The Great Train Robbery (8 page)

The next day, Monday 12 August, a sergeant from Aylesbury Division and ten men searched a strip of land and buildings between Ordnance Survey grid lines 17 and 22. The search was in a westerly direction from Cheddington. The searchers gathered and set off at about 11 a.m. and had instructions to search buildings in groups of five. On returning to divisional headquarters at Aylesbury at 8 p.m. that evening, the sergeant reported he had reached the village of Quainton and that if the search was to be completed quickly, more search teams were required. As a result, two further teams from the neighbouring division were formed.

It was at this point that Commander George Hatherill’s frustration at the state of police organisation on the ground in Buckinghamshire came to the surface. Together with Detective Chief Superintendent (DCS) Ernie Millen, the head of the Flying Squad, he set out for Aylesbury on 13 August and spent two hours discussing the situation with McArthur and Fewtrell. Hatherill insisted that Scotland Yard take over the administration and organisation of the train robbery incident room in Aylesbury, as he considered it was not functioning as smoothly as it should have been.
18

It was at this time too that DS McArthur was formally made responsible for the progressing of reports and paperwork, and DCS Tommy Butler of the Met’s No 1 District (shortly afterwards to replace Millen at the helm of the Flying Squad), assisted by DCI Peter Vibart, was placed in overall charge of the train robbery investigation.
19

To the media, there was now a very public face leading the enquiry; Tommy Butler, the ‘Grey Fox’ was the cop who always got his man. He was by nature a very quiet man; a totally dedicated detective who was more than likely aided by his home life - a bachelor living with his mother in
w
est London - Butler was able to dedicate his whole time to pursuing cases and gathering intelligence.

Butler’s first move was to set up another incident room, run and staffed by the Flying Squad at Scotland Yard. In the weeks that followed the robbery, at least eighteen Flying Squad officers and often as many as thirty worked exclusively on the case.

At Butler’s behest, DCS Ernie Millen directed that no matter what enquiries officers or teams had in hand they were at all times to give priority to the train robbery enquiries. Liaison officers were also set up with the Yard’s Criminal Intelligence Department C11.
20

On 13 August 1963, DS McArthur supplied a number of nicknames to C11 and asked if they could be identified. From the records examined a number of names were put forward which included: John T. Daly, CRO 33321/48; Douglas G. Goody, CRO 4290/46; Roy J. James, CRO 17638/56; Bruce R. Reynolds, CRO 41212/48; Charles Frederick Wilson, CRO 5010/54.
21

By now, press speculation about the robbery and who was behind it was moving into high gear. The consensus among journalists and editors was that the robbery had been masterminded, although by whom was another question entirely. Every newspaper had its own pet theory.

The
Daily Express
reported that:

… detectives trying to pick up a whisper about the latest raid in the clubs of London’s underworld last night met with silence. For someone has learned to eliminate the gangster’s major giveaway - his ability to keep his mouth shut. It is almost certain that one man plotted the raid. This is probably how his raids are planned. First, he gets a tip-off about a train. Usually it comes from an ‘ideas’ man. He never actually meets the leader, only his contacts. Then a small team of ‘officers’ are told to hand-pick the raiders. They are given a substantial cash down payment and an assurance that if they are caught their wives and families will be looked after. Contacts have to be made and bought in Glasgow, London and at the scene of the crime. Afterwards raiders go their own ways, knowing the haul will not be touched and distributed for several weeks.
22

The
Sunday People
was the first newspaper to see a link between the train robbery and the London Airport raid of the previous November.
23
In their opinion, the £62,000 prize from the Heathrow raid was merely a ‘curtain-raiser’ to meet the expense of the mailbag ‘grand slam.’
24
Another theory being probed by Scotland Yard was that the mailbag robbery was the work of the Irish Republican Army. Scotland Yard was, according to
The People
, looking for three Irishmen thought to have been in the gang, who had disappeared from Dublin. The Irish police suspected them of robbing three Dublin banks in the past two years.

The
Daily Mail
claimed that a baronet was being shadowed by the police, ‘The check was ordered when it was found that he was associated with men suspected of having taken part in the £2½-million mail robbery,’ wrote
Daily Mail
columnist Owen Summers. ‘A chapter in the dossier being drawn up by the police is devoted to the activities of the baronet.’
25

Peter Gladstone-Smith of the
Daily Telegraph
expounded the view that:

Detectives investigating the Great Train Robbery yesterday know the identity of the criminal who masterminded the £2,631,784 raid. He is a miser and lives alone in one room at Brighton. His home has been searched and he is being watched. There is not enough evidence yet to arrest him. This man has a flair for the most ingenious type of crime. He works with infinite care and patience to prepare a plan which is perfect in every detail. He is known to the underworld by a nickname, travels widely, and meets other criminals in the clubs which they frequent. He has a criminal record but no convictions for more than twenty years.
26

This man’s frugal existence and austere surroundings have defied all efforts to prove his guilt in the past. Detectives believe it has been his ambition to amass a huge sum of money; he is now expected to retire from crime. ‘He never takes part in an operation himself. When his plan is complete he takes it to a master criminal, well known in the Harrow Road area of London, who carries it out with confederates.’
27

Within a few short days the media were to have the breakthrough they had been waiting for when the robber’s hideout was finally discovered at a farm near Brill. DS Malcolm Fewtrell later confessed that he had made a tactical blunder that had perhaps delayed the discovery for several days:

The farm was in fact on the very edge of our 30-mile perimeter and our plan was to search outwards from the centre. During the long months since the discovery of the farm I have kicked myself thousands of times for not having ordered the search the other way round.
28

The first occasion on which the farm was specifically brought to the notice of the police, as being a likely hideout for the thieves, was late on Sunday 11 August 1963, when Detective Inspector (DI) Densham, head of the Oxfordshire County CID, had a conversation with an informant in an Oxfordshire Club. It was mentioned during the conversation that ‘Rixon’s place’ at Oakley was a likely spot as a hideout for the thieves as it was isolated and in a little known situation. It was known to the informant, as he had met Rixon in connection with their joint interest in motorcycle meetings and socially. He knew the farm was up for sale and, so far as he was aware, had not been sold up to a few days before the robbery. The informant described it as merely a hunch on his part.

The following day DI Densham made some enquiries to verify the information he had been given. On being satisfied that the information given to him was true and that Rixon was in fact living at the sub-post office at Dunaden, Berkshire, he telephoned the following message to Aylesbury at 11.47 p.m. on 12 August 1963:

Whilst making enquiries at Wheatley, Oxfordshire, re mail robbery, information was received that the premises at Leatherslade Farm, Brill, Bucks, were on the market for some time with no prospective purchaser. These premises were purchased a few weeks ago for a large sum of money. The informant suggested that this may be of interest to the robbery.

This message was received by Police Constable 78 Lewis in the operations room in Aylesbury. At 9 a.m. on 12 August 1963, Police Constable 145 Peter Collins was on duty in the incident room at Police Headquarters, Aylesbury, when he received a telephone call from John Alfred Maris, herdsman of Glencoe House, Little London, Oakley, concerning his suspicions that Leatherslade Farm may have been the ‘hideout’ of the train robbery gang. He made a note of this information and handed it to DS Fewtrell. There is no trace of this message anywhere and it was not acted on.

Maris was away on holiday from 26 July until 4 August 1963. From 4 August onwards he saw nothing happening at Leatherslade Farm to arouse his suspicions. On Monday 12 August, after reading his morning newspaper, which mentioned that the police were interested in isolated farms in connection with the train robbery, and knowing that Rixon had left Leatherslade Farm, he went to the farm. He noticed that the curtains were drawn and a large lorry was parked in one of the outbuildings. These facts made him suspicious and he telephoned the police.

At 9.05 a.m. on 13 August 1963, Sergeant Blackman of Waddesdon, on whose section Leatherslade Farm was situated, received a message from Buckinghamshire Headquarters incident room, informing him that a telephone message had been received the night before that Leatherslade Farm, Brill, had been sold recently for a high price and would he examine the place. (This information was passed to Waddesdon as a result of the telephone message from DI Densham of Oxfordshire.) Sergeant Blackman had never heard of Leatherslade Farm and contacted Police Constable Woolley of Brill, and another police constable who had worked the Brill beat. Neither knew Leatherslade Farm. Police Constable Woolley was of the opinion it referred to a farm at Oakley, known to him as Rixon’s place.

Whilst these discussions were taking place, a further call was received by Sergeant Blackman from Buckinghamshire Headquarters incident room that a Mr Maris had telephoned again regarding Leatherslade Farm.

It was as a result of this call that more information was given as to the whereabouts of the farm. Sergeant Blackman met Police Constable Woolley at 10.30 a.m. on 13 August, and went to Leatherslade Farm where they arrived at 10.50 a.m. What they found was to change the whole direction of the investigation and, indeed, the lives of all those who took part in the robbery. In the words of DS Malcolm Fewtrell, it was ‘one big clue’.
29

Notes

  
1
.  DPP 2/3718, part 2 of 6 (originally closed until 2045, but opened under FOI request 25/6/10).

  
2
.  HO 287/1496 (originally closed until 1995; opened 1996).

  
3
.  POST 120/96 (originally closed until 1993; opened 1994).

  
4
.  Osmond’s estimate was to prove prophetic; at this early stage many were estimating the loss in the hundreds of thousands.

  
5
.  HO 287/1496 (originally closed until 1995; opened 1996).

  
6
.  
Ibid
.

  
7
.  
Daily Express
, 9/8/63, p. 1.

  
8
.  POST 120/134 (originally closed until 1993; opened 1994).

  
9
.  BBC TV News, 9/8/63.

10
.  POST 122/15954 (originally closed until 2014; opened December 2011).

11
.  
Ibid
.

12
.  DPP 2/3718, part 2 of 6 (originally closed until 2045, but opened under FOI request 25/6/10).

13
.  After Jack Mills’s death on 4 February 1970,
The Times
published a letter on 21 February 1970 by Peta Fordham, the wife of Wilfred Fordham QC (who had defended Ronald Biggs, John Daly and Gordon Goody at the 1964 trial), which reinforces this conclusion (see Appendix 1 for the full text of this letter).

14
.  DPP 2/3717/1 (originally closed until 2045, but opened under FOI request 25/6/10) and POST 120/97; the identity of Welch’s two associates is not revealed in McArthur’s report.

15
.  Makowski was born in Poland in 1926 and came to Britain during the war, where he soon became involved in black-market criminality. He was first arrested and convicted in 1951 (CRO file 50130/51). He died in London 26/4/93.

16
.  POST 120/146 (originally closed until 2039, opened November 2011).

17
.  HO 287/1496 (originally closed until 1995; opened 1996).

18
.  
Ibid
.

19
.  
Ibid
.

20
.  
Ibid.

21
.  DPP 2/3717/1 (redacted version opened 25/6/10) and unredacted version POST 120/96 (originally closed until 1993; opened 1994).

22
.  
Daily Express
, 9/8/63, p. 2.

23
.  The
Sunday People
, 11/8/63, p. 1.

24
.  DPP 2/3588 (still closed until 2045 at the time of writing). The police believed that the following individuals were among those who took part in the robbery: Bruce Reynolds, Ronald Edwards, Gordon Goody, John Daly, Michael Ball, Charles Wilson, Joseph Hartfield, Terence Hogan, Roy James and James White. See also
Daily Express
, 28/11/62, p. 3.

25
.  
Daily Mail
, 9/8/63, p. 3.

26
.  
Daily Telegraph
, 10/8/63, p. 1.

27
.  
Ibid
.

28
.  
Sunday Telegraph
, 19/4/64, p. 4.

29
.  HO 287/1496 (originally closed until 1995; opened 1996).

B
ernard Rixon bought Leatherslade Farm in July 1952. In the spring of 1963 he decided to sell and had lodged sale details with two local estate agents. Towards the end of May he received a telephone call from solicitor John Wheater, whose London office was at 3 New Quebec Street, W1. He apparently had a client who wished to buy the property and who would pay immediately in cash.