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'I Forgave My Daughters' Killer'

In 2001 Sandy MacGregor went to prison to confront the man who shotgun-blasted his three daughters to death. Author Paul B. Kidd was there as the drama unfolded.

 

‘As I sat waiting to meet the man who murdered my children, I really didn’t know what my reaction towards him would be,’ says Sandy MacGregor. ‘I was incredibly nervous and uptight. Not shaking or anything like that. It was all on the inside.

‘In all of the months I had spent preparing myself for this moment I had never kidded myself that it was going to be easy. But I had imagined, or rather hoped, that it would be a lot easier than this. But now that it was actually happening I was apprehensive of the outcome, frightened of what I might do.

‘I could have stopped it then and no one would have thought any the less of me,’ he says. ‘But there was no turning back now. I had to meet this man and forgive him for what he had done. Not for him, but for me. And then I could be completely at peace with myself and get on with my life.’

As he relaxes in the loungeroom of his Sydney home, Sandy MacGregor is the embodiment of what he teaches: how to manage your life through the powers of your own mind. He sits surrounded by photos of his family – his deceased daughters, their elder brother Andrew, now 36, his second wife Sandra and their family of Ian, 17 and Lara, 19. And this tall, gentle man speaks candidly about the murder of his daughters Lexie, 16, and twins Jenny and Kirsty, 19, and their 19-year-old girlfriend – and how he came to forgive the man who so callously took his loved ones from him.

The early hours of 24 January 1987, are deep-etched in Sandy MacGregor’s memory forever. ‘I was re-married with a young family and my daughters lived with their mother nearby,’ he recalls. ‘The kids and I were extremely close and I was in frequent contact with them. At 2am there was a loud knocking on the door and I answered it to two policemen, who ushered me through to the loungeroom and sat me down. They said they had some terrible news. They told me that my three daughters and a friend had been killed in their mother’s home.

‘My reaction was disbelief. My daughters couldn’t be dead. Only the night before I had called to wish Lexie a happy birthday and talked about the camping trip they were going on the following day for the Australia Day long weekend. It had to be a mistake.’

As they drove Sandy to the scene, the officers explained that a male friend who was going on the camping trip had called several times during the evening and when there was no answer, although the lights were on, he had climbed through a window at 1.10am to find the carnage.

‘When I arrived I embraced my ex-wife Beverley, who had arrived home to the chaos from a friend’s wedding celebration, and we sobbed uncontrollably,’ he says. ‘Beverley wanted to go inside and see what had happened to her daughters but the police took me aside and explained that the girls had been “blown away” with a shotgun.

‘They apologised for being so graphic but said that they had to tell me this as due to the horrific nature of the crimes they wanted my support to keep Beverley from going inside. They said that it was best that we remember our children as they were. Neither of us went inside. I am glad that I didn’t.’

The following day police arrested unemployed student Richard Henry Lawson Maddrell, 27, as he sat on a cliff top contemplating suicide. He had thrown the shotgun in the ocean. A diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic and high on a cocktail of drugs at the time of the killings, Maddrell had met Jenny MacGregor when she was a student at Wollongong University, 100 kilometres south of Sydney. Maddrell had become infatuated, but over the previous 12 months she had rejected his advances.

Maddrell told police that he had gone to Jenny MacGregor’s house at 9.30 that night with a loaded shotgun. After she answered the door, he marched her at gunpoint into the loungeroom where the other girls were watching television and allegedly said to her, ‘You don’t know how much you have hurt me and screwed me up, but I still love you’, before shooting her in the head at point-blank range. Maddrell then killed the other three girls with five more shots to their heads after stopping to re-load twice.

‘After the murders I was in two states of shock,’ Sandy says. ‘I was either like a zombie, wandering around in a daze, or I was consumed by loathing and hatred. I had a consultancy business in the city and I just abandoned it. All I wanted to do was kill Richard Maddrell. To me he was just vermin – and mad vermin at that – who should be put down.

‘I was approached by a person who said that he could have him killed in jail for me as a favour. And I believe this person could have. But eventually I declined, though I must admit, I did give it a lot of thought.

‘If anyone had told me then that there would come a time in my life when I would be able to forgive Maddrell, I would have said they were crazy.’

Sandy MacGregor’s father was a major in the British Indian army. Sandy was born in 1940 and in 1947 the family migrated to Tasmania. Sandy was the top army cadet at school. After graduating from Duntroon he completed a civil engineering degree at Sydney University.

Sandy commanded the Royal Australian Engineers 3 Field Troop in Vietnam, the first ‘tunnel rats’ to discover the Viet Cong’s secret underground cities in 1966. Back in Australia in 1967 to train young officers about Vietnam, he was awarded the Military Cross for bravery and leadership. He left the regular army in 1968 to work as an engineer, but stayed in the Army Reserve. His marriage to Beverley ended in 1976 and he married Sandra Dewhurst in 1979 and started a new family.

Sandy first encountered the healing powers of the mind when he encouraged his son, Andrew, then 17, to seek alternative treatment for the chronic asthma he’d had since infancy.

‘A couple of bad attacks had landed him in hospital,’ Sandy says. ‘I took him to an Indian doctor who taught Andrew a simple mental relaxation technique, which helped him control the severity of the attacks. And, later on, when Andrew was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident and looked like losing a leg, he used the same techniques to cope with infection and pain and saved his leg.

‘I was convinced there was something in this so Andrew taught me the techniques. I applied them to losing weight and I lost 22 kilograms in six months, without dieting, and could make my pulse disappear and bring my blood pressure down by 20 points,’ Sandy says. ‘Up to the time of the girls’ murders I was meditating daily and had done a course on personal development.

‘After the tragedy, even though I was in severe shock, I did another course and within two months I was meditating again. It was during the meditation that I realised that if I persisted in being consumed with anger, hate and revenge towards Maddrell I would become another of his victims,’ he says. ‘I decided to turn those negative thoughts into thoughts of acceptance, love and forgiveness. I worked on it for up to two hours a day and within six months my head was clear, I had forgiven Maddrell in my mind many times, I felt at peace with myself and I could get on with my life.

‘By now I was convinced of the power of the subconscious and I decided to teach people about it. As a result of an interview on ABC Radio in 1990, when I said publicly for the first time that I had forgiven Maddrell, 300 people enrolled for my seminars. That was really the beginning of my new life.’

Since then he has conducted hundreds of seminars throughout Australia for many thousands of participants, recorded more than a dozen meditation tapes, written numerous books on personal development, one of which, Piece of Mind, has sold over 60,000 copies, and published his memoirs of Vietnam in No Need for Heroes.

‘But in time Maddrell could be freed and it worried me not knowing how I would react if I bumped into him in the street,’ Sandy says. ‘Would I talk to him or would I avoid him? Would I abuse him? Would I react violently? I came to realise that until I found the answers I would go on wondering and he would always be like a monkey on my back.

‘In late 2000, while consulting a spiritual teacher about my concerns, to my surprise he suggested that I could complete the process by seeing Maddrell in prison and forgiving him face to face. I was shocked. The thought had never crossed my mind.

‘But after I thought about it I realised that it was also the opportunity to get all of my questions answered,’ he says. ‘Then the effect on my psyche would be gone and I would be free. But would he see me? I decided to find out.’

In March 1988, Maddrell had been found not guilty of murder by reason of mental illness and detained indefinitely in strict custody at Morisset Psychiatric Hospital for the criminally insane. After serving four years he was considered sane enough to live among mainstream prisoners and was now in Grafton Gaol, 620 kilometres north of Sydney.

‘Maddrell was contacted through a New South Wales Corrective Services program called Conferencing,’ Sandy says, ‘which brings victims and offenders together for a multitude of reasons, such as venting their anger or giving the offender the opportunity to repent and ask forgiveness. Maddrell agreed immediately.

‘During the four months it took to set up the meeting I worked hard at preparing myself with meditation, mental and physical exercise and prayer,’ he says. ‘With a friend to support me during the meeting, we drove to Grafton and discussed in detail what I wanted to talk about and the questions I wanted to ask. I wanted to get it right the first time as there was no going back and doing it over.’

The meeting’s coordinator, Phil Hartmann from Corrective Services, met Sandy and Paul at the jail and took them inside to the tiny chapel, where six chairs had been set up in a circle in front of the altar. Sandy meditated for a few minutes to compose himself then indicated that he was ready. Psychologist Chris Drayden-Thompson and Reverend Richard Brown led a stony-faced Maddrell, his hands clenched in front of him, into the room. He looked as if there were a thousand other places he would rather be.

‘When I looked up and saw him for the first time I thought: “So this is what he looks like. So this is the bastard who killed my kids,”’ Sandy says. ‘But rather than feel hatred or anger or want to abuse him, as I had dreaded I would when we met, I knew in that face-to-face instant that I could forgive him in the flesh and be free from ever having to wonder about those things again in my life. It was an enormous relief.’

Phil Hartmann introduced Maddrell to Sandy and Paul and they both remained seated. There was no shaking hands. Just nodding hellos. Maddrell was seated opposite Sandy.

At around 170cm, of medium build and dressed in a green T-shirt, tracksuit pants and runners, 42-year-old Maddrell looked younger than his years. He obviously worked out and looked trim and healthy. Atop his high forehead sat a crewcut. He had a pointed nose, no facial hair and his beady eyes gazed out from abysmal, ecliptic cavities. ‘I noticed that there were red blotches around his eyes and I thought, “Good, maybe he’s emotional, it looks as if he has been crying,”’ Sandy says. ‘To break the tension I told him that I was very nervous and asked how he felt. He replied that he was “scared witless”.

‘I told him that I was doing this on my own behalf and that my former wife and my son Andrew were not aware I was here,’ Sandy says. ‘I said that I would like to talk about what forgiveness is all about for me before I forgave him for the murders of my daughters.’

Sandy told Maddrell that he had already forgiven him many times in his own mind, had said it publicly on radio and published it in his book Switch On To Your Inner Strength in 1996. ‘I explained that I teach that if you can forgive in your mind something that has been done against you, it prevents you from becoming hateful and angry. If you don’t, then that hatred and anger will run your life, which would leave you wide open to sickness and disease of the body and mind.

‘I made it clear that my forgiveness did not condone what he had done or trivialise the offence and that I was doing this for myself, not him. If he got some good out of it then that was his good fortune, though I said that I hoped that by forgiving him it would be a good outcome for us both.’

As Sandy spoke Maddrell sat bolt upright with his hands in his lap, not once taking his eyes from him. Apart from the occasional nod in agreement when Sandy asked him if he understood what he was saying, he remained silent and emotionless.

‘I explained that I believed that all humans have an energy that runs through their bodies, which can be seen on a screen when it is measured by an electro-encephalograph, the machine that measures brain waves,’ Sandy says. ‘When you are brain dead the line is flat – the energy is gone. Sometimes that energy comes back in what is known as a “near-death experience” and then it is known as Life.

‘When that energy has gone out of the body some people call it Soul, Spirit, Life-force, Prana, Chi, God or Spark of God. I choose to call it God. I firmly believe that this energy, this God, is in all of us and that we are all joined by it and therefore forgiving is a spiritual act.’

And then after a long pause, Sandy said: ‘Richard Maddrell, I bring to mind that part of you which is joined to me, so whatever I do or say to you in this moment I am also doing and saying to myself. From the God in me to the God in you, I unconditionally forgive you for the murders of my three daughters, Jenny, Kirsty and Lexie.’

As he struggled saying his daughters’ names, Sandy began to weep. If ever there was an opportunity for Maddrell to show any emotion, this was it. He didn’t. Sandy sat and wept for a short time before composing himself. Then he asked Maddrell if he would like to say anything.

Maddrell said he was sorry (the first of six times that he said it) for what he had done and expressed gratitude at being given the opportunity to say it. He was softly spoken and appeared sincere. He said that he never imagined that he could ever hurt so many people so much and have so many people hate him.

‘Then we discussed the things that I had struggled with in my mind and would have been doomed to live without the answers to, if I had not met with Maddrell,’ Sandy says. ‘Things about that horrible night that were deeply painful, but had to be answered so I would never have to wonder about them ever again.’

When he was satisfied that he had put his mind completely to rest, Sandy called an end to the meeting and Maddrell was taken back to his cell. It had been an hour and a half.

‘I walked out into a perfect summer’s afternoon,’ Sandy says. ‘The sun was beaming as if Jenny, Kirsty and Lexie were smiling down on me. I knew they would have been proud of their dad. As I walked from the jail a free man, it was as if I was floating on air. My 14-year sentence was over. The monkey was off my back forever.’

 

Sandy MacGregor conducts seminars all over Australia helping people to get on with their lives by understanding themselves better through the power of their minds and meditation. For information on Sandy MacGregor’s seminars contact www.calm.com.au.