CUTTING OPEN A DRUG COURIER

One of the many way drugs enter a country is via ‘mules’; people who are recruited to smuggle contraband across international borders by ingesting capsules of drugs such as heroin and cocaine that have been packed tightly into condoms. The typical drug mule can swallow anywhere between 80 to 125 capsules, which can weigh up to a combined total of 1.25 kilos. They take medication to block their bowel movements before and during the flight, and once they reach their destination the drug mule swallows laxatives to help the pellets pass through their digestive system, and the drugs hit the street in no time at all. I’d like to think if people knew how their ‘blow’ or ‘smack’ was delivered – passed through someone’s bowels - they’d have second thoughts about ingesting it for their highs. The mule’s actions aren’t without risks because apart from the threat of being caught by customs and convicted to a long prison sentence, they’re also in danger of suffering a terrible death from heart or respiratory failure should any of the pellets rupture inside of them. A mule stands to make no more than between $3-4000 for risking their life and freedom, a mere pittance when compared to the drug lords’ earnings because they can make so much more. For instance, a Kilo of Cocaine purchased in South America can be secured for as little as 7k Australian dollars. If that Kilo is successfully imported into Australia, it can return an imported approximately 230k Australian dollars.

For those who may think there is some sort of adventure in trying to smuggle drugs I’ll relate a story from the United States which proves how little the life of a mule means to the drug cartels because what happened in 1995 to a 21-year-old from Colombia, a kid who had the best years of his life to look forward to, was nothing short of disgraceful. The man, who’d just secured a job on a cruise liner, was enticed to make some extra cash by smuggling heroin into Miami, but the drugs he’d stuffed into his belly started to leak and he paid the ultimate price for his crime when he died of an overdose. However, the mule’s contact wasn’t going to allow for the drugs that were inside the corpse to go to waste, and he used what doctors who conducted the autopsy realised was a 12-inch knife to gut the dead man and retrieve the bags of white powder so he could supply his clients. His body was dumped

on the street, and the reason why the authorities could ascertain the 21-year-old was a mule was because the contact had failed to retrieve two pellets that were lodged in the Columbian’s oesophagus. It’s a filthy business, and to think the ‘party people’ in Miami, Los Angeles and New York City unwittingly hoovered cocaine up their nostrils that was cut out from a dead man’s digestive system says it all.

I recall when working in the Drug Squad in the 1990’s receiving a call from the NSW Ambulance service that they’d been called to treat an east European national and his girlfriend at a doctor’s surgery in the inner-Sydney city suburb of Newtown, and he had a stomach full of heroin and was violently ill. They had earlier been to the same Doctor but didn’t want to disclose why he felt so ill. When he returned later that day to the doctor’s surgery he collapsed into a narcotic coma whilst in the waiting room. The Doctor called the ambulance once the girlfriend told him her boyfriend had a stomach full of heroin. The Doctor couldn’t phone us because he was bound by the law to respect the confidentiality of his patients, but the paramedics could – and it was just as well for this man that they did. When we arrived at the nearby Royal Prince Alfred Hospital x-rays were taken which showed there was quite a number of pellets lodged in his gut and it looked like one had burst. Normally heroin that is imported is close to 100% in purity and is ‘cut’ by drug dealers with all sorts of materials including battery acid cleaning powders to between 5-10%. It was obvious his life was in danger and two esteemed surgeons were waiting for him in the operating theatre They were dressed in gowns and gloves, and even though they wore face masks I sensed they were seething, and it didn’t take long before they were making no secret of the fact that they were furious at being called back to the office from their golf day to save the life of someone who was an active player in the drug epidemic that filled their hospital’s wards, and far too many graves. ‘It’s ironic,’ said one of them shaking his head in disgust as he glared down at the man lying unconscious on the operating table. ‘We’re normally fighting to save the victims of the drugs this thing brings into the country, and now we’re saving . . . this.’ Due to the laws of continuity, myself and a forensic team were required to be in the surgery to be able to show continuity to the court – that is there was no way the drugs could be contaminated, disturbed or the amount meddled with. It soon became painfully obvious that they had no respect for the man because, apart from their barbs, it didn’t appear to me that they were too concerned about the ‘gentle touch’ when they opened him up with the scalpel. I’m by no means a medical professional so I don’t know anything about medical procedures, but it struck me at the time as being quite savage. The east European hadn’t been to the toilet for days because he’d blocked his bowels with intestinal obstruction medication and his stomach was bloated with gases and his ‘pipes’ were clogged with excrement, and when the scalpel was plunged into the abdomen the stench that was released was pungent. Apart from reminding me of the smell of a dead person, the foul odour made me want to heave. I noticed that even the two doctors recoiled when the stench reached their noses, but one of them quipped with a chuckle: ‘I’d say he’s had a dodgy vindaloo or two!’ His comment broke the tension, and the same surgeon then asked what my cricket skills were like because he directed me to cradle my hands as though I was fielding at first slip and to brace myself. My colleague who was filming the surgery as part of the chain of evidence wished me luck because he reckoned I’d struggle to catch a cold, but we watched in amazement as the surgeon removed the mule’s guts out of his stomach, plonked them on the operating table , photographed them and then slit a fine line along the bloke’s intestines.

Once that was completed the surgeon glanced towards me and asked: ‘are you ready?’ and he squeezed the intestines as if it was a sausage. The pellets came flying out towards me at speed . . . pop . . . pop . . .pop . . .pop . . . and I reckon the Australian test cricket skipper Mark Taylor, who was a top slips fieldsman and celebrated for taking some classic catches off people such as Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, would’ve given me his thumbs up for my efforts because I’d wait, watch, catch and then drop the packages into a bucket full of Betadine disinfection and repeat it time and time again. Once the last of the drugs were removed the surgeons, who had both earned my admiration for the incredible job they did to save the criminal’s life, just dumped his guts back into his stomach as though they were stuffing a Christmas turkey. They then used catgut to stitch him up, and the way the needle was roughly thrust in and out of his skin looked as though they were repairing an old potato sack. I thought to myself he was going to have one hell of a scar to remind him of the many lives – and families - he was prepared to destroy for a few dollars. It came as no surprise to any of us that once he was able to be interviewed the mule insisted, he wasn’t a willing party in the crime because he’d acted under duress after being threatened with ‘severe’ ramifications by the underworld if he didn’t go ahead with their plan.

He would eventually be found guilty at court, sentenced and deported. It’s always good when you catch a drug courier, however it always disturbed me that we were catching the lo hanging fruit and the real crooks, those who orchestrate, arrange and facilitate the transnational movement of drugs just move onto the next load and treat the seize the same as a bank manager treats a stolen credit card – as a risk management process of – to make money sometimes you have to expect to loose money-but the drug kings don’t care for the human degradation and societal impact their crimes have. They really are the true ‘dirt bags’ of humanity.