Original subtitles

[male reporter] Michaella McCollum, the local woman

who is suspected of cocaine trafficking in Peru,

has told her lawyer, she was taken captive by a gang with guns

and forced to carry drugs.

-[camera shutters clicking] -[reporters clamoring]

[Michaella] That's me.

[reporters] Michaella! How do you feel? How is it?

[Michaella] Michaella McCollum.

[female reporter] Caught with 11 kilograms of cocaine

hidden in their luggage.

[Michaella] Aged 20, I became one half of the "Peru Two."

-[woman] What is your nationality? -Irish.

[Michaella] And owner of the world's most infamous up-do.

[female reporter] They said they'd been forced to carry the drugs,

but those claims turned out to be lies.

[Michaella] You might wonder how a regular kid from rural Northern Ireland

could wind up here…

in a maximum-security prison in South America.

[female reporter] Michaella McCollum could be jailed for 15 years.

[Michaella] My family certainly did.

[man] It was like someone had died.

[Michaella] And the whole world seemed to have something to say about it.

-[female reporter] Michaella McCollum. -[male reporter] Michaella McCollum.

[man] If they're drug dealers,

if they're trying to smuggle cocaine worth 1.5 million pounds,

then they deserve all that they are getting.

[woman 1] Their family were hounded by the media.

[woman 2 on phone] It is what people are talking about.

[Michaella] One bad decision looks set to wreck my life.

[man] The big question was why? What made them do it?

[Parry] She obviously made the decision,

but then what's behind it?

[Michaella] Well, this is the story of how I got myself into this mess.

-[yelling in Spanish] -And…

[female reporter] Michaella McCollum flew into Dublin,

out of prison and out of Peru.

[Michaella] …how I managed to get myself out of it.

[crewman] Camera speed, everyone ready? Okay, Michaella, let's go.

[music crescendos]

[deep breath]

["A Hero's Death" by Fontaines D.C. plays]

[airport PA signals]

[Michaella] I walked into the airport fearing the worst.

But stupidly, I'd managed to convince myself

I'd get through with the drugs just like Matteo had promised I would.

But I'd been lied to about where I'd have to go to get the drugs,

lied to about how much drugs they would be,

and obviously I'd been lied to about this part too.

["A Hero's Death" continues]

As Melissa and I were led away,

their questions began.

Lots and lots of questions.

[song fades]

[policewoman in Spanish] Your name?

[Michaella] Translate, they're going to translate?

Even when someone started translating them into English,

we didn't have any answers.

[policewoman] Um, you visit tourist,

-Lima? -Yes, well…

[interpreter in Spanish] They came to Lima on holidays.

[Michaella] I did panic a little bit,

but I kind of didn't want to get ahead of myself…

because I didn't know if this was supposed to happen,

if this was like part of our plan.

[policewoman] With the bags, with these?

[Melissa] That's me.

The next thing I knew, they were opening our bags.

[indistinct chatter]

[Michaella] Matteo did say if we're pulled over,

his friend's going to be searching the case,

but you know that would be fine cause he's getting paid

so then I kind of didn't know if this was meant,

if this was the way it was supposed to go,

or if we were really fucked and we were caught

or, I just kind of didn't really…

know at that point.

[distant chatter]

I thought, maybe this was a normal procedure.

[distant chatter]

Our suitcases had, like, loads of porridge packages.

You know 30, 40 packages…

[woman laughs]

…and they started laughing.

I looked at Melissa and I said, "What the fuck are we going to do?"

Cause I was thinking, "Is this supposed to happen?

Surely this is not supposed to happen.

Surely this means that we're fucked,

but you said that we weren't going to get caught,"

and I was like mumbling at her,

and she was just, you know, she didn't… She didn't speak at all.

[packages rustling]

When they tested for the cocaine…

I remember then that…

ear bud or that…

you know…

thing that they test it with turned blue.

[ominous music]

And the guy started shouting, "Coca, coca, coca!"

and then all of a sudden, the place just erupted.

I was getting swung across the room,

everything was just really crazy.

Everybody was shouting and screaming.

[somber music]

While they were deciding what to do with us,

we just sat there.

Me and Melissa hadn't spoken for like an hour.

We were kind of in shock…

and then we started to get quite emotional

'cause we were thinking, "What are we going to say to our mums?

What are we going to do?" And we were both crying

and trying to think of what we were going to do

and Melissa had said,

"We can just tell them the whole story, but we'll say that we were forced."

[somber music continues]

I don't think I'm very good at lying.

I think it's very easy for people to see when I'm telling a lie

or to see when I'm trying to hide something.

But when it came to our interrogation…

you know it was just kind of like…

I don't know, a panic situation. We thought we'll just…

maybe hope if we do this, it will…

make things better in some way.

PERU NATIONAL POLICE ANTI-DRUG DEPARTMENT

[solemn music]

[Juan Mendoza in Spanish] I read the police report.

There was nothing to investigate.

We had the drugs.

For me, it was just a common mule case,

and it was a matter of sending them to prison straight away.

[interpreter] You're, um, uh…

You know they contained drug?

[Melissa] No, I don't know that.

[interpreter in Spanish] They said they didn't know

the packets contained drugs.

[Juan Mendoza in Spanish] We didn't believe their story.

Nobody transports

from Peru to Europe…

"Quaker oats and jelly"

on a return fly.

You don't have to be a police to know that.

[woman in Spanish] Why did you come to Lima, Peru?

[in English] Why arrive Lima, Peru?

[Melissa] Someone in Ibiza.

-[woman] What? -[Melissa] Someone in Ibiza

made us bring these items back from Peru.

-[woman] "Made us"? -[Michaella] Like forced, like,

made us come. Not tourist, not, just made us come.

-[woman] Not tourists? -[Melissa] No.

[woman in English] Not tourists?

Not friends?

And what's the other possibilty?

[shackles rattling]

[Juan Mendoza in Spanish] Here the responsibility is on individual.

The law in Peru

is fair,

but it's also tough.

Fair to those who cooperate

and tough on those who do not cooperate.

[shackles rattling]

[Michaella] I remember we arrived in this drug unit

where drug traffickers or any kind of drug-related issues

would be taken there.

so it's kind of like a holding center for any drug cases.

And we were handcuffed at that point,

and they had cuffed our feet too,

and they took my shoes.

And so my feet were so cold, which made it harder to walk.

All the prisoners called it "The Dungeon."

[shackles clinking]

I didn't really expect that this was going to be the way things had went.

[prison door being drawn]

[deep breath]

[somber music]

[Parry] I was walking home from a friend's apartment,

then I went into a café for a juice and it came up on the…

It was on the news. Just her face.

I was in such disbelief that she was…

in Peru and on the tele.

The week ago, she was in Ibiza, and now she's on the news in Peru.

Mental.

[TV newscaster speaks in Spanish]

And that's just when my phone blew up

with people, friends, family, her friends and family…

asking me if I knew, asking me if I was involved,

asking me if I was okay. Just loads of questions

and I think I was just…

I was shocked, I don't know,

I was just really taken aback trying to take it all in.

The first thing I did was phone my dad.

Told him what had happened, and…

being a great dad he is, he gave me the best advice.

He just said, "You need to come home."

And then I left pretty much the next day,

and came home.

[Parry] After I left, the girls who I shared the apartment with,

they were contacting me, letting me know

that, you know, people were looking for me.

I think that's what was quite scary, is how they knew that…

that's where I was living before I'd went home.

[Michaella] That morning I woke up, you know, shivering.

The bunk was a piece of concrete.

We had no mattress, no blanket or anything.

I was crying all the time.

And I asked the guard,

"Can I call my family because I need to talk to them?"

So he was quite sympathetic,

and he knew I was genuinely upset, so he thought, "Okay."

[telephone dial beeping]

It was the worst phone call ever.

I say hello, I don't say anything else.

And I hear her shouting, "It's Michaella!"

And then she's screaming and everybody's screaming.

[sobs] Sorry.

[sniffles] So then my mom says, like, "I thought you were dead."

And then I get really upset because, like…

I didn't know that she was going through all of that.

And I'm like, "How am I going to tell her where I am?"

So then I actually get around to say, like, "I'm in…

I'm in Peru. I'm in jail,"

and she was like, "What, what?" And then…

[hang up tone]

…that was it, then the phone call ended,

and I was like screaming, like I was crying

and the police officer was like, "We need to go."

[sniffles]

So we ended the phone call really badly,

so I didn't really get to, like… [sniffles]

…tell her the situation, or…

You know, it just kind of ended like that, so…

I don't know what the heck she was thinking at that point.

[solemn music]

[Michaella] My brother later told me later that she just went unconscious, so…

they kind of, like, called the ambulance and…

they kind of thought she was suspected taking a heart attack or a stroke,

they didn't really know. But she was just so overwhelmed

in anxiety and the stress that she just kind of …

I don't know, like, passed out.

I think she was just completely heartbroken.

["Keep Moving" by Jungle plays]

[male newscaster] Police in Peru have released footage

of their interview with two women, one British, the other Irish,

who were arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking.

Customs officials in the country say they found cocaine

worth 1.5 million pounds in their luggage.

[Patricia Devlin] It was August 2013,

and I had been working a story

about a young girl from here called Michaella McCollum

who had went missing in Ibiza.

And there was huge concern for her safety.

Then it just sort of went quiet until I…

I walked into the office

and the editor had a front page of a National newspaper

which said, "Missing girl in coke bust in Peru."

It was just, it was almost unbelievable.

And the appetite for information on Michaella from the public was huge.

There was no bigger story that year than the Michaella McCollum story,

and obviously when a story like this breaks,

uh, we just throw everything at it.

[song fades]

[Christopher] I think the real clincher was, as I say,

was that it was two girls.

It was… they were not the archetypical drug mule you would expect

and particularly to come from Ibiza as well.

So… the big question was why?

What made them do it? What drove them to do it?

All that I knew really was it was important to get to Peru very quickly

because I knew instantly that there would be a lot of attention

from other newspapers, from TV crews.

There would almost be a race to get there.

[jet engines whooshing]

This story was growing all the time.

It got bigger and bigger and bigger.

[somber music]

[vehicles honking]

[Michaella] I remember the police officer from the office came downstairs

and said, "Your boyfriend is upstairs."

[door unlocks]

And I was like, "I don't have a boyfriend,"

And they were like, "Yes, boyfriend upstairs."

And I was kind of like,

"But I… I don't know what he's talking about,"

and Melissa was like, "Oh, let's go, let's go,"

like, "We need to get upstairs," because…

for us getting upstairs was like a treat, so…

Then I said, "Okay, I'll go see my boyfriend,"

and we went upstairs and there was this guy sitting there.

["Firewater" by Django Django plays]

It was some guy from, like, an English tabloid newspaper.

It was my lack of Spanish…

that really helped me.

You know, if I could have spoken Spanish,

I'd have probably talked myself out of getting into the prison.

["Firewater" continues]

And I thought if I've been banged up abroad like this in this particular place,

creature comforts,

so I just trawled the local supermarkets, petrol stations,

looking for anything that was British.

[chatter in Spanish]

[Christopher] I literally had three bags of these goods.

Hello.

And I think that helped me…

over the next half an hour, gain their trust.

Nice to meet you. I'm Melissa.

[Christopher] And the story that they gave…

was quite incredible.

[tape player clicks]

Melissa said she was trafficked to Lima,

and they said they were coerced into it,

guns pulled.

Their families had been threatened,

that type of thing.

You wanted to believe them.

You wanted to believe these were innocent girls

who were taken advantage of.

[printing press clacking]

[Patricia Devlin] Public opinion went from absolute shock

to obvious concern.

Oh, my goodness, these two,

uh, 20-something, uh, women,

here they are in a developing country in Peru,

they must have been forced.

They had to have been forced

and people were just really…

worried and concerned about how an ordinary girl could end up

so far away, um, with a bag full of drugs.

And they… I think at that stage,

most people did believe that she was forced.

[coins clinking]

People felt sorry for Michaella.

They wanted to help Michaella.

People here raised thousands of pounds for Michaella

to help her, to help her family because

they believed what she was telling them.

[eerie music stings]

[female newscaster] Two women who were arrested in Peru

after they were caught with 11 kilos of cocaine

are likely to be formally charged in the coming days.

[Michaella] I'm not from the sort of family who could ever afford

to put money aside for a rainy day

and this was some Noah's Ark-level downpour.

But somehow, in two weeks,

they'd manage to scrap together cash for an Irish lawyer who knew South America,

a local lawyer to defend me

and even the funds to send over my big brother, Keith.

[woman speaks indistinctly]

[man] And the brother, the brother is there as well.

["Hurt" by Arlo Parks plays]

[Michaella] The lawyers wanted to prep us for a meeting with the Chief Prosecutor,

who was the man who'd decide what crime we'd be charged with…

and what prison sentence we were facing.

They had read the newspaper reports where we had said we'd been forced into it.

And when they didn't question that,

me and Melissa didn't really have the heart to tell them

that it wasn't entirely the whole truth.

I mean, looking back now, I'm like it was so stupid,

you know, "Why not take responsibility?"

But I feel like in that situation,

you don't want to believe that you did that,

and you kind of want to push the responsibility away in some way.

[clamoring]

[female reporter] Melissa Reid looked stressed and bewildered

as she was jostled into a waiting police car.

-[clamoring] -[camera shutters click]

[Michaella] We were taken from the cells to meet Juan Mendoza,

the Chief Prosecutor, who was going to decide our fate.

["Please Believe" by Elite Tennis Club plays]

[clamoring]

[vehicle honks]

[music fades]

[Juan Mendoza in Spanish] They arrived at my office.

I was very firm and told them,

"Don't lie to the prosecution."

"You can not deceive us."

[tense percussive music]

[Juan Mendoza in Spanish] You have the opportunity

to collaborate with us and reduce your sentence

even gain your freedom.

The only condition is that you give us information

that identifies or leads to the arrest of cartel members.

[tense music continues]

[male journalist] Did you ever believe their story?

Was there any part of it you ever believed?

No, never!

I've heard this story before. I've seen this happen to other people,

and that's not the way that drug… drug traffickers operate.

They don't force people.

What they do is they promise things.

They tell them, "Ah, you're going to go somewhere where there aren't any cameras.

It's super easy.

You'll be back in a day," you know.

That's the way they work.

It's not common to hear

"Oh, someone, you know, forced me into it by pointing a gun at me."

["Copper Bullet" by Denise Chaila plays]

[siren blares]

[female newscaster] Two women arrested in Peru on suspicion of smuggling cocaine

have been formally charged.

Michaella McCollum could be jailed for 15 years.

["Copper Bullet" continues]

[Michaella] I couldn't even understand what that would feel like.

I mean, what 20-year-old can imagine being,

you know, being in prison for 15 years?

I think it's very hard to even imagine or even think about.

The only way to get it reduced was to cooperate.

[tense music]

But that meant giving up information of Davey, Matteo and Julio back in Spain.

And whenever I thought of that,

I thought of Julio's drawer of guns.

Worse even than the thought of the guns

was the thought of telling my mom,

that everything we'd said about being forced to do it…

[Michaella in footage] Somebody made us come here.

-[woman] No tourist? -Just made us come.

[Michaella] …wasn't exactly the whole truth.

[Michaella] It had only been two months…

but it felt like two years already.

[inmates clamoring]

Time was going kid-before-Christmas slow.

[eerie music]

I barely ate.

I couldn't sleep.

[eerie music intensifies]

I would lie awake all night with the guilt…

and the cockroaches.

[cockroach clicking]

At the beginning, I was obviously scared

because I'd never really seen cockroaches before,

and there was like lots of cockroaches, there was so many of them.

I would get into bed at night,

you would hear them crawling up

and they'd all be escaping.

I used to just cover myself in the sheet

so they didn't crawl on me,

but you would just constantly hear that clicking against the metal

of hundreds of cockroaches.

I was really paranoid

because I felt like my skin was crawling.

I felt itchy all of the time.

I would be slapping my leg or slapping my arm.

[rustling]

I went to see a prison doctor,

and he basically said I was crazy because I felt like there was things on me.

But there actually wasn't.

Basically I was like really losing it.

[engine whooshing]

[female newscaster 1] Two British women are appearing before a judge in Peru,

accused of trying to smuggle drugs.

[female newscaster 2] Michaella McCollum and Melissa Reid who are both 20

could be jailed for 15 years if they're found guilty.

[male reporter] How are you feeling, girls? How are you feeling? Okay?

[judge in Spanish] …attributed to Michaella McCollum,

the crime is…

[Michaella] So when my court date finally came around…

[continues in Spanish] …of the state…

…Melissa and I both thought like we need to tell the truth

because this is gonna backlash.

And we just wanted it to be over.

And I thought, like, "Oh, my God."

And at that point, it was kind of like…

you know 50-50, I didn't know what was going to happen.

[tense music crescendos]

[lawyer speaking in Spanish] …for that reason…

[male reporter] In the last hour, the two women have arrived here

at this hearing. Sources close to the family

say they are going to accept the charges against them

because they want to spend as little time as possible in a Peruvian jail.

[Michaella] Eventually,

I just kind of told the judge what really happened

[judge in Spanish] …which is cocaine hydrochloride with carbonates.

[cameras clicking]

[Michaella] Now that I was pleading guilty,

I was hoping that I would be given the minimum sentence,

6 years and 8 months.

That's what I expected.

[tense drum beats]

[Andrea] Because of the amount of drugs that they were carrying,

even if they plead guilty,

Juan Mendoza really wanted to give them a really high sentence.

[tense drum beats]

They couldn't just say,

"Oh, yeah, I'm guilty but I didn't do it."

They had to say, "Yes, I'm guilty, I did this,"

and they had to open up and they had to make the court feel

they're helping.

[tense percussive music]

What I did this I made a deal with the defence and with them.

The deal is called "submit oneself to being an effective informant".

[female reporter] These pictures were filmed in the court in Lima yesterday.

They show 20-year-olds, Melissa Reid from Lenzie

and Michaella McCollum from Northern Ireland, being sentenced.

[woman speaking in Spanish] …by a competent authority.

[Michaella] I knew we would never survive 15 years in a Peruvian prison,

so I decided, you know, we had to give them something.

[tense music]

So I told them a few details that might help them work out

what town in Majorca Julio's apartment was in.

[tense music continues]

Much less than I knew, of course.

But just enough, I hoped…

-[telephone rings] -…to show I was cooperating.

[telephone rings]

[female reporter] The Judge sentenced them to 8 years in prison,

but they struck a plea bargain…

so discounted it to 6 years and 8 months.

[distant conversation in Spanish]

Obviously if somebody had of told me that I would go to prison

for 6 years and 8 months, I would say that's impossible.

Like, 6 years and 8 months is a long time.

But that in comparison to 15 years, I thought was nothing.

[tense music continues]

[male reporter] Michaella McCollum and Melissa Reid

will now join 30 other British nationals already in Peruvian jails

for smuggling drugs.

[Michaella] I'd given them enough to get my sentence reduced.

Now I just had to hope…

it wasn't also enough to get me killed.

[truck honks]

Michaella and Melissa had both admitted to doing it for money.

They had said they had carried this out, they had taken money for it,

they knew what they were doing, they had done it willingly,

and then that really, really changed how the public viewed them.

["Truth" by Sun.Set.Ships plays]

[Michaella] Everything did change a lot after I pleaded guilty.

You know from that moment onwards,

I felt like I was the most hated person in the world.

And at that point, I probably was.

["Truth" continues]

[Patricia Devlin] Her actions were abhorrent.

She shouldn't have carried them out. No one supported what she did.

["Truth" continues]

People felt betrayed. They felt deceived.

[male reporter] Convicted drug smuggler Michaella McCollum from Dungannon,

we'll get your views this morning.

[man on phone] Just a common criminal. Don't deserve anything.

[Patricia Devlin] Don't forget at the start,

people felt sorry for Michaella.

People here raised thousands of pounds for Michaella.

[woman on phone] She lied. Where is her apology?

["Truth" continues]

[Michaella] At that point,

my biggest worry was for my family back home

because they were trying to deal with what, like, happened to me,

but then they had all of that extra stuff,

like, "Everybody is talking about you, everybody is looking at you."

There's like new stories and scandals every day.

So my family really, really struggled,

um…

to kind of deal with that. They didn't really know…

[inhales]

…how to deal with that situation.

They just avoided going outside a lot of the time.

Um…

You know I think it was really difficult for them.

[Michaella] Spending nearly seven years in a Peruvian prison…

is never going to be anyone's ideal plan for their 20s,

but I kept clinging to the fact it could have been twice as long,

which did make me feel a bit better.

Until they told me where I'd be serving my sentence,

Ancón Dos.

[Andrea] Ancón Dos is a real prison. It's a huge complex,

and you share a room with like eight other people

with only one bathroom.

The water gets cut constantly 'cause it's in the middle of the desert.

The winters are extremely cold,

and the summers are extremely hot.

[ominous music]

And you have a mix of some of the most dangerous people.

People charged with rape or murders.

It's horrendous.

[clamoring]

[ominous music continues]

[male journalist in Spanish] What can happen to drug mules

if they give information to the police?

[B in Spanish] They kill them.

[ominous music continues]

In one way or another,

even if they are in jail,

they have contacts.

Not even the prison helps them.

[music fades]

[closing theme music]