Escape: The Past: 'Living Fast' Redefined as Bangkok Hilton Escapee David McMillan Opens His Past as a Teenage Drug-Trafficker - Softcover

David McMillan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9814358274 ISBN 13: 9789814358279

Publisher: Monsoon Books, 2012

Synopsis

In this gripping prequel to 'Escape: The true story of the only Westerner ever to break out of Thailand's Bangkok Hilton', which has sold over 50,000 copies worldwide and is now an ebook bestseller in the UK, drug smuggler-turned-bestselling author David McMillan tells it from the beginning. Throwing away an expensive education as a teenager then a promising executive career, McMillan hits rock bottom only to shake off the dust from the dirt-floor warehouse that was his home to make his first million dealing drugs before he turned 21. McMillan details his incredible plans to smuggle two tonnes of marijuana from northern Thailand by Learjet, befriend drug-dealing pimps in fishbowl brothels in Bangkok, rig cockfights in Manila with disgraced British peer Lord Moynihan and even transport liquid heroin in a transparent glass statue. Learn the tricks of the smuggling trade as McMillan arms himself and his teams of couriers with dozens of passports and custom-built machines that frustrate border guards for years. Success for McMillan comes at a heavy price as he builds up smuggling rings around the world only to see them repeatedly destroyed. While this true survivor overcomes prison time in half a dozen countries on four continents, the true cost is the lives of almost everyone he holds close. Soon enough the highlife of cash millions, glitzy apartments and commuting by Concorde is shattered as the law catches up with the urban-cool trafficker in Australia. Despite eleven years jail, and release under heavy surveillance, McMillan returns to the only world he knows: the smuggler's trail. Ahead lie shiploads of marijuana from Colombia, the opium fields of Afghanistan and death row in both Karachi and Bangkok.

About this title

About the Author

Melburnian David McMillan's first arrest was for breaking into a Richmond match factory to enlarge his matchbox-label collection. At 12, putting crime aside, he then began presenting TV's 'Peters Junior News' for the Nine Network. Newsreading and the straight life didn't stick however and McMillan was thrown out of two of Melbourne's best schools before returning to crime and becoming one of Australia's most notorious smugglers, leading a group that developed the bag-swap system at Sydney's Kingsford-Smith airport. Following a State - Federal taskforce operation, massive police raids and one of Victoria's most expensive trials, which lasted six months, McMillan was sentenced to seventeen years in prison. While awaiting trial, McMillan again made the headlines after attempting to escape Melbourne's high-security Pentridge Prison by helicopter using former SAS personnel. Following release from prison on parole, surveillance immediately resumed leading McMillan to return to the life from which escape appeared impossible. Under false identities, he fled to Bangkok where he was promptly arrested and jailed. Following his dramatic escape from prison in Bangkok, the story of which is retold in this book, McMillan slipped to the Afghan border and again onto the smuggler's trail. In the years that followed, he avoided a life sentence in Pakistan and serious time in Colombia before a stretch in Scandinavia brought an end to his most dangerous life. In the late 90s, he retired to London, where he now lives.

About this edition

• Publisher: Monsoon Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 9814358274
• ISBN 13: 9789814358279
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264