Bullion Robbery

 It was the biggest bullion robbery of all time. Twenty-six million pounds in gold, stolen from a warehouse at Heathrow.

There was still an hour to go before daybreak when the early shift of security guards at the Brinks-Mat company warehouse at Hounslow, west London, turned up for work on the morning of Saturday 26 November 1983.

At exactly 6.30 a.m. security supervisor Mick Scouse turned his keys in the locks of the staff entrance and let in his four shivering and bleary-eyed colleagues. Ron Clarke, Richard Holliday, Robin Riseley and Peter Bentley had all volunteered for the unpopular Saturday shift. A fifth man on the roster, Tony Black, was late and Scouse made a mental note to speak to him about his timekeeping.

From the outside Unit 7 looked like just another ugly brick and steel goods shed, a soulless box, strictly functional like thousands of others. But inside it was a different world. Unit 7 was one of the most secure buildings in Britain, with an impenetrable steel compound containing three of the world’s toughest safes. To get to them it was necessary to pass through two sets of locked and alarmed doors and gates, each with a dual key/combination method to entry. The building was protected by at least eight alarm systems. And not a single employee knew both which keys and which combination of numbers deactivated any gate or alarm system. In effect, the safes were boxes inside a strongbox, which in turn was inside a strongbox.

Three tons of gold

As Scouse busied himself with the day’s paperwork. He noted that one of the first jobs was to get three tons of gold bullion to Gatwick by 8 a.m. in time to go on board a Cathay Pacific flight for Hong Kong. It was all routine. But there was nothing routine about what was about to happen in the next few minutes.

At 6.40 a.m. Black, the guard who was late, rang the front bell and Scouse went to let him in. the 31-year-old ex-soldier looked like he had a bad night. “You look rough,” commented Bentley, as the latecomer mumbled something about going to the lavatory and left the room.

Seconds later, a man with a gun and yellow ski mask leapt through the doorway of the restroom where the guards were brewing tea. Riseley, Clarke, Bentley and Holliday froze with shock. The gunman, who looked slightly absurd with a trilby hat on top of his mask, snapped an order: “Get on the floor or you’re all fucking dead.” He was pointing a 9-mm Browning automatic pistol. All but Bentley dropped to the ground. The gunman stepped forward and clubbed the fourth man with his pistol, sending him sprawling.

Then another three or four robbers piled through the door. They worked fast, handcuffing the terrified Brinks-Mat men, binding their legs with tape and placing cloth bags over their heads. The robbers switched on a radio scanner, checking for police activity. There was none. The police were unaware of the crime not in progress.

Combinations revealed

Scouse, at 37 a senior employee and trusted ‘keyman’, was shocked to find the robbers knew he had the combination to the door to the vaults. In fear of his life, Scouse knew he had no choice. “45-75-55-85,” he told them. It was one half of a combination. In the restroom, more gang members were giving Riseley the same treatment. As his jeans were slashed and petrol poured over his groin, Riseley gave up his half of the combination: 50-90-30-55.

Scouse and Riseley were commanded to neutralise the alarm codes. They were now standing in front of a hefty door linking then van loading bay with the compound housing the vaults. Scouse punched a number into the electronic key pad to switch off the alarm on this door. Two massive bolts were slipped across to open the door. Then another alarm had to be dealt with. With a gun barrel digging into his neck, Scouse used a key to switch it off. Now they were at the door of the vault itself. Scouse keyed in his half of the combination. Riseley, almost collapsing with fear, fumbled at first, then got it right. The vast door slowly opened to reveal more defences: a steel cage protecting the inner sanctum.

Trembling, Scouse bit his lip as he tried to remember two more alarm codes and the right key to unlock another gate.

When he had clocked off the afternoon before, the vault had been less than half full. But shortly after he left a huge consignment of gold had been delivered. However, what the robbers saw in front of them was not a sea of glinting ingots. Instead there were pallets laden with what looked like grey shoeboxes. Scouse instantly recognised what they were, but the villains clearly didn’t know what they were looking at. Instead they were intent on the three large safes lying at the rear. 

Now there was a problem. Riseley was going into shock. He shook and stuttered. The combinations had recently been changed. In his state of fright, he could not remember the sequence. The robbers thought he was acting. A gravel voice sneered: “Looks like we’ve got a fucking hero.” Someone struck a match and wafted it dangerously close to his petrol-soaked clothes. Now the gang were growing angry and edgy. Riseley was told to remember the numbers – or die. But Riseley, in tears, could not remember the vital numbers. One gang member said he was staying another 10 minutes, then going, booty or no booty.

Guards and robbers were now close to hysteria. One bandit, calmer than his colleagues, asked Scouse what was in the boxes. When he replied, the gangster ripped open a box to see if it was true. Gold ingots, each roughly the size of a cigarette pack, tumbled out.

Now the robbers were bubbling with excitement. Black was dragged down to the vault at knifepoint and commanded to open the loading bay door to the outside. He obeyed, and a van drove in. The doors shut behind it. The captive guards heard the sound of frantic activity and a gang member shouting: “We need another van.”

A second vehicle was brought into the loading bay and the robbers quickly loaded all the bullion boxes – more than three tons of gold. They still hadn’t finished. With the gold safely stowed, perhaps Riseley had managed to remember the safe combination? It was no good. The man was now a wreck. One hood bundled him back into the room where his colleagues were still bound and blindfolded. “I’ll fucking teach you,” the gunman said, and punched Riseley with all his might in the stomach. He then bent down where to where Riseley lay doubled up with pain. “It’s a good job for you it’s Christmas,” he said.

The gang left. It was Christmas for them all right. Although it is doubtful that they knew it at the time, they had just got away with over £26 million: the worlds biggest robbery.

The Judas, the gang and first trial

Flying Squad Boss Commander Frank Cater took only minutes to make up his mind. There was no doubt that this was an inside job.

It was several hours before Cater’s officers got round to interviewing the shocked, and in some cases injured, guards who had been ambushed. One thing was soon apparent. The bandits had known exactly how the Brinks-Mat multi-layer defence system of keys, codes, locks and alarms had worked. The job had gone well; too well. The insider had to be one of the six there at the time. But which one?

Something else quickly dawning on the Squad men. There was absolutely no way the gang could have known what was going to be in the vaults that morning. Even the company had not known until a few hours before, and most of what was taken had come in after Mick Scouse and his team had clocked off on Friday and before they had reported for duty the next day. The robbers had come determined to get into the safes which they thought were stuffed with cash- the only objective they had been denied. They had taken all the gold as their second choice. Cater, incredulous, told a senior colleague: “This is unbelievable. They came to get a million and got 26 million – by accident.”

Tony Black fiddled nervously with his thick black moustache as detectives questioned him about what had happened. Black had been last to arrive for work – late. And he had been out of sight of the others when the bandits burst in.

Then Cater got his first major break. A junior officer excitedly pressed a price of paper into his boss’ hand. Cater read the note and now he was sure. Black had a brother-in-law called Brian Robinson – and every Scotland Yard man worth his salt knew Robinson – otherwise known as ‘The Colonel’ – was “one of the best blaggers in the business.” Cater’s view that Black was the mole was reinforced when the Yard team made their own video of the events according to the guards’ own statements: it was easy to see that Black had lied in his account of what had happened to him.

On Sunday 4 December at 8 a.m., without warning, eight days after the sensational raid, Cater had all the guards brought into Hounslow police station for further questioning. Five were to be treated quietly and with respect. The sixth, Black, was to be fully interrogated. Three officers took him through his story again and again. At 4.52 p.m. Detective Inspector Tony Brightwell told him: “It is obvious you are lying and have a lot to hide. I am arresting you for armed robbery.” Black steadfastly denied his involvement. But his confidence was breaking. Two hours later, another interview session concluded with Brightwell casually dropping a bombshell on Black. “By the way,” he asked the pale and sweating guard, “what does your brother-in-law Brian think about this robbery?”

The ‘mole’ confesses

The detectives left Black in a cell overnight to think things over. On Monday the frilling started again. After pointing out again the contradictions in Black’s story, Sergeant Alan Branch told him: “It is plain to see you are trying to cover something or somebody up.” Black asked for a cup of tea. When it arrived he took a sip and told the detectives: “OK. Where do I start?”

For more than a year Black had been helping his brother-in-law Brian Robinson in his ‘research’ projects. Robinson lived in Bermondsey, south London, an area, according to Scotland Yard intelligence files, more densely populated by professional villains than in any other part of London. One of his closest robber colleagues was Micky McAvoy, who was already on bail. He and another man had been picked up earlier in the year for the possession of £250,000 of cocaine.

The ‘research’ undertaken by Black had involved secretly photographing the inside of Brinks-Mat security wagons and the vaults of the Hounslow warehouse while Robinson and McAvoy mulled over the possibilities of robbery. Robinson had done much of his own homework, spending long hours parked near the Brinks-Mat base, timing the movements of vans and guards. Eventually Black had supplied ‘The Colonel’ and McAvoy with all the information they needed about security systems and duplicate keys to get them in through the safe door. For weeks Robinson, McAvoy and another giant of a man known only as Tony had taken Black over every tiny detail of procedure inside the warehouse time and time again.

Detectives took eight hours to write down Black’s confession. At the end Detective Sergeant Nick Benwell slid three pictures from Yard files across the table to Black. They showed Robinson, McAvoy, and ‘Tony’. “That’s them,” said Black, and then slumped exhausted in his chair.

Eleven days after the robbery, at 6.30 in the morning, teams of armed detectives smashed open the front doors of three south London homes. McAvoy, Robinson and Tony White were arrested without a struggle. All three were shaken to hear that Black had talked. After 36 hours of steady and skilled interrogation, they were all charged with the Brinks-Mat robbery. The detectives knew that at least six men, probably more, had carried out the raid, and many Flying Squad men believed they knew who the other robbers were. But there was no more evidence and thus no more arrests or charges.

On 17 February 1984 Black appeared at the Old Bailey. Commander Cater told the judge of the former guard’s role in the robbery and how he was now prepared to give evidence against the others. He was sentenced to six years. McAvoy, Robinson and White went on trial at the Old Bailey on Monday 25 October 1984. All pleaded not guilty.

Black, living in solitary confinement in jail in a special prison wing designed for ‘supergrasses’, spent two-and-a-half days in the witness box facing the hard stares of his former friends. On Thursday 29 November the jury retired. But it was not until Sunday 2 December, after four days, that they returned to give their verdicts. White was acquitted and was immediately released after a year in custody. But McAvoy, aged 33, and Robinson, 41, were found guilty. Both were sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The gold trail

The campaign to catch the robbers started reasonably well, but there was a major disappointment: there was no sign of any gold.

Commander Cater was sure of several things. Getting away with literally a truckload of gold was as big a surprise to the villains as anyone else. They would not have made plans in advance to sell it, as with most other big-time crimes.

He was sure that the robbers needed to turn the gold into cash. And he was certain that finding other crooks willing – and capable – of disposing of such a huge chunk of bullion would create problems. And problems would create mistakes. Every detective in Scotland Yard was ordered to talk to his informants. Someone must know something.

The first problem the gang had was to disguise the identity of their take. Each bar had a serial number and assay mark. The best and only practical way to get rid of those identifying marks was to melt it all down. But that would need very special equipment.

First mistake

It was only 17 days after the robbery that Cater’s predicted his first mistake happened. A man walked into a Hatton Garden company and asked to buy a gold smelter. He wanted to pay cash and take it straight away. When the proprietor explained that such equipment was not available ‘off the shelf’ and would have to be ordered, the customer grew impatient and said he would go direct to the manufacturer.

A few days later two Scotland Yard undercover men were watching the premises of the Alcosa Works in Shropshire when a man in a white van arrived to collect a gold smelter. They followed as he drove to the town of Evesham and met another man with a gold Rolls-Royce. The men loaded the smelter into the boot of the Rolls and the detectives tailed it as it drove down the motorway to Kent. The bulky smelter was sticking out of the boot, which had to be lashed shut with string.

The mans name was Michael Lawson, a wealthy businessman. When Flying Squad officers paid him a visit the next day they were too late: the smelter had gone. Lawson told the police he had bought the smelter for a man he didn’t know by name. He had been paid £1,500 to deliver it to a lay-by near the M25.

Dodgy deals

Police were also interested in a friend of Lawson; Kenneth Noye, a self-made millionaire with criminal friends, had been doing some very dodgy-looking gold deals in the Channel Islands.

Detective Chief Superintendent Brian Boyce, head of the Criminal Intelligence Branch, had supplied the police in Jersey with a list of nearly 20 people he suspected might be helping to launder Brinks-Mat gold. The Channel Islands with its strict business confidence laws and relaxed tax arrangements, had long been popular with the more cunning elements of Britain’s criminal fraternity. So when Noye naively walked into a bullion dealer’s office in St Helier with a suitcase containing £50,000 in £50 noted and tried to buy some gold bars, Boyce was quickly informed.

Noye obeyed the bullion dealer’s instructions to open an account with them, deposited nearly £100,000, and ordered 11 one kilo bars. He was trying to set up a potential defence if he was ever caught with any Brinks-Mat gold. Bit if Noye thought he was being smart; he had only fooled himself. Staff at the gold company noted how insistent Noye was that he would collect the gold in person. And how he seemed unduly worried about whether his receipt would show the serial numbers of the bars. Add to this his south London accent, his flashy Italian suit and diamond-encrusted Rolex watch, and he was almost the TV image of the dodgy businessman-turned-villain.

Yard surveillance

Eight days later, when he flew back to Jersey with a ticket bought in a false name, the Yard were watching. Noye collected the gold, put it in a plastic shopping bag and, struggling under the weight, walked to a nearby safe deposit company. There he rented a box to store the gold. Boyce had a hunch that it wasn’t the gold that was so valuable to Noye; it was the receipt showing he had legitimately purchased 11 bars.

Within three weeks Boyce believed he understood how the gold trial worked. A cunning surveillance operation had been set up on Noye’s £750,000 home, Hollywood Cottage, at West Kingsdown near Brands Hatch in Kent. Boyce had used the best undercover operators on the Yard’s books, some trained by the SAS, to keep watch on the house and trail Noye and his friends. The detectives had set up a ‘hide’ of leaves and branches in a thick hedge opposite Hollywood Cottage, which stood in several areas of its own woodland. A video camera, designed to record all the comings and goings at the house, was hidden in a bird nest box and fixed on a tree.

Secret meetings

Noye was seen having secret meetings with a noted burglar named Brian Reader. A car belonging to Michael Lawson, the man who bought the gold smelter, was seen several times. Reader was secretly followed to other meetings. Heavy-looking briefcases were seen being transported towards Bristol, where they were handed on to the boss of a jewellery company who bought and smelted scrap gold.

After three weeks of round-the-clock surveillance, Boyce was sure that some or even all the stolen gold was hidden at Hollywood Cottage. He found out that one Saturday in January 1985 Noye and Reader were to have a meeting at Noye’s home. Boyce was sure some of the gold was going to be brought out from its hiding place and handed over. But before he could get a search warrant, he needed more evidence.

A small group of his best surveillance men were secretly to enter the grounds of Hollywood cottage under darkness to get the closest possible look at what Noye was up to.

Within 24 hours the police had a small portion of the stolen gold – but one of the surveillance officers was dead, stabbed by Kenneth Noye. It had been snowing and the temperature had already dropped below zero when Detective Constables John Fordham and Neil Murphy were ordered into the grounds of Hollywood Cottage. It was about 6.15 p.m., and Reader had just driven into Noye’s long drive. The undercover officers were dressed both to keep out the numbing cold and to be fully camouflaged. Fordham wore a diver’s wetsuit and thermal underwear beneath his army surplus jungle fatigues. He wore two layers of dark woollen Balaclava masks, an army forage cap and a webbing belt with a police radio on it.

Police detected

Quietly they dropped over the rear fence and started to creep towards the distant lights of their target’s house. Within minutes they had a serious problem. Unbeknown to the police pair, Noye’s three Rottweiler guard dogs were loose in the grounds. The dogs quickly approached, sniffing the air and barking loudly.

One minute later, at 6.27 p.m., Fordham radioed: “Somebody out, halfway down the drive, calling dogs.”

What happened next will never be exactly known. Noye readily admitted that when he found Fordham at attacked him with a knife, stabbing him 10 times. He later told police that he was terrified when he saw Fordham in his garden in full military battle dress. He said he thought he was about to be attacked and stuck out blindly with a knife he was carrying.

Cleared of murder

After Fordham’s last radio message there followed several minutes of confusion while his colleagues on stake-out in the area decided what to do. Eventually more plain-clothed men raced up the drive of Hollywood Cottage and found Fordham dying, with Noye standing over him. Noye, and Reader, who had fled the scene was later picked up nearby, where charged with murder. But in a sensational trial at the Old Bailey the following November, both men were cleared. Noye wasn’t walking away scot-free, however. For within hours of Fordham’s terrible death, detectives searching the area found what Boyce had suspected. In a shallow gully beside a garage wall and under some old paint tins and carpet, police found a cloth. Wrapped inside were 11 gold bars weighing 13 kilos and valued at about £100,000. Traces of gold from a smelting process were also found, and operating instructions for the smelter were found in a shed. There was also traces of gold residue in the boot of Reader’s car. The police tore Hollywood Cottage apart, uncovering secret compartments housing valuable stolen china and jewellery.

‘Smuggling’ defence

It was distinctly confident Noye who strode up the steps from the cells at the Old Bailey in 1986 to face trial for handling Brinks-Mat gold. But it was this very arrogance that was to bring him down. His defence was not that the gold at his house had come from Jersey; in fact, there were two kilos more at the cottage then he had bought in the Channel Islands. Instead he claimed he had made a fortune as a gold smuggler, cockily boasting to the court how he had evaded VAT and income tax. He claimed that the gold found at Hollywood Cottage was part of the smuggling operation, and insisted that he had never touched Brinks-Mat gold.

Two-and-a-half months after the trial began, the jury decided they had not been conned by the fast-talking Noye. They found him guilty.

If they had any doubt about their verdict, such worries were swept away when Noye screamed at them: “I hope you all die of cancer.”

He was sent down for a total of 14 years. His accomplice Reader got nine years, and Garth Chappell, a Bristol jeweller who helped ‘launder’ scores of kilos of Brinks-Mat gold through his business, got 10 years. Lawson and two other men were acquitted.

Smelting the gold

With Kenneth Noye facing trial for the murder of DC Fordham, Scotland Yard moved in on other members of the “gold chain”.

Shortly before Noye’s arrest, police had decided that the stolen gold was being shipped in parcels to a Bristol-based firm called Scadlynn to be smelted, disguised and sold for cash, the money being returned up the line to Noye. Garth Chappell, the boss of Scadlynn, was arrested at his home in the village of Litton.

But the biggest sensation followed a raid on the home near Bath of wealthy jeweller John Palmer. A smelter was found concealed in a ramshackle building on his land. It had been used in the previous few hours to smelt gold from the Brinks-Mat robbery and several ingots were found on the premises. But there was no sign of Palmer. He had left the previous day for a holiday in Tenerife with his family. It was supposed to be a three-week trip, but Palmer did not come back for a year.

While he was away, detectives discovered more details of how the operation had been run. Noye had passed the gold to Reader, who had passed it to two unsuspecting middlemen to take to Chappell at Scadlynn. There the gold was melted down and mixed with copper and silver in an attempt to change its purity and disguise its origins.

During later 1984 Chappell was producing 12 ingots of gold a week, an incredible amount for such a modest company. To try to cover his operation he had taken out adverts in West Country newspapers offering to buy in scrap gold in any amount at unbeatable prices.

Massive racket

When police checked bank accounts and company ledgers they found the scale of the racket was phenomenal. Between September 1984 and January 1985 Chappell had deposited more than £10 million in his local bank account. But money was going out as well – in huge chunks. An average of £20,000 a day in cash was being withdrawn. Detectives found that on one occasion £55,000 had been taken away in a supermarket plastic bag, and £150,000 in a cardboard box five days later.

The withdrawals continued to escalate. On 4 December 1984 a Scadlynn representative wanted £200,000 and had brought a paper sack in which to carry it away. Four days later he was back, wanting £270,000. Then there were three pay-outs of £200,000, followed by a whopping collection of £300,000. The cash withdrawals grew so heavy that Barclays branches in the Bristol area actually ran out of £50 notes.

Scadlynn’s security was so lax that the firm was soon a victim of robbery itself: one employee was robbed while transporting £250,000 of newly smelted gold. Chappell was so fearful of the local police asking awkward questions that he reported the loss as only £97,000.

Scadlynn hired security guards. They later told the police that they had collected a consignment of gold that was still warm from the smelting process. On one occasion they transported £500,000 in readies from the bank to Chappell. Chappell went down with Noye, but Palmer was still out of the country. The Press dubbed John Palmer ‘Goldfinger’. He was the man Scotland Yard most wanted to talk to, but he was sitting tight in the Canary Islands.

Palmer lived like a millionaire, moving from his hotel to a £250,000 hacienda. His beautiful wife Marnie came back to Britain so that their two children could carry on with their schooling. She bought a brand new Porsche.

Return to Britain

He had problems, though. Under new laws brought in by the Spanish in an attempt to stop the country being a haven for runaway British crooks, Palmer could only stay until his passport ran out. That was December 1985.

Then, when the Spanish started to press Palmer, the British Consul on Tenerife refused to help. If Palmer wanted to renew his passport it would mean a return to the UK – and immediate arrest.

Palmer hung on until June 1986, when he was arrested, flown to Madrid and told that Spain was kicking him out. He booked a flight to Brazil, but he was refused entry, and asked to be booked on the next flight to England. He was arrested at Heathrow on 2 July 1986, just as Noye went on trial with Chappell for handling stolen Brinks-Mat gold.

From the outset Palmer denied having anything to do with the laundering operation, saying he had split away from Chappell and Scadlynn long before the bullion robbery. The smelter was in his back yard because he had plans to return to the jewellery business.

Acquitted of conspiracy

A few months later another suspect in the gold chain, Christopher Weyman, gave himself up to the police. He too had vanished in the wake of Noye’s arrest. Palmer and Weyman went on trial accused of conspiracy to launder stolen gold along with Noye, Reader and Chappell. After a three-weeks trial, both men were acquitted.

The search goes on

The greatest unanswered questions of the whole Brinks-Mat saga remain: “What happened to the gold?”

There have been scores of theories even among detectives who have worked on the case. Some believe large portions of the bullion were quickly flown out of the UK using light aircraft in the first two or three days after the robbery. Another theory is that it was taken to America or even Australia, disguised as part of a container cargo. Most tantalising of all is the theory that the bulk of it, possibly more than two and a half tons, is still hidden in Britain.

Hidden store

Former detective Chief Inspector Tony Brightwell, who devoted more than seven years to the case, said: “It could be under the floorboards of a London house, in a lock-up garage or barn, or buried somewhere. I am convinced much of it is intact somewhere.”

In 1986 Micky McAvoy, believed to have had a share of the loot and coming to terms with the prospect of 25 years in jail, offered Scotland Yard a deal. He offered to return his portion of the bullion for a reduction in his sentence. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian worth visited the robber secretly in jail several times. But McAvoy insisted a third party would have to lead the cops to the gold.

Increased value

The deal collapsed. McAvoy’s chosen middle man, identity still unknown to the police, is believed to have been directed to the hiding place by McAvoy and then vanished with the gold himself.

Police believe that what remains of the gold, plus property and businesses bought and set up with cash from it, have now increased in value four times, to a staggering £100 million. Loss adjusters for the insurers have a list of over 50 people – some convicted, some acquitted, others untouched by the criminal law – that they plan to try to sue to get the value of the gold back. More than two dozen people, firms and financial organisations have already had assets frozen while the civil proceedings take place.

Search continues

Nearly 10 years after the robbery, a total of 21 people have so far faced trial on charges arising from the handling of the Brinks-Mat cash. Two of the robbers have been put behind bars, as have a number of people who helped to ‘launder’ the stolen gold. Only 14 people have been convicted, but the investigation continues.

Among those convicted was Kathy Meacock, Micky McAvoy’s common law wife. When police visited her at the £250,000 Kent farmhouse she had purchased, they found it guarded by two ferocious Rottweiler dogs, one called Brinks and the other Mat.

Robert Relton, once a successful solicitor who became wealthy by representing tough London villains, including Micky McAvoy, could not resist the lure of the stolen gold. He was jailed for 12 years at the Old Bailey in 1988 for helping to ‘launder’ the proceedings.

Also now in jail is Brian Perry, another south London wheeler-dealer with criminal connections. When police raided a mini-cab office in Blackheath owned by Perry they found a notice on the wall that read: “Remember the golden rule. He who has the gold makes the rules.”

Property developer Brian Perry had vanished in 1986 when police started taking an interest in his new-found wealth, deserting his £1-million Tudor mansion at Westerham in Kent, here the bath taps were solid gold and the curtains alone had cost £60,000. A year later, detectives watching an address in London’s Docklands saw him pull up in a BMW. When one officer tried to get the keys from the ignition, Perry accelerated away, dragging and injuring the policeman.

Perry got away, but not for long. He was captured in 1991 and in August 1992 was sentenced to nine years for handling Brinks-Mat money. Perry is one of the latest, but surely not the last, to go down.

End