How I Survived Venezuela's Deadliest Prison | Extraordinary Lives | @LADbible

I'm smoking I've got a raging quack addiction you know I'm separated from my daughter I'm in a Venezuelan prison where people are getting killed all around me where I have to face the next 10 years of my life and yeah I took an overdose hi and welcome to this episode of extraordinary lives the podcast from that Bible we are joined here today by Natalie Welsh welcome Natalie hi thank you van and uh for anyone who isn't aware of who you are could you just give a brief introduction yeah I'm author of the book Escape from Venezuela's deadliest prison which is available on Amazon which as it says in the title it's um my biography about my time and incarceration in a jail in Venezuela where I got caught drug smuggling in the year 2001 and my subsequent escape from from there fantastic um that book title is one of those ones that you don't need to do any work do you it's just sells it says it's gonna says it in the title yeah okay well I'm excited to hear all about it um but in terms of you as a person why don't we sort of go back to the beginning and sort of learn a little bit about how you ended up in that situation so what was childhood like for you um I had a pretty difficult childhood um my mom and dad had split up um before I was born so my mum had a new partner um so I bought it by my stepdad and um he was a bully really and it was difficult and there was a lot of physical and mental abuse involved so naturally I I think you know it's that naturally leads on to rebellion and misbehavior and conflict and um I got put into a children's home which was just so unruly um it was just chaos what age was this I was like 12 or 13 when I got put in the Children's Home and there were about another 30 kids there I think so it was like 30 other children there from the ages of like 9 to 16. oh wow all with whatever issues going on because that's why they're in their children's home um and it was just Mayhem and Chaos so then again that just kind of leads to more um Rebellion I think did you do you remember feeling did you understand why you were there like did you know that you'd done a series of events that meant you were there and you were like well I did it or was it was there a sense of sort of anger and frustration and confusion um it was relief oh I was relieved yeah because um it meant that I wasn't in the family home and it meant that I wasn't getting abused and bullied by my stepdad so um the police came and put me in the children's home right so when I was put in there it was just total relief because I was always walking on eggshells at home all the time I never knew what was going to trigger um my stepdad so it was just a really volatile nervous environment to be in so to go from that into this children's home where it was just everybody was just doing what they wanted there was no kind of consequences to anything it was from one end of the scale to the complete opposite end of the scale there was no kind of in-between on on the journey right so you'd imagine as someone on the outside you'd imagine the Children's Home was designed to give you some sort of structure or something like that but was it the opposite complete opposite yeah um I think from what I can understand now those kind of Children's Home that I was in they don't exist anymore I think they either encouraged like foster home placements okay or there's just kind of like temporary accommodation for young adults with like support workers but the environment that I was in I think that's definitely kind of been like eradication sit down I think they've looked back on that and seen that it doesn't work and how long did you stay in there for until I was 16 years old so 12 to 16. yeah and what was life like in there like how did it start to shape how your life would progress after leaving um well whilst I was in there um I start I had a relationship with my social worker oh wow which was he was supposed to be in charge of I don't know like he was my key worker so he's supposed to be in charge of um guiding me into adulthood and so how old were you at that point 14 15 and how old was he older than that right yeah yeah he's in his 30s oh God yeah so in a legal relationship yeah okay yeah wow yeah and then I went on and had it we've got a child together okay got my doses from him yeah so that kind of really messed my head up as well because I was I was already messed up yeah then entered into this relationship that went on for quite a while and he was married with kids and so it was just do you mind me asking I don't want to if you don't answer it's fine I don't want to cry but it's your relationship with him like when you look back on that relationship do you see it as a relationship or do you see him as a predator I see that he was in a position of power yeah that he abused like um I don't know if I'd say Predator um but I think that he should have recognized that I was a messed up kid yeah that had a history of unhealthy relationships with older men um and he should have reacted and responded differently and instead of encouraging and entertaining this um relationship at the time I didn't see anything I thought that I was in love with him maybe I was in love with him or infatuated or maybe I was looking for this fatherly figure or I just wanted to feel love you know and but when I look back on it now then I understand that on every level um it it shouldn't have happened yeah um yeah I can see it's a very complex situation because you have a daughter now relationship what what age did you get pregnant 16 16 right yeah so people do you think people were aware that that relationship was ongoing uh he lost his job for him right okay yeah eventually okay well okay so what happened at that point when you got pregnant so I think I'd I'd left the children's home so I left the Children's Home on my 16th birthday oh and then went into my own accommodation got pregnant at 16. um and I think I thought oh so the pregnancy was after you left again so it was just after okay but you continued the relationship yeah okay yeah it was just after and I think you know I thought that we were going to be together and we were going to have been happy families and you know none of that happened and it was a struggle because I was a single parent basically you know he would occasionally show up but and I didn't get hot you know much family support at all like hardly anything from my mum and so um and I didn't really know what I was doing and um and I thought I knew everything you know as you do I think as any 16 year old probably does and I really battled with it and uh and it was a real struggle I mean I can't imagine what I was like because I think how my my child was born when I was late 30s and I found it very hard as someone who had a lot of life experience so being a 16 year old in quite an unusual circumstance it must have been really hard yeah I mean I think I felt I thought I was so grown up I think because of what I'd gone through from an early age in life and because of living in the Children's Home and kind of like fending for myself and I think I just felt like I was a a grown-up and like I said like I knew it all and really I was just a child inside and I wasn't ready for for what was about to come okay well let's talk about that what was about to come how did it progress from moving into that flat with her with her baby what was the next step so um I was experimenting I mean I'd been experimenting with drugs when I think I started about 14 years old in the children's home I started experimenting with drugs with amphetamines and ecstasying and then there was kind of like a a natural progression then um and cocaine and then I was living in my flat with my daughter and I had like this group of friends which I felt like this um I felt like I was doing the things I was supposed to be doing finally you know I was 16 17 years old and I had these group of friends that were age age appropriate and we were going out to you know bars and parties and rivers and just doing the things that you're supposed to be doing at that age and it was the first kind of time in my life that I'd felt that I fitted in and I was really happy and that um all went wrong and um I had I'd split it with um my daughter's dad by this point and uh had a boyfriend in this group of friends and we split up and because they were kind of like his friends I felt myself I found myself like just isolated again um and it was just heartbreaking for me I really struggled to to deal with that to suddenly go from having you know being in the center of something to suddenly just being like on my own um I wasn't mentally prepared for it at all and in the Village that I was living in at the time there was a huge um presence of track of crack dealers he'd come over from Jamaica and set up like bases all over the place you know they're probably like three kind of flats that were working 24 hours a day that had people that had been you know coming over from Jamaica specifically to work these flats and that's just in the area that I was in and then what year was this this was like 19 hang on 1999 okay yeah it was around 1999 um and there was a a girl in specific that kind of recruited me I'm not blaming her you know because I made my own choices and I made the decisions to do what I started doing but it was heavily influenced by this girl that was coming around um the and bringing drugs around like the the drug dealers were giving her drugs and then she was coming around and feeding me these drugs like for free um and just got me hooked so quickly like literally within like a week I think what kind of drugs crack cocaine right okay yeah crack cocaine and it just completely ruined me I was already broken anyway and then I found like this I don't know community and some kind of escapism I think in the in the drug but it's just so fake and false and temporary but it was too late I was just completely consumed by it and at that point I guess the job had been done in terms of giving you free drugs because now you wanted drugs that you had to yeah pay for it yeah yeah as soon as I got I remember I remember it so clearly um I was on benefits at the time and I remember that I was being given these drugs all the time and I said oh when I get my benefits you know I thought you out and I got my benefits and I spent it all like instantly within a couple of hours of getting it I'd spent it all on crack and I had no food no gas no electric um and that's how my life then continued for the next three years you know and trying to kid myself every time well I didn't know that was silly I shouldn't have done that um hating on myself really chastising myself and hating on myself but then doing exactly the same thing and are you raising a child at this point trying to yeah not very well but did you have any support for that with the the father's side or anything not from the father no um I was really lucky that I had support from a from a friend right who she recognized what was going on so from there um I started committing crime which is just again a natural progression of of being a drug addict um and then I got offered an opportunity or got asked if I wanted to to go away and and smuggle some drugs and was up by the people you were buying it from yeah so were they doing it as a kind of instead of paying you can do this and we'll give you some more well no they offered to pay me like uh yeah they said you want to go to you know this place you want to go and get some jokes and you know we'll pay you this amount of money and What attracted to it me to it more than anything it wasn't the money it was getting away from the environment that I was in like my brain like was so messed up I thought that it would be an opportunity to get to get clean even though I'm going to go and get a suitcase full of the very poison that's killing me I thought well I can go there and I can get away from this place all I need to do is get away from from here and break these like habits in this cycle and get away from these people so I thought I can I could go there I can go and do that trip I can get clean and then I can come back with the drugs and I'll be clean and I'll have many and I just won't do it when I come back okay you know that was the I think that's how I Justified it to myself in in my head but can you talk us through that first trip then the the first experience of transporting drugs yeah well the first time um it didn't go to plan so I went to Jamaica and then um when I got there I was quite I was really lonely actually because I've gone from I was just in a country where you know I didn't know anybody I was kind of left on my own but it was an opportunity to you know I was not smoking drugs so I kind of I think I kidded myself into thinking you know when I get back that's it you know I thought I was clean um but whilst I was there um the person that I was working for told me not to bring anything back because they'd been told somebody knew that I'd gone there and they'd been told that the police were going to be waiting for me like expecting me um at the airport or when I got back so I didn't actually bring anything back the the first time so I got a free trip there and did they still pay you no right and were they angry at you or yeah yeah they were really angry with me oh but what what had you done wrong I said something I told somebody that I was going okay and that person had then like told a rival gang okay then it was the rival gang then that had been in contact and said and were the police waiting when you got back yeah yeah I got torn apart at the airport oh wow yeah so if you had brought something back you would have been yeah they would have totally got me right okay yeah wow you would have thought that should have been enough to put me off yes okay you know and and how much would they pay you for a trip like what was the offer to do that four thousand pounds wow which 90s it probably seemed like a lot of money in the position that I was in it seemed like a lot of money yeah relevant to what I was doing the risk I'm taking and relevant to how much money they're making um it's peanuts okay I didn't understand any of that four thousand pounds just so it was a lot it sounded like a lot of money to me so the first one has gone wrong yeah they're annoyed at you obviously you'd had a bit of a shock yeah um a lot of people I think would have gone got off lucky there let's stop but you continued with the same guy no I did it with a different gang at this time okay so the first one went wrong and then there was a couple of success a few successful ones yeah and then the one that we're gonna get to is the one that went catastrophically wrong yeah um so how did that come about the Venezuela trip so I'd done the the successful ones to Holland um and then every time I'd been doing these trips I'd been connected there was like a small team of people that were kind of in charge of like looking after me you know so he picked me up from the train station I'd stay with them like kind of mind us really um and two of them who I'd met like a few times now they did this regularly or so well they said that they'd done this regularly and they were Smugglers and I'd stay at their houses in you know in London and it was really nice houses it was really nice furniture and they were dressed really well and they had really nice clothes and I wanted that life um I don't know if that was part of their role was to you know enamor me with the with the lifestyle again I wasn't thinking about consequences I wasn't thinking about the damage that the drugs even though I you know obviously I knew firsthand because I was a victim myself but I I wasn't thinking of anybody else I was just thinking you know it's really selfish um thought process that I was going through and I saw this life that these other Smugglers had and I thought I you know I want some of that you know I'm fed up of my shitty life which I've had most of my life I want a good life I want some money and I want a nice house I Want to Be Drug Free and at the time were they drug-free yeah they weren't users no not at all and at the time for me that was that was kind of my my ticket you know I would that I was looking for okay so they set up this trip to Venezuela for you yeah um what drug was it that you were cocaine cocaine and it was it you were taking it or you're going to collect it and bring it back I was collecting it and bringing it and bringing it back yeah and am I right in thinking that on this trip I mean maybe this is what you did before but this trip was different because you took your daughter didn't you yeah yeah yeah so where did that decision come into it um I was I was told to she'd come with me on the on my other trip oh okay she had been she had been with me um and by now I'm building up my confidence as well you know the the Jamaican thing they told me they said don't bring anything back so I think I was always thought now right if anything's going to go wrong and they're going to tell me don't bring anything back the the Dutch trips had gone successfully um I had these people telling me you know bring your daughter it's all part of you know the plan no one's going to think that you're smuggling drugs when you've got your daughter with you I was told that everything had been arranged that everybody had been paid off that the Guardia in the in Venezuela had been paid off and that people in Claudius Venezuelan police yeah yeah yeah like the national Army right that they'd been um paid off um that the airport staff had been paid off you know I was under the impression that it was just going to be plain sailing um and even more plain sailing you know with my daughter and also um because the I wonder I kind of wonder sometimes if the the girl like the the other girl that was a Smuggler that would like you to take me in and stuff I kind of wonder sometimes if she knew what they were going to do because she offered she said when I was going you know oh you know leave like at the last minute she was like oh you know you could leave your daughter here and I'll look after her and I was like no no because I don't really know you I can't just use my daughter she was a stranger my daughter's not going to know what's going on and you know anyway everybody else has everyone's told me that it's all part of the plan and I think I wonder if she if she knew so yeah I mean that sounds that's a big Cliffhanger there so what what did they have planned what happened in that trip well it's Rich you know what as well when I was at the airport when I was go first of all we missed the first flight we were supposed to my boss came with me which was odd so he came with me to Amsterdam I flew from Amsterdam and we missed the first flight and then we got like the next flight I think it was like a week later and I was sat at the airport and I had this just awful feeling come over me which I now recognize as Instinct at the time I again I did just knew nothing about I just had this my stomach was going and this feeding of dreads and just the closer and closer it got to going just everything just felt so wrong in every level but again I didn't know how to interpret that and I said to my boss I said I've got a really funny feeling about this and he said to me don't worry about it then that's you know don't go um and I wanted to impress him I thought I was just being you know chicken [ __ ] again all kinds of stupid um thoughts going through my head and I just completely pushed that feeling aside when it's almost like the universe was screaming at me you know to not go and I just didn't know how to interpret those feelings at that time so I just ignored them and and and got on the plane um again kind of being reassured that everything would be all right because everybody had been you know paid off okay so then you arrive yeah you decide yeah and when did things start to go when did you realize something was wrong hmm I think I think I should have known I think I knew the whole time of the Instinct yeah yeah I think I knew the whole I think I knew the whole time and again it was just this naive belief of invincibility yeah that I had um you see early 20s here 21 21 yeah yeah I was 21. um because nothing went to plan nothing went as as I was told it was going to go there was nobody waiting for me at the airport I was expecting for there to be someone to be waiting for me at the airport I was expecting to be taken to my hotel I thought whilst I was there that um I was gonna be kind of minded and taken out and show for different not chauffeur driven around but you know taken around and looked after like what had happened when I'd been in Holland working for this team you know I'd been looked after and that didn't happen I was just like abandoned from from the from the get-go I was just completely kind of um abandoned there was nobody waiting at the airport I was really confused I didn't know what was going on um I had to phone my boss up that was in London he seemed confused that there was no one there waiting for me gave me instructions on what to do got to my got to my um hotel and then the guy the connection at that end came to see me like the next day I wasn't impressed with him like at all he told me to like wait in my room for him or in my Chalet which I didn't do because it's boiling hot and I've got a you know a three-year-old with me that wants to go out in the swimming pool and this guy's telling me to wait there and then he picked me up and really didn't treat me very well compared to what I was used to and then just abandoned me again until like the it was like the day before I was leaving which I wasn't expecting so I didn't like him I didn't have a good feeling about him and the when I got there when I received a suitcase and it was a day before my plane it's just it stank so much of glue like I could really smell like they'd obviously just like glued it and I left the suitcase open I called night and I'd go out and I'd go in my come back into my Chalet and just the smell of the glue would just hit me straight away and I was like I'm sure this isn't supposed to so what was the glue what have they done with the glue they'd um they'd created a false bottom suitcase so like um like a hidden compartment right so the suitcase was like that big but really it was only like that big and then they had this like compartment underneath so they'd like ripped out put the drugs in there and then just like you know glued it all and that's what stank and that's what stank was was this glue um and the guy was just convincing me he was like no it's you know it's fine you know it's in your head and obviously it wasn't but I think again because I was just I was out of my league I didn't know what I was doing um and I think I'd set these wheels in motion and I was kind of on this roller coaster now that I felt that I couldn't get off yeah and I could have done at any point all right it's Connor here one of The Producers on extraordinary lives that led Bible which is going to take a short break from the show to talk about our sponsor nordvpn now I'm a really big fan of nordvpn and I use it loads when I travel as much as I love getting some sun I also want to keep up with my favorite shows from back home and no VPN lets you do that and it's so quick and easy to use to give you an idea recently I was in Colombia and I was able to watch the finale of succession whilst relaxing by the pool pure Bliss and because of nordvpn's threat protection I was able to do this using my hotel's free public Wi-Fi with absolute Peace of Mind extraordinary lives listeners can get an exclusive nordvpn deal with a huge discount by going to nordvpn.com forward slash minutes and it's risk-free with nord's 30-day money-back guarantee you'll also get an additional bonus month by going through nordvpn.com forward slash minutes and this this amazing deal is included on all plans standard plus and complete again you can get it now by going to nordvpn.com forward slash minutes that's nordvpn.com forward slash minutes so you get to the airport yeah the suitcase yeah you still smell it while you're walking through the air I think I can yeah I don't know if I really can but it's in your head yeah but it's totally in my head now and then what happened so put the suitcase through I'm definitely paranoid we're handing the suitcase in like when I've got to go and check the suitcase in to the on the um gate I'm like 100 convinced that the woman can smell the suitcase but now I'm just reminding myself the whole time that it's okay like they're all in on it like it doesn't matter if she can smell the suitcase or she's been paid because everybody yeah you know she's been paid you know the National Guards have been paid you know everybody's in on it now so it doesn't this is what I'm saying to myself you know it doesn't matter because they've been paid off and then I go through to departures and I'm sat down with my daughter and next to me there's a table with a family sat down there's a husband and wife and a couple of kids and I see the the the god the guards come in and they go up to this table and they're asking them for ID and I just I knew instantly that it was not them that they were looking for I knew that it was me I did this just everything I was like they're looking for me so they showed them their ID they came over to me asked me to show them my passport which I did and then they asked me to go with them so I'm just saying to myself this is okay this is part of the plan you know kidding myself really um you're not worried yet still yeah I am I think I'm just refusing yeah okay yeah I think so holding it at Bay yeah yeah but I'm just having to I'm just saying to myself like I think you would I think anybody would until that actual moment of no return that you're just going to say to yourself it's okay you know when you're a kid when you're really young and maybe you've done something wrong and you just think that if you like squeeze your eyes like hard enough or you know that when you go to sleep you know and you're gonna wake up and you can reverse time you know until you actually realize that that can't happen that's where I was at that you know just like it's not it's gonna be fine it's going to be fun like that childish yeah um belief that you know everything could be all right if you're just weld it enough and um yeah so they took me into a room and my suitcase was on the table so I'm still trying to justify it to myself I'm saying right okay they're just checking that they've got the right suitcase that's what they're doing you know I was told that the guardian knew I was told that they might pull me to one side they're just checking that you know they've got the right suitcase and they're letting the right person through um and deep down inside I knew that it wasn't but I just wasn't ready to accept that then at that point and then yeah so they asked me to confirm it as my suitcase and then they opened up my suitcase and then they pulled out a knife and I'm like I'm sure this isn't supposed to be like I'm pretty sure this bit isn't supposed to be happening you know that that's what I'm just starting to kind of maybe potentially acknowledge that things aren't going the way that they're supposed to be going so then they put you know the knife into the suitcase and bring the knife out and you know it's got the drugs on it I'm like yeah that's definitely not supposed to be happening um but I still I still kind of wouldn't refuse to accept that I was really excuse my language that's fine yeah um I still thought that I might get on my plane I don't know I thought well they might just say well we're keeping this off you go yeah right because I was you know British and they'd say right you know I don't do it again yeah you know they would just literally give me a sap on the wrist and tell me that you know I can't do that and I keep in a suitcase and you know so I'm like watching the clock you know still hoping that I'm gonna get get my plane and they bring in um somebody from the airline to translate because this is all going on in Spanish yeah and I don't understand a word of of Spanish but I understand that I'm not in a very good position here and this is not how things are supposed to be going so the woman from the airline comes in that they've used to translate um and she pretty much tells me that um I'm not going to be getting on my plane and that I'm going to be going to prison for 10 years wow Mitch just tells you that then yeah it's a straight away yeah um and I didn't believe her yeah or I didn't want to believe her I just thought that she was trying to frighten me and it was just a little scared tactic and that I'd get on the next plane because what else were they gonna do with me and you've got your daughter there I've got my daughter exactly so what else are they gonna do so then they put me in contact with my um with a consulate who tells me exactly the same thing like there's it has a zero sympathy over the phone at all and tells me quite matter if factly that this is what's going to happen you know you're gonna get arrested you're gonna get taken to the police station you're gonna have your um daughter taken away from you and you're gonna go to prison for 10 years oh my God yeah and I still do and I and I still didn't believe them do you think it might have been shock at that point I think so yeah yeah I went it was about a year before it was about a year before I actually finally believed that this is it now that I've actually was I did have a you know a 10-year prison sentence and I was supposed to be in jail for ten years so it was a no trial was it just what you yeah no there was a trial well I don't know if I don't know there was a court proceeding yeah yeah but it was already decided yeah well apparently I pleaded guilty so oh I didn't have a clue what was going on it was all in Spanish I had like I had an interpreter that couldn't speak English it was like the most brokening it was the worst English ever I'd like how he got a job as a interpreter in a in a Venezuelan court of law I have no idea there must have been some backhand there included in that because it was just I may as well have not had him um and then when I got sentenced because I didn't get sentenced straight away I was in a police station for a few months um and then when I actually got a sentence I'd been transferred to there to the prison and I'd gone back to the prison and I had all this paperwork with me and but I knew what was going to happen like by that point I I knew that I was going to get a sentence to 10 years so you know it didn't matter they could have done the court case in Chinese yeah like I knew what the outcome was was going to be and was it 10 years because of the amount of drugs he'd been caught with who did that automatically mean 10 years except over there it's any of mine is oh wow yeah there were some English people there were two English guys in the prison that I was in um and they'd been caught with like tens of they've been caught with a container ship full of cocaine and they got 10 years oh yeah how much did you have five kilos well five kilos but it was three kilos by the time I went to court oh really yeah a couple of kilos went missing along the way oh wow yeah it's pretty bog standard I think over there that's sort of an interesting I mean at that point you may as well do a ton if you're going to get caught for five right if you're gonna get the same amount of time yeah five kilos or it's just ten years it's just a standard whether you get caught with weed coke oh wow like a bit on the street or you know a bit in a suitcase or a ship full of it it's just like a mandatory 10 years so what happened during this period of the of the kind of like the the the court proceeding and all that kind of thing what happened where was your daughter so we spent the first night together um in a what they didn't know what to do with me really because I had my daughter they were really kind of like confused on what to do with me so I spent a night in a Guardia station I was like handcuffed chained to like this like a water pipe um and my daughter was with me and at that point my concern or my priority was to try and keep her calm like to for her to you know not to Panic or be just draw or upset and just try and did you understand vaguely what was happening really no did she know something bad was happening or not even there okay no she didn't she didn't understand what was going on and she was calm because I I made I was like oh you know there was because she was in the room when they took me into the room with a suitcase she was in the room and she was like asking why you know what was they were doing the suitcase and what was that in the suitcase and I was just lying through my teeth to her you know to just say oh you know there's some big stones in there and they shouldn't be in there and and we're just going to go here and just trying to answer her questions and to not freak her out and panic her and um she just you know believed everything I said of course because I'm I'm her mum and went along with her so she stayed with me the first night and then the next day I got taken just like all these different police stations I had to have like fingerprints done and then um there was somewhere where the suitcase was where they'd leave the suitcase out with all the parcels out on the on the floor and then um I got taken to I think I got taken gosh I can't remember where I got separated from Nikita I can't remember if it was in a police station or at a court where somebody came along and said that um I was going to be taken to a police station and that Nikita was going to be taken and and put into a orphanage I think it was war in Venezuela Venezuela yeah whilst um Arrangements were made for her to um go back to to the UK that must been heard it really was and I'm talking about it now it might seem like with no emotion but I've had to process of 20 years ago nearly 20 years ago now like well this actual moment was over 20 years ago and I've talked about this so many times and processed this and had to forgive myself that it's not that there's no emotion it's that I can't beat myself up for the rest of my life because I've done that and I've gone through that and it doesn't change anything like I know what an awful thing I did and I can't turn back time and there's nothing I can do to change that and if I chastise myself for the rest of my life that's not healthy for me that's not healthy for my relationship with my daughter so she's forgiven me um which is the most important thing for me um and I've through a lot of work I've forgiven myself so I'm not emotionless about it I've just had to move on from that because it took me so long before I could even speak about it without breaking down into tears for feeling like such an awful person but I can't change what I did you know so I have to just move on from that okay so she she was um taken and then you were what was the point then how long was it from the point that she was taken off you that you were then taken to a prison um I got to a police station actually um she was taken off me and I got put into like a police station a holding kind of holding police station um but it was mental I'd never in a million years would imagine that it could be anything like that it's the holding station yeah um like I thought there was a thing like human rights that existed all over the world they do not exist in Venezuela and I think I thought that because I was British then I had a British Embassy I just assumed that I would be exempt from right you know Venezuelan conditions and then my Embassy would look after me and I had all these rights and no that's yeah there's not at all they you know no way um so I got taken to the police station and I got put into this room it was a tiny holding cell and there must have been 20 odd women in there big scary Spanish-speaking Venezuelan women um it was stinky it was sweaty it was vile um it was there was like this horrible fluorescent like light in there um I didn't understand a word that anyone was saying it was overcrowded it was it was horrendous there was um like a sinkhole in the in the corner of the of the room on the floor you know like a plug hole yeah um and if you wanted a wee so there was a bucket in the room and if you wanted to wait there was no partition or curtain or it was as open as this studio is so if you wanted a way you did away in the bucket and then you just poured the bucket down the hole if you wanted a poo then you put a bag in the bucket and you did a poo then you had to tie the bag up tie it to the gate and you know wait for one of the police officers to you know take remove the bag that could be maybe if they felt like it they'd do it straight away if you called them maybe it could be a few hours the yeah it was it was horrendous um and I was in there for gosh a couple of months I think I was in there waiting just in a month yeah yeah no food no like I I relied on the prisoners in giving me food so a lot of them were locals and their family would come twice a day and bring them food right so they bring breakfast and they bring um you know the evening meal my consulate came to see me kit was like the the day after I'd been put in there the local consulate come to see me and he bought me some snacks some biscuits Club social they were called some like just some crackers and some magazines um and he told me that he'd given some money to the police to buy me some food and maybe if I was lucky they would buy me some food but they would most probably keep the money for themselves so I think they bought me some food for a couple of days in a in a row and then they said that you know there was no more money and I depended on scraps from what the other prisoners had what their families were bringing them so what would you have done if they they hadn't given you any just survived off Club social biscuits or wow yeah they're not gonna let you starve in that the police probably would but their actual other prisoners I mean they're going to make sure they've got their their film first but they're gonna you know throw you a bone okay yeah wow okay so a couple of months yeah and I mean it sounds like it can't get much worse but I think it did get worse didn't it yeah yeah so what was the next step after that so the next step was prison which at first was a relief like when I was in the police station and the Consular told me as well and again I just I don't know why but I just didn't believe anything that anybody was saying and I think it was just too much for my mind to comprehend like I'm just suddenly being thrown all these Concepts and ideas of of something that is unimaginable for a for a British person yes yeah and especially like now on TV you see all these programs you know like banged up abroad and you but at the time you know 20 odd years ago these programs weren't on TV so you didn't get uh understand or see what goes on in prisons all over the world even now like because I agree with you there's all those shows but even now there's a slight arrogance to being brought up in this country where I'm sort of thinking but didn't the concert say oh don't worry I'm going to get you outside something out I'm going to get you out was it nothing like that no they told me from the they told me right from the beginning that I was going to get sentenced to 10 years and they said there was nothing they could do about it they were brutally brutally honest and clear so there's no help no nothing they weren't like we can investigate some Avenues they were just like this is where they said that there was um some countries had a repatriation agreement yeah and America had a repatriation agreement and Holland had a repatriation agreement um and but England didn't have a repatriation agreement it was something that was being negotiated but it was something that had been being negotiated for a long time that wasn't showing any signs at all of any progress and then he told me that there was already a couple of um British prisoners in the prison that had already been there five years six years and the thing is even though he's telling me this the whole time I'd still still think that I'm exempt from these rules every day I'm thinking that somebody's going to come and get me out of there and I think that's just how I what I had to do to not not go into that whole of this my life now yeah I think there was just so much to try and take on board that my brain was only able to kind of process like one bit at a time yeah and it just couldn't process everything yeah all at once okay um and I think I was just also in this state of of shot you know because of the conditions as well I think I'm just trying to deal with that and the the only way that I could get through that was by telling my you know believing that tomorrow I'd get taken out of there because if I at that point thought that that was going to be it for the next 10 years um I couldn't have I don't think my brain couldn't have coped hey this is Ben Powell Jones the host of extraordinary lives and we're just going to take a quick break to talk about one of this episode's sponsors better help better help is an online therapy service that matches you to professional counselors I was provided with three months free therapy through better help I've been using it for a month now and it's been brilliant I think sometimes we get so caught up in ourselves and what we're doing on a daily basis that we don't actually spend time thinking about what we actually need and if we're happy in fact I've found the system really easy to use definitely going to keep signing on afterwards it's a personal choice but I think sometimes we think therapy needs to be for huge events and actually I don't think that's the case at all you can use it to talk through different situations that you're in your life starting a new job problems with relationships and even if you're feeling fine I've found personally that it's sometimes good to top up every now and again if you're interested in trying it out you can head over to www.betterhelp.com minutes with for a discount that's betterhelp help.com minutes with thanks and back to the show Okay so let's move on to the prison then yeah so San Antonio is that yeah San Antonio so I get there it's a mixed prison it's men and women wow um it's probably about 70 women there and about 700 men oh God all all open plan all integrating the there's a women's section so at night time were separated but the gates were opened I don't know eight o'clock in the morning or something and then locked at like eight o'clock at night so between eight in the morning and eight at night it's just all freeing it's a self-sufficient Community within the perimeter of the walls and you can do anything you want in there except leave it's it's literally like there's shops there's stores there's restaurants there's um drugs there's alcohol there's parties um and as I when I got to the prison I saw these guys on the roof patrolling the roof and they looked rough and they had guns and they had no Tops on and they had ripped clothes on ripped shorts um you know toothless you know and they just look they look like crackheads which they were but I didn't know that at the time and I remember look at them I'm thinking they look rough like I thought they were you know yeah security like the guards they look rough why aren't they why aren't they wearing a uniform and how can the how can the guards you know they've had a tough shift and um they weren't guards they were they were prisoners defending like their territory their the prison was divided up into like sections certain men's sections because of gang Warfare like things that are going on in the streets so they just had guns yeah like all kinds of guns from they had homemade guns that they'd made themselves from like the metal beds Choppers they were called they're about that big then they had professional rifles and they had a machine gun in there and they had grenades and they had any anything that they and that was known and accepted but yeah there was a there was a section like one section for the men's side where they had the Prisoners the male prisoners had constructed their own gate now twice a day the Guardia would come in and they'd do a thing called numero which is where they want to count everybody to check that there's you know nobody's escapes and everybody's there and they do it headlights section by section now to get into this specific men's section the internal um bihilantes um had to get like permission from the actual prisoners to get through like the prisoners had to open the gate for them to let them through and it was the same with the Guardia the prisoners had to open the gate to let the Guardia through and when they came they would always someone be shouting if it was the National Guards coming in then the prisoners would shake like aguiver de Agua Verde which is green water so anybody that was doing anything that they shouldn't be doing in plain view of the of the army had time to like you know get rid of and hide their things and if it was the Vigilantes and it would be agua aguasul so you knew which ones were were coming in the Vigilantes did you say yeah what is that what um they're there so you've got like the internal screws and then you've got the National Guards that are all based around outside the prison they've got Tower points so there's always the tower Point's always manned where they're you know looking at what's going on and then they've got like an office um block outside um and they come in they do the numero they're the ones that are in charge of like keeping the prisoners in line when it kicks off it's a good idea that'll come in and you know try and so it's kind of like as long as you're not kicking off and it's not right just get on with it yeah and were you scared when you got it I mean it sounds absolutely terrifying yeah um no I don't think I was again I think it's just a shock thing do you feel under threat no like the the Venezuelan men are very protective okay of the women okay that the women are safe and sound and there's no way that any of the guys could violate any of the women okay because they every men's section has got like a gang leader and that's just completely against the rules and if you did something like that you'd get killed like the men would get killed for it there's a there's a hierarchy and and you do what you're told there and if you don't abide for the men if you don't stick to those rules then there's repercussions and there's just no way that anything was this explained to you by someone like that was in their audit was it just something you came to understand I kind of I started to just figure out there was some things that were explained to me um but I just started to the longer I was there I learned little bits more and started to figure out like how things went and how about like woman to woman like was that did you feel fairly safe there or were they threatening as a group um it was really intimidating it was yeah it was when I first went in it was really really intimidating and a girl came and she's like grabbed my suitcase and sort of like run off my suitcase and it was um and it but it was all kind of like a a test really and fun and games for them but when you're coming in and you're new to this fireman it's yeah it's really really scary and I think could just kind of tried to stay away from certain groups and certain people and I just process and watch what was going on and yeah I mean crazy because all that and then the language barrier as well must have just been such a sensory overload yeah yeah understand what's being shouted at you I said yeah um like it was a relief when I got to the prison because I've been in this tiny room for ages with just these women with new form of stimulation or you know diversity to the day or or anything so when I got there you know it's this massive prison you know you can walk around freely there's guys there there's music going on you know that it's it's a relief to begin with to get there and and until you know guns start going off and people start dying and you know where did you see that yeah okay can you tell us a little bit about that yes um so I think the the very first morning that I woke up I was woken at there was a siren that went off it's like an air raid siren and I thought at first that it was like a morning Bell or something to to get a but then as the siren went off like lots of the Venezuelan women uh fry in and you can hear that they're in distress and then someone explains to me one of the English guys explains to me that what the siren is it means that someone's been killed it means one of the one of the prisoners it means that something's gone on internally and that one of the prisoners is is dead and been killed by another prisoner and like all the women that are distressed because maybe it's their husband or you know their partner or their brother or their son or whatever so I think at first I wasn't sure if I believed them or not because again it just sounds like an overwhelming concept you know that this can can go on in prison um but but it does and then there was a time when it was like it was like a wall that went on for war a war it went on for three days and the the Guardia wouldn't even come in so what like a gang war yeah so two Rivals yeah between two rival sections in the women's section right in the middle of these rival sections and this war it just went on relentlessly for three days like non-stop so what was in fist fighting or guns shooting there was a grenade that went off it there's a fur grenade and it blew up like this section called them the maximum which is like their maximum security is where prisoners get put in where they can't stay on either side like they've done something wrong on that side and they've done something wrong on that side and they can't come out because people want to kill them right so they're literally just locked in all the time for their own safety because they're gonna get they're going to get killed so grenade have been thrown in that I've been blown up and then the two sides were just all like they were on the roof shooting at each other and then the one side like right next right next to Earth they'd made these massive holes in the wall they were like they were the size of doorways and they would bring in like the guys that had been like shot and killed they would kind of bring them through our bit and take them to like the main kind of office bit which was right by the the female bent but all the screws had locked themselves in and the Guardia wouldn't come in because you've got 700 men like killing each other so the Guardia are just going to wait until they've run out of ammunition or they've killed each other they're not going to put themselves at risk they're just going to wait until everybody runs out of so it's not like a writer site like like people dying Non-Stop and then the the ambulances wouldn't come it was all over the news it was on the TV and on the news the ambulances wouldn't come in to pick up the dead bodies because they couldn't because there was no because that's bullets flying every everywhere so these body and then like the infirm Maria is full up with with bodies already so these bodies are just left like outside in this Courtyard under the Venezuelan Sun for two three days um Boston's Wars going on just just decomposing motting Under the Sun it was yeah it was how do you have any idea of how many people got killed during that period of time like how many did you see a lot of bodies during those three days I don't know I mean I think I probably saw I don't know I think I probably saw about six or seven dead bodies and then quite a few injuries where people were being carried through a you know kneecaps shot and God knows how many dead bodies on the other you know that was just the one side so I don't know how many won there so we just kind of staying in your bit for three days just like yeah head down yeah totally just stay a night of the staying out of the way yeah and then a lot of the guys were trying to like hide in our bit as well because it's this kind of safe not as involved with the yeah yeah wow and then when the when the Guardia finally got back in what was that like like did they have to retake control by force or was it more like walking into just chaos and everyone had given up by then well the guardian didn't come in until everyone had given up right they'd run out of steam or run out of ammunition when I have whatever drugs it was that they were taking that was given the thing to keep going but there was punishment because the Guardia want to be they have to regain like you said some kind of control or some kind of um facade yeah they have yes some kind of control you know realistically they haven't you know but they have to be show that they've got some kind of power so um they got all the guys I felt so sorry for them they got all the guys and there's this massive massive Courtyard and they made them all lay down like on it was like tarmac Courtyard and they made them all lay down from like in the morning from I think it was like I don't know 10 o'clock in the morning till about five six o'clock in the evening they just made them all lie on the courtyard underneath the sun wow and all the Guardia they had these massive like swords but they were rounded edges they weren't you know um not stubbing or no yeah like buttons yeah just like huge swords with these rounded edges and um whenever any of the guys you know start to try and like move and because they were you know burning and the Guardians like beating them with the swords and then they lined some of them up they lined them up against the wall and made them drop their um trousers down to their ankles and were beating them like on their ass and on the back of their legs and the back of their knees and the guys would just like dropping to the floor where they were getting beaten by the swords I mean it sounds unbelievably horrible okay you've talked so far about constantly talked about the fact that you're able to I don't this isn't real this is yeah I don't believe this was there a point where you were like this is 10 years now yeah how long to it was that right yeah right yeah I think it was um it was about a year and it was not long after that event I think where I kind of realized like this this is really happening and I've got a 10-year sentence and can't I can't do this um and I was riddled with drug addiction again so I was smoking now you know I'd got oh so could you get that yeah yeah I was so smoking crack again you know as much as and it was so cheap over there as well and it sold all my stuff and you know I was just really where's Rock Bottom I don't think there's anywhere lower for me there were to know whether you know there was nowhere look you know I'm I'm smoking I've got a raging quack addiction you know I'm separated from my daughter I'm in a Venezuelan prison where people are getting killed all around me where I have to face the next 10 years of my life and yeah I took an overdose purposefully yeah right yeah totally just kind of I don't know what it was um there were these tablets that would go in mind the jail um and I can't remember what they were called um but okay but just of pills like to have yeah right yeah and I just got my hands on as on as many of them as as I could thinking that um that that would do and that I could just nail all of those and just never wake up again and what happened I woke up okay yeah I was so disappointed did you have to go to some sort of Hospital area no I'd just been left like I hadn't yeah they just left me we will I was unconscious yeah yeah I wasn't I wasn't getting up for um uh the the roll call or the number call and but the guardian came in and you know checked and I was still breathing and so they just left me to it yeah and then I came round um and I was just bitterly disappointed that I'd come around and had to deal with this still but it was also like it was a massive turning point for me as well because I felt like I should have died and I wanted to be dead and I wasn't dead um so if that wasn't an option then I was gonna have to to deal with this and and find a way to to get through it um and I prayed I got on you know you hear this a lot didn't you when people would just get to this complete point of desperation there's no hope left in the world and you dig deep and you just find this um faith I think or you're just looking you're so desperate for if you haven't got faith I think you're so desperate for it anything so just reach out for for anything so um yeah I was on my hands and knees um praying like I've never prayed for anything in my whole life you know just like tears just streaming down my face just asking the firm some help somehow like okay okay I've got to be here for 10 years you've got to help me out you know you've got to please you've got to give me something to help me because I can't do this and I can't get through this like I'm like this I kind of made the deal and it's packed with this higher power or whoever it was that I was praying to like you know look get me out of here it was and it was the crack addiction again was really consuming me and I really hated myself for it um and I kind of felt like if I can get rid of the addiction then maybe I can try and deal with everything else that's going on but I just can't deal with it all so help me with the addiction and I'll deal with everything else so I put in for a transfer and got transferred out of there the the next week so to a better prison in Caracas on the mainland it was a all women's prison okay um and I I stuck to my side of the pact you know I'd made this deal I mean I know you can't really make deals with but in my mind that's you know I was like well you get me out of here and please and wherever I get to I won't take the drugs I know that they'll be there but you know it's just too easy here and I'm caught in this Loop now and I need some help so please help me get out of here and and I won't take the drugs so I got transferred to this new place um and it was just a lot more manageable I didn't I stopped taking the drugs I didn't look for the drugs at all there was routine there there was no men there there was you know not there was still a little bit of violence but you know nothing compared to there was no guns and you know people getting killed in front of you on a on a daily basis there was um workshops there was education there was a waste and a bit and there was a bit of you know structure something that felt more like a society yeah so you'd been in the San Antonio yeah for one year is that yeah and then you transferred yeah and then how long was it in this new place which was sounds a lot better but how long was it before you started to plan a way out well everybody always planned for you know sure okay in the moment from any prison anywhere in the world that you're in anybody straight away is gonna fantasize about escaping so it didn't quite start developing there um I was only there for six months and then I got transferred I didn't put it in for a transfer I just got moved on from there to this other prison um called what was it called San Juan de lagunias in a place called Merida which was four hours away ish from the Colombian border and it was a mixed prison again so I was dreading going there I thought I thought it was going to be the same as San Antonio um and it wasn't the same but horrendous things happened there still um but it wasn't until I was there that I started seriously contemplating and thinking about how could I get out of there and was that just because you were like I 10 years is too long like how can I shorten that well I just saw it as a viable option right like I could I could say that it could actually be done like were people escaping around you no no no okay um but I could see that it could be more than a than a fantasy okay um because people were having day releases in in this prison okay you know people that had completed a a certain amount of their um sentences were getting day release and they were able to go in and out every day and I got involved with the prison guard and romantically yeah right okay yeah we fell in love with each other wow like massively like I fell in love with him and he fell in love with me he was from Venezuela yeah he was Venezuelan and could you communicate at that point yeah I could speak Spanish by then oh so you'd learn Spanish yeah I've been there but when I met him I think I'd been in prison for about three years okay so my Spanish was it was good enough to hold conversations and communicate and you know get by um so yes so we got into a relationship with each other and I got my day releases like I got to a point in my sentence where I could apply for them and I fought really hard for them I paid a lot of people off to get them I paid Administration officers off in the prison to sign the paperwork um where are we getting the money to pay I'd had some money sent over okay and Jose the the prison guard right he was giving me money all the time as well right and he would give me all his wages he was wow he was earning more money illegitimately in the prison like than he than his wages his wages was just the I don't know like pocket money compared to what he was actually earning doing things for the prisoners bringing in Contraband okay doing things for them outside so he had quite a bit of money so he funded your ability to pay off the different officials he helped fund it he helped yeah he helped fund it and he knew people as well okay so um and just to be clear and obviously uh you know it's a bit of a personal question but you said you would do it you you'd fallen in love with him you weren't seeing him as a way of yeah no I wasn't um I mean when we first started talking to each other and you know we we joked about you know helping me escape um but no we really fell in love with each other okay yeah Head Over Heels yeah unlikeliest places I know I know um okay so you got the day release yeah and then how did that how did the plan start to form for how you could use that so we were close like I said we were quite close to the to the Colombian border right and I knew that all I had to do was get out of Venezuela and I was kind of Home Free you know I wasn't and if I got if I tried to run away and stay in Venezuela then I'm in trouble but outside of Venezuela it's outside of Venezuela and jurisdiction um so I thought if I can just get to Colombia and then so then the plan had to develop from there and it was like yeah but then what you're going to do in Colombia it was like okay well from Colombia I can get a plane to your rep I thought I can't get a plane from Venezuela to Europe because I could get recognized I could be at the airport like the Guardia they do they go on tour so one moment they might be working in the prison but then you know the next month or something they might be working at an airport or they could be working it like they have stops everywhere you can't get from like one town to another you can't travel freely without going through like Guardia stops so there was always this risk that I could be a get be trying to go through a stop because you're not allowed outside your area either you have day release but I'm not allowed to leave media there so even just getting to the Colombian border because I've got a goose room some of these stops yeah okay yeah still a few stops to go through and you know a way to try and to get there like undercover but I couldn't go to Caracas and get a plane from Caracas because I'd get recognized instantly because I had blonde hair and blue eyes and any Guardia that's worked in any of those prisons you know you get to know the Guardia because they come in twice a day you know and they get to know you by you by your name and by your look and so I just knew that trying to get out from Venezuela was just not it was it was just high risk um so I thought okay let's try and do it going through Colombia um and I started to get into trouble in the in the prison because I was taking the piss really by this point and I was having this relationship with this prison guard everybody knew in the prison that we were having a relationship and he'd been transferred out of there once and transferred to go and work in another prison because our relationship would come out and then the governor the prison that I was in lost his job so he got his transfer back to the pre to the prison that I was in again so like all the staff knew like some of them were on our side some of them weren't on our side all the prisoners knew I had day release I was supposed to go out during the day to work and then I was supposed to come back in the night time um I wasn't going to work I'd had paid somebody off to say that I had a job there and I didn't I wasn't coming back at night I was getting doctor's um certificates to sign me off um Jose was using his connections with people inside the prison where he was friends with the governor I was staying out for two weeks at a time you know yeah going out with the governor you know because Jose was friends with the governor you know the governor would come and meet us and we'd take him out and we'd get him drunk and then we'd ask him to phone at the prison to say that I didn't have to come back for the weekend oh wow yeah and this went on for like quite a few months and um people started to get annoyed with it right um some of the guards the female guards were getting fed up with their some of the prisoners were getting fed up with their because I was just taking the piss really and why should I be able to do it and everybody else couldn't do it so we were like planning this escape and we like we'd planned it a little bit more further ahead um and we suddenly got told um that I was going to have my benefit taken off me my day release I've got a phone call and they were like they're gonna take the day release off me because of everything that was going on we'd been stopped in time as well we'd been in town um and kind of Arrested um because I was with Jose in time in LaGuardia like got us the the prison had like phoned up and said if they're seen together you've got to get them and it was like well you guys can't be together um I got to back to the prison I tried to get out in the morning they wouldn't let me out that day I had to like appeal to be able to get out so I got out I think like the day after and it's like we've got to go now like I'm not gonna wow last like again um so we had to bring everything forward and then the day that it was planned for there was like a storm of biblical proportions um and my Escape Route was blocked like because all the cliffs there had been like an avalanche and the Cliffs of the bus couldn't get through because all these Boulders were in the way so I'd got off the bus and I tried to get attacked soon oh see it's set off you'd got on the bus and you'd set off yeah yeah I'd go yeah I went in so it was arranged that I was going to meet Jose at the at the bus station yeah a place called a heedom and from hido is where like that was our last I needed to get to a hedo and then from ajido I was going to kukuta which is the Colombian side okay of the border so um it arranged to meet Jose we decided to travel separately yeah because we would be in monitor you know people they were looking for us like traveling together so I'd got on the bus had been this Avalanche and the bus couldn't get through because of these bold airs I'd got a taxi the taxi couldn't get through the taxi took a different route but then it only got so far because of I think the river had like burst six Banks and the taxi couldn't get through him I couldn't go back because it's not like oh I can't go back I'll go back stay the night and try again tomorrow um because I knew if I went back I was I wasn't gonna be let out again for a day release that was it I was going to be in there for another five years so then I got another bus going another route and we got this River Crossing it's supposed to be a road and again the river could burst its banks and there were Guardia everywhere and by this point I'm not even supposed to be in this area like I've I've gone out of married dad which is way out of like the the Jewish diction that on my day release I'm supposed to be confined within it says Guardia everywhere because of this you know burst Riverbanks and you know this storm trying to like direct everybody and um someone this best and I can see like the best doesn't want to go through there's this was a road but now it's a river but there's all these four by fours like going through and I'm watching them and I can see that there is a path the vehicles are taken and then like the smaller cars aren't going through and some people would be in turn around and some people are being allowed to go through the Guardia and the bus driver he wasn't going to do it I went up to him and just begged him to like please like look you can do it I was like look you can do it they can do it they're going that way just go behind that track and follow the route you take in and like my life depended on it and I think the best I ever messed up felt like this girl's begging me this like her life's depending on it and then like everybody else on the bus then started like everyone wants to get to their destination maybe not as much as I do but everybody wants to get to their destination so then everybody else on the bus is then like cheering the best driver on so he's under like kind of like quite a lot of immense peer pressure from his um passengers as well and uh you know I think by this one he wants to be the hero as well and I'm trying to have this conversation with him like when there's guardio everywhere um so he does he's decides that he's gonna he's gonna go so we're going through this path and the water's filling up it's coming in the best like the waters came in there through the step in the best I'm there trying to hide you know with my head down like this and then you know going past all these Guardia everywhere did you have any sort of Disguise or was it just no no no okay head dying like this trying to hide from the guardian and um and yeah and we made it firm when we made it through the other side like the whole best just like burst into glorious Applause yeah and the best driver feels like you know he's a hero and he saved the day and you know I'm just a quivering wreck and see you know like sweat pouring off me and um yeah I made it to the to the bus station where I don't know how he'd done it where Jose was waiting for me and uh he said that he'd been like because I was I was late it was like four hours late from our like Rendezvous point in time um and I didn't even know if he was going to be there yeah if he had got there if he was going to wait you know what was he going to do where was he going to think I am because we'd sold our phones like we didn't have any phone because we just wanted as much money as we could get together was he gonna come with you yeah he came with it he did he did right he did yeah he did come with me um so we had no forms of communicating with each other because we had no idea that this massive storm was going to happen it was simple it was like right I'll leave this time you leave that time we'll take separate routes meet you at the bus station at you know 10 o'clock in the morning and I didn't get there till two o'clock in the afternoon she must have been relieved to see him there oh I didn't even know like I got there and I was like is he even gonna be here yeah um and when I did see him it was just like the most amazing feeling um and then he'd got there with no problems he'd left like half an hour after me and just got straight through um and he was so lovely because I remember and like I said to him like I didn't know if you're going to be here like how how long would you have waited for he said he would have just waited forever so I don't know how long he would have waited for but yeah so then from there we got Taxi to kukutta which is the Colombian side of the border and can you just pass through well we got a taxi with these Mexicans that were we just shared this taxi um because there was different ways to get to this place from the bus station that was you know the burst or there was a taxi so we met these Mexicans and decided that our best bet was to just like share a taxi with them and just say that we were just going to kukata but you have to go through the checkpoint yeah the border control um but if you're a lot of times if you're just going to kukata and back because people are doing that every single day um the the Border people don't stamp your passport so did you have your passport yeah how did you have it I got it off my Embassy okay yeah when I got out for my day release um I phoned my British Embassy app and I told them that I'd got day release and that I wanted to get a job a paid job but that to get a paid job I needed ID and that the only idea that I had was prison ID and that I didn't want to go and apply for a paid job with prison ID and could I have my passport and I wonder if they knew what probably I'm sure they probably had a suspicion um but they gave you it they gave me it yeah okay yeah and they gave me my passport okay so you made it to the border yeah and because they thought you were going in and back yeah well I just kind of like hid like kind of hid in the back seat of the car like pretending to be asleep and everyone else did the talking and they were like oh it's just a you know just go in there and bark and she can't speak Spanish and they were just like oh you know just just let us through like I think there must have been um light shining down on me with fever that day you know um but there was there was no other option yeah it had to be successful that there was no in my mind there was failure was just not an option there was no for me there was only one outcome and that outcome was going to be I was getting out of there and I didn't even enter my mind or that it was ever going to be any other way so we got through and then we went to Bogota to get the plane Spain because the plan was we were going to go to Spain and then we got into so much [ __ ] in Bogota because we didn't have the entry stamps on the passport so when we were trying to leave Bogota immigration like Hall decept and separated us and interrogated us wanting to know how we'd got into the country and ironically they thought I was smuggling drugs I know hi um and they like set stole my bags they wanted to take me to a hospital to have scans yeah like they knew something was up because it was fishy because why would you you know why haven't you got these stamps on your passport you've got this bizarre story that doesn't quite make sense um so I told we knew I knew we knew that there was potentially going to be some issues at the airport so we had some money reserved by to deal with any potential problems should we come across them and we got to the airport really early in so that there would be time to actually deal with things so when they said could they take me to the airport I offered to pay for the taxi I was like yep we can go to the airport um can we go now and I'll pay for a taxi because I know because I was used to how things worked in Venezuela um I kind of imagined that it would be similar in Colombia and in Venezuela when you're supposed to go to court there was supposed to be a prison van that took you from the police station to court and a lot of the times it wasn't available because the governor had spent the money for fuel on whatever and you know on on himself he just kept all the money so if you wanted to go to court a lot of the times if you had the money to pay for a taxi instead of like the prison van taking you you could go to court in a taxi but the the guards would have to come with you so I said to them in the airport yeah let's go to court um let's go to the hospital yeah um I'll pay for a taxi because you know if I pay for a taxi can we go now because if we go now then maybe there's enough time to go to hospital or do the things you'll see I haven't got any drugs we can get a taxi back and there's still time for me to to get the plane so after a while they said that they didn't need to go to hospital said that they didn't think they weren't convinced that I had anything inside me because I was too eager to just get to to get there and get back um and they wanted to know what was going on so in the end we cut we confessed a little bit we just said look yes there is something going on but it's not drugs and it's nothing to do with Colombia and I just want to get home how much is it going to cost to sort this out you've checked me you've checked the suitcase you've done your checks to see if I'm you know there's anything going on with me in Colombia and there's nothing the only issue is because I haven't got the stamp on the passport so how much is it going to cost for you to ignore that and let me get on the plane or put the stamp on on my passport and there were two immigration officers and we paid them 200 each and they let us get on the plane to Madrid yeah wow I know I thought you were going to say more than that no okay so you got to Madrid yeah and Jose was still with you yeah how long did you stay are you still together how long did you stay together for no we stayed together all together we stayed together for about five five and a half years we came to England together things didn't work out the way that we'd planned or how we'd expected in Spain so we came to England um I got in contact with the foreign Commonwealth office to find out what my legal status was going to be which was such a bizarre um conversation and an interaction with them because did you have to tell them the truth did you have to say that I did yeah they didn't even know I'd been gone I'd been gone nine months I'd been in Spain for nine months um run out of money I hadn't got work I was like right I wonder what the situation is if I go back to to England because I knew that in England I could get support get money and get somewhere to live so I phoned up the foreign Commonwealth office and said right okay what happens if I come back to England yeah am I gonna have to serve the rest of my sentence in England am I going to get sent back to Venezuela like what's what's the deal here and they didn't understand that I wasn't in prison in Venezuela Venezuela hadn't told them that I had left and so their first reaction was well you can't come back yet Natalie you've still got you know four and a half five years left to do on your sentence and the repatriation agreement hasn't gone through like what do you want about I said you do know that I'm not in prison don't you and that I've done a Renault and I'm not in Venezuela and they had no idea yeah so their first reaction was where are you um and I said that's irrelevant so that doesn't matter where I am just tell me what's what's my legal status what's the situation so they got in contact with Venezuela and Venezuela said that as long as I didn't go back there for the duration of my sentence they had no interest in me being returned there because it costs them money you know it costs them a lot of money for me to be a prisoner in their prison life never contributed anything to their economy and the British government does not give them anything for my keep there so I'm just a a drain on they're all ready limited resources and then as far as England was concerned you know Venezuela hadn't requested that I go to prison there and finish off my sentence there and I hadn't committed a crime in England so again to put me in prison in England for a crime I haven't committed which is also a massive drain on their resources um just doesn't make sense so I was free to to just go back to England so basically you were told that as long as you didn't go back to Venezuela for the next six years or whatever it was yeah you were free yeah both sides yeah that must have felt pretty amazing yeah um it was an interesting Insight how laws and politics work [Music] um in a way that most people would never you wouldn't think no so did Jose come back to the UK with you yeah so Jose came Jose came back with me and he overstayed he wasn't even supposed to be there at all and he didn't have any visas or anything we we basically blagged his way in and we got a boat from Santander to I think it was Plymouth or Portsmouth I can't remember which one and we kind of blagged her blogged him in through immigration um which he wouldn't have been allowed to do on his own I think it was just because he was with me and I was British and we were a couple and we had this you know story ready for them um and then I think like reality like hitting real life started to yeah to happen then and Jose really struggled because he couldn't work um and that was a big thing for him was to be able to provide and to be able to be there the breadwinner and after a couple of years I think it was like maybe like three years we were together in England this really started to um create some issues for him you know it was really kind of stripping away his his identity um and we wanted to have a child and he wanted us to get married so we went to try and get married and were told that we couldn't get married because she didn't have he needed to have like the correct paperwork so then we tried to get the paperwork but he can't get the paperwork whilst in England has to be you can only get that paperwork in the country that you're that you're from so we agreed that he would go back to Venezuela and apply for that paperwork um and that he'd come back with the correct paperwork and then with that paperwork he'd be able to work we'd get married and we could have this family and you know hopefully things would work out better than they were at that time um but he went back and he got into loads of trouble at Heathrow Airport because he'd been in England by this point for three years wow and he just had this entry stamp on his passport that in no Visa um and they put this black mark on his passport to say that he wasn't allowed to enter England or Europe again for five years oh wow and he went back to Venezuela and and we appealed it he went to the British Embassy and and we appealed the the decision and um just got turned down so then he can't come back for five years I can't go back to Venezuela and it just that we went our own I mean we still speak okay yeah yeah we're still we're still friends now and we still speak and have affection for each other and remember I mean it's an amazing story you shared so another character in your story was your daughter uh what happened there so when I whilst I was away my friend looked after her the same friend oh wow that right from the very beginning um God that's amazing I know um and she had her own stuff going on as well in in her life um she's a legend definitely she's a Superhero real life superhero um so my friend looked after her and when I came back my daughter didn't recognize me she didn't know who I who I was um and and then I told her my name and um she asked me she said she asked me if I was her mum so I had to rebuild that that relationship and I was really lucky that my daughter didn't Harbor she I think she was too young really um to kind of understand what had been going on and by that point she had lived more of her life with my friend than she had with me so when you're just talking about your daughter there about how long you were away from her how long was it in total four and a half years four and a half years and she was about three when she got to she was three and then she was I was away from her four and a half years yeah okay so we had to rebuild um the relationship and it worked really well with my friend it was a real gradual process um and it went really smoothly so I mean over the years it's we've had a really quite a rocky relationship with um you know our ups and downs and we would just trying to work through those and process you know I have to like I said earlier I've had to deal with and try and you know what I've done the impact that that had on her not just then but even now the impact that that decision that I made to go drug smuggling with her how that still affects her to this day so we're still working through that but um you know we went out for a meal last night in Cheltenham and I stayed around our house tonight and she comes to visit me where I live in Spain and um we're just doing our best to move on from that and I'm trying my hardest now to be the best mother I can be to I can never make up for all those years that I was away for her from her I can't make up for those mistakes that I made but I'm just trying my best now to to do the best that I can and be the best man that I can to her now today and tomorrow moving forwards you understand and when you look back at your life which has been very unusual I mean as I know there's whole elements that we didn't even get to go into and talk about today but yeah um it has been an incredible unique extraordinary life what do you think it's taught you what have you learned think one of the biggest things that I've learned is to never give up um to to keep going and that life will never throw anything at us that we're not capable of of dealing with and that maybe some of these challenges that we go through uh for a reason and now I want to try and use my experiences um to help other people and to I think like I kind of have a message to people that's like you know what no matter what you're going through like I really feel like I have been like rock bottom everybody has their own version of Rock Bottom um and just all those people that are there what bottom I just want to say like don't give up you know and and believe in yourself and it doesn't matter how many times you [ __ ] up like don't think that all I've messed up three times four times don't write yourself off just keep picking yourself up and keep going and it will all come good and then all those things that have happened one day it will just all suddenly click into place and make sense that they've happened for a reason and that you can learn lessons from them and then use those lessons to be a better person and a better version of yourself it's a great message to come out from a very difficult start um look it's been brilliant talking to you when you tell your story so okay engagingly um thank you so much for your time thank you so they're they're all attacking and basically the guy with the walkie-talkie was the one that was telling them what was it orchestrating that right and it's quite hard as a sniper to keep your mind straight because you you're watching people get injured you're watching people die on the battlefield and you've got to keep your composure

Channel: LADbible TV

Views: 207,082

Keywords: the lad bible, lad bible, lad, bible, videos, viral videos, documentaries, exclusives, interviews, viral, drug mule, natalie welsh venezuela, venezuela, drug smuggler, drug smugglers caught at border, drug smuggler documentary, true crime, prison documentary, prison break, prison documentary 2023, prison stories, prison war, gang war, south america prison, latin america prison, drug mule documentary, drug mules caught at airport, drug mules caught, podcast, escape prison

Id: hg6AmOWcexk

Length: 102min 58sec (6178 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 28 2023