Ted Gross says he’s a murderer. Not in the legal sense, but by his own definition.

“The only difference is that I used keys,” he says.

On the night of May 31, 1998, the then-20-year-old Gross killed 21-year-old Melissa Hoeving when he ran a red light and crashed into her car while impaired. He was driving at 137 kilometres per hour.

The Regina man was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison, a term he himself considers too light. But in the end, he’s serving a life sentence anyway, he said.

“You would think the guilt has lessened, that it’s not as prevalent, but the raw feeling of it is still there,” he said. “It’ll be a part of who I am till I die.”

He shared his story with the Star ahead of the sentencing for Marco Muzzo, the 29-year-old King City man who pleaded guilty to impaired driving charges in February for a September crash that killed Daniel Neville-Lake, 9, Harrison, 5, Milagros, 2, and their 65-year-old grandfather, Gary Neville. The children’s grandmother and great-grandmother were also seriously injured.

The Newmarket courthouse will be the centre of national attention on Tuesday as Superior Court Justice Michelle Fuerst hands down what could be one of the toughest sentences for impaired driving causing death in Canadian history.

The Crown is calling for a prison term of 10 to 12 years, while the defence is asking for 8 years.

Gross is among a select group of people who can really understand the court proceedings and public pressure from Muzzo’s perspective. His case also bears some similarities.

He too had a well-known criminal defence lawyer, and was the son of a former provincial cabinet minister facing accusations that money and privilege would have an effect on the case’s ultimate outcome.

And like Muzzo, his blood alcohol content was three times the legal limit.

Gross, who was greeted by TV crews and reporters at the courthouse when he was granted bail, spent months inside a bubble, spending all his time at home with a supportive family, struggling to sleep at night.

“I thought everybody, whenever I went out in public, I thought everybody was staring at me, judging me,” he said. “I was at the store once and someone said ‘Hey, you’re a murderer.’”

He was pulled in different directions by family and friends, some saying “you screwed up” and should pay for his crime, others suggesting that there might be a way to fight the charge.

Some friends no longer wanted to be associated with him — “100 per cent fair,” he said — while those who remained had angry comments lobbed at them for sticking with him.

There was a range of emotions travelling through his mind — guilt, self-pity, remorse. He called himself an idiot and every other possible insult. Then he started having suicidal thoughts.

“To me, it’s not fair to Melissa if I was to do it (commit suicide), and that’s honestly as long as it took me to make up my mind. It was the cheap way out,” he said.

So after speaking with a family friend who was a former RCMP officer, Gross decided to plead guilty.

“I knew I was going to jail. I wanted to move past it, to start rebuilding my life,” he said.

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“I realized this collision wasn’t about speed. I realized it was the alcohol that killed Melissa. It was my drinking. I had to realize I had a problem…A girl paid with her life, and my reward was I got to live. I thought the least I can do is man up and take my punishment.”

Gross, who came from a well-to-do middle-class family, said he was “scared as hell” and found no one who looked like him when he arrived in prison in Prince Albert, about a three-hour drive from Regina.

“It’s a mentally draining game, you get scared of getting beat up, you have no friends, no allies. I was afraid people were going to look at me and say ‘Here’s someone who killed somebody and got a light sentence,’” he said.

“I adapted to my environment by realizing that I’m not better than anyone else in here. I couldn’t hide in isolation. I had to do my time like everyone else.”

He never did get beat up, and spent a lot of his time writing letters. The first was to Melissa’s mother, who agreed to meet with him when he was released. The meeting happened shortly after he was granted day parole, after having spent about five months in prison.

“One question was: Why did you do it? And to this day, if she was to ask me that question, I still don’t have an answer,” he said.

“I was an idiot. And that’s the sad part with this crime. Nobody intends to do it, but they do it. She was blaming me, and she had every reason to. She talked about forgiveness, which is really tough, because to this day I still don’t forgive myself for it. I’ll die before I forgive myself for what I’ve done.”

Gross says he hasn’t had a drink of alcohol since the collision. He got married after being released, and he and his wife have a 6-year-old boy. She also has a child from a previous relationship.

“I don’t hide it,” he said of his crime. “When people ask me, I say ‘Yes, I’m that guy.’”

He urges anyone charged with impaired driving causing death to not “look for the easy way out.” He said you have to learn how to create your new normal.

“What you’ve done in your life up until that moment, that life is over for you. You have to learn to live within your own skin as that person,” he said.

“I think back and I remind myself that someone paid with their life for me to learn this lesson.”