know what you do at
Speaker 2: a Christmas party. So he decided to drive home very
Speaker 2: late that night. He was going to go, as we
Speaker 2: found out later, he was going to go and stay
Speaker 2: with a couple of mates down on the Gold Coast.
Speaker 2: The next morning, we were none the wiser that Jordan
Speaker 2: had driven down to the Gold Coast and we had
Speaker 2: a knock at the We live in a three story
Speaker 2: walk up, so we've got one of those airphones, so
Speaker 2: we had a ring on our airphone and I answered
Speaker 2: that airphone and it was a couple of police saying,
Speaker 2: you know, it's the police and we're looking for Melissa Hayes.
Speaker 2: And that was really interesting because I Hayes was my sorry,
Speaker 2: my first married name, so it was unusual be called Melissa.
Speaker 2: Hazel thought that's very odd. And I had to go
Speaker 2: down to the stairs to let those offices in. And
Speaker 2: as I was walking down those last flight of stairs
Speaker 2: and I saw the two officers through that glass door,
Speaker 2: I knew that I was about to be delivered news
Speaker 2: that was going to shatter my family. When I opened
Speaker 2: the door, they didn't tell me straight away what had happened.
Speaker 2: They asked if they could come up. And I walked
Speaker 2: in the door and I said to Peter, you know,
Speaker 2: the police are here. And they were so good, Gary,
Speaker 2: they were amazing. And they said, somebody that you want
Speaker 2: to phone, is you know? And we said, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: what's happened? And then they delivered us that news that
Speaker 2: there had been a crash on the M one and
Speaker 2: that I forget the words, but it was something along
Speaker 2: the lines of we believed that your son has been
Speaker 2: fatally injured, and you know, you take it from there,
Speaker 2: but that was just it made no sense at that
Speaker 2: exact moment.
Speaker 4: And look, of course, over the over the years and
Speaker 4: it won't be news to you at all. Gary, We've
Speaker 4: we've had the beautiful privilege to meet many many bereaved
Speaker 4: parents over the years, so that how that plays out,
Speaker 4: he has a real familiarity to it with every story,
Speaker 4: as you'd know, mate. But on that morning, it took
Speaker 4: some time for us to get the full picture as
Speaker 4: to what was well, what had played out the night before,
Speaker 4: And it was much later in that day that it
Speaker 4: was revealed to us that, you know, there had been
Speaker 4: the scale of the tragedy as as the day played
Speaker 4: out and as the subsequent weeks and months played out
Speaker 4: as well well.
Speaker 1: I would imagine receiving that news initially it would be
Speaker 1: hard to process, just coming to terms of what you've
Speaker 1: been told from a knock on the door and your
Speaker 1: your life changed dramatically, and the grief of the shock,
Speaker 1: the not even accepting it. I think it's hard, and
Speaker 1: I've seen people that know that it must be wrong.
Speaker 1: That type of narrative. Narrative comes back. So what happened
Speaker 1: after they told you? What did you actually do? What
Speaker 1: was the next step?
Speaker 2: The police were so amazing that the two police that
Speaker 2: did that door knock, they were so caring they stayed
Speaker 2: with us for good. I would say it was about
Speaker 2: two hours to make sure that we're okay, and we
Speaker 2: made the decision well, actually I had a girlfriend staying
Speaker 2: with me, My best friend was there that night, and
Speaker 2: I had my daughter, my youngest daughter, who was four
Speaker 2: at the time, at home, and we made a decision
Speaker 2: that we wanted to go to the police station and
Speaker 2: meet up with those first responding offices. We wanted to
Speaker 2: understand a little bit more about what had happened in
Speaker 2: but we were in so much shock, I don't even
Speaker 2: know quite how to put it into words. So my
Speaker 2: friend that was staying there, she minded my four year old,
Speaker 2: our four year old daughter, and we just drove straight
Speaker 2: to the police station and we were there with the
Speaker 2: first responding officers. And I'll never forget it because there
Speaker 2: was a young man there who look he looked like
Speaker 2: he was maybe twenty years old, something like they look
Speaker 2: so young and to think that, you know, that was
Speaker 2: probably his first big crash scene that he had been
Speaker 2: to it it's never lost. I mean, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for the work that you do, because I think
Speaker 2: about what that scene must have looked like to the
Speaker 2: many police ambos and fieries, the undertakers, all those people
Speaker 2: that were there that night to see this young man,
Speaker 2: to go, My goodness, that would have been probably your
Speaker 2: first big horrendous event that you've turned up to. And
Speaker 2: my heart breaks thinking, you know what he saw that night,
Speaker 2: what you all see, what you all go through again,
Speaker 2: bringing it back to someone's choices, all because of Jordan's choice.
Speaker 2: That crash was preventable, It should never have happened.
Speaker 1: Well, the fact that you guys are sitting here and
Speaker 1: talking about your concern for other people when you're going
Speaker 1: through that, I think that says a lot about the
Speaker 1: type of people you are in the environment that Jordan
Speaker 1: would have been raised in. You've found out that it
Speaker 1: was a crash, hard to find out more details of
Speaker 1: the crash. When did the when did the i'll call
Speaker 1: it the realization come to the fact that it was
Speaker 1: Jordan's actions that caused the crash. When when did you
Speaker 1: start to come to terms with that?
Speaker 2: I think a bit of a blur, Gary, But we
Speaker 2: knew parts of it straight away. We knew that he'd
Speaker 2: hit the back of the car, so that part was
Speaker 2: going to be his fault. We knew that he'd been
Speaker 2: drinking the night before because it exchanged a couple of
Speaker 2: texts with us. But as the cannabis in his system
Speaker 2: and the speed you know, that stuff came out much
Speaker 2: later down the track.
Speaker 4: So we were given advice, and I think pretty good
Speaker 4: advice to just not look at the media. I guess
Speaker 4: because of me especially. It was it was very news
Speaker 4: worthy event least the Queensland's major arterial shouting both directions
Speaker 4: for hours and hours a couple of weeks before Christmas,
Speaker 4: so it took a while for us to to get
Speaker 4: all of the detail out. Of course, during that first
Speaker 4: period of time, naturally we've got to get around and
Speaker 4: let how various other relatives know. And the other major
Speaker 4: consideration is the feelings for all of everyone affected, all
Speaker 4: of the families, all of everyone that the community at large.
Speaker 1: You're taking on that all that grief.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but of course our two daughters, Jordan's little sisters,
Speaker 4: who were at the time four and eleven respectively, ten
Speaker 4: sorry respectively, we really just had to keep putting one
Speaker 4: foot in front of the other and just try to
Speaker 4: take one day literally, as Melissa says, one sunset at
Speaker 4: a time.
Speaker 1: How did Jordan's sisters take the news and how did
Speaker 1: you break it.
Speaker 4: To the kitty, our youngest. It's kind of a little
Speaker 4: too young to completely understand it.
Speaker 2: She was there and saw it, she was there when
Speaker 2: the police arrived.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So for her it was more of a she
Speaker 4: wasn't stricken with the guilt, sorry, the grief immediately, yeah,
Speaker 4: but rather just obviously upset because because of just the
Speaker 4: visceral feelings of the emotion.
Speaker 2: That she was really concerned to about us as a
Speaker 2: little fought through the four year old's eyes. She didn't
Speaker 2: quite conceptualize what was going on. You can imagine what
Speaker 2: mum and dad look like, so she felt from watching
Speaker 2: what my mum and dad are going through. Montana was
Speaker 2: staying with her father the night that Jordan had his
Speaker 2: crash and I had to ring Montana's father and it
Speaker 2: was actually Montana's father that had to break the news
Speaker 2: to her, and he told me later through his tears
Speaker 2: that she just cried, you know, not brother, No, please,
Speaker 2: please please not brother. So it was a shock for her.
Speaker 2: She was old enough to understand what it meant that
Speaker 2: Jordan had died, that he'd had a car crash. Kitty
Speaker 2: couldn't conceptualize that. She just watched what was going on
Speaker 2: with mum and dad.
Speaker 1: I'm silent because I'm just trying to comprehend the ripple
Speaker 1: effect through the family and then, as you said, contacting
Speaker 1: other family members and friends, relatives. It's just, yeah, it's ongoing.
Speaker 1: How did it change when you're found out and you
Speaker 1: said it was gradual that you're getting further information. You
Speaker 1: found out that the car that Jordan was driving crashed
Speaker 1: into a parked car, So okay, he was a driver
Speaker 1: at fault, you would say, into a park car. He'd
Speaker 1: been drinking, had cannavais in his system.
Speaker 2: That we didn't fund out a bit later. I remember,
Speaker 2: about seven weeks after Jordan died, I was just doing
Speaker 2: a normal trip to the shopping center to do my
Speaker 2: food shopping, and I'd been by the post office and
Speaker 2: I had a letter from the I think it was
Speaker 2: the Coroner's office. That was unusual in itself to be
Speaker 2: opening a letter from them, and it was Jordan's. It
Speaker 2: wasn't his death certificate, but it was his I can't
Speaker 2: think of the word for it, toxicology, toxicology report. It
Speaker 2: was all the things, and that's what I noticed, that
Speaker 2: he'd had cannabis in his system. I remember sitting in
Speaker 2: the shopping center in my car in the car park
Speaker 2: and I just burst into tears, thinking, oh my goodness,
Speaker 2: so he hit the back of a car. I didn't
Speaker 2: know it was speeding doing approximate one hundred and forty
Speaker 2: two kilometers at the time. I knew he had alcohol
Speaker 2: in his system, and I knew he hit the back
Speaker 2: of the car. So it was like another thing, Oh
Speaker 2: my goodness, he's got cannabis in his system. And Jordan
Speaker 2: wasn't a big drinker, nor was he a habitual smoker.
Speaker 2: And you could be forgiven from looking at the news
Speaker 2: and thinking that was the sort of kid that he was.
Speaker 2: I mean, he wasn't a saint, but he wasn't an habitual.
Speaker 4: By the way, we didn't user we did we didn't
Speaker 4: know that he smoked weed.
Speaker 2: And we're not stupid.
Speaker 3: Well, well I can say hate you too. Yeahs, you
Speaker 3: look at your kids.
Speaker 1: You don't know you know what you did when you.
Speaker 2: At that age, just don't know what you don't know.
Speaker 2: As parents, you just don't know what you.
Speaker 4: Don't look, no doubt. Well, we'll we'll talk about this
Speaker 4: as the conversation unfolds, but it does speak to the
Speaker 4: to you know what you reflect on in your parenting.
Speaker 4: We always say this when when something like this unfolds,
Speaker 4: naturally you go back through it is a reflection on
Speaker 4: your parenting, like it or not, and.
Speaker 3: It's a visceral fear.
Speaker 2: We say this all the time to say, isn't it
Speaker 2: we're hunting to hear.
Speaker 4: We know logically that we didn't cause Jordan's crash, We're
Speaker 4: not accountable for what he did. But in your gut
Speaker 4: you as a parent, obviously you're going to go back
Speaker 4: through what could have I done? What didn't I know?
Speaker 4: What could we have done?
Speaker 1: In an anguish of being the parents?
Speaker 3: Isn't What is?
Speaker 1: It is responsibilities that can't come with it. And I
Speaker 1: I've heard you guys talk and say that Jordan would
Speaker 1: be mortified about the pain that he's caused.
Speaker 2: So many, so many absolutely horrified to know what he's done,
Speaker 2: not only to the people that he loved the most,
Speaker 2: his two little sisters, but what he's done the wider
Speaker 2: scope of what he did, the amount of lives that
Speaker 2: he affected, and that he ruined, absolutely ruined for generations
Speaker 2: to come.
Speaker 1: There's a lot said about the you know, we allow
Speaker 1: kids that aiding to drink and that they're also allowed
Speaker 1: to have cars, and like putting the two together. And
Speaker 1: then I add into the mix that first Christmas party
Speaker 1: where you treat it as an adult. You're out there
Speaker 1: with your work colleagues. You know you've come from a student.
Speaker 1: There's a whole lot of things that combine that add
Speaker 1: up to the potential to make those stupid decisions at
Speaker 1: the time the funeral. How long did it take before
Speaker 1: before you could bury Jordan.
Speaker 3: Gary, we were.
Speaker 4: We didn't have our service for Jordan until after the
Speaker 4: poor other kids were laid to rest, So that happened
Speaker 4: maybe six weeks. I want to say, Melissa, I can't
Speaker 4: remember down the line.
Speaker 3: But really that that whole.
Speaker 4: Period of time is quite a blur. But we know
Speaker 4: we commemorated him as privately as we could.
Speaker 2: I remember sitting with my father in the week that
Speaker 2: had happened, and I was saying to Dad, because as
Speaker 2: a father watching his daughter go through that not only
Speaker 2: had he lost his grandson, but he was watching his
Speaker 2: his daughter, watching her lose her son. And I remember
Speaker 2: sitting there with Dad and he was saying, do you
Speaker 2: want me to help with some funeral arrangements? I said, Dad,
Speaker 2: how do you have a funeral for someone who's just
Speaker 2: killed four people? You know, a funeral is obstensibly about
Speaker 2: celebrating some life. When he killed those four people, he
Speaker 2: lost the right for us to go out and celebrate him.
Speaker 2: How do you celebrate your son who, on his way
Speaker 2: out kills four people. And it was again, they were
Speaker 2: visceral feelings of just going, what do you do here?
Speaker 2: And there was no way we were going to go
Speaker 2: out and have this big celebration for him.
Speaker 4: Which you know, and we've got to come back to this.
Speaker 4: I guess we discussed it earlier.
Speaker 3: We love him.
Speaker 4: It's not that we've had people kind of in the
Speaker 4: past be a bit confronted by the fact that we
Speaker 4: own his culpability and what he did. And like I say,
Speaker 4: that's different to not loving him and missing him desperately
Speaker 4: and forgiving him, like us forgiving him. But we understand
Speaker 4: or other people may not. And that speaks to the
Speaker 4: whole notion of I guess those arrangements in the months
Speaker 4: after the crash, all.
Speaker 1: Those years ago, so confronting the whole situation. So it
Speaker 1: was a conscious decision that you guys made that you
Speaker 1: weren't going to lay to rest Jordan until after the
Speaker 1: four victims of.
Speaker 2: The So remembering that Jordan's father also played a partner here.
Speaker 2: Jordan's father wanted to have a funeral, so I just said,
Speaker 2: you do your thing. I just feel like it's inappropriate
Speaker 2: for me. I don't feel like we should be. We'll
Speaker 2: do something up, something very quiet, something very personal afterwards.
Speaker 2: So there was a funeral service for Jordan. It was
Speaker 2: nineteen days I think after he died. We did go
Speaker 2: to that, but we didn't open it up to our
Speaker 2: widest circle to attend. I just took my immediate family,
Speaker 2: my nieces and nephews, and that was it. I just
Speaker 2: I just felt like it was.
Speaker 4: In any case, suffice to say, it was just a
Speaker 4: fraud scenario for every goness.
Speaker 2: We're also in such a blur too, like even that
Speaker 2: whole period of just going.
Speaker 4: What do you do?
Speaker 2: What do you do with all of this?
Speaker 3: But again.
Speaker 4: We're a stud to be asking the questions, you know,
Speaker 4: and digging into our feelings, but in answering them, you know,
Speaker 4: we need to be very intentional about saying none of
Speaker 4: this is to seek sympathy for ourselves, you know, like
Speaker 4: these are feelings that we'd feel, anyone would feel, but
Speaker 4: we're not saying we're not saying, poor us. We rarely
Speaker 4: talk about this, so the good questions to ask us
Speaker 4: and confronting questions to ask us. But like I keep saying, our.
Speaker 3: What our.
Speaker 4: Even transporting ourselves back? You know, nearly thirteen years Even
Speaker 4: at that time, we were aware that there are two separate
Speaker 4: issues at play, you know.
Speaker 1: That's what, like I said at the start of the podcast,
Speaker 1: I've been thinking long and hard about how to have
Speaker 1: the discussion and fully comprehend what you guys have gone through,
Speaker 1: and it was so difficult on so many different layers.
Speaker 1: It's when I say easier, it's probably the wrong choice
Speaker 1: of words. But to make a decision if the death
Speaker 1: was someone else's fault, you can channel channel your anger there,
Speaker 1: or you can accept it was an accident and it's
Speaker 1: a fate. Powers greater greater than us have made the decision.
Speaker 1: But there's so many things that you're you're going through.
Speaker 2: Did you reach layers of complexity?
Speaker 1: Did you reach out to the other families?
Speaker 4: We were advised not to, probably for reasons that you
Speaker 4: understand as a as a as a former police person.
Speaker 4: So no, not not at that time, under advice.
Speaker 2: That was really tricky too. Like all I wanted to
Speaker 2: do was to reach out to those families and say
Speaker 2: I am so sorry what my son did. That was
Speaker 2: hard not to but we always took that advice from
Speaker 2: the police, and that was one of the first things
Speaker 2: that I asked anyone in the services, because I always
Speaker 2: feel like, am I doing the right thing? Should I
Speaker 2: be reaching out? And everybody always said do not. It's
Speaker 2: not up to you to reach out to them to
Speaker 2: make yourself feel better. They may not want to hear
Speaker 2: from you. And that was hard. That was really hard.
Speaker 4: And of course all of those dynamics continue to be challenging,
Speaker 4: and all we can do with them is to put
Speaker 4: our hands on our hearts and just say we are
Speaker 4: doing everything we can to try and ensure that no
Speaker 4: family goes through anything like this again if we can
Speaker 4: do anything about it with what we've experienced, and I
Speaker 4: guess we'll get into it later, but you choose is
Speaker 4: working and if it wasn't, we wouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 4: Just explain because we were talking about it.
Speaker 1: But you choose. That's part of the non of it advocacy.
Speaker 1: You've gotten the training or educating people on what you've
Speaker 1: been through to try and prevent this type of thing happening.
Speaker 1: When did you find out the full circumstances You talked
Speaker 1: about the toxicology report coming through, Was there a coronial inquest?
Speaker 1: And did you attend there were a inquest?
Speaker 2: And the coronial inquest was three years later, so that's
Speaker 2: when all the full details came out. We chose not
Speaker 2: to attend that, and we only found out only a
Speaker 2: few days before. It took so long for that report.
Speaker 2: So Peter was overseas for work at the time, and
Speaker 2: I found out maybe about four days before the coronial
Speaker 2: inquest was on, and I spoke to the coroner and
Speaker 2: myself and I just said, I don't think I can come.
Speaker 2: It was really confronting to know that I would be
Speaker 2: there with the families, the families of those people that
Speaker 2: children killed, and I knew that he wasn't there to
Speaker 2: own up to what he did.
Speaker 3: All of that would.
Speaker 2: Fallen to me. So I spoke to the coroner and
Speaker 2: I asked me if he could send me the forensic
Speaker 2: crash report. I wanted to know exactly what happened. I
Speaker 2: felt like I owed it to Jordan's victims, to Jordan's
Speaker 2: victim's families, to understand everything that that meant. So I
Speaker 2: got the coronial sorry, the yeah, the forensic Kresh report
Speaker 2: right at the time the inquest was going on, and
Speaker 2: it was really it was a really tricky time because
Speaker 2: it was all over the news. Again, it was only
Speaker 2: three years down the track, and it was just it
Speaker 2: was crazy. And I remember sitting down one night and
Speaker 2: I read that report cover to cover, like I read
Speaker 2: the whole thing, and it was confronting an ye. I
Speaker 2: just cried and cried thinking about it, and I sort
Speaker 2: of regret now that I didn't have the courage to
Speaker 2: go to that coronial inquest. Had I gone, maybe I
Speaker 2: might have regretted going it. But you know, like, where
Speaker 2: is the manual that you get when your son kills
Speaker 2: four people? The manual that you can follow to go,
Speaker 2: this is what you do when your son kills four people?
Speaker 2: One doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: Sadly, it doesn't exist, and it's there for other than
Speaker 1: a few people. It's uncharted territory.
Speaker 2: It's also something that we don't really talk about a
Speaker 2: lot those you know, it's it's even giving me a
Speaker 2: little heart palpitations to even talk about it publicly. It's
Speaker 2: something that we keep very very private.
Speaker 1: To rebuild yourself from what's happened from the start, I
Speaker 1: would my observations, and I think it's what you've said.
Speaker 1: Your life from that point in time when you found
Speaker 1: out about the crash has changed so dramatically that you
Speaker 1: could never envisage that this is what your life would
Speaker 1: be about your children, your family. Are you still coping like?
Speaker 1: Is it? I would imagine each days? And you said,
Speaker 1: one foot step stepping forward for your children? Is that
Speaker 1: what kept you going?
Speaker 4: Certainly in the early days here, we pretty quickly figured
Speaker 4: out that there wasn't healing involved in any of this,
Speaker 4: and that if we were seeking to put the weight
Speaker 4: of grief and the visceral feelings of culpability down, or
Speaker 4: it was some form of process that you recovered from,
Speaker 4: I think that was misguided in our case at least.
Speaker 4: And I think from the time that we realized that, look,
Speaker 4: we need, we've got to weight to carry.
Speaker 3: What does it mean?
Speaker 4: How do we assist each other to carry it together?
Speaker 4: And how do we carry it with some sort of
Speaker 4: sense of purpose and meaning? Is there any sort of
Speaker 4: grace or peace anywhere in this we were seeking it?
Speaker 3: We sawt it.
Speaker 4: But from the time we realized that they putting it
Speaker 4: down is not going to work. We got to understand
Speaker 4: how to carry.
Speaker 3: This, okay, So to make it.
Speaker 1: You can't put that in the compartment and just step
Speaker 1: aside from it and not open not open it. Was
Speaker 1: there any advice or how Quite often through homicide and
Speaker 1: where deaths have occurred in tragic and sudden circumstances, the
Speaker 1: people around the families of the victim or the person
Speaker 1: who has died don't know how to meet with you.
Speaker 1: And I've had families of murdered victims saying that close
Speaker 1: friends would avoid them because they don't know what to say.
Speaker 1: People just didn't know how to react or just pretend
Speaker 1: it didn't happen and have a conversation. What were the
Speaker 1: things that helped you the most, the way that people
Speaker 1: reacted around you and supported you.
Speaker 4: I think, well, would you like to I guess I'll
Speaker 4: go In the first instance, for us, it was and
Speaker 4: we say the same things as we were look at
Speaker 4: each other.
Speaker 3: We know what we're going to say.
Speaker 4: People want to solve They want to make you feel better,
Speaker 4: and that's beautiful. You don't want them to understand, do you, Gary?
Speaker 3: When understand that?
Speaker 4: So when people say to you, I could never understand
Speaker 4: how you could feel you've got to go good. I
Speaker 4: never want you to understand how how it feels. The
Speaker 4: most effective support that we've got and that we still
Speaker 4: get and that we'll always get is just the simplicity
Speaker 4: of just love. Solutions, not so much you can't turn
Speaker 4: back the clock. Love and support is what has always
Speaker 4: been the most effective for us, and it's certainly uplifted
Speaker 4: us and enabled us to sort of move on to
Speaker 4: something that might be a positive out of all this.
Speaker 4: So yeah, the simplest thing, okay, is that that you
Speaker 4: share that view. Well.
Speaker 2: I always think of the one the story that comes
Speaker 2: to mind in the very early days and a lot
Speaker 2: of people, you know, would over hug me and they
Speaker 2: would be so sad and for me, and I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 2: you just got to leave me alone, Like who's the
Speaker 2: hug for you or for me? And in those early days,
Speaker 2: a lot of people would just be like, you know,
Speaker 2: how how are you not thinking? Honeybody think I am?
Speaker 2: You know, And it was such an insulting question. I
Speaker 2: was like, why would you ask me that? And I
Speaker 2: was at my daughter's creation at the gym that I
Speaker 2: used to go to at the time, and she was
Speaker 2: a much you know, she's maybe in her late seventies,
Speaker 2: I guess. And she came up to you one day
Speaker 2: and she just you know, she put a hand on
Speaker 2: her shoulder and she gave me a squeeze and she
Speaker 2: said to me, how are you today? And I remember thinking,
Speaker 2: thank you for saying today that one word, because yesterday
Speaker 2: I was absolutely, you know, atrocious. Today I'm feeling okay.
Speaker 2: So thanks for letting me or thanks for letting me
Speaker 2: off the hook that you know, it's just about today.
Speaker 2: And I have said right from the very day that
Speaker 2: Jordan died. You know, we only got through one sunset
Speaker 2: at a time, so the idea was to get through today, right,
Speaker 2: there's another sunset radio tomorrow. We'll just get through to
Speaker 2: tomorrow's sunset. And a lot of people, you know, wanted
Speaker 2: to involve themselves in what was going on. And I
Speaker 2: am so grateful that this man has such a so
Speaker 2: to point you pointing it.
Speaker 1: That's a audio, there is video, but there's this man.
Speaker 2: This man, he has such an emotional high emotional IQ.
Speaker 2: So during this period he instinctively knew what to do
Speaker 2: to protect his family. Now, it might not work for
Speaker 2: someone else's family. But we became very, very insular. We
Speaker 2: sort of reached out to everyone saying, just give us time. Please,
Speaker 2: don't phone, don't drop over flowers, don't knock on the door.
Speaker 2: We just need to sit and be We need to
Speaker 2: sit in this and understand it. So we were very
Speaker 2: much we didn't include people in the process. We asked
Speaker 2: people to give us a lot of time. We also
Speaker 2: had the girls, so and again, where's the manual? You know?
Speaker 3: Funny funny enough.
Speaker 4: Just being listening to your many podcasts, Gary, you probably
Speaker 4: I know that I can recall hearing this before, you know,
Speaker 4: and we certainly hear it from other bereaved people or
Speaker 4: other people that are dealing with dealt with tragedy.
Speaker 3: Is that.
Speaker 4: The next steps in your life aren't necessarily linear. Yeah,
Speaker 4: like you're not necessarily hanging around holding hands, going right.
Speaker 4: We're all experiencing this together. There's a way you deal
Speaker 4: with losing Uncle Clary at ninety, you know, and then
Speaker 4: celebrating a beautiful, wishful life, and there's all the other
Speaker 4: there's the other things, you know, and it's not always
Speaker 4: this neat sort of the square peg in a square
Speaker 4: hole that one size fits everything.
Speaker 3: In terms of how.
Speaker 4: You go on and what next steps look like and
Speaker 4: all that. And I mean we might live another thirty
Speaker 4: years or forty years and still not have the answers.
Speaker 4: And I think giving or letting go of the idea
Speaker 4: that you have to heal and you have to be
Speaker 4: well and you have to demonstrate to the world that
Speaker 4: you're on this pathway to recovery. It's a little bit
Speaker 4: of pressure you don't need, I can imagine.
Speaker 1: And you've raised some points that made me think about
Speaker 1: you come up, you give someone a cuddle, and yeah,
Speaker 1: are you cuddling for yourself or you've cuddling to give
Speaker 1: me the comfort there. I like what you just said there,
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, if we're going to get
Speaker 1: messages across and we are in this podcast because I
Speaker 1: think it's inspirational what you've guys, how you've processed this
Speaker 1: and steered it in a positive direction in terms of
Speaker 1: education and letting people learn from what happened in your situation.
Speaker 1: But I love that how are you feeling today? Because
Speaker 1: that's a good thing, because you know, we've all had
Speaker 1: situations where people come up and want to comfort you
Speaker 1: or whatever.
Speaker 3: How are you?
Speaker 1: How the fuck do you think I am.
Speaker 3: That's the attitude.
Speaker 1: But how are you today? It's very simple. Look, I'm
Speaker 1: just doing a bit tough today. Tomorrow might be better,
Speaker 1: or you know, I'm feeling great today, but who knows.
Speaker 1: It's a simple question.
Speaker 2: Very same lady the first time I saw her after
Speaker 2: it happened, and again I guess this is the wisdom
Speaker 2: that you get or that becomes you as you get older.
Speaker 2: But she came up to his sweetest thing, and she
Speaker 2: just again just lightly popped a hand on my shoulder,
Speaker 2: and she said, there are just no words, so I'm
Speaker 2: not going to say anything. And I remember thinking, thank you,
Speaker 2: because that's the exact thing that I want to hear.
Speaker 2: There are no words. So people often ask me for
Speaker 2: grief advice, which I think, oh my goodness, just because
Speaker 2: I've gone through grief doesn't mean you know that we
Speaker 2: are grief experts. And you can't compare grief. You can't
Speaker 2: compare my grief in someone else's grief. And I I
Speaker 2: had an emotionally intelligent husband, I had young girls that
Speaker 2: I had to keep getting up every morning and getting
Speaker 2: them to school. Kitty was still at home at that stage.
Speaker 2: I worked at that time I had to keep functioning.
Speaker 2: Some people don't have that. Some people. I had a
Speaker 2: flexible job, I had a husband, We we have a
Speaker 2: lovely we had a beautiful life beforehand. So the chaos
Speaker 2: that Jordan created, thank goodness, we had this really yeah,
Speaker 2: some underpinning and a strong foundation to carry us through
Speaker 2: something that we would have never ever thought we would
Speaker 2: ever be able to survive.
Speaker 3: Let alone.
Speaker 2: You know, turn it into too what we're doing around
Speaker 2: the country.
Speaker 3: There's a few different things to you to your question. Yeah, it's.
Speaker 4: You can see we've we've met many, many bereaved parents
Speaker 4: on this on this journey, and that sounds really morbid,
Speaker 4: but boy, you meet some beautiful, beautiful people who have
Speaker 4: experienced their own version, and everyone does of the bottom
Speaker 4: of the barrel.
Speaker 3: So as you go through that, and.
Speaker 4: Even I'm looking at you, Gary, knowing what your experience
Speaker 4: in life is, knowing that in time, you develop a
Speaker 4: deep respect for the fact that everyone's got their version.
Speaker 4: You're getting their bumps splintered by the bottom of the barrel, right,
Speaker 4: and everyone responds in a different way. And I think
Speaker 4: it increases, or it increased our empathy in general, because
Speaker 4: while you're dealing with your own kind of narrow version
Speaker 4: of what that looks like. Certainly early in the piece,
Speaker 4: you know, part of going on is to sort of
Speaker 4: broaden that focus and go. It does tell you that
Speaker 4: the world is carrying a lot of pain out there
Speaker 4: that you're not necessarily seeing, you know so, and that
Speaker 4: that can manifest itself in so many different ways. Like
Speaker 4: we we are blessed because if we didn't handle this
Speaker 4: entire set of circumstances in a way that was complement
Speaker 4: to each other, you can see how these things would.
Speaker 3: Just destroy put just tear people.
Speaker 4: Apart it you weren't on the same page. The other
Speaker 4: side of that same coin is that having gone through
Speaker 4: that together. I often say this, and I'm sorry for
Speaker 4: repeating myself, sweetheart, but it's one thing to love each other.
Speaker 4: It's something else altogether to admire them, and that's profound.
Speaker 1: You better get the tissues, so those steps, and.
Speaker 4: It's taken a while to actually understand that feeling and
Speaker 4: being able to articulate it, because we often get asked,
Speaker 4: how do you even to what the work that we
Speaker 4: do today all these years after it can be depleting
Speaker 4: it It has to be you have to be vulnerable
Speaker 4: to do it.
Speaker 1: Right, you're giving you, you're coming on here. You're talking
Speaker 1: about some very deep emotions.
Speaker 2: Don't get us wrong, we've had some very very dark
Speaker 2: but we've done it to get we look like we're
Speaker 2: strong and brave and all those things. But it's been
Speaker 2: a journey to get here.
Speaker 4: But I guess what I'm saying is that if you
Speaker 4: find a way of filling each other's tank as much
Speaker 4: as it gets depleted, and you're doing that for each
Speaker 4: other and it's complementary, including our daughters and the rest
Speaker 4: of our family being able to do that, you can
Speaker 4: make sense of something that literally doesn't make sense, as
Speaker 4: you correctly pointed out going all the way back.
Speaker 1: And I've seen family situations and couples caught up in
Speaker 1: tragedy that life dishes out, and quite often that it
Speaker 1: might be You'll turn to be the strong one there
Speaker 1: because I need the comfort, and then you can reverse roles.
Speaker 1: And they're the ones, my observations there, the ones that
Speaker 1: seem to be able to work, because you can't both
Speaker 1: be strong every day like someone's going to have a
Speaker 1: down day. But if you've got a partner that's emotionally
Speaker 1: attuned and capable of supporting when you're down and switching it.
Speaker 1: I think the complexities of what you guys have gone
Speaker 1: through is it's not just grief. If you carry shame,
Speaker 1: you carry regret and a whole range of very powerful emotions.
Speaker 1: So it must have been so difficult navigating your way
Speaker 1: a way through all that.
Speaker 2: And thank goodness, Peter has such a high emotional intelligence.
Speaker 2: Had I been you do, don't get cranky. That's going
Speaker 2: to say if you keep looking like we're going to
Speaker 2: have the next stop.
Speaker 1: It yes, no, he is.
Speaker 2: That really helped our family get through that. Peter knew
Speaker 2: what to do to protect his family. I'm so grateful
Speaker 2: that I would not be the woman that I am.
Speaker 2: I would not have been able to do the part
Speaker 2: of you choose that I do had Peter not been
Speaker 2: able to steer us in those very very early days.
Speaker 2: Same with my girls. It's why my girls are doing
Speaker 2: so well. We had the foundation, but then Peter instinctively knew.
Speaker 2: And it's probably that you know that man protector feeling
Speaker 2: inside of you and actually that man protect a feeling
Speaker 2: that you had for your families. It's what's eked into
Speaker 2: YouTube that's really at the bottom, at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, what you choose. It's all about. It's all
Speaker 2: about how do you protect the people that you love.
Speaker 1: It makes sense. Where do you think you learned that
Speaker 1: from Peter? Where did do you think those characteristics were
Speaker 1: instilled in you?
Speaker 3: Gary?
Speaker 2: I appreciate the compliment I was going to say without
Speaker 2: sounding like Wenka.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's true. I'm glad you see that, thank you.
Speaker 4: But for me, I learned that simply because for many
Speaker 4: years in my life I was a boy until I
Speaker 4: had a boy to raise. I met Melissa in my
Speaker 4: mid thirties. Melissa had two kids yep, one very young
Speaker 4: kid and Jordan, who was a little bit older, and
Speaker 4: I realized, having met Melissa with the two kids, just
Speaker 4: exactly what.
Speaker 3: Was missing in my life.
Speaker 4: And as cliche as this is, I was just a
Speaker 4: lion walking around the savannah without a pride.
Speaker 3: I like the description, I just didn't.
Speaker 4: I had a lot gone for me. I was financially
Speaker 4: in a good spot and career and everything was good.
Speaker 4: Some's missing, And the missing thing became so apparent to
Speaker 4: me the second that I had kids to father.
Speaker 3: And that's the answer to the question.
Speaker 4: There's there's nothing complicated in my background or anything like that,
Speaker 4: other than the fact that that that instinct that was
Speaker 4: in me that was just uneven detectable at the time,
Speaker 4: let alone unrequired, was just sitting in there. And you're right,
Speaker 4: that level of cops.
Speaker 3: That that level of.
Speaker 4: That kind of dynamic does eke its way through into
Speaker 4: the philosophies that were being taught by kids. Yeah, it
Speaker 4: it's I think there's a whole there's a lot of
Speaker 4: us out there that have got that instinct. And you
Speaker 4: know it comes out in many different ways, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Well, it comes out when it has to come out,
Speaker 1: and in your situation that it was make or break.
Speaker 1: When the situation you're confronted with it, it could have
Speaker 1: broken you and it sort of made you the situation.
Speaker 1: So you're we're giving all the compliments to Peter at
Speaker 1: this stage, but you've you've hung in there and you're
Speaker 1: you're been strong all the way through. Where where did
Speaker 1: that come from? And you can't say it was all Peter?
Speaker 1: I let you get away of that.
Speaker 3: That's right, Definitely wasn't it.
Speaker 2: The strong part of me comes from that weight of
Speaker 2: civic responsibility that bears down on my shoulders. I can
Speaker 2: justify why Jordan died that night, and I was sitting
Speaker 2: with my cousin when I come down to do presentation,
Speaker 2: and so I often go and stay with my beautiful cousins.
Speaker 2: And she said to me one night, if we're all
Speaker 2: sitting in a circle, and we all threw our problems
Speaker 2: into the center, we'd probably take out our own problems.
Speaker 2: And I was thinking, you're absolutely right. Part of why
Speaker 2: where I speak for myself, part of why I feel
Speaker 2: like I'm able to go on, is that I can
Speaker 2: justify what Jordan. I can justify Jordan dying, He drank, drove,
Speaker 2: he drug drove, he spared. What do you expect, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're gonna do those sort of things where you
Speaker 2: can't go, oh, do you know why? God, why did
Speaker 2: this happen? Whereas for someone like Jordan's victims, I can't
Speaker 2: justify what happened to those kids. They were five kids
Speaker 2: sitting in a car, broken down car, minding their own business,
Speaker 2: and my son drunk stoned, speeding, hit the back of
Speaker 2: that car and killed four of those kids. He left
Speaker 2: a little girl orphaned that night. There was two young
Speaker 2: parents in that car, you know, in the six year
Speaker 2: old l play that was left with severe boons and trauma.
Speaker 2: So part of that strength that I've got is thinking
Speaker 2: Jordan doesn't deserve. This is going to sound really harsh
Speaker 2: and really horrible. This is through the lens of I
Speaker 2: loved Jordan, but this is what goes through me. Deserve
Speaker 2: is not the right word. But when you act like
Speaker 2: Jordan did that night, what do you expect? You know,
Speaker 2: I can justify it, But for those those other young adults,
Speaker 2: I can't justify that. And that's the strength that I
Speaker 2: carry to go if there is one thing that I
Speaker 2: can do to inspire or influence, or that we can
Speaker 2: do to inspire or influence just one team to not
Speaker 2: make a choice that might destroy the lives of the
Speaker 2: families like Jordan destroyed the life of those victims and
Speaker 2: those victims families. All of my strength comes from that.
Speaker 2: Hand on heart. That is what drives me. And there's
Speaker 2: no way we would put ourselves through this if we
Speaker 2: didn't think that what we were doing made an impact.
Speaker 2: And hand on heart, we know that it is.
Speaker 1: We know.
Speaker 2: I hear it in the conversations that I have with
Speaker 2: young teens around the country. In a straight after a presentation. Oh,
Speaker 2: I have so many kids up. It's almost like come
Speaker 2: up afterwards, and it's like having a confessional because what
Speaker 2: they've done is They've related to Jordan's behavior, so they
Speaker 2: can see themselves in Jordan. And whilst I'm holding up
Speaker 2: a mirror, what I'm doing is I'm not showing them
Speaker 2: my family. I'm showing them their family. So they're sitting
Speaker 2: there going, well, goodness, I do that, I do that
Speaker 2: I do. That could be my mum, that could be
Speaker 2: my little sister. I show footage of Montana speaking at
Speaker 2: Jordan's memorial, and it gets them to deeply, deeply reflect
Speaker 2: about what they're doing. And I think that's the magic
Speaker 2: dust of Youtobe is that I loath to think of
Speaker 2: myself an as an educator, and I'm using air commas here.
Speaker 2: The idea behind everything that we do is when one
Speaker 2: of those teens walks out of our program, they've arrived
Speaker 2: at conclusions about themselves, about their mates, about their social ecosystem,
Speaker 2: and that that role that they play inside that social
Speaker 2: ecosystem around protection, around leadership. What is it am I
Speaker 2: leading negatively? Is this a positive thing that I'm doing
Speaker 2: or is it a negative thing? So they're not being
Speaker 2: taught anything they've arrived at the conclusions for themselves, and
Speaker 2: that again, that's what inspires me and gives me the strength,
Speaker 2: gives us the strength to just keep on keeping on.
Speaker 2: Just one kid, Gary, just one kid, and all of
Speaker 2: it will have been worthwhile.
Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, I can see why what you're doing is
Speaker 1: making a difference. And I think people that have listened
Speaker 1: to our chat just at this point in time get
Speaker 1: the depth of where it's coming from, on what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. And I think that was important for us
Speaker 1: to set up the sort of platform because in part
Speaker 1: two we'll take a break now, but in part two
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about what you're actually doing and
Speaker 1: breaking down the messages and the lessons that you're learned
Speaker 1: and the information that you're passing on. Because I got
Speaker 1: to say, and your avid listeners to our catch killers,
Speaker 1: you've heard all the impressive people that we've had on,
Speaker 1: inspirational people and all that, but speaking to you too,
Speaker 1: and the importance the simplicity of the message, but the
Speaker 1: importance of the message that you guys are delivering. I
Speaker 1: encourage everyone to come back and listen to part two.
Speaker 1: And if I said it at the start that the
Speaker 1: introduction that. If you've got kids, I advise them to
Speaker 1: listen to it too, because it can make a difference.
Speaker 1: And with horrible situations that what you guys have been
Speaker 1: confronted with the four victims and your son in that
Speaker 1: lives have been lost, lives have been destroyed. We turn
Speaker 1: that tragedy and that horror situation into something positive. And
Speaker 1: I think that's what you guys are doing. That's what
Speaker 1: I want to talk about, in part to breaking it
Speaker 1: down who you're speaking to and the type of message
Speaker 1: you're getting across, and any other insightful thoughts that you
Speaker 1: guys might have, because seeing here listening to you, I'm
Speaker 1: being inspired by what you're doing.
Speaker 3: Thanks Gary, look forward to it.