Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm Stephen Drill, the host of a new podcast from
Speaker 2: the team behind crim City. It's called Cocaine Inc. A
Speaker 2: team of three reporters have traveled fifty thousand kilometers across
Speaker 2: the globe to bring you an unprecedented insight into the
Speaker 2: cocaine business. We speak to corrupt doc workers in Rotterdam,
Speaker 2: shaddy 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.
Speaker 5: A group that smuggled one hundred million pounds out of
Speaker 5: the UK.
Speaker 1: How do you reflect on that?
Speaker 4: And Stephen Drill from News Corp Australia.
Speaker 1: This is the end of the line.
Speaker 2: I'm just about to go in Kno 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 5: I'm in Merseyside, probably most famous around the world for
Speaker 5: the Beatles and Liverpool football club, from the city of
Speaker 5: Liverpool itself. I've made a short drive through the Kingsway
Speaker 5: tunnel under the river to an area called the wirel.
Speaker 1: Like David, I've come to meet Tim Edwards.
Speaker 5: He's the father of Ellie Edwards, the young woman who
Speaker 5: went to the pub on Christmas Eve. He's never spoken
Speaker 5: about that night. 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 5: Tim is tall and broad, with thick streaked gray hair
Speaker 5: and a beard. He's an imposing figure and I guess
Speaker 5: you might describe him as a man's man, the type
Speaker 5: of guy you'd sink a few pints in the pub
Speaker 5: with and chat about football and life. He was born
Speaker 5: in nineteen seventy one and came of age in Liverpool
Speaker 5: in the eighties, a tough time for the city with
Speaker 5: 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 and father. The next minute you get a clip
Speaker 3: around here.
Speaker 5: Or when he got in as a young man, like many,
Speaker 5: 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: of Liverpool And.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I met her on a nighthouse and what happened
Speaker 1: after that?
Speaker 3: You were just yeah, just fell in love. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: fell in love. I started having kids. I was a
Speaker 3: young lad and I was just a whatever I could
Speaker 3: to put food on the table and build a family,
Speaker 3: you know, build a home. That just did me best.
Speaker 5: The couple's first child was a boy, and then on
Speaker 5: the tenth of May in nineteen ninety six, their second
Speaker 5: 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 feeding 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?
Speaker 5: What would she do on her a 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 5: As an adult, Ellie put that creativity to good use.
Speaker 5: She left school at sixteen to study beauty at college
Speaker 5: 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 5: Ellie was a young woman with a bright future ahead
Speaker 5: of her, balancing two careers and close with her family.
Speaker 5: Although Tim and Gainor had now split, Christmas remained a
Speaker 5: 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 5: So can you remember Christmas Eve? And did you see
Speaker 5: Ellie that day?
Speaker 3: We'd been out the day before to Manchester. We've been
Speaker 3: to from markets and shopping and the next day she
Speaker 3: bought me a coat for Christmas. And the original plan
Speaker 3: was for her to come to mine and she was
Speaker 3: going to help me wrap the presents for me, grands,
Speaker 3: all the other kids and there and.
Speaker 1: What she didn't.
Speaker 5: Instead of wrapping presents, though, Ellie rang her dad and
Speaker 5: said she was going out with her sister Lucy. The
Speaker 5: pair were close, and Lucy had made a surprise trip
Speaker 5: back from Dubai for the festive period.
Speaker 3: It could have been so different if we 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 going out.
Speaker 3: We're friends, which is quite right what you should have
Speaker 3: been doing.
Speaker 5: Ellie and Lucy headed to a pub called the Lighthouse.
Speaker 5: The pubs in the middle of a small row of
Speaker 5: shops and businesses, surrounded by residential streets and set a
Speaker 5: little back from the road.
Speaker 1: There's a large beer garden out front.
Speaker 5: Inside it's a big, spacious boozer, the kind of place
Speaker 5: where you can watch sport, play pool, gamble on the
Speaker 5: machines in the corner.
Speaker 1: Back at home, Tim 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?
Speaker 3: Said it was early we need Tory Gospel.
Speaker 5: Let's pause a second, because on that Christmas Eve, it's
Speaker 5: the actions of someone Tim had never even heard of
Speaker 5: that would change his life beyond recognition. A few miles
Speaker 5: from the pub, a man puts on dark clothes with
Speaker 5: a hood and gloves. He gets in a stolen Mercedes
Speaker 5: with false license plates. For three hours, he drives to
Speaker 5: six different locations, watching and waiting, before finally settling on
Speaker 5: a parking spot near the front of the lighthouse. At
Speaker 5: 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.
Speaker 5: At eleven forty seven pm, she goes outside for a cigarette.
Speaker 5: In the car park, the man waits around the corner,
Speaker 5: out of sight, wearing a mask. He's holding the Scorpion
Speaker 5: submachine gun loaded with twelve bullets.
Speaker 1: He moves forward.
Speaker 5: Until he's only a few meters away from Ellie and fires.
Speaker 5: CCTV caught the attack, the man retreats, scrambles into the
Speaker 5: 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 5: And it was obviously the early hours of the morning
Speaker 5: Christmas Christmas Day.
Speaker 1: There's nobody there, and there's You're with your son and.
Speaker 3: The kids and all the family and the apology and
Speaker 3: the children's was which was crazy. It was I remember,
Speaker 3: I was just angry. There was no patience or kids
Speaker 3: in it. And yeah, yeah, I was just very angry.
Speaker 5: Was it the surgeon in that moment that broke the
Speaker 5: 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? They knew she'd been shot.
Speaker 3: Well that was the only thing really I was still though.
Speaker 3: I was contained. She was going to turn up at
Speaker 3: the most. I tried drinking her phone.
Speaker 5: After the moment with the surgery, tried to ring a phone.
Speaker 5: H 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 for.
Speaker 5: I actually remember seeing Tim on television after Ellie's death.
Speaker 5: On Boxing Day, he went to lay flowers on the
Speaker 5: pavement outside the pub. The waiting news cameras zoomed in
Speaker 5: 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, So much happens. I
Speaker 3: always explain that as being in an elevator that doesn't
Speaker 3: stop at any floor, just keeps calling up so you
Speaker 3: can never get off. Just so much that goes on
Speaker 3: really quickly to process, and I was protecting the family
Speaker 3: from having to deal with all that, so I bore
Speaker 3: the brunts of all of it.
Speaker 1: Merseyside Police acted quickly.
Speaker 5: Hello.
Speaker 7: First of all, I'm going to read a statement on
Speaker 7: behalf of Ellie's family. There was no one as beautiful
Speaker 7: as our Ellie may her looks.
Speaker 5: In a press conference in the week after Ellie's death,
Speaker 5: I watched Tim sitting next to a detective superintendent as
Speaker 5: she read from a statement the family had written.
Speaker 7: Everyone that knew, and met El knew how special she was.
Speaker 5: Off the six people were shot that night, Ellie was
Speaker 5: only one not to survive. Looking back at this now,
Speaker 5: the grief is obvious on Tim's face. From time to time,
Speaker 5: he sniffs and his lip quivers as if he's holding
Speaker 5: back tears.
Speaker 1: The officer appeals for information.
Speaker 7: They don't deserve to be protected. They belong in prison.
Speaker 7: We know that the answers to this lie within our communities.
Speaker 7: So my appeal to you is, please tell us what
Speaker 7: you know and help us get justice for Ellie's family.
Speaker 1: And the public responded.
Speaker 5: In a week after her murder, the police received a
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty tips and leads, suggestions of people to
Speaker 5: look at and over potential evidence. Then, after two weeks,
Speaker 5: on the tenth of January in twenty twenty three, a
Speaker 5: twenty two year old called Connor Chapman was arrested in
Speaker 5: North Wales. He was spotted in a supermarket where he's
Speaker 5: rushed at the check out and detained by playing clothes
Speaker 5: 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 guns.
Speaker 3: 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 the 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 5: 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 5: The trial lasted sixteen days and after around four hours
Speaker 5: of deliberation, the jury found Chapman guilty of Ellie's murder.
Speaker 5: The judge sentenced him to forty eight years behind bars.
Speaker 8: The murder of Ellie Edwards has caused profound and permanent
Speaker 8: grief to her family and a great shock to the
Speaker 8: entire community. So that it's understood by you, Connor Chapman,
Speaker 8: as well as those who are observing. It means that
Speaker 8: you will have to serve forty eight years in custody
Speaker 8: before you could apply for release, and if you're ever released,
Speaker 8: and considering your dangerousness, that might never happen.
Speaker 5: Just in the last few minutes, this guilty verdict for
Speaker 5: 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 5: What are your feelings towards I mean, I know you
Speaker 5: said earlier to me before the interview.
Speaker 1: You know you 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 5: So what was Chapman doing that night? Why was he
Speaker 5: spraying bullets into a busy pub beer garden. Well, he'd
Speaker 5: actually been targeting two men who Ellie happened to be
Speaker 5: standing near. You see, Chapman was from a place called
Speaker 5: the wood Church Estate, a notorious area not far from
Speaker 5: the pub. The previous day, one of his associates had
Speaker 5: been beaten up by rival gang. He was seeking revenge.
Speaker 5: When the case came to court, Chapman said he was
Speaker 5: a quote low level cocaine dealer. The shooting was part
Speaker 5: of an ongoing conflict between rival gangs fighting over territory
Speaker 5: in the area's cocaine trade. The same month that Chapman
Speaker 5: was convicted of murder, July twenty twenty three, on the
Speaker 5: other side of the world, five people were shot within
Speaker 5: five days in Sydney, Australia, two of them killed in
Speaker 5: 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 5: That conflict was over a shipment of cocaine that went missing.
Speaker 5: The shipment was said to be worth around one hundred
Speaker 5: million Australian dollars. One of the murdered men was left
Speaker 5: lying on the road. School children subjected to the horror
Speaker 5: on a Canterbury street passing the body of a man
Speaker 5: his death, like in that gang war, and like Ellie's
Speaker 5: had one thing in common.
Speaker 1: We rid all is cocaine. Mainly that gets enormous profits
Speaker 1: for criminals here in Sydney.
Speaker 5: The cocaine trade one of the most lucrative businesses in
Speaker 5: the world, a business where the global supply is currently
Speaker 5: at record levels, where the profits are counted in millions
Speaker 5: and the loss is measured.
Speaker 1: Out in murders.
Speaker 5: But those in charge don't care about the human cost.
Speaker 5: It's only business and right now.
Speaker 1: Business is good.
Speaker 5: Coming up in this series we go inside that multimillion
Speaker 5: dollar global industry.
Speaker 1: Very casually.
Speaker 5: The guy says, all right, so if they've found this,
Speaker 5: they know about the torture self, And I'm like, torts yourself,
Speaker 5: what are you talking about.
Speaker 3: I'm down here in a NA tunnel.
Speaker 1: We're about eighty meters from the Mexican.
Speaker 3: Border, and to be honest, it's just quite frightening.
Speaker 9: I raise my hands and I say to my God,
Speaker 9: I forgive the person that did me that. And I
Speaker 9: say to my God, forgive them and forgive me, because
Speaker 9: 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 5: Just between you and me, just between your me. Literally,
Speaker 5: some of the money might be from like drugs in
Speaker 5: 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 3: You are, my guest.
Speaker 1: What are these rows about? Do you think you know
Speaker 1: what it's about. I don't have to say the word,
Speaker 1: you know the word drugs.
Speaker 6: I'm getting down today.
Speaker 5: The first time I saw the money, I felt like
Speaker 5: I was in a film.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe how much it was, and I thought,
Speaker 1: what the fuck have I got myself into? How would
Speaker 1: 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 fortunately never got to to see the grand kids
Speaker 3: that we may have had, really, but just oh, she's
Speaker 3: always spoke about in a good, positive way.
Speaker 5: Since Eli died, a foundation that has been set up
Speaker 5: in her name. Its mission is to raise awareness of
Speaker 5: 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 1: Mm hmmm