The Brisbane Drug Story

1986

A True Story

Written 1/2012* 922 Words*

By Howard Yasgar

During the 1980’s, my company was doing quite a bit of business in Taiwan.

So, when the Christmas holidays came around and our company closed for a two-week vacation, I usually took the first week to travel with my wife to Taiwan and meet with our suppliers.

In 1986, our friends, Ros and Neil Metcalf of Truck Electrics in Brisbane Australia invited us to come visit them, after we did our business in Taiwan.

My wife Kathrine worked out a travel plan for us to use.

We would spend four days in Taiwan taking care of business there, then we would fly on Quantas Airlines to Bangkok Thailand.

After spending a couple of days in Thailand, we would fly on to Sydney Australia.

Once in Sidney, we could again fly on Quantas to Brisbane and spend a few days with our friends there.

I then called up our friends Barney and Saralee Kaplan in Detroit, to tell them what we were doing.

Saralee asked me to do her a favor; she wanted me to bring Ros a gift.

Barney and Saralee had recently visited with Ros and Neil in Australia, and now Saralee had bought a small personal gift for Ros.

The package she sent me was 6 inches long by 6 inches wide, and not very thick, and it felt soft like a blouse or scarf or something like that, and I didn’t give it another thought.

On December 12, 1986, we left Miami and arrived in Taipei, Taiwan.

We stayed at the Sheraton Lai-Lai hotel in Taipei, the same as we always did.

As usual, I had a large gray Samsonite suitcase and a soft leather fold up garment bag with several zippered pockets in it. My wife had a large soft suitcase and a matching garment bag.

When we finished doing our business in Taiwan, we then flew on to Bangkok Thailand.

While we were in Thailand, I purchased a few cartons of Thai cigarettes that I intended to give to friends as gifts when we returned to Miami.

I packed all the cigarettes in the zippered pockets of my soft leather garment bag.

Our next flight was flying again on Quantas from Bangkok Thailand to Sidney Australia.

When we arrived in Sidney Australia, my soft leather fold up garment bag was missing.

At the Sydney airport, the Quantas agent said, “Not to worry mate, we always find lost bags”.

He was right, that night a Quantas employee came to our hotel with my fold up garment bag, they had found it.

I took the garment bag to our hotel room, and I checked all the pockets, and nothing was missing.

So, after spending two days in Sidney, we were off to see our friends Ros and Neil in Brisbane Australia.

At Brisbane airport my wife and I waited at the luggage carousel, but my garment bag was missing again.

After what seemed like an eternity, and everyone had left the airport, I then told a Customs Agent that one of our bags was missing.

He said, “yes, we know all about it, someone would be bringing it out to us soon”, and just as he said that another Customs Agent came walking out from behind the luggage carousel. He was carrying my soft leather garment bag, and there was a Beagle puppy running along beside him, and the dog was jumping and he was sniffing my bag.

I said to the Agent, this was one hell of a coincidence as this same garment bag was missing on our flight from Bangkok Thailand to Sidney Australia.

The Agents then opened my fold up bag on their inspection table.

The very first thing they took out was Saralee’s gift for Ros.

The Agent said, “What’s in here?” I said, “I don’t know.

He looked at me and said, “You would travel half-way around the world with a package, and you don’t know its contents.

I was getting a little irritated, I said come on, you can feel its soft, it’s like a scarf or blouse or something, it’s a gift for my friend’s wife here in Brisbane.

Then he unzipped and emptied the garment bags pockets, the ones that had all the Thai cigarettes, and there was a small amount of white powder along with the cigarettes.

For the life of me I couldn’t remember ever putting any white powder of any kind in the garment bag.

Just then another Customs Agent was coming out of his office shaking a glass vial that had some kind of liquid in it.

The agent said, “If this liquid and your powder turn red you are in big, big trouble”.

He shook up the white powder and the liquid turned purple.

It may have been purple, but by then I was so nervous, it looked pure red to me.

I thought we were going to jail for sure.

It was obvious to me that someone in Bangkok had put drugs in my fold up bag, then removed the drugs in Sidney, and then returned the bag to the airline.

The Customs agent looked at me and said, “You can take your bag, you are free to go”.

As we walked out of the luggage area, our Australian friends Ros and Neil, were outside still waiting for us.

“What kept you so long mate, Neil asked”?