Heroin In Baby's Stroller, Police Say
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday January 24, 1987
BANGKOK, Friday: A Sydney couple were arrested in a Bangkok street yesterday allegedly with eight kilograms of heroin concealed inside their baby son's stroller.
Paul Hudson and Nola Blake, both aged 35, were walking outside a department store with their 14-month-old son, Todd Paul John, in the stroller, when police arrested them.
The information officer at the Australian Embassy in Bangkok, Mr Don Hook, said Thai officials had agreed to release the child into the care of an embassy staff member about midday.
Mr Hook said the alternative was for the 14-month-old boy to stay with his parents in the detention centre, attached to Bangkok Police Station, and then go into Thai institutional care.
"The welfare of the little boy is of paramount importance," Mr Hook said.
Foreign Affairs officials were investigating the possibility of a relative of the couple caring for the child back in Australia should legal proceedings become protracted.
Mr Hook said the couple maintained the child was theirs although he believed Blake had a husband back in Australia.
Thai narcotics police say they saw Hudson and Blake hand over $US49,000 to a Thai man, Supoj Kittidejdamkern, 33, outside the city's main park and take from him eight packets of heroin which they then stuffed inside the baby's stroller.
The number one heroin, the lowest grade of purity, was normally worth about 20 per cent more than that on the streets of Bangkok, police said.
Kittidejdamkern, who worked in a massage parlour, was arrested as he drove away from the park. Police followed the Australian couple for some distance and then arrested them.
If convicted they face life imprisonment or death sentences. Thailand has never executed a Westerner for a drug offence, although an Australian pilot, Donald Tait, is now under sentence of death in a Bangkok jail for attempted heroin trafficking. He has appealed. Two Australians, Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers, were executed in Malaysia last year after being convicted of drug trafficking.
Thai and foreign narcotics police in Bangkok said the latest arrests were part of "a much bigger operation" involving other Australians, both in Australia and Thailand.
Thai officers said the Australian couple, who had been staying in a first-class hotel for the past 12 days, had made 10 visits to Thailand in the past seven years.
A Thai officer said suspicions about the couple had been increased by the baby in the stroller. The police had been alerted to the possibility of babies being used by drug runners by a movie now showing in Bangkok.
In the French film Three Men and a Cradle heroin is hidden in a baby's nappies before being "dropped" for collection.
Mr Hook said he expected Mr Hudson and Ms Blake would appear in court next Wednesday when Thai law officers probably would seek a further seven-day remand. It could be 91 days under Thai law before a hearing began.
The couple had obtained the services of a Bangkok lawyer and the Australian Embassy had arranged for a doctor to visit them.
Mr Hook declined to detail conditions at the detention centre except to say they were "alright though a bit basic".
Alongside reports of the arrest of the Australians, Bangkok newspapers today carry statements by the opium warlord Khun Sa made to reporters just inside Burma near the Thai border.
Khun Sa is reported to have said that territories under his control would produce 500 tonnes of opium this year, enough to make 50 tonnes of heroin. He said there were many mobile heroin refineries in his area.
© 1987 Sydney Morning Herald