Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm Stephen Drill, the host of a new podcast from
Speaker 2: the team behind I Catch Killers. It's called Cocaine Inc.
Speaker 2: A team of three reporters have traveled fifty thousand kilometers
Speaker 2: across the globe to bring you an unprecedented insight into
Speaker 2: the cocaine business. We speak to corrupt doc workers in Rotterdam,
Speaker 2: shady gold dealers in Dubai, and taking inside Mexico's Narco
Speaker 2: tunnels where cocaine is smuggled into the US. Check out
Speaker 2: Cocaine Inc. Wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3: This is not a video game, this is real life.
Speaker 3: Your goals to a fucking poplar Christmas Eve with a
Speaker 3: machine gul if it was someone going there with a baseball.
Speaker 3: But I have a grievance with someone that's Sunderds. That
Speaker 3: happens every weekend. But you go somewhere with the machine
Speaker 3: muscle when it is you go on as kill someone.
Speaker 4: It's Christmas Eve. On the We're all a comfortable suburban
Speaker 4: area just outside Liverpool, a port city in the north
Speaker 4: of England. Twenty six year old Ellie Edwards is heading
Speaker 4: to a local pub with her younger sister Lucy. Ellie
Speaker 4: is a little less enthusiastic than her sister. She's been
Speaker 4: hungover for a couple of days already, but she's decided
Speaker 4: to head out for another night a beautician. Her long
Speaker 4: blonde hair falls down over her leather jacket and a
Speaker 4: big silver necklace. Inside the Lighthouse Pub, the sisters are
Speaker 4: soon singing and dancing together. Sometime after nine point thirty pm,
Speaker 4: Lucy heads home. She tells Ellie not to stay out late.
Speaker 4: Ellie says she'll just be another hour and continues back
Speaker 4: at the pub. What Ellie cannot know is that a
Speaker 4: man is also standing outside the pub in the car park.
Speaker 4: He's been waiting and watching the area for around three hours.
Speaker 4: He's carrying a Scorpion submachine gun. I'm Fiona Hamilton, the
Speaker 4: chief reporter at The Times and from The Times, The
Speaker 4: Sunday Times and News Corps Australia. This is Cocaine. In
Speaker 4: episode one, are shooting at Christmas. Trying to understand what
Speaker 4: happened next on that night in twenty twenty two ended
Speaker 4: up being a much bigger task than one reporter could
Speaker 4: do alone. Over the past year, I've been working in
Speaker 4: a team from two separate countries with my colleagues David
Speaker 4: Collins from the Sunday Times in the UK.
Speaker 1: So you were part of a group that smuggled one
Speaker 1: hundred million pounds out of the UK. How do you
Speaker 1: reflect on that?
Speaker 4: And Stephen Drill from News Corps Australia.
Speaker 1: This is the end of the line.
Speaker 2: I'm just about to go in knock on the door
Speaker 2: of a ten million dollar house that is accused of
Speaker 2: being the proceeds of crime.
Speaker 4: This investigation has taken us to ten different cities in
Speaker 4: six countries, traveling over fifty thousand kilometers, following trail from
Speaker 4: that pub in northern England where Ellie was celebrating Christmas,
Speaker 4: and leading us to Colombian cartels, drug smuggling in Mexico,
Speaker 4: a torture chamber in the Netherlands, money laundering in the
Speaker 4: Middle East, and police raids across Australia.
Speaker 1: Sydney's gun crime epidemic has claimed two more lives tonight.
Speaker 3: Police have established Task Force Magnus to try to win
Speaker 3: the bloodshed.
Speaker 4: What we uncovered was a global business operation based around
Speaker 4: a single illegal product, one so common that, let's be honest,
Speaker 4: it's likely that you or someone you know has snorted
Speaker 4: a line recently we'll reveal how the world's legitimate business
Speaker 4: empires trading floors and boardrooms have their shadowy equivalents in
Speaker 4: the cartels, traffickers and kingpins. But for now, this story
Speaker 4: starts with Ellie Edwards. David Collins, the Sunday Times Northern editor,
Speaker 4: went to meet her father.
Speaker 1: I'm in Merseyside, probably most famous around the world for
Speaker 1: the Beatles and Liverpool football club, from the city of
Speaker 1: Liverpool itself. I've made a short drive through the Kingsway
Speaker 1: tunnel under the river to an area called the wirel
Speaker 1: Like David, I've come to meet Tim Edwards. He's the
Speaker 1: father of Ellie Edwards, the young woman who went to
Speaker 1: the pub on Christmas Eve. He's never spoken about that night.
Speaker 1: In the detail you're about to hear.
Speaker 3: It doesn't get any easier. Sometimes you can. You can
Speaker 3: feel you're getting ahead a bit and dealing with things,
Speaker 3: and everything's getting you know, it's going to be brighter
Speaker 3: as the future, and then something will come along and
Speaker 3: trigger a memory or and then I might struggle for
Speaker 3: a couple of days, But as it happens, today, today's
Speaker 3: a good day.
Speaker 1: Tim is tall and broad, with thick streaked gray hair
Speaker 1: and a beard. He's an imposing figure and I guess
Speaker 1: you might describe him as a man's man, the type
Speaker 1: of guy you'd sink a few pints in the pub
Speaker 1: with and chat about football and life. He was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one and came of age in Liverpool
Speaker 1: in the eighties, a tough time for the city with
Speaker 1: high unemployment, but he remembers a close knit working class community.
Speaker 3: No matter how bad things were, your neighbor would be
Speaker 3: looking out for you, you know, the local bobby. He
Speaker 3: would be on a bike or he'd be walking around
Speaker 3: and he'd be keeping an eye on the kids. Then
Speaker 3: if the kids would get up, you know good, he'd
Speaker 3: just go on knock on the door and tell your
Speaker 3: mother than father the next minute you get a clip
Speaker 3: around here.
Speaker 1: Or when he got in as a young man, like many,
Speaker 1: he went out clubbing, which is where he met his wife, Gainer.
Speaker 3: Back in the ninety early nineties. The club seems massive
Speaker 3: and Liverpool and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I met her on a nighthouse and what happened
Speaker 1: after that you were.
Speaker 3: Just yeah, just fell in love. Yeah, fell in love.
Speaker 3: I started having kids. I was a young lad and
Speaker 3: I was just a whatever I could to put food
Speaker 3: on the table and build a family, you know, build
Speaker 3: a home. That just did me best.
Speaker 1: The couple's first child was a boy, and then on
Speaker 1: the tenth of May in nineteen ninety six, their second
Speaker 1: came along, a daughter called Ellie.
Speaker 3: She was never a problem. She was always there's some
Speaker 3: kids want when the babies are to be up all night,
Speaker 3: the one feet and every couple of a couple of hours.
Speaker 3: What left my life? Yeah? So yeah, she was never
Speaker 3: a bother. We have four kids all together, Connor, Ellie,
Speaker 3: Lucy and George. It was a great It was a
Speaker 3: happy house.
Speaker 1: Can you remember Ellie's bedroom when she was a tea?
Speaker 3: Like typical typical girl, to be honest, if he could help,
Speaker 3: but never went in there. Yeah, typical teenagers where you
Speaker 3: just don't want to go in there.
Speaker 1: You just don't know what you're going to find. What
Speaker 1: was she into? What would she do on her a
Speaker 1: Saturday night for.
Speaker 3: Example, Well when she was a child, or.
Speaker 1: She's in a fifteen sixteen.
Speaker 3: Oh god, I remember their best friend. She died of
Speaker 3: her and I must have seen every color of the
Speaker 3: rainbow at least three times over. You'd see them coming
Speaker 3: now ready to go out on Friday, Saturday night or whatever,
Speaker 3: and you'd have different color of it.
Speaker 1: As an adult, Ellie put that creativity to good use.
Speaker 1: She left school at sixteen to study beauty at college
Speaker 1: and also became a qualified dental nurse.
Speaker 3: She had a bit of space in one of her
Speaker 3: friends had a beauty She wanted to build this beautician
Speaker 3: side of her life for killer if you like. And
Speaker 3: Monday to Friday she would do the gentleness work. So
Speaker 3: that was a bread and butter if you like. So
Speaker 3: she worked hard, she worked early hard.
Speaker 1: Ellie was a young woman with a bright future ahead
Speaker 1: of her, balancing two careers and close with her family.
Speaker 1: Although Tim and Gainor had now split, Christmas remained a
Speaker 1: full and happy time.
Speaker 3: Because although me and the one were not together, and
Speaker 3: I hadn't been for a couple of years, but I
Speaker 3: would still make the Christmas dinner and we would all
Speaker 3: meet up and have Christmas together.
Speaker 1: So can you remember Christmas Eve? And did you see
Speaker 1: Ellie that day?
Speaker 3: We'd been out the day before to Manchester, We've been
Speaker 3: to from markets and shopping.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 3: The next day she'd bought me a coat for Christmas
Speaker 3: And the original plan was for her to come to
Speaker 3: mine and she was going to help me wrap the
Speaker 3: presents for me grands, all the other kids and there and.
Speaker 1: What she didn't Instead of wrapping presents, though, Ellie rang
Speaker 1: her dad and said she was going out with her
Speaker 1: sister Lucy. The pair were close, and Lucy had made
Speaker 1: a surprise trip back from Dubai for the festive period.
Speaker 3: It could have been so different if we'd just stuck
Speaker 3: to our plan, but girls being the girls, it was
Speaker 3: never going to stick to that plan.
Speaker 1: She just gone out.
Speaker 3: We're friends, which is quite right what you should have
Speaker 3: been doing.
Speaker 1: Ellie and Lucy headed to a pub called the Lighthouse.
Speaker 1: The pubs in the middle of a small row of
Speaker 1: shops and businesses, surrounded by residential streets and set a
Speaker 1: little back from the road. There's a large beer garden
Speaker 1: out front. Inside it's a big, spacious boozer, the kind
Speaker 1: of place where you can watch sport, play pool, gamble
Speaker 1: on the machines in the corner. Back at home, Tim
Speaker 1: went to bed.
Speaker 3: I don't know what time. It was, well three o'clock,
Speaker 3: maybe two o'clock, I don't know. And they eventually they
Speaker 3: banged on my door and got me up power bed
Speaker 3: and he opened the doors saw.
Speaker 1: And can you remember what he said to you? Said?
Speaker 3: It was early we need Tory Gospel.
Speaker 1: Let's pause a second, because on that Christmas Eve, it's
Speaker 1: the actions of someone Tim had never even heard of
Speaker 1: that would change his life beyond recognition. A few miles
Speaker 1: from the pub, a man puts on dark clothes with
Speaker 1: a hood and gloves. He gets in a stolen Mercedes
Speaker 1: with false license plates. For three hours, he drives to
Speaker 1: six different locations, watching and waiting, before finally settling on
Speaker 1: a parking spot near the front of the lighthouse. At
Speaker 1: the same time, Ellie is laughing with friends inside the pub.
Speaker 1: She spots someone across the room and makes her way
Speaker 1: over to give them a hug. At eleven forty seven pm,
Speaker 1: she goes outside for a cigarette. In the car park,
Speaker 1: the man waits around the corner, out of sight, wearing
Speaker 1: a mask. He's holding the Scorpion submachine gun loaded with
Speaker 1: twelve bullets. He moves forward until he's only a few
Speaker 1: meters away from Ellie and fires. CCTV caught the attack,
Speaker 1: the man retreats, scrambles into the stolen car, and speeds off.
Speaker 1: Six people have been shot.
Speaker 3: I just remember getting to the hospital h as click
Speaker 3: as it could. It was quite hearing. There was no
Speaker 3: one there. Oh, I remember the sage and coming down
Speaker 3: and he's just just was awful.
Speaker 1: And it was obviously the early hours of the morning
Speaker 1: Christmas Christmas Day. There's nobody there, and there's You're with
Speaker 1: your son and.
Speaker 3: The kids and all the family and the apology the
Speaker 3: children's was which was crazy. It was I remember, I
Speaker 3: was just angry. There was no patience or kids in it.
Speaker 3: And yeah, yeah, I was just very angry.
Speaker 1: Was it the surgeon in that moment that broke the
Speaker 1: news that Elliot had died?
Speaker 3: And what was.
Speaker 1: And your initial act reaction was anger?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, I was just ready. I was ready to
Speaker 3: go to war. I was ready to flatten the hole
Speaker 3: of the world, no bother.
Speaker 1: And did you have any idea at that point of
Speaker 1: how she died?
Speaker 3: They knew she'd been shot. Well that was the only
Speaker 3: thing really I was still though. I was contained. She
Speaker 3: was going to turn up at the most. I tried
Speaker 3: drinking her phone.
Speaker 1: After the moment with the surgery, tried to ring a phone.
Speaker 5: Hm.
Speaker 1: What was the purpose of ringing her phone.
Speaker 3: To speak to her?
Speaker 1: Did you get a voicemail or a message or just
Speaker 1: for I actually remember seeing Tim on television after Ellie's death.
Speaker 1: On Boxing Day, he went to lay flowers on the
Speaker 1: pavement outside the pub. The waiting news cameras zoomed in
Speaker 1: on him as he arrived.
Speaker 6: At the scene where she was killed. Ellie's family came
Speaker 6: to lay flowers for a woman they so deeply loved.
Speaker 6: On what was supposed to be the happiest few days,
Speaker 6: they've undoubtedly been the worst.
Speaker 3: It's a blair, to be honest.
Speaker 1: So much happens.
Speaker 3: I always explain that there's been in an elevator that
Speaker 3: doesn't stop at any floor, just keeps calling up so
Speaker 3: you can never get off. Just so much that goes
Speaker 3: on really quickly to process, and I was protecting the
Speaker 3: family from having to deal with all that, so I
Speaker 3: bore the brunts of all of it.
Speaker 1: Merseyside Police acted quickly. Hello.
Speaker 5: First of all, I'm going to read a statement on
Speaker 5: behalf of Ellie's family. There was no one as beautiful
Speaker 5: as our Ellie may her looks.
Speaker 1: In a press conference in the week after Ellie's death,
Speaker 1: I watched Tim sitting next to a detective superintendent as
Speaker 1: she read from a statement the family had.
Speaker 5: Written everyone that knew and met el knew how special
Speaker 5: she was.
Speaker 1: Off the six people were shot that night, Ellie was
Speaker 1: only one not to survive. Looking back at this now,
Speaker 1: the grief is obvious on Tim's face. From time to time,
Speaker 1: he sniffs and his lip quivers as if he's holding
Speaker 1: back tears. The officer appeals for information.
Speaker 5: They don't deserve to be protected. They belong in prison.
Speaker 5: We know that the answers to this lie within our communities.
Speaker 5: So my appeal to you is, please tell us what
Speaker 5: you know and help us get justice for Ellie's family.
Speaker 1: And the public responded. In a week after her murder,
Speaker 1: the police received a hundred and fifty tips and leads,
Speaker 1: suggestions of people to look at and over potential evidence. Then,
Speaker 1: after two weeks, on the tenth of January in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, a twenty two year old called Connor Chapman
Speaker 1: was arrested in North Wales. He was spotted in a
Speaker 1: supermarket where he's rushed at the check out and detained
Speaker 1: by playing clothes police officers.
Speaker 3: This is surrendous. What do you know you go so
Speaker 3: pub with a machine gun and Christmas Eve? Really, come on,
Speaker 3: this is not a video game. This is real life.
Speaker 3: You go so fucking pub on Christmas Eve with a
Speaker 3: machine gun if it was someone going over a baseball
Speaker 3: bat and have a grievance with someone, that's standard, that
Speaker 3: happens every weekend. But you go somewhere with the machine
Speaker 3: guns matter when it is you go on is kill someone.
Speaker 3: That machine gun is not gonna just slightly hate someone.
Speaker 3: It's going to kill someone. So who have fuck goes
Speaker 3: over with that mentality, and especially on Christmas Eve. I
Speaker 3: just it's one thing that makes me angry. What part
Speaker 3: of your brain makes that think that that's okay.
Speaker 1: Chapman soon found himself in the dock at Liverpool Crown Court.
Speaker 3: The very first day of the trial, he walked into
Speaker 3: the courtroom. He's obviously behind a piece of glass and
Speaker 3: all that protected, but he decided to give it a
Speaker 3: bit of a show of bravado. But you know what,
Speaker 3: within twenty minutes he never looked at me again, because
Speaker 3: he's just a coward.
Speaker 1: The trial lasted sixteen days and after around four hours
Speaker 1: of deliberation, the jury found Chapman guilty of Ellie's murder.
Speaker 1: The judge sentenced him to forty eight years behind bars.
Speaker 7: The murder of Ellie Edwards has caused profound and permanent
Speaker 7: grief to her family and a great shock to the
Speaker 7: entire community. So that it's understood by you, Connor Chapman,
Speaker 7: as well as those who are observing. It means that
Speaker 7: you will have to serve forty eight years in custody
Speaker 7: before you could apply for release, and if you're ever released,
Speaker 7: and considering your dangerousness, that might never happen.
Speaker 1: Just in the last few minutes this guilty verdict for
Speaker 1: Connor Chapman found guilty of murdering Ellie Edwards.
Speaker 6: Ellie Edwards's father Tim once again looking directly at Connor
Speaker 6: Chapman as those verdicts were read out to him as
Speaker 6: he stood in the dock.
Speaker 3: The amounts of people involved in this investigation from day one,
Speaker 3: literally from the minute it happened, has been remarkable, and
Speaker 3: they did not give up. They were relentless and achieving
Speaker 3: the goal, which is to get justice for Ellie and
Speaker 3: catch the killer. Thankfully, now he's got forty eight years
Speaker 3: and hopefully he never sees Christmas again.
Speaker 1: What are your feelings towards I mean, I know you
Speaker 1: said earlier to me before the interview. You know you
Speaker 1: can't even say his name.
Speaker 3: I'll never mention his name. Doesn't deserve the breath out
Speaker 3: of my mouth. So mentioned his name as far as
Speaker 3: I was a piece of shit, And what happened to
Speaker 3: him until his last breath, I couldn't curless.
Speaker 1: So what was Chapman doing that night? Why was he
Speaker 1: spraying bullets into a busy pub beer garden. Well, he'd
Speaker 1: actually been targeting two men who Ellie happened to be
Speaker 1: standing near. You see, Chapman was from a place called
Speaker 1: the wood Church Estate, a notorious area not far from
Speaker 1: the pub. The previous day, one of his associates had
Speaker 1: been beaten up by rival gang. He was seeking revenge.
Speaker 1: When the case came to court, Chapman said he was
Speaker 1: a quote low level cocaine dealer. The shooting was part
Speaker 1: of an ongoing conflict between rival gangs fighting over territory
Speaker 1: in the area's cocaine trade. The same month that Chapman
Speaker 1: was convicted of murder, July twenty twenty three, on the
Speaker 1: other side of the world, five people were shot within
Speaker 1: five days in Sydney, Australia, two of them killed in
Speaker 1: another tit for tat gang.
Speaker 2: Conflict, escalating gang wars in Sydney is leading our bullsom
Speaker 2: with New South Wales police under pressure to approve they
Speaker 2: have controlled the street.
Speaker 1: That conflict was over a shipment of cocaine that went missing.
Speaker 1: The shipment was said to be worth around one hundred
Speaker 1: million Australian dollars. One of the murdered men was left
Speaker 1: lying on the road. School children subjected to the horror
Speaker 1: on a Canterbury street passing the body of a man
Speaker 1: his death. Like in that gang war, and like Ellie's,
Speaker 1: had one thing in common we rid all is cocaine.
Speaker 2: Mainly that gets enormous profits for criminals here in Sydney.
Speaker 1: The cocaine trade one of the most lucrative businesses in
Speaker 1: the world, a business where the global supply is currently
Speaker 1: at record levels, where the profits are counted in millions
Speaker 1: and the loss is measured out in murders. But those
Speaker 1: in charge don't care about the human cost. It's only
Speaker 1: business and right now business is good. Coming up in
Speaker 1: this series we go inside that multimillion dollar global industry.
Speaker 1: Very casually. The guy says, all right, so if they've
Speaker 1: found this, they know about the torture self, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: torts yourself what are you talking about. I'm down here
Speaker 1: in a NA tunnel. We're about eighty meters from the
Speaker 1: Mexican border, and to be honest, it's just quite frightening.
Speaker 8: I raise my hands and I say to my God,
Speaker 8: I forgive the person that did me that. And I
Speaker 8: say to my God, forgive them and forgive me, because
Speaker 8: in this thing I need you so much.
Speaker 1: I think we can arrest our way out of this.
Speaker 1: They are twenty four to seven.
Speaker 2: They are notified by money, greed and ego, and that
Speaker 2: drives and it's power.
Speaker 1: Just between you and me, just between your me. Literally.
Speaker 1: Some of the money might be from like drugs in
Speaker 1: the UK.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the cameras.
Speaker 1: It's too dangerous.
Speaker 4: You're worried, it's too dangerous to get out. Are you
Speaker 4: worried about my safety?
Speaker 1: Of course.
Speaker 9: You are, my guest.
Speaker 1: What are these rows about? Do you think you know.
Speaker 8: What it's about. I don't have to say the word,
Speaker 8: you know the word drugs.
Speaker 6: I'm getting down today.
Speaker 9: The first time I saw the money, I felt like
Speaker 9: I was in a film. I couldn't believe how much
Speaker 9: it was, and I thought, what the fuck have I
Speaker 9: got myself into?
Speaker 1: How would you like her to be remembered.
Speaker 3: I'd like it to be remembered for being a good soul,
Speaker 3: good example, two women.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 3: I'm fortunate there I got to to see the grand
Speaker 3: kids that we may have had. Really but just oh,
Speaker 3: she's always spoke about in a good, positive way.
Speaker 1: Since Eli died, a foundation that has been set up
Speaker 1: in her name. Its mission is to raise awareness of
Speaker 1: gun crime and help families affected by it.
Speaker 4: Cocaine Inc. Is a joint investigation from the Times, The
Speaker 4: Sunday Times and News Corps Australia. The reporters are David Collins,
Speaker 4: Stephen Drill and me Fiona Hamilton. The series is produced
Speaker 4: by Sam genter Attack. The executive producers are Will Row
Speaker 4: and Dan Box. Audio production and editing is by Jasper Leak,
Speaker 4: with original music by Tom Burchill. And If you want
Speaker 4: to get in touch with any questions or thoughts on
Speaker 4: the scene series, email Cocaine Inc. At The Times dot
Speaker 4: co dot UK.
Speaker 8: Mm hmmmm