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Daily Mail
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
From Brink's-Mat to the Great Train Robbery, these are the five BIGGEST heists in British history
To celebrate the launch of two new Mail podcasts, 'The Trial: The Kim Kardashian Heist' and 'The Hunt for Tamara Ecclestone's Diamonds', these are the five biggest heists in British history. From holding up trains to cracking open bank vaults, the heists are ranked according to the approximate amount of money the thieves stole. In a new series of the Mail's award-winning 'The Trail' podcast, acclaimed crime journalist Caroline Cheetham and reporter Nick Fagge, will deliver daily courtroom updates from the Paris trial of the alleged robbers of Kim Kardashian jewels, dubbed the 'grandpa gang' by French media. Also launching is a brand-new exclusive podcast series called 'Heists, Scams and Lies'. The first episodes follow Mail reporters George Odling and Andy Jehring's journey across Europe to hunt for socialite Tamara Ecclestone's £25 million in stolen diamonds. 5) The Hatton Garden Heist, 2015 Stolen: £14 million (approximately £18.5 million in today's money) Across a four-day Easter weekend, six elderly men took advantage of the disruption caused by electrical labels catching fire and broke into a safe deposit facility in Hatton Garden, London. The fire caused chaos in Central London, with offices evacuated and noxious fumes spewing out of manhole covers. With local businesses also closed for the holiday, the men were able to enter the bank through an underground lift shaft and make away with £14 million in jewels and cash. The burglary was undertaken by experienced thieves, with one of the conspirators, Brain Reader, having ties to the 1983 Brink's-Mat gold robbery. To enter the safes inside, they drilled holes in the walls with police later releasing CCTV images of the men caught in the act. Through a combination of the CCTV footage and tracking attempts to sell the stolen goods, the Flying Squad, a specialist branch of the Metropolitan Police, was able to find and arrest the men involved. 4) The Great Train Robbery, 1963 Stolen: £2.61 million (approximately £69 million in today's money) Undoubtedly the most infamous heist in British history, a gang of fifteen men meticulously planned and executed the early morning robbery of a Royal Mail train as it travelled from Glasgow to London. An employee at the Royal Mail had shared information about the train's movements to figures in London's criminal underworld, leading to a daring plot that took months to plan, with multiple rival gangs working together. By messing with the signaling system and attacking staff members, the criminals were able to stop the train and get away with £2.61 million, an eye-watering sum for sixties Britain. To this day, much of the loot taken from the train has never been recovered. The train robbers were eventually caught when their Leatherslade Farm hideout in Buckinghamshire was raided by police. Amusingly, a Monopoly board proved the undoing of many of the conspirators, with fingerprints on the game allowing police to link together and track the men. 3) The Securitas Depot Robbery, 2006 Stolen: £53 million (approximately £92 million in today's money) Beginning with the abduction of a man's family and ending with the burglary of a depot in Tonbridge Wells, the Securitas Robbery would have topped this list if thieves were able to carry more than 53 of the £154 million available to them. The depot was a subcontracted holding facility for the Bank of England, with newly printed notes made in Epping stored there before distribution. A mixed band of Albanian and English criminals were able to gain information about the workings of the depot by placing a man on the inside. On 21 February 2006, the gang abducted the facility's manager, Colin Dixon and his entire family, later forcing him at gunpoint to open the door of his place of work. Staff were then held in cages as the thieves ransacked the location. The conspirators fled to locations in Cyprus and Morocco, hiding out while spending the ill-gotten money extravagantly. After discovering bank notes in laundry bags, a locked-up garage, and the boots of vehicles linked to the heist, police were eventually able to track down and arrest the men. The case is remembered as the biggest cash robbery in history and shortly after the thieves were prosecuted, the depot was shut down. 2) The Brink's-Mat Robbery, 1983 Stolen: £26 million (approximately £102 million in today's money) Taking the silver medal for arguably the most famous heist in British history, the Brink's-Mat Robbery saw £26 million in gold bullion and diamonds stolen from Heathrow airport. Six men broke into the Brink's-Mat warehouse on Heathrow's International Trading Estate in London, after colluding with the location's security guard Anthony Black. The robbers poured patrol on staff and threatened to set them on fire if they did not comply with their demands. Despite the planning involved, the theft was mostly a fluke. The gang responsible did not know beforehand that gold bullion was going to be stored at the warehouse. After the robbery, a huge manhunt began with Metropolitan Police's Flying Squad again getting involved to identify the perpetrators. By picking apart an elaborate scheme to melt the gold down and sell it to legitimate buyers, the conspirators were caught and arrested. It took nearly six years of rigorous investigation to find everyone involved, with the last man arrested in connection with the crime being apprehended in Fuengirola, Spain in 1989. 1) The Knightsbridge Deposit Robbery, 1987 Stolen: £60 million (approximately £187 million in today's money) Masterminded by Italian immigrant and prolific thief, Valerio Viccei, the 1987 robbery of a bank in Knightsbridge, London would have remained unsolved if not for the sale of a luxury car. The heist saw Viccei indebt the bank's manager by supplying him cocaine, to the extent that he supplied the necessary information to complete the burglary. Vicci and his gang held up the bank at gunpoint on 12 July 1987, hanging a closed sign outside the building to give his men time to loot safes and lock boxes. The gang's leader escaped to South America but later returned to London to pick up a Ferrari sportscar, where he was then arrested. He was linked to the crime after forensic investigators discovered his bloody fingerprint at the crime scene. To listen ad-free to our award-winning true crime series, subscribe to The Crime Desk - the home of arresting podcasts from the makers of The Trial. Become a member by clicking here, for ad-free access to every show across The Crime Desk network — including over 200 episodes of The Trial and On The Case and so much more.
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Yahoo
The families devastated by the terrible cruelty of serial killer Peter Tobin
On the day police found a second body behind a house once occupied by a murderer, the father of a missing teenager raised his hand, crossed his fingers and said he hoped it was his daughter. Dinah McNicol was 18 when she vanished in 1991, after hitchhiking home to Essex from a dance music festival in Hampshire. Her father had spoken to countless reporters since then and it just so happened that I was interviewing him when 16 years of tortuous uncertainty were coming to an end. Ian McNicol had been left in such a dark place that he wanted his daughter to be the person in a shallow grave, because it would mean the family would finally know where she was, get her back, and lay her to rest. His words laid bare the terrible cruelty of serial killers and they've haunted me ever since. A new BBC documentary, The Hunt for Peter Tobin, explains how the murder of a young Polish student finally solved the mystery of what had happened to Dinah and a second teenager, 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton, who had gone missing in central Scotland six months earlier. Tobin was a registered sex offender on the run from the authorities when he killed Angelika Kluk and concealed her body beneath the floor of a Glasgow church in September 2006. He was 60 at the time. The crime was so horrific, detectives were convinced he must have killed before. Strathclyde Police launched Operation Anagram, a nationwide scoping exercise which tried to establish whether Tobin could be linked to unsolved cases around the UK. Within months, officers realised he was living in Bathgate when Vicky Hamilton went missing in the West Lothian town in February 1991. Despite a huge inquiry and appeals by her distraught family, 15 years had passed with no trace of Vicky ever being found. The link with Tobin changed everything. Forensic scientists re-examined evidence from the time of her disappearance and found DNA from Tobin's son on Vicky's purse, which had been left near Edinburgh bus station. In June 2007, Lothian and Borders Police searched Tobin's former home in Bathgate. In the attic, they discovered a knife which bore traces of Vicky's DNA. Operation Anagram went on to connect Tobin to Dinah, who'd gone missing at the other end of the country in August 1991. Her cash card had been used in towns across the south-east of England, from Hove to Margate and Ramsgate in Kent. The money draining from Dinah's account was compensation she received after her mother Judy died in a road accident when she was six. The police found evidence linking Tobin to the card and established he was living in Margate when Dinah failed to come home. One of Tobin's neighbours recalled "Scottish Pete" digging a deep hole in his back garden around that time. Essex Police thought they were going to get answers for Ian McNicol and his family when they went to Tobin's old house at 50 Irvine Drive in November 2007 - but instead of Dinah, they found Vicky. Having covered the search in Bathgate, I travelled south to Margate with a sense of disbelief which was shared by the Scottish officers investigating Tobin's past. Everyone in Scotland knew the face of the smiling schoolgirl with the bobbed dark hair. The discovery of her remains so far from home was horrifying and baffling. How had she ended up there? The answer was that Tobin had killed Vicky in Bathgate, dismembered her body, and taken her remains with him when he moved to a new house 470 miles away in the south of England. In the days that followed, as the police continued their search for Dinah at Irvine Drive, I interviewed her dad at his home in Tillingham, a small Essex village built round a Norman church. Ian was an instantly likeable man in his late 60s; a retired musician originally from Glasgow who'd named his daughter after a jazz standard. Over the years, Dinah's disappearance had taken its toll on his health. We sat down and started filming. "When I lost my wife, we knew she was dead because we had to bury her," he said. "We went through the normal process of grief. "When a member of your family goes missing, it's 20 times worse than death because you do not know a thing and all sorts of things go through your imagination." He was taking some solace from the fact that another family in exactly the same situation had been helped, even though his daughter had not been found. Ian turned to the camera to address Vicky's family and said: "If you're watching, from me and my family, good luck to you. We wish you all the best." The doorbell rang. Another reporter told us the police had just announced the discovery of a second body. Ian agreed to continue the interview, raised his right hand with his fingers crossed and said: "If they've said that, please be Dinah, and get us out of this misery. "I would bury her next to her mother. So please, let it be Dinah." Later, after the police confirmed the remains were those of his daughter, Ian said he could die in peace. He passed away in 2014. In the BBC documentary, Vicky's younger sister Lindsay Brown tells of the impact her disappearance had on their mother Jeanette. Two years after Vicky went missing her mother died, her family said, from a broken heart. Archive footage shows Lindsay reading a statement to the media outside the High Court in Dundee in 2008, on the day Tobin was convicted of Vicky's murder, flanked by her older sister Sharon and twin brother Lee. Given all they had been through, what she did that day was as brave as it was difficult to watch. She said: "Vicky was much more than the girl who was abducted and killed by a stranger or a girl on a missing poster. We will always remember Vicky as she lived, not as she died." The detectives investigating Tobin's past were certain he had other victims. They did all they could to find answers for other families, to no avail. Tobin took his secrets to the grave and was serving three life sentences when he died in 2022. No-one came forward to claim his body. His ashes were disposed of at sea. When I was interviewed for the BBC documentary, the producer asked what I had thought when I heard the news. I told him I had been pleased and hoped his death hadn't been pleasant. Should I have been that honest? Did it cross a line? I don't know. What I do know is that I'll never forget Ian McNicol or what he said to me 17 years ago: "Please be Dinah." The horrific crimes of serial killer Peter Tobin Serial killer Peter Tobin dies in hospital, aged 76 CSI Scotland: How forensics caught Peter Tobin
