Missing Gary Tweddle Book Part 22 – CHAPTER 9: GARY’S COCAINE DEAL
So, Gary’s deceased body had ultimately discovered on Monday 2nd September 2013 by fluke at around 4pm, just over six weeks (47 days) after he had gone missing. Due to fading light he could not be safely recovered until the following day by authorities.
Once Gary’s body was recovered (after being propped 6 weeks in a remote cliff-side tree), police arranged due tests – evidentiary search discovering finding his mobile on person, a post-mortem examination, toxicology examination and report, cause of death.
However, no official update by the police was provided to the public at the time, despite the considerable public search effort and concern. However, subsequent criminal prosecution by police would reveal more relevant explanatory details, as we later disclose.
By 29th September 2013, a media article was written thus:
“A mission to keep the party going turned fatal for Sydney man Gary Tweddle on the night he vanished into Blue Mountains bushland. None of his friends imagined the awful tragedy that would unfold when the much-loved 23-year-old went to buy some cocaine.
Tweddle was attending a work conference when he ran out of the Fairmont Resort at Leura in the early hours of July 16.”
Recall, the taxi driver, who did not wish to be named, says he remembered about Gary upon collecting him from the restaurant in Leura that the 10-minute trip to the hotel that Gary:
”He was wasted, seriously wasted.‘
Yet Gary had been observed by the Silk’s restaurant owner/manager as a dining guest that night having very little alcohol during dinner event.
Police recovery of Gary’s phone must have had meta data records indicating that Gary had made phone contact with a drug dealer in Sydney the previous day – Mr Pambos. This is because police established that Mr Pambos had arranged to drive from Sydney toward the Blue Mountains to meet up with Gary half way at Penrith on the night Gary had gone missing. How else could police have possibly known this?
Court documents obtained by Fairfax Media revealled that Gary was intoxicated and trying to find his way to Penrith train station to buy five bags of cocaine from Pambos. Also that 26-year-old Pambos had planned to sell Tweddle 2.5 grams of cocaine in five small resealable plastic bags, presumably one each for Gary and his four Oracle colleagues.
Christopher Thomas Pambos outside Petersham Train Station, two weeks after Tweddle vanished. [Photo by Kate Geraghty]
‘Pambos’ is a Greek Cypriot surname – Greeks bearing gifts?
Back in 2013, cocaine had a premium illegal dealing street value in Sydney of about $250 per hit (0.5 grams). Police learned from Pambos that Gary was prepped to pay him a premium of $1550 for 5 hits. So, likely each of the five would have chipped in their equally split 5-way payments of $250 each to Gary in cash, else Gary naively contributed to price premium difference.
This author is not a druggie. Our subsequent online research finds that cocaine as a powder looks similar to bicarbonate of soda. So for demonstration purposes we measured 1/2 gram of bicarbonate of soda (1/4 of a teaspoon) into a small plastic bag and compared the amount to an Australia 1 dollar coin. We photographed this and then reproduce the photo to show what Gary’s cocaine deal would have looked like for the $1550. See below.
The 5 Oracle Sales Snorters.
It means that Gary would have run out of the Fairmont to do his drug deal with at least $1550 in cash on him.
Apparently Gary’s mobile phone records showed that he had texted to his drug dealer:
“Hey man. I’m in Leura. Keen to pay whatever. Any chance for a delivery? Will pay BIG,” said a text message sent at 11.15pm.
It was agreed the pair would meet at Penrith train station to make the exchange. From where Mr Tweddle was staying at the Fairmont Resort, the nearest railway station at Leura was 3km away, but via dark backstreets, then his intended train journey was more than an hour to Penrith station.
It would have taken Gary at least 2 hours to make the journey each way, had he known where he was even going and had the trains been running after midnight, but they weren’t.
Gary had no idea how to get to the nearby train station at Leura, let alone to Penrith to meet his drug dealer, whom he had never met.
Police learned that Pambos had previously tried to meet Gary sometime between 10pm on July 15 and 2am on July 16, during the time of the Oracle conference, but the pair lost contact. They never ended up meeting each other.
This then begs the obvious question of how had Gary and/or his four co-conspirator druggy colleagues managed to obtain cocaine prior to imbibe at Silk’s Restaurant – obviously in the Men’s room?
Had Pambos previously met up with one of the others. Was Pambos, Oracle Sales go-to cocaine supplier, and this time it was Gary’s turn?
Just two weeks after Gary’s disappearance on 2nd August 2013, NSW Police arrested Pambos on 16th August 2013 in Sydney for supplying more than $30,000 worth of cocaine and $800 worth of MDMA (chemically: 3,4-Methylene-Dioxy-Meth-Amphetamine), more commonly known in druggie circles as ‘Ecstasy’.
MDMA is street druggie ‘Ecstasy’
Pambos was consequently charged with two counts of supplying a prohibited drug after he allegedly sold 128 grams of cocaine and 88 grams of ecstasy at Earlwood. Police also charged Pambos with dealing with the suspected proceeds of a crime after he was found with $5,930 cash on his person.
According to the Fairfax Media at the time, Pambos had branded his drug dealing trade as being an ‘online entrepreneur’ running a website called Simple Marketing Plan. (SimpleMarketingPlan.com – PS. don’t bother searching this since is has long expired) and Pambos self-described this on his Facebook page as “the world’s leading website and newsletter”.
Such a marketing brand would have had sympathetic appeal to sales executives.
Gary’s body had yet to be found when Pambos first appeared initially before Burwood Local Court (in Sydney) on 23rd August 2013. Gary’s body was found on 2nd September 2013.
Magistrate Christopher Longley granted Pambos bail on the condition he surrender his passport and report daily to Marrickville Police Station.
On 14th November 2013, Pambos was sentenced in Sydney’s Downing Centre Local & District Court to a maximum two years’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to three supply related offences.
Pambos was the only one who knew where Mr Tweddle was trying to get to on the night he vanished but kept silent as thousands joined the largest search ever conducted in the Blue Mountains.
[COMMENT: No, Gary’s Oracle sales colleagues were up to their necks aware of Gary’s drug muling antics and that he was well wasted at the time high on cocaine and ecstasy. Guilt factor or what?]
“The British-born sales representative, from Cremorne, ran out of the Fairmont Resort at Leura during a work conference in the early hours of July 16, 2013. But the 23-year-old got lost in bushland and was never seen again.”
Pambos had already been arrested and appeared in court by the time Gary’s body was found on a cliff ledge at Katoomba, six weeks after his disappearance. During this time police tracked Pambos down after finding his number on Mr Tweddle’s iPad under a false name.
When Pambos saw this news about Gary’s disappearance, he ignored a call from police and threw his mobile phone away. Pambos stated that he did this, and did not contact police, as he was scared of being exposed as a drug dealer and was worried about the consequence of this – this according to facts tendered to the District Downing Centre Court.
Police had stopped 27 year old Pambos in his mother’s green Ford Fiesta on Illawarra Road at Marrickville on Friday 2nd August 2013. The dealer looked shell-shocked when police said they were investigating Mr Tweddle’s disappearance.
“Pambos immediately became nervous and started shaking and stumbling over his words.”
He confessed he had a mobile hidden in the crutch of his underpants and told them he had drugs stashed inside his Earlwood unit.
Police found more than $30,000 worth of cocaine and $800 of MDMA concealed in a Prada and Emporio Armani box inside a fridge in Pambos unit. During a search of his bedroom, officers also found a black drug ledger book, two sets of scales, a capsule filler, empty gelatine capsules, a number of mobile phones and 18 replica men’s watches.
The drug dealer was arrested and charged but granted bail when he first appeared before Burwood Local Court on August 23.
Fairfax Media approached Mr Pambos when he was reporting to Marrickville police station but he did not wish to make a comment.
In October 2014, almost a year and half after Mr Tweddle’s death, Pambos was sentenced to nine months’ jail for trying to supply him with cocaine. Judge Robert Toner sentenced him to two years’ jail for the two supply charges related to the cocaine and MDMA found in his unit. Pambos served the sentences concurrently and was eligible for parole on 13th November 2015.
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