Out of the Box

In 1964, one of the best javelin throwers in Australia traveled to England to see if he could qualify for the Olympics. But, because of an injury, he didn’t make the team - and he couldn’t afford a plane ticket home. So he came up with an idea while working a cargo job at Heathrow Airport: “I saw them shipping animals. And I thought, well, if the dogs can survive it, I could.” Marcus and Julie McSorley’s book about Reg Spiers is Out of the Box: The Highs and Lows of a Champion Smuggler. This episode was originally released in 2023. Say hello on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, invitations to virtual events, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  I'm Ina Garten, and each week on Happy Hour, I invite new and old friends for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. On this week's episode, I'm joined by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. We talk all about attending a fashion show in Paris together, throwing dinner parties, and making her Broadway debut in other desert cities. New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  How far would you go to have a healthy baby?

• 0:42Speaker 02

  Embryo editing is very much illegal in the United States. It is illegal in most countries. But there is growing interest as the technology has gotten better.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  This week on Explain It To Me, the ethics of embryo maxing. Listen to new episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:10Phoebe Judge?

  Hi, it's Phoebe. When we decided to spend this month re-releasing some of our favorite episodes since the show began, I knew I wanted this one on the list. It's a perfect criminal story to me, funny and unexpected. And when I talked to Reg Spiers, I kept thinking, who is this and where did he come from? I hope you like it.

• 1:33Phoebe Judge?

  This episode contains language that may not be suitable for everyone. Please use discretion.

• 1:41Speaker 04

  Phoebe, I don't know how old you are, but you remember when you were 22?

• 1:44Phoebe Judge?

  Yes.

• 1:45Speaker 04

  What could you do? Everything. You could do everything. Well, that's how it was.

• 1:55Phoebe Judge?

  How did you begin throwing the javelin?

• 2:00Speaker 04

  By accident. When I went to school, they didn't ask you if you wanted to go and participate in sport. They told you to. And I did that, and I found out that I was good at it. Picked up a javelin and was able to throw it. And that was about it.

• 2:17Phoebe Judge?

  What did you like about it?

• 2:20Speaker 04

  What I liked about it was the effort. The throw is the lightest implement in athletics, and you can hit the living shit out of it. And I liked that. It was a moment in your life when you could do something full effort.

• 2:36Phoebe Judge?

  This is Reg Spiers. He grew up in Adelaide, Australia, in the 1940s. By the time he was in his early 20s, he'd become one of the best javelin throwers in the country. Javelin throwing is a track and field event, and it's an old one. It was added to the Olympic Games in Greece in 708 B.C. The current Olympic record for the longest throw is just over 323 feet.

• 3:05Speaker 04

  I just took to it, and it felt right. And eventually, I got in the Australian team for the Commonwealth Games in Perth in 1962.

• 3:15Phoebe Judge?

  While he was there, he met a javelin thrower from England named John McSorley.

• 3:20Speaker 04

  And the moment we met, we became friends.

• 3:24Speaker 05

  He's rather brash, but he was very open. And we instantly had a rapport. We instantly got on with each other.

• 3:34Phoebe Judge?

  John McSorley.

• 3:35Speaker 05

  And from that point on, he wanted to show me as much of Australia as he could because he was always saying it's the greatest country in the world. And we became really good friends. Look, I always described him as he's actually outgoing for an Australian. Australians normally outgoing. And he's outgoing for an Australian. But he's got a heart of gold.

• 4:04Phoebe Judge?

  After the Commonwealth Games, John went home to London, and Reg went back to Adelaide and started training. He was hoping to qualify for the Australian team for the 1964 Olympics.

• 4:17Speaker 04

  But I got injured. My right arm at the elbow was damaged. And nobody seemed to know what it was.

• 4:27Phoebe Judge?

  Because of his injury, Reg ran out of time to qualify for the Australian team. But he thought there might still be a chance for him to compete if he went to England. He got a job on a boat so he could work his way to England without having to pay. Did you look John up right when you got to England?

• 4:46Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, sure.

• 4:48Speaker 05

  He suddenly turned up at my front door. Look, I was delighted to see him, but I was shocked.

• 4:56Phoebe Judge?

  What did he say when he showed up?

• 4:58Speaker 05

  Hi, Matt. Good to see you. He was telling me, I think he'd given his last $2.90 or something as a tip to the taxi driver. But he's full of joy.

• 5:11Phoebe Judge?

  He was happy, and he had no money.

• 5:13Speaker 05

  He's happy, had no money. And he stayed with me. And we managed to get by.

• 5:20Phoebe Judge?

  Today, Reg and John are in their 80s. But in 1964, they were in their early 20s.

• 5:27Speaker 05

  Life was a laugh a minute. I mean, typically, he would step out of my flat into the main road and stick his thumb out to hitch. Hitch a ride. And a car would have a choice of running him down or stopping. And he would walk around to the driver and say, geez, mate, thanks for stopping me. I'm just going up here, up into town. Can you give us a lift? And he was so charming, he used to get away with it.

• 6:00Phoebe Judge?

  But Reg's injury didn't improve, and he didn't qualify for the Olympics.

• 6:05Speaker 04

  And then the dilemma was how to get back to Australia when you have no money.

• 6:15Phoebe Judge?

  A friend helped him get a job working with cargo at Heathrow Airport in London. But it was going to be a long time before he could save enough money to afford a plane ticket home. His daughter was about to turn three, and he says he wanted to get back before her birthday. He started thinking about other ways he could get home.

• 6:35Speaker 04

  And I saw them shipping animals by their various aircraft. And I knew that you could ship animals in these big jets, mainly little beagle dogs that they shipped all over the place. And I thought, well, if the dogs can survive, then I could. So that's where I came up with the bright idea of jumping in a box and coming back home to Oz.

• 6:59Phoebe Judge?

  So you saw that the beagles were making it alive, and you thought, maybe I guess I could too.

• 7:04Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly that. Put a stamp on my ass and send myself home. Basically, that was it.

• 7:12Phoebe Judge?

  I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

• 7:24Phoebe Judge?

  Reg Spiers isn't the first person to come up with the idea of shipping himself from one place to another. In 1849, an enslaved man in Virginia named Henry Brown escaped enslavement by shipping himself to a free state in the North. A carpenter helped him build a box that was labeled Dry Goods. It had three small air holes. And when Henry Brown climbed inside, he brought a pointed metal tool in case he needed to make more. He was in the box for 27 hours, traveling by wagon, train, and steamboat before he arrived in Philadelphia.

• 8:06Phoebe Judge?

  After his successful escape, Henry Brown became famous. And he toured America and England to tell his story and perform magic tricks. He changed his middle name to Box. Sometimes, he would burst out of a box onstage, the same one he'd burst out of when it was delivered to Philadelphia.

• 8:29Phoebe Judge?

  In the early 1900s in England, an accountant named Reginald Bray spent a lot of time coming up with ways to test the limits of the British postal system. He sent a turnip with the address carved into it, a half-smoked cigar, and a bowler hat.

• 8:47Phoebe Judge?

  When he learned that it was possible to send live creatures, he decided to try to mail both himself and his Irish terrier, Bob. The regulations permitted sending anything bigger than a bee and smaller than an elephant.

• 9:03Phoebe Judge?

  Reginald Bray successfully mailed himself three times. The process just involved being escorted by a mail carrier. There's a photograph of him being delivered by registered mail to his own house in 1903. He's standing on the doorstep while his father signs for the package at the door.

• 9:24Phoebe Judge?

  In 1909, two British suffragettes got the idea to send themselves to the prime minister's residence so they could speak with him face to face. They went to the post office and were escorted directly to 10 Downing Street. But when they were delivered, nobody would sign for them, and they were sent right back to the post office. It wasn't a total failure for the suffragettes, though. The stunt generated a lot of attention and put them on the front page of the Daily Mirror.

• 9:56Phoebe Judge?

  At the same time in the United States, the postal service only delivered packages that were fewer than four pounds. But in 1913, the limit was increased. The regulations were a little vague, and people started testing the system. They mailed eggs, bricks, snakes, and children. Typically, parents would hand their children to postal carriers, and they were just carried or walked along the postal route to their destination, which was normally a relative's house. One Ohio couple shipped their 10-pound baby a mile away to his grandmother's house. The postage was 15 cents. They also decided to get the $50 insurance.

• 10:43Phoebe Judge?

  The next year, the postmaster general made a new rule: no humans in the mail.

• 10:52Phoebe Judge?

  In 1964, when Reg Spiers started thinking he could ship himself from England to Australia, he confided in his friend, John McSorley. When you first brought this idea to John, what did he say?

• 11:08Speaker 04

  He said, "You're crazy." He said, "You're out of your mind, crazy bloody Aussie." But eventually, he knew the situation, had no money, wanted to get back home. And this was plausible, you know, when you thought about it. And the main thing was, it was COD.

• 11:27Speaker 05

  Cash on delivery.

• 11:29Phoebe Judge?

  So you don't have to pay?

• 11:31Speaker 05

  You don't have to pay until it actually arrives.

• 11:35Phoebe Judge?

  Did you ever try and convince him not to do it?

• 11:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, of course. I said, "You're mad, you're mad, crazy. Why would you do that?" But water on a duck's back, it was. And he was persistent. He said, "Look, I want to do it. I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it." And I said, "Listen, if you're gonna do it, then I've gotta make the crate. I'm not having you go in some bloody orange box and busting out of the thing." And so, that was it. So then, they were full on, "That's what we were gonna do."

• 12:17Phoebe Judge?

  First, John had to figure out how to make a box that Reg could fit in and stay in for hours and hours. And it couldn't look like there was a person inside.

• 12:27Speaker 05

  For a start, I didn't want it to look like a coffin. So it couldn't be coffin size.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  The biggest box you could put on a jet aircraft was five feet by three feet by two and a half feet. Now, that's a big box.

• 12:41Phoebe Judge?

  How tall are you?

• 12:43Speaker 04

  I'm about six foot one.

• 12:45Phoebe Judge?

  Because it wouldn't be the most comfortable journey, but you could do it.

• 12:50Speaker 04

  You're right. But I was 22. You can put up with a lot when you're that age. Ask me now to do it, and I wouldn't.

• 12:58Phoebe Judge?

  There wasn't enough room in John's apartment to build the box. So he worked on it in secret at a nearby college. John and Reg had spent a lot of time on campus, training for the javelin throw, and eating in the cafeteria there, and knew a few people at the school.

• 13:15Speaker 04

  They didn't know what the box was for. It was just a box.

• 13:19Speaker 05

  We didn't advertise it. But we were able to just put it out of the way so that not too many questions were asked. But then, if they did ask questions, they wouldn't believe you, anyway.

• 13:34Phoebe Judge?

  John and Reg tried to think through everything that could go wrong, and designed the box so that Reg would have what he needed, could stay hidden, and be able to breathe.

• 13:43Speaker 04

  He built it so that the slats were, plenty of air in it, and I could even see through the slats.

• 13:50Phoebe Judge?

  And if the box was gonna have little spaces so you could see and breathe, how were you hidden within the box?

• 14:00Speaker 04

  Well, we put brown paper over the inside so that nobody could see in. And I could just remove the paper and see out. The whole idea, of course, is, well, it never occurred to me at the time, or John, about claustrophobia, or you're gonna be in pitch darkness all the way. That didn't come in. We didn't think about that. We just went and did it.

• 14:22Phoebe Judge?

  Where you were, I mean, inside the box, did you have anything so that you could hold on in case the box was tumbled around?

• 14:28Speaker 04

  Yes, there were straps that fit in there to hang on to, that would keep me in place.

• 14:35Speaker 05

  Also, he had a strap attached so that while he was lying down, he could strap himself in when he's being moved.

• 14:46Phoebe Judge?

  And there was a way to get out?

• 14:50Speaker 04

  Yes, both ends. I could, they're just locks. They just undo them, and the end would pop out, either end.

• 14:57Phoebe Judge?

  Did you have to say what was in the box?

• 14:59Speaker 04

  Phoebe, we told lies.

• 15:01Speaker 05

  We had on this idea that he should go as rubberized emulsion for a shoe company.

• 15:09Phoebe Judge?

  How did you come up with the idea for emulsion? Did you just pick something?

• 15:14Speaker 04

  Well, something that had a bit of weight in it and a bit of, you know, something that people wouldn't even know what it was.

• 15:21Speaker 05

  So he invented this shoe company called the Supreme Shoe Company Gloucester Road, London. And it was to be delivered to a Mr. Graham in Perth, collected by Mr. Graham and paid COD.

• 15:38Phoebe Judge?

  Was Mr. Graham real?

• 15:41Speaker 05

  No.

• 15:42Phoebe Judge?

  Just made up?

• 15:43Speaker 05

  It's all made up. We thought the Supreme Shoe Company sounded pretty good. And Mr. Graham, that sounded sort of, you know, a pretty new ordinary kind of name. Acceptable. So that was it.

• 16:00Phoebe Judge?

  And you had labeled this cash on delivery, so they assumed that someone would pay for it when they picked the box up?

• 16:08Speaker 04

  That was the whole idea, Phoebe.

• 16:11Phoebe Judge?

  I mean, because I bet it was really expensive.

• 16:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was about 400 pounds, 440 pounds.

• 16:22Phoebe Judge?

  How much would a ticket home have cost?

• 16:25Speaker 04

  Not much, less than that. It would have been 300 pounds, 350 pounds, which was right out of my league. It would take me a year to save it.

• 16:35Phoebe Judge?

  350 pounds in 1964 would be about 8,500 US dollars today. The route they chose started in London, stopped in Paris, and stopped again in Mumbai, where he would have to change planes. From Mumbai, he would go to Singapore for a fuel stop before finally arriving in Perth, Australia. Did you tell anyone at home that you were planning on...

• 17:02Speaker 04

  No, no, I didn't say anything to anyone.

• 17:05Phoebe Judge?

  And did you have any idea how long it would take?

• 17:09Speaker 04

  Well, no, not really.

• 17:12Phoebe Judge?

  Reg and John put a couple of pillows and a blanket inside the box. And then they tried to think through what else Reg would need.

• 17:21Speaker 05

  He liked baked beans. And I was working for Heinz at that stage. So he'd have a number of tins of baked beans, which he'd eat raw. And he loved them.

• 17:35Phoebe Judge?

  So that's what he brought, baked beans?

• 17:38Speaker 05

  Baked beans, yeah.

• 17:40Speaker 04

  Baked beans.

• 17:41Phoebe Judge?

  Did you have anything else to eat?

• 17:44Speaker 04

  No. No, because I figured, you know, I didn't particularly want to have a bowel movement in there.

• 17:52Speaker 05

  I mean, Reg had an appetite of a horse. He really did. And so, we thought, "Right, let's slow down your system so you don't need to go to the loo."

• 18:04Phoebe Judge?

  He packed water, a flashlight, and a gift for his mother, placemats with pictures of guards at the Tower of London. He also packed a suit to change into when he landed in Australia. They put two labels on the box, "Fragile" and "This Way Up." When you were just about to get in the box, did you run around a little bit or stretch, knowing that you were gonna be in there for a while?

• 18:33Speaker 04

  No. "No, there's the bloody box. Get in the damn thing and stop buggerizing around."

• 18:38Phoebe Judge?

  So you weren't nervous?

• 18:40Speaker 04

  No, strangely enough, you know, I'm not trying to say I was brave. I think I was closer to being stupid. No, once the ball started to roll, there wasn't time to sort of be frightened or anything like that. Just put up with it and ride it out. And that's basically it.

• 19:00Phoebe Judge?

  Was John worried at all to do so?

• 19:03Speaker 04

  Well, he could have had some thoughts in that regard. But it was never mentioned. It was a bit of a joke, if anything. We just did it.

• 19:17Speaker 05

  What you have to remember is, we were young and careless and carefree. And so, I think if we'd been older, we'd got a bit more sense, we probably would never have done it.

• 19:34Phoebe Judge?

  Do you remember the last thing you said before they closed you up in the box?

• 19:37Speaker 04

  "See you later, Johnny." That's all. "No, no big deal. Once I was in, I'm in. And we're off."

• 19:45Speaker 05

  Well, I said, "Look, good luck, Reg. Good luck. Hope you make it, mate. But don't forget to let me know when you get there."

• 19:56Phoebe Judge?

  A few of John's friends, who had a van, helped load up the box and drive it to the airport.

• 20:02Speaker 05

  I remember it was frustrating and anxious time when we were taken into a freight shed, and the guy behind the desk was sort of looking a bit suspiciously. That was a bit of an anxious moment. But fortunately, time passed, and it was okay. And then they took the crate away.

• 20:26Speaker 04

  I was in a huge bloody warehouse. I could see out through the slats. And I was put up high, too. And when they come to get me, some young bugger apprentice was driving the forklift, and he almost dropped me because it was teetering on the bloody thing. But I threw myself back towards it to settle down. But those things happen.

• 20:48Speaker 05

  And then in the afternoon, the fog came down. Fog came down, and all the planes were delayed. So he had to stay in there for hours and hours and hours. But we couldn't do anything about it.

• 21:06Phoebe Judge?

  What was it like when you finally heard the plane's engines and you realized you were in the air?

• 21:11Speaker 04

  "Here we go. Here we go. So it begins." That's what I thought.

• 21:22Phoebe Judge?

  We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus.

• 21:33Speaker 06

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• 22:04Phoebe Judge?

  Reg Spears was in his box in the cargo hold of a Boeing 707 on his first leg of the journey from London to Paris.

• 22:15Phoebe Judge?

  Was it strange to be in the cargo area of the plane, knowing that above you were, you know, a hundred people?

• 22:22Speaker 04

  All the passengers?

• 22:23Phoebe Judge?

  Yeah.

• 22:24Speaker 04

  No, it never crossed my mind, but the thing is, here I am. What can I do? I've decided to do this, and so far, so good.

• 22:33Phoebe Judge?

  He says he'd already been in the box for 24 hours because of the fog delay. So, once the plane was in the air and he was alone, he decided to let himself out.

• 22:42Speaker 04

  I was dying for a leak, but I had a big can there, and I peed in that when I got out of the box. Silly me, I got out of the box, and from London to Paris is not very long. So, in my haste to get back, I put the container of pee on top of the box and got back in and realized I'd left the bloody thing there.

• 23:02Phoebe Judge?

  It was too late to get out of the box again. He felt the plane landing and then heard the cargo door opening and the French baggage handlers talking to each other as they entered the cargo area.

• 23:14Speaker 04

  And then that's when they discovered the baked bean can full of pee, and they weren't happy. I could hear ongles, you know, they were swearing at the English. But I thought that they'd know then that someone's in this bloody box, but they didn't. Nothing happened.

• 23:36Phoebe Judge?

  And when you were on the ground or you knew that people around, were you ever worried about making a noise, sneezing or something?

• 23:43Speaker 04

  No, it wasn't. The funny thing was, I remember that. When people are around, you're sort of smiling to yourself because you're in the box. They don't know you're in there, and everything is normal or seems normal, but it's not. And that made me smile a bit.

• 24:02Phoebe Judge?

  Eventually, the plane took off for the second leg of Reg's flight, heading to Mumbai. It was the longest part of the journey.

• 24:10Speaker 04

  I just recall it being pitch black, and most of the time, I had a pillow and blanket, so I was asleep.

• 24:19Speaker 04

  I was asleep.

• 24:21Phoebe Judge?

  You were sleeping, but when you weren't sleeping, what were you thinking about?

• 24:25Speaker 04

  Everything. You know, reflect on your life. You just think about yourself and your family and what you've done and all the things that people think about.

• 24:38Phoebe Judge?

  He brought a book, which he could read using the flashlight he brought. It was called The Bedside Esquire, a collection of short stories that had been published in Esquire magazine by authors like Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbach.

• 24:52Speaker 04

  And that's helped run out the batteries. Read a bit of that, and when it went dark, that was that.

• 25:00Phoebe Judge?

  It's about 4,300 miles from Paris to Mumbai.

• 25:05Phoebe Judge?

  Do you think that your athletic training helped you? You know, that...

• 25:09Speaker 04

  Oh, sure did. Yeah, it did. Of course it did. It's with athletics, with the training, you commit yourself to it, and you're driven. And that's what I was. It was, I was doing this, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it all the way through. It was that sort of attitude, as you said, came out of athletic training, having that mindset. That's basically what it was. There was no fearful aspect to it all.

• 25:40Speaker 04

  Not at all.

• 25:42Phoebe Judge?

  When you landed in India...

• 25:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:45Phoebe Judge?

  What happened?

• 25:47Speaker 04

  Well, the plane, again, they opened the hold. I expect the hold to be open each time you come into an airport. This time, they took me out.

• 25:57Speaker 04

  They took me out of the, took the box out of the plane and propped it on the tarmac, and they stood me up on one end, which that's okay, because I said to you, there were belts in there that helped me in place.

• 26:12Phoebe Judge?

  But you were upside down?

• 26:14Speaker 04

  Yes. I just hung in there and waited.

• 26:18Phoebe Judge?

  And then the crate was moved again and turned right side up. Reg says he didn't know what was happening or what the delay was. He says at one point, he could hear people talking nearby, eating lunch.

• 26:32Speaker 04

  And it was very hot. Took all my, I was totally naked in there because it was so hot.

• 26:37Phoebe Judge?

  You took your clothes off?

• 26:38Speaker 04

  Yes, it was so bloody hot. I was sweating, and I wondered how long I could last in this heat. But I'm from Australia, we're used to the heat, and it was very hot, though, that's all I remember. And I was sweating, and I was wondering whether I could sustain it. But I did, and next thing, I'm on the move. They came and got me, put me on another plane that went off to Singapore, I think.

• 27:04Phoebe Judge?

  The flight from Mumbai to Singapore was about 2,500 miles.

• 27:10Phoebe Judge?

  At what point did you realize you were really gonna make it? That this was gonna work?

• 27:16Speaker 04

  By the time I got to Singapore, I figured if I got to Singapore, the next hop's us, and I don't care if I get caught, because I'm home.

• 27:26Phoebe Judge?

  It would be about 2,500 more miles to Australia.

• 27:31Phoebe Judge?

  What were you looking forward to the most when you got home?

• 27:36Speaker 04

  Stepping onto Australia.

• 27:39Speaker 04

  That's what I wanted to do. There's nothing like Australia. It's the greatest place on earth, the center of the universe to me.

• 27:48Phoebe Judge?

  How did you know that you'd arrived in Australia?

• 27:51Speaker 04

  The voices.

• 27:52Phoebe Judge?

  What happened?

• 27:54Speaker 04

  The voices. When the hold opened, of course, after this long journey, the hold opened and the handlers come into the cargo, and their voices, I knew they were Aussies. So, I was home.

• 28:09Phoebe Judge?

  What did they say?

• 28:11Speaker 04

  They said, "I hope this big fucker's not for us." But it was, and they got me out, put me in a bond shed.

• 28:20Phoebe Judge?

  So, you were still in the box, but they put you in a shed?

• 28:24Speaker 04

  In a bond shed. A bond shed, it's customs, you know, it goes in there before you. The people that owned the box come and get it, but it's held in a bond shed until it's cleared by customs and handling charges, all that sort of thing.

• 28:40Phoebe Judge?

  And the shed is also locked.

• 28:47Phoebe Judge?

  We'll be right back.

• 29:01Phoebe Judge?

  Reg Spiers says he'd been in the box for more than 60 hours when it finally landed in Australia and was put in a locked storage shed.

• 29:11Phoebe Judge?

  From inside the box, he could hear airline workers unloading boxes around him. He says he stayed quiet and still and waited for what felt like hours.

• 29:22Phoebe Judge?

  And then, finally, he heard someone say they were leaving for a smoke break. When it seemed like everyone was gone, Reg crawled out of the box.

• 29:31Speaker 04

  The bond shed happened to have, happened to be full of beer. Not that I like beer, but I was pretty thirsty, so I cracked a can of beer and drank half of it and threw it up, I think.

• 29:43Phoebe Judge?

  Next, he put on the suit he'd packed.

• 29:46Speaker 04

  I've got into the suit because I didn't want to look inappropriate around the Air Force there, carrying a bag. And if I was going to be wandering around, I wanted to look appropriate.

• 29:58Phoebe Judge?

  When you got, I mean, when you got out of the box, did you close it back up so people wouldn't be suspicious?

• 30:03Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, I closed it back up, but I just pushed the ends in.

• 30:08Phoebe Judge?

  And then, he looked around for a way to get out of the locked shed.

• 30:13Phoebe Judge?

  He remembers that there were two heavy metal double doors with a waist-high chain across them and an old-looking padlock. From inside, he could push the doors open enough to reach the chain.

• 30:26Speaker 04

  I found a toolbox, and I cut a bit of a hole in the chain and just jumped out and walked away.

• 30:33Phoebe Judge?

  Reg says he saw a group of passengers getting off of a plane on the tarmac and joined up with them as they filed into the airport terminal. He tried to look like he was supposed to be there and followed the signs for arriving Australian citizens. He would have to go through customs. When he got to the counter, he says he got out his passport, smiled at the official, and was waved through.

• 31:02Phoebe Judge?

  You were in Australia, but still a long way from home. What did you do next?

• 31:07Speaker 04

  Hitchhike. I knew I could hitchhike in Perth. And I hitchhiked a little good way out of Perth towards Adelaide, which is my hometown, until I reached the Nullarbor Desert. You can't get across there. The truckies won't take you. Eventually, a Catholic priest gave me some money for a train ticket to Adelaide. And when I got home, I sent him the money back. So that's how I got the last part.

• 31:39Phoebe Judge?

  Reg Spiers arrived home more than three days after he'd first gotten in the box in London, but he'd made it in time for his daughter's birthday.

• 31:49Phoebe Judge?

  What did your family say when you arrived?

• 31:51Speaker 04

  They were a bit surprised. They wondered how the hell I did it. And I didn't tell them at first, because they probably wouldn't have believed me anyway.

• 32:03Phoebe Judge?

  What were you doing while Reg was on his trip? Do you remember just worrying a lot, thinking about different scenarios?

• 32:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was biting my nails down to the elbows.

• 32:17Phoebe Judge?

  John McSorley.

• 32:19Speaker 05

  Really anxious, anxious about things, because it's a long flight and it takes a long time to get from England to Australia on a plane or anything else. So I was very anxious, and I wanted to hear from him posthaste.

• 32:39Speaker 05

  And I didn't hear from him.

• 32:43Speaker 05

  So in the end, I was so concerned that I notified somebody I knew from the Daily Telegraph. And he contacted somebody in Sydney in the press, and they flew out to Reg's place, found out he was at home. He'd got home, but he hadn't bothered to let me know that he'd got home.

• 33:09Speaker 05

  And then the story broke, and in Australia, it was huge news. It was big news in England. The News Chronicle at that stage, there was a new paper out. The whole front page was about this story.

• 33:27Speaker 05

  Nothing else on the front page.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  I never expected anything like it. I thought if I got caught, I'd just get a kick in the bum, a fine, or locked up, who knows, but never expected this.

• 33:41Speaker 05

  The Australian culture is such that they love a story like that, that somebody would be so desperate to get back to the country that he'd come back as freight.

• 33:55Phoebe Judge?

  John, on the other hand, was not treated like a folk hero. And his employer, Heinz, was not happy to discover that they had unwittingly supplied beans for the trip.

• 34:05Speaker 05

  And Heinz, they called me into the office. And that's the difference in the cultures. Heinz are very upmarket and strict and stiff.

• 34:20Speaker 05

  And they ticked me off for being irresponsible. Meanwhile, Reg was having a heyday in Australia.

• 34:30Phoebe Judge?

  After the story broke, customs officials checked the storage shed and found the empty box Reg had left behind.

• 34:38Phoebe Judge?

  A spokesman from the airline was quoted saying, "It's a miracle that Spears arrived in Perth alive. My blood runs cold when I think of the terrible risks he ran. The cargo could have been offloaded and left in some tropical depot over a weekend. Or he could have been discovered en route and thrown into jail. Or he could have been packed with other freight and suffocated. Or the pressurization in the cargo hold might have failed."

• 35:09Phoebe Judge?

  When you realize that this was now in the news and they knew your name, were you worried that you'd be in trouble with the law?

• 35:20Speaker 04

  Well, the immigration people, of course, and the customs came and saw me. And I had to fill out a form and sign, and that was that. And the other thing was Air India with their, they asked me to pay the freight charges.

• 35:39Phoebe Judge?

  According to Reg, he told the airline he would not be paying.

• 35:43Speaker 04

  And I never heard it from them again, so that was it.

• 35:48Phoebe Judge?

  Tell me a little bit about what you've been up to since your feet in a box.

• 35:53Speaker 04

  Ah, well, I got into drug smuggling, because I'm a big fan of weed. I smoke it to this day.

• 36:06Speaker 04

  I really like it. I'm not much of a drinker, but I like weed and hashish.

• 36:13Phoebe Judge?

  He's been arrested for conspiracy to import cocaine and for smuggling and transporting cannabis resin and heroin. He's been in prison in more than one country, and he says he spent years of his life on the run. And what's your life like now?

• 36:29Speaker 04

  Terrific. You know, hell, I'm 80 years old and I can feel it, but I don't regret a moment, not all. I had experiences that people don't have.

• 36:45Phoebe Judge?

  Tell me, you said you're still friends with John McSorley all these years later. When you get together, do you talk about this?

• 36:53Speaker 04

  Oh, yes, we talk about it. We laugh.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  And for us, yes, the box is a real giggle matter. We laugh about it all the time.

• 37:05Speaker 04

  He'll always be in my life.

• 37:07Phoebe Judge?

  Why do you think you've been friends for so long?

• 37:10Speaker 04

  Because we like each other.

• 37:12Speaker 05

  The depth of the friendship is something that's not tangible. We're very different in personalities, very different. He's this real outgoing guy, and I tend to be fairly reserved, reserved Englishman. But somehow it worked, and it's continued to work. And we'd do anything for each other.

• 37:44Speaker 05

  It's a weird thing, but it's nice. It's nice to know that you can meet somebody and be that sort of close, close to them.

• 37:57Speaker 05

  There are certain times in your life, you come to a crossroads, and you think, shall I do this, shall I do that, sort of, and people don't do it. No, Reg was the sort of guy where there was no such thing as can't. You can do anything. And this still exists in him.

• 38:22Phoebe Judge?

  John had a stroke last year, and Reg flew from Australia to London to be with him at the hospital.

• 38:29Speaker 05

  He said, "Look, Johnny," he said, "you've just been lying in bloody bed. Let's get you out." So he got me in a wheelchair. He took me out of the hospital, wheeled me around the streets, wheeled me around the street. He said, "You need a haircut," he said. So he's wheeled me to a hairdressers, wheeled me into the hairdressers, and said, "Can you cut this guy's hair?" And they did.

• 39:00Speaker 05

  With him, no such thing as can't. You want to do it, you do it.

• 39:22Phoebe Judge?

  This episode was first released in 2023. Since then, John McSorley has been living in a care home. His son Marcus visits twice a week. He says Reg Spiers hasn't been able to visit recently. He's no longer allowed into the UK because of stricter immigration controls. But Reg and John still talk as much as they can.

• 39:46Phoebe Judge?

  Marcus and Julie McSorley, John's wife, wrote a book about Reg's trip. It's called "Out of the Box: The Highs and Lows of a Champion Smuggler."

• 39:58Phoebe Judge?

  Criminal is created by Lauren Spoor and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susannah Robertson, Jackie Sajikko, Lily Clark, and Lena Silhson. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. This episode was mixed and engineered by Rob Byers. Julianne Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com/newsletter. We hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program, Criminal Plus. You can listen to Criminal, This is Love, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without any ads. Plus, you'll get bonus episodes.

• 40:43Phoebe Judge?

  These are special episodes with me and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spoor, talking about everything from how we make our episodes, to the crime stories that caught our attention that week, to things we've been enjoying lately. To learn more, go to patreon.com/criminal. We're on Facebook at This is Criminal, and Instagram and TikTok at Criminal underscore Podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.