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Holly Deane-Johns: WA’s most infamous international inmate breaks her silence a decade after her jail release

From the brink of execution in a Thai jail, Holly Deane-Johns is forging into a second chance at life in a storybook tale of redemption. Once one of the most notorious Australian expat prisoners behind bars in Asia — years before Schappelle Corby — she is now free, clean and on a mission to help others — and happily driving Uber passengers around Perth. Deane-Johns was in the throes of a full-blown heroin addiction, a dark life choice that cost her mother and two of her four siblings their lives through overdoses, when her arrest for trafficking in Thailand in 2000 made global headlines. For a while she was looking at death row before she pleaded guilty in 2003 and was sentenced to 31 years in the hell-hole of a Bangkok jail for trying to post 10.4g of pure heroin back to Australia. She was eventually transferred to Perth’s Bandyup Prison in 2007 under a deal between Australia and Thailand and released in 2012 on five years’ parole. Now in her first interview since then, Deane-Johns has revealed the full horrors of her jail time in Thailand’s Lardyao Women’s Correctional Institution — mischievously dubbed the “Bangkok Hilton”. But she also told The West Australian how that 31-year jail sentence was a blessing in disguise and never broke her spirit. It only served to give her hope that she would some day get home to WA. “If I didn’t end up in jail, I’d probably be dead now ... you can’t lead that kind of life,” the 51-year-old said. “I saw a lot of things that nobody should see — I watched people get sick while getting no medical help, I watched my friends die. You were in prison with people who had been there for a long time and you’d look into their eyes and there was no light anymore, just a blank stare. “I knew as soon as I was arrested that I was f..ked. When the cops came to interview me they said, ‘You’re going to get the death sentence’. I knew I’d be there for a very long time, but I didn’t think I’d die. “All my focus was on getting home, just to get the f..k out of there.” Now with distance between her and her release, looking healthy and speaking articulately about wanting to help others make a positive difference in their lives, she has a “gut feel” that the time is right to finally tell her powerful story. “I don’t really know why the time is right now, it just feels right and it hasn’t felt right before,” she said. “Life has got in the way. You’ve got to be able to pay your bills and there’s been no real time to be able to take a breath. Since I got out, there has been a lot to deal with to get to where I am now.” With the emaciated reality of living her past drug hell all but gone, she tells how the media circus that surrounded Corby — who was arrested four years after Deane-Johns — had been instructional in prompting her to remain silent. Deane-Johns revealed she had even sent a letter to Corby from jail to jail, advising her to put her head down and stay away from the media. She was not sure whether the letter was received and never had a reply. “I was hearing what was going on with her being in the public eye with all the news and interviews and I felt bad for her,” she said. “I still don’t know if the letter got to her, but I explained to her who I was and explained to her that the way she was handling it was not doing her any favours and to stop. I know keeping quiet was what helped me get home.” On the day Deane-Johns arrived at the Bangkok Hilton after a month in the police holding cell, where she had considered suicide, she was hastily shoved into a five-metre by six-metre cell with 120 other women. Alone and alienated, her cramped reality in the over-populated facility required a coming-to-terms with almost unbearable living conditions. “It was just f...king horrible, I was wondering where I was going to sleep,” she exclaimed, the vivid recollection palpable in her suddenly elevated voice. “They just opened the door and pushed me in there and there was only Thais, no foreigners except me ... and I didn’t speak Thai. Because there was no room, everybody had to sleep on their sides and if somebody had to go to the toilet, when they came back their space would be gone. “When one person in the line turned over, the whole line had to turn over and because it was so hot, you stuck to people. If someone had their hair in a pony tail, it stuck in your face. “If people had their period, you’d wake up with someone’s period blood on you. It was horrible, just horrible.” She laughed that she now had a king-sized bed at home and also said she had to continue sleeping on the floor when she first arrived at Bandyup because the mattress and pillow gave her vertigo. Deane-Johns suffered serious bouts of conjunctivitis and was constantly frightened of getting ill in the Thai jail. She even once had another prisoner pull out a sore tooth with pliers when she could not get a dentist, only to later realise she had pulled out the wrong one. A return for a second painful experience, replete with a more than colourful language exchange, was required the following day. “Everything was harsh, even things as small as a toothache could turn into something big,” she blurted. “The screws (guards) would walk around hitting people with their batons and humiliation of prisoners was huge. Two girls stole some underwear, so they got a big rod and hung the underwear on it and made the girls walk around all day with ‘I am a thief’ written on their chests. “They made people stand on a table, holding water over their heads and chained others up on a wall like a crucifixion. I also got in a couple of fights because I didn’t want to be seen as a pushover and wouldn’t back down. “Sometimes, if you didn’t have work, your whole day would consist of just sitting and doing nothing. There were stones, hair and maggots in the food and there were times when you were hungry and couldn’t get food.” She revealed she had further darkened her naturally brown hair colour soon after being incarcerated to try and better blend in with the other prisoners. It also helped her move around the prison without being noticed more easily and into various work areas. It enabled her to sell the food and toiletries she was peddling as part of a behind-bars business that kept her financially solvent. She also made silk flowers to sell, did some embroidering and learned to speak Thai. But she said losing her Thai friend Aong, the person she had become closest to in prison, had broken her heart. She died from AIDS. “I classed her as my sister,” she said. “She got sick and when I saw her, her neck was so swollen she looked like a cobra. She wanted me to kill her and a few days later she died. “After they picked her up, I watched from my cell as two guys picked her up in a bag and swung her three times before throwing her into a truck like a sack of potatoes. You could hear the thud and I was like, ‘That’s my mate’. “I laid down, covered my face and just cried. I’ve got a tattoo on my leg in memory of her.” Many random Australians visited Deane-Johns during her Thai jail stint. Some would come just for curiosity, getting a short shrift in return, while others came offering food and friendship. She remains close to an elderly Queensland couple, who were a former prison officer and an ex-prisoner. A major factor in Deane-Johns finally being transferred from Bangkok to Bandyup in 2007 was her sudden, serendipitous friendship with WA-based Debbie Singh, whose brother John Doran in 2003 became the first Australian brought home from Thailand under a new international prisoner transfer treaty. He had been jailed for fraud in 1997. An agreement struck between Thailand and Australia in 2002 allowed for sentenced prisoners to be transferred between the countries, but State authorities had to agree to pay for repatriation and to keep them in jail once returned. Ms Singh regularly visited Deane-Johns, as well as other Australians in prisons abroad, and the pair have now become best friends. Their union provided valuable support, particularly when WA’s then-corrective services minister Margaret Quirk repeatedly rejected Deane-Johns’ prisoner transfer, despite it having been given the green light by both the Australian and Thai Governments. Key WA political figures including former premier Carmen Lawrence and Labor Party stalwarts Graham Edwards and John Hyde, as part of immense public and political pressure, were instrumental in getting Ms Quirk to relent in 2007. Ms Quirk had been reported as saying Australian jails were not a dating service for heroin dealers, suggesting Deane-Johns wanted only to be back closer to her boyfriend of the time. Deane-Johns categorically denied that was the case. “I never said that and it wasn’t a priority at all,” she said. “I just wanted to go home to so I could have visits from my friends and family. I was so segregated, I had nobody and that’s tough. Every month, I was asking if there was any news (of her transfer), but eventually I stopped asking because it was too gut-wrenching and I got really scared. “You got that hope, then it was gone, over and over and over for years. I thought they were kidding when they finally told me it had been rejected.” With her mental health deteriorating, she had also seen her drug-trafficking accomplice Robert Halliwell returned to NSW and released from prison while she was still behind bars. She had even considered applying for a transfer to another Australian State. She comparatively described her time in Bandyup as being in a “girls’ boarding school”. But she has paid a price. Since her release, Deane-Johns has been diagnosed and received treatment for post traumatic stress disorder. Given her experiences, it is almost surprising that it came as a shock to her. “I had no idea I had it,” she said. “I’d wake up in the morning crying my eyes out for no reason and that’s not me, I’m not an emotional person. My dad died when I was in jail, my mother died when I was in jail ... to lose both your mum and dad when you’re locked up is pretty hard. “Even things like that have a big impact. It’s hard.” Remarkably, given Deane-Johns’ notoriety at the time of her arrest, she has barely been recognised during her assimilation back into general society. Initial television news bulletins covering her release meant that a few punters picked her out at the bar of South Perth’s Windsor Hotel that day, following a shopping spree at Whitford City where nothing on the shelves was safe. “I bought a phone, clothes, bags ... I was like a little kid in a candy store,” she said. “I was euphoric. I had money in my hand, I didn’t have to ask anyone for anything and I could even have a shower when I wanted.” But more recently, while driving passengers for Uber and Sheba and delivering Uber Eats meals around suburban Perth and also having a FIFO stint at a Geraldton gold mine and traffic controlling at Tom Price, her identity has gone largely unnoticed. She did not turn one head as she openly told her story sitting alfresco at a Mt Lawley cafe. Her friend Ms Singh said she was immensely proud of how Dean-Johns had turned around her life. “We fed off each other in a way with what I went through with my brother,” she said. “Now we’re just normal as the day.” Five years ago, still unsure whether she could return to Thailand, Deane-Johns took a chance and joined Ms Singh on one of her regular medical and education missions for the underprivileged. She found out at Bangkok Airport. When customs guards saw her name they looked knowingly at each other before having her escorted to a room by 20 police officers to wait for the next flight home. Behind the headlines and the drama of her life is the deeply sad tale of family tragedy. Born in the Victorian suburb of Kew, Deane-Johns was raised in Perth and was a student in Mt Lawley. “We had a great childhood, we had a great life,” she said. “We didn’t talk about drugs, we didn’t have anything to do with drugs, we weren’t criminals. We were the normal, typical Perth suburban family.” Then, her parents Damian and Laurie split when she was 12 and the rot set in. Her mother later became romantically involved with a heroin addict, triggering her downward life spiral. She died from an overdose in 1991. Deane-Johns said she and four of her siblings became heroin addicts and all spent time in jail. She herself did a five-year jail stint in Bandyup in the early 1990s because of drug-trafficking charges. Her older brother Craig died from an overdose the day he was released from prison three years ago and her younger sister Amy suffered the same fate last year. Her father, a former Perth disc jockey with 6KY, 6PM and 6IX, launched a career as a drug addiction therapist, but died soon after she was sentenced. The family trauma has left her with a nagging feeling of guilt. Private pictures from Deane-Johns’ childhood show the innocence of a beautiful little girl. But she confirms suggestions that she became a high school wild child and climbing into hard drugs ignited the pathway to destruction. She was not injected with heroin at the age of 14 by her mother as past reports have suggested. But she admitted she did ask her mother to supply her first try of heroin powder after she had turned 16. “They say you try it once and you’re hooked and it’s so true,” she said. “That was the beginning of the end and there’s nothing to be proud of.” For her first 11 months in prison in Thailand, Deane-Johns easily sourced heroin to continue feeding her junkie addiction. That was, until one day she realised how far downhill her life had slipped and from that day, she has remained clean and her redemption pathway was set. She was determined to get straight. She took sips from a bottle of methadone she had bought back from Thai police while enduring a brutal three weeks going “cold turkey”. She paid a fellow inmate to massage her to help deal with the withdrawal symptoms. “It was really weird — people say a light comes on and it did,” she explained. “I don’t really know why, but I woke up and looked around and thought, ‘What the f..k am I doing, look where I am, look what I’ve done to myself’. I had clarity and knew I had to sort my sh.t out. “You’re either going to sink or you’re going to swim and I wasn’t sinking. I’ve always been very strong-minded and very strong-willed.” Deane-Johns, whose parole period ended in 2017, said she had long owned her errors and did not want or expect any sympathy. She has completed studies in timeline therapy, hypnotherapy and youth and community services work and was adamant she had the capacity and experience to become a mentor to others facing adversity in life. “I’ve always considered myself very lucky and very fortunate because wherever I’ve been and what ever situation I’ve been in, I’ve always gravitated towards the people I’ve needed to be with,” she said. “Now, I just feel like it’s my calling to talk to people and I know I can help. I’ve lived a life of experience and I know what I’m talking about, I’m not just somebody who has read a book. “It’s all a bit surreal and what’s happened to me seems like another world. But that was one chapter of my life and this is a new chapter. I’m straight, there’s life to be lived and I’m never going back.” Deane-Johns has also written a warts-and-all book on her experiences titled, “Holly’s Hell - My Long Road Home”. It is based on the many notebooks she filled while serving her time in prison, a pastime which was also an emotional crutch through the daily grind. It is in manuscript stage and she hopes to soon have it published and she is also considering some corporate and public speaking.

exclusiveHolly Deane-Johns: WA’s most infamous international inmate breaks her silence a decade after her jail release

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Holly Deane-Johns: WA’s most infamous international inmate breaks her silence a decade after her jail release