On this date (August 8) in the year 1963, a Royal Mail train was robbed in Buckinghamshire, England. The robbers got away with more than £2.6 million - which in todays money is more than $75 million. Not a bad haul... in fact, it was so good that the event is now known as The Great Train Robbery. In the spring of 1963, a couple of British baddies named Gordon Goody and Buster Edwards were introduced to a man who claimed to be connected to the General Post Office (as of this moment, the identity of this individual remains a mystery). Goody started calling this informant The Ulsterman which he read off a tailors label on the mans jacket. Goody and Edwards brought in the rest of their team - a successful little mini-mob, masterminded by Bruce Reynolds, that had quite the reputation in criminal circles. Still, as good as they were, they had no experience in the art of stopping and/or robbing trains, so they brought in another gang that was known mostly for robbing passenger trains. They brought in a few more specialists of various kinds as they were needed - at the end, there 16 men involved in the robbery. At 6:50pm on Wednesday, August 7, one of the travelling post office trains, the Up Special, left the station in Glasgow, expected to arrive in London at 3:59am the next morning. For you train geeks out there, the train was pulled by an English Electric Type 4 D326 diesel-electric locomotive... it was pulling 12 cars, and carried 72 post office workers who used the time to sort the mail. On Royal Post Office trains, the 2nd car behind the engine was called the HVP (High Value Package) car - the one where registered and certified mail was carried, along with money and other valuables. On average, this run wouldve had something like £300,000 on that car. But the date the robbers chose was after a bank holiday weekend in Scotland, so the car was expected to have closer to £3 million. Its assumed that whoever The Ulsterman was, he knew this... And another tidbit that suggests that The Ulsterman was an inside man: a couple of years prior to the robbery, the post office had outfitted HVP cars with alarms, bars on the windows, and heavy-duty deadbolt locks on the doors... but for this particular run, all of those cars were either being used or were out of service (some conspiracy theorists have even suggested that they were sabotaged), so a back-up car was used - one without all of these extra security features. Just after 3am, the driver of the train stopped it at a red signal light in the countryside in the outskirts of Buckinghamshire. As it turns out, the robbers had tampered with the light... they covered the green light, and spliced in a battery to turn on the red light, which signaled the driver to stop the train. Once it was stopped, the gang got on the train armed with billy clubs and took over. One of the robbers had learned basic train operations - they had planned to uncouple the engine and the front 2 cars and leave behind the rest of the train. Unfortunately, the locomotive was a newer model, and the guy wasnt familiar with the newer equipment. With his learning curve, it wouldve taken too long - so they decided to move the entire train to the Bridego Bridge. At that point, the gang broke into the HVP car, smacked the workers around a bit with their billy clubs, and started unloading. They unloaded 120 of the 128 sacks from the HVP car into a waiting truck and 2 Land Rovers, and they drove off. They headed to a rundown farm theyd bought a couple of months prior, where they divided the loot into 16 shares worth almost $4.5 million each (in todays money), with some extra chunks set aside for logistics, expenses, etc. And then they scattered... richer than theyd ever imagined. Because this crime was so big (and high-profile), the investigation was huge - a joint operation between English police, Scotland Yard, and the Post Office Investigation Branch. Before too long, most of the gang were captured and arrested. The trial lasted 51 days - with 613 exhibits and 240 witnesses. One of the defendants was a man named William Boal, who had been arrested with one of the robbers in an apartment they shared. William was sentenced to 24 years in prison. He died around 6 years later, in jail, but he actually hadnt been part of the crime at all. Later, British officials admitted that Boals case was handled badly - a miscarriage of justice. Another defendant, John Daly, had his case dismissed due to lack of evidence... his fingerprints were found on a Monopoly game at the farm where theyd divvied their loot, but that wasnt enough to convict him of anything else... Unfortunately, he actually was guilty - he was one of the getaway drivers. So Boal died in jail for something he didnt to - and Daly got off but was actually guilty. Most of the robbers were given sentences of 30 years. At the time, these sentences were very harsh - that length of time was normally given to murderers or to more flagrant armed robberies. These robbers had intentionally brought billy clubs instead of guns. Some believed that the sentences were so harsh just because of the public nature of the crime, and the amount of money involved. Others believe that the British government had specifically instructed the judge to render extra-harsh sentences because they were in the middle of a couple of major scandals - and wanted to appear that they were still tough on crime. All in all, 3 of the robbers were never caught. Less than £400,000 of the original £2.6 million was recovered. Reynolds and Goody were caught much later, but not until theyd spent their shares living lavishly in Mexico. The mastermind they called The Ulsterman was never even identified, much less caught. The Great Train Robbery was so huge that it captured the attention of people everywhere. Almost immediately, references to it showed up in pop culture. In 1965, in the movie Help! John Lennon made a snide comment about it to Scotland Yard: Great Train Robbery... hows that going? That same year, in the James Bond movie Thunderball, an officer from SPECTRE mentioned that they had received a £250,000 consulting fee for the robbery. The robbery showed up in many more movies, TV shows, plays, books, songs, and even video games. Many of the robbers had biographies written about them... and a couple of them even wrote their own autobiographies. Today is the 51st anniversary of the Great Train Robbery. Heres something I find amusing - when we think of train robberies, we think of the Old West... toothless dudes chasing down trains on horseback, stealing a bag of money and some jewelry from the passengers. And yet the biggest train heist of all was committed in Great Britain.. in the 60s... maybe thats only amusing to me :)
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 15:59:13 +0000
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