They were offered a ‘trip of a lifetime’ but wound up in an Australian jail

Vera “Toddie” Hays and Florice “Beezie” Bessire were the two most unlikely criminals you could imagine. Not even Hollywood could have come up with their characters, who came to be known as the “Drug Grannies” after being so dubbed in the media.

The two women were long-time companions who had lived together, first in Los Angeles in the late 1950s, through to retirement in a small Oregon community, La Pine in the mid-70s. An offer from Toddie’s nephew of an all-expenses paid “trip of a lifetime” driving a campervan from Stuttgart to Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1977 was too good to refuse. Neither women had ever travelled overseas before, and at 59 and 61, now was the time. Nephew Vern Todd told them that once they’d reached Bombay, he’d ship the vehicle to Australia to use in a documentary film he was making.

The Drug Grannies: Florice “Beezie” Bessire and Vera “Toddie” Hays.Credit: Steve Boyer/The Bend Bulletin

Having safely manoeuvred their eight-metre-long Mercedes-Benz rig through Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, we take up their story in Turkey, where they were rudely awakened to the realities of being two older women with no language skills and little understanding of the culture of the country they were in.

Toddie was careful and kept to the speed limits, if not under them, especially as she was driving in foreign countries with often puzzling road rules. The scenery pleased them, but the food was sometimes a mystery. In one of Toddie’s phone calls to her nephew to keep him across their progress, she said the tinned foods with which they’d loaded up in Stuttgart were beginning to pay off as they found the national dishes on offer not at all to their liking.

By the time they were approaching Turkish territory, the roads had become thin passages, the bitumen patchy and often worn through to the dirt beneath. Stones thrown up by passing vehicles proved a constant danger. Still, the different languages seemed less confronting the further they went, and they continued to admire the ever-changing scenery.

The van so far had served them well, and the inclusions worked perfectly. It wasn’t “home”, but they didn’t travel halfway around the world to sit in the comfort of their own living room.

Their daily plan was to drive for about eight hours, then pull into a caravan park where they felt safe, usually situated close to a petrol station or supermarket. Toddie had so far been able to maintain good health and she took care not to strain herself driving without regular breaks. Beezie navigated, made the coffees and checked the oil and water at each rest stop and petrol station. She prepared and cooked all of their meals.

Theirs was a relationship founded on each woman’s independence but reliant on co-operation and mutual tolerance. By now they were successfully through the Edirne border from Bulgaria into Turkey on their way to Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul. It was already after midday. They had 240 kilometres to cover and the roads weren’t in great condition, so it was late afternoon by the time they approached the city outskirts. It had been a particularly long day for Toddie. She was losing concentration fast. The bridge crossing at Bosphorus gave them a magnificent view of Istanbul, but the Turkish drivers were no delight.

The Turks’ haphazard and dangerous driving had the women on the edge of their seats. The constant cacophony of horns was deafening. Road rules seemed non-existent, road etiquette equally absent, and the campervan felt too wide and long for the narrow lanes and streets of the city.

Theirs was a relationship founded on each woman’s independence but reliant on co-operation and mutual tolerance.

The next destination was Ankara, 450 kilometres south-east. Toddie did a quick calculation and figured that if the roads weren’t too bad, she’d last the distance despite her weariness.

The sun began to dip and the traffic eased as they moved away from Istanbul. They followed the road along the Sea of Marmara and decided to pull into a rest area near Izmit, half an hour or so out of Istanbul. Both women were exhausted and decided not to push on through the night.

Beezie prepared a quick meal on the stove and Toddie stretched out on her bed, badly in need of sleep. They ate a late dinner without much conversation, and then Toddie retired for the night.

While Beezie washed the dishes, it dawned on her that she had seen warnings in one of the tourist brochures about bandits on the outer roads. Travellers were advised not to stop unnecessarily at night on the wayside. She pushed the warning to the back of her mind and prepared for bed, pulling the drapes across the living section of the van before turning out her light.

Not long after, Toddie sat bolt upright, reached across to Beezie’s bed, and grabbed her arm, shaking it and urging her to wake up. Flashes of light were penetrating the campervan windows and raised voices could be heard from all directions outside. The voices became louder and broke into shouting. The women worked out it was flashlights casting eerie shadows, criss-crossing the walls and ceiling of the campervan.

Beezie pictured with a mechanic in Jaipur who helped them get back on the road again.

Beezie leaped from the bed and grabbed for a knife from the kitchen drawer. The male voices they could hear, they figured, must be speaking in Turkish. The shouting was then accompanied by loud banging against the outside of the van.

Toddie, the more physically imposing of the two women, dressed quickly. She moved to the front of the van towards the driver’s seat. Grabbing the edges of the drapes Beezie had drawn earlier, Toddie flung them aside and put her hands on her hips to create an impression of fearlessness. The flashlights shone on her, and she could see rifles raised and pointed directly at the campervan’s windscreen.

The “bandits” turned out to be Turkish police who, upon sighting the women, lowered their weapons. The commander motioned his men to move aside and walked around to the driver’s side of the van. Toddie’s and Beezie’s hearts were racing. Toddie wound down the passenger window and looked directly at the commander. “American tourist, American tourist,” she said, pleading for understanding. “Tourista, tourista.”

None of the soldiers spoke any English. The commander approached the window, gesturing with his hands, pointing into the distance and drawing his forefinger from side to side across his neck.

There was no mistaking this as a clear warning that the rest area in which they were parked for the night was dangerous and vulnerable to attack by bandits. Another policeman uttered “bang” in his best cowboy vernacular, pressing his forefinger to his temple. Toddie and Beezie needed no further convincing to move along. With their adrenaline pumping, and thankful nods of understanding, the women handed out American cigarettes, which were gratefully received by the now smiling policemen. Toddie looked at her watch. It was 10pm. Meanwhile, Beezie pored over their maps, trying to decide their next move.

“If only they could see this at home, they wouldn’t believe us.”

Soon after, Toddie started up the van and they were on the road again. They agreed the safest bet would be to keep driving but didn’t relish the thought of heading back to Istanbul, so they struck out for Ankara.

They carefully drove through the night towards their destination, arriving on the city’s outskirts at around 3am. “We stopped a cab and tried to make him understand to lead us to a hotel in Ankara,” Toddie wrote in her diary. “I told him we would pay him like we were a fare. Explaining this transaction took almost half an hour, but he finally understood.”

Finding a hotel, they parked, checked in and collapsed into their beds, sleeping soundly for the next
12 hours. Meanwhile, Beezie thought, “If only they could see this at home, they wouldn’t believe us.”

Beezie (second left) and Toddie (second right) with their guards at the Norma Parker Centre.

Postscript

While the Drug Grannies were to survive the continuing challenges of overland travel through Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, it was not without being tested by a flood, a breakdown that left them stranded in Bengal tiger country, a fierce attack by armed bandits near Alwar, in India, and the mysterious side trip Vern Todd took for several days in Peshawar while the women cooled their heels in a government dacha … none the wiser to the nephew’s true intentions.

Eventually forced to fly to Australia to collect the campervan, and then threatened with harm by Vern Todd, the two women ultimately fell into a well-planned trap set by the now-defunct Australian Federal Bureau of Narcotics. They were arrested in Sydney in early 1978 while Beezie was trying to fly home to the USA and Toddie was in hospital.

Their Australian jail sentence – in both its length and lack of a parole date – was unprecedented. In prison, they survived riots, assaults, a knife attack and countless false promises of early release from an unsympathetic federal government intent on using them as examples to other potential drug mules now pouring into Australia with a variety of illegal substances such as heroin, LSD and hashish.

This is the inside story that the Drug Grannies finally get to tell in Betrayed. The book is based on their diaries, letters, court transcripts and interviews with the young journalist who reported on their fight for justice at the time and who eventually committed himself to getting them out of jail.

Edited extract from Betrayed (Hachette Australia) by Sandi Logan, out June 1.

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