The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. Detective see a side of life the average persons 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. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world. Welcome to another episode of I Catch Killers.
Now.
I normally prepare the introduction for the guests when they come on I Catch Killers. But I've decided to do something a little bit different today. Today's guest is Peter Linden James, and this is how he's described on a website. After twenty six years as an addict, drug dealer and criminal, Peter turned his life around to create Australia's largest and toughest rehab housing over one hundred and fifty residents no cost to the community. Peter has upended everything we know
about addiction and rehab. Now, I figure with an introduction like that, I don't need to add anything because this is going to be an interesting chat and I'm looking forward to speaking to Peter Lindon James on I Catch Killers.
Peter Lindon James, Welcome to I Catch Killers.
They're goody, it's good.
To be a well, it's good to sit down and have a chat with you. I've had quite a few people drop your name and the work that you're doing at Shalom as Shalem House and quite impressive. So a lot of people have been pointing me in that direction. And so the work you're doing over there is reaching the east coast of the country because you're over in Perth.
Yeah, it's good getting around.
Well, you're doing something that's making a difference. So you should be proudiest often happy that the reputations traveling.
Yeah, thank you.
In prepping for this.
Chat with you, I've got to say you've certainly had an interesting life.
Yeah, you could say that a bit of variety.
Yeah, a variety incarcerated, addictions, crime, time in prison, all sorts of things. And here you are turning your life around. Did you think you would make it this far at the low point in your life? Like what goes through your mind when you're going in and out of jarle you're addicted and your habitual offender and addict.
Basically, yeah, mate, telling the truth.
I don't actually I don't look ahead. I just I just try now, just get up to be the best me I can be. I mean, and my whole life, I just wanted to be a geek, normal person and just doing normal stuff and I want my life to matter. And unfortunately, because of the way they grow up and what I went through, I grew up on the wrong side of the fence doing stuff that I didn't want to do. But yeah, just sort of the cards that were dealt.
Yeah, So even that those those lower points in your life, you were just still looking I want to get out of this life, but I'll just get through the day and we'll worry about it the next day.
Is that the sort of the way you rolled?
Yeah, just day by day, just whatever came came. Just accepted who I was, what I did, and like most people, you just accept it and thing's going to be a lot to hit the big wall and then I sort of recalibrate and then just do it again and again. It's like groundhole day, just doing what you don't want to do, and it's sort of just your life follows you.
Yeah, you're a slave to it. Well, you have been quoted somewhere. I just read this quite out because it's pretty heavy, but it sort of gives an insight. I hated who I was, what I stood for. I hated everything that I'd become, but I didn't know who I was. That's confronting and sad on a lot of different fronts, but that how you felt.
That's how I felt from probably the age of eight onwards. Just the whole life just hated me. So what I stood for, what I did, how I smelt people, I hurt my life, I lived family, you name it.
You carry a lot, don't you. Well, look you've turned your life around, and there's something and we want to talk about that. And now you're the CEO and you actually established it, the Shalem House and it's been described as Australia's strictest rehabilitation center where you employ a tough love approach that has been seen Shalom become the most successful rehab center in Australia.
That's something to be proud of.
I am.
I love my staff, love my residence. I'm really proud of or the effort to put in and it's taken a lot over the probably the last thirteen fourteen years to establish the culture and now it's not one person carrying it, it's all of us who carry it.
It's nice when you set something up that's worthwhile and you create that lineage, isn't it where people are it's not all to you.
You've passed on the torch and people are out actually doing it with you.
Now.
Yeah, right from day tod always, I learn it, I teach it, I delegate it, I let go, and I just I want it to run, not because of me, but in spite of me. So I'll get you by a truck tomorrow. It'll just keep going. It's definitely laid on a good solid foundation.
Yeah.
Well, that's a pretty good insight into running anything or doing anything, is that you create it to the situation where you set it up so it doesn't need you.
That's a perfect, perfect thing. We're going to talk.
We're going to talk in great deal about what you're doing at Shalam House because I think it's fascinating and to give people an insight into why it is so successful and why people are coming there and knocking on the door to get in because of the reputation. But before we do, I want to talk about your upbringing.
Get a sense of where you've come from, because I think people are you know, it's one thing to say this is my life, now, look how successful I am, but people have got to understand where you came from because it's your life experiences that have got you to this point. So tell us about your upbringing.
Well, ninety percent of the people that we will actually help, the root cause of what they are like they are is actually childhood trauma. Me Lockridge, which is in Perth, is a bit like the Bronx type stuff. I gore up in Lockridge, some second eldest of five kids. I got an older sister, two younger brothers, and the younger sister the Lockridge scanned. The way where everything started going
wrong was when I was probably six or seven. My dad actually went out with my mum and they had a baby sitter stay over the night and looked after us five kids, and I come back, and they come back, and I wake up in the morning.
All I could hear was screaming and yell.
And there's a five year old, six year old I can actually remember it. And we're on a two story place. I walked out in the bedroom and I've seen Dad going down the stairs and Mum just through this pot and like a cooking pot at the back of Dad's head.
And for me, that was.
Where all life started going skew with. So I'm a six year old kid. Dad's moved out of home, moved into moto and my mom she started drinking lots, and I remember the repossession of people coming through after Dad moved out, took our TV lounge fridge because Mom couldn't afford the payments, and our quality of life kept going down. But as a kid, all I can remember was Mum throwing the pot. When I was going to school lock Whose Primary school, I'd pull in the Eaton Hill Pub.
My dad was starting at the motel on the way to school. So Dad do it something from the shops. He gave me ten backs and get us a pack of fags, and I lay for bread and so I'd go down the shop give him matt and he said, I keep the change. And I really loved my dad. I was really close to my dad. He was a mechanic, deeds a mechanic. And I'd done that for like three four weeks. And one day I went knocked on the
motel and knocked on the motel. No one was there, and so I went to get on my pushbite right off, and the garden was in the car park and I said to himself, you seen my dad, and goes, oh, your dad doesn't live anymore. He's moved up north. And when he said that, I just broke down and cried. I can remember it clear as day. I just felt that he abandoned me. And from then onwards just life just went crap mate. My mom started moving from house
to house. I went from gool to school, and by the time I was eight, I'd been at like six different schools, seven different schools. She started drinking lots abused alcohol. One in particular fellow that she was with. He used to discover her by the hair and I'd walk out and the lander at three o'clock in the morning, all
the screaming had stopped. I had my brothers and sisters hit under the bed, but I walk out in the lander and mumby sitting on the end of the lounge, and her face would be mad in blood, two black eyes, her false teeth to be smashed in half, and she'd be sitting on the lounge like that, the superlo trying to glue her teeth back together.
The alcohol, no food in the cupboards.
Every school, you go to your height behind the library, and because other kids would picked on you, you never had a fixed group of friends, never had school clothes like other kids. I was going through all this stuff as a young kid, and I shouldn't have been subjected to it. But eventually mumy going to a rehab and my brothers and sisters went to my grandma, and I tried to stay with my mom. So Gavin Judy and
Gavin Shrean Gray went to grandma's. My sister went to her best friends, and I went into her Wansley Children's Home and then into Foster Cany. Mom at the rehab and then when she get out of the rehabit all she did was drink and spend time with his bloke. And I met some young kid in the caravan park
and it's become mates. And one night I said, Mum, can I stay with it my mate's carry and he goes yeah, And then I started with my mate's caravan and I wake up three o'clock at the morning and my mate's uncle was giving me oral sex and I'm laising their frozen solid and mate year old kid and yeah, this bloke was doing stuff to me and I had to pretend I was asleep. And the reason I share that is that that's one of the root causes of
why I was like I was. And I remember geting up in the morning and walked out of the carrian park and I heard a voice and it says, tell you, mum, And then I heard another voice and now, stuff ya suffer. She doesn't love you. She loves this man or the alcohol more than she loves you. And I remember thinking, as night year old kid, yeah, stuffa, she loves him more than she loves me. If she loved me, I wouldn't have been molested. I would have been all these
children's homes. I mean, I would to be in all these different schools. And so from the age eight, I literally hated her guts and every chance I could, I just ran away. I'd run away from her to sleep under my mate's floorboards. And if it wasn't and that I was in Good Samaritan bidness. I was living on the streets from the age eight. Age of nine, they put me into another children's home even Perth called Parkaol
Children's Home, and I spent three sins in there. From the age of nine, I used to run away back up there for two weeks run away again the third time they caught me from the good run away from Parky. I was sleeping in the Good samaran been at the middle of Gate Shoping Center. And I remember waking up in the morning five o'clock, four o'clock on the morning with the coppers with a big torch light on my head. And so they took me back up to Parklor So I hadn't seen me dad since he took off when
I was six. From now nine, they took me out to park with children's aims and I walked walked into this room right and I had my dad sitting on the right and I had the counselor sitting on the left. And again I remember this as clear as day, and she said, listen Pete, you obviously don't want to be here. You're wasted down time and our resources. You can either go with your dad or you're going a lot more.
And I didn't realize long more was a boy's prison, like with bars and all that sort of stuff, actual prison. But I looked at my dad and I heard his voice again and said, he doesn't love you. He loves the babysitter more than he loves you, because it turned out that he ended up running off with a babysitter, had two kids with her, and went out to the marble bar.
That's where he'd been for the last three years.
But I looked at me Dad, and I heard this voice, I don't love you now, And so I said to this chick, I got a lot more.
And then I heard this voice and making a mistake, and.
Then I heard these other ways, nice stuff stuff he make him pay for what he's doing.
Yeah, I mean.
And so my dad was the one who drove me a lot more eleven o'clock at night, and when we pulled it up at the gates, nine year old kid, and I tell you what, my heart mate was going fin in a mile and hour. I've never been so scared and we're like And I walked up to these big bars, this prison offs to come down with all these keys, and I went through the gates and I looked back and the dad walking back to the car and with the baby sit in the front of the
passage seat or his wife. And they took me into the into the prison. They took me into the prison and the train, and they stripped me naked. They put nick cream on my hair, crab cream on me nuts, and they gave me six comic books and eat the toilet shoders. And they marched me down these right prison cells and there's like nine cells to the left, nine cells to the right.
I'm getting put.
In prison just because I want my mom and my dad and I done nothing wrong. And I remember when they marched me down about six cell and the left down side open the door, pushed me in the slot and the bolted the door shut. I remember chucking me comic books that we crap on the steel bench, jumping on the bed, just grabbed a hold on my pillow, started to bottomie out, crying saying, if you let me out now, I'll behave. I won't run away again.
That experience of getting put in a prison as a nine year old kid. Kid scared the liver crap out of me.
I'm rocking side to side and I heard a voice in me cell Again, I'm going to refer to a voice quite often, but I heard a voice of Mesell and I said, Peter, from this stay forward. You're going to have to look after yourself. And so I made a vow from they stay forward. I'm going to look after myself when I get stressed. Now I'm a fifty four year old fellof, but I cut on my slow to get to sleep.
Every night.
I wake up the next day and we clean your cell out, up your floor, stand by yourself door for selling, inspects to shirts tucked down, hands behind your back, not talking. So I'm sit there in the prison sell with all these other kids, and do they inspect you end up spending three months in Lonmar. But that three months in Nornmore was the first time that I ever found I had a home.
All those other kids in you know, there's about one hundred.
And forty of them, one hundred and thirty of them, but they all had stories like mine, that mum had run off with a man, or dad had run off with a woman and they were just like me. All they wanted was a mum and dad normal, But because of the life that they parents have lived, they were wearing the consequences of the parents' choices.
Yeah, I just unpacked that story and I haven't interrupted you because it's just it's heavy, mate, that's a sad story and that you know, my heart goes out for you. And I'm looking at your seeing you're a big tough man, but I'm looking at this young kid.
Yeah, life dealt you some shit cards, But isn't it.
It wasn't good.
Just how these things happen, these sliding door moments, and just one person's life is just forever stuffed up. I'm sitting here and I've heard a lot of stories on my catch killers and a lot of people have been down some tough paths. But Peter, the way that you told that really took me there and thinking what would I be thinking at that age as a kid, What would be going through my head?
Like my mom doesn't love me, my dad doesn't love me.
Violence is the thing you go to a place where you feel a little bit more secure, you sexually assaulted, then you get locked up in a prison, and it's a prison, call it juvenile whatever, it's a prison.
You're not allowed out.
You haven't done anything wrong, You're just trying to look after yourself. Like fuck me, I do not know how people come through that and the stuff that you must carry from that. We all carry some sort of childhood trauma. But full credit to you that you can sit here and talk about it and you survive that. I just want to get a sense, like you're in and out
from the age of nine into those detention centers. Do you have an old detention centers does it create Tell me how you think when you're in there, because I would imagine you'd be thinking, I'm just a worthless piece of shit. Nobody cares about me. This is you know, and you've become a self fulfilling prophecy.
I would imagine in jail you've got a projected image that people perceive to fit in with where you are. You've got to adapt to the culture. But what's normal in prison is what's normal outside. And prisons don't actually make your better, they make your worse. And so when you get out of prison, even though you're out of prison, you're still in prison. You can take the prisoner out of prison. You've got to get the prison out of the prisoner. And so all jail did for me, I
was just institutionalized. If I wasn't locked up, I've been living on the streets. But I thought I was away, that I wasn't good enough, I didn't belong No one loved me, Mum and dad. I was just a mess man. And then and then there's stuff I'll be in for. I spent seven years a lot more two years in Riverbank. When I wasn't locked up, I lived on the streets. I was straight kidding Perth from nineteen seventy nine, nine
eighty eight. Yeah, when I was in jail, mate, I was on the on the streets do a lot of stuff they shouldn't have done.
Well, I look at look at your life, per Who do you have as a role model there? Like who's who's your role model? You like it as a kid, you're looking for role models. You're looking for someone that I want to follow that person or I want that person to help me in life.
Who is your role model?
And then again, I've come across a couple of geek fellaws, older fellaws. They just feel like they're your dad, and I get I get that with Chris DAWs. I met Chris DA's West Australian governor at the moment, but I met him a fair few years back.
And form former cop Chris.
Yeah, he was a police commissioner and then now he's governor. But I really related to remember time I sat down and how he armed with him and an unpacked. He just he felt like my dad.
I mean, yeah, And.
So there's a few blakes like that that's come across my path since I've been semi normal that I can I can download to.
But otherwise I've got one.
Hundred and sixty residents and all these stuff, so I don't really have time to look up. I'm just focusing on what's someone below me.
Hey, I ask you this question.
Do you think if at that stage and you know the nature of the person that you are or whatever, do you think if there was one person in your life? Yeah, so it was an uncle and auntie, just someone that could have helped you and steered you through, do you think your life would have been completely different?
Nah?
I don't actually reason being is I was full that unforgiveness and having unforgiveness in his like swallen rat poison and expecting the other person to die. And I believe that all my actions and everything that I'd done was paying them back, but it was actually hurting me. So I hated my mom, I hated my dad, and I made sure that I made whatever decisions that I could to have a negative effect on them. And the absence of having mum and dad. I mean, I've never played
I've never played sports. The one thing I did with the sports is I've never played sports. I've never been on a family holiday. I've never been able to run up the corridor and jump into bed with Mum and Dad for cuddle. I mean, no one taught me how to lift the toilet seat to do a piss, you know. I mean, yeah, I just I was just angry. He blamed everybody else and no matter who it was that tried to help me. My grandma, I took off, my uncle, I took off my other Gramdmar, I just took off.
I just yeah, I was just I just want my mom and my dad. There was no substitute.
Yeah, he's that like almost survival to the anger that you just you hate the world.
Yeah, you hate the world, and you look at the drugs and substances that cover it out, and you try to have a good time and trying to find a substitute for what you didn't never had, and I never found it.
Talk us about the drugs you're living the life of crime. I want to talk about your crime, but just talk us about the creep into the world of finding peace with your drugs or finding something you're looking for with drugs.
How'd you fall into that?
So after I spent three months in long Wall for the first time when I was nine, they put me in another children's home. I met some of the kids who were in Long War in the children's same and that's when I was introduced to drugs when I was nine,
with cones first, then math, speed, then myth later on. Yeah, I just started the drugs from there, being institutionalized from the age of nine to eighteen, and that was just NonStop, no conviction, just kept doing what I'd do and I went started breaking the house, of stealing cars, fraud high speed chases. I'd be locked up for six months out for a month, back in for eleven months, out for
a day, back in for another. I spent seven birthdays in a row in a lot more two years in Riverbank, and my my crime and all my stuff started slowing down when I hit probably the age eighteen nineteen.
So what was drugs doing for you? Did you, like, did you even have a sense this was dangerous for you? Like it was anyone sort of gown? What are you doing? Did you ever think what am I doing?
No? Not that day.
I was just having a hell of a lot of fun, sleeping with her. I can sleep with grab a holder, can grab a hold. I just have a lot of fun. Young and stupid. Absolutely, I'm stupid, unteachable everyone else.
What do you know? Old people use it? You mean, I'm just young and stupid.
When when did you realize in your life that you became dependent on drugs so that it really got you, Like at first you're thinking I can try this, I can walk away from When did you yourself go shit, it's got me.
Probably around nineteen I was. I mean, I'd stop doing the petty crime stuff. I mean I'd buy stolen goods here and there. But yeah, I just couldn't do without drugs, you know. And I've moved like literally every three months in my whole life, right up to the age of thirty one.
I'd go from town to town to town.
I think, if I just go to Caggooley, right, I just go to Cagooley, I'll just gout there and work. But when I got to Cagiley, because of my personality and who I felt comfortable with, everybody that I felt comfortable with was doing what I did want to do. So I'd start off with a packet, get to an We'll get to an ounce, and that's how I'm going to go. And so then I took off to South Australia. I detox and then I run into somebody else. I start off with the packet, getting an able, get to
an ounce. And if I wasn't on the math, I'll be on the chill and it wasn't on the chore. I'll be on a drink and I wasn't on the drink, then I'd be on the prescription medication. I needed some sort of chemical or substance to feel normal. But the problem is my tolerance. You start off with one, then you go to two, and then two goes to four, and it's just it's just like a snic, a never
ending cycle. I didn't realize all my childhood stuff or the pain or the anger or the guilt, the shame or the I didn't realize all my childhood stuff was having in effect. I mean I was looking for something to try and mask or cover it.
It's interesting you say that you could travel anywhere or go or try to break away, but the kind finds kind. You end up with the people that you've ran away from there in another town.
Yeah.
Like I said, you can take the prisoner out of prison, right, Yeah, but you've got to get the prison out of the prisoner. And when you go to prison, you've got to learn to project the image that people perceive and what you do in jail and who you've got to become. Even if you're a good person, I mean, you're blake walking in your slot. You've got stamp over his lies. It's intimidation's bulliants.
And all that.
And when you live in that environment for three, six, twelve months and then you get out, there's only certain people you feel comfortableund I mean, you're a geek straight out. You projected image that I perceive that you're normal, and my mum and dad, family holiday has done all this normal stuff. I mean I feel uncomfortable around you. You mean,
you feel I feel like you're better than me. So I go hang around people I feel comfortable, but they're all smashing picks in their arms and smoking pipes and pop and Pillso it's not just about rehabilitations, reintegration, resocialization, having to learn about having normal conversation with normal people who do normal stuff. But you never go there because it just brings up all your insecure or your crap. So you just go where you feel comfortable because it's easier.
It makes perfect sense the way you're explaining that you're going to gravitate towards an area or a group of people that you feel comfortable with. Let's break it down. Your experience in the juvenile tension centers, the boys' homes, whatever we want to call them. They have a hundred different different names for it. What's how could that be improved?
And I know, well I can say in New South Wales, I know corrective services are trying to make it make a difference, but you looking you've experienced it, is there anything that they could have broken the cycle in that environment?
Or mate?
I mean, I've been part of the system, water of the state, you name it, ever since i was a nine eight year old kid.
I was flagged.
I was sat in front of hundreds of psychiatrists, counselors, doctors, child psychologists, parole officers, community corrections, and those people don't realize the power that they have with that pen. And most of the people that I've sat with is just as screwed up as what I am. Even now, I have twenty counselors and I have to interview two hundred to get one. But the system, right, they always talk
about reducing the ricis of them. Rate my house, we just don't allow swearing, we don't allow gossip, we don't allow drugs. We don't mean the system itself. Now I have a psychiatrist, psychologist, child psychologists, I have twenty counselors.
I have the work life, home life.
I have all my own team all on board, and we work together as a team to help people change their life. The system they're not working together as a team. I mean, one does it this way, and then this one does it different, and this one does it different, and so you're just throwing around the system. But when you take away the coke un mechanism, you've got to deal with the roots. So your picture over here, we've got Bankshire Hill, which is a youth detention center. You're
pitting kids in a prison culture. I mean, if we started a new unit twenty one and you start by developing the culture, I mean, and honesty and highness and all that sort of stuff. When you put a person in that and you keep maintaining those rules, the person changes adapts. If the prisoners and all that bad culture is stronger than the good culture, the good culture is going to get it wiped out. But if the good culture is stronger than the bad culture, the bad culture is going to get wiped out.
That's why Shalon works. I got one hundred and.
Sixty living residents to stay with me between one year to three years. And I just don't tolerate swearing. I don't tolerate roosters. I'll chop rooster's heads off out the street. And it's not okay to gossip, it's not okay to drop behind somebody else's back. And thirteen years, I'll have not one police car, not one ambulance. I mean, you want to live under my house. I want love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness.
And the stuff the stuff you're talking there and will unpack it in detail. But that's the type of thing that could be brought bought into the prisons in the chemis centers.
Change the change the culture, set the culture.
And I just okay, we'll talk more on that, but I just want to get a sense, like the crimes, what what do you look back at your crimes now? Like I'm saying, a person that's got the interests of society and come to terms of everything that's gone on, do you look back at some of the crimes that you're committed. Is there any crime that you've looked back and gone how I don't even recognize that person.
Most of them the main from from the from credit card for it. They may using other people's identities, from stealing people's bobcats. I mean it's like I got a lot of regret. I mean I stole one Blake's bobcat, had it delivered to the house, and went and sold her on him and that wiped him and his family out. I mean, I've had ex girlfriends where she inherited some foreign notes. The foreign notes were nothing, but the value in those just because there were a grandfather's The value
to her was not about the money. It was about all these my grandpops. And when I turned my life around twenty years later, I hadn't seen her for twenty years. I actually found her and apologized that she broke down. She'd been carrying that for twenty years. I've done a lot of stuff that I'm ashamed of. I've slept with hundreds of prostitutes and broken her house and just done stuff that's just not good. I mean, selling all the drugs in that. This is not good. I mean, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
No, it's thanks for your honesty. Have you allowed yourself to forgive yourself? I say this, I'm not going to sit here in judgment of anything you've done. Looking at the start you're having life. So have you allowed yourself to forgive?
I have?
But for me, whenever I'm do an interview like this, I really don't care what you think about, or your listeners or whatever watch is on. What you see is what you get. If you don't like as your your problem. But I'm going to be real and I'm going to lead by example. I mean, if I can talk about stuff, then they can talk about stuff. I mean, somebod I'm one hundred percent transparent, and what you see is what you get. And I have I forgiven myself. You've forgiven myself.
Do I regret what I've done?
Yeah? Do I regret not having mom and Dad? Yeah?
Do I regret sleeping by my eyes back and having to tell her and watch your tears falling in the face.
Yeah, I regret it.
I mean when I put my kids through and man of the times I spent in jail, I regret it. I mean, and I don't want other people to live the life that I've lived. My family, right, he's the one that's laying back right now in a prison cell. He doesn't want to be here. He is he wants to change. But the geeks and now other people, they are not listening, and they just keep slapping them in prison,
and the prison doesn't fixture makes them worse. Your class addiction five categories ab CD, and there's three types seeds. These are the ones we take in shlammers and knee that hit the brick wall, and ones to do whatever it takes a change like the other. E's the one that want to go from an illegal drug to a legal drug. And the third one is what we build prisons for. We should be filtrating the three a's, putting
the ones we build prison for in prison. The number two a's should be going to drug an alcohol courses until they want to change, and the third one should be going to rehab and we're not. We're putting all three e's in the one basket. We're wondering why West Australia's prison population in the last ten years has gone from seven hundred to twenty two hundred, and we've got new prisons now obviously doing something wrong.
Look and we've been looking at a lot on my catch killers and we've done a lot of exploration into the prisons and what goes on. It just seems ridiculous, the recidivism that comes through and West Australia and New South Wales right across the country. If it's if it's not working, let's look at how to change it.
Now.
I now over here and i've lived over in Perth. I understand y there's a bad crime, there's big hullabaloo. Politicians come out, We're going to get tough on crime, mandatory sentencings, We're going to do this, all sorts of stuff. That's what we get in New South Wales and all the other states across the country. But we've got to try and think a little bit outside the square. If people get sent to prison, that's said punishment. They've been
taken away from society. Is it not in the interests of everyone that if someone goes in the prison it won't work for everyone. But if on the off chance you can make that person a better person when they come out of prison, I think everyone's a winner.
Yeah.
Well, I just had a fellow two weeks back and spent fourteen months in shilim. He's only a young fellow and got caught up doing something that he should have done, got done with the only two ounces of math. He couldn't give up the person who done it because of the repercussions, which I won't going to and but he spent fourteen months in Shilami's life changed. About two weeks ago they put him in prison for three years. Yeah, I mean it's going to undo what we've just done.
He's generally since remorse completely change owned everything. After fourteen months in prison. Instead of lettinghim spend on another fourteen months in prision, they stepping in jail for three years.
Well, I've seen some what I consider informed judges or magistrates or whatever that look a little bit deeper, and in a situation like that, they might make an exception and go, well, you know, okay, the book said we're going to send him back in or law says send him there for another fourteen months.
But let's look at his life.
That's where I cringe where people say mandatory sentence, because in all the times I was in the cops, I didn't see him one offense. It was identical to the other, like your upbringings, different to the other person and the circumstances,
so it's not one punishment fits all. But I also speak to victims of crime, so yeah, these are people that robberies where their loved ones have been murdered, a kid murdered, all sorts of things, and one person I raise him quite often because he's a bit, a bit of a talk to me and I admire the stuff that he's done. Ken Marslew, his son was murdered. He's working seventeen years old, working in aizza pizza hut. M Robbers come in, they shot him, shot him in the
back of the head with a shotgun, killed him. Ken was absolutely fuming. He was angry, every emotion you could think a parent would have in that circumstances. He wanted revenge, he wanted to see him punished, he wanted death penalty, wanted everything to occur. We're now twenty years down the track, and you speak the can.
He goes, I still.
Hold that anger. I still hold that anger. But what's going to happen if I hold that anger? It's going to destroy me. If they make prisons the whole system work to make the person better when they come out, that's not getting soft on crime. That's getting smart on crime, and it's helping victims because there'll be less victims. And it's a simple philosophy. But I think, touching on what you're being saying, I think you'd agree it makes sense.
Yeah, one hundred percent.
I mean what does makes sense also in wa is that if you've got a criminal record, and they've actually blanketed where you can't get into the prison system anymore. It's literally any person with the criminal record. I was at one of the prisons here, Kasha Prison, from two thousand and five to ten, three days a week, as a volunteer. In twenty ten, they just thought that and lived experience people who actually generally sincerely have turned their life round, do have a lot to give.
Well you should and get in touch with me. I can source it if we need to. Because over in New South Wales, I've seen a lot of people come here that the burn in situations like yours, done time in prison and they're opening their minds up to bringing them back and working in. In fact, had a blot that had done five years that then ended up working as a welfare officer in the prison and seeing people,
the prisoners that he was sharing the cell with. He's come in as working for Creative Services that's down in Victoria.
So well that's great.
Yeah, I lived experience because half the time, if you're in that environment, you got to bridge up. You can't show weakness. And you know you're not going to listen to as you call them, a geek or a straighty one to eighty come in and say this is how you should live your life. But if you walk in the door and go well, this is what's happened to me, and this is my story and this is what I think you do, people will sit and listen. It just makes just make sense, doesn't it.
Ond Per I'm actually a geek now Greek.
To me, he's like a normal person, a productive member of society, free for inancers of drugs and substances and do normal stuff. I mean, so I am actually a geek. But an image like these fellows is on the end of these cameras here they look like geeks.
Yeah, yeah, no, I know what you're saying.
But to get to get to those people, to listen lived experiences is something. And yeah, being a geek because you describe yourself. I had a mate that was in the bikies for a long time and he's okay, and I respected it to a degree. He was I'm an outlaw and I don't have a job. I don't pay taxes. I'm bike here, we're a one percent on the patch and that's what I do. He changed his life around,
turned his life around. He contacted me years and years later and said, you know what, mate, it's not bad being a sevilan, working, paying taxes, being part of society. And I love.
Seeing those turn around because he just did not see it at the time.
Yeah, I love it.
Okay, with the drugs and the time in prison, how long did you bend in prison?
All up?
So I say to people that I spent twenty six years in prison.
Even when you're not in prison, he's still in prison.
I understand what you know.
Even though from the age of nine I was literally my whole child was incarcerated from the age of nine to eighteen, and my first char lagon was in nineteen ninety one, and then I've made the rounds of all the prisons and down here in Perth, and as a bumb Recarnet Warlo okay show, even when you're not in prison, you're still in prison. You can, like I say, you can take the prisoner out of prison, but then you've
got to get the prison out of prison. I've never added up exactly time I've done, but it wasn't until two thousand and two thousand and two on my last lagon is where my life actually broke for you and I started a change.
Yeah, it's an interesting concept and I haven't heard it put that way, but the way you've articulated explains it very well that yeah, it doesn't matter with you're serving a twelve month sentence here and then you're out for six months and doing eighteen months very imprison.
You're just outside the lagon.
Right and yeah, hit the brick wall ends in a big finale, you get three years back.
Then they have you only.
Do two thirds get a third in remission, so you only do it really a year, and so your detox all of the drugs. Your family can start seeing your change. You start putting meat back on, and you tell them everything they want to hear.
On the visits.
You're not drunk, you're not using drugs, you're not getting alcohol. But when you get out, as soon as you get out of jail, you celebrate the fact that you're doing a lag. And the first thing you do is you go get on and you have a shot, or you're go and have a beer, and then one beer tunes into two, and then someone rocks up with some gear and then you have a shot. Second you get out of jail, they do they celebrate the fact that they're
on a lagging. And that's why I say at Shaloon, we don't take people straight from Jarl unless they do full time. They ring me up, say can we come to Seloon, and I say yeah, when you do your full time, walk out it, walk out the front gate, go to our care, don't drink, don't use drugs and give me a call and I'll send a helicopter to pick out.
And it's like they don't. They go out and get on first.
But the second you stick that pick in your arm mate, or you smoke that pipe, you pop that pill, it's like get it on a train even though you're not in prison.
You're in prison.
You've just stuck it and the train it starts picking up speed, it starts getting faster and faster.
And you know they're about to hit walling up. I can jarl again.
Then one day you look up and all the doors are shut, no conductors, no people bang it HiT's a bit wall.
You're back in jarl again. I mean again. It's the prison culture.
You take that prison culture with you when you get out, and you hang around that prison culture because now that prison culture becomes your standard normal and you feel more comfortable around those types of people, then you do the other types of people. You've got to get the prison out of the prisoner. If you don't get the prison out of the prisoner, it ain't going to change.
Yeah, it makes sense.
Was there any time during that and I want to well lead into when you actually decided this is it. I'm turning it turning my life around. Did you have any false starts during that period? Did you come out of prison one time and say, right, I'm going to do it right? And if you did, and you fail.
Times, you get out and you go start work as a tire fid and you get a job and you think you're doing the right thing. And but I used to look for the acknowledgment of my mum or my dad or somebody, Oh, you're doing a good job, Peter.
But no matter how how hard I tried, or that it was criticized, I never said, you're doing a good job, And so I got stuff ya And a lot of people that I deal with they want the acknowledgment, hey, that they're doing well, but they don't get it and they stuff it, so they just go back and do what they shouldn't do. I could rattle off heaps of times. I mean, but there wasn't anyone there to encourage her. And even now, you're not going to get that encouragement.
I mean, you ain't going to look for the acknowledgement. He appears you just got to do it.
If you strip the layers back, with the upbringing that you've had and the environments that you grew up in and so many other people. I would imagine when you talk, you don't get that encouragement. They have to be this overwhelming feeling of self and yeah, you.
Just self flaving hate, yourself hate everybody, blame everybody else for why you are like you are. It's your mum's fault, it's your dad's fault, it's your brother's fold, a sh uncle's fault, it's a cops fault. It's everyone else's fault. But it's not my fault. That's where everyone's like that, you know.
That is that start of the process where you've got to take ownership and go, well, hold, it's I can blame this person, that person upbringing, but there's one person that control.
Yeah, I'm doing it.
But you've got to come to that point where you allow because people try to tell you it could be your mum, could be your dad, but I'm not going to listen, and then their words are like water and windscreen. It could be people have got their lives together, could be your grandmother giving you a lecture or whatever. Grand I mean, you just don't listen. You've got to there's a certain time you've got to come to a certain
point where you will listen. And there's two times in my life that I know that if somebody had to listen and and grab my hand, I would have changed. And so so because of the life that I've lived, I use all of my lived experience to help me to do what.
It is that I do today.
When I was nine, laying in that prison cell and I'm rocking a pillow side to side, cry and saying, please, if you let me out now, I promise I'll behave I know that, I know that, I know that if somebody had to grab my hand that day, that experience is enough for me. I would have turned my life around. It was different than any other experience that I had. And another one when I was in nineteen eighty eight, if somebody had reached out and grabbed my hand in I know that, I know that, I know that I
would have changed. And they're the ones that I look for and the ones I take into Shilom. I worked out a method of how to find and separate the whek from the chart, so to speak, the serious for the not serious.
What was the thing about those two examples, What were the two things that and you speak so strongly about it. I'm convinced what you're saying, where were you at in that stage your life that would have made the difference.
When you hit the brick wall that ends in the big FINALI the last thing you do is go to rehab or I mean your brain automatically. When you hit the brick wall, you ring your mum, you ring your grandma, or you ring your uncle or your wife, and they always take it in. I eat the brick wall. I was at the bottom of myself. I had no one to ring, but I had a thought in my head, I can't do this anymore. I want to change. And I felt that thought go from my head into my
heart and it was like a seed of life. Someone give me this opportunity of our mate, and I'll grab it with two hands. And there's only been twice in my life that I've had that. But no one was there. No one was there to grab my hand. And that's what I do. I look for those who are at that point. My family are laying in prison solves, they're sticking PicTel around there.
I grew up with. That's why I do what I do.
I'm looking for those ones who come to the point and say I can't do it anymore. I want to change. That's a seed. I can water that seed, I can make that seed grow.
You want to be that hand for those people.
I want to be that hand. Yeah, and I want to raise up lots of other hands, you know, not just me. I'm nearly hopefully finished at shalom. Soon I can hand it over to and hopefully they can just keep doing and I can do you.
I want to make a difference.
Hey, guys, have you ever wondered what goes on behind the headlines of a gang.
War or shooting? Then you need to listen to crim City. Join crime reporters Mark Murray and Josh Hamrahan as they uncover the details of crimes unfolding on Sydney streets and share the stories that don't make the papers. The latest season of crim City is out now. Listen early and ad free on Crime x plus on Apple Podcasts. Today, let's talk about the time when you've gone okay, I'm out of this life style.
What was that point?
You've talked two examples where if the right circumstances might have made the difference when.
To do that. I'm going to talk about faith.
Is that all right, yeah, yeah, by all meds.
I'm going to talk about Christianity. So I didn't grow up going to church. I used to every time I was in a lot more in Rubank and I was locked up. You used to have to play two bucks ago to an activity, and we used to have these Christian mob come in, but they had to play games with you and all of this stuff. And I remember going on sevent years and long more. Then I went
to Ruverbank. I got eighteen months hit one Hit and Riverbank, and one night these Christian great come in and they chucked on these videos called.
Cross of the switch Plade, And.
There was this story about this part of America who's grew up in the bronx on the streets, and his story was like mine, I mean, and you can see on the inside he wanted to be a good person. And then this corny looking preacher comes down and basically just says God loves you and all this stuff. But I did showed on in the video how he used to be. This bat's comes like all this real bad person and then this corney preacher told him God loves him, and then it shows him at the end of the
movie how his life changed. You mean, he stopped hanging around the more moors or the games. And it's like and I remember going back to my cell and I got on my knees. It was the eighteenth of May, nineteen eighty six. I got on my knees and I said, God, if you're real, and I bore my eyes out. Mate, if you could change his life, he could change mine. I'm telling him. I had experience with him, and I know that he's real. But then when I got out of jail, I just went whatever and just forgot him,
just kept living the life. And then in fast forward to two thousand and so that was nineteen eighty six, eight so eighty six, sorry, So fast forward to two thousand and one. I'd done three years of jail, got out of jail, and I thought to myself, I'm going to sell drugs and guns for a living and I'm not going to do I'm not going to do crime or buy hot goods to kick some of the heat off. And so I was married with my wife. I've got three kids, two to my wife. My son Peter was four,
other son was one. I got jail just after he was born two weeks a week after he was born. But I got out of jail and I thought, I'm going to sell drugs for the JIT and so I just started selling eight balls then, and within three months I went from eight balls to ounces and ounces to pounds and then up getting a two and a half kilos I've met I'm selling a week and and I went really really big, really quick.
Mym I'm and nobody.
I'm just a common, everyday, pathetic looking crim But I'm telling me I went from the bottom of the food chain to the top of the shoe chain. I had a big factory full of cars. My house was bugged, my car was bugged. I was suffering psychosis two and a half kilos of mad I'd sold a box of dynamite to this dude and I reckon he was informant. And anyway, next day copp has come to my house.
I had TRG coming through the front, back, shotguns, bullet proof, first helicopter of the roof, and I was doing sixteen days and no sleep. I have my missus laying on the floor with a shotgun to her head, with my with my two year old kid, with her in arms and stuff, and I just I just hated me, And when I really hated me, I hated.
Everything that I stood for, everything I'd done.
And I got done with a pan of pot, couple of handguns, and she got done with the color pot. She got handguns. All this on a record. She's never done nothing wrong. She's a country girl, you mean. But anyway, we both got out on bail. And and I've never played sports and stuff, like I said, but she she enrolled my son in and this thing called grasshop of soccer, and them days I used to have diamond rings on every finger. I was like sixty kilo, big bed, looked
like skeleton, absolute goose. But she rolled him in his grass up of soccer. I'd got barwed out. And then the next time I'm over at the park. We were staying and I took my kid over because the country girls, that's what they do.
I never played sports, but I go over the raid and.
There's all these geeks there and the grasshoppers, like I was kick introduction to footy, and the and the dad the deer was that the dad. All these dads, these geeks were sitting there and a circle with their kid. And if the kid kicked the ball through the dad's legs and they had to roll around like an idiot on the ground. Goko you mean? And I'm thinking, man, it's not cool.
I'm fried.
And then his kid kicks his ball through his dad's legs and he died chi kitchiqui on the ground, and then the other he had done it. And I'm thinking, and if my boy kicks the ball room my legs, man, I'm out of here. And he kicked the ball through my legs and I just turned my back of my son and I walked off and I started.
Ball of eyes out.
I wouldn't give anything to make my son feel normal. I hated me. I hated how I smelled. I hated the environment I put them through. I hated that would sleep in it and wake up lunch time and they weren't at school.
I mean. And then and here I am, I work off my bat.
And when I walked off with my son, I remember, I just said, I can't do it anymore. God, if you're real. I knew he was real because I got new when I was sixteen seven aeen. I said, God, if you're real, I need your help, and I'm balling my eyes. I gave with the missus, I said woman. I called with my wife and woe and I said. Woman gotok after the boy, and for me, that was the turning point. I'm dry he really really weird stuff started happening.
She went.
I over and looked after the kid, and I get out of my car and I'm going drive around me stuff. And it's like from that day for it, I couldn't get on. Every time I try to score drugs. The doors were shut. I went to go pick up off some gear off the Italian fellow I was getting my all mustache from and there's all these bloody coppers there that righted his van.
And anyway, so.
I'm driving around trying to do what I'm doing, and then I started hearing his voice in head saying, Peter, I want you to follow me.
I want you to follow me. And I'm figuring, oh, this is be weird. It's not my car, I mean.
And I'm driving along and there's a car in front, and they would tap on his bright lights and I'd see a few flashes and I hear his voice of Peter, I want you to follow me. And so I follow this car. It goes left, right, left, and then it pulls up at a park and the car just drove off, and I'm sitting there in the car looking around, and then I look over in the park over there, and there's a mom and a dad with their kids playing in the car and in the park having a picnic.
And I heard it clear as day his voice again. It says, Peter, I'm offering you this. And I just sat in my car and I cried, I've never had a picnic. I'll never give my kids a pickny when I when I take my kids to the park, I got send him on the swings and I have a shot in the car. I'm throwing up. I mean, I want that.
That's everything I want. I just thought I want to be normal and then setting me card of a big solk.
Again for all. And then I drive off and I'm.
Driving and it's like, mate, I want you to follow me. I want you to follow me. There's another car. It's happening. So I'm following. This car went left, when right and left, and then it pulls up in the next of brandy display home and it drives off and I'm looking at this home and then I heard his voice, Peter, I'm offing you this, well, Brandy Holme is a place to call home.
All ever I wanted was a place to call home.
And and I remember sitting there bollowing my eyes out looking at this house. I'm telling you something we is going down and for two three days, yeah, for two three days, all this weird. So and tell him my missus is something we's gone down, and she goes, Oh. I thought it was a gear because I've been I've been spent two days up in roof cavities of houses, seeking little people down.
There, sitecases, drugging.
Yeah. Yeah, I've been over the park and one o'clock in the morning with a chainsaw. If you ain't come down, I'm chopping it down. It's like plague people that followed me.
I was like some of the great moments in life.
Oh mate, I've been in nutwaters, back the fround a gun on, poot down the leg.
I mean, it's like little people. Yeah yeah.
And I'm a missus thinking and we're going through this bloopy stuff. And I thought, right, well stuff, I'm I reckon, I reckon you mob the coppies, you're playing with me freaking ahead. I mean, because the coppers I found the listening devices. Jordan my bloom and in my brickwork and all this other stuff he's done to me. And I'm figuring,
right old stuff, you mob up. So I left the car and I got a new bike, and I was on this vee and fifteen hundred cruiser, a brand new bike, full taker juice, and I got the missions out out the door and sheaves to the door and pootr out this thing and I cut through two hundred meters of dirt on this faft fifteen hundred, and I lost to whoever it was. It might have been followed me, or
I thought I did. And then I'm on this vee and fifteen hundred, and I'm out near a place called near Abut in Perth, which is like and I'm on this bike and I'm hearing his voice. I want you to allow me what you follow me? And I think, oh my god. So I pulled out the side of the raid and rip the helmet apart. How do you buggers get a speaker in there?
Does that? Then I couldn't find nothing, so I sucked the fel crow back in there.
And then I'm booting past a nearby roadhouse and I'm sitting on about one hundred and ten or whatever, and it
was a standard bike, standard pipe standing everything. But then this thing stay out of the hand of bar Stard going tune and go ah, and the bike and the shut and your balls bouncing on the tank and it was like the most surreal, perfect insynct experience ever get on a bike and I mean we go yeah, And then I went and died on the side of the road, and I was thinking, wait, what have you done to it? And then I pulled the seed off and pulled the plastic tanks off.
I'm looking for that motor that you fellas are put in there.
It's normally it's normally when we've connected the electrical wrong that your car breaks down or the bike breaks down.
But anyway, yeah, but I'm so looking for whatever he was put in there. The bloody play with my head and and I couldn't find anything. And I was even thinking that you're bob right, it had be on surveillance
and that you were filming me. At one stage, I reckon, this is a psychosis, let's loop out a loopa, And so you were filming me as I'm going through all this stuff with the house, the kids in the park, and you're going to use this as an educational video to show people this happens when you use jokes.
What you're talking and I've heard it. I've heard heard it at the time when people are saying that to me, I've heard it, like you reflecting on it, going shit, Well, this was what was going through my mind.
So all up on that, I.
Just want to tell you this bit right, I'm on I'm on this bike. I get on the side of the road and he asked me where it is that I changed my life. It started with my son at the socer.
Yeah.
Then I'm on the three days of someone off from me everything I wanted. Then I'm on this bloom and bike and I'll get on the other side of the road because they had to hitch back to the roadhouse.
And I've put my fun out.
And there was this young couple that stopped and I got in the backseat of the car and we started driving on. They had this music plan, and out of the blue, this young fellow turns around him. He says, mate, I feel like God's telling me to tell you that he loves you and he has a plan and a purpose for your life. Out of the blue, left field and I started crying my eyes out. He said, pro
let me at your car. I got out in the middle of nowhere, chuck me jacket and we let the jack on the side of the blub went in a.
Bush had of silk, and I come back out.
I stuck me if I'm out again, and I started hitching and then this black f two fifty pickup truck pulls up.
It was a matte black flat trail of black, looked like a Kiwi.
Dude had tattoos on the half side of his face, black paints ole hair and he says, pro is that you'll buy back there?
I says, yeah, because I will go back and pick it up. Hey, And I said, nah, bro, somewhere is going to come down. I just got to get home.
So I got in this dude's car and we started driving towards the roadhouse and he turns around him he says, made it for I got to tell you something.
I said, yeah, what's that?
He says, God's telling me to tell you that he loves you and he has a plan and a purpose for your life. And that's the second person's pace of five k. I bought be eyes that he drove me to the Petro station. I remember walking in to the Petro station. I pulled all my gold jewlry, of all my chains, off, all my watch, and I threw everything to being. Somebody somewhere was offering me a life that I only ever dreamed of.
I just want to be.
A good person, a normal person, and I wanted what they're offering. And then I rang and misses up and said, you've got to come pick me up. Bike's breaking down. Something he is going down. She goes, I got to
pick the kids up from schools. So I walked out in the highway, stuck me from out, and then this old granny pulls up and she's in a Dat's in two hundred bide Dado platinum white hair, and when she spoke of false teeth and flapping them out, and she goes, I don't normally pick a hiker's up, son, but you
look different. And so I got on this granny's car and we started driving and I got three k out the raid and she turns around me and she said, honey, I feel that God is telling me to tell you that he loves you and has a plan and purpose for your life, that your life's not a mistake and I just cried all the way.
She drove me all the way to Bayswater. And that's how my life.
I've had three strangers in the space of not even fifteen k's and then I had a big, full on account after that.
Peter, that's heavy and fascinating. And you said, is it all right to talk religion. I don't consider myself a religious religious person, but I'm a spiritual person. I think in some way, I just look at look at that, the story you've told this there, and of course you right to talk about it. It's your story, that's what changes whatever was working there. And they say, you know, God acts in mysterious ways.
I don't know. I can't.
I can't rebut what you're saying, and you know, if that's worked for you, and it's when you break it down, it's three people showing you some kindness and consideration and it's sort of going, look, people do care about me. So it's factored in the where your life was at at that moment. So yeah, it's fascinating.
I don't believe you're a fart. And I reckon when you die, and I reckon, you're going either up or down. It's either good or bad, and that's what we do. And it's just like there's just one wants you to do drugs and one doesn't want you. One they're just so good and a bad mate. And I mean, if the Church of God was like hungry Jack, should be chockers. But how do you know which one's which?
Well, that's true, that's true. All right, Well look we're going to take a break here. When we come back, we're going to talk about your life from that that point in time and the work that you do and showing house how you set it up, what it's about. That must have been your dream at the time. This is what I want to do and what you're doing. So I'm looking forward to our chat on the second part.
Thanks mate, Cheers,