A mum says she still loves her notorious drug lord son despite him threatening to kill his whole family.
Susan Moorby is housebound due to osteoporosis and arthritis, and relies on a morphine prescription.
She can no longer visit her youngest son Jon Moorby, who is serving a 29-year sentence in high security HMP Frankland.
The 51-year-old, who has two guards accompany him whenever he leaves his cell, was involved in a multi-million pound drugs operation.
Chartered helicopters would drop half a tonne of class A drugs into the back gardens of holiday homes in Kent.
The cocaine was brought up from Liverpool where drugs lord Lance Kennedy oversaw everything from warehouses to couriers employed to drive across the pennines.
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Sometimes the drug mules would have tens of thousands of pounds of substances hidden in compartments in their cars.
The drugs were distributed across the country, with Moorby ensured that a significant proportion hit Teesside, where he's from.
Winky Watson, Craig Costello, Steven Beazley and Dave Wright organised a supply network there.
The four were sentenced to a combined total of more than 30-years inside in November 2021, for their part in the drugs conspiracy, reports TeessideLive.
Moorby has ties to some of the UK's most powerful underworld criminals.
He was arrested in 2014 when Interpol tracked him down on the Thai island of Ko Samui.
There was no sign of the more than £4.5million profit he was found to have made.
In stark contrast he is now dependent on £40 a week from his parents, which he spends on protein shakes and toiletries in prison.
Mum and dad Susan and Richard - Baptist Christians - rent a small flat in Ingleby Barwick, Stockton.
Susan believes the seeds of her son's descent into crime may have started at school where he was bullied.
He felt the need to stand up to them and started going to the gym every day.
"He wanted to get stronger and stronger," she explained.
Moorby got an apprenticeship in a welding business before taking a job at Wentane Motors where he hatched a plan to steal sunroofs but ended up in court.
He spent his 20s in and out of prison for low level drug dealing.
"He was getting involved with worse and worse people and that's how it started," said Susan.
Moorby had a son, Brandon, but a proceeds of crime order meant he lost the family home in 2004.
His rented home was then petrol-bombed by rivals.
He attempted to put his criminal life behind him by taking work on oil rigs in Aberdeen and Africa and married a hotel manager.
But Susan said her son was always motivated most by money and the lure of the underworld always loomed.
Moorby took a job as a hotel manager in Stockton but it brought him into contact with drugs and he ensured prostitutes there were safe.
In 2004, he was jailed for six years for supplying drugs.
In 2011, he was jailed for three-years after being caught with £100,000 of drugs.
In June 2014, while awaiting trial and after he was caught with hundreds of thousands of pounds of cocaine and amphetamines at his Ingleby Barwick home - Moorby fled to Thailand.
While living in a luxury villa in Ko Samui he restarted his drugs operation, instructing couriers and dealers back in the UK throughout the following year.
Kennedy ran the operation from Spain.
He is now serving 18-years-and-four-months for conspiracy to supply class A drugs.
Moorby was sentenced to 15 years in prison, in 2014, after being convicted at Teesside Crown Court in his absence.
He is now serving this in addition to the 14 years he was handed for running his cocaine operation while in Asia.
Moorby had two daughters with different Thai women and says he fell in love with the country.
But he was caught in 2017, when his then 16-year-old son Brandon visited him.
When Brandon was arrested at the airport, Moorby was tipped off and said he left his Thai villa in seconds.
Kennedy allegedly organised a speedboat and he fled to remote island Ko Mudsom.
But the game was up, and hours later, he was pictured surrounded by Thai police and Interpol officers.
Pol Maj Gen Apichart Boonsriroj said police seized a fake passport held by Moorby identifying him as a Belgian citizen under the name Goossens Wouters.
Thai police charged Moorby with illegally entering Thailand and using a fake passport and he was deported to the UK.
Asked how her son had so much influence and power, Susan said: "People were scared. He can be very cruel.
"When he was in Thailand he needed money to bribe the police there. When his older brother said he couldn't send it - he had lost his job and didn't have thousands of pounds - he threatened to kill us all.
"He's put us through a living hell. But we still love him."
Moorby is appealing his latest prison sentence and hopes to be out in just over two-years.
But Susan says he can't stay around Teesside if he does get released.
She said: "He's got a lot of enemies round here and the police would be watching him like a hawk.
"He wants to go back to Lalida and their daughter Lily, in Thailand. Her family have a rice farm.
"We pray for Jon everyday."
