Dan Snow's History Hit - The Great Train Robbery

Episode Date: August 6, 2023

Did the "heist of the century" really happen the way the robbers say it did? In the summer of 1963, a gang of masked robbers executed a daring plan to intercept a Royal Mail train carrying millions of pounds in cash. Operating in the quiet countryside of Buckinghamshire, England, the gang stopped the locomotive in its tracks, overpowering the train's crew and escaping with an astronomical haul. But the robbery itself was just the beginning - what came after - the most wanted men on the run, the jailbreak, the betrayals, fake identities, the surreptitious flights to Latin America and the manhunt across continents - the audacity of it all captured the public's imagination for decades.But with each grand retelling, we get further from the facts of what really happened. Joining Dan is the author of 'The Great Train Robbery: Crime of the Century', Nick Russell-Pavier who says that they may have pulled off the heist itself but their lack of planning for the aftermath was their downfall, and a common pattern in audacious heists like this and the Hatton Garden Diamond heist.Dan also hears from Colin Mackenzie who secured one of the scoops of the century when he tracked down train robber Ronnie Biggs in Brazil who was enjoying the beaches of Rio De Janeiro as a minor celebrity and fugitive.Produced by Mariana Des Forges, edited and sound designed by Dougal Patmore.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world-renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.PLEASE VOTE NOW! for Dan Snow's History Hit in the British Podcast Awards Listener's Choice category here. Every vote counts, thank you!If you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can email us at [e-mail], we'd love to hear from you!You can take part in our listener survey here.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. It's 2.45am, the early morning of the 8th of August, 1963. A Royal Mail train speeds down the West Coast mainline through the flat, open countryside

of Buckinghamshire, just north of London. It's heading to the capital from Glasgow. And at this time of day, it isn't just carrying letters and packages. It's carrying bags of money. carrying bags of money. In 1963, almost all transactions are still done in cash. So naturally, that cash had to be transported from one bank to another. And as on every cash-carrying mail train, it was held in the third carriage. As well as cash, there are postal workers sifting and sorting the mail. On this train,

there are 70 postal workers aboard. At 3am, the train approaches the Sears Crossing between Leighton Buzzard and Cheddington. Usually the train gets a straight run through, but this time the driver, Jack Mills, sees a red signal up ahead. Obeying the signal, he applies the brake and the train grinds to a standstill. A red signal is unusual, but not unheard of. There have been maintenance works on the line here, so a second crew member, a 26-year-old called David Whitby, climbs down from the cab to call the signalman from a telephone beside the tracks.

To his surprise, he finds the phone is out of service. The cables have been cut. He then sees someone with a bib and braces looking between the carriages. Hello? He shouts to him, believing he's a railway worker. The man beckons David over and he obliges.

But as he approaches the man, a group of others leap out of the darkness and bundle David down the embankment, telling him that they'll kill him if he makes any noise. Back on the train, the quiet is broken by the sound of footsteps. Driver Jack Mills thinks they belong to his colleague, David Whitby, but it's not him. It's a man in a balaclava who grapples with Jack at the door of the cab. During the altercation, another man comes up behind Jack and strikes him over the head with an iron bar. He crumples, semi-conscious. Robbers now have control of the train, and they now have to move it to Bredego Bridge, half a mile further along the track, where they plan to unload the vast amount of money being

transported on the train. They decouple the third carriage from those following it, which hold the regular mail and the 70 postal workers, and shunt the front of the train, including that all-important third carriage holding the money, to the bridge. On that high-value package third carriage, other gang members take on the remaining postal workers inside in the same way they deal with Jack the driver, a violent kosh over the head. They are made to lie face down on the floor in the corner of the carriage. By this point, Jack and his colleague David Whitby are also brought in, handcuffed together and pushed down by the others. Next, the gang form a human chain,

offloading all but eight of the 128 sacks of money from the carriage onto waiting trucks. They drive off with 2.6 million pounds, around 50 million in today's money. From boarding the train to getting away, the whole thing has lasted just 30 minutes. The story goes that when they arrived at their safe house, they played Monopoly with the spoils. It's been dubbed the heist of the century. But the story doesn't end there. In fact, the robbery itself was just the beginning.

What happened in the decades after? Most wanted men on the run, the jailbreak, the betrayals, the fake identities, the surreptitious flights to Latin America, and the manhunt across continents. That is the story that's gripped the public, movie makers, and authors for decades. But is the story we know about the Great Train Robbery and its perpetrators, the likes of Ronnie Biggs and Bruce Reynolds who catapulted to stardom, is it true? These guys created a media storm around themselves selling their version of the story, making the most of bidding wars between British tabloids.

And we know those who write the best stories get to tell the history. So to get the truth and unravel the real events of the Great Train Robbery, I'm joined by two journalists who know the story inside out. Nick Russell-Pavia is a long-time producer for the BBC who wrote The Great Train Robbery, Crime of the Century. Having undertaken years of painstaking research, he knows just about every tiny detail of the robbery and says they might have pulled off the heist itself, but their lack of planning for the aftermath was their downfall

and a common pattern in audacious heists like this. The farmhouse is an aberration in terms of the planning. It really was a very stupid thing to have done. They could have all been back in Marble Arch in 45 minutes from there. They could have all been home in bed within an hour. If they'd just stashed the money, carried on behaving normally, they'd never have been caught. I'm also joined by Colin McKenzie. His incredible career as a Fleet Street journalist has seen him grill Margaret Thatcher, Richard Nixon, and Elizabeth Taylor. He secured one of

the scoops of the century when he tracked down Ronnie Biggs in Brazil, who'd escaped from Wandsworth Prison in July 1965 while serving time for the Great Train Robbery, and was enjoying the beaches of Rio de Janeiro as a minor celebrity and fugitive on the run. He had to become a tourist trap, signed books, signed autographs. I don't think many of his colleagues on the robbery would have been able to learn fluent Portuguese and survive as he did on the run for nine or ten years. This is Dan Snow's history, the place that brings the most astonishing stories from history to life. So mind the closing doors. This is the Great Train Robbery.

this is The Great Train Robbery. Nick, give me a little insight. Who were these men? Where are they from? That's a big question, Dan. I mean, there's quite a few of them. There's Bruce Reynolds, Gordon Goody, Charlie Wilson, Buster Edwards. There's a whole bunch of people, 16 of them.

They were all a loose association of criminals in South London. When you say loose association, have they worked together before? Or was this kind of an Ocean's 11 elite team who spent all their time knocking off big targets? They'd love you to believe that, or they would have done in their day. They had some track record, both working together and as individuals. None of them were, you know, Ocean's Eleven standard criminals, really. They had done quite an impressive robbery, some of them together the previous year at London Airport, where they'd managed to snatch the entire cash wages of BOAC from Comet House. £62,000 in 1962 money. Wow. So they were, I believe we'd call them

hardened career criminals these days. Well, yeah. I mean, before the Great Train Robbery, just to put Bruce Reynolds, the mastermind, who he isn't, into perspective, the last charge that he went to court on before the Great Train Robbery was for poaching. If you read Bruce Reynolds' biography, and I spent a lot of time with Bruce, you will realise he is the mastermind of his own reputation. That's brilliant. And were they all London boys? Did they have military backers? Was there anything else perhaps that links them?

Firstly, yes, the core bunch which kicked this thing off were all sort of Battersea boys. They came from South London. They latterly enticed some other people to join them because they had some expertise with stopping trains and robbing trains. But the core group that began to sort of get this plan together, such as it was, they all came from South London, and they were both poor and had not really gone very far out into the world. You know, their horizons were fairly limited. And that is partly why the planning of the crime, for example, having a

country farmhouse as a hideout, was such a catastrophic mistake. Because being Battersea boys, they thought there aren't many people around in the country, so nobody will notice this. But what they didn't realise, I mean, I live in the country, I've only got to go down the road in a new pair of shoes or a new coat, and all the neighbours are talking about it. You can't get away with anything in the country. Fatal. Nosey neighbours in the countryside. People like me, twitching curtains everywhere.

What was Britain like at the time? Was it, this may be a stupid question, was it easier to commit these enormous crimes of ambition in that era? Was policing different? Was CCTV detection different back then? massive crime wave all the way through the 50s into the early 60s. It's quite common after the war. And it possibly came out of the back of the ordinary everyday people, respectable people like you and I, Dan, broke the law on a daily basis with the black market during the war. So, you know, lines were a bit blurred and children, particularly like these guys, they were all adolescents in the war. Their boundaries and their sense of right and wrong were possibly not quite as clear cut as they might have been had they been born in peacetime or had been brought up in peacetime.

So there was that aspect to it. There was a sense of lawlessness, people coming back and having fought and suffered, even people who hadn't fought in the war. Life was very precarious, you know, and I think, you know, we all went through this a little bit with the pandemic. You know, when everything that you know and I think you know we all went through this a little bit with the pandemic you know when everything that you know and everything's familiar it begins to sort of be uncertain it really is a quite a shattering experience and you do face the situation that you know tomorrow things that you know might not be the same and people you love may

no longer be there and it puts people into a different space, I think. And I think one sort of has to see where these people have come from. It's their trajectory, which gives you a handle on what was going on. And there was a lot of young men looking at crime as being an option. It was quite glamorised. They could go around in sharp suits and Bruce Reynolds had his suits made in Savile Row and thought he was, you know, had arrived and all the rest of it. I think part of that is the part of history, which social history, there was a sense of aspiration. People were looking at American films at a classless society. They were listening to American music. That wasn't the way Britain was. That wasn't the world of their parents, but they wanted their life to be different. As Tommy Wisby, one of the great train robbers said, I didn't want to be like my dad and end up

just as poor at the end of my life as I was at the beginning. And there was a sense looking at these American movies, the kind of can do optimistic culture of America. People had this aspiration, they wanted their lives to be more like that. How big was it? I mean, you mentioned that job they pulled off the year before. Was this a big one? No, this was a coming together of various ideas. And there was this sense of theatre about it. They all dressed up in pinstripe suits and waited in Comet House,

which was BAC headquarters, in order to intercept two security guards bringing in this steel box with all the cash wages in. So it was a little bit like a kind of 60s film, like a League of Gentlemen type of thing or something, where there was quite a sense of theatre and concept about things. It wasn't just a smash and grab raid where they were working with stockings over their heads. But what about the train robbery? I mean, how ambitious was this one? It was very ambitious. And one of the great failings of it is possibly it was a bit too ambitious for their experience and their outlook. And I mean, these guys had grown up in a very poor environment, money to them. And I think this is an important part of understanding

what was going on in their minds. They didn't have enough money to get to the end of the week most weeks and that was the way life was for them and everybody that they knew. What would it be like to have more money than you could possibly need to last you a lifetime even? That to them would be the solution to everything. That to them would be, as Bruce Reynoldsynolds says el dorado it would be the absolute kind of pinnacle of achievement what they didn't realize because they had no concept of is when you have more money than you need for today or more money than you need to last you to the end of the week what do you do with it even if it was legitimate money they had no concept of how you could handle large amounts of money and make it work for you.

And this was a massive failing in their understanding, as well as the fact that they didn't understand. I mean, if you and I were planning a crime, I think the first thing I'd be thinking about is how am I going to get away with that? They didn't have alibis, none of them. They basically had a very limited thing. All they could think about is getting hold of that money. When they got hold of that money, life would be sweet. And that's the beginning and end of their ambition. How did they choose this particular target? Well, in the previous year, this 1962 London airport robbery, Gordon Goody, who was one of the train robbers, was also involved in that. And he, in an ID parade, got picked out by one of the guards, even though at the time he

was wearing, he dyed his hair black and he was wearing a false moustache. He got picked out rather unluckily by one of the security guards and ended up in court. Anyway, the solicitors representing him, Wheater and company, the solicitor's clerk there was an interesting character. One of the things he did as well as being a solicitor's clerk was to broker information and sort of matchmake criminals, which was the sideline, which was more lucrative than being a solicitor's clerk. And he and Gordon got along really well. And when they were in court, Brian Field came up with this idea that he would exchange the hat that Gordon was allegedly had been wearing during the robbery for one that was several sizes bigger. So when in court Gordon was asked to put on the hat in order to be identified the hat sort of fell over his eyes and of course it then undermined the entire identity parade on

which he'd been obliged to take part and that was the beginning of him getting off on the charge thanks to Brian Fields. So this solicitor's clerk gave him a call one day, sometime later, and said he'd got some information that he might be interested in. And he arranged for Gordon to meet a guy in Finsbury Park who claimed to be connected with somebody who worked for British Railways, as it was then called, and worked on post office trains. railways as it was then called and worked on post office trains and then unfolded this astonishing thing to Gordon that there were these trains going up and down the country on a nightly basis carrying millions of pounds in cash so that was the basis on which he was presented with this extraordinary opportunity it is extraordinary that no criminals have thought of robbing these mail trains before. Was there lots of preparation involved? There was. I mean, it's a little bit more complicated than the usual smash and grab thing. You know, you've got a train travelling down a track in the middle of the night. How do

you stop it? Where do you stop it? Then they came across this idea that they would have to stop it. And then they've got these other carriages, which are sorting carriages, where they're sorting letters and parcels with 70 male train workers. So they're never going to be able to overpower all those guys. What they did discover fairly early on is the carriage that held all the money that's being transported, this money belonged to banks. It was always the third carriage on the train. So two things came together. Firstly, where they could stop the train wasn't quite where they could unload it. They needed to move it down to a bridge 1100 yards further down the track.

Secondly, if they uncoupled the third carriage from the rest of the train, they'd leave these 70 guys behind so they wouldn't have to deal with them. So those are the two, if you like, important pivotal moments where they kind of thought this plan could work. And they assemble, not the most crack of teams, but they do assemble people with the right skills. They bring a few people in. They do. There was a bunch of people who were christened by the press, the South Coast Raiders. They'd been robbing trains on the South Coast line, the London to Brighton line,

in a very modest way, but quite successfully. That was headed up by a guy called Roger Cordray. very modest way but quite successfully um that was headed up by a guy called roger cauldry and he had worked out through friends he was quite a gambling man had a quite good association of sort of friends who all went drinking together anyway one of his friends he drank with worked for the railways and explained how railway signaling worked and that was a key thing to okay how do we stop the train the answer answer is Roger Cordray knew how to do it. Well, I mean, you've got to take me into the night of the raid now. The gang were concerned that the train driver of the train might not actually move it down to the bridge for them. He might just say, no way, and they would be stuffed. So the gang had their own

train driver, who was this retired guy that Ronnie Briggs came up with. He was put in the driving seat, but he did not realise what had happened because he wasn't particularly familiar with that type of train. And so when he tried to move it forwards, of course, it didn't move because all the brakes were locked on. So basically, they just thought he was incompetent. He was quite an elderly guy, nicknamed Pop. And Pop and Ronnie Biggs were sent back to the Land Rover in disgrace because actually they couldn't move the train and it hadn't been everything at that stage was literally hanging on a thread when Pop can't move the train and he's sent back to the Land Rover with Ronnie Biggs their only option is to get drag poor Jack Mills back out of the engine put him in his seat

and say drive this train and he basically what jack mill said they said is drive the train or you'll get some more i you know you'll be hit again jack mills um despite being in a fairly bad way of course uh is very very experienced he you know he lives and breathes train has probably been doing all his life immediately realizes what the problem is he managed to partially restore some of the vacuum in the remaining part of the train, but not entirely. But that train is just so powerful. And with just two carriages behind it, he managed to drag the other two carriages with their locked on brakes down to the bridge, which is 1,100 yards. That's how we get down to the bridge. And then the money can

be unloaded. At that point, they then, all hell breaks loose. They then go for it in terms of breaking into the high value package coach, which is coach number three. And there's, you know, they're jumping in through the windows, smashing. There's some fairly flimsy bars on some of the windows, but it's easy enough to smash through the doors and the windows. They're wielding an axe. They've got pickaxe handles. They're hitting everybody inside, herding them down to the other end of the carriage and making them live face down on the floor. It's a pretty terrifying experience. And I read all the witness statements, which is the first thing that really alerted me to this idea. Is this story actually not quite what we've been told? Because when you read the witness statements of those guys, which has just taken a few hours

after this happened, and they're handwritten notes taken by the policeman this guy is just talking to him it's like a time machine you're in that moment with those people and what you've realized what has just happened to them has been absolutely terrifying so they hack their way into this high value carriage how much they get away with well the total value at this point they've got no idea how much do they get away with? Well, the total value at this point, they've got no idea how much they're going to steal. What they do is steal 120 bags of what they believe is cash and they don't open to see where they are, but this is what they've been told.

So they're just grabbing these big post office bags, which are all tied up. And there are 128 in the cupboard, which is not even locked inside the High Valley package cage, and literally pass them from man to man all the way down the embankment and chuck them on the lorry, which is down on the road below. And they get away. Do they get to their rural farmhouse? The whole thing about the rural farmhouse is that, you know, there's this expression honour amongst thieves. Well, there's no honour amongst thieves, certainly not these thieves,

because the reason why they had to have this hideout is none of them would let those bags out of their sight until they'd been opened and they'd counted it. They knew exactly how much they'd sold and they'd gotten their share. So basically, the farmhouse is an aberration in terms of the planning. It really was a very stupid thing to have done. They could have all been back in Marble Arch in 45 minutes from that. They could have all been home in bed within an hour.

If they'd just stashed the money, carried on behaving normally, they'd never have been caught. When they arrive at the farmhouse, obviously they're pretty chuffed. They've got away with it. And they upend these massive bags and all the packets of notes, which are all tied up with brown paper with Midland Bank or whoever it might be. Incidentally, the Midland Bank hadn't insured their money.

That's how confident they were that this was a very secure form of transport. Anyway, they spent the rest of the night counting these bags and bags and packets of banknotes. It came out at 2.6 million, which is somewhere approaching 50 million in today's money. So it was a big haul. Did they divide it up there and then? I mean, I don't know exactly. There's no record of exactly how the money was divided up, but I'm pretty sure that after counting it, they would have divided it up because that was the whole purpose that they were. And that's why they were in that farmhouse was so that they everybody had their stash and everybody knew what their cut was going to be so what's next presumably they want to get away they want to get into the golden

sunlit uplands of the rest of their lives absolutely right so anyway the following morning obviously the police have talked to david whitby and dav David Whitby he's 28 years old he's quite sharp you know even though he was pretty scared and he'd been held on the embankment one of the things he noticed was as they were unloading the train they were passing the bags down the embankment and putting them onto a lorry and they looked like it was an army lorry it was kind of khaki colored and he mentioned this when he was talking to the police. He said it looked like they had an army lorry of some sort. So that was quite interesting because, in fact, the charade of the robbery in order to get to the robbery site and to get back from it is they had indeed got two Land Rovers and a lorry, painted an army khaki, and they were

wearing army uniforms. The reason why they were doing that is there was a lot of army camps in the area with several army camps in the area but they were doing exercises and moving people around on a fairly regular basis so to see some army trucks in the middle of the night with army uniform guys in the residents if anybody saw them driving through a village of rural buckinghamshire, would think, oh, it's just those army guys again. So that was quite a clever plan. But at the same time, it was their undoing, because Dave Whitby noticed this army-type lorry

and said the police then announced on the radio the following day, because they were trying to get as much help as they could, to be on the lookout for army trucks. And had anybody seen any army trucks driving around, you know, appeal for witnesses and so on? So the criminals were, of course, listening to the radio to find out what was going on. And then they heard this earth-shattering announcement

that the police were looking for army trucks. Well, they were planning to drive back to London in those army trucks at some stage. Clearly, that was not going to happen now because if they drove out of the farmhouse, they'd immediately be arrested. So there they were in the middle of rural Buckinghamshire with their 2.6 million quid

and no means of transport, no way of getting home. What a nightmare. So what happens next? Well, the other thing that came over the radio, which added to their dilemma, was that not only was the transport compromised, and it's not clear exactly who came up with the idea. It may have been General MacArthur, who was headed up the investigation from Scotland Yard initially, that there was a possibility in their minds, the detectives we're talking about now, the police, they're thinking, these guys seem to have disappeared quite quickly. And one of the things that they said to the people on the train is, don't move for 30 minutes.

So thinking it through, General MacArthur said it's possible that they're lying low, they're still in the area, maybe they've got to hide out somewhere. Old barns and old sort of buildings around the place, there was a canal nearby. We need to just search this area fairly thoroughly just to make sure that they're not just hiding somewhere. Because funnily enough, there's no real report of any of these vehicles moving beyond the area. You know, there was a woman down the road who said she'd seen some army vehicles

on the night of the robbery, but that was the only sighting of anything. It was a brilliant bit of detective sort of uh deduction in a way that again was announced on the news that the police are going to be looking at farm buildings and searching disused buildings within a 30 mile radius of the robbery and uh leather slayed farmers 28 miles away so do they stay and wait to be captured or do they make a run for it? So basically, there they are on the farmhouse. They can't use the vehicles and sooner or later, within the next few days,

somebody's going to come up the track and knock on the door and say, what's going on here? They would be caught red-handed. So they're faced with the situation that their vehicles are compromised. So the first thing that comes to mind is, let's give Brian Field, the guy who gave us this information, the dodgy solicitor's mind is let's give Brian Field, the guy who gave us this information, the dodgy solicitor's clerk, let's give him a call. Maybe he can help us out a little bit. And so somebody goes to the local telephone box and calls Brian Field, who's

obviously not necessarily particularly experienced in how to get 16 dodgy criminals out of the middle of Buckinghamshire in the middle of a massive police hunt. But anyway, he starts scratching his head thinking, OK, so how can we solve this? Roy James, who was a very gifted amateur racing driver, was involved in this. He decided that he's going to go to London and try and get some sort of vehicle. He was then dispatched down to London. And a combination of Brian Fields and Roy James assembled a sort of motley collection of vehicles, including what was called a dormobile in the old days, a camper van, in other words, and various other things. Bruce Reynolds managed to get to London via a friend of his. And his answer to the transport problem was he went to the Chequered Flag Garage, which is on the chiswick roundabout and bought an austin

healy which is very very um desirable sports car at the time i mean how he felt that was really going to help the situation i'm not sure but he did return to the farm in the austin healy uh which um is probably not only conspicuous but completely not very useless in terms of actually being able to transport all these people and all these bags of money. It gives you an insight into his grasp of reality. I love it. I love it. So when did they get away with it or not? Did they get away? They did eventually manage to get away

in a rather haphazard fashion. Bruce and Ronnie Biggs and Pop the train driver, I think, squeezed into a couple of cars and headed off. Most of the guys managed to get to Brian Field's house, which was in Berkshire and they all sort of managed to get there and spent the night again making themselves quite conspicuous Brian Fields neighbours complained that the road was blocked with all these different cars and things and there was a lot of noise going on in the middle of the night but that only came to light later

but it wasn't exactly the most subtle form of escape they did anyway manage to get to brian field's house and from then they gradually sort of dissipated off in different directions so that they managed to get themselves away from the farm really by the skin of their teeth then how did the police round them all up in the end i mean just i know there's lots of them but just of generally were they spending conspicuous amounts of money? The seeds, if you like, of the great train robbery story is Buckinghamshire Police completely confounded by this extraordinary crime that all they'd been dealing with in the past is poachers or somebody stealing a tractor or something. So their first announcement to the press is what an extraordinary crime this is.

You know, that sort of caught the Jesse James mood. You know, Westerns were very popular at the time. So these were the headlines that were going out. How they managed to trace these things. Scotland Yard was called in. And of course, Scotland Yard and particularly the Flying Squad, who were the, if you like, the investigators of this crime. Ultimately, they realised they needed some real sort of serious detective work the head of Scotland Yard George Hathorall and Tommy Butler who was the chief detective of Scotland Yard started talking to their informants information received I think

is the expression the police often use and information received usually means somebody from the underworld grasping or telling them something for some money in a brown envelope in the pub. So basically, George Hathor and Tommy Butler, the head of Flying Squad, within 10 days of the robbery, through information received, i.e. grasses, had a list of names, most of whom had criminal records. And every single person who was subsequently arrested and went to prison is on those lists. So the detective work wasn't huge in terms of establishing who was responsible. Where it became more long-winded is obviously they had to actually catch these people who were kind of you know all over the place. So a very long sequence of events took place between then and the spring the following year, where gradually they managed to catch up

with various people. Sometimes in a rather farcical manner, they'd, you know, made themselves conspicuous. And sometimes people had been quite good at evading capture. Eventually, lots of them go on trial. Was it seen by the public? Was this a core celebre? Was it rather glamorous? Were they seen as Robin Hood characters or just purian interest? Were the trials big news? It was at the time the biggest criminal trial

in British history. It was huge and it did involve the majority of the people who were involved in the robbery. What had stirred it all up as well before we got to the trial, there was an enormous amount of press coverage. It was like a sort of reality TV show. People were literally looking at the next installment on their breakfast tables, you know, with the newspaper. The popular press was full of it. And that's part of the reason why we have this

extraordinary sort of mythology evolving around this thing. They were having a field day, they really were. And the idea of reporting and naming people before they go to trial, they didn't give a stuff about that. You know, there were people's faces, there were photographs, there were names. So when people arrived in the dock, you know, a lot of those people actually, their photographs or their names had already been in the press. And it was such a kind of big deal that, I mean, I'm not sure the justice was even had a chance to be done. Not that they didn't do the crime,

but that's not really the due process of British law. But nevertheless, there was this huge show trial in Aylesbury. They couldn't even fit everybody in the county court in Aylesbury, so they had to build a special courtroom for all these people and all the people that were going to be attending. I mean, just the number of criminals and their various legal representatives, you know, it was bigger than sort of that they could even squeeze into the county court. So they built this huge court. It was like a massive courtroom in the council chamber, I think it was. So, you know, this big show trial started

unraveling. And again, it was another day by day instalment. Some of the criminals were coming dressed in rather smart suits. And these were people who were claiming not to have any money. And their wives had been shopping in Harrods. And Bonnie Biggs, his wife, was a great shopper. And she came in the most elaborate outfits. And it was really a rather stupid move on their part to think that if they were coming to see their husbands on trial and their husbands were claiming to be innocent of this crime, to be sort of wearing this extravagant clothes, just that was pantomime, really. Well, no one think of the banks, Nick. Well, no one think of the banks. Did they get the money back or had lots of it been spent or stashed?

The banks didn't really get much of it back. In fact, Roger Cordray was the first to be arrested in Bournemouth and he was arrested with all of his money. And that's how we know what the share was per person. Because actually, if you add up all the various bits that Roger Cordray had and was arrested for and had spent on cars, it gives you a pretty accurate figure as to what each person's share was. A lot of the money actually, when it came to it, or quite a sizable amount of their money, went on their legal representation. And this was another thing which is open to question. Retrospectively, all the people who paid, there were a few people, I think, who had a sort of pro bono type of arrangement, i.e. that illustrious barristers of the day would do it for free because it was a prestigious thing. But actually, most of them paid for their legal representation and the average bill per person was £30,000.

That's 1964 money. So how did these innocent men from Battersea afford the top barristers of the day at £30,000 a throw? Nick, I'm really surprised, really surprised that the real beneficiaries of the Great Train Robbery were a bunch of London lawyers. Yeah, so totally. And there was even an article I read from the Daily Mirror, I think it was, where somebody had remarked on the number of new cars in the car park belonging to the legal representatives. Were all the people involved in the robbery eventually found and put on trial?

The majority of those who took part in the robbery were ultimately brought to justice and went to prison. There were three guys who weren't named at the time. And there's been one of the big things about the Great Trinidad Robbery is, you know, there's these mystery people who got away with them. You know, did they do a deal with the police or was there something else going on? And there's all these other sort of things, rather like any kind of conspiracy type thing. People love the idea there's more to it. A detective who wrote a biography later on, he said they're perfectly aware who these other guys were, but they just

couldn't pin anything on them. And the basis on which they did arrest and charge successfully those who went to prison was they had left fingerprints, mostly evidence at the farm. And what is interesting about the sort of legal process is there was no evidence at the crime scene which linked any of the individuals who went to prison with the crime. What they effectively worked on the basis is that the farm was sort of inexorably linked with the crime because they found mailbags there.

And they basically said anybody who was at the farm, where there was evidence of them being at the farm in terms of physical evidence or fingerprints, must therefore have been part of the robbery. But, you know, that's kind of a little bit shaky. You listened to Dan Snow's History Hit. Don't give up on us just yet. There's more coming. Step back in time with me, Tristan Hughes, on the ancients from history

hit as we unearth Pompeii's buried secrets in a special mini-series. You'll discover what life was like in this town before the eruption of Vesuvius, the bustling streets, the roar of the gladiators, and the hidden lives of sex workers. Lost for over 1500 years and then uncovered, Pompeii's saga continues. With the help of leading experts, we'll bust myths and reveal startling new research, so get ready for a dramatic journey through the echoes of the past. Experience Pompeii like never before on the Ancients from History hit. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. The public were hungry for every scrap of information, every detail on who these guys were and how they managed to pull it off. Every segment, every article, theory and speculation made the Great Train Robbery what it is today.

A phenomenon. And the coverage didn't end with the trial. The drama of the Great Train Robbery would stretch on for another 40 years, thanks to the audacious prison escape of Ronnie Biggs. At the time of the robbery, Colin McKenzie had just graduated from Oxford. As he laid out in a recent autobiography, Pressing My Luck, he would go on to have a long career on Fleet Street during its golden age, as the home of the UK publishing industry and of many of its major newspapers. Ten years later, he uncovered the scoop of the century, fugitive Ronnie Biggs living it up in Brazil,

evading capture from the British police through a series of legal loopholes. I was a runner at the BBC when the Great Train Robbery occurred in 1963. So I didn't take it in as I would had I been in Fleet Street, but obviously it was a huge story. And I remember, you might find this hard to believe, but I remember the government almost being grateful that a story had come along to knock Profumo off the front pages because they were suffering very badly. Dear old Mr. Macmillan, you've never had it so good.

From the fact that the Profumo scandal was exciting the papers beyond any story that had ever existed practically. So the Great Train Robbery comes along and replaces it as the main topic of conversation amongst all the newspapers, not just the tabloids. Tell me about Ronnie Biggs. Why does he loom so large in our memory? Because I've learned that he wasn't even very significant in the actual robbery itself. He balls up his part of it. He did balls up his part of it. He was a pal of Bruce Reynolds, who was one of the two masterminds

of the Great Train Robbery. Bruce popped by literally one day at his Red Hill home and said to Ronnie, what are you up to? And he said, oh, I've got my building career going. I've been straight for three years.

I've married Charmian. We've got a little boy. We've got another one on the way. But can you lend me 500 quid? As usual, Biggs was skint. And Bruce Rowell said, no, I can't lend you 500 quid at the moment, but I can do something better than that. I can give you a share of a job I'm about to do.

Biggs being Biggs, who'd been a regular guest of Her Majesty's ever since the war, couldn't resist joining in. I guess, but the reason we remember Biggs, therefore, is that escape. Tell me about the escape. Right. Well, I was in Fleet Street by then, although not covering crime or news. But of course, I had a long, long chat with Biggs out in Brazil about his escape. And it was fairly simple, expensive, in that a quarter of his money was produced to arrange for a tall van to be parked underneath one of, I think, the Wandsworth Northern Wall. A couple of the inmates were bribed to look after the wardens who were patrolling during exercise on the afternoon of, I think it was July the 5th, 1965. And they took care of the wardens. Biggs and a pal called Paul Seaborn

burst out of the prison, climbed the ladders, which had been put over the wall by the people driving the van. Two others, freelance escapees, got on board as well, but they didn't get into the van with Biggs and his mate. They were just out and escaped as freelancers. And Biggs was then taken by various groups to a flat in southeast London, where he hid for about two months until the hoo-ha died down. And he was able then to get a boat across to Antwerp and from Antwerp, a car to Paris, where he underwent very painful and rather unsuccessful plastic surgery on his face.

But did it work? The plastic surgery didn't work particularly well. I mean, I'd seen his wanted posters. And when I met him, he looked remarkably like the bloke whose pictures, even with a bad Scotland Yard photographer, did look very much like him. But he was quite a tall, imposing fellow, six foot one and a half, blue eyes. When he finally got his plastic surgery in Paris, he then flew to Australia. This is in 1965. And within a year, Charmian had tested the water by going on holiday to the Canary Islands with a friend and taking her two boys with her.

And hadn't noticed anybody tailing them or checking up on who she was or why she was. So she decided that it would be safe under a pseudonym to go to Australia. And indeed, she did follow him to Australia a year later. And she landed in Darwin. And they'd arranged to stay in a hotel which Biggs had seen and heard of from Sydney where he was working. The only problem was the hotel hadn't yet been built. And he'd yet again cocked up a bit.

But he eventually got hold of a rather shaken Charmian. And they bought a car and drove all the way down through Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, and finally settled in Adelaide. And they were there for three years before a magazine article came out, at which point Buster Edwards, who'd been on the run, and Bruce Reynolds also had been on the run, had come into prominence because they'd had to give themselves up, basically. And there was a picture of Biggs in amongst this magazine article, and they felt they had to move. So they moved to Melbourne, where he worked for Channel 9 television for quite a while as a carpenter.

And then another article arrived, which clearly pinpointed him and his family being in Australia. So he went on the run again. And with the help of a friend called Mike Haynes, he was put up in a suburb of Melbourne waiting for a liner, the SS Alinis, which he eventually got in February 1970, took him to Panama. And then he managed to look up during the intervening months where he would be relatively safe. And he discovered that Brazil had no extradition treaty with Britain.

So he made his way from Panama down to Rio, where he set about trying to get himself a job as a working carpenter. And amazingly, there were enough expats and Americans and people to provide him with enough work where he survived for another four years until I found him. How did you people to provide him with enough work where he survived for another four years until I found him. How did you come to find him? Basically, it was a huge piece of luck. I mean, I'd been on the Express nearly 10 years by the time this came along. And at the time, Biggs was still in the headlines of Scotland Yard were chasing their tail all over the world. And some of their senior policemen had had wonderful holidays in Australia, South Africa, Cyprus, many visits to Spain.

Anyway, my dad lived in Brazil by pure coincidence. And he was over on leave just about November 73. And I gave a little drinks party for him and invited my neighbors. And one of the neighbors, by pure luck, was a 19-year-old backpacking student called Constantine Benkendorf. I mean, I knew his mother. I'd never met Constantine. And he came to the party.

And when he discovered I was a journalist on the Express, he said, my goodness, I bumped into somebody you'd be interested to meet before he finished his sentence. I said, you bumped into Ronnie Biggs in Brazil, didn't you? And the poor boy went absolutely crimson. And I knew I'd hit the nail on the head. I said, Dirk, we won't talk about it now. It's too many years. We'll go and have a drink in a pub tomorrow and you can tell me all about it. And believe it or not, Biggs had actually confided in Constantine that he was fed up with life on the run. The parole system had come in in Britain since he was sentenced to 33 years, and he would only now have to do one third of his sentence. He'd already done 18 months by

the time he escaped from Wandsworth. So by his reckoning, he would only have to do another eight and a half years if he handed himself in to the consulate in Rio. I had, first of all, got hold of his old girlfriend's phone number. He hadn't paid his phone bill. So it was impossible to get Biggs on the phone. He never paid any of his bills. But I managed to get him on the phone. I cross-examined him for about 20 minutes and was satisfied he was who he claimed to be.

I then had a conundrum. Do I take the voluntary redundancy that the Express was frittering out to everybody who wanted it at that time, or do I go into the editor and tell him what I've got? And a great colleague of mine called Brian Vine said, look, they've taught you to be a reporter man and boy. You've got to keep it in the Express family and give it to the editor. Well, what I had forgotten was that while I was based in New York that summer, Ian McColl, the editor of the Express, who'd come down from editing the Scottish Daily Express about a year before, had swallowed the story that the Daily Express had found Martin Borman in Buenos

Aires. It's probably too old a story for you to recall, but we had a headline with a man crossing the street in Buenos Aires, we found the great Nazi Martin Borman. Anyway, it took about a week for this story to unravel and turn out to be a farrago of invention. First of all, the poor innocent creature who was crossing the street turned out to be an innocent Buenos Aires school teacher who started suing his for libel. Then we had mentioned Borman was the director of several large corporations in South America, including, I believe, Fiat, all who also thought this was a bit of a damaging story to them. So the escapade involving Martin Bormann cost the paper a huge fortune, even in 1973. So when I bowled into the editor's office three months later and said,

I think I found Ronnie Biggs in Brazil, there was panic on my editor's face, quite the contrary to what I expected. And he actually said later on in the negotiations, There was panic on my editor's face, quite the contrary to what I expected. And he actually said later on in the negotiations, Colin, I wish you'd never told me this story. He was very Scottish. That was a bad attempt at a Scottish accent. But he was terrified.

And in order to get some insurance, unbeknownst to me, he enlisted the help of Scotland Yard by telling one of the senior commanders there, would they be interested in the fact that one of his young reporters had found Ronnie Biggs in Brazil? And of course, the Yard weren't going to say no to a little gift like that. And so they were brought on board with the Daily Express, unbeknownst to me, until very late in the piece. So it wasn't a simple story. It's okay.

So you're in Brazil. Where do you come across him for the first time? This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Well, I was in phone contact with him via his ex-girlfriend, who was an American lady, and therefore I had arranged

and I took Constantine, the contact, out with me and a wonderful photographer called Bill Lovelace, my colleague, and the three of us landed in Rio on the Wednesday, about January the 28th, 29th, 1974. And we went to the Copacabana Palace Hotel, where I was intending for us all to stay, only to discover it was, bang, full of tourists. And I then relocated to a hotel about 200 yards further up

at Copacabana Beach, called the Trocadero. And I arranged to meet Biggs that afternoon, and he arrived on the arm of a beautiful 22-year-old blonde. And we made our introductions. And he thought, and I partly thought, we were going to have two wonderful weeks doing his story about all his life on the run before he gave himself up to the consulate in Rio, eating at all Rio's finest restaurants. And so he could have one last splurge before he went back to Wandsworth Prison to do his chokie.

And Chief Superintendent Slipper and his sidekick, Peter Jones, a sergeant, arrived 24 hours later, parked themselves in another hotel about 300 yards from mine. And just as my photographer was sending his first batch of photographs back from Galliol, Rio's airport, with a passenger on British Caledonian airline, can you imagine? Because we didn't dare send anything by public wire in case it alerted our rivals. So he literally gave a wonderful bunch of pictures of bigs up at the Corcovado and on the Ponte del Sucre, the Chugalev Mountain, and other various locations where he'd done work for Americans.

All that went with a tourist from British Caledonia, and overnight, Thursday into Friday. I was told I was going to be given a week to debrief him, and then Scotland Yard would arrest him. And I complained and complained and complained, said, that's not on. I've given him my word that I will allow him to hand himself in. And they said, you're not in charge of this story anymore, Mackenzie. You do what we say. Well, the Thursday night, so I've only been there 36 hours, I'm summoned to Slipper's hotel room, 300 yards from my hotel. And I learn that they're planning to arrest him the following morning. Now, he's gone off into the night with his girlfriend.

There are no mobile phones. I've got absolutely no means of getting hold of him. I've got no idea where he spent the night. He's going to walk into a trap the following morning at 10 a.m. He's going to walk into a trap the following morning at 10 a.m. He's coming to the Trocadero up to my room, 909, and literally walking into a police trap. And there is literally nothing I can do about it. And I can tell you now, it was the worst 12 hours of my life.

I had a sleepless night trying to write down all my notes so I could file a story the following morning. But it got done somehow. So he walks into your hotel room and the trap is sprung. down all my notes so I could file a story the following morning. But it got done somehow. So he walks into your hotel room and the trap is sprung. He walks into the hotel room. We're taking a few pictures of him and his girlfriend. There's a knock on the door. The police have been waiting outside, saw him come in. And in walks Slipper perspiring in a suit and saying, hello, Ronnie, I expect you remember me. And it was awful. They arrested him. He was taken into the bathroom of the hotel suite. They wanted to put handcuffs on him. He said, don't do that. I hate handcuffs. If you agree not to handcuff me, I'll come quietly.

Slipper agreed to that, had him by the shoulder and by the arm, and took him downstairs. And he waited so that Bill Lovelace, my colleague, could scamper down to the ground floor and get a sort of iconic photograph of him being pushed into the British Consul's Austin Marina car to be taken to the local police station. I thought we didn't have an extradition treaty with Brazil. So how can we start arresting people all over the place? This is the biggest problem that Scotland Yard faced. They hadn't made any preparations for removing bigs from Brazil. And the Brazilians were furious that Scotland Yard had come and arrested somebody without their knowledge. Although the local police station did send an armed copper with them,

there'd been no accord at the higher level to agree to this. And of course, they wanted to know how on earth Biggs survived four years in a country where your papers are everything, passports, identity cards, and all the rest of it. How on earth could he have survived four years without being caught prior to this? Was he a drug dealer? Who was he? And so they were not under any circumstances going to let him go back on the British Caledonian flight with the two policemen. My rival at the time, the Daily Mail, got this wonderful shot in the British Caledonian

flight when one of the coppers got up and went to the toilet. There was an empty seat by Chief Superintendent's slipper, and they got a shot of it from the first-class compartment. The empty seat, where is he? And of course, Biggs was sent up to Brasilia, to the foreigner's prison. How did they get Biggs to the UK eventually? Well, that was a long, long time after I found him. He was eventually released after three months in jail in Brasilia, allowed to return to Rio. By this time, another girlfriend, but his more permanent girlfriend, had turned up claiming she was pregnant. Well,

at least that gave me a little scoop. Because he was to be responsible for a Brazilian child as yet unborn, the Brazilians consented to allow him to stay. They wouldn't allow him to work, which is an extraordinary situation and nonsensical in a way. So in the end, he had to become a tourist trap. He cooked barbecues for tourists, signed books, signed autographs, and he made some sort of a living from 74 right through to 2001, by which time he'd had three very bad strokes, and the last of them removed his powers of speech. I did actually try to see him in 98. He didn't want to see me because he looked so awful because of his illnesses. I was in Rio then in 98, but he survived pretty well. I know some people say, well, he was only the tea boy in the train robbery.

That is true to a very large extent. However, I don't think many of his colleagues on the robbery would have been able to learn fluent Portuguese and survive as he did on the run for nine or 10 years in the manner that he did. and command the loyalty from so many friends and indeed from his wife, Charmian, in Australia until she gave up once she saw it was impossible to get back together with him because he would be giving himself up if he did. What reception did he get when he got back to the UK eventually? Well, he didn't get back until 2001 when his son, Michael,

who was the product of the pregnant lady I was describing earlier, by then Michael was 27. He'd negotiated a deal with the Sun newspaper to bring him back in Rupert Murdoch's private jet. So he literally took off from Rio, landed at Northolt to be met by half of Scotland Yard. I think by then the poor old chief superintendent Slipper was dead, but he was met by other senior Scotland Yard people, debriefed and put into Belmarsh prison. And he served eight and a half years in Belmarsh prison and was released on sympathy grounds because of his medical condition. The very same day that the Libyan bomber was released from prison in Scotland, if you recall. And they had a little private bet, the two of them, he told me, that who would live

the longest. And actually, Biggs won that bet because he lived for nearly four more years. He died at the end of 2013, whereas Abdul Ali Magrahi died of prostate cancer, I think, after two years in Libya. And I went to Biggs' funeral in North London, and there were literally hundreds and hundreds of people there. I don't know whether they were friends of his or colleagues or just criminals celebrating his existence and his life, but he became quite a popular fellow, even though the train robbery itself was obviously quite a violent crime.

It's been 60 years since the great train robbery, and I'm really grateful to our guests for coming on and trying to drill down into the truth of those remarkable events. In the meantime, too many people have taken us ever further from the truth, whether it's the criminals, the police, the media. People have enjoyed spinning a yarn when it comes to this extraordinary story. As John Williams wrote, our fascination with the Great Train Robbery shows no sign of fading. It's Britain's real-life Wizard of Oz. No matter how familiar the tale, we can never resist savouring it just one more time.

Thanks for listening, everybody. This has been Dan Snow's History Hit. The podcast was produced by Marianna Desforges and Dougal Patmore. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes.

Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.