Alison Dine was a kindergarten teacher who became the Mr Asia syndicate’s head courier.
Alison Dine was a kindergarten teacher who became the Mr Asia syndicate’s head courier.
The six-part podcast series Mr Asia: A Forgotten History tells the inside story of New Zealand’s most infamous drug syndicate. In episode 4, hosts John Daniell and Noelle McCarthy explain the New Zealand end of the operation, including an unlikely criminal prospect.
The transformation of Alison Dine from kindergarten teacher to courier queen was typical of a particular kind of young professional who drifted into working with the Mr Asia syndicate.
Men like Terry Clark, Peter Fulcher and Jim Shepherd had long histories of crime behind them before they got into drug dealing.
But Marty Johnstone had been a menswear retailer and Dine came into the group through her then-boyfriend Wayne Shrimpton, who was in his early 20s.
In the podcast series Mr Asia: A Forgotten History, Shrimpton is described by someone who knew him well as a shy, stuttering man who had been a business student.
Karen Soich, a young lawyer who was part of Clark’s legal team, then became his lover and would end up standing beside him in the dock on drug trafficking charges.
Karen Soich outside the Whangārei courthouse where she was admitted as a barrister and solicitor in 1979. Photo / NZME
A couple of the others were Auckland Grammar old boys – one of them, Greg Ollard, worked with EMI as a record company executive while he was selling heroin. Ollard and his girlfriend Julie Thielman, who had been a nurse at Auckland Hospital’s geriatric unit, were both shot in cold blood by Clark.
One police officer had to do a door knock in Remuera to return a dead girl’s belongings to her family; as he put it, “these weren’t the kinds of people who were supposed to be getting murdered.”
Shrimpton met Clark in Wi Tako prison in 1973, where he had been sent as a 19-year-old on drug charges. He and Dine moved to Sydney together just after Christmas 1976.
By May 1977, Dine was in a relationship with Clark.
Over the following months she would move from being part of a team breaking up and repackaging imported heroin to running the whole courier operation.
Dine came up with innovations like encouraging her couriers to take a valium so they’d be more relaxed going through customs. She had them dump tampons, broken toys and soiled underwear on top of their suitcases to fluster male Customs inspectors.
She would sit up front in first class, a safe distance away from the drug mules themselves although she had a close shave in Wellington over Christmas 1978.
Police mug shots of Val Kairau, who smuggled heroin into New Zealand for Mr Asia drug boss Terry Clark.
Former police officer Glenda Hughes, part of the team that arrested Dine in Wellington that Christmas and held her overnight, tells the series that “women make the best couriers”.
But Dine’s career as a major drug trafficker came to an end as her relationship with Clark burned out and he began to wonder whether she knew too much.
Ultimately, Dine would testify against Clark and many other syndicate members before disappearing into a witness protection programme.
Mr Asia - A Forgotten History is a six-episode true crime series. Follow the series on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are released on Wednesdays.
The series is hosted and produced by John Daniell and Noelle McCarthy of Bird of Paradise Productions in co-production with the New Zealand Herald.
