EXCLUSIVE: 'Cocaine Cassie' like you've never seen her before: Drug smuggler, 26, tells all about being STARVED for four days in Colombian prison, her new lesbian lover, how she got her trim new physique - and what scares her about returning to Australia
'Cocaine Cassie' Sainsbury will restart her personal training career when she returns to Australia - but the convicted drug smuggler revealed she could be leaving behind a new lover and still fears the sinister criminal forces she claims landed her in a Colombian prison.
Sainsbury, 26, is desperate to come home from Chapinero, Bogota, where she is spending her final months on parole for smuggling 5.8kg of cocaine into the country in April 2017.
In an interview with Daily Mail Australia, Sainsbury detailed her daily life in and out of El Buen Pastor prison and shared her dreams of a simpler existence where she could shed her 'Cocaine Cassie' identity.
Sainsbury also showed off her trim new physique in an exclusive photoshoot - she's lost 29 kilograms since her arrest and 12kg since leaving prison last April - and revealed the meaning of her new tattoos.
Of her new beginning outside prison, she said: 'It's kind of like, this is where it all starts again.'
'This is where it all starts again': Cassie Sainsbury - better known as 'Cocaine Cassie' - is eager to come home to Australia in the coming months and hopes to one day shed her notorious nickname
Sainsbury was locked up in Colombia's El Buen Pastor prison for three years. She was released on parole last year and has found a new lover in Bogota
Sainsbury also showed off her new physique - she's lost 29 kilograms since her arrest and 12kg since leaving prison last April - and the meaning of her new tattoos. Among the ink is a picture of a pocketwatch showing the time she was released from jail
Sainsbury spent three years in El Buen Pastor prison, locked in a two-metre by two-metre cell with up to five other inmates. She still has nightmares about it.
'We were woken up between 2.30 and 3.30 in the morning,' she claimed. Inmates were fed breakfast while it was still dark.
Between 5am and 7am, the guards did a headcount. Sometimes they were friendly, other times 'inhumane', she claimed.
'You were expected to be showered, beds made, cleaned. You never really knew when but you had to be ready.'
HOW TO GET A BODY LIKE COCAINE CASSIE:
Cassie Sainsbury shared these five tips about how she gained her trim physique:
1. Cassie follows calorie deficit rules, where the amount of calories you consume is balanced with the amount used in a day
2. She follows a balanced diet, including all food groups
3. Cassie does one hour of exercise, three times a week
4. Drink lots of water
5. Eat lots of fruit and vegetables
The food was 'absolutely horrible', generally including rice, a small serving of vegetables or salad, and meat.
'When it was chicken you knew it was chicken. When it was meat, you didn't know exactly what it was,' she said.
Health inspectors occasionally shut down the prison kitchen - even doing so for four days on one occasion, she claimed.
But Sainsbury was allowed a job during her time in custody, teaching English at a local school in twice-daily sessions.
Newly etched in Sainsbury's skin is a tattoo of a pocketwatch which shows the time she walked through the big blue prison door to freedom.
Sainsbury was released on parole at 11.30pm on Friday, April 3 last year and now lives in a studio apartment in Chapinero, in Bogota's east.
She has found love with a female computer technician after calling off her engagement to prison fiancee, Joli Pico.
The relationship with Ms Pico fell apart for two reasons, Sainsbury said. It wasn't the same outside of prison and Pico 'ended up being with somebody else'.
She likewise doesn't speak to her ex-boyfriend, personal trainer Scott Broadbridge, who faithfully defended her and brought her a rose in Colombian prison shortly after her arrest in April 2017.
Sainsbury told the Mail it was early days with her new flame, whom she declined to name.
'She doesn't know to the extent that I'm quite well known back in Australia.
'But here they don't understand that kind of . In Colombia there's so much of it (cocaine smuggling).'
However, Sainsbury is unable to work - or be vaccinated against Covid - because she's a foreigner.
She reports for parole once a month to the judge assigned to her case and admits she has few local friends.
Sainsbury's sentence will officially expire next May but she is hopeful she could be allowed to return home to Australia at the end of 2021.
She plans to live with her mother, Lisa Evans, in Adelaide, and expects to experience some culture shock.
Sainsbury rarely speaks English in Bogota and now has traces of a Spanish accent.
Upon her return, she's hoping to start a personal training business - her chosen career before she was locked up in Bogota.
'All I really want to do is move on from all this and have my life back,' she said. 'I don't always want to be known as Cocaine Cassie.'
'All I really want to do is move on from all this and have my life back,' Sainsbury said. 'I don't always want to be known as Cocaine Cassie'
Sainsbury was caught with 18 bags of cocaine at Bogota airport in April 2017. Above, a police photo of the evidence
Asked if she will still be worried about the criminal forces which landed her in trouble when she returns to Australia, Sainsbury admitted it's 'always a thought in the back of my head'
Sainsbury said she stood by the version of events she previously told 60 Minutes about being under duress from a Brazilian drug lord when she smuggled the 18 packages of cocaine to Bogota in April 2017.
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.
But she was unable to prove this in a Colombian court as she had forgotten the passcode to her phone.
Asked if she will still be worried about those criminal elements when she returns to Australia, she admitted: 'Obviously it's always a thought in the back of my head.
'I guess we'll wait and see what happens.'