Warren Fellows (13 September 1953 – 14 January 2022) was an Australian former drug courier who was sentenced to life imprisonment in Thailand in 1978 for his role in a heroin trafficking operation that took place from Perth to Bangkok.
Word got out about the successful drug run and a customer in the bar where Fellows worked employed him to travel to Los Angeles, Hawaii and South America to smuggle cocaine into Australia.
Fellows came to know drug dealer William Sinclair, who took him to Bangkok, Thailand where he was introduced to Neddy Smith and made his first successful attempt at smuggling heroin into Australia.
After returning to Australia, Neddy Smith who was impressed with his smuggling skills, contacted Fellows and offered him a job.
Hayward played professional rugby league with the Newtown Jets and had been selected to represent Australia as a boxer at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Canada.
Hayward and Fellows became increasingly apprehensive, but after Smith lost his patience with them and made implied threats, they reluctantly agreed to go through with the trip.
So Fellows procured a false passport through a friend, in the name of a deceased child Gregory Hastings Barker.
Fellows claimed that there were many warning signs and that the night before they were arrested he had a "moment of clarity" and resolved to wash the heroin down the bath drain.
[6] On 12 October 1978, the rooms occupied by Fellows and Hayward at the Montien Hotel in Bangkok were raided by Thai police.
They were sent to the Lard Yao prison but after five days there when Sinclair attempted to bribe the wrong guard, they were transferred to Bangkwang.
Furthermore, Fellows claimed that he had the same nightmare once a year or so, regarding him lying on a beach with two beautiful women feeling free and happy, however as he began to walk off into the sunset he turned around and noticed that the two girls had disappeared and that he was back in the Thailand Prison where a guard was calling his name telling him to go in his cell.
[citation needed] Sheffield four-piece band Harrisons penned a song entitled "Simmer Away" after reading The Damage Done.