poledriver
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Mum and Dad break bad, build drug empire after losing daughters to illness
DARREN and Debra Wright lost their two young daughters to illness within three years of each other. That’s when they started “breaking bad”.
The couple spiralled into depression after the deaths and dad Darren turned to cannabis to help cope with his devastation, the Daily Mail reports.
In a turn of events that echoes the dramatic plot lines of the TV series Breaking Bad — in which the cancer-stricken main character starts cooking methylamphetamine to pay his medical bills — Wright began growing the drug himself.
They were sentenced in a British court yesterday to a combined eight years’ jail.
Within a year of their first crop, the Wrights were heading a multi-million dollar empire, using Vietnamese immigrants as cheap labour.
Over five years, they produced dope worth nearly $7 million at seven factories across Kent, where they lived.
But the high life stopped in April this year when police became suspicious and the Wrights were forced to flee to a Spanish villa they’d bought with their takings. They were extradited to the UK in June.
During their trial, the court heard Darren and Debra lost their daughter Chloe to an aggressive and unstoppable cancer in July 2004.
They remortgaged their home and raised more than $440,000 to send Chloe to Texas for experimental treatment, which failed.
Only three years later, another daughter, Ella, 9, contracted a staphylococcus infection during a routine dental operation. She became ill on the first day back home from the operation and died one afternoon on the drive home from school.
Mr Wright’s lawyer, John Kearney, told the court the father’s grief sent him “off the rails”. And Mrs Wright’s lawyer said the housewife was “fit for nothing else than grieving” after losing two daughters.
The couple has one remaining daughter, 17.
Judge Michael Carroll acknowledged the role of tragic grief in the couple’s downfall, but said their actions were unacceptable.
“It may have affected your judgment and made you more vulnerable but you were an extremely active and involved conspirator,” he said of Mr Wright.
Darren Wright was sentenced to five years and eight months behind bars. Debra Wright was jailed for three years.
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/re...hters-to-illness/story-fnixwvgh-1226726714773
DARREN and Debra Wright lost their two young daughters to illness within three years of each other. That’s when they started “breaking bad”.
The couple spiralled into depression after the deaths and dad Darren turned to cannabis to help cope with his devastation, the Daily Mail reports.
In a turn of events that echoes the dramatic plot lines of the TV series Breaking Bad — in which the cancer-stricken main character starts cooking methylamphetamine to pay his medical bills — Wright began growing the drug himself.
They were sentenced in a British court yesterday to a combined eight years’ jail.
Within a year of their first crop, the Wrights were heading a multi-million dollar empire, using Vietnamese immigrants as cheap labour.
Over five years, they produced dope worth nearly $7 million at seven factories across Kent, where they lived.
But the high life stopped in April this year when police became suspicious and the Wrights were forced to flee to a Spanish villa they’d bought with their takings. They were extradited to the UK in June.
During their trial, the court heard Darren and Debra lost their daughter Chloe to an aggressive and unstoppable cancer in July 2004.
They remortgaged their home and raised more than $440,000 to send Chloe to Texas for experimental treatment, which failed.
Only three years later, another daughter, Ella, 9, contracted a staphylococcus infection during a routine dental operation. She became ill on the first day back home from the operation and died one afternoon on the drive home from school.
Mr Wright’s lawyer, John Kearney, told the court the father’s grief sent him “off the rails”. And Mrs Wright’s lawyer said the housewife was “fit for nothing else than grieving” after losing two daughters.
The couple has one remaining daughter, 17.
Judge Michael Carroll acknowledged the role of tragic grief in the couple’s downfall, but said their actions were unacceptable.
“It may have affected your judgment and made you more vulnerable but you were an extremely active and involved conspirator,” he said of Mr Wright.
Darren Wright was sentenced to five years and eight months behind bars. Debra Wright was jailed for three years.
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/re...hters-to-illness/story-fnixwvgh-1226726714773
