Terri Irwin: Footage of Steve’s Death Won’t Air
There’s going to be one less morbid tape soiling the airwaves these days.
In her first interview since her husband’s death, Steve Irwin’s widow, Terri, said that the video footage captured of the Crocodile Hunter’s run-in with the stingray that killed him will never be broadcast on television.
“No. No. What purpose would that serve,” Terri Irwin told ABC’s 20/20 in a segment set to air Wednesday, adding that she has never watched the tape, either. “It was an accident so stupid. It was like running with a pencil. It was not risk he was taking. It was just an accident.”
Irwin, 44, was killed Sept. 4 while filming a documentary near Australia’s Great Barrier Reef when he was stung in the heart by a stingray. Wildlife experts have called the TV star and conservationist’s death a “freak accident.”
More than 5,000 people gathered last Tuesday at Irwin’s Australia Zoo to pay tribute to the man known the world over for his “Crikey” outbursts and enthusiasm for some of nature’s deadliest creatures.
“I have to make sure the zoo keeps running,” Terri Irwin told 20/20’s Barbara Walters. “He planned all that masterfully. He planned this wonderful business so that it could continue if anything happened to him.”
Despite Irwin’s jovial demeanor, Terri Irwin said that her late husband had a feeling he wasn’t going to live to a ripe old age, and not just because he bucked the odds every day, cozying up to poisonous snakes and wrestling with creatures from the deep. “He’d talk about it often,” she said. “But it wasn’t because of any danger from wildlife. That was never a consideration. He just felt life could be dangerous.”
Terri, who’s from Oregon, and Steve Irwin tied the knot in 1992, six months after meeting in Australia, where Terri was on vacation. “I fell then and there, love at first sight,” she said.
The khaki-clad Croc Hunter told the pretty American that he had a girlfriend, though.
“I was a little bit devastated,” she told Walters. But, luckily that “girlfriend” turned out to be Irwin’s pet dog, Sue.
“I had romance like I didn’t think existed anymore, a wonderful romance,” Terri Irwin, who frequently traveled with her mate on his adventures and costarred in the 2002 film The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course, said. “He was passionate and determined and enthusiastic.”
It wasn’t always paradise in the Outback, of course, but the Irwins made it work. “There were so many things that made me crazy,” Terri recalled, “like his desire to do everything now. He had a real sense of urgency with his life and no side-view business plan. If you got plans, we’ll do them now.”
The Croc Hunter’s other half said that she is coping with her husband’s death “one minute at a time, sometimes an hour at a time.”
“With great faith, great determination,” she said. “I have two beautiful children. And they really are my strength.”
Eight-year-old Bindi told the crowd at her father’s public memorial service that she plans to carry on his conservationist efforts and promote his love for nature. The little girl’s speech, which she studiously read from a piece of notepaper, prompted a standing ovation from the thousands in attendance.
Bindi, who also has a two-year-old brother, Robert, is already making good on her word, hosting a series on the Discovery Network called Bindi the Jungle Girl.
“Bindi has a spirituality about her that I’ve seen with Steve,” Terri Irwin said. “She has unbelievable sensitivity. She has an uncanny connection with wildlife. She has a love for them that was just like her dad’s.”
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