November 29, 2025 • 57 mins
Former Miss Australia Felicia Djamirze was living the high life travelling the world, but behind the glamour she was fighting to survive. As a bikie wag, she was strangled unconscious and chased with a loaded gun at the hands of her drug-induced boyfriend. Felicia went into hiding as a way to start fresh, only she had no idea her life was about to get even worse.
Learn more about Felicia Djamirze's book Accessory (with Erin O’Dywer) (Affirm Press) here.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective see a side of life the average person is
never exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
That's what I did for a living. I was a
homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world.
(00:46):
Today I spoke the former Miss Australia, Felicia Damige. You
might think how and why did a former Miss Australia
find herself on a podcast called I Catch Killers. I
wondered that too, But there was something in Felicia Dna
that attracted her to the bad guys. We talked about
a life growing up with immigrant parents supporting an alcoholic father,
(01:08):
and how she was attracted to the bright lights of
King's Cross. Felicia tells us what it was like being
a bikey wag living with a bikey who became addicted
and was cooking mefan fair. The means also being chased
around the house with a loaded shotgun, being strangled, and
a whole lot more. We also talked about the high
life she was living when money was no object, designer
(01:29):
clothes and accessories, along with flash restaurants. That was the
first relationship, but she wasn't finished with the bad guys.
Her next partner was also a drug dealer, and that
relationship led to a world completely unraveling. She was severely
injured in a tactical police raid, arrested and charged. Felicia
also told me why she has a tattoo that says
(01:51):
fuck the police, and what she is doing now. It's
an interesting chat for sure, Felicia Jamisee, welcome to I
Catch Killers.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Thanks for having me. Gary.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Did you ever think when you're a partner of a
member of an outlaw motorcycle gang that you'd be sitting
down having a chat with a former cop?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Definitely not, definitely not. That was probably the last thing
I would have expected. But a lot of things that
have happened in my life have been very unexpected, so
I always say, you know what expect the unexpected.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
It's funny how life turns out. I never thought starting
a true crime podcast, i'd be sitting down speaking to
a former Miss Australia.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
So, well, you're a lucky day, Gary.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
You never know what's around the corner. I've spent the
weekend reading your book Accessory, and I've got to say
it's an interesting read, very raw. How it feel writing
the book?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
It was pretty cathartic, to be honest. It was difficult.
It was more challenging mentally and emotionally than what I
thought it would be initially. But I think that's like
most tasks that you take on, especially something you haven't
done before. She'd never written a memoir before. I do
do some writing, but not to that extent. So it
was very grueling and very emotionally taxing, and a lot
(03:06):
of things came to the forefront of my mind that
I hadn't touched on or thought about for years. There
was also a lot of things in there that I
felt I had dealt with. But when we actually spoke
about it and Aaron and I sat down and started
writing it together. I thought, hang on a minute, there's
still some work to be done, some grief work, you know,
some trauma work. There was still a lot of things
that were unresolved for me. So I'm happy I've got
(03:29):
the privilege an opportunity to kind of go through that
process again and you know, work on all those unresolved issues.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Well, it makes you take account of everything that's happened
in your life. Doesn't when you're sitting down and writing
in the memoir, playing the little that I go to say.
I started reading, I wasn't sure where it was going
to take me, but I felt sympathy for your father, Yuri. Yeah, yeah,
and we'll talk about it. But he battled alcohol, I
think in the book that covered his demise, you know,
(03:55):
he was a strong, capable man and then what he
was reduced to because of his addiction to alcohol. But
also another interesting aspect was, and I've seen this before
with friends and people I've met in this environment with
immigrant parents, sometimes the trauma's passed down and people don't
realize and you look at the life that they come
and then your parents from Russia and what they went
(04:18):
through to settle over here. It's quite an amazing story,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, it is. And you find that with a lot
of families who've come to Australia that there is that
intergenerational trauma that exists there. And also on my mother's side,
my mother has an Indigenous background and there's intergenerational trauma
there for my grandmother being on a mission, the stolen generation.
There's so many different aspects that are passed down that
(04:42):
you don't really think about or realize until you do
that life indoventory and you take stock, yeah, of those
events and how they've impacted your childhood and then you
into the future.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Well, it passes on to generations, and I don't think
we fully appreciate that because sometimes we think it's happened
in the past. Your life was different, you grew up
in a different environment, But the family structure and the
emotions are shaped by the environment in which your parents
grew up on their parents before them.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Completely true. And even with my partner Dean, his father
was an orphan from Italy and came over here on
a boat, and there's a lot of trauma in obviously
being an orphan and coming to a new country on
a boat, and then being adopted out to two Aussie
parents and you're from a completely different country. And there
was a lot of things that went on in Dean's
(05:30):
father's childhood that were very similar to URI's childhood. And
then Dean's father actually ended up in Partridge prison, and
then the intergenerational stuff comes down, and then Dean ended
up in prison, and then I ended up with charges.
So you can kind of see on a really really
basic level, how there's that trickle down effect. And I
will never say it's an excuse, so I don't really
(05:52):
believe in excuses, but it's a reason, and we have
to know the reason behind why things happened to be
able to correct, change, solve.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I'm with you on that. I honestly believe we're going
to understand what the root cause of the problem is
quite often. I'm also going to ask you why you've
got fuck the Police tattooed? But that was in your book.
I haven't dolt that.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Can you read Russian?
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Gary, No, I can't, but a very reliable interpret it
as in yourself interpret it. But we'll get into that.
Maybe you'll change in mind, maybe you'll get another another tato,
But look, you've lived a life highs lows. You've seen
it all, so let's just sort of break it down.
Tell us about your childhood where you grew up.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
I grew up in a housing commission, and it was
a very multicultural cul de sack that we lived in,
and it felt like a community back in those days.
The house that I grew up in, Anita Cobby's killers,
the Murphy brothers parents and them had lived in that
house prior to that. They moved out and we moved in.
(06:55):
So that paints a picture of the socioeconomical environment and
what it was like in those days. So that's where
I grew up basically.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, I've jumped out at me and I made some
notes about that, living in the house that the Murphy
brothers grew up and for people, and I'm sure everyone's
heard of the need of copy murder. It was a
horrendous situation and the Murphy brothers, for even were recharged
with that murder. You always describe the house as feeling
(07:25):
slightly haunted.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Correct, even before I knew, because I was quite young, obviously,
and I only found out that that was their house
and the context in and around that when I was
about eight or nine years old. So even before I
knew that there was a past with that house, yeah,
I could always feel there was some kind of energy
in the house that was a heavy energy basically.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah. Yeah, Look, we're delving into areas that I don't
fully understand, but I know sometimes an environment can carry
carry something. I know, if you go into a closed
down prison or even the oh yeah, you can feel
the pain that's gone in that environment.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
So yeah, a lot of people say that, They say
that it feels like the wolves can talk to them,
the energy that's coming off of that. Well, we believe
in Wi Fi signals, right, yeah, anything.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
I've got an open mind the things. But yeah, I
found it interesting. Also living in the could Sack, you
had a lot of your relatives living in there. You
have five houses, ten houses, and that must have been
a fun environment to grow up with cousins.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
It was chaotic, fun and great. I think that you
know a lot of families will say that your cousins
are your first best friends. Usually if you've got cousins,
so you grow up together, you play together on the weekend.
So it was great in that respect to have everyone
quite close in kit and I think too, the family
was very used to living close together because in Danisk,
(08:49):
which is now a city of the Ukraine prior the
former Soviet Union. So they lived in a unit and
my grandmother raised eleven children in this year unit and
they were very used to living very.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Close but literally on top of it.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
If anything that was in the same street would feel
a lot for some families, but that was, you know,
normal to even just all be in the same unit,
all in the same house. And I think a lot
of people from European or you know, more ethnic backgrounds
are kind of used to that close knit living environment.
It's a cultural thing.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Yeah, it has its benefits, but doesn't the shared parenting
like if you're up to not good, your uncle, your auntie.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
The shared cooking food and I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
It went down in that cul de sac. How would
you describe yourself as a child.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Apparently I was shy, which is really hard to believe
anyone that knows me the book, I was. I was
quite shy. I was a well behaved child. Me and
my mother always joked that I was a very good child,
but a bit of a you know, I guess, a
naughty adult adolescent and adult you have to.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Break out soon sooner or later, maybe you should have
got there that your sister in kindergarten, that it might
have been a easier path your parents' relationship. And yeah,
I see you're still close with your mum. Your mum's
come down here today and she's exactly how I pictured
a reading the book. But you had a tough time
(10:19):
with your father and a decent man, but just was
carrying some pain. Would that be fair the sake most definitely.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
And I think if you acknowledge that your parent is
a human and they've experienced trauma, that it is understandable
how they parent you in a certain way. They're doing
the best that they can with the knowledge that they have.
And he grew up in poverty. There was a shortage
of food in Russia. He was in a kid's home.
(10:49):
There was some abuse that went on in the kids home.
There was an incident where him and one of his
friends took an abuser out into the woods and Uri
was on one end, his friend was on the other,
and they broke. He abuses back up against a tree
and they left him there to dine. So if you
are grappling with those kinds of traumas and you don't
(11:12):
know how to cope in any other way than drinking
or doing drugs, then that's how you're going to cope.
And I think that society sees coping mechanisms quite differently.
So you've got workaholics, you're given a gold star, where
you've got your more clandestine type of coping mechanisms that
no one knows about. But when it's drung alcohol, it's
(11:35):
very overtly obvious. So they're just coping the best way
that they know how, and it's an illness and it
needs to be treated as such.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, and for a kid, that's hard because you look
at your parents to start with as heroes. You know,
they're Superman, Superwoman, they can do everything. And then as
you got allder, you started to see the failings. It
was quite sad when you're talking about when he travel
overseas and you'd come to pick him up at the
airport and that he was in no show because he
got on the drink wherever he was and wasn't allowed
on the plane.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, it happened so many times, and yeah, it was
heartbreaking and devastating and that caused some issues for me,
but I didn't realize it at the time. That was
my norm at the time. It's only when you get
older and you reflect back and you look at certain
circumstances and things in your life that you realize how
these things have impacted you.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, there was a period in time, and I'm not
sure how old you were when you traveled overseas to
where your father grew up and with your mother. He
didn't come, he wasn't invited, but you and your mother
were drunk. You and your mom went over there. Where
was that and how did that change your view on life?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
That was to Dansk, the coal mining town that's now
in the Ukraine. We caught a overnight train from Kiev
to Danievska and that was an experience. And I talk
about traveling on that train overnight. It was a lot
of drunk Russian men who couldn't aim. The toilet was
just like, I'm you can, you've created and I thought,
(13:01):
come on, guys, getting to aim. So it was quite
a wild train ride, to be honest. But it was
a great experience that me and my mum got to
have together with my auntie and my cousin and we
went to stay with my auntie and my cousin's parents.
But my Auntie's parents and her father actually fought in
the war and he at one stage had Goebels's briefcase
(13:25):
in his possession, so I mentioned that in the book
as well. So there's a lot of things in there
that back into history and the war, and also there's
some Australian history in there. I think when people see
the cover it's quite deceiving because inside the book it
goes a lot deeper into a lot of historical things,
and also I talk about trauma, mental health, and a
(13:46):
lot of women's issues as well, So it's a lot
deeper than what you see on the cover. So I'm
hoping people pick it up thinking one thing and leave
thinking a completely different.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Well, I didn't know what to expect that I'm reading
it preparing for this, but I've got very interested. Knew
his life and Brenda and how.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
He's a whole book. Yeah you could, here's a whole Netflix.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Series anyway, an interesting character and one thing that came
through the whole time, and we're going to talk about
your relationship with Cam and when that was going bad,
Ural stepped up as a father and said we can
make this problem go away, and he was he wasn't
talking about taking him out for dinner. He was going
to go again, just taken him out. Yeah, yeah, literally.
So okay, you also identified like a lot of your
(14:30):
family were successful in different fields, and you had your beauty,
and that's where you thought, Okay, well I'm going to
trade on what I've got there, and you got into
a beauty contest. Talk us through that. Because I'm not
an expert in that field. Surprisingly, so how did that
come about?
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Expect you would be, Gary in regards to that. I
always have seen myself just as a normal person, and
my friends and family or people that know me quite
closely know that that's how I am. But I still
to notice that other people were perceiving me as being
attractive and I could leverage on that. So that's what
(15:07):
I did when I was younger, and I thought, Okay,
if I can enter this contest and I can win
a trip overseas, this is a great way for me
to get out of Blacktown, see the world, travel, I
have my hair and makeup done and have a great time.
And it was also a very different era back then
when I was doing it, and the social climate has
changed a lot when it comes to pageants, when it
(15:28):
comes to women, when it comes to the way women
are perceived and objectified, it hasn't come that far, but
there has been some significant changes in this period in
the past ten years. So it was really a little
bit more I guess, socially acceptable to leverage your looks
in that way.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Back then there was an innocence to it. Wasn't no
one thought anything of it, like Miss Australia or Miss
Gold Coast or.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
It was very normalized.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Yes, the first contest you went in, you won a
thousand dollars or something.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
I was under age and it was in a pub
and I was in a bikini.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Oh no, sorry, that was a different contest all right.
The contest you're talking about could be the dancing competition
at Channel B and I took the thousand dollars overseas
when I traveled overseas. Yes, I wasn't in a bikini.
They're just a crop toop and a skirt.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Okay, dancing in a bikini underage that we might have
taken the podcast somewhere I didn't expect. So what were
the titles that you won?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
So I won three different titles, So misterism Queen Australia
Miss Australia International and Miss Lumia Australia and I've got
to go overseas on all three occasions, which is great.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Right, So that sort of set you up in a
lot of regards, I would imagine at that age and
winning contest like that, and I.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Made a lot of really good friends, some of which
I still speak to today nearly on a daily basis. We're
on WhatsApp, we're talking, and even though it's been ten
or so years, we have a really good long distance
relationship girls from other countries and it's really lovely to know.
So if you travel, you've always got somewhere to stay,
somebody local to show you around, and somebody that you
(17:02):
trust and that you have a good time with. So
that part of it, the friendship aspect and the connection aspect,
has been priceless.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Yeah, see my perception of it. I thought everyone in
those type of contests were straight one eighties and chaperones
and all that. But you broke out when you're over
was it the US with someone?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
And owned Chicago with Miss California?
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Right?
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Okay, there was a rule that you had to stay
in the hotel I think from nine pm onwards and
if you got court leaving the hotel, you were disqualified.
So myself and Miss California and the miss from the
UK said, you know, stuff, this were going out. So
we left and we went to a night club in
(17:44):
Chicago and it was floor to ceiling glass. You could
see the whole city. It was amazing and oh, we
just had the best time. We're dancing on tables that
were free pouring vodka into our mouth. I thought, this
is wonderful. And although I did have some wild experiences
in the cross that was pretty up there. The Chicago
scene was pretty cool, and everyone was saying, you know,
(18:05):
be careful, it's Chicago, you know the spill, I didn't
feel unsafe. It was great.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Did that give you the taste of the bright lights?
And already got the taste? I think. And I'm not
sure what trip it was, but you also auditioned for Playboy.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
That's the same trip.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Okay, I'll do the topless, but I'm not doing the
bottom of okay. So that was the line that you
drew there. Yeah, what was it like auditioning because like Playboy,
Penthouse or whatever, those were big back in the day.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Again, the social climates changed. It was really really big
back then, and Playmate of the Year got quite a
large sum of money, a car, and then a model
in contracts, so on and so forth. Through there, you
can just see from the example of like Pamela Anderson
and how her career kind of progressed from there onwards.
So yeah, I thought that that was a viable option.
I wasn't didn't feel I was tall enough to be
(18:57):
a traditional model and to be more of a commercial model.
And actually my mom came with me to the Playboy test.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Shit, it makes it acceptable, I felt.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
You know, say, if she was actually there in the
room with me, so I was supervised, I guess, so
to say, I bet.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
They're all whole life experiences, aren't.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
The Oh yeah, they are not something I'd probably do now.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Then again, when did you start getting the attraction to
the city nightlife and you were doing the Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
Sunday recovery session in the city. Talk us about that.
What attracted you to that lifestyle?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Fun? It was just fun and it was escape from reality.
Basically at the time, I didn't probably acknowledge so much
that it was escapism. But when you're there and you're
around friends, you're dancing and drinking, doing coke, whatever it
is that you're doing right, You're not thinking about, you know,
your traumas, you're not thinking about your everyday worries, you're
(19:52):
not thinking about life stuff. You're having a mental break.
You're basically numbing out and you're having a good time.
And that can be quite una addictive. Everyone wants to
feel like that all the time, but that's not realistic.
That's not what life is.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
It's hard to sustain it.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Oh yeah, it's unsustainable. There's no pace in that kind
of coping mechanism. Back then, when I was young, I
wanted to be away from Blacktown in the Cross having
a good time because at home my father his health
was ailing. He was an addict and he was quite
verbally abusive, and it was an unpleasant environment to be in.
(20:26):
So I said, I'm out of here, basically, And that's
kind of.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
How it all breakaway. And you started that at a
young age, or like you're getting in with your fake
ideas and fake passport, fake passport, you had it all happening.
You got to meet a lot of the characters in there.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
I did, and again also from families that came from overseas,
so you can see how there's the intergenerational stuff there
as well. That's quite interesting when you look at it
in that way.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Looking for something. Now, you said, and I'm interpreting from
the book, that you still realize that you've got your
looks and you could trade that in that environment, like
the dumb bloke's coming up and buying your drinks. And
when I say dumb blokes, let's have sympathy for them.
But they thought they were in with a chance, and
you would leverage that.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Well in saying that I wouldn't call them dumb. I
would say chivalry, and that's died a lot in this
day and age. I think that it is lovely when
a man offers you a drink, or a man takes
you for dinner and offers to pay for your dinner
and shows you that they're courting you, they're wanting to
impress you. They've got the ability to look after you,
(21:32):
even though you have the ability to look after yourself. Yeah,
because obviously a majority of women can buy their own dinner.
But it's not about that. Is that it's about the
courting and about respect. So I think in those days,
if you're speaking to a woman and you didn't buy
her a drink. It's pretty embarrassing. I think it's still
embarrassing now.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
I think it would be still embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
There's been a lot of shifts and change in the
way that that dynamic is framed in society, but I'm
still a big believer in.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Old fashioned vague. Yeah, what about the drugs? Did that
ever get hold of you? Did you become dependent on
the drugs?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I felt I had control. I don't feel I was
dependent on it. It was recreational for me, but it
quite easily could have become more than that, depending on
what was going on in my life, depending on the
people you have around you. I've always had a really
good support network in my mother and in my sister,
(22:27):
and I think if I didn't have those things, things
could have been different, because there's a big genetic component
when it comes to addition, and my mother always had
fears around the fact that because I'm your's daughter, I
could have issues with addiction. And that's accurate, so accurate,
and something you've really got to be on top of
if that runs in your family. So you've got to
(22:48):
learn really good coping mechanisms. You've got to create a
community around you that can support you instead of going
to that you've got something healthy to gravitate to own.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
It can make the difference, isn't it. Like I'm sure
your mum kept a tight reign as tired as she could.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
I was on bail. Yes she did that.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
I'm surprised do in the rest. We're going to ask,
and I want you to explain. You're not speaking for
every woman, but what is the attraction to the bad
guys for you?
Speaker 2 (23:17):
I wouldn't say that I'm attracted to them because they're
perceived as bad. I don't think anyone's inherently good or bad.
We've all got, you know, two sides.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
That's just a terminology, the bad bad boys, the.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Stereotypical bad boy. It's because we grew up in the
same ship pit usually, and we've got a lot in common.
I feel comfortable around people that have grown up rough
like I have. We see the world from a similar perspective,
and we're not only in the same book, we're on
the same page. Whereas nothing against people who are again
(23:51):
a stereotypical coin term as straighty one eighty. We just
look at life differently because our experiences are so far
detached from each other. So I have dated men that
you would say, you know, I guess, let's say.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
I've got I've got a head in here, You've straight
one eighty dat incident. So I know what you're talking about,
but I'm interested in it. In that my career within
the police and even my life outside the police, I
constantly see the bad boys, and the bad boys is
just terminology. We're not even dissecting what is actually bad
(24:26):
or good about them. But I saw so many women
with the so called bad boys, and my take on
it was some thought they could change them, like, Okay,
this is a rough diamond, but I'm going to polish
him up, and this dude is going to be the
perfect gentleman once I finished with him.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Ladies, don't bother trying to polish the diamond. Get the
diamonds as.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Gifts life theories. But you obviously had an attraction, and
you explained that that way that you could understand where
they came from. There were similarity shared. And also I
think they and you mentioned this in the book, they
like having you as their partner. Look look how I've succeeded.
(25:10):
That was the that was their state as symbol having
you as a partner. Is that fair the say? Or
am I selling it too short?
Speaker 2 (25:16):
That often is the case. And I think you can
say in traditional society, not just in the gang world,
that your partner is an extension of you.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
And this is how it's how it's seen. The partner
is an extension of you. And if they look a
certain way, they have certain things, they're wearing, certain things
that it elevates your status. If that makes sense in
that and then hence the name of the book accessory.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Well, I interpreted that that was the play on words,
play on words with the what what you were doing?
That attraction took you into a relationship. It was a
long term relationship with kemore happy to talk about the relationship.
There he was when you first got with him. I
think he was a non for a biking club. And
(26:06):
we've had enough Bikei's on here and we've talked about
it enough.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Your attraction to bad boys, then, Gary, if you've had
a lot of bikes.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
I had to catch him when I was in the cops.
That was a strong attraction. But I buy you a drink.
I've got a lot of friends in that world, and yeah,
there's professional differences. When I was in the cops, obviously,
of course I say this, and I don't want this
to be misinterpreted, but I respected the code that they
(26:34):
live by when they truly lived by their code. And
we'll talk about that, but I understood it. I might
agree with it, but I understood a code. And they're
putting themselves up there. This is what we are. We're outlaws.
You're the cops. We don't like you. I can respect
living by their code. I just don't necessarily agree with
some of the things in their code. So I don't
(26:57):
mind mind them individually, sit down, have a chat. And
it's amazing the life that they've lived. I think you
touched on it too, that a lot of them have
been abused when and yeah, and this isn't the information
that I'm getting from them. A lot of them had
been abused. So when you see the big tough guy
(27:18):
covered in tattoos like that, don't fuck with me. Look
about them. A lot of it is that bravado built
up because they're never going to be a victim again.
And that saddens me that people have to. Yeah, that's
the way they live their life.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
But I understand it, and then that's further reinforced in
prison because you have to have that bravado because if
you show any vulnerability, you'll be picked on, and then
that kind of transfers into the behavior in society as well.
So if you don't, if you're not seen as vulnerable
or weak, that not that being vulnerable this week, I
just want to point that out. But if you're perceived
(27:50):
as such, there's always a threat that you'll be attacked
or victimized.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Again, they can smell smell fear, and you aren't. It
can't display that or you will be preyed upon in
jail and also in the biking clubs. So okay, what
was your steps into there? So is it fair when
you were going out with Kem that you were a wag,
a biky wag? Is that or an old lady?
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Old old love that term? Well I'm kidding.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Alter now so, but it's an old lady in that
is a term that's used the old lady, and that
tends to indicate you're a partner of a particular bikie.
So how did you meet How did you meet Camp?
Speaker 2 (28:35):
We lived in similar areas, so we had friends of
friends and we kind of just grew up in the
same scene basically. And that's where I say, you know,
it just becomes normalized that dating somebody in a club
or that goes into a club, or somebody that commits
crime or Jill's drugs or goes to jail, or it
(28:56):
was seen as quite normal in my social sir, and
with me and my friends growing up. Quite a few
of my girlfriends that I grew up with had also
had similar experiences to me, so it was very normalized.
So it didn't feel foreign.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Well, you are a product of your environment, and I
do understand what you're saying. So it wasn't sort of
you've never seen that side of the world and you've
stepped in and gone, yeah, wow, you understood that a
big deal.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
It wasn't like, oh my goodness, you're joining a club,
do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Like, it was okay, okay. So you started going out
with him. He started to rise.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Up the ranks quite quickly, very likable, charismatic, kind, generous
person and also you know, physically strong, tall, good sense
of him. I got along with everyone, so that worked
to his advantage or a good standover man, and I
think that's why he was able to move up quite quickly.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
How were you treated in the club, in the social
events and different things when you got to get with
the club?
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Was very well?
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yep, very well.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
How did you navigate your way through that?
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Again? Just normalized. Yes, friends with all the other wives
and girlfriends and would go out and would have dinner together,
and it was actually like our own little crew, so
to speak. And yeah, camaraderie in a sense because we
all would have quite similar experiences, and those experiences are
very outside the norm for your regular person and not
(30:27):
something you'd speak about with probably other people other than
the wives and the girlfriends that are in similar situations
to you. So yeah, I actually was treated quite well
within that scene and that circle, and I enjoyed being
in that scene in that circle in that time until
Cam developed an addiction and then everything changed after that.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yeah, talk us through that, because as described in your book,
the Cam that you first got, we've had a lot
of things going for him and then the slow deterioration
when the addiction and came in. And he was a
good mefan Feathermines cook too, which endeared him to the
world that he was living in as well. It's correct,
So what changes did you see in him?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Anyone that knows somebody who has an addiction and has
seen somebody from the inception of that addiction addiction until
when they hit rock bottom will know that it's like
the lights are on, but no one's home, and you
pined for that person that existed prior before the addiction
(31:33):
because it slowly eats away at their personality, at their soul,
and they become unrecognizable basically, and not the person you
fell in love with, and they're not the person that
you kind of agreed to date or go out with
because the behaviors change.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
I look, I've seen people that addicted to ice and
other drugs. They've lost their soul. You look into their
eyes and there's nothing but behind the eyes. I know
that like sitting in interview rooms with people who are
just talking to people that have got that addiction, and
there's something that there's just a big black hole there,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah, Because the pain that they've got within themselves, the
emotion that is there that needs to be dealt with,
is so heavy and painful that they can't face it.
And in order to not face it, they have to
nu'mb out with drugs, alcohol, etc. There's always pain there.
There's always like we said earlier, there's always a root
(32:31):
cause there.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
What we've sort of hit the low points of that relationship.
The high points, like the lifestyle that you were living with.
Him explained that when.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Things were good, they were very good. When things were bad,
they were very, very bad. So I guess it was
like a roller coaster. It was feast or famine a
lot of the times, but the famine was because of
the addiction. Money would go missing, and that's when I realized, Hey,
this is big becoming a serious problem here.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Yeah. Is that something you're like that? Some people go
through their life flatlining live, the suburban life, the white
picket fence, two kids dog, that type of stuff. Are
you looking for the highs and lows? Is that something
that you're you're attracted to?
Speaker 2 (33:17):
My life is pretty interesting and exciting now, but in
different ways. So you know, writing the book and the
work that I do as well the therapy work that
I do. I'm always learning, always meeting new people, so
it's it has its highs and lows now, but in
a very different way. So yes, I do like that.
(33:38):
I don't think I could ever live your mundane, white
picket fence life, I would become very borught. And that's
probably my idea of hell. Maybe yeah, some people's dream.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
I think people like you look at other people. Everyone
lives their life in the path that they choose. Some people,
other people would be slow death.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah. I like to always learn something new, Like I said,
meet new people. Travel. I traveled to the Philippines. I
visited the women in Middlist City prison. I like to
go and do things that enrich your knowledge, things that
you can learn to bring back to your country and
advise on, you know, whether that's programs, policies, et cetera.
(34:20):
I like to do things where I can learn things
and then give that knowledge back.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
How did you just a sidetrack? How did you get
into the women's Philippine prison in Manela? That would have
been interesting experience.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
It was really really interesting, and it was a privilege
to be allowed into their living space. So I thank
them for that, and I went in there and actually Brenda,
my mother, came to the prison as well, and we
went into the dormitory and I explained, well, how I
got in there.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
To begin with?
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Was I spoke with the warden, and I explained the
work that I do here and the advocacy that I
do for women have conviction histories, and I said, I'd
like to come and do some cross cultural knowledge sharing
with you and see what what are you guys doing
that where not that works, and vice versa, and let's
sit down and let's, you know, share ideas and share knowledge.
(35:13):
So it's an enriching experience for both. And they said, yeah, great,
please come along because I'm a trauma therapist, as you know,
so come along. Anyway, I went. I went there. They
invited me into the dorm and I would say, I
know that the people listening can't see the size of
the studio, but just for your purposes, so double the
(35:33):
size of the studio. You'll have sixty women.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Okay, so we're looking at the room probably eight foot
by six foot here roughly, or three to four meters
long to the three meters wide.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Yeah, so not much space at all, and bunk beds
one on top of the other, and so very close
living quarters. And some of the women did not have mattresses.
They were sleeping on bunk beds with just a cardboard sheet.
And although that was the conditions. They were allowed to
see their families daily except for the days where there
(36:08):
was mandatory learning and jobs training, which is two days
a week, and they were allowed to see their children
for basically unlimited hours in comparison to what happens in Australia.
They had a coffee shop where the men make the
coffee for the families or the male prisoners on the
other side they come, they work in the coffee shop,
so they make the coffee and the snacks for their
(36:29):
children when they come. There's a great playground there. And
I said to the warden and the nurse and the
other staff there, and also to the women that were
in there, what happens when you leave prison? And they
were like, what do you mean? Because in Australia we
have a situation where a lot of women or people
in general, as you would know, they leave prison and
(36:49):
they don't have anywhere to go. They've lost connection with family,
they don't have anywhere to live, and it just fuels
the cycle of going back inside because they don't have
that support network. And they looked at me like I
was speaking another language, probably because I was.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
But that was very very perceptive of him.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
They were looking at me, like what is she talking about?
They said, what do you mean? We just go back
home to our families. And it made sense because they're
allowed to keep the connection with family. They're not moved
far away. They can see their children every day, they
can see their parents every day. So that's something that
they do really, really well, is the maintaining your connection
(37:27):
with support networks so when they come out, the family's
able to support.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
So it does make a lot of sense. Like prisons science,
it's not. I think one of the Norwegian countries look
after the family when the prisoners are in there to
make sure the families are looked after outside because they
know the importance of having a stable family for the
prisoner to come back to it.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
And especially in the sense of when we've got children
who are impacted by a parent who's incarcerated, we know
that if we look at the starts. I'm not going
to go in to that, but if we look at
the stats, there's a higher likelihood of that child growing
up and being engaged in crime if they've had a
parent or both parents incarcerated. So looking at myself, I've
(38:12):
had charges, my father was in prison, my partner's father
was in prison. So even just within you know, my
close knit circle, I can see the intergenerational stuff. So
if you're looking after the children that have parents incarcerated,
that's future crime prevention right there. So and that's something
that can be implemented now that we're not doing look
(38:34):
after the kids, look after the mums, because the mums
look after the kids. You know, that's our future. It's
what we've got to nurture.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
And most people go in the prison, and this is
where I think the public don't fully appreciate they're going
to get out. So it's how you treat them inside
is going to dictate how they come out, what they're
like when they come out.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
So oh yes, and there's I think that the person
going into prison goes into court, they get sentenced, and
they say, okay, yes, I'm going to do my five
years or my ten years or whatever it might be.
So they're agreeing to that part of it. But I
don't feel like Corrections is keeping up their end of
the bargain because people are coming out worse. There's no
(39:15):
correcting going on in Corrections needs to be better access
to health, that needs to be about access to education, skills, training, employment,
training and more connection to family promoted.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Yeah. No, we're breaking those things like education, skills training
so they've got something to come to and the family
family connection that is important. I know. Correct, your services
are trying to implement changes in that regate.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
I'll tell you exactly what you need to be doing.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Yeah, well, have a look at a Macquarie Correctional Center
and a few other prisoners. I'm talking New South Wales
here who adopted a new approach, and I think it's
something worthwhile. Definitely worthwhile. And this is not me sitting
here as a bleeding heart softy. I'm an ex cop,
so I make a hardline on phone.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
I don't think either of us are softiest. Gary.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
No, was just to clarify that we're tough. Hey, guys,
it's Gary Jubilan here. Want to get more out of
I Catch Killers, then you should head over to our
new video feed on Spotify where you can watch every
episode of I Catch Killers. Just search for I Catch
Killers video in your Spotify app and start watching today.
(40:25):
Getting back to camp, the deterioration that it became became
quite confronting for you. Some of the things that took place,
you wanted happy to talk through that journey.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
I'm happy to talk through that. So there was a
couple of incidents when I quite easily could have lost
my life, and you know, I was strangled, I was
shot at. A lot of really violent stuff went on,
which I've worked through. And I speak about these experiences
very openly in the book because I believe it's important
(40:59):
that if you can speak about these things, you should
for the people that cannot. And I don't know what
the flow on impacts will be for women who have
been through similar situations or potentially young women growing up
that will read my book and say, oh, hang on
a minute, I can see red flags. Now I'm going
to kind of, you know, back away, step away. You know,
(41:21):
I need to have boundaries, I need to look after myself.
I need to make sure that you know, XYZ maybe
make them more perceptive orwaere that these things do go on.
But I think the main thing is that women don't
feel alone in having had these experiences, because when these
really violent things happen to you, you don't sit and
(41:41):
imagine that there's X amount of other women out there
who have been through similarly.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
It can be very low in isolation.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Yes, so I'm hoping that this makes a lot of
women feel as though you're not alone or know that
they're not alone, basically because it can be very very
isolating to be in an abusive relationship, and a lot
of the times too, for a long period of time,
it's like a clandestine thing. They hide it from family
and friends. It's too shameful to.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Admit, well that that comes into it, and it's sad
that comes into it, but it's like an embarrassment. And
I suppose if you've well, this is a partner I selected,
and look what's happening, and all the friends and family
probably seen me go, we could have told you.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
That shame, self, blame, all of these things that come
into it that aren't helpful.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
But your experiences were I think that there was one
time a shop was let fire at the taxi and
another time you've been chase around with him in a
drug fueled rage with a shotgun and then strangled to
the point where you passed out and ended up in hospital.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Yeah, I thought I was finished, and that strangulation, I thought,
this is it, this is the end.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
I thought, Yeah, what what happened? When you wake up?
And yeah, you work.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Up and I thought, fuck, yeah, I'm alive.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Okay, Well that's a bonus surprise. Always look on the
bright side life. Yeah, you you were concerned about leaving
him because of the state of mind he was in.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
And access to weapons too had to be taken into consideration.
And I don't think that's unique to the drug world
or to the gang land world. I think that, you know,
there's access to weapons even though we've got laws in place,
et cetera. I think that a lot of women that
aren't in that world still have to consider access to
weapons as a risk factor when they're leaving, which is
(43:30):
the most dangerous time. So I don't think I'm alone
in that. It's just that probably, you know, in my circumstance,
it was a shotgun as opposed to some other kind
of weapon.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
You know. Yeah, but there's always weapons in house. They
don't have to be a gun to flee exact click
click the violence. But you reached out to his club
and spake to as soon your member there and saying, yeah,
help me, this is what's going on.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
I said, he needs to go to rehab because I
was able to separate the person from the illness, and
I knew that his addiction was again not an excuse,
but it was the reason behind his behavior, because the
violence increased and the behaviors and the aggression increased so
much as a result of the drug taking, and was
(44:20):
a complete polar opposite to the person that I had
met and I was with prior, and that I entered
a relationship with. And I always kind of hoped that
that person would come back, and then I realized it wouldn't,
so I really tried to implore them to put him
into a rehabilitation facility for a period of time so
he could get his head straight and have a chance
at getting his health back, getting his life back. Whether
(44:44):
we stayed together or not was irrelevant at that point
for me on a human level, I wanted him to
get the medical help that he needed and the psychological
help that he obviously needed as well.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
How was that received when you took that to the club?
Speaker 2 (44:57):
It was all a lot of yes, yes, yes, and
then not a lot of action. I think they tried
to detox him themselves, which was futile. I know I
tried to detox youuring myself a couple of times at home.
I do not recommend a very dangerous thing to do.
It needs to be under medical supervision. But I think
also in some senses, I would say that could have
(45:18):
been to their advantage to have him, you know, addicted.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Yeah, well he's dependent control do anything. How did the
relationship actually come to an end?
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Then it ended when I left, So look, it ended
before that. But I had to be very careful in
the way that I did decide to leave, because I
did get cam to leave, but he would return to
the home. He ripped the door off the hinges on
one occasion, and I had went out one night and
(45:51):
I got home and he had crawled through my window
and he was asleep in my bed. And this was
after I, oh yeah, and I just had to pretend
that everything was okay because I didn't know what mood
he was in. I didn't know whether he had a
weapon under the blanket. I didn't know what was going
to happen. So I just acted normally, put on my
(46:11):
pajamas and just laid in the bed and kind of
just one eye opened situation and waited till the morning.
He got up in the morning and then he left.
Didn't say a word.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
I suppose in your situation, because he knew he was cooking,
the drugs and all that. You didn't really have the
option of ringing the cops, did you, No?
Speaker 2 (46:30):
And I never would, I never would. I guess you
would know. You know, there's a code in regards to that.
But I will say that domestic violence and club issues
or whatever it might be, they're completely separate things and
they never should be kind of piled together in one thing.
(46:52):
You know, and people get called, oh, you're a dog
if you call the cops. You can't exactly, but if
somebody's you're abusing you, they're not a man, And yeah,
you know, you need it needs to be dealt with it.
You're not a dog. It needs to be dealt with.
Real men don't hit women. So yeah, that needs to
be kind of separated. But back then it was kind
(47:13):
of all piled into one and domestic violence wasn't on
the forefront as much as what it is now in society.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
Did you have blokes within the club that had the
ticket that stand up to this, like if something was
going down domestic violence and just take him aside and
saw the man.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
Well, we try to deal with everything. We did, try
to deal with everything in house, so to speak. So
it's a kind of street justice. It's a better way
to deal with things. And yes, some people did go
and visit him at his house and he ran, and
I was disappointed in that. I felt he should have
just stayed and then it would have been even.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Yeah, you said, he didn't have the balls to even
stand up and face it.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
Didn't can run that fast.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
Defense kicks in that adrenaline. Adrenaline, So we're and can
we talk? And your father's passed away. But I like
the fact that the father that always had your back.
And how was described as how Uri was going to
We touched on it earlier, how Uri was going to
fix the problem.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Yeah, well, Ury said, you know, we'll get rid of him.
I'm knock him and it doesn't matter because I'm dying anyway.
But even if Ury wasn't dying, he still would have
been keen to do it. So it became a problem because,
like I said, I left, ripped the door off, the
hinges comes into the window at night. We thought, you know,
(48:35):
where is this going to end? Where is this situation
going to end? Am I ever going to be free
of this person? And you always you know, after you've
been strangled to the point where you think you're going
to die, and you end up unconscious and you're shot
at you're thinking how much longer do I have? Basically,
so it was either me or him at that point.
That's psychologically the point that I was at. And Ur
(48:59):
and I discussion about it and we kind of planned
what we were what we were wanting to do. Then
luckily we didn't have to, you know, go through with that.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
What eventually led to the break up, all the separation.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
I decided to leave the area and I went to
central New South Wales, YEP, and kind of just hit
out there where he couldn't find me for a while
and was hoping that he'd just kind of get over it.
Speaker 1 (49:22):
Well, did he get over it? Because part of the
problem we've had absession and with the addiction is that
and yeah, you're smiling and you're tough, You've lived a
tough life. That Yeah, if you've got someone strangling you
to the point where you end up in the hospital,
or someone running around with a loaded shotgunsfis face and
someone firing a shot, you must have had genuine concerns
(49:44):
for you. Are you going to survive this?
Speaker 2 (49:46):
Oh? Yeah I did. I'm a pretty positive person. I'm
always try and look at, you know, the brighter side
of things. Not that there's a bright side in that,
but I always saw that there's hope, and there's a
way out, and there's a way forward. No matter what's
thrown at me, there's always a way forward, and I
always push for that. But yes, I was genuinely concerned
(50:08):
for my safety, and that's why I chose to remove
myself from the situation, because the owners couldn't be on
him to correct the situation of his behavior because he
was not of sound mind. He's addicted and has access
to weapons. So and that was that aspect of things
was solidified because I went and spoke to him after
(50:29):
he had been arrested for something else. Yep, he ended
up in prison and I sat with him and he
said to me, I'm actually glad that I'm in here
because I would have killed you. I would have killed
myself and probably somebody else. So yeah, well that that
means that removing myself from the situation was the right
(50:50):
thing to do. But also I had the privilege of
being able to do that. A lot of women don't.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
Yeah, that's true, that's true. What prompted you to go
see in prison, and how long since you'd spoke to him,
were you staying in contact with him when he was
in prison? What prompted you to go see him in prison?
Speaker 2 (51:08):
What prompted me to go and visit him and talk
to him was that I knew it would be an
opportunity to speak to him when he was straight. He
wasn't completely straight, but I mean not on illicit substances,
and I wanted to give him an opportunity to apologize.
Now looking back, you know, don't I don't need the apology.
(51:31):
I was a lot younger than too, So I give
him an opportunity to apologize, and also to say, you
know what if we run into each other in the
street or in the traps, and you know, I'm someone else,
you're with somebody else to things to be able to
be civil, and that didn't happen. He said he wasn't
ready to apologize, and I said, you know, that's fine,
(51:54):
and I left. But I gave him. I gave him
that opportunity to, I don't know, close the book on
that and leave some room for forgiveness, and you know
that healing that comes with that closure.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
How long was he insightful?
Speaker 2 (52:09):
After that, I didn't speak to him, so I'm not sure,
but I think it was a little bit of a
period of time.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
Yeah, okay, well it's tough. How long were you together?
Speaker 2 (52:19):
For five years?
Speaker 1 (52:20):
It's a long time. It's a relationship. So yeah, you
had that closeness here the start with that.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
And even on a human level, you don't like to
see somebody or anybody in that kind of.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
Situation once you break away from him. Did you break
away from the bike?
Speaker 2 (52:37):
He sainte with that, I started dating Dean, But I
started dating Dean because I knew he was somebody that
could protect me and I couldn't rely on the police
to protect me. Like I said, things were more dealt
within house, and the police were aware of the fact
that there was abuse in my home and they tried
(53:01):
to leverage that in a way that they said, you know,
if you give us information about abc D, then will
help to protect you. Otherwise we're not interested. And I thought,
I won't say what I thought, but.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
I think that's sort of hinting where it's but it
gets a lot worse. But we fuck the police tatoo.
But I should have saying that. Saying that, so I
suppose the police. I'm not defending it, and yeah, we
try to leave partners out of Yeah, if you're going
after someone, you tend to leave the partners out. But
(53:38):
I suppose from their point of view, you know the
crimes is in, you want us to help help you,
And that's what they were trying to leverage was it
will save you from him if you give him up.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
But that's a face. They wouldn't have been able to
save me from him, That's the whole point, you know,
So you have to just deal with these things yourself
if you're in a situation. I was not recommending anyone
does that, but for me, that was my best chance
of survival and keeping myself safe was to date somebody
(54:10):
that I knew he wouldn't want to, you know, come
up against or mess with.
Speaker 1 (54:15):
Basically, Well, I suppose and you said you understood the
code of the bikies and you don't don't speak to police,
and you respected that and didn't And that's probably the
environment you've you've grown up with Yuri's attitude. Yes, I'm
sure he wasn't one that like speaking to police.
Speaker 2 (54:32):
No. No, have you gotten to the scene in the
book where the police come to the house and he
answers the door naked. Yeah, did that make you smile?
Speaker 1 (54:44):
It makes me smile that I've been confronted with that before.
And yeah, and that is a real fuck you police,
I'm not putting clothes on what what? What do you?
What do you want? With Yuri? The decline? And I
know it impacted on you with the alcohol, the dependence
(55:04):
and the seeing him go from this strong, successful, successful
man to becoming someone that was hiding his drinks. And yeah,
I think you found him on the bus shelter without
shoes on board, him home and different things like that.
That must be.
Speaker 2 (55:19):
Hard for a child, Oh, very extremely And I don't
think that there's any real words to describe how painful
that emotion is. And there's a lot of people who
have addictions that are highly intelligent. They're brilliant people, they've
got great personalities, they have such good things going for them.
(55:40):
It's just that that coping mechanism is not there, and
that pain is so strong. So it's not a reflection
on them as people. It's just an illness that needs
to be treated. And I started to realize that as
I got older.
Speaker 1 (55:56):
You saw, Okay, we might take break at this stage.
When we come back, we're going to talk about you've
decided to go into the relationship We've dean. We want
to talk about your experiences dating the straight one eighties
in the intrument period. Come on, be nice to the
good guys. And also I make light of this, but
(56:20):
it was a horrific situation that you found yourself in
and there you've got to accept blame your living the lifestyle,
but the extremes have been involved in a tactical arrest
where stung grenades were thrown in, multiple stung grenades thrown
into your bedroom, and you suffered very serious injuries to
the point where you might have lost you lost your hand, yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:44):
And almost lost my eyesight as well.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
Yeah yeah, no, I've seen patos of it, so that
that would be very very traumatic. But we're going to
talk all through that and what you're doing now with
your life and how you're sort of trying to turn
it around and pointed in the right direct sounds good
cheese m hm.
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective see a side of life the average person is
never exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
That's what I did for a living. I was a
homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world.
(00:46):
Today I spoke the former Miss Australia, Felicia Damige. You
might think how and why did a former Miss Australia
find herself on a podcast called I Catch Killers. I
wondered that too, But there was something in Felicia Dna
that attracted her to the bad guys. We talked about
a life growing up with immigrant parents supporting an alcoholic father,
(01:08):
and how she was attracted to the bright lights of
King's Cross. Felicia tells us what it was like being
a bikey wag living with a bikey who became addicted
and was cooking mefan fair. The means also being chased
around the house with a loaded shotgun, being strangled, and
a whole lot more. We also talked about the high
life she was living when money was no object, designer
(01:29):
clothes and accessories, along with flash restaurants. That was the
first relationship, but she wasn't finished with the bad guys.
Her next partner was also a drug dealer, and that
relationship led to a world completely unraveling. She was severely
injured in a tactical police raid, arrested and charged. Felicia
also told me why she has a tattoo that says
(01:51):
fuck the police, and what she is doing now. It's
an interesting chat for sure, Felicia Jamisee, welcome to I
Catch Killers.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Thanks for having me. Gary.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Did you ever think when you're a partner of a
member of an outlaw motorcycle gang that you'd be sitting
down having a chat with a former cop?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Definitely not, definitely not. That was probably the last thing
I would have expected. But a lot of things that
have happened in my life have been very unexpected, so
I always say, you know what expect the unexpected.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
It's funny how life turns out. I never thought starting
a true crime podcast, i'd be sitting down speaking to
a former Miss Australia.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
So, well, you're a lucky day, Gary.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
You never know what's around the corner. I've spent the
weekend reading your book Accessory, and I've got to say
it's an interesting read, very raw. How it feel writing
the book?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
It was pretty cathartic, to be honest. It was difficult.
It was more challenging mentally and emotionally than what I
thought it would be initially. But I think that's like
most tasks that you take on, especially something you haven't
done before. She'd never written a memoir before. I do
do some writing, but not to that extent. So it
was very grueling and very emotionally taxing, and a lot
(03:06):
of things came to the forefront of my mind that
I hadn't touched on or thought about for years. There
was also a lot of things in there that I
felt I had dealt with. But when we actually spoke
about it and Aaron and I sat down and started
writing it together. I thought, hang on a minute, there's
still some work to be done, some grief work, you know,
some trauma work. There was still a lot of things
that were unresolved for me. So I'm happy I've got
(03:29):
the privilege an opportunity to kind of go through that
process again and you know, work on all those unresolved issues.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Well, it makes you take account of everything that's happened
in your life. Doesn't when you're sitting down and writing
in the memoir, playing the little that I go to say.
I started reading, I wasn't sure where it was going
to take me, but I felt sympathy for your father, Yuri. Yeah, yeah,
and we'll talk about it. But he battled alcohol, I
think in the book that covered his demise, you know,
(03:55):
he was a strong, capable man and then what he
was reduced to because of his addiction to alcohol. But
also another interesting aspect was, and I've seen this before
with friends and people I've met in this environment with
immigrant parents, sometimes the trauma's passed down and people don't
realize and you look at the life that they come
and then your parents from Russia and what they went
(04:18):
through to settle over here. It's quite an amazing story,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, it is. And you find that with a lot
of families who've come to Australia that there is that
intergenerational trauma that exists there. And also on my mother's side,
my mother has an Indigenous background and there's intergenerational trauma
there for my grandmother being on a mission, the stolen generation.
There's so many different aspects that are passed down that
(04:42):
you don't really think about or realize until you do
that life indoventory and you take stock, yeah, of those
events and how they've impacted your childhood and then you
into the future.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Well, it passes on to generations, and I don't think
we fully appreciate that because sometimes we think it's happened
in the past. Your life was different, you grew up
in a different environment, But the family structure and the
emotions are shaped by the environment in which your parents
grew up on their parents before them.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Completely true. And even with my partner Dean, his father
was an orphan from Italy and came over here on
a boat, and there's a lot of trauma in obviously
being an orphan and coming to a new country on
a boat, and then being adopted out to two Aussie
parents and you're from a completely different country. And there
was a lot of things that went on in Dean's
(05:30):
father's childhood that were very similar to URI's childhood. And
then Dean's father actually ended up in Partridge prison, and
then the intergenerational stuff comes down, and then Dean ended
up in prison, and then I ended up with charges.
So you can kind of see on a really really
basic level, how there's that trickle down effect. And I
will never say it's an excuse, so I don't really
(05:52):
believe in excuses, but it's a reason, and we have
to know the reason behind why things happened to be
able to correct, change, solve.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I'm with you on that. I honestly believe we're going
to understand what the root cause of the problem is
quite often. I'm also going to ask you why you've
got fuck the Police tattooed? But that was in your book.
I haven't dolt that.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Can you read Russian?
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Gary, No, I can't, but a very reliable interpret it
as in yourself interpret it. But we'll get into that.
Maybe you'll change in mind, maybe you'll get another another tato,
But look, you've lived a life highs lows. You've seen
it all, so let's just sort of break it down.
Tell us about your childhood where you grew up.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
I grew up in a housing commission, and it was
a very multicultural cul de sack that we lived in,
and it felt like a community back in those days.
The house that I grew up in, Anita Cobby's killers,
the Murphy brothers parents and them had lived in that
house prior to that. They moved out and we moved in.
(06:55):
So that paints a picture of the socioeconomical environment and
what it was like in those days. So that's where
I grew up basically.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, I've jumped out at me and I made some
notes about that, living in the house that the Murphy
brothers grew up and for people, and I'm sure everyone's
heard of the need of copy murder. It was a
horrendous situation and the Murphy brothers, for even were recharged
with that murder. You always describe the house as feeling
(07:25):
slightly haunted.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Correct, even before I knew, because I was quite young, obviously,
and I only found out that that was their house
and the context in and around that when I was
about eight or nine years old. So even before I
knew that there was a past with that house, yeah,
I could always feel there was some kind of energy
in the house that was a heavy energy basically.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah. Yeah, Look, we're delving into areas that I don't
fully understand, but I know sometimes an environment can carry
carry something. I know, if you go into a closed
down prison or even the oh yeah, you can feel
the pain that's gone in that environment.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
So yeah, a lot of people say that, They say
that it feels like the wolves can talk to them,
the energy that's coming off of that. Well, we believe
in Wi Fi signals, right, yeah, anything.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
I've got an open mind the things. But yeah, I
found it interesting. Also living in the could Sack, you
had a lot of your relatives living in there. You
have five houses, ten houses, and that must have been
a fun environment to grow up with cousins.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
It was chaotic, fun and great. I think that you
know a lot of families will say that your cousins
are your first best friends. Usually if you've got cousins,
so you grow up together, you play together on the weekend.
So it was great in that respect to have everyone
quite close in kit and I think too, the family
was very used to living close together because in Danisk,
(08:49):
which is now a city of the Ukraine prior the
former Soviet Union. So they lived in a unit and
my grandmother raised eleven children in this year unit and
they were very used to living very.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Close but literally on top of it.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
If anything that was in the same street would feel
a lot for some families, but that was, you know,
normal to even just all be in the same unit,
all in the same house. And I think a lot
of people from European or you know, more ethnic backgrounds
are kind of used to that close knit living environment.
It's a cultural thing.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Yeah, it has its benefits, but doesn't the shared parenting
like if you're up to not good, your uncle, your auntie.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
The shared cooking food and I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
It went down in that cul de sac. How would
you describe yourself as a child.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Apparently I was shy, which is really hard to believe
anyone that knows me the book, I was. I was
quite shy. I was a well behaved child. Me and
my mother always joked that I was a very good child,
but a bit of a you know, I guess, a
naughty adult adolescent and adult you have to.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Break out soon sooner or later, maybe you should have
got there that your sister in kindergarten, that it might
have been a easier path your parents' relationship. And yeah,
I see you're still close with your mum. Your mum's
come down here today and she's exactly how I pictured
a reading the book. But you had a tough time
(10:19):
with your father and a decent man, but just was
carrying some pain. Would that be fair the sake most definitely.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
And I think if you acknowledge that your parent is
a human and they've experienced trauma, that it is understandable
how they parent you in a certain way. They're doing
the best that they can with the knowledge that they have.
And he grew up in poverty. There was a shortage
of food in Russia. He was in a kid's home.
(10:49):
There was some abuse that went on in the kids home.
There was an incident where him and one of his
friends took an abuser out into the woods and Uri
was on one end, his friend was on the other,
and they broke. He abuses back up against a tree
and they left him there to dine. So if you
are grappling with those kinds of traumas and you don't
(11:12):
know how to cope in any other way than drinking
or doing drugs, then that's how you're going to cope.
And I think that society sees coping mechanisms quite differently.
So you've got workaholics, you're given a gold star, where
you've got your more clandestine type of coping mechanisms that
no one knows about. But when it's drung alcohol, it's
(11:35):
very overtly obvious. So they're just coping the best way
that they know how, and it's an illness and it
needs to be treated as such.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, and for a kid, that's hard because you look
at your parents to start with as heroes. You know,
they're Superman, Superwoman, they can do everything. And then as
you got allder, you started to see the failings. It
was quite sad when you're talking about when he travel
overseas and you'd come to pick him up at the
airport and that he was in no show because he
got on the drink wherever he was and wasn't allowed
on the plane.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, it happened so many times, and yeah, it was
heartbreaking and devastating and that caused some issues for me,
but I didn't realize it at the time. That was
my norm at the time. It's only when you get
older and you reflect back and you look at certain
circumstances and things in your life that you realize how
these things have impacted you.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, there was a period in time, and I'm not
sure how old you were when you traveled overseas to
where your father grew up and with your mother. He
didn't come, he wasn't invited, but you and your mother
were drunk. You and your mom went over there. Where
was that and how did that change your view on life?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
That was to Dansk, the coal mining town that's now
in the Ukraine. We caught a overnight train from Kiev
to Danievska and that was an experience. And I talk
about traveling on that train overnight. It was a lot
of drunk Russian men who couldn't aim. The toilet was
just like, I'm you can, you've created and I thought,
(13:01):
come on, guys, getting to aim. So it was quite
a wild train ride, to be honest. But it was
a great experience that me and my mum got to
have together with my auntie and my cousin and we
went to stay with my auntie and my cousin's parents.
But my Auntie's parents and her father actually fought in
the war and he at one stage had Goebels's briefcase
(13:25):
in his possession, so I mentioned that in the book
as well. So there's a lot of things in there
that back into history and the war, and also there's
some Australian history in there. I think when people see
the cover it's quite deceiving because inside the book it
goes a lot deeper into a lot of historical things,
and also I talk about trauma, mental health, and a
(13:46):
lot of women's issues as well, So it's a lot
deeper than what you see on the cover. So I'm
hoping people pick it up thinking one thing and leave
thinking a completely different.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Well, I didn't know what to expect that I'm reading
it preparing for this, but I've got very interested. Knew
his life and Brenda and how.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
He's a whole book. Yeah you could, here's a whole Netflix.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Series anyway, an interesting character and one thing that came
through the whole time, and we're going to talk about
your relationship with Cam and when that was going bad,
Ural stepped up as a father and said we can
make this problem go away, and he was he wasn't
talking about taking him out for dinner. He was going
to go again, just taken him out. Yeah, yeah, literally.
So okay, you also identified like a lot of your
(14:30):
family were successful in different fields, and you had your beauty,
and that's where you thought, Okay, well I'm going to
trade on what I've got there, and you got into
a beauty contest. Talk us through that. Because I'm not
an expert in that field. Surprisingly, so how did that
come about?
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Expect you would be, Gary in regards to that. I
always have seen myself just as a normal person, and
my friends and family or people that know me quite
closely know that that's how I am. But I still
to notice that other people were perceiving me as being
attractive and I could leverage on that. So that's what
(15:07):
I did when I was younger, and I thought, Okay,
if I can enter this contest and I can win
a trip overseas, this is a great way for me
to get out of Blacktown, see the world, travel, I
have my hair and makeup done and have a great time.
And it was also a very different era back then
when I was doing it, and the social climate has
changed a lot when it comes to pageants, when it
(15:28):
comes to women, when it comes to the way women
are perceived and objectified, it hasn't come that far, but
there has been some significant changes in this period in
the past ten years. So it was really a little
bit more I guess, socially acceptable to leverage your looks
in that way.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Back then there was an innocence to it. Wasn't no
one thought anything of it, like Miss Australia or Miss
Gold Coast or.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
It was very normalized.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Yes, the first contest you went in, you won a
thousand dollars or something.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
I was under age and it was in a pub
and I was in a bikini.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Oh no, sorry, that was a different contest all right.
The contest you're talking about could be the dancing competition
at Channel B and I took the thousand dollars overseas
when I traveled overseas. Yes, I wasn't in a bikini.
They're just a crop toop and a skirt.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Okay, dancing in a bikini underage that we might have
taken the podcast somewhere I didn't expect. So what were
the titles that you won?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
So I won three different titles, So misterism Queen Australia
Miss Australia International and Miss Lumia Australia and I've got
to go overseas on all three occasions, which is great.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Right, So that sort of set you up in a
lot of regards, I would imagine at that age and
winning contest like that, and I.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Made a lot of really good friends, some of which
I still speak to today nearly on a daily basis. We're
on WhatsApp, we're talking, and even though it's been ten
or so years, we have a really good long distance
relationship girls from other countries and it's really lovely to know.
So if you travel, you've always got somewhere to stay,
somebody local to show you around, and somebody that you
(17:02):
trust and that you have a good time with. So
that part of it, the friendship aspect and the connection aspect,
has been priceless.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Yeah, see my perception of it. I thought everyone in
those type of contests were straight one eighties and chaperones
and all that. But you broke out when you're over
was it the US with someone?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
And owned Chicago with Miss California?
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Right?
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Okay, there was a rule that you had to stay
in the hotel I think from nine pm onwards and
if you got court leaving the hotel, you were disqualified.
So myself and Miss California and the miss from the
UK said, you know, stuff, this were going out. So
we left and we went to a night club in
(17:44):
Chicago and it was floor to ceiling glass. You could
see the whole city. It was amazing and oh, we
just had the best time. We're dancing on tables that
were free pouring vodka into our mouth. I thought, this
is wonderful. And although I did have some wild experiences
in the cross that was pretty up there. The Chicago
scene was pretty cool, and everyone was saying, you know,
(18:05):
be careful, it's Chicago, you know the spill, I didn't
feel unsafe. It was great.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Did that give you the taste of the bright lights?
And already got the taste? I think. And I'm not
sure what trip it was, but you also auditioned for Playboy.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
That's the same trip.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Okay, I'll do the topless, but I'm not doing the
bottom of okay. So that was the line that you
drew there. Yeah, what was it like auditioning because like Playboy,
Penthouse or whatever, those were big back in the day.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Again, the social climates changed. It was really really big
back then, and Playmate of the Year got quite a
large sum of money, a car, and then a model
in contracts, so on and so forth. Through there, you
can just see from the example of like Pamela Anderson
and how her career kind of progressed from there onwards.
So yeah, I thought that that was a viable option.
I wasn't didn't feel I was tall enough to be
(18:57):
a traditional model and to be more of a commercial model.
And actually my mom came with me to the Playboy test.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Shit, it makes it acceptable, I felt.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
You know, say, if she was actually there in the
room with me, so I was supervised, I guess, so
to say, I bet.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
They're all whole life experiences, aren't.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
The Oh yeah, they are not something I'd probably do now.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Then again, when did you start getting the attraction to
the city nightlife and you were doing the Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
Sunday recovery session in the city. Talk us about that.
What attracted you to that lifestyle?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Fun? It was just fun and it was escape from reality.
Basically at the time, I didn't probably acknowledge so much
that it was escapism. But when you're there and you're
around friends, you're dancing and drinking, doing coke, whatever it
is that you're doing right, You're not thinking about, you know,
your traumas, you're not thinking about your everyday worries, you're
(19:52):
not thinking about life stuff. You're having a mental break.
You're basically numbing out and you're having a good time.
And that can be quite una addictive. Everyone wants to
feel like that all the time, but that's not realistic.
That's not what life is.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
It's hard to sustain it.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Oh yeah, it's unsustainable. There's no pace in that kind
of coping mechanism. Back then, when I was young, I
wanted to be away from Blacktown in the Cross having
a good time because at home my father his health
was ailing. He was an addict and he was quite
verbally abusive, and it was an unpleasant environment to be in.
(20:26):
So I said, I'm out of here, basically, And that's
kind of.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
How it all breakaway. And you started that at a
young age, or like you're getting in with your fake
ideas and fake passport, fake passport, you had it all happening.
You got to meet a lot of the characters in there.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
I did, and again also from families that came from overseas,
so you can see how there's the intergenerational stuff there
as well. That's quite interesting when you look at it
in that way.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Looking for something. Now, you said, and I'm interpreting from
the book, that you still realize that you've got your
looks and you could trade that in that environment, like
the dumb bloke's coming up and buying your drinks. And
when I say dumb blokes, let's have sympathy for them.
But they thought they were in with a chance, and
you would leverage that.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Well in saying that I wouldn't call them dumb. I
would say chivalry, and that's died a lot in this
day and age. I think that it is lovely when
a man offers you a drink, or a man takes
you for dinner and offers to pay for your dinner
and shows you that they're courting you, they're wanting to
impress you. They've got the ability to look after you,
(21:32):
even though you have the ability to look after yourself. Yeah,
because obviously a majority of women can buy their own dinner.
But it's not about that. Is that it's about the
courting and about respect. So I think in those days,
if you're speaking to a woman and you didn't buy
her a drink. It's pretty embarrassing. I think it's still
embarrassing now.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
I think it would be still embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
There's been a lot of shifts and change in the
way that that dynamic is framed in society, but I'm
still a big believer in.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Old fashioned vague. Yeah, what about the drugs? Did that
ever get hold of you? Did you become dependent on
the drugs?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I felt I had control. I don't feel I was
dependent on it. It was recreational for me, but it
quite easily could have become more than that, depending on
what was going on in my life, depending on the
people you have around you. I've always had a really
good support network in my mother and in my sister,
(22:27):
and I think if I didn't have those things, things
could have been different, because there's a big genetic component
when it comes to addition, and my mother always had
fears around the fact that because I'm your's daughter, I
could have issues with addiction. And that's accurate, so accurate,
and something you've really got to be on top of
if that runs in your family. So you've got to
(22:48):
learn really good coping mechanisms. You've got to create a
community around you that can support you instead of going
to that you've got something healthy to gravitate to own.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
It can make the difference, isn't it. Like I'm sure
your mum kept a tight reign as tired as she could.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
I was on bail. Yes she did that.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
I'm surprised do in the rest. We're going to ask,
and I want you to explain. You're not speaking for
every woman, but what is the attraction to the bad
guys for you?
Speaker 2 (23:17):
I wouldn't say that I'm attracted to them because they're
perceived as bad. I don't think anyone's inherently good or bad.
We've all got, you know, two sides.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
That's just a terminology, the bad bad boys, the.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Stereotypical bad boy. It's because we grew up in the
same ship pit usually, and we've got a lot in common.
I feel comfortable around people that have grown up rough
like I have. We see the world from a similar perspective,
and we're not only in the same book, we're on
the same page. Whereas nothing against people who are again
(23:51):
a stereotypical coin term as straighty one eighty. We just
look at life differently because our experiences are so far
detached from each other. So I have dated men that
you would say, you know, I guess, let's say.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
I've got I've got a head in here, You've straight
one eighty dat incident. So I know what you're talking about,
but I'm interested in it. In that my career within
the police and even my life outside the police, I
constantly see the bad boys, and the bad boys is
just terminology. We're not even dissecting what is actually bad
(24:26):
or good about them. But I saw so many women
with the so called bad boys, and my take on
it was some thought they could change them, like, Okay,
this is a rough diamond, but I'm going to polish
him up, and this dude is going to be the
perfect gentleman once I finished with him.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Ladies, don't bother trying to polish the diamond. Get the
diamonds as.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Gifts life theories. But you obviously had an attraction, and
you explained that that way that you could understand where
they came from. There were similarity shared. And also I
think they and you mentioned this in the book, they
like having you as their partner. Look look how I've succeeded.
(25:10):
That was the that was their state as symbol having
you as a partner. Is that fair the say? Or
am I selling it too short?
Speaker 2 (25:16):
That often is the case. And I think you can
say in traditional society, not just in the gang world,
that your partner is an extension of you.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
And this is how it's how it's seen. The partner
is an extension of you. And if they look a
certain way, they have certain things, they're wearing, certain things
that it elevates your status. If that makes sense in
that and then hence the name of the book accessory.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Well, I interpreted that that was the play on words,
play on words with the what what you were doing?
That attraction took you into a relationship. It was a
long term relationship with kemore happy to talk about the relationship.
There he was when you first got with him. I
think he was a non for a biking club. And
(26:06):
we've had enough Bikei's on here and we've talked about
it enough.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Your attraction to bad boys, then, Gary, if you've had
a lot of bikes.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
I had to catch him when I was in the cops.
That was a strong attraction. But I buy you a drink.
I've got a lot of friends in that world, and yeah,
there's professional differences. When I was in the cops, obviously,
of course I say this, and I don't want this
to be misinterpreted, but I respected the code that they
(26:34):
live by when they truly lived by their code. And
we'll talk about that, but I understood it. I might
agree with it, but I understood a code. And they're
putting themselves up there. This is what we are. We're outlaws.
You're the cops. We don't like you. I can respect
living by their code. I just don't necessarily agree with
some of the things in their code. So I don't
(26:57):
mind mind them individually, sit down, have a chat. And
it's amazing the life that they've lived. I think you
touched on it too, that a lot of them have
been abused when and yeah, and this isn't the information
that I'm getting from them. A lot of them had
been abused. So when you see the big tough guy
(27:18):
covered in tattoos like that, don't fuck with me. Look
about them. A lot of it is that bravado built
up because they're never going to be a victim again.
And that saddens me that people have to. Yeah, that's
the way they live their life.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
But I understand it, and then that's further reinforced in
prison because you have to have that bravado because if
you show any vulnerability, you'll be picked on, and then
that kind of transfers into the behavior in society as well.
So if you don't, if you're not seen as vulnerable
or weak, that not that being vulnerable this week, I
just want to point that out. But if you're perceived
(27:50):
as such, there's always a threat that you'll be attacked
or victimized.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Again, they can smell smell fear, and you aren't. It
can't display that or you will be preyed upon in
jail and also in the biking clubs. So okay, what
was your steps into there? So is it fair when
you were going out with Kem that you were a wag,
a biky wag? Is that or an old lady?
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Old old love that term? Well I'm kidding.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Alter now so, but it's an old lady in that
is a term that's used the old lady, and that
tends to indicate you're a partner of a particular bikie.
So how did you meet How did you meet Camp?
Speaker 2 (28:35):
We lived in similar areas, so we had friends of
friends and we kind of just grew up in the
same scene basically. And that's where I say, you know,
it just becomes normalized that dating somebody in a club
or that goes into a club, or somebody that commits
crime or Jill's drugs or goes to jail, or it
(28:56):
was seen as quite normal in my social sir, and
with me and my friends growing up. Quite a few
of my girlfriends that I grew up with had also
had similar experiences to me, so it was very normalized.
So it didn't feel foreign.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Well, you are a product of your environment, and I
do understand what you're saying. So it wasn't sort of
you've never seen that side of the world and you've
stepped in and gone, yeah, wow, you understood that a
big deal.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
It wasn't like, oh my goodness, you're joining a club,
do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Like, it was okay, okay. So you started going out
with him. He started to rise.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Up the ranks quite quickly, very likable, charismatic, kind, generous
person and also you know, physically strong, tall, good sense
of him. I got along with everyone, so that worked
to his advantage or a good standover man, and I
think that's why he was able to move up quite quickly.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
How were you treated in the club, in the social
events and different things when you got to get with
the club?
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Was very well?
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yep, very well.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
How did you navigate your way through that?
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Again? Just normalized. Yes, friends with all the other wives
and girlfriends and would go out and would have dinner together,
and it was actually like our own little crew, so
to speak. And yeah, camaraderie in a sense because we
all would have quite similar experiences, and those experiences are
very outside the norm for your regular person and not
(30:27):
something you'd speak about with probably other people other than
the wives and the girlfriends that are in similar situations
to you. So yeah, I actually was treated quite well
within that scene and that circle, and I enjoyed being
in that scene in that circle in that time until
Cam developed an addiction and then everything changed after that.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yeah, talk us through that, because as described in your book,
the Cam that you first got, we've had a lot
of things going for him and then the slow deterioration
when the addiction and came in. And he was a
good mefan Feathermines cook too, which endeared him to the
world that he was living in as well. It's correct,
So what changes did you see in him?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Anyone that knows somebody who has an addiction and has
seen somebody from the inception of that addiction addiction until
when they hit rock bottom will know that it's like
the lights are on, but no one's home, and you
pined for that person that existed prior before the addiction
(31:33):
because it slowly eats away at their personality, at their soul,
and they become unrecognizable basically, and not the person you
fell in love with, and they're not the person that
you kind of agreed to date or go out with
because the behaviors change.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
I look, I've seen people that addicted to ice and
other drugs. They've lost their soul. You look into their
eyes and there's nothing but behind the eyes. I know
that like sitting in interview rooms with people who are
just talking to people that have got that addiction, and
there's something that there's just a big black hole there,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah, Because the pain that they've got within themselves, the
emotion that is there that needs to be dealt with,
is so heavy and painful that they can't face it.
And in order to not face it, they have to
nu'mb out with drugs, alcohol, etc. There's always pain there.
There's always like we said earlier, there's always a root
(32:31):
cause there.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
What we've sort of hit the low points of that relationship.
The high points, like the lifestyle that you were living with.
Him explained that when.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Things were good, they were very good. When things were bad,
they were very, very bad. So I guess it was
like a roller coaster. It was feast or famine a
lot of the times, but the famine was because of
the addiction. Money would go missing, and that's when I realized, Hey,
this is big becoming a serious problem here.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Yeah. Is that something you're like that? Some people go
through their life flatlining live, the suburban life, the white
picket fence, two kids dog, that type of stuff. Are
you looking for the highs and lows? Is that something
that you're you're attracted to?
Speaker 2 (33:17):
My life is pretty interesting and exciting now, but in
different ways. So you know, writing the book and the
work that I do as well the therapy work that
I do. I'm always learning, always meeting new people, so
it's it has its highs and lows now, but in
a very different way. So yes, I do like that.
(33:38):
I don't think I could ever live your mundane, white
picket fence life, I would become very borught. And that's
probably my idea of hell. Maybe yeah, some people's dream.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
I think people like you look at other people. Everyone
lives their life in the path that they choose. Some people,
other people would be slow death.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah. I like to always learn something new, Like I said,
meet new people. Travel. I traveled to the Philippines. I
visited the women in Middlist City prison. I like to
go and do things that enrich your knowledge, things that
you can learn to bring back to your country and
advise on, you know, whether that's programs, policies, et cetera.
(34:20):
I like to do things where I can learn things
and then give that knowledge back.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
How did you just a sidetrack? How did you get
into the women's Philippine prison in Manela? That would have
been interesting experience.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
It was really really interesting, and it was a privilege
to be allowed into their living space. So I thank
them for that, and I went in there and actually Brenda,
my mother, came to the prison as well, and we
went into the dormitory and I explained, well, how I
got in there.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
To begin with?
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Was I spoke with the warden, and I explained the
work that I do here and the advocacy that I
do for women have conviction histories, and I said, I'd
like to come and do some cross cultural knowledge sharing
with you and see what what are you guys doing
that where not that works, and vice versa, and let's
sit down and let's, you know, share ideas and share knowledge.
(35:13):
So it's an enriching experience for both. And they said, yeah, great,
please come along because I'm a trauma therapist, as you know,
so come along. Anyway, I went. I went there. They
invited me into the dorm and I would say, I
know that the people listening can't see the size of
the studio, but just for your purposes, so double the
(35:33):
size of the studio. You'll have sixty women.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Okay, so we're looking at the room probably eight foot
by six foot here roughly, or three to four meters
long to the three meters wide.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Yeah, so not much space at all, and bunk beds
one on top of the other, and so very close
living quarters. And some of the women did not have mattresses.
They were sleeping on bunk beds with just a cardboard sheet.
And although that was the conditions. They were allowed to
see their families daily except for the days where there
(36:08):
was mandatory learning and jobs training, which is two days
a week, and they were allowed to see their children
for basically unlimited hours in comparison to what happens in Australia.
They had a coffee shop where the men make the
coffee for the families or the male prisoners on the
other side they come, they work in the coffee shop,
so they make the coffee and the snacks for their
(36:29):
children when they come. There's a great playground there. And
I said to the warden and the nurse and the
other staff there, and also to the women that were
in there, what happens when you leave prison? And they
were like, what do you mean? Because in Australia we
have a situation where a lot of women or people
in general, as you would know, they leave prison and
(36:49):
they don't have anywhere to go. They've lost connection with family,
they don't have anywhere to live, and it just fuels
the cycle of going back inside because they don't have
that support network. And they looked at me like I
was speaking another language, probably because I was.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
But that was very very perceptive of him.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
They were looking at me, like what is she talking about?
They said, what do you mean? We just go back
home to our families. And it made sense because they're
allowed to keep the connection with family. They're not moved
far away. They can see their children every day, they
can see their parents every day. So that's something that
they do really, really well, is the maintaining your connection
(37:27):
with support networks so when they come out, the family's
able to support.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
So it does make a lot of sense. Like prisons science,
it's not. I think one of the Norwegian countries look
after the family when the prisoners are in there to
make sure the families are looked after outside because they
know the importance of having a stable family for the
prisoner to come back to it.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
And especially in the sense of when we've got children
who are impacted by a parent who's incarcerated, we know
that if we look at the starts. I'm not going
to go in to that, but if we look at
the stats, there's a higher likelihood of that child growing
up and being engaged in crime if they've had a
parent or both parents incarcerated. So looking at myself, I've
(38:12):
had charges, my father was in prison, my partner's father
was in prison. So even just within you know, my
close knit circle, I can see the intergenerational stuff. So
if you're looking after the children that have parents incarcerated,
that's future crime prevention right there. So and that's something
that can be implemented now that we're not doing look
(38:34):
after the kids, look after the mums, because the mums
look after the kids. You know, that's our future. It's
what we've got to nurture.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
And most people go in the prison, and this is
where I think the public don't fully appreciate they're going
to get out. So it's how you treat them inside
is going to dictate how they come out, what they're
like when they come out.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
So oh yes, and there's I think that the person
going into prison goes into court, they get sentenced, and
they say, okay, yes, I'm going to do my five
years or my ten years or whatever it might be.
So they're agreeing to that part of it. But I
don't feel like Corrections is keeping up their end of
the bargain because people are coming out worse. There's no
(39:15):
correcting going on in Corrections needs to be better access
to health, that needs to be about access to education, skills, training, employment,
training and more connection to family promoted.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Yeah. No, we're breaking those things like education, skills training
so they've got something to come to and the family
family connection that is important. I know. Correct, your services
are trying to implement changes in that regate.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
I'll tell you exactly what you need to be doing.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Yeah, well, have a look at a Macquarie Correctional Center
and a few other prisoners. I'm talking New South Wales
here who adopted a new approach, and I think it's
something worthwhile. Definitely worthwhile. And this is not me sitting
here as a bleeding heart softy. I'm an ex cop,
so I make a hardline on phone.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
I don't think either of us are softiest. Gary.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
No, was just to clarify that we're tough. Hey, guys,
it's Gary Jubilan here. Want to get more out of
I Catch Killers, then you should head over to our
new video feed on Spotify where you can watch every
episode of I Catch Killers. Just search for I Catch
Killers video in your Spotify app and start watching today.
(40:25):
Getting back to camp, the deterioration that it became became
quite confronting for you. Some of the things that took place,
you wanted happy to talk through that journey.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
I'm happy to talk through that. So there was a
couple of incidents when I quite easily could have lost
my life, and you know, I was strangled, I was
shot at. A lot of really violent stuff went on,
which I've worked through. And I speak about these experiences
very openly in the book because I believe it's important
(40:59):
that if you can speak about these things, you should
for the people that cannot. And I don't know what
the flow on impacts will be for women who have
been through similar situations or potentially young women growing up
that will read my book and say, oh, hang on
a minute, I can see red flags. Now I'm going
to kind of, you know, back away, step away. You know,
(41:21):
I need to have boundaries, I need to look after myself.
I need to make sure that you know, XYZ maybe
make them more perceptive orwaere that these things do go on.
But I think the main thing is that women don't
feel alone in having had these experiences, because when these
really violent things happen to you, you don't sit and
(41:41):
imagine that there's X amount of other women out there
who have been through similarly.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
It can be very low in isolation.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Yes, so I'm hoping that this makes a lot of
women feel as though you're not alone or know that
they're not alone, basically because it can be very very
isolating to be in an abusive relationship, and a lot
of the times too, for a long period of time,
it's like a clandestine thing. They hide it from family
and friends. It's too shameful to.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Admit, well that that comes into it, and it's sad
that comes into it, but it's like an embarrassment. And
I suppose if you've well, this is a partner I selected,
and look what's happening, and all the friends and family
probably seen me go, we could have told you.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
That shame, self, blame, all of these things that come
into it that aren't helpful.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
But your experiences were I think that there was one
time a shop was let fire at the taxi and
another time you've been chase around with him in a
drug fueled rage with a shotgun and then strangled to
the point where you passed out and ended up in hospital.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Yeah, I thought I was finished, and that strangulation, I thought,
this is it, this is the end.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
I thought, Yeah, what what happened? When you wake up?
And yeah, you work.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Up and I thought, fuck, yeah, I'm alive.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Okay, Well that's a bonus surprise. Always look on the
bright side life. Yeah, you you were concerned about leaving
him because of the state of mind he was in.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
And access to weapons too had to be taken into consideration.
And I don't think that's unique to the drug world
or to the gang land world. I think that, you know,
there's access to weapons even though we've got laws in place,
et cetera. I think that a lot of women that
aren't in that world still have to consider access to
weapons as a risk factor when they're leaving, which is
(43:30):
the most dangerous time. So I don't think I'm alone
in that. It's just that probably, you know, in my circumstance,
it was a shotgun as opposed to some other kind
of weapon.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
You know. Yeah, but there's always weapons in house. They
don't have to be a gun to flee exact click
click the violence. But you reached out to his club
and spake to as soon your member there and saying, yeah,
help me, this is what's going on.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
I said, he needs to go to rehab because I
was able to separate the person from the illness, and
I knew that his addiction was again not an excuse,
but it was the reason behind his behavior, because the
violence increased and the behaviors and the aggression increased so
much as a result of the drug taking, and was
(44:20):
a complete polar opposite to the person that I had
met and I was with prior, and that I entered
a relationship with. And I always kind of hoped that
that person would come back, and then I realized it wouldn't,
so I really tried to implore them to put him
into a rehabilitation facility for a period of time so
he could get his head straight and have a chance
at getting his health back, getting his life back. Whether
(44:44):
we stayed together or not was irrelevant at that point
for me on a human level, I wanted him to
get the medical help that he needed and the psychological
help that he obviously needed as well.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
How was that received when you took that to the club?
Speaker 2 (44:57):
It was all a lot of yes, yes, yes, and
then not a lot of action. I think they tried
to detox him themselves, which was futile. I know I
tried to detox youuring myself a couple of times at home.
I do not recommend a very dangerous thing to do.
It needs to be under medical supervision. But I think
also in some senses, I would say that could have
(45:18):
been to their advantage to have him, you know, addicted.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Yeah, well he's dependent control do anything. How did the
relationship actually come to an end?
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Then it ended when I left, So look, it ended
before that. But I had to be very careful in
the way that I did decide to leave, because I
did get cam to leave, but he would return to
the home. He ripped the door off the hinges on
one occasion, and I had went out one night and
(45:51):
I got home and he had crawled through my window
and he was asleep in my bed. And this was
after I, oh yeah, and I just had to pretend
that everything was okay because I didn't know what mood
he was in. I didn't know whether he had a
weapon under the blanket. I didn't know what was going
to happen. So I just acted normally, put on my
(46:11):
pajamas and just laid in the bed and kind of
just one eye opened situation and waited till the morning.
He got up in the morning and then he left.
Didn't say a word.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
I suppose in your situation, because he knew he was cooking,
the drugs and all that. You didn't really have the
option of ringing the cops, did you, No?
Speaker 2 (46:30):
And I never would, I never would. I guess you
would know. You know, there's a code in regards to that.
But I will say that domestic violence and club issues
or whatever it might be, they're completely separate things and
they never should be kind of piled together in one thing.
(46:52):
You know, and people get called, oh, you're a dog
if you call the cops. You can't exactly, but if
somebody's you're abusing you, they're not a man, And yeah,
you know, you need it needs to be dealt with it.
You're not a dog. It needs to be dealt with.
Real men don't hit women. So yeah, that needs to
be kind of separated. But back then it was kind
(47:13):
of all piled into one and domestic violence wasn't on
the forefront as much as what it is now in society.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
Did you have blokes within the club that had the
ticket that stand up to this, like if something was
going down domestic violence and just take him aside and
saw the man.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
Well, we try to deal with everything. We did, try
to deal with everything in house, so to speak. So
it's a kind of street justice. It's a better way
to deal with things. And yes, some people did go
and visit him at his house and he ran, and
I was disappointed in that. I felt he should have
just stayed and then it would have been even.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Yeah, you said, he didn't have the balls to even
stand up and face it.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
Didn't can run that fast.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
Defense kicks in that adrenaline. Adrenaline, So we're and can
we talk? And your father's passed away. But I like
the fact that the father that always had your back.
And how was described as how Uri was going to
We touched on it earlier, how Uri was going to
fix the problem.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Yeah, well, Ury said, you know, we'll get rid of him.
I'm knock him and it doesn't matter because I'm dying anyway.
But even if Ury wasn't dying, he still would have
been keen to do it. So it became a problem because,
like I said, I left, ripped the door off, the
hinges comes into the window at night. We thought, you know,
(48:35):
where is this going to end? Where is this situation
going to end? Am I ever going to be free
of this person? And you always you know, after you've
been strangled to the point where you think you're going
to die, and you end up unconscious and you're shot
at you're thinking how much longer do I have? Basically,
so it was either me or him at that point.
That's psychologically the point that I was at. And Ur
(48:59):
and I discussion about it and we kind of planned
what we were what we were wanting to do. Then
luckily we didn't have to, you know, go through with that.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
What eventually led to the break up, all the separation.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
I decided to leave the area and I went to
central New South Wales, YEP, and kind of just hit
out there where he couldn't find me for a while
and was hoping that he'd just kind of get over it.
Speaker 1 (49:22):
Well, did he get over it? Because part of the
problem we've had absession and with the addiction is that
and yeah, you're smiling and you're tough, You've lived a
tough life. That Yeah, if you've got someone strangling you
to the point where you end up in the hospital,
or someone running around with a loaded shotgunsfis face and
someone firing a shot, you must have had genuine concerns
(49:44):
for you. Are you going to survive this?
Speaker 2 (49:46):
Oh? Yeah I did. I'm a pretty positive person. I'm
always try and look at, you know, the brighter side
of things. Not that there's a bright side in that,
but I always saw that there's hope, and there's a
way out, and there's a way forward. No matter what's
thrown at me, there's always a way forward, and I
always push for that. But yes, I was genuinely concerned
(50:08):
for my safety, and that's why I chose to remove
myself from the situation, because the owners couldn't be on
him to correct the situation of his behavior because he
was not of sound mind. He's addicted and has access
to weapons. So and that was that aspect of things
was solidified because I went and spoke to him after
(50:29):
he had been arrested for something else. Yep, he ended
up in prison and I sat with him and he
said to me, I'm actually glad that I'm in here
because I would have killed you. I would have killed
myself and probably somebody else. So yeah, well that that
means that removing myself from the situation was the right
(50:50):
thing to do. But also I had the privilege of
being able to do that. A lot of women don't.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
Yeah, that's true, that's true. What prompted you to go
see in prison, and how long since you'd spoke to him,
were you staying in contact with him when he was
in prison? What prompted you to go see him in prison?
Speaker 2 (51:08):
What prompted me to go and visit him and talk
to him was that I knew it would be an
opportunity to speak to him when he was straight. He
wasn't completely straight, but I mean not on illicit substances,
and I wanted to give him an opportunity to apologize.
Now looking back, you know, don't I don't need the apology.
(51:31):
I was a lot younger than too, So I give
him an opportunity to apologize, and also to say, you
know what if we run into each other in the
street or in the traps, and you know, I'm someone else,
you're with somebody else to things to be able to
be civil, and that didn't happen. He said he wasn't
ready to apologize, and I said, you know, that's fine,
(51:54):
and I left. But I gave him. I gave him
that opportunity to, I don't know, close the book on
that and leave some room for forgiveness, and you know
that healing that comes with that closure.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
How long was he insightful?
Speaker 2 (52:09):
After that, I didn't speak to him, so I'm not sure,
but I think it was a little bit of a
period of time.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
Yeah, okay, well it's tough. How long were you together?
Speaker 2 (52:19):
For five years?
Speaker 1 (52:20):
It's a long time. It's a relationship. So yeah, you
had that closeness here the start with that.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
And even on a human level, you don't like to
see somebody or anybody in that kind of.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
Situation once you break away from him. Did you break
away from the bike?
Speaker 2 (52:37):
He sainte with that, I started dating Dean, But I
started dating Dean because I knew he was somebody that
could protect me and I couldn't rely on the police
to protect me. Like I said, things were more dealt
within house, and the police were aware of the fact
that there was abuse in my home and they tried
(53:01):
to leverage that in a way that they said, you know,
if you give us information about abc D, then will
help to protect you. Otherwise we're not interested. And I thought,
I won't say what I thought, but.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
I think that's sort of hinting where it's but it
gets a lot worse. But we fuck the police tatoo.
But I should have saying that. Saying that, so I
suppose the police. I'm not defending it, and yeah, we
try to leave partners out of Yeah, if you're going
after someone, you tend to leave the partners out. But
(53:38):
I suppose from their point of view, you know the
crimes is in, you want us to help help you,
And that's what they were trying to leverage was it
will save you from him if you give him up.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
But that's a face. They wouldn't have been able to
save me from him, That's the whole point, you know,
So you have to just deal with these things yourself
if you're in a situation. I was not recommending anyone
does that, but for me, that was my best chance
of survival and keeping myself safe was to date somebody
(54:10):
that I knew he wouldn't want to, you know, come
up against or mess with.
Speaker 1 (54:15):
Basically, Well, I suppose and you said you understood the
code of the bikies and you don't don't speak to police,
and you respected that and didn't And that's probably the
environment you've you've grown up with Yuri's attitude. Yes, I'm
sure he wasn't one that like speaking to police.
Speaker 2 (54:32):
No. No, have you gotten to the scene in the
book where the police come to the house and he
answers the door naked. Yeah, did that make you smile?
Speaker 1 (54:44):
It makes me smile that I've been confronted with that before.
And yeah, and that is a real fuck you police,
I'm not putting clothes on what what? What do you?
What do you want? With Yuri? The decline? And I
know it impacted on you with the alcohol, the dependence
(55:04):
and the seeing him go from this strong, successful, successful
man to becoming someone that was hiding his drinks. And yeah,
I think you found him on the bus shelter without
shoes on board, him home and different things like that.
That must be.
Speaker 2 (55:19):
Hard for a child, Oh, very extremely And I don't
think that there's any real words to describe how painful
that emotion is. And there's a lot of people who
have addictions that are highly intelligent. They're brilliant people, they've
got great personalities, they have such good things going for them.
(55:40):
It's just that that coping mechanism is not there, and
that pain is so strong. So it's not a reflection
on them as people. It's just an illness that needs
to be treated. And I started to realize that as
I got older.
Speaker 1 (55:56):
You saw, Okay, we might take break at this stage.
When we come back, we're going to talk about you've
decided to go into the relationship We've dean. We want
to talk about your experiences dating the straight one eighties
in the intrument period. Come on, be nice to the
good guys. And also I make light of this, but
(56:20):
it was a horrific situation that you found yourself in
and there you've got to accept blame your living the lifestyle,
but the extremes have been involved in a tactical arrest
where stung grenades were thrown in, multiple stung grenades thrown
into your bedroom, and you suffered very serious injuries to
the point where you might have lost you lost your hand, yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:44):
And almost lost my eyesight as well.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
Yeah yeah, no, I've seen patos of it, so that
that would be very very traumatic. But we're going to
talk all through that and what you're doing now with
your life and how you're sort of trying to turn
it around and pointed in the right direct sounds good
cheese m hm.
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