The Brink’s-Mat Robbery

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0:56It's 6 30 in the morning on November the 26th 1983 on a trading estate near Heathrow Airport in West London. 37-year-old security guard Michael Skous arrives in his car outside an unprepossessing warehouse. Unit 7 is a two-story building occupied by Brinks Matt, a leading security firm. It's a storage place for precious metals and currency in transit to or from the airport. Getting out of his car, Scouse walks past the big shutter door that allows vehicles access to the building and heads around the side to the pedestrian entrance. There, he finds four other security guards fidgeting to keep warm, though he notes that one of them, Tony Black, is missing.

1:45As the supervisor and key holder, Scouse is in charge of the complicated security protocols that start the shift, letting himself in first to disarm the night alarm, then returning to admit the others. Once everyone is safely inside, Scouse heads past the vehicle loading bay and vault to the first floor. He is just getting started in the control room, looking at today's tasks when he is summoned back downstairs by the doorbell. Waiting by the side door is Tony Black, looking pale and unkempt. He disappears immediately to use the toilet, then joins Scouse upstairs. But just then, a commotion erupts in the staff room.

2:30As Scouse gets to his feet, a masked figure appears in the doorway holding a semi-automatic pistol. He barks at him and Black to get on the floor. The pistol is pressed into Scouse's neck, and a bag is pulled roughly over his head. After his wrists are wrenched behind him, and secured with handcuffs, he is kicked a few times, and cold liquid is sloshed on his crotch. Its strong, familiar stench reaches his nostrils instantly. It's petrol. While his colleagues are handcuffed to radiators in the staff room, Scouse is forced to hand over the keys to the building, then hauled downstairs towards the main safe with his colleague Robin Risley, who has the other half of the combination.

3:14From beneath his hood, Scouse hears the gang pass through the series of doors and alarm systems until they're inside the caged vault. Temporarily relieved of his hood, Scouse punches his combination swiftly into the safe's keypad. But when it's Reisley's turn, the panic seems to have wiped the numbers from his mind. He tries again and again, but even the threatening rattle of a matchbox doesn't jog his memory. The robbers are sounding increasingly agitated, and now one of them comes over and tears off Scouse's hood again. He wants to know what's in some barrels on the floor. But then his attention is drawn by a stack of grey cardboard boxes on two pallets.

4:02The masked man opens one up, and calls the others over, astonished when he sees what it contains. Twelve bars of pure gold. He opens another with the same result, and then another. A buzz of excitement passes through the vault. It's clear to Scouse that even though the robbers were expecting a big score, this is way more than they'd hoped for. What will become known as the Brinks-Matt gang have come across perhaps 27 million pounds worth of pure gold. But the question is, what will they do with it now?

4:48The Brinks-Mat robbery was one of the largest thefts in British history. The discovery of the record-breaking haul in a West London warehouse in 1983 set off a chain of events that would echo through Britain's criminal underworld for decades. It helped shape the property boom of the 1980s, the drugs trade of the 1990s, and left an enduring mark on UK crime and policing. But who were the men behind the so-called robbery of the century? Why did the tentacles of the theft reach so far? And what is the curse of Brink's mat? I'm John Hopkins, from the Noiser Podcast Network. This is a short history of the Brink's mat robbery.

5:39Around the world, cities have always had their criminal underclass, and London in the post-war decades is no exception. Though the majority, rich and poor, make ends meet through honest means, for those young people brought up among the city's rogues and scoundrels, crime can seem to be the rule rather than the exception. True crime writer Wensley Clarkson is the author of The Curse of Brinks Matt, 25 Years of Murder and Mayhem South London in the 60s, 70s and 80s was a hotbed of professional criminals These were people who were brought up in a criminal atmosphere Who were brought up just after the war, there wasn't a lot of money around, everyone ducked and dived Your father would steal something off a ship in the docks in the Thames.

6:29Another relative might be a printer at the big newspapers who's fraudulently putting in claims for all sorts of extra time he's earned and ending up earning a fortune as a result. It was all about ducking and diving, and this mentality moved, as the decades progressed, into out-and-out professional criminal behaviour. One of the boys growing up in South London at this time is named Mickey McAvoy. His Irish family settles in Camberwell, and he grows up working as a porter at Covent Garden's Fruit and Vegetable Market at the weekend. He boxes in local clubs, frequents South London nightspots, and places bets on races between stolen cars.

7:10Before long, he and his friends are stealing the vehicles themselves. As crime rises, so too does the profile of the Flying Squad, Scotland Yard's elite unit that tackles armed robbery known as the Sweeney. But the police are not beyond corruption themselves, pocketing reward money meant for informants and fraternizing with criminals. By the early 1980s, McEvoy is living with his wife, Jacqueline, and children in South London and looks much like a normal family man to his neighbors. But while he works occasionally as a painter and decorator, as well as running a grocery shop for a time, he has been climbing the criminal ladder too, moving from stealing cars to joining a team of robbers who work a patch covering much of Southeast England.

7:57Leading a double life in more ways than one, he's also got a girlfriend, Kathleen Meacock, whom he calls Kathy. To keep himself fit for his nefarious line of business, he works out obsessively with weights and a punch bag at home. Like many South London criminals, he is known to the police, though they have yet to pin anything substantial on him. Even-natured most of the time, the occasional flare-up of McAvoy's temper earns him the nickname Mad Mickey Now approaching his thirties, he is restless, in search of a big job Something that might mean he'll never have to work again Perhaps through his alleged involvement in a drugs hall near Heathrow He learns that there are warehouses in the vicinity which are used to store valuable items Scheduled for flights out of the airport McAvoy mentions this to an old friend of his, Brian Robinson.

8:51As luck would have it, Robinson's brother-in-law, Tony Black, happens to be employed as a security guard at the Brinks-Matt Warehouse near the airport. Managed by one of the best-known security companies in the world, the Brinks-Matt Warehouse is relatively lightly guarded, with huge amounts of cash and gold stored overnight. To McAvoy, it sounds promising. Very promising indeed.

9:22McAvoy assembles the rest of his crew, six men in total. They start to watch the Brinks-Matt warehouse closely, learning the exact movements of the security staff. Eventually, through Robinson, they approach Tony Black and make him an offer. Though not an experienced criminal, Black, who's struggling with debt, leaps at the chance to help the gang for a share of the proceeds. Tony Black was a civilian in criminal terms. He wasn't a criminal, but he happened to be the brother-in-law of Brian Robinson, one of the robbers. Black shares his knowledge about the alarm and security system at the warehouse and draws detailed diagrams of the layout.

10:02On November 25, 1983, he calls his brother-in-law from a phone box to let him know a big shipment has been delivered. Two tons of what he calls yellow. Gold. But they have to act fast. It'll only be there until the following lunchtime. The big job McAvoy has been waiting for is finally underway. At 6.40 in the morning the following day, Black arrives at work ten minutes late. The rest of the team of security guards at the Brinksmatt warehouse are already there. Once he's in, Black doubles back to let in McAvoy and his gang, who are waiting outside in a blue van. An alarm sounds as they enter, but no one can hear it upstairs.

10:47Masked and armed, they go straight for the two security guards they had been told will provide the combination to the safe.

10:56But what surprises them is the size of the hall they find there. They had expected rich pickings, but nothing on this scale. Three tons of gold, rather than two. A total of 60 boxes containing 6 ,800 gold bars, worth over 26 million pounds. They also take over 100 ,000 pounds in used banknotes, a pouch containing traveller's checks worth 200 ,000 pounds, and another containing diamonds. The vast hall, which could be worth as much as half a billion today, is the property of the London-based Johnson-Mathie Bankers Limited. Bear in mind, this was almost comical, that when they left in the van from the warehouse, their van was scraping the pavement.

11:41They had so much gold in the back of it. They couldn't believe their luck. The leader of the gang, Mickey McEvoy, ordered them not to disappear, not to go on the run, not to go abroad, but to continue to hang out in their haunts. They knew the police would hear about it, but the police would presume that meant they weren't involved. When the news breaks, the scale of the theft shocks the nation. The tabloids call it the robbery of the century, and the police waste no time in launching an investigation. Scotland Yard's elite flying squad, who had become, partly thanks to TV series and partly thanks to their extraordinary record of breaking down doors and breaking up gangs of robbers, were immediately put in charge of this case.

12:29and at the top of them, the guy in charge was Scotland Yard's Chief Commander, Frank Cater. He had an amazing background. He'd been involved with the Great Train Robbery. And he gave the day-to-day duties to Detective Chief Superintendent Brian Boyce, who was a very tenacious ex-Army officer and probably, I say this now, one of the most honest policemen at Scotland Yard at the time. Within a day, the insurers for the hall, Lloyds of London, offers a£2 million reward for information leading to the return of the stolen gold. And though the insurance claim is settled swiftly, it is devastating for Lloyds, who promptly launched their own investigation to trace the stolen property.

13:13McAvoy decides the robbers will have to sit on the loot for a while. But from the beginning, the gold proves to be almost as much trouble for the finders as it is for the insurers.

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15:04It doesn't take the police long to suss out the connection between the security guard, Tony Black, and his brother-in-law, Brian Robinson, a known criminal. Black and the other security guards are called back to the warehouse to make a video reconstruction of the theft to aid the investigation. During the process, the guilty man struggles to hide his nerves. When he is interrogated, the police quickly wear him down and he identifies three of the gang members, his brother-in-law, McAvoy, and a man called Tony White. He cracked very quickly when the police rounded him up because he wasn't a criminal, and it was obvious that this would happen.

15:42He was terrified, though. He had to change his identity. He went into hiding. The police carefully watch the three named men in the hope that they will lead them to the gold. Despite the advice he has given to the others, McAvoy starts to be less cautious, even leaving his Dulwich council house and moving into a mansion on the border of the county of Kent. Soon, his girlfriend Kathy, for whom he has by now left his wife, also benefits from a big new house. McAvoy even buys two Rottweilers and names them Brinks and Matt. Nevertheless, the police delay the arrest of the three men named by Black.

16:20Not only because they have no evidence beyond his confession, but also because they are holding onto the hope that they will be led to the treasure. Finally, 11 days after the robbery, McAvoy, White, and Robinson are taken in for questioning at separate police stations. Despite providing alibis and keeping to the criminal code of silence, a few weeks later they are brought to Feltham Magistrates Court There, though the hall is nowhere to be found, they are remanded on the charge of stealing the gold and other valuables from the Brinksmatt Warehouse While the rest of the gang sits tight, the wheels are already in motion to turn 6 ,800 bars of gold into cold hard cash

17:05Though they're still free, the remaining members of the gang have a problem. Heavy gold bars are more or less impossible to offload unnoticed. Gold ingots tend to carry their own individually designed hallmarks and serial numbers, which need to be removed. And the high quality of the hall presents its own challenge. Failure to disguise it will arouse the suspicion of legitimate traders who might question the sudden appearance of a huge quantity of pure gold. especially with the newspapers filled with reports of the robbery of the century. So having stolen, almost by accident,£27 million worth of gold, which back in 1983 was a lot of gold.

17:47And today, by the way, would be worth at least half a billion pounds, probably more because gold has gone up so much in price. But the problem for the robbers, not only did they have the police on their tail within days, but what the hell do they do with all this gold? They've got to turn it into money, and they need professionals to do that. The gold needs to be melted down and mixed with other metals, such as copper, to disguise its purity before being recast and fed back into the market without drawing attention. Once it's sold, the proceeds themselves must be laundered to disguise the origin of the profits.

18:25The entire process will create a vast chain of work for smelters, middlemen known as fences, money launderers and other criminals. But first things first, the gang needs someone who knows his way around gold and how to smelt it. Enter Kenneth Noy, a professional criminal based in Kent who has taught himself everything there is to know about the precious metal. Kenneth Noy was a professional criminal down to his toenails. He made a reputation for himself before this as someone who could make money out of just about anything. And more importantly, he knew the people to dispose of the gold with and he brought in a gold smelter called John Palmer, who was also a criminal from the west of England.

19:14These two ended up being the pivotal characters in the Bringsback job, even though they never went anywhere near that warehouse. Based in Bristol, John Palmer has a reputation as a major fence. His skill at handling precious metals has even earned him the nickname Goldfinger. Like Noy, he protects his interests by cultivating relationships with contacts on the local police force. In partnership with a man named Garth Chappell, Palmer has a number of legitimate-looking businesses to cover up his criminal activities, including a precious metals and jewelry business. Since 1979, Palmer has been regularly using a private smelter installed in his own garden.

19:59There he smelts scrap and stolen jewelry to sell it back into the legitimate gold market or through one of his three jewelry shops. He and Noy now strike a deal with the gang that they'll take a 25 % fee on everything they smelt. Soon, divided up between trusted associates, the Brink's matte gold begins to be gradually dispersed Little by little, the 6 ,800 gold bars are moved around, smelted, mixed with copper, recast, and sold to dealers Neighbors of Kenneth Noy's elderly parents start to notice the regularity with which Noy unloads what he calls heavy batteries from his Ford pickup into his parents' garage.

20:46And the police start pulling at other threads, including a tip-off from Hatton Garden, London's jewellery district. A man in a gold Rolls Royce, they are told, has been making inquiries about buying an industrial smelter. When the man, Mickey Lawson, returns to pick up the smelter, the flying squad follow him all the way to Kent, and specifically to the door of his best friend, Kenneth Noy. It's incredible. He couldn't make it up. And so as a result, Scotland Yard, partly with the assistance of the Kent police, mounted what they call sophisticated surveillance operation. It included cameras in boxes by trees at the entrance to Kenneth Noy's isolated house in the Kent countryside.

21:36But the police can't prove anything immediately, and in the months after the robbery, in spite of the surveillance, Noy, Palmer and their associates are making money from their smelting operation. After being blended and recast, the gold is taken in small consignments to the Assay Office in Sheffield, one of the few places with the power to hallmark gold, silver and platinum. Once the gold's purity levels have been determined, the Sheffield Office gives it a hallmark, meaning it can be sold on the legitimate market. As a cover story for this sudden influx of gold, Chappell takes out an advertisement in a local paper, a call to buy unwanted jewelry.

22:19One of the biggest buyers of this new influx of the precious metal is Johnson Mathie, the original owners of the Brinks Mat Loot. The money starts to pour in. In just four months after the robbery, one bank handles transactions of more than£10 million in grubby plastic bags, no questions asked. But then the money has to be carefully laundered and made to appear as if it comes from a legitimate source, such as property investments. There's absolutely no doubt that some of the money raised in the first year, I would say, after the robbery, was invested in what then became Canary Wharf and certain other areas on the side of the Thames near to Canary Wharf.

23:04And the reason that that happened is actually some of these very astute criminals and their associates already owned rundown warehouses, some of them, and they actually sold them on to other criminals who then sold them to developers. It was a great way of laundering the money and making a big profit at the same time. And actually, if you walk through Canary Wharf now, you're really looking at something that was built partly, without doubt, on the proceeds of the gold from the Brinksmack robbery. Meanwhile, Brinks Matt Inside Man, the security guard, Tony Black, is sentenced to six years imprisonment for his role in the robbery.

23:39But the sentence is accompanied by a grim warning from the judge who tells him, never again will your life be safe. I believe he's still in hiding to this day. And he was seen as, they used to say in South East London, they probably still do, a grass. he'd grassed up his family member and that was succulent. Within a year of the robbery, McAvoy, White and Robinson are brought before the same judge at London's Old Bailey to charges of conspiring to commit robbery and of robbery itself. White is cleared, but McAvoy and Robinson are found guilty and sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment. But although two of the gang are behind bars, the police have yet to locate what's left of the stolen goods Now, in January 1985, surveillance suggests that some of the gold is being moved in and out of Noy's property What the police need to know is how

24:43It is January the 26th, 1985, around 6.15 in the evening, and already bitterly cold in the dark Kent countryside. D.C. John Fordham and his partner D.C. Neil Murphy have just started the overnight surveillance shift of Kenneth Noy's Hollywood Cottage, a large mock Tudor house set in 20 acres of grounds and woodland. They're still settling into their usual positions when a pair of headlights slices through the gloom Coming up the quiet country lane and turning towards the property A quick check confirms that the car is that of Noyes' associate, Brian Reader A person of interest in the Brink's mat robbery The two detectives are on their feet in seconds This could be it, the key piece of evidence they've been looking for Quickly, they leave the hideout and head through the bushes towards the road Both are wearing camouflage clothing and balaclavas But though they are carrying yeast tablets to pacify noise Rottweilers, they are unarmed As is standard procedure for operations of this kind They are, however, equipped with discrete radio sets with which they can communicate with the backup team nearby 37-year-old Murphy follows his senior partner Fordham.

26:02Known as Gentleman John for his old-fashioned good manners, Fordham is an impressive mentor, with four commendations for bravery under his belt. With Reeda's car by now out of sight up the driveway, the two officers pass over the low wall and along the perimeter fence, making for the cover of the trees and shrubbery outside the barn. But just as Fordham drops to his knee beside a tree, waiting for Murphy to move ahead, one of Noyes Rottweilers appears out of nowhere. Startled, Murphy's hand flies to his pocket for the yeast tablets. But the dog, now joined by a friend, isn't interested. Though neither animal attacks for now, the alarm has been well and truly raised.

26:46As their barking intensifies, Murphy hears the crackle of his colleague's radio as he reports this latest development of the officers waiting nearby. Gesturing to Fordham, Murphy begins to withdraw carefully from the dogs, presuming his partner will follow. But when he reaches the shrubbery, he finds he is alone. He quickly climbs a tree to help him locate his partner. And once he's up there, he sees something that makes his heart sink. A figure of a man in the garden, flanked by the dogs and holding a torch. It's Kenneth Noy. Suddenly, the beam of light swings towards Murphy in his tree. He drops from the branches to the other side of the boundary fence and runs out of sight.

27:33But now he can hear raised voices and the sounds of a tussle. A woman starts to scream. Murphy pushes through some bushes for a clearer view, and for a moment, what he sees doesn't make sense. Two men and a woman are standing over something on the grass. something one of the men is viciously kicking. But when Murphy realizes the shape on the ground isn't moving, he understands it completely.