Sara Connor: Byron Bay mum has approached Schapelle Corby’s security guard ahead of release from Bali jail
Schapelle Corby’s bodyguard is in a race against time to travel to Bali to help escort fellow Australian prisoner Sara Connor to freedom.
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Exclusive: Schapelle Corby’s bodyguard is in a race against time to travel to Bali to help escort fellow Australian prisoner Sara Connor to freedom.
Three years after assisting drug runner Corby out of the island’s infamous Kerobokan jail, Australian security consultant John McLeod has been approached to protect the Byron Bay mother upon her release.
Prison authorities hold grave fears for the 49-year-old’s safety following the murder of a separate cop killer upon their release from prison in Sulawesi – an Indonesian island in the Makassar sea.
Connor will be released tomorrow having served four years of her five year sentence for her part in the fatal bashing of a policeman on Kuta beach in 2016 with her former DJ boyfriend David Taylor, a Brit who remains in jail.
“I will have more to tell you tomorrow because there are several issues with getting to Bali at the moment,” Mr McLeod told News Corp.
Indonesia is not accepting foreigners unless they already hold a work visa. Immigration is not issuing visas since the island is closed to international visitors.
The corrections division head of the Law and Human Right ministry’s Bali office, Mr Suprapto said that Connor’s safety when she leaves to prison tomorrow is his top priority.
Cop killers are targets for reprisal assassinations.
“We want to ensure her safety when she is released from prison. We don’t want another revenge killing. Her safety is our consideration. (The) case where victims are police officers can attract persecution,” Mr Suprapto said.
Mr McLeod is the famous hired gun who shepherded Schapelle Corby during the major media circus of her release in 2017 from the same hell hole prison where she served nine years for infamously bringing a boogie board bag stuffed with 4.2kg of cannabis to the holiday island.
He has also extracted Queensland schoolie-gone-bad Zac Whiting who was thrown into the Kuta cells last year for punching a security guard in the car park of Burger King.
And Mr McLeod helped a hapless New Zealander with mental health issues, to be returned safely returned to home after trying to enter Bali with more than 5000 declared and legitimate prescription medications – an action that could have landed him in prison for ten years.
“Sara looks so excited to leave. Yesterday she told me that she could not wait to meet her children again. She has already packed her things. We have asked the police for support
with security. We have had no request from Tora Solutions but if it is outside of prison, it is not our authority,” said Mrs Lili, the head of Kerobokan women’s prison.
‘FEARS FOR HER LIFE’
Prison officials have grave concerns for 49-year-old Connor’s safety as cop killers are a prime target for revenge in Bali as soon as they leave prison.
Connor was serving four years for her involvement in the grisly and fatal bashing of a policeman on Kuta beach in 2016 with her former boyfriend, British-born DJ David Taylor, who remains in jail.
With reduced flights between Bali and Australia, Connor may be held in the detention cell at the airport to wait for a flight. She will arrive to a further two weeks of confinement in quarantine.
The 49-year-old mother of two, who has retrained as a hairdresser while inside, is a loner who does little more than smoke and drink coffee while waiting to be reunited with her sons, who are now aged 13 and 15.
She barely speaks Indonesian, further isolating her from the prison population. She shares a cell with half a dozen local women, who are mainly small-time thieves and drug convicts, as well as the infamous ‘Ibu Made’, who is doing time for the death of the three-month-old baby.
Connor famously lashes out at anyone — guard or fellow inmate — who she fears is surreptitiously taking her photograph as a souvenir.
This paranoia is only likely to grow during the two weeks of quarantine she will endure on her arrival home.
Prison insiders say that Connor rejects exercise, arts and craft activities and even food.
Despite learning hairdressing, briefly working in the kitchen and exploring painting, she no longer partakes in any jail activities.
“Sara keeps to herself and is not friendly. Not to anyone. She didn’t participate in our recent fashion show and never gets involved with dance, or anything that the jail asks her to be part of,” one prisoner, who did not want to be named, said.
“She thinks people will sell her photo and is crazy and paranoid about that. She loves her ciggies and coffee and hanging out in a quiet corner.”
Connor struck up a friendship with British death row granny Lindsay Sandiford, who was sentenced to death for smuggling cocaine in 2013, but they had a recent falling out.
Connor befriended an Arab card skimmer, who was transferred to another prison last week for bashing a guard.
“She’s very sad and a very moody person,” a charity worker, who also did not want to be named, said.
Connor today appears to be the polar opposite of the woman described in a book of 78 character references from family and friends that was a loving ode to her goodness when it was presented to the court during her trial.
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At the time Connor told journalists that she hoped God would give her two sons strength to endure the situation.
“If this is what God has planned for my life, to punish me so harshly and deprive my children of their mother, I hope he will give my children the strength to cope,” she said.
However, she has not found God in Hotel K – the nickname for the jail – and does not attend church inside the building that was opened in 1979 to house 300 inmates rather than the 1400 it contains today.
Connor and her former boyfriend, 38-year-old British national David Taylor who was once a dreadlocked toy boy called DJ Nutzo, were found guilty of the deadly assault of Balinese police officer Wayan Sudarsa, whose broken body had 42 bloody wounds, including shocking head injuries, was found on Kuta beach in August 2016.
Connor, who has always maintained her innocence, offered $2500 in compensation to Mr Sudarsa’s widow but the proposal was rebuffed.
Originally published as Sara Connor: Byron Bay mum has approached Schapelle Corby’s security guard ahead of release from Bali jail