Great Train Robbers 'planned second Royal Mail rail heist'

Today is the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Great Train Robbery It has gone down as the greatest British heist in history. Now, previously unseen documents suggest that criminals linked to the Great Train Robbery planned a second raid on another Royal Mail rail service only months later. Police investigating the original theft received a series of "reliable" tip-offs that a second raid – to be at least as vast in scale – was being organised by individuals connected to the earlier one. Informants told police that the gang were planning to ambush a mail train travelling from Weymouth, in Dorset, to London Waterloo. The existence of the proposed heist is disclosed in a new book The Great Train Robbery: The Untold Story From The Closed Investigation Files. Andrew Cook, the author, has studied more than 1,000 pages of previously unseen documents from the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Post Office and the Metropolitan Police to build an authoritative account of the raid, in which £2.6 million in cash – the equivalent of around £44 million today – was stolen when a Glasgow to London Euston mail train was forced to stop in remote Buckinghamshire countryside. The documents also implicate several individuals who were never charged, including two on a list of 14 suspects given to police by an informant within days of the raid, in August 1963. Related Articles Swedish cleaner who crashed train cleared 18 Jan 2013 British have invaded nine out of ten countries 04 Nov 2012 Oliver Cromwell – the metrosexual: how the Lord Protector became the skin protector 06 May 2012 The trench talk that is now entrenched in language 25 Nov 2012 The source also gave an incredibly detailed description of the crime and all the other names on the list were later prosecuted. One of the two was Henry Smith, who had a criminal record dating back to 1947, and was only traced after a nine month manhunt. Officers could find no evidence to link him to the hideout used by the gang after the robbery but concluded "there was not the slightest doubt in our minds of police that Smith... was one of the robbers actually at the scene and taking a very active part in the commission of the offence". They believe Smith – who died in 2008 – spent his money from the raid on buying, through associates, "32 houses (including a row of 11), a drinking club and a hotel in the Portsmouth and Gosport districts". The second individual on the list who was never charged – even though police concluded he was "strongly suspected" – is still alive. The files also lend credence to theories that the original gang included a high ranking Post Office official who passed on details via an intermediary. A total of 17 people faced trial for the robbery, but it is thought there were four other men who helped rob the train, as well as several more who assisted in the organisation, who were never prosecuted. The individuals involved in planning the second raid are not known and several of those involved in the first one had already been arrested by the time it was allegedly being planned. However, police believe there was a clear overlap between the two. The files suggest the gang due to carry out the raid on the Weymouth-Waterloo line would be "at least on the scale of the one that carried out" the first one and, according to some reports, the haul targeted would be up to £6 million – more than twice that stolen from the Glasgow train. The raid was expected to happen early in the New Year 1964, when large amounts of money was due to be transported by rail. The first vague tip-offs were received in September 1963. Then, just before Christmas that year, the officer leading the hunt for the Great Train Robbers, Commander George Hatherill, received further information from three sources about the second operation. According to one document, the intelligence "suggests very strongly that an attack ... was being planned by criminals some of whom were connected with the (original) gang". In response to the threat, officers launched a major operation, code-named "Primrose" - apparently because many of the suspects were connected to an address near Belsize Park, with a "Primrose" telephone code. It involved a survey of the 130 mile track to likely areas for an ambush. Some of the intelligence suggested it would take place at Weybridge, in Surrey, but other locations were also considered. A control room was set up, in Hampshire, to operate each night that the service was running, to receive regular signals from the train and ensure it was safe. Checks were also made on vacant or suspicious properties within a 20 mile area each side of the line, in case the gang had already set up a hide-out, in which to lie low after the raid, as they had done after the earlier heist. Police were particularly concerned that the gang could use caravans in the New Forest. However, detectives also considered that the gang might try to flee straight away with their haul, so established check points to stop traffic. Arrangements were also made to allow police to pursue suspects across county borders. Extra security measures were introduced on the train, with security officers travelling on board and window bars, alarms and loud hailers fitted. The operation lasted four months, but officers eventually concluded that although the original intelligence had been accurate, the gang had abandoned their plans in response to the security measures. Mr Cook said: "It was clear that the threat was taken extremely seriously."

Great train bunglers: The Great Train Robbers were blundering thugs, not criminal masterminds

For half a century they have been seen as criminal masterminds who pulled off the Crime of the Century. But the Great Train ­Robbers can now be unmasked as ­bungling thugs who were lucky not to be caught before they fled the scene. Fifty years after the gang became household names for holding up a postal train and stealing £2.6million, the myths surrounding Britain’s most famous heist – and the men who carried it out – have been completely debunked. And – according to new book The Great Train Robbery, by Nick Russell-Pavier and Stewart Richards – many of the cops who finally brought some of the robbers to justice were just as ­bumbling, nearly letting them off the hook with a series of errors. The robbers’ ringleaders were Gordon Goody, Charlie Wilson and Bruce Reynolds. Ronald “Buster” Edwards – later portrayed by Phil Collins in 1988 movie Buster – was also at the core of the gang. It is suspected they received inside information that the Travelling Post Office train, en route to London, was ripe for attack. It carried 128 mailbags, stuffed with £2,595,997 in cash – worth about £45million today – but was effectively unguarded. They put together a gang of 16 men and planned to stop the train in the early hours of August 8, 1963, by rigging a signal at Sears Crossing, between Leighton Buzzard, Beds, and Cheddington, Bucks. On the night of the robbery, phone lines were cut to stop signal staff calling for help. But a GPO engineer came close to uncovering the crime when he was called to look into a fault – caused by the gang’s handiwork. One man, John Daly, had been told to alter the signal by placing a glove over a green light and using a battery to turn on an amber light. But inexplicably he unscrewed the bulb. The book says: “Daly’s blunder was one of a number of critical errors during the raid that illustrate the gang’s lack of technical knowledge.” The gang planned to use their own driver to move the train half a mile down the track, before loading the mailbags on to waiting trucks. But “expert” driver Ronnie Biggs suddenly realised he didn’t know how to move the locomotive. They had to get the real driver, Jack Mills, to do it for them. Although he was nursing a serious head injury after being attacked, he managed to spot that the crooks hadn’t released the brake properly. The attack on Mills is often seen as the one dark moment during an ­otherwise trouble-free heist. His ­family say he never recovered from his injury before his death in 1970. But the book says: “The Great Train Robbery raid was peppered with acts of violence. It is only remarkable that other victims were not more seriously injured.” The robbers always said they didn’t carry firearms but one of the workers in the mailbag carriage claims to have heard one member shout: “Get the guns.” Several burst in, armed with coshes. One had an axe. Assistant post office inspector Thomas Kett was whacked on the arm with a cosh as he tried to protect himself. A colleague was hit several times by the same attacker. Another worker was struck across the shoulders by a raider wielding an iron bar. Kett was hit on the head by a robber left guarding the crew – who also laid into another victim. After the heist, the gang hid out at Leatherslade Farm near Oakley, Bucks. At 28 miles from the scene of their crime, it was judged to be close enough to reach before police could respond effectively to the robbery, yet far enough away for the robbers’ presence there not to arouse suspicion. They fled when they heard radio reports that the police were focusing on properties within a 30-mile radius of the robbery. But they left a trail of clues behind them. Police found robbers’ ­fingerprints at the farm, including those of Ronnie Biggs on a Monopoly box, a Pyrex plate and a ketchup ­bottle. The biggest find was 35 mailbags containing bank money wrappers and £627 in Scottish banknotes. The book says: “For the gang to have left these mailbags and cash in the farmhouse seems an extraordinarily stupid mistake.” Aerial shot of the great train robbery at Sears Crossing in 1963 Heist: The train had no guard Mirrorpix But the police also committed basic errors. Roadblocks were set up straight after the robbery, but officers didn’t show up for nearly two hours. At first they had no idea how much money had been stolen – initial reports ­suggested less than £1million. When a local police chief called for dog teams to be deployed and smallholdings to be searched, his orders were ignored. But the book says if they had been carried out “the protracted investigation that tied up hundreds of police officers at vast public expense for many years would have been ­concluded within days if not hours.” Eventually, 16 of the gang ­members were brought to trial. Seven – Biggs, Goody, Wilson, Hussey, Thomas ­Wisbey, Robert Welch and Roy James – were given 30-year jail terms. Brothers Brian and Leonard Field received 25-year sentences. William Boal, Roger Cordrey and John ­Wheater got 24, 20 and three years respectively. The last suspect John Daly successfully argued there was no case against him. Buster ­Edwards and Bruce Reynolds went on to serve nine years. James White was sentenced to 18 years after three years on the run. So four gang members were never captured. But the book’s authors unearthed documents from the Post Office ­archive showing two police lists containing the names of those who were arrested or who admitted being involved in the robbery. There are 10 new names on the lists – one, Henry Smith, appears on both – and the book suggests he, with three others, could well be the missing gang members. So was the Great Train Robbery ­really all that great? The book argues: “There was a great deal of money stolen. There were a great many people involved and it took a great deal of police effort to bring the criminals to justice. “For the criminals, great plans were made and great dreams were lost. There were a great number of mistakes made... In that sense, the mail-train robbery could be considered great in many ways.” http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/great-train-robbers-unmasked-blundering-1519952

Great Train Robber Goody Confesses Fifty Years On

AN oxygen tank by his side, ­Gordon Goody cuts a frail figure as he sits in his Spanish garden. Regarded by many as the mastermind behind the Great Train Robbery, the ­incredible story of his life is drawing to an end. But before he dies, Goody, 84, wants to tell the truth about his role in one of Britain’s most notorious crimes. And as the 50th ­anniversary of the robbery approaches next month, he speaks publicly for the first time. In an exclusive interview, he tells just how the gang pulled it off and claims that the police had to fabricate evidence to get him sent to prison. “I got away with the perfect crime, so the police fitted me up,” he says. “I’m not saying I was an innocent man being fitted up – I was a guilty man doing his best not to get fitted up, but they were ­determined to get me and they did.” The Great Train Robbery netted Goody and his 17-strong gang £2.6million – ­equivalent to more than £40million today. Some of those responsible, including ­Ronnie Biggs and Buster Edwards, were turned into folk heroes. But Goody’s role in the crime has often been overlooked. Suffering from emphysema and at times struggling to breathe, he says he wants to put his side of the story before it is too late. Goody, who still owns one of the original stolen mailbags, claims that officers from the Flying Squad were desperate to “get him” because he ­humiliated them several times by walking free after earlier robberies. Gordon Goody Leader: Good going into court after raid Getty It all stemmed from a job in November 1962 when Goody, along with Bruce Reynolds, Buster Edwards, Charlie Wilson and Roy James, stole the contents of a cash van at Heathrow airport and escaped with £62,000. When one of the getaway ­drivers was recognised, police pulled in the rest of the gang. “I was put on an ID parade and picked out, so was Charlie Wilson,” says Goody. “Charlie’s case fell apart but the one against me was pretty solid. I knew I had no choice but to get to one of the jurors. “In those days, judges would only accept a unanimous verdict so you only needed to get to one to get the case thrown out. I picked out a likely looking prospect and followed him home. It turned out he’d done time in the past and had no problems taking money to put a spanner in the works.” Goody was later retried for the crime and this time decided to take a different route. He says: “Charlie Wilson knew a crooked copper who had access to the prosecution exhibits. The witnesses that identified me said I’d been wearing a tweed hat. For £200, the bent copper agreed to steal the hat and replace it with one three sizes bigger. “When they made me try the hat on in court, it covered my eyes and nose. It was clear that I couldn’t have been the one wearing the hat. The jury came back with a not guilty pretty quick.” As he walked out of court, Goody ran into the chief prosecutor and couldn’t resist boasting about the fact that he’d got away with the crime. “I couldn’t resist taking the mickey,” he says. “It was a stupid thing to do and I feel ashamed that I did it, even now.” Despite the popular conception that Bruce Reynolds, who died last year, was head of the gang, it was actually Goody who was approached with the original information that would lead to the robbery. Brian Field, a crooked solicitor’s clerk who had been involved in Goody’s defence for the airport heist, passed the details to him. “All I was told was that there was a large amount of money in transit and that a well-organised gang could liberate it,” says Goody. Field ­arranged a meeting between Goody and a contact known as The Ulsterman. He says: “The Ulsterman had a friend who was a postal worker and had given him all the details about the train timetables and security. "He told us the carriage with the money was normally the second car from the engine. "The Ulsterman reckoned that at holiday periods we could be talking in the region of six million quid. I took it to Bruce and the rest of the gang.” Investigators at great train robbery scene End of the line: Train after heist ©Mirrorpix Goody and the others had robbed trains before and considered themselves experts. “I worked out we only needed eight people on the job, but the problem was how to stop the train,” he says. “Buster had a friend, Roger Cordrey, who worked for a South London firm that was always robbing trains. We hoped they’d tell us how they stopped them. "They agreed, but only on condition their whole firm got in on the job.” The gang also needed somebody to drive the train, so they called on Ronnie Biggs who’d done time with ­ Reynolds and said he knew a retired train driver. “Biggs was ­supposed to get a few quid for the ­introduction but he could smell the money and wanted in on the job,” he adds. “A few of us were opposed. He was an ar**hole. But we had no choice.” On the night of the robbery, Cordrey ­simply placed a glove over the green lens of the train signal and attached a battery to the red bulb to switch it on. “If we’d known it was as easy as that, we would have done it ourselves,” says Goody. The train stopped at the signal. Biggs and his friend climbed into the carriage to drive it to the bridge where it was to be unloaded, but the friend turned out not to know how to drive the train after all. Goody says: “We kicked Ronnie out and told him to wait in the van. He hadn’t been any use at all.” Instead the gang turned to the original driver, Jack Mills. When Mills refused to drive, he was coshed on the head and ­threatened until he agreed. That violence marred the gang’s reputation as gentlemen thieves. Mills never recovered from his injuries, suffering headaches for the rest of his life. He died from leukaemia seven years later. The gang always refused to say who had been responsible for the attack but last year James Hussey made a death-bed confession that it was him. Tony Thompson with one of the actual mail bags from the Great Train Robbery The original mailbag Philip Coburn/Sunday Mirror It took nearly half-an-hour to unload all the bags of cash and another half-hour to make the journey to Leatherslade Farm in Buckinghamshire where the loot was to be divided. Goody says: “All the money had been stacked up. That thing about playing ­Monopoly with real money... that never ­happened. We did have a few drinks though.” The farm hideout was later discovered by police who claimed it contained a wealth of evidence. Furious Goody says: “I had worn two pairs of gloves. We also paid someone to clean up, but they did a runner. There should have been nothing left for the police.” He was eventually arrested two months later in Leicester. He says he’d felt certain there would be no evidence to tie him to the robbery, but then police said that yellow paint found on a pair of shoes at Goody’s home matched paint found at the farm. “I knew they had planted the evidence because I hadn’t worn those shoes during the robbery,” he says. At his trial, the same experts Goody had mocked after the airport case admitted that while the paint on Goody’s shoes was similar, it wasn’t exactly the same. He says: “I thought it was going well, but then the argument became that if the police were going to fit me up, they would have used the exact same paint, so that became proof that the paint hadn’t been planted and I was found guilty.” He was sentenced to 30 years and was ­considered such an escape risk that the Army was drafted in to guard him at Durham Prison. He was then transferred to a high-security unit at Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight ­until his release in 1976. He later moved to Spain where he has lived ever since with his Spanish partner of 30 years, Maria. Asked what he did with the money he says he buried a lot of it, but most went on legal fees. He also claims some was stolen by people he entrusted to look after it while he was inside. Now he is set to tell all in a TV ­documentary this year and will even reveal the identify of The Ulsterman. On every anniversary of the infamous robbery – August 8 – Goody raises a glass to his gang. Fifty years on, he says the wine will taste that much sweeter now that he has told his side of the story of a heist that made c­riminal legends of them all. Check out all the latest News, Sport & Celeb gossip at Mirror.co.uk http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/great-train-robber-gordon-goody-2097638#ixzz2b5564aZv

The Great Train Robbery: Fun-loving Criminals

Over the police radio came the astonished comment: “You won’t believe this – but they’ve just stolen a train.” The first official notification of the theft of £2.6m from the Glasgow-to-Euston mail train came at 4.30 in the morning on 8 August 1963. Now, nearly 50 years on, we are about to experience a blizzard of anniversary television programmes, reissued books and chin-stroking commentary pieces about what was initially called “the Cheddington train robbery” but soon acquired a more grandiose title. But why, half a century later, are we still familiar with the names of those involved in the Great Train Robbery? How has professional crime changed since then? And what, if anything, does it say about the nation’s fascination with villainy? The previous decade, in 1952, another group of professional criminals had carried out what was, at the time, an even more impudent robbery. It took place in Eastcastle Street in the West End of London and involved the theft of £287,000 (today worth more than £6m) from a mail van and the coshing of the van crew. More than a thousand police officers were involved in the hunt for the robbers and the prime minister, Winston Churchill, asked for daily updates on the investigation. The press could barely conceal its admiration for the theft, which was carried out “with Montgomery-like thoroughness . . . it went off as smoothly as any of our commando raids during the war”. No one was ever arrested for it although it was common knowledge that it had been organised by the London gang leader Billy Hill, who was soon boasting about getting away with it in his ghosted autobiography. It was referred to jokily in the film The Ladykillers three years later, but beyond that it barely lingered on in the national consciousness. There have also been bigger and more complex robberies since the Great Train Robbery. In 1975, 94 security boxes at the Bank of America in Mayfair, central London, were plundered of an estimated £8m. The thieves were in such a rush that they left behind a Picasso and an Enid Blyton first edition. Who remembers the names of any of the robbers? A more spectacular theft of safety deposit boxes was carried out in Knightsbridge in 1987 by an Italian playboy and libel lawyer’s son called Valerio Viccei. He got away with £40m and was caught only because he came back to London from his Latin American hideaway to arrange for the transportation of his Ferrari Testarossa, as one would. Viccei, whom one detective described as having “an ego the size of the Old Bailey”, was jailed for 22 years. Allowed to serve some of his sentence in Italy, he was shot dead in a confrontation with the police in 2000 while on day release from prison. The 1971 robbery of the Baker Street branch of Lloyds bank also enjoyed a certain cheery notoriety because of its modus operandi: the gang had a lookout with a walkie-talkie on the roof of the building opposite who alerted the robbers to the presence of the police as they painstakingly drilled their way into the bank through an adjoining property. A radio ham overheard their conversations and told the police, who initially thought he was pulling their leg. This robbery became a film, The Bank Job (2008), starring Jason Statham, and the cinema publicity suggested that the heist had involved “millions and millions of pounds . . . none of it was recovered. Nobody was ever arrested. The robbery made headlines for a few days and then disappeared – the result of a government D-Notice, gagging the press.” (All of which was nonsense: four of the gang were jailed for 44 years in total; £231,000 was recovered and no D-Notice was even requested, far less granted.) I n 2000, an attempt was made to steal £200m worth of De Beers diamonds from the Millennium Dome, with a planned escape by speedboat down the Thames. The police were ahead of the gang and caught them red-handed. More recently, in 2006, another gang robbed the Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent, of £53m. They kidnapped the depot manager, his wife and his young son and held them all until the robbery had been carried out; the robbers were disguised as police officers and wearing latex masks. It was Britain’s biggest robbery ever but most people would struggle to name even one of the robbers involved, the best known of whom was a cage fighter called Lee Murray who fled to Morocco, his father’s home country, and is now serving a 25-year sentence there. It failed to capture the public imagination not least because it involved the kidnapping of a child and woman. The investigating officer, Detective Chief Inspector Mick Judge, said that the robbers’ plans had been “very clever in parts and very naive in others. There was some very sophisticated preparation and also some very silly mistakes that they had not thought through at all.” And Roger Coe-Salazar, the then chief Crown prosecutor for Kent, said at the end of the trial in June 2008, “It is quite easy for it to end up being seen in a romantic, even an Ocean’s 12, way. There is nothing romantic or victimless about a child being held at gunpoint by a masked man.” The Securitas robbery exemplified how the execution of such crimes had changed over the years since 1963. At the end of the Securitas trial, Bruce Reynolds, the ringleader of the train robbers, wrote a piece for the Guardian in effect a review of the later crime. He suggested that perhaps the robbers would have carried out the heist even if they had known that they were going to get caught, as “Nipper” Read, one of the detectives who pursued the train robbers, had suggested about them. “We all have our benchmarks,” he wrote, “and for us the benchmark was the Brinks robbery in Boston in 1950, which was the largest robbery in the United States at that time. We wanted to do something as spectacular as that . . . It’s insanity, of course, and we knew we would be in the frame as soon as the robbery happened but it’s the same madness, I suppose, that drives people to bivouac on the north face of the Eiger.” He pointed out how such crimes had altered in the intervening years. The Securitas robbers faced the same problems that we had because we both had a large group of people but it was different for us because we all came from a common background; we shared the same mores and we trusted each other. With Securitas, they had two Albanians and seemed to have half> of the team from Kent and half from south London. Their other problem was that their robbery, like ours, was too big. You throw down the gauntlet to society and obviously society has to respond. Reynolds concluded: “If you really want to make money nowadays, you should go into hedge funds.” He gave his fee for the article to Amnesty International, as he did the advance on the last edition of his memoirs. Under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, ex-criminals are not allowed to profit from writing about their crimes. The law was attacked by Baroness (Ruth) Rendell as it made its way through the Lords; she cited Jean Genet as just one writer who would have been affected by it. The nature of professional crime, as Reynolds suggested, has changed in the same way as industry has. The old family firms and local enterprises have been replaced by multinationals. Criminals prefer now to be as faceless as a chief executive, rather than knock out their memoirs and feature in the press. By the end of the 1960s, drugs were already beginning to replace robbery as a simpler way of getting money and many professional criminals moved into that field. I bumped into one old thief a few years ago who had sent his sons to public school with the proceeds of his crimes and now saw them working in the City and earning more than he could ever have dreamed of. Reynolds died in February at the age of 81. The death of an old villain these days follows a pattern: recollection of past crimes, a quote or two from their memoirs and some grainy old photos from outside the Old Bailey. This is generally followed a couple of days later by a few articles from the vicarish end of the commentariat on how shameful it is that criminals are portrayed as lovable rogues or diamond geezers when they are nothing but lowlife crooks. Usually these articles make reference to Robin Hood and Dick Turpin and then despair at the national affection for some criminals. The Independent ran a classic of the genre in which Reynolds was dismissed as a “lowlife loser” who was little different from Raoul Moat, who in 2010 shot his ex-girlfriend, killed her boyfriend and blinded a policeman who later committed suicide – a comparison about as fatuous as likening Chris Huhne to the Yorkshire Ripper because motor vehicles were involved in the commission of both men’s crimes. So why do we still run through the details of the crime and remember the train robbers’ names? One reason was the length of sentences – 30 years each for seven of the defendants – handed out by Mr Justice Edmund Davies. “Let us clear out of the way any romantic notions of daredevilry,” he said. “This is nothing less than a sordid crime of violence inspired by vast greed.” Jack Mills, the driver of the train, was hit over the head during the robbery and never worked again. “As to violence,” the judge said, “anyone who has seen that nerve-shattered engine-driver can have no doubt of the terrifying effect on law-abiding citizens of a concerted assault by masked and armed robbers in lonely darkness. To deal with this case leniently would be a positively evil thing.” Mills died seven years later of leukaemia that the coroner said was not related to his injuries. In 1963 the usual sentence for a robbery was about 12 years and the death penalty for murder was still two years from abolition. As Reynolds observed later, the message sent by the sentences was that if you were now going to get a 30-year term for robbery you might as well carry a gun. And in 1966, three robbers shot dead three unarmed policemen in Shepherd’s Bush, west London, rather than be arrested. One of them, Harry Roberts, remains in jail to this day. From the 1970s onwards, it became standard practice for robbers to carry firearms. Another reason why the story (and myths) around the train robbery took off was the period. It was 1963, the year of the Profumo scandal and the Beatles’ first LP. The BBC’s That Was the Week That Was poked fun at an establishment already reeling from the Profumo disclosures. Private Eyehad just arrived on the scene. It was the end of the age of deference, when judges and politicians became figures of fun. There are echoes of that mood and lack of respect today, because of the behaviour of politicians, the City, the Catholic Church. One of the first of more than 20 books about the robbery, The Robbers’ Tale, by Peta Fordham, published in 1965, likened the gang to “Henry V’s men at Agincourt . . . what feats they did that day”. The robbery seemed audacious, in tune with the times. That some of the perpetrators escaped or were never captured kept the story alive and turned it into a long-running soap opera. There was Ronnie Biggs, who escaped over the wall of Wandsworth Prison in 1965, fleeing to Brazil and avoiding extradition from there by fathering a child by an exotic dancer. He was later kidnapped by a bunch of exarmy chancers and finally came home to tussle with the then justice secretary, Jack Straw, over whether he should ever be allowed out of jail. There was Charlie Wilson, who was tracked down to Canada and then, having served a sentence, was shot dead as he prepared a barbecue on the Costa del Crime. There was Buster Edwards, who after his early release in 1975 sold flowers outside Waterloo Station and became the subject of a film starring Phil Collins and Julie Walters. Edwards hanged himself in 1994 (he’d said how “dreary” he found law-abiding life). The 1960s also saw the rise and fall of the Krays, lionised by some in the media and treated gently by parts of the establishment, notably Lord Boothby and Tom Driberg. The Krays were looked down on by the robbers, who saw them as bullies who didn’t earn their own money but took it off weaker people. They mocked them as “Gert and Daisy”. So what of our fascination with criminals, real or fictional, artful dodgers or diamond geezers, Raffleses or Corleones? The words we still use for lawbreakers offer a clue. Outlaws, bandits, desperadoes – all have a romantic feel in a way the nicknames for the police – plods, peelers, busies, the filth – do not. Perhaps some lawbreakers – particularly those who do not cause physical harm – fascinate the law-abiding because they represent forbidden fruit, disobedience, a frustrated transgressor within. “Know ye not me?” asks Satan in Paradise Lost. “Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.” Some of the high-profile robberies, too, won grudging admiration because of what was stolen and the belief that if you have salted something away in a safety deposit vault or acquired lots of diamonds you must be up to no good. Reynolds did not portray himself as a victim, from a deprived background, driven to crime. He knew he could have made an honest living. He had fancied a career in journalism and, as a teenager, he had walked into Northcliffe House, the first newspaper office he found on Fleet Street, saying he wanted to be a reporter. He worked for a while as a messenger at the Daily Mail; who can tell whether the Almighty, on the dreadful day of judgement, might not conclude that the Mail had caused greater pain and damage to society than the train robbers? And he was smart enough to have turned his hand to any number of jobs, had he not sought the adrenalin rush of criminality. A week or so before Reynolds died, eight masked and armed men stole diamonds worth an estimated £30m that were being loaded on to a Swiss-bound plane at Brussels Airport. Once again, some of the coverage was breathless. All this may merely serve to remind us of the words of another ex-con of a different era who pondered on our fascination with badness. “Wherever God erects a house of prayer,” wrote Daniel Defoe, “The Devil always builds a chapel there;/And ’twill be found, upon examination,/The latter has the largest congregation.” http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/culture/2013/04/great-train-robbery-fun-loving-criminals

Great Train Robbery: Ronnie Biggs speaks out on 50th anniversary saying he was 'proud' of the heist Check out all the latest News, Sport & Celeb gossip at Mirror.co.uk http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ronnie-biggs-speaks-out-50th-2100260#ixzz2ac9nXfcR Follow us: @DailyMirror on Twitter | DailyMirror on Facebook

All pensioners look back with pride on certain aspect of their lives – personal achievements, marriage, children, grandkids… But for Ronnie Biggs one of his proudest moments is being part of a ­ruthless gang that carried out one of the biggest heists in British criminal history – the Great Train Robbery. As the 50th anniversary of the 1963 raid that shocked the nation approaches, the 83-year-old insisted he was delighted to have been involved in the crime. Ailing Biggs, who cannot speak and communicates through a spelling board, said: “If you want to ask me if I have any regrets about being one of the train robbers, my answer is, ‘no’.” I will go further: I am proud to have been one of them. I am equally happy to be described as the ‘teaboy’ or ‘The Brain’. “I was there that August night and that is what counts. “I am one of the few witnesses, living or dead, to what was the crime of the century.” The Glasgow-London Royal mail train, which was attacked in the night by 15 armed robbers The Glasgow-London Royal mail train attacked by Ronnie and his gang Getty Biggs will celebrate his 84th birthday on August 8, the same day as the anniversary of the robbery that netted the gang £2.6million. And while age has clearly not softened his feelings towards the crime – during which driver Jack Mills was coshed and never fully recovered – the former villain admits harbouring some regrets about the night that changed the lives of both the robbers and its victims. He said: “It is regrettable the train driver was injured. And he was not the only victim. The people who paid the heaviest price for the Great Train Robbery are the families. “The families of everyone involved in the Great Train Robbery – and from both sides of the track. “All have paid a price for our collective involvement in the robbery. A very heavy price, in the case of my family. For that, I do have my regrets.” The heist took place after the robbers stopped the London-bound overnight mail train from Glasgow near Cheddington, Bucks, at 3am. Police eventually rounded up most of the gang and Biggs was jailed. Part of the £2.5 million stolen by the Great Train Robbers Part of the £2.6 million loot PA But he escaped in 1965 and spent 36 years on the run abroad before finally being arrested and locked up in 2001 after he returned from Rio de Janeiro where he had been living. Four years ago Biggs was released from prison on compassionate grounds due to ill health. He is being cared for in a North London nursing home. A new book which promises to tell the complete story of the heist has been published to mark the anniversary. Biggs contributed to the book, called The Great Train Robbery – 50th ­Anniversary – 1963-2013, as did his accomplice Bruce Reynolds, who died in February. It was written by Reynolds’ son Nick, and Biggs’ autobiographer Chris Pickard. Artist and musician Nick said they embarked on the project with the aim of “setting the record straight” and putting right any inaccuracies in a tale that has become folklore. The 51-year-old added: “I said to my dad, would you be interested if we were to do a sort of ‘round-up’ 50 years on and so he said yes. Unfortunately he died before we finished it, but he contributed a fair bit, as did Ron. “One of my dad’s biggest regrets was the driver should never have been hit. The plan was to get the driver to drive the train. It was only if he refused that they had Ronnie Biggs’ standby driver. “There was no intention to hit him, it was completely unnec­essary. From that point of view my dad had regrets.” But Nick revealed that like Biggs, his father had no other regrets about taking part in the heist. He added: “My dad said if he was asked would he have done it today knowing everything if he was the same age, yes he would have done. “He was a bit of a crazy adventurer if you like.” Mr Pickard, 56, who became friends with Biggs after they met in Rio, told how nobody believed the robber would live to see the 50th anniversary as he was so sick when he was released. He said: “He was an extremely ill man. At least twice the hospital had called Michael his son and said, ‘You had better come, it’s a matter of hours’. “But once he was released and could be treated in hospital, the doctors managed to stem the infection. “Ron is a great fighter. I think when he thought he wasn’t going to be released he thought, ‘I’ve had enough of this’. But once he knew he was going to be released he had something to fight for. “Slowly and slowly he pulled himself round. But he is still a very, very ill man. He could pop off at any time. “I would never have put money on him seeing the 50th anniversary. We never thought he’d survive a month in prison here, let alone what he has done.” http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ronnie-biggs-speaks-out-50th-2100260

The Great Train Robbery – 8th August 1963

It took fifteen men to pull off the Great Train Robbery of 1963, along with a few accomplices. The cast of criminals included Bruce Reynolds, Douglas Gordon “Goody,”Ronald “Buster” Edwards, Charlie Wilson, Ronnie Biggs, Roy James, Roger Cordrey, Tom Wisbey, Jim Hussey, Bob Welch, Brian Field, Leonard Field, Jimmy White, William Boal and John Daly. Their accomplices were known as Mr. One, Mr. Two and Mr. Three; “Peter,” brought to drive the train; and John Wheater, who secured the safe house. Although no one is certain who first had the idea to rob the mail train, Bruce Reynolds, a burglar and antique dealer in London, is known as the mastermind. After ending a stint in prison in 1962, Reynolds began to assemble his crew. He started with his own men, the South West gang, and chose gang member Gordon “Goody,” a London hairdresser and part-time thief, to be his No. 2. As the details were worked out, it became clear that the South West gang wouldn’t be big enough to pull off such a large-scale robbery. But as both Reynolds and Goody were good friends with former boxer-turned-club owner “Buster” Edwards, leader of the South East gang, it was decided the two gangs would work together. Through his contacts, Reynolds obtained the train’s details: its schedule, the amount of cash it would be carrying and the car it would be in, and the number of workers onboard. After learning the payload would be greater after a bank holiday — the next being on Aug. 5, 1963 — Reynolds tapped into an insider, known later in the media as the “Ulsterman,” to find out which day the train would be carrying cash to London. The date was set. Reynolds had his men, information about the train and a date, but he needed to figure out one last detail: how to stop the train. It was Roger Cordrey, an associate of “Buster” Edwards, who came up with that answer. Just as we encounter stoplights when we drive cars, trains also rely on signals to know when to proceed and when to stop — green means go, amber means slow down and red means stop. Cordrey proposed he “fix” the signals. Using black paper and leather gloves, he would cover the green signals at their chosen spot. And using batteries and wire, he would turn on a red signal. It was time. The men lay low at Leatherslade Farm, their safe house, drinking beer and playing Monopoly while they waited for the date the train was scheduled to pass by. The Great Train Robbery Investigation Just two days after the robbery, the Flying Squad was created from the best detectives of Scotland Yard and was charged with finding the criminals behind the Great Train Robbery. Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Butler, known around Scotland Yard for his professionalism and thoroughness, was assigned to be the squad’s chief. Among the team of detectives was Jack Slipper, a tall man with a pencil moustache who would become a household name for his work on the case and his cat-and-mouse chases with Ronnie Biggs. The Flying Squad’s first break in the case came eight days after its investigation began. A suspicious vehicle was reported at an old farmhouse about 30 miles (48.28 km) from the scene of the crime. The old farmhouse — Leatherslade Farm — was the same one that the men used as their safe house. Food, sleeping bags and bedding were found in the house, along with bank note wrappers and post office sacks. Fingerprints were found on a bottle of ketchup and on the Monopoly game the men had played with some of the £1, £5 and £10 notes they had stolen. Within a day of the discovery of the fingerprints, Roger Cordrey was arrested. In a week, Charlie Wilson was arrested in London and police were on to Bruce Reynolds, Jimmy White, Roy James and Buster Edwards. Biggs’ fingerprint was found on a bottle of ketchup in the safe house and he was arrested on Sept. 4, 1963. Ronnie Biggs, Charlie Wilson, Tommy Wisbey, Jim Hussey and Bob Welch were all sent to Bedford prison to await trial. While in prison, they learned that Goody had been questioned but let go for insufficient evidence. However, several weeks later, he, too, was arrested, charged and sent to Bedford. Two months after arriving at Bedford, Biggs was planning his escape but would have to wait — the group was transferred to Aylesbury prison and security was tight. During their time at Aylesbury, they learned evidence against them was strong and Biggs again began to plot escape. But he was foiled when one of his friends got cold feet. By December of that year, John Wheater, Brian Fields, John Daly and Roy James were arrested — James in a spectacular chase across neighborhood rooftops before his capture. Bruce Reynolds evaded arrest until 1969. Twelve of the 15 robbers were eventually caught and brought to trial. But how were they sentenced, and did any escape? Find out in the next section. The Great Train Robbery Trial and Aftermath Because the gang had planned to escape the Aylesbury prison, they were watched closely until their trial began. On Jan. 20, 1964, they appeared before Justice Edmund Davies at Buckinghamshire Assizes. Ronnie Biggs, Tommy Wisbey, Charlie Wilson, Roy James, Bob Welch, Gordon Goody, Leonard Field, Brian Field, William Boal, and John Wheater all plead not guilty. Roger Cordrey was the only man to plead guilty and gave back his share of the money — £80,000. Two weeks into the trial, evidence surfaced that showed Biggs had a criminal record. Fearing this could sway the jury, the judge halted the trial and ordered Biggs to stand trial at a later date. The trial went on for months and included testimony from bank officials and the train driver, Jack Mills, who took the stand and told the story of the robbery and the injury so severe he wasn’t able to continue working. John Daly, who was implicated because his fingerprints were found on the Monopoly game, was acquitted during the defense proceedings in March 1964. His lawyer petitioned that the fingerprints could have been on the game prior to it being at the farm. On March 25, 1964, the jury found all of the accused guilty of conspiracy to rob, and Tom Wisbey, Roy James, Charlie Wilson, Bob Welch, Jim Hussey and Gordon Goody were found guilty of robbery with violence. Sentencing wouldn’t be set down until Biggs’ retrial, however, which was scheduled for April 8, 1964. His retrial only took seven days, and the jury swiftly found him guilty. On April 16, 1964, sentences were handed out by Justice Davies, who was heavy-handed due to the violence against Jack Mills. The men received 30 years apiece with few exceptions. John Wheater, who arranged the safe house, received three years; Roger Cordrey received 20 years; William Boal received 24 and Brian and Leonard Field each received 25. After appeals, Cordrey and Boal’s sentences were reduced to 14 years each, and Brian and Leonard Field each had their sentences reduced to five years. Buster Edwards, Bruce Reynolds and Jimmy White were all found and jailed by 1969. Edwards fled to Mexico but turned himself in three years after the crime. After five years on the run, the mastermind Reynolds was captured and sentenced to 10 years in prison. The robbers were placed in prisons across the country, and in August 1964, Charlie Wilson, incarcerated in Winson Green maximum-security prison, was the first of the gang to escape. He was recaptured in 1968. Biggs was sent to Wandsworth prison — Britain’s version of Alcatraz. Only 15 months after arriving at Wandsworth, Biggs escaped in a furniture van and became Britain’s most notorious fugitive. He underwent plastic surgery to disguise his face and fled to Australia and eventually Brazil, where, in 1970, he settled in as “Michael Haynes.” Biggs evaded return to the U.K. for more than three decades amidst attempts to extradite him: Once in 1974 when Slipper showed up at his door, and again in 1981 with a kidnapping attempt by British ex-military. In 2001, an ailing Biggs, the man who had almost gotten away with it, voluntarily returned to the U.K. to serve the remaining 28 years of his sentence in a Norwich jail for elderly inmates. He outlives his rival, Jack Slipper, who passed away in 2005. The renowned Monopoly game is on display at the Thames Valley Police Museum. 8 August 1963 the travelling post office was Robbed…… This was also Ronnie Biggs Birthday 8 August 2011…………….. Ronnie Biggs was 82 The Great Train Robbery (The Times) http://glasgoweye.com/2010/08/10/the-great-train-robbery-8th-august-1963/

BBC to dramatise the Great Train Robbery from perspectives of coppers and criminals

A week after the mastermind behind the Great Train Robbery Bruce Reynolds died aged 81 the BBC has announced it is to dramatise the notorious heist. Hollywood star Luke Evans will play Reynolds in two 90-minute films timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the raid later this year. It follows last year's ITV1 drama Mrs Biggs in which Sheridan Smith played Charmian, the wife of another infamous train robber Ronnie. In the BBC drama Jack Gordon will play Ronnie Biggs. The two films, A Robber's Tale and A Copper's Tale, will focus on the crime from the joint perspectives of the fugitive robbers and the detectives hunting them. The Great Train Robbery took place on a Royal Mail train on 8 August 1963 at Bridego Railway Bridge. The gang of 15 men was unofficially led by Reynolds, assisted by Gordon Goody, Charlie Wilson and Ronald "Buster" Edwards. They made off with £2.6 million, a huge sum of money in those days, thought to be equivalent to £41 million today. The first BBC1 drama shows an earlier robbery at Heathrow Airport in 1962 and the background to how the train heist was planned, rehearsed and executed, from the perspective of Reynolds. The second, A Copper's Tale, tells the story of Tommy Butler and the team of detectives who sought to bring the gang to justice. The writer and executive producer of A Robber's Tale, Chris Chibnall, said: "The Great Train Robbery has passed into modern folklore. How fantastic that such a magnificent bunch of talented young stars have come together for our first film, to tell how one gang planned - and almost got away with - the British crime of the century." Ben Stephenson, Controller, BBC Drama, said: "In the first of two films, Chris Chibnall's unique drama about morality sees the infamous crime from the view of Bruce Reynolds and his gang - this is a stellar cast who will bring this notorious story to life in a surprising and revelatory way." http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/bbc-to-dramatise-the-great-train-robbery-from-perspectives-of-coppers-and-criminals-8522213.html