It all started when Michaella McCollum Connolly was reported missing in Ibiza. The 20-year-old Irish woman had been working for the summer as a dancer at a club in San Antonio when she reportedly vanished at the end of July, worrying her parents. 15 days after she was reported mission, her parents remained hopeful and confident that they would find her.
Michaella turned up almost a month later in Peru along with 19-year-old Melissa Reid from Scotland when police intercepted the two attempting to board a flight to Madrid from Lima, Peru with over $2.3 million worth of cocaine in their suitcases.
When confronted by the authorities, the girls claimed that they were kidnapped at gunpoint by gang members in Ibiza and then flown to Morocco and eventually to Lima, where they were given 11 kilos of cocaine concealed in Quaker Oats packets.
Though they claim that they were forced to do all this against their will, it’s hard to believe that they were either completely ignorant of what was going on or fully uncooperative with the gang members based on information that has since come out about their time spent in South America.
There is a video of the girls just after their arrest where they appear candid and unconcerned with what was going on. Here they are seen eating donuts and laughing in the police station:
Peruvian taxi driver Martin Huaroto chauffeured Michaella and Melissa around Lima for three-days before their arrest. He describe the girls as “relaxed and happy” as they went on a shopping spree around the city spending hundreds of British pounds on high-end clothing, jewelry, and shoes.
The girls also found time for a two-day sightseeing trip to the Andes, hopping on a flight to Cusco just after landing in Peru, and seemed perfectly content and relaxed as they checked into their hotel upon returning to Lima, chatting with hotel employees about their amazing trip.
Huarato was shocked when he saw the girls in the news after their arrest. “I thought they must be really spoiled because they bought so much. When I saw them on the news I could not believe it – they had gone from being on expensive shopping trips in my cab to holed up in a dirty cell.”
However, he did acknowledge that he has been aware of this happening before. “It’s very common for girls to be talked into coming to Peru by flash gangsters. They are promised free drugs, money, a holiday and accommodation. When they get caught out the world comes from beneath them.”
A worker at the police station where the girls were being held said, “Michaella and Melissa have been laughing, and even singing songs like You’re Just Too Good To Be True. It’s the same old story we have heard a million times . . . They were just stupid, allowing themselves to get in a situation and got caught. Now they have to deal with the consequences.”
Drug gangs have exploited vulnerable young girls working in Ibiza to further their illegal businesses for years. They tend to seek out PR workers, who are hired to hand out pamphlets advertising parties and clubs, offering significant amounts of money and extravagant trips abroad.
Just recently, Peru overtook Colombia as the world's largest producer and exporter of cocaine. Drug lords in Peru make more than £1 billion each year with the cocaine they transport into Brazil and Europe alone. Peru has the second highest rate in the world for arrest charges of people illegally transporting drugs. In 2012 alone, 248 “drug mules” were arrested at Lima’s Jorge Chavez international airport, the same place where the two girls from the UK were caught.
