There are few things more embarrassing for an eastern suburbs socialite than being busted buying a bag from some blow-in dial-a-dealer from out west.
But recent events at Waverley Local Court reminded me it’s hardly a rare occurrence.
In 2021, I penned a column about magistrates losing patience with the revolving door of ‘entitled cocaine consumers’ caught red-handed purchasing the drug.
‘They are sick and tired of seeing white-collar elites caught in possession of cocaine or caught using a dial-a-dealer,’ a legal source revealed at the time.
‘They see the same routine – they hire an expensive barrister, they get counselling and often get let go on section 10 [where a defendant is found guilty, but no conviction recorded] and walk away with a fine of community service.’
Sometimes even that is considered too harsh and they simply waltz out the door, with the only punishment being a pap photo outside court and a story in the Daily Mail (we’re always happy to help).
Fashion guru Katherine ‘Kate’ Killey (pictured) pleaded guilty to a single charge of possessing a prohibited drug after cops sprung her buying a bag on a Friday night in Bondi
The latest member of the club is fashion guru Katherine ‘Kate’ Killey who this week pleaded guilty to a single charge of possessing a prohibited drug after cops sprung her buying a bag on a Friday night in Bondi.
The 40-year-old, who used to do PR for Alice McCall and now runs her own fashion sales business, The Known Agency, had been spied by plainclothes police on April 4 ducking into a Ford station wagon that had pulled up outside an apartment complex on Spring Street.
A quick search of the car showed it was from ‘well out of the area’.
When Ms Killey was seen exiting the vehicle just 20 seconds after sitting down in the passenger seat, it didn’t take Columbo to work out what was going on.
She was stopped by the cops and when asked if she had drugs on her, a ‘clearly remorseful’ Ms Killey handed over a little baggie with 0.6g of cocaine inside.
When the matter made it to court less than two weeks later, it was dismissed without conviction. And fair enough: Ms Killey, originally an Adelaide girl, has an otherwise unblemished reputation and is highly regarded in her industry.
She told the court she was ‘mortified’, deeply sorry and her solicitor argued a criminal record would seriously impact her globe-trotting career in fashion.
While a small-time eastern suburbs’ cocaine arrest hardly seems to raise eyebrows these days, the remarks by the weary magistrate bear repeating here.
A local news story this week about a fashion PR caught buying cocaine reminded us of Kristin Fisher’s (pictured) brush with the law in 2021 and a thundering slapdown from a magistrate
In a report by local rag the Wentworth Courier, you could almost hear the despair in Stephen Barlow‘s voice as he told Waverley Local Court on Tuesday that Ms Killey’s offending was ‘almost an eastern suburbs stereotype’ at this stage.
He went on to remark that ‘getting caught with cocaine in Bondi is pretty prevalent’.
Barlow noted that ‘intelligent’ eastern suburbs high flyers often assume they won’t get caught buying coke – even though police ‘have eyes on everyone around here’ as they seek to crack down on the illicit trade.
‘I’m not telling you to get your cocaine anywhere else,’ he added (lol).
‘But you have to decide what’s more important: your career, your reputation and the ability to travel to New York without having to be cross-examined, or is it cocaine?’
Judge Ross Hudson once thundered: ‘People who justify their cocaine usage as socially acceptable or as part the social fabric… it is not. It is a criminal, illegal drug’
It’s a good question – perhaps one that other Sydney businesswomen with plenty to lose should be asking themselves.
Now, Barlow’s gentle chiding of Ms Killey was nothing compared to the dressing-down fellow magistrate Ross Hudson gave Kristin Fisher back in October 2021 after her conviction for cocaine possession was annulled in the same court.
The Double Bay eyebrow queen, like Ms Killey, had been busted in a ‘dial-a-dealer’ situation after hopping into the passenger seat of a 19-year-old’s Kia Rio for a quick transaction.
A ‘mortified’ (that word again) Ms Fisher apologised for her ‘dreadful mistake’ and her application to annul her sentence was duly granted.
But she was given a stern warning that was directed at many others in the east.
‘People who justify their cocaine usage as socially acceptable or as part the social fabric… it is not. It is a criminal, illegal drug,’ thundered Hudson, who has since been appointed as a District Court judge.
‘It is a stain on our community. People in the eastern suburbs must be fed up with it.’
William Mooney escaped a conviction for cocaine possession in December 2022 after being caught throwing a bag he’d just bought from a Corolla-driving dial-a-dealer into a gutter
When it comes to slapping down eastern suburbs cocaine buyers, few can compare to Magistrate Jacqueline Milledge
Of course, when it comes to slapping down eastern suburbs cocaine buyers, Barlow and Hudson are wallflowers compared to Magistrate Jacqueline Milledge.
A google search for ‘Jacqueline Milledge cocaine’ yields a highlight reel of takedowns so withering that I wonder if those on the receiving end of them ever fully recovered.
Take celebrity nose surgeon William Mooney, who escaped a conviction for cocaine possession in December 2022 after being caught throwing a bag he’d just bought from a Toyota Corolla-driving dial-a-dealer into a gutter.
The icing on the cake? He’d been standing in the middle of a Bondi Beach street in his boxer shorts.
Magistrate Milledge thundered: ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
When Mooney’s defence barrister argued his client was ‘not a drug user’ and had collected the cocaine outside his home for his girlfriend, Milledge questioned why he would be ‘with a partner who likes to stick it up her nose’. Ouch.
In 2012, Magistrate Milledge gave Bridget Holmes à Court – the cousin of Australia’s first billionaire – a six-month good behaviour bond without recording a conviction after she pleaded guilty to possession
In a separate matter, an eastern suburbs school teacher faced Magistrate Milledge when she pleaded guilty to drug possession at Waverley in 2023.
She tried to claim the bag of coke in her possession belonged to a friend who ‘did not have a handbag’, but Milledge wasn’t buying it.
‘To your credit when you got caught, you were compliant [but] I don’t buy that you were minding it for someone… it was there to be enjoyed [by you],’ she said.
‘In life we all take risks, we jump out of planes… [you’re] someone who chose a [career] path which relies on integrity… you’ve said, “I’ll gamble all of that, because I want to stick something up my nose.”‘
No conviction was recorded.
Back in 2012, Magistrate Milledge gave Bridget Holmes à Court – the socialite cousin of Australia’s first billionaire, the late Robert Holmes à Court – a six-month good behaviour bond without recording a conviction after she pleaded guilty to possessing a small quantity of cocaine.
Luckily for Bridget, there is no record of what she said in handing down her decision.
- This is an expanded except from THE GROUP CHAT WITH LUCY MANLY, the weekly society gossip column exclusive to Mail+ subscribers
