The Great Train Robbery (18 page)

To take the enquiries forward, Osmond deputed DCI Peattie and Sergeant Meller to undertake undercover enquires into Bowie’s background. They reported back within a week:

Mr G S Bowie

As a result of discreet enquiries it has been established that Mr G S Bowie is an electrician employed at the Reddich Hill Colliery. He has resided at 15 Westbenhar Road, Harthill, Lanarkshire, for about eighteen years. It has been confirmed that he has at no time in the past had any connection whatsoever with the Post Office or British Railways, and indeed is regarded locally as respectable.

The Fox and Hounds

I have pursued this enquiry at the Fox and Hounds, Denes Hanger, Wolverton, where I interviewed both the Licensee and his wife, Mr and Mrs G B Brazier, who serve at the bar at the public house and know all their regular customers. Neither could recall any strangers having been on the premises during the relevant period, and explained that their daughter, Susan Kay Brazier, was responsible for making the telephone calls from the Prince of Wales public house, Drury Lane, Rugby. Both Mr and Mrs Brazier have been previously interviewed about these telephone calls by PC Underwood, Denes Hanger, and I have ascertained that they are well respected in the neighbourhood and their good faith and integrity is beyond reproach.

Chief Inspector Peattie

Sergeant J H Meller
17

Again, another lead that in many ways looked too good to be true had seemingly come to a dead end, with an innocent explanation found. However, as one lead went cold, the telephone record checks turned up another intriguing possibility that set Osmond’s mind racing, as his report reveals:

Memorandum

It is known that John Daly, CRO 33521/48
,
the brother-in-law of Bruce Reynolds and one of the main suspects in the Mail Train robbery, has been in touch by telephone in the past with The Victoria Wine Company, 18
Akeman Street, Tring, Herts. This is extremely close to Cheddington where the train robbery took place and the contacts between Daly and someone at this Wine Company are being investigated by the Bucks Constabulary.

However, there is another aspect of this subsidiary inquiry which interests me. On the 17 April 1963, a ticketed telephone call is recorded as having been made from The Victoria Wine Co, Tring, to Gipsy Hill 5462. This telephone line stands in the name of F E Roberts, 1
Eden Hill, West Norwood, London, SE27. Further inquiry has disclosed that Mr Roberts is a member of the Post Office staff employed as a Technician Class I on external work in the Ravensbourne Telephone Exchange area, LTR/SE Area. Unless this has already been done, I should like to have some early inquiry made designed to give some background information concerning Mr Roberts.
18

Again, the wheels of undercover investigation moved into motion providing a full report of Roberts’s personal and professional background:

As a result of discreet enquiries designed to give some background information concerning Mr Frank Ernest Roberts, Technician I, Ravensbourne TE, it has been ascertained that he is married and resides with his wife and son, age about 16 years, in an old type one storey end terrace house which he is believed to be purchasing at 1 Eden Road, West Norwood, SE27.

A form P141X is attached from which it will be seen that he first entered the Engineering Branch of the Post Office in the London South East Area on 5 October 1936 and apart from the period 8 October 1939 to 19 October 1945 when he served in the Royal Navy, he has been employed continuously in that area of the Post Office to date.

On 7 August 1963 Mr Roberts was employed on external work in the area from 7.45 am to 5.15 pm and similarly on the following date from 7.45 am to 6.30 pm. During the course of his duties of each of those dates he was in possession of an official vehicle (Mini Minor YXF 409). A schedule outlining his hours of duty during the w/c 5 August 1963 and giving details of ticketed telephone calls from his private telephone number viz, GIP 5462
is associated. Whilst the possibility that Mr Roberts assisted the raiders on the night in question cannot at present be refuted, it may be considered that having regard to the fact that he is known to have commenced duty at Ravensbourne Telephone Exchange at 7.45 am on 8 August 1963
makes this somewhat unlikely.

In so far as the telephone calls to the Victoria Wine Company, 18
Akeman Street, Tring, are concerned, despite the frequency of these calls during the periods February to May 1963
when nine such calls are recorded, it has not been found possible to establish the reason for them.
19

Despite the Roberts connection turning out to be a tenuous one, to say the least, Daly’s calls to the wine merchant suggested the shop was or had been used as some kind of ‘dead letter box’.

DCI Peattie had not only been on the trail of the Rugby telephone caller, Messrs Boyd, Bowie and Roberts, he had also been tasked with investigating the information given by his informant Bernard Makowski on 10 August, which, in spite of initial scepticism, was about to provide a vital lead.

Notes

  
1
.  POST 120/95 (originally closed until 2001; opened 2002).

  
2
.  
Ibid
.

  
3
.  The name of Ronald Biggs is noticeably absent from this list. The view later taken by the police was that the informant’s contact with the gang, direct or indirect, must have ceased before Biggs joined the gang. This was also the view taken by Biggs himself (see Biggs,
Ronnie Biggs: His Own Story
, p. 81, and Reynolds,
Crossing the Line
, p. 201).

  
4
.  POST 120/95 (originally closed until 2001, opened 2002).

  
5
.  While this list is to be found in POST 120/445 (originally closed until 2017, opened 2003), three of the thirty-five names are omitted for reasons that can only be speculative at this point in time.

  
6
.  POST 120/95 (originally closed until 2001, opened 2002).

  
7
.  POST 120/445 (originally closed until 2017, opened 2003).

  
8
.  POST 120/129 (originally closed until 2014, opened 2011).

  
9
.  POST 120/95 (originally closed until 2001, opened 2002).

10
.  From the very beginning of the investigation, Butler was sceptical if not completely opposed to the idea of an ‘insider’ within the Post Office. In this, he was at odds with the IB, many of his Flying Squad colleagues as well as his immediate superior Commander Hatherill.

11
.  POST 120/129 (originally closed until 2014, opened 2011).

12
.  POST 120/128 (originally closed until 2014, opened 2011).

13
.  
Ibid
.

14
.  
Ibid
.

15
.  POST 120/146 (originally closed until 2017, opened 2011).

16
.  POST 120/447 (originally closed until 2017, opened 2011).

17
.  
Ibid
.

18
.  POST 120/129 (originally closed until 2014, opened 2011).

19
.  
Ibid
.

B
ernard Makowski’s information concerning the gang headed by Benny Stewart was thoroughly investigated by DCI Peattie. He passed on his conclusions to IB controller Clifford Osmond along with CRO photographs and information concerning all those referred to in the statement about the proposed ‘King’s Cross’ line robbery. Osmond, in turn, forwarded a copy to IB investigator Frank Cook on 19 August:

Mr Cook

The attached report from Chief Inspector Peattie relating to the latest information from his informant will no doubt be passed to Chief Supt Butler for his information. As regards Lucraft, the previous reference was not, of course, to ‘Mickie the Fox’ or ‘Mickie the Fly’ but to ‘Freddie the Fox’ who I understand from Mr Butler is a criminal known as ‘Titch Lucy’.

Mr Peattie has today told me that he considers that Benny Stewart has been, or is still, in Germany and that a German criminal who has been deported to Germany recently is one of Stewart’s associates. Mr Peattie is at present following up this inquiry with the Aliens Office in an effort to identify the German criminal and to search the CRO for any trace there. It is a question for consideration whether or not this further inquiry relating to Benny Stewart or any other member of the team quoted by the informant should continue and perhaps you would be good enough to let me know confidentially what Mr Butler thinks about this.
1

Within three days, Peattie had identified Stewart’s German associate:

The German associate of Stewart has been identified by the informant as:-

Hans Wilhelm Schaefer CRO 21154/62, who was deported from this country on the 21 June, 1962, and is believed to be a native of Kefenrod, Germany. Schaefer has convictions in Australia and was deported from that country on 9-11-59.

Correspondence reveals that Schaefer sailed from Dover to Ostend on SS Prince Baudouin en route to Aachen, Germany. Whilst the records show Schaefer as being penniless, information has been received that this man perpetrated crime on a large scale in this country and successfully smuggled the money so obtained to Germany. Schaefer is believed to have had military training and the informant is confident that he, Schaefer, has been in the West End of London since being deported. He is described as the type of criminal Stewart would recruit as a member of the ‘Gang’.

If there is reason to suspect that Stewart is involved in the Mail Train Robbery, the informant is prepared to accompany me to Germany, provided that his expenses are paid, with a view to tracing Stewart, if subsequent enquiries reveal that there is a possibility he may have linked up with Schaefer.
2

With new and reliable information from Commander Hatherill regarding the identities of the mail train gang, it seems clear that Clifford Osmond was about to close the file on Makowski’s information. None of the names Makowski had mentioned had been corroborated in any way by other Yard informants, and while the story in itself was certainly of interest in terms of previous attempted mail train robberies, it seemed an unlikely current lead. However, at 9.30 p.m. that same evening, C11 received significant new information about Bruce Reynolds, which was copied to DCS Butler and Clifford Osmond.

According to Osmond:

A series of events has led to some important developments in the mail train robbery which came to a head on the 27 August 1963. The information relates to three different addresses:-

(a)  Edith M Simon

      85 Hermitage Court

      Woodford Road

      Wanstead, E18

      Telephone: Wanstead 5078

(b)  Mrs Doris May Golding

      42 Winchester Road

      Fulham

      London, SW6

      Telephone: Renown 3592

(c)  Mr L Heller

      69 Belsize Park Gardens

      Hampstead

      London, NW3

      Telephone: Primrose 02183

Apparently, these addresses were thought to be linked to Bruce Reynolds’s support network. Although official permission for telephone taps to be placed on these three lines had not yet been sought, let alone approved, it seems likely that some unofficial tapping had already occurred in order for these suspicions to be formalised.
4
Clifford Osmond’s memo confirms this:

At the request of Chief Supt Butler, observation was arranged on the 27 August, and was kept on each of these three addresses by Mr Balm, Mr Hood and Mr Gray, IB Assistants. At about lunch time Mr Gray reported that whilst outside 69 Belsize Park Gardens, Hampstead, he saw a man who resembled Albert Millbank leave the house in company with a blonde woman who was carrying a poodle. They drove away in a car bearing a registration number which was recorded and a quick search through the records revealed that, in fact, this car was registered in the name of Albert Millbank who was using his mother’s address in the registration particulars.
5

Millbank, of course, was named by Makowski in his statement about the proposed King’s Cross mail train job as being ‘an important man behind the scenes and suggested he might be organising this particular mail bag offence.’
6
Subsequent enquiries into Millbank through the Criminal Record Office revealed an offence in 1939 and a cross reference to the Garda Criminal Records Office in the Irish Republic. This indicated that Millbank and one Charles McGuinness had been arrested by the Irish police at Kingsbridge railway station in Dublin on 12 September 1955. A warrant was already out on McGuinness, who was wanted in connection with a £44,000 mail van robbery in Glasgow on 19 July 1955. There was no warrant out on Millbank, although Glasgow police did want to interview him about the robbery. Both Millbank and McGuinness were charged by Dublin police with ‘loitering at Kingsbridge Station between 7.00 pm and 8.00 pm for the purpose of committing a felony’ and also with ‘having £232/4
s
-9
d
unlawfully in their possession’.
7

Osmond concluded his memo by asserting that:

There is some reason for thinking that Bruce Reynolds might be hiding at the Belsize Park Gardens address in view of the fact that information now to hand suggests that a message might have reached him from his girl friend on the night of the 22 August.
8
This was the day on which Mary Manson was arrested and it is known that she is the girl friend of Bruce Reynolds and that she was attempting to get a message through to him urgently on that day. This information has been passed to Chief Supt Butler who has requested that telephone observation should be set up on all three addresses without delay. I suggested to Mr Yates that the Post Office, as yet, has insufficient information to justify a request to the Home Office for such authority but that we would be prepared to do the work if Scotland Yard would obtain the Home Office warrant. However, I said to Mr Yates that as Bruce Reynolds is the organiser of this team, I would be prepared to persuade the DDG to put a letter to Sir Charles Cunningham if there is any difficulty foreseen by Scotland Yard.
9