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Billy Hayes (writer)
William Hayes (born April 3, 1947) is an American writer, actor, film director and convicted drug smuggler. Hayes is best known for his autobiographical book Midnight Express about his experiences in and escape from a Turkish prison, after being convicted of smuggling hashish. Hayes was one of hundreds of U.S citizens in foreign jails serving drug charge sentences, following a drug-smuggling crackdown by foreign governments.
William "Billy" Hayes was born on April 3, 1947, in the Bronx, New York City, the son of William Hayes Senior, a Metropolitan Life Insurance executive and Dorothy E (Dottie) née Banks, a housewife. Raised in a middle class household with a younger brother and sister, Hayes was educated privately at Seton Hall High School, Patchogue, a Catholic high school for boys in Long Island, New York, graduating in 1964.
A major in Journalism, during his senior year at Marquette University, to the disappointment of his parents, Hayes decided to drop out from college to focus on traveling, surfing, skydiving and writing. To pursue these activities unabated, Hayes faked a psychiatric report in order to escape the Vietnam draft.
During the summer of 1967, while working part-time as a child psychiatric aide at Milwaukee County General Hospital, a friend returned from Turkey with some hashish that he had hidden in his money belt. Soon after, Hayes got the idea to smuggle some hashish by hiding it in a cast on his leg.
No longer a student and lured by the Orient, in April 1969, Hayes traveled to Istanbul. He hid two kilos of hashish in a cast on his leg and went back to the U.S. This was a lucrative enterprise with Hayes buying the hashish for USD $300 and selling the drug back home for USD $5,000 to clients with a dealer nickname of "Crazy" amongst the purchasing community.
With the money from the proceeds beginning to run out after spending on overseas travel (Spain, amongst other countries) and a new motorcycle, Hayes decided to continue smuggling, first in October 1969 and second in April 1970, but started to get careless. “I seriously thought I was way too smart and good-looking to ever get arrested,” he admitted.
Using different means of transport, Hayes mostly flew from Istanbul to New York, but on his second trip, he traveled to and from Istanbul on the Orient Express with connecting flights to the U.S. from mainland Europe. The aim was to diversify routes taken in and out of the country so as to blur the real intentions behind his visits.
At his fourth attempt, at Istanbul airport, after having passed customs, during a hijacking alert, Hayes was caught trying to again smuggle two kilos of hashish (as on previous occasions) out of Turkey on October 7, 1970. The PLO had hijacked four airliners in September 1970 and the airport had reinforced controls by searching passengers for explosives given that sophisticated devices such as fluoroscopes or metal detectors had not yet been introduced.
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Billy Hayes (writer)
William Hayes (born April 3, 1947) is an American writer, actor, film director and convicted drug smuggler. Hayes is best known for his autobiographical book Midnight Express about his experiences in and escape from a Turkish prison, after being convicted of smuggling hashish. Hayes was one of hundreds of U.S citizens in foreign jails serving drug charge sentences, following a drug-smuggling crackdown by foreign governments.
William "Billy" Hayes was born on April 3, 1947, in the Bronx, New York City, the son of William Hayes Senior, a Metropolitan Life Insurance executive and Dorothy E (Dottie) née Banks, a housewife. Raised in a middle class household with a younger brother and sister, Hayes was educated privately at Seton Hall High School, Patchogue, a Catholic high school for boys in Long Island, New York, graduating in 1964.
A major in Journalism, during his senior year at Marquette University, to the disappointment of his parents, Hayes decided to drop out from college to focus on traveling, surfing, skydiving and writing. To pursue these activities unabated, Hayes faked a psychiatric report in order to escape the Vietnam draft.
During the summer of 1967, while working part-time as a child psychiatric aide at Milwaukee County General Hospital, a friend returned from Turkey with some hashish that he had hidden in his money belt. Soon after, Hayes got the idea to smuggle some hashish by hiding it in a cast on his leg.
No longer a student and lured by the Orient, in April 1969, Hayes traveled to Istanbul. He hid two kilos of hashish in a cast on his leg and went back to the U.S. This was a lucrative enterprise with Hayes buying the hashish for USD $300 and selling the drug back home for USD $5,000 to clients with a dealer nickname of "Crazy" amongst the purchasing community.
With the money from the proceeds beginning to run out after spending on overseas travel (Spain, amongst other countries) and a new motorcycle, Hayes decided to continue smuggling, first in October 1969 and second in April 1970, but started to get careless. “I seriously thought I was way too smart and good-looking to ever get arrested,” he admitted.
Using different means of transport, Hayes mostly flew from Istanbul to New York, but on his second trip, he traveled to and from Istanbul on the Orient Express with connecting flights to the U.S. from mainland Europe. The aim was to diversify routes taken in and out of the country so as to blur the real intentions behind his visits.
At his fourth attempt, at Istanbul airport, after having passed customs, during a hijacking alert, Hayes was caught trying to again smuggle two kilos of hashish (as on previous occasions) out of Turkey on October 7, 1970. The PLO had hijacked four airliners in September 1970 and the airport had reinforced controls by searching passengers for explosives given that sophisticated devices such as fluoroscopes or metal detectors had not yet been introduced.