Steven Dorough

In this episode of Significant Voices, Pete Dorough shares the heartbreaking story of his son, Steven, who was murdered in 2009. Pete discusses the profound impact of losing a child, the challenges of navigating grief, and the importance of sharing Steven's story to raise awareness about violent crime. He reflects on the realities of parenting in today's world, the consequences of actions, and the lasting effects of crime on families and communities. Through humor and advocacy, Pete seeks to honor his son's memory and help others cope with their own losses. In this conversation, Pete Dorough and Wanda Miller share their profound experiences with grief, trauma, and the justice system following the loss of their sons. They discuss the emotional weight of navigating the justice system, the importance of support groups, and the healing power of sharing their stories. They emphasize the significance of forgiveness, the need for community support, and the journey of finding purpose in their pain. Their dialogue highlights the struggles of men dealing with grief and the necessity of open conversations about mental health and healing.

Transcript

Wanda Miller (01:01)
Pete, welcome. It's good to have you here. you. I really appreciate you having me here today. Like you said, my name is Pete Dorough.

Pete Dorough (01:10)
I'm Stephen Dorough's father. This has been a 15 year journey.

Pete Dorough (01:16)
to say that there's any way to actually navigate this. There's no instruction manual. There's no, you know, people just don't come to you and say, hey, this is what's gonna happen. This, this, this, you know, it's just a, it's an everyday struggle, you know, because nobody is, nobody's ready to have a child murdered. Nobody. Yeah, a lot of people, we...

Wanda Miller (01:45)
we talked to a lot of, crime victims and, that's,

Wanda Miller (01:49)
prevalent in our conversations that people say, you know, one second, your life is this way. And the next second, your life is changed and there's no time to prepare for it. So you, you're, you're just pushed over the, into the abyss basically. And you're really kind of struggling to make your way. So

I think there's a lot of people that feel that way. you know,

Wanda Miller (02:18)
Talk us through your journey through this. 

Pete Dorough (02:42)
 Well, basically the timeline of me figuring and finding out all about this. I work for the railroad and I had been called out on a midnight coal train going to Mobile and I had I'd down, went to the hotel, went to bed. Just a couple hours after I went to sleep, my phone just blowed up. Like just ringing over and over to go over again. And so I got up and I mean, I'm half asleep. So when I did answer it, there's like seven or eight times it had rained. All I could get was,

Pete Dorough (03:11)
hysteria. scream. I'll never forget the scream.

Because all she could say was that he's dead. I'm like, what are you talking about? What's going on? And she said they shot him.

Pete Dorough (03:26)
That was it. So I'm three hours from home. know, how, what, what, you know. A deputy, the chief deputy got on the phone. He tells me that after an exhaustive
investigation that they believe with almost certainty that they, my son had been killed early that morning.

Pete Dorough (03:55)
It's been 15 years. mean, you don't get better. mean, and if anybody's ever tells you it's going to get better, it don't get better. You just learn how to start dealing with it. a lot of things kind of fortunate happened. My boss lived in Mobile and when I called him, he said, he'd be in the lobby and I'll be there in 10 minutes.

Pete Dorough (04:17)
He got me to Montgomery in about two hours for mobile. And that's when the nightmare became even more real. Because the unknown really starts kicking in. You get up with all these questions, because your mind is the most amazing place that you could ever.

Pete Dorough (04:42)
fall into, but it's the most darkest, deepest hole you could ever fall in also. And it'll eat you alive. And that was all my questions. They gotta be wrong, not Stephen. He's a good kid. He's already been to boot camp. This kid knows how to take care of himself. He's a good kid. He'd give anybody the shirt off his back. So I got home and I don't think I slept for

Pete Dorough (05:12)
two or three days just because my mind would not settle down. apparently Stephen had gone to a party of a kid that he was very close with and as they start telling me more more details of that, that's when more and more of the story came out of what all led up to this and Stephen had been

Pete Dorough (05:41)
shot in the back of the head with a shotgun and his body had been placed on the burn pile because they were going to hide the evidence, hide his body, destroy it and hide it. And they found his wallet hidden underneath a dresser drawer inside the house. So the more we talked over the next several days, the more I learned that

Pete Dorough (06:08)
This has been going on for months. Everything that led up to this has been going on for a long time. So you went from, you're at your job and you're going through a normal day and you get that phone call. That changed your life forever. Yeah. Yeah. When we talk to people who've gotten that phone call, it's like they almost start moving in slow motion.

Wanda Miller (06:36)
I think you're trying to kind of absorb what's happening because it feels surreal because you're hoping that you wake up and it's all been a bad dream because what you find yourself in too at that point, most people say, I've never dealt with the police. Had a couple of speeding tickets maybe, but...

Wanda Miller (07:03)
So you're thrown into this whole new area that you don't really know anything about. You're dependent on a lot of other people to help you navigate. And while you're doing that, you're also dealing with your loss or what you're numb, I would guess at that point, you're just going through the motions. Well,

Pete Dorough (07:29)
Like I said, your

Pete Dorough (07:31)
mind can eat your life. just the Google is not your friend because you're running through every scenario through your mind and you're gonna look it up on the internet and it's gonna tell you all 50 million different kind of stories. That just adds to all the anxiety going on with it. having to not only...

Pete Dorough (07:56)
try to process that. I'm also trying to be there for my three boys.

Pete Dorough (08:02)
My wife at the time, my family, my mom and dad, his other grandparents, all the friends and family. mean, he's a senior in high school. So, I mean, at that moment, I became a dad to hundreds of kids because they're all looking at me. Because...

Pete Dorough (08:22)
They don't know how to handle this either. I'm not just the victim.

And when people say, well, it just affects just a small amount. No, not in his life. mean.

Wanda Miller (08:35)
It's one of those things that you're trying to not only save yourself, but you're trying to save as many others that are around you because you're in the middle of a Titanic and it's sinking and you're just trying to trip water yourself, but yet you're trying to save everybody else around you. So you went into a kind of a...

Pete Dorough (09:27)
TV show, you know, and everybody's looking for the 60 minute ending to it with the commercial interruptions to let you go take a break in bathroom and everything else. And guess what? There's no commercials in this and it ain't 60 minutes. So I mean, I'm just trying to put all this together and it's like the more you try to answer questions, the more questions come up. And you know, one of the biggest things

Pete Dorough (09:56)
that I don't know if it was really the biggest impact I could make on the other kids or get them to think in another way was, know, I probably had six or eight teenagers at my house at that time. And they were all saying, you know, what do we do? How do we handle this? And

Pete Dorough (10:20)
it may be a character flaw, but there's times that I use humor in very,
strange ways to handle stress. Stephen as a teenager had dyed his head blue several times as a teenager. And my thought process, if that's the worst he could do, know, he's the one that's got to deal with his peers and everybody else looking at him.

Pete Dorough (10:44)
And so I insert my foot in my mouth and say, if we all showed up with his feeling blue hair, he would be laughing.

Pete Dorough (10:54)
And the kids loved it. They jumped out and loved it. When I say there was a lot of blue hair, there was a lot of blue hair. And, you know, it, over time I kind of...
took that as a sign that, you know, if, you know, it's not today. know, today you're liable to see peacocks walking down the road and you know, that's their way of expressing themselves. But I mean, this is 2009, 2010, know, colored hair was not the norm. And so, of course these kids look at me and they're like, hey, well, I have a whole lot more hair then.

xpressing themselves. But I mean, this is 2009, 2010, you know, colored hair was not the norm. And so of course these kids look at me and they're like, hey, well, I had a whole lot more hair then.

Pete Dorough (11:37)
You know, you don't have blue hair? I had blue hair. And you know, that was how I coped with it. Because there's just, I mean, how do you? You don't. But you helped those kids cope with it too. showing that solidarity and doing something for Stephen that, like you said, would make him laugh. Right.

Wanda Miller (12:05)
You probably got them through a pretty bad day, just pointing fingers at each other and laughing at blue hair. and you know, I think in the work we do in advocacy work, we spend a lot of our time trying to explain to people who've never experienced what you've experienced.

Wanda Miller (12:27)
How that feels and what that means and how that affects your life and what crime's really all about. The effects, the lasting effects. And like you said, it's not a made for TV movie. It's not a 30-minute detective show where the case is solved.

Wanda Miller (12:53)
They go to trial, the bad guy goes away forever, and you know, everybody goes away happy. It's not like that. No, absolutely not. It's messy and it's dirty and it's hurtful and it's all of those things that nobody really understands until they're faced with that moment that you had. I think to us that's, you know, and that's why this, this doing this is so important to be able to tell stories about real people.

Wanda Miller (13:23)
You know, Stephen was a real person. had a life. He had dreams. He had, he wanted to be something. He, he had a family, he had friends, he had a future. What would he have been? You his life was cut short and all that ended. And so, you know, it's, it's, and you preserve that and carry on and keep his, his memory alive.

Pete Dorough (13:53)
But that's unfortunate that's what you have, and you don't, and people can't really understand that until it happens. Well, I've kind of made a game over the years out of it. it's, the more this has gone on, the more, you know, especially with social media, you know, it was just coming out.

Pete Dorough (14:15)
Facebook had only been around about a year, maybe a year and a half, and other social medias hadn't even come up yet. So mean all these different ways of communicating where we don't really communicate. We're just kind of just getting lost in the shuffle of everything. I kind of adopted the whole blue.

mantra of it because every time I did it, I only did it then just to kind of I guess in lot of ways to mask the pain and I would do it I would put blue in around his birthday and then around his anniversary of his murder and But every time I did it there were kids that would say I like that or I would have adults who would say I like that You know or they would say, know, they would make fun of it or they would say

You know, or they would say, you know, they would make fun of it or they would say,

Pete Dorough (15:10)
And every time was an opportunity for me to tell his story. So whenever I was able to tell his story, that over the years I found that the more I tell his story, the more I heal. I've been to so many types of therapists and all the different, you know, in the mental health field. And you know,

Pete Dorough (15:35)
there is no fix. There is no magic.

Pete Dorough (15:38)
for any of this. This is all about you know you have to learn how to deal with it and me I found the greatest satisfaction is if I can save one life by telling what happened to him and and and what his friend did to him and

Because I see it. I hear his story repeated over and over and over and over again, almost on the daily of kids that are killed by people they consider friends. I don't even know what the statistics are, but I've heard it before that you're more likely to be killed by somebody that you know versus somebody that you don't know. And that's scary.

Wanda Miller (16:32)
That is scary to me. Well, and you think about the times that we grew up in. I grew up in a small town and we left home in the morning on a horse, bareback, trotting down the road and we came back late evening. all of our neighbors knew they would spot us. They knew where we were. Everybody looked out after each other.

Wanda Miller (16:59)
We didn't worry about those kinds of things. We didn't worry about our friends. We were just out having a good time, not bothering anybody. But what kids are growing up, the atmosphere that kids are growing up in now is scary. You don't know the person next to you. You don't really know what that person might do. You don't know when you...

Wanda Miller (17:27)
kids start dating or going out in groups and they're away from home and they're away from their parents. That is frightening. Yes. parents have to worry about that sort of thing now. And like you said, we read about it every day. We hear it all over the United States, all over the world where kids are walking out the door and they were coming back. Well,

Pete Dorough (17:53)
And I don't want to get into the whole cliche thing

Pete Dorough (17:56)
because sadly, in my perspective, I see the movement that started years ago of parents that want to be more of a friend than they do a parent. And I get you want to protect your children. You want to be there 100 % for your kids. want to, you know,

Pete Dorough (18:19)
You want to make sure that they have the best of everything, that they have the best education, that they excel in everything, and all these good things, good positive things. But we started losing sight of the bad things that do happen in life. Kids need to ride that bicycle and fall off and scrape their knee or hit their head because then they learn consequences for actions.

Pete Dorough (18:45)
that there's always gonna be times that things don't go just how they're planned. It's life. And we have lost that in communication over the years that now, if you say something to a kid, you're gonna have parents coming after you because not my little angel and how many little angels nowadays are in prison.

Pete Dorough (19:10)
Because mom and dad wouldn't do what they needed to do. And I'm not saying, know, abuse is abuse, 100%. You know, and abuse is wrong. But there are ways that you can teach kids lessons that they need to be taught, where they don't escalate, and they keep escalating to keep it. Because you can only make excuses for one, you know, for so long. And I've seen a bumper sticker before, or seen the same before.

Pete Dorough (19:38)
that raise your kids right that way a corrections officer doesn't have to do it for you. And sadly that's the world that we're living in now. And I've seen so many kids that are in my son's generation, it's almost like a badge of honor. Well, I know what it's like to in jail. That is not a badge of honor. But why have we made it such a glorious thing? Because they just don't, they don't know consequences.

Wanda Miller (20:07)
I can remember consequences from a neighbor lady down the street several times that whipped me like I was her own and I deserved it. And then she called home and you got it again. got home and there was a switch waiting on the couch for me when I got home. so yeah, I mean, yeah, it's, a different time that we live in, that's, that doesn't make it right. I mean, there are, there are consequences. There are,

Wanda Miller (20:36)
And I think that, you know, I was telling somebody the other day, you know, about consequences and I go, you know, you can simplify consequences down to, know that if I eat the brownie.

Wanda Miller (20:51)
I'm gonna get fat. I know that if I drive 80 miles an hour through the neighborhood, I'm gonna get a ticket. I know that if I don't pay my taxes, I'm gonna get in trouble. I mean, you know, there's consequences to everything that we do every day in our life. I mean, there's consequences that we do. We go through the motion so often we don't even realize that we're.

that were following the rules.

Wanda Miller (21:18)
We followed the rules. And so when you talk to people about consequences for actions such as the individuals that did this to Stephen and you go...

Pete Dorough (21:32)
you know, are there consequences that, are there enough consequences? Because you know, can't, there's no punishment that's gonna cover that. There's no, how do you equal taking somebody's life for anything else? You know, what is the value of one human life?

Pete Dorough (21:53)
you it's I've heard it explained before the what ifs as you alluded to all ago you know what could Stephen have been in the future could he have prevented a mass casualty event could he have invented something that would have changed the world could he have done you never know because his life is over but they're still here and they're still breathing right is it fair absolutely not

Pete Dorough (22:20)
But I had to come to that realization and had to come to that fact that nothing would ever bring Stephen back, absolutely nothing. We met because you, the two individuals that took Stephen's life went to prison and then you were notified about parole hearing. Yes. And that's...

Wanda Miller (22:44)
How I found out about your case and started doing some research and reached out to you and we started talking and then eventually we went to the hearing and you spoke. And I tell people whenever I lose my way in the work that I do and in advocacy and you talk to so many people and you hear so many stories and you

Wanda Miller (23:09)
You know, you do it every day and then, you you just, kind of veer off and you, need to be energized again. I tell people when I get to that point, I go sit at the parole board all day. I go there first thing in the morning, 730, whenever all the victims have driven through the night to get there and they're coming and they're, they're going to come and tell their story.

Wanda Miller (23:36)
And you sit there and you hear, whether it's 10 years, and I believe in your case it was what 16 years? 15 years. You hear people get up and talk about their children or their wife or their husband or whoever, whatever's happened to them, whether it's a homicide or a sexual assault or whatever it is that's impacted their life.

Wanda Miller (24:00)
And I see it and hear the pain that, whether it's 10 years or 30 years, at that moment, you're right back in that moment. And so it's really a true expression of what violent crime does to people.


Wanda Miller (24:25)
the collateral damage, what's left there after it's all over with, is these people that pain and that loss is still so real. And it's true testament that what was taken or what was changed can never be fixed.

Pete Dorough (24:51)
 I like to equate it to, yeah, they say that everything heals. You'll be okay one day, everything heals. That's equating, you get a splinter in your finger, you know, and you've got that splinter in there and it hurts and it aggrates and it's everything in the sun and you get the splinter out and a week later you can't even tell there's a splinter there. But if you had open heart surgery, they cut your chest open, they break your bone, they do all these things to go in.

Pete Dorough (25:18)
and that scar is there forever to your last breath. So it's like saying that that little spot on your finger is just equates to that same scar that you had after surgery. And it's not the same. And it never will be the same. I don't care what anybody says. It's like somebody trying to say that, well, you know, I lost one of my pets, so I know what it's like to lose a child.

Pete Dorough (25:47)
Really, you know, or everybody lives with somebody. Everybody lives with somebody. You will experience life ending at some point in time for everybody in your life. And a lot of times I think you kind of prepare yourself for that as you see your parents get older and older and older. My dad died two years ago. Went to sleep, just didn't wake up.

Pete Dorough (26:16)
And I want to say that my mom had died two years prior to that. And I truly want to say my dad died of a broken heart. She came to him in a dream and said, let's go. And he got up and he left. And that's exactly how I would love to leave this world. But you know, it's not always like that. I mean, he was 79 years old, except he'd 80. So I mean, you know, he lived a great life. So you prepare yourself for that. But to get a phone call.

Pete Dorough (26:45)
waking you up to tell you that your child had just
been murdered. And then you find out the heinousness as it goes along of how it was planned and what it was about and what they did to his body and all these things. And then it comes time for the funeral. You can't even see his body. Yeah. Because you're burying a bag. Yeah. It's all slept. You know, the other thing.

Pete Dorough (26:48)
And then you find out the heinousness as it goes along of how it was planned and what it was about and what they did to his body and all of these things. And then it comes time for the funeral. You can't even see his body. Yeah. Cause you're burying a bag. Yeah. It's all slapped. You know, the other thing

that, that, that, you know, in these years of working with people,

Wanda Miller (27:11)
And my dad died last year and he was 90 and had lived a full life. And he lived with me and my husband the last six years of his life and we got to spend so much time with him. And so I had prepared myself for that day as hard as it was gonna be.
So I had prepared myself for that day as hard as it was going to be
to see that empty chair and not do the things, not watch NASCAR on Sunday anymore and cook.


Wanda Miller (27:43)
a good lunch and spend the afternoon together. So there's all those things, but you do prepare yourself and you do pick up and still have those memories and you move on because it's almost like a progression of life. It is inevitable. The thing about murder, is that human element. Yeah. It's not a natural death. No, it's not an accident.
It's not a disease. It's an intentional, conscious decision by another human being to take somebody's life. Or to kidnap somebody or rape somebody or any of the... It is a true intentional act. It's true. And

Wanda Miller (28:31)
It's that human, it's that another person made that decision.

And I think that's what makes violent crime so different than anything else, is that you do have that factor. And you have to reconcile yourself around, just like the things that you just said about Stephen and having a funeral where you couldn't have an open casket.

Wanda Miller (29:00)
And in your mind, you've got to picture all of this and you've got to wonder,

how could somebody do this? mean, how could somebody do this? How do you plan? It's pure evil. Right. So that part of it.

And I think for crime victims, that part of it is, you know, a huge factor because you've got, not only are you dealing with what this person did, then you're going to be dealing with how the system is going look at that person. a lot of people don't put as much stock in that as they should. Where, you you're dealing with Pete, he's dealing with Steven being gone. He's still receiving how he was taken out of this world. And then you get into the criminal justice system and you're, it's like you're in the rapids and you don't have an oar and you're just, the boat's just going and you can't stop it. 

Pete Dorough (29:43)
I think it's worse than that. I think it's like somebody throws you in a big washing machine and just slam the door and you're in there till the cycle's over. Exactly.


Pete Dorough (30:11)
And you're just gasping for breath, trying to maneuver this whole thing. And then you've got a system that you've got to reconcile now. You've got to reconcile the fact that

Pete Dorough (30:27)
the individuals that did this are going to be taking into account. Their future is going to be taken into account because they have a future.

Pete Dorough (30:40)
You know all of these things are Nobody nobody sees this nobody Nobody understands that and and I'm glad because I want anybody to ever have to go through this kind of ordeal yeah, but

It doesn't change the fact that you're going through it, you know it You know I guess that part of it is always really kind of intrigued me too, and there's no answers to it. There's really no

Pete Dorough (31:05)
there's no answers. Well, it's when you're talking about the justice system and the courts and dealing with all that especially if you never had to deal with it before. The first day that the boys were being arraigned I was put where God wanted me to be put that day because the courtroom was packed. It was in Chilton County.

Pete Dorough (31:33)
And when I say it was packed, they were standing room only. There was probably 150 people in there, maybe more, maybe 100, maybe 200, I don't know. one thing is every time that anything is introduced to the court, they call the case number first. Not the person's name, everything boils down to your number. And that becomes inhumane.

Pete Dorough (32:00)
to a certain point because my son's not Stephen Dorough, my son's case filed because that's how it's gonna go into the system. But I was placed in a spot where I'm a very deep thinker and I analyze and a lot of times I over analyze situations and especially this day when people say that you can get mad, that's a true statement.

Pete Dorough (32:28)
But people that say that they've been mad have never felt rage. And rage is an emotion that can make you do things that you would never think possible. You know, it's that mom flipping that car over to get that kid out from underneath it. But I thank God for the logistical side that I have in my brain because he put me seven rows back with seven people on one side of me and seven on the other.

Pete Dorough (32:55)
Cuz when they walk in that courtroom, I analyze every way I can get to them. And it wouldn't work out. And it wasn't worth it.

Pete Dorough (33:03)
But when people say, I've got so much stress on me, you don't know stress. You don't know stress. Thank God for the good things in your life. The bad things are just, you know, they're gonna be what they're gonna be. But being baptized in the justice system and the way I was, it's truly an eye-opening experience that I will share to my last breath.


Wanda Miller (33:32) Yeah. Talk to us about what you've been doing. know you and I have talked about some things, some of the programs that we do here at Vocal and we have support groups and we try to do work with people after the fact and try to give them, there's something to be said about coming together with people with like experiences, people in a room that you don't have to explain yourself to it. They already know what you're thinking and how you're feeling and your sick humor or your inappropriate laughter or whatever it is, you're dealing with it. You're coping with it. so these people all come together. And one of the things that we talked about that I've seen in some of our support groups is factoring in the fathers

Wanda Miller (34:29)
the men, the husbands, the boyfriends, the brothers, the uncles, grandfathers, know, all the men who have dealt with the horror that you've dealt with. And, you know, we look to men in our lives as our strength and our protector and our, you know, the people that take care of everything and, you know, the ones that fix the flats and change the oil and make the cars run and...

Wanda Miller (34:58)
keep the roof from leaking and taking care of everything kind of people. But what I've seen and what we've kind of touched on is...

Wanda Miller (35:08)
how hard a situation for a father, when you're dealing with, and you've already said, you you already talked about how you were kind of taking care of everybody else because that's your nature. That's what you do. And, you know, but to talk to us a little bit about what kind of what your mission has been to try to help reach out and help not only young men that are coming up, but people.

like yourself

Wanda Miller (35:36)
who've experienced something like you have? One of the things that kind of hit me right after all this happened was just...

Pete Dorough (35:47)
Number one, mean, how do you write an instruction manual on how to survive such a traumatic situation? there ain't nothing out there. I mean, you have so-called experts that know all these things, and they like to facts out there. But as I tell a lot of people, I don't fit the norm. I mean, you can kind of look at me and tell. It's simple. It's simple.

Pete Dorough (36:16)

Yeah, it's kind of a but you know, you're either gonna learn two things about me. You're either gonna judge me by looking at me and you're gonna say, yeah, okay, he's just weird. Or you're gonna say, I like your beard. Can you tell me a little bit more about it? And that's when I get the opportunity. Because at some point in time, that person that judged me and said, you know, he's weird, whatever, he's gonna hear my story, I pray.

He's going to hear my story and he's going to realize I judged that man on his appearance and his appearance not knowing his story. Now that I know his story, it makes a difference. So I win or I win. But one of the biggest things that in the very beginning with all of my on this journey was I knew I had to have help. I knew I needed to.

Pete Dorough (37:10)
be able to express myself, to be able to get this out. Because if I didn't, in my mind, I already know that it's going to end bad. I can't handle things. We train our men, our service members to go overseas and to do things that the mind struggles with severely to process. And we average 22 of them committing suicide a day.

Pete Dorough (37:37)
That tells you everything in a nutshell you need to know. When you go through hard things in life, severe hard things in life, as a man it's hard, hard, hard to figure it all out. And sometimes the easiest answer is the exit because we can't handle it. So I started going to therapy and the first therapist,

Pete Dorough (38:04)
was a family therapist and the first thing he said was over 90 % of people that lose a child get a divorce and that became a that became a very huge issue right away and because those numbers were latched onto and you know it is what it is you know it is what it is you either


Pete Dorough (38:32)
can work through certain things in life or you come to a point where you say, I can't do this anymore and you got to part ways. And you know, it is what it is. You know, me and me alone will have to pay for my sins one day, you know, and I won't answer for everything I've done in my life. And I have no issue whatsoever owning that. But the more that I started

Pete Dorough (38:59)
going to certain therapists, the more I started seeing that I know more about what's going on in my head than they do. All they want to do is, well, let's try this pill, or this pill, or this pill. And that did not work for me. What worked for me was being able to talk and get it out and let go of those things. So I joined the Compassionate Friends Network. It's a huge grief.

Pete Dorough (39:27)
organization throughout the United States and they have a homicide group. So I mean that was to me was like wow okay. joined another group of parents of murdered children and you know it's just like okay these people get me these people understand what I'm going through but the more I immerse myself into all this the more I'm looking around and I'm like why am the only guy in here?

Pete Dorough (39:57)
Or why am I one of the only guys in here? On average, would be, some of the groups I would be in would be 2,000 compassionate friends. That's a lot of people going through the same thing I am. But the average, I I was maybe one of five, five men that actually would get on there, much less talk. And as you can already see, I'm a talker.

Pete Dorough (40:23)
But I've realized the more I talk, the more I heal. But the more I heal, the more I realize that there's a whole lot more people out there hurting that won't heal, that can't heal. And you can only put so much heat and so much pressure inside of a pressure cooker before it's got to release. And if it don't, it's gonna explode. And on this journey,

Pete Dorough (40:50)
I've joined some men grief groups that are just men. And the pain that I hear come out of so many of these men.

Some of these men I've gotten close with and they're no longer with us. And that kills me because there's no reason that they couldn't live with the pain of losing their kids. And I mean, I get it, I do. And as I've had conversations with other guys, you know, it's, you know.

Pete Dorough (41:19)
The more you celebrate their memories and the more you celebrate those two kids that murdered my son, they took his body, but they'll never take his memories. I have very few pictures of for whatever reason. It is what it is. I have all of his memories in my mind and those will forever be with me.

Pete Dorough (41:47)
Kid that I mean he has mine made up. You he was gonna be an FBI agent and so he was trying to figure out how's the hot what path am I gonna be able to get there and He took that one of the college entrance exam. He didn't do good on me So in his mind he made it up I go there early entry program in the army to the junior senior year boot camp and Go ahead make rank and because he went in he started as a e1 by the time you got out of boot camp he was an e3

Pete Dorough (42:17)
And he was so proud of himself. And he knew that if he went military service, he kept busting his butt, that he would be able to become an FBI agent. That's what he wanted. That was his dream. But to me, I equate that to he wanted to help people. And if I can live his dream out for him, then he won.

Pete Dorough (42:43)
You know, and that's the one thing that I guess I had to move on. And the one thing that I guess was the hardest thing to do was the day that they were sentenced, I forgave them both. I didn't forgive them for them. I didn't settle on the plea agreement for them. I did it for me. And, you know, I've had family members that, you know, that was selfish.

Pete Dorough (43:10)
of you to do. You should have thought, you should have this, you should have that. You're not living in my shoes. You're not living in my head. You are standing on the sideline as a part-time cheerleader showing up whenever it's convenient for you. no, you know, if you want to stand right here in the ditches with me, if you want to stand that hand in hand side by side and fight this fight with me, cool. But whenever

Pete Dorough (43:39)
We show up for court, you know, that's when everybody else shows up. But whenever I see you at Walmart, you hightail it the other way. And that's one of the biggest things in Greece that I really tell so many people is when you go through a traumatic situation, when those casseroles are gone, that's whenever the darkness moves in. And I tell people, they really don't need anything the first 10 days. They need you after that first 10 days. They need you just to say, hey,

Pete Dorough (44:08)
If you need to talk, talk. You ain't got to listen to them. They don't care. They don't care if you're listening to them. Honestly, they don't. They just want somebody to physically be there for them to just unload on. And that's it. Because once it's out,

Pete Dorough (44:25)
They're good for a while. Yeah, and then it's gonna start all over again, but it's gonna be that way forever 

Wanda Miller (44:25)
 I do hope that what we'll be able to do is work together and I'm going to put up some information at the end of this podcast so that if there are any men out there that are looking at this, that they'll have a place to call. And, you know, I...

Wanda Miller (44:54)
I see in our support groups, and we have a lot of mothers that come. And I think probably, you know, women are a little more social. They tend to talk more. They tend to let their feelings out a little bit more so it works for them. But we've had several men that have come to the support group for homicide families.

They'll come one time and look around and go, well, just like you said, not sure that this is going to help me. and we've looked for way to fill that gap for people. And that's why when I met you, I thought, this is a God thing. Because this man's been brought into my life to fill that gap.

Wanda Miller (45:47)
for these people that, I mean, you know, I've shared with you a story about my family members that lost someone to a homicide. And, you know, so I've seen that side of it from not just working with people in a professional capacity or an advocacy capacity, but being pretty close and seeing, you know, a lot of things that I wish I could fix or help or...show a better way to do it.

Wanda Miller (46:16)
So I hope we get to do that because, know, I believe that being together with people who've had experiences that you have had and being able to pull those resources and come together and help each other is, I mean, I've seen it for decades, over thousands of people who I know have healed
through others. I know they've healed because they have a purpose to get up and every day, you know, and I found myself that helping other people helped me heal. 100%. You know, and it was, was, and I've told people before, I reached a point where, and I'm gonna tell you about my situation today, it's for another podcast, but I reached a point where

Wanda Miller (47:08)
I knew I could go left or right and that people were going to say, if I went left and I sat in the corner and sucked my thumb for the rest of my life and never moved out of the dark room, people would say, bless her heart. know what happened to her. 100%. But if I took the right turn and I said, I'm going to take this path.

Wanda Miller (47:36)
because they've taken all of me they're gonna take. And today, it starts with that step and with me healing. in the healing, know, forgiveness and healing is very personal. And I think every crime victim I've dealt with, it's been happened at a different time. Some people, like you said, at...

Wanda Miller (48:05)
during the whole trial process and sentencing or whatever point you're at, you reach that point where you have to, you feel like you have to, you know, have to forgive to be able to move on because in between the incident and the healing is the anger. And it's hard to move on when you're angry and you're holding that.

Wanda Miller (48:34)
anger all inside of you and you're trying to figure out what to do with it. I agree. And a lot of things that you do with it is destructive. Like it's drinking, it's taking medication, it's acting irresponsibly, it's doing things that are out of your nature or character. But it's the way you're processing it. You're trying to get through it. It's all a cry for help. Yeah. It is. It's all a cry for help.

Wanda Miller (49:02)
Yeah. And, you know, people say, some people never forgive and that's okay because it's their decision. It is 100%. Some people have to forgive and some people, you know, turn to their faith or they turn to their family or they, you know, they turn to something that helps them get past, gets over that hump, you know, and, and

Wanda Miller (49:32)
I know that forgiveness is like a freedom. It really is. mean, once you truly say, you no longer have control over me, and that's what that anger is, it's just a control over you, you no longer are going to guide my day, then you can start making your own decisions.

Wanda Miller (50:00)
You take back the control of your life and that's what violent crime does. It takes away our control because you had no control over that day that you got that phone call. 100 % yes. The only control that you had, you know, your life was, you were steering your ship, you were going to work, you were supporting your family, you were doing what you do, you were driving the train. Really driving the train.

Wanda Miller (50:30)
and somebody else took control of the wheel. And, you know, that's a bad, that's a horrible feeling to know that.

Wanda Miller (50:41)
You can't even plan a vacation because you know that there might be a court hearing. Or you can't decide to move without thinking of all the different agencies you've got to let know your address so you don't miss a notification of something. So it's always up here where you have to deal with it in some shape, form, or fashion.

Wanda Miller (51:09)
there's that control. that is, in our discussions, we kind of touched on that, about how liberating that is to get to that point. It does not mean you forget. No, We never forget. No. We never get back what was taken. No, you can't. But we have to reach a point where...

Wanda Miller (51:32)
We can, we can outwardly move forward. Internally, we're still dealing, we're always going to deal with it. Just like you talking about Stephen and how emotional you get. That's 16 years later.

Pete Dorough (51:56)
 I always preface every time that I have a, I talk to people about this. I'm going to cry. I am, I'm gonna cry, I'll get through it. But I shared with you a story that kind of just like, when you know you're on the right path, you know that you're doing what you're supposed to do. And I don't care what people call it, but I shared with you this story about Michael, the guy in my bill. I truly believe it's divine intervention.

Pete Dorough (52:26)
2018, I had reached out to the district attorney who tried my case and he was going to provide me with Stephen's case files because if I'm going to talk about this, I want to be able to take every single little detail that I can because today's kids, if you lied to them in any shape, form, or fashion, they lost them.

So I don't care if it was negative, positive, what it was. I want to know every single detail about my son's case. So he told me he was going to get him for me. And I've been working with this same guy over and over again. And this day just so happened when he emailed me and told me, the files are there. You can come see them start next week. Great. So I got called to work. So we stay in a hotel and mobile.

Pete Dorough (53:19)
So get downstairs, talk to my coworker, I'm excited, know, and he's excited for me. And the hotel manager says the maintenance man is gonna take y'all to work. Okay, so I get in the van and me and the engineer are talking and we're just going on about me being able to get his files. And the driver looks at me and says, you lost a son too? And you know.

Pete Dorough (53:44)
Again, it goes back to me in a grief. very, to tiptoe around it because you know, just, the morning's driving me out, I him to freak out and know, wreck, but you know, but it's just the general nature of, you know, I know what it's like. And so I said, yeah, you know, I lost the son also. And he looks at me and he said, me too. And he says,

Pete Dorough (54:11)
Okay, and you know kind of
a little more small talk he said yeah, I said

Pete Dorough (54:17)
I said my son was murdered. And he looked at me and he said, mine too. And a little more small talk and now I'm like really nervous because I don't know, you I know this is a very touchy subject. I know this is, you know, hard for him to tell a complete stranger. I mean, we just met 10 minutes ago. And then he looks at me and he says, yeah, he said my son was murdered December 27th, 2009. The exact same day my son was murdered. Wow. You know.

Pete Dorough (54:45)
two different parts of Alabama, two completely different guys. And in that moment, we were the same person. he's a black guy, I'm white guy. And...

Pete Dorough (54:54)
From that moment on, were brothers, connected in a way that nobody else could really know unless they've been through that. And right before COVID hit, I ran into him again at the hotel. And he pulled me aside and he was like, hey, I don't know how much longer I'm gonna be here. But he said, I just don't know how you can do it. I don't know how you got the strength to do it. He said, but.

Pete Dorough (55:23)
You keeping your son alive keeps my son alive. He said, and I can't appreciate, can't tell you how much I appreciate that. And I know I can't do it, but you can keep doing it and keep doing it. Keep keeping our kids alive. Keep telling the story. And you know, that was the odds of me meeting that man on that day. was astronomical. I had a better luck winning the Powerball. And just to meet somebody out of the blue.

that wasn't out of the blue. 

Pete Dorough (55:53)
Well, that was confirmation that what you're doing, and that's not the only thing that I've had happen like that, but that's the most profound of all of it. things don't happen in life by chance. You know, we're given free will to do what we want, but we're not given a free pass for the consequences of those actions.

So we all meet things that are destined to be

Pete Dorough (56:22)
have a way of working themselves out. know, Vocal was a part of my case, my son's case originally. And the lady that worked on my son's case was amazing. She was a spitfire. She came with knowledge and she went back now for nothing.

Pete Dorough (56:45)
And at the same time she was fighting cancer. And it broke my heart whenever


Pete Dorough (56:51)
The case was over with, she passed away. And you know, maybe I should have stayed in touch with uncle, maybe I should have been more involved. Who knows? But things do come around, they come full circle. And you can fight it as much as you want. But you know, sometimes you just gotta accept things. You sometimes the path

Wanda Miller (56:51)
Joyce

Pete Dorough (57:13)
that's put before you is not what you want to do. But sometimes the peace in your mind.

Pete Dorough (57:21)
is worth the journey. Exactly. And if it's just one seed that I plant every day, then to me it's worth it. Because the only way we're going to make a difference, the only way we're going to make a difference in this life that we live is if we stand up and we say what we got to say

Pete Dorough (57:42)
and be vocal. Because if not, the bad guys

Pete Dorough (57:47)
Who screams the loudest nowadays? Usually the people that are the longest. The people that are all these experts that talk about all these things that they know all about. And whenever you ask them, people love to talk about cops and murders and all these things because they watch so many TV shows.

Pete Dorough (58:12)
I usually set them up real easy and they come at me real hard on social media. You don't know what you're talking about. And then when I lay out all the facts, they shriek up about that small and they slide out from under the door or under the rock that they crawled out from under. So, you know, the only way that we're going to make a difference in this world is if we work together. I am no, and any man that's out there watching this that has ever been through

Pete Dorough (58:41)
a traumatic situation. don't care if it's military or losing a child or any type of violence. You're not alone in this. I am no better than anybody else. I have cried myself to sleep. I have had very, very bad thoughts. I've been married four times, which I have an amazing wife, Naju, that does great work with the YPCA. I'm ashamed of this book.

Pete Dorough (59:08)
We're not perfect. None of us are, none of us ever will be. But the relief that I have felt in my life from being able to just talk about my son, be able to enjoy things that if you don't let it out, you can't enjoy nothing anymore. Life becomes just day to day mundane.

Pete Dorough (59:33)
go from A to B to B to A, you go to, you eat and you go to bed. Life is, that's not what life's about. Our kids wouldn't want us to live like that. Our kids would want us to be able to move on and do something with it. And you're doing that for them. And they're worth it. So. 

Wanda Miller (1:00:00)
Well, without a doubt, I would say Stephen's very, very, very proud of his dad. And I appreciate you coming on today and sharing your story and telling us about Stephen and get letting us get to know him. I hate that I didn't know him in person, but we are going to put up a link on, on at the end of the podcast with some contact information. So that if there is someone out there that, would like to, to join us, some men, especially that.

Wanda Miller (1:00:27)
looking for a place that's a place for them to do exactly the same things that you're doing. Have people around them that understand, that will help them. And where their journey counts and means something. That certainly does to us. So again, I thank you. 

Pete Dorough (1:00:50)
And I certainly look forward to... all of us working together because, know, there's a lot more of them out there than there are of us. And there's thousands of victims across the state and across the country that need our help. And I look forward to working with you in that endeavor. I'm here to do anything I can. I can ramble on for hours and hours.

It's just one of those things that

Pete Dorough (1:01:20)
once you open the dam, there's no putting the plug back in it. So I mean, the story just goes on and there's another chapter and another chapter and all we can do is just keep trying. That's right. That's your story. So that's it. Okay. It's our story

Pete Dorough (1:01:40)
because I'm not going to shut up. All right, then we got a deal. We're not going to shut up. That's exactly right. For all of those people that really want us to shut up.

Wanda Miller (1:01:40) All right then. We got a deal. We're not going to shut up. That's exactly right. For all of those people that really want us to shut  up, not happening.

Pete Dorough (1:01:50)
You're gonna see a guy, a 5'10", with a mohawk and a blue beard, you know. You're gonna see me at some point in time, so you might as well just accept that. 

Wanda Miller  (1:01:59) Just embrace the blue beard. That's it, embrace it. Thank you.