US cop stops infamous Aussie crim David McMillan from the grave

Infamous Aussie drug smuggler David McMillan will stop writing about his life of crime, ironically ending his story with the obsessed US DEA agent who “made my ruin his life’s calling”.

There’s something akin to poetic justice that famed criminal turned author David McMillan should decide to stop writing true crime books with the tale of his relentless pursuit by a dogged US Drug Enforcement Administration agent.

David McMillan pictured in the London Hilton. Picture: Ella Pellegrini

McMillan claims DEA Special Agent William ‘Bill’ Shenkmann became obsessed with him and pursued him around the world, appearing just before or after each of his arrests, his invisible hand apparently involved most times authorities busted McMillan.

It was a mutual obsession and now, in some way, Shenkmann, who has since passed away, has had the last laugh, pursuing McMillan one last time into retirement from his true crime book writing career.

“He made my ruin his life’s calling,” the 63-year-old McMillan told True Crime Australia.

“It’s over. I don’t enjoy writing about myself anymore and might just go with fiction.”

McMillan was one of Australia’s biggest criminals, whose drugs smuggling exploits saw him pursued by authorities for more than 35 years and jailed off and on for 20.

Infamously, he became the only Westerner to successfully escape from Bangkok’s notorious Klong Prem prison when in 1996 he used wooden picture frames lashed to bamboo poles to climb over seven walls and make his escape.

Toby Schmitz plays David McMillan running foul of police at Bangkok Airport in Underbelly: The Man Who Got Away. Picture: Supplied

The plot featured in the Underbelly TV series, which highlighted the former Melbourne man’s incredible wealth from drug smuggling, which began at Sydney Airport in the 1970s when he developed a bag-switching drugs trafficking system to move hash from India and heroin from Thailand into Australia.

His infamy only increased when it was revealed he had plotted to use a helicopter and a former SAS soldier and West African mercenaries to escape from Melbourne’s Pentridge Prison.

Since leaving his life of crime behind, the now UK-based dual British-Australian national has written several books about his past, but now says it would be easier to write fiction instead of fact, which put “too many lives at risk”.

David McMillan was released from jail in the UK in September 2016. Picture: Ella Pellegrini

In his latest book, available online, Unforgiving Destiny — The Relentless Pursuit of a Black Marketeer, he gives grit and attitude to his cavalier exploits best summed up by the line: “I’m too old to apologise for my life, and have made too many apologies to the dead to care how evil readers believe I am. Besides, would a good guy tell you what you really want to know?”

Fair point.

Unforgiven Destiny gives the context before and after his Klong Prem prison break, but it’s the subplot of the pursuit by Shenkmann, a Washington-based intelligence analyst, that is most interesting. He investigated a shadowy drugs plot in Thailand in the 1970s and would later recognise a photo of McMillan years later in another plot and pursued him ever since.

“A problem that shadowed my former smuggling career was that funding was readily available to launch (police) task-force operations,” he told True Crime Australia.

David McMillan is turning his attention to fiction after telling the story of his life of crime. Picture: Supplied

“I was just big enough to justify the cost, and ideally for investigators, an independent who refused to work with either the cartels or black-hats within the police agencies. The really big operators are always tangled up with politicians and government agencies, both of which are threatened if the story ever gets to court. The independent is the ideal target as no corrupt officials might be uncovered.

“Even so, only once did an official take the pursuit personally — that American DEA agent working in Australia from the 1970s made my ruin his life’s calling.

“I’ve written of Bill Shenkmann’s relentless chase in Unforgiving Destiny which will be my last autobiographical book. Bill would suddenly appear at my major arrests. First in Melbourne, then Thailand and even in Pakistan as well as the edges of South America. He’d put my name up in operations from Cali to Kabul — even when I was not a player. There were deaths on all sides. Who was to blame? Was I the cause of misery for trading, or were Bill and his colleagues equally culpable for creating a war? That’s a question only someone standing outside — a reader perhaps — can answer.”

David McMillan pictured in London. Picture: Ella Pellegrini

McMillan’s pacy plot jumps around a bit, perhaps much like his life, and at times it’s hard to follow the detours and is a little indulgent, but rightly settles midway in the moments before, during and life after his infamous Bangkok prison break.

Throughout the book the constant theme is that of a smuggler’s guide to doing things right and wrong and like all good crime, the cynicism and conspiracy of others to blame.

Even government prohibition is used to justify his heroin trafficking, with the suggestion laws indirectly created the lucrative black market, and the risk pushed up prices to wet a smuggler’s appetite.

It’s warts-and-all honesty, a man’s personal rise and fall, and rise again, journey with acceptance of his own failings, amid accounts of crims robbing crims and broader betrayals.

Ultimately he accepts his true adversary was not Shenkmann and others but himself.