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 choose 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 Court docket. 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 look at. The climax of the play, the drama,” Welch stated. “And the medieval setting by which we have been sentenced, you recognize, it was a bit chilling.”

Welch and his fellow convicts had fallen a good distance since pulling off one of the 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 report haul at the moment, and the equal of over £50m ($65.8m) right now. On the time of Welch’s trial, police have been nonetheless looking for 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 greatest legal gangs had labored collectively, every tasked with a selected function within the plot. “They have been considered the elite of the legal world,” Reginald Abbiss, who had coated the crime for the BBC as a younger reporter, informed 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 and so they got here collectively as a result of they wanted a mess of expertise.” 

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

Seeing the pink gentle, the prepare’s driver, Jack Mills, stopped the engine, and his co-driver, David Whitby, climbed out to make use of the trackside cellphone to search out out what the issue was. That is when Whitby found that the road had been reduce, and he was set upon by masked males carrying 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 battle, one other gang member hit him over the top, rendering him semi-conscious.

“The one glitch, in the event you like, was the truth that the prepare driver… tried to withstand,” stated Abbiss. “One of many robbers hit him on the top with a cosh. Loads of 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 more cash than normal.

Though there weren’t any police onboard, there have been greater than 70 Publish Workplace staff, largely 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 format shortly 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. “That they had a driver to drive the prepare, he could not get the prepare going, and so they needed to pull the unique driver, Jack Mills, up from the ground and threaten him and say, ‘Drive the prepare,'” stated 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 principle a part of the prepare had gone on forward.”

Mills, nonetheless bleeding profusely, was informed 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. Additionally they introduced in Mills and Whitby, who have been handcuffed collectively.

The gang had determined that they’d give themselves simply quarter-hour to unload the loot after which go away no matter cash was left. They fashioned 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 known 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 nearly all of the legal gang had been rounded up and have been dealing with trial.

“Nicely, at first view, the job was a really well-planned job,” ex-Det Supt Malcolm Fewtrell, who led investigations into the heist, informed 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 choose at their trial didn’t view the robbers’ actions within the “romantic” means among 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 by way of the courtroom when the choose, a person known as Lord Justice Edmund Davies, handed down 307 years within the house of half an hour,” Abbiss informed BBC Witness Historical past in 2023. On the time, the punishments they obtained for the theft have been among the harshest in British legal 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, informed Man Alive in 1978. 

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

The explanation the choose 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 doubt of the terrifying impact on law-abiding residents of a concerted assault by armed robbers,” stated 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, at the very least among the many robbers themselves, that they have been being disproportionately punished as a result of the heist had embarrassed the British institution. Certainly one of them, Roy James, stated 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 Court docket choose, used the backing of the state for vengeance. He put himself on a par with me and every part that he stated I used to be.”

“There was a sense that Justice Davies got here down significantly arduous for 2 causes,” stated Abbiss. “One was the violence proven towards 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 type 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 therapy and served the remainder of his jail sentence.

The legislation would additionally ultimately meet up with the three gang members who did not stand trial that day. Bruce Reynolds, thought of 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 adolescence on the run along 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 boys convicted of the Nice Practice Theft would find yourself being launched early. None served greater than 13 years for the crime – though a lot of them would return to jail for various offences within the years that adopted. 

As for the large haul stolen throughout the theft, regardless of the police in 1964 providing a ten% share for info that will cause them to it, nearly all of the cash was by no means recovered.

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