Drugs mule caught with drugs in anus on HMP Bullingdon visit

Ryan Murphy, 21, was ordered to pack the parcels of cocaine and various prescription medications inside himself before visiting an inmate at HMP Bullingdon on December 31, 2021 – and only remove the drugs once he was inside the Oxfordshire jail.

The handover never took place. Although he managed to get past the gates, Murphy was stopped and searched by guards.

He admitted he had drugs inside him and removed three packages from what prosecutor Bethan Chichester termed his ‘anal cavity’.

Had they got into prisoners’ hands, the drugs would have been worth an estimated £2,000 to £4,000, Oxford Crown Court heard.

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His phone was seized and analysed by the police, revealing texts between him and ‘someone called Jayden’ giving him instructions about bringing the drugs into prison.

Mitigating, Peter du Feu said his client was ‘acting under direction, but he was understandably to complain at the sheer bulk of what he was to insert into himself’.

He got involved in the ill-fated smuggling operation after chalking up a drugs debt, it was said. He did not know the prisoner he was supposed to be visiting at Bullingdon jail.

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Mr du Feu said: “20 years old as he was then in December 2021, and the idea this might have been his operation for his profit rather than his account, which was he was stupidly being used as a mule – perhaps the latter makes a bit more sense.”

Since being released under investigation by the police a year-and-a-half ago, he had begun work as a chef in Cambridge.

When the letter dropped onto the doormat informing him he had finally been charged with drugs supply, ‘he was back to Oxford and he had to give up his job’, the court was told.

Ryan Murphy's police custody image Picture: TVP (Image: Thames Valley Police)

Murphy, of Mount Road, Thatcham, pleaded guilty at an early hearing to possession with intent to supply class A and C drugs. Despite his young age, he had 25 offences on his rap sheet, including for dealing cannabis.

Jailing him for 26 months, Recorder John Bate-Williams said: “At 21, you’ve got one of the least impressive criminal records that I’ve seen in recent months.”

He added: “The account given in your basis of plea is that you got yourself in hock to people you described as unpleasant third parties and were acting on instruction.

“It was a pretty risky and uncomfortable technique and you chose not to give any information about those [putting] pressure on you, which could have supported your own claim and possibly put them behind bars where they need to be.”