Original subtitles

This was definitely the future of cocaine trafficking.

The business was on course to make a lot of money.

Millions.

I was completely hooked on the whole adrenaline, the whole buzz of drug

trafficking.

Just a feeling of invincibility.

Come on, man!

Hey, where are you taking us?

It's a bit like playing Russian roulette.

You end up gambling with your life.

People getting stabbed, killed, shot, cut up.

It's a decision that I've regretted every day since.

Every single day.

I went to Cardiff University to study archaeology, but quickly got distracted

the whole drug -taking, party, acid house, rape scene.

My studies declined and my partying increased.

There are several reasons I became involved in the drug.

Growing up, I had a lot of experience of death.

When I was 14, one of my best friends died.

And by the age of 20, I'd witnessed the death of eight people.

I realised that life could be taken away in an instant.

That made me live for the moment and become rather reckless.

Hey, how you doing?

Quite a few people started asking whether or not I could get any.

Pills, good ecstasy, and I could.

Word spread, and before I knew it, I was supplying quite a lot of people in

Cardiff. A big part of me enjoyed the whole business of

dealing with drugs.

It was a good feeling to come to a party and get everyone turned on, basically,

and in the mood for partying.

It's definitely the adrenaline of the whole thing.

I remember a few people saying that I was an adrenaline junkie.

By the year 2000, I'd been dealing drugs for five years.

I'd made a reasonable amount of money and also acquired the lifestyle that

with it.

You know, expensive hotels, flash cars.

But I had become somewhat complacent.

I took the drive and ran with a briefcase full of drugs as if I was a

In fact, I think it became a running joke that I was the party doctor or

something like that.

One evening, I was stopped by the police.

They discovered the briefcase and found 5 ,000 vasopressin pills, and that was

that, really.

I was 24, and I was sentenced.

through five years in prison.

That was devastating.

For a while, I didn't want to know anything about drugs at all.

But prison is the ultimate finishing school for criminals.

I couldn't meet the right people.

Where? Yeah.

Where did you get it from?

No, because I met quite a lot of old -school gangsters and...

Whatever you didn't know before you went in, you certainly do when you come out.

I'm from Columbia.

I didn't really want to get involved in it again, but I always say that the

selling of drugs is more addictive than the taking of drugs.

One day, I came across an article which described how cocaine had been implanted

into plastic garden furniture.

And that, to me, was just the eureka moment.

I decided to do it myself, go straight to the force in South America, cut out

all the middlemen and import it directly into Britain.

This was definitely the future of cocaine trafficking.

I was released from prison towards the end of 2002, having served half my five

-year sentence.

Six months later, I flew out to Ecuador.

When I arrived in Quito, I was quite nervous because it was the first time

been anywhere far afield like that.

I had been given a contact in prison for a Colombian guy who knew

how to impregnate the cocaine into rubber.

The whole situation was quite exciting.

I was about to carry out a drug deal in a country that I didn't know.

Speaking a language I didn't understand.

So I was quite anxious.

A couple of days later, I received a phone call from the Colombian.

He said he had five kilos of cocaine ready to go and that a taxi would

me from the hotel.

By that time, it was dark.

Tension started to build. I was getting a bit more nervous and wondering where I

was going.

Having heard countless stories of people getting kidnapped in hell for ransom

and all the rest of it, I think, God, I could be walking into a really bad

situation here, which I wouldn't be walking out of.

I was dropped off at a house.

Backslide these metal gates to the courtyard.

And they close behind me and I'm like, oh, God.

So there's no way out of here now.

As I walk through the door, I turn around and

there's a long -barrelled gun hanging on the back of the door, like a rifle or

something.

I'm now in this house with a bunch of people I don't know, and there's already

guns on display.

I was pretty well on edge by now.

Peter. Hola.

Como estas?

Very good. You?

You like Quito?

Yes, yes. It's a very interesting city.

The Colombian that I'd been put in contact with was nicknamed El

Because he'd been in the military and involved with the guerrilla force, fuck.

People not to be messed with, really.

He produced a really large tent,

rolled it out, covering pretty much the whole floor.

Here? The rubber of the ground sheet?

Uh -huh. Cocaine and the rubber are mixed. Cocaine is rubber.

Throughout the whole... And he explained that he was turning the cocaine into

rubber, which he would then put into the ground sheet of a tent in between the

layers.

In the whole tent?

And that, to me, is just ingenious. It seems really good.

I mean, I actually questioned whether the drugs were in there, because it

too good to be true.

So I said to him, can I just chew the corner of that tent, please?

And sure enough, it made all my mouth go numb, so I knew that it was 100 % in

there.

And it made my mouth go that numb that I knew it was really cocaine as well.

Everyone relaxed and...

We realised that, yeah, we could make this happen.

A couple of days later, I travelled out to the airport with my 10 -man tent.

I was extremely nervous.

The tent was quite a large item.

So I was worried that, you know, that would be picked up upon by customs.

I'm just afraid you have six people overweight.

Oh. Unless you want to leave something behind.

Maybe this bag?

That's fine, I'll pay the excess.

OK.

I was

quite relieved just... to get it out of my hands, basically, and into the

luggage hold.

But it was probably ringing all sorts of alarm bells.

You know, why is one man bringing a 10 -man tent back?

I was pretty nervous waiting to get onto the plane.

Waiting and waiting and waiting.

When the plane took off, I was like, yeah,

we're away.

After a horrendously long flight, we've landed in London Heathrow.

As I was queuing up to go through board control, I noticed that one of the

customs officials was really looking at me and giving me the eyeball.

And at that point, I just knew I was getting pulled in.

Have a look at your passport, please.

Thank you. Can you come with me?

So I was like, oh, great, here we go again.

It wasn't exactly the most subtle of moves, really.

Freshly released drug dealer goes to country next to Colombia. I wonder what

are up to.

I'm wondering, oh, God, you know, have they brought the tent from the hole?

And sure enough, it was there.

It was worrying, and it didn't feel good at all.

The adrenaline kicked into my heart rate, just gone through the roof.

Big tent for one person travelling alone.

I found it in a shop in Quito.

It was very cheap and it seemed like a good deal.

I was just trying to stay as calm as I could.

Not blink too much or, you know, look away or touch my nose or any of those

typical signs of lying.

I was just trying to keep it cool whilst my knees were knocking together and I

was turning into jelly.

So did you pack these bags yourself?

Yes. Are you carrying anything for anybody else?

No.

What moment would it be?

The adrenaline was flowing.

But... Surely they've been looking for powder or blocks of cocaine or bags of

cocaine or something white and powdery anyway.

This will be a test if it does work. Then we know it works.

If not, then I'm going to prison for a long time.

Okay.

You're free to go. Please take your bags.

I was like, really?

You sure?

And he said, yes, you can go.

Walked up to customs and through the Claire Lane.

And at that point, the adrenaline was, yeah, it was awesome.

It was a really big high.

Just a feeling of invincibility, feeling great.

I was well and truly addicted to it by then.

And it was just green light.

There's no turning back, really, from that point.

After that first one, I recruited mules to carry the tents back.

Yeah, hi, Dave, it's Peter.

Yeah, yeah, we're on for tonight.

I'd be absolutely insistent that they had no criminal record for drugs and

minimal connection to me.

Some people did it...

to raise extra money for their family. A couple did it to pay off mortgages.

I was bringing in one tent with between three and five kilos in every couple of

months.

If you were looking around an airport, the people that you suspected of being

mules were probably the least likely.

You know, ex -bank manager at 70 will bring things back for us.

rented an apartment in Edinburgh and set up a cocaine processing laboratory.

They employed two Colombian chemists who had worked with gorillas in the jungles

processing tons of cocaine.

And you'd have to soak it in alcohol to draw the cocaine out.

And then it would be a case of evaporating all the alcohol off.

leaving the cocaine powder, and then cut it in order to maximise

the profit.

We'd use coffee grinders to blend the cutting agent into it.

The coke tended to get everywhere.

We'd end up high up in the powder.

It was just circulating in the air and going through your skin.

It would take two or three days to get it all done properly.

And, hey, you pressed over there, a nice fresh kilo of supposedly pure cocaine.

We would have been making about £150 ,000 on each tent.

The business was on course to make a lot of money, millions.

And the whole time we were doing it, no -one was arrested.

I was proud of that. I was happy.

By the spring of 2005, I'd been trafficking cocaine for almost two years

a hitch.

Why not?

Convertible. I didn't tell my girlfriend Nikki anything that I was doing, which

was difficult.

It's very similar to an addiction in that way. You're always looking for

something bigger, a bigger dose, a bigger fix, basically, isn't it?

I love you.

I suspect that, yes, I probably was under surveillance, particularly with my

background and past.

I suppose you turn a blind eye, really, to try and ignore the risk.

One night, the two chemists called me.

I'm sorry, baby.

Let's work.

I'll be back.

Instead, we think we're being watched.

There's a man and a woman in a car that keep looking up at us.

Okay, I'll come straight over.

Hey, are they up there now?

Yeah, come on. Yeah, okay, come on, come on, come on.

When I arrived, I had a quick peek out the window, and the couple were

constantly looking up at the apartment.

How long have they been there for?

Like half an hour.

And I said, yeah, we're certainly the police for sure.

I mean, if the police had come through the door right then and there.

I knew I was going to end up in prison. Put that down, drop everything, take the

ovaries off, let's go.

I really did not want to stay there too long.

But the chemists were in the middle of processing something.

Hey!

What are you doing? Go with me now! There in front of them is a $200 ,000

of drugs that they're about to just walk away from.

There's no way they're going to do that.

I'm going. I'm going to call you in the morning, OK?

OK. So they decided to stay, and I left.

The next morning, after a pretty fitful night's sleep, I tried to call them.

Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.

All their phones are off.

Pick up, pick up, pick up. Well, that is a good sign.

Come on, man!

The amount of news coverage it got was insane.

My name didn't come up in the news report, but I knew that it wouldn't be

before the police were coming for me.

The game was up.

I had to go on the run. I had to leave the country and disappear for a bit.

Literally got smuggled into France.

in the boot of a Mercedes car by a Turkish guy who was involved with the

mafia.

After a few weeks of being on the run sat in the middle of France doing

I received a phone call from El Comandante in Ecuador.

He had a tent there ready to go that contained just a couple of kilos.

At this point in time, I probably should have thrown in the towel and said, you

know, enough is enough.

But yet again, I didn't.

It was still the whole addictive adrenaline thing.

It was just difficult to walk away from doing that to doing nothing.

I knew it was risky, but I told myself it would be the last turn.

It's a decision that I've regretted every day since.

Every single day.

When I arrived in Quito, I took a taxi to the hotel.

The next day I picked up the tent from Comandante.

When I got back to my room, my girlfriend Nikki was there waiting for

I love the roses.

What are you doing here?

I got the early flight.

Oh,

I've missed you so much.

I hadn't seen her for maybe a month or more because I was on the run in France.

So I decided to pay for her to come over, show the country.

She knew that I sold some drugs,

but nothing about the scale of it or the amount of money involved.

I tried to keep her out of it as much as I could.

We'd been together quite a few years at that point, so, yeah, she was important

to me.

Hello, Tito.

Hello, you.

That evening, I took Nicky out to a nice restaurant.

That was the first time that Nicky had been out of Europe properly, so for her,

it was quite a big deal.

Over dinner, I was talking to her about what we're going to do for the next two

weeks, planning out the trip.

Not long after arriving there, this European guy comes into the restaurant

sits maybe a table away from us. The restaurant was virtually empty.

And I'm looking at him and thinking, this guy looks weird.

He seemed to be eavesdropping on the conversation that me and Nick were

When I looked over...

We sort of caught each other's eye briefly, and he grabbed the menu and

reading it, but it's upside down.

I looked at him for a moment in disbelief.

To some extent, I knew that sooner or later I was going to be arrested.

But it just felt like I was driving towards a brick wall, 100 miles an hour,

with my foot jammed on the accelerator, and I just couldn't take it off.

And yet I could see the wall coming.

It was a collision course.

Hola, buenas noches.

We made our way back to the hotel.

As I asked for my key to the room, the girls looked me right in the eye and

of made a real point of staring at me, which was quite bizarre.

Have you talked to the guy about those islands?

No.

Well, you should really go.

You should go. No.

Gracias. Something was ringing in my mind.

An alarm was going off. But I couldn't quite play it.

On the way, Mickey was laughing and joking. She was quite happy and had a

drinks.

We walked down the corridor towards the room.

And I turned the handle, and something in my peripheral vision, there's a

movement, and...

There's all these guys charging down the corridor.

I felt a feeling of panic sweep through me.

Within seconds, they were on, you know, hands on us.

My whole world stopped.

The reality was starting to sink in rapidly.

The adrenaline had really kicked in. I felt quite sick.

My mouth had gone all dry.

Within a very short time, they produced the tent.

They'd definitely been into the room whilst we'd been out at dinner.

They didn't search anywhere else, brought it straight out of the closet

went, oh, look at this, oh, look what we found.

A dip?

It's a tent.

Yeah, we know what it is.

We know it's full of drugs.

I don't know what you're talking about. I just kept up the pretence, though. I

don't know anything about any drugs. We know it's full of cocaine.

We know it's full of cocaine.

We know it's cocaine, you guys. They were adamant that they knew it was in

there. So obviously someone had told them.

They found $2 ,500 in cash.

So I figured I can at least try and bribe my way out of here.

So I said to him, look, is there not some other way that we could do this? Is

there not some arrangement that we could come to? You know, nudge, nudge, nod,

nod, wink, wink.

You've not found anything here. You've found a tent, OK?

Didn't find any drug, nothing. $25 ,000 here in one hour.

Okay? That's for you. That's from me to you. You understand?

We are the Ecuadorian police force, okay?

We don't want your money.

I thought, do you have enough?

God, that was really not normal.

I mean, they're pretty well renowned for being corrupt and taking bribes.

There's somebody else in charge of this.

So I get straight away, obviously, it's got to be the British police.

The Edinburgh raid, it well and truly caught up with me.

I felt extremely guilty and terrible about having placed Nikki in this

situation.

She'd only been in the country a few hours.

She was in no way involved.

And she'd been arrested.

How the hell was I going to get out of this situation? How was I going to get

Nikki out of it as well?

We were led down a corridor towards the holding cells.

I was placed in one and Nikki was placed in the one opposite.

When that door eventually does lock behind you, it's a very strange feeling,

know, a feeling of total defeat, helplessness, a lack of control over

destiny and future.

I could hear her sobbing, which is pretty difficult to take, really,

there was nothing I could do.

Nikki.

She was still in shock, still not really comprehending what had happened or what

was happening.

Nikki.

I basically had to say, well, yes, in part, it is true.

I'm sorry, baby, I'm sorry.

It was heartbreaking.

It felt really bad that she was now locked up in a prison cell so far from

After a couple of days, Nicky and I were transferred to the main prison.

The men and women had separate prisons,

so she was suddenly going, and I had no idea when I was next going to see her if

I was ever going to see her again.

There was no way I was going to be able to protect her, look after her.

I was really concerned about how she was going to fare.

I was devastated.

I was in tears.

So yeah, it was hard.

The prison that I was placed into was supposedly the fourth most dangerous

prison on the whole of the South American continent.

I was surrounded by a high wall topped with razor wire and at intervals there

were police armed with M16 rifles with orders to shoot to kill anyone trying to

escape.

I'd heard all sorts of stories about the prison being hell on earth, people

getting stabbed, killed, shot, cut up, burned.

That's terrible.

The prison was renowned as being gang -controlled, completely corrupt.

The prison guards just went along with the wishes of the gangs, bringing in

drugs, guns, alcohol.

whatever was needed, basically, because they knew if they didn't, they were

going to get killed.

There was no sense of security there or safety whatsoever.

The prisoners were charged with all sorts of offences, ranging from

pickpocketing and petty theft.

murder, rape.

I was taken to my cell and the guy there explained that we could lock the doors

from inside.

We even had an observation hatch so we could look out and make sure there was

one trying to kill us.

It was very much upside down, topsy -turvy world.

I hadn't been in the prison that long, and suddenly I hear a commotion.

There was a crowd surrounding this just horrific thing.

I think it was a Sunday. It was a visit day.

There were families in there seeing their loved ones.

And this guy was being butchered by another prisoner with a kitchen knife.

They were repeatedly stabbing this guy. He was run in a pool of his own blood.

I mean, it felt bad, stood there watching the guy.

But there was nothing you could do. If you get involved, the guy's going to

you as well.

It was the most surreal thing.

You know, there were kids running through the blood to their mum, and this

being stabbed to death right in front of everyone.

The smell of the blood was something I'll never forget.

And that sweet, sickly iron smell.

I can almost taste it in my mouth right now.

Yeah, just horrific.

It was a terrifying wake -up call.

I didn't know how I was going to survive in a place like this where life was

worthless.

I managed to get hold of Nicky's phone number over in the women's prison.

She was finding it hard to deal with being in prison so far from home and

family. It's going to be OK.

He was overwhelming, I think, for her.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

She was innocent and shouldn't have been in there.

Okay, it says here that I, Peter Trenton, I am totally... My lawyer told

if I wanted Nicky to go free, I was going to have to admit full guilt.

So please sign and date it here.

That was really hard, knowing that I was going to end up getting a heavy

sentence.

But I would do whatever I had to do to get her out.

It was completely my fault.

After about four or five months, Nikki was finally released.

I was sentenced to 12 years, which was, yeah, which was difficult, because

12 years is a long time.

I was looking at a long -term sentence, and I needed money to survive.

You needed money for everything.

Food, drinks, mobile telephones, cigarettes, basically whatever you

The most obvious income is probably selling drugs.

The only problem was there were two heavily armed gangs that controlled the

trade.

So the only way to do it really was to become involved with them.

Let him ask the questions, you just answer. You good? Yeah.

I was taken to meet Gutter, the boss of one of the gangs.

This is my friend Peter.

The one I was telling you about.

Hello.

Come on.

They were Colombian cartel members that controlled the drug trade.

This is my friend.

Just basically people not to be messed with, really.

We can bring cocaine from our farm in Colombia.

The Colombians had heard that I was friendly with a lot of the foreigners.

and thought I would be a good person to sell coke for them.

Yes. We can trust you?

Yes, you can trust me.

Don't let us down.

I was fairly nervous because everyone had said from day one, don't get

in any drug dealing because it just ends up in trouble.

But that was what I knew best.

So I just applied my previous business principles to this and did exactly the

same thing.

There were quite a lot of foreigners in the prison and they were the

biggest consumers of cocaine.

I quite enjoyed having that role.

Kept me occupied with something to do in the day. It felt good.

But it was a bit like playing Russian roulette. You know, you end up gambling

with your life.

Tension had been building between the two gangs for quite some time.

I tried to be friendly towards gang members from both gangs, but they didn't

target me.

Big one for Gato.

Gato, you know, the boss, was particularly keen on Italian food, so I

him a plate of spaghetti bolognese.

As I took the plate of food down towards his room, I've noticed that there's not

many people around on the wing.

It just didn't feel quite right. It was almost like a ghost town. It was

unusually quiet.

At the end of the wing, there were a whole bunch of the other gang members,

of huddled, having some quiet discussion, which looked a bit ominous

I've knocked on the door to give Gato the play of boo.

Gato.

Mmm. Spaghetti.

And there's an incredibly loud bang.

I mean, it felt like it was in my ear.

And I've seen Gato has been shot in the bullet that's gone straight in his

forehead and out the back of his head.

My adrenaline picked in and I just ran without even looking back to myself.

There was gunfire coming in. It sounded like the wall over the wing.

And I could hear bullets impacting the wall and things hitting my door.

I stood there with a large kitchen knife.

It was just complete pandemonium outside.

It was a war, though.

Suddenly, we hear the sound of police radios.

To be honest, I was more worried than fearful of what was going to happen when

the police came in.

They were rough. They would beat you, you know, I mean, quite often for

They started shouting for everyone to get on the floor.

As I'm lying down.

I've looked up slightly as they've dragged Gato.

I could see his face, which was pretty gruesome.

It's a sight that I'll never forget.

The smell, the sound, all of it.

It was a real moment in the whole sentence.

I remember looking into a mirror and...

It was almost like a different person looking back at me, one that I really

didn't recognise.

At that point I knew I had to change my ways.

I decided to stop selling drugs and to make an appeal to get parole.

I was just adamant that I was going to get out one way or the other.

I just wanted to go home, I wanted to see my family.

Yeah, apple pie and home.

I just wanted to go home.

Hello?

The news that my mum was ill came quite suddenly. I mean, she hadn't been in the

best of health.

for several years.

Say that again?

They told me that she'd been rushed into hospital with a heart attack.

The doctors had managed to favour her, but she was in a coma and not expected

live more than two or three days.

Which was just... I mean, that was my worst fear, my worst nightmare, was

A family member dying whilst I was in prison, basically.

I

remember

praying all weekend that she'd pull through.

I got a phone call from my father on, I think it was a Monday, saying that it

was over.

Really, all I'd ever wanted to do was help, look after her.

And in the end, I did exactly the opposite.

Not long after the death of my mother, I discovered that my parole application

had been denied.

that I was now going to have to serve another five years in prison on top of

six that I'd already done.

I was absolutely certain I was getting out at this point. I could almost taste

the prison.

And suddenly... ..the door slammed in my face.

I just didn't see much reason in living at that point.

Just so many feelings of remorse for having done what I did and caused what I

caused.

The effect that some of the drugs that I sold had on people, you know, mentally,

health -wise, all the rest of it.

Yeah.

Yeah, it wasn't good.

All hope just vanished completely.

I just did not see a future for me at all.

So, yeah, it was very dark days.

God knows how I made it through that. I really don't know.

I often wonder whether some sort of divine force or something was looking

upon me and guided me through the whole thing and there's some reason that I was

kept alive.

In the November of 2014, after slightly more than nine years in prison in

Ecuador, I was finally told that I was going home.

I was going to be repatriated to serve the rest of my sentence in Britain,

closer to my family.

I remember the grin on my face. You know, one of those grins where you just

can't stop grinning.

Physically impossible.

After having been through so much death, carnage, mayhem and murder, it was a

miracle that I walked out of that place alive.

I have a lot of regret for what I did and the hurt that I caused my family,

you know, my mother.

It was never repaired before she died.

I am definitely changed, man, from the person that was taking it to that

I was completely hooked on the whole adrenaline, the whole buzz of drug

trafficking.

And that temptation is always there, obviously.

If I wanted to pick up the phone, I could.

But am I going to?

No, I'm not.

I've had enough of the whole lifestyle.

I'm quite content just to be happy and free.

I feel very lucky to be alive.