In this episode of *Criminal*, Phoebe Judge recounts the extraordinary true story of Reg Spears, a young Australian javelin thrower in 1964 who, after an arm injury dashed his Olympic hopes, found himself penniless in London. Desperate to return home for his daughter's third birthday, Reg hatched a daring plan to mail himself to Australia in a wooden crate. With the help of his friend John McSorley, he built a box five feet by three feet by two and a half feet, equipped with straps, air holes, and brown paper lining for concealment. They labeled it as rubberized emulsion for a fictional Supreme Shoe Company, to be delivered cash-on-delivery to a nonexistent Mr. Graham in Perth. Reg packed baked beans, water, a flashlight, and a suit, then climbed inside, enduring a grueling 60-hour journey across multiple flights and airports. He faced intense heat, darkness, and near-discovery, including a mishap with a can of urine in Paris and being left upside down in Mumbai. Upon landing in Perth, he escaped the locked bond shed, changed into his suit, and hitchhiked home, arriving just in time for his daughter's birthday. The story made headlines globally, turning Reg into a folk hero, though John's employer was displeased. Reg later pursued a life of drug smuggling and prison, but the two remained lifelong friends, with Reg flying to London years later to care for John after a stroke. The tale highlights youthful audacity, friendship, and the lengths one will go to for home.
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Hi, it's Phoebe.
When we decided to spend this month re-releasing some of our favorite episodes
since the show began, I knew I wanted this one on the list.
It's a perfect criminal story to me.
Funny and unexpected.
And when I thought about it, I was like,
when I talked to Reg Spears, I kept thinking,
who is this and where did he come from?
I hope you like it.
This episode contains language that may not be suitable for everyone.
Please use discretion.
Phoebe, I don't know how old you are, but do you remember when you were 22?
Yes.
What could you do? Everything.
You could do everything.
Well, that's how it was.
How did you begin throwing the javelin?
By accident.
When I went to school, they didn't ask you if you wanted to go and participate in sport.
They told you to.
And I did that, and I found out that I was good at it.
Picked up a javelin and was able to throw it.
And that was about it.
What did you like about it?
What I liked about it was the effort.
The throw is the lightest implement in athletics,
and you can hit the living shit out of it.
And I liked that.
It was a moment in your life when you could do something full effort.
This is Reg Spears.
He grew up in Adelaide, Australia, in the 1940s.
By the time he was in his early 20s,
he'd become one of the best javelin throwers in the country.
Javelin throwing is a track and field event, and it's an old one.
It was added to the Olympics,
the Olympic Games in Greece, in 708 B.C.
The current Olympic record for the longest throw is just over 323 feet.
I just took to it, and it felt right.
And eventually I got in the Australian team for the Commonwealth Games in Perth in 1962.
While he was there, he met a javelin thrower from England named John McSorley.
And the moment we met, we became friends.
He's rather brash, but he was very open.
And we instantly had a rapport.
We instantly got on with each other.
John McSorley.
And from that point on, he wanted to show me as much of Australia as he could,
because he was always saying it's the greatest country in the world.
And we became really good friends.
Look, I always describe him as he's actually outgoing for an Australian.
Australian's normally outgoing, and he's outgoing for an Australian.
But he's got a heart of gold.
After the Commonwealth Games, John went home to London,
and Reg went back to Adelaide and started training.
He was hoping to qualify for the Australian team for the 1964 Olympics.
But I got injured.
My right arm at the elbow was damaged.
And it's. Nobody seemed to know what it was.
Because of his injury, Reg ran out of time to qualify for the Australian team.
But he thought there might still be a chance for him to compete if he went to England.
He got a job on a boat so he could work his way to England without having to pay.
Did you look John up right when you got to England?
Oh, yeah, sure.
He suddenly turned up at my front door.
Look, I was delighted to see him.
But I was shocked.
What did he say when he showed up?
Ah, Matt, good to see you.
You know, he was telling me I think he'd given his last two and ninepence or something
as a tip to the taxi driver.
But he's full of joy.
He was happy and he had no money.
He was happy, had no money.
And he stayed with me.
And we managed to get by.
Today, Reg and John are in their 80s.
But in 1970. In 1964, they were in their early 20s.
Life was a laugh a minute.
I mean, typically, he would step out of my flat into the main road
and stick his thumb out to hitch, hitch a ride.
And a car would have a choice of running him down or stopping.
And he would walk around to the driver and say,
Jeez, mate, thanks for stopping.
I'm just going up here, up into town.
Can you give me a hand?
Can you give us a lift?
And he was so charming, he used to get away with it.
But Reg's injury didn't improve.
And he didn't qualify for the Olympics.
And then the dilemma was how to get back to Australia
when you have no money.
A friend helped him get a job working with cargo
at Heathrow Airport in London.
But it was going to be a long time before he could save enough money
to afford a plane ticket.
His daughter was about to turn three.
And he says he wanted to get back before her birthday.
He started thinking about other ways he could get home.
And I saw them shipping animals, you know, by their various aircraft.
And I knew that you could ship animals in these big jets,
mainly little beagle dogs that they shipped all over the place.
And I thought, well, if the dogs couldn't survive it, I could.
So that's where. I came up with the bright idea of jumping in a box and coming back home to Oz.
So you saw that the beagles were making it alive, and you thought, maybe, I guess I could too.
Yes, exactly that.
I put a stamp on my arse and sent myself home.
Basically, that was it.
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.
♪♪
Ratch Spears isn't the first person to come up with the idea of shipping himself from one place to another.
In 1849, an enslaved man in Virginia named Henry Brown escaped enslavement by shipping himself to a free state in the north.
A carpenter helped him build a box that was labeled Dry Goods.
It had three small air holes, and when Henry Brown climbed inside,
he brought a pointed metal tool.
In case he needed to make more.
He was in the box for 27 hours,
traveling by wagon, train, and steamboat,
before he arrived in Philadelphia.
After his successful escape, Henry Brown became famous,
and he toured America and England to tell his story and perform magic tricks.
He changed his middle name to Box.
Sometimes he would burst out of a box on stage, the same one.
He'd burst out of when it was delivered to Philadelphia.
In the early 1900s in England, an accountant named Reginald Bray
spent a lot of time coming up with ways to test the limits of the British postal system.
He sent a turnip with the address carved into it, a half-smoked cigar, and a bowler hat.
When he learned that it was possible to send live creatures,
he decided to try to mail both himself and his Irish terrier,
Bob.
The regulations permitted sending anything bigger than a bee,
and smaller than an elephant.
Reginald Bray successfully mailed himself three times.
The process just involved being escorted by a mail carrier.
There's a photograph of him being delivered by registered mail to his own house in 1903.
He's standing on the doorstep, while his father signs for the package at the door.
In 1909, two British suffragettes got the idea to send themselves to the Prime Minister's residence
so they could speak with him face-to-face.
They went to the post office and were escorted directly to 10 Downing Street.
But when they were delivered, nobody would sign for them,
and they were sent right back to the post office.
It wasn't a total failure for the suffragettes, though.
The stunt generated a lot of attention and put them on the front page of the Daily News.
mirror. At the same
time in the United States, the Postal Service only delivered packages that were fewer than
four pounds. But in 1913, the limit was increased. The regulations were a little vague, and people
started testing the system. They mailed eggs, bricks, snakes, and children. Typically, parents
would hand their children to postal carriers, and they were just carried or walked along
the postal route to their destination, which was normally a relative's house. One Ohio
couple shipped their 10-pound baby a mile away to his grandmother's house. The postage
was 15 cents. They also decided to get the $50 insurance.
The next year, the Postmaster General made a new rule. No humans in the mail.
In 1964, when Reg Spiegel, the Postmaster General, was in the United States, the Postmaster
General started thinking he could ship himself from England to Australia. He confided in
his friend, John McSorley. When you first brought this idea to John, what did he say?
John McSorley: He said, "You're crazy." He said, "You're out of your mind, crazy
bloody Aussie." But eventually, he knew the situation. He had no money, wanted to get
back home. And this was plausible, you know, when you thought about it. And the main thing
main thing was it was COD. Cash on delivery. So you don't have to pay? You don't have to pay until
it actually arrives. Did you ever try and convince him not to do it? Yeah, of course. I said, you're
mad, you're mad, crazy. Why would you do that? But water on a duck's back it was. And he was persistent.
He said, look, I want to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. And I said,
listen, if you're going to do it, then I've got to make the crate. I'm not having you going in some
bloody orange box and busting out of the thing. And so that was it. So we were then, they were full
on. That's what we were going to do. First, John had to figure out how to make a box that Reg could
fit in. And so he did.
He couldn't stay in for hours and hours. And it couldn't look like there was a person inside.
For a start, I didn't want it to look like a coffin. So it couldn't be coffin size.
The biggest box you could put on a jet aircraft was five feet by three feet by two and a half feet.
Now that's a big box. How tall are you? I'm about six foot one.
It wouldn't be the most comfortable journey, but you could do it.
You're right. But
I was 22. You can put up with a lot when you're that age. Ask me now to do it and I wouldn't.
There wasn't enough room in John's apartment to build the box.
So he worked on it in secret at a nearby college. John and Reg had spent a lot of time on campus
training for the javelin throw and eating in the cafeteria there and knew a few people at the
school. They didn't know what the box was for. It was just a box. We didn't advertise it.
We were able to just put it out of the way so that not too many questions were asked.
But then if they did ask questions, they wouldn't believe you anyway.
John and Reg tried to think through everything that could go wrong and designed the box so that
Reg would have what he needed, could stay hidden and be able to breathe.
He built it so that the slats were plenty of air in it and I could even see through the slats.
If the box was going to have little spaces so you could see and breathe,
how were you hidden within the box?
Well, we put brown paper over the inside so that nobody could see in.
And I could just remove the paper and see out. The whole idea, of course, is,
well, it never occurred to me at the time or John, about claustrophobia or you're going to be in
pitch darkness all the way and all. That didn't come in. We didn't think about that. We just went
and did it.
Where you were, I mean, inside the box, did you have anything so that you could hold on in case
the box was tumbled around?
Yes, there were straps that fit in there to hang on to that would keep me in place.
Also, he had a strap attached so that while he was lying down, he could strap himself in
when he was being moved.
And there was a way to get out?
Yes, both ends.
I could, they're just locks. They just undo them and what the end would pop out, either end.
Did you have to say what was in the box?
Phoebe, we told lies.
We hit on this idea that he should go as rubberized emulsion for a shoe company.
How did you come up with the idea for emulsion? Did you just pick something or?
Well, something that had a bit of weight in it and a bit of,
you know, something that people wouldn't even know what it was.
So we invented this shoe company called the Supreme Shoe Company,
Gloucester Road, London, and it was to be delivered to a Mr. Graham in Perth,
collected by Mr. Graham and paid COD.
Was Mr. Graham real?
No.
Just made up?
It's all made up. We thought the Supreme Shoe Company sounded pretty good and Mr. Graham,
that sounded sort of, you know, pretty ordinary kind of name, acceptable. So that was it.
And you had labeled this cash on delivery, so
they assumed that someone would pay for it when they picked the box up.
That was the whole idea, Phoebe.
I mean, because I bet it was really expensive.
Yeah, it was about 400 pounds, 440 pounds.
How much would a ticket home have cost?
Not much less than that.
It would have been 300 pounds, 350 pounds,
which was right out of my league, and it would take me a year to save it.
350 pounds in 1964 would be about 8,500 U.S. dollars today.
The route they chose started in London, stopped in Paris,
and stopped again in Mumbai,
where he would have to change his car.
He would have to change planes.
From Mumbai, he would go to Singapore for a fuel stop,
before finally arriving in Perth, Australia.
Did you tell anyone at home that you were planning on. No. No, I didn't say anything to anyone.
And did you have any idea how long it would take?
Well, no, not really.
Reg and John put a couple of pillows and a blanket inside the box.
And then they tried to think through what else Reg would need.
He liked baked beans.
And I was working for Heinz at that stage,
so he'd have a number of tins of baked beans,
which he'd eat raw.
And he loved them.
So that's what he brought, baked beans?
Baked beans, yeah.
Baked beans.
Did you have anything else to eat?
No.
No, because I figured, you know,
I didn't particularly want to have a bowel movement,
in there.
I mean, Reg had an appetite of a horse.
He really did.
And so we thought, right, let's slow down your system
so you don't need to go to the loo.
He packed water, a flashlight, and a gift for his mother.
Placemats with pictures of guards at the Tower of London.
He also packed a suit to change into when he landed in Australia.
They put two labels on the box.
Fragile and This Way Up.
When you were just about to get in the box,
did you run around a little bit or stretch,
knowing that you were going to be in there for a while?
No.
No, there's the bloody box.
Get in the damn thing and stop buggerizing around.
So you weren't nervous?
No.
Strangely enough, you know, I'm not trying to say I was brave.
I think I was closer to being stupid.
No.
Once the ball started. Once the ball started to roll,
there wasn't time to sort of be frightened or anything like that
and just put up with it and ride it out.
And that's basically it.
Was John worried at all, did you sense?
Well, he could have had some thoughts in that regard,
but it was never mentioned.
It was a bit of a joke, if anything.
We just did it.
What you have to remember is we were young,
and careless and carefree.
And so I think if we'd been older and got a bit more sense,
we probably would never have done it.
Do you remember the last thing you said
before they closed you up in the box?
See you later, Johnny.
That's all.
No, no big deal.
Once I was in, I'm in.
And we're off.
Well, I said, look, look, good luck, Rog.
Good luck.
I hope you make it.
But don't forget to let me know when you get there.
A few of John's friends, who had a van, helped load up the box and drive it to the airport.
I remember it was a frustrating and anxious time when we were taking him into a freight shed
and the guy behind the desk was sort of looking a bit sort of suspiciously.
That was a bit of an anxious moment, but fortunately time passed and it was okay
and then they took the crane away.
I was in a huge bloody warehouse, I could see out through the slats, and I was put up high too.
And when they come to get me, some young bugger apprentice was driving the forklift
and he almost dropped me because it was teetering on the bloody thing.
But I threw myself back towards it and it settled down, but those things happen.
And then in the afternoon the fork came down, the fork came down and all the planes
were delayed, so he had to just stay in there for hours and hours and hours,
but we couldn't do anything about it.
What was it like when you finally heard the plane's engines and you realised you were in the air?
Here we go. Here we go. So it begins. That's what I thought.
We'll be right back.
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Reg Spears was in his box in the cargo hold of a Boeing 707 on his first leg of the journey.
From London to Paris.
Was it strange to be in the cargo area of the plane, knowing that above you were, were, you know, a hundred people?
Yeah.
No, no, it never crossed my mind, but the thing is, here I am, you know, what can I do?
I decided to do this, and so far, so good.
He says he'd already been in the box for 24 hours because of the fog delay.
So once the plane was in the air and he was alone,
he decided to let himself out.
I was dying for a leak, but I had a big can there, and I peed in that when I got out of the box.
Silly me, I got out of the box, and from London to Paris is not very long.
So in my haste to get back, I put the container of pee on top of the box and got back in,
and then I realized I'd left the bloody thing there.
It was too late to get out of the box again.
He felt the plane landing, and then heard the cargo door opening,
and the French baggage.
The French handlers talking to each other as they entered the cargo area.
And then that's when they discovered the baked can full of pee, and they weren't happy.
I could hear Anglise, you know, they were swearing at the English.
But I thought that they'd know then that someone's in this bloody box, but they didn't.
Nothing happened.
When you were on the ground or you knew that people were around,
were you ever worried?
Were you worried about making a noise, sneezing or something?
No, no, it wasn't.
The funny thing was, I remember that.
When people are around, you're sort of smiling to yourself because you're in the box.
They don't know you're in there, and everything is normal or seems normal, but it's not.
And that made me smile a bit.
Eventually, the plane took off for the second leg of Reg's flight, heading to Mumbai.
It was the longest part of the journey.
I just recall it being pitch black.
And most of the time, I had a pillow and blanket, so I was asleep.
I was just asleep.
You were sleeping, but when you weren't sleeping, what were you thinking about?
Everything.
You know, reflect on your life.
You just think about yourself and your family and what you've done and all the things that people think about.
He brought a book, which he could read.
Using the flashlight he brought.
It was called The Bedside Esquire.
A collection of short stories that had been published in Esquire magazine by authors like Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck.
That's helped run out the batteries.
Read a bit of that, and when it went dark, that was that.
It's about 4,300 miles from Paris to Mumbai.
Do you think that your athletic training helped you?
Oh, sure it did.
Of course it did.
With athletics, with the training, you commit yourself to it, and you're driven.
And that's what I was.
I was doing this, and I'm going to do it all the way through.
It was that sort of attitude, as you said, came out of athletic training, having that mindset.
That's basically what it was.
There was no fearful aspect to it all.
Not at all.
When you landed in India, what happened?
Well, the plane, again, they opened the hole.
I expect the hole to be open each time you come into an airport.
This time they took me out.
They took me out of the, took the box out of the plane and propped it on the tarmac, and they stood me up on one end.
That was okay, because as I said to you, there were belts in there to help me.
They put me in place.
But you were upside down.
Yes.
I just hung in there and waited.
And then the crate was moved again and turned right side up.
Ratch says he didn't know what was happening or what the delay was.
He says at one point he could hear people talking nearby, eating lunch.
It was very hot.
I took all my, I was totally naked in there because it was so hot.
You took your clothes off.
Yes, it was so bloody hot.
I was sweating.
I wondered how long I could last in this heat.
But I'm from Australia.
We're used to the heat.
It was very hot, though.
That's all I remember.
And I was sweating.
And I was wondering whether I could sustain it.
But I did.
And next thing, I'm on the move.
They came and got me, put me on another plane that went off to Singapore, I think.
The flight from Mumbai to Singapore was about 2,500 miles.
At what point?
At what point did you realize you were really going to make it, that this was going to work?
By the time we got to Singapore, I figured if I got to Singapore, the next hop's ours.
And I don't care if I get caught, because I'm home.
It would be about 2,500 more miles to Australia.
What were you looking forward to the most when you got home?
Stepping onto Australia.
That's what I wanted to do.
And there's nothing like Australia.
It's the greatest place on Earth.
It's the center of the universe to me.
How did you know that you had arrived in Australia?
The voices.
What happened?
The voices.
When the hold opened, of course, after this long journey, the hold opened and the handlers
come into the cargo and their voices, I knew they were Aussies.
So I was home.
What did they say?
They said, I hope this big fuck is not for us.
But it was, and they got me out and put me in a bond shed.
So you were still in the box, but they put you in a shed?
In a bond shed. A bond shed, it's customs, you know, it goes in there before you.
The people that own the box come and get it,
but it's held in a bond shed until it's cleared by customs and handling charges, all that sort of thing.
And the shed is also locked.
We'll be right back.
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Open soon. Reg Spears says he'd been in the box for more than 60 hours when it finally landed in Australia.
And was put in a locked storage shed.
From inside the box, he could hear airline workers unloading boxes around him.
He says he stayed quiet and still and waited for what felt like hours.
And then, finally, he heard someone say they were leaving for a smoke break.
When it seemed like everyone was gone, Reg crawled out of the box.
The bond shed happened to be full of beer.
Not that I like beer.
I was pretty thirsty, so I cracked a can of beer and drank half of it and threw it up, I think.
Next, he put on the suit he'd packed.
I've got into the suit because I didn't want to look inappropriate around the Air Force there, carrying a bag.
If I was going to be wandering around, I wanted to look appropriate.
When you got out of the box, did you close it back up so people wouldn't be suspicious?
Yes, yes, I closed it back up.
But I just pushed the ends in.
And then, he looked around for a way to get out of the locked shed.
He remembers that there were two heavy metal double doors with a waist-high chain across them and an old-looking padlock.
From inside, he could push the doors open enough to reach the chain.
I found a toolbox and I cut a bit of a hole in the chain and just jumped out and walked away.
Reg says he saw a group of passengers getting off of a plane on the tarmac.
And joined up with them as they filed into the airport terminal.
He tried to look like he was supposed to be there and followed the signs for arriving Australian citizens.
He would have to go through customs.
When he got to the counter, he says he got out his passport, smiled at the official, and was waved through.
You were in Australia, but still a long way from home. What did you do next?
I. I. I hitchhiked.
I knew I could hitchhike in Perth.
And I hitchhiked a good way out of Perth towards Adelaide, which is my hometown.
Until I reached the Nullarbor desert.
You can't get across there.
The truckies won't take you.
So, eventually, a Catholic priest gave me some money for a train ticket to Adelaide.
And when I got home, I sent him the money back.
So, you know, that's how I got there.
I got the last part.
Raj Spears arrived home more than three days after he'd first gotten in the box in London.
But he'd made it in time for his daughter's birthday.
What did your family say when you arrived?
Oh, they were a bit surprised.
They wondered how the hell I did it.
And I didn't tell them at first.
Because they probably wouldn't have believed me anyway.
What were you doing while. Raj was on his trip?
Do you remember just worrying a lot?
Do you remember thinking about different scenarios?
Yeah, I was biting my nails down to the elbows.
John McSorley.
Really anxious.
Anxious about things.
Because it's a long flight and it takes a long time to get from England to Australia on a plane or anything else.
So, I was very anxious.
And I wanted to hear from him.
And I didn't hear from him.
So, in the end, I was so concerned that I notified somebody I knew from the Daily Telegraph.
And he contacted somebody in Sydney in the press.
And they flew out to Ridge's place.
Found out he was at home.
He'd got home.
But he hadn't bothered to let me know that he'd got home.
And then the story broke.
And in Australia, it was huge news.
It was big news in England.
The News Chronicle at that stage.
There was a paper, a new paper out.
The whole front page was about this story.
Nothing else on the front page.
I never expected anything like it.
I thought if I got caught, I'd just get a kick in the bum or a fine.
Locked up, who knows?
But never expected this.
The Australian culture is such that they love a story like that.
That somebody would be so desperate to get back to the country
that he'd come back as a freight.
John, on the other hand, was not treated like a folk hero.
And his employer, Heinz, was not happy to discover
that they had unwittingly supplied beans for the trip.
And Heinz, they called me into the office.
And there's a difference in the cultures.
Heinz are very upmarket and strict and stiff.
And they ticked me off for being irresponsible.
Meanwhile, Reg was having a heyday in Australia.
After the story broke, customs officials checked the storage shed
and found the empty box Reg had left behind.
A spokesman from the airline was quoted saying,
It's a miracle that Spears arrived in Perth alive.
My blood runs cold when I think of the terrible risks he ran.
The cargo could have been offloaded
and left in some tropical depot over a weekend.
Or he could have been discovered en route and thrown into jail.
Or he could have been packed with other freight and suffocated.
Or the pressurization in the cargo hold might have failed.
When you realized that this was now in the news
and they knew your name,
were you worried that you'd be in trouble with the law?
Well, the immigration people, of course,
and the customs came and saw me.
I had to fill out a form and sign it, and that was that.
And the other thing was Air India.
They asked me to pay.
They asked me to pay the freight charges.
According to Reg, he told the airline he would not be paying.
And I never heard from them again, so that was it.
Tell me a little bit about what you've been up to since your feet in a box.
Ah, well, I got into drug smuggling
because I'm a big fan of weed.
I smoke it to this day.
I really like it.
I'm not much of a drinker, but I like weed and hashish.
He's been arrested for conspiracy to import cocaine
and for smuggling and transporting cannabis resin and heroin.
He's been in prison in more than one country,
and he says he spent years of his life on the run.
And what's your life like now?
Terrific.
You know, hell, I'm 80 years old and I can feel it,
but, you know, I don't regret it.
at the moment.
Not at all.
It was, I had experiences that people don't have.
Tell me, you said you're still friends with John McSorley
all these years later.
When you get together, do you talk about this?
Oh, yes, we talk about it, we laugh.
And for us, yes, the box is a real giggle matter.
We laugh about it all the time.
He'll always be in my life.
Why do you think you've been friends for so long?
Because we like each other.
The depth of the friendship is something that's not tangible.
We're very different in personalities.
Very different.
He's this real outgoing guy,
and I tend to be fairly reserved.
Reserved Englishman.
But somehow it worked.
And it's continued to work.
And we do anything for each other.
It's a weird thing, but it's nice.
It's nice to know that you can meet somebody
and be that sort of close, close to them.
There are certain times in your life
you come to a crossroads
and think, shall I do this, shall I do that?
Sort of doing that.
And people don't do it.
No, he's, he's, Reg was the sort of guy
where there was no such thing as can't.
You can do anything.
And he's, this still, still exists in him.
John had a stroke last year.
And Reg flew from Australia to London
to be with him at the hospital.
He said, look, look, Johnny, he said,
you've just been lying in bloody bed.
Let's get you.
Let's get you out.
So he got me in a wheelchair.
He took me out of the hospital,
wheeled me round the streets.
Wheeled me round the streets.
He said, you need a haircut, he said.
So he's wheeled me to a hairdresser's,
wheeled me into the hairdresser's and said,
can you cut this guy's hair?
And they did.
With him, that's just seeing as can't.
You want to do it, you do it.
You want to do it.
He's no longer allowed into the UK
because of stricter immigration controls.
But Reg and John still talk as much as they can.
Marcus and Julie McSorley, John's wife,
wrote a book about Reg's trip.
It's called Out of the Box,
The Highs and Lows of a Champion Smuggler.
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This episode was mixed and engineered
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This is Criminal.
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Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Reg Spears, an Australian javelin thrower in the 1960s, injured his arm and missed qualifying for the Olympics, leaving him stranded in London without money.
He devised a plan to ship himself back to Australia in a wooden crate, labeled as "rubberized emulsion" for a fake shoe company, with cash-on-delivery terms.
His friend John McSorley built the crate and helped him execute the plan, despite initial skepticism and concerns.
Reg endured a 60-plus-hour journey via plane from London to Paris, Mumbai, Singapore, and finally Perth, facing heat, darkness, and close calls with customs.
He escaped the crate in a locked bond shed in Perth, changed into a suit, and hitchhiked home, arriving in time for his daughter's birthday.
The story became major news in Australia and England, with Reg treated as a folk hero, while John faced reprimands from his employer, Heinz.
Reg later led a life involving drug smuggling and prison, but he and John maintained a lifelong friendship, with Reg flying to London to support John after a stroke.
Summary:
In this episode of *Criminal*, Phoebe Judge recounts the extraordinary true story of Reg Spears, a young Australian javelin thrower in 1964 who, after an arm injury dashed his Olympic hopes, found himself penniless in London. Desperate to return home for his daughter's third birthday, Reg hatched a daring plan to mail himself to Australia in a wooden crate. With the help of his friend John McSorley, he built a box five feet by three feet by two and a half feet, equipped with straps, air holes, and brown paper lining for concealment.
They labeled it as rubberized emulsion for a fictional Supreme Shoe Company, to be delivered cash-on-delivery to a nonexistent Mr. Graham in Perth. Reg packed baked beans, water, a flashlight, and a suit, then climbed inside, enduring a grueling 60-hour journey across multiple flights and airports.
He faced intense heat, darkness, and near-discovery, including a mishap with a can of urine in Paris and being left upside down in Mumbai. Upon landing in Perth, he escaped the locked bond shed, changed into his suit, and hitchhiked home, arriving just in time for his daughter's birthday. The story made headlines globally, turning Reg into a folk hero, though John's employer was displeased.
Reg later pursued a life of drug smuggling and prison, but the two remained lifelong friends, with Reg flying to London years later to care for John after a stroke. The tale highlights youthful audacity, friendship, and the lengths one will go to for home.
FAQs
Reg Spears is an Australian former javelin thrower who, in 1964, shipped himself in a wooden crate from London to Australia to get home for his daughter's birthday.
He had no money for a plane ticket after an injury prevented him from qualifying for the Olympics, and he wanted to get home before his daughter's third birthday.
He packed baked beans, water, a flashlight, a book, and a blanket, and relied on air holes and straps inside the crate. He also fasted to avoid needing the bathroom.
He and his friend John McSorley claimed it contained rubberized emulsion for a fake shoe company called the Supreme Shoe Company, to be delivered cash on delivery to a fictitious Mr. Graham.
He escaped from a locked customs shed, cut a chain, joined passengers in the terminal, passed through customs, and hitchhiked home, finishing with a train ticket funded by a priest.
He only had to fill out and sign a form for customs and immigration, and when Air India asked him to pay freight charges, he refused and never heard from them again.
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