The Great Train Robbery (Famous Heist Documentary) | Timeline

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[Music] this is the story of the crime that helped define the 60s when so many regards one thing jolly good luck it shakes things up and embarrasses a complacent establishment that's one of those watershed moments that kind of hinge moment if you like where the momentum of life just shifts it's pulled off by modern-day highwayman the type who appealed to the British to be seen here in archive interview they saw them as roguish and cocking a snowsuit society one of them even managed to stay on the run for three decades it made him into a different person he became somebody I didn't know or like behind the myths of derring-do is a darker tale a tarnished dream and dozens of lives wrecked I know it was wrong of him to do that but at the end of the day he was my father or not you know I loved him [Music] it is one of the most controversial media stories of its age on the one hand a robbery that draws admiration for its daring bravado on the other hand a violent thuggish act of greed so what really happened on the night of Thursday eighth of August 1963 a train is on its way from Glasgow to London along the way it's collecting huge amounts of cash [Music] at the same time a gang of thieves leave a remote farmhouse in Buckinghamshire [Music] when the figure of 1 million to 6 million was mentioned to me my first social this is it this really is elder all the plan is to stop the trains and Robert each man knows what he has to do it's 3:00 a.m. in the middle of nowhere they Hotwire the red signal and cover up the green with a glove and was cheeky it was audacious it was extremely well executed the raid is planned with military precision I saw myself as as you know an extension of a commando leader growing up in the war seeing the aeroplanes bombing and dogfights and stuff and reading the comic books as a boy's own adventure so who are these adventurers lying in wait for an oncoming train in the middle of the night [Music] the team of South London thieves could pull off something like that [Music] the train robbers gang comes from all over London southern suburbs it's been put together by two men Gordon goody from Putney and Bruce Reynolds from Battersea chrome was my life I mean the excitement was there that there was I think more predominant than the Nnamani Bruce Reynolds deals in bric-a-brac but he's fond of the highlight he got his shoes made the same place where the Queen gets her shoes made he used to drink wine when he could either get wine in England it was seen as a bit of a suspect drink but only girls huh Gordon goody is a hairdresser my father wanted me to be a plumber if I'd listened to him maybe I've been better but I didn't become a plumber I wanted to be a thief good e'en Reynolds have with them on the track that night a gang of talented accomplices that they met in prison and on the streets of South London [Music] they cut the communication wires so no-one can call for help and then wait for the train to arrive Buster Edwards is a florist Charlie Wilson a green grocer who would later be sprung from prison as will Ronnie Biggs a builder but I did strike Taggart promise from him when he married me that he would never engage in any criminal activity of her again and he gave me his word and I believed him and I think he meant it at the time Tommy Wisby a newcomer he's a bookie from Camberwell harbors deep the only black sheep was at our family absorb that was all hard-working people but the dozen or so men on the track this is the most exciting moment of their lives there are a generation of working-class men who were born at the beginning of the nineteen thirties who are too young to afford in the walks they haven't had the experience of adventure that comes with the wall but also that crucially I think they have another experience of national solidarity so they don't perhaps have the stake the end of the loyalty this is the world looked at it always an outlaw that society didn't care for me and I didn't particularly care for society the train that is making its way closer and closer to Reynolds and his gang is a Mainer train the general post office the mail which had the symbol of the Queen's head on it if they went for a target like that then they played for very high stakes this will be the first time in 125 years that anyone has wormed a traveling post office the thieves have worked out that the high street banks are doing what every private citizen has been told never to do sending cash through the post and they're doing this pretty well every night by the ton load in mail sacks what on a common-sense level seems totally lunacy by transporting large sums of money through the night with no guards for some reason in large institutions which have been going for a long time people look at these things differently they become a sort of traditional thing so they become entrenched there virtually unprotected and for sums of money abdic carried all over the country their main security is the fact that nobody knows how much is on ball when it gets the buckling shit the mail train is right for the picking it has picked up money in mail bags from stations all along the way I am old enough to remember seeing them hanging from baskets the train didn't stop it just careered through the station and the net went out and picked the bag up this is enough money to transform the robbers lives a bric-a-brac merchant a hairdresser a florist a builder a green grocer a bookie south london thieves with day jobs and criminal records united by the same thing aspiration and in the fifties and sixties you have the explosion of advertising and consumerism suddenly there's a brave bright new world out there which you can just about reach but kind of calm [Music] it's now a culture of ambition material ambition aspiration I want a television a car holiday a nice house I want all those things and I'm gonna go out and grab them the robbers are family men with wives kids and went to pain for a long time I believed as he did it with a view to benefiting his family because that's what he said he had in mind better life you know - what my father had you know he was a hard worker worked all these all his life I could see him getting any benefits you know what di was he put into what he was doing yeah he wanted that pot of gold and that poor gold he found before dawn Bruce Reynolds spots the lights of the train approaching the stop signal while they got remember him Sony put his head down onto the railway tracks as he'd heard that's what Lawrence of Arabia did to hear when the trains were coming it's the moment of truth as the train stops as planned at the ricked signal we still didn't know any amount of money we was getting we couldn't say we were gonna get five hundred thousand eight hundred thousand or two hundred thousand there's no going back now so far the scheme has worked to perfection but all that is about to change people have this kind of Robin Hood fantasy of the great train robbers is actually you know some sort of Ealing comedy enterprise which of course it isn't yeah these people are career criminals who are you know to get what they can for themselves the next 30 minutes we'll see a transformation the ruffians will become thugs as an audacious robbery turns into a violent raid in the early hours of Thursday April focused 1963 the Glasgow to London mail train comes across an unexpected red-light at Sears Crossing fucking Michelle Jack Mills the driver brings the train to a halt he's 58 approaching retirement and what happens next will change his life when the train stopped I was the first one onto the footplate and Jack Mills somebody's trying to come up on the other side and Frank Jack Mills was trying to keep him down puts up a brave fight to defend his train as more men sworn to the death about total people get on one side and three or four people getting on the other side there was this hit on the head and collapses no Kai rasoi it wasn't bad bad he was talk to us he said think you're far a gentleman he said yeah medical reports describe multiple injuries a half-inch deep laceration a quarter-inch cut in front of his right ear and another deep cuts on the back of his head mills will need 14 stitches and two days in hospital there was a loose cannon they are panicked and just yet drill it at religion nun in Peru you know when you're on that sort of work you know the robbers have always said Mills was hit by accident that they intended it to be a non-violent braid it was a mistake it should never happen but what if intimidation is all part of the plan what would they've gone even further would they have killed him on the spot they may have done witnesses later claimed that the robbers used more force than they have admitted the Chapmans of assault was obviously a very critical part of the robbery but it's been isolated as if it was the only put only bit of violence on the entire raid they've got an assortment of felling axes sledgehammers crowbars and they battered their way into the high-value coach the high value package compartment the HBP is where the money was held they were hit with clubs and cautious it's not an isolated thing that just early generals by accident just happened to get hit they went in there and they were violent and they hit people one of the crew describes the robbers as very aggressive pushing the staff around striking some of them if it was going to be your brother on the train or your husband or a friend of yours and they were brutally attacked like that and terrified would you think these guys were cool would you think they were heroes other than you would there in front of the robbers a mailbag stuffed full of banknotes 10 shilling notes 1 pound notes fibers they have hit the jackpot that's when I found their first bag what I saw was the first bag of but lots of bags in a cage and I pulled one out and I opened to cut it open and I could see that was cash and that was it that was surprised everyone I picked up was every not fault that - gorgeous it's the real thing you know I look better someone laughing it was with this is a lot you know everyone's adrenaline is pumping away like mad when the half an hour was up that I'd a lot is for the unload you know I called it a diet and I went in the lead then Rover we drove off into the Nile [Applause] [Music] the world wakes up to the news that an untold amount of money has been stolen from the Glasgow to Houston mail train driver been cashed and handcuffed John Woolley is then a 25 year old Buckinghamshire policeman these were the big boys in the criminal world and well I suppose we I suppose we held them in some degree of awe [Music] the banks are trying to work out exactly how much money has gone but there is a mixture of both surplus notes going back to head office and know what's going for destruction [Music] made salad offered to 300,000 and then was spiked every two hours up by another quarter of a million and so we went up to a million and million and a half millions three quarters two million two and a quarter million two and a half million pounds and that was a complete sensation I know I was earning about ten pounds a week and it really was difficult to to you know just imagine how much it was two and a half tons of money in white the mountain told of money the story's coming from the railway track this is the best adventure story since their dam Busters the British public are in a frenzy fueled by the media who picked up on the train robbery originally called the chattington mail van ride until some bright spark at the daily sketch said let's call it the Great Train Robbery [Music] the rubbers themselves perpetrators of this daring deed haven't gone far they're in hiding not back in South London or further afield they have stayed in Buckinghamshire and it was here to leatherslade farm that they returned with their loot and set up their hideout there in a local farmhouse playing Monopoly with real money and waiting till the heat is off I suppose after a time you know we'd have part of that decided what I wanted to do you know what's all the hullabaloo it died down you know they believe they're secure in their lair they've laid in enough supplies for weeks it was part of their plan that they had got probably no more than 30 minutes half an hour from leaving the scene of the crime to being under cover off the road safe from prying eyes this is too big a drug for the Bucks police to handle on their own I was dealing with minor traffic accidents minor theft Cajun abit of poaching time to bring in the cream of the metropolitan police force the flying squad the Sweeney told that everybody knew about these were the folk heroes of my generation of policemen and yet now there they were descending on the middle village of brill and on my police station it's agreed the manhunt will be focused within 30 miles of the crime smart police work lever slave farm where the robbers are hiding is precisely 27 miles from where the raid took place that would flush them out they could that panic they might just suddenly decide well we've got to get our Headley at high frequency radio this is the police course if the robbers jump ship immediately they risk being caught in a trap but sooner or later their hideout will be found people in the countryside ah frankly more nosey if you want to hide if you don't want to be seen if you don't want to arouse attention then you stay in the city the idea that you can go down into the countryside and nobody's going to notice you is is a townies mistake and it cost them big time four days after the Great Train Robbery a small Buckinghamshire police station receives word of suspicious activity at a local farmhouse it all started with a telephone call and my sergeant asked me did I know when leatherslade farm was in Braille we had a walk around the yard in two separate garages were two Land Rovers and it was then that I noticed that the registration number on those two Land Rovers was the same inside the house there is a trapdoor in the kitchen I could see that that cellar was absolutely chock-a-block with bulging sacks and as the top flopped open I could see parcel wrappers banknote wrappers consignment notes all bearing the names of the famous high street banks tipped off by police radio traffic the robbers have got out just in time but they have abandoned the farm without covering their tracks what really did go wrong was that the guy who was paid to basically go back to the farm and burn it down did a runner [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] once the farm is discovered the full media circus rolls into town the little village of brill has never seen anything like it several sets of fingerprints have been discovered and it's quite a good bet that some of those fingerprints will match records at the yard in addition of course there were vast stalks of tinned food and other stores and it's possible the police may have a lead here we were filmed from every angle sideways up in the sky with the helicopters and people who probably had never had their views canvassed on on anything of importance were suddenly being asked to comment which side are you on the cops or the robber is honest I still I'm still on his side what about you whose side are you on please why oh man - Tony should get his own punishment Tommy Butler chief of London's elite Flying Squad is now in charge of the case he would give the impression that that he knows all about you and maybe he didn't give the impression that he did and and that that kind of light heated this notion of his cunning old Fox Tom cotton has a reputation and he was a villain he was I see Tom Butler as he was so streetwise he thought like a thief he thought like I did [Music] the robbers have been flushed out of their lair and scattered but the flying squad already has intelligence on who they are well know the police could guess who did it it was only one gang in London and would have done it they knew stay away bloody Reynolds as how did he do it and how we gonna prove they did it once it notices are issued with photographs there was a sense from the time when police issued the wanted poster that they knew exactly who they were looking for and that around these figures Annette had been set up which was gradually tightening a lot of the information that was coming in wasn't supplied because people were looking for a reward a lot of it is because they were jealous that they weren't on it the envy of their peers the front covers of the newspapers the robbers are fast becoming celebrities [Music] once he Bruce Reynolds dresses smiling with good quality suits a smooth talker fond of dog tracks likes fast cars and spends freely it was roadblocks as intense police activity they then become like a gigantic manhunt eight days after the robbery thirty thousand pounds is found in a caravan belonging to Jimmy White one of the robbers another hundred thousand pounds is found in Redlands wood talking the media almost portrayed airs like treasure hunt where's the money you know could the money be here and some money's being found in a phone box it could be you that could find it next time in London the whiz bees are on a spending spree one when it was would buy clothes from the catalog and mix when it would be in Flex taxi down tonight switching hammers but for shaumyan Biggs Ron's homecoming can only mean trouble ahead he tipped the contents of the kit bags onto the floor and the notes were all done and done up in bundles and they smelled horrible very frosty I was just anxious for him to get it out of the house as soon as possible forensics have spent 10 days dusting the farmhouse for prints and are now examining what they found the main evidence was was the fingerprint evidence was found on artifacts at the farm we had cats he liked cats and he put a saucer of milk out leatherslade farm and I think was a fingerprint on that it was on other things that he'd handled inside because he hadn't worn gloves all the time some of the others wore gloves from start to finish you never took them all the Flying Squad combs London and the South East criminals stay indoors the streets are quieter than they have been in years an unexpected bonus of the hunt for the train robbers there were the arrests that that followed quite quickly and those extraordinary images people with blankets over their heads being taken in and out of court and handcuffed two policemen a whole group of policemen H paps arrived at the house and I answered the door but they they barged in I explained to them that I was they wanted to know where Ron was he was at work I said I can call him no I wasn't allowed to use the phone I was made to sit down and say nothing as they all stood around the room until Ron came home from work [Music] Tommy Butler comes in person with his officers to Tommy wispies door they ask me we know where I was in the house with it two months ago I can't remember up just told you everything so you know you believe you anyway she'd you nicked Jerald see more reports on the arrests for ITN that went on right the way through late summer autumn and into winter and the final big one before Christmas was the arrest of Roy James who did a runner over the rooftops they've dragged him down but 10 policemen dragged him down into the news and I said to detective you know who who caught who who captured they said it's all right we've got him we've just heard the news on the television set and the dominoes were going down fast and our lights and I thought we could be my turn Bruce Reynolds will stay on the run for four years early one morning the doorbell went my dad shouted out Nick can you get that I'll just ran down the stairs open the door and the next thing I knew was the door came bursting open and I was pushed up against the wall please come charging in and basically throwing themselves across the bed then my dad came in with Tommy Butler and basically just said to me my Sonny Knight has been very nobody born and he's got to go to prison son and you know I love young that's it I knew we were running from something but I didn't know what and it never occurred to me that my dad could have been a bad guy so when the police came awful a the runnings over they come to rescue my dad was safe now he was quite solve uncle Owen said well got you at last person had just come out natural salivate on the police were particularly nice to me and I couldn't understand may have been very friendly and giving me presents and stuff like that and whereas my mum was just an absolute mess crying her eyes are the trial of the great train robbers begins on 20th of January 1964 in Ellsbury Buckinghamshire just at a moment when Britain is on the cusp of a new world [Music] within a year there will be a change of governments the old guard will be ousted and younger men will come to power [Music] for now there is still a deep-rooted fear of anything that threatens the status quo this was a society that had become in many ways that kind of fossilized you have an elite of people who are all drawn by a large from the same class they've been to the same schools they've been to the same country houses at weekends they have the same kind of grouseman values and and tastes and so on it was almost a crime against the statement and they weren't going to put up with that that was something that was attacking the establishment attack attacking the very fabric of organized society it was a real shame trial it was a real piece of theater he had a certain Nuremberg trial thing is a big occasion the robbers will always complain that when their case comes to trial the odds are stacked against them they didn't have a hope in hell the defense applied to have the trial at the Old Bailey because they thought that the jury in Buckinghamshire would be too partisan the crown appoints justice Edmund Davis as judge bad news for the robbers a very tough hard an emotional man that was his reputation and they would get no favors from him it's the state versus the people law and order versus criminality time for the top brass to take on the folk heroes it's the gray days of winter 1964 and the great train robbers are on trial in Buckinghamshire this is the reality television of its day the robbers and their families in the full glare of the media spotlight time for some 1960's power dressing the robbers wags as it were their kind of gangsters moles from central casting and they sort of have this sort of ultra fashionable early sixties look that kind of beehive and the full sizes and the miniskirts and whatnot [Music] they were all smart women wearing clothes costumes that you didn't normally see in Aylesbury with so much at stake the robbers have secured the best barristers that money can buy I suppose it came to about 30,000 pound legal expenses and cost a fortune I think my legal explain my legal my legal expenses for the Train was something like very very game cash because I want to get someone who I thought was reliable you know Tony Wisby couldn't even afford to pay off the hard purchase on his the car which matter 230 pounds how those people managed to hire top Q C's of the day some of them like Biggs managed to get poor persons relief which then subsequently became legal aid but many of them paid privately for their defense and it was tens of thousands of pounds where did that money come from Great Train Robbery the strategy is to persuade the jury that the robbers weren't on the train and went in the farmhouse it's my contention all the fingerprint evidence that was placed there was placed there for policemen intent on him buying orders that these men must be caught Gordon goody tries to prove that the forensic evidence against him paint from the farm on his shoe was put there by the police I was fitted up I was a train robber there's no doubt about it you know I was pretty no but did the police really fit the robbers up or is it something the robbers say to make themselves look better could the answer lie with the men who got away seen by witnesses on the track that night but never brought to trial the three men got away simply because there wasn't the evidence to prosecute them police did know who they were but they couldn't bring them to justice with no hard evidence against them the police cannot say who they are and the robbers along with their families refuse to name them that will never come from my lips I'm sure it'll come out at some point but it's not for me to say I'm afraid but are their names important some believe they only matter because if three men escape justice the evidence against the others must be solid if they were fitted out whiter than that police also fit out the three guys who got away the answer is they won't get it up [Music] aside from the forensic evidence the prosecution have a trump card the violence used in the robbery specifically against train driver Jack Mills the robbers families say his injuries are overstated year after year it comes out how the train driver was killed by the train robbers he wasn't he died of lymphatic leukemia some years later he got a good hiding and if you speak to his family they will tell you that he never properly recovered I don't really think it makes any difference you know whether they killed him on the spot where he died later they still whacked him in a very vicious way he's a man who's you know approaching old age art to me it was a it was a violent unnecessary thing to do after an eight-week trial the jurors decide it took the job me 52 and 3/4 hours to reach their verdict they took them 10 minutes to deliver it this morning [Music] guilty and not only that in the judges summing up it is clear that he sees them as violent criminals let us clear out of the way any romantic notions of daredevil read this is nothing less than a sordid crime of violence inspired by vast greed the relatives rap in the public gallery you could have heard a pin drop initially some of the one one of the mothers of one of the businesses screamed out Leonard fields mother up in the public gallery shouted as the judge was sentencing her son he's innocent my poor boy and field looked up at her and said calm down mum I'm still young the robbers are given more than 300 years between them up to 30 years each with at the time no parole system renee whizby is at home with the children and another train robbers wife Jill Hussey she said they've got 30 so my mom was overran so my mum went oh that's all right 30 months so she went no not months years years they went crash she fainted me mum there is a massive public outcry against the severity of the sentences it is only when the parole board has introduced three years later that there is any hope of an early release [Music] [Music] Marylyn Wisby is nine McReynolds six when their fathers are sent down but the very first time I visit him in prison made the strongest or the biggest loss impression in my mind get to Darrin which was on a hill and it was a blizzard would get there ten minutes early in this passage raised the keys the doors so we finally finally went around around around so we came this little secure unit in the middle and he was like he was in a look at glass cube or something and I was putting my nose and kissing him on the glass pane I'll be in the car park after the visit and he'd said you know if he looked up X windows up and everything past the barred windows would see a little handkerchief waving and I beat him before he went into his cell and always had a lump in my throat [Music] alongside the robbers in jail is one man who was arrested tried found guilty and sentenced with the rest of them but Bilbo who leaves behind a wife and three kids was not involved in the planning or execution of the crime I'm afraid that he slips out of the radar and I do to this day I think that was a miscarriage of justice John the oldest he expects me to look after and engineer Deborah because he puts me in charge of the embassy they don't run a ret run around the streets too much shoots he expects me to give them some talk with tuition the way he gave me in tuition what sort of things do you teach them that he taught you honesty and he died in prison of all guy you don't in prison is it bad news I feel very strongly about it you know at the trial the robbers don't help bowl because of their own not guilty plea it is very hard to discern between a group of professional criminals who have pleaded not guilty to discern that among semi somebody who's also pleaded not guilty that really is not guilty but once in jail there was no orchestrated campaign to get him out having been convicted and having got their sentences actually any time after that they could have got together and said we're gonna get this guy out because it's not fair that he sent to prison it's actually wrong but they never did the robbers have all since protested bowles innocence but could more have been done at the time they didn't bother with him because they didn't care and if they say they do now then I didn't believe it a year after the robbery Charlie Wilson scales the walls of Winson Green prison he's found with his wife and children three years later in July 1965 Ronnie Biggs escapes from one's with prison and flees the country [Music] you remain on the run for 36 years longer than his original sentence I don't think I would ever entrust my well-being to somebody else again after that I'd rather run my own show I can rely on me Biggs's escapades revived the heroic myth of the robbers even though he played only a very minor part in the rain sordid and crooked as they are the great train robbers will always be remembered as the equipment of 18th century highwayman and you know as many facts about the case can emerge as you want but it'll never change the public perception by ten years after the robbery most of the families have nothing to show for it but the money went and being on the run is expensive game laundering false passports keeping one step ahead of the law I lost a lot of money as it happens no no no other people a lot of other people trusted their friends and these are friends for money who can they trust because if they steal the money off them what are they gonna do they're gonna go to the police account it got put into businesses where buy never worked the dream that glittered wasn't gold I think you have to be educated to be able to have money what's the point of having loads of money if you're not educated you're not using it to your best ability not that clever all you had to do was stop a train in the middle of the night on a track where there's no other trains running along and take the money away it would have been clever if we'd have all got away maybe what a waste an awful waste of some clever bright guys who the fork in the road went left when maybe there was a right and paid so dearly for it and I can't see that I may be completely wrong I can't see that any of them would have said yeah hey it was worth it was worth it [Music] you can't always get what you want

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Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 89,090

Rating: 4.7459164 out of 5

Keywords: TV Shows - Topic, History, heist, biggs, 2017 documentary, Documentary, robbery, crime documentary, real, Documentaries, history documentary, Full Documentary, Full length Documentaries, Channel 4 documentary, The Great Train Robbery, BBC documentary, Documentary Movies - Topic, documentary history, stories, crime

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Length: 45min 21sec (2721 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 06 2018

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