Schapelle Corby’s decade of hell

SHE’S the Gold Coast girl who’s been holed up in an Indonesian prison for almost 10 years. Here is Schapelle’s life behind bars.

Schapelle Corby has spent almost a decade of hell in jail.

SHE is the Gold Coast girl who has been holed up in an Indonesian prison for almost 10 years for smuggling 4.1kg of weed into Bali.

How did a woman from a nondescript Queensland upbringing become the infamous drug smuggler we know today?

Schapelle Corby’s life began in a small town on the Gold Coast in 1977. Her folks Michael Corby, a coal miner, and Rosleigh Rose, who owned a local fish and chip shop, were simple people. They divorce when Corby was young. News_Image_File: Schapelle Corby with her siblings.

She dropped out of school in Year 11 and studied beauty therapy at TAFE. She didn’t graduate as her father was diagnosed with cancer and she wanted to care for him. During this time, she worked at her parent’s shop and at a Coles supermarket.

Corby admitted trying drugs when she was 14. Her and her friends chipped in $5 each and bought some marijuana. It left her feeling paranoid and depressed, she said in her autobiography.

Aged 17, Corby goes overseas for the first time. She travels to Bali with her sister Mercedes and brother Michael Jnr. and stays for six months.News_Image_File: Before the nightmare began.

In the next few years, she travels five times to Bali on her way to Japan to visit Mercedes, who has set up home there.

At 21, Corby marries a Japanese surfer she met while he was on a working holiday in Australia. She lives in Japan but the couple divorced in 2000.News_Image_File: A photo of Schapelle, two friends and her brother James as they head off to Bali in 2004.

After the divorce, she takes her first trip to Bali in four years. It was the ill-fated trip she would not return home from.

Corby, her half brother James and two friends, head off on the surfing trip from Brisbane via Sydney. Corby is arrested on arrival at Denpasar airport in Bali with a bodyboard case full of marijuana. It is October 8, 2004.News_Image_File: The marijuana found in the body board bag.

Corby claims she immediately denied the drugs were hers and voluntarily opened the bag. Prosecutors said she admitted her guilt on the night of her arrest, and had yelled “No! No! I have some ...”

Three months later, she faces court. Her Defence claims she had no idea how the drugs came to be in her bag and that it was possibly baggage handlers.News_Image_File: Schapelle struggled mentally throughout the trial.

On April 28, 2005, Corby pleads with the court to consider her innocence in her final statement.

“I would like to say to the prosecutors I cannot admit to a crime I did not commit. And to the judges, my life at the moment is in your hands but I would prefer if my life was in your hearts.”

She is sentenced to 20 years behind bars. Her breakdown is heartbreaking. It is broadcast live to Australia.

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The judge rules all Defence witnesses irrelevant and believes the version of events presented by the Customs officials. Her mother screams: “Schapelle, you will come home!”

It takes nine years before this dream would come to fruition. Her father, who died in 2008 from bowel cancer, never saw his daughter taste freedom again.News_Image_File: The media scrums took their toll.

In the years that followed, multiple appeals and sentence changes took place. Corby had her sentence cut to 15 years in 2005, with it increased back to 20 years on appeal.

As Corby spends her days imprisoned in a small cell in Kerobokan jail, her state of mind deteriorated and in 2008 and 2009, she is treated for depression and suffers bouts of psychosis.News_Image_File: She has been known to have bouts of psychosis and depression.

She falls in and out of love with former fellow Kerobokan inmate Ben Panangian and struggles with the media scrums.

Mercedes blames her sister’s mental condition on the intense press attention and with the public interest at fever pitch, theories about how the drugs came to be in her bag begin circulating.

News_Image_File: Schapelle in tears in front of her cell at Kerobokan Jail in Bali.

Photos emerge of Corby with a notorious South Australian drug dealer in Kerobokan prison, which create interest in her family’s criminal history.

Her father, Michael, had been convicted on multiple drink driving offence and a drug possession offence in the 70s.

Her half-brother, James, who travelled with Schapelle and held the bodyboard bag for a period of time before the arrest, has spent time in jail for break and enter and drug possession.

During the trial and aftermath, her brother Michael Jnr is portrayed as a well-known dealer on the Gold Coast, locals and the family dismissed these rumours as “vicious lies”.News_Image_File: Her mother Rosleigh and sister Mercedes react to judges' verdict. News_Image_File: Convicted drug dealer with Schapelle Corby.

Jodi Power, a long-time family friend, speaks to Today Tonight, claiming Corby’s sister, Mercedes, previously asked her to transport drugs to Bali and had confessed to transporting drugs concealed inside her body. In 2008, Channel 7 are found to have defamed Mercedes for implying she was a drug dealer and smuggler.

Corby’s final appeal was rejected in 2008, with the original ruling declared “accurate and correct”.News_Image_File: Corby was rushed to the hospital in 2008 as she was suffering from depression and hallucinations.

In 2010, in a last-ditch effort to reduce her sentence, Corby begs for clemency due to her mental illness. She claims her life is at risk. Two years later, her sentence is slashed by five years. She is almost home. News_Image_File: The time in prison has taken a devastating toll.

This week, Indonesia’s Justice Minister Amir Samsyuddin announces he will sign her parole papers, finally freeing Schapelle Corby after her almost decade-long stint in hell.

News_Rich_Media: Mercedes Corby storms through a waiting media pack on her way to hear news of Schapelle Corby's parole