We could steal practically anything
because it was just unheard of, stealing,
shoplifting abroad in Europe.
No one did it.
The money underneath the till was astronomical,
grands, grands, grands.
We basically robbed nearly every **** shop in Holland.
[The Thief on Interpol’s Most Wanted List]
Petty crime had been going on since I was in nappies.
It was all do or dare. Everyone just stole.
You had to go in a shop; if you come out with nothing,
you was probably out of the firm.
This is how I really started getting into what we called grafting,
which is really shoplifting.
A grafter’s someone who doesn’t want to work nine to five,
but isn’t lazy.
He’s an entrepreneurial thief.
He just doesn’t want to pay for anything.
We had a motto, “To pay was to fail.”
A lot of people would say I followed my older brother Colin.
But Colin was pretty much in your face,
you know, just took what he wanted.
We tended to sneak around.
Eventually, all these sneak thieves, we all got our act together.
Like I say, we went out in twos and threes.
We’d go to garden centers, where tills were unattended.
But the funny thing, the first till I did in a garden center
was a big wooden drawer.
And as I pulled it out, it was so old it fell to pieces.
All the cash was on the **** floor.
So eventually, Colin was going abroad.
We thought, “Why don’t we go abroad?”
And everyone’s, “Oh, where’s that, where’s this?”
“It’s abroad.”
“Where’s abroad, what’s abroad?”
We thought it was a town.
You know, didn’t even think it was Europe.
We obviously went to Amsterdam
because even at 16, we were all smoking joints.
Me and my mate ended up in a wool shop.
And I’ve always said it, “What are two lads from England
doing in a wool shop?”
Simply, underneath the till, got 500 guilders,
which in them days, we was only 17, it’s like £150.
The average wage was £20 in England.
Then we started buying little cheap cars, going out.
It was just basically going round.
You could do a thousand shops a day.
We went to Austria, then we went to Switzerland,
Germany, Belgium,
Liechtenstein, Luxembourg.
As a rule, we didn’t bother with major cities,
they were more clued up.
But the villages were great.
So easy, it was pathetic.
A few years into it,
and we were really targeting jewelers for Rolexes.
You know, you’re talking 30 Rolexes,
even if you did them at scrap, that’s £30,000.
We’d travel for three or four hours for the Rolex jobs.
And if they never happened, we’d just work our way back.
And that would be just ad hoc.
But we’d go in jewelers again.
We’d just see a window,
we’d say, “Right, there’s a nice window, full of gold.”
“Gold?” “Gold, yeah,” we’d all say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
It become actually an art.
When someone comes in a shop and disappears out of eyesight,
everything is safe, it’s locked up.
They don’t know we’ve got the keys.
We looked all over the place,
and the keys were next door in a shop.
And they’ve got their wares in a cabinet with exactly the same key,
in a jewelry shop.
So we used to collect all these keys.
We’d get into jewelers sometimes where you’d open the safe,
and there’d just be trays and trays and trays and trays of rings.
That’s how we were living. We were living for the moment.
None of us expected to reach old age, I’m afraid.
It was funny because we had Spud, who was smaller than me.
And then we had-- John McKee his name was.
He was a really big guy
and he used to cover us all the time.
But John McKee’d have six Heinekens in the car before he went out.
He was a heroin taker.
Once you’re into heroin--
We found out they were only taking little bits
so they could get through the day.
So they weren’t out their heads,
they knew what they were doing.
So John McKee was a character.
Colin was a live wire.
He just wanted to rob from every single shop he went in.
We eventually-- Someone told me.
They said, “You know the police are watching you?”
And we thought nothing of it at the time
because we could easily lose the police,
you know, with all the canals in Amsterdam.
They had no fear of the police at all.
I first got arrested in a place called Leiden,
which is about 30 kilometers out of Amsterdam.
That was on a baker's robbery, which I'm not proud to say,
where you snatch cash outside the banks.
About three or four days, it’s the usual, “It wasn’t me.
You’ve got the wrong man,” and they’ve had to let me go.
And they said, “Yeah, Interpol want a word with you.”
And I’d thought nothing of it.
I ordered a taxi.
I could feel someone following me.
Just as you’re coming into Amsterdam, I said, “Taxi driver, that’ll do me.”
And I just **** ran
because I knew I’d been followed from Leiden.
And that night, we’re in a club.
It was called the ROXY.
Everyone’s on ecstasy at this time, it was about 1987.
“I don’t think we should be in the clubs tonight, lads,”
so we’ve gone out of the club, jumped in a taxi, drove past them.
We were giving it... so we’re giving it that.
That’s when we first got the inkling that it was Interpol
and not the police.
After 15, 20 years of hearing, “English, English, English, English,”
they put a dossier together on us.
About 1987,
I got stopped in Holland.
“We’ve been following you.”
I said, “I know you’ve been following us,
but you’re not very good at it.”
But eventually they put about five or six of us in jail.
And it wasn’t the exposure, it was just the time was up.
Security had moved on, cameras were starting to appear in the shops,
CCTV’s on the streets.
And this is the kind where you think the days are numbered.
In the end, I got just 18 months,
which even I thought was ridiculous.
I thought I was looking at five years.
But the jewelers we never got done for.