Peru drugs mule Michaella McCollum went from ‘bullied white girl’ to cellblock boss by running beauty salon behind bars
The 23-year-old model said she feared she'd be "eaten alive" in the Peruvian prison where she "lost three years of my life"
DRUGS mule Michaella McCollum has told of her hellish time behind bars in Peru after spending three years in jail for attempting to smuggle cocaine worth £1.5million onto a plane.
The model, 23, revealed she lived in a mosquito-infested cell with seven other women, and was forced to share an overflowing hole in the ground for a toilet.
She slept on a concrete shelf for three years, and ate food crawling with maggots while serving time.
McCollum, one half of the notorious “Peru Two” along with accomplice Melissa Reid, was so terrified by her gangster inmates she feared she would be eaten alive.
Speaking to the, she revealed she also worried she would be imprisoned for life, claiming her psychologist in prison told her she would never get out when she rejected his advances.
But McCollum, of Northern Ireland, eventually made her way up the jail pecking order with money her family sent her, which she used to fund a beauty salon from her cell.
'What I went through was completely my fault – and I lost three years of my life'
The turn of events saw her go from “bullied white girl” to “top dog” in prison, and she was swiftly put in charge of the phone, television, and inmate budget for buying food and cleaning supplies.
Reflecting on her time behind bars now that she’s back home with her family, McCollum confessed to the Mirror: “What I went through was completely my fault – and I lost three years of my life.
"You get an adrenaline high because you’re doing something you know you shouldn’t be doing.
"No one put a gun to my head."
McCollum said she was on a four-day ketamine and magic mushroom-fuelled bender in Ibiza when she decided to smuggle cocaine into Spain.
After a “Cockney guy Jake” offered to help her make money, she agreed and began her £4,000 task.
She met fellow mule Reid in Majorca at the airport, and the pair flew to Lima posing as tourists, even visiting popular tourist destination Machu Picchu as part of the ruse.
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They then picked up 32 packets of cocaine and packed them inside their suitcases.
The pair didn’t get far – a plain-clothes police officer searched their bags at Lima’s Jorge Chavez International Airport, and the gig was up.
After realising she could end up in jail for 15 years if found guilty, McCollum came clean, admitting she had not been forced to carry the drugs.
Her honesty paid off – she received six years and eight months instead, which was cut short in April this year.
Now back home with her family in Northern Ireland, McCollum reminisces about her time behind bars, saying she made the most of life on the inside: “You could cry and mope or try to do something with the time and have what fun you could.”
Despite being the only “white girl” in the cockroach-infested prison, where all the other inmates were gangsters who “smoked crack”, McCollum was able to make her way up the pecking order within six months by becoming an entrepreneur.
Buying products with money her family sent her including a massage table, hair straighteners, rollers and a hairdryer, she was soon making £200 a week with her beauty salon.
Before too long, she was able to employ a Spanish girl to do most of the work, while she was voted in as general coordinator and tasked with running her wing of the prison.
As she gained the loyalty of her fellow prisoners, McCollum also received romantic attention from men and women alike.
She claims she received nearly 500 love letters in her time at the jail – and one marriage proposal.
Another enamoured admirer sent her eight kittens, which she was forced to give back.
Looking forward now she’s back home in Dungannon, McCollum is determined to set things right: “Now I have got to prove to the people I love that I’m responsible and that I’m sorry for what I put them through.”
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