Ringleader Brian Reader brought his experience of the 1983 Brink’s-Mat heist to bear in plotting the biggest burglary in English history

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

In the Kent countryside 31 years ago, two criminals stood over a man slumped on the ground as he took his last breaths.

Over the incessant barking of dogs, shouts could be heard across the chilly January night. One, carrying a shotgun, shouted: “Right, we’ll blow your fucking head off!” He was Kenneth Noye.

Three guilty of Hatton Garden heist as Kenneth Noye link revealed Read more

The other, Brian Reader, aimed a kick at the man: John Fordham, a specialist police surveillance officer, who had been stabbed five times in the front and five times in the back, with such force that a knife was plunged into his body up to its hilt.

Experts would later tell a trial that Fordham had been held down for some of those stab wounds, inflicted by Noye – then a king in the criminal underworld –that night in 1985. His trusted partner was Reader.

Fordham was part of the Scotland Yard team keeping watch on Noye as part of the investigation into the Brink’s-Mat heist of 1983, when £26m in gold and bullion had been stolen from a warehouse near London’s Heathrow airport.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kenneth Noye, left, and Brian Reader. Composite: Kent Police/Metropolitan Police/PA

Reader was Noye’s right hand man in the plot to launder the Brink’s-Mat haul. “Reader was trusted by Noye,” Brian Boyce, the senior detective who led the Scotland Yard investigation into Brink’s-Mat, told the Guardian.

Both men stood trial for murder but were cleared, with Noye claiming he had acted in self-defence, fearing an attack from Fordham. Noye was later jailed for another violent attack after stabbing 21-year-old Stephen Cameron to death in a road rage incident. But both Reader and Noye were convicted over the gold, and Reader was jailed for nine years in 1986.

Reader’s experience of working with some of the top criminals of the postwar era helped him to attempt the biggest burglary in English history at Hatton Garden. From Noye, Reader learned the value of having deep knowledge of who in the criminal world had certain skills. He also moved in the same circles as Tommy Adams, a leader of one of the most feared crime families in British criminal history.

“He was close to the Adamses,” recalls Boyce, saying Reader was also unique in being close to major criminals in firms from different parts of London.

How the Hatton Garden raid was done How the Hatton Garden raid was done

By 2015, Reader was a 76-year-old pensioner, using his free bus pass to travel to his old stomping ground, Hatton Garden, home to London’s diamond district. “Most of the Brink’s-Mat gold went through the Hatton Garden area,” Boyce said. The world had moved on, and Reader was struggling to keep up.

But on Thursday 2 April 2015, the start of the long Easter weekend, he took a train from his home in Dartford, Kent, to London to join his handpicked gang of pensioners, who were to break into the vault and carry out his long nurtured plan.



In his crew was Terry Perkins, 67, “an extraordinary character”, say friends. He had served 22 years for his role in the 1983 Security Express robbery, which saw £6m stolen – also over a long Easter weekend.

The gang also included veteran criminal John Collins, 74, and burglar Danny Jones, 58, described by friends as a gentle man who liked a laugh and a joke, who had burglary convictions going back to 1975. One friend said he was “eccentric to the extreme” and “bit of a Walter Mitty”, obsessed by palm-reading and known to sleep in his mum’s dressing gown and a fez.

“It was to be one last payday … their pension,” Peter Spindler, Scotland Yard’s head of specialist crime investigations at the time of the burglary, told the Guardian.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A police forensics officer enters the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit company, scene of the biggest burglary in English history. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Another senior former detective said Reader, Perkins and Collins had worked together in the past: “They don’t work with strangers … Their biggest fear is a grass.”

The men had begun looking at the Hatton Garden area in mid-February. They finalised the plot in the weeks leading up to the raid, often on a Friday night at the Castle pub in Islington, north London.

There was no inside man, police believe: the gang simply waltzed into the building, which housed many different businesses. In its basement were the safety deposit boxes protected in a vault behind iron gates and thick concrete wall. By 12 March, Collins had been to Hatton Garden at least five times. It is believed the men may have posed as customers wanting a safety deposit box in the vault.

By 31 March, the gang were so brazen they were not just wandering in and out of the eight-storey building, but playing with the lift. Perkins was spotted in a small elevator in the building, wearing blue overalls and surrounded by tools and building equipment, and smiling at a woman he came across.

After hours of planning and talking – in cars, at each other’s houses, at the Castle pub and at a famous old-school Italian cafe called Scotti’s – they were ready.

On 2 April, at 8.25pm, Collins parked a white van outside the building, at 88-90 Hatton Garden.

A man with a wig of red hair, known only as Basil, opened the door of the building, having gained codes for the doors and a key for a mortise lock on the front door. He has never been caught.

Basil was brought in for technical expertise, police believe. He was probably involved in several roles, including neutralising the alarm and handling the electrics.

Having got into the building, Basil waited until a man in a neighbouring business had left, then, with a black binbag slung over his shoulder, opened a fire escape door to the building.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A still image taken from CCTV footage showing one of the burglars carrying tools in the fire escape corridor at Hatton Garden Safe Deposit company. Photograph: Metropolitan Police/PA

The rest of the gang entered, with the tools for the job, posing as workmen. These men were Brian Reader, Terry Perkins, Daniel Jones and another co-conspirator, Carl Wood, who pleaded not guilty but was convicted on Thursday.

They unloaded bags, tools and two wheelie bins, which they carried (or wheeled) in through the fire escape, and large metal joists.



Reader perhaps had a sense this would be his last performance and dressed up – his stripy socks and scarf were so distinctive they stood out on CCTV and helped establish his guilt.

He also wore a yellow hard hat and a hi-visibility jacket with “GAS” written on the back.

Perkins was dressed in a hi-vis tabard, a yellow hard hat and a white surgeon-style mask.

Collins had keys for a building over the road and acted as lookout. The gang communicated via walkie-talkie and never once used their mobile phones, knowing that might later help place them at the scene.

Then one of the gang went to the lift on the second floor, still some way from the basement vault. Police believe this was most likely Basil. “He was probably first to clamber down the lift shaft: he’s younger and fitter than the others,” said one source.

The lift was deliberately jammed on the second floor, leaving a small drop down to the basement, where the vault was. Basil disabled the alarm only partially, but enough so that he could cut the power to iron gates safeguarding the lobby to the entrance of the vault. These could now be pulled open, and machinery brought through by the gang.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The ground floor lift at Hatton Garden Safe Deposit company with an out of order sign. Photograph: Metropolitan Police

The alarm managed to send a warning signal. Police were informed but did not respond.

The gang now had run of the building and all its eight floors.

The gang cut through a second iron gate and now faced a thick reinforced concrete wall. Using a diamond-tipped Hilti DD350 drill they had researched on the internet, they tore into the concrete: plumes of dust and debris billowed into the air.

A hole – just 50cm deep, 25cm high and 45cm wide – was cut 89cm off the ground. Police believe that the two who managed to crawl through the tiny hole were Basil and Jones.

Having smashed their way through the concrete, they encountered the backs of the heavy metal cabinets that housed the safe deposit boxes.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The inside of the vault at the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit company. Photograph: Metropolitan Police/PA

The cabinets were screwed both to the floor and ceiling. The jack they had used to prise open the lift doors included a 10-ton hydraulic ram, which was then intended to push the deposit boxes over. But it did not work.

“They only meant to be in for one night, but the jack breaks … Their plans fell apart,” said Spindler.

Reader got upset and walked out, never to come back. The gang gave up for the night. Just after 8am, with the sun now up, they left, defeated – for now.

It was decided that Jones would be sent to buy a new pump and hose for the jack; but in doing so he used his real surname and the name of the road he lived on. On Saturday 4 April, Jones was driven by Collins in his white Mercedes to Twickenham, south-west London. A store called Machine Mart sold a Clarke pump and hose to a man who gave his details as “V Jones” of Park Avenue, Enfield, Middlesex. Jones lives at 115 Park Avenue, “V” is the initial of his partner’s first name.

At about 10.04pm, Jones, Perkins, Wood, Collins and Basil came back in a white van. For some reason, Wood decided to quit.

Armed with the new equipment, later that night the gang broke back in, but before doing so they made a fatal mistake. Half an hour earlier, Collins drove from his nearby Islington home to recce the Hatton Garden area again using his own white Mercedes, which meant police were able to trace his number plate.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jewels recovered from Edmonton cemetery during the investigation into the Hatton Garden heist. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

That second night the gang used the jack as a ram to smash the metal cabinets over. Finally they were in.

Later, police covertly recorded two of the gang discussing the moment they smashed through the vault wall.

Perkins: “Once I heard the first crack, I thought …”

Jones: “It was hissing, that pump – BANG – didn’t it? That all I could hear – BANG – and I thought, for fuck’s sake, I had a headache, Tel.”

One of the men then clambered through the tiny hole to jemmy open 73 of the 550 safe deposit boxes, which they ransacked.

The Crown claimed they amassed a £14m haul including jewellery, precious stones, gold bullion, cash, emeralds, sapphires and diamonds, wristwatches by luxury brands such as Rolex, and rings.

They needed wheelie bins to stash the loot and took an hour to move their haul and equipment out. By 6.44am on Sunday 5 April, they had left the scene.

It was not until 8am on Tuesday that the burglary was noticed by staff returning after the long holiday weekend.

Police were confronted by a scene of dust, debris and scattered safety deposit boxes. Power tools, including an angle grinder, the Hilti drill and crowbars, were abandoned on the floor, having been wiped clean of any incriminating evidence.

They were forensically aware, courtesy of their criminal experience and refreshed by a book called Forensics for Dummies, which was recovered from one of their homes by police. For example, when nature called, it was thought they used toilets on other floors, away from the vault, during their two nights in and around the vault. There was no direct physical evidence that any of the guilty men were ever in the vault.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A copy of Forensic for Dummies, recovered after the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company raid. Photograph: Metropolitan Police/PA

Solving the burglary was the job of Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad and pressure ratcheted up on the force after it was revealed that police had ignored the security alarm.

“That was an embarrassment for the Met,” said former commander Spindler, who was put in charge of overseeing the Met’s response to the audacious heist, which caught the public’s imagination.

Detectives combed through CCTV from neighbouring buildings, and then fanned out to get more and more, capturing the wider area.

They spotted Collins’s Mercedes, with its disabled badge, outside the building half an hour before the white van returned on the second night – a car whose owner’s criminal record went back to 1961.

They decided to put an audio probe in his car, and watch him to see who his associates were. This helped lead to the rest of the gang. They then placed a bug in Perkins’s Citroen Saxo.

The biggest challenge with any large haul of loot is how to dispose of it and turn valuables into cash. Philip Evans, the prosecutor, said: “They could split it up, melt it down, sell it or hide for a rainy day. Ultimately, however, their plan was to convert their criminal property into money.”

“They got rid of the bullion and cash quickly,” said an investigator, but did not know what to do with the rest. The stolen valuables were stored in two large wheelie bins and a holdall.

They were getting increasingly confident. On 8 May they even returned to the scene of the crime.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Items of jewellery recovered during the investigation. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

There, Collins and Reader met with a man a surveillance officer described as having “Elvis-style large gold-rimmed glasses”.

Later that day, Collins, Perkins and Jones were observed meeting again at the Castle pub, moving on to the upmarket Bonnie Gull Seafood Bar in nearby Exmouth Market.

They were largely disciplined, did not show off their new-found wealth and avoided changes in lifestyle that would attract suspicion. They planned to let the publicity die down.

But a week later, on Friday 15 May, the bug in Perkins’s car caught his passenger, Jones, bragging: “The biggest cash robbery in history at the time and now the biggest tom [short for tomfoolery, slang for jewellery] in the fucking world, that’s what they are saying … And what a book you could write, fucking hell.”

That day Perkins also said stolen Indian gold could be his pension: “I’m going to melt my good gold down.” Later, Asian necklaces, bangles and pendants were recovered.

Spindler said the gang made errors and believed the hype surrounding the heist: “They probably thought they had got away with it, and became complacent or arrogant. They were caught on the probes talking about the biggest cash burglary in history.”

On 19 May, it was decided the gang would gather all the loot at an address in Enfield at Sterling Road. Potentially this was for “the slaughter” – the divvying up of the loot.

This was the point where police chiefs decided to pounce, with the suspects and their haul in one place. 200 officers staged raids and the gang were arrested.

Spindler said: “They were analogue criminals operating in a digital world. They lacked the knowledge to defeat digital detectives.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Edmonton cemetery, north-east London, where Daniel Jones stashed his share of the goods. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Police thought they had recovered most of the loot but then events changed their mind.

Jones told police about a stash hidden where the ashes of his children’s grandfather had been “buried”, but not about a larger stash hidden in another memorial stone.



Now what Reader, Perkins, Collins and Jones fear, according to those close to them, is a series of potentially devastating court hearings to get the money back.

They face a likely maximum of less than seven years for conspiracy to burgle. They chose not to use violence and did not take weapons, knowing that would attract a much higher sentence. A former detective said: “Do you get your biggest bird [time in jail] for breaking in or putting a gun into someone’s face?”

If Brink’s-Mat in 1983 was the start of modern British crime, with some of its millions funding large scale drug importations into the UK, Hatton Garden may be the last grand act of a kind of old-school, working-class criminal.

“It’s probably the last of its type,” said Spindler.

Now big-time crime is moving to the cyber world, offering large rewards with less risk of capture.

Hatton Garden is the swan song for a certain type of crime and villain, partly sophisticated but undermined by small but crucial errors.

Spindler said: “They are men of their time. One of the reasons they have not been successful, a decade or two ago, there was not the ANPR [automatic number plate recognition] or CCTV coverage there is now, and they would have had a better chance of getting away with it.”

For Reader, he put in place the lessons learned from Noye and Adams and assembled a gang that called him “the Master” and “the Guvnor”. Aged 76, he had left the anonymity of old age, and became a someone again.