606. I Ask Notorious Drug Lord: "Are You A Psychopath?"

Peter Tritton, welcome to the show. Thanks Andrew. Thanks for inviting me. It's good to have you here I won't call you posh Pete. How do posh Pete start? You don't like posh Pete, do you? No, I don't. I've explained it's a couple of times Yeah, basically one of the first Journalists to interview me some of the while I wasn't saying the name of the paper, but What are the broad bands the other ones? I don't know the broad page the pages Broadsheets. No, the other ones. The yellow paper. Yeah, red headlight. Yeah, one of those and This journalist asked me she's he or she said Do you have any nicknames and I said well, no, not really and then I thought I don't know actually I do have several anyway I said well a friend of mine in Wales hello mark Course me is posh lit English buddy and as soon as I said I knew I was going to regret it and she said oh posh Pete and I was like God worry down worry down and then the next thing it's headlight news posh Pete blah blah this time the other I was like Jesus Christ. I'm not posh There's a misconception It is but then we said no, however you want to call it me something. I suppose in the movies somebody who ended up and we'll get into your Life story in all these kinds of prisons are a little bit rougher and ready than than what they might envisage you Yeah, I mean, I get that a lot of people Before they've met me they think oh there are gonna be some So shaving head is big stocky gangster type, but what is the perceived perception or misperception of a gangster? Yeah, Andrew Tate tattoos. Yeah, well not even Andrew Tate He's been wetty really is me. Sean outward. Yeah sure Sure bald Yeah, and then they see you and he's yeah, you're like just you know mini me to Sean. Yeah, if you didn't have that if I did I didn't use to actually in Ecuador. I was clean headed. I were you. Yeah, they used to call me Casparine like Caspar the friendly ghost Interesting. Okay, so you put yeah, I didn't like many Sean. Okay, so what what the fuck happened? What what did you do? What did I do? What didn't I do? He's more to the point. Yeah Well, I mean I've been in prison twice once in Britain once in Ecuador Okay, both times of drug trafficking on quite a serious level well very serious level First I'm a brin was I got arrested in may of 2000 and Yeah, they found quite a lot of drugs in the big manor house. I was renting and a son of shotgun Not that was not long after moving out of Bristol actually I've been living in St. George's after uni in Cardiff Yeah, and things have just been escalating from Cardiff. Just getting bigger and bigger and bigger meeting more and more people and You know network just expanded and I was dealing with big crime families up in London Through contacts that I'd made Directly linked to various cartels of Medellin cartel Carly cartel both of them was connected to and in London. This is prior to my endeavors in South America So how does this start because one minute you're somebody who's not? But you know, I mean if you go that way back when it all started really From a very young age. I mean my dad was smoking hash from you know from Dale's born First got stoned at the age of four. I was probably getting passively stoned from day dot The first time I was actually I remember being Physically Effected by hash each of the age of four and I was fed a piece of chocolate cake Which was laced with hash each my mum hadn't realized gave me this cake and I was off my head I knew I've watched you talk about that and I I actually have a similar story Yeah, that was my first interaction with drugs. It must happen to a lot Intentionally or unintentionally unintentionally. I was I was but I was 18. Okay. Oh nice different Yeah, that is different to four. That is different to four But I was out in California and with lots of Americans and they had a space cake And I didn't know what that was so they were like, okay, Andrew do you want some space cake? And I was like bloody lover brownie. Yeah, they're like it was a brownies and I was just stuffing my face because I was addicted to chocolate Yeah, I just the whole thing I just like threw in my mouth and they were watching me like Andrew You know pace yourself and I was like yeah pace myself. I'm doing fine me don't worry about me And then I was like sick and well for days So so that was anyway how you got it got yeah, well, I mean that's not how I got started dealing obviously Like came a little bit later on a bit. Yeah, I mean I said a little bit wasn't that far on About the age of 11 to 12 And it's my parents got divorced when I was 10 and there wasn't a lot of money in the home home My mum had become an alcoholic but at this point and she was struggling financially My dad was a builder so he was out a lot of the time So I was quite and left my own devices had a younger sister by four years And I just I was always sort of looking for opportunities to make money or you know have to have that very entrepreneurial spirit from a very young age and Just came across drugs like I say about the age of 11 or 12 because of the illegal racing my parents had got divorced and my mum's new partner had two sons who were both older than me one was a year older but the oldest was about what 10 years older eight eight to 10 years older And he was heavily involved in the illegal racing as a DJ and also involved with like a lot of the local heavies and People organizing the illegal raves that and controlling the drugs as well So I had a very young baptism of fire should we say into all of this with them started tagging along and along to the illegal Raves and of course because they were there. I had sort of a Lot of older people around me. He was sort of looking out for me to some degree And it just seems so easy to deal drugs in these parties because the police wouldn't come in They just set up a cord and round it and not even come into the party so I realized there wasn't any law in there apart from hour and law and You know like I see people making a fortune and it was just like well. Yeah, this is easy peasy Started off as a lot of people do or did maybe it's a little bit different nowadays But back then it was you know quite and stuff selling hash or weed So we've started with now. Well, I actually the first deal was like a half ounce of hashish off a school mate who's parents with dealers and Wasn't it wasn't a great deal. So I found my own source through my step brothers and But I remember the first deal with like property was an ounce of different poison which was South African weed bought that sold it very quickly to school mates and then started buying pills off these same people then LSD and Fedamins You know and that went on all through my school years up until I was a six-room college insurance sister and Someone grasped me up in formed on me and I was getting ready to leave for college one morning There was a knock at the door about eight a.m. Unusual because I was living in a very small village evening next to Princess answer state and gacking park So there was knock on the door answer the door and I had about two and a half ounce of hash on me cut off into deals Down my box of shorts ready to go out the door So anyway open the door and there's a guy there playing to load and it was a police officer colleague of his has gone around to the back door to make sure they got the back door and they had a search warrant for the house My dad was in France at the time was with his new partner looking for a holiday home So I was again there my own so they come in search the house about search my room and any combing up rooms Had eventually they find hash on me. I get arrested and end up getting sentenced to It was either six months or 12 six or 12 months of probation. I think I'm pretty sure it was 12 and Where my dad got by from France. I mean, I actually managed to speak to him whilst it was there and telling what had happened And he didn't so much he wasn't so much it was angry But he was more angry that the police had come to the house and he was like look if you can do it that you have to do it properly And this is how to do it and not do it like that So he rather than tell me off. He sort of started to educate me and was like, you know If you're gonna do it do it properly and don't get caught, you know, I'd always been brought up by my dad He was like pretty anti-police anti-authoritarian My mum's brother, so my uncle was in the South African police force and she hated him He wanted me to go into the military Had a lot of connections in the military very high ranking and my mum as I said hated him and So it was always anti-military anti-police. You're not joining the military. You're not doing this. You know So yeah, like I said, I was always quite I was brought up without sort of mindset, you know Don't inform don't grasp the police don't even talk to them So yeah, was was there a feeling of panic when the police first arrived I Actually going back to have there was an early incident with the police When I was about six and as I said there was not much money in the house and I can see I suppose even at that age That my mum was having a bit of a hard time And you know as a kid you want your mum to be happy and you you know you want to give him presents and stuff like that And I'd gone around to a friend's house and Saw that his mum had gold chains in gold jury and stolen two chains on Separate occasions and of course they did word out that when I was there things had gone missing You know, I didn't even know what I was doing. I was six years old Anyway, they the word how what happened I I'd stashed the chains up underneath the chest of drawers in my bedroom So I still had them Gave them back, but they insisted that the police were called in so this police officer called PC flinders He was like the local motorbike police officer glasses like you know square glasses typical police That was a big blank moustache You know typical eighties police officer He turns up Sits me down in a chair in the kitchen become the armchair. It says look You're any young at the moment, but if you carry on the way you're going you're likely to end up in prison I need to go there because it's for the bad people bad things happen there I can see you're a good kid, you know You know gave me the the spiel so that was at the age of six so I'm already scared of the police now because I've already been terrified by one Also Princess Anne's police nearly ran me over in a range over one day on her estate Me and a friend brought their mucking about We'd be knocking stone to for derelict barn and they came roaring up in a range over Chasers off the farm Down a track into the village of evening and they could as they came down the track I tripped fell and they nearly ran me open this bloody range over Drag to me for my feet, you know sort of shook me and get me a real bollykin was princess Anne there She wasn't present. I've known a couple of times and a door so have you yeah, yeah, we're just just in the village and stuff and and on the estate You know, did you say your police, you know? No, I didn't ask to scare So, yeah, very sort of Anti sort of police Yeah, so it must have been quite frightening. How old were you when they came when you had that all the stuff hidden in the house? What the chains or the drugs, the drugs when they came in, yeah, that was when I was at six one college So I was 17, okay, I got arrested then yeah, so I got all this Probation and like I said my dad was like yeah, you need to do it better, so it didn't really put me off It to be honest is it did stop me in my tracks. I stopped dealing stop going to the legal raves and The six one college actually allowed me to sit my exams very kindly So I got four a levels, you know, wanting an archaeology Geography biology in English And that managed to secure four offers from various universities around Britain and I obviously don't encourage because it was mainly because it was close to home And I could get back quickly in the event that my mum had a psychotic episode which she was doing when she drank Every time she drank she would have these psychotic episodes and become like a different person You know real jackal hide character. I'm sorry to hear that. That's a hot boy. That was really traumatic actually growing up It was an extreme that was extremely traumatic. I'm to live through that as a child and you know Being protective of my sister trying to sort of take it from his motorcycle You never quite knew what version of your mum you'd get well that was it. We're quite often we come home school at the end of the day and You know wouldn't know which mum would be behind the door of the flat she was living in in Nelsworth with a new partner and You know invariably if it was the nice one invariably she would tend into the nasty one You know after drinking quite a lot whisky quite quickly She has her favorite drink being half-score about being scotter. Sorry. I'm half-scot Was part of the motive and when you started with all this to help provide for the family. Oh, yeah, definitely that was a big Drive that's a lot on the shoulders of an 11-year-old kid. Yeah, so that was you know a big reason for trying to I you know A bring my mother out of the poverty that she was in and you know try and go get her help for the alcoholism But you know in the end, you know because my activities in wildlife obviously it made it worse because of the stress and Trauma there must been some time where you were bringing in oh, yeah, you know, I used to help out a lot financially How much were you bringing in in those years? Well, when I was at school. Yeah, um I mean you know as The years went on it increased, but um, I mean it wasn't a great amount, but I don't know It's a long time ago as well I said there's probably two three four hundred pounds a week maybe there's a lot to a teenager Actually, it must have been more because it when I was at you at Six-one college. I mean I was buying a thousand trips at a time. Sometimes more And they were and that was cost about a thousand pounds. So yeah, I was obviously making more than that because yeah, there were also ounces of Sometimes like half a kilo kilo of about 30 minutes around me and you know thousands of pills So it must have been more by the latter stages How did you end up then getting over to South America? Yeah, so I think go to uni I'm not dealing at this point but very quickly start again and Because like you know again, I see there an opportunity there and trying to survive as a student on the student loan is pretty difficult and You know again not having financial support from the family so I quickly start dealing in Cardiff again all the past the drugs and this is the first time I started dealing cocaine because a bunch of students they wanted coke and Also going out to nightclubs right kind of dealing ecstasy and it was in there that I started Meeting local celebrities like reset fans carries Matthews. Who's the first one? Recit fans We said yeah the Ginger. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So not in Hill. Yeah, not in Hill. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so he had he had quite recently made a twin town I don't know at this time. That was the first film. He's in twin town. Okay. Okay. It was and then the carries Matthew the Catatonia Catatonia carries Matthew's stereo phonics. No, no catatonia. Oh, yeah, that's a woman Yeah, it's a woman. What's the guy who does phonics? They were they were not going to back as well because obviously she was friends with them So yeah, anyway, stop meeting them and one of their friends was a dealer. You know, I became quite friendly with And he then introduced me to quite a few other dealers around Cardiff and things escalate massively then Those dealers I then said to them. I said look could you introduce me to the people that were previously supplying you? I know some of you won't be able to because they won't take kindly to me Stepping into their patch and but others were fine. They were like, yeah sure will introduce you So it went from just being around Cardiff so they're meeting dealers from Bristol all across the South Wales Emphol Corridor Swansea bridge end portalt were all up in the valleys the Rhonda valleys and these were like major major dealers You know buying 500 kilos to a ton of hash Hundreds of thousands well tens of thousands of pills I mean, you know huge amounts of drugs Each time you're taking a step up in terms of your business which to other people would be very exciting in other businesses Well, it was to me as well. I mean it was you know, I was by this stage in very, you know, without shadow of that hoot on the adrenaline But isn't it but there's also Every time you take that step up the risk and the potential punishment from complete. Yeah, yeah, I was kind of just like I Always stuck as kept it to like a one-man band. I was quite a team up with another dealer for a while like that guy I mentioned just now around Cardiff But you know things would start to go right after a while But I always because of the amount so I was being interested with on credit I didn't really want to interest other people without just in case they disappear, but they were fucked up or whatever Yeah, I mean there's a lot of credit onward down downstream Which proved problematic after a while With certain people were you also sort of dabbling in your own product? I was pretty strict about that You know don't get high in your own supply and all that. I mean, yeah, I would use my own code because it was the best route But I wouldn't use it whilst I was dealing I'd quite and I had sort of had a rule that I would do everything I had to do in the day And then if I was going to do it I'd do it when I got home or what else checking out with friends in the evening and Not to excess either generally. I mean, I don't remember a few all-nighters, but You know, it was never really my thing. I was kind of like to be in control, which is why cocaine became my drug Really rather than ecstasy and that LSD. I've done a lot of LSD as well, but It got to a point where it was just you know after quite a lot of traumatic experiences It became too much to deal with you know too many bad tropes You know, I yeah thousand plus tropes The thousand plus yeah, but you say it like six at a time stuff. I was like LSD Yeah, I mean you know, I mentioned buying a thousand trips at a time Yeah, you know that was in the early days It was you know later on it was more and I quite often sit there Without gloves on and cut up a thousand trips into individual trips So you imagine all of that acid is going straight through my fingers into me and I start tripping without even taking any Let alone then taking four or five six at a time. I Had one once or some form of acid on an island in in Colombia The worst night of my life. Yeah, because you got to be pretty strong mentally Yeah, but to do a thousand you must have been pretty strong. Yeah, yeah Bloody hell. Were you meeting was apart from you know Keris Matthews and that were you meeting lots of celebrities was their Sexy lure. There was a click in Cardiff particularly in Cardiff around the Was the bit it was in Riverside an area of Cardiff Riverside just behind the the the stadium. Yeah, Cardiff What was Cardiff on the park at the time which is now the new millennium stadium, isn't it? Yeah Riverside it's an area of Cardiff just by the by the river the river tap I think is and there was a cafe there I've got an avid now There was Chloe for back as well What was the name? I think it was Riverside cafe or something like that But they kind of had it as their own private club almost and Anything went on in there a lot of things did go on in there and then people like the director of casualty. Oh, yeah, it was Regular, you know, they were doing curry compiles and stuff like this With resiphons and carry the curries Matthews. They may have made not have been I cannot say Yeah, sure. Sure Tom Jones Anthony Hopkins went for a few I tell you he was around was Howard Marx was around a lot. There's Howard Marx You know the big hash no good. All right. Okay. So he was he was involved. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was around Howard Okay, and then so that's like it's almost like this Ferry animals. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay, the manic street preachers Probably so it's all that kind of thing which is very British like Americans won't even know what any of the names are and then you end up in this much more exotic but also I mean the The gun that I was dealing with up in near up from the Oxford. He was like the connection to all these people up in London or a lot of them anyway There were also a lot of celebrities up around the cults world People like Jonathan was sort of from the who he's now dead He had a mansion a house up at still in the world and he would turn up in a white bowl's worst to my friend's house to buy coke from him with his girlfriend Lisa, who's now dead as well So people like that were hanging out with them A racist was turning up at his house. No way. Yeah Yeah, I mean I can I can keep on dropping loads of names, but they were all involved now. That's that's You know, I mean in that scene you know the coaxing is you know, there's a lot of Musicians film stars You know that's what it used to be like People money. How did you end up in South America? Yeah, so all that stuff carried on in car if and then like say it got to a Such a point where there was you know, I was but on the version of a nose breakdown all sorts of shenanigans going on You know, but I mean I'm a son of shotgun chasing people that over money and Go through people's front doors and all sorts of stuff. Were you doing that? Were you the one sort of going? Yes, and no, yeah, like you got it because you you seem very mellow or soft Yeah to a point and then if someone doesn't pay up if I'm pushed to a point and I you know, I've got Quite calm to a point, but yeah, go beyond that and what would you say to me if I haven't paid up? What would you say to me? Well, invariably I know where your family lived if I was dealing with you and you know Start coding pieces off you take fingers off dropping off your family's doorstep. You'd say that, but you didn't actually do that I can't say but I did or didn't but Yeah, what cutting people's yeah fingers off pickle them Take them to their families doors at Christmas and job off of Christmas day stuff like that So would you get the fingers of the family members to show that people haven't paid? No, take your finger off and like to put pressure on the family to pay. What would you cut someone's finger off with? Like hedge cutters, you know like the ones were cutting through thicker stems But you're not that intimidating to look please don't need to be intimidating. You don't need to be expecting to be intimidating no Bloody hell mate, you know things have to be done on occasion. Do I mean yeah keep people in line? Well, yeah, I mean I was always quite good at instilling the fear in people because I tell you know Because of the people I was connected to in London quite often I wouldn't need to say much more than their names and people would know who they were And they had a lot of clout throughout Britain But sometimes you had to get because sometimes yeah because you know people just fuck up and there would be problems I mean, you know, but didn't you feel bad? I mean I've I've nearly I mean I've been in position But I owed someone money and they drove me around collecting the money with them It was a bike again from from somewhere and Well, they were the ones that we used to collect the debt and we drove around all day going to people's houses collecting money in And it was about a quarter million pounds we're talking about In total, so you know people don't need like 50 grand here 30 grand there Drove around all day collecting money and got back with about 60 or 70,000 The guy was I bring him back. I'm gonna break both his arms anyway. So driving we have one last stop after the run of the valley and at that last stop I was just prepared to go back And have my arm broken or two I was just trying to calm myself down and like get ready for the pain and The last stop they could see that I wasn't particularly fazed by sort of having my arm broken They said oh, you know, we're gonna leave you here. Don't worry about it. We won't take you back You know we can see you're trying to sort it out They just dropped me off of the last stop in the ronda my friend took me home afterwards But then having having been in the position where you hadn't been able to pay yourself Didn't you have that kind of I'm just interested in your mind. Well, which is why we had to go around Getting nasty with people to collect the money. Yeah, but we weren't like cutting off their cutting off their fingers And I didn't you feel I asked I feel bad for this guy Not really Fair enough Bloody hell man. That as a kid School they call me psychoped Do you think you are? Do you think you are on the spectrum? Psychopath I think so I've actually been analysed a couple of times and I think it came back as yeah Definitely if someone ran a if you saw like somebody torturing a puppy I've seen people getting tortured in a quadripe. I've seen people getting killed Hacked pieces killed. I mean, I've seen people get killed any which way you can think of Electrocute and hacked their shot blown out drowned beaten to death I mean you name it pretty much see me What and and what's it made you feel seeing some of the worst of that? By the time I was twenty twenty one and I'd seen eight people dying in front of me Drogo not really violence but drogo overdoses Car accidents that I've derived a heart a couple of heart attacks So I was really a customer to death first hand By a very young age Most people write throughout their life maybe you've seen one or two people dying actually take their last breath in front of them Yeah, you know, maybe you've seen a couple more dead bodies, but Yeah, so if you just when I was living in Bristol. I applied to the Avenous Somerset ambulance People to be a paramedic and at the time I only had that one conviction for cannabis from six from Hold on Yeah from from six from college and I had a clean the driver license and they said we can we can Forgive you for the for the cannabis conviction, but you have to have a clean driving license and I shit you know the day I've filled out all the forms and the day that I went to post them. I came down the stairs in Living in Bristol in the same job. I came down the stairs of the house and on the doorstep It was a on the dorma. There was a speed intake from the first gatsow cameras ever in Britain from Manchester and Had either three or six points for speeding and I just saw it as sort of destiny though I wasn't destined to be a paramedic and That was destined to carry on drug dealing and it was like one of those Fouls in the in the road or my life path I want to I want to understand the psychopathic minds because I'm fascinated by this. I don't know what I am or not But if you so if you saw like a dog suffering would it would it make you feel? Yeah, I've I always used to say to my schoolmates I've it's easy. I find it worse seeing a cow or dog suffering the person dying because a lot of people where every person has something bad that they've done maybe not everyone but a lot most people you know and People aren't great at the end of the day. Well, I've never been you know I was always quite alone in a school and you know the countryside with my dog and Yeah Animals bring there's say I think a lot of people say that like they feel worse for animals Yeah, because they're innocent at the end of the day what they don't wrong, you know maybe a tiger or a lion Yeah, not so much but their predatory but you know something like a cow particularly and something like a cow that's just eating grass It's not doing anyone any harm. You look at his eyes and then see it shot in the head I mean, it's not great is it? You know, are you a vegetarian? No, no Yeah, it's no well fair enough and so okay South America. How does that happen? Yeah, so I get arrested in May of 2000 I go to prison in Britain So that was the end of all the stuff in Britain and whilst I'm in I've been prison I'm pretty much category A Which is that I highest-curry through through a lot of it end up in parker still in the island white and whilst I'm in parkest And I actually walked in with the Sunday times that they I used to get the Sunday times every week and whilst I was in prison and I'm setting myself in parkest reading the Sunday times and I'm pretty sure it was in the Sunday times I came across his article about this Shipman of cocaine that had been seized at a port in Britain in a container shipping container and the cocaine have been impregnated into plastic You know like your patio sets that you get your plastic garden furniture. Oh, yeah, you know like white chairs plastic chairs and All the cocaine had been impregnated it had been mixed into the plastic and then the chairs had been moulded into the shapes that they are No one had been arrested. They didn't know where well They knew where they come from but they they hadn't made any arrest at either end and I was just like wow that is absolute genius I lied to read about other forms of impregnating cocaine lying to clothing soaking clothing and cocaine or paper or card or You know other stuff But that was all pretty old hat and This was all sort of cutting edge at the time impregnating plastic cocaine into plastic or rubber and 9/11 had just happened and All the security in the seapulls air pools to gone through the roof and They were starting to bring in scanners at this time they hadn't yet come in but they were they were talking about it And you know it's a traffic or drug dealer you're always trying to keep up on what they're doing what the you know the law are doing and what Customs and excise and Border Force are doing because it's your trying to find ways around it So you need to know what they're doing you need to know the laws and how you can manipulate law and how you can break and What you can and can't do and how close to the wind you can sail so I was always reading up on laws and law books and the archipelago law books always in my soul and Whilst I was sitting present I was seeing Like drug mules and people that were in port mean drugs into Britain getting caught up in the heightened security getting arrested and ending up in prison And I was sat there and I read this article and I thought the days of bringing cocaine or whatever you're bringing into Britain in block form Or even in powder form I pretty much done a dusted now excuse dust time. Yeah So I went to my co-defendants who were also in parkers with me by this point and that guy from Oxford Had been arrested and he was in there with me And I knew he had good contacts in London because also we've been using them And I said look when I get out of prison the only thing I want to do is if what if we're going to carry on drug trafficking There's no way we can carry on doing what we've just been doing because we're so well known to the British police now That you know they're going to be all over us when we get out we were without a shadow of doubt the under surveillance of some sort So there's no way we can carry on doing what we do at the moment But I've just read this article and it seems like genius to me, you know the proper lightbulb moment in the head If I go back to drug dealing when I get out because I didn't plan to Then this is the only thing I want to do. I want to get a connection with the Sathamore and cartels in Columbia, Bolivia, Peru Wherever we need to but a direct contact with someone out there that can get us the cocaine and they can have it impregnated into plastical rubber and then disguised in something Whatever that may be So I said if I call you at any point once we're out You all know why I'm calling you don't talk about it on the phone or come and meet you in person Everything has to be face-to-face because you know We were well aware of tactics the police were using you know eavesdropping telephone tabs You know bugs in cars in houses and well aware of all this so I said it has to be face-to-face out of a car Not in a building, you know go for a walk out the countryside leave a phone in the car and we'll have a discuss this face-to-face And they were like okay if we look you know if that day comes and we'll be waiting Basically, so I got out Winchester I was doing paint and decorating start my little business because my dad was a builder He was giving me all the paintings and contracts on the back of his work And that was going okay for a while but I was seeing that it was you know I wasn't really getting anywhere with it and it was quite hard work I've been used to having tens of thousands of pounds around me You know in cash and living in mansion houses driving at nice cars going wherever I wanted restaurants whenever I wanted You know just money no objects to suddenly earning, you know I don't know whatever it was eight six seven eight hundred pounds a week Whatever it was pretty difficult. It was a big Shock, you know to the system and it was quite difficult for me to sort of get my head around this and People were ringing me on the daily almost saying do you want to be involved in this can you get us this that the other You know we've got this can you shift it for us, you know just all sorts of old contacts ringing me all the time plus new contacts I've made in the prison and Just kept saying no, no, don't want to be involved And after a while, you know temptation became too much and started doing a couple of side hustles You know dealing a bit of weed and then there was one particular client that I did some painting a decorating work for and they just pissed me off they were late payers and You know I just went fuck it and it was that day a Fuck it day as I call them and I just picked up the phone and bang my guy in Oxford or near Oxford And I said look you know what this course will come and meet me So we mess up and I said look can you get me a Go to go up to London talk to your people up there and Gets a connection in South America all here with a Colombian or somebody who's got a connection in South America direct That we can buy the cocaine from direct out there have it made into rubber or plastic and start shipping cocaine back Build it up get to a container level and then do you know start shipping it by so Shipping container in volume And he said okay, went away in about two weeks later phone me up and he said come and meet me So I went and met him again, and he said okay, I managed to find through a friend of mine up in London a Columbia and a Chilean They seem to be important cocaine already they're selling it Come and meet them and I said okay what I do is I come up and I meet them and I buy a kid or a coke And just as a way of getting to know them So a phone a friend in South Wales who'd been asking me to get him cocaine And I say they do still want like coke you want to do you ask me for when he said yeah, I said okay Give me the money. I've got this plan. So I told him a little bit about the idea that I had I said will it are you willing to bankroll me on this? You know back at financial he said yeah fine if I get first refusal on the cocaine when it comes back So I know it would be high quality and a good price Our bankroll the operation for you So I said okay, give me the money for a kilo of coke so I can go up to London meet these guys Check them out. So I went and bought a kilo and a bit of a chat with them I said I'll be back for another kilo in a couple of days So drop this kilo back in Newport and it was good quality So I don't know four or five days later phone them up again. So can I come back and meet you? I've got something I want to talk to you about Went back up bought another kilo, and I said look the actual reason I'm here is because I want to start important cocaine into Britain impregnated in rubber or plastic Do you have the capacity to buy coke to get cocaine in in Colombia? Cos you're Colombian or anywhere in Peru, Bolivia and Having transformed into rubber or plastic and you know hidden in something disguised in something And they said well as it happens, we're already bringing cocaine into Britain impregnated in rubber in the ground sheets of tent and I was like this is just this is destiny because I'm quite a strong believe in destiny and you know Things you know you path kind of been planned out a little bit beforehand And it just felt like it was meant to happen and I said well, you know, this is ideal. This is exactly what I'm looking for I said look I can bring to the table because obviously they're already doing it. Yeah, so I had to present something that was desirable for them to take beyond I said look I can bring to the table a big distribution network I can shift as much cocaine as we can get into Britain and I mean that as much as we can get it could be one kilo could be a thousand kilo I can move it and Quickly to a to a small number of people so we don't have to have no loads of People that we're dealing to we can streamline things right down just to sort of two or three people. They'll take everything that we've got And and also I can bring money like as Former investments upscale this and get it really moving and they were like, okay, yeah, fine And I said also I'll get passengers because we were they would bring it in with passengers carrying a tent like a backpacker Sure, so I said I can also get passengers. I can arrange tickets I can do all the logistical side of things So I said let's form a partnership so you know we formed like a business business partnership three of us me the Chilean and the Colombian and start bringing cocaine in The Colombian was the main conduit for the cocaine because his wife was the niece of the guy in Cali Who was affiliated with the Cali Cartel and Also the Colombian himself was from Cali and it'd been heavily involved with the you know the actual proper Cali cartel I spent some time in Cali. Yeah, I have as well salsa dancing. Yeah, did you go to? What's the name of the bridge it's in beer? No, it's no idea. It was the bridge 20 the something I can't remember. Yeah, and who wore the salsa cafe Clubs I definitely went because I went and tried to do salsa and I couldn't I couldn't really work yeah, the way they did It's unbelievable. Yeah, I'm not a dancer, but well not that dancing anyway Yeah, it's good isn't it it was unbelievable. Yeah, I felt a bit silly because I couldn't do any of it Yeah, you know, but I nearly got shot in Cali did you right? It wasn't Cali. It was born into a yeah on the coast The Pacific Coast really dangerous poor and So I'd gone out there to We were gonna upscale things so we did important. We've done a couple of runs with passengers I'd actually don't put in the first ten myself because I didn't want to start sending people to do something that I hadn't already done myself and also, you know, I'd never been South America So I thought yeah, be a bit of an adventure. Sure And I thought if their method is that good, I won't have any problem and I actually got stopped by Dutch customs with a tent And and released so you know, I got through Ecuadorian customs got stopped by Dutch customs. This is on one trip And then got through British customs So that just showed me that was on the first one So that just showed me that this was you know a method that was Unknown at the time to the police and it worked and it really did so that was green light and we just went Yeah, wow, let's go with it So yeah, on this occasion I was out in Culley I'd already sent a passenger back from Ecuador from Crito and then gone on up to Culley to meet the guy, the commandante as we called him And the idea being that we were gonna upscale things and start shipping multiple tents by sea container, you know start a camping company, camping equipment company in Britain one in Columbia manufacturing tents, manufacture the tents and send back not all of them contaminated just a certain number But as a cover good for the rest of the container, you know tents and camping gear And that was going to be the business And the first shipment was going to be 100 kilos So I went to someone near point of interior to we had inspect a 100 kilos coke that we were going to buy And got there and the guys He were in the safe house with the coke had obviously been on the coke So me and commandante walked in the front door and they were all hyped up and First thing there's a gun on the table. There's like a handgun on the table every revolver was I fuck this isn't good and I was scared. Yeah, it was a little bit because they started talking And they're looking at me and they're gabbling away in Spanish And I didn't understand a great deal at that point But I could understand them saying MI5, MI6, police and point at me And I think, oh fuck, they think I'm police, they think I'm MI6 Here in full trading the car to go tell They're gonna kill me and they're going, they're getting pretty fucking excited about this And I went, oh hold on a minute, I'm not police, police, no police, I've just come out of prison And you know, which I had park, and I was thinking, fucking police have heard of parkers You know, because there's quite an infamous prison in Britain And I said, I've just come out of parkers prison and one of them suddenly started With guy that was freaking out the most Suddenly started speaking English And he said, oh, I've just come out of the van Which is Waelen Waelen, which is just across from the Aula White and Robert and Parkers And he said, oh yeah, I've just come out of prison In Britain myself, I was in, well not just, but recently come out of prison In Britain, I was in the van And I said, oh, if you were in the van around then, do you know a guy called Bloody Blah And he said, yeah, I remember him And he pulled out a photo And he said, do you recognize this guy? I didn't, but you know, the ice was broken And he realised that I was genuine and not in my six So, yeah, that was pretty narrow escape Because how did I not have managed to get that across? I think they made well have killed me That would be the end of your journey Yeah, I'd have been buried, chopped up, fish food Beheaded Yeah, went over into a fish food So anyway, yeah, it was all fine, it expected the coke Did you get close to Escobar while in Colombia? No, but Prior to getting arrested in May of 2000 I was actually dealing with Brian Brendan Wright Who's nicknamed as the milkman The guy in Oxford was heavily connected to this guy And if you look him up, Brian Brendan Wright He is one of the Britain's biggest cocaine traffickers He was dealing with the tail end of the Medellin cartel Which was Escobar's cartel Escobar was dead at this point All of the cocaine that I was getting and taken down to Cardiff Bristol, Wales For us to Dean And Scotland, Edinburgh That was all coming from the Medellin cartel And Brian Brendan Wright And they all got arrested in 1998 Which was where my problem started Me and the guy from Oxford was at a marble arch on a Friday night Waiting for Kevin Halley, who was Brian Brendan Wright's right hand man And Kevin was on the way to us with like three or four keys of coke To drop with us To take back And we had a system of pages So we had pages and we'd go to telephone box The good old red telephone box Which people will hardly remember nowadays because of mobile phones Anyway, we'd go to a telephone box And we'd do a box-to-box call So we would page Kevin with the number of the telephone box we were sat by He would then go to another telephone box Find us Box-to-box To evade any eavesdropping techniques that are placed with using And we had arranged to re-keven to meet us at marble arch For this four or three or four keys of coke And as far as we were aware, he was on the way Unbeknownst to us, the local police around that area Had arrested a Libyan or Lebanese I think it was Libyan diplomat with his 30 kilos of coke And they'd put pressure on this guy to give up his dealer His dealer was Kevin So the local police had actually stumbled Or bummed into a big operation By Soko or National Crime Agency And they'd had all of these guys probably including us Under surveillance for about two years And the local police, what they did was they got this Libyan diplomat to take Ended up in 29 keys of coke Back to Kevin on a Friday night and Kevin opened the door And this diplomat literally just threw the coke back at him And said he'll have to take this back The police then raided the house and arrested him Fucked up this operation the National Crime Agency had going So Kevin was, oh no they didn't raid the house That's right, they, sorry, I got that wrong They followed Kevin and they stopped him Half a mile from reaching us at Marble Louch With 29 kilos of coke in the boot of his car Right Now without a shadow of it out We were in the surveillance That the police or National Crime Agency had I bust me in Kevin Because we even got up there like two or three times a week Me getting coke, bringing money back, coke, money, coke, money You know, for weeks, months And I get arrested two years after this in May of 2000 So I think that they then started watching me From, you know, or building up a case anyway So that's what I then got arrested Anyway, going back to the Equival thing Says yeah, things were going along quite well And as I said we were about to scale things up And it was on this trip to Cully Well, I'd been to Buenaventura I remember we'd got back to Cully after that trip And all the phones in London had gone dead And the Colombian and the Chilean had been arrested in one of our makeshift labs Because obviously the coke had to be back engineered, extracted out of the rubber Right When we got it into London, operand So the police had raided this lab in Crystal Palace Arrested everybody in there And so things, you know, the shit hit the fan Um, so we sort of shot shopped for a little bit Not very long there, like a month or so I went back to Britain after a while He'd out in Columbia for about a month And then when nothing happened, you know, around me or in Britain You know, my family's home and stuff You know, I decided to buy the bullet and go back And carry things on, which I did What's the Ecuador on Columbia? Well, Columbia, Ecuador, Venezuela, we were shipping out of Wall 3 Okay This is when the problems really started in earnest Because the Colombian haven't been arrested The police put pressure on him and his family And so we're going to deport your whole family Your parents everything Unless you cooperate with us And give up the rest of the unit Me basically So that's what he did Um, and it took them a little while to get to me Should we say Um, and it ended up being a complete game of mass Because I, A, I got tipped off by a police officer in London And then the man I was under surveillance Through a third party Um, so I knew I was under surveillance At this point So I then start, you know, evasive techniques Counselors, surveillance measures And this went on for several months Up until the point at which they raided another lab in Edinburgh And I very nearly got arrested there But just managed to not get arrested And got out of there And I realised that, you know, that had been too close call And that was it, I had to get out of Britain So I get smuggled out of Britain by the Turkish Mafia Out of Dover In the boot from Mercedes car Bloody hell Because they heard me a few favors This particular guy You let the Turkish Mafia put you in the boot of a car Yeah, they, they, they, they, it was a good friend of mine So, yeah, no worry about that So I went over to France And my dad, you know We had a whole other home in France by this point So I disappeared to there I was feeding the Colombian misinformation Telling him, I was in Spain On, you know, I put the Alps And this time, the other, because he was obviously being directed by the police To ask me certain questions, like I tell what he was So, decided to do one last job And it literally was going to be the last job Because I knew it was the police The net was closing in, should we say And I decided to rob the Colombian Because I knew it was a police informant So I said, look, set up a deal in Ecuador Because I thought, well, like, you know, I've got a way Under the nose is a police in Venezuela In Ecuador, we've been in the surveillance in both, and in Colombia And we've circumvented it, all got around them And, you know, the method was that good And I had that much faith in it And I said, well, I'm not the one carrying the drugs out the country So we're going to stop anyone, it will be the mule And on this occasion, the mule's going much to lunder But the Colombian's not going to get paid And, you know, I was then planning to go back to France Thailand Wait in Thailand, for the money to be transferred to me, and spend six months there See what I could do out of Thailand instead of, you know, just changing stuff a bit And I've never got back to France or to Thailand Because the Colombian sort of, must have sussed out that something was up And the British police must have realized that this was probably the last opportunity They were going to get to take me out So I arrived in Ecuador And immediately, there was a woman at the bottom of the steps to come off the plane And there were a set of steps down to the passport control And she was stood at the bottom of the clipble Obviously had my photo on it, because she was looking at everybody So he did a double take, then disappeared into a back office And when I got to passport control, she was there with a senior officer And they said, "Oh, what are you doing? Where are you going? You know, why are you here?" And this had never happened So I gave them all the spill, you know, just load a bullshit, I'm here doing Tourist, this, that and the other So they let me through, but obviously they then put a tail on me And surveillance, which I started picking up on And I should have just cut loose then and just disappeared And I didn't, you know, be an arrogant and think, "Well, it's not me carrying it back I've got a random before, I can do it again You know, just been too overconfident to, I don't know, whatever And, yeah, my girlfriend from Britain arrived, because I hadn't seen it for months, because I was on the running France So I said, "Come out, it's work with all, you know, I know the British police can't arrest me there" I thought I couldn't Come and see me in Ecuador, you spend two weeks with me here whilst I was doing some business, didn't tell her what I was doing You know, I'll show you around Ecuador, the plan was She was going to arrive, I was going to send the mule back And then I was going to take her off on the tour of Ecuador for two weeks And then like I said, go back to France, she'd go back to England Yeah Happy days She arrived on the third day, I think it was, and by this point, I already had the tent with the cocaine in it She was only in the country four hours and we'd get arrested We'd just, we'd been to dinner in the restaurant of the hotel in Quito and Avenue, Amazonas, Hotel Mercuria was one of the Mercuria Chains And we'd been out to the, like I say, the restaurant of the hotel And Hannah Pellet, whilst we sat there, a guy has come into the restaurant and the restaurant was pretty empty And he sat at one table away from us, one or two tables away from us And I turned to my right and I looked at him and I noticed that he was reading the menu But it's the wine menu and it's upside down Obviously police and he looked European, which is why I'd noticed him And I said to my girlfriend, have you seen this European looking guy over here, he's reading the menu but it's upside down And she was like, you know that's weird, why is he, what's that all about? I was just like, well, I don't know, but I do Which is pretty much, because I heard that, I heard you talk about that in the podcast recently Yeah, I just thought, what kind of police officer is reading it upside down? I know, right What the fuck, come on boys, sorry, you have to say that it's the technique Yeah, that's a lie Surveillance technique 101, isn't it? Yeah, I was almost like, yeah, look at the vibe way up Yeah, I don't know how you'd do that, but Anyway, he was So, you know, I thought, well, that's pretty suspect Anyway, go back to the reception of the hotel And I'd become quite familiar with the receptionist there And she looked me dead in the eye, Alejandra and they were there And she said, have you been to the Galapica silence this time And I'd never been to the Galapica's, never And she knew that And she, and I said no And I thought, that's a weird question, why is she saying that? And she said, well, you really should go now then And I said, well, she trying to tell me and, you know, having had a drink at dinner and stuff And my girlfriend was in my ear, and I was like, well, you know, just got distracted And of course, she was trying to say, you know, get the fuck out of the police room in the hotel I don't, I would have made out the hotel, because there it's around it Yeah Anyway, we get in the elevator, go to the top floor out the door, down the corridor And I get out the electronic card key for the door And as I put it in the lock, all hell breaks loose And there's people charging down the corridor We're in plain clothes, we're built to profess on Machine guns out, hang guns, balaclavas, I'm thinking, I'm either getting robbed Or it's a police And they're shouting, 'Police here, man, I was a reaver, kid, no, no, no, I'm aware of this You know, hands up, don't move, you know, where the police will fucking shoot you if you do And I was like, oh, balaclavas, and I said to my girlfriend, don't say anything, let me do the talking And she's like, what the fuck is going on? And I was like, look, just be cool, let me talk to them So they get us in the room, and they obviously been in their whilst we were at dinner And they went straight into the closet, where I had the tent stashed, and they come out and they're like, oh, look what we've got, blah blah blah blah And I was like, look guys, is there any other way we can do this? I had like 25,000 euros on me in cash, I said, look, I've got 25,000 euros in cash If you can have that, keep the tent, I don't want that, you can have that And give me a phone, and I'll arrange whatever money you need to pay the whole team off Right now And because they had one guy that spoke a bit differently And he looked at me and he said, no, do you think we're corrupt? No, no, no, we're not corrupt, we're the aquedonian police force I said, look, man, it's a fuck off, and I was laughing, I was like, come on guys, I know you're corrupt Can't you do it dearly, he said, no, we can't, the British police are here, look We'd love to Yeah, exactly They're watching us The fucking Colombian who I'd given her a rucksack full of cash to Him, when I got the case papers He'd been lost in traffic Yeah, right guys, I know exactly what happened there They stopped him, he had a rucksack full of cash, no drugs on him So they just took the cash and went, oh, we've lost him in traffic And they kept 25,000, 30,000, it was 30,000 dollars Bloody hell I thought I was giving it So they had a good payday that day Yeah, I've seen some of that first hand with the police out in Colombia Oh, yeah, they corrupted the fuck Not all of them, but you just had to play it right Yeah But you would then take an into an Ecuadorian Yeah, so they took us to Interpol and the Interpol station in Keto is right at the airport It's literally across the road, you can smell the aviation fuel So every day I'm hearing planes taking off at the more or less the time that I was supposed to get the plane out of back of the door eventually So yeah, I'm out there with my girlfriend for five weeks Didn't see daylight once There was one cold tap and one light bulb And we actually tried to escape out of there Because one day I was sat in the cell And I hit the wall behind me in frustration And then I realized it was partition and wall Because it was hollow and I was like, no way And I said to one of the locals, I said, what's behind the wall And they said, oh, office blocks They're like an office, like an insurance office or something Or car hire And I said, is there anyone in there that weekend? They said, no, definitely not on Sundays I said, right, let's fucking escape out of here We'll dig a hole through the wall Because it's literally a partition wall Into the offices and out through the fucking offices on a Sunday When there's no one there But we got to do, because the guards weren't coming into the cells So I said, yeah, we're going to have to be really clever about this And not let anyone know Anyway, somebody fucking twit what we were doing And grasp us up They're like Frank Abigail, catch me if you can Always another way they did it Yeah, I was always looking, yeah, there's always another way So I mean, I was actually quite believable And I got arrested in Ecuador Because I knew they were corrupt there And I knew that I was either going to be able to pay my way out Get the sentence reduced Or escape Or pay, or pay to be taken out of the prison Whereas, has I been arrested in Britain? I knew it was going to be hell A category all the way You know, maximum security prisons Fucking bullshit, bell marsh Wakefield, whatever the fuck they were going to put I'm not wakefield, but bell marsh anyway But I gather from your story that it was actually much worse Being in prison because you ended up going to prison in Ecuador Much worse than it would have been in the UK No, why'd you think no Because I remember you saying that when you Ended up in a British prison afterwards It was a relief compared to Oh yeah, it wasn't really, yeah But I mean, there were a lot of things in Ecuador that were good I mean, initially when I was in Keto You could have whatever you wanted in your cell Your visits came into your cell If you weren't, you could buy a cell though basically So I didn't initially because I thought I'm getting out of it I'm going to be out of here any minute now Because I'm going to pay off the judge I'm going to brighten away out I'm going to pay whatever the fuck it costs to get the fuck out of there That didn't work So I eventually bought a cell And you know, sort of I'm here for the long run I'll buy a cell I actually bought about four or five and rented them out Anyway, um, yeah, so you could have TV in the satellite TV, laptop, phone, cooker, shower I had myself rewired, plastered, re-plastered, new electrics in there You know, it was an entire black porcelain tunnel on the floor It was a swanky Painted a union jack on the door, I did that myself Oh my god, represent Britain Yeah Um, you know, he lived in the high life Started running the wing pretty much Took it over, formed a gang of British, well, not British, but Europeans Called it Eurobander Spanish river gang Got a band-bander Eurobander, I thought it was quite funny It was the bit of piss-take really Bought a gun, had a gun in there Uh, yeah, it was good, you know Entered a meet-and-a-girl from Manchester Hello Becky Um, it was a model Absolutely beautiful It looked like Angelina Jolie Oh, shit, you know Wow Amazing, half Jewish, half Scottish Blue eyes, long black hair Oh, honestly, figure of Angelina Just a spitting image of Angelina Jolie What was she doing in prison? She wasn't She was touring South America's Because we set up a tour of the prison Oh He took A bit like, from March and February That gave us the idea Because that one had stopped Because he'd been released and whatever So, we started on Inquison, it became really popular And, uh, they, uh, heard a friend, but uh, it was Becky and I forgot her friend's name, Jesus, she'll kill me Anyway The two of them had come in to have a look at the prison And, uh, we just fell in love basically So, they went off for a bit more of an explore A bit further up Into Columbia, then she came back out of the blue And said, "Look, I really like it, you want to spend some time with you?" So, I rented a flat for Inquison, I got a flat And, um, yeah, she was in there every visit day So, it was all day Wednesday, all day Saturday All day Sunday, and every other week she could stay the night On a Saturday in the cell with me Wow So, it was, it was full on, you can imagine, lots of sex Cocaine, alcohol, party party, party So, that was the good side So, that was the good side, but the bad side of being in prison in South America Is the guns, the violence The sudden The riots, the people getting hacked to death Uh, people getting shot, seeing your friends hung Seeing people dismembered, disemboweled To people, yeah, get a lot of gun fights Went through various gun fights, hang grenades Explosives, C4 Yeah, it was like a war zone I heard you say it got particularly bad when a, when a third gang came into the prison That was incredibly cool, so, yeah, so I only got moved, I got transferred out of Keto after two years Because I tried to escape out the prison in Keto as well With some members of FARC, some Colombians, uh, FARC, uh, get rid of this And, uh, we were gonna blow the war, right, we had various plans We were gonna blow the wall of the exercise yard With an RPG, get some of their friends out from Colombia Blow the walls and RPG, lay down covering fire on the gun towers And make a Fouga Massiva out of the, um, which is a massive escape Fouga is a escaping Spanish Massiva, Fouga Massiva And take it from only people as you could out of the exercise of B-Wing Because it had a big exercise yard and the exterior wall, the prison wall was one concrete block to think that was it The other idea was a helicopter lift off the roof And it was big, expensive, it was about a hundred grand A bit complicated and then the, the one that we settled on was a tunnel Because there were so many tunnels that had been dug out the prison Garcia Merena, the old prison in Keto That people used to joke it was like a rabbit, were an underneath They said if you dig a hole to make a tunnel here, you're gonna come across two or three obsolete tunnels, old tunnels In the process, which is pretty much true So we bought the penultimate cell on B-Wing On the right, so that's B-Wing going out that way and that's the exterior wall And we bought the penultimate cell on the ground, obviously on the ground floor And um, staged a fake party on a visit day to cover the noise breaking the floor Broke the floor and you could get, like I said, you could get building materials in the power tools So meant, whatever you needed Bloody hell So we had a cap for the, for the hole for the entrance to the tunnel Yeah, a concrete cap made that we could fit into it and then could cover it with whatever Wow And then we started, we paid people to start digging this tunnel So the way we did it was we got down to start digging the tunnel And then just followed the line of the exercise yard underneath the tarmac Out towards the wall Following the line of the prison wall Like the wall of the Wings, right? Yeah, yeah So following that and the tarmac above out towards the exterior wall And then under the wall And we got out to the exterior wall and obviously had to start digging down Quite a long way and then up And we got found out, they didn't find the tunnel but they knew we were planning a food and mass either So me and the Colombians all suddenly got bailed out of there on a visit there Split up and a centre for prisons all around the country different prisons for each one of us around the country And I, joy of choice, got a centre quiet hill Which at the time was the third most dangerous prison in the whole of South America It's a massive city, isn't it? Is it like the bigger city? It's a quiet hill, it's bigger than Quito Quito is very long and thin Quito is, I think one of the longest cities in the world is I'm like 42 kilometres long So it's crazy, it's like it's really long between two mountains Two management ranges up in the Andes I saw the equator there Yeah, I went to the equator, I've been there as well In the middle of the world, yeah, I've been there, yeah, I've been to the middle of the world monuments I get you to walk up, taking a knee on there Yeah, you walk by the side and then the water goes the different way each way And I don't know if they've sort of made it happen or if it's real or what No, it does, it goes a different way But within like a metre of the line, I don't know I don't know There were who knows But you went to quite a kill Yes, so I get transferred down to quite a kill And Luckily I got someone to phone her, he was quite influential So I was received reasonably well because I didn't know what was going on So anyway, it's a long story And I know we're probably running out of time So I get moved to quite a kill And it's is completely different to Kito You could buy a cell But it was completely gang-controlled there Whereas in Kito, it wasn't really gang-controlled So much, there were gangs, but they were little And they sort of stuck their own wings and did their own thing And did really fuck around with the other people too much And they didn't have such a grip on the prisoners as they did in Gwirek Hill there I mean, the guards were scared of the gang The gangs were so well armed in the prison that they were better armed than the guards And everybody was corrupt The directors of the prison Like then, all the administration level, they had all the guards All of them were on the payroll of the gangs Initially when I went in there And the prison was 8,000 prisoners 26 wings And it was, there were wings one in front of each other like this And they had a long middle corridor Which was a kilometer long Wow, so 26 wings like this all the way down And the police would ride up and down this central corridor on a motorbike It was that long And halfway down there was a frontera like a border Where you couldn't cross it because each There were two gangs initially, what I went in, so each gang had a half of the prison So the prison was split more or less in half So the Lotharousos had that into the prison and I was in the end with Lotharous Cubanos So the Russians and the Cubans? Yeah, basically They weren't Russian or Cuban, they just looked Russian and they looked Cuban Okay So the guys that the Lotharous Cubanos were Cubano, which was like, it was three brothers Betraya, Cubano, and another one, I can't remember his name Cayman, like Cayman So that was the three brothers Betraya at this point was dead, he'd escaped and been killed in Peru by the police And like I said, they had a stranglehold of the prison They controlled everything You couldn't have the mobile phone there As in Keto, you could There, you can, they controlled everything So if you wanted to make a call you had to pay a dollar a minute for the international calls And they had like, they would run the phones Okay, mobile phone No cabbinas So no public telephones or no phones that you could use in the prison No postal system there So that was literally your only point of contact with the outside world They would put ten cents on each bottle of Coca-cola or phanta coming into the shops in the prison So that was a big money spinner They would run all the drugs in there So you couldn't get away with doing your own little drug dealing thing in there They controlled everything, all the alcohol, the drugs That was a big money making thing They would sell, they would sell the cells to you But you didn't really own them You were like renting them, it was like a lease with them I see Whereas in Keto, you could resell it There, they would sell you the cell for like a thousand dollars or fifteen hundred dollars And whenever they felt like it, they would come and take it back if you can kick you the fuck out Proper mafia Yeah Oh yeah, yeah It's amazing, this tale, the story, your story, it seems like such a long time ago, even now That we were talking about Resifans, and you know Carous Matthews Those kinds of people in sort of Cardiff and all of that And now we're with los guanos and los rusos in Ecuador What was, what was- Oh yeah, so the third gang came in Yeah And this is when it all started I mean, it was bad enough, anyway The murder rate in Guayque was like six, six, seven a week They'd just turn up dead in the rubbish like coming to pieces and then in the rubbish Any foreigner or new person coming into the prison would get extorted because they just thought you were money, cash cows Luckily, like I said, I didn't get extorted because I had that connection But anyone else coming in, they would get you in a cell, put a gun to your head And just talk to you They would electrocute you, drown you, what they would do, they'd call it submarine Submarina They'd put your under for so long until you were choking and then they'd bring you up Like water bought it Yeah Put a gun to your head, give you a phone So you ring your family, get money transferred by Western Union to them So these names, which were their family members outside And I'm talking like tens of thousands of dollars if they could get it out of you Yeah, so you know, all that was going on And then this third gang came in and they came into the wing that I was on And they were called the Los Chorneiros From Chonny in Manter, which is a province of Ecuador On the coast, Esmeraldas, Manter And they, the Cubans were kind of like more street thug-ish, street robbers Low-level drug dealers, that sort of type of criminal And I didn't really get on with them that well But the Cubans, the, the Chorneiros came in And they were sort of better class of criminals, we call them More educated You could talk to them and you know, they were more amenable But they were really fucking dangerous They were contract killers, they were hired by politicians to take out other politicians They would clean up other drug gangs So the police would employ them to take out other cartels Or gangs or whatever, you know, they would they would prop a proper contract killer Jose Luis Zambrano, who was their, their leader at the time Raskina was his nickname, who I was really friendly with, still friends with his brother to this day Carlos So hot early, as we used to call him Raskina, had killed 86 people when he came into the prison He was only 26 years old Through all method of the killer, through shootings, stabbing, machetes They told me about him crushing people's heads with concrete blocks And I actually sort of do that to someone in the prison Christ Yeah, a guy that just missed a, basically pretty badly But they crushed itself with half a concrete block So I'm not joking when I've said I've seen people killed every which way, pretty much every which way What was this, probably the, the single darkest thing that you saw Well, there was some pretty dark things That was probably, I mean, there was the gun fight between the, the churn errors and the cubanners which he went through and which they took out, got it, and he got shot in front of me I was just counting them to play it, food And they, the, the, the cubanners who were trying to take out the churn errors Because they were, they were not liking the fact that the churn errors were taken over the prison Because they were starting to lose their, their foothold So they tried to take out all the key members of the, of the churn errors And there was this, yeah, gunfight one night And we locked in the wing now The cell doors were open 24 hours a day there Well, they were at this time So you had to lock your own door from the inside when you had enough So I'm cooking spaghetti, bottled the ladies with the German guy, another Peter, who's also dead now And um, Gato, one of the churn errors He was like the right-hand man of hotelly And asked me for a plate of food because it was your PM food that they weren't used to So I said, sure, I'll bring you a plate of food So when it was ready, I went and got a plate of him And as I got the food, the cubanos are obviously looking for an opportunity to attack him And they were all sat around in the entrance of the wing on hammocks and stuff But they would congregate you in the evening And I was friendly with both parties So I said, hello to them And as I'm knocked on the door, Gato's open the door, taking the plate of food And then, as I've turned left, I'd like to go right to myself There's a shot rang out from behind me, and he got shot straight in the face Someone had come up behind me, used me as cover And opened fire from behind me, over my right-hand shoulder The bullets have whipped past my head He was straight in the face, he had blown the back of his head out One there, one there, to blown the back of his head out So brains are gone everywhere, spaghetti's gone everywhere I loved his life, fuck, I didn't even turn around, I just bolted myself And just run to myself, shut the door And a two and a half hour long gunfire ensued after that It was at least two or three people entered up dead, as well as Gato Yeah, that was pretty bad How do you feel while that's going on? Well, the problem was, by this point It was because I was so funny with the chanera I was dealing with the cocaine for them on the wing And the cubanos weren't liking this And there were things hitting my door, myself door Which was the only thick wood And you know, the bullets going off hand grenades And the oozy was released, someone let off an oozy in there And things were hitting myself door And I think in any fucking minute now They're going to come through my door and kill me as well So I was in charge at the cocaine on the wing And I think in fact, this is it, I'm done And are you scared? Yeah, I'm not scared at all, it's a guy, I didn't have a gun If I'd had a gun, I'd have been a bit calmer Well, I just asked him, I'm trying to get, I mean obviously, anyone would be scared in that situation I'm trying to get into it, I want to know, understand your opinion Yeah, to really see, it was almost more scary when the police came in afterwards And they started torturing everybody, they got us all out of the cell And they made us lie down And then just beat the fuck out of all of us With two before, but it's the two before, but the guns They were getting people in cells, again, they're electrocuting them to find out what would happen Discharging firearms up the sides of their heads To find out who had done what and where and when And then they heard it, it's all into a space Which was like the width of a cell Which was the entrance way in and out to the exercise yard And in that space, they'd exit the chon errors that executed Negropolia, which was like the black moth Like nickname of this guy, big tall black guy Who was like the head of this hit squad who'd been Put in there to take out the chon errors They'd managed to get a hold of this guy And they had him in this space They shot in twice in the stomach and for about half an hour the guy had been calling an hour ago "Please don't kill me, I've got family" And the chon errors are going, "Well, hot LEDs got hold of him" "No hot LEDs screaming" "Where gonna kill this motherfucking can?" "Bah, blah, blah, I'm going to go to all but we're gonna kill him" "How we've got your boss, you're fucked now we're gonna kill him" And the guy was pleading for his life For like half an hour and bleeding out all over the place And after about half an hour, they just went "Fuck this" "Due to tomorrow" This is probably Ecuadorian talk now "How much am I done?" And they just shot him straight in the fucking head Executed in them and then dropped in And they dragged out the bodies in front of us And then they heard it all of us about 130 inmates Into a space of a cell where he'd blood out And made us all stand in his blood for about 20 minutes And then cat and nine tail whipped us As we came back out Each one of us has, oh he's butt-barrick Ruined a pair of trainers I had as well Because they got so damn blood, honestly, about that deep it was And the smell of the blood My mouth's watering, but not in a good way It's that, you know, the metallic-ey-ion smell of blood, a lot of it Do you have PTSD or something? I have got PTSD, I've been diagnosed with complex PTSD Because not just PTSD, but complex PTSD Because you're in a prison, you're confined in a confined space And it's repeated And you've got no way out of there, which is what complex PTSD is And I mean, you think about it, that was the worst thing From my point of view is that for ten, not nine years and three months I was in a prison where every fucking day I didn't know whether it was going to be my last day You know, it could have been Every day I was thinking, I'm not sure I'll be here tomorrow And literally The health stuff didn't help, and then you know Ended up with TB after getting injected with it Thanks to the Ministry of Health The testing stuff on you Yeah, and I'm adamant that they were testing pharmaceuticals on us Because they would not even give us a paracetamol in there for free You had to buy any medicine you needed And they came around doing this course of vaccinations And I was like, I don't want it, don't need it From Britain, I've had this one, I was younger Really don't want it, I don't want it in that needle And ended up in nearly having a fight with like 15 inmates on the wing He wasn't running the wing at the time And they said, look if you don't have it, we're going to take your cell off you Which I bought, I've got all my stuff in the cell And I had a little business running And they said, we'll take all of that off you And beat the fuck out of you Throw you out, take you out the wing And put you on the worst wing in the prison Because they said that look, if you don't have it You're going to put the rest of us risk because If you contract TB Anyway, it was bullshit And I was just like, whatever, giving the fuck an injection So I had the injection, and I said where to go, you could probably see me coughing And you could hear my throat's a bit raspy So I get given the injection And about three months later I'm absolutely fucked I couldn't even walk from where I'm sat to you Or to that door, which is what, a couple of metres And no energy, my appetite just completely gone No appetite whatsoever But it was starving, because of the easiest, horrible sweats That you would get with it And eventually I'd get diagnosed with a bovine strain of TB Multi-drug resistant bovine strain of TB Up into the point that the health ministry of health came in And injected everybody There wasn't a great deal of, there was some TB in the prison, but not much Then suddenly this fucking TB popping up on each wing Different strains of it, on different wings Bovine strain in my case, multi-drug resistant I hadn't been there a cow in six years at this point You were guinea pigs? Yeah, guinea pigs As fun as an equitable, they eat them Yeah, I know, I've tried them, they're really tasty, I should grill So suddenly there's all this medication in the healthcare unit And I start watching what's going on And I give them out this medication And it costs £25,000 Not dollars, pounds Per person, because you have to have a minimum of a year's treatment for TB Here in Britain it's like six months I think now But at that point it was a year's treatment minimum you have to have And it cost £25,000 And they wouldn't even give you a paracetamol free And suddenly they're giving out all this medication And there's all these different strains of TB People drop in dead left right and centre because of it Oh my god And god, I'm getting twitchy thinking about it And I was sick for three years with TB I went from 80 kilos down to 49 Jesus, the world I'm for surviving it, bloody hell Yeah, I mean that was bad as well Yeah, what you've lived now in the sort of underworld Now you've lived in real life In real life Back to the old world The old world How are you now? I'm okay Yeah, I mean I wouldn't say life is easy Not at all I'm painting a decorate Which is, yeah, it's alright I've just got a new job actually Which I hope is going to be a little bit more secure But again, I mean still now to this day The financial side of things is not great And you know, when I think back to all the money I used to have And yeah, I mean it is still a temptation I was going to ask Yeah, it's like I've said this numerous times This is like being an alcoholic More drug addict There's always going to be that temptation To revert to type But it's having this strength not to And you know, having Had that horrendous experience in Ecuador Like I said, no, all of it was bad But a lot of it was fucking horrendous There must be a legal business you could start Because you've obviously got the business brain Oh yeah, I mean I want to start importing cacao from Ecuador I actually set up a company I've just had to close it Because it, things got too complicated An Ecuadorist so unstable at the moment Because of all the drug traffic going out there Something like what was in 90% of the world's cocaine is coming out of Ecuador now Bloody hell From Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, all up to Ecuador now Massive internal conflict And the Chonera is on right at the heart of that Well, you've got one thing going on, which is your book Uh, yeah El Infino What's it called? El Infino The Infino Which is like what the South America used to call it Prison, because it was the hot place in the Infino Where can people get that? That's on Amazon I think it's about 12.99 in the moment I think they're out of stock at the moment Oh right Maybe they will be back in stock by the time this comes out Yeah, hopefully Is there an alternative place to get it if it is out of stock? Uh, you can get the Kindle Which I presume is in stock Because I doubt that goes out of stock I read on Kindle Yeah, well people should definitely get that Because then you go much more into depth About all of the things that happen to you Yeah, exactly Yeah, the book is, um, it focuses mainly on the prison Aspect of, uh, you know, the Ecuadorian prison uh, cycle Uh, plan to write what I'm sort of about a third Of the way through a prequel But I need to get it finished I'm saying I'm gone, but I haven't Yeah But I will do and it will be out soon Ish I can't believe you were cutting people's fingers off Well, not many But Even one, that's a lot of fingers to cut off There's no, it doesn't take long to cut off a finger When you think about dicey, when you know, like, you know, bearing the mind I've seen whole bodies, uh, Disappeared That takes a while Would you cut the little finger? Yeah, didn't really You wouldn't start with like a, the big, the next finger Yeah, little finger first Little finger, come on, send us your money Send us the money To To To Finger, little finger Little finger, you do Does it, a lot of blood come out? Not, not massive, man If you hold it, have your heart, that stops it So it doesn't stop it, but it slows it Hold your hand above your heart, so you'd do that and what just cut the No, I don't know If we'd do it on a table, that it was up to them to hold the fucking hand I didn't give a shit what it is Were you like, were you like aggressive with them? Or were you like, right? No, they don't, they don't, they don't have months and months of fucking options before this You know, we wouldn't just go straight in and start Doing stuff like that No They'd have options Who's a heretic? Aiman plans Who's a heretic, you admire? Oh, yeah, I've, yeah, heretic I look, it's a Greek word, some like, heretic, hereth, was it? Heresy, heretic Yeah, something, heretic, something else on the end And it means to choose, doesn't it? So, yeah, heretic is actually being able to choose So, yeah, a bit of a strange title for your podcast That's interesting So that's the ultimate I never talked to a technology Yeah, I look, I, yeah, because I studied archaeology I obviously, I come again here, I didn't come in blind I looked at it, looked it up And it means to be able to choose That's interesting So, to be a heretic is to be able to choose Or to be able to make the choice of not conforming So, I don't know, heretic, it's not something I've ever been asked Who's a heretic, you like So, I had to look, look about So, Galileo is pretty cool Or Joan of Arc, because my mum's name was Joan Ah, what, she's dead now So, sorry to hear about Yeah, Joan of Arc is pretty cool Joan of Arc's dead as well Yeah, she was a bit of a champion In fact, they found, because I do metal detating They found a ring connected to Joan of Arc a few years ago When they were auctioned and fetched a lot of money A metal detector has found it Joan of Arc's an interesting one, because it's so bizarre that it's That it was real, because it just feels that It feels that one of those stories, you don't really think about it too much The stories that happened from hundreds of years ago You just sort of go like, "Oh, that's Joan of Arc," or whatever You don't really think about it But if you think about like what was she 12 or something She led the French Army She led the French Army What, when she led the French Army she was 12 Something like that, yeah How do I do this? How old was Joan of Arc when she died? Let's look that up first Okay, she was 19 Oh yeah, so French Army was probably about 18, 17, 18 Pretty young though Yeah, well I don't know If I'd been back in it, they'd probably have been doing something similar Yeah, you probably would have I'd have been a pirate, let's be honest Imagine being, yeah, that's true as well Imagine being burnt at the stake, like, how old were they? I've seen people burnt to death in there because of them I've seen really I mean, people please go and get Peter Tritton's Tritton, what did I say? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's quite a nice thing Please go and get Peter Tritton's book It's a great book about all of this. You're going to go into more detail and all of that.