What they’re saying… * Contact * Press Releases
Here are the interviews, reports and reviews of ‘Betrayed’ so far.
There’s a two-part radio documentary I’d especially like to bring to your attention. It’s something I have written, narrated and produced called ‘Too Old Too Run: the Drug Grannies’, broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation program The History Listen (on Radio National) and now available as a podcast:
🎧 Listen to Part 1
🎧 Listen to Part 2
Find the latest Press Release here.
What they’re saying….
That’s Life, 15 August 2025
Drug Grannies: Their campervan was stuffed with drugs
When two nannas were caught with one of the biggest drug hauls in Australian history – one man helped free them.
About Regional journalist Albert McKnight reports from the New South Wales south coast, where Sandi Logan spends much of his time as a journalist and author. In this story about the UK True Crime Award, we learn more about the book’s option to turn BETRAYED into a series or movie at some time in the future.
The Canberra Times, 6 May 2024
28 December 2023
In this recent broadcast, I appear reading a short extract from my book as well as in an interview with the multi-talented Karena Wynn-Moylan who presents a weekly program on community radio entitled Arts Canvass (from about 1’04”, coming out of a Billy Bragg song).
What is interesting about this interview in which I address the issue of the largely untold story about the three organisers behind the Drug Grannies’ adventure — Philip Shine, Vern Todd and Mr X — is that it is broadcast on Byron Bay-FM — the very station at which Philip Shine was general manager until 2023.
🎤 Here is the interview:
🎤 And here is where I read an excerpt from the book:
24 September 2023
Betrayed: The Incredible Story of 1970s “Drug Grannies” – It is not easy for me to lose myself in a good book, with work commitments and household distractions. However, this true story of two American women who unwittingly became Australia’s ‘Drug Grannies’ caught my interest, and I was hooked from start to finish.
Follow @@womentalkng1 on Instagram and enter the competition for a chance to win a copy of BETRAYED.
That’s Life (Australia) 3 Mar 2023
That’s Life! Crime Scene (UK/ November 2022)
Sandi Logan joined ABC (South East NSW) breakfast show presenter Paul West for an interview about his book and forthcoming author’s talk at the Bega Library.
16 September, 2022
Listen to the interview here:
True Crime Conversations
Mamamia Podcasts, 25 August 2022
The Drug Smuggling Grannies
In 1977, retirees Vera Hays and Florice Bessire were offered a trip of a lifetime. All they had to do was drive a motorhome from Germany to India for Vera’s nephew. What they didn’t know was that there’d be two tonnes of hashish hidden in the vehicle.
Journalist and author Sandi Logan joins Gemma this week to tell us how two American women who unwittingly became Australia’s ‘Drug Grannies’.
Mystery Bay True Crime Author Talks ‘Drug Grannies’
Mystery Bay author Sandi Logan will begin his south coast author’s tour at the Bega Library in September, followed by Batemans Bay and then Narooma Libraries, ‘spilling the beans’ on the inside story of the two most unlikely drug-running grannies in Australian history.
23 August 2022.
Were the Grannies none the wiser to the highly lucrative – and highly illegal – cargo they transported here, as they claimed? Were they setup and betrayed by Vera’s nephew? Or could they have been the unlikely masterminds behind the entire plot? Now, 45 years after they set out on their ill-fated journey, it’s time to tell their story.
As his book climbs up the sales charts, a retired Canberra public servant finds there’s strong interest in the story from Hollywood
By Peter Brewer, August 7, 2022
Read more here… (Paywall)
Take 5, 28 July 2022
‘Betrayed’ Book Has Everything. Intrigue, Suspense …and Two Drug-Running Grannies.
By Evan Hosie, July 28, 2022
The ‘drug grannies’ thought they were on the trip of a lifetime. They couldn’t have been more mistaken
ABC RN / By Sandi Logan and Anna Kelsey-Sugg for The History Listen
20 June 2022
Incredible untold story of the ‘drug grannies’ tricked into driving a campervan from Germany to India on an ‘all-expenses paid holiday’ that ended with them in jail for smuggling 1.9 tonnes of hashish into Australia
Daily Mail UK online, 13 June 2022
Jonesy and Amanda (WSFM)
Tuesday, 14 June 2022, 6-9am
The incredible story of Australia’s ‘Drug Grannies’
Interview with Deborah Knight on 2GB, 7 June 2022
Sandi Logan on the most unlikely drug-running grannies in Australian history in ‘Betrayed’
The Good Reading Podcast
5 June 2022
Driving across the world with tonnes of hashish: betrayal of ‘Drug Grannies’ revealed in new book
Article by ALBERT MCKNIGHT 3 JUNE 2022
Listen now:
Canberra Times
Sandi Logan’s new book ‘Betrayed’ is a true crime story Australia’s infamous ‘drug grannies’
By James Tugnell.
1 June 2022
Mystery Bay author Sandi Logan’s new book ‘Betrayed’ a true crime story about hashish, family betrayal, justice and Australia’s infamous Drug Grannies
By James Tugwell, May 31 2022
Local Mystery Bay author Sandi Logan’s new book ‘Betrayed’ is a true crime story about hashish, family betrayal, justice and Australia’s infamous Drug Grannies
May 31 2022
Sydney Morning Herald, 29 May 2022
They were offered a ‘trip of a lifetime’ but wound up in an Australian jail.
Read now…
(click on images to enlarge)
Sandi Logan launches ‘Betrayed’ June 1st
Clued In: How two elderly best friends unsuspectingly trafficked two tonnes of hash – before the ultimate family betrayal.
20 May 2022. By Jake Loader.
Australian Women’s Weekly
19 May 2022
Well before Vera ‘Toddie’ Hays embarked on the ‘trip of a lifetime’ which ultimately led to the book ‘Betrayed’, she was appearing in major newspapers in LA for her prowess as a professional softballer. Here she is at bat for Bing Crosby’s ‘Croonerettes” at Loyola Stadium in 1936 competing in the Southern California Women’s Professional Softball League.
Toddie and Beezie were competitive women’s eight-pin bowling competitors in southern California in the 1940s where they regularly participated in bowling leagues and tournaments — often winning substantial (for the times) prize monies. Here they are with a pair of likely lads tuning up for a forthcoming bowling league play-off weekend, which was regularly covered in the metropolitan LA media at the time.
Fast forward to the early 1980s and Vera ‘Toddie’ Hays (with eye patch) and Florice ‘Beezie’ Bessire are in an Australian prison, sentenced to 14 years’ incarceration after pleading guilty to importing 1.9 tonnes of Afghan hashish into Melbourne. A Christian network in Australia and the US supported the campaign to free the women before their full term on the basis they’d fully cooperated with narcotics investigators (leading to convictions of some of the drug shipment’s backers), were in declining health, and served no useful purpose being kept imprisoned any longer. Ultimately it was this fight for freedom which led to my book Betrayed.
Sandi Logan 