Nun busted for smuggling cocaine in high heels
A Missouri nun smuggled 2 pounds of cocaine into Australia using her high heels — but claims she was duped into the act by a man she met online.
Denise Marie Woodrum, 51, was caught arriving into Sydney Airport last August while making her way through customs — when officers discovered the drugs stuffed into the heels of her shoes, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Monday.
But her lawyer, Rebecca Neil, told District Court Judge Penelope Wass last week that the items were meant for a mystery man Woodrum had met online named Hendrik Cornelius.
“She was groomed to provide a financial gain for this person, Hendrik Cornelius, whatever person or persons it was behind this identity,” Neil said, according to the paper.
“She went on this trip thinking she was bringing artifacts for him.”
After a failed marriage and major health problems that led to crippling bills, Woodrum, a sister of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, a religious order based in Kansas, believed she had met someone special online.
“Can you promise you will never leave me?” she had texted him last July. “You are my Only and First True Family!!!”
Despite exchanging hundreds of texts with Cornelius, Woodrum had never met him face to face — and her lawyer claimed she was just a “vulnerable” woman who had been preyed on.
Woodrum pleaded guilty in January to importing a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug — but there are still questions surrounding how much she knew about what she was smuggling.
Wass questioned the claim that Woodrum was duped by an online lover, finding it “inconsistent and unbelievable.”
“I am less than convinced by her explanation,” she said, according to the Herald.
Prosecutor Ben Dunstan urged the judge to find that Woodrum knew she was bringing in cocaine as part of a plot she had full agency in.
Woodrum had flown from Missouri to Texas and then to Trinidad and Tobago on July 18. The next day she traveled to Suriname in South America, and on July 25 she texted someone named “Stacie”: “This whole trip is paid for and will get additional payment for work.”
On July 30 she texted Cornelius, “Riding in his car to get stuff no signature needed,” and on Aug. 2, she texted him a list of expenses for hotels and flights and then departed to Sydney.
When stopped at the airport, Woodrum said she’d come to Sydney to see the Harbour Bridge and the aquarium and that the shoes in her suitcase were a gift for her mom.
After being told the slingbacks tested positive for cocaine, she reportedly replied: “Why, how much did you find?”
She later told investigators she’d been given gifts and clothes in South America to give to people in Sydney. All the while, Cornelius was sending her messages that read: “Are you ok?” “What are you doing honey?” “Shuttle?” “In taxi?”
Woodrum has been in custody since the day she was arrested and will be sentenced next month.
Meanwhile, her dad, who lives in Illinois, said his daughter’s arrest “was a big shock to the whole family.”
“It just came out of the blue,” her father, Tom Rozanski, told the Herald.
Rozanski said his daughter was a former teacher with a master’s degree in marketing who suffered from depression and had undergone a hysterectomy.
“All of a sudden she met someone she talked to,” he told the paper. “She said she was going to be doing some traveling.”
“Life took a turn. She has never done anything like this before, and this experience has been difficult for me to understand. Mostly because none of our family has had anything happen to them that even remotely resembles what Denise has done,” he added.
“I’m just hoping the best for her, that’s all I can tell you.”
via: https://nypost.com/2018/08/13/nun-busted-for-smuggling-cocaine-in-high-heels/
Photo credit: Australian Border Force