May 20, 2025 • 11 mins
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Ron Isherwood, a former addict and ex-convict reflects on a lifetime shaped by trauma, crime, and redemption. From confronting a violent and abusive father to surviving prison and the chaos of addiction, he shares a powerful story of pain, resilience, and transformation.
Rewind back to Season 10 to hear the full story.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Approte, production, what did you done think of you when
you in your latter years, when you were coming out
of jail and he's seen how bad you were like
as as an addict.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
My whole man hated two things. Hated junkies, hated tatoos. Wow,
it said my body. Yes, I said, he hated you know.
My biggest issue was that I was trying to make
him pay. I think, in retrospect, is.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
It truly shot you or try.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
To shoot me? For slam in the front door. He
shot at me twice with the forty five.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Wow. Yeah, man.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
He was sexually abusing my sister. You know, he's a
fucking piece of shit. You know, my sister had a
child to him. My stepsister had a child to my father.
People wondered why I hated him so much, you know,
but I didn't find that out until I was fifteen
or sixteen. I never used her until I was nineteen.
My mom passed away in March. My mom passed away,
(01:09):
and I was using heroin by May. My mom never
seen me as a junkie, which was really nice. And
I was so scared of him, That's very truth. I
asked mom if I could kill him when I was fourteen.
I said, when he comes home, I'm going to blow
his head off. My mom didn't say, I don't kill
your dad. She said he's not worth going to jar for.
Well about years later, did you ever want to do it?
Years later when you knew that you were a bit
(01:31):
more Yeah? No, years later I watched him die slowly.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
It was even better.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Sounds horrible, but he ended up with nothing. He ended
up living in a shith house out of the back
of Kenley veil. The paint falling off the wall, the
hot water system was blown up and they're boiling jugs of.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Someone who was so high up.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
It just ended up with nothing, and watching him die
like that, it's going to sound horrible. I can only
tell you made I can't come on here and tell
you bullshit.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
I had more. I'm not enjoyment. Was it more satisfaction?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
More satisfaction watching him die like that, like died with
nothing enough to do it.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
But you know, you can sit back on just watch it.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
And as mum said, he wasn't worth you know, taking
your life. I think it's a pretty big deal. I
think you have to have to learn to live with
I've been unfortunate enough to live with a lot of
murderers and hang out with a lot of murderers. And
you know, and even the ones that we're murderers, murders,
murders that like doing the murders, and that they still
(02:35):
they're still I don't give a fuck what they say.
They're still not comfortable with themselves. Mate, They're still not
comfortable with themselves. They're still not I don't believe. You know,
we are human beings where males. I don't care who
you serve. We all serve somebody. We all have this
thing like you've got to pay the piper. You know,
we all got to pay the piper one day. There's
(02:56):
always going to be a And as I said, you know,
I've been to jail with a lot of murderers. You know,
like I don't know why, because I was doing eighteen year.
So you associate with people that are doing big lagons.
And even before that, because of my bullshit gangster pass,
that's who you attracted to the other gangsters. So you
all nick together. You know, all the frauds hang together
(03:19):
over here. All the fuger and pedophiles are going into
their section, you know, and you know, you sort of
attract like attracts like you know, and my crew was
always the murderers, doing big lagons, guys that were very
anti system. We trained really hard, and people thought we
trained hard to protect yourself from each other. We didn't
(03:39):
protect yourself from each other. We'll protecting austrass from the system.
Because when the screws comes flying in the door with
their fucking Batman Robin out fits on Batman, you and
you know you had to be fit and healthy.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
You think, you know that's that would happen.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
You know, they just kicked the door out at four
o'clock in the morning, running bash and throw in the
van and you end up with gold. What the fuck
are we doing in gold? But you know I've got
no visitors. And they do that, then you might in gold.
But what they used to do, oh, it's terrific. Russ
used to bang his head around about it sometimes and
under stripped.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
What do you call it? O C D.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
I'm obsessively compulsive, and everything's got to be spotless, of man.
You know, in my wardrobe, my clothes go from black
white blue. They do all my clothes and all my
shirts are folded, and everything's imacally he's got to be
like that. My cars are always clean. You never see
my car dirty. It's never, never dirty, never. And if
I go into the rain, I came over, I hose
the cardown. You know, it's just there's something you might
(04:34):
make up. What the screws would do. They'd put me
into a cell, and I would fucking scrub that cell
all night. I'd scrub it. I'd get so, i'd get
soap and I'd scrub every bit of the cell. Two
days later they move in or another cell.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Fuck. That was their game. That was their game.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
They'd just done it to me for so many times
because they knew that I couldn't cope with it, because
you had to cell blakes to pick their nails and
put the shiver and there pisted on the walls, and
you know, I've got to sleep in there because you're tall,
and your beside to bed, you know, and it's a
master it's got a bunk. If you know I can't
live in that. You know, today I run my companies
(05:14):
the same way as I cleaned that cell.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Thoroughly.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I do things very thoroughly. I'm consistent, I'm reliable, I'm accepting,
I'm honest. You know, I respectful. I respect myself. I
won't disrespect myself by cheating on my wife. Sounds funny.
If I'm hanging out with guys in business these days
and they cheat on their wives, I won't do business
with them. And they go why, I say, well, if
(05:39):
you cheat on who, what are you going to do
to me? If you're cheating on the person's the mother,
your children, the person you spend all your time with,
what the fuck are you going to do to me?
So I've got this incredible and it's really hard. My
wife says, we honey, you expectations you're too high. And
I say, well, I'm not going to lower them. I'd
rather have less friends, you know. And I'm an ex junkie.
(06:00):
I say, I'd rather have a gram of pure than
a kilo shit. And it's the same with friendships, It's
the same with business partners, it's the same with any relationship.
I want to be able to look you in the
eye and say, hell, I made how brother? Yeah, and
feel it, you know, like fucking I want people to
come with us, man. I don't want to be bigger
and better than anyone. I was all to grow together.
(06:20):
That was one of my downfalls that I thought people
thought the same as I did and they didn't. And
there was one of my downfall as a kid. I
believed in that I wrote a book, you know that
I meant to bring it down. I'll send it to you.
I actually had it out and I signed it to
you and everything I fucking left in the cupboard. It's
called Born into the Lie of crime. It's called it
says life l I f E and I blacked the
(06:40):
f out and it just says born to the lie
of crime.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Because we thought it was a life. It was just
a lie. There was no loyalty, there was no trust,
there's no you know.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I don't know about you, you know, but you came up
the Cross after I finished up there, and mate, there's
some horrific proople up there in the old days, you know,
some of the club owners were horrific. Yeah, there's some
nasty pizza work up there. Just morally, I didn't taken
me wrong. I was no saint, but you know, I
(07:13):
still had certain principles where I didn't want to see
people being exploited, especially weak people. I've always had that
want to save people and wanted to help people, even
when I was a bloody drug bill and I still
wanted to help people. I just I don't know. I
have a good heart, that's the truth. I have a
good heart and I have.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
A But usually the ones who have the good heart
are the ones who get fucked over.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. I don't know if you
ever met Peter, Kay? Did you hear about Pete? He
was Billy Bayo's partner at the end. But I knew
Peter before he ever took drugs. He was just something
like a twenty four year old guy driving a Ferrari
and a rolls rice. He ain't the Cosmopolitan. Okay, yeah,
(07:55):
he ain't the Cosmo. He ain't one who I knew
it before he took drugs. He was just a really
good operator restaurant I rade, a Greek boy, lovely guy.
And then I seen him get on the cot and
I just you ended by killing himself, hung himself in jail,
you know, And I just seen people. That's why I
hate drugs now. I've just seen so many good people
just fucking destroy their lives. And I didn't you know,
(08:18):
we haven't even touched on that thing called ice. That's
just another one. Al together that's the dead, that's the
devil's drug. Whoever the devil is, I'll tell you about
it is. I know drugs smugglers and drug dealers that
won't even bring into the country, you know, the old guys,
the old school guys, they won't bring into the country
(08:39):
because they say, it's just such a fucking gum dragon,
you know. And these guys would sell their grandmother for
fucking for a penny, but they won't even deal with that.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
That's how horrible it is. And when I meet somebody
these days, because I because I work in drug and
alco and try to help people on that soon as
I meet them, I say, you an ice head.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
You know that?
Speaker 2 (08:59):
And I have a look at you your frieds. Do
you know havn't used for twelve months and they're still fried?
You know, they're still It's sad. I'm scared of watching it.
What's coming? But do you think called fentanyl coming, that's
going to be something that we that we've never seen
this that likes of you put on a pin head
(09:21):
and a kildure so strong. That's just killing America right now.
And we follow America's trends. We have all the times.
We've always fow America's trends, you know, and I hope
to God that the system doesn't get it. We are
never going to stop importations while there's a demand. So
what we have to do is take away the demand.
(09:42):
We do that by having people learning how to get
off dope, because if there's no fucking druggies, why would
you bring it in? You don't have to be your
storage share. They say, to get pinched, better storage shared,
you know what I mean. So we have to get
more money into the education to help people to get
clean and work at what's causing the people to get
why people using it starts off is fun for some
(10:02):
of us, but most of us starts off is to
kill a pain. Yeah, because we have trauma, depression, depression trauma.
Where did the trauma come from? We have to start
treating the trauma. We have to start looking at why
people use, not what they use, what the use is, irrelevance,
why they use. And that's what we have to start
as a society. Take away the demand, take away the
demands the drug dealers that go away, or and this
(10:24):
is going to sound even crazier, fucking legalize it.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Take the crime out of it because it's not fun.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Even half the fun for me was getting the trip,
was been sneaking. He's getting away with it.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
You know. I'm a naughty boy. I'm fucking fuck you.
You know. That's honestly. Part of the part of me
with crime was puck you. I've got away from this.
You know, I'm smarter than you are.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
But as a copper said to me, and I will
hear it till the day I die, You've only got
to make one mistake. He's sitting on my background and
they just raided my house. They got nothing, and there's
a whole federal task force and they usually come with
the SWAT team because of my commissions, and do the
arrest in them.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
After the SWAT team believe in the cops come and
he said, do you believe in karma? I said I do.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Actually, he said, fucking You've only got to make my mistake,
and so I'll be there. I said, I fuck off, dickhead,
you know, And that's you know, and not saying my
daughter is born the next day. That's why I know,
zach Date. You know, my little girl, she's twenty eight
now twenty nine this year you know, fucking you, fuck off, dickhead.
Four years later, I'm handcuffed in the back of a
(11:29):
van thinking fucking Calma, fucking.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Calm, he got me, you know, And yeah, say, you know,
karma is a good thing.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
But as long as you're doing good things, and I
say people all the time, if you do good things,
good things come back.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
I'm massive believer in you know,
Approte, production, what did you done think of you when
you in your latter years, when you were coming out
of jail and he's seen how bad you were like
as as an addict.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
My whole man hated two things. Hated junkies, hated tatoos. Wow,
it said my body. Yes, I said, he hated you know.
My biggest issue was that I was trying to make
him pay. I think, in retrospect, is.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
It truly shot you or try.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
To shoot me? For slam in the front door. He
shot at me twice with the forty five.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Wow. Yeah, man.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
He was sexually abusing my sister. You know, he's a
fucking piece of shit. You know, my sister had a
child to him. My stepsister had a child to my father.
People wondered why I hated him so much, you know,
but I didn't find that out until I was fifteen
or sixteen. I never used her until I was nineteen.
My mom passed away in March. My mom passed away,
(01:09):
and I was using heroin by May. My mom never
seen me as a junkie, which was really nice. And
I was so scared of him, That's very truth. I
asked mom if I could kill him when I was fourteen.
I said, when he comes home, I'm going to blow
his head off. My mom didn't say, I don't kill
your dad. She said he's not worth going to jar for.
Well about years later, did you ever want to do it?
Years later when you knew that you were a bit
(01:31):
more Yeah? No, years later I watched him die slowly.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
It was even better.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Sounds horrible, but he ended up with nothing. He ended
up living in a shith house out of the back
of Kenley veil. The paint falling off the wall, the
hot water system was blown up and they're boiling jugs of.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Someone who was so high up.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
It just ended up with nothing, and watching him die
like that, it's going to sound horrible. I can only
tell you made I can't come on here and tell
you bullshit.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
I had more. I'm not enjoyment. Was it more satisfaction?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
More satisfaction watching him die like that, like died with
nothing enough to do it.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
But you know, you can sit back on just watch it.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
And as mum said, he wasn't worth you know, taking
your life. I think it's a pretty big deal. I
think you have to have to learn to live with
I've been unfortunate enough to live with a lot of
murderers and hang out with a lot of murderers. And
you know, and even the ones that we're murderers, murders,
murders that like doing the murders, and that they still
(02:35):
they're still I don't give a fuck what they say.
They're still not comfortable with themselves. Mate, They're still not
comfortable with themselves. They're still not I don't believe. You know,
we are human beings where males. I don't care who
you serve. We all serve somebody. We all have this
thing like you've got to pay the piper. You know,
we all got to pay the piper one day. There's
(02:56):
always going to be a And as I said, you know,
I've been to jail with a lot of murderers. You know,
like I don't know why, because I was doing eighteen year.
So you associate with people that are doing big lagons.
And even before that, because of my bullshit gangster pass,
that's who you attracted to the other gangsters. So you
all nick together. You know, all the frauds hang together
(03:19):
over here. All the fuger and pedophiles are going into
their section, you know, and you know, you sort of
attract like attracts like you know, and my crew was
always the murderers, doing big lagons, guys that were very
anti system. We trained really hard, and people thought we
trained hard to protect yourself from each other. We didn't
(03:39):
protect yourself from each other. We'll protecting austrass from the system.
Because when the screws comes flying in the door with
their fucking Batman Robin out fits on Batman, you and
you know you had to be fit and healthy.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
You think, you know that's that would happen.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
You know, they just kicked the door out at four
o'clock in the morning, running bash and throw in the
van and you end up with gold. What the fuck
are we doing in gold? But you know I've got
no visitors. And they do that, then you might in gold.
But what they used to do, oh, it's terrific. Russ
used to bang his head around about it sometimes and
under stripped.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
What do you call it? O C D.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
I'm obsessively compulsive, and everything's got to be spotless, of man.
You know, in my wardrobe, my clothes go from black
white blue. They do all my clothes and all my
shirts are folded, and everything's imacally he's got to be
like that. My cars are always clean. You never see
my car dirty. It's never, never dirty, never. And if
I go into the rain, I came over, I hose
the cardown. You know, it's just there's something you might
(04:34):
make up. What the screws would do. They'd put me
into a cell, and I would fucking scrub that cell
all night. I'd scrub it. I'd get so, i'd get
soap and I'd scrub every bit of the cell. Two
days later they move in or another cell.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Fuck. That was their game. That was their game.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
They'd just done it to me for so many times
because they knew that I couldn't cope with it, because
you had to cell blakes to pick their nails and
put the shiver and there pisted on the walls, and
you know, I've got to sleep in there because you're tall,
and your beside to bed, you know, and it's a
master it's got a bunk. If you know I can't
live in that. You know, today I run my companies
(05:14):
the same way as I cleaned that cell.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Thoroughly.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I do things very thoroughly. I'm consistent, I'm reliable, I'm accepting,
I'm honest. You know, I respectful. I respect myself. I
won't disrespect myself by cheating on my wife. Sounds funny.
If I'm hanging out with guys in business these days
and they cheat on their wives, I won't do business
with them. And they go why, I say, well, if
(05:39):
you cheat on who, what are you going to do
to me? If you're cheating on the person's the mother,
your children, the person you spend all your time with,
what the fuck are you going to do to me?
So I've got this incredible and it's really hard. My
wife says, we honey, you expectations you're too high. And
I say, well, I'm not going to lower them. I'd
rather have less friends, you know. And I'm an ex junkie.
(06:00):
I say, I'd rather have a gram of pure than
a kilo shit. And it's the same with friendships, It's
the same with business partners, it's the same with any relationship.
I want to be able to look you in the
eye and say, hell, I made how brother? Yeah, and
feel it, you know, like fucking I want people to
come with us, man. I don't want to be bigger
and better than anyone. I was all to grow together.
(06:20):
That was one of my downfalls that I thought people
thought the same as I did and they didn't. And
there was one of my downfall as a kid. I
believed in that I wrote a book, you know that
I meant to bring it down. I'll send it to you.
I actually had it out and I signed it to
you and everything I fucking left in the cupboard. It's
called Born into the Lie of crime. It's called it
says life l I f E and I blacked the
(06:40):
f out and it just says born to the lie
of crime.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Because we thought it was a life. It was just
a lie. There was no loyalty, there was no trust,
there's no you know.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I don't know about you, you know, but you came up
the Cross after I finished up there, and mate, there's
some horrific proople up there in the old days, you know,
some of the club owners were horrific. Yeah, there's some
nasty pizza work up there. Just morally, I didn't taken
me wrong. I was no saint, but you know, I
(07:13):
still had certain principles where I didn't want to see
people being exploited, especially weak people. I've always had that
want to save people and wanted to help people, even
when I was a bloody drug bill and I still
wanted to help people. I just I don't know. I
have a good heart, that's the truth. I have a
good heart and I have.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
A But usually the ones who have the good heart
are the ones who get fucked over.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. I don't know if you
ever met Peter, Kay? Did you hear about Pete? He
was Billy Bayo's partner at the end. But I knew
Peter before he ever took drugs. He was just something
like a twenty four year old guy driving a Ferrari
and a rolls rice. He ain't the Cosmopolitan. Okay, yeah,
(07:55):
he ain't the Cosmo. He ain't one who I knew
it before he took drugs. He was just a really
good operator restaurant I rade, a Greek boy, lovely guy.
And then I seen him get on the cot and
I just you ended by killing himself, hung himself in jail,
you know, And I just seen people. That's why I
hate drugs now. I've just seen so many good people
just fucking destroy their lives. And I didn't you know,
(08:18):
we haven't even touched on that thing called ice. That's
just another one. Al together that's the dead, that's the
devil's drug. Whoever the devil is, I'll tell you about
it is. I know drugs smugglers and drug dealers that
won't even bring into the country, you know, the old guys,
the old school guys, they won't bring into the country
(08:39):
because they say, it's just such a fucking gum dragon,
you know. And these guys would sell their grandmother for
fucking for a penny, but they won't even deal with that.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
That's how horrible it is. And when I meet somebody
these days, because I because I work in drug and
alco and try to help people on that soon as
I meet them, I say, you an ice head.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
You know that?
Speaker 2 (08:59):
And I have a look at you your frieds. Do
you know havn't used for twelve months and they're still fried?
You know, they're still It's sad. I'm scared of watching it.
What's coming? But do you think called fentanyl coming, that's
going to be something that we that we've never seen
this that likes of you put on a pin head
(09:21):
and a kildure so strong. That's just killing America right now.
And we follow America's trends. We have all the times.
We've always fow America's trends, you know, and I hope
to God that the system doesn't get it. We are
never going to stop importations while there's a demand. So
what we have to do is take away the demand.
(09:42):
We do that by having people learning how to get
off dope, because if there's no fucking druggies, why would
you bring it in? You don't have to be your
storage share. They say, to get pinched, better storage shared,
you know what I mean. So we have to get
more money into the education to help people to get
clean and work at what's causing the people to get
why people using it starts off is fun for some
(10:02):
of us, but most of us starts off is to
kill a pain. Yeah, because we have trauma, depression, depression trauma.
Where did the trauma come from? We have to start
treating the trauma. We have to start looking at why
people use, not what they use, what the use is, irrelevance,
why they use. And that's what we have to start
as a society. Take away the demand, take away the
demands the drug dealers that go away, or and this
(10:24):
is going to sound even crazier, fucking legalize it.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Take the crime out of it because it's not fun.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Even half the fun for me was getting the trip,
was been sneaking. He's getting away with it.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
You know. I'm a naughty boy. I'm fucking fuck you.
You know. That's honestly. Part of the part of me
with crime was puck you. I've got away from this.
You know, I'm smarter than you are.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
But as a copper said to me, and I will
hear it till the day I die, You've only got
to make one mistake. He's sitting on my background and
they just raided my house. They got nothing, and there's
a whole federal task force and they usually come with
the SWAT team because of my commissions, and do the
arrest in them.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
After the SWAT team believe in the cops come and
he said, do you believe in karma? I said I do.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Actually, he said, fucking You've only got to make my mistake,
and so I'll be there. I said, I fuck off, dickhead,
you know, And that's you know, and not saying my
daughter is born the next day. That's why I know,
zach Date. You know, my little girl, she's twenty eight
now twenty nine this year you know, fucking you, fuck off, dickhead.
Four years later, I'm handcuffed in the back of a
(11:29):
van thinking fucking Calma, fucking.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Calm, he got me, you know, And yeah, say, you know,
karma is a good thing.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
But as long as you're doing good things, and I
say people all the time, if you do good things,
good things come back.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
I'm massive believer in you know,
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