The Crime Book

58

B

y the early spring of 2015,

veteran career criminal

Brian Reader, age 76, had

spent three years planning “one last

job”. Reader had the pedigree,

having participated in the Baker

Street Robbery of 1971. This time,

he recruited friends John “Kenny”

Collins, 74, Terry Perkins, 67, and

Danny Jones, 60, among others.

On the first weekend of

April 2015, with the Easter holiday

and Passover due to coincide, the

Hatton Garden Safe Deposit

Company was to close its doors on

Thursday night and would not open

again until the following Tuesday.

The entire district, renowned as

London’s jewellery quarter, was to

be deserted for the long weekend.

Without a hitch

The last of the Hatton Garden

Safe Deposit Company staff left

the building at around 8:20pm.

Five minutes later, security

cameras captured footage of a

gang heading down into the vault

via a lift shaft.

They were led by a man

nicknamed “Mr Ginger” by the

press for the red hair visible

beneath his cap, but he was

referred to among the gang as

“Basil”. Three others were visible,

each pushing a large commercial

wheelie bin: the robbers clearly

expected a major haul. For the

moment, though, no one saw this

OLD-SCHOOL

LONDON

CRIMINAL GENTS

THE HATTON GARDEN HEIST, APRIL 2015

IN CONTEXT

LOCATION

London, UK

THEME

Vault heist

BEFORE

11 September 1971

Burglars, including Brian

Reader, break into the safe

deposit boxes at the Baker

Street branch of Lloyds Bank

in London, stealing an

estimated £3 million (about

£42 million today).

12 July 1987 Thieves pose

as potential customers at the

Knightsbridge Safe Deposit

Centre in London to gain

access before holding up

staff and making off with

about £60 million (£158 million)

in cash and jewellery.

AFTER

4–5 February 2016

Computer hackers attempt to

steal £673 million from the

central bank of Bangladesh.

A diamond-core drill, stolen from

a nearby demolition site four months

before the heist, was used to bore

three overlapping holes through the

reinforced concrete wall.

They were analogue criminals

operating in a digital world.

Scotland Yard

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59

See also: The Great Train Robbery 30–35 ■ The Société Générale Bank Heist 44 ■ The Antwerp Diamond Heist 54–55

footage, nor did the Metropolitan

Police react to an alert from the

vault’s alarm.

The alarm also alerted the

vault’s security monitoring

company. They called Alok Bavishi,

the son of the safe deposit centre’s

joint director, who was temporarily

in charge. Although Bavishi was

incorrectly informed that the police

were already at the scene, he

phoned a security guard to check

out the building. But the guard

found nothing wrong when he

looked through the main door – a

lucky break for the gang,

particularly as lookout Collins had

fallen asleep while he was on duty.

Meanwhile, Basil and his

associates made two trips to the

vault. By the time they fled

the area, at 6:45am on Sunday

morning, they had ransacked

72 boxes and taken £14 million

worth of loot.

Tracking them down

However, the gang unwittingly left

an electronic trail. They had tried

to disable the security cameras and

BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS

the vault’s alarms, but only with

partial success. The gang’s

careless use of their cell phones

also provided the police with clues.

Access to phone records and

vehicle-tracking data established

that gang members Perkins,

Collins, and Jones had regularly

met at the Castle pub in Islington,

north London, while planning the

raid. A police surveillance operation

later recorded Reader, Collins, and

The “Diamond Wheezers” as the

press dubbed them were jailed for a

lenient combined total of 34 years.

Perkins and Jones even thanked the

judge as they were led away.

Perkins in the Castle pub boasting

about how they had accessed

the vault.

Mystery mastermind

Seven men were eventually

arrested and convicted for the

Hatton Garden robbery, but Basil

eluded capture. According to the

testimony of Danny Jones, Basil

was an ex-policeman and the

mastermind behind the raid. Basil

clearly was the most professional

member of the gang and had been

careful to conceal his face with a

bag when making his way into the

waiting van. He is believed to have

been the inside man, letting

himself into the building with a set

of keys and bypassing several

layers of security. Both Basil and

more than £10 million worth of

jewellery, gold, and gems are

unaccounted for. ■

One last job

The British press and the public

were tickled by the venerable

age of the men accused of the

Hatton Garden heist. There was

a certain charm to the revelation

that Reader used a senior

citizen’s bus pass to get to

Hatton Garden; that lookout

Kenny Collins had napped on

duty; and that Terry Perkins had

remembered to pack his

diabetes medication.

Superficially, the gang

members seemed like they

could have been anyone’s

grandfathers. However, many

of them were dangerous career

criminals bonded by friendship,

a shared skill set, and nostalgia

for past adventures.

For years, Reader had

cultivated a “safety-first”

approach to keep him ahead of

the law. He had aborted risky

robberies and taken long

sabbaticals when things turned

“hot”. Finally, though, it seems

that he could not resist the

allure and prestige of this

opportunity, abandoning his

tried-and-tested approach for

one last job.

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