- David McMillan (smuggler)
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David McMillan Born 9 April 1956
London, England, United KingdomOccupation Photographer, TV presenter, smuggler, writer David McMillan (born 1956) is a British-Australian drug smuggler who is best known for being the only Westerner on record as having successfully escaped Bangkok's Klong Prem prison.[1] His exploits were the subject of the 2011 Australian telemovie, Underbelly Files: The Man Who Got Away.
Contents
Biography
Early life
McMillan was born in Saint Marylebone, London, England on 9 April 1956. He is the son of John McMillan CBE, who was the controller of Associated-Rediffusion Television. After emigrating to Australia with his family, the younger McMillan attended Caulfield Grammar School in Melbourne, Victoria. As a child, 12-year-old McMillan appeared nightly on the Nine Network's 'Peters Junior News', presenting news stories for children in a regular 5-minute TV bulletin. After working as a cinema projectionist and camera operator in Sydney, he began a short-lived career in advertising with Masius Wynne Williams in Melbourne.
Criminal career
A part-time job at a city cinema introduced McMillan to the fringes of the underworld; a group of safe-crackers who had turned to narcotics when police surveillance curtailed their traditional profession. Connections with the free-marijuana hippie lobbyists brought those two worlds together and a tempting opportunity for someone who was well-travelled. McMillan then began a career as a drug smuggler, during which he developed the bag-duplication system at Sydney's Kingsford-Smith airport in the late 1970s as he smuggled hashish from India. In 1979, McMillan fell out with disgraced peer, Lord Tony Moynihan, after the exiled lord attempted to trap McMillan in a gambling-sting operation using the large-scale bets of the Chinese-run cockfights in Manila.
Moynihan had hoped to employ McMillan's technical expertise to detonate an explosive capsule in the necks of fighting cocks, and so determine the winners. In fact, Moynihan planned only to swindle McMillan out of the betting stake after a test game. McMillan was alerted to the scam by his Chinese film-making friends and left the Philippines after cautioning Moynihan. Lord Moynihan would later move on to hoodwink smuggler Howard Marks in the 1980s, resulting in Marks's conviction and imprisonment in Florida. Imprudent spending attracted the attention of federal police when a Clenet automobile was imported from California bearing papers that had greatly undervalued the vehicle. This slip-up led to a major investigation which eventually revealed houses, businesses and properties along the eastern coast of Australia bought with cash and valued in millions of dollars. These assets later became the subject of Australia's first important confiscation of drug-earned assets.
After three years, McMillian and business partner Michael Sullivan were arrested following Operation Aries, a Victoria Police/Federal Police taskforce operation reported to have cost over A$2 million. McMillan and Sullivan, along with their partners, Clelia Teresa Vigano and Mary Escolar Castillo respectively, had been arrested on 5 January 1982 for conspiracy to import heroin. The four had several false passports between them, and in addition to conspiracy to import heroin, they were also charged with importing, selling, trafficking and possession of heroin.[2] McMillan stood accused of travelling under 30 false passports and keeping station houses in London, Brussels and Bangkok. The trial heard charges of an attempt to escape Melbourne's high-security Pentridge Prison by helicopter using former SAS personnel in a scheme engineered by a vengeful Lord Moynihan.[3]
The prosecution opposed bail for Castillo, who had a four-month-old baby with Sullivan, because she had access to funds and it was thought she could flee to her wealthy parents in her native Colombia. The police surgeon reported that all four defendants were habitual heroin users.[2] Clelia Vigano and Mary Castillo were two of three women who died in a fire at HM Prison Fairlea on the evening of Saturday 6 February 1982.[4] After her death, Castillo's baby went into the custody of Sullivan's mother.[5] The consequent six-month trial produced 116 witnesses and a hung jury that finally returned a verdict after seven days sequestration. Despite being acquitted of 11 of the 12 counts, McMillan was found guilty of the remaining count and was sentenced to a long sentence before being released in 1993 on parole.[6]
Thailand and escape from Klong Prem
While on parole, McMillan flew to Thailand. After a close-call at Don Muang airport, he was arrested in Bangkok's Chinatown, charged with heroin trafficking. He was held in Klong Prem Central Prison.[7] Klong Prem, also known as the "Bangkok Hilton", is Asia's most notorious prison and housed 600 foreigners along with 12,000 inmates. For two years, McMillan watched as inmates fell prey to drugs, disease, death, violence and despair. Facing the death penalty and a transfer to Bang Kwang Central Prison, McMillan escaped from Klong Prem in August 1996. During the night he and a fellow inmate cut the cell bars with hacksaws, scaled four inner walls, then mounted the outer wall using a bamboo-pole ladder. The inmate helped McMillan cut the bars but did not join in the escape.
Four hours later, with a false passport, he was on a flight to Singapore.[7] Future Australian attorney-general Robert McClelland when praising Australia's embassy in Thailand remarked that McMillan: "… a prisoner… escaped from the Thai jail in quite exceptional and athletic circumstances. In terms of mere escape, it was really quite an achievement." [8] An account of the Thai prison and his jail break can be found in his autobiography: ESCAPE (Mainstream Publishing 2008). After fleeing Thailand using false documents, McMillan was kept safe in Balouchistan, Pakistan under the protection of Mir Noor Jehan Magsi of the Magsi clan, from where he began operations to Scandinavia.[9]
Pakistan
Some years later, McMillan was arrested in Lahore, Pakistan as a result of the confession of a captured courier. McMillian was flown to Karachi, Pakistan, and held in Karachi Central Jail. This jail maintained a class system for prisoners, through which McMillan kept servants and private rooms. Due to a financial dispute with the prison superintendent concerning his illegal cellphone, McMillan was transferred at night to the Hyderabad jail, where he was kept in the dungeons until being rescued by Lord Magsi.[citation needed] Not wishing to add to the existing Interpol warrants, McMillan returned to Karachi to stand trial, where he was acquitted by a Customs Court judge who found there was no evidence that McMillan had sponsored the courier. The courier, a former boxer from Liverpool, was sentenced to five years in custody, eventually released and has since disappeared.
During his time in Hyderabad, McMillan formed a friendship with the members of a Moscow street gang, who were completing a ten-year sentence for the hijack of a commercial liner outside their Russian prison. The gang had been separated by the Russian prison authorities, a decision overcome by gang leader Andreas, who flew his hijacked aircraft to Krasnoyarsk from where he freed the other members of his team before flying to Pakistan, then under the control of General Zia al Huq, known for his independence from both the Soviet Union and the US. The story of the Russian prisoners and their ordeal has been written by McMillan in White Russians.
England
David McMillan returned to London in 1999. He was arrested in 2000 in Copenhagen. He was later arrested at Heathrow in 2002 for smuggling 500 grams of class A drugs. For this crime he served a sentence of two years. As of 2007, David McMillan is living quietly in England. The warrant for his arrest in Thailand for heroin trafficking was at that time still active and he was still wanted in Australia for breaching parole. However, the UK government refuses to extradite anyone to a country which carries out the death penalty, while breaching parole is not an extraditable offence.
In June 2009, McMillan appeared as a guest in a 50-minute episode of Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men 2: Living Dangerously, which aired on Bravo TV. The episode includes interviews and presents McMillan as having settled peacefully with partner Jeanette and children. An Australian television company, Screentime, released a telemovie that aired on Chanel Nine in February 2011 very loosely based on McMillan's smuggling, arrest, and imprisonment in Bangkok and briefly outlined his escape from Klong Prem. The low budget film was the 3rd in the Underbelly Files series. McMillan is to see published McVillain: the Man Who Got Away, scheduled for launch April 1st, 2011. McVillain is the first in a series planned for the grand rises and deep falls in McMillan's life. Although launched on the springboard of the Underbelly telemovie, the books differ in almost every factual event according to McMillan.
References
- ^ http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Westerner-Thailands-Bangkok-Hilton/dp/9810575688
- ^ a b Heroin syndicate used 17 false passports: police. The Age: 7 January 1982, p.5.
- ^ Sydney Morning Herald. Copter Plan Foiled. 21 January 1983
- ^ Bolt, Andrew. State warned in 1978 of Fairlea fire hazard. The Age: 8 February 1982, p.1.
- ^ Grandmother to care for fire victim's son. The Age: 11 February 1982, p.17.
- ^ an article in the Australian Financial Review gives his view of day-release after a long sentence
- ^ a b Andrew Drummond in Bangkok and Paul Cheston in London (14 September 2007). "Drug dealer who escaped Bangkok jail is on the run in London". Evening Standard. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23412205-details/Drug+dealer+who+escaped+Bangkok+jail+is+on+the+run+in+London/article.do. Retrieved 8 March 2009.
- ^ Andrew Rule (12 September 2009). "There Was A Crooked Man". The Age. http://www.theage.com.au/national/there-was-a-crooked-man-8230-20090911-fkui.html. Retrieved 2 February 2010.
- ^ Andrew Rule (2000). The One Who Got Away. The Sunday Age, Melbourne.29 October 2000
External links
- ESCAPE Paperback: 320 pages Publisher: Mainstream Publishing (3 Jul 2008) Language English ISBN 1845963458; ISBN 9781845963453 Amazon listing
- Drug dealer who escaped Bangkok jail is on the run in London Evening Standard article Sept 2007
- The one who got away Heroin pusher David McMillan escaped the 'Bangkok Hilton' - but he lived like a prince on the inside The Nation, Bangkok
- Escape from Klong Prem Richard Barrow, ThaiPrisonLife.com
- How to plan a successful jailbreak
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Categories:- 1956 births
- Australian criminals
- Australian memoirists
- People educated at Caulfield Grammar School
- Living people
- Smugglers
- Australian escapees
- British escapees
- Escapees from Thai detention
- Prisoners and detainees of England and Wales
- Prisoners and detainees of Pakistan
- Australian people imprisoned abroad
- British people imprisoned abroad
- British criminals
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