Housekeeper busted for pocketing ice stash found in hotel room

A housekeeping supervisor who pocketed the lion’s share of a 120g stash of the drug ice found in a hotel room has walked free from court.

A Gold Coast housekeeping supervisor who secretly pocketed the lions share of a 120g stash of the drug ice found in a hotel room has walked free from court, with the judge describing it as an “extraordinary case”.

Nicole Joy Wilkes, 52, was in the Brisbane Supreme Court on Tuesday before Justice Melanie Hindman where she pleaded guilty to possession of the drug ice on June 4 last year.

Crown Prosecutor Stipe Drinovac told the court that Wilkes had “facilitated the preservation of a commercial quantity of methylamphetamine”.

Wilkes, who moved to the Gold Coast from Victoria when she was a child, was handed a bag containing 120g of ice, which contained 90g of pure ice, by cleaners who found it stashed inside a cushion cover on a lounge cushion in Broadbeach serviced apartment block.

“It is a very large amount of methylamphetamine,” Mr Drinovac told the court.

The cleaners thoroughly searched the room after the previous guest returned after checking out, claiming he had left something behind, the court heard.

When he looked in the room, the cleaners noticed he was “staring in the vicinity of the lounge”, but he did not retrieve the drugs, the court heard.

After the cleaners discovered the stash and handed it to their supervisor, Wilkes took a small amount of the ice and put it in a clip-seal bag and handed it in to management, but “secreted the balance” of the 120g in her cleaning trolley and then took it home, the court heard.

Within hours, she effectively confessed to her boss and agreed to return the balance of the drugs the next day.

The incident was then reported to police.

Nicole Joy Wilkes - Photo Steve Pohlner

“(She) very quickly she came to realise what she was doing was utterly stupid,” Wilkes’ barrister Bernard Reilly told the court.

“At 8.41pm she called her manager told them what she had done,” he said.

Mr Reilly told the court that his client only took the drugs home because she was “concerned” the guest who lost the drugs may return and act violently toward the cleaners.

“My clients son is really one of the reasons she was led into saving these drugs with her (taking them) home from the workplace. He is now 27, but when he was 18 to 21 he was a user of methylamphetamine,” Mr Reilly told the court.

In sentencing Wilkes to a wholly-suspended three months jail, Justice Hindman described Wilkes actions as “an extremely unfortunate blip in your life” and that she was otherwise an “functioning ordinary, successful member of society” who had “a good upbringing”.

“It is ...an extraordinary case. you are not the type of drug offender that normally comes before this court, not by any stretch of the imagination,” Justice Hindman said.

“It really was just a terrible error of judgment made in the heat of the moment affected by your history with your son,” she told Wilkes.

“That decision, obviously, to have secreted those drugs at home was playing on your mind, it was causing you stress almost immediately upon having made the decision and I accept because you knew that you were doing the wrong thing,” Justice Hindman said.