Crime is never a laughing matter But the sheer audacity and I must admit Extraordinary ingenuity of a gang of pensioner aged British crooks has certainly made many people smile Last year the daring villains used their substantial experience to plan and then pull off the biggest burglary in English history The Hatton Garden vault in the heart of London held hundreds of safe-deposit Boxes full of jewelry cash and other treasure it was said to be impenetrable Until these bad grandpa's proved that boast a lie But the old-timers made one mistake and for them it was a biggie They are perhaps the most unlikely gang in criminal history But the crime they pulled off has few equals its legendary this is going to go down as an iconic crime For centuries, we're gonna be soft about this you've pulled out you can down on every other burger Beauty Leonardo DaVinci akroy decision modulation Easter Thursday 2015 a White van pulls up in the diamond center of London pattern garden and parks outside the Hatton Garden safe-deposit company one of the oldest vaults in the world What happens next will stunned the nation When you with criminal, you know, they're always talking about their fantasy job, you know their fantasy job It's it's almost like a criminal pornography. You know, it's what they like what they get off on and and Hatton Don Volt was one of that was one of these these are these iconic targets Hatton Garden has been London's diamond and jewelry district for centuries and its massive vault built back in the 40s According to criminologist professor dick Hobbs was considered impenetrable When I look around here, it's just wall-to-wall jewelry shops They never in their wildest dreams thought that this place could get knocked over. That's right I mean There's been a lot of crime here over the years, but this was the place that everyone could rely on They never dreamed that this could be knocked over. This was them this was the most secure place dick Hobbs grew up in London's East End Home to many of the city's most notorious criminal gangs and old-school villains Men like legendary gangster Bobby comes I mean I can walk they're new in there with you I know I ain't worried about cars slowing down and guns coming out then someone trying to shoot me once one of London's most feared armed robbers Bobby went straight years ago and now runs a charity for Ex-prisoners, but that doesn't stop his professional admiration for the Hatton Garden heist You look at and you know that if you go for it, and if you touch it you're down in the annals of crime There's a master at your game It's like going for the Olympics in Australia criminal world. Yeah, the gold medal winner It's no good getting the silver or the bronze. You want the gold one? Yeah Regarde infers the gold one When you heard it had been hit. Yep. What did you think? I laughed, you know, it was a professional bit of work and when you look at that There's only a few type of people that could put that sort of work together. I know a bloke Who knows a bokor? Well for most people their knowledge of crime comes from Hollywood and and this seems to fit very very neatly into a Hollywood scenario Useful pictures of George Clooney being put beside the pictures of this heist You know straight away people started to to to cast the film that was going to come out on the heist And I'm about to propose to you is both highly lucrative and highly dangerous And it really did seem like a movie scenario from from day one You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off when police discovered these supposedly Impregnable Hatton Garden vault had indeed been cracked most believed It could only be the work of a highly trained commando team probably from Eastern Europe So imagine their surprise indeed Disbelief when the identities of the gang revealed not so much commandos as an early dad's Bunch of all fucked a Bunch of our fasting date and this was the kind of one last hit one last job one last time Again This was a gang of senior citizens. The ringleaders included 76 year old Brian reader He turned up at the robbery by bus using his pension apart getaway driver John Kenny Collins Who it's 75 suffered from arthritis? diabetes and memory loss Terry Perkins 67 who was taking twenty nine pills a day for various ailments William Billy the fish Lincoln 60 years old. He had two hip replacements and was incontinent Danny Jones also 60 in better shape than his cohorts but a renowned eccentric who thought his dog was human and A mystery man named basil who has never been caught and may have been the heists mastermind When you saw who was involved What did you think I thought It's obviously blood professional criminals And I thought to myself this was their last pop This was their pension if you like But it's it's like it's like a good mature wine the older it gets the more experience it gets and it's better Tasting and that's best way to like my feelings on it They spent three years meticulously planning the heist and Each had a particular role They studiously watched YouTube to learn how to operate a massive drill to breach the vaults thick concrete wall and To cover their tracks, they read forensics for dummies First off you've got to do a feasibility study So you've got to do a SWOT analysis right strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats so you that is a psychological bit of the job You've got a dough that sounds like a business plan what it is You can put it together before you decide whether it's worth the risk, it can be done. Yeah, you got to a risk assessment Thursday April the second the start of the easter long weekend, the gang arrives at Hatton Garden at 8:20 p.m Dressed as maintenance workers Basil has somehow gained access to the building and opens a fire escape door to a side street Using wheelie bins the gang unload their tools Inside basil disables CCTV cameras and the alarm system but not entirely an Alert is sent to the building security company, but a security guard who checks the building report seeing nothing suspicious Nor did 75 year old John Kenney Collins who was positioned across the road He was the lookout man. Yeah, and he fell asleep. Yeah, Kenny Connie's fell asleep Well when you're that eyes, you don't need to sleep and he wasn't a well man So he did he did apparently he did apparently fall asleep Two floors down unaware the gang Jimi's through two metal gates in an underground corridor Now they set a massive diamond drill against the wall of the vault The pensioner creams are half a meter from untold will What do you think they're feeling in their 70s 60s and they're about to pull off the biggest heist in Britain's history Well, what are they nervous are they bits it's a it's a really weird feeling when you go on a bit of work Everyone's hyped up, right? There is a rush to it Also, there's a cheekiness to it. You think we're gonna do the best one ever. It's also the fear because you know about your mind You'd do it wrong. I mean, these are old guys They know they're gonna die in jail, even if they get synthesis They got off of them and not well people so they know they're not going to make it to the arrogate It takes it Sounds strange, but it takes a fair bit of courage to do what they do. You know, they would though they're risking a lot They're risking their Liberty. And when when you're in your 70s in you're risking your Liberty, it's it's huge its massive It's not like don't when you're 25 After three hours of drilling the vault wall is penetrated, but for the gang it's a disaster Stopping their entry the solid back of the still safe deposit cabinet bolted to the floor and ceiling and immovable Yet I hadn't anticipated that the lockers that these boxes were going to be on the other side of the of the wall they were drilling through and I think this really shows that how Professional they were in our old school and how cool they were because they would then have to make a decision What's it though? Do they give it up that they walk away? They're free They're not being cold But they've they've not got the prize that not got the prize and so our villains like this the prize is everything, you know The prize is absolutely everything They'll carry on do I walk away date it's a make-or-break thing there for the oldest of the gang 76 year old Brian reader the stress is too much. He doesn't come back But for the others the lure of the prize is too tempting They leave having garden the next day by themselves a massive hydraulic ram Then late Easter Saturday night basil again, lets the gang into the building Their hydraulic ram applies 10 tons of pressure And with a huge crack the safe deposit cabinet toggles What would that moment have been like Be like Christmas I've never been lit with presents And they'll Sparkle, it would be a true Christmas there'd be rockin and rollin inside thinking we've done it They work through the night smashing open the safe deposit boxes and spilling out their treasures of cash jewels gold Mysteriously they only break into 73 of the 996 safe deposit boxes Perhaps that was all these aged villains could carry out Even so they've made criminal history Still to come hailed as Robin Hoods You had a public that seemed to be rooting for the bad guys thick as thieves But there was one big mistake. They would not be in jail if their performance same as basil that's next in 60 minutes When news broke of the theft of millions of dollars worth of cash and jewelry from a supposedly impregnable vault in central London last year Incredibly the thieves were cheered by the public they'd managed to achieve the impossible Somewhat cynically though there was little sympathy for the victims of the crime because they were so obviously wealthy But then the crooks got cocky This was the biggest burglary in Britain ever recorded They got away with 14 million pounds worth of cash gold and jewelry officers did not attend the premises when in fact They probably should have done and commander Peter Spindler headed the police investigation From the beginning the public sympathy was with the villains You had a public that seemed to be rooting for the bad guys instead of the good guys Undoubtedly, this crime captured the public's imagination not just in Britain, but across the world I think there's something to do with the sort of Hollywood vision of an Ocean's eleven type going coming together the Robin Hood stealing from the rich listen Livingston were said Bachelor said the public everyone trains an even strike color white. That's why we serve some in crime books, too Everyone dreams about robbing a bank or doing a hostel day, you know, but is fantasy This was a heist that seemed so well planned except for one thing these old school creams failed to remember that we're working in a new-age world where just about Every square inch of central London is covered with a CCTV camera So when 75 year old John Collins cased the joint in his distinctive mercedes-benz not once not twice, but five times It proved to be a massive error They were always going to get call you have to remember These were analog criminals operating in a digital age and the new digital detective is sitting down Methodically collecting all this information and starting to work backwards from the scene using CCTV a number plate recognition technology police traced that white Mercedes to John Collins Within days Collins led them to reader and then the rest of the gang Cars were bugged and hidden cameras recorded them all wherever they met and cafes and pubs reliving their crime Boasting about it to each other utterly unaware that everything they said they were saying to Peter Spindler's detectives When you see On the surveillance where we're filming In the pub and our officers have got so close to them that you can actually see them Demonstrating how they did it. It's fantastic So from our perspective we wanted to talk as much as it can We know that Because of surveillance, yeah We know that they got together. Yeah Cafes and Papas and we know they bragged and bragged loudly. Yeah when you get to the edge, what's the use of doing st Really good, if no one knows about it What's the use you see it is there you've done the biggest one over What's the use of doing the biggest one over if you can't so no one about it? They don't just want to be ice faith. They wouldn't be the one who everyone knows. She's the best faith And they were celebrating they were saying it's the biggest blog ever with I'm very, well, aren't we the boys aren't we too chaps? What are you gonna do with the money? I'm gonna give something my kids. I'm gonna spend it this way spend it that way Yeah, that would have been very very understandably. They would have been absolutely pleased with themselves For six weeks the police watched and waited Waiting for what's known as the slaughter with the villains meet to divide the loot? What the police had to do was catch him with a prize, right Recovery, it's not just about getting bodies is about recovering some of the jewelry Sometimes you gotta wait, you know slowly slowly catch monkey Is it the slaughter as they call it the thing you had to wait for I Had set the priority for the team of getting the property back. This wasn't about convicting a handful of old men We could have done that much earlier. The objective was always to find as much of the loot that they had got Incredibly the slaughter happened in a public car park at 9:44 a.m. On Tuesday, May the 19th with police watching their every move on CCTV the gang transferred three duffel bags full of jewels to Colin's Mercedes Police swooped Arresting the main gang members and five others connected to the crime They thought they've gotta wait, thank you You know, they've been sitting lording it up in pubs boasting to each other Anyway, now what they've done and how they've done it and reliving that moment. They thought they got away. What was the reaction of the Crooms and One of them tried to run away Tell me not the 76 year old. No, I think it's one of the slightly fits a young room. I think one wet himself So it was a massive shock for them But six weeks they think They're in the clear. They've gotten away with it How do they feel what do you think their reaction would have been when the cops came through the door? The bottom would have dropped right out they won't because there you are thinking you got it I know the faith takers are coming, and they're taking you Because that's what we call Please do that we do that but they're going and the terrible thing is you would have faith that they're taking The ringleaders of the robbery brine reader John Collins Daniel Jones, Terry Perkins and William Lincoln realized how overwhelming the evidence was and pleaded guilty There were each sentenced to seven years Police recovered four million pounds worth of loot But the rest of the haul around 10 million pounds worth is still missing and So too is the mysterious Basel police have no idea where he is or even who he is he disappeared into the easter night of the robbery and has never been seen since Basil has come away with most of the loan with most of the money and Who knows where he is? It's very possible. The other members of the gang didn't know who those all was. Oh, yeah I think it's quite likely the other members. The gang didn't know bad boys Basel is obviously shrewder than the rest of them. So he's taken his Wages through cash and probably gold Very easily disposed so he's not waited for the slaughter and the divvy up to be paid He's come in he's done. His bit is taken his money and he's gone He's obviously an intelligent men, he's not moron he's covered all these angles all the rest of the neat She's the only one not nicked He's covered all these angles and he's at why they would not be in jail if their performance same as basil With a combined age of more than four hundred and fifty years the Hatton Garden gang will spend a few more years behind bars As high school it went very wrong But as a movie It might have a happy ending a Hollywood producer set through their trial and there are reports that Already, there is one feature film in the works So perhaps the Hatton Garden gangs one last job could pay off after all Books about but having said that there's two parts to that as well because they're going to be angry with their cells for getting comical But they're going to be really pleased yourself because they're celebrities now for the rest of your life. Oh Yes, the allegiance now I Think you know bugs will if they can get outta prison in the next Few years that could coincide with the with the film This one's gonna run and run and you've gotta say that's uh, maybe that those are voice Maybe I was old bugger's who will get a few of it in the end. Oh Do you know what crime does pay? Come on crime does pay yeah Hello, I'm Liz Hayes thanks for watching to keep up with the latest from 60 minutes, Australia Make sure you subscribe to our Channel You can also download the 9 now app for full episodes and other exclusives 60 minutes content
Granpa Basil is that you? I need some spending money...
More info on wiki. Seems like it was made into several films and TV shows.
Seems like the one that got away, Basil, may have been caught last year. (his capture and his delayed sentencing due to film release lol).