Australian drug dealer ‘Cocaine’ Cassie Sainsbury has reunited with her mum Lisa Evans in Colombia for the first time in four years ahead of her wedding later this month.
Sainsbury, 26, and her fiancée Tatiana met her mum and her husband Nick Evans at El Dorado Airport in Bogota on Monday morning.
It was the same location where, in April 2017, Sainsbury was caught with 5.8kg of cocaine in her luggage as she tried to board a flight to London.
She spent almost three years in El Buen Pastor jail for her crime and is unable to leave Colombia because she is completing her sentence on bail after getting an early release due to Covid.
Sainsbury was wearing a stylish orange coat, matching high-heeled boots and tight black trousers showing off her impressive weight loss.
Cassie Sainsbury (left) is hugged by her mum Lisa Evans. Beside them are Lisa’s husband Nick and Cassie’s fiance Tatiana
She and Tatiana looked nervous as they waited for her mum and stepdad to arrive in Bogota after an epic 31-hour journey from Adelaide.
Writing on social media during a stopover on her mammoth trip, Lisa wrote: ‘I’m so happy that my girl has found her true love.’
Tatiana stroked Sainsbury’s blonde hair and made her laugh to break the tension as the wait went on.
If the police officer stationed a metre away from her bothered Sainsbury, she didn’t let on.
As passengers started to emerge from the arrivals area, she and Tatiana moved closer to where her mother would emerge from.
And then, the moment Sainsbury had waited four years for finally arrived.
A nervous looking Cassie Sainsbury (pictured left) is calmed down by her fiance Tatiana (right)
It was four years since Cassie Sainsbury (pictured right, with her fiance Tatiana) had seen her mum
Cassie Sainsbury (left) looks worried as she waits with her partner Tatiana for her mum to arrive
Tatiana (right) pulls a funny face to keep Cassie Sainsbury’s (left) spirits up as they wait for her mother and stepfather to arrive from Australia
Ms Evans came out of arrivals first and headed straight for her daughter for a minutes-long, emotional hug before the group headed to a people carrier and on to a hotel.
Then Mr Evans emerged with two large suitcases and got a welcome to Colombia hug from his future daughter-in-law.
It was the first time Sainsbury had returned to the airport since her arrest and also the first time Mr and Ms Evans had met her partner.
Cassie Sainsbury (left) and her finance Tatiana (right) were getting excited at the imminent arrival in Colombia of Cassie’s mother and stepfather
Then the moment finally came and Cassie’s mum Lisa Evans emerged from the arrivals gate. Pictured are Cassie and Lisa embracing while her fiance Tatiana looks on
Cassie’s stepfather Nick Evans (pictured right) then arrived as Cassie was still hugging and crying with her mum
Nick (left) chatted to Cassie’s fiance Tatiana as the emotional mother and daughter reunion continued
The relief can be seen on Lisa Evans’ (centre) face as she hugs her daughter, Australian drug dealer ‘Cocaine’ Cassie Evans
As Sainsbury and her mum continued to embrace and cry, Mr Evans chatted with Tatiana, whom he’d previously only spoken to on the phone and on video chat calls.
Getting off to a good start, Tatiana, who is an IT specialist, brought a huge bouquet of flowers with her to present to her future in laws.
An onlooker said: ‘It was a very emotional moment at the end of what must have been a very difficult flight.
‘Cassie seemed nervous before her mum came through but Tatiana looked very confident and assured.
‘They’re plainly in love, they were laughing and giggling and Tatiana held Cassie’s hand to reassure her.’
Getting off to a good start, Tatiana (right) brought a huge bouquet of flowers with her to present to her future in laws
Cassie Sainsbury’s mum (left) admires the flowers given to her by her future daughter-in-law Tatiana (centre)
Pictured left to right are Lisa Evans, her husband Nick, future daughter-in-law Tatiana and daughter Cassie Sainsbury
Sainsbury, who is still on bail after being released from jail early in 2020 because of the Covid pandemic, lives with Tatiana at an apartment in the Chapinero suburb of Bogota.
Last November, she showed off her glitzy engagement ring as she opened up about Tatiana and made plans to return to Australia after the years locked up in a Colombian prison.
Sainsbury shared the news of her engagement to her 15,000 Instagram followers, posting a photo proudly posing with her ring.
‘So hard to choose a wedding dress,’ she wrote. ‘Yes people I’m engaged.’
In celebration of her upcoming nuptials she posted a series of photos with Tatiana, a 33-year-old computer technician from Bogota who she met through mutual friends on May 26, 2021.
Sainsbury shared the news of her engagement to her 15,000 Instagram followers, posting a photo proudly posing with her ring (pictured)
They are getting married later this month and plan to live between Colombia and Australia once Sainsbury is able to return to her home country.
‘It was a really unexpected relationship,’ Sainsbury told Daily Mail Australia from Bogota.
‘We had shared a group of friends and one night we went out for a birthday and we literally hit it off.’
After a short romance, Sainsbury said Tatiana further surprised her by proposing to her during a getaway to Cartagena on the Colombian coast.
‘She put a ring on it!’ Sainsbury said of the engagement. ‘She’d been planning for a while trying to find a ring that she thought was perfect for me and in the end she found it.
Sainsbury (pictured) spent three years in Bogota’s El Buen Pastor prison after she was convicted for smuggling 5.8kg of cocaine into the country in April 2017
‘She took me to Cartagena and organised a small, romantic dinner at a cosy little restaurant on the beachfront. She asked me to marry her there.’
In July last year Sainsbury told Daily Mail Australia her new lover was unaware of her past and why she had been headline news in Australia, but that has now changed.
‘I shared everything with her about everything,’ she revealed.
‘Basically [Tatiana] said she wasn’t going to judge me on my past, she was really mature about the whole situation.
‘I feel like I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. It’s nice to feel like I can be myself with no judgement from someone who is always there for me.’
Sainsbury said she wants to return to her hometown of Adelaide as soon as possible but delays in the Colombian legal system caused by the incursion of Covid-19 into the country mean she is still waiting on the decision of a judge before she is allowed to return home.
After a short romance, Sainsbury (pictured) said Tatiana further surprised her by proposing to her during a getaway to Cartagena on the Colombian
Sainsbury (pictured being escorted to a court hearing in Bogota in 2017) became engaged to a fellow female inmate, Joli Pico, while in prison, before her current relationship
‘We’ll get married and then the plan is to go back home for a while, sort things out there, see my family and then make a decision about what the big plan will be.
‘She’s never been to Australia. We’ll probably end up between Australia and Colombia because obviously her family is here so it will be like, some time here, some time there type of thing.’
Sainsbury, whose Australian accent has been transformed by a Latin lilt after her four-and-a-half years in Colombia, has undergone many changes since her arrest in April 2017 when cocaine packaged inside 18 headphone boxes was found in her suitcase.
Coming out as gay is one such change.
Sainsbury became engaged to a fellow female inmate, Joli Pico, while in prison, before her current relationship with Tatiana once she’d been released.
‘It has always been something there,’ she said of her attraction to women. ‘I had relationships like that [in Australia]… but not as serious.’
‘Tatiana said she wasn’t going to judge me on my past, she was really mature about the whole situation’ Sainsbury said of her new love
Sainsbury said the lowest point of her whole ordeal since she was first arrested was when she became seriously ill with bacteria in her stomach while inside El Buen Pastor prison.
‘When I became sick I was taken out of prison into hospital and that is what saved me.’
While in prison she was locked in a two-metre by two-metre cell with up to five other inmates and says she still has nightmares about it.
Sainsbury said she is focused on putting her past behind her rather than trying to prove the claims she made in a 60 Minutes program in April 2020 that pressure from a Brazilian drug lord had caused her to undertake the cocaine smuggling mission.
She claimed back then that a mysterious man named ‘Angelo Sanchez’ allegedly threatened to kill her mother and then-boyfriend, Scott Broadbridge, unless she committed the crime.
Sainsbury was just 22-years-old when she was arrested with 5.8 kilograms of cocaine hidden in her luggage at Bogota airport (pictured, arriving for a court hearing in Bogota in 2017)
‘I want to move forward but trust me there are still days where I ask myself, ‘why me?”
‘I want to move forward but trust me there are still days where I ask myself, ‘why me?”
‘I feel like if I keep trying to bring up the past, I’m never going to be able to move forward. I just want to be able to put all this behind me and live a normal life.’
But Sainsbury said she does take note of the perceptions Australians have about her.
‘I still care. Believe it or not, the comments people make obviously affect me,’ she confessed.
‘I try not to let it affect me too much, I know there are a lot of mixed opinions about me. I can’t tell someone not to have their own opinion.’
Sainsbury said the perception of her by Australians does affect her. ‘I’m not sure what to expect, to be honest,’ she said of returning to her home country
‘I feel like if I keep trying to bring up the past, I’m never going to be able to move forward. I just want to be able to put all this behind me and live a normal life, Sainsbury said, pictured above at the time of her arrest in Colombia in April 2017
She said she is concerned about whether she will be able to readjust to life in Australia, where she has said she wishes to establish a personal training business and is open to reality television offers.
‘I’m not sure what to expect, to be honest.’
A love of Colombian culture and people was one of the positive things to come from her experience since she’d been out of prison, Sainsbury said.
‘Through everything I went through, I learnt to take the best out of the experience I could… meeting new people, maturing, learning more about myself.
‘To make it feel like it was not a complete loss of time, using what I learnt from the experience to become the person I’ve become.’
A love of Colombian culture and people was one of the positive things to come from her experience since she’d been out of prison, Sainsbury (pictured in 2017) revealed
