was working in a bookshop. Copetas' first big story came in 1974 when Rolling Stone sent him to find J.Paul Getty III shortly after he had been kidnapped in Italy. Copetas worked with fellow Ohio University journalism graduate Joe Esztheras to interview him for the magazine and enabled Richard Young, who photographed Getty, to secure his first published photograph. That same year, Copetas also interviewed his friend David Bowie and William S. Burroughs for the magazine. Copetas went on to serve as foreign correspondent for Alternative Press Syndicate, based in Quito, Ecuador, and Bogota and Colombia, and as news editor for High Times magazine where he worked with Tom Forcade. In 1976, Copetas broke the paraquat poisoning story which highlighted the aerial spraying of Mexican marijuana fields with the lethal herbicide paraquat in the Mexican‐American war against marijuana. His articles led Daryl Dodson, an intern on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, to research further and ultimately the Senate Subcommittee investigation which resulted in Government testing of contaminated Mexican marijuana. Copetas was also responsible for maintaining a cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship with NORML, the non-profit public-interest pro-marijuana advocacy group. His other roles have included contributing staff writer at the New York Daily News, New York Times, Harper's Magazine and columnist for Inc Magazine. In 1978, he joined Associated Newspapers where he served as associate editor and staff writer at Esquire magazine. At the magazine, Copetas worked with writers such as Graham Greene, Norman Mailer, Hunter Thompson, William Buckley, James Baldwin, Anthony Haden Guest and Jesse Kornbluth. His fellow editors included Peter W. Kaplan, Marilyn Johnson, Rob Fleder and Dominique Browning. They were the last group to be trained and mentored by those who had edited the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Wolfe. That group included Arnold Gingrich, Harold Hayes, Byron Dobell, Rust Hills and Don Erickson. Copetas went on to work at ANG's The Soho Weekly News before moving to London for the Mail on Sunday and helping to create the paper's Sunday Magazine supplement. During the 1980s, he also wrote for The Village Voice and Regardie's Magazine. By then, he was based in Moscow where he also became on-site director of media company Kommersant, During one of his trips back to London he visited his friend Tony Elliott, founded of Time Out, during a labour strike at the publication. He persuaded Elliot to accompany him on a trip