In 1987 Detective Alan Holmes, a Freemason who had joined the Craft while serving at Croydon Police Station, faced the ultimate test of his Masonic loyalty. Holmes was not corrupt but was under great pressure to betray a Masonic colleague. Scotland Yard’s anti-corruption squad CIB2 believed he knew of crooked links between a Masonic Detective Commander and Mason Kenneth Noye, convicted of receiving part of the £26 million’s worth of gold stolen in Britain’s biggest ever robbery – the 1983 Brink’s-Mat job. Unknown to Holmes, CIB2 arranged for him to be secretly recorded as he gossiped to a fellow detective in his Lodge. When Holmes was told he had unknowingly shopped his brother Masons, he became deeply distressed. One morning in his back garden he shot and killed himself. Darkside of Freemasonry III
£26 million’ worth of gold and diamonds were stolen from Heathrow Airport. It was the biggest robbery in British history. Since then three men have been imprisoned for their part in the robbery but the gold was never found. Secret History: Brink’s-Mat: The Greatest Heist, Channel 4 2003
The leader of the gang was Michael McAvoy from south London. ibid.
Noye was to remain in custody until his next charge of handling stolen bullion. ibid.
With McAvoy’s inability to return the stolen gold his 25 year sentence was now looking precisely that – they’d be no early release. ibid.
Those living off Brink’s-Mat gold had begun to think they were untouchable. ibid.
The whole Swiss laundering operation came to light. ibid.
I have made more money out of gold than all the Great Train Robbers put together. King of Thieves 2018 starring Michael Caine & Jim Broadbent & Tom Coutenay & Charlie Cox & Paul Whitehouse & Michael Garbon & Ray Winstone et al, director James Marsh, Caine
Something terribly reassuring about a nice vault. ibid. Courtenay
On the evening of Friday 16th December 1910 a police constable patrolling in the city of London was called to investigate strange noises coming from Exchange Buildings, a small alleyway near Houndsditch. Great Crimes & Trials: The Siege of Sidney Street
Behind, they left Sergeants Bentley and Tucker and Constable Choate dead. ibid.
Among the immigrants came political refugees. ibid.
In the suburb of Tottenham ... Two Latvian émigrés attempted a wages snatch. Foiled, they hijacked a tram and were chased for several miles, shooting indiscriminately at the pursuers. A policeman and a ten-year-old boy were killed before the gunmen were cornered and shot themselves. ibid.
Two hundred policemen, some armed with shotguns, moved into the area in the late evening of 3rd January 1911. ibid.
Their response was to start shooting at anything that moved. ibid.
The request was sent asking for troops to be dispatched from the Tower of London. This was approved by the thirty-six-year-old Home Secretary Winston Churchill, who then hurried to Sidney Street to see the action. ibid.
The anarchists were now keeping up a steady fire. ibid.
A wisp of smoke was seen coming from Number 100. Soon the fire had taken a good hold. Churchill told firemen to stay clear until the roof and first floor collapsed. ibid.
The killing of three policemen in Exchange Buildings and the subsequent siege at Sidney Street shook pre-First World War Britain. ibid.
His [Billy Hill] campaign of robbery, heists and racketeering is poised to change the nature of crime for ever. Wartime Crime I, Yesterday 2018
In 1952 he carries out the Eastcastle Street robbery with a value of over £7 million today; it is the biggest criminal heist Britain has ever seen. ibid.
The 1970s saw a five-fold increase in armed raids. Robbers like Bernie Khan were committing three or four robberies a week ... Alarmed with the crime wave, police fought back with an elite specialised squad of detectives – the Flying Squad. Underworld: London
Meanwhile, the City’s banks and cash-carrying companies were still being targeted. Out on the streets it was business as usual for the criminals. Robberies in London continued to escalate – 734 in 1978 alone ... By the 1980s the recent rash of armed robberies plaguing the City was declining. Security was also improving at banks and in the vehicles that transport the cash. ibid.
Technology had become the ultimate gangbusters ... Armed robberies in the ’70s and ’80s prompted banks and security companies to install hundreds of surveillance cameras. In the early 1990s police added ever more in the streets to combat terrorist attacks. Almost 80% of the British government’s Crime Prevention Budget was devoted to public surveillance cameras. Back in the days of the Krays and Richardsons, in the late ’60s, there were approximately 70 closed-circuit cameras in the all of England. By the time Ronnie Kray died of a heart attack in the spring of 1995, London was literally covered in cameras. No combination. No cash. Then the gang made an amazing discovery. They saw pallets on the floor of the warehouse which contained boxes about the size a shoebox and found out they was gold bars in these boxes ... The gang had stumbled across 7,000 gold bars – three tons ready for delivery. The haul is worth a staggering £100,000,000 in today’s money [1999]. It was the biggest gold bullion robbery [Brink’s-Mat, London 1983] in British history. McAvoy had pulled off the crime of the century. But the gold was about to give his gang more trouble than it was worth ... Some of the proceeds of the gold were invested in property, including the rebuilding of the docklands, part of the original heartland of organised crime in London. But as the money from the robbery spread out, police began to close in. Detectives discovered Brink’s-Mat guard Anthony Black had a sister who lived with a well-known bank robber Brian Robinson. ibid.
It was getting like the wild west. John O’Connor, commander Flying Squad, re ’60s & ’70s bank robberies
In December 1961 Foreman’s gang attacked a bank van carrying wages worth today over a million pounds ... The failed raid left the police with plenty of forensic evidence. The Krays: Inside the Firm, ITV 2000
London was less security conscious in the 1960s. ibid.
In May 1952 Billy Hill allegedly pulled off the biggest heist of the time – the East Castle robbery. Frankie Fraser’s Last Stand, CI 2013
Hill himself was setting up the most audacious robberies of all: in 1952 a team of his stole more than £200,000 from a post office van. Gangster Kings of the Underworld: Jack Spot
Tommy [Adams] hit the big time. He was the key player in Britain’s biggest heist when raiders escaped with £26,000,000 of gold ingots ... Tommy Adams was acquitted. (Gangs UK: London & London & Heists) Godfathers: The Adams North London
By the early 1960s, after the birth of his second son Jamie, Freddie [Foreman] had set up one of the most successful robbery firms in the country, with Mickey Regan and Alfie Gerrard. Freddie invested in houses, nightclubs, casinos, betting shops and minicab offices. Fred: The Godfather of British Crime, captions, 2018
Ruthless in its conception, fearless in its operation, the Brink’s-Mat heist is still the largest bullion robbery in British criminal history. In just fifteen minutes a highly organised south-London gang of armed robbers made off with three tons of gold from the Fort-Knox style warehouse near Heathrow. Britain’s Biggest Heists s1e1: The Brink’s-Mat Robbery, Sky 2010
Brink’s-Mat was no ordinary warehouse. It was one of the most secure buildings in Britain, containing three of the world’s toughest safes. To get to them once inside the warehouse it was necessary to pass through locked and alarmed vault doors, using two sets of keys and combinations numbers, then through a gate. One inside the vault the safes could only be opened by a set of keys and combination numbers. ibid.
Whilst Robinson, McAvoy and White were arrested and questioned by the police, the pressure was on detectives to find the missing gold. Seven months after the robbery the police got another breakthrough when a man called Kenneth James Noye was brought to their attention. They were back on the gold trail. ibid.
Ironically, the gold was being sold back to the company it had been stolen from. ibid.
The 4th April 1983 went down in criminal history: a gang of armed robbers raided a high security depot in London nicknamed Fort Knox. The heist was executed with military precision. The robbers carefully planned their attack and fled without a trace. They held the guards to ransom for an agonising eight hours then stole almost £7 million. Britain’s Biggest Heists s1e2: Security Express Heist
But how the gang managed to infiltrate a top-security depot remained a mystery until some time later. ibid.
This was a robbery that shook London. It took the authorities over seven years to recover less than half the cash. The whereabouts of the rest of the money remains a mystery. But despite the gang’s planning and skill, most were brought to justice. ibid.