Curtis Warren is, by some distance, Britain’s most notorious drugs trafficker. Whether he approves of the label is not known, but he is said to be fond of his nickname – Cocky – which he acquired because of his swaggering disdain for authority.
He has refused, for instance, to give evidence at any of his court hearings. Once, he taunted customs officers after being acquitted half way through a trial.
And while on remand in La Moye prison in Jersey in 2007, a court heard he was suspected of using seven mobile phones to mastermind a £300 million global empire built on heroin importation.
Curtis Warren with Teresa Rodrigues in his cell at HMP La Moye prison, Jersey, 2007. Teresa Rodrigues had an affair with convicted drug trafficker Curtis Warren whilst she was working as a drug councillor at HMP La Moye, Jersey.
It was around this time that Warren’s delight in beating the system found expression in something else outrageous, something that has remained secret until now.
And once again he didn’t have to leave his cell.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Teresa Rodrigues, a former senior manager at La Moye who ran the drugs and alcohol counselling unit, confesses to an affair with the barrel-chested gangster.
She claims it lasted two years and only ended when he was convicted of drugs smuggling and transferred to a prison on the mainland.
‘We had sex in his little cell most days,’ says Lisbon-born Ms Rodrigues. ‘Yes, it was insane but I was in love like never before, and I still am.
There were butterflies, feelings of intense excitement. I know what Curtis is, who he is, but love overrode everything.’
Played out under the noses of the governor and supposedly watchful prison officers, the affair raises many questions.
For instance, what was it that attracted this ‘middle-class girl from a respectable Lisbon family’ to a man who, among a litany of criminal acts, once kicked a fellow prisoner to death?
‘His charisma and charm,’ she says without hesitation. ‘He’s an old fashioned gentleman.’
Teresa Rodrigues, spent much of her time during the prison relationship with Warren in his cell
It’s also unclear how the unlikely couple got away with it. According to Ms Rodrigues, 46, the answer has much to do with Warren’s ‘reputation as a man of respect’ and his ability to bend others to his will.
While they enjoyed trysts in his cell – B47 – on the third floor of La Moye’s B-wing, a select few of 50-year-old Warren’s fellow inmates, who were in on the secret, kept lookout for patrolling prison warders.
‘If one appeared, the prisoners would whistle and sing to alert us, to give us time to sort ourselves out. On many occasions I was able to spend a whole afternoon with Curtis in his cell. We were a couple in prison.’
Yet again, former bouncer Warren, who once appeared in The Sunday Times Rich List, was not so much tweaking the nose of law and order as punching it with his fist.
Perhaps naively, Ms Rodrigues hopes they will resume their liaisons when he is eventually released.
It should be stated that Ms Rodrigues claimed to be speaking with the blessing of Warren.
But when this newspaper contacted his lawyers, Keith Dyson Solicitors, they said their client did not wish to ‘authenticate the story’.
After Warren left Jersey for Belmarsh prison in South-East London to begin a 13-year sentence for drugs smuggling in 2009, Ms Rodrigues stayed at La Moye for another two years before returning to Lisbon.
Now she leads a less hectic life running a cake-decorating business and an art and crafts shop.
She keeps in touch with Warren by phone and letter and waits patiently for him in her apartment overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
She acknowledges that her account of their relationship is studded with ironies.
There is her role at the prison. She counselled drug addicts while Warren built his empire feeding their cravings.
During their affair, Ms Rodrigues ‘wore lingerie for Curtis and tops with zips at the front’ – but it was also her job to ensure her female underlings followed a strict dress code so as not to inflame the male inmates.
She speaks about the relationship with exceptional candour and is sure that people will think her ‘insane’.
Curtis Warren, from Liverpool, arriving at The Royal Court in St Hellier, Jersey
But she says: ‘I wasn’t one of these women who write love letters to famous criminals they don’t even know; Curtis got a lot of those. I fell in love after getting to know him. It wasn’t because of his notoriety.’
Ms Rodrigues makes an improbable gangster’s moll. Her childhood was ‘safe and comfortable – nothing out of the ordinary’.
Privately educated, the daughter of a businessman and a biology teacher, she worked hard at school and later went to art college before becoming a teacher.
However, she has always had what she calls ‘my dark side and love of danger’.
She adds: ‘As a little girl playing in Lisbon I wanted to be in the boys’ gang. I was always craving excitement.’ When she was 14, she tried heroin with her then boyfriend.
A desperate on-off battle with the drug ensued, leaving her family shattered. ‘They went through hell,’ she says.
After finally conquering her addiction at a clinic in England, she became a drugs counsellor and worked in Somerset before managing a rehabilitation unit in Jersey.
She gave that up in 2002 to work full time at La Moye, a mixed prison housing around 200 inmates.
She says: ‘I loved it. I wasn’t scared and I wanted to gain the prisoners’ trust which I did. I would visit them in the their cells and my office door was always open. My past allowed me to connect with them.’
By the time Warren walked through the gates of La Moye – Jersey’s only prison – Ms Rodrigues was a well-established figure, respected by staff and inmates alike.
Jonathan Welsh (left) and Curtis Warren in a public phone box in Jersey; they were two members of the gang convicted of a £1million drug smuggling plot at the Royal Court in St Helier, Jersey
Warren was awaiting trial, accused of a plot to smuggle £1 million of cannabis to the island.
Ms Rodrigues recalls the excitement his arrival caused and she looked him up on the internet.
She discovered that his disregard for the law gave him cult status in Merseyside, where T-shirts were once sold featuring his round face and bushy eyebrows.
Parents on the estate where he grew up were even said to have named their sons Curtis in his honour.
Then there was his form for violence, armed robbery, drugs importation and smuggling guns and hand grenades which had already cost him years of liberty.
For a while he was Interpol’s ‘Target One’ – the most wanted international criminal.
Somehow, when Ms Rodrigues cuddled up to him in his cell one day and planted a kiss, she managed to put his past to the back of her mind. And she has been doing so ever since.
Shrugging her shoulders and displaying the palms of her hands in a gesture of helplessness, she wrestles with her words. ‘I don’t know . . . I don’t know. I was in love and that was all that mattered.’
The pair first met when she introduced herself – which she did to all new inmates – as Warren passed her in a prison corridor.
‘He was this unusually cheerful, confident guy – unlike all the others. There was a prison officer hovering and Curtis stared as if to say, “What the hell are you looking at?” and the guy shuffled off.
Curtis made his presence felt right from the start. He was the main man.
‘He has never taken drugs or even tasted alcohol so he didn’t need my help, but I told him to keep his head down. He told me that he wouldn’t be inside for long.
‘He said he’d see me around. After that, we kept bumping into each other. He’d always hold doors for me as we passed through the prison. He was very polite and very charismatic.
‘I was attracted to him from the start. I was developing these strong feelings. I felt silly and stupid; I had the butterflies that people talk about. I had never felt like it before.
Curtis Warren, thought to be one of Britain’s richest criminals, who was sentenced for a £1 million cannabis smuggling plot in 2009
‘When I was with him, my heart would be jumping through my mouth.
‘One day in the cell, it just happened. I kissed him. It seemed right. It was me who took the initiative.
‘It was a kiss and then a longer one. I just smiled and walked away afterwards. I went back to him later that day – I probably felt a little embarrassed but we were comfortable. From that day on I saw him every day and very soon the relationship became physical.
‘Sometimes we kissed in my office, but we only ever had sex in his cell. He called it mushy mushy time for some reason.
‘It appealed to my sense of danger. If we had been caught he would have been immediately moved to another prison and I would have lost my job. Our love was on the line.’
Meanwhile, her account of the way Warren helped other inmates puts one in mind of Ronnie Barker’s character Fletcher from the TV prison comedy Porridge.
‘Curtis took vulnerable prisoners under his wing,’ she says. ‘He helped them with their cases, with paperwork.
He taught them to read and write and on many occasions he was the mediator in disputes. After his arrival, incidents of violence reduced significantly.’
In yet another irony, he also helped Ms Rodrigues counsel drug addicts. ‘Where I had failed, he got many to stop. He was a natural. He would say, “Look in the mirror. Look at what drugs are doing to you.’’ ’
It is a measure of his influence inside that, according to Ms Rodrigues, he arranged for a huge bouquet of roses to be delivered to her apartment near the prison.
‘They were so big I couldn’t even see the man behind them. He gave me a mobile and Curtis was on the end of the line wishing me goodnight. How he did that I do not know.’
Ms Rodrigues had hoped to have been reunited with her lover by now – he was due to be released last month. But he was ordered to hand over £198 million from the proceeds of his crime or face ten more years in jail. He has refused and is appealing.
‘I don’t know what will happen now,’ she says. ‘I haven’t seen Curtis for several years.’
She brandishes a recent letter. ‘I need mushy mushy time with you,’ writes Warren. ‘I’ll picture you in my mind. Hey! All in good time. Take care, love Curtis xxx.’
A spokeswoman for La Moye’s governor, Bill Millar, said he did not wish to comment.
