Betrayed

Trade Paperback

The incredible untold inside story of the two most unlikely drug-running grannies in Australian history

WINNER OF THE NED KELLY AWARD FOR BEST TRUE CRIME 2023

WINNER OF THE UK TRUE CRIME AWARD FOR BEST INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING 2024

A relentlessly fascinating and often jaw-dropping true story of two American women who unwittingly became Australia's 'Drug Grannies'

In 1977, Vera 'Toddie' Hays and Florice 'Beezie' Bessire thought they were about to embark on the trip of a lifetime when Vera's nephew, Vern Todd, offered them a campervan to drive from Germany to India. Little did the women know that Vern and his accomplices would secretly pack two tonnes of hashish into the vehicle along the way.

This shocking inside story chronicles Toddie and Beezie's wild ride across continents and oceans to our shores, their arrest by Australian Federal Bureau of Narcotics agents, and all that the women faced in the aftermath.

On the ground at the time, journalist Sandi Logan draws from his interviews with those attached to the events, and accounts in the women's diaries, to tell the incredible tale of an unlikely pair who became infamous and their fight for justice.