The warning signs in 'drugs mule' Bella's social media posts that revealed how her dream trip around the world was turning dark
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Quite how young Bella May Culley is screams out in her carefree – and copious – social media posts. At the start of May, on an earlier leg of her far-flung travels, the 18-year-old from Teesside posted an image from the coral reefs off the famous El Nido beach in the Philippines and captioned it 'swimming with nemo'.
It was a reference to the 2003 Pixar film Finding Nemo, which, it is startling to note, is older than she is.
Another post acknowledged that she was in dangerous waters on this holiday of a lifetime – although, in retrospect, the misplaced source of the peril seems childishly naive.
'Sometimes I think I have a death wish, me straight in the water just after they told me there's poisonous snakes, sea urchins and spiders,' she joked.
Jeopardy was indeed just around the corner, and it was the teenager's sudden silence online that alerted her family back home to the fact that something was very wrong in paradise.
Bella – whose posts feature lots of bikinis and much pouting – told the world, in no uncertain terms, that she did not want to have a 'boring' life and was 'hungry for success'.
She had already gone off-piste on the holiday which was supposedly a final fling before she settled down to nursing training, after completing an access course in Middlesbrough.
She had told her mother Lyanne that instead of flying on to Ibiza next, as her friend was doing, she was heading to Thailand for some more adventuring, possibly meeting up with a lad – or a group of them – she knew from home.
When she failed to show up for a FaceTime call last Saturday – and her mum realised that she hadn't posted on TikTok for a few days, which was wholly out of character – the alarm was raised. An international hunt for Bella began.
But there was little solace for the family when Bella was 'found', because it wasn't the case that she had got lost or been abducted, as those who love her naturally feared.
She had, in fact, been arrested on drug-smuggling charges nearly 4,000 miles away in the former Soviet satellite state of Georgia, the authorities there claiming she had tried to bring 34 bags of cannabis into the country.
The images of a pale and bespectacled Bella – her withdrawn appearance in stark contrast to her glamorous social media posts – being led into court in Tbilisi in handcuffs went around the world, the arrest making international headlines as it was revealed she faced 20 years or even life in prison.
The Mail can reveal Bella has confided in a source close to her legal case that she flew to South East Asia 'for love' but 'has said nothing about why she had the drugs'.
There was a further shock, too. In the dock the teenager, whose perma-pout was noticeably absent, claimed that she was pregnant – which apparently came as news to her relatives back home, already scrambling to get family members to her. That pregnancy has not yet been confirmed.
Ia Todua, the lawyer who was assigned to Bella, revealed that her client has undergone medical tests, but she was not yet in a position to share the details.
Officials have confirmed to the Mail that Georgian prisons have special rooms for inmates who have children, where they can raise them for the first three years of their lives.
Georgian lawyer Eliso Rukhadze, who specialises in women's rights, told the Mail: 'Bella would be transferred to a hospital to have the baby and then rushed back to prison.
'For up to three years, the child would grow up there and the mum would have unrestricted access to the baby, including breastfeeding, and then [the child] would have to be cared for by a family member.'
Whether we are talking about one life in the balance here, or two, this horror scenario is every parent's worst nightmare when they wave their just-about-adult off on a grown-up holiday.
The shellshock was evident on the face of Bella's father Niel and his sister Kerrie, Bella's aunt, as they arrived this week in Georgia from Bangkok, where they started the search for her.
The nightmarishness of the situation was also laid bare by Bella's grandfather William Culley, 80, in her hometown of Billingham, who told reporters visiting his bungalow that he feared he would never see her again.
Could his granddaughter, barely out of school and only recently posting about selling her prom dress, really be an international drug smuggler?
This was a girl whose great-grandfather had been an MP – the ex-Labour grandee Frank Cook, who represented Stockton North until 2010. The idea was preposterous to William, and led him immediately to the conclusion that she had been the victim of exploitation.
'She's not daft,' her grandfather argued. 'She's an intelligent girl. Why has she done it? Has someone dangled money in front of her? We are just hoping that someone can do something. She must be terrified. She's got sucked into something, somehow. She's not an international drug trafficker. She was just going on holiday.'
Later, he recalled a vague conversation he'd had with his daughter Lyanne Kennedy – Bella's mother – about how she had gone off to Thailand to meet someone called Ross or Russ. He couldn't be certain.
So what do we know about Bella's background? It is understood that her parents are divorced and her father lives in Vietnam, where he's believed to work on an offshore oil rig as a senior electrical technician.
Before setting off on her travels, she lived with her mum and 16-year-old brother Billy – who both pop up regularly on her social media posts.
Until recently the family lived in a neat council estate in Billingham. When our reporter visited, there was a discarded mattress slumped in the garden and the house was clearly empty.
One neighbour said Lyanne had moved out 'after a leak', and seemed shocked that Bella could have become involved in something so serious, saying: 'She's only young. I'm afraid she has been exploited in some way.'
How the family must now be wishing they had asked more questions and perhaps looked a little more closely at those social media posts, which viewed in retrospect are rather troubling, raising many more questions than they answer.
On TikTok and Instagram, for the duration of her trip, which began just after Easter, Bella wasn't just posting cutesy images of marine life and getting excited about releasing baby turtles back into the wild.
She was also posing with wads of cash – tied up with hairbands, no less – and bragging about dipping a toe not just in azure oceans, but in gangster territory. One TikTok post might have seemed funny to some but is now pretty horrifying, given what happened next.
It seems to show a bikini-clad Bella presenting herself as Bonnie in a Bonnie and Clyde scenario.
'Blonde or brunette? Erm, how about we get up to criminal activities side by side like Bonnie n' Clyde, making heavy figures and f***ing on balconies all over the world,' she said in a video on April 1. In a caption, she added: 'I don't care if we on the run baby, long as I'm next to you.'
Was Bella aware that things didn't end well for the 1930s criminal duo, who famously died in a hail of gunfire?
The post smacks of hapless teen bravado, but the reality is that Bella's social media output is now likely to be scrutinised as prosecutors prepare a case against her.
Her friends are reeling, convinced she was an unwitting drugs mule. Yet obviously there will now also be scrutiny of Bella's social circle – in particular, police will want to clarify if there was a 'Clyde' to Bella's Bonnie. Her posts appear to suggest so, but there is no man visible.
And who is this Ross or Russ she was supposedly meeting? Her grandfather thinks he was from North East England, but was working in Thailand for his father's company.
'But now I wonder if what she told me was true,' he added, the realisation dawning that families don't always know what teenage children are doing.
That her entire future may be in part decided by 'evidence' she herself shared on social media should, at the very least, serve as a warning to other youngsters to be mindful about what they put out there.
She's certainly already facing trial by social media if the myriad online posts about her case are anything to go by.
Hardly surprisingly, questions have been asked about how a teenager who lives with her mum and brother in a council house can afford the lifestyle that was laid out in those swaggering social media posts, involving luxury hotels, exotic locations and, in one instance, Bella nonchalantly smoking a joint in the back of a car.
And, as more details emerge of Bella's life, the questions keep coming. It was revealed this week that although her family believe she wanted to be a nurse, Bella had, in the course of the last year, been installed as the director of two mystery companies, one with links to China. It may well be some time before the full truth emerges.
Bella was denied bail because the court thought she was a flight risk, and she faces nine months in jail before a full trial.
She is currently being held in the Women's Penitentiary No 5, near Rustavi, an uncompromising Soviet-era prison where conditions were previously slammed by human rights groups.
They highlighted unsanitary conditions, a lack of running water and inhumane treatment. It is clear that the Culley family are still in shock, trying to navigate all this. Bella's grandfather also revealed that his son had instructed him to prepare to sell the family home to raise funds for Bella's legal fight.
Her relatives were desperate to talk to the media when they thought she was simply missing, and Bella's mum, who is believed to have remained in the UK, gave a poignant interview pointing out that her daughter hadn't wanted to go to Ibiza with her friend because she wasn't a party animal, and didn't drink much.
But her parents have been silent since her arrest, as they try to process the seriousness of Bella's situation.
The focus now, for her dad and aunt, is just getting to see her.
At the time of writing, her father hasn't yet been allowed into the prison (requests to visit can take up to five days to be processed) and is being supported by British embassy staff.
Bella's lawyer spoke to journalists, revealing that the teenager was in a state of distress. 'When I explained to her that what she was accused of was an especially severe crime, she was concerned and visibly shaken.'
Ms Todua added: 'My impression was that she ended up in Georgia without even knowing what she was doing. I got the impression she wasn't expecting those consequences.'
The lawyer was able to clarify that Bella reportedly entered the Georgian capital on a flight from Thailand via Sharjah, a city in the United Arab Emirates, which gives another extraordinary twist to the story.
Bella is accused of hiding the weighty cannabis and hashish stash in separate packets. Ironically, in 2018, Georgia made history by becoming the first former Soviet state to decriminalise cannabis, although it retains strict laws about illegal trafficking and the penalties are severe.
One can only imagine the distress Bella must be in. As her grandfather puts it, 'the poor bairn must be at her wits' end.' Her family, too.
To add to their pain, they have fallen victim to social media trolls and scammers setting up unauthorised fundraising pages – falsely claiming to represent the family.
Whether Bella knew what a precarious path she was on or not, her social media posts are now sad to view.
The phone that took those glossy, if brazen, images has been confiscated and all control of her young life – and how it is presented to the world – is out of her hands.
'You'll never catch me with a boring life,' she posted gleefully on her Instagram in March as her adventure was beginning.
Click on another carefully curated clip, panning over her tanned legs and on to the hotel pool beyond, and you get a fleeting glimpse of the page of the book she was reading at the time. Its content? How to achieve profit targets, become a CEO and set life goals.
The title at the top of the page reads Designing Your Dream Life.
However she saw her dream life, it will have been a million miles from the one she is living now.
