A drug smuggler has tied the knot with a woman he met while serving a decade behind bars in a Caribbean jail. Paul Cairns enjoyed a traditional Scots wedding to Dominican Republic native Carmen Rosa – with his smuggling accomplice as his best man and another jailed trafficker on the guest list.
Cairns, 35, from Gourock, Renfrewshire, was caught with nearly £500,000 of cocaine at Punta Cana Airport in 2009. He bragged about the lax prison system online before he was released in 2019 – but had to remain on the island until his sentence was served.
Cairns – who fathered a child while in jail – is understood to have proposed to Carmen in 2011. Fellow convicted smuggler Daniel Squires, of Greenock, who served the same sentence, was by his side at his wedding.
A source said: “Cairns couldn’t wait to get back to Scotland after his 10 years was up but he had to marry his lover for her to be allowed to live in Britain. The minute he was allowed back to Scotland, he brought his partner over and they got married in Renfrewshire. Squires was the best man.”
The day after the wedding, Cairns thanked pals, posting a snap from the day. He wrote: “Me and my wife loved every minute of it.”
Carmen is understood to have moved to Glasgow with Cairns in 2019. Another Scots mule jailed in the Dominican Republic, Daniel Patterson, was also at the wedding. Patterson and his partner Kelly Carrigan were caught with almost seven kilos of the drug in their luggage in 2009 and jailed for eight years. The haul was worth £300,000.
Cairns and Squires were jailed for a decade in 2010. They were linked to a gang run by William Byrne of Wemyss Bay, Renfrewshire, who was jailed that same year for four-and-a-half years after pleading guilty to being concerned in the supply of cocaine.
Our sister paper the Sunday Mail previously revealed they were all under the control of crime boss Roy Dunstace, who lived in Spain. His empire was smashed and he was jailed for 11 years in 2015.
In 2019, it emerged Cairns had refused to swap his cushy island prison cell for his hometown jail – so he could stay with Carmen. In 2013, Cairns posed for a picture with his second child, captioning it with a Spanish phrase meaning “Me and my daughter”.
It later emerged Squires had also had a child while behind bars. The Record tried to approach Cairns for comment.
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