Cocaine Cassie tells how she fell in love with a woman who turned her into a drug mule in new book
Convicted drug smuggler Cassie Sainsbury has told how her downward spiral began with one fateful meeting. See the video.
True Crime
Don't miss out on the headlines from True Crime. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Convicted cocaine smuggler Cassie Sainsbury has revealed she was secretly in love with the “predatory and manipulative” woman who lured her into becoming a drug mule.
The 29-year-old made global headlines in 2017 when she landed in one of South America’s most notorious prisons after being caught with a suitcase containing 5.8kg of cocaine in Bogota, Colombia.
Now based in Adelaide with her wife Tatiana after serving three years, Sainsbury has written a tell-all memoir and says she plans to donate the proceeds of the book to a charity that helps rehabilitate former prisoners.
Among the bombshells in the book are the horror attacks she endured in the tough women’s jail, the threats that pushed her into smuggling drugs and what she describes as betrayal by some of her closest family members while she was imprisoned.
Watch the video above to hear Cassie Sainsbury read an extract of the book where she explains how she tried to escape Bogota
Sainsbury says an all-consuming infatuation with an older woman resulted in the prison term during which she endured daily beatings and horrific sexual assaults.
She says she was easy prey for the woman, known as Wendy, when they first met, as she was struggling with her sexuality while engaged to her former fiancee Scott Broadbridge.
Sainsbury and Wendy formed a friendship while they were both studying to become personal trainers – and it was Wendy who encouraged her to work at a Sydney brothel.
“We just became really good friends,” she said. “I got bullied a lot growing up so I struggled to connect with people and it was almost like she enveloped me.
“She always knew the right thing to say to me, she always knew how to comfort me.
“I confided in her that I was gay, that I liked women and that I lived in the closet because I was so scared of what people would say and think.
“It’s not something that I felt would be accepted into my family at all and so I was constantly always trying to make myself straight, do the right thing, have the perfect relationship and it was hell.”
Sainsbury said although their relationship was never physical, she latched onto Wendy like a “lost puppy” after she dropped “subtle” hints that they could be more than friends.
With hindsight, Sainsbury now believes Wendy, who she described in the memoir as the “architect of my downfall”, was a predator.
“It was all too consuming and she was very manipulative — it was grooming because essentially you don’t like yourself, you don’t have any self-love and you feel like you’ve got no worth,” she said.
“It’s so easy to take someone and suddenly give them everything they think they need to hear and feel — then you’ve got the most adoring person that will probably do anything for you.”
Sainsbury was invited by the woman to go on an overseas trip that was pitched as a fun getaway.
In reality, Sainsbury claimed, she was lured to Bogota and eventually forced by a man who threatened to harm her family to smuggle drugs.
“She painted this trip to be the best thing in the world and little did I know that I was being sold a nightmare, I didn’t see it coming,” she said.
That nightmare culminated in a stint in El Buen Pastor prison, described by Sainsbury as “horrifying”.
“The place was filthy, women were walking around naked. they would walk around with knives embedded in their tongue,” she said.
Since her time in prison, Sainsbury has completed a criminology degree and now hopes to study law.
“Eventually when I do get the chance to study law, it’s going to give me the perspective of both sides.
“More so, I would want to be the lawyer that I didn’t have over there.”
Sainsbury said she doesn’t want to profit from her crimes and plans to donate the proceeds of her book to charities that help prisoners with their rehabilitation.
“For me, it was never about the money,” she said. “I am so grateful to the publishing people for giving me a voice.”
Cocaine Cassie: Setting the Record Straight is published by New Holland Publishers.
More Coverage
Originally published as Cocaine Cassie tells how she fell in love with a woman who turned her into a drug mule in new book
Mein Kampf man coerced child to torch ex’s $90k ute
A prison inmate concerned about his treatment in custody has been warned by a judge he “may need to wear a beanie for life” in order to cover a massive tattoo of Adolf Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf on his forehead.
Read more
Inside housemate from hell’s months-long revenge plot
Former flatmates of Tsai-Wei Hung say they endured months of torment after she was booted from their Clyde North rental, as new video shows the moment she torched their cars and lobbed Molotov cocktails at her landlord’s front door.
Read more