Just curious. Given time, how many of you STILL believe Schapelle Corby is innocent
- Thread starter doob
- Start date
doob
Legend Member
- Points
- 1,981
Schapelle's wild ride before the crash by Eamon Duff
Date November 12, 2011
Corby drew attention to herself even before her Bali flight landed, writes Eamonn Duff.
Rosleigh Rose has always been her family's unofficial photographer. Wherever she went her little camera went with her and no family event was too boring to document. So, it wasn't unusual that Ros took a happy snap of Schapelle and her three travelling companions at Brisbane Airport before they boarded QF501 for Sydney. These days, looking at that photo can easily bring Ros to tears. She had unconsciously captured her daughter's last moment of freedom in Australia.
In the photograph, friends Katrina Richards and Ally McComb, a glamorous and confident-looking Schapelle and half-brother James are bunched together outside the domestic terminal just minutes before they boarded their flight. On the back of the photograph, Ros wrote: ''8th Oct. All happy go to Bali.'' The photograph was later handed to the media as proof Schapelle and the others were relaxed as they set off on their tropical holiday.
You'd be caught before you sold your first bag.
James was scheduled to take a different flight but, after some last-minute pleading at the airport by Ros, he scored a seat on the same flight as Schapelle and the girls.
Last moment of freedom ... Katrina Richards, Schapelle Corby, Ally McComb and James Corby at the airport.
Ally's memory is that James carried the boogie board to the check-in counter at Brisbane Airport: ''Me and Schapelle and Katrina all checked in at the same time. James went to a different counter and put the boogie board up there to go through first and they're like, oh no, that goes in a different section - that goes over to oversize baggage.''
Advertisement But apparently James didn't carry the boogie board across to the oversize baggage counter - Schapelle did. During her trial in Bali in 2005, Schapelle said: ''We all walked together from the check-in counter to the conveyor, the oversize conveyor. I put it in - everyone saw me put it in.''
Katrina also remembers Schapelle checking in the boogie board: ''Schapelle actually put her bag through the oversize counter - it just looked like a normal boogie board bag. How it would normally - no marijuana in it.''
Indonesian police inspect the boogie board.
Not long after 6am the group was finally in the air. Once in Sydney, they found their way to the international terminal, where they had a couple of hours to kill. Schapelle had a few beers in the airport bar with her good friend Jodie Power, who was booked on a later flight to Bali. Jodie later claimed that Schapelle kept pointing at the security cameras saying, ''There's one, and there's one over there'' and that the ill-fated traveller's last words to her in the bar were, ''We'll see you round the pool.'' But it didn't quite happen the way the had planned.
Australian Airlines flight AO7829, scheduled for departure from Sydney at 10.30am, was full with the usual Bali crowd: mostly tourists with business people, surfers and a few expats heading back to their low-cost, exotic lifestyles. Schapelle and Ally helped themselves to more drinks on the flight. While most people were having a morning coffee, it seems Schapelle drank solidly all the way to Bali. She later wrote in her book, My Story: ''Feeling tipsy, I think we spent most of the flight laughing at nothing … I was well into the holiday spirit.'' A photo taken by Katrina on the flight shows the girls laughing and holding up their cans of beer.
The group may have thought they were discreetly having fun, but Schapelle's heavy drinking didn't go unnoticed. After Schapelle's arrest, a person claiming to be a flight attendant on flight AO7829 posted this blog on the internet:
''Those crocodile tears. Seen 'em from Schapelle before. She was a total bitch on the flight to Denpasar - even jumping up on descent and demanding another beer - her ninth for the trip: 'If I wanted f---ing water you would give it to me! Why not another beer?' Then the tears. She almost had to be physically taken back to her seat. We [the cabin crew] cheered about 3 hours after hearing about the arrest. And, yes … I have considered all along she could be really guilty. Just got caught this time after having paid off officials in the past.''
Gail Burgess was senior cabin purser that day, overseeing the flight attendants who served Schapelle's group on the flight. While Schapelle insists she couldn't have been more relaxed on the plane, Burgess recalls a different story. In an interview for Sins of the Father, she said the blog was ''completely genuine'' and confirmed Schapelle had been at the centre of a ''major drama''.
''As the cabin manager in charge that day,'' she recalls, ''I was mainly working towards the front of the plane, so didn't really know what was going down until the passengers had all stepped off and all the crew were talking about it. I was briefed about a woman that was heavily intoxicated and creating a scene around her area. Consequently, the attendants were forced to cut off her alcohol.''
Schapelle was annoying people. ''The exact words used by staff were 'angry', 'tense' and 'agitated', to the point where surrounding passengers kept on complaining that she was being too aggressive and loud.''
Burgess said she was notified of the incident within minutes of the last passenger exiting, but she was nevertheless ''upset'' her staff had not alerted her at the time. ''I remember saying after we had got off, 'You know the process … You should have let me know what was going on down the back.'
''The protocol is that the captain is also supposed to be informed - and he was angry that he hadn't been advised of the situation also. If someone gets violent, there are containment procedures. The handcuffs come out and then surrounding passengers also have to be moved. She hadn't reached that point, but if you have your alcohol cut off, then you are displaying behaviour that suggests this is a possibility.''
The following day, ''We returned to the aircraft to prepare for a shuttle run to Singapore and straight back [to Bali]. It was then that I was informed a girl from our flight the day before had been reprimanded due to an illegality with her luggage - and that it was drugs. It then emerged it was the same girl who had been acting so strangely on the plane.
''They [the cabin crew] were saying, 'Now it all makes sense.' The captain and I had a chat and we were like "Jesus!" It kind of reinforced our earlier point that we should have been made aware of the situation as it was happening.''
Burgess said that, to this day, nobody acting in any official capacity had ever thought to interview either her or her staff about the flight: ''You have to say it was a bit of an oversight. Had they [the authorities] known what had occurred, it might have proved to be an important part of the jigsaw. She certainly wasn't your typical carefree, relaxed traveller heading off on a family holiday like she claimed. She was the opposite.''
By the time Schapelle and her travelling buddies entered the terminal at Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport, it was 14 hours since they had packed their bags in Ros's garage - everyone was feeling exhausted and Schapelle was almost certainly starting to feel the strain from her heavy drinking.
Ordinary tourists wait in long queues to get their entry visas and passports stamped before entering the nightmare of long lines and crowding in the customs area. With corruption rife in Indonesia, however, there is an alternative for the well-heeled travellers staying at five-star hotels - a VIP service fee that ensures easy passage through all the processes and surrounding mayhem. Those travellers usually receive a ''meet and greet'' service. Rarely, if ever, are their bags checked by customs officers.
When Mercedes Corby, Schapelle's sister, was interviewed by the journalist Sian Powell, she said no one in their right mind would dare smuggle cannabis into Bali.
''Usually stuff gets found inside surfboards with the glass resin over it,'' she told Powell.
''You wouldn't even be able to sell the stuff; you'd be caught before you sold your first bag.''
During Schapelle's trial, however, it was common for television camera crews to arrange payments for fixers to ensure equipment would sail through customs without any checks. Pretty girls can get away with a lot at airports and on this particular day, Schapelle was dressed to impress.
Perhaps the plan had never been to use a fixer but instead to use the happy travelling group as her ''protection''. They certainly blended in.
There were no problems when the group queued at the immigration counters to pay the arrival tax and get their holiday visas, nor when they lined up to have their passports stamped. Next they passed through the hand-luggage X-ray checkpoint and walked through to the main baggage collection area. It had been quite a while since their plane landed and the queues were starting to thin out as passengers gradually left the airport.
At this point, Schapelle was very close, but there was just one final hurdle remaining - the customs inspection desk. All that was left to do was to grab her boogie board, let the customs officers check her huge black suitcase and, if necessary, flash a flirtatious smile if she was asked to open the boogie board bag. But two years after the terrible 2002 Bali bombings, security measures had increased considerably at Bali's international airport. Now Schapelle Corby was playing Russian roulette with her life.
Date November 12, 2011
Corby drew attention to herself even before her Bali flight landed, writes Eamonn Duff.
Rosleigh Rose has always been her family's unofficial photographer. Wherever she went her little camera went with her and no family event was too boring to document. So, it wasn't unusual that Ros took a happy snap of Schapelle and her three travelling companions at Brisbane Airport before they boarded QF501 for Sydney. These days, looking at that photo can easily bring Ros to tears. She had unconsciously captured her daughter's last moment of freedom in Australia.
In the photograph, friends Katrina Richards and Ally McComb, a glamorous and confident-looking Schapelle and half-brother James are bunched together outside the domestic terminal just minutes before they boarded their flight. On the back of the photograph, Ros wrote: ''8th Oct. All happy go to Bali.'' The photograph was later handed to the media as proof Schapelle and the others were relaxed as they set off on their tropical holiday.
You'd be caught before you sold your first bag.
James was scheduled to take a different flight but, after some last-minute pleading at the airport by Ros, he scored a seat on the same flight as Schapelle and the girls.
Last moment of freedom ... Katrina Richards, Schapelle Corby, Ally McComb and James Corby at the airport.
Ally's memory is that James carried the boogie board to the check-in counter at Brisbane Airport: ''Me and Schapelle and Katrina all checked in at the same time. James went to a different counter and put the boogie board up there to go through first and they're like, oh no, that goes in a different section - that goes over to oversize baggage.''
Advertisement But apparently James didn't carry the boogie board across to the oversize baggage counter - Schapelle did. During her trial in Bali in 2005, Schapelle said: ''We all walked together from the check-in counter to the conveyor, the oversize conveyor. I put it in - everyone saw me put it in.''
Katrina also remembers Schapelle checking in the boogie board: ''Schapelle actually put her bag through the oversize counter - it just looked like a normal boogie board bag. How it would normally - no marijuana in it.''
Indonesian police inspect the boogie board.
Not long after 6am the group was finally in the air. Once in Sydney, they found their way to the international terminal, where they had a couple of hours to kill. Schapelle had a few beers in the airport bar with her good friend Jodie Power, who was booked on a later flight to Bali. Jodie later claimed that Schapelle kept pointing at the security cameras saying, ''There's one, and there's one over there'' and that the ill-fated traveller's last words to her in the bar were, ''We'll see you round the pool.'' But it didn't quite happen the way the had planned.
Australian Airlines flight AO7829, scheduled for departure from Sydney at 10.30am, was full with the usual Bali crowd: mostly tourists with business people, surfers and a few expats heading back to their low-cost, exotic lifestyles. Schapelle and Ally helped themselves to more drinks on the flight. While most people were having a morning coffee, it seems Schapelle drank solidly all the way to Bali. She later wrote in her book, My Story: ''Feeling tipsy, I think we spent most of the flight laughing at nothing … I was well into the holiday spirit.'' A photo taken by Katrina on the flight shows the girls laughing and holding up their cans of beer.
The group may have thought they were discreetly having fun, but Schapelle's heavy drinking didn't go unnoticed. After Schapelle's arrest, a person claiming to be a flight attendant on flight AO7829 posted this blog on the internet:
''Those crocodile tears. Seen 'em from Schapelle before. She was a total bitch on the flight to Denpasar - even jumping up on descent and demanding another beer - her ninth for the trip: 'If I wanted f---ing water you would give it to me! Why not another beer?' Then the tears. She almost had to be physically taken back to her seat. We [the cabin crew] cheered about 3 hours after hearing about the arrest. And, yes … I have considered all along she could be really guilty. Just got caught this time after having paid off officials in the past.''
Gail Burgess was senior cabin purser that day, overseeing the flight attendants who served Schapelle's group on the flight. While Schapelle insists she couldn't have been more relaxed on the plane, Burgess recalls a different story. In an interview for Sins of the Father, she said the blog was ''completely genuine'' and confirmed Schapelle had been at the centre of a ''major drama''.
''As the cabin manager in charge that day,'' she recalls, ''I was mainly working towards the front of the plane, so didn't really know what was going down until the passengers had all stepped off and all the crew were talking about it. I was briefed about a woman that was heavily intoxicated and creating a scene around her area. Consequently, the attendants were forced to cut off her alcohol.''
Schapelle was annoying people. ''The exact words used by staff were 'angry', 'tense' and 'agitated', to the point where surrounding passengers kept on complaining that she was being too aggressive and loud.''
Burgess said she was notified of the incident within minutes of the last passenger exiting, but she was nevertheless ''upset'' her staff had not alerted her at the time. ''I remember saying after we had got off, 'You know the process … You should have let me know what was going on down the back.'
''The protocol is that the captain is also supposed to be informed - and he was angry that he hadn't been advised of the situation also. If someone gets violent, there are containment procedures. The handcuffs come out and then surrounding passengers also have to be moved. She hadn't reached that point, but if you have your alcohol cut off, then you are displaying behaviour that suggests this is a possibility.''
The following day, ''We returned to the aircraft to prepare for a shuttle run to Singapore and straight back [to Bali]. It was then that I was informed a girl from our flight the day before had been reprimanded due to an illegality with her luggage - and that it was drugs. It then emerged it was the same girl who had been acting so strangely on the plane.
''They [the cabin crew] were saying, 'Now it all makes sense.' The captain and I had a chat and we were like "Jesus!" It kind of reinforced our earlier point that we should have been made aware of the situation as it was happening.''
Burgess said that, to this day, nobody acting in any official capacity had ever thought to interview either her or her staff about the flight: ''You have to say it was a bit of an oversight. Had they [the authorities] known what had occurred, it might have proved to be an important part of the jigsaw. She certainly wasn't your typical carefree, relaxed traveller heading off on a family holiday like she claimed. She was the opposite.''
By the time Schapelle and her travelling buddies entered the terminal at Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport, it was 14 hours since they had packed their bags in Ros's garage - everyone was feeling exhausted and Schapelle was almost certainly starting to feel the strain from her heavy drinking.
Ordinary tourists wait in long queues to get their entry visas and passports stamped before entering the nightmare of long lines and crowding in the customs area. With corruption rife in Indonesia, however, there is an alternative for the well-heeled travellers staying at five-star hotels - a VIP service fee that ensures easy passage through all the processes and surrounding mayhem. Those travellers usually receive a ''meet and greet'' service. Rarely, if ever, are their bags checked by customs officers.
When Mercedes Corby, Schapelle's sister, was interviewed by the journalist Sian Powell, she said no one in their right mind would dare smuggle cannabis into Bali.
''Usually stuff gets found inside surfboards with the glass resin over it,'' she told Powell.
''You wouldn't even be able to sell the stuff; you'd be caught before you sold your first bag.''
During Schapelle's trial, however, it was common for television camera crews to arrange payments for fixers to ensure equipment would sail through customs without any checks. Pretty girls can get away with a lot at airports and on this particular day, Schapelle was dressed to impress.
Perhaps the plan had never been to use a fixer but instead to use the happy travelling group as her ''protection''. They certainly blended in.
There were no problems when the group queued at the immigration counters to pay the arrival tax and get their holiday visas, nor when they lined up to have their passports stamped. Next they passed through the hand-luggage X-ray checkpoint and walked through to the main baggage collection area. It had been quite a while since their plane landed and the queues were starting to thin out as passengers gradually left the airport.
At this point, Schapelle was very close, but there was just one final hurdle remaining - the customs inspection desk. All that was left to do was to grab her boogie board, let the customs officers check her huge black suitcase and, if necessary, flash a flirtatious smile if she was asked to open the boogie board bag. But two years after the terrible 2002 Bali bombings, security measures had increased considerably at Bali's international airport. Now Schapelle Corby was playing Russian roulette with her life.
- Points
- 152
Let's see Schapelle was a hair dresser.
Hmmm Melbourne gangster Dominic Gatto daughter is a hairdresser her husband is in jail for importing drugs????
Shapelle lived in Brisbane where could have gone to the gold coast sunshine coast northern Qld for a holiday instead she went a overpopulated polluted shithole called bali.
Hairdressers are common suppliers of drugs to strippers and other people apart from pizza and souvlarki sellers.
Solution The baggage handlers slipped the drugs in her boggie board under police instruction.
Nobody is that dumb to bring drugs back from a shithole like Bali even Melbourne gangster Dominic Gatto has holidayed in bali and did not bring any drugs back.
Personally believe she was set up.
Hmmm Melbourne gangster Dominic Gatto daughter is a hairdresser her husband is in jail for importing drugs????
Shapelle lived in Brisbane where could have gone to the gold coast sunshine coast northern Qld for a holiday instead she went a overpopulated polluted shithole called bali.
Hairdressers are common suppliers of drugs to strippers and other people apart from pizza and souvlarki sellers.
Solution The baggage handlers slipped the drugs in her boggie board under police instruction.
Nobody is that dumb to bring drugs back from a shithole like Bali even Melbourne gangster Dominic Gatto has holidayed in bali and did not bring any drugs back.
Personally believe she was set up.
Wooper
Legend Member
- Points
- 541
person I know was over there the time of the trial and was coming home the day she got convicted and said their mother was in the smoking area of the airport where a lady was balling her eyes so she and another bloke asked if she was ok and turned out was a relative of Chapelle and I forget exactly what she said but was along the lines that they warned her not to do something so stupid but she didn’t listen and now she is servicing time
doob
Legend Member
- Points
- 1,981
This was published 9 years ago
Reporters who have covered the Schapelle Corby saga from the start call it the "Corby curse" — the chaos, disaster and betrayal that so routinely surrounds this family.
Close friends have fallen out and been sued; counsellors, priests and lawyers have breached the sanctity of the confessional; spivs and crooks have been hired and discarded for incompetence or mendacity.
Indonesian authorities have threatened to revoke Schapelle Corby's parole and send her back to Kerobokan prison if she goes ahead with a paid television interview.
Money, predictably, is at the root of it all, and Schapelle Corby's undying ability to earn it. Even now, an exclusive TV interview with the Seven Network's Mike Willesee, and a rumoured magazine deal are in the offing, and expected to earn millions.
If there is a curse, though, it has affected Schapelle Corby most of all. She has spent nine years in prison, and she's done her time hard.
The media circus that followed Schapelle Corby's release.CREDIT: JUSTIN MCMANUS
Report after report suggests she is mentally ill, struggling. In the view of Indonesian officials who have visited her since her release, she is "stressed", a word that could describe anything from mildly irritated to a full-blown breakdown.
In this dysfunctional family, the most dysfunctional member of all is the star.
"She wants to go home immediately but she's stressed because of all the media attention. She feels like she's chained," said Indonesian parole office official Ketut Sukiati after interviewing the Corby clan on Friday.
But she cannot go home, because nowhere is as secure as her current compound, and every story that's let slip, every paparazzi photo that is taken before the exclusive interview airs reduces its financial value.
Schapelle Corby leaves prison on Monday.
Of course, the Indonesian justice ministry's move on Thursday night to ban the interview under pain of Corby being returned to prison, means it may never go ahead.
There was little room for doubt in the deputy Justice Minister's statement: "If you're going to do the interview, especially if it's going to be paid, it will cause ... restlessness in the community, so I have instructed the officer here ... to advise the family not to do it."
Schapelle's sister Mercedes fighting her way through the media pack after visiting her.CREDIT: JUSTIN MCMANUS
In the face of this, though, Mike Willesee still insisted he could proceed, though he conceded on Friday he had talked neither to the family nor Seven Network management about that view.
Quite apart from the legal considerations, it's unclear whether, and when, Corby may be up to doing an interview.
It's a diabolical dilemma for Corby, whose very freedom is on the line.
The sensible choice would be for her to make a detailed written statement to all media, have a professional photographer release a series of beautifully posed post-prison pictures to replace the stock photos we all use of her behind bars, and then ask all to respect her privacy. Then she could go home and start getting well.
The only hints about Corby's new, albeit temporary, life inside Villa 30 of the Sentosa Seminyak villas, the gilded cage she has swapped for prison and where she is checked in as Jodie Hawkins, are not promising.
First was the release of a photograph of her, unmasked and drinking beer after Woman's Day agreed to pay $20,000 for it. The magazine ultimately refused to pay after News Limited breached the exclusivity of the image. Mercedes threatened legal action, and old hands nodded sagely and muttered, "Ah, the Corby curse."
The photograph showed Corby posed looking awkward and slightly manic while drinking beer in her brother Michael's company. She was still in the hat and shirt she wore on her mad dash outside prison, though without the veil. Was there not time even for a shower before the family took a photograph? That someone then tried to hawk the image for cash reasserts a familiar pattern.
That photograph — and her luxury surroundings — obsesses the Indonesian media, which spent Thursday interviewing Australian journalists about the fact that she is inside luxury digs, not the family home, while on parole. They also questioned her "partying" and "perhaps being drunk".
A Balinese employee of the hotel, which is hosting the waiting media summed up a common view, telling this journalist on Friday: "It's not fair. She's spent nine years not having to work in prison, and now she will get rich talking about it."
Then there was a video released on Thursday by Mercedes talking down the size of the interview fee, and exposing her obsessions by taking a swipe at Queensland Premier Campbell Newman over the Schapelle telemovie.
The unexpected behaviour of Willesee has also given us hints. He has emerged several times from the compound he shares with the Corby family only to reveal that he has less idea about crucial developments than the media outside.
On Saturday morning, after the family announced that they would not be doing any interview "at this stage", this reporter asked Willesee if he had discussed that statement with the family.
"I've only got what's in the public domain," he replied.
Whatever his contract or agreement says, it must leave significant room for doubt — and provide little guarantee of communication with the family.
Willesee is sounding slightly concerned.
Perhaps he's reassessing his decision to throw his lot in with the Corbys. Perhaps he's concerned that the next victim of the Corby curse will be him.
Money at the root of the 'Corby curse'
By Michael Bachelard
February 15, 2014 — 2.37pmReporters who have covered the Schapelle Corby saga from the start call it the "Corby curse" — the chaos, disaster and betrayal that so routinely surrounds this family.
Close friends have fallen out and been sued; counsellors, priests and lawyers have breached the sanctity of the confessional; spivs and crooks have been hired and discarded for incompetence or mendacity.
Indonesian authorities have threatened to revoke Schapelle Corby's parole and send her back to Kerobokan prison if she goes ahead with a paid television interview.
Money, predictably, is at the root of it all, and Schapelle Corby's undying ability to earn it. Even now, an exclusive TV interview with the Seven Network's Mike Willesee, and a rumoured magazine deal are in the offing, and expected to earn millions.
If there is a curse, though, it has affected Schapelle Corby most of all. She has spent nine years in prison, and she's done her time hard.
The media circus that followed Schapelle Corby's release.CREDIT: JUSTIN MCMANUS
Report after report suggests she is mentally ill, struggling. In the view of Indonesian officials who have visited her since her release, she is "stressed", a word that could describe anything from mildly irritated to a full-blown breakdown.
In this dysfunctional family, the most dysfunctional member of all is the star.
"She wants to go home immediately but she's stressed because of all the media attention. She feels like she's chained," said Indonesian parole office official Ketut Sukiati after interviewing the Corby clan on Friday.
But she cannot go home, because nowhere is as secure as her current compound, and every story that's let slip, every paparazzi photo that is taken before the exclusive interview airs reduces its financial value.
Schapelle Corby leaves prison on Monday.
Of course, the Indonesian justice ministry's move on Thursday night to ban the interview under pain of Corby being returned to prison, means it may never go ahead.
There was little room for doubt in the deputy Justice Minister's statement: "If you're going to do the interview, especially if it's going to be paid, it will cause ... restlessness in the community, so I have instructed the officer here ... to advise the family not to do it."
Schapelle's sister Mercedes fighting her way through the media pack after visiting her.CREDIT: JUSTIN MCMANUS
In the face of this, though, Mike Willesee still insisted he could proceed, though he conceded on Friday he had talked neither to the family nor Seven Network management about that view.
Quite apart from the legal considerations, it's unclear whether, and when, Corby may be up to doing an interview.
It's a diabolical dilemma for Corby, whose very freedom is on the line.
The sensible choice would be for her to make a detailed written statement to all media, have a professional photographer release a series of beautifully posed post-prison pictures to replace the stock photos we all use of her behind bars, and then ask all to respect her privacy. Then she could go home and start getting well.
The only hints about Corby's new, albeit temporary, life inside Villa 30 of the Sentosa Seminyak villas, the gilded cage she has swapped for prison and where she is checked in as Jodie Hawkins, are not promising.
First was the release of a photograph of her, unmasked and drinking beer after Woman's Day agreed to pay $20,000 for it. The magazine ultimately refused to pay after News Limited breached the exclusivity of the image. Mercedes threatened legal action, and old hands nodded sagely and muttered, "Ah, the Corby curse."
The photograph showed Corby posed looking awkward and slightly manic while drinking beer in her brother Michael's company. She was still in the hat and shirt she wore on her mad dash outside prison, though without the veil. Was there not time even for a shower before the family took a photograph? That someone then tried to hawk the image for cash reasserts a familiar pattern.
That photograph — and her luxury surroundings — obsesses the Indonesian media, which spent Thursday interviewing Australian journalists about the fact that she is inside luxury digs, not the family home, while on parole. They also questioned her "partying" and "perhaps being drunk".
A Balinese employee of the hotel, which is hosting the waiting media summed up a common view, telling this journalist on Friday: "It's not fair. She's spent nine years not having to work in prison, and now she will get rich talking about it."
Then there was a video released on Thursday by Mercedes talking down the size of the interview fee, and exposing her obsessions by taking a swipe at Queensland Premier Campbell Newman over the Schapelle telemovie.
The unexpected behaviour of Willesee has also given us hints. He has emerged several times from the compound he shares with the Corby family only to reveal that he has less idea about crucial developments than the media outside.
On Saturday morning, after the family announced that they would not be doing any interview "at this stage", this reporter asked Willesee if he had discussed that statement with the family.
"I've only got what's in the public domain," he replied.
Whatever his contract or agreement says, it must leave significant room for doubt — and provide little guarantee of communication with the family.
Willesee is sounding slightly concerned.
Perhaps he's reassessing his decision to throw his lot in with the Corbys. Perhaps he's concerned that the next victim of the Corby curse will be him.
doob
Legend Member
- Points
- 1,981
Aaaah Bali! They should rename it Corby. "
Bali is more than a place; it’s a mood, an aspiration, a tropical state of mind. – Elizabeth Gilbert
Schapelle should be named Chairperson of the Bali Tourism Commission. She knows where the best bars are. She even knows the law and is a citizen of both Bali and Australia - yes, she's a convict.
Bali is more than a place; it’s a mood, an aspiration, a tropical state of mind. – Elizabeth Gilbert
Schapelle should be named Chairperson of the Bali Tourism Commission. She knows where the best bars are. She even knows the law and is a citizen of both Bali and Australia - yes, she's a convict.