Loner’s wait to leave Bali jail
Four years takes a toll
AUSTRALIAN mother Sara Connor is the picture of prickly loneliness as she prepares to leave Bali’s infamous Kerobokan jail.
Connor, who is serving four years for her involvement in the fatal bashing of a policeman on Kuta beach in 2016, will be deported when she is released from the ratinfested jail in the next week.
The 49-year-old mother of two, from NSW’s Byron Bay, is a loner who does little more than smoke and drink coffee while waiting to be reunited with her sons, who are now 13 and 15.
She barely speaks Indonesian, further isolating her from the prison population.
She shares a cell with half a dozen local women, who are mainly small-time thieves and drug convicts, as well as the infamous “Ibu Made”, who is doing time for the death of a three-month-old baby.
Connor reportedly lashes out at anyone – guard or fellow inmate – who she fears is surreptitiously taking her photograph as a souvenir.
This paranoia is only likely to grow during the two weeks of quarantine she will endure on her arrival home.
Prison insiders say that Connor rejects exercise, arts and craft activities and even food.
Despite learning hairdressing, briefly working in the kitchen and exploring painting, she no longer partakes in any jail activities.
“Sara keeps to herself and is not friendly. Not to anyone. She didn’t participate in our recent fashion show and never gets involved with dance, or anything that the jail asks her to be part of,” one prisoner, who did not want to be named, said.
“She thinks people will sell her photo and is crazy and paranoid about that. She loves her ciggies and coffee and hanging out in a quiet corner.”
Connor struck up a friendship with British death row granny Lindsay Sandiford, who was sentenced to death for smuggling cocaine in 2013, but they had a falling out.
Connor befriended an Arab card skimmer, who was transferred to another prison last week for having bashed a guard.
“She’s very sad and a very moody person,” a charity worker, who also did not want to be named, said.
Connor appears to be the polar opposite of the woman described in 78 character references from family and friends presented to the court during her trial.
At the time Connor said that she hoped God would give her two sons the strength to endure the situation.
“If this is what God has planned for my life, to punish me so harshly and deprive my children of their mother, I hope he will give my children the strength to cope,” she said.
However, she has not found God in Hotel K – the nickname for the jail – and does not attend church inside the prison that was opened in 1979 to house 300 inmates rather than the 1400 it contains today.
Connor and her then boyfriend, 38-year-old British national David Taylor, who was once a dreadlocked toy boy called DJ Nutzo, were found guilty of the deadly assault of Balinese police officer Wayan Sudarsa, whose broken body had 42 bloody wounds, including shocking head injuries, when it was found on Kuta beach in August 2016.
Connor, who has always maintained her innocence, offered $2500 in compensation to Mr Sudarsa’s widow but the proposal was rebuffed.