Do you remember the Peru Two? That was the nickname for Michaella McCollum Connolly and Mellisa Reid, arrested in 2013 for trying to smuggle £1.5 million’s worth of cocaine from Peru to Ibiza, where they’d been spending a summer. The pair had never met before a shady guy called Jake sent them on a sightseeing holiday to Peru, with the promise that they’d bring back 24lbs (that’s almost a stone each!) of cocaine in return for €5,000 each. But obviously, as we know now, the pair were caught at Lima airport.
Once their stories hit the headlines, they became a phenomenon, mostly for their commitment to fashion - Michaella infamously sported a big doughnut-sized bun in her hair, and the pair would swap clothes while on remand - the idea presumably being that though they did not have clean clothes, they could have fresh clothes each day! Oh, and they also made a list of requests while imprisoned - for necessities like Oreos, Pringles and baby oil.
Now released on parole after serving a third of her sentence at Ancon 2 and Virgen de Fatima prisons near Lima, Michaella has given an interview to the Daily Mail to tell of her time in jail. Somewhat unsurprisingly, she started a salon in jail after becoming ‘top dog’.
She offered prisoners treatments such as bike waxes, haircuts and facials. She made 1,000 soles (£230) a week and so was able to employ a Spanish inmate to do most of the work while she performed her elected duty as ‘general co-ordinator’, which meant she was in charge of budgets for her wing’s essential food and cleaning supplies as well as the phone and TV.
Michaella also got other poorer inmates to clean her room for money ‘Because it’s so dirty, I mean, even the bathroom you wouldn’t even touch. You’re literally cleaning your own crap.’
And she bribed a guard just 400 soles (£92) to give her a mobile phone, which she used to take photos of herself in jail and send to her family - to reassure them that she was alright.
So far, so Orange is The New Black. And that’s before you even consider the dance-offs Michaella says she won against her peers: ‘We won almost every single one. We were foreigners and we danced their national dance better than the Peruvians actually did – that’s why they would get so pissed off because we’d always win’
There’s more than one way to stay in jail, sure, and you’ve got to do what you can to keep your head up, but pissing off Peruvians, profiting off of poorer women or making them clean your cell for you? It’s very Piper Chapman at the beginning of series 4 and we’re not sure if we like it. That is, of course, until we get to read the book on the Peru 2…maybe we’re just peeved Michaella didn’t write some memoirs for us to sift through.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.