Cocaine Cassie, get your story straight: Media Watch star Paul Barry calls out drug smuggler’s ever changing tale – and has some tough words for the very famous TV stars promoting her new book

Media Watch presenter Paul Barry has accused journalists of failing to question convicted drug trafficker Cassandra Sainsbury about inconsistencies in her memoirs and story since she was released from prison.

Sainsbury, then aged 22, was arrested in 2017 while smuggling 5.8kg of cocaine through Bogota International Airport in Colombia on a flight to Australia.

Speaking to Natalie Barr on Sunrise on October 14, Sainsbury said she was “lured into it by someone I had completely opened myself up to.”

“I was very vulnerable and unfortunately she used that to basically destroy my life.”

But Sainsbury had never mentioned this person, Wendy, in her previous interviews from years ago; all the people she previously blamed for her plight were men.

But even those men varied in name and appearance from interview to interview, just like the ABCs Media view tone pointed out.

All told, she has done at least 17 interviews in the past week, including Nine, Seven, Ten, the ABC and Sky, but not a single interviewer has asked her a single crucial question. Sainsbury is pictured on Sunrise

Sainsbury had told the media for years about a ‘handler’ called ‘Joshua’ who introduced her to drug dealing in Sydney and then sent her to Colombia.

When she appeared on 60 Minutes on April 19, 2020, Sainsbury said Joshua was “tall but chubby, green eyes and brown hair.”

But two years later, on Channel 7’s Spotlight show, Joshua’s appearance had changed dramatically. Now he was “muscular, tanned, bright-eyed (and) bald.”

But in her book, which is supposedly about ‘setting the record straight’, Angelo is not mentioned, but there is another man called ‘Carlos’ who fills a very similar role as a drug lord.

Nick also apparently had a British accent and “a lot of tattoos on his arms; snakes, dragons and strange words’.

There was also another bad hombre that Sainsbury mentioned earlier, ‘Angelo’, who was supposedly the mastermind behind her short and failed drug smuggling career.

Cassandra Sainsbury, better known as Cocaine Cassie, arrives for a court hearing in Bogota, Colombia in 2017

Sainsbury (left) now lives in Adelaide with her Colombian partner Tatiana (right), who she calls her ‘anchor through it all’

“(Angelo) told me that if I didn’t do the job and take the package, my mother, my sister and my partner would be killed,” Sainsbury said in 2017.

But in her book, which is supposedly about ‘setting the record straight’, there is no mention of Angelo or Joshua, but there is another man called ‘Carlos’ who fills a very similar role as a drug lord.

“These were certainly all important points for the media to take into account,” Mr Barry asked. ‘Yet they have all failed – and we counted no fewer than seventeen interviews on TV and radio last week, including Nine, Seven, Ten, ABC and Sky -.’

“Instead, we got soft questions about life in a prison in Bogota, along with plug after plug for the book.

‘Has anyone actually read the book? I doubt it, and they certainly didn’t do any homework before talking to her.

‘But these interviews were not about the truth, but about ratings and celebrities. That’s what criminal Cassie has already seen shine on Seven’s SAS Australia.’

After her trial, she was sentenced to six years in prison, but was released in 2020 after serving two years, eleven months and 21 days.

She then spent 27 months on probation in Colombia.

Sainsbury now lives in Adelaide with her Colombian partner Tatiana, who she calls her ‘anchor through it all’.

“I was portrayed as such a nasty, horrible person and I just wanted to give people insight into how it actually unfolded and how I got there,” she said.

“I’m sorry, but at no time was it intentional.”