The boys behind the Nice Practice Theft

Britain within the Nineteen Sixties was captivated by the daring of the Nice Practice Theft, and the sheer scale of the cash stolen. However when the accused males stood trial in April 1964, the decide was decided to ship a message that such crimes wouldn’t be tolerated. Fourteen years later, a number of of the convicts talked to the BBC.

On 16 April 1964, Robert Welch was one of many 12 males discovered responsible of a infamous heist in Aylesbury Crown Courtroom. Fourteen years later, in 1978, he was on the BBC’s documentary and present affairs programme, Man Alive, and recalled seeing native dignitaries jostle for positions within the courtroom to listen to the sentencing. “This was what they’d all come to observe. The climax of the play, the drama,” Welch mentioned. “And the medieval setting by which we have been sentenced, , it was a bit chilling.”

Welch and his fellow convicts had fallen a good distance since pulling off one of the crucial audacious and profitable thefts the UK had ever seen: the Nice Practice Theft.

Welch and his co-defendants have been a part of a band who held up a Royal Mail evening prepare travelling from Glasgow to London. The robbers had made off with £2.6m in used banknotes, a document haul at the moment, and the equal of over £50m ($65.8m) at this time. On the time of Welch’s trial, police have been nonetheless trying to find three of the folks they suspected had been concerned within the crime.

To execute this rigorously orchestrated theft, 15 members of two of London’s largest prison gangs had labored collectively, every tasked with a specific function within the plot. “They have been thought to be the elite of the prison world,” Reginald Abbiss, who had coated the crime for the BBC as a younger reporter, instructed the Witness Historical past podcast in 2023. “You needed to have a sure expertise and audacity, sure talents to have the ability to pull a heist of this magnitude they usually got here collectively as a result of they wanted a large number of expertise.” 

The daring theft happened simply after 03:00 on 8 August 1963. Step one the criminals had taken was to chop the telephone traces to cease an alarm being raised. They then rigged the prepare indicators to remain crimson. “They put a glove over the inexperienced gentle, they wired an inexpensive battery as much as the crimson gentle and this, in fact, meant the driving force needed to gradual up,” mentioned Abbiss.

Seeing the crimson gentle, the prepare’s driver, Jack Mills, stopped the engine, and his co-driver, David Whitby, climbed out to make use of the trackside telephone to seek out out what the issue was. That is when Whitby found that the road had been lower, and he was set upon by masked males sporting boiler fits. Within the meantime, a masked robber burst into the prepare’s cab to restrain the driving force. When Mills tried to place up a combat, one other gang member hit him over the top, rendering him semi-conscious.

“The one glitch, in case you like, was the truth that the prepare driver… tried to withstand,” mentioned Abbiss. “One of many robbers hit him on the top with a cosh. Numerous blood and down he went.” 

The gang had been given inside info that the money and high-value packages have been held within the prepare’s entrance two coaches. And since it was a Financial institution Vacation weekend, it will be carrying extra money than ordinary.

Though there weren’t any police onboard, there have been greater than 70 Publish Workplace staff, principally within the rear carriages, the place they have been busy sorting letters. The criminals who had already familiarised themselves with the prepare’s operation and structure rapidly uncoupled the 2 money-laden carriages. The plan was to detach them and drive them away from the steep embankment to a predetermined rendezvous the place it will be simpler to unload the luggage of money.

It was then they hit an issue. “They’d a driver to drive the prepare, he could not get the prepare going, they usually needed to pull the unique driver, Jack Mills, up from the ground and threaten him and say, ‘Drive the prepare,'” mentioned Abbiss. “He managed to get the prepare a mile up the road to the place a lot of the gang have been ready, leaving the opposite eight or 9 coaches with sorters fortunately sorting, completely unaware that the primary a part of the prepare had gone on forward.”

Mills, nonetheless bleeding profusely, was instructed to cease the 2 entrance carriages at Bridego Bridge. There, the remainder of the gang broke into the carriages, overpowering the Publish Workplace employees working in them, and forcing them to lie face down on the ground. In addition they introduced in Mills and Whitby, who have been handcuffed collectively.

The gang had determined that they might give themselves simply quarter-hour to unload the loot after which depart no matter cash was left. They shaped a human chain and swiftly eliminated 120 sacks containing two-and-a-half tonnes of cash into parked Land Rovers. After 1 / 4 of an hour, the crew referred to as time and ordered the terrified Publish Workplace employees to remain nonetheless and to not try to contact the police for half-hour. Then the robbers drove off into the evening. 

The boldness of the theft and the large sum of cash concerned captured the British public’s creativeness. Within the weeks that adopted, the nation was gripped by sensational headlines detailing the police’s hunt for the perpetrators. However regardless of the meticulous nature of the theft’s planning and its skilful execution, inside a 12 months the vast majority of the prison gang had been rounded up and have been dealing with trial.

“Effectively, at first view, the job was a really well-planned job,” ex-Det Supt Malcolm Fewtrell, who led investigations into the heist, instructed BBC Information in 1964. “However within the occasion, it has been a catastrophe. They clearly weren’t so intelligent as they thought they have been.” 

The decide at their trial didn’t view the robbers’ actions within the “romantic” means a number of the public appeared to, saying that it will be “positively evil” if he confirmed the convicted males any semblance of leniency.

“I bear in mind a shock wave ran via the courtroom when the decide, a person referred to as Lord Justice Edmund Davies, handed down 307 years within the area of half an hour,” Abbiss instructed BBC Witness Historical past in 2023. On the time, the punishments they acquired for the theft have been a number of the harshest in British prison historical past, particularly since no one had been killed and no firearms had been used.   

“I used to be simply numbed, I could not consider something however 30 years. When are we going to get out? We’re by no means going to get out,” one of many robbers, Tommy Wisbey, instructed Man Alive in 1978. 

“I do not suppose it actually hits you till a few days later and also you realise what you’ve got obtained,” fellow gang member Gordon Goody mentioned to the BBC. “I imply it was a little bit of a joke downstairs, clowning round and all that form of factor. However deep down, I suppose you have been sick.”

The rationale the decide gave for the severity of the jail phrases was the assault on Mills. “Anyone who has seen that nerve-shattered engine driver can have little question of the terrifying impact on law-abiding residents of a concerted assault by armed robbers,” mentioned Justice Davies on the trial. Mills by no means labored once more and died in 1970 of leukaemia. His co-driver Whitby died of a coronary heart assault the next 12 months on the age of 34.

However there was additionally a way, no less than among the many robbers themselves, that they have been being disproportionately punished as a result of the heist had embarrassed the British institution. One in all them, Roy James, mentioned to the BBC in 1978, “At that second, all of the disgrace that was with me all through the trial was lifted as a result of I felt that Mr Edmund Davies then used his place as a Excessive Courtroom decide, used the backing of the state for vengeance. He put himself on a par with me and every little thing that he mentioned I used to be.”

“There was a sense that Justice Davies got here down significantly arduous for 2 causes,” mentioned Abbiss. “One was the violence proven in opposition to the prepare driver, and the opposite was that the institution, the federal government, the Publish Workplace and British Rail, the way in which that they have been form of caught with their pants down. It confirmed the institution to be folks maybe who take their eye off the ball.”

The criminals’ notoriety solely grew following their sentencing when two of the gang made dramatic escapes from jail. Charles Wilson, who had been the treasurer of the group, broke out of jail simply 4 months after the trial. He was recaptured in Canada after 4 years on the run and served one other 10 years behind bars. Ronnie Biggs escaped from London’s Wandsworth Jail, 15 months after his sentencing, utilizing a makeshift rope ladder. He underwent cosmetic surgery and lived at instances in Spain, Australia and Brazil, evading arrest for almost 40 years. In 2001, he voluntarily returned to the UK for medical remedy and served the remainder of his jail sentence.

The legislation would additionally finally meet up with the three gang members who did not stand trial that day. Bruce Reynolds, thought-about to be the theft’s mastermind, spent 5 years on the run till he was arrested on his return to England. He was sentenced to 25 years in jail, however ended up serving simply 10. His son Nick, who spent his youth on the run together with his father in Mexico and Canada, would later have his personal hyperlink to the outlaw life-style when his band Alabama 3’s music Woke Up This Morning grew to become the opening theme of The Sopranos TV sequence. 

Ronald “Buster” Edwards, who was later performed by Genesis singer Phil Collins in a 1988 movie, Buster, fled to Mexico following the theft. He gave himself up in 1966 and was launched after serving 9 years. James White, who acted because the quartermaster for the theft, was caught in Kent and despatched to jail after three years on the run. He was launched in 1975. 

Regardless of the prolonged jail time handed down, all the lads convicted of the Nice Practice Theft would find yourself being launched early. None served greater than 13 years for the crime – though lots of them would return to jail for various offences within the years that adopted. 

As for the massive haul stolen throughout the theft, regardless of the police in 1964 providing a ten% share for info that may cause them to it, the vast majority of the cash was by no means recovered.

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