July 6, 2024 • 38 mins
Stephen Mee, a former cocaine trafficker who worked with the Cali Cartel, sits down to discuss how he built an illicit empire.
David Collins and executive producer Will Roe meet Stephen in his artist’s studio.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's always there in the background, what you've been through.
Even now, when somebody knocks on the door, you know,
if I don't know who's coming, it's I was a
bit of a shock, even though I've got nothing anything
to worry about. I've not done a single things as
I came out, but it's still there, that constant thing
of looking behind you back.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hey there, Today we're bringing you the first I had
two bonus episodes. While making the series, David got in
touch with one of his contacts, Stephen me. Stephen's a
reformed criminal who once helped run one of Europe's biggest
cocaine operations in the nineties, from making business deals with
(00:44):
the infamous Cali cartel to escaping from prison, Stephen's insight
into how global cocaine trafficking worked during the trades burgeoning
years is well worth a listen. I'm Fiona Hamilton and
(01:05):
from The Times for Sunday Times and Newsical Australia. This
is Cocaine Inc. Episode nine, The Artist.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Hi, Stephen, David, You're right, I'm here, but I'm I've
come to where the post code is I think is it?
I've come to an industrial estate on the outskirts of
Manchester to meet Stephen met good to see you. Stephen
(01:49):
is in his mid sixties. He's bold, stocky and looks
like a pretty typical bloke you'd see on any high
street around the UK. You could say a bit of
a gruff exterior. I'll go on if that's all right,
just to take. But he's also very friendly, accommodating, gentle
even these days he's a vegan. I'm here with Will,
(02:13):
one of the executive producers on this series.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
A bit black, Is that all right? I do?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Like Sawyer. No meeting Stephen now, it's a far cry
from his former life. Stephen was born in nineteen fifty
eight in Newton Heath, an area of northeast Manchester. As
a young boy, he was involved in petty crime. By
the eighties, he moved to the Netherlands, got into the
(02:42):
cannabis trade and soon moved on to smuggling cocaine. Then
in the nineties, Stephen teamed up with an infamous Liverpudlian
drug lord Curtis Warren, who was known as the Cocky Watchman,
the Teflong Gangster, and Britain's Pablo Escobar to get Stephen
and Warren ran one of Europe's biggest drug trafficking operations.
(03:05):
Eventually the law caught up with Stephen and he went
to jail for sixteen and a half years. He's no
longer involved in crime and these days he's a professional artist.
Is this all your studio? Then leading us into his studio,
there's a big comfy sofa with lots of cushions and
(03:27):
a twenty four hour news channel was playing on the TV.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Well, we turn it off.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
I'll just put it down. It's all right. There are
dozens of canvases, colorful portraits, pop culture references with a
hint of surrealism and abstract landscapes. It's the first time
I've been to this studio.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
It's a painting that's earn good money from with people
like it. Yeah, that one there is the original one
that are painted in a really trippy That's a shame.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Stephen's had solo exhibitions in London. He's won awards. He's
hoping to release a book of illustrations. His art also
reflects his years in prison, where he would paint portraits
of other inmates.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Donald Nielsen, how was he barber for about five years?
When I first got there in a response to anybody,
he should just go go in his cell and you
should go on the exercise yard for two three hours
and march because he was a proper soldier type of person.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Donald Nielsen was a prolific burglar, kidnapper and murderer, mainly
in the north of England. He was nicknamed the Black Panther.
His most notorious crime was in nineteen seventy five, when
he kidnapped and murdered a seventeen year old girl. Leslie Whittle.
Stephens says when he knew him, he was an old man,
(04:57):
emaciated and close to death.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
I was a wing barber, so he used to come.
He used to cut his hair, and then eventually he
he caught more your own disease. And then he agreed
that I could paint his portrait. And he had to
carry him up the stairs and prop him up in
the corner the way the picture shows, and.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Just can you just visually talk me through what you're
looking at and how you painted it, and just describe
it to a listener that that's will asking the question.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
There, Yeah, paint a picture. I did a few sketches,
got a little black panther in the top corner to
depict two ears, to put the decayne through to show
end of life. And on the right you've got the
single bed and a little table. On the left got
the big bars behind it, and then you've got Donald.
I think he weighed about forty five kilo at the time,
(05:50):
and I'll never sell it, but I will donate it.
Why did not like it two years? He's a monster.
It's like putting a picture of adol fit lit up
in your You knows not as bad as him, but
he was on the lines.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
So why do you paint it if you don't like
to capture the image.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
It was a one off thing, and I knew about
Multideo's I knew he only had amount of time left
and nobody had ever managed to take pictures of him.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
After showing some of his portraits, Stephen and I sit
down in his studio to chat about his life and
how he once ran a cocaine smuggling business. Let's begin
with an incident in nineteen ninety six, when Stephen was
in bo Guitar, the Colombian capital.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
A meeting was arranged for me to go and meet Lucco,
the head of the Calicato and I bought Luco a
wire mechanism that he could move for directors to play with,
and you could move it about and he'd make different
shapes and all that. And I bought that to give
him as a gift, because I was told that you
should always take a gift to Colombians if you're going
(07:03):
to meet them.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
The Cali Cartel is one of the most notorious and
influential organized crime groups in history. As Pablo Escobar's Medeyin
cartel imploded, the Karli Cartel rose up to take control
of the cocaine market. At the height of the group's power,
they controlled ninety percent of the coach coming into Europe.
(07:26):
A nineteen ninety one cover story for Time magazine described
police referring to the leaders as lost cabieros, the gentleman
of Karli.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
It was like a board meeting. They've got their own directors.
You know, people might see cocaine as people in the corner,
But when I've gone into this boardroom, it's a boardroom
at the top of a multi story shopping center, and
we're watching about six top Columbians. I've got my translator there.
(07:59):
First thing they wanted to know was what happened to
the cocaine. So three thousand kilos they're asking about.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Before Steven got to Columbia, three thousand kilograms had gone
missing on the way to Europe. The cartel wanted accountability.
As the conversation went on, Stephen and the translator started
to get nervous.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
So I've had to explain where I've come from. They're saying,
how do it get it? So I've told them everything
about you know, you can check the papers and you
can check who I am. And you've got these people
walking in and out coming back whispering in there. Tell him, yeah,
that was in. He got nited for this, and we
know about that. This Columbians telling me. And he's nudging me,
(08:44):
you know, because he's panicking as well now because this
could be just a meeting or it could be an
assassination meeting for the three thousand kilo and Lucho sat
there all suited up and everything. These are all immaculately
dressed with top suits on. You know, you've seen the films,
that's what they look like.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Steven's talking about the Carly cartel leader Louis and al
Doak Guissino but Terra. He calls him by his nickname
Lucho Palmira.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
And the meeting went on a lot of mumbling on
me giving references about what happened and timeline as best
as I knew, But they also knew that I wasn't
involved in it. I only came into it afterwards. But
I was the first one there to explain what had
happened to the three thousand Kiro. Everybody else was still
even nipped or in prison. So that was a scary
(09:35):
moment at.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
The back of your mind as you're on the plane
on the way to Bogatar. Yeah, you must have been
thinking to yourself. I am the first person in I
know if I got to explain myself.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
I didn't think I was going there to explain anything.
I thought I was going there to create a deal.
And it was all within twenty minutes or something, you know.
He said, yeah, okay, well what's going on now? And
then it just literally went into well what have you
come for? What have you got now? We've got transport,
got this, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
But do you think that twenty minutes basically decided whether
you would live or die?
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:21):
What did your childhood look like? Stephen Kind? Of growing up, well,
there was.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Nine of us, nine kids. It was a big family.
We grew up in a place called Newtonnis, which was
a poor area. I was born in the corner of
the house. I literally fell out of my ma'am so
I was I think the fifth fifth along. She got
up from one chair and went to another, and I
was born, fell on my head apparently, but a weighed
(10:50):
thirteen pound twelve ounces, So I was a monster of
a kid. My dad always worked, but my man was
a She had Parkinson's and it was an alcoholic so
the combination of the Parkings and drugs and alcohol was horrendous.
She'd go miss him for days on end. She used
to send us shopping with a fiver and give us
(11:14):
a shopping list for the tenor sort of thing, and
if we didn't come home with the goods, we used
to get battered off for her, you know, because she
was either always drunk order that sort of offer head on.
These really strong chemicals and shotling became a normal thing
for mer. Me and my younger brother and sister used
(11:35):
to go about with one of them all trolleys, remember them,
Tartan trolleys that used to pull along We had a
little compartment in the bottom and we used to put
the food in and hide it under there. And then
this is eight years old. They was seven and six,
so it was it's done out having necessed and my
dad never knew about any of this, but we used
(11:55):
to steal as much as we could and that gave
us food as well.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
What did your dad do?
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Dad was an electrician. Yeah, he had a good job.
He ended up working for the railway for thirty years
or something. It was quite high up in the railway back.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Lad And what were you like at school?
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Apparently terror? I suppose I became a criminal at a
very early age. Nine. I think was my first registered
warning and conviction was at nine for burglar me on
primary school. On my own, I got caught for stealing
cars when I was thirteen. I stole the Lord Mayor's
(12:36):
car from Oldham from off the top of Saddle with
more that I'd gone down to a club in Manchester
called the Reno. Been in there at thirteen years old
and came out, stole another car to get home with
fell asleep in the car and got woke up by
a local bobby from the police station. Sergeant with a
(12:59):
few his mates. He kicked us all the way down
the hill to the police station and formed my dad O.
My dad kicked me all the way home. My maam
kicked me all the way to bedroom. So it was
violent times.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
What do you think was the trigger for you in
terms of escalating from the shop lifting, then the stealing
of the cars and then what got you into the
drugs trade?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Well, the first smuggle we stole cars, so I got
a few grands together for that and decided to go
to Holland because I started seeing people smoking cannabis for
the first time that was eighty two I think it was,
and seeing what sort of money was paying for this stuff,
(13:50):
and three of us went over. I supplied the money
and was sort of the boss of it. We went
to Felix Stone, got them three day passports years ago
we could just get him at the dock, and went
to Amsterdam and started walking in coffee shops and asking
him could we buy a kilo of cannabis? And we
got chased out of about ten of them, and we
(14:13):
ended up with the Els Angels. They sold us a
kilo and we brought it back sold it more or
less instantly in bits made about five thousand pounds out
of it. We paid thirteen hunder quid for it at
the time, which was a lot of money, but it
was good quality. And then we went back and did
the same again, doubled it up, and went back and
doubled that up, and doubled that up, and kept on
(14:34):
doubling it up, and then started selling it into Germany
as well. And then when I got to the eighty seven,
I think it was did the cocaine smuggle? That's when
it all I expanded.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
And why did you move from the marauama to cocaine
the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
I wasn't involved in cocaine, and somebody offered me a
job to carry from Ecuador to Europe, and I went
for it. I carried twenty four kilo through and because
of the contacts had built up doing the cannabis, I
ended up with people in France, Switzerland, and I ended
up taking all my stuff and everybody else's stuff down
(15:17):
all through Europe and Switzerland.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
How did you take twenty four kilous three from Ecuador?
How did that work?
Speaker 1 (15:25):
I was all completely corrupting those days. It was organized
by the Ecuadorian side, by the military. I think it
was a two star generally who took my bag onto
the plane. I took it to the airport, and so
I walked it in the airport and then they were
stood there while it was being put on, and they
followed it all the way on to the plane. So
(15:46):
they made it safe on that side of it. And
then you just had to kamakaze it through the customs.
So when it come off the European side, it just
went onto the carousel, so you had to walk up
and pick it up like anybody else one bag. So
I got a trolley put it on I had. I
was suited up and everything, had a proper briefcase, and
(16:07):
I devised my own little plan where I was going
to drop my briefcase in front of the customs. So
I opened my briefcase out and all pens fell out
all over right, which distracted. Well, I thought it did.
Just shut up to the obviously, because I got through
and I just had to walk through about eight customs
block down the middle, try not show any any fear. Obviously,
(16:27):
it worked and we got through. Well, it was in
the days I woul get nineteen eighty seven, they want
that much focus on cocaine and things like that. So
I got twenty four kilo through. Other people did it
and got twenty one kilo through, but there was nothing
(16:48):
in the case. It was just cocaine and a bit
of polystyrene form on the outside of it. So I
had re opened it, it would have been you won't even
pretend to clothes being in there.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
It was just what did it feel like on the
other side as you arrived at the airport, what's going
through your mind?
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Everything? Everything, I'm going to get Nate and going to
do this. But I calculated it before we even went,
you know, I thought, well, I forget Cartier bringing that through.
They're going to class me as a mule, which I was,
and I'll get three or four years if that. And
for that sort of risk at the time, I found
that well worth it. The only risk was the other side.
You know of lunatics in South America, But this side,
(17:30):
all is you going to do is take it into
the cells and that's it. You're going to do your sentence.
So even though it's scary as you're doing it, and
you work out that, well, the risks are there to
be taken. So it was a risk worth taking at
the time, and.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Just from that smuggle. From that point, how did it develop?
How did the cocaine business develop from that point?
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Once you got back with that, the reputation had built
up of the group that had done it, and how
all these come It's through reputation. But the thing at
the time was that the Colombians wasn't formed properly. They've
got the cocaine, they've got the transport to get it
into Europe, but they didn't have the people to sell
(18:13):
it to. They could trust or they could literally just
sell it to. And I think that's where I came in.
You know, I just got people to come and pick
it up, took it to a safe place, and then
sold it. We're in a matter of weeks, it was
gone and the next time they came, they came with
three thousand kilo.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Would you describe yourself? You were kind of a middleman
between street gangs that are selling it and the Colombians.
Were you the link in that chain?
Speaker 1 (18:43):
No, I wasn't anywhere near any street gangs. I was
dealing with the big dealers in Holland.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
And how would you collect up the money and give
it back to the Colombians?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Very careful by that time, we was at a certain
level and we had special houses just for money, which
people had sit there with guns and protected. We'd have
special houses separate for the cocaine. The Columbus had had
their own, and I used to take bim bags full
of money to certain places and there'd be Columbian people
there and they just say, I put it in there
(19:19):
with the rest of it. I only went once to
the moneyhouse, and it was just ridiculous. It was just
full of bags of money everywhere you look, just throwning.
But there was Columbians there with a grenades and machine guns,
so nobody's going to get in, and if they did
get in it caused such a mess.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
How much would you say was going through millions.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Wundreds of millions, hundreds of millions, thousands of kilos and
we were just one, you know. The amount of Columbians
that was trying to get it in was ridiculous. Even
when I was in bog Guitar with the Klik cartel,
I was still getting propositioned by other cartel leaders, can
you do it for us as well? But yeah, the
(20:02):
money was just in binbags. Literally.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Did you spot a gap in the market, I guess
because you recognized that the Colombians couldn't distribute. Yeah, so
you identified a gap in the market and set up
a business.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Yeah. Well, when a Columbia, well known Colombian comes up
to you and says, we've got this, but we can't
sell it with someone like me that's just flashing lights
all the way through, you know there's a business here
these people. I've got the ability to bring it here,
but not the ability to sell it. Well, that didn't
last so long. That only lasted for about a year
or so, maybe two years, until they established themselves. It
(20:40):
was perhaps to the end of the eighties and early
nineties that they started to organize themselves and get their
own groups.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
In the early nineteen nineties, Stephen was arrested for smuggling
cocaine and cannabis into England, but a couple of years later,
on his way to being sentenced at Manchester Crown Court,
he would dec on me that made national headlines.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
It was a strange day and normally when you get
transported and we're talking about April the first, now nineteen
ninety three, So I was waiting all morning for the
transport to come and take us to sentencing and then
the coach had come to pick us up, but it
was an old coach, so you're talking about the old
things that you used to go to Blackpool in, you know,
(21:24):
with a sloping back on it, so like a three
quarter coach, and were taken to court by the prison guards.
I was supposed to be attached to someone else who
was going to help me get off, and instead of
him attaching me and him together, which they've done for
a couple of years, me and him have been put together.
And then all of a sudden, this big guard came
(21:46):
from nowhere, fucking seven ten or something. He was he
was a monster, and attached this over lad to him,
and this other little lad has been attached to me.
It was nothing to do with anything. Took us outside
to the coach and I was on walking up the steps.
I told him something's going to happen in a bit,
and he just sort of mumbled and scurried up the stairs,
(22:09):
so armed.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
To him, that's the prisoner you're attacked.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah, the prisoner I'm attached to. And I sat on
the window side so that the person in the car
could recognize it was me because I had a special
coat on. See all these things had to be planning
because his loads of coaches coming out all day long
getting there from prison, so they've got to know which one.
So there's a special mark on my coat. He spotted
it come out in front of the coach. So there's
(22:34):
one person in a car pulled out in front of
the coach. The coaches screeched to a halt. I jumped
up and shout, nobody move and me and this lad.
I dragged him to the front of the coach, pulled
the emergency exit. The doors were opened, and the guards
are still sat down, really.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Not doing anything.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
I think I was about twenty one stone at the time,
of about eighteen percent body fat, so it was pretty big.
And the reputation was already there with the guards. The
guards are just earning money. They're not going to put
the lives. They didn't know what was going on.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
And you've got handcuffs attached to gund cuffs, so you've
got to pull him with your right arm, and he
cuffed across you, so it's hard to pull him.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Everything's pumping now and at you, adrenaline's going and everything.
They managed to get into the car. Guards had just
stood there, drove off changed car within a couple of
hundred meters, turn another car covered in the back, changed
to another car further up, and then taken to a
house in Toxster. But then the problem started again then
(23:44):
because the people who was receiving us in Toxstaff only
knew that they was picking up me and a black man.
That's all they knew. But now they've got two white men,
all right, So they don't know anything about anything because
they've not got contact with the people who are controlling anything.
They've got a job to cut the cuffs off, and
that's it.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
And what's this lad who's attached to you? What's he's saying.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
He's not saying anything. He's only a petty criminal. They're
arguing now what ought to do, whether to just drop
us off somewhere and get rid of us, or to
cut the cuffs off. And I was screaming at fucking
each other, saying he got it wrong. They've got the
wrong people. And then one person and who's walked into
this melee and said, now that's right, he's right, get
(24:28):
rid of him, all right, So cut the cuffs off.
So he's free now in things, even though he didn't
want to be so he's phoned his girlfriend, She's come
and picked him up. They've gone to a hotel, spent
the night together, and he's handed himself in the following morning.
She got pregnant that night and she's had the baby
and everything. He went to court and got off with
his charges. So he's had a story for the rest
(24:50):
of his life to tell. And then I was then
just put into a little flat in Toxstuf and the
Liverpool gangsters, if you want to call them, was feeding
me every other day and I was just waiting for
a private plane to take me out. We had to
travel to the other side of Yorkshire and went into
(25:10):
a little airport and to an engined plane. We tuck
off on the grass. Me and this other block got
in and we flew to Holland and just literally got
off a plane and walked out. Nobody there, not a
single person to stop us. Just what straight out and
(25:33):
that was it. I settled into becoming a criminal on
the run.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
During this spell as a fugitive in the Netherlands, Steven
got a phone call from a mate he made him prison.
It was Curtis Warrant, the drug trafficker. He was ready
to recruit Stephen as one of the top executives in
his international smuggle network. Did you ever do no drugs
(26:06):
that you smuggles?
Speaker 1 (26:07):
No, you can't be doing that. I never get on
your own supply, especially that stuff. If you start taking it,
you're not going to get anywhere. Nobody at Trushia you
did see it on you. Whenever I had people working
with me, or when me and Curtis had people working
with we insisted on it. No drinking, no drugs, carrying,
too much money, too much danger involved in it. You
(26:30):
just cannot be doing that type of thing, doing what
we was doing, not the level was doing it anyway,
So it's quite professional.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
You're almost like an HR department in that way. Curtis, Yeah,
screaking people.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
We've had problems where people have gone to places and
got drunk and missed the meeting, and you know, it's
dangerous things. You're dealing with Colombians or any South American
or whoever you're dealing with, and they arrange meetings to
pick things up or drop things off, and they're not
there because they pissed. You can't have it. So it
(27:05):
was quite stripped with all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
It was in those years running with Curtis Warren that
he was sent to Columbia to make deals with the
Karli cartel. Stephen would be invited to stay at one
of the leaders, Luke Cho's country ranch.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
He had a tiger, a full sized tiger, and that
just to roam about. Talking about a ranch here now
that year you see like Dallas. So he's got a
set of stables. We're attacking it for thousands of horses,
because he's got hundreds of thousands of acres loads of
cattle men. He had a full size chimp that he
(27:41):
had from a baby, and that jumps on me that
finger and started screaming. It opened its mouth. I was terrifying.
And the tigers just used to walk about, just sit
down and lie down and not really interact with anybody.
But it was always eating, so it was always satisfied.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
The tiger it had still had its teeth and its clawes.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
The tiger was a full grown, full bloody tiger. But
you just used to walk about.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Like a dog of a cat.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
But the chimp was a full grown male chimp, and
it seemed to attach itself onto me for a bit.
So once I got it off, I got in the
card and told him to get rid of it or
so I'm not getting out of the car, and then
that night was a full bullfight. I think they brought
four top of the range mattadors from Spain for the day,
(28:33):
flew them in and flew them out in private jets.
They was earning big one at the time and there
was about maybe a thousand people there on that occasion.
Killed a few bulls, which goes against me with veganism now, But.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Those wild parties with the Carli cartel had a shelf
life because when you're on top of an organized crime group,
the cops will always be watching you. In nineteen ninety six,
Dutch police tapped Stephen and Curtis Warren's phones and learned
they were bringing in a shipment. When it arrived, officers swooped.
(29:13):
The hall was massive. They found everything from guns and
hand grenades to large amounts of cash and of course, cocaine.
It was estimated to be worth one hundred and twenty
five million pounds. While awaiting trial, Curtis Warren even made
the Sunday Times Rich List back in nineteen ninety seven.
(29:35):
He was listed as a property developer with a forty
million pound fortune. In June that year, Warren was sentenced
to twelve years in a maximum security prison in the Netherlands,
and the Sunday Times removed him from its rich list.
(29:56):
But back to Stephen, who that same year, in nineteen
ninety seven, was sentenced to seven years in the same
Dutch prison. He also had to serve time in jail
in the UK afterwards. It was during his prison years
where Steven took a university course in fine arts, and
in twenty twelve he was released.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
I had about thirty paintings and all my family was
outside waiting, and they've been waiting for a couple of
hours in the rain and the snow. But it was surreal,
you know, getting the paintings in the car and all
the other stuff that I collected over the sixteen and
a half years.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
And just from what you've been through in prison, how
does it affect your life day to day?
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Now? It's not so bad now, but it's always there
in the background, what you've been through. Even now when
somebody knocks on the door, you know, if I don't
know who's coming, it's always a bit of a shock.
Even though I got nothing anything to worry about. I've
not done a single things as I came out, but
it's still there, that constant thing of looking behind your back.
(30:59):
Plus a game that was in was dangerous anyway, it's
nice not to look behind you. There's no friends in there,
there are all associates. Even in there, you I was
looking over your shoulder. I've seen three or four people
killed in.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Prison, and in hindsight, looking back on the cocaine trade
and the businesses that you ran, what do you think
about what you did? Do you regret it? Do you
wish that you know you'd have stayed on and become
the graphic design of the artist.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
When I came out. So I've come out after all that,
all the millions and all that money that got taken
and everything that got took off us, and on the
day of release, I've come out, and then I've started
meeting all my friends from school and thinking all of
them are doing well. Quite a few millionaires involved who've
(31:54):
done it legitimately through their own hard legal work. Even
the people who've just had a job and just works
have got their own a nice house, a nice car,
going on aud this three times a year. I've got
none of that. In the end, when you look at
it all and even you know, even when you do
get to the top, one tiny mistake and it's all gone.
(32:21):
As times progressed, it's become a lot more violent, a
lot more desperate people involved in it, dirty, horrible, miserable trade.
All trust has gone from the criminal gangs. In any business,
you've got ahead of the business and then all of
a sudden somebody comes away and takes your managing director away,
(32:43):
and then you've got the people below wondering what's happened there?
You know, how do we get our okay now? When
the boss has gone? So then the next group move
up into that position, and then that every group below
and moves up into that position. But what the police
have done and wittingly is taken away any semblance of power.
(33:06):
Eventually you're going to get to people who don't give
a fuck about anything, who were ten times more violent,
maybe fifty times less clever. Because you've got to think
of them people at the top as if they wasn't
doing cocaine. They'll be at the top of a multinational business.
You know, we was talking about hundreds of millions when
(33:26):
we was moving stuff. So you're talking about major CEOs
and if you take any major CEO of any company
on the planet at the moment, the people below it
are going to feel it. And with the crime, I
think it's the same. I'm not saying you can't keep
arresting people, because that's what you've got to do, but
the consequences of that is every time you do it,
(33:47):
the next layer is going to be more violent and
care less about anything, and they're just in for it
for the money.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
What do you think of Ellie Edwards, a young twenty
six to a beautician, murdered outside of a pub on
Christmas Eve by Connor Chapman.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Yeah, well, first of all, condolences to the family for
such a terrible loss. It's that consequences of power and
money and how do you control it. I don't think
it's controllable. It's one of the things that aunts me
as well, the damage that I've done in my past
because of it and unwittingly not even thinking about it
(34:30):
at the time. It's only later with reflection that you
can look at the damage and the state of everything.
But I mean you can point to Ellie, you know,
because of what I did, technically evolved into creating the
monsters that killed her. But then you have to start asking, well,
(34:50):
how far back do you go? We didn't start the
cocaine business. Other people started that. But I accept my
my own guilt for what I I did. Just dealing
in any way, shape or form, you become an outside
monster to society. Really, I suppose there's no easy way
to put it. There's nothing good comes out of cocaine
(35:11):
and heroin over the misery and death.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
Coming away from the interview of Stephen, he paints a
picture of a swashbuckling lifestyle and a rose tinted view
of the coke trade in the eighties and nineties. I've
known Stephen for two years and I've always found it
very open and honest about his past. Interviewing someone who's
been in jail is tricky. Stephen had a hard childhood,
(35:42):
the way he tells it, crime was always a part
of his life. But as a journalist you want to
get the balance right. Years after all, a convicted criminal
at the height of his notoriety, he was wanted by interpal.
He says he wasn't directly involved in violence, but whether
that's true or not, it's inevitable that his actions trafficking
(36:06):
huge amounts of cocaine and transporting it through Europe has
had an impact on the prevalence of the drug today.
Although he was sent to prison, others just rose up
in his place, and it's still leading to fatal consequences
decades later. As an older man, I fairly understands this,
(36:26):
and it's clear he shows remorse. He can never truly
escape all those years in the underworld, running from the law,
even after atoning in prison and turning to art. So
by speaking about his former life, perhaps it can help
us understand how organized criminals and cocaine networks operate today,
(36:48):
to understand the business model and whether the violence and
destruction the human costs can ever be stopped.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Cocaine Inc. Is a joint investigation from The Times, The
Sunday Times and News Corpustralia. The reporters are David Collins,
Stephen Drill and me Fiona Hamilton. The series is produced
by Sam Chanterassak. The executive producers are Will Row and
Dan Box. Audio production and editing is by Jasper Leik,
(37:28):
with original music by Tom Burchell. We still have one
more bonus episode for you, a question and answer session
with myself, David and Steven. Please do email any questions
you want to ask us at Cocaine Inc. At the
Times dot co dot uk, or get in touch with
us directly on our social media profiles. We put a
(37:50):
link to them in the description notes of this episode.
It's always there in the background, what you've been through.
Even now, when somebody knocks on the door, you know,
if I don't know who's coming, it's I was a
bit of a shock, even though I've got nothing anything
to worry about. I've not done a single things as
I came out, but it's still there, that constant thing
of looking behind you back.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hey there, Today we're bringing you the first I had
two bonus episodes. While making the series, David got in
touch with one of his contacts, Stephen me. Stephen's a
reformed criminal who once helped run one of Europe's biggest
cocaine operations in the nineties, from making business deals with
(00:44):
the infamous Cali cartel to escaping from prison, Stephen's insight
into how global cocaine trafficking worked during the trades burgeoning
years is well worth a listen. I'm Fiona Hamilton and
(01:05):
from The Times for Sunday Times and Newsical Australia. This
is Cocaine Inc. Episode nine, The Artist.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Hi, Stephen, David, You're right, I'm here, but I'm I've
come to where the post code is I think is it?
I've come to an industrial estate on the outskirts of
Manchester to meet Stephen met good to see you. Stephen
(01:49):
is in his mid sixties. He's bold, stocky and looks
like a pretty typical bloke you'd see on any high
street around the UK. You could say a bit of
a gruff exterior. I'll go on if that's all right,
just to take. But he's also very friendly, accommodating, gentle
even these days he's a vegan. I'm here with Will,
(02:13):
one of the executive producers on this series.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
A bit black, Is that all right? I do?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Like Sawyer. No meeting Stephen now, it's a far cry
from his former life. Stephen was born in nineteen fifty
eight in Newton Heath, an area of northeast Manchester. As
a young boy, he was involved in petty crime. By
the eighties, he moved to the Netherlands, got into the
(02:42):
cannabis trade and soon moved on to smuggling cocaine. Then
in the nineties, Stephen teamed up with an infamous Liverpudlian
drug lord Curtis Warren, who was known as the Cocky Watchman,
the Teflong Gangster, and Britain's Pablo Escobar to get Stephen
and Warren ran one of Europe's biggest drug trafficking operations.
(03:05):
Eventually the law caught up with Stephen and he went
to jail for sixteen and a half years. He's no
longer involved in crime and these days he's a professional artist.
Is this all your studio? Then leading us into his studio,
there's a big comfy sofa with lots of cushions and
(03:27):
a twenty four hour news channel was playing on the TV.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Well, we turn it off.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
I'll just put it down. It's all right. There are
dozens of canvases, colorful portraits, pop culture references with a
hint of surrealism and abstract landscapes. It's the first time
I've been to this studio.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
It's a painting that's earn good money from with people
like it. Yeah, that one there is the original one
that are painted in a really trippy That's a shame.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Stephen's had solo exhibitions in London. He's won awards. He's
hoping to release a book of illustrations. His art also
reflects his years in prison, where he would paint portraits
of other inmates.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Donald Nielsen, how was he barber for about five years?
When I first got there in a response to anybody,
he should just go go in his cell and you
should go on the exercise yard for two three hours
and march because he was a proper soldier type of person.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Donald Nielsen was a prolific burglar, kidnapper and murderer, mainly
in the north of England. He was nicknamed the Black Panther.
His most notorious crime was in nineteen seventy five, when
he kidnapped and murdered a seventeen year old girl. Leslie Whittle.
Stephens says when he knew him, he was an old man,
(04:57):
emaciated and close to death.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
I was a wing barber, so he used to come.
He used to cut his hair, and then eventually he
he caught more your own disease. And then he agreed
that I could paint his portrait. And he had to
carry him up the stairs and prop him up in
the corner the way the picture shows, and.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Just can you just visually talk me through what you're
looking at and how you painted it, and just describe
it to a listener that that's will asking the question.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
There, Yeah, paint a picture. I did a few sketches,
got a little black panther in the top corner to
depict two ears, to put the decayne through to show
end of life. And on the right you've got the
single bed and a little table. On the left got
the big bars behind it, and then you've got Donald.
I think he weighed about forty five kilo at the time,
(05:50):
and I'll never sell it, but I will donate it.
Why did not like it two years? He's a monster.
It's like putting a picture of adol fit lit up
in your You knows not as bad as him, but
he was on the lines.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
So why do you paint it if you don't like
to capture the image.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
It was a one off thing, and I knew about
Multideo's I knew he only had amount of time left
and nobody had ever managed to take pictures of him.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
After showing some of his portraits, Stephen and I sit
down in his studio to chat about his life and
how he once ran a cocaine smuggling business. Let's begin
with an incident in nineteen ninety six, when Stephen was
in bo Guitar, the Colombian capital.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
A meeting was arranged for me to go and meet Lucco,
the head of the Calicato and I bought Luco a
wire mechanism that he could move for directors to play with,
and you could move it about and he'd make different
shapes and all that. And I bought that to give
him as a gift, because I was told that you
should always take a gift to Colombians if you're going
(07:03):
to meet them.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
The Cali Cartel is one of the most notorious and
influential organized crime groups in history. As Pablo Escobar's Medeyin
cartel imploded, the Karli Cartel rose up to take control
of the cocaine market. At the height of the group's power,
they controlled ninety percent of the coach coming into Europe.
(07:26):
A nineteen ninety one cover story for Time magazine described
police referring to the leaders as lost cabieros, the gentleman
of Karli.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
It was like a board meeting. They've got their own directors.
You know, people might see cocaine as people in the corner,
But when I've gone into this boardroom, it's a boardroom
at the top of a multi story shopping center, and
we're watching about six top Columbians. I've got my translator there.
(07:59):
First thing they wanted to know was what happened to
the cocaine. So three thousand kilos they're asking about.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Before Steven got to Columbia, three thousand kilograms had gone
missing on the way to Europe. The cartel wanted accountability.
As the conversation went on, Stephen and the translator started
to get nervous.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
So I've had to explain where I've come from. They're saying,
how do it get it? So I've told them everything
about you know, you can check the papers and you
can check who I am. And you've got these people
walking in and out coming back whispering in there. Tell him, yeah,
that was in. He got nited for this, and we
know about that. This Columbians telling me. And he's nudging me,
(08:44):
you know, because he's panicking as well now because this
could be just a meeting or it could be an
assassination meeting for the three thousand kilo and Lucho sat
there all suited up and everything. These are all immaculately
dressed with top suits on. You know, you've seen the films,
that's what they look like.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Steven's talking about the Carly cartel leader Louis and al
Doak Guissino but Terra. He calls him by his nickname
Lucho Palmira.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
And the meeting went on a lot of mumbling on
me giving references about what happened and timeline as best
as I knew, But they also knew that I wasn't
involved in it. I only came into it afterwards. But
I was the first one there to explain what had
happened to the three thousand Kiro. Everybody else was still
even nipped or in prison. So that was a scary
(09:35):
moment at.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
The back of your mind as you're on the plane
on the way to Bogatar. Yeah, you must have been
thinking to yourself. I am the first person in I
know if I got to explain myself.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
I didn't think I was going there to explain anything.
I thought I was going there to create a deal.
And it was all within twenty minutes or something, you know.
He said, yeah, okay, well what's going on now? And
then it just literally went into well what have you
come for? What have you got now? We've got transport,
got this, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
But do you think that twenty minutes basically decided whether
you would live or die?
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:21):
What did your childhood look like? Stephen Kind? Of growing up, well,
there was.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Nine of us, nine kids. It was a big family.
We grew up in a place called Newtonnis, which was
a poor area. I was born in the corner of
the house. I literally fell out of my ma'am so
I was I think the fifth fifth along. She got
up from one chair and went to another, and I
was born, fell on my head apparently, but a weighed
(10:50):
thirteen pound twelve ounces, So I was a monster of
a kid. My dad always worked, but my man was
a She had Parkinson's and it was an alcoholic so
the combination of the Parkings and drugs and alcohol was horrendous.
She'd go miss him for days on end. She used
to send us shopping with a fiver and give us
(11:14):
a shopping list for the tenor sort of thing, and
if we didn't come home with the goods, we used
to get battered off for her, you know, because she
was either always drunk order that sort of offer head on.
These really strong chemicals and shotling became a normal thing
for mer. Me and my younger brother and sister used
(11:35):
to go about with one of them all trolleys, remember them,
Tartan trolleys that used to pull along We had a
little compartment in the bottom and we used to put
the food in and hide it under there. And then
this is eight years old. They was seven and six,
so it was it's done out having necessed and my
dad never knew about any of this, but we used
(11:55):
to steal as much as we could and that gave
us food as well.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
What did your dad do?
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Dad was an electrician. Yeah, he had a good job.
He ended up working for the railway for thirty years
or something. It was quite high up in the railway back.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Lad And what were you like at school?
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Apparently terror? I suppose I became a criminal at a
very early age. Nine. I think was my first registered
warning and conviction was at nine for burglar me on
primary school. On my own, I got caught for stealing
cars when I was thirteen. I stole the Lord Mayor's
(12:36):
car from Oldham from off the top of Saddle with
more that I'd gone down to a club in Manchester
called the Reno. Been in there at thirteen years old
and came out, stole another car to get home with
fell asleep in the car and got woke up by
a local bobby from the police station. Sergeant with a
(12:59):
few his mates. He kicked us all the way down
the hill to the police station and formed my dad O.
My dad kicked me all the way home. My maam
kicked me all the way to bedroom. So it was
violent times.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
What do you think was the trigger for you in
terms of escalating from the shop lifting, then the stealing
of the cars and then what got you into the
drugs trade?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Well, the first smuggle we stole cars, so I got
a few grands together for that and decided to go
to Holland because I started seeing people smoking cannabis for
the first time that was eighty two I think it was,
and seeing what sort of money was paying for this stuff,
(13:50):
and three of us went over. I supplied the money
and was sort of the boss of it. We went
to Felix Stone, got them three day passports years ago
we could just get him at the dock, and went
to Amsterdam and started walking in coffee shops and asking
him could we buy a kilo of cannabis? And we
got chased out of about ten of them, and we
(14:13):
ended up with the Els Angels. They sold us a
kilo and we brought it back sold it more or
less instantly in bits made about five thousand pounds out
of it. We paid thirteen hunder quid for it at
the time, which was a lot of money, but it
was good quality. And then we went back and did
the same again, doubled it up, and went back and
doubled that up, and doubled that up, and kept on
(14:34):
doubling it up, and then started selling it into Germany
as well. And then when I got to the eighty seven,
I think it was did the cocaine smuggle? That's when
it all I expanded.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
And why did you move from the marauama to cocaine
the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
I wasn't involved in cocaine, and somebody offered me a
job to carry from Ecuador to Europe, and I went
for it. I carried twenty four kilo through and because
of the contacts had built up doing the cannabis, I
ended up with people in France, Switzerland, and I ended
up taking all my stuff and everybody else's stuff down
(15:17):
all through Europe and Switzerland.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
How did you take twenty four kilous three from Ecuador?
How did that work?
Speaker 1 (15:25):
I was all completely corrupting those days. It was organized
by the Ecuadorian side, by the military. I think it
was a two star generally who took my bag onto
the plane. I took it to the airport, and so
I walked it in the airport and then they were
stood there while it was being put on, and they
followed it all the way on to the plane. So
(15:46):
they made it safe on that side of it. And
then you just had to kamakaze it through the customs.
So when it come off the European side, it just
went onto the carousel, so you had to walk up
and pick it up like anybody else one bag. So
I got a trolley put it on I had. I
was suited up and everything, had a proper briefcase, and
(16:07):
I devised my own little plan where I was going
to drop my briefcase in front of the customs. So
I opened my briefcase out and all pens fell out
all over right, which distracted. Well, I thought it did.
Just shut up to the obviously, because I got through
and I just had to walk through about eight customs
block down the middle, try not show any any fear. Obviously,
(16:27):
it worked and we got through. Well, it was in
the days I woul get nineteen eighty seven, they want
that much focus on cocaine and things like that. So
I got twenty four kilo through. Other people did it
and got twenty one kilo through, but there was nothing
(16:48):
in the case. It was just cocaine and a bit
of polystyrene form on the outside of it. So I
had re opened it, it would have been you won't even
pretend to clothes being in there.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
It was just what did it feel like on the
other side as you arrived at the airport, what's going
through your mind?
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Everything? Everything, I'm going to get Nate and going to
do this. But I calculated it before we even went,
you know, I thought, well, I forget Cartier bringing that through.
They're going to class me as a mule, which I was,
and I'll get three or four years if that. And
for that sort of risk at the time, I found
that well worth it. The only risk was the other side.
You know of lunatics in South America, But this side,
(17:30):
all is you going to do is take it into
the cells and that's it. You're going to do your sentence.
So even though it's scary as you're doing it, and
you work out that, well, the risks are there to
be taken. So it was a risk worth taking at
the time, and.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Just from that smuggle. From that point, how did it develop?
How did the cocaine business develop from that point?
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Once you got back with that, the reputation had built
up of the group that had done it, and how
all these come It's through reputation. But the thing at
the time was that the Colombians wasn't formed properly. They've
got the cocaine, they've got the transport to get it
into Europe, but they didn't have the people to sell
(18:13):
it to. They could trust or they could literally just
sell it to. And I think that's where I came in.
You know, I just got people to come and pick
it up, took it to a safe place, and then
sold it. We're in a matter of weeks, it was
gone and the next time they came, they came with
three thousand kilo.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Would you describe yourself? You were kind of a middleman
between street gangs that are selling it and the Colombians.
Were you the link in that chain?
Speaker 1 (18:43):
No, I wasn't anywhere near any street gangs. I was
dealing with the big dealers in Holland.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
And how would you collect up the money and give
it back to the Colombians?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Very careful by that time, we was at a certain
level and we had special houses just for money, which
people had sit there with guns and protected. We'd have
special houses separate for the cocaine. The Columbus had had
their own, and I used to take bim bags full
of money to certain places and there'd be Columbian people
there and they just say, I put it in there
(19:19):
with the rest of it. I only went once to
the moneyhouse, and it was just ridiculous. It was just
full of bags of money everywhere you look, just throwning.
But there was Columbians there with a grenades and machine guns,
so nobody's going to get in, and if they did
get in it caused such a mess.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
How much would you say was going through millions.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Wundreds of millions, hundreds of millions, thousands of kilos and
we were just one, you know. The amount of Columbians
that was trying to get it in was ridiculous. Even
when I was in bog Guitar with the Klik cartel,
I was still getting propositioned by other cartel leaders, can
you do it for us as well? But yeah, the
(20:02):
money was just in binbags. Literally.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Did you spot a gap in the market, I guess
because you recognized that the Colombians couldn't distribute. Yeah, so
you identified a gap in the market and set up
a business.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Yeah. Well, when a Columbia, well known Colombian comes up
to you and says, we've got this, but we can't
sell it with someone like me that's just flashing lights
all the way through, you know there's a business here
these people. I've got the ability to bring it here,
but not the ability to sell it. Well, that didn't
last so long. That only lasted for about a year
or so, maybe two years, until they established themselves. It
(20:40):
was perhaps to the end of the eighties and early
nineties that they started to organize themselves and get their
own groups.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
In the early nineteen nineties, Stephen was arrested for smuggling
cocaine and cannabis into England, but a couple of years later,
on his way to being sentenced at Manchester Crown Court,
he would dec on me that made national headlines.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
It was a strange day and normally when you get
transported and we're talking about April the first, now nineteen
ninety three, So I was waiting all morning for the
transport to come and take us to sentencing and then
the coach had come to pick us up, but it
was an old coach, so you're talking about the old
things that you used to go to Blackpool in, you know,
(21:24):
with a sloping back on it, so like a three
quarter coach, and were taken to court by the prison guards.
I was supposed to be attached to someone else who
was going to help me get off, and instead of
him attaching me and him together, which they've done for
a couple of years, me and him have been put together.
And then all of a sudden, this big guard came
(21:46):
from nowhere, fucking seven ten or something. He was he
was a monster, and attached this over lad to him,
and this other little lad has been attached to me.
It was nothing to do with anything. Took us outside
to the coach and I was on walking up the steps.
I told him something's going to happen in a bit,
and he just sort of mumbled and scurried up the stairs,
(22:09):
so armed.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
To him, that's the prisoner you're attacked.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah, the prisoner I'm attached to. And I sat on
the window side so that the person in the car
could recognize it was me because I had a special
coat on. See all these things had to be planning
because his loads of coaches coming out all day long
getting there from prison, so they've got to know which one.
So there's a special mark on my coat. He spotted
it come out in front of the coach. So there's
(22:34):
one person in a car pulled out in front of
the coach. The coaches screeched to a halt. I jumped
up and shout, nobody move and me and this lad.
I dragged him to the front of the coach, pulled
the emergency exit. The doors were opened, and the guards
are still sat down, really.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Not doing anything.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
I think I was about twenty one stone at the time,
of about eighteen percent body fat, so it was pretty big.
And the reputation was already there with the guards. The
guards are just earning money. They're not going to put
the lives. They didn't know what was going on.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
And you've got handcuffs attached to gund cuffs, so you've
got to pull him with your right arm, and he
cuffed across you, so it's hard to pull him.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Everything's pumping now and at you, adrenaline's going and everything.
They managed to get into the car. Guards had just
stood there, drove off changed car within a couple of
hundred meters, turn another car covered in the back, changed
to another car further up, and then taken to a
house in Toxster. But then the problem started again then
(23:44):
because the people who was receiving us in Toxstaff only
knew that they was picking up me and a black man.
That's all they knew. But now they've got two white men,
all right, So they don't know anything about anything because
they've not got contact with the people who are controlling anything.
They've got a job to cut the cuffs off, and
that's it.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
And what's this lad who's attached to you? What's he's saying.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
He's not saying anything. He's only a petty criminal. They're
arguing now what ought to do, whether to just drop
us off somewhere and get rid of us, or to
cut the cuffs off. And I was screaming at fucking
each other, saying he got it wrong. They've got the
wrong people. And then one person and who's walked into
this melee and said, now that's right, he's right, get
(24:28):
rid of him, all right, So cut the cuffs off.
So he's free now in things, even though he didn't
want to be so he's phoned his girlfriend, She's come
and picked him up. They've gone to a hotel, spent
the night together, and he's handed himself in the following morning.
She got pregnant that night and she's had the baby
and everything. He went to court and got off with
his charges. So he's had a story for the rest
(24:50):
of his life to tell. And then I was then
just put into a little flat in Toxstuf and the
Liverpool gangsters, if you want to call them, was feeding
me every other day and I was just waiting for
a private plane to take me out. We had to
travel to the other side of Yorkshire and went into
(25:10):
a little airport and to an engined plane. We tuck
off on the grass. Me and this other block got
in and we flew to Holland and just literally got
off a plane and walked out. Nobody there, not a
single person to stop us. Just what straight out and
(25:33):
that was it. I settled into becoming a criminal on
the run.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
During this spell as a fugitive in the Netherlands, Steven
got a phone call from a mate he made him prison.
It was Curtis Warrant, the drug trafficker. He was ready
to recruit Stephen as one of the top executives in
his international smuggle network. Did you ever do no drugs
(26:06):
that you smuggles?
Speaker 1 (26:07):
No, you can't be doing that. I never get on
your own supply, especially that stuff. If you start taking it,
you're not going to get anywhere. Nobody at Trushia you
did see it on you. Whenever I had people working
with me, or when me and Curtis had people working
with we insisted on it. No drinking, no drugs, carrying,
too much money, too much danger involved in it. You
(26:30):
just cannot be doing that type of thing, doing what
we was doing, not the level was doing it anyway,
So it's quite professional.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
You're almost like an HR department in that way. Curtis, Yeah,
screaking people.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
We've had problems where people have gone to places and
got drunk and missed the meeting, and you know, it's
dangerous things. You're dealing with Colombians or any South American
or whoever you're dealing with, and they arrange meetings to
pick things up or drop things off, and they're not
there because they pissed. You can't have it. So it
(27:05):
was quite stripped with all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
It was in those years running with Curtis Warren that
he was sent to Columbia to make deals with the
Karli cartel. Stephen would be invited to stay at one
of the leaders, Luke Cho's country ranch.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
He had a tiger, a full sized tiger, and that
just to roam about. Talking about a ranch here now
that year you see like Dallas. So he's got a
set of stables. We're attacking it for thousands of horses,
because he's got hundreds of thousands of acres loads of
cattle men. He had a full size chimp that he
(27:41):
had from a baby, and that jumps on me that
finger and started screaming. It opened its mouth. I was terrifying.
And the tigers just used to walk about, just sit
down and lie down and not really interact with anybody.
But it was always eating, so it was always satisfied.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
The tiger it had still had its teeth and its clawes.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
The tiger was a full grown, full bloody tiger. But
you just used to walk about.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Like a dog of a cat.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
But the chimp was a full grown male chimp, and
it seemed to attach itself onto me for a bit.
So once I got it off, I got in the
card and told him to get rid of it or
so I'm not getting out of the car, and then
that night was a full bullfight. I think they brought
four top of the range mattadors from Spain for the day,
(28:33):
flew them in and flew them out in private jets.
They was earning big one at the time and there
was about maybe a thousand people there on that occasion.
Killed a few bulls, which goes against me with veganism now, But.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Those wild parties with the Carli cartel had a shelf
life because when you're on top of an organized crime group,
the cops will always be watching you. In nineteen ninety six,
Dutch police tapped Stephen and Curtis Warren's phones and learned
they were bringing in a shipment. When it arrived, officers swooped.
(29:13):
The hall was massive. They found everything from guns and
hand grenades to large amounts of cash and of course, cocaine.
It was estimated to be worth one hundred and twenty
five million pounds. While awaiting trial, Curtis Warren even made
the Sunday Times Rich List back in nineteen ninety seven.
(29:35):
He was listed as a property developer with a forty
million pound fortune. In June that year, Warren was sentenced
to twelve years in a maximum security prison in the Netherlands,
and the Sunday Times removed him from its rich list.
(29:56):
But back to Stephen, who that same year, in nineteen
ninety seven, was sentenced to seven years in the same
Dutch prison. He also had to serve time in jail
in the UK afterwards. It was during his prison years
where Steven took a university course in fine arts, and
in twenty twelve he was released.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
I had about thirty paintings and all my family was
outside waiting, and they've been waiting for a couple of
hours in the rain and the snow. But it was surreal,
you know, getting the paintings in the car and all
the other stuff that I collected over the sixteen and
a half years.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
And just from what you've been through in prison, how
does it affect your life day to day?
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Now? It's not so bad now, but it's always there
in the background, what you've been through. Even now when
somebody knocks on the door, you know, if I don't
know who's coming, it's always a bit of a shock.
Even though I got nothing anything to worry about. I've
not done a single things as I came out, but
it's still there, that constant thing of looking behind your back.
(30:59):
Plus a game that was in was dangerous anyway, it's
nice not to look behind you. There's no friends in there,
there are all associates. Even in there, you I was
looking over your shoulder. I've seen three or four people
killed in.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Prison, and in hindsight, looking back on the cocaine trade
and the businesses that you ran, what do you think
about what you did? Do you regret it? Do you
wish that you know you'd have stayed on and become
the graphic design of the artist.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
When I came out. So I've come out after all that,
all the millions and all that money that got taken
and everything that got took off us, and on the
day of release, I've come out, and then I've started
meeting all my friends from school and thinking all of
them are doing well. Quite a few millionaires involved who've
(31:54):
done it legitimately through their own hard legal work. Even
the people who've just had a job and just works
have got their own a nice house, a nice car,
going on aud this three times a year. I've got
none of that. In the end, when you look at
it all and even you know, even when you do
get to the top, one tiny mistake and it's all gone.
(32:21):
As times progressed, it's become a lot more violent, a
lot more desperate people involved in it, dirty, horrible, miserable trade.
All trust has gone from the criminal gangs. In any business,
you've got ahead of the business and then all of
a sudden somebody comes away and takes your managing director away,
(32:43):
and then you've got the people below wondering what's happened there?
You know, how do we get our okay now? When
the boss has gone? So then the next group move
up into that position, and then that every group below
and moves up into that position. But what the police
have done and wittingly is taken away any semblance of power.
(33:06):
Eventually you're going to get to people who don't give
a fuck about anything, who were ten times more violent,
maybe fifty times less clever. Because you've got to think
of them people at the top as if they wasn't
doing cocaine. They'll be at the top of a multinational business.
You know, we was talking about hundreds of millions when
(33:26):
we was moving stuff. So you're talking about major CEOs
and if you take any major CEO of any company
on the planet at the moment, the people below it
are going to feel it. And with the crime, I
think it's the same. I'm not saying you can't keep
arresting people, because that's what you've got to do, but
the consequences of that is every time you do it,
(33:47):
the next layer is going to be more violent and
care less about anything, and they're just in for it
for the money.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
What do you think of Ellie Edwards, a young twenty
six to a beautician, murdered outside of a pub on
Christmas Eve by Connor Chapman.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Yeah, well, first of all, condolences to the family for
such a terrible loss. It's that consequences of power and
money and how do you control it. I don't think
it's controllable. It's one of the things that aunts me
as well, the damage that I've done in my past
because of it and unwittingly not even thinking about it
(34:30):
at the time. It's only later with reflection that you
can look at the damage and the state of everything.
But I mean you can point to Ellie, you know,
because of what I did, technically evolved into creating the
monsters that killed her. But then you have to start asking, well,
(34:50):
how far back do you go? We didn't start the
cocaine business. Other people started that. But I accept my
my own guilt for what I I did. Just dealing
in any way, shape or form, you become an outside
monster to society. Really, I suppose there's no easy way
to put it. There's nothing good comes out of cocaine
(35:11):
and heroin over the misery and death.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
Coming away from the interview of Stephen, he paints a
picture of a swashbuckling lifestyle and a rose tinted view
of the coke trade in the eighties and nineties. I've
known Stephen for two years and I've always found it
very open and honest about his past. Interviewing someone who's
been in jail is tricky. Stephen had a hard childhood,
(35:42):
the way he tells it, crime was always a part
of his life. But as a journalist you want to
get the balance right. Years after all, a convicted criminal
at the height of his notoriety, he was wanted by interpal.
He says he wasn't directly involved in violence, but whether
that's true or not, it's inevitable that his actions trafficking
(36:06):
huge amounts of cocaine and transporting it through Europe has
had an impact on the prevalence of the drug today.
Although he was sent to prison, others just rose up
in his place, and it's still leading to fatal consequences
decades later. As an older man, I fairly understands this,
(36:26):
and it's clear he shows remorse. He can never truly
escape all those years in the underworld, running from the law,
even after atoning in prison and turning to art. So
by speaking about his former life, perhaps it can help
us understand how organized criminals and cocaine networks operate today,
(36:48):
to understand the business model and whether the violence and
destruction the human costs can ever be stopped.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Cocaine Inc. Is a joint investigation from The Times, The
Sunday Times and News Corpustralia. The reporters are David Collins,
Stephen Drill and me Fiona Hamilton. The series is produced
by Sam Chanterassak. The executive producers are Will Row and
Dan Box. Audio production and editing is by Jasper Leik,
(37:28):
with original music by Tom Burchell. We still have one
more bonus episode for you, a question and answer session
with myself, David and Steven. Please do email any questions
you want to ask us at Cocaine Inc. At the
Times dot co dot uk, or get in touch with
us directly on our social media profiles. We put a
(37:50):
link to them in the description notes of this episode.
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