bi11i
03-25-2005, 03:06 PM
This was an interesting read, just something I grabbed out of my daily search for opiate news. Courtesy of reprint via the Herald Sun (http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,12656656%255E2862,00.html):
Worst choice for job (http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/printpage/0,5481,12656656,00.html)
Geoff Wilkinson
26mar05
ANDREW David James Caddaye may well have been the worst choice ever as an international drug courier.
He'd never been overseas before, he'd been in trouble with the law for drug trafficking and he'd been a heroin addict.
At 193cm and 120kg, with a bushy beard and thick-rimmed glasses, wearing an Australian bush hat and a brightly striped rugby top, he hardly merged seamlessly into the scenery in downtown Kathmandu.
Nor was he likely to escape scrutiny at Melbourne airport when he returned home.
But after four failed attempts to arrange a courier, and a rapidly mounting interest debt on the short-term $10,000 loan that financed his drug smuggling plan, Murray Perrier was in no position to be choosy.
His first telephone approach to Andrew Caddaye, an opal miner at Lightning Ridge in NSW and old prison mate, was in October 2002 when he asked "the big boy from the north" if he could get his hands on $4000.
Perrier assured Caddaye, who told the court he also answered to "H" and "HJ" ("don't ask", urged prosecutor Brent Young) that he could look forward to getting $10,000 back in a fortnight if he could help out with the money. Better still, if he could organise someone to do the job, there'd be 50 grand in it for them.
In the same call Caddaye urged Perrier to be careful about what he said on the phone -- a warning ignored for more than four months.
Perrier assured him he was ringing on a mobile "and that's cool".
"They're untraceable. They only know where you're ringing from, but they don't know what you're saying," he said in one of almost 400 conversations played to the jury.
By October 21 Caddaye was expressing interest in doing the drug run himself -- but not right away, because he had "40 plants in" and if he did not water the crop they would die.
Three months later, after a Romanian called Shep, Caddaye's mate Dicko and his Uncle Jack had all got cold feet and declined to be couriers, the big boy got sore feet hitchhiking from Lightning Ridge to Melbourne to take on the job.
He was accompanied by his dog, a pitbull-rhodesian ridgeback cross, who caused much consternation two days later when it ran off into the wilds of Carlton and failed to return.
Caddaye was due to be away seven to 10 days when he left for Nepal on February 6, 2002, but did not return until five weeks later.
The delay was partly caused, he declared to an increasingly anxious Perrier, by the fact that he had fallen in love with a young Nepalese woman and planned to marry her.
One five-day period when Caddaye was incommunicado was explained, Mr Young told the jury, by the fact that "the eagle, instead of flying east towards Melbourne, had lost his way and had flown west to India for what Mr Perrier surmised was a dirty Delhi weekend".
The former heroin addict also managed to upset his hosts in Kathmandu by using "the product", running up big bills at the hotel where he was staying and threatening to kill one of them.
He was, observed Perrier's co-accused Peter Tilley in another intercepted telephone call, "just a big kid in a candy shop" who had mixed business with pleasure.
The day before he left Kathmandu, Caddaye assured Perrier that "everything is under control . . . sort of".
Caddaye's movements were closely monitored in every sense when he finally arrived back in Melbourne on March 12 with 49 packages of heroin in his stomach and two more of heroin in his ample underpants.
He must have thought he was home free when a search failed to find the two extra packages and his illicit hidden cargo failed to excite any interest from a Customs labrador, despite several passes in front and behind him as he stood in a queue in the border control area.
But then he was arrested by AFP agents, and when confronted with the overwhelming evidence against him agreed to take part in a controlled delivery of a sample package to Perrier at a Carlton hotel.
Perrier had earlier booked Caddaye into a room at the Seaford Taverner hotel for three nights after he expected him back from Nepal.
Instead he spent seven nights under guard in a bed at Royal Melbourne Hospital as AFP agents waited for him to produce the evidence.
Perrier argued during sworn evidence that the Seaford holiday was simply an act of kindness designed to allow the big boy to have a good rest after his long flight.
"I am a very kind person. That's why I get into all this trouble," Perrier told the jury.
Caddaye and his uncle both gave evidence for the prosecution.
John Andrew Caddaye, then a 63-year-old pensioner who sold used cars one day a week, said he was told he would be paid $30,000 for bringing heroin back from Nepal in the soles of a special pair of shoes. The jury heard Perrier tell him in a taped telephone call that the shoes were guaranteed 100 per cent.
"They've put it through the X-rays, they've put it through the dogs and there's not a problem," Perrier said.
But Perrier's assurances were not enough to convince Uncle Jack, who feigned a mild stroke the day before he was due to fly out of Melbourne to avoid going through with the plan.
His nephew then agreed to step into the breech, but neither Murray the mastermind nor his Nepalese suppliers of heroin and special shoes thought to inquire about the dimensions of the new courier's size 14 feet.
Andrew Caddaye received a reduced sentence of 3 1/2 years after agreeing to give evidence for the Crown.
By the time he came to court for the trial he was at least 140kg and his green prison jacket and tracksuit pants were stretched to the limit.
So was his credibility when it emerged that a statement he made a month after his arrest, exonerating Perrier, was constructed by Perrier while they were in jail together on remand and witnessed by an accused murderer.
With long hair and beard giving a Mansonesque appearance, Caddaye did his best to give the prosecution no more than absolutely necessary from the witness box. But the damage had already been done.
Worst choice for job (http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/printpage/0,5481,12656656,00.html)
Geoff Wilkinson
26mar05
ANDREW David James Caddaye may well have been the worst choice ever as an international drug courier.
He'd never been overseas before, he'd been in trouble with the law for drug trafficking and he'd been a heroin addict.
At 193cm and 120kg, with a bushy beard and thick-rimmed glasses, wearing an Australian bush hat and a brightly striped rugby top, he hardly merged seamlessly into the scenery in downtown Kathmandu.
Nor was he likely to escape scrutiny at Melbourne airport when he returned home.
But after four failed attempts to arrange a courier, and a rapidly mounting interest debt on the short-term $10,000 loan that financed his drug smuggling plan, Murray Perrier was in no position to be choosy.
His first telephone approach to Andrew Caddaye, an opal miner at Lightning Ridge in NSW and old prison mate, was in October 2002 when he asked "the big boy from the north" if he could get his hands on $4000.
Perrier assured Caddaye, who told the court he also answered to "H" and "HJ" ("don't ask", urged prosecutor Brent Young) that he could look forward to getting $10,000 back in a fortnight if he could help out with the money. Better still, if he could organise someone to do the job, there'd be 50 grand in it for them.
In the same call Caddaye urged Perrier to be careful about what he said on the phone -- a warning ignored for more than four months.
Perrier assured him he was ringing on a mobile "and that's cool".
"They're untraceable. They only know where you're ringing from, but they don't know what you're saying," he said in one of almost 400 conversations played to the jury.
By October 21 Caddaye was expressing interest in doing the drug run himself -- but not right away, because he had "40 plants in" and if he did not water the crop they would die.
Three months later, after a Romanian called Shep, Caddaye's mate Dicko and his Uncle Jack had all got cold feet and declined to be couriers, the big boy got sore feet hitchhiking from Lightning Ridge to Melbourne to take on the job.
He was accompanied by his dog, a pitbull-rhodesian ridgeback cross, who caused much consternation two days later when it ran off into the wilds of Carlton and failed to return.
Caddaye was due to be away seven to 10 days when he left for Nepal on February 6, 2002, but did not return until five weeks later.
The delay was partly caused, he declared to an increasingly anxious Perrier, by the fact that he had fallen in love with a young Nepalese woman and planned to marry her.
One five-day period when Caddaye was incommunicado was explained, Mr Young told the jury, by the fact that "the eagle, instead of flying east towards Melbourne, had lost his way and had flown west to India for what Mr Perrier surmised was a dirty Delhi weekend".
The former heroin addict also managed to upset his hosts in Kathmandu by using "the product", running up big bills at the hotel where he was staying and threatening to kill one of them.
He was, observed Perrier's co-accused Peter Tilley in another intercepted telephone call, "just a big kid in a candy shop" who had mixed business with pleasure.
The day before he left Kathmandu, Caddaye assured Perrier that "everything is under control . . . sort of".
Caddaye's movements were closely monitored in every sense when he finally arrived back in Melbourne on March 12 with 49 packages of heroin in his stomach and two more of heroin in his ample underpants.
He must have thought he was home free when a search failed to find the two extra packages and his illicit hidden cargo failed to excite any interest from a Customs labrador, despite several passes in front and behind him as he stood in a queue in the border control area.
But then he was arrested by AFP agents, and when confronted with the overwhelming evidence against him agreed to take part in a controlled delivery of a sample package to Perrier at a Carlton hotel.
Perrier had earlier booked Caddaye into a room at the Seaford Taverner hotel for three nights after he expected him back from Nepal.
Instead he spent seven nights under guard in a bed at Royal Melbourne Hospital as AFP agents waited for him to produce the evidence.
Perrier argued during sworn evidence that the Seaford holiday was simply an act of kindness designed to allow the big boy to have a good rest after his long flight.
"I am a very kind person. That's why I get into all this trouble," Perrier told the jury.
Caddaye and his uncle both gave evidence for the prosecution.
John Andrew Caddaye, then a 63-year-old pensioner who sold used cars one day a week, said he was told he would be paid $30,000 for bringing heroin back from Nepal in the soles of a special pair of shoes. The jury heard Perrier tell him in a taped telephone call that the shoes were guaranteed 100 per cent.
"They've put it through the X-rays, they've put it through the dogs and there's not a problem," Perrier said.
But Perrier's assurances were not enough to convince Uncle Jack, who feigned a mild stroke the day before he was due to fly out of Melbourne to avoid going through with the plan.
His nephew then agreed to step into the breech, but neither Murray the mastermind nor his Nepalese suppliers of heroin and special shoes thought to inquire about the dimensions of the new courier's size 14 feet.
Andrew Caddaye received a reduced sentence of 3 1/2 years after agreeing to give evidence for the Crown.
By the time he came to court for the trial he was at least 140kg and his green prison jacket and tracksuit pants were stretched to the limit.
So was his credibility when it emerged that a statement he made a month after his arrest, exonerating Perrier, was constructed by Perrier while they were in jail together on remand and witnessed by an accused murderer.
With long hair and beard giving a Mansonesque appearance, Caddaye did his best to give the prosecution no more than absolutely necessary from the witness box. But the damage had already been done.