Payne Haas’ father Gregor opens up on how the family is handling horror car crash
With his wife in jail on remand facing manslaughter charges, life as a virtual single dad has pushed Payne Haas’ father to breaking point.
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Every Wednesday morning, Gregor Haas sets out on a 330km-round road trip, a soul-destroying drive he never envisaged.
Some would call it his highway to hell.
Haas, the father of Brisbane Broncos NRL star Payne, with all his thinking time, prefers to treat it as a journey of hope.
It’s a weekly ritual Gregor finds as strangely comforting as he does confronting, snaking his way, alone for two hours, from his home in the Gold Coast hinterland to the gates of the Southern Queensland Correctional Centre near Gatton, west of Brisbane.
In 2018, the prison was reclassified as a women’s facility under Operation Elevate, a program designed to solve chronic overcrowding, improving conditions and outcomes for women in custody.
The prison has 300 beds.
One of those is occupied by Uiatu “Joan” Taufua, Gregor’s partner of 28 years and the mother of their 10 kids, including Payne Haas, the Brisbane Broncos’ highest paid player and the NRL’s No. 1 prop.
“To be honest, seeing my wife in jail,” says Haas Senior, pausing for a moment as he lights up a stress-relieving cigarette.
“What can I say, mate … it’s just f***ed.”
In a News Corp exclusive, Haas is speaking for the first time about one of the nation’s most distressing and horrific stories of 2022.
On December 30 last year, as millions of Australians were preparing for New Year’s Eve celebrations, tragedy struck when Taufua was at the centre of a high-speed car crash at Bonogin, just minutes from the Haas family home on the Gold Coast.
Three people were killed. Two families’ lives were changed irrevocably in a split second.
Taufua survived – just. She was the sole survivor.
The 46-year-old has been accused of the manslaughter of Susan Zimmer, 70, her partner Chris Fawcett, 79, and her daughter Steffanie Zimmer, 35.
While the Zimmer family is still trying to put their lives back together knowing their loved ones will never come home, the Haas family is dealing with its own nightmare.
Taufua was also charged with dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, evading police and driving without a driver’s licence.
Last month, the Southport Magistrates Court heard that Taufua had also been charged with an additional count of drink driving.
Taufua finds herself behind bars on remand as she awaits her fate over the road accident that claimed three lives and almost took her own, leaving Gregor to keep the Haas family unit from falling apart.
“I’m going through all sorts of emotions,” Haas says.
“You go through a period of grieving, but then you move on.
“I don’t mean move on as in not being with Joan anymore, but life has to move on. The kids have to go to school. I have to work. Otherwise everything falls apart.
“The first four weeks when Joan was taken into custody were so hard.
“As a family, we have gone into our little shell in life. We have nothing to do with anyone really and it’s best that way. We have our little family unit and it’s my job to ensure the kids are safe and happy.
“I’m trying to stay as busy as I can. I do what I can to keep my mind off things.”
Solitude comes when Haas embarks on a journey he never imagined. The weekly day trip to visit the mother of his kids in jail.
“I get to see Joan once a week,” he says.
“I drive out Gatton way, there’s a women’s facility out there.
“I get one hour once a week to see her and we are also allowed one video call.
“It’s a long drive, plenty of time to think.
“I see her every Wednesday at 9 o’clock. I can’t touch her.
“Sometimes it’s behind a glass panel – like the movies – sometimes it’s not.
“They still enforce the 1.5 metres social-distancing thing with Covid, so if I try to hug her, the guards will run in and stop us.
“I never expected any of this. Life takes you on a journey you don’t expect.
“It can really toss you around.”
Upon meeting Gregor, the mere sight of him crystallises the confusion and complexity that surrounds the Haas family.
At first glance, the 45-year-old, like his 118kg famous footballing son Payne, is a menacing proposition.
Gregor is well over six feet tall and is chiselled at 105kg. He is covered in tattoos, including a large Polynesian tribal tapestry of ink that starts at his lower thigh and finishes near his torso.
He could easily pass as a nightclub bouncer, but as you get closer to shake his hand, you see another side to the Haas family patriarch.
Half-Swiss, half-Filipino, Gregor extends his hand. His fingernails and toenails are covered in purple glitter nail polish, courtesy of his youngest child.
“You can blame that on Gypsy (seven years old),” he says. “I haven’t had time to wipe it off.”
Life as a virtual single dad – caring for six of the couple’s nine school-aged children (their 10th, quadriplegic son Chace died three years ago) – has pushed him to breaking point.
Gregor and Joan have another two “adopted sons”, Aryan, 20, and Kaha, 19. They joined the Haas clan seven years ago.
“The hardest thing about life as a single parent is realising how much a mother does,” he said.
“Joan did so much day-to-day and I’m coping the best I can. I’m still trying to figure things out every day.
“Payne’s brother Klese (who plays for NRL side the Gold Coast Titans) and his partner help out and I have my 17-year-old daughter, who has taken on the role of a mini mum.
“We have learnt that if someone can’t do something, someone else has to step up.
“You wouldn’t believe how proud I am of Aryan and Kaha. I would be absolutely f***ed without them.
“We haven’t officially adopted them, but anyone who asks, they are my sons in our eyes.
“Anything I have needed through this period, they are there in the blink of an eye.
“The love they have showed us, they are a true part of the family.”
Gregor called on his “adopted” boys on the tragic day of Friday, December 30.
He received a phone call from a friend. It changed his life. There was carnage on a stretch of road at Bonogin. Joan was among the smouldering wreckage. Gregor took off, leaving his younger children with Aryan and Kaha.
“A mate of mine who lives in Bonogin sent me a photo of the crash. I can’t describe how I felt in that moment,” he recalls.
“I drove down there and saw the damage.
“It was five minutes from our place. I was bawling my eyes out. I thought the worst.
“The police officer told me she (Joan) had been taken to Gold Coast hospital. They said, ‘Sorry, we don’t want to lie to you but we don’t know if she will survive this one’.
“They (the paramedics) had to resuscitate her.
“When I first saw the accident, I honestly thought Joan was gone.”
Almost five months on, Gregor says Joan is still physically and mentally recovering behind bars.
“I can’t talk about what actually happened for legal reasons, but the injuries to Joan were horrific,” he said.
“When I finally got to see her in hospital, her face was a mess.
“She has a metal plate in her chest. She damaged her back. Her tailbone. Both shoulders were stuffed. She is still recovering now in jail.
“I don’t know if they do rehab in jail. She is trying to rehabilitate herself.
“She still can’t put her arm up or anything like that.
“She’s not good emotionally … as you can imagine.
“Apart from Chace dying, that (accident) was the worst day of my life.”
Haas’ highest-profile child, Broncos superstar Payne, is suffering in silence. It is understood the Broncos prop has yet to visit his mum in jail.
Last month, the NSW Origin forward, who is Muslim, posted a message via an Instagram story from Zimbabwean Islamic scholar Mufti Menk, who stated: “Remember that your character should always be stronger than what you’re experiencing in life.
“We can’t always control what happens to us, but we can always control how we react and respond to it.”
Of his mum’s ordeal, Haas added in an interview with a Sydney newspaper: “I won’t lie and say it’s been easy.
“It’s been really tough. I’m lucky I’ve got a good support network around me, I’ve got my partner and my daughter.
“I missed the World Cup last year to be with my family. We saw what happened with mum. Just for my head, I thought it was best I stay back in Brisbane and be with my family and look after myself and them.”
Gregor says Haas has worked hard to compartmentalise his life and stay out of trouble after several off-field incidents. Two years ago, he was fined $50,000 and suspended for three games by the NRL following a drunken altercation with police officers.
“Payne has been through some tough times,” Gregor said. “He’s had some off-field incidents, but he knows how to separate things emotionally.
“He hasn’t tried to let this off-field stuff affect his football. He is playing great football for the Broncos this year. He has a great focus.”
As Joan attempts to heal her physical and mental scars in stone-cold incarceration, Gregor is steeled by the ghosts of another car accident more than two decades ago.
In 1999, Gregor and Joan were passengers in a car that slammed into a tree on a Canberra highway. The driver, a friend, was killed instantly. Joan, who was heavily pregnant at the time with Payne in her womb, stumbled out of the wreckage.
Gregor, briefly unconscious, woke to find Joan holding their five-month-old son Chace, strapped into a baby seat in the back of the car.
The impact of the crash snapped his spinal cord. Chace was a ventilated quadriplegic up until his sudden death at age 21 from respiratory failure in August 2020, a passing the Haas family did not expect.
“That’s why Payne has his first name and his middle name is Lucky. The pain of that moment and the fact he is lucky to be alive,” Gregor says.
“When I look back now at that accident, I think , ‘How the f*** did we get through all this?
“It changed our lives in a big way.
“It took us six months to recover from that crash. I still vividly remember staring at the tree right in front of me.
“It took ages for Chace to get a diagnosis. He was in hospital for a good 12 months. We knew from the moment he was old enough he would spend his life in a wheelchair.”
Gregor accepts there will be no tears of sympathy for Joan. But he believes very few could have coped with her journey raising Chace.
“Raising a child with Chace’s disability, it was so hard,” he says.
“We’re not perfect, none of us are, but the Joan that I know is a loving mother. All I can say is I love Joan to death and that will never change. I was 17 when we first met.
“When the kids are down, she brings them up.
“I will never meet another woman who loves their kids like Joan.
“People without disabled kids don’t understand how hard it was with Chace.
“Joan fought for him every day, taking him to doctors and changing his catheter.
“His death hit us hard. I remember one of the doctors saying, ‘Do you want to let him go?’ I said, ‘No way, I can’t kill my son’.
“In the end, we let him go as long as we could.
“We still think about him every day. Every day.”
Gregor knows the weeks and months ahead could bring more pain. The public condemnation of the family and, more specifically Joan, has been savage.
For the sake of his mental health, Gregor avoids social media, ignores headlines, gets on with the job of playing Mr Mum … and locks in his weekly Wednesday sojourn on the road to what he hopes is redemption.
“People can be so critical these days. Social media is awful, they just hammer us on there,” he says.
“All the stuff you hear and read, I honestly don’t worry about it. With Payne in the media all the time, you figure out what’s right and wrong. We’re used to the attention in a way. For 20 years, people would stare at us with Chace and we’ve lived with judgment.
“It’s been very hard, but me and the kids are very tight. The tighter we stay the better. This is not what I ever expected, but the kids are going to school and I’m sorting things out.
“I guess you could say we’re all hands on deck.
“We’re coping the best we can.”
MY FAMILY WILL NEVER COME BACK TO ME’: FALLOUT FROM DEADLY CRASH
Jeremy Pierce
A Gold Coast woman who lost three family members in the horrific hinterland car crash allegedly caused by Uiatu “Joan” Taufua is still trying to piece her life together.
Claudine Snow’s sister Steffi Zimmer, her mother Susan and her mum’s partner Chris Fawcett all died within moments of an explosive crash with a vehicle allegedly being driven by Taufua at Worongary in the Gold Coast hinterland on December 30 last year.
Mrs Snow has watched news reports of Haas fronting media conferences to talk of the toll the crash has taken on his family with mixed emotions.
“It hurts deeply to hear about that family missing their mother (but) mine will never come back to me,” she said.
After burying her loved ones, Mrs Snow relocated her young family from the NSW north coast to live in her mother’s house - just a handful of kilometres from Taufua’s own family home.
The thought of running into Taufua’s family - which includes Brisbane Broncos star Payne Haas, fills Mrs Snow with dread, while she also faces the brutal reality of driving past the site of the horrific crash almost every day.
A roadside shrine still marks the spot where her loved ones lost their lives.
Mrs Snow has shown enormous courage in navigating just the latest tragedy to strike the family (both she and a daughter have faced their own serious health battles in recent years) and she told The Sunday Mail it was still hard to come to terms with the consequences of the crash.
“It’s been an incredibly difficult Easter - the first holiday without my little sister and my mum,” she said.
She said she felt “so many memories” had been taken from her and her three young children.
“I grieve the reality that this is permanent and when we celebrate Mother’s Day next month, I am the only one left in my family who can be called Mum.”
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