Mark Buddle with Mel Ter. Wisscha together. Photo / Supplied
The racy past of the estranged wife of freshly detained Comanchero bikie boss Mark Buddle has been revealed as her former husband prepares to face court over a major international drug bust.
The 37-year-old was extradited from Turkey and arrested by the Australian Federal Police after touching down in Darwin on Wednesday.
It will be alleged Buddle was linked to a transnational criminal syndicate operating out of Asia and Europe, where he sent encrypted communications to co-ordinate the shipment of more than 160kg of cocaine from Hong Kong to Melbourne via Sydney in May 2021.
His ex-wife, Mel Ter. Wisscha, revealed last month the pair separated more than a year ago and she hadn't seen him in 12 months, Daily Mail Australia reported.
Ter. Wisscha, who has children with Buddle, has also been living in Europe – a far cry from her past as a promotional model for US restaurant chain Hooters.
Photos from the red carpet at the premiere of Will Ferrell's Talladega Nights in Sydney in 2006 show her posing with Thor actor Chris Hemsworth and Olympic swimming champion Kieren Perkins.
Images from the night showed a barely recognisable Ter. Wisscha wearing the trademark Hooters singlet, tiny orange shorts and white sneakers.
She was one of several promotional models snapped at the event posing with A-list celebrities.
Ter. Wisscha reportedly split from Buddle when he moved to Northern Cyprus in July last year and she moved to Bodrum, Turkey.
She told The Daily Telegraph last month her children had seen Buddle since the split, but she had not.
"I haven't seen Mark for a year. He's the father of my children. They see him, I don't," Ter. Wisscha told the publication, adding she hadn't left Turkey at all.
"My kids have gone to and from [Northern Cyprus] but I have stayed away," she said.
Ter. Wisscha last week spent three days in an immigration detention centre outside Istanbul after she was stopped by police as she tried to leave the Bodrum resort she had been living in.
It's understood her former relationship with Buddle was related to her being detained, which a source told The Daily Telegraph caused her to be "very upset".
"She was leaving a hotel in Bodrum and about 15 police pulled her over and began going through all her stuff, and checking passports," the source told the publication.
After signing a Turkish document she couldn't understand, the source said she was taken to an immigration centre in Turkey's southwest.
Australian government sources were reportedly aware of her detainment and said it was because she had been declared a foreigner who was inconvenient for public order or security.
She has since been moved to a small detention centre where is still being held, with the publication reporting family have been making use of 15-minute visits to deliver her fresh clothes.
"They detained her because of her links to Mark, so now that he's gone hopefully we'll get some news today because until this point, all they are saying, even our lawyer, is 'there's a process, there's a process ... it takes time'," a source told The Daily Telegraph.
Buddle reportedly remarried a few months after moving to Northern Cyprus to a woman named Ozge – a former employee who sources believed had entered into a "fake" marriage.
Ozge has reportedly been detained in Turkey but for matters separate to the AFP investigation.
Buddle is facing two charges for allegedly importing cocaine that had a street value of A$40 million ($44.2m).
The charges, one count of importing a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug and one count of conspiracy to import a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug, each carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The AFP alleges it identified Buddle in mid-2021 before working with the Commonwealth Department of Public Prosecutions to seek an arrest warrant and make charges.
In mid-July 2022, a Melbourne Magistrates Court issued an arrest warrant for Buddle in relation to the alleged cocaine importation, followed by an Interpol red notice later in the month.