A reformed drug dealer whose Swedish model fiance famously tried to order the murder of prosecution witnesses has found love again – two years after his last failed engagement.
Former strip club owner and ecstasy producer Steven Spaliviero and blonde beauty Charlotte Lindstrom made headlines in 2007 after police arrested the pair.
He was jailed for eleven years for a clandestine drug operation that supplied the city’s rich and famous, and she was jailed for offering a hitman $200,000 to kill two witnesses.
Now, six years after being released from prison, Daily Mail Australia can reveal Spaliviero has found love with another younger woman.
The 59-year-old is now engaged to Newcastle beauty Ciara Jones, 28, after popping the question on New Year’s Eve.
Spaliviero and Lindstrom were engaged to be married, but she was deported after her release from prison and he served eleven years in prison, becoming a mentor and model prisoner.
Steven Spalivero and fiancée Ciara Jones got engaged on New Year’s Eve
The pair are believed to live a relatively quiet life on Sydney’s northern beaches compared to Spaliviero’s wild criminal past, but they like to show off their life of luxury travel and fine dining on social media.
The couple shows off their life of luxury travel and fine dining on social media.
Spaliviero’s latest engagement comes two years after he popped the question to a Sydney property professional – known only as Emma – during a European holiday in 2022, but the relationship ended before the couple married.
On Wednesday, Spaliviero dodged questions about his new life when asked by Daily Mail Australia.
His vow of silence is a change of heart after he published a comprehensive e-book in 2015, titled Pills Of God.
The self-published memoir revealed stunning revelations about his chaotic relationship with Lindstrom and how he became Australia’s biggest drug chef.
Spaliviero and Lindstrom first met 20 years ago and embarked on an ill-fated romance that would end in prison, with their doomed relationship making headlines around the world.
At the time, Lindstrom, 18 years his junior, was a glamorous blonde who worked at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney and at the Hemmesphere Bar in Merivale.
The pair shared their exciting news with friends and family on social media
Lindstrom, above on surveillance camera, offered to pay $200,000 to a “hitman,” an undercover police officer, to have two witnesses to a drug trial placed in “the cemetery”
Their relationship imploded in 2005 after Spaliviero received a tip that police were bugging his home and car, and he found a tracker hidden in his bumper bar.
Police would eventually charge him with manufacturing 44kg of ecstasy in Riverstone, northwest Sydney, and other locations, and jail him.
In May 2007, Lindstrom was also arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder after meeting with undercover police officer ‘Rob’, outside Sydney Town Hall. ‘Rob’ posed as a hit man.
Lindstrom was arrested as she left City Hall and imprisoned for three years and 10 months in Long Bay’s Special Purpose Center, where she refused to eat.
She received the sentence in exchange for acting as a key witness in her fiancé’s drug case.
Lindstrom, who developed anorexia in prison, made world news when she became a key witness against her ex
Lindstrom languished while incarcerated in the Long Bay Special Purpose Center and was deported back to her native Sweden upon her release after three years behind bars
At the time, she claimed Spaliviero ordered the hit, but he was acquitted of the charges and became a model prisoner, and his sentence was reduced to 16 years on appeal.
Despite this, she still wanted to marry him and Spaliviero did not resent her testifying against him.
“We were very much in love and we wrote to each other in prison,” he told Daily Mail Australia after his release from prison.
“The last letter I got from her said, ‘When this is all over, please find me.’ She begged me, “I still want the fairy tale.”
‘When she went back to Sweden, she wasn’t allowed to contact me. I didn’t know where she was.
“She looked like a missing person, but [a relative of Spaliviero] received a Facebook message from a girl who knew Charlotte under a completely new identity.’
By the time he was released from prison (he served time in Silverwater, Goulburn, Cooma and Long Bay prisons), Spaliviero was no longer in love with Lindstrom – and determined to build a new crime-free life outside prison.