Jack Lawrence (2:25)

Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

David McMillan (2:30)

Acast.com.

Jack Lawrence (2:41)

When you Google Image Search Wanted Criminals the one thing that sticks out to me is just how utterly unassuming most of the faces staring back at you really are. Of course, there's the odd mug shot that screams, I'm not a great person. But for the most part, these faces are ones that you would pass in the street and not even give them a second glance. That sentiment could definitely be said about David McMillan. Hello, hello, hello.

David McMillan (3:07)

Hi.

Jack Lawrence (3:08)

There he is.

David McMillan (3:10)

Ah, there you are. Well, that's all right.

Jack Lawrence (3:13)

What have we got there?

David McMillan (3:14)

Listen. Hey, you still getting your shit together or.

Jack Lawrence (3:19)

I know, I'm good. We can get going. Yeah, yeah. I didn't want to. I realized how late it was over there.

David McMillan (3:24)

Well, all right, let me just get a drink and I'll be back in a flash.

Jack Lawrence (3:28)

Perfect. At almost 70 years old, David has lived a life that is almost unbelievable. The head of an international drug trafficking business that spanned across multiple continents. A decade behind bars in Australia, relentlessly pursued by the US Drug Enforcement Agency, wanted by Interpol, not to mention two death penalty sentences. And the only Westerner on record to have successfully escaped Bangkok's Long Prem Prison, also referred to as the Bangkok Hilton.

David McMillan (4:02)

Would they have executed me? I think they. Australia definitely gave the go ahead. Britain didn't care. The Americans were quite keen on it. They liked a foreigner being executed, as long as it wasn't an American.

Jack Lawrence (4:15)

My name's Jack Lawrence. Welcome to Wanted, or as David likes

David McMillan (4:20)

to put it, Earnestly Desired. I like to think of it fondly

Jack Lawrence (4:25)

remembered yeah, yeah, yeah I'm a wanderer of the soul before the end I plan to behold But I know I'll lose myself along the way what's gone long is gone what's past is past Let me leave what belong. It's April 5, 1956, in the West End of London. John and Rosie McMillan welcome into the world their new baby boy, who they name David. David's mother, Rosie, was in fact Australian. And as a result, David would make several trips back and forth between the two countries as a youngster. We've actually got something in common because I was also born in the UK and emigrated to Australia. You came over with your mother, I believe I did.

David McMillan (5:27)

I came over on the Orsovo when I was three. Well, the first time we went back when I was 7 and then 10. So I've sort of imported myself a few times. In fact, I'm Australian by. I misread the certificate. I thought it said citizenship by being decent. It wasn't. It was dissent. It's just that Mum and Dad were actually born in Australia. I thought, that's pretty damn. I mean, if that's not Forgiveness. What is.

Jack Lawrence (5:57)

So your parents were actually born in Australia, Rosie?

David McMillan (6:00)

My mother was and as much as he tried to hide it, my father, John Macmillan was Australian. I mean he changed his accent several times but I heard just a bit of Australian in there. During the war he was a major or something in the radio section where they did trying to counter the German propaganda. So I don't know what side he was on. He was pretty good.

Jack Lawrence (6:27)

As for David's father, he says he really didn't have much of a relationship with him.

David McMillan (6:32)

He got himself a CB which is Commander of the British Empire. So he was a real snob and didn't think much of me. Not because he probably had any fundamental objection, it just didn't fit into. He kind of scripted his life and there wasn't really a role for me in that.

Jack Lawrence (6:56)

David's mother and father would separate when he was still very young and he would again head back to Australia with his mother and sister and move to Melbourne. He would attend Caulfield Grammar private school in Melbourne's southeast until he was asked to find another school after what he says was an incident with his chemistry teacher who claimed that that David had attempted to make a batch of lsd. Some possible early warning signs of what was to come in David's life. It was the 1970s in Australia and drug use was not particularly underground and so called hard drugs were not really distinguished between anything else. David says even from a young age he knew that he was going to need control in life and to get control he would need money and in fact the law was something that was just there to be broken as he witnessed firsthand so called respected people doing just that.

David McMillan (8:07)

One of the worst influences my mother say one of my stepfathers, there wasn't quite that many but one, Jim Troup was a respected gynecologist who with some other Melbourne doctors were challenging the anti abortion laws and they'd been paying off the cops because they were the only properly qualified doctors running the surgeries and it was the vice squad of all departments that were in charge of taking an interest in that sort of thing. So all the surgeries were in cash and when it became public, when the doctors got arrested and they were taking them to court and police were feeling threatened and threatening us in our household. So you can imagine this, my mother said it was the worst possible influence where we were surrounded by respected people who came home with a soup lol, a bag full of cash. The police were the enemy, the laws were there to be broken and I was 14 years old.

Jack Lawrence (9:14)

So how would David go about taking control? How was he going to make his money? Well, he would find that answer in the local library.

David McMillan (9:24)

By 18, I was really going to the library, looking up what is the quickest and most profitable thing to do in the world. And the Guinness Book of Record made it very plain that the wholesale price of opium in the fields of Turkey compared with street price in New York City, the final product was 127,000%.

Jack Lawrence (9:51)

Dear God.

David McMillan (9:52)

I thought, okay, I think they've left out a bit in this story. And by chance, I ended up meeting some safecrackers who'd retired and wanted to put their money into something they used to buy marijuana from the Murray River Valley, Italians there. But really what they wanted was somebody who could import. And I thought I could do that. It just seemed to be my kind of thing.

Jack Lawrence (10:22)

David formed a friendship with this group of former safecrackers, guys that were all loyal to each other, always looking out for one another, and he felt drawn to their world. They had a need and David decided he could fill it. So he leaves his job at the City Cinema and decided that he was going to have a crack at importing the drugs that these retired safecrackers were after. One of them gives him a loan for a few thousand dollars. And David sets off for India on the hunt for some hashish. His initial plan was to import a big piece of machinery which had weights in it. Then they would be removed and replaced with the drugs and thus weighing the same on its return. Good plan on the outset, but David soon found out that he would have to pay an extraordinary amount in duty just to get it into the country. So that was off the table. It would be a chance meeting, however, with a man at the money exchange which would see him pull off one of the worst attempts at a drug importation you can think of as. He's given six kilos of hash and then sets about trying to hide it in an old 1950s radio, jumping back on a plane and heading straight to Sydney.

David McMillan (11:44)

My first little importation of 6 kilos of hash from India was pretty hopeless, but towel stuffed into a in 1950s Grundig radio that had been eviscerated. Completely kind of avuncular. Customs officer at Sydney opened my suitcase and there's nothing in it. I think there were three pairs of socks, a T shirt and this thing.

Jack Lawrence (12:11)

And you just come back from India?

David McMillan (12:14)

Yeah, yeah. Straight from New Delhi, whack into Sydney airport. He looked at it and spent the day tuning dial, which kept on spinning, gravity doing its stuff. Nothing behind there to stop it from spinning. And you said, are you going back there? No, no, I said, oh, see that you don't take the radio with you. You never get that kind of break these days.

Jack Lawrence (12:43)

No, absolutely.

David McMillan (12:43)

They work in teams.

Jack Lawrence (12:49)

Talk about close call. But this didn't deter David from his ambitions of drug importation. No, he just needed to get better

David McMillan (12:59)

at it soon enough. I'm doing pretty well. Instead of accosting and living on the good graces of some wizened Sydney customs officer, I've learned how they do their thing that when you arrive back in the country, they want to know where you've come from. They want to look at your passport and see the history of it. So I need passports, a lot of them. I also noticed they worked in teams, and if you did get stopped, which shouldn't happen if you've got it all together, but let's just say you do, you would be in front of two officers. The first one would do the searching of your bag. He'd drop the lid onto his hand just to feel the weight of it. Then he'd lift up pretty much every object. Toiletries bag, unzip it, give it a jiggle, zip it up, put it aside. Unrolled towel, lift up something else. Could he search everything? No. Did he have any special information? Likely is not. But you come from an iffy place and you were a young guy, so you know. But this is what happens. The guy watching from behind with whom you're having some kind of stilted conversation because you're shitting yourself that this thing will be found. When the guy who's going through your stuff lifts up teddy bear, gives him a bit of a squeeze, a heft and puts him aside in the cleared objects, You. If you don't know what I did by then, the shoulders drop down, you look up at that officer that you've been talking to. Oh, yes, Suddenly you're a new man. Yeah, well, I didn't really like Bali and, you know, the girls in Bangkok. It's like talking to a different person. As soon as you change like that, he taps the man who's doing the searches. The last object was it, wow. And that was the part. I liked the research and people didn't have the passion for it. In recruiting. I said to some people, I don't want lazy criminals. You've got to. You don't run away from it. I mean, people say, oh, if there's something, there's going to be a problem with this. Stuff, I'm dropping it and running. You've got to be impassioned about it. And it got to the point, really, where I didn't want to let this stuff go, especially, like, coke from Colombia. I'd sort of care over it, packing it and using laminate so that no odor would ever escape from it. When I'd finally get back to my little zone of operations and unpacked this thing fairly carefully because I could use the devices a few times, and then I put it there in front of me. Jack, I didn't want to let him go. Well, it was a herb I then who'd taken on a kind of ship's feminine personality.

Jack Lawrence (16:00)

David was so involved and obsessed by the process of smuggling drugs that even when he got to the stage of having couriers and putting them through training, he was always close by.

David McMillan (16:12)

It was like some school teacher in their final exam. When they were going through, I couldn't leave them alone. I'd be in a couple of seats up from on the plane.

Jack Lawrence (16:21)

So you would. You would go with, like, trainee, as it were, couriers to make sure that they were okay.

David McMillan (16:26)

Oh, and. And particularly when they're on a real job, I didn't. I didn't want them making any decisions that wouldn't be a disaster. And even if they were asking what it was they were smuggling, I'd say, well, think of the worst thing you can imagine. Plutonium, you know, just anything that would take it out of their mind. You don't want to think about that. You'll never see it anyway, so whatever. And if you come to grief, you have the choice then, the best lawyers. Your time in prison will be surprisingly comfortable, if that's what you want. But I'm hoping you'd say, david, get me the hell out of here, and I'll come in and get you out, and I'll really enjoy that.

Jack Lawrence (17:17)

So, as I said at the start of this episode, David McMillan is not a man you would look at and think, well, there's a hardened criminal. I mean, of course, he's now 67 years old and a very slightly built man. But even in his more, shall we say, sprightly years, he had more of a look of a man that you might meet at the bank about a home loan, not someone you'd go to to get your hands on 10 kilos of Colombia's finest. David said this had an obvious advantage when it came to the authorities. However, he was also dealing with some very dangerous people. So how did he avoid getting himself into trouble with Them again, there is

David McMillan (17:57)

a technique that even the most featherweight of people can protect themselves because I always found that people fear what they don't know. You know, you'd meet somebody for business and say, look, Mario, the people now, I mean, they really depend on me for a living. And they come from a bit village. If something goes wrong, they'll kind of won't really ask anything much. They just have a handful of photos and start tearing up when they see any of them and shoot them all. So let's try and not, you know, rock the boat on this one. So the idea of kidnapping me and wringing money out of me was not. Somebody would be really very reckless to take that on because they just didn't know where this unseen enemy might come from. And of course, anybody who's really capable of doing anything, you certainly don't want to look the part. Certainly the more when I say respected, more professional of killers I've met will certainly never look the part. I don't know, you're too young. But there was a guy called Jim Basley who was Australian. Jim, you would never expect to look. It looked like a kind of grandfatherly type.

Jack Lawrence (19:20)

Yeah.

David McMillan (19:20)

In fact, part of the case against him when it came up was that he refused to shoot the family dog.

Jack Lawrence (19:30)

So a very brief Australian criminal history lesson for you. The man that David is referring to is James Frederick Bazley, also known as the Iceman or machine gun. And he's long believed to be the hitman who gunned down prominent anti drug campaigner and Liberal politician Don McKay. It's an order supposedly given by the Italian mafia in Australia in the 1970s and was the subject of Channel Nine's Underbelly series, a Tale of Two Cities. James Baizley died at the age of 90 in 2018, a free man in a Melbourne nursing home, although no stranger to the inside of a prison cell. In fact, in 1986, he was sentenced to nine years behind bars for the conspiracy to murder Mr. McKay, but was never tried over being the one who actually fired the gun used to kill the politician. He also was handed a life sentence for his role in the double murder of drug couriers Isabel and Douglas Wilson, whose bodies were recovered in 1979. However, handed a life sentence, Mr. Bazley would walk out of prison in 2001. Mr. McKay's remains were never found. Mr. Bazley kept his secret until the very end. Police would describe this man as someone who saw murder as a job and felt absolutely no remorse.

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David McMillan (21:37)

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David McMillan (21:49)

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Jack Lawrence (22:41)

So you were really. You were hanging around some very, very dangerous people then?

David McMillan (22:44)

A few, yeah, a few were different but, but the, the genuinely strong ones were not bullies. And certainly amongst this tiny core, because there weren't many good ones. There was a lot of loyalty when I was in. I was locked up in Thailand and disaster there. Nobody really knew what had happened to me clearly. Anyway, they knew sort of where I was. But after months and months and months, I finally found myself inside the prison behind the rice stacks of a little warehouse where they kept food by the Chinese Thais who gave me the bulky looking mobile phone. And I got through to Michael at some ungodly hour and he hadn't heard from me in a long time. He interrupted me as I began to explain. Extraordinary event. He said, david, don't explain anything. We don't have time. Just tell me what I've got to do and what I need to bring. I thought, wow, you know that's what you want, don't you?

Jack Lawrence (23:49)

Yeah, that's what you want on your side? Absolutely. This Michael that David speaks of was his longtime business partner and former champion pole vaulter Michael Sullivan, A man whose life likely would have been vastly different if he had been able to represent Australia in the Olympic Games. Michael was in fact the first ever Australian to break the 16 foot mark in pole vaulting, but was passed over by Olympic selectors in 1968 for the Mexico City squad. He would later suffer a severe ankle break which would not only see him miss the Commonwealth Games, but also lead him to develop an addiction to his pain medication, which then led to drugs and his eventual meeting with with David. And so a long and lucrative partnership began. By this stage, David had cut ties with the retired safecrackers and he, Michael and their Thai connection, Mr. Chowdhury, were building a very lucrative business. As David's wealth grew, so did his appetite for the finer things in life. And it would apparently be the purchase of an incredibly expensive American roadster that would eventually bring the attention of of Australian police. They would soon discover that this David McMillan had properties all over the world. Melbourne, Bangkok, London, Hong Kong and Brussels. Ann had had more than 11 overseas trips in one year. However, there was seemingly no explanation for this man's extreme wealth. The police continued to do more digging on this man of mystery, only to discover a list of 43 couriers across Melbourne, Sydney and London that David was using. Also no less than 38 birth certificates and 27 passports under false names. The police now well and truly had David and his syndicate in their sights and Operation Ares was closing in. It would in fact be David's travel agent that would tip him off about police making inquiries into him. Two detectives came in with a long list of names they wanted travel details for. On that list was 30 names, 26 of which were aliases used by David at the time. What made David such a success was his love of risk and adventure. However, this would also be his downfall as Operation Ares swoops.

David McMillan (26:32)

In Australia. I was arrested after a very long task force, state, federal operation. I was warned, sure, get out of town. I did. Arrogance again. I thought, well, if they're a big police setup, then they won't cheat too much because they'll want to get the goods. But they moved in and arrested when there was no and no drugs to be found. And it makes for a very tough case. Now, Jack, if you ever find yourself on a murder charge, hope that they found a body because you've got something to win over if it's a conspiracy where it's all innuendo and talk and so much evidence can go in that's just chatter A we thought there were 12 couriers. They didn't say a word. They were good.

Jack Lawrence (27:27)

The code of silence was being upheld so far by all involved. However, police would tighten the screws on the team by arresting both David and Michael's significant others and placing them in prison when tragedy would strike because the

David McMillan (27:45)

evidence wasn't very strong they did a mass arrest thing. The families got rounded up My Italian wife at the time Claelia Vigano was arrested. Michael's Colombian wife was arrested. She'd just had a baby. Still nothing. Nobody was wakening. They put an informer in the Fairlie women's prison to extract some kind of information out of them. But their choice of informer Danielle was a poor choice indeed she was an arsonist and that was his solution to anything to set fire to the place which she did and burnt the women's prison that section of it anyway to the ground that caused the death of Clelia and Michael's wife Mary and something you don't want to hear any time but it's particularly creepy when you're in a prison and the prisons in those days didn't barely had radios so 11 o' clock at night they'd switch it off and I just heard the beginning of the story about fire at the women's prison

Podcast Advertiser (28:57)

sir.

Jack Lawrence (28:57)

This evening about quarter past eight, 20

David McMillan (28:59)

past eight an alarm was received from the remand section at Fairleigh. The fire brigade attended with quite a number of appliances and on attending they found found a fire burning in the remand section some fatalities click and it was off. As a result of that fire three female prisoners are deceased. So after a restful night's sleep I came out of the cell in the morning and straight over to one of the officers I knew well I skipped the formalities. Oh Dave shuffling around pushing pens around his desk. We look not clear at the moment but look, I know you're probably a bit worried or that that wasn't a good sign and nobody would talk to us. Michael and I were called up for a legal visit a few hours later deserted visit center one officer on duty who was busy examining his foot or something. Yeah, yeah. Through the next door and all our families were there well those who remained anyway so that was of course I felt completely responsible and guilty. I felt like really for the first time I had blood on my hands and it was almost like my own still the authorities to make the best of a bad situation Put it about that we had started to eliminate all the witnesses and starting with your own wives. Yeah.

Jack Lawrence (30:49)

David and Michael had been held in Jaika Jiker, the high security section of the infamous Pentridge prison, home to prisoners like Chopper Reed and Ned Kelly. It was designed as a prison within a prison to hold Victoria's toughest and longest serving prisoners. Jaika Jiker had six separate units, all with nothing but concrete electric doors and remote locking. The furnishings were sparse and prisoners would exercise in small escape proof yards. Eventually, Jaika Jiker would be closed down after a number of inmates would die in a fire that had been deliberately lit. However, David and Michael were eventually taken out of Jaika Jaika, but a supposed planned escape would see them taken straight back again.

David McMillan (31:36)

The trial was made worse by a lot of stirrings, including the great prison helicopter escape that wasn't. It was set up by Lord Tony Moynihan, who was a fraudster from the uk, settled in the Philippines, sort of done some business with and knew I couldn't trust him. When he said he'd sending a former SAS commando to arrange a helicopter escape, I knew it was likely to be just a scam, but I didn't realize that it was actually a scam done with the corporation of the Federal Police. This idiot came over, listen, you can get some money out of them. Just pretend you're ex SAS and go through there, get a quarter of a million, send me my bid, all of that. I suppose Lord Tony thought he'd get something out of that before the axe fill, but he got double crossed along with everybody else. So really, the beginning of the trial, there was that helicopter escape, so it was back into the supermax prison again.

Jack Lawrence (32:40)

So the authorities got wind that this was supposedly happening and then.

David McMillan (32:45)

Well, they should know because it was there.

Jack Lawrence (32:47)

It was their idea.

David McMillan (32:49)

Yeah. From the day the guy arrived, the Hilton Hotel in Collingwood was. His room was monitored. They put him into a special one. My friend and accountant Max got dragged into it and went to see him a couple of times and I said, look, keep away from the guy. God knows what's behind this, you just don't want to be seen there. But it was coincided with the first week of the drug conspiracy trial.

Jack Lawrence (33:17)

And that's all we've got time for. But coming up in our next episode, while David is in prison, the police waste no time in enjoying what he's left behind.

David McMillan (33:28)

The police moved into my house in Beaumuris. They partied like it was 1999 and the local police had come down to stop the noise.

Jack Lawrence (33:36)

And once released finally from Australian prison, he decides to leave the country. On his way to England, he'd make a stop off, a stop off that was going to cost him his life.

David McMillan (33:48)

And this was during a visit into the prison in Thailand by some Australian liaison officer and said, oh, by the way, you know your fact, don't you? You're finished.

Jack Lawrence (34:01)

Next time Unwanted I'm a wanderer of the soul before the end I plan to behold But I know I lose myself along the way. What's gone?

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Jack Lawrence (35:06)

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David McMillan (35:29)

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Jack Lawrence (35:45)

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David McMillan (35:51)

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