‘Oh, Renae’s here! It’s Renae!’
Everyone was staring, pointing and whispering at the notorious psychopath. All eyes were on her, including mine. As I sat watching her through the bars on my cell window, my fears instantly vanished. This girl couldn’t have contrasted more with the images in my head. She looked like a frightened mouse as she took that first terrifyingly lonely walk up the gravel path towards the guards’ table. When she reached it, she stood timidly giving her details, saying nothing to the thirty or forty girls ferreting wildly through her bags in their usual scavenging fashion.
As she was walked to her new cell, her face was full of terror, like she was about to be put in a cage and fed to the lions. She almost was. She was to share with the Black Monster, until Sonia viciously objected, screaming, kicking and slamming the cage door shut. The guards didn’t argue; they just walked Renae to another cell, her big blue eyes spilling tears as she trailed behind them like a lost lamb, clinging to her pilfered bags. I felt sorry for her as I sat listening to her cries, knowing exactly what she was going through. But I didn’t go to her. I kept my distance for a few hours to let her breathe and take in the dump that was her home for now . . . and maybe for ever.
I finally went to meet Renae just before lock-up. She was a mess. She was sitting on the cell floor, sobbing and broken, with her head hopelessly hanging.
‘Come on, this isn’t going to help you,’ I told her.
She slowly looked up at me, her eyes red and swollen. ‘How do you do it? How do you do it, Schapelle?’
‘You just have to, Renae. You have to.’ It was impossible not to see the fresh scars on her sliced-up wrists. ‘And you can’t do that – you can’t. Just forget about doing that again.’
But she had so much anger inside. She was living hour by hour and didn’t know how to control her emotions. She’d already tried to kill herself at Polda and then lost it a couple of days after checking in, slamming her fist into the cell wall over and over until the bones in her hand were broken. The guards unlocked my cell so I could go and try to calm her down, settle her a bit. But I couldn’t. I had no chance of holding her back, as she kept smashing her swollen fist into the concrete wall and screaming like a tortured animal. A few male prisoners ran in and began grabbing her arms. She went crazy until we finally got her to the ground. I pushed a little blue sleeping tablet into her mouth, and within a minute she calmed down.
One night about two weeks later, she again started smashing her already broken hand into the wall. The guards came in and unlocked my cell to help and when I got to her cell, she was shaking, crying hysterically and gasping for air. I tried to soothe her, giving her a hug and holding her good hand while we waited for the doctor to arrive. She had to let out her anger and said it was either the wall or one of the girls. Luckily, she chose the wall.
I soon told Dewi she had to forget the snake’s-belly line I’d taught her. Renae and I were unlikely friends: we were worlds apart as people, and outside in the real world I doubt we’d have even met, let alone become friends. She spent her spare time blowing up cars, I spent mine having facials. But inside Hotel K, we bonded as easily as kids in kindergarten. We both needed someone to talk to and support us through our black days. The broad brushstrokes of being Australian, speaking English and being stuck in here were enough to draw us together, and we became friends . . . for a while.
But I tried to avoid talking about her crime. I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to think about what she’d undeniably been involved in. I also blamed Renae and the other eight for hurting my case.
When they were arrested, there were headlines everywhere screaming: ‘Corby death penalty!’ Bali was making an example of me. They were showing the world that this little holiday isle really was tough on drug traffickers. The prosecutors regularly told my lawyers I would be a lesson to the world. But the lesson wasn’t working, the headlines weren’t hitting home, no one was listening if nine Australians were trafficking drugs a month before my verdict. They were arrested in April; I was sentenced in May. The judges felt they really had to make a point. They hit hard. My sentence was one of the highest-ever for trafficking marijuana.
Merc looked into it and easily found plenty of cases to highlight the wildly disparate sentences for drug cases.
Two Indonesian brothers were caught importing 8.5 kilograms of marijuana through Jakarta airport. Like me they were charged under Article 82, which carries the maximum punishment of death. But unlike me they didn’t get anything close to twenty years – one brother got five years, the other six.
Another man, who was on exactly the same charges as me but had been caught with 160 kilograms of marijuana – forty times more than the amount found in my boogie-board bag – was sentenced to five years less than me.
Even people caught with harder drugs received lighter sentences than mine. A man who flew into Bali with 5.2 kilograms of cocaine hidden in the lining of his surfboard bag was sentenced to life but got fifteen years on appeal. A known drug dealer caught smuggling forty kilos of crystal meth from Hong Kong to Indonesia in gravestones got seven and a half years.
A man caught with 4,700 Ecstasy pills strapped to his legs as he flew into Indonesia from Taiwan was sentenced to four years and six months. Another man caught boarding a flight to Australia with 5,852 Ecstasy pills strapped to his thighs and stomach was sentenced to ten years in jail. A brother and sister who were caught with 2.62 kilograms of pure heroin in their shoes when they were spotted walking strangely as they came off a flight from Taiwan were each sentenced to twelve years.
It was impossible to understand and comprehend how the Indonesian justice system worked, how they decided on what sentences to hand down. They seemed to just pluck a number from thin air, rather than relying on legal precedents like courts in most countries did. There was no uniformity, no fairness.
What was even more incredible were the ridiculously low sentences given out for murder. There were several people in Kerobokan Prison doing just five or six years for gruesome slayings. Or, in the most extreme and obscene case, Bali bomber Abu Bakar Bashir, guilty of conspiring to bomb the Kuta nightclubs in October 2002, which killed 202 people, was sentenced to just thirty months. This terrorist, who’d given his ‘blessings’ for the bombings, was freed four and a half months early for good behaviour! He was out in two years, showing absolutely no remorse for all those killed and injured in the bombings.
The man who’d supplied the equipment for the bombs in the second Bali attack, in 2005, which killed twenty people and injured a hundred, was so happy with his eighteen-year sentence the day before his twenty-ninth birthday that he called it ‘the sweetest birthday gift’. He warmly shook hands with the judges and gave the thumbs up, smiling, when his sentence was delivered. This terrorist obviously knew he’d got away lightly.
It was also ironic that the murderers were often given jail privileges, allowed out at weekends and sent on errands to get the guards cigarettes from the local shop. My visitors have often been shocked to learn that the friendly man at the front door who obligingly called them a cab on his mobile phone or hailed one for them was a murderer who’d punched a man to death. He got five years and would soon be released. He was fit and well toned, as he regularly worked out at a local gym.
I stepped back into the courtroom almost exactly six weeks after I’d left it on my blackest day. It was hard to sit in front of those same judges again, but I felt like I might finally get justice in this unfair system. My whole family was over the moon when Hotman miraculously got my case reopened. We thought it was a sign that the judges could see that I didn’t get a fair trial. But it turned out to be yet another sharp plunge on the roller-coaster.
After the usual five-minute photo session in the hot seat, I walked over to sit next to Hotman. He was colourful, dramatic, feisty and constantly leapt up to fight for me. Yes, this is more like it! I finally had a professional lawyer.
My translator was also a pro. He was late on t
he first day of my original trial, so Eka, who spoke conversational English, had been sworn in. ‘Where were you? Do you know what happened to me?’ I asked him. ‘Yes.’ He apologised for being late, telling me that Lily had given him the wrong court start time. I wondered if it had been intentional – why else had Eka unusually been in court that first day? She was an employee of Lily and Vasu’s. They billed big bucks for her translation work. When this guy started translating, I realised how much I must have missed with Eka. It wasn’t her fault; she was untrained and it was a hard job. She should never have been put in that position by her masters.
We had two days in court, and it went nowhere. All Hotman was able to introduce were a legal expert and two Qantas employees from Brisbane airport – one who had checked me in and one who’d taken the boogie board at the oversized-luggage counter. They told the court they’d noticed nothing unusual, no smell of marijuana. I wanted to scream out: ‘That’s because it wasn’t there!’
At the end of the second day, the judges shut down the retrial and crushed my hopes. I sobbed in court. How much longer did I have to live this nightmare?
They now had two months to consider my appeal. I couldn’t stop crying as I was led out and driven back to Hotel K, where fate seemed to want to keep me caged. It was the last time I set foot outside Kerobokan for more than a year.
I was having a lot of black days and Renae would often come and sit with me in my cell. She had her share of dark days, too, although she’d started taking the tranquiliser Xanax, which often zonked her right out, almost turning her into a walking zombie. Her eyes would be half closed and I’d have to keep hitting her, saying, ‘Come on, Renae. Think of what you look like. Cut it out!’
I tried to tell her to maybe just take half a tablet. But she wasn’t coping, she needed to blur reality and numb the fear and pain. It wasn’t easy living under the dark shadow of the death penalty. Renae felt sure she would get death, or life at best. I’d help wean her off the tablets after the verdict. Right now, she was living on a dangerous edge.
One night around 7 p.m. I heard yelling and screaming coming from her cell. It sounded like someone was being possessed. I was laughing to myself as I pictured Renae’s reaction: she’d be sitting there, going ‘Oh . . . what’s going on?’ with that wide-eyed, spaced-out look on her face. It was my twisted sense of humour, one that Renae shared, too.
But suddenly I heard angry shouting. ‘Stop it . . . stop it!’ Then, bang, bang – ‘Stop it, stop it!’ It was Renae’s voice. Whatever was going on, she definitely wasn’t finding it funny.
After about an hour of yelling and screaming, the guards turned up and opened her cell. She walked over to my cage window.
‘Renae, what’s going on?’ I could see something in her eyes, so I leant in closer. She was giving me a scary, glassy-eyed stare. ‘Renae, stop it. What are you thinking? Can you just stop it, Renae? Come on . . .’
She put her hand up to my cell window. I flinched.
‘OK, Renae, don’t move.’ She held a razor blade between her thumb and first finger. ‘I’m just moving my hand slowly, and I’m going to take this out of your hand.’ She was edgy. I didn’t want to spook her. ‘Just let it go – don’t squeeze it, just let it go. Give it to me, Renae, give it to me.’ I touched her hand. ‘Now, undo your fingers!’ My eyes were locked on hers, willing her to give up the blade.
It had all been a cry for help. Her eyes were full of pain, pleading: This place sucks, but I don’t want to do this. Can you help me? Take it away from me! Help me! She finally dropped it into my hand. The suicidal moment passed . . . for now.
I wrapped the blade in a tissue and put it away. We decided after that night that I’d look after all her razors and she’d come and take one when she needed to shave her legs. Emotions were volatile and changed dangerously fast in Hotel K. It was better to be safe than sorry.
Three weeks after meeting Renae Lawrence, I heard the unbelievable news that another Australian had been arrested with drugs, this time outside a dance party. Bali was cracking down. Our cells were full of girls who’d been picked up at a club with one or two Ecstasy pills. The police would randomly choose a club or restaurant, shut it down and search everyone at the door as they left. Unusually, it seemed they were handing out pretty standard sentences for Ecstasy: most people got four years and six months, whether they were caught at an airport with 4,700pills wrapped in plastic and strapped to their legs or found at a club with one or two.
One of the girls in my cell was doing four years and six months for being spotted throwing an Ecstasy tablet in the bin during a police raid on a nightclub. She had a negative urine test. Another prisoner was serving the same amount of time just for a positive urine test.
A Brazilian girl who was on holiday in Bali with three friends was caught in the crackdown. She was out enjoying dinner with her girlfriends when the police randomly raided the restaurant and found a speck of hashish wrapped in a little tissue in her handbag. She received a four-month imposed extension on her paradise holiday, stuck in the confines of a shabby hotel. This girl was in Polda on the night that model Michelle Leslie was arrested with two pink Ecstasy tablets in her handbag.
My first reaction at hearing the news of yet another Aussie caught with drugs was pure shock. I immediately thought this girl must have done it for publicity. How could anyone from Australia have anything to do with drugs in Bali after the Bali Nine and I had been front-page news for months? It was unfathomable.
But Michelle became the eleventh Australian in Hotel K, arriving one afternoon after we’d all been locked up. Michelle was placed in Salma’s ‘elite’ cell. In the morning, I went down to say hello, but from then on we had little to do with each other. She occasionally came to my cell and poked around, asking a bunch of questions like what I was reading, how many pairs of jeans I had and what I ate. She kept pushing me to do a storyand a ‘photo shoot’ with her for one of the women’s magazines. She’d already been given a little camera. She regularly told me that she had ‘the ultimate story’: ‘The media is all over this, they’re so onto me. I’ve got the ultimate story, babe! I’ve got fame, modelling, drugs and religion. It’s the ultimate story! It can’t get better than this, darl.’
I wanted my story to be over. But it was far from it. Poor Merchad broken the bad news to me the same day Michelle Lesliearrived at Kerobokan: on appeal, my sentence had been cut by only five years. I was shattered. It was nothing. I sobbed uncontrollably. My chances of undoing this injustice were evaporating fast. Maybe I really was going to be stuck for ever with someone else’s miserable fate. Merc tried to calm me. ‘We’ve still got another appeal, Schapelle.’
I had one last shot, in the Supreme Court in Jakarta. It had to work. It was Hotman’s turf – he was the best, he’d weave his magic, and I’d get out then. This insane situation would unravel. I didn’t hold out any hope for new evidence, just a new perspective: the judges had to see that the investigation had been non-existent, that I’d never had the chance to find a shred of evidence to defend myself, and that I didn’t get a fair trial. In my heart and soul, I still believed that this would end soon. I was innocent, and I believed something would snap me out of the nightmare as fast as it had snapped me in.
The Bali Nine were just starting their trials. I’d see them lining up with handcuffs on, waiting for the sardine bus, when I sat out at visits. I knew the hell they were all going through. Watching Renae go to court was hard. In the early stages of her trial, I could never sleep on nights before she was due in court, and during the days I felt a sense of anger, just knowing what she’d be going through with the media. I’d try not to let it affect me so much, but it was useless. All of my own dark memories and emotions came flashing back strongly. I couldn’t escape them.
I tried to help Renae look her best for court by doing her make-up. She’d never been the type to wear make-up and was reluctant at first, but I soon converted her; she even asked me to do it. Sometimes I put little clips in
her hair, though she’d rip them out faster than a two year old. Renae really did care about how she looked, and often if I was sitting in a visit while she was handcuffed and waiting to go out to the bus, she’d dash over and ask me to fix her hair. I’d ruffle it a bit and then she’d run back to the line, singing out, ‘Thanks, beauty therapist!’ One morning, she ran over to me with tears in her eyes and whispered, ‘I want my mum.’ I knew exactly how she felt.
I didn’t see much of the Bali Nine guys, apart from when they were standing handcuffed before court or when I’d walk past them in the visiting hall, where many of them often sat talking to their devoted and distraught parents. Andrew Chan and Matt Norman regularly went to church, so I’d see them there, too. Andrew was always really friendly and incredibly upbeat, shaking hands with people and giving them high-fives. Sometimes I’d talk to him, though Renae asked me not to. Unsurprisingly, there were definite tensions between the Nine.
Two weeks after the Bali Nine trials started, Michelle Leslie also began her trial and was distressed to be handcuffed to Renae on her first day. She didn’t like Renae and tried to keep her distance, especially publicly. But within a few weeks her court case was finished and a success. Five weeks after checking into Hotel K and three months after her arrest, Michelle was going home.
As soon as I heard the news, I walked down to her cell to congratulate her. She was straightening her hair and busy packing, so I told her, ‘I’ll see you again before you go, to say goodbye.’
‘Yeah, OK, babe,’ she replied.
Then she was gone. She didn’t come to say goodbye.
I always felt conflicting emotions when any girl was released: pleased for her but upset and agitated that it wasn’t me, too. It was a kick in the guts, a reminder that I was stuck, trapped, caged in this soul-sucking dump. It super-sensitised me and brought on the strong emotions I usually tried to suppress: a deep, all-consuming, heartbreaking longing to go home. Watching someone walk free left me trembling and teary for days.
No More Tomorrows Page 26