BBC sports commentator John Hunt said he is developing “confidence that I can cope” after his wife and two daughters were brutally murdered.
Mr Hunt’s wife, Carol, was killed alongside their daughters, Louise and Hannah, by Louise’s ex-partner Kyle Clifford in July 2024.
Clifford, 26, had become “enraged” when Louise ended their relationship and committed the murders in a “violent, sexual act of spite”, a court heard.
Mr Hunt has spoken to The Telegraph about how he manages his grief, telling the paper: “It writes its own rules, it’s the strangest thing. You can wake up at half past seven one morning and think, ‘I feel quite bright today.’ And then, for no reason at all, come half past eight, you’re on your knees again.”
Despite the waves of shock and grief that come back to him, Mr Hunt said: “The next time it hits, you know that the intensity won’t be quite the same in an hour’s time. You develop a confidence that you can cope, even though nothing changes.”
He explained that he has been increasingly immersing himself in music and reading in the time that has passed since the horrendous acts against his loved ones.
Mr Hunt said a line from Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist who was sent to Nazi concentration camps with his family, has resonated with him as he considers how to live life without Carol, Hannah and Louise.
In the book, Mr Frankl argues: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Mr Hunt told The Telegraph: “It took me a lot of hard work to run with it, but I realised, ‘I have choices here”. I have Frankl’s words with me all the time,” adding: “While Kyle Clifford had taken just about everything from me, he didn’t have control over my future, or how I chose to live.”
Clifford, who has been given a whole-life term for the horrific crimes, gained access to the family home in Bushey by deceiving 61-year-old Carol Hunt before stabbing her and then lying in wait for Louise, 25, to enter the property.
Clifford restrained Louise, raped her and shot her with a crossbow, before killing her 28-year-old sister Hannah when she returned from work.
Mr Hunt, who has returned to work covering horse racing and other sport for the BBC, explained later: “Even though my life is completely upside down, I still get to live my version of it.”
He believes he was spared from becoming the fourth victim of Clifford’s attack only by the quick thinking of his daughter Hannah, who managed to call her boyfriend and ask him to call the police in the moments before she was killed.
