August 23, 2025 • 56 mins
Jordan Hayes-McGuinness was driving home from a work Christmas party when he crashed into another car, killing four people and himself. He was drunk, on drugs, speeding and three times over the limit. In this episode, his parents, Melissa and Peter McGuinness, join Gary Jubelin to talk about why they’ll never celebrate Jordan’s life, the impact his choice has had on so many lives, and why they’re working to prevent other people from making life-changing choices.
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Transcript
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 aside 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 talked to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes in the contact with crime is
left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into
this world. Today, I had a sad yet inspiring conversation
(00:49):
with Melissa and Peter McGinnis. We talked about the death
of their eighteen year old son, Jordan, who died in
the horrific car crash in twenty twelve. It was a
crash that could have been avoided. Other young lives were
lost in the crash. Now, death on their roads, unless
it impacts on you personally, is often just passed off.
As road statistics, but for those close to the people killed,
(01:10):
it's life destroying. It's hard to imagine the pain of
losing your child in those circumstances. I speak to Melissa
and Peter about that, But there is also another complex
layer to what happened to them. See, their son, Jordan,
was driving a vehicle that crashed into a parked car
containing the four victims. Jordan was almost three times over
(01:30):
the legal limit, traveling well over the speed limit, and
had lost his license just days before. As I've said,
it was something that could have been avoided. Today, I
had a deeply personal conversation with Melissa and Peter about
all the emotions they've had to process that include shame, anger, sadness,
and regret. We talked about the guilt they felt and
(01:52):
coming to terms with the fact their son's actions destroyed
so many lives. There are some important, thought provoking messages
in this conversation. Have a listened to what they have
to say, it blew me away, and I think you
might feel the same way. Melissa and Peter McGinnis, thanks
very much for coming on Eye Catch Killers.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Thank you for having us Gary. Thanks mate.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah, well, I thought long and hard about how to
have this conversation because it's a difficult conversation. But one
thing that really comes out to me researching and finding
out what's happened and also having conversations with you before
the podcast, is that so much is encapsulated in choices
we make in life, isn't it, And one choice can
(02:36):
just have devastating effects. What's your thoughts on that? With
your son Jordan the bad choice and look what's happened.
Do you often reflect on the consequences of choices we make?
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Well, it's very much shaped our lives, hasn't it myself
the last nearly thirteen years now and certainly closer to
the time of the crash that Jordan caused and the
tragedy you know, where we're sort of fixated on this
idea of like one one choice on one thing can
(03:09):
lead to all of this impact, you know, particularly for
the the for.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
His victims, his victims families, which.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
You know, really keeps us going, you know, making sure
that this kind of thing doesn't happen again to the
extent that we can. But we've learned that, you know,
that idea of one choice, Yes, it was one choice,
a number of choices that Jordan made on that night.
But it's also really it's been revealed to us through
the work that we do with so many teens around
(03:40):
the country, that often these things are.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
A series of choices.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
These choices are made in a social ecosystem, or there's
patterns of decision making or recklessness that developed that sometimes
you just can't see as a parent, and sometimes you
just can't see yourself or inside your circle of friends.
So long answer to a short question, Yeah, we do
reflect on it. But you know what we've concluded, haven't we, Melissa,
(04:05):
is that it's just so often more than just that
one choice.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Well, I want to and we're going to deal very
deeply through the course of the podcast into the education
and the messaging that you're getting out from what happened
with the situation of Jordan's choices and the tragedy that
unfolded following on from those choices. And I think if anything,
(04:29):
that the messages that come out the people that have
been through what you've been through, and the victims and
the families of the people killed and the crash that
Jordan was driving, there's consequences for actions.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Isn't it It's interesting because the whole last thirteen years
since Jordan's crash, all of it has come down to
Jordan's choice. Everything that we've done from that day, from
that day to this day, has been around the choices
that Jordan made that night. So it's it can't be
(05:04):
underestimated what choice means, what one decision. Jordan made a
lot of stupid choices that night, and look at what happened,
look at the amount of families that were devastated. And
we think this all the time, don't we that we
will never seek sympathy for ourselves. People often share sympathy
with us, and we think the sympathy is reserved solely
(05:26):
for Jordan's victims and Jordan's victims families because of the
choices Jordan made, And he would never have intended to
harm anyone that night, the family that he loved the most,
let alone his victims and his victims families.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yet through his choice, it saddens me and I get
the sense of all the times that you've spoken publicly
and that that you don't allow yourself to have sympathy
for yourself. I'm sitting here saying to you, I've seen
a lot of tragedy in life from people's actions and that,
But be kind to yourself too. You're a victim of
(06:01):
Jordan's choices as much as much as the other people are.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
So I think.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
We, of course we forgive Jordan, and for the millions
of reasons, how much we love him and miss him
and admired him as a person. I think there's a
difference between that concept of privately commemorating it and privately,
of course we forgive him, But it's a separate thing
(06:30):
to also own his culpability and own the choices that
he's made, and part of part of the journey with
carrying this weight and understanding how we can make use
of it in some sort of positive way. Is I
guess that separation between loving him and forgiving him and
(06:51):
privately commemorating him, but also being really sensitive about the
idea publicly that this is not, you know, a celebration
of Jordan's life. We don't do what we do with
you choose for any sort of healing for ourselves. What
we seek is change, Gary, Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
I think what people might not realize too is that
that very day Jordan made those choices, and he destroyed
so many his lives, so many lives. What he did
was he transferred his culpability onto the shoulders of the
people that he loved the most. And that from that
very day that I sat on the door and sorry,
I sat at home and we got the knock on
(07:28):
the door from the police, we felt that really heavy
weight of civic responsibility. Whilst all the information about Jordan's
crash wasn't available right then and there, we knew that
it would be his fault. So we instantly felt that
feeling of going, my goodness, we've got a son who
made choices that killed four people. I mean, what did
(07:49):
you do with those feelings of civic responsibility? And they
were instant, weren't they Like we were in the middle
of going what the heck is even happening, but also
feeling that weight instantly.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Mind you.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
You know, it also should be said we didn't start
youtubes immediately. Of course, it took a number of years,
four years before we were even able to formulate the
idea that there should be something that we could do.
It will never be made right, but if just one
(08:21):
family can be can be spared, you know, the tragedy
that Jordan's victims families have been through and it won't.
Then any kind of effort we can put in at all,
small or large, would be well worth it.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Well, you're right, Just making the difference in one person's life,
or seeing one person in the right direction, can have
a ripple effect that you can't even comprehend how far
it reaches. Let's talk about Jordan for a bit. What's
your last memory of Jordan? Both of you, like the
last time before you got the horrendous knock at.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
The door by the police.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
What was your last contact and memory with.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Your Okay, so the Saturday before, sorry, the Sunday before
Jordan died, So six days before Jordan died, and it
was not far off Christmas, and Jordan and I went
shopping to buy Jordan's Christmas presents and we actually had
a really lovely day and it was so rare that
the two of us spent time together because you know,
(09:21):
like what eighteen year old wants to hang out with, ma'am? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So we had this really lovely day. We went down,
we had lunch together, we laughed a lot, was just
him and I and I actually tell this story during
part of the presentation that we do into schools, but
I was We were shopping in a particular store and
Jordan was just trying on everything going that we were
(09:44):
going to buy him for his Christmas presents. And while
he was just trying on his clothes, I went in
and I just tried on this dress just for fun.
And I came out and I said to Jordan, Hey,
what do you think of this dress?
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Mate?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And he said to me, Mum, you look really pretty
in that. And I just remember thinking, oh, my goodness,
did I just get a compliment from my son. So
when amongst buying all of his stuff, I bought that
black dress, which happened to be the same black dress
that I wore nineteen days later at his funeral. So
(10:16):
that was my last memory, this fantastic that day that
I'd had with Jordan, shopping and having lunch and laughing,
and you know the fact that he gave me this
this compliment. And Jordan would never also leave home without
giving me a kiss goodbye, so it was, for all
intents and purposes, it was a really lovely day. So
I'm so grateful that that was our last moment together,
(10:36):
because of course he wasn't living at home at that time.
So he had moved to Brisbane for his carpentry apprenticeship.
But that event followed you and him going to Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Funny enough.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
That's why we always say to the many hundreds and
hundreds of thousands of kids that we interact with these days,
you know, don't look at that door without exchanging I.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Love you, right, you hear it?
Speaker 4 (10:56):
A lot, Yeah, people experienced these things. Yeah, but look,
it speaks to a broader issue about Jordan. But he
wasn't a lot different to any other team, you know.
And I guess we'll dig into this a little bit later,
but certainly on the Gold Coast. I know, I'm a
born and bred Gold Coaster. It was all you could
do to wear a shirt when you're a teenager. And
(11:18):
I can recall us. We were leaving, I think, to
see the latest James Bond movie at the time, you know,
and he's just walking out the door and his jeans
and he's you know, and he's four pluggers, no shirt,
very impressed with his own rig.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
He's a muscular kid. He loved his.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Footy and I said, mate, could you least tuck a
T shirt into the back, you know, take one with you.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
I think.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
So that was our sort of the.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Last last time together, and of course we exchanged I
love yous as well, we always did.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
I think there's still instance has really sum up Jordan.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Kind of, does you know.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
And he was a very loving young man, very loving
to his younger sisters, his nieces, his cousins, his dad, sorry,
his cousins, his dad on stepdad. Had beautiful relationships with
everyone in his life.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
It says a lot about that. That's your last memory
and Melissa, for you, that's that awkward transitional stage between
he's going to become a man and he won't be
out shopping with his mum much longer. And that's his
reference to you wearing the dress. You look pretty in it.
It's stepping in the manhood. He can make informed comments
like that, so special moments and the joy of going
(12:35):
to watch a film with your son and raiming him
in walking out, could you, like my normal comment, could
you put some shoes on that? Maybe you should wear
some shoes if you're going out that type of thing.
But look, I'm glad you can hang on to those
those memories because they must be so important to you.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
The last of the contacts and memories and we've.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
Got numerous, I mean obviously years, a lifetime of memories
with him. As we often say, don't he's no angel.
He's very much like any other team. But that's the point.
It's very much like any other team. So in so
many ways, like his life, our lives like really hold
up a mirror to almost any family or any teenager
(13:17):
in Australia.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
It's the average teenager, average family, and this is what happens.
I'll bring you to the time that you found out
that Jordan had been involved in the car crash. Can
you can you talk us through that because it's something
that no one wants to experience. And I've been involved
from the police point of view, doing the knock on
the door and it's just horrendous. If you're comfortable, can
(13:42):
you tell us tell us about you when you found
out that about the crash.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
So Jordan was living in Brisbane at the time, where
Gold Coast based, and Jordan had been at his work
Christmas party the evening beforehand, and it's got to be
said that his bosses did everything right at the end
of the party there or sent home in cabs and
for reasons that we don't know, and we'll never know.
Jordan decided to drive home from Brisbane to the Gold Coast.
(14:09):
We'd exchanged a couple of texts with Jordan that night.
He said he was having a fantastic It was like
his first ever work Christmas party. Yeah right, a passage. Yeah.
He was a carpenter, apprentice carpenter. So he was with
all of his mates and they'd been out in the
hot sun digging holes and you know, so they're enjoying
a few beers and you know what you do at
a Christmas party. So he decided to drive home very
(14:30):
late that night. He was going to go, as we
found out later, he was going to go and stay
with a couple of mates down on the Gold Coast.
The next morning, we were none the wiser that Jordan
had driven down to the Gold Coast and we had
a knock at the We live in a three story
walk up, so we've got one of those airphones, so
we had a ring on our airphone and I answered
(14:51):
that airphone and it was a couple of police saying,
you know, it's the police and we're looking for Melissa Hayes.
And that was really interesting because I Hayes was my sorry,
my first married name, so it was unusual be called Melissa.
Hazel thought that's very odd. And I had to go
down to the stairs to let those offices in. And
(15:12):
as I was walking down those last flight of stairs
and I saw the two officers through that glass door,
I knew that I was about to be delivered news
that was going to shatter my family. When I opened
the door, they didn't tell me straight away what had happened.
They asked if they could come up. And I walked
in the door and I said to Peter, you know,
the police are here. And they were so good, Gary,
(15:35):
they were amazing. And they said, somebody that you want
to phone, is you know? And we said, no, no, no,
what's happened? And then they delivered us that news that
there had been a crash on the M one and
that I forget the words, but it was something along
the lines of we believed that your son has been
fatally injured, and you know, you take it from there,
but that was just it made no sense at that
(15:59):
exact moment.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
And look, of course, over the over the years and
it won't be news to you at all. Gary, We've
we've had the beautiful privilege to meet many many bereaved
parents over the years, so that how that plays out,
he has a real familiarity to it with every story,
as you'd know, mate. But on that morning, it took
(16:22):
some time for us to get the full picture as
to what was well, what had played out the night before,
And it was much later in that day that it
was revealed to us that, you know, there had been
the scale of the tragedy as as the day played
out and as the subsequent weeks and months played out
(16:44):
as well well.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
I would imagine receiving that news initially it would be
hard to process, just coming to terms of what you've
been told from a knock on the door and your
your life changed dramatically, and the grief of the shock,
the not even accepting it. I think it's hard, and
I've seen people that know that it must be wrong.
(17:05):
That type of narrative. Narrative comes back. So what happened
after they told you? What did you actually do? What
was the next step?
Speaker 2 (17:15):
The police were so amazing that the two police that
did that door knock, they were so caring they stayed
with us for good. I would say it was about
two hours to make sure that we're okay, and we
made the decision well, actually I had a girlfriend staying
with me, My best friend was there that night, and
I had my daughter, my youngest daughter, who was four
at the time, at home, and we made a decision
(17:35):
that we wanted to go to the police station and
meet up with those first responding offices. We wanted to
understand a little bit more about what had happened in
but we were in so much shock, I don't even
know quite how to put it into words. So my
friend that was staying there, she minded my four year old,
our four year old daughter, and we just drove straight
to the police station and we were there with the
(17:56):
first responding officers. And I'll never forget it because there
was a young man there who look he looked like
he was maybe twenty years old, something like they look
so young and to think that, you know, that was
probably his first big crash scene that he had been
to it it's never lost. I mean, thank you so
much for the work that you do, because I think
about what that scene must have looked like to the
(18:18):
many police ambos and fieries, the undertakers, all those people
that were there that night to see this young man,
to go, My goodness, that would have been probably your
first big horrendous event that you've turned up to. And
my heart breaks thinking, you know what he saw that night,
what you all see, what you all go through again,
bringing it back to someone's choices, all because of Jordan's choice.
(18:39):
That crash was preventable, It should never have happened.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Well, the fact that you guys are sitting here and
talking about your concern for other people when you're going
through that, I think that says a lot about the
type of people you are in the environment that Jordan
would have been raised in. You've found out that it
was a crash, hard to find out more details of
the crash. When did the when did the i'll call
(19:04):
it the realization come to the fact that it was
Jordan's actions that caused the crash. When when did you
start to come to terms with that?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
I think a bit of a blur, Gary, But we
knew parts of it straight away. We knew that he'd
hit the back of the car, so that part was
going to be his fault. We knew that he'd been
drinking the night before because it exchanged a couple of
texts with us. But as the cannabis in his system
and the speed you know, that stuff came out much
later down the track.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
So we were given advice, and I think pretty good
advice to just not look at the media. I guess
because of me especially. It was it was very news
worthy event least the Queensland's major arterial shouting both directions
for hours and hours a couple of weeks before Christmas,
(19:55):
so it took a while for us to to get
all of the detail out. Of course, during that first
period of time, naturally we've got to get around and
let how various other relatives know. And the other major
consideration is the feelings for all of everyone affected, all
of the families, all of everyone that the community at large.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
You're taking on that all that grief.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
Yeah, but of course our two daughters, Jordan's little sisters,
who were at the time four and eleven respectively, ten
sorry respectively, we really just had to keep putting one
foot in front of the other and just try to
take one day literally, as Melissa says, one sunset at
a time.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
How did Jordan's sisters take the news and how did
you break it.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
To the kitty, our youngest. It's kind of a little
too young to completely understand it.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
She was there and saw it, she was there when
the police arrived.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Yeah, So for her it was more of a she
wasn't stricken with the guilt, sorry, the grief immediately, yeah,
but rather just obviously upset because because of just the
(21:18):
visceral feelings of the emotion.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
That she was really concerned to about us as a
little fought through the four year old's eyes. She didn't
quite conceptualize what was going on. You can imagine what
mum and dad look like, so she felt from watching
what my mum and dad are going through. Montana was
staying with her father the night that Jordan had his
(21:40):
crash and I had to ring Montana's father and it
was actually Montana's father that had to break the news
to her, and he told me later through his tears
that she just cried, you know, not brother, No, please,
please please not brother. So it was a shock for her.
She was old enough to understand what it meant that
Jordan had died, that he'd had a car crash. Kitty
(22:02):
couldn't conceptualize that. She just watched what was going on
with mum and dad.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
I'm silent because I'm just trying to comprehend the ripple
effect through the family and then, as you said, contacting
other family members and friends, relatives. It's just, yeah, it's ongoing.
How did it change when you're found out and you
said it was gradual that you're getting further information. You
(22:31):
found out that the car that Jordan was driving crashed
into a parked car, So okay, he was a driver
at fault, you would say, into a park car. He'd
been drinking, had cannavais in his system.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
That we didn't fund out a bit later. I remember,
about seven weeks after Jordan died, I was just doing
a normal trip to the shopping center to do my
food shopping, and I'd been by the post office and
I had a letter from the I think it was
the Coroner's office. That was unusual in itself to be
opening a letter from them, and it was Jordan's. It
(23:09):
wasn't his death certificate, but it was his I can't
think of the word for it, toxicology, toxicology report. It
was all the things, and that's what I noticed, that
he'd had cannabis in his system. I remember sitting in
the shopping center in my car in the car park
and I just burst into tears, thinking, oh my goodness,
so he hit the back of a car. I didn't
know it was speeding doing approximate one hundred and forty
(23:29):
two kilometers at the time. I knew he had alcohol
in his system, and I knew he hit the back
of the car. So it was like another thing, Oh
my goodness, he's got cannabis in his system. And Jordan
wasn't a big drinker, nor was he a habitual smoker.
And you could be forgiven from looking at the news
and thinking that was the sort of kid that he was.
I mean, he wasn't a saint, but he wasn't an habitual.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
By the way, we didn't user we did we didn't
know that he smoked weed.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
And we're not stupid.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Well, well I can say hate you too. Yeahs, you
look at your kids.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
You don't know you know what you did when you.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
At that age, just don't know what you don't know.
As parents, you just don't know what you.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Don't look, no doubt. Well, we'll we'll talk about this
as the conversation unfolds, but it does speak to the
to you know what you reflect on in your parenting.
We always say this when when something like this unfolds,
naturally you go back through it is a reflection on
your parenting, like it or not, and.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
It's a visceral fear.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
We say this all the time to say, isn't it
we're hunting to hear.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
We know logically that we didn't cause Jordan's crash, We're
not accountable for what he did. But in your gut
you as a parent, obviously you're going to go back
through what could have I done? What didn't I know?
What could we have done?
Speaker 1 (24:52):
In an anguish of being the parents?
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Isn't What is?
Speaker 1 (24:55):
It is responsibilities that can't come with it. And I
I've heard you guys talk and say that Jordan would
be mortified about the pain that he's caused.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
So many, so many absolutely horrified to know what he's done,
not only to the people that he loved the most,
his two little sisters, but what he's done the wider
scope of what he did, the amount of lives that
he affected, and that he ruined, absolutely ruined for generations
to come.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
There's a lot said about the you know, we allow
kids that aiding to drink and that they're also allowed
to have cars, and like putting the two together. And
then I add into the mix that first Christmas party
where you treat it as an adult. You're out there
with your work colleagues. You know you've come from a student.
There's a whole lot of things that combine that add
(25:46):
up to the potential to make those stupid decisions at
the time the funeral. How long did it take before
before you could bury Jordan.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Gary, we were.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
We didn't have our service for Jordan until after the
poor other kids were laid to rest, So that happened
maybe six weeks. I want to say, Melissa, I can't
remember down the line.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
But really that that whole.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Period of time is quite a blur. But we know
we commemorated him as privately as we could.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I remember sitting with my father in the week that
had happened, and I was saying to Dad, because as
a father watching his daughter go through that not only
had he lost his grandson, but he was watching his
his daughter, watching her lose her son. And I remember
sitting there with Dad and he was saying, do you
want me to help with some funeral arrangements? I said, Dad,
how do you have a funeral for someone who's just
(26:56):
killed four people? You know, a funeral is obstensibly about
celebrating some life. When he killed those four people, he
lost the right for us to go out and celebrate him.
How do you celebrate your son who, on his way
out kills four people. And it was again, they were
visceral feelings of just going, what do you do here?
And there was no way we were going to go
out and have this big celebration for him.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
Which you know, and we've got to come back to this.
I guess we discussed it earlier.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
We love him.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
It's not that we've had people kind of in the
past be a bit confronted by the fact that we
own his culpability and what he did. And like I say,
that's different to not loving him and missing him desperately
and forgiving him, like us forgiving him. But we understand
(27:51):
or other people may not. And that speaks to the
whole notion of I guess those arrangements in the months
after the crash, all.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Those years ago, so confronting the whole situation. So it
was a conscious decision that you guys made that you
weren't going to lay to rest Jordan until after the
four victims of.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
The So remembering that Jordan's father also played a partner here.
Jordan's father wanted to have a funeral, so I just said,
you do your thing. I just feel like it's inappropriate
for me. I don't feel like we should be. We'll
do something up, something very quiet, something very personal afterwards.
So there was a funeral service for Jordan. It was
(28:35):
nineteen days I think after he died. We did go
to that, but we didn't open it up to our
widest circle to attend. I just took my immediate family,
my nieces and nephews, and that was it. I just
I just felt like it was.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
In any case, suffice to say, it was just a
fraud scenario for every goness.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
We're also in such a blur too, like even that
whole period of just going.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (29:01):
What do you do with all of this?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
But again.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
We're a stud to be asking the questions, you know,
and digging into our feelings, but in answering them, you know,
we need to be very intentional about saying none of
this is to seek sympathy for ourselves, you know, like
these are feelings that we'd feel, anyone would feel, but
(29:29):
we're not saying we're not saying, poor us. We rarely
talk about this, so the good questions to ask us
and confronting questions to ask us. But like I keep saying, our.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
What our.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Even transporting ourselves back? You know, nearly thirteen years Even
at that time, we were aware that there are two separate
issues at play, you know.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
That's what, like I said at the start of the podcast,
I've been thinking long and hard about how to have
the discussion and fully comprehend what you guys have gone through,
and it was so difficult on so many different layers.
It's when I say easier, it's probably the wrong choice
of words. But to make a decision if the death
(30:15):
was someone else's fault, you can channel channel your anger there,
or you can accept it was an accident and it's
a fate. Powers greater greater than us have made the decision.
But there's so many things that you're you're going through.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Did you reach layers of complexity?
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Did you reach out to the other families?
Speaker 4 (30:36):
We were advised not to, probably for reasons that you
understand as a as a as a former police person.
So no, not not at that time, under advice.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
That was really tricky too. Like all I wanted to
do was to reach out to those families and say
I am so sorry what my son did. That was
hard not to but we always took that advice from
the police, and that was one of the first things
that I asked anyone in the services, because I always
feel like, am I doing the right thing? Should I
be reaching out? And everybody always said do not. It's
not up to you to reach out to them to
(31:14):
make yourself feel better. They may not want to hear
from you. And that was hard. That was really hard.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
And of course all of those dynamics continue to be challenging,
and all we can do with them is to put
our hands on our hearts and just say we are
doing everything we can to try and ensure that no
family goes through anything like this again if we can
do anything about it with what we've experienced, and I
(31:44):
guess we'll get into it later, but you choose is
working and if it wasn't, we wouldn't be doing it.
Just explain because we were talking about it.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
But you choose. That's part of the non of it advocacy.
You've gotten the training or educating people on what you've
been through to try and prevent this type of thing happening.
When did you find out the full circumstances You talked
about the toxicology report coming through, Was there a coronial inquest?
(32:17):
And did you attend there were a inquest?
Speaker 2 (32:20):
And the coronial inquest was three years later, so that's
when all the full details came out. We chose not
to attend that, and we only found out only a
few days before. It took so long for that report.
So Peter was overseas for work at the time, and
I found out maybe about four days before the coronial
inquest was on, and I spoke to the coroner and
(32:42):
myself and I just said, I don't think I can come.
It was really confronting to know that I would be
there with the families, the families of those people that
children killed, and I knew that he wasn't there to
own up to what he did.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
All of that would.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Fallen to me. So I spoke to the coroner and
I asked me if he could send me the forensic
crash report. I wanted to know exactly what happened. I
felt like I owed it to Jordan's victims, to Jordan's
victim's families, to understand everything that that meant. So I
got the coronial sorry, the yeah, the forensic Kresh report
right at the time the inquest was going on, and
(33:24):
it was really it was a really tricky time because
it was all over the news. Again, it was only
three years down the track, and it was just it
was crazy. And I remember sitting down one night and
I read that report cover to cover, like I read
the whole thing, and it was confronting an ye. I
just cried and cried thinking about it, and I sort
of regret now that I didn't have the courage to
(33:46):
go to that coronial inquest. Had I gone, maybe I
might have regretted going it. But you know, like, where
is the manual that you get when your son kills
four people? The manual that you can follow to go,
this is what you do when your son kills four people?
One doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Sadly, it doesn't exist, and it's there for other than
a few people. It's uncharted territory.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
It's also something that we don't really talk about a
lot those you know, it's it's even giving me a
little heart palpitations to even talk about it publicly. It's
something that we keep very very private.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
To rebuild yourself from what's happened from the start, I
would my observations, and I think it's what you've said.
Your life from that point in time when you found
out about the crash has changed so dramatically that you
could never envisage that this is what your life would
be about your children, your family. Are you still coping like?
(34:51):
Is it? I would imagine each days? And you said,
one foot step stepping forward for your children? Is that
what kept you going?
Speaker 4 (35:00):
Certainly in the early days here, we pretty quickly figured
out that there wasn't healing involved in any of this,
and that if we were seeking to put the weight
(35:21):
of grief and the visceral feelings of culpability down, or
it was some form of process that you recovered from,
I think that was misguided in our case at least.
And I think from the time that we realized that, look,
we need, we've got to weight to carry.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
What does it mean?
Speaker 4 (35:44):
How do we assist each other to carry it together?
And how do we carry it with some sort of
sense of purpose and meaning? Is there any sort of
grace or peace anywhere in this we were seeking it?
Speaker 3 (36:00):
We sawt it.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
But from the time we realized that they putting it
down is not going to work. We got to understand
how to carry.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
This, okay, So to make it.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
You can't put that in the compartment and just step
aside from it and not open not open it. Was
there any advice or how Quite often through homicide and
where deaths have occurred in tragic and sudden circumstances, the
people around the families of the victim or the person
(36:31):
who has died don't know how to meet with you.
And I've had families of murdered victims saying that close
friends would avoid them because they don't know what to say.
People just didn't know how to react or just pretend
it didn't happen and have a conversation. What were the
things that helped you the most, the way that people
(36:53):
reacted around you and supported you.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
I think, well, would you like to I guess I'll
go In the first instance, for us, it was and
we say the same things as we were look at
each other.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
We know what we're going to say.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
People want to solve They want to make you feel better,
and that's beautiful. You don't want them to understand, do you, Gary?
Speaker 3 (37:18):
When understand that?
Speaker 4 (37:20):
So when people say to you, I could never understand
how you could feel you've got to go good. I
never want you to understand how how it feels. The
most effective support that we've got and that we still
get and that we'll always get is just the simplicity
of just love. Solutions, not so much you can't turn
(37:42):
back the clock. Love and support is what has always
been the most effective for us, and it's certainly uplifted
us and enabled us to sort of move on to
something that might be a positive out of all this.
So yeah, the simplest thing, okay, is that that you
(38:04):
share that view. Well.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
I always think of the one the story that comes
to mind in the very early days and a lot
of people, you know, would over hug me and they
would be so sad and for me, and I'd be like, oh,
you just got to leave me alone, Like who's the
hug for you or for me? And in those early days,
a lot of people would just be like, you know,
how how are you not thinking? Honeybody think I am?
You know, And it was such an insulting question. I
(38:27):
was like, why would you ask me that? And I
was at my daughter's creation at the gym that I
used to go to at the time, and she was
a much you know, she's maybe in her late seventies,
I guess. And she came up to you one day
and she just you know, she put a hand on
her shoulder and she gave me a squeeze and she
said to me, how are you today? And I remember thinking,
thank you for saying today that one word, because yesterday
(38:49):
I was absolutely, you know, atrocious. Today I'm feeling okay.
So thanks for letting me or thanks for letting me
off the hook that you know, it's just about today.
And I have said right from the very day that
Jordan died. You know, we only got through one sunset
at a time, so the idea was to get through today, right,
there's another sunset radio tomorrow. We'll just get through to
(39:10):
tomorrow's sunset. And a lot of people, you know, wanted
to involve themselves in what was going on. And I
am so grateful that this man has such a so
to point you pointing it.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
That's a audio, there is video, but there's this man.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
This man, he has such an emotional high emotional IQ.
So during this period he instinctively knew what to do
to protect his family. Now, it might not work for
someone else's family. But we became very, very insular. We
sort of reached out to everyone saying, just give us time. Please,
don't phone, don't drop over flowers, don't knock on the door.
(39:48):
We just need to sit and be We need to
sit in this and understand it. So we were very
much we didn't include people in the process. We asked
people to give us a lot of time. We also
had the girls, so and again, where's the manual? You know?
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Funny funny enough.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
Just being listening to your many podcasts, Gary, you probably
I know that I can recall hearing this before, you know,
and we certainly hear it from other bereaved people or
other people that are dealing with dealt with tragedy.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Is that.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
The next steps in your life aren't necessarily linear. Yeah,
like you're not necessarily hanging around holding hands, going right.
We're all experiencing this together. There's a way you deal
with losing Uncle Clary at ninety, you know, and then
celebrating a beautiful, wishful life, and there's all the other
there's the other things, you know, and it's not always
(40:45):
this neat sort of the square peg in a square
hole that one size fits everything.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
In terms of how.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
You go on and what next steps look like and
all that. And I mean we might live another thirty
years or forty years and still not have the answers.
And I think giving or letting go of the idea
that you have to heal and you have to be
well and you have to demonstrate to the world that
(41:14):
you're on this pathway to recovery. It's a little bit
of pressure you don't need, I can imagine.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
And you've raised some points that made me think about
you come up, you give someone a cuddle, and yeah,
are you cuddling for yourself or you've cuddling to give
me the comfort there. I like what you just said there,
And I think, you know, if we're going to get
messages across and we are in this podcast because I
think it's inspirational what you've guys, how you've processed this
(41:43):
and steered it in a positive direction in terms of
education and letting people learn from what happened in your situation.
But I love that how are you feeling today? Because
that's a good thing, because you know, we've all had
situations where people come up and want to comfort you
(42:04):
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
How are you?
Speaker 1 (42:07):
How the fuck do you think I am.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
That's the attitude.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
But how are you today? It's very simple. Look, I'm
just doing a bit tough today. Tomorrow might be better,
or you know, I'm feeling great today, but who knows.
It's a simple question.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Very same lady the first time I saw her after
it happened, and again I guess this is the wisdom
that you get or that becomes you as you get older.
But she came up to his sweetest thing, and she
just again just lightly popped a hand on my shoulder,
and she said, there are just no words, so I'm
not going to say anything. And I remember thinking, thank you,
(42:43):
because that's the exact thing that I want to hear.
There are no words. So people often ask me for
grief advice, which I think, oh my goodness, just because
I've gone through grief doesn't mean you know that we
are grief experts. And you can't compare grief. You can't
compare my grief in someone else's grief. And I I
had an emotionally intelligent husband, I had young girls that
(43:03):
I had to keep getting up every morning and getting
them to school. Kitty was still at home at that stage.
I worked at that time I had to keep functioning.
Some people don't have that. Some people. I had a
flexible job, I had a husband, We we have a
lovely we had a beautiful life beforehand. So the chaos
that Jordan created, thank goodness, we had this really yeah,
(43:26):
some underpinning and a strong foundation to carry us through
something that we would have never ever thought we would
ever be able to survive.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Let alone.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
You know, turn it into too what we're doing around
the country.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
There's a few different things to you to your question. Yeah, it's.
Speaker 4 (43:46):
You can see we've we've met many, many bereaved parents
on this on this journey, and that sounds really morbid,
but boy, you meet some beautiful, beautiful people who have
experienced their own version, and everyone does of the bottom
of the barrel.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
So as you go through that, and.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
Even I'm looking at you, Gary, knowing what your experience
in life is, knowing that in time, you develop a
deep respect for the fact that everyone's got their version.
You're getting their bumps splintered by the bottom of the barrel, right,
and everyone responds in a different way. And I think
it increases, or it increased our empathy in general, because
(44:28):
while you're dealing with your own kind of narrow version
of what that looks like. Certainly early in the piece,
you know, part of going on is to sort of
broaden that focus and go. It does tell you that
the world is carrying a lot of pain out there
that you're not necessarily seeing, you know so, and that
that can manifest itself in so many different ways. Like
(44:49):
we we are blessed because if we didn't handle this
entire set of circumstances in a way that was complement
to each other, you can see how these things would.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Just destroy put just tear people.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
Apart it you weren't on the same page. The other
side of that same coin is that having gone through
that together. I often say this, and I'm sorry for
repeating myself, sweetheart, but it's one thing to love each other.
It's something else altogether to admire them, and that's profound.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
You better get the tissues, so those steps, and.
Speaker 4 (45:33):
It's taken a while to actually understand that feeling and
being able to articulate it, because we often get asked,
how do you even to what the work that we
do today all these years after it can be depleting
it It has to be you have to be vulnerable
to do it.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Right, you're giving you, you're coming on here. You're talking
about some very deep emotions.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
Don't get us wrong, we've had some very very dark
but we've done it to get we look like we're
strong and brave and all those things. But it's been
a journey to get here.
Speaker 4 (46:02):
But I guess what I'm saying is that if you
find a way of filling each other's tank as much
as it gets depleted, and you're doing that for each
other and it's complementary, including our daughters and the rest
of our family being able to do that, you can
make sense of something that literally doesn't make sense, as
you correctly pointed out going all the way back.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
And I've seen family situations and couples caught up in
tragedy that life dishes out, and quite often that it
might be You'll turn to be the strong one there
because I need the comfort, and then you can reverse roles.
And they're the ones, my observations there, the ones that
seem to be able to work, because you can't both
be strong every day like someone's going to have a
(46:45):
down day. But if you've got a partner that's emotionally
attuned and capable of supporting when you're down and switching it.
I think the complexities of what you guys have gone
through is it's not just grief. If you carry shame,
you carry regret and a whole range of very powerful emotions.
(47:06):
So it must have been so difficult navigating your way
a way through all that.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
And thank goodness, Peter has such a high emotional intelligence.
Had I been you do, don't get cranky. That's going
to say if you keep looking like we're going to
have the next stop.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
It yes, no, he is.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
That really helped our family get through that. Peter knew
what to do to protect his family. I'm so grateful
that I would not be the woman that I am.
I would not have been able to do the part
of you choose that I do had Peter not been
able to steer us in those very very early days.
Same with my girls. It's why my girls are doing
so well. We had the foundation, but then Peter instinctively knew.
(47:48):
And it's probably that you know that man protector feeling
inside of you and actually that man protect a feeling
that you had for your families. It's what's eked into
YouTube that's really at the bottom, at the end of
the day, what you choose. It's all about. It's all
about how do you protect the people that you love.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
It makes sense. Where do you think you learned that
from Peter? Where did do you think those characteristics were
instilled in you?
Speaker 3 (48:13):
Gary?
Speaker 2 (48:15):
I appreciate the compliment I was going to say without
sounding like Wenka.
Speaker 4 (48:19):
Yeah, it's true. I'm glad you see that, thank you.
But for me, I learned that simply because for many
years in my life I was a boy until I
had a boy to raise. I met Melissa in my
mid thirties. Melissa had two kids yep, one very young
(48:44):
kid and Jordan, who was a little bit older, and
I realized, having met Melissa with the two kids, just
exactly what.
Speaker 3 (48:52):
Was missing in my life.
Speaker 4 (48:54):
And as cliche as this is, I was just a
lion walking around the savannah without a pride.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
I like the description, I just didn't.
Speaker 4 (49:06):
I had a lot gone for me. I was financially
in a good spot and career and everything was good.
Some's missing, And the missing thing became so apparent to
me the second that I had kids to father.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
And that's the answer to the question.
Speaker 4 (49:27):
There's there's nothing complicated in my background or anything like that,
other than the fact that that that instinct that was
in me that was just uneven detectable at the time,
let alone unrequired, was just sitting in there. And you're right,
that level of cops.
Speaker 3 (49:48):
That that level of.
Speaker 4 (49:51):
That kind of dynamic does eke its way through into
the philosophies that were being taught by kids. Yeah, it
it's I think there's a whole there's a lot of
us out there that have got that instinct. And you
know it comes out in many different ways, doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
Well, it comes out when it has to come out,
and in your situation that it was make or break.
When the situation you're confronted with it, it could have
broken you and it sort of made you the situation.
So you're we're giving all the compliments to Peter at
this stage, but you've you've hung in there and you're
(50:33):
you're been strong all the way through. Where where did
that come from? And you can't say it was all Peter?
I let you get away of that.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
That's right, Definitely wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (50:45):
The strong part of me comes from that weight of
civic responsibility that bears down on my shoulders. I can
justify why Jordan died that night, and I was sitting
with my cousin when I come down to do presentation,
and so I often go and stay with my beautiful cousins.
And she said to me one night, if we're all
sitting in a circle, and we all threw our problems
(51:06):
into the center, we'd probably take out our own problems.
And I was thinking, you're absolutely right. Part of why
where I speak for myself, part of why I feel
like I'm able to go on, is that I can
justify what Jordan. I can justify Jordan dying, He drank, drove,
he drug drove, he spared. What do you expect, you know,
(51:28):
if you're gonna do those sort of things where you
can't go, oh, do you know why? God, why did
this happen? Whereas for someone like Jordan's victims, I can't
justify what happened to those kids. They were five kids
sitting in a car, broken down car, minding their own business,
and my son drunk stoned, speeding, hit the back of
(51:50):
that car and killed four of those kids. He left
a little girl orphaned that night. There was two young
parents in that car, you know, in the six year
old l play that was left with severe boons and trauma.
So part of that strength that I've got is thinking
Jordan doesn't deserve. This is going to sound really harsh
(52:12):
and really horrible. This is through the lens of I
loved Jordan, but this is what goes through me. Deserve
is not the right word. But when you act like
Jordan did that night, what do you expect? You know,
I can justify it, But for those those other young adults,
I can't justify that. And that's the strength that I
carry to go if there is one thing that I
(52:34):
can do to inspire or influence, or that we can
do to inspire or influence just one team to not
make a choice that might destroy the lives of the
families like Jordan destroyed the life of those victims and
those victims families. All of my strength comes from that.
Hand on heart. That is what drives me. And there's
(52:56):
no way we would put ourselves through this if we
didn't think that what we were doing made an impact.
And hand on heart, we know that it is.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
We know.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
I hear it in the conversations that I have with
young teens around the country. In a straight after a presentation. Oh,
I have so many kids up. It's almost like come
up afterwards, and it's like having a confessional because what
they've done is They've related to Jordan's behavior, so they
can see themselves in Jordan. And whilst I'm holding up
(53:28):
a mirror, what I'm doing is I'm not showing them
my family. I'm showing them their family. So they're sitting
there going, well, goodness, I do that, I do that
I do. That could be my mum, that could be
my little sister. I show footage of Montana speaking at
Jordan's memorial, and it gets them to deeply, deeply reflect
about what they're doing. And I think that's the magic
dust of Youtobe is that I loath to think of
(53:48):
myself an as an educator, and I'm using air commas here.
The idea behind everything that we do is when one
of those teens walks out of our program, they've arrived
at conclusions about themselves, about their mates, about their social ecosystem,
and that that role that they play inside that social
(54:09):
ecosystem around protection, around leadership. What is it am I
leading negatively? Is this a positive thing that I'm doing
or is it a negative thing? So they're not being
taught anything they've arrived at the conclusions for themselves, and
that again, that's what inspires me and gives me the strength,
gives us the strength to just keep on keeping on.
(54:31):
Just one kid, Gary, just one kid, and all of
it will have been worthwhile.
Speaker 1 (54:37):
Wow, Okay, I can see why what you're doing is
making a difference. And I think people that have listened
to our chat just at this point in time get
the depth of where it's coming from, on what you're
talking about. And I think that was important for us
to set up the sort of platform because in part
(54:57):
two we'll take a break now, but in part two
we're going to talk about what you're actually doing and
breaking down the messages and the lessons that you're learned
and the information that you're passing on. Because I got
to say, and your avid listeners to our catch killers,
you've heard all the impressive people that we've had on,
inspirational people and all that, but speaking to you too,
(55:20):
and the importance the simplicity of the message, but the
importance of the message that you guys are delivering. I
encourage everyone to come back and listen to part two.
And if I said it at the start that the
introduction that. If you've got kids, I advise them to
listen to it too, because it can make a difference.
And with horrible situations that what you guys have been
(55:44):
confronted with the four victims and your son in that
lives have been lost, lives have been destroyed. We turn
that tragedy and that horror situation into something positive. And
I think that's what you guys are doing. That's what
I want to talk about, in part to breaking it
down who you're speaking to and the type of message
(56:06):
you're getting across, and any other insightful thoughts that you
guys might have, because seeing here listening to you, I'm
being inspired by what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (56:14):
Thanks Gary, look forward to it.
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective see aside 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 talked to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes in the contact with crime is
left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into
this world. Today, I had a sad yet inspiring conversation
(00:49):
with Melissa and Peter McGinnis. We talked about the death
of their eighteen year old son, Jordan, who died in
the horrific car crash in twenty twelve. It was a
crash that could have been avoided. Other young lives were
lost in the crash. Now, death on their roads, unless
it impacts on you personally, is often just passed off.
As road statistics, but for those close to the people killed,
(01:10):
it's life destroying. It's hard to imagine the pain of
losing your child in those circumstances. I speak to Melissa
and Peter about that, But there is also another complex
layer to what happened to them. See, their son, Jordan,
was driving a vehicle that crashed into a parked car
containing the four victims. Jordan was almost three times over
(01:30):
the legal limit, traveling well over the speed limit, and
had lost his license just days before. As I've said,
it was something that could have been avoided. Today, I
had a deeply personal conversation with Melissa and Peter about
all the emotions they've had to process that include shame, anger, sadness,
and regret. We talked about the guilt they felt and
(01:52):
coming to terms with the fact their son's actions destroyed
so many lives. There are some important, thought provoking messages
in this conversation. Have a listened to what they have
to say, it blew me away, and I think you
might feel the same way. Melissa and Peter McGinnis, thanks
very much for coming on Eye Catch Killers.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Thank you for having us Gary. Thanks mate.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah, well, I thought long and hard about how to
have this conversation because it's a difficult conversation. But one
thing that really comes out to me researching and finding
out what's happened and also having conversations with you before
the podcast, is that so much is encapsulated in choices
we make in life, isn't it, And one choice can
(02:36):
just have devastating effects. What's your thoughts on that? With
your son Jordan the bad choice and look what's happened.
Do you often reflect on the consequences of choices we make?
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Well, it's very much shaped our lives, hasn't it myself
the last nearly thirteen years now and certainly closer to
the time of the crash that Jordan caused and the
tragedy you know, where we're sort of fixated on this
idea of like one one choice on one thing can
(03:09):
lead to all of this impact, you know, particularly for
the the for.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
His victims, his victims families, which.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
You know, really keeps us going, you know, making sure
that this kind of thing doesn't happen again to the
extent that we can. But we've learned that, you know,
that idea of one choice, Yes, it was one choice,
a number of choices that Jordan made on that night.
But it's also really it's been revealed to us through
the work that we do with so many teens around
(03:40):
the country, that often these things are.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
A series of choices.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
These choices are made in a social ecosystem, or there's
patterns of decision making or recklessness that developed that sometimes
you just can't see as a parent, and sometimes you
just can't see yourself or inside your circle of friends.
So long answer to a short question, Yeah, we do
reflect on it. But you know what we've concluded, haven't we, Melissa,
(04:05):
is that it's just so often more than just that
one choice.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Well, I want to and we're going to deal very
deeply through the course of the podcast into the education
and the messaging that you're getting out from what happened
with the situation of Jordan's choices and the tragedy that
unfolded following on from those choices. And I think if anything,
(04:29):
that the messages that come out the people that have
been through what you've been through, and the victims and
the families of the people killed and the crash that
Jordan was driving, there's consequences for actions.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Isn't it It's interesting because the whole last thirteen years
since Jordan's crash, all of it has come down to
Jordan's choice. Everything that we've done from that day, from
that day to this day, has been around the choices
that Jordan made that night. So it's it can't be
(05:04):
underestimated what choice means, what one decision. Jordan made a
lot of stupid choices that night, and look at what happened,
look at the amount of families that were devastated. And
we think this all the time, don't we that we
will never seek sympathy for ourselves. People often share sympathy
with us, and we think the sympathy is reserved solely
(05:26):
for Jordan's victims and Jordan's victims families because of the
choices Jordan made, And he would never have intended to
harm anyone that night, the family that he loved the most,
let alone his victims and his victims families.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yet through his choice, it saddens me and I get
the sense of all the times that you've spoken publicly
and that that you don't allow yourself to have sympathy
for yourself. I'm sitting here saying to you, I've seen
a lot of tragedy in life from people's actions and that,
But be kind to yourself too. You're a victim of
(06:01):
Jordan's choices as much as much as the other people are.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
So I think.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
We, of course we forgive Jordan, and for the millions
of reasons, how much we love him and miss him
and admired him as a person. I think there's a
difference between that concept of privately commemorating it and privately,
of course we forgive him, But it's a separate thing
(06:30):
to also own his culpability and own the choices that
he's made, and part of part of the journey with
carrying this weight and understanding how we can make use
of it in some sort of positive way. Is I
guess that separation between loving him and forgiving him and
(06:51):
privately commemorating him, but also being really sensitive about the
idea publicly that this is not, you know, a celebration
of Jordan's life. We don't do what we do with
you choose for any sort of healing for ourselves. What
we seek is change, Gary, Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
I think what people might not realize too is that
that very day Jordan made those choices, and he destroyed
so many his lives, so many lives. What he did
was he transferred his culpability onto the shoulders of the
people that he loved the most. And that from that
very day that I sat on the door and sorry,
I sat at home and we got the knock on
(07:28):
the door from the police, we felt that really heavy
weight of civic responsibility. Whilst all the information about Jordan's
crash wasn't available right then and there, we knew that
it would be his fault. So we instantly felt that
feeling of going, my goodness, we've got a son who
made choices that killed four people. I mean, what did
(07:49):
you do with those feelings of civic responsibility? And they
were instant, weren't they Like we were in the middle
of going what the heck is even happening, but also
feeling that weight instantly.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Mind you.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
You know, it also should be said we didn't start
youtubes immediately. Of course, it took a number of years,
four years before we were even able to formulate the
idea that there should be something that we could do.
It will never be made right, but if just one
(08:21):
family can be can be spared, you know, the tragedy
that Jordan's victims families have been through and it won't.
Then any kind of effort we can put in at all,
small or large, would be well worth it.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Well, you're right, Just making the difference in one person's life,
or seeing one person in the right direction, can have
a ripple effect that you can't even comprehend how far
it reaches. Let's talk about Jordan for a bit. What's
your last memory of Jordan? Both of you, like the
last time before you got the horrendous knock at.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
The door by the police.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
What was your last contact and memory with.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Your Okay, so the Saturday before, sorry, the Sunday before
Jordan died, So six days before Jordan died, and it
was not far off Christmas, and Jordan and I went
shopping to buy Jordan's Christmas presents and we actually had
a really lovely day and it was so rare that
the two of us spent time together because you know,
(09:21):
like what eighteen year old wants to hang out with, ma'am? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So we had this really lovely day. We went down,
we had lunch together, we laughed a lot, was just
him and I and I actually tell this story during
part of the presentation that we do into schools, but
I was We were shopping in a particular store and
Jordan was just trying on everything going that we were
(09:44):
going to buy him for his Christmas presents. And while
he was just trying on his clothes, I went in
and I just tried on this dress just for fun.
And I came out and I said to Jordan, Hey,
what do you think of this dress?
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Mate?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And he said to me, Mum, you look really pretty
in that. And I just remember thinking, oh, my goodness,
did I just get a compliment from my son. So
when amongst buying all of his stuff, I bought that
black dress, which happened to be the same black dress
that I wore nineteen days later at his funeral. So
(10:16):
that was my last memory, this fantastic that day that
I'd had with Jordan, shopping and having lunch and laughing,
and you know the fact that he gave me this
this compliment. And Jordan would never also leave home without
giving me a kiss goodbye, so it was, for all
intents and purposes, it was a really lovely day. So
I'm so grateful that that was our last moment together,
(10:36):
because of course he wasn't living at home at that time.
So he had moved to Brisbane for his carpentry apprenticeship.
But that event followed you and him going to Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Funny enough.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
That's why we always say to the many hundreds and
hundreds of thousands of kids that we interact with these days,
you know, don't look at that door without exchanging I.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Love you, right, you hear it?
Speaker 4 (10:56):
A lot, Yeah, people experienced these things. Yeah, but look,
it speaks to a broader issue about Jordan. But he
wasn't a lot different to any other team, you know.
And I guess we'll dig into this a little bit later,
but certainly on the Gold Coast. I know, I'm a
born and bred Gold Coaster. It was all you could
do to wear a shirt when you're a teenager. And
(11:18):
I can recall us. We were leaving, I think, to
see the latest James Bond movie at the time, you know,
and he's just walking out the door and his jeans
and he's you know, and he's four pluggers, no shirt,
very impressed with his own rig.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
He's a muscular kid. He loved his.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Footy and I said, mate, could you least tuck a
T shirt into the back, you know, take one with you.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
I think.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
So that was our sort of the.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Last last time together, and of course we exchanged I
love yous as well, we always did.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
I think there's still instance has really sum up Jordan.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Kind of, does you know.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
And he was a very loving young man, very loving
to his younger sisters, his nieces, his cousins, his dad, sorry,
his cousins, his dad on stepdad. Had beautiful relationships with
everyone in his life.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
It says a lot about that. That's your last memory
and Melissa, for you, that's that awkward transitional stage between
he's going to become a man and he won't be
out shopping with his mum much longer. And that's his
reference to you wearing the dress. You look pretty in it.
It's stepping in the manhood. He can make informed comments
like that, so special moments and the joy of going
(12:35):
to watch a film with your son and raiming him
in walking out, could you, like my normal comment, could
you put some shoes on that? Maybe you should wear
some shoes if you're going out that type of thing.
But look, I'm glad you can hang on to those
those memories because they must be so important to you.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
The last of the contacts and memories and we've.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
Got numerous, I mean obviously years, a lifetime of memories
with him. As we often say, don't he's no angel.
He's very much like any other team. But that's the point.
It's very much like any other team. So in so
many ways, like his life, our lives like really hold
up a mirror to almost any family or any teenager
(13:17):
in Australia.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
It's the average teenager, average family, and this is what happens.
I'll bring you to the time that you found out
that Jordan had been involved in the car crash. Can
you can you talk us through that because it's something
that no one wants to experience. And I've been involved
from the police point of view, doing the knock on
the door and it's just horrendous. If you're comfortable, can
(13:42):
you tell us tell us about you when you found
out that about the crash.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
So Jordan was living in Brisbane at the time, where
Gold Coast based, and Jordan had been at his work
Christmas party the evening beforehand, and it's got to be
said that his bosses did everything right at the end
of the party there or sent home in cabs and
for reasons that we don't know, and we'll never know.
Jordan decided to drive home from Brisbane to the Gold Coast.
(14:09):
We'd exchanged a couple of texts with Jordan that night.
He said he was having a fantastic It was like
his first ever work Christmas party. Yeah right, a passage. Yeah.
He was a carpenter, apprentice carpenter. So he was with
all of his mates and they'd been out in the
hot sun digging holes and you know, so they're enjoying
a few beers and you know what you do at
a Christmas party. So he decided to drive home very
(14:30):
late that night. He was going to go, as we
found out later, he was going to go and stay
with a couple of mates down on the Gold Coast.
The next morning, we were none the wiser that Jordan
had driven down to the Gold Coast and we had
a knock at the We live in a three story
walk up, so we've got one of those airphones, so
we had a ring on our airphone and I answered
(14:51):
that airphone and it was a couple of police saying,
you know, it's the police and we're looking for Melissa Hayes.
And that was really interesting because I Hayes was my sorry,
my first married name, so it was unusual be called Melissa.
Hazel thought that's very odd. And I had to go
down to the stairs to let those offices in. And
(15:12):
as I was walking down those last flight of stairs
and I saw the two officers through that glass door,
I knew that I was about to be delivered news
that was going to shatter my family. When I opened
the door, they didn't tell me straight away what had happened.
They asked if they could come up. And I walked
in the door and I said to Peter, you know,
the police are here. And they were so good, Gary,
(15:35):
they were amazing. And they said, somebody that you want
to phone, is you know? And we said, no, no, no,
what's happened? And then they delivered us that news that
there had been a crash on the M one and
that I forget the words, but it was something along
the lines of we believed that your son has been
fatally injured, and you know, you take it from there,
but that was just it made no sense at that
(15:59):
exact moment.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
And look, of course, over the over the years and
it won't be news to you at all. Gary, We've
we've had the beautiful privilege to meet many many bereaved
parents over the years, so that how that plays out,
he has a real familiarity to it with every story,
as you'd know, mate. But on that morning, it took
(16:22):
some time for us to get the full picture as
to what was well, what had played out the night before,
And it was much later in that day that it
was revealed to us that, you know, there had been
the scale of the tragedy as as the day played
out and as the subsequent weeks and months played out
(16:44):
as well well.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
I would imagine receiving that news initially it would be
hard to process, just coming to terms of what you've
been told from a knock on the door and your
your life changed dramatically, and the grief of the shock,
the not even accepting it. I think it's hard, and
I've seen people that know that it must be wrong.
(17:05):
That type of narrative. Narrative comes back. So what happened
after they told you? What did you actually do? What
was the next step?
Speaker 2 (17:15):
The police were so amazing that the two police that
did that door knock, they were so caring they stayed
with us for good. I would say it was about
two hours to make sure that we're okay, and we
made the decision well, actually I had a girlfriend staying
with me, My best friend was there that night, and
I had my daughter, my youngest daughter, who was four
at the time, at home, and we made a decision
(17:35):
that we wanted to go to the police station and
meet up with those first responding offices. We wanted to
understand a little bit more about what had happened in
but we were in so much shock, I don't even
know quite how to put it into words. So my
friend that was staying there, she minded my four year old,
our four year old daughter, and we just drove straight
to the police station and we were there with the
(17:56):
first responding officers. And I'll never forget it because there
was a young man there who look he looked like
he was maybe twenty years old, something like they look
so young and to think that, you know, that was
probably his first big crash scene that he had been
to it it's never lost. I mean, thank you so
much for the work that you do, because I think
about what that scene must have looked like to the
(18:18):
many police ambos and fieries, the undertakers, all those people
that were there that night to see this young man,
to go, My goodness, that would have been probably your
first big horrendous event that you've turned up to. And
my heart breaks thinking, you know what he saw that night,
what you all see, what you all go through again,
bringing it back to someone's choices, all because of Jordan's choice.
(18:39):
That crash was preventable, It should never have happened.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Well, the fact that you guys are sitting here and
talking about your concern for other people when you're going
through that, I think that says a lot about the
type of people you are in the environment that Jordan
would have been raised in. You've found out that it
was a crash, hard to find out more details of
the crash. When did the when did the i'll call
(19:04):
it the realization come to the fact that it was
Jordan's actions that caused the crash. When when did you
start to come to terms with that?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
I think a bit of a blur, Gary, But we
knew parts of it straight away. We knew that he'd
hit the back of the car, so that part was
going to be his fault. We knew that he'd been
drinking the night before because it exchanged a couple of
texts with us. But as the cannabis in his system
and the speed you know, that stuff came out much
later down the track.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
So we were given advice, and I think pretty good
advice to just not look at the media. I guess
because of me especially. It was it was very news
worthy event least the Queensland's major arterial shouting both directions
for hours and hours a couple of weeks before Christmas,
(19:55):
so it took a while for us to to get
all of the detail out. Of course, during that first
period of time, naturally we've got to get around and
let how various other relatives know. And the other major
consideration is the feelings for all of everyone affected, all
of the families, all of everyone that the community at large.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
You're taking on that all that grief.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
Yeah, but of course our two daughters, Jordan's little sisters,
who were at the time four and eleven respectively, ten
sorry respectively, we really just had to keep putting one
foot in front of the other and just try to
take one day literally, as Melissa says, one sunset at
a time.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
How did Jordan's sisters take the news and how did
you break it.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
To the kitty, our youngest. It's kind of a little
too young to completely understand it.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
She was there and saw it, she was there when
the police arrived.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Yeah, So for her it was more of a she
wasn't stricken with the guilt, sorry, the grief immediately, yeah,
but rather just obviously upset because because of just the
(21:18):
visceral feelings of the emotion.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
That she was really concerned to about us as a
little fought through the four year old's eyes. She didn't
quite conceptualize what was going on. You can imagine what
mum and dad look like, so she felt from watching
what my mum and dad are going through. Montana was
staying with her father the night that Jordan had his
(21:40):
crash and I had to ring Montana's father and it
was actually Montana's father that had to break the news
to her, and he told me later through his tears
that she just cried, you know, not brother, No, please,
please please not brother. So it was a shock for her.
She was old enough to understand what it meant that
Jordan had died, that he'd had a car crash. Kitty
(22:02):
couldn't conceptualize that. She just watched what was going on
with mum and dad.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
I'm silent because I'm just trying to comprehend the ripple
effect through the family and then, as you said, contacting
other family members and friends, relatives. It's just, yeah, it's ongoing.
How did it change when you're found out and you
said it was gradual that you're getting further information. You
(22:31):
found out that the car that Jordan was driving crashed
into a parked car, So okay, he was a driver
at fault, you would say, into a park car. He'd
been drinking, had cannavais in his system.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
That we didn't fund out a bit later. I remember,
about seven weeks after Jordan died, I was just doing
a normal trip to the shopping center to do my
food shopping, and I'd been by the post office and
I had a letter from the I think it was
the Coroner's office. That was unusual in itself to be
opening a letter from them, and it was Jordan's. It
(23:09):
wasn't his death certificate, but it was his I can't
think of the word for it, toxicology, toxicology report. It
was all the things, and that's what I noticed, that
he'd had cannabis in his system. I remember sitting in
the shopping center in my car in the car park
and I just burst into tears, thinking, oh my goodness,
so he hit the back of a car. I didn't
know it was speeding doing approximate one hundred and forty
(23:29):
two kilometers at the time. I knew he had alcohol
in his system, and I knew he hit the back
of the car. So it was like another thing, Oh
my goodness, he's got cannabis in his system. And Jordan
wasn't a big drinker, nor was he a habitual smoker.
And you could be forgiven from looking at the news
and thinking that was the sort of kid that he was.
I mean, he wasn't a saint, but he wasn't an habitual.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
By the way, we didn't user we did we didn't
know that he smoked weed.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
And we're not stupid.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Well, well I can say hate you too. Yeahs, you
look at your kids.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
You don't know you know what you did when you.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
At that age, just don't know what you don't know.
As parents, you just don't know what you.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Don't look, no doubt. Well, we'll we'll talk about this
as the conversation unfolds, but it does speak to the
to you know what you reflect on in your parenting.
We always say this when when something like this unfolds,
naturally you go back through it is a reflection on
your parenting, like it or not, and.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
It's a visceral fear.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
We say this all the time to say, isn't it
we're hunting to hear.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
We know logically that we didn't cause Jordan's crash, We're
not accountable for what he did. But in your gut
you as a parent, obviously you're going to go back
through what could have I done? What didn't I know?
What could we have done?
Speaker 1 (24:52):
In an anguish of being the parents?
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Isn't What is?
Speaker 1 (24:55):
It is responsibilities that can't come with it. And I
I've heard you guys talk and say that Jordan would
be mortified about the pain that he's caused.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
So many, so many absolutely horrified to know what he's done,
not only to the people that he loved the most,
his two little sisters, but what he's done the wider
scope of what he did, the amount of lives that
he affected, and that he ruined, absolutely ruined for generations
to come.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
There's a lot said about the you know, we allow
kids that aiding to drink and that they're also allowed
to have cars, and like putting the two together. And
then I add into the mix that first Christmas party
where you treat it as an adult. You're out there
with your work colleagues. You know you've come from a student.
There's a whole lot of things that combine that add
(25:46):
up to the potential to make those stupid decisions at
the time the funeral. How long did it take before
before you could bury Jordan.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Gary, we were.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
We didn't have our service for Jordan until after the
poor other kids were laid to rest, So that happened
maybe six weeks. I want to say, Melissa, I can't
remember down the line.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
But really that that whole.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Period of time is quite a blur. But we know
we commemorated him as privately as we could.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I remember sitting with my father in the week that
had happened, and I was saying to Dad, because as
a father watching his daughter go through that not only
had he lost his grandson, but he was watching his
his daughter, watching her lose her son. And I remember
sitting there with Dad and he was saying, do you
want me to help with some funeral arrangements? I said, Dad,
how do you have a funeral for someone who's just
(26:56):
killed four people? You know, a funeral is obstensibly about
celebrating some life. When he killed those four people, he
lost the right for us to go out and celebrate him.
How do you celebrate your son who, on his way
out kills four people. And it was again, they were
visceral feelings of just going, what do you do here?
And there was no way we were going to go
out and have this big celebration for him.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
Which you know, and we've got to come back to this.
I guess we discussed it earlier.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
We love him.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
It's not that we've had people kind of in the
past be a bit confronted by the fact that we
own his culpability and what he did. And like I say,
that's different to not loving him and missing him desperately
and forgiving him, like us forgiving him. But we understand
(27:51):
or other people may not. And that speaks to the
whole notion of I guess those arrangements in the months
after the crash, all.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Those years ago, so confronting the whole situation. So it
was a conscious decision that you guys made that you
weren't going to lay to rest Jordan until after the
four victims of.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
The So remembering that Jordan's father also played a partner here.
Jordan's father wanted to have a funeral, so I just said,
you do your thing. I just feel like it's inappropriate
for me. I don't feel like we should be. We'll
do something up, something very quiet, something very personal afterwards.
So there was a funeral service for Jordan. It was
(28:35):
nineteen days I think after he died. We did go
to that, but we didn't open it up to our
widest circle to attend. I just took my immediate family,
my nieces and nephews, and that was it. I just
I just felt like it was.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
In any case, suffice to say, it was just a
fraud scenario for every goness.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
We're also in such a blur too, like even that
whole period of just going.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (29:01):
What do you do with all of this?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
But again.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
We're a stud to be asking the questions, you know,
and digging into our feelings, but in answering them, you know,
we need to be very intentional about saying none of
this is to seek sympathy for ourselves, you know, like
these are feelings that we'd feel, anyone would feel, but
(29:29):
we're not saying we're not saying, poor us. We rarely
talk about this, so the good questions to ask us
and confronting questions to ask us. But like I keep saying, our.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
What our.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Even transporting ourselves back? You know, nearly thirteen years Even
at that time, we were aware that there are two separate
issues at play, you know.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
That's what, like I said at the start of the podcast,
I've been thinking long and hard about how to have
the discussion and fully comprehend what you guys have gone through,
and it was so difficult on so many different layers.
It's when I say easier, it's probably the wrong choice
of words. But to make a decision if the death
(30:15):
was someone else's fault, you can channel channel your anger there,
or you can accept it was an accident and it's
a fate. Powers greater greater than us have made the decision.
But there's so many things that you're you're going through.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Did you reach layers of complexity?
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Did you reach out to the other families?
Speaker 4 (30:36):
We were advised not to, probably for reasons that you
understand as a as a as a former police person.
So no, not not at that time, under advice.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
That was really tricky too. Like all I wanted to
do was to reach out to those families and say
I am so sorry what my son did. That was
hard not to but we always took that advice from
the police, and that was one of the first things
that I asked anyone in the services, because I always
feel like, am I doing the right thing? Should I
be reaching out? And everybody always said do not. It's
not up to you to reach out to them to
(31:14):
make yourself feel better. They may not want to hear
from you. And that was hard. That was really hard.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
And of course all of those dynamics continue to be challenging,
and all we can do with them is to put
our hands on our hearts and just say we are
doing everything we can to try and ensure that no
family goes through anything like this again if we can
do anything about it with what we've experienced, and I
(31:44):
guess we'll get into it later, but you choose is
working and if it wasn't, we wouldn't be doing it.
Just explain because we were talking about it.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
But you choose. That's part of the non of it advocacy.
You've gotten the training or educating people on what you've
been through to try and prevent this type of thing happening.
When did you find out the full circumstances You talked
about the toxicology report coming through, Was there a coronial inquest?
(32:17):
And did you attend there were a inquest?
Speaker 2 (32:20):
And the coronial inquest was three years later, so that's
when all the full details came out. We chose not
to attend that, and we only found out only a
few days before. It took so long for that report.
So Peter was overseas for work at the time, and
I found out maybe about four days before the coronial
inquest was on, and I spoke to the coroner and
(32:42):
myself and I just said, I don't think I can come.
It was really confronting to know that I would be
there with the families, the families of those people that
children killed, and I knew that he wasn't there to
own up to what he did.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
All of that would.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Fallen to me. So I spoke to the coroner and
I asked me if he could send me the forensic
crash report. I wanted to know exactly what happened. I
felt like I owed it to Jordan's victims, to Jordan's
victim's families, to understand everything that that meant. So I
got the coronial sorry, the yeah, the forensic Kresh report
right at the time the inquest was going on, and
(33:24):
it was really it was a really tricky time because
it was all over the news. Again, it was only
three years down the track, and it was just it
was crazy. And I remember sitting down one night and
I read that report cover to cover, like I read
the whole thing, and it was confronting an ye. I
just cried and cried thinking about it, and I sort
of regret now that I didn't have the courage to
(33:46):
go to that coronial inquest. Had I gone, maybe I
might have regretted going it. But you know, like, where
is the manual that you get when your son kills
four people? The manual that you can follow to go,
this is what you do when your son kills four people?
One doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Sadly, it doesn't exist, and it's there for other than
a few people. It's uncharted territory.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
It's also something that we don't really talk about a
lot those you know, it's it's even giving me a
little heart palpitations to even talk about it publicly. It's
something that we keep very very private.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
To rebuild yourself from what's happened from the start, I
would my observations, and I think it's what you've said.
Your life from that point in time when you found
out about the crash has changed so dramatically that you
could never envisage that this is what your life would
be about your children, your family. Are you still coping like?
(34:51):
Is it? I would imagine each days? And you said,
one foot step stepping forward for your children? Is that
what kept you going?
Speaker 4 (35:00):
Certainly in the early days here, we pretty quickly figured
out that there wasn't healing involved in any of this,
and that if we were seeking to put the weight
(35:21):
of grief and the visceral feelings of culpability down, or
it was some form of process that you recovered from,
I think that was misguided in our case at least.
And I think from the time that we realized that, look,
we need, we've got to weight to carry.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
What does it mean?
Speaker 4 (35:44):
How do we assist each other to carry it together?
And how do we carry it with some sort of
sense of purpose and meaning? Is there any sort of
grace or peace anywhere in this we were seeking it?
Speaker 3 (36:00):
We sawt it.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
But from the time we realized that they putting it
down is not going to work. We got to understand
how to carry.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
This, okay, So to make it.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
You can't put that in the compartment and just step
aside from it and not open not open it. Was
there any advice or how Quite often through homicide and
where deaths have occurred in tragic and sudden circumstances, the
people around the families of the victim or the person
(36:31):
who has died don't know how to meet with you.
And I've had families of murdered victims saying that close
friends would avoid them because they don't know what to say.
People just didn't know how to react or just pretend
it didn't happen and have a conversation. What were the
things that helped you the most, the way that people
(36:53):
reacted around you and supported you.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
I think, well, would you like to I guess I'll
go In the first instance, for us, it was and
we say the same things as we were look at
each other.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
We know what we're going to say.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
People want to solve They want to make you feel better,
and that's beautiful. You don't want them to understand, do you, Gary?
Speaker 3 (37:18):
When understand that?
Speaker 4 (37:20):
So when people say to you, I could never understand
how you could feel you've got to go good. I
never want you to understand how how it feels. The
most effective support that we've got and that we still
get and that we'll always get is just the simplicity
of just love. Solutions, not so much you can't turn
(37:42):
back the clock. Love and support is what has always
been the most effective for us, and it's certainly uplifted
us and enabled us to sort of move on to
something that might be a positive out of all this.
So yeah, the simplest thing, okay, is that that you
(38:04):
share that view. Well.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
I always think of the one the story that comes
to mind in the very early days and a lot
of people, you know, would over hug me and they
would be so sad and for me, and I'd be like, oh,
you just got to leave me alone, Like who's the
hug for you or for me? And in those early days,
a lot of people would just be like, you know,
how how are you not thinking? Honeybody think I am?
You know, And it was such an insulting question. I
(38:27):
was like, why would you ask me that? And I
was at my daughter's creation at the gym that I
used to go to at the time, and she was
a much you know, she's maybe in her late seventies,
I guess. And she came up to you one day
and she just you know, she put a hand on
her shoulder and she gave me a squeeze and she
said to me, how are you today? And I remember thinking,
thank you for saying today that one word, because yesterday
(38:49):
I was absolutely, you know, atrocious. Today I'm feeling okay.
So thanks for letting me or thanks for letting me
off the hook that you know, it's just about today.
And I have said right from the very day that
Jordan died. You know, we only got through one sunset
at a time, so the idea was to get through today, right,
there's another sunset radio tomorrow. We'll just get through to
(39:10):
tomorrow's sunset. And a lot of people, you know, wanted
to involve themselves in what was going on. And I
am so grateful that this man has such a so
to point you pointing it.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
That's a audio, there is video, but there's this man.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
This man, he has such an emotional high emotional IQ.
So during this period he instinctively knew what to do
to protect his family. Now, it might not work for
someone else's family. But we became very, very insular. We
sort of reached out to everyone saying, just give us time. Please,
don't phone, don't drop over flowers, don't knock on the door.
(39:48):
We just need to sit and be We need to
sit in this and understand it. So we were very
much we didn't include people in the process. We asked
people to give us a lot of time. We also
had the girls, so and again, where's the manual? You know?
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Funny funny enough.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
Just being listening to your many podcasts, Gary, you probably
I know that I can recall hearing this before, you know,
and we certainly hear it from other bereaved people or
other people that are dealing with dealt with tragedy.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Is that.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
The next steps in your life aren't necessarily linear. Yeah,
like you're not necessarily hanging around holding hands, going right.
We're all experiencing this together. There's a way you deal
with losing Uncle Clary at ninety, you know, and then
celebrating a beautiful, wishful life, and there's all the other
there's the other things, you know, and it's not always
(40:45):
this neat sort of the square peg in a square
hole that one size fits everything.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
In terms of how.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
You go on and what next steps look like and
all that. And I mean we might live another thirty
years or forty years and still not have the answers.
And I think giving or letting go of the idea
that you have to heal and you have to be
well and you have to demonstrate to the world that
(41:14):
you're on this pathway to recovery. It's a little bit
of pressure you don't need, I can imagine.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
And you've raised some points that made me think about
you come up, you give someone a cuddle, and yeah,
are you cuddling for yourself or you've cuddling to give
me the comfort there. I like what you just said there,
And I think, you know, if we're going to get
messages across and we are in this podcast because I
think it's inspirational what you've guys, how you've processed this
(41:43):
and steered it in a positive direction in terms of
education and letting people learn from what happened in your situation.
But I love that how are you feeling today? Because
that's a good thing, because you know, we've all had
situations where people come up and want to comfort you
(42:04):
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
How are you?
Speaker 1 (42:07):
How the fuck do you think I am.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
That's the attitude.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
But how are you today? It's very simple. Look, I'm
just doing a bit tough today. Tomorrow might be better,
or you know, I'm feeling great today, but who knows.
It's a simple question.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Very same lady the first time I saw her after
it happened, and again I guess this is the wisdom
that you get or that becomes you as you get older.
But she came up to his sweetest thing, and she
just again just lightly popped a hand on my shoulder,
and she said, there are just no words, so I'm
not going to say anything. And I remember thinking, thank you,
(42:43):
because that's the exact thing that I want to hear.
There are no words. So people often ask me for
grief advice, which I think, oh my goodness, just because
I've gone through grief doesn't mean you know that we
are grief experts. And you can't compare grief. You can't
compare my grief in someone else's grief. And I I
had an emotionally intelligent husband, I had young girls that
(43:03):
I had to keep getting up every morning and getting
them to school. Kitty was still at home at that stage.
I worked at that time I had to keep functioning.
Some people don't have that. Some people. I had a
flexible job, I had a husband, We we have a
lovely we had a beautiful life beforehand. So the chaos
that Jordan created, thank goodness, we had this really yeah,
(43:26):
some underpinning and a strong foundation to carry us through
something that we would have never ever thought we would
ever be able to survive.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Let alone.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
You know, turn it into too what we're doing around
the country.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
There's a few different things to you to your question. Yeah, it's.
Speaker 4 (43:46):
You can see we've we've met many, many bereaved parents
on this on this journey, and that sounds really morbid,
but boy, you meet some beautiful, beautiful people who have
experienced their own version, and everyone does of the bottom
of the barrel.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
So as you go through that, and.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
Even I'm looking at you, Gary, knowing what your experience
in life is, knowing that in time, you develop a
deep respect for the fact that everyone's got their version.
You're getting their bumps splintered by the bottom of the barrel, right,
and everyone responds in a different way. And I think
it increases, or it increased our empathy in general, because
(44:28):
while you're dealing with your own kind of narrow version
of what that looks like. Certainly early in the piece,
you know, part of going on is to sort of
broaden that focus and go. It does tell you that
the world is carrying a lot of pain out there
that you're not necessarily seeing, you know so, and that
that can manifest itself in so many different ways. Like
(44:49):
we we are blessed because if we didn't handle this
entire set of circumstances in a way that was complement
to each other, you can see how these things would.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Just destroy put just tear people.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
Apart it you weren't on the same page. The other
side of that same coin is that having gone through
that together. I often say this, and I'm sorry for
repeating myself, sweetheart, but it's one thing to love each other.
It's something else altogether to admire them, and that's profound.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
You better get the tissues, so those steps, and.
Speaker 4 (45:33):
It's taken a while to actually understand that feeling and
being able to articulate it, because we often get asked,
how do you even to what the work that we
do today all these years after it can be depleting
it It has to be you have to be vulnerable
to do it.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Right, you're giving you, you're coming on here. You're talking
about some very deep emotions.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
Don't get us wrong, we've had some very very dark
but we've done it to get we look like we're
strong and brave and all those things. But it's been
a journey to get here.
Speaker 4 (46:02):
But I guess what I'm saying is that if you
find a way of filling each other's tank as much
as it gets depleted, and you're doing that for each
other and it's complementary, including our daughters and the rest
of our family being able to do that, you can
make sense of something that literally doesn't make sense, as
you correctly pointed out going all the way back.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
And I've seen family situations and couples caught up in
tragedy that life dishes out, and quite often that it
might be You'll turn to be the strong one there
because I need the comfort, and then you can reverse roles.
And they're the ones, my observations there, the ones that
seem to be able to work, because you can't both
be strong every day like someone's going to have a
(46:45):
down day. But if you've got a partner that's emotionally
attuned and capable of supporting when you're down and switching it.
I think the complexities of what you guys have gone
through is it's not just grief. If you carry shame,
you carry regret and a whole range of very powerful emotions.
(47:06):
So it must have been so difficult navigating your way
a way through all that.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
And thank goodness, Peter has such a high emotional intelligence.
Had I been you do, don't get cranky. That's going
to say if you keep looking like we're going to
have the next stop.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
It yes, no, he is.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
That really helped our family get through that. Peter knew
what to do to protect his family. I'm so grateful
that I would not be the woman that I am.
I would not have been able to do the part
of you choose that I do had Peter not been
able to steer us in those very very early days.
Same with my girls. It's why my girls are doing
so well. We had the foundation, but then Peter instinctively knew.
(47:48):
And it's probably that you know that man protector feeling
inside of you and actually that man protect a feeling
that you had for your families. It's what's eked into
YouTube that's really at the bottom, at the end of
the day, what you choose. It's all about. It's all
about how do you protect the people that you love.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
It makes sense. Where do you think you learned that
from Peter? Where did do you think those characteristics were
instilled in you?
Speaker 3 (48:13):
Gary?
Speaker 2 (48:15):
I appreciate the compliment I was going to say without
sounding like Wenka.
Speaker 4 (48:19):
Yeah, it's true. I'm glad you see that, thank you.
But for me, I learned that simply because for many
years in my life I was a boy until I
had a boy to raise. I met Melissa in my
mid thirties. Melissa had two kids yep, one very young
(48:44):
kid and Jordan, who was a little bit older, and
I realized, having met Melissa with the two kids, just
exactly what.
Speaker 3 (48:52):
Was missing in my life.
Speaker 4 (48:54):
And as cliche as this is, I was just a
lion walking around the savannah without a pride.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
I like the description, I just didn't.
Speaker 4 (49:06):
I had a lot gone for me. I was financially
in a good spot and career and everything was good.
Some's missing, And the missing thing became so apparent to
me the second that I had kids to father.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
And that's the answer to the question.
Speaker 4 (49:27):
There's there's nothing complicated in my background or anything like that,
other than the fact that that that instinct that was
in me that was just uneven detectable at the time,
let alone unrequired, was just sitting in there. And you're right,
that level of cops.
Speaker 3 (49:48):
That that level of.
Speaker 4 (49:51):
That kind of dynamic does eke its way through into
the philosophies that were being taught by kids. Yeah, it
it's I think there's a whole there's a lot of
us out there that have got that instinct. And you
know it comes out in many different ways, doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
Well, it comes out when it has to come out,
and in your situation that it was make or break.
When the situation you're confronted with it, it could have
broken you and it sort of made you the situation.
So you're we're giving all the compliments to Peter at
this stage, but you've you've hung in there and you're
(50:33):
you're been strong all the way through. Where where did
that come from? And you can't say it was all Peter?
I let you get away of that.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
That's right, Definitely wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (50:45):
The strong part of me comes from that weight of
civic responsibility that bears down on my shoulders. I can
justify why Jordan died that night, and I was sitting
with my cousin when I come down to do presentation,
and so I often go and stay with my beautiful cousins.
And she said to me one night, if we're all
sitting in a circle, and we all threw our problems
(51:06):
into the center, we'd probably take out our own problems.
And I was thinking, you're absolutely right. Part of why
where I speak for myself, part of why I feel
like I'm able to go on, is that I can
justify what Jordan. I can justify Jordan dying, He drank, drove,
he drug drove, he spared. What do you expect, you know,
(51:28):
if you're gonna do those sort of things where you
can't go, oh, do you know why? God, why did
this happen? Whereas for someone like Jordan's victims, I can't
justify what happened to those kids. They were five kids
sitting in a car, broken down car, minding their own business,
and my son drunk stoned, speeding, hit the back of
(51:50):
that car and killed four of those kids. He left
a little girl orphaned that night. There was two young
parents in that car, you know, in the six year
old l play that was left with severe boons and trauma.
So part of that strength that I've got is thinking
Jordan doesn't deserve. This is going to sound really harsh
(52:12):
and really horrible. This is through the lens of I
loved Jordan, but this is what goes through me. Deserve
is not the right word. But when you act like
Jordan did that night, what do you expect? You know,
I can justify it, But for those those other young adults,
I can't justify that. And that's the strength that I
carry to go if there is one thing that I
(52:34):
can do to inspire or influence, or that we can
do to inspire or influence just one team to not
make a choice that might destroy the lives of the
families like Jordan destroyed the life of those victims and
those victims families. All of my strength comes from that.
Hand on heart. That is what drives me. And there's
(52:56):
no way we would put ourselves through this if we
didn't think that what we were doing made an impact.
And hand on heart, we know that it is.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
We know.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
I hear it in the conversations that I have with
young teens around the country. In a straight after a presentation. Oh,
I have so many kids up. It's almost like come
up afterwards, and it's like having a confessional because what
they've done is They've related to Jordan's behavior, so they
can see themselves in Jordan. And whilst I'm holding up
(53:28):
a mirror, what I'm doing is I'm not showing them
my family. I'm showing them their family. So they're sitting
there going, well, goodness, I do that, I do that
I do. That could be my mum, that could be
my little sister. I show footage of Montana speaking at
Jordan's memorial, and it gets them to deeply, deeply reflect
about what they're doing. And I think that's the magic
dust of Youtobe is that I loath to think of
(53:48):
myself an as an educator, and I'm using air commas here.
The idea behind everything that we do is when one
of those teens walks out of our program, they've arrived
at conclusions about themselves, about their mates, about their social ecosystem,
and that that role that they play inside that social
(54:09):
ecosystem around protection, around leadership. What is it am I
leading negatively? Is this a positive thing that I'm doing
or is it a negative thing? So they're not being
taught anything they've arrived at the conclusions for themselves, and
that again, that's what inspires me and gives me the strength,
gives us the strength to just keep on keeping on.
(54:31):
Just one kid, Gary, just one kid, and all of
it will have been worthwhile.
Speaker 1 (54:37):
Wow, Okay, I can see why what you're doing is
making a difference. And I think people that have listened
to our chat just at this point in time get
the depth of where it's coming from, on what you're
talking about. And I think that was important for us
to set up the sort of platform because in part
(54:57):
two we'll take a break now, but in part two
we're going to talk about what you're actually doing and
breaking down the messages and the lessons that you're learned
and the information that you're passing on. Because I got
to say, and your avid listeners to our catch killers,
you've heard all the impressive people that we've had on,
inspirational people and all that, but speaking to you too,
(55:20):
and the importance the simplicity of the message, but the
importance of the message that you guys are delivering. I
encourage everyone to come back and listen to part two.
And if I said it at the start that the
introduction that. If you've got kids, I advise them to
listen to it too, because it can make a difference.
And with horrible situations that what you guys have been
(55:44):
confronted with the four victims and your son in that
lives have been lost, lives have been destroyed. We turn
that tragedy and that horror situation into something positive. And
I think that's what you guys are doing. That's what
I want to talk about, in part to breaking it
down who you're speaking to and the type of message
(56:06):
you're getting across, and any other insightful thoughts that you
guys might have, because seeing here listening to you, I'm
being inspired by what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (56:14):
Thanks Gary, look forward to it.
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