Undercover Cop with a Deathwish, and the Man With Grief Behind Him

Content note: this episode includes a detailed account of discovering a loved one's suicide.

Todd Maguire spent twenty-seven years with the Queensland Police Service, most of it as a detective, including two years working undercover under a new identity: Donny Wilson. But the badge and the alias were only part of the story. On New Year's Day 2000, Todd's girlfriend Karen died by suicide in their home. He and her four-year-old son found her. Todd was twenty-five.

Twelve months later, almost to the day, Todd became Donny. He grew his hair out, got tattoos, bought drugs from dealers, and walked toward danger most people would run from, chasing a recklessness that let him feel like nothing was worth protecting, including himself. He escaped death more times than he can count and once had a hundred-thousand-dollar bounty on his head. Looking back, he calls it a bit of a death wish.

It took years of drinking, undiagnosed PTSD, and a wife telling him it felt like walking on eggshells before Todd started to find his way back. Therapy that didn't work the first time around. Reading about other undercover officers who'd lived through something similar. And eventually, writing it all down in a memoir, Donny: Undercover Cop with a Deathwish, that he wrote for himself and ended up helping strangers he'll never meet.

What You'll Hear:

• Finding Karen and the moment that changed everything


• Deciding, together, not to continue a pregnancy weeks before her death


• Protecting her four-year-old son in the middle of the worst morning of Todd's life


• Grieving through blame, and the years it took to let it go


• Becoming Donny Wilson, twelve months to the day after Karen's death


• Repeatedly escaping death undercover, and the hundred-thousand-dollar bounty


• Marrying again, becoming a father, and still not being able to leave Donny behind


• Living with undiagnosed PTSD and what his wife noticed before he did


• Finding validation through other people's stories, a decade and a half later


• Why he wrote the book for himself, and what happened when strangers read it


• What he'd want to tell the Todd who was waiting on that porch in 2000

Guest Bio:

Todd Maguire spent twenty-seven years with the Queensland Police Service, largely as a detective, including two years working undercover as "Donny Wilson." He is the author of the memoir Donny: Undercover Cop with a Deathwish, which tells the story of the grief, the undercover years, and the long recovery that followed the loss of his partner, Karen, in 2000.

Website: www.toddmaguire.com.au (http://www.toddmaguire.com.au)

Facebook: Todd Maguire

Instagram: @todd_author_donny (https://www.instagram.com/todd_author_donny)

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• Part of Me Died That Day: Learning to Live After the Worst Day of Your Life (https://www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/stephen-panus-grief-journey/)

undercover policing, PTSD, suicide loss, grief, memoir, Queensland Police, Donny Wilson, complex trauma, recovery

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