Snowing in Bali

by Kathryn Bonella

  – Richard

  Missing your chance to deal early only guaranteed the cost of the bribe would skyrocket, as more people required payment and camouflaging a deal got trickier. Richard hired a female lawyer, who did the negotiating.

  The lawyer came to me and said, ‘They’ve offered us a deal; they want 275 million rupiah’ – we worked it out as A$55,000 – and she goes, ‘If you don’t pay that by a certain time, a certain date, if you are one day late, they won’t accept the payment.’

  Otherwise we would have had to pay $180,000.

  To whom?

  The police wanted that; it would’ve got split up between the lawyers, judges, everyone. They’re parasites, they are real parasites; everything is money, money, money. It ended up costing my family $55,000 for me to get home. If I didn’t pay that, I would have done 15 years . . . they were asking 15 years.

  – Richard

  Richard ended up doing three months.

  *

  Cash wasn’t always the reward for snitches; spite also played a hand, with some expats’ villas raided after a tip-off by a vengeful local. Komang had been working for a Swiss furniture export company, being paid $250 a month plus commissions, a very good salary for a Balinese. But when Frenchman Gerard moved to the island to do marketing for the company, Komang lost his job. Bitter in the belief that Gerard had bad-mouthed him to the boss in Switzerland, he executed a plan of revenge. Using Gerard’s Balinese maid to steal a joint from the house, he passed it to a police friend to test. It was marijuana; so two police searched his house, found a small stash and busted him. Without ready access to big cash, Gerard was taken to the concrete police cells, and then moved into Kerobokan Prison. After raising the cash, he cut a deal and got a lenient two years.

  Komang didn’t get his job back but got great satisfaction seeing the Frenchman fall.

  I was a little bit happy he went to jail. I really hated him because I lost my job, I lost everything, my life, and I was very angry.

  – Komang

  Alberto regularly saw his Balinese snitch in Kerobokan Prison, but didn’t waste time exacting revenge. There were many locals in the jail who had ‘changed heads’, but then been denied their promised freedom and who casually hung out with their victim. It shocked Alberto because, in South America, a snitch’s fate was usually a wooden box. But in Bali snitching was common, which was why the ‘changing heads’ scheme was so often used.

  They’re natural-born snitches.

  – Alberto

  But Alberto and the crew would soon see one of their own turning rat.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MISSING ENGLISH GIRL

  As Alberto languished in Kerobokan Prison, he heard zilch from his Peruvian drug-dealing friends, fat Diaz brothers Juan (Poca) and Mario and Jose Henrici (Borrador). Rafael had come in laden with bags of food from the Bali Deli, but the Peruvians didn’t visit, call or send him cash or food; they stayed clear, because they had their own strife. Not only were they hot on the police radar, but Borrador’s English girlfriend was now threatening to snitch on them.

  Poca’s usual feverish paranoia, exacerbated by Alberto’s bust and the police blitz, meant this girl’s threats, perilous anytime, were exquisitely bad timing. The Bali dealers might have been smart, educated, multi-lingual guys who often surfed, loved parties, five-star hotels and fine wines, but it could be lethal to forget they were drug dealers – often high and paranoid, precariously teetering on a high wire, with much further to fall than most. At any given moment, their ritzy lives could take a spectacular nosedive into the darkest pits of hell, as they’d just watched Alberto’s do.

  One evening Rafael was sitting in a Seminyak restaurant, Made’s Warung, when he noticed a ‘missing persons’ poster on the wall. He recognised the face of Borrador’s English girlfriend. After the roadside beating that Jando had given Borrador for undercutting prices, Rafael had seen little of him and only knew this girl in passing, but had heard Poca and Mario talking anxiously about her.

  They complained she was trouble, ‘This bitch talk too much, blah blah, she talks so much.’ She was giving shit to Poca and Mario . . . like, ‘I’m gonna tell police what you guys are doing.’

  – Rafael

  She was cool. She was kind of crazy, but she was cool.

  – Alberto

  British girl Kate Osborne had been dating Borrador for a couple of years, living with him and, she confided to her mum, hoping to marry him. She was an attractive, effervescent girl from Carlisle in England’s north – seemingly an unlikely person to get mixed up in the drug underworld. She’d grown up second of three sisters in a close upper middle-class family, hanging with a group of smart, urbane, ambitious friends. She loved travelling and backpacked the globe, with many trips to Bali, as like so many, she was captivated by the little island’s sun, smiling people, and exotic culture.

  She’d had an early sense she didn’t want to live a boring upper middle-class life. So she didn’t. She moved to Bali and fell in love with a drug dealer. She perfectly fitted the cliché of good girls falling for bad boys. Borrador was a volatile, coke-addicted, drug-dealing Latino. She was a feisty, well-bred good girl, who inevitably became ensnared in the Bali underworld – watching their play up close, seeing the intricacies of the game, but not liking it.

  But she loved her bad boy. Then one day they both vanished.

  Her dog’s food had run out and her friends hadn’t seen her for weeks. Kate’s parents, Patrick and Liz, didn’t yet know that when they sounded the alarm. A world away in the UK, they were worried that they hadn’t heard from their daughter for more than a month, as she usually rang every 10 days. Their fears that something was rotten on the Island of the Gods turned to reality when Kate failed to call home on her birthday. Her parents were the first to alert authorities.

  ‘The situation builds up gradually and suddenly you think, “Crikey, what is going on?” when there is no contact,’ Mr Osborne said.

  – The Times, 4 June 2003

  ‘All sorts of terrible things go through your mind’ – Mr Osborne.

  –Daily Mail, 4 June 2003

  None of Kate’s Bali friends had reported her missing. Those dealing drugs obviously ducked for cover, but other expat friends also stayed quiet. Westerners were cynical of Bali police, with corruption so endemic that you had to sling cash even to get a police report written. The closest most came to the cops, unless busted for drugs, was being pulled over in a roadside blitz, sometimes for riding without a helmet, sometimes for nothing, but always being asked for a 50,000 to 100,000 rupiah (about $5–10) sling before being permitted to ride off. This roadside dance was as accepted as gamelan music for being a part of Bali life.

  After Kate’s parents called the British Honorary Consul in Bali, British and local police and Interpol, they were suddenly in a waking nightmare. It was not good news, as their worst fears were being confirmed by disturbing facts.

  Kate had last been seen weeks earlier on Good Friday night. Her maid had seen her leave home at 10.30 pm dressed up to party. She’d gone to the Woodstock Bar in Legian, drunk beers – in good spirits, according to the barman – and then given a Dutch friend a lift home at 2 am.

  A week later her rented Daihatsu jeep was found abandoned in the car park at Denpasar International Airport with doors locked, keys in the ignition and a flat tyre. But there was no record of her flying out. Her beloved dog Maisie had been abandoned without food or care arrangements; her two bank accounts had been untouched; no activity was recorded on her email accounts and her passport and purse were missing.

  Kate’s parents set up a website and held a press conference in England. Their story was every parent’s worst nightmare and it instantly created global headlines.

  The parents of a British graphic designer who went missing in Bali nearly six weeks ago spoke yesterday of their fears that she may have been kidnapped or murdered. Yesterday her mother told a press conference: ‘We are staying strong. We have to beli
eve that Kate is somehow going to turn up. If someone has kidnapped her then I would say, “Please, for god’s sake, return her safely to us. Get in touch.” I pray every day for her safekeeping.’

  – Telegraph, UK, 4 June 2003

  But the story held more intrigue. Borrador was also missing. In Kate’s last phone call to her mum, she’d said that ‘Joseph’ had gone to Peru to see his family and was due back soon. When it came to light that he was now also missing, that he owed Kate at least £20,000, and that he sometimes brutally bashed her, he was the obvious prime suspect.

  The mystery of the car, the abandoned dog and the vanishing friends from Bali’s surf set would not normally cause serious alarm on an island where most people come to escape from everyday life. The real concern has been raised by Henrici’s violent behaviour, all too typical of a small group of Latin American surfers who have a reputation for aggression and hard living.

  ‘She really, really loved him,’ said Osborne’s live-in maid, Ni Ketut Dya, 32, ‘but they fought all the time.’ In a statement to Indonesian police, the maid said that on one occasion she became so frightened by their fighting that she called the police station. The row had subsided by the time officers arrived, she said.

  One night in mid-March, an eyewitness said, Henrici hit her in front of customers at the Woodstock Cafe. ‘The management threw him out but he waited for Kate outside, hid behind her car and attacked her when she left,’ said the witness. She was left with bruising and cuts that required hospital treatment.

  – Sunday Times, 15 June 2003

  ‘I cannot tell you much about him at all,’ Mrs Osborne said. ‘I have only spoken to him briefly on the phone once.’

  – The Times, 4 June 2003

  Sitting on their hands in the north of England, with the Bali police investigation agonisingly slow, and suspecting little effort was being made, Kate’s parents decided to fly to Bali – their first trip to Indonesia – with two British detectives.

  Mrs Osborne, fighting back tears, said: ‘It’s difficult, and, quite frankly, slow, increasingly frustrating and exceedingly worrying.’

  – Yorkshire Post, 3 June 2003

  Kate’s father, Patrick, 64, a former director of Cavaghan & Gray, a Carlisle-based food company, and his wife said that they were ‘incredibly frustrated’ by the paucity and slowness of information filtering through from Bali. They aim to travel there to talk to officials and local people in an attempt to shed light on her last known movements.

  – The Times,4 June 2003

  For the sake of diplomacy, the UK detectives were quick to point out the investigation was ‘Indonesian-led’, careful to avoid treading on toes while trying to nudge Bali police in the right direction.

  Detective Chief Inspector Bill Whitehead, of Cumbria police, has liaised with the Indonesian police, making it clear that tracing the boyfriend should be a priority. Later this week he is meeting officers from Interpol.

  –The Times, 4 June 2003

  Mr Whitehead said if he was in charge of the investigation he would be keen to find and speak to Kate’s boyfriend. He added: ‘It would be one of the first things we do in this country, as a matter of course.’

  – BBC, 3 June 2003

  The detectives also warned the vulnerable parents about corruption in Bali and people offering false information for cash.

  The difficulty with sources from that area of the world is that they tend to report on uncorroborated hearsay with the sole intent of financial gain. Part of our job was to warn the family against such exploitation.

  – Detective Chief Inspector Bill Whitehead

  The day the Osbornes flew out, Kate’s mum told journalists, ‘We will never give up the search for Kate and believe we will find her.’ But ten days later they came home, no closer to unravelling the nightmare.

  Instead, they had a new question – who was the mystery person their daughter had called at 4.14 am on the day she vanished? Kate’s phone records, obtained in Bali, showed she’d not only made that very early morning call but had also sent six text messages to the number throughout the night. It was the last trace of their daughter’s existence. As yet, they didn’t know whose number it was.

  The strongest lead has to be to find the person Kate contacted at 4.14 am, to find out the nature of the conversation and why there were several text messages to that phone earlier in the day.

  – Detective Chief Inspector Bill Whitehead, in The Journal,

  Newcastle UK, 3 July 2003

  Although the trip to the island hadn’t turned up any answers, it gave the distressed parents an intangible connection to their missing daughter.

  Mrs Osborne said: ‘It was very hard going through her home and all her stuff, but it was good to do, because it resonated of Kate and we felt very much with her.’

  Her father said: ‘We live in hope that she is alive, but with the passage of time that hope is diminishing.’

  – The Journal, 3 July 2003

  The Bali drug dealers were super-aware that the disappearance of Borrador’s girlfriend had exploded into global headlines, with gossip among them that Australian cops, Scotland Yard and Interpol were now all lurking and spreading tentacles in Bali to investigate, including hot young cops infiltrating private parties by acting as tourists. Some of the dealers actually knew where Borrador was, but everyone vamoosed, staying as far away as possible from the problem.

  No one wanted to be snared into the spotlight or see their name in print. Journalists had already latched on to Borrador’s drug connections, even writing stories specifically naming Alberto as Borrador’s ‘notorious’ friend – although ironically the ugly white walls of Kerobokan Prison were protecting him from the fire outside.

  One of Mr Henrici’s reportedly good friends, Alberto Lopez, was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment in February for possessing ecstasy tablets. Lopez, a notorious figure among Bali’s surfing set, was convicted of possessing ecstasy tablets at the High Court in Denpasar, Bali, in February this year and was sentenced to 18 months in jail.

  – Sunday Times, 15 June 2003

  Matters are complicated by widespread but as yet unsubstantiated rumours that Ms Osborne’s partner, Jose Henrici, was involved in drug running and that he owed her up to £21,000. He is thought to have had at least three other aliases.

  – The Guardian, 17 June 2003

  They are keen to track down her estranged boyfriend, who was linked to the South American underworld. Peruvian Jose Henrici, also 35, has a history of arrests for drug offences.

  – Daily Mail, 16 June 2003

  Kate’s parents had been back in England for several days when news broke explaining exactly why they hadn’t found Borrador in Bali. An indisputably clear reason: he’d been busted trying to smuggle 4.2 kilos of coke across the Peruvian border to Brazil and was now locked up in a dungeon-like cell in the middle of the Peruvian jungle. Because he’d travelled on a false Argentinian passport as Carlos Navarro Lanatta, it had taken authorities time to discover his real identity. He’d used the passport to leave Bali three months earlier – three weeks before Kate vanished – ostensibly to see his family, but in reality to do a drug run for Poca. He’d been busted 10 days after Kate vanished, so he had the perfect alibi.

  The boyfriend of a British woman missing in Bali for more than ten weeks has been arrested on the other side of the world. Jose Henrici, 35, is in custody in his home country of Peru . . . Henrici, a professional surfer thought to have links to the underworld, was arrested on drugs charges in the town of Puerto Maldonado in the Andes.

  – Daily Mail, 1 July 2003

  Henrici, 35, described as a professional surfer is being held at the ‘hell hole’ Puerto Maldonado jail in the heart of the Peruvian jungle.

  – News of the World, 6 July 2003

  Henrici is now awaiting trial in Puerto Maldonado, almost 500 miles east of Lima. If found guilty, he could face up to five years in jail.

  – News and Star, UK, 24 July 2003


  Borrador talked about Kate to a Peruvian journalist, claiming she had threatened to tell police he was a drug dealer. He was blasé and mocking of her disappearance, not in any way a loving, concerned boyfriend.

  ‘She could be in a hotel in a remote island in Indonesia, laughing about everything that is happening,’ he says. ‘That’s what I think is happening. That she is doing this to point the finger of blame at me. I did not kill her and I have absolutely no idea where she is.’

  – Caretas, Lima, 24 July 2003

  Days after the breaking news of Borrador’s arrest, Britain’s News of the World newspaper ran an exclusive story, with shocking claims by Borrador, that Poca and Mario had ordered Kate’s murder to stop her exposing a dark secret they all shared.

  Missing Briton Kate Osborne may have been murdered by drug barons – after she helped them fake their deaths in the Bali nightclub bombing. The men were facing trial in Indonesia and realised confusion over who died in the horror provided the perfect opportunity to ‘disappear’ forever. Kate is said to have added three drug traffickers’ names to the list of dead after volunteering to help officials as a translator in the wake of the attack.

  The sensational allegations in the riddle of missing Kate are revealed today by Kate’s lover, Jose Henrici. He admits he is one of the three drug dealers – and is now in prison in Peru facing a massive sentence for smuggling cocaine. He believes the other two men, brothers known as Juan Mendoza Diaz and Mario Alfonso, ordered 35-year-old Kate’s killing to ensure their secret could never be revealed . . . Henrici’s claim is the latest intriguing twist in the mystery of what happened to Kate . . . The News of the World has confirmed that Kate – who spoke the local language – worked with aid agencies and British Consulate staff helping to compile lists of the dead, missing and injured . . . Police in Peru and Indonesia fear Kate could have been targeted as the loose link in the conspiracy. The source added: ‘It is feared that the dealers decided that Kate was the only one not at the heart of the gang who knew what had happened.’