Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast - Stalked: Jazz Thornton Tells Her Story

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

WARNING: This episode discusses stalking and threats and may be distressing for some listeners. Jazz Thornton joins Jono, Ben & Megan to share her real‑life experience of being stalked, after an online obsession escalated into a man flying overseas and showing up outside her home. She opens up about the emotional toll, the lack of legal protection at the time, and how that experience led her to speak out and make change through her documentary Stalked.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Jono Ben and Megan podcast, thanks to Dilma. Goodness really does taste great. Dilma, making the world a better tea. Jazz Thornton with us in the studio. Nice to see you, Jess. I'm going to see you guys. Can I just ask you? What have you been up to?

Because every time I talk to you, like, I've just come back from Ecuador. You're always busy. I've been at a United Nations meeting in Brazil. We're hanging out with Lady Gaga's mum. What has been happening recently? There's never nothing exciting going on in your life. I really wish I had a cool story for you, but I feel like I've just been so ratch. wrapped up in doing this other show that I've been doing and touring.

But it's amazing the people that you have connected with over the years. Yeah. No, like, you know, like I said Lady Gaga's mom and that's true. Yeah, like you connected with her, you know. Simone Biles recently. Rachel Platton, fight song, you know. She messaged me yesterday. I know, like you guys are mates together.

Yeah, she's one of my good friends now. What did she say to you yesterday? Was it personal? Oh, no, she just said congratulations on the show. I love you, I miss you. Because I was then asked if I could send it to her. That's such an amazing story. Getting an illegal download, illegal link

for Rachel Bannon. How you guys connected though, you know? That was a song that you used. Yeah, I used to play it a lot as a teenager when I was struggling, a little fight song. And then, yeah, she started following me on social media a while ago. And then we just kind of hit it off. And now we hung out a lot.

And she took me to some fig farm in Malibu when I was there recently. Are you a fig fan? I can't say I am a fig fan. And it was like ice baths and saunas on a fig farm. Yeah, it was a wonderful time. I'm not an ice bath girl. I don't like freezing cold. You didn't like figs, the ice bath.

You're like, batten, you're going to take me to the worst. Like, freak bar. That's not in the top 200 things I'd think of doing. It was so odd, but it was so, it was very Rachel. That's awesome, though. Yeah, okay. Documentary on tonight, tomorrow and Wednesday on Sky Open and also on Neon right now. This is something that you'd be working on for a while, right?

Yeah, about just under two years, I think. Yeah, we first, I first got approach to do it at the end of 2024, when after my stalker situation had happened, and we've been working on it kind of ever since. So it's called stalked, and, yeah, like, you've got a lot of fans, you know, you're huge on social media, but this is a true story, your story and a couple of other people's story about stalkers.

In your case, the person came from the, was it, Netherlands? Yeah. To New Zealand to see you. 18,000 kilometres that he flew. He only discovered me, I found out three weeks prior, and then just became obsessed. Yeah. Yeah, and then I, to this day, I've never spoken to him.

But he messaged my housemaid and was like, I'm coming to find jazz, booked a flight, came, got home one day and he was sitting outside my house. Oh my God, so you saw him? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And did you know who it was when he was outside your house? He left a brown paper bag outside, like our front part that had a letter from him in it. I've actually got that audio. This is in the doco because you filmed going out to see this brown paper bag. Have a listen.

Before he even opened it, I just knew. She's Dutch. She's not opening the bag. That's Dutch treats. That's Dutch treats. And she's just like, these are Dutch treats, these are Dutch treats. And I just start panicking. And there is a letter and a card in there.

It's Dutch treats. And my eyes just darted immediately to the bottom. Where I saw his name. I don't think I've ever felt fear like that in my life. They're all got goosebumps here. That's crazy. Yeah, and we went inside after that, and that's when we had these Florida ceiling windows

that looked down to a beach just below us, and we went inside, and he was sitting down at the beach, looking up into our windows. Oh, my God. What is going through your mind? I am terrified, and yet still, I think, in the classic New Zealand fashion,

I was like, do I call the police or am I being dramatic? Wow. Like, I don't know what to do. So we sent my male housemate, which, worst thing to do when you have a stalker, is send someone down to the stalker. To confront him. Not to confront him to confirm it was him

because I didn't want to call the police and then it not be him right there. So he went down and you actually see the photos that he took in the doco to send to us and then yeah, called the police and they were like, hey, this is really crazy but also stalking's not illegal. Yeah, that's the thing.

The laws in New Zealand, yeah, they feel very outdated, right? Oh, not just outdated, non-existent. Yeah, right. At that time, completely non-existent. It becomes a thing. illegal now on the 26th of May. But yeah, back then, it was literally like, this guy potentially

is here to take himself out and take you out with him. I had a criminal forensic psychologist that was working in the police that was analysing everything and was instructing me what to do on if he tried to take me and things like that. And still the police were like,

we can't like... They couldn't do anything. No, he got arrested eventually, but it was just given a criminal harassment notice and then have he broke that is when they could actually charge him because they were working around this non-existent. Could they deport him? No, they were trying to.

But again, because he hadn't directly said this is what he was going to do, he wrote a message that basically at the end of it said, I hope to meet you in the next life soon. And that's what the criminal forensic psychologist was like, oh, he's planning to take you out and then take himself out. Wow. Because he hadn't said that's what he was going to do. They were like, we want to, I remember the commander calling me. because everyone was involved in police and they were like,

we just want to drop, kick him out of the country, but we can't do that. And I was like, why? Yeah. What the heck? But, yeah, the law was just not there. It seems like a very important documentary for parents and kids as well, you know, and he kind of worked out where you live through social media, right?

Through some little, like, and almost doing his own investigation of landmarks and things like that. So again, to be careful what you're posting and, you know, how you can give things away, right? Yeah, never posting like outside your windows and things like that. Mine was a running video that he found me on and there was like a pedestrian bridge in the background that he used Google Earth and reverse imaged it and then kind of Google earthed it around the coastline until he found my house. And so, yeah, I'm now super careful as to what I post. Never in my suburb, never outside my windows, never anything identifying with my house.

Because it just takes one person out of however many that follow you. Whether you have a big social media following or you have 200 people that follow you, it just takes one. one person to become obsessed and it's pretty easy to find people. That is frightening how quickly he found you from following you online three weeks and then he's here. Yeah, it was 24 hours after he entered the country that he was at my house. Jeez. And so obviously yours was a pretty extreme case of someone flying across the world,

but it happens domestically every day, right? Every day. And I was shocked. I didn't know that. I think that I thought it was something that you see in movies and TV shows. And the week before it happened had just watched Baby Rain. India and was like, this is crazy. But after I kind of shared my story, I was thousands of people in New Zealand have

experienced this. And it's everywhere. But no one really talks about it because I think, like I said, New Zealanders don't want to be dramatic or like, we should be thankful that someone is obsessed with us or like that kind of thing. Yeah. But yeah, it's everywhere. One in five women and one in 15 men.

Really? So amazing your story. You get to tell this, which is so incredible. and some other brave people as well, telling their stories as well. Yeah, there's two others in there, which are both. Their stories will infuriate you. A girl, Zini, she met her stalker when she was 16. He was 24.

They barely knew each other, like at all. He was her boss's partner. Became obsessed with her, message to her for years, really threat, like death threat kind of situation. Really awful stuff. And police didn't do anything. And then the other girl, Tessa, she ended up. being kidnapped by her stalker.

Wow. She survived doing the one thing that the forensic psychologist told me to do if my guy approached me. Like she'd saved her own life and she's incredible. What was that one thing? What was that for the docker? You have so for me, I got told I had to be so thankful if I saw him and like you have to really feed into, oh my gosh, your amazing kind of thing because rejection in those

stalkers is a lot more dangerous. And so she realized that she couldn't physically escape this guy. And so instead she was like, I'm in. love with you like oh my gosh like let's go out together i'll tell them someone else hurt me and he fell for it and she was out in the bush for 38 hours on great barrier yeah he had like come over and he hid under her bed so isolated yeah he hid under her bed in the day and then took her in the middle of the night oh my gosh and she survived um and yeah it was and it's insane like it happens in new zealand this is in new zeal yeah um and obviously he got sentenced for it for that stuff um but yeah

So she literally talked her way out of it. Couldn't fight it, but talked it. Wow, good on her. And I imagine you and your story was a big part of the law changing. Yeah, I mean, there were people that were advocating a lot for it beforehand, but it just wasn't getting any traction. And so the petition actually launched the day after my guy left the country. And I knew that the one thing I had was public pressure and a platform.

And so we decided to share our story the day after it happened, which I didn't want to do. But it just wasn't. getting traction. So yeah, once we did that, the petition got over like 20,000 things and it got to push through to Parliament. But there were people that have been working on this for so long, and it was just kind of the final kick that needed to make it happen. Good on you for doing this. And good on you for making this doco. It looks incredible. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah, sharing your story. Stalked. It's on tonight on Sky Open. You can catch the whole thing on neon as well. Jazz. Always nice to catch up. Nice to see you guys.