The Drug Grannies | Too Old to Run | 02

In the summer of 1978, Australian narcotics agents intercepted a campervan being unloaded on the Melbourne docks. What they discovered inside the van turned out to be the largest haul of an illicit substance, black hashish, to land on Australian soil at the time. The campervan belonged to two elderly American women tourists, whose overseas holiday odyssey quickly spiralled into a hellish nightmare.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi, Hilary Harper here with ABC Rewind and part two of the series, The Drug Grannies: Too Old to Run. And if you missed part one, I urge you to catch up on it. You won't believe that this story actually happened.

• 0:19Speaker 00

  In the summer of 1978, Australian narcotics agents intercepted a large camper van, making its way by ship from India to Melbourne. What they discovered inside that van turned out to be the largest ever haul of an illicit substance, in this case, black hashish, to land on Australian soil. The camper van was in the names of US citizens Vera Todd and Floris Basir, two women in their 60s who'd come to Australia as part of a months-long overland odyssey, a trip arranged for them courtesy of Vera Todd's nephew Vern. After a massive sting operation by narcotics agents, the two women were arrested, convicted and dubbed the Drug Grannies.

• 1:03Speaker 00

  But were they really guilty or merely unwitting pawns in a global drug importation syndicate masterminded by Vera's nephew? Sandy Logan was a young journalist when the Drug Granny story hit the headlines and he ended up becoming swept up in the case. Forty years on from the events, he's written a book about this extraordinary case and Sandy's also our guide for this second part of the series, Too Old to Run, which picks up the story in Sydney, February 1978, just as the women have been arrested. And a warning, there is a teeny bit of colourful language coming up.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  I hated my nephew like I never hated anybody in my life.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  The news story that I'd torn from a telex machine as a young reporter in 1978 when the Drug Grannies were arrested was about to dominate my life. I wanted answers to how these two elderly American women had almost overnight become Australia's biggest drug criminals.

• 2:02Speaker 03

  We understand that 1.9 tonnes, and that's an awful lot of hash, has been found in a camper van, which is at present in the possession of the customs department at their marine centre in Neutral Bay.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  Undercover narcotics agent Mish Kuri was part of the first formal interview after the women's arrest.

• 2:19Speaker 04

  On the day that we took Vera Todd Hayes back to the customs house interrogation room...

• 2:25Speaker 02

  It was here that Toddy learned just how much hash was hidden in their camper van.

• 2:30Speaker 04

  I showed her a sample of the goods that we found under the floor of the camper van. I said, "All in all, the total is 1.9 tonnes", to which, in her own inimitable style, said, and I quote, "No wonder that motherfucker wouldn't go up them fucking hills." Now, that has stayed with me forever and a day.

• 2:59Speaker 05

  Malawha Prison in Sydney, with prisoners protesting about conditions. It was a very tough prison indeed.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  After Toddy's formal interview, she was taken to join her companion Beezy in the remand section of Sydney's Malawha Prison. The women were charged with importing a prohibited substance, almost two tonnes of hashish. Toddy and Beezy had been lifelong upstanding US citizens. Nothing in their 60 years had prepared them for what they were about to encounter behind bars.

• 3:30Speaker 06

  You wouldn't believe rape amongst women, but there was rape, and bashings, hair pulling, shaving of heads, scalding water, anything that you could think of.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Toddy and Beezy were convinced by their lawyer the best way forward was to plead guilty, to get the case over and done with, and be deported back home to the US, or so they hoped.

• 3:55Speaker 06

  We were told that's what would happen if we cooperated.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  If we cooperated, we would be deported.

• 3:59Speaker 06

  That's all it would happen.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  We cooperated, we told everything we could possibly tell.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  In April 1978, they went to trial before the chief judge of the New South Wales District Court, James Staunton QC.

• 4:10Speaker 07

  Florice Marie Basir, I sentence you to imprisonment for 14 years. Vera Todd Hayes, I sentence you to imprisonment for 14 years, to date from the 2nd of February 1978.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Toddy and Beazey had the book thrown at them. Fourteen years jail with no parole date. The sentence shocked the narcotics agents, the defense counsel, and even the prosecution. The prospect of a jail term horrified the women. Here's Toddy in a radio interview, remembering the shock as reality began to bite.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  You can't believe what you're hearing. You're scared to death. The trauma has set in. What in the world? You're thinking about your loved ones at home. Everything is going through your mind. What is going on? And you don't know what's going on. You've never been in drugs. You've never been affiliated with drugs in any of your life. You don't even know what the stuff is. Now, all of a sudden, this is what you're in for.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  After their sentencing, Toddy and Beazey were transferred out of the less rigid remand section and into the jail proper. Their case was well-known inside, but the prison officers respected the two women, who were now the state's oldest female prisoners.

• 5:24Speaker 08

  They were like grandmothers. Actually, some of the girls used to call them grand.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Muller's deputy superintendent at the time, Shirley Goodfellow, is long retired.

• 5:35Speaker 08

  They did more good in jail than what they did out. I can tell you that. As far as the girls... A lot of the girls used to call them grand or nan or, you know. So, they were willing to listen to the prisoners, you know? They were willing. They put them in their place straight away. They started being smart. And I think sometimes they stopped a lot of brawls that would have happened. They stepped in, because the girls become to respect them, you know? Because they would help anybody and do anything for anyone. They were always courteous. They treated you right and, you know, I never got any trouble from them at all.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  In late 1979, after working as a journalist in Canada, I returned to Australia. The news story that had first caught my attention, the size of the drug haul, the ruse of hiding it in the van's floor, and the two drug importers' age, had continued to play on my mind. I decided to request a visit to see the women in jail. Little did I know that narcotics agent Mish Kuri was doing the same thing. Like me, she was deeply troubled by the lengthy jail term given to the women.

• 6:52Speaker 04

  You know, I felt like I was locking up my grandmother. It made me even all the more determined to, whenever I got up to Sydney, that I'd actually go and see them. I'd often, I'd ring up Silverwater and have a bit of a chat just to see how they were going. Not talking to them, but talking to the powers that be. Just keeping an eye on them. I think Vera was going blind, but they were a really loving couple.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  A special keepsake among the drug addicts' possessions from their jail time included a letter Mish Kuri had written to them, using a pseudonym known only to Toddie and Beezy. During my interview with her, I showed Mish that letter, and she became visibly emotional, so much so that she didn't feel able to read it herself. Here's an excerpt from the letter voiced here by an actor.

• 7:45Speaker 09

  Dearest Vera and Beezy, I have been thinking of you both constantly and hope that you are both keeping it together. There has been speculation, time after time, about your release, and I am coming up to Sydney on the 12th of March and hope not to see you. If I had my way, you two would be out of the place before I got there. Officially, I've heard nothing, as no one is talking to anyone about your case. Hold on tight. I went to church last week and lit a candle for you both. It was shining brightly, and I hope that's an omen. I'm sorry this is a rushed note, but it's better than no note at all. God bless you both and please maintain your strength. With love, Julie.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  For all of us supporting the women, it now became a matter of managing Toddies and Beesie's expectations as the reality of their jail sentence set in.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  This has almost completely destroyed us. It hasn't. We still have our faith and we know someday it will. It has to end. Whether it's the beginning, there is an end. And oh God, please make it soon. We've got to get home to our loved ones.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  I campaigned with their legal team and Christian Networks, who were all calling for the drug grannies to be freed and sent home. In 1981, the lawyer for Toddie and Beesie was Claude Bolinski QC. Bolinski argued for his client's release because their health was now in serious decline. Toddie especially was very sick.

• 9:25Speaker 10

  She suffers from hypertension. She is now blind in one eye. In the past year, she's been in hospital for some 69 days. She suffers from a chronic back problem. And she really appears to be psychologically in a bad way. And you have to bear in mind that she has no family support in Australia, that they're in a foreign country. On the basis that their health is so bad and the background under which they are here, the government could show compassion. Now, the only other factor is, of course, the help that both these ladies have given the government. A German court from Frankfurt has been here on four occasions

• 10:11Speaker 10

  to get evidence for the one case. And both Hayes and Beesie have given evidence where there was no requirement upon them to give evidence or assist.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  The late 1970s was a time when governments around the world considered trafficking in all drugs to be equally bad. Cannabis, LSD, cocaine, heroin, speed. As far as legislators were concerned, they were all one eight baller nickel bag of pure illegality. There was very little sympathy for people caught with any drugs. There was little nuance in drug sentencing. Former narc agent Mish Curry is convinced the women were badly done by the judge.

• 10:56Speaker 04

  Very, very unfair because I couldn't, I couldn't understand it. You know, they, they pled guilty. You would normally think that anybody who pleads guilty gets a little bit of leeway. That's, that's how it's always worked.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Toddy and Beezy's camper van, like the rest of Vern Todd's drug shipments, originated from Germany. And investigators there were now closing in on Vern Todd and his two accomplices, Philip Shine and Mr. X. In 1981, a West German court specially convened in Sydney to hear evidence from Toddy and Beezy. Their statements were crucial to the overseas court's conviction of Philip Shine. The women's three appeals for early release to the Fraser government's Attorney General, Peter Jurek, had all been rebuffed. By 1981, now into their fourth year in jail, Toddy and Beezy were deeply depressed.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Unsuccessful surgery on Toddy's cataract had left her blind in one eye. It was hard to muster much of a smile. But one day, while on a jail-supervised outing, the drug grannies chanced upon a sight they couldn't believe.

• 12:08Speaker 11

  She drove down, it ended up it was in a dead-end street. About that time we turned around, I saw the van that we'd driven clear across Europe and Asia. And I said to Hostard Holland to her, "Stop the bus, stop the bus." And she's, "Beezy, what's the matter with you?" And I said, "Stop the goddamn bus." So she stopped it, and I said, "There's the van." So she stopped. This fellow and his wife and a little boy were sitting back having coffee or tea, whatever. And I hollered in the window. I said, "Hey, you a yank," because I'd read in the paper where a yank had bought it. And I said, "Boy, you got a good-looking rig here." And he said, "Yeah, this rig has got quite a history." And I said, "Yeah, I know." He looked at me, kind of funny. I said, "Yeah, I rode in it from Stuttgart, Germany to Bombay." He says, "You one of the drug grans?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "What are you doing, escaping?"

• 12:53Speaker 11

  And I said, "No, I'm not escaping." I said, "We're just out on a fishing trip." And he says, "Yeah, but I thought you're supposed to be in prison." I said, "Well, we're in prison. There's the good guys and the bad guys in prison. And the good guys get to do all the things, the bad guys don't get to do anything." I just laughed. But anyhow, that was about a million-one chance I'd ever see that bus again.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  By the end of 1981, as Taudie and Beezy endured yet another Christmas without their families, pressure on the Australian government to release the women was ramping up. In early 1982, I visited the US Capitol to lobby on the women's behalf.

• 13:31Speaker 12

  One of the Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon, has written to the Prime Minister, Mr Fraser, to ask for freedom for the two American women. In his letter to the Prime Minister, the senator argues that the women already are into their fourth year of their 14-year sentence. Senator Hatfield has not received a reply from Mr Fraser. Jeff McMullin, AM, Washington.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Through these years in jail, the women felt as powerless as puppets. Their lives were being dangled in front of them. It appeared as though they were little more than political playthings. Jail Deputy Superintendent Shirley Goodfellow saw the effects this was having on both Taudie and Beezy.

• 14:12Speaker 08

  They'd become very flat, and I tell you, take this, nobody they can talk to. Nobody. Probably broke their hearts.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  The drug grannies lawyers believed there were strong grounds for early release on licence. But the most crucial person in the whole mix, Attorney General Peter Durak, certainly did not support this position. By 1982, Taudie was close to giving up altogether.

• 14:41Speaker 13

  Thursday, the 28th.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  In an audio letter she recorded, again on that scratchy old cassette deck, her despair is palpable.

• 14:49Speaker 13

  ...items in the papers, pro and con, upon our release. And a lot of the Liberal Party is against it, and there was a flash on this morning's news at 7 o'clock, we only picked up part of it. The drug grannies should serve their full sentence. It's just tearing our guts apart. And I don't know how much more of this we're going to be able to take unless something happens pretty soon.

• 15:16Speaker 14

  Good evening from Hugh Evans. The federal Attorney General, Senator Peter Durak, today turned down an application by legal counsel representing the two so-called "American drug grannies" for an early release from prison.

• 15:27Speaker 15

  The two women in the Norma Parker Centre in Sydney had expected their application to succeed. They'd bought new outfits, their bags were packed, and in their minds they were heading back to Oregon. The decision this morning by Attorney General Senator Durak was not even given first to the women or to their solicitors, it was given to the media. But for a warden at the prison turning down the radio, the women might have first heard the bad news on the news. Another argument being put forward is that the Australian authorities still hope to catch the mastermind behind the crime, Vern Todd, a nephew of Vera Hayes. Todd's syndicate is believed was imported up to 100 tonnes of high-grade hashish before being detected and put under surveillance. But in Todd's case, the surveillance on his Wallara house was mysteriously lifted shortly

• 16:12Speaker 15

  before the women were arrested, and the women took the rap.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  So what about that missing piece in this drug granny's sorry puzzle? Vern Todd. You'll remember him from episode one, Toddie's very dodgy nephew. In the early 1970s, having tried his hand at everything from modelling to acting, retail sales to concert staging, yacht cruising to dune buggies, Vern eventually established a baby products business.

• 16:41Speaker 16

  Well, I first met Vern in Melbourne in late 60s, probably 69 I think.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Vern's old acting friend, Michael Caton.

• 16:52Speaker 16

  Vern was trying to develop this product with another great bloke called Tony Eadie, and he, it was a baby bath, an inflatable baby bath, but it never really realised their dreams, and I think at that stage Vern decided that it might be an idea to do a bit of dealing. The thing is Vern had no head for dope, he had no head for it at all, so we would test drive it, and would say, "That's a, that's a good batch." "No, no, that's not a good batch." The Afghani hash happened later.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Vern Todd's business operations were based in John Street, Wallara. It was in this exclusive Sydney eastern suburbs location that Vern set up his logistics, planning and tasking hub for his massive drug importations.

• 17:45Speaker 16

  There were times in John Street where you'd walk in and it was obvious something was going on. You could cut the tension with a knife. And I'd say, "Well, I'll be off mate," because it was tangible.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  I hated my nephew like I never hated anybody in my life.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  The realization that her much-loved nephew was not the person she believed him to be hit the very loyal Toddy hard.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  I hated him for his lies, for his stories, for what he had done to his favorite aunt and her friend, Florrie's. It's such a deep hurt that you can't eat, you can't sleep, you find yourself deteriorating yourself mentally, physically, in every way. So I had to stop that and to turn to love and to forgiveness. Even though I was in the place where I should not be, I had to forgive. He just has self-love. Self-loved, egomaniac. Is that the right word? Egomaniac. It's just hard for me to believe that this person from the family that we all come from that could turn out to be like this.

• 18:51Speaker 11

  He only loves himself. He cares for no one but himself. You can tell that or he wouldn't have done this to you or me.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  Some of Vern's associates recall him rushing into the office just before the Drug Granny's arrest in early 1978, disheveled and panicky, stuffing his trademark aluminium briefcase with papers, passports, and cash. And then he was gone, disappeared into thin air. Michael Caton heard the news of the Drug Granny's bust while on stage in Melbourne.

• 19:23Speaker 16

  Well, I thought shit. The shit has hit the fan. And then Vern disappeared. Disappeared. Cost him his Australian life, which was a pretty good life, to sort of have to start again.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Toddy and Beazie, now into their fifth year behind bars, could only exist from day to day.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Well, this is Thursday, February the 3rd. I don't know why I'm kind of calm, but that son of a bitch in Dirac did it again. I mean, you're told and told and told that everything's gonna be fine, you're gonna be released first week or second week in February of this year. Then they had to have, Fraser had to have that snap election, which they do in this country. Well, I just hope the asshole gets beat.

• 20:13Speaker 17

  Today is March the 18th, of course, my birthday, but whatever. And Malcolm Fraser, the one that called a snap election, got his ass beat. It was a landslide win for Bob Hawke and the Labor Party. The SOB Peter Durak is out. The new Attorney General is Senator Gareth Evans. And I pray to God that it won't be too long before they'll get us out of here.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  Todd, he had no idea how prophetic her words would be. On March 23rd, the new Attorney General, Senator Gareth Evans, issued a media release.

• 20:51Speaker 18

  I announced today that Flores Marie Basia and Vera Todd Hayes have been released from prison. Both Mrs. Basia, who was 66, and Ms. Hayes, who was 65, will be deported to the United States as both are citizens of that country. In recommending their release, I've taken into account their age, their health, favorable prison and parole reports, and their cooperation with West German authorities, which led to the conviction of one of the principals in an international drug syndicate.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Gareth Evans told me that though the original sentence was consistent with the law at the time, the Fraser government's handling of the drug grannies had become all about politics.

• 21:35Speaker 18

  What became unedifying, I think, was the way in which politics so obviously intruded in the last year of the handling of this. It was one thing to say, well, maybe four years was okay for Australian citizens, but you need a bit extra for non-Australian citizens, and given the gravity of the offense, maybe that was a defensible decision. That was a position I took myself at the time. But by the time you had the government saying clearly that they were prepared to accept five years as the benchmark, and then backing away from that at a rapid rate of knots in the context, manifestly, of an election decision, that was politics pure and simple. Just a fear of being painted as soft on drugs, which no government wants to be.

• 22:22Speaker 17

  Well, we finally got the news. Today's the day.

• 22:27Speaker 17

  We're going home.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  That day amid the celebrations, Toddy and Beesey once again put a cassette into their sturdy little machine and recorded it all.

• 22:37Speaker 19

  I can't believe it. You can't believe it. Oh, God! I know! They just have to use you for this day during. Daddy, your son is coming to you.

• 22:48Speaker 05

  Doris, Marie, Latia, and Vera Todd Hayes will be released from jail within hours.

• 22:53Speaker 19

  Hope for everybody now. My sister's flying up from California to be there when we arrive. And the young ribbons are on the old old street after five goddamn years, they've set us free. We're packing, we don't know which way to go first. God love you all. God love you all. We're gonna be on our way in about five hours. Oh, God, after five years and all this stuff.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  ABC journalist Sandy Logan has been writing a book about the two women. He's speaking to Sue Cameron.

• 23:25Speaker 09

  When the women leave tonight, what will they go home to?

• 23:28Speaker 20

  Probably a very happy family. They've got a family, I know, that'll be waiting for them at the airport in the United States. They've got a small trailer home in a little backwards place called La Pine, Oregon, that, as they said five years ago, La Pine will have the red carpet out for Vera and Floris.

• 23:46Speaker 05

  Two La Pine, Oregon women arriving back on United States soil last night at San Francisco International Airport. The two women were arrested in Sydney, Australia with this, nearly two tons of pure hash each, worth some twelve million dollars. The women have maintained their innocence all along. They did it, they say, for a nephew who promised them a free trip around the world, but a nephew who mysteriously disappeared only hours before Beesey and Toddy were arrested. This is Stan Wilson reporting.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  The sudden and mysterious disappearance of Vern Todd has never been explained. Almost anyone who knows the details, including Vern himself, are either dead or are holding their tongues. But Mish Kuri, the ex-narc agent, believes she knows what happened to him.

• 24:34Speaker 04

  Probably about twelve months. After the granny's job. I did have occasion to do a raid in Melbourne where I saw a postcard on this particular person's fridge from Vern, and it was in Rio. A postcard from A Vern from Rio to this particular person in Melbourne, to which I said, "Oh, Vern's done a Ronnie Biggs." And he said, "Good luck to him. He's a good man." That riled me a bit. It's bittersweet, actually, because we didn't get the protagonist out of in the whole story.

• 25:17Speaker 04

  My only disappointment is that we didn't get Vern Todd. The main man got away, absolutely got away. And to think that he allowed his aunt and her beloved partner to take the rap for it, single-handedly or double-handedly, without any implication for him, is an absolute disgrace. Absolute disgrace. I hold nothing but contempt for him.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  An actor, Michael Caton, also thinks he knows what became of his old friend Vern after a chance encounter in Los Angeles, six or seven years after Vern Todd plued the Sydney coop.

• 25:56Speaker 16

  In about eighty-five or six,

• 26:01Speaker 16

  I'm at a Toyota dealership in Los Angeles. And I looked across, and there was a bearded Vern Todd. He had a new identity, thriving business there. So we became sort of reacquainted.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  So where are they all today? Vern Todd died in Los Angeles in 2019 after suffering from Alzheimer's.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  I hated him for his lies, for what he had done to his favourite aunt and her friend, Floris. So I had to stop that and to turn to love and to forgiveness. Even though I was in the place where I should not be, I had to forgive.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Vera Todd Hayes, known to us as Toddie, died in 1986, just three years after her return home to the United States. Florriece Basir Beazey passed away in 1998 when she was 82.

• 26:58Speaker 11

  I don't care what anybody says, I've seen beautiful people in prison. Some of them I prefer to a lot of people on the outside that think they're so sanctimonious.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  One of the last things that Beazey said to me was how much she missed her dear friend and companion, Toddie.

• 27:20Speaker 00

  The Drug Grannies: Too Old to Run was written and rated by Sandy Logan. The sound engineer was Matthew Crawford and the editor, Michelle Rayner.

• 27:31Speaker 00

  Catch you for more wild stories from the past here on Rewind.