An Oregon woman was recently arrested for smuggling drugs into a federal prison. I’ve always wondered how that happens. But there are ways, even if you don’t have a corrupt guard handy.
For instance, drugs have been sewn into dead birds and lobbed into prison yards. The designated recipient might receive a message: The eagle has landed [SPLAT]. I’m guessing that it happens at night. I’d be suspicious if I saw a damp flightless bird arcing into a prison yard for no reason.
But usually, it’s the inmates’ visitors who make the deliveries. Our newest felon stashed hers in her bra. She had 137 hits of Suboxone in there. It wasn’t lumpy (although that might not attract suspicion in some women). It comes in thin little strips.
At the end of her visit she was observed to withdraw something from her brassiere area, cough into her hand, and kiss the inmate, after which the inmate appeared to transfer something from his mouth to his pocket. Nothing suspicious there! After all, sometimes people just go all Ernestine on their bras. They’re digging in there all the time. And people still cough into their hands even though we all know they’re supposed to cough into their elbows instead. It’s not totally normal to hawk a loogie into your hand and then kiss someone right afterwards, but it makes sense that the person being kissed might then try to clean his mouth out with his hand and wipe it on his pants.
So, no alarm bells went off for the guards.
Suboxone is one of those drugs that help people deal with opioid withdrawal by being even better than the original drug, which is quickly abandoned. Perhaps I have that wrong, but it is supposed to be up to 50 times more potent than morphine, and people are perfectly happy to take a dose of it all by itself. One strip can sell for $250 in prison.
The drug is ingested sublingually, and it would be a bottle-rocket of a spectacular death if the woman had all 140 strips of it in her mouth at once, even briefly. Even in her bra there was probably enough moisture to make her hooters perk up and dance. Fortunately, the woman thought all that through, and put the strips in a little baggie. It’s the old routine: bra to hand, hand to mouth, mouth to mouth, hand to pocket, pocket to Dawg-Man.
Drugs can also be hidden in a sock tied behind one’s testicles, I am led to understand, and drug-sniffing dogs who hit the mark there are often told to just settle down. I’m not sure of the exact method of transferral of a bag of testicular methamphetamine, but it might involve a cough, too.
I do know that visitors to prison of any of the available sexes are not allowed to wear an underwire bra. I always thought it was because it was a way to smuggle in a shiv. Them wires have shiv potential for sure. They’re designed to occupy a tissue-thin silky channel at the bottom of the garment that will at some point detonate and shoot the weapon into the air. The only reason we do not see more airborne underwear-powered projectiles is that they are usually ejected directly into the armpit flesh before reaching peak velocity. It’s painful, but the general citizenry is not at risk.
Turns out that’s not why underwire bras aren’t allowed! It’s because underwires will set off the metal detector, and explaining that it’s just your bra is not persuasive enough to prison guard personnel. There might be stilettos, daggers, blackjacks, throwing stars, and of course guns, any of which might be concealed in a bra, especially the size bra that belongs to women you really don’t want to mess with. “We have no way of knowing what sort of metal a person might have in that area,” explained a prison administrator.
Well. We’ve heard that before. You just don’t know what’s in a bra until you have yourselves a look-see, right, boys?
I read Matthew Perry’s memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big, Terrible Thing. He also was treated for opioid addiction with drugs that seemed to be MORE addictive. Although he was no longer on opioids, these drugs were in his system when he passed out into his jacuzzi and drowned. I can see the validity of the premise of “a little hair of the dog that bit you.” That’s pretty much the basis of homeopathy. However, “the ravening wolf who never bit you… but WILL” doesn’t seem to be a good basis for pharmaceuticals.
On a lighter note: underwire bras. They DON’T have to be uncomfortable. I wear them, but they have PLASTIC underwires, not wire, and they have cushioning between the bra and the boob, not just a thin layer of material. Yes, they cost more. But how often does one buy bras, and putting up with uncomfortable ones is a false economy.
No underwires at all in mine. Mine is nothing but stretch and fairy wings.
Puts me in mind of one of my favorite camp movies: The Tenth Victim, the plot of which involves licensed killing as a way to solve overpopulation. The idea is to think of original and surprise ways to kill someone. My fave was Ursula
Andress stalking her victim wearing someone’s idea of a futuristic outfit with plenty of exposed skin, shooting a bullet from her bra.
Okay… I’ve figured out the perfect way to kill someone, leaving no weapon or fingerprints behind. But: it HAS to be done in the winter, when icesicels are around. They get to a point when they are very hard and very sharp. You stab the victim. They die. Weapon melts.
Okay… then you have to dispose of the body. So you need to have the ground thaw a bit next step. You go to a cemetery at night, when they have already dug the grave, and have it covered with a tarp. Open tarp, dig a slightly deeper grave. Insert body. Cover with enough dirt and tamp it down to look as it did before. They’ll bury the other body over it.
Not that I’ve given all this much thought….. 😈
That mystery novel has been written, but I can’t recall by whom. There was also one where a man was killed by blunt-force trauma, but when the police showed up, the previously frozen steak was cooking away in the oven. Don’t know the author of that one either, but my mom told me the plot. Then there’s The Demolished Man, in which there is a gun that shoots gel capsules that melt at body temperature. As you said, not that I’ve given all this much thought…
The frozen bullet was first, I think, mentioned in a comic strip, Dick Tracy…don’t ask how I know. lol.
Why can’t they use a regular weapon and bury it with the body if nobody’s going to dig under the legit body?
I was thinking of the theme music from that flic just the other day! I used to play the album a lot back in the 60s. All I can recall of the English lyrics is “I want to play a game of love with you / Let’s try some guessing for a start.” I’ve looked around but can’t find the rest of it.
Roald Dahl, “Lamb to the Slaughter” — that’s maybe the story you’re thinking of. The wife kills the husband with a frozen leg of lamb, throws it into the oven, then the investigators end up eating it during their search for the murder weapon. Good one!
Roald Dahl wrote a brilliant short story involving a murder committed with a frozen leg of lamb, which the murderer then roasted and fed to the unsuspecting and hungry investigators as they mused about the importance of finding the murder weapon.
That sure sounds like it. Thank you!
I remember Ursula Andress and the bra with the bullets! Some other mystery writer I heard about came up with shooting air into someone’s vein with a hypodermic needle, which mimics a heart attack. But to me, a good coroner would find the tiny pinprick where the needle went in and figure it out.
I re-watched it. I was mistaken that it was for population control.. It was for sport. Still makes me laugh!