Friends of Karm Gilespie shocked after Chinese court sentences ‘squeaky clean’ Australian to death
- Acquaintances and former business partners say they have been looking for the actor turned entrepreneur since his sudden disappearance in 2013
- He was arrested after more than 7.5kg of methamphetamine was found in his luggage at the Guangzhou airport
Karm Gilespie was arrested after more than 7.5kg of Ice, a methamphetamine, was found in his luggage at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in December 2013, according to Chinese media reports.
Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court on Saturday said he had been given a death sentence in a June 10 ruling, the first public acknowledgement of Gilespie’s secret detention since he suddenly dropped out of contact with friends and business partners.
Gilespie, who is now in his mid-50s, is originally from the regional town of Ballarat, outside Melbourne. He appeared in a number of episodes of Australian police drama series Blue Heelers in the mid-1990s before turning to property investment, motivational speaking and financial planning.
He had been well known in financial self-help circles, and his abrupt disappearance saw those who knew him embark on a fruitless two-year search for information on his whereabouts.
“We were looking for any signs in the press and contacting the Melbourne authorities to find out if anything had happened to him,” said Gilespie’s friend Roger James Hamilton, who runs entrepreneurial and motivational speaking workshops in Bali. “We just assumed that for some reason he had decided to start a new life.”
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Hamilton said he believed Gilespie had been framed after being told by a friend of the former actor’s family that he had been asked by Chinese businesspeople to deliver gifts to associates in Australia that were secretly lined with drugs.