AN INTERNATIONAL beauty queen turned gangland girlfriend once brazenly had sex on the bonnet of a car while undercover police watched on.
Three-time Miss Australia winner Felicia Djamirze knew she was taunting cops who had been monitoring her and her drug trafficking fiancé Dean but she didn’t care in her life of luxury.
But her world of excess and indulgence was dramatically cut short as she was left with catastrophic injuries when police lobbed grenades into her bedroom and held a rifle to her head.
Felicia, who has detailed her epic rags-to-riches story in her book Accessorysaid she spent a “sordid and salacious” time engaged to a king of Queensland’s criminal underbelly, Dean Grant O’Donnell.
The beauty queen told how she lived the high life with jet-skis, bottle service, weekend holidays and designer brands.
Dean spoiled her with expensive gifts – including a £7,500 Louis Vuitton handbag to show her how serious he was about her.
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Felicia admits that she didn’t initially realise how he was funding such extravagant gifts.
He said all his money came from his tow-truck business and Felicia believed him, until the high roller lifestyle became impossible to justify.
Dean revealed he was trafficking drugs and running weapons, which meant he could fund “anything you wanted, basically”.
Felicia told The Sun: “His revelation was no surprise – it was part of the world we lived in: high risk, high reward.”
But it came at a cost – police had been tapping their phones and listening in on their every move.
By the time Felicia realised the cops were onto them, she was in too deep – they were engaged and she was wearing Dean’s rare ruby engagement ring when police raided their home and arrested them both.
She was asleep in bed in her pyjamas and woke up in agony, thinking she’d been shot in the face by home invaders.
In a daze of burning pain and attempting to crawl to safety in the walk-in robe, she realised it was police dressed in helmets and riot gear.
Police had thrown eight grenades into their bedroom at dawn – one of which was military-grade and last used in the rescue of 18 hostages from a terrorist gunman.
The blasts rippled through the room – causing the ruby in her ring to melt onto her skin.
A tactical officer screamed at her to show her hands while pressing an assault rifle into the side of her head.
She couldn’t because her hand was like “mince meat” and her elbow had been blown out.
“I was completely covered in blood, it was like the movie Carrie and a mix of Freddie Krueger because my face was burnt too,” she said.
But the damage to her plush ring was the least of her worries.
During the raid, Felicia sustained horrific injuries – including third-degree burns, a disfigured hand, gunpowder in her eyes that impaired her vision and shrapnel embedded in her face.
Felicia needed months of specialist care to treat her burns and damaged eye, while 18 months of multiple surgeries saved her hand from amputation.
Police didn’t have an ambulance on standby, Felicia said, despite knowing they would be using a military-grade DEFTECH ‘flashbang’ grenade, which was against mandatory protocol.
A US tactical expert later said that a flashbang grenade should never come into contact with humans except where the potential danger of the situation outweighs the risk to human life.
Living the high life
Felicia told how before the raid, Dean would splash at least £5,000 on a night out with friends – more if they went to the casino.
He bought her the most expensive shoes in the store of an exclusive Italian designer in Melbourne.
“I still remember the look on the woman’s face. It was like Pretty
Woman, except I wasn’t a prostitute,” she said.
They paid people to cook and clean, and she always had professional stylists to do her hair and makeup on weekend nights out.
“At the time of our arrest, we had cumulatively spent £125,000 on Louis Vuitton alone,” Felicia said.
“The only way I can explain it is that when you’ve come from nothing, spending money is a way of re-balancing the scales. It’s also intoxicating,
the dopamine hit.”
Dean drove a customised black 2006 Chrysler 300c, the same model as rapper Snoop Dogg, and he hid money in £10,000 stacks in modified compartments.
As the fiancée of a drug trafficker, Felicia knew she was at risk of being caught up in a potential arrest if Dean was nicked by police, but she never anticipated the level of violence used against her.
She wasn’t part of the nefarious business dealings, just the “gangland girlfriend” – but that was enough to have her world turned upside down.
The making of a beauty queen
At the tender age of 15, Felicia realised her looks could be the way out of the housing commissions of Blacktown, Sydney, which at the time had a notoriety for crime and poverty.
Older men would leer at her at the supermarket, in a way they didn’t with her friends of the same age.
Her mum would tell them off, shouting: “Keep your eyes to yourself!”.
When her father was drinking, home wasn’t a great place for young Felicia to be.
Teen magazines and MTV fostered a desire to emulate the 90s supermodels and celebrities she saw depicted, and her love for hair, make-up and fashion began.
Looking beautiful and dancing the night away at a club became a way of escaping the trauma of what was going on at home.
“Going out, being someone else and leveraging that was escapism for me,” she said.
“Everybody copes by wearing a mask in some sense or another.”
Hers was a thick layer of foundation and false eyelashes.
Sydney’s pub scene offered a new idea for Felicia, who was still underage, to use her looks to move up in the world.
She started sneaking into pub bikini competitions and winning hundreds of dollars worth of cash.
Run by alcohol labels and men’s magazines, Felicia made a bit of a name for herself after winning title after title.
The next natural step was catwalk modelling, but she wasn’t tall enough, so she decided to give beauty pageants a go instead.
Finding love while escaping abuse
She was crowned Miss Australia International 2013 – and the win gave her the opportunity to compete overseas in the US, representing Australia.
In Chicago, under a global spotlight, Felicia was hiding a dark secret.
Two weeks earlier, her ice-addicted biker boss boyfriend Cam had almost strangled her to death.
No one knew she had survived a horrific attack, which had left her hospitalised and needing steroids to reduce the swelling inside her throat in order to breathe.
She hid it behind her pageant-perfect smile and heavy make-up, gliding across the stage in a designer dress and stilettos.
“I remember thinking when I was on the stage in Chicago, ‘this is a bit weird’ that I was almost strangled to death two weeks ago. But I was smiling and answering all these questions,” she recalled.
“You think you are being strong and coping, but in reality it’s pushing it to the side and not dealing with it. The cracks will show later on.”
She returned home and eventually managed to extricate herself from the relationship, but not before Cam shot at her taxi when she was escaping.
The driver told her to “get the f*** out of my cab” and left her on the pavement.
She knows she was lucky to have people to help her leave and somewhere far away to escape to.
The Hervey Bay farm of her pal-turned-lover Dean became somewhat of a sanctuary during that time.
Felicia was first introduced to Dean via Facebook while she was still tangled in Cam’s abusive web.
She felt like Dean could offer her protection from Cam.
“My motivation in the beginning was to protect myself, it was survival,” she said.
Felicia said by the time she learnt the truth about Dean’s criminal businesses, she felt she had no choice but to stay by his side.
“If I left, where would that leave me? It got to the point I was too entrenched in the situation,” she said.
World came crashing down
A drug crime task force was investigating Dean’s underworld operation, and they bugged their house and tapped their phones.
The police saw drugs being weighed and packaged, and guns and money
being hidden in Dean’s stash points.
“They saw me cut and snort cocaine on numerous occasions. Dean also spoke openly with me about his dealing – the quality of the drugs, how they should be packaged, how the money could be laundered,” Felicia said.
But deep down, Felicia and Dean knew their life wasn’t sustainable forever.
“You’re always watching your back. It doesn’t come without a cost. It’s all sordid and salacious, all the sh** that goes on behind the scenes,” she said.
“Every decision in the moment you make it, you feel it’s potentially the right one, or you know it’s 100 per cent the wrong one but you make it anyway.”
Dean and Felicia were planning a future outside of criminality, “hanging up our boots so to speak”.
“We wanted to get out together. There was no longevity in it and we wanted a peaceful life and to have a family.”
But before they could get straight, police performed a no-knock raid on their home at dawn.
In September 2019, Dean was sentenced to ten years’ jail, with parole
after eight years. He pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and possession
of drugs.
Four years into his sentence, they called off their engagement.
He was later diagnosed with cancer and underwent treatment while incarcerated.
But two years before his release, Felicia and Dean reconnected and decided to give it a go on the straight and narrow.
They have since become re-engaged and Felicia has supported Dean in the transition back into society after a decade as an inmate.
Felicia got a three-year suspended sentence for drug supply with the only evidence police had was footage of her testing if Dean’s drug weighing scales worked.
Her own journey post-conviction has been challenging and full of prejudice.
Today, Felicia is a counsellor and an award-winning advocate for women’s justice.
“I’m passionate about challenging the stereotype of what it looks like to be a woman with a conviction history,” she said.
“There are so many women out there who would make brilliant social workers or counsellors because of their life experience, but they’re being shut out of the opportunity.”