Nola Blake is an Australian woman who in 1987 was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand for drug trafficking and subsequently sentenced to death.
[1] Blake was arrested on Friday, 23 January, 1987 outside a department store opposite Lumphini Park along with her de facto husband Paul Hudson.
Police had been monitoring the pair and saw them pass US$49,000 to a Thai national and accept eight packets which they stuffed into the pillow in the pram.
An officer also claimed that the presence of the child and push chair increased their suspicions as a French film showing in Bangkok at that time, Three Men and a Cradle, had involved drug smugglers hiding heroin in a baby's nappy for a drop.
The Thai man, massage parlour operator Supoj Kittidejdamkern, was arrested as he drove away after the meeting.
It was speculated that they were medium level drug dealers supplying heroin in small quantities to distributors to deliver around Sydney, that they received about $40,000 for each trip to Bangkok, and that Blake was the brains behind the operation.
[2] Hudson, a 37-year-old Sydney carpenter, described himself as a drug addict who had previously been arrested and jailed in Indonesia on heroin possession charges.
Hudson says he initially admitted to buying the drugs and implicated the Thai national because he had been told by police that Blake and their son would then be freed.
Blake told her lawyers she wanted the baby back with her in prison, something not permitted under Thai law.
Shortly after their arrest Hudson had provided a written confession claiming he alone had been involved in the drug deal and that Blake knew nothing of it.
The court stressed that several policemen had seen Blake sitting with Kittidejdamkern at a coffee shop table, working out sums on a pocket calculator.
[5] It was rare for Westerners[vague] to receive the death sentence in Thailand, which was, at the time, carried out by automatic rifle(s).
One other was Australian pilot Donald Tait who in 1987 was being held in a Thai prison awaiting the death sentence for drug smuggling.
[10] Blake received a Royal Pardon and was released in March 1998 having spent 11 years and two months in prison.