Peru Two's Michaella McCollum ‘couldn't survive prison horrors' Brit ‘smugglers' Bella Culley & Charlotte Lee may face

The Sun

31-05-2025

MICHAELLA McCollum of the notorious Peru Two has warned that accused Brit drug smugglers Bella Culley and Charlotte Lee will go through unbearable prison horrors.
The infamous drug smuggler turned influencer branded the pair "victims", and said she could not endure the conditions Culley and Lee may have to face.
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As one half of the notorious Peru Two, McCollum, 31, served three years in a hardcore prison near Lima when she was convicted of drug smuggling in 2013.
Alongside Melissa Reid, the two were arrested at Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima, Peru, after it was discovered that their suitcases contained a shocking £1.5million of cocaine between them.
Mule turned author McCollum also detailed how she was forced to survive on maggot-infested paella and flick away cockroaches approaching her on the dining tables.
The now mum-of-two said of Culley and Lee: "I could not do 20 years in a prison like that. I just couldn't. And that's what those girls are facing."
Culley, 18, and Lee, 21, are facing similar but unrelated drug smuggling charges and have both been locked up far away from home with little hope of getting out.
Culley was arrested on May 11 in Tbilisi airport, Georgia, with a suitcase packed with 31lb of cannabis and hashish after flying from Thailand via Sharjah in the UAE.
She faces 15 years to life in jail in the eastern European former Soviet state.
She is being held in watchtower-ringed Penitentiary No 5 near Tbilisi while prosecutors probe how she came to have the £200,000 stash and who she planned to hand it to.
Meanwhile, Lee was arrested earlier this month in Sri Lanka after cops found two suitcases stuffed with 46kg of synthetic drug kush — which is 25 times more potent than opioid fentanyl.
If found guilty, the South Londoner could face a 25-year sentence.
The Brit claimed that she didn't know she was smuggling drugs into Sri Lanka before she was detained - and called her allegations 'made up'.
Her friends revealed that she has been struggling behind bars since her arrest due to the shocking conditions.
The part-time nail technician told pals she has not been allowed medication, and detailed how her cleaning regime consists of 'having a glass of water poured over her head'.
McCollum, who has endured similar hardship in foreign prisons, was also a very young adult when she made the "greatest mistake of my life".
She was 19 at the time of her arrest, alongside her pal who she had recently met Reid, who was 20.
The mum compared her story to those of Lee and Culley.
She said: "The situation was almost exactly the same. Her mum had reported her missing, then it emerged that she'd been arrested.
"There were such parallels with my case – except it was just in a different country."
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She added: "I couldn't help but feel bad for them.
"They are 19 and 21. Whatever they have done, it's so young to be caught up in something like this, and I know what they are going to go through.
"And their families. It's the worst thing anybody can have to face."
Culley's situation also took a nightmare twist, after she told a Tbilisi court that she was pregnant.
McCollum said: "As a mum, I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to give birth in that sort of place, and to potentially have the child taken from you and put into care.
How might the cases of Bella Culley and Charlotte May be connected?
Within a single day of Bella Culley's arrest, Charlotte May, 21, was arrested in Sri Lanka after allegedly being caught trying to smuggle drugs worth £1.2m
While the two arrests took place over 3,000 miles apart, people immediately noted striking similarities
It is believed to be likely that Georgian and Sri Lankan authorities will launch a joint investigation
Both women are said to have departed from the same airport - Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport - allegedly with the drugs on them
In both cases, the drugs were stashed in airtight packages that suggest a level of professionalism
Both women had told their loved ones that they planned on meeting a mystery man during their travels in Thailand: Bella's grandad said she mentioned a man called "Ross or Russ", while Charlotte's friends said she made vague comments about meeting a man
"That adds a whole new, terrifying, dimension. It's just incredibly sad."
The smuggler turned public speaker also said the accused pair need more public sympathy, but cautioned that she also understands they may have made mistakes, as she did.
"It's easy to look at girls like this and think 'how could you be so stupid?' but I look back at myself and think exactly that," she said.
"I don't know the circumstances in detail here, but I do know that of all the women I came across who had been involved in drug smuggling, only about 10 per cent were doing it as a business, who knew the risks and accepted them."
She continued: "The vast majority were the victims of some sort of coercion, usually by men.
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"Prisons all over the world are full of women who have been caught up in something like this."
Lee has already told cops about a mysterious Brit man called "Dan".
She claims to have met him on a beach in Thailand before he bought her a ticket to Colombo, promised to join her but then suddenly vanished.
McCollum said she was only regarded as a "victim" after a 2022 Netflix documentary exploring the Peru Two case.
She said: "It was when I was watching an actress do some of the re-enactments of my story that I realised there had been exploitation and coercion going on here.
"At the time I was so high (on cocaine) that I could barely walk. Yet the men around me were all sober.
"I thought they were my friends, but actually they didn't give a s**t about me."
McCollum was offered a mere £5,000 to smuggle the drugs she was caught with.
"I mean who would risk spending 20 years of your life in prison for £3,000 or £4,000 or even £10,000," she reflected.
"Even £50,000 isn't enough. No amount of money is worth your freedom."
The 31-year-old has also written a book detailing her experience, and worked with police to tell her story to impressionable teens.
More than a decade on from her harrowing story, the former drug mule is now a public speaker, wife and author who's estimated net worth nearly £1million.
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