Hey Thoughty2 here, Humans have always
been enchanted by gold. We don it, devour it, drink it, serenade it, even defecate atop it,
and, when the chips are down, we kill for it. From King Midas to the California gold rush,
when it comes to this most precious of precious metals, we simply lose our tiny little minds.
Given this centuries old love of all-things Au, it’s no wonder that gold has remanied a target
of the criminally inclined. And there was no heist bigger than that of the Brink’s-Mat bullion raid,
in which an armed gang burst into a warehouse near Heathrow airport and
made off with £26 million worth of pure gold. The heist, hailed as ‘The Crime of the Century’,
was at the time the largest in British history. But the theft itself was merely
the start of the story. Because after stealing three-tonnes of solid gold,
these newly minted millionaires had to figure out just what the hell they were going to do with it.
The Brink’s-Mat raid took place at 6.30am on the 26th of November 1983; say what you like about
armed robbers, but they do get to work early. The gang was led by two career criminals, Brian
‘The Colonel’ Robinson and ‘Mad’ Mickey McAvoy, one of whom was said to be the brains of the
operation and the other a certified hard-ass; I’ll leave it to you to work out which was which.
There was also an inside man, security guard Anthony Black. He was married to
Brian Robinson’ sister and he happily spilled his guts to his criminal inlaw
about the large sums of money that were held in the Brink’s-Mat warehouse where he worked.
As far as heists go, this one was absurdly simple. During his rounds, Black casually unlocked a side
door, granting access to the seemingly secure warehouse, for the rest of the crew. Then,
six balaclava-clad bandits burst in, quickly subduing the security guards who,
far from ready to defend the incursion, were enjoying a nice hot cup of tea and a gossip.
Next on the to-do list was gaining access to the vault. Only select guards knew the codes and Black
wasn’t one of them, so the gang politely asked one of the ones who did if he wouldn’t mind handing it
over. When that didn’t work, they tried the more direct route of putting a knife to his throat,
pouring petrol over his privates, and suggestively lighting a match. But before the poor man had a
chance to cough up the codes, one of the crew spotted something strange..
Sitting in the middle of the warhouse were several large boxes. Each concealing 6,800
solid gold ingots. The Brink’s-Mat robbers had hoped to steal around £1 million worth of
foreign currency from the vault. Instead, they found 26-times that sum just sitting there.
It was the heist equivalent of winning the lottery, except when people win the lottery
they aren’t usually holding a shotgun and threatening to burn someone’s cock off. Also,
when you win the lottery they give you one of those big novelty cheques, which must
be a nightmare to pay into the bank, but a damn sight easier than transporting 3 tonnes of gold.
The crew had anticiapted a swift smash-and-grab operation - what they hadn’t planned on is that
almost two hours later they’d still be loading the loot into the van with a forklift truck.
So laden with loot was the getaway vehicle that they struggled to ‘get away’ at all,
leaving the scene at a pace surpassed by my gran on a midnight trip to the toilet.
They did manage to escape before the alarm was raised, but soon enough the chase was afoot.
The London police department dedicated to organised crime is known as the Flying Squad,
better known by its cockney rhyming slang The Sweeney (Sweeney Todd,
Flying Squad). They had a reputation for being every bit as tough as the criminals they
pursued so it wasn’t long before they started putting these gold bar bandits behind bars.
Anthony Black, the inside man, was the first to be brought in - as soon as the cops realized he was
the brother-in-law of a known criminal. He really didn’t think that one through did he. Black folded
under questioning and confessed to his part in the crime. He also coughed up the names of
ringleaders Brian Robinson and Mickey McAvoy, who were both arrested only ten days after the raid.
Not that either had exactly been lying low in the interim - both immediately
swapped their humble family homes for significantly swankier properties,
purchased in cash. Just in case doubt remained, McAvoy further confirmed
his culpability by trying to punch Anthony Black in the face during a police line-up.
A year later Robinson and McAvoy were sentenced to twenty-five years each,
with Black getting six years. Unlike Black, McAvoy and Robinson remained silent - they never
gave up their accomplices, and the other 4 men involved still haven’t been caught to this day.
With the ringleaders safely in prison you might think it would have been easy to track down the
stolen loot - after all, how the hell do you even begin to launder 3 tonnes of very shiny metal?
Step forward John Palmer, the man the press would later christen the real life
Goldfinger - and with very good reason. Despite growing up in extreme poverty in
Birmingham, Palmer had a knack for making money. He left school at a young age and
started selling scrap metal and second-hand cars before moving into jewellery and gold.
By the time of the Brink’s-Mat robbery in 1983 Palmer was living in a Georgian mansion near
the historic town of Bath, where he had his own smelter, - a mini furnace for melting metal.
As a well-known criminal who owned a gold melting machine,, he was the perfect person to liquidate
the gang’s assets - literally. Just two days after the robbery,
Palmer’s affluent neighbours alerted the police about his frantic backyard smelting.
Unsurprisingly, they figured it might have something to do with the three tonnes of
stolen gold making news headlines. The police turned up shortly afterwards,
but for reasons that have been lost to history, they decided not to take things any further.
That left Palmer free to melt down huge quantities of gold, which he mixed with
copper to disguise its origins. He then sold it on to unsuspecting companies including one called
Johnson Matthey - the very same company that owned the gold in the first place.
I mean stealing someone’s gold is one thing, but selling it back to them at
an inflated price after you’ve decreased the quality - that’s just criminal.
In total £13 million worth of profit from the gold went through the accounts of Palmer’s personal
company - which he wasn’t shy about spending. However ineffective the police might have been
previously, they eventually began to suspect Palmer's involvement and raided his mansion
in 1985. The trouble was, by that point it was too late - he’d taken his family to Tenerife,
a “short” holiday that ended up lasting two years - funny that.
He did eventually return to Blighty in 1987, and was promptly put on trial for his part in
disposing of the gold. But it seems he’d spent the intervening years polishing up his case,
because, despite admitting to melting and selling the gold, he was cleared of all
charges. His defence was simple - he claimed he never knew the gold was stolen. That
might sound hard to believe, but apparently the jury saw things differently - Palmer left the
courtroom that day blowing them kisses before hopping on a plane straight back to Tenerife,
where he’d set up a dodgy timeshare business. By this time Palmer wasn’t the only one of
the extended criminal family connected to the Brink’s-Mat robbery that the police were pursuing;
they were also after life-long gangster Kenneth Noye, an expert fence who had a
reputation for being able to shift all kinds of ill-gotten gains. Like Palmer,
Noye was thought to have played a pivotal part in melting down the Brink’s-Mat gold and laundering
the money which its sales brought in. As a prime suspect Noye was placed under
close police surveillance, which is how one night an undercover officer came to be hiding
camouflaged in his back garden. Apparently Noye was a proud horticulturalist - because
on finding the police officer camped out in his chrysanthemums, he stabbed him to death.At
the subsequent trial, Noye pulled off an even more unlikely victory than John Palmer, claiming
he’d stabbed the police officer 10 times in the chest… in self defence. He was found not guilty.
Thankfully, Noye faced court again less than a year later when police found
eleven solid gold bars in his house. Even the apparently easily-led jurors of 1980s England
couldn’t ignore this glaring evidence. Noye was fined £500,000, and given fifteen
years in prison. He was released in 1994, but two years later murdered someone else.
It seems old habits quite literally died hard. This time he killed a motorist in a road rage
incident, then fled the country the following day and went on the run for four years.
You may be wondering how a convicted criminal wanted for murder managed to slip away so easily.
Well I assume he donned one of those pairs of glasses with a false nose and moustache attached,
but - like Ringo Starr from the Beatles - Noye had a little help from his friends,
only with less drumming and more stabbing. In this case Noye’s friend was none other
than old Goldfinger himself, John Palmer. Perhaps there is honour among thieves after
all. Palmer had Noye flown out of the UK in his private helicopter, which took him
to Palmer’s private golf course in France. From there, Noye took Palmer’s Learjet to Tenerife,
where authorities lost track of him altogether. Noye is believed to have orchastrated at least 3
mob murders while on the run - either to evade law enforcement or to avenge
those he believed had wronged him. He was eventually arrested in Spain
and extradited back to the UK, where he was sentenced to life in prison.
But hang on a second, did I say that John Palmer owned a helicopter? And a golf course? And a
Learjet? Yes, yes, I did. Because while Kenny Noye had spent years locked up,
Palmer had spent his time cleaning up, making an absolute fortune in a scam of huge proportions.
You see, his holiday apartment timeshare business was nothing but a huge con. It grew to be an
empire employing hundreds of people and made Palmer a personal fortune of over £300 million,
meaning that at one point he was as rich as the actual Queen of England.
Palmer’s vast wealth was all built on lies and up to 20,000 customers were tricked into
paying for apartments that didn’t exist. If they refused to pay, Palmer’s hired
thugs convinced them to change their minds. Not only that but Palmer was caught on camera
by legendary British investigative journalist Roger Cook offering to launder £60 million
worth of drug money and boasting about how he could get guns from the Russian Mafia.
Justice, though long overdue, eventually caught up with Palmer who, just like Noye, was extradited
back to the UK. He was put on trial, found guilty, and sentenced to eight years for fraud.
He would be released after four to continue his life of crime until 2015, when he was shot dead
outside his mansion in the English countryside. No one has been convicted of his murder.
The brutal end to Palmer’s life is typical of many of those associated with the Brink’s-Mat
heist, which superstitious types have suggested may have been cursed. In total,
twenty people involved in the heist have been murdered over the years.
Many others have languished in prison; original robbers Robison and McAvoy got long sentences,
and both died penniless, their shares of the stash having evaporated by the time they were released.
As for the gold itself - the vast majority was never recovered, and its whereabouts remain the
subject of fevered speculation even today. So much stolen gold was processed by the thieves that,
according to some estimates, almost everyone who bought gold jewellery in the UK after
1984 is wearing at least some Brink’s-Mat gold. Other tales claim the laundered money has been
invested in everything from international drug trafficking to the large-scale
re-development of the Docklands area of London. With so many having taken their secrets to early
graves it seems likely we will never know the whole truth, and the mystery of the Brink’s-Mat
robbery, like the gold that was taken that day, will continue to fascinate and tantalise
us for years to come. Thanks for watching.