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SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: How The Great Train Robbery Worked · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Thanks for making it through our true crime playlist. We're
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: rounding this one out with a good old fashioned train
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: robbery for which we had across the pond to visit
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: our friends in the UK. Back in nineteen sixty three,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: one of the all time great holdups was carried out
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: by a huge gang of men who relieved a British
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: mail train of a massive amount of money, and they
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: did it without guns. Most of the robbers were eventually caught,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: but most of the money has never been found. All
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: aboard for the last episode in our playlist on the
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Great train robbery.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Welcome to you Stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: Chew, chew, and welcome to the podcast. Um, Josh Clark,
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: There's Charles W. Chuck Bright, there's Jerry uh and you
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: put all of us together with a couple of microphones
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: at crummy ikea.
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: Lamb and you well and a head full of nose juice.
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: You get stuff you should know. That's right, stuff you
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: should nose juice. Oh grow, how's it going buddy? Besides
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: the obvious under the weather yess.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: Of you, I predict this is the last one great.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna be back to good as new by the
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: next time we record.
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we're going to Vancouver and you'll get some of
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: that good Canadian air air in your body and the
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: pine air. It's healing. Yeah, properties, I'll.
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: Get pine and flannel and ocean like in my in
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: my face.
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: And moose yeah, moose hair. Yeah, that's tough.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: If you walk, wadd it all into a ball and
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: sniff it.
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: Uh huh. It takes care of everything. That's right. What
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: in the world are we talking about? I don't know.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: Uh, we're talking about trains, that's right. We're talking about
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: a specific train, Chuck. We're talking about a specific train
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: at a specific moment in place and time. Yes, it
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: all came together to become known as the Great Train Robbery.
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: It's right.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: Did you know did you commission this article?
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: I did not.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: Did you know about it already?
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: Some? Or yeah? I mean a little bit, but not
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: as like obviously as much. After I researched and I
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: watched a couple of documentaries and was looking for a
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: great awesome movie. But I don't think there really is
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: a great awesome movie about.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: This yet, which is surprising.
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: I think they did, like BBC did one, and I
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: think Sean Connery did one that was loosely I think
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: other things were loosely based.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: But like the Taking of Pelham one, two three.
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly, that's a good movie. Did you the original?
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: Of course? Yeah?
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: Did you watch The Tale of Two Thieves? Is that
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: one of the documentaries you watched?
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: No, I don't think that's out to the public yet
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: unless I just haven't seen it. Okay, I think it's
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: new this year.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like a twenty fourteen.
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I want to see it. But there are no
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: shortage of YouTube BBC docs because they love it. And
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: I learned a lot of new words watching them. Yeah,
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: like what oh like instead of crooked, someone has bent,
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: like a bent solicitor. I figured out was a crooked solicitor.
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: And a cosh is a like a like a billy
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: club and you can cosh somebody. Oh wow, like the
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: train conductor was coshed.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah. There were just a bunch of cool terms that
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: I had to kind of figure out what they meant.
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: An American gotcha in my English? Yeah, so I had.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: I heard the words great train and robbery together, but
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: I didn't know anything about it.
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: I think there was another one, an older great train
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: robbery from the eighteen hundreds.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: There's one in eighteen fifty five, Yeah, where a train
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: traveling from London to Paris or vice versa had a
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: bunch of gold bullion on it and it got hit.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: That was legendary. But apparently this was the biggest train
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: heist since then, Yeah, more than one hundred years later.
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, it was a big deal and it was
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: sort of Jesse James style. That's why it became one
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: of the crimes of the century in England for sure.
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: I mean it was huge in the press, and these
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: guys that knocked off this train became these kind of
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: weird working class heroes.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: Well, one of them became the symbol for the anti establishment,
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: which one oh what was his name, the one who
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: made off for years and years?
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, see bigs. Yeah, he he was on the
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: lamb for like thirty years, so he was super famous.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they knew where he was and they couldn't
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: get to him, which we'll talk about, but he, you know,
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: became like the this folk hero of the anti establishment,
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: saying vocals on lots of like punk records.
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: Oh really like that? Yeah, yeah, I saw in both documentaries.
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: I had a bunch of interviews, like on the street
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: interviews from the time, like with regular upstanding citizens, like
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: who side are you on? And a lot of them
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: were like, well, I feel ashamed to admit this, but
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: I kind of think these guys really took it to
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: the cops on this one. Yeah, and they thought they
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: were ingenious and even though the plan, as we'll get
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: to really was pretty uncomplicated. Yeah, it wasn't nearly as
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: clever as it was made out to be.
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: Right, Well, let's talk about the plan. So there was
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: this idea who had the idea, the original idea.
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: I believe his last name was Fields. He was the
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: guy who originally had the idea and approached several people
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: criminals for partnership, and they all turned him down except
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: for this a safecracker by the name of Goodye.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: Okay, so Goody had a friend who was His name
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: was Bruce Reynolds, and I guess he originally funded the
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: whole thing.
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, they were in a gang called the Bowler
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: Hat Gang in London. I know, right, I don't think
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: we've said this.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: We've made reference to like the wild West and Trained
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: Roberts and everything. This is the nineteen sixties. Yeah, like
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: the early nineteen sixties that this is going on.
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And the Bowler Hat Gang was they dressed in
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: bowler hats and suits and they had done some crimes
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: and they were mainly career criminals and they actually even
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: they had the press's attention, and they actually tried to
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: rob a train at first, but it didn't work so
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: well and they got away, and but that they had
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: sort of a not a trial run, but they legitimately
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: tried to knock off another train.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: So is that when they realized that they needed to
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: expand their rank and file.
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they realized that we don't know trains and we
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: don't know how to stop them, so we need to
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: get some train guys. Right.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: So the Bowler Coast Gang, who is I guess led
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: by Bruce Reynolds, right, Yeah, Bowler Hat the Bowler Hat,
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: yeah gang they got with the South Coast Gang.
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: I think, Yeah, the South Coast Raiders.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: So they and this is I mean, those are some
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: great gang names.
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: By the way, totally great.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: But the Bowler Hat Gang and the South Coast Raiders,
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: who were led by a dude named Buster Edwards, right.
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and Tom Wisby he was one of the main
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: guy or Whisney Sorry.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: So those guys all got together and they said, we
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: got this great idea. We need your people to get
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: to come help us. We're gonna rob a train. And
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: they're not just any train. There was one specific train
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: that this gang targeted and for good reason. It was
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: called the Up Special and the Up Special had been
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: running since the eighteen thirties between Glasgow, Scotland and London, right, Yeah,
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: and it had run every night and it was basically
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: like a mail sorting facility on wheels.
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Like it was pretty clever.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: They thought, well, we'll take all the mail from Glasgow
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: that's going to London and we'll sort it along the way.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: So there was twelve cars in the Glasgow Special or
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: the Up Special and a diesel engine, so it's a
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: pretty simple train.
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And it had run for years and years, right
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: without incident, for.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: Like one hundred and fifty one hundred, almost one hundred
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: and fifty years.
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and it wasn't loaded with guards and cops. I mean,
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: it was a bunch of postmen basically.
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: Which is a really it's really weird then that the
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: banks would trust their money that we're moving from Glasgow
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: to London, Yeah, to this postal train.
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: Different that had like no security, no armed guards, no
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: alarms until the early sixties on the train cars themselves.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: But yet every night the banks would empty their their
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: accounts into this train and say, good luck get into London.
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: Like here's a bunch of huge sacks of money. We're
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: gonna put it on the train and you're gonna sort
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: it along the way.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: They had an inside man who And this is one
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: of those weird stuff you should know things, you know,
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: how there's all these weird correlations in the news. I
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: picked out this article two days ago, and two days
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: ago what was announced Who the identity of the inside
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: man was.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the last great mystery of this thing from the sixties. Yeah,
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: was just unwrapd like two days ago.
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: And I didn't even know it at the time. I
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: found out afterward. But the code name was Ulsterman, and
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: it was always believed to be someone on the inside
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: of the of the train and post industry to give
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: him information like you know, the train is super loaded
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: on this particular night because of a bank holiday. And
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: he was named by Gordon Goody as Patrick McKenna. Yeah.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: In that documentary A tale of two thieves. They hand
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: a picture of Patrick McKennon to Goody and says that
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: ulsterman and apparently he like kind of like gets visibly
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: uncomfortable because he's kept this guy's identity secret. He was
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: the last person alive for fifty years to know who
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: this person was. There were two other people who knew.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: They both died before Goody. Patrick McKenna died years back,
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: and there was just this one man who swore he
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: would take the secret cheers grave and he named them
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: he had angered him.
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: These guys were really good keeping secrets over the years.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: They wore bowler hats for goodness.
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: So McKinnon's family was super surprised to hear all this.
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: Police never suspected him, and they basically think that this
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: guy felt bad afterward and never even spent the money
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: and gave it to the Catholic Church like slowly over
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: the years. Oh yeah his cut, huh is what the
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: family is saying. But it sounds like an ulsterman kind
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: of thing to do. Yeah, you know, Lstie right, he's
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: a good guy.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: Well before he had his change of heart, he was
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: the inside man that helped the gang figure this out.
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he actually recommended they change the date to get
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: a bigger take. Yeah, and it was and it worked.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: Can you explain this to me? So a bank holiday
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: and it's the same thing here in the US. It's
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: like a day the banks are closed. Yea, they have
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: official bank holidays. There's a banking Act in the UK
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: from the nineteenth century that designated certain days as bank holidays.
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: What I don't understand is why is there's so much
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: more money the day after a bank holiday. It's like
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: everybody waited to do their banking business that they would
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: have done on Monday on Tuesday. Like there's so many
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: more people or so many more transactions that didn't get
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: to be done on that Monday that were carried out
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: on the Tuesday. That that's why there's so much more money.
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: I don't know. Maybe it's that the because of the holiday,
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: they didn't do their deposits and like make the money
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: leave the bank like they normally would, so it was compounded.
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: I guess. So there was like double the amount of
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: money as usual because they didn't do their drop on
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: the holiday or something.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but they didn't conduct any business on the holiday,
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: so there wouldn't have been more money to accumulate than usually.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: Well, if it came after a weekend, though, maybe it
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: was like all of that weekend's deposits, yeah, had gathered up. Okay,
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: I don't know. That's a good question. Okay.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: The point is, is this a lot more money than usual?
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: A lot more usually? This? This train car, the Up Special,
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: carried about three hundred thousand pounds between Glasgow and London
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: each each night.
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: On this particular night, the night of August eighth, nineteen
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: sixty three, which was Thursday, early wee hours of a Thursday,
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: it was carrying something like two point six million pounds,
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: which today in dollars would be worth about fifty million.
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: I think it's I looked that up and it was
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: like double that one hundred million. Well, yeah, because you're
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: going from nineteen sixty three to twenty thirteen and from
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: pounds to dollars. Yeah, I might be off, but I
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: got sixty nine million pounds today or one hundred and
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: eleven million dollars US, let's go with that. That's way
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: better either way. Two point six million pounds was a
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: ton of money for a highspec then. Yeah, it was
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: like really really a lot of dough. Yeah, even splitting
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: it among fifteen guys.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they didn't even necessarily split it evenly. There
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: were the core game who were carrying this thing out
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: and they all got even split. But there are also accomplices.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: In addition to Ulsterman, there was mister one, Mister two,
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: and mister three.
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and those are their names. So because they were
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: never brought to justice, there were three that just got
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: away with it even though they knew who they were. Supposedly,
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: they didn't have evidence to go pick them up. So
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: like the identities of the three guys that got away,
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: they think they knew who they were the whole time.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: Really, I mean, one of them's named John Wheder. He
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: got away.
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure I was he one of the one,
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: two or three he was?
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he was the one who got the safe house
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: for the gang.
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well he worked with Fields to get the safe house. Well,
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: let's let's back up here. Okay, we're so excited we're
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: getting out of it. So he mentioned that they recruited
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: another gang that knew how to work with trains, knew
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: how to stop trains, and what they did was they
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: brought this guy on board who had this elderly man
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: who was a train driver. His name was Peter, and
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: Peter's job once they stopped the train was to get
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: it to where the drop point the exchange point was
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: in case, you know, because the train stops at the
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: red light, right, which they very awkwardly wired the red
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: light to turn on and they just covered the green
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: light with some gloves, but it worked. They stopped the
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: train and still needed to get it down the track
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: to the exchange point. And this old man gets on
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: board and he's like, I don't know how to undo
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: this new handbrake, right, So he was useless.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: And so the guy Bigs who became this criminal legend
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: for evading the law for so many years, apparently his
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: only job was to find somebody who could drive the train.
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: And he failed at that and he screwed it up.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so the guy who was supposed to drive the
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: train got thrown off the train and they got the
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: original train engineer, the one whose job it was to
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: actually drive the train under normal circumstances, and made him
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: drive another mile and a half to this bridge.
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and that was Jack Mills, And this is a
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: very important detail. He was, like you said, the conductor
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: and two guys jumped on the train at the very
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: front there and uh coshed him, which is smacked him
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: on the head a bunch with this billy club. I
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: thought it was a crowbar wells an ironcosh, which is
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: English for crowbar, I guess. And this was a big
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: point because for a lot of reasons. One in that
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: it was why the justice ended up coming down so
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: harshly on them, because they were apparently way more violent
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: than they needed to be with this guy. Yeah, and
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: the public perception of these guys's working class heroes doesn't
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: jibe with the violence because they weren't. You know, the
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: English still aren't really into violence as a whole.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: No, especially if you're the bowler hat GK.
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Like you dressed nicely and you conducted your business,
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: your criminal business like gentlemen, and you didn't need to
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: beat this old guy up. He was elderly, nearing retirement,
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: and his family says the robbers still say today that like,
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: he wasn't beaten up nearly as bad as they say,
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: and the family's like, no, he never fully recovered, yeah,
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: and died of cancer.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: But about seven years later I think he died of leukemia.
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but they say he had headaches for the rest
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: of his life and he was just not the same man. Yeah.
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: You can't do that to somebody. You can't do that
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: to someone.
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: And and like you said, that changed absolutely everything. Goodie,
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: the the guy who's really the brains behind this whole operation,
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: he wrote a book a few years back before he died,
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: and he named He said it was either Buster Edwards
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: or a guy named Jame Hussey, who is the one
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: who coched the poor conductor.
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and supposedly Hussy who was brought in as a
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: heavy as some muscle. Supposedly at his deathbed he said
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: that it was him who coshed the guy. Yeah. And
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: but there are other people that say, including Jack Mills's
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: son who said, no, my father told me who it
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: was and it wasn't him. This guy is just doing
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: that that robber thing where you still cover for your people.
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: So like on his deathbed, he was still trying to
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: cover for the real guy. And I don't know if
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: we'll ever know for real if it was him or
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: the other dude.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: Wow, lying on your deathbed, Yeah, that's not okay.
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: No, that never happens. Yeah, that's where you're supposed to
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: be the most truth.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: Sure, Like yeah, I mean they take deathbak confessions like
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: as like completely legitimate in courts.
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's where you're supposed to look at your wife
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: and say, I never really loved you.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: Wow, that's terrible, Chuck.
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: Could you imagine? I think that was in a movie.
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: Once you thought it was gonna be some tender moment
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: and he was like, I never really loved you.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: I think I know what you're talking about. The War
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: of the Roses, where like they're both laying there dying
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: and Michael Douglas goes to like put his arm around.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: I think it's a great movie. No, I don't think
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: anybody's done that.
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: Oh okay. So Roger Cordrey is the guy's name who
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: came up with the idea to fix these train signals.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: And he was an associate of Buster Edwards. And if
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: you had ever seen a movie Buster with Phil.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: Collins, Oh, is that who it's about.
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: That's what it's about. Sort of like working class criminal
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: like criminals back then were kind of revered in certain
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: circles in England. It's weird.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: Two hearts beating it.
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: Just one was that from that movie. Okay, great song.
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: All right, So after this break we are gonna talk
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: a little bit more about how it went down and
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: what happened right after.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: So chuck, Yeah, we've got the Bowler Hat Gang and
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: the South Coast Raiders. Yeah, coming together for one huge
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: heights that's worth about one hundred million dollars in today's money, yeah,
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: or or half that. They're hitting the up Special. Just
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: this crotchety old twelve car train moving along through the
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: night from Scotland to London, right, Yeah, And so the
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: gang messes with the lights.
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they put a.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: Glove around the green light and managed to turn on
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: the red light. So the train comes to the stop,
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: they all board the train. Yeah, they hit the conductor
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: over the head, huge mistake.
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: They bring on the guy who's supposed to drive the train,
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: find out he can't drive the train, throw him off,
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: stand the conductor back up, probably give him a handkerchief
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: for his head, Yeah, and say we need you to
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: drive this another mile and a half to the drop point,
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: which is called a Britigo bridge.
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was it like a bridge overpass.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: Uh huh. And the guy does that and they start
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: offloading the loot.
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they got one hundred and twenty of one hundred
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: and twenty eight sacks of cash money onto They had
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: this big lorry and a couple of land rovers. Yeah.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: Could this be any more stylish?
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: They had land rovers. There's getaway cars.
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's pretty cool. You see why people bought into
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: all this stuff and thought it was cool, because I
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: think it's cool right now. Yeah. And so what they
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: did they had pre arranged a hideout. And this was
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: Fields's job as well, was he bought this farm and.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: Farmhouse leathers slaid farm right.
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah too, And it was sort of ingenius, but ended
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: up screwing them in the end because the idea was
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: within thirty minutes of this robbery they have effectively disappeared
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: off the face of the earth.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: Well, they stopped the train and got it to the
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: bridge and offloaded more than a ton of money.
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, two tons, I think two and a half.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: Tons of money, yeah, in fifteen minutes.
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and they were back in their hideout in another
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: fifteen So by the time this thing was reported, they
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: were gone and in this farmhouse like with the windows
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: shut and the shades drawn. Okay, but that also kind
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: of screwed them because before they left the train, they said,
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: all right, no one moves for thirty minutes. And so
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: the cops hear this and they went, oh, well, that
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: they're probably within a thirty mile radius then, and so
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: they put this out on the news. We know that
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: they're within a thirty mile radius, and we're going to
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: start canvassing the area. They get word of this, they're
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: within twenty eight miles and they go, well, crap, they're
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: going to find us. And they also said it was
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: sort of a city boy's move to think you can
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: hide out in the country like that. And this one
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: guy in the documentary was like, na, out in the country,
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: you get noticed, right if you're fifteen guys in a farmhouse.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: That was their undoing. A neighbors said, there's a lot
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: more people at this old, rambling old farm, and they're
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: all wearing bowler hats for some reason, or at least
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: half of them are. There's something fishy going on. So
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: when the word got out that this train had been hit,
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: this guy came forward and said, you guys should go
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: check this farm out. Well, the guys weren't only at
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: this farm for the half hour after the heist. They'd
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: been there for like eight days, waiting for the day
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: to come, getting ready, eating things that required catchup, playing Monopoly.
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: Played a lot of Monopoly with their real money, Yes
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: they did. They thought that was just a fun thing
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: to do, hilarious.
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: And they did go to the trouble of wiping down
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: a lot of the stuff, but they left a lot
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: of stuff behind, including the Monopoly game, including the ketchup bottle,
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: and a lot of other stuff that had prints on it.
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: Well, yes, because Fields was supposed to get a guy
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: to go torch the place.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I thought. I was like, why wouldn't
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: you just burn the place down?
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: That was the plan, And apparently the guy never did it,
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: and they ended up getting out of there a few
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: days early. They left five days into it because they
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: obviously heard the news that they were canvassing the area.
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: So they left quicker than they wanted to, and, like
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: you said, left a lot of stuff behind because they
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: thought it was gonna be torched.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: They're playing was to lay low there for a few days.
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, to keep laying low, huh. But when they found
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: out they were basically making their way to them little
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: by little, right, they got the heck out of Dodge Piker.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: Well that probably kept them from getting caught sooner. Yeah,
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: but in so the public is being treated to this
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: incredibly daring train heist. These people got away without a
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: trace for at least the first week. Only within a week,
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: this leather Slade Farms has been identified as a place
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: where these guys were hiding out. Yeah, they found the
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: trucks and they got at least one person within eight
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: days of the of the heist. Yeah, and all of
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: a sudden people start falling. There's fifteen people and on
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: the case is called the Flying Squad, who are like
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: the best of the best that Scotland Yard has to
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: offer to combat these some of the best of the
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: best criminals that that great Britain has had to offer
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: at the time.
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Chief Superintendent Detective Tommy Butler was the head of
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: the Flying Squad. And like you said, this was so
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: sensational because it was the top robbers and the top
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: cop it was I guess it's sort of like the
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: elliot ness of the day going after al Capone. It
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: was just a huge story. And like you said, they
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: started getting nicked one by one and it came out
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: later that there was an informant by the name of
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: Mickey Keo. Supposedly, Scotland Yard said, this guy, Mickey Kejo
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: was telling us all about it because it was well
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: known within the criminal underground, like what was going on,
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: and started naming names. Although the robbers to this day
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: still say, nah, it wasn't Mickey Kejo. We know that guy.
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: He didn't even know us that well. He wasn't giving
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: up names. Yeah, but I don't know, Scotland Yard says
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: he was, so I don't see why they'd make that up.
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: I could see them making it up to protect somebody else,
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: especially if they didn't like Mickey Kejo in the way
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: he looked.
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: That's true, but they You're right. They started to go
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: down one by one. There was a pretty short list
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: of people who they thought it was. It wasn't like
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: some great mystery.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: Plus, once they started peeling away one and catching one
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: here or there, others started falling others did did Did
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: anyone who was caught name names? Did you get that impression?
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: No? They were Most of them were pretty tight lipped.
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: In fact, one guy, Charlie Wilson, he was the treasurer
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: of the gang. They called him the silent man because
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: he literally said nothing and he just didn't speak at
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: all during the trial.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: Right, he went on to become a US congressman who
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: waged a proxy war against Russia in Afghanistan of the seventies.
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: I don't think so. I think that's a different, different Charlie.
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: Okay, Tom Hanks, I yet right, So consider this from
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: the public's point of view. There's a staring robbery, right
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: words getting out. Within a week, you got your first
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: guy caught, but there's still tons more people on lamb,
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: which gave the press tons of fodder. They had so
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: much to write about. There was a capture of one
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: of the guys that involved roof tops, like the guy
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: was running and jumping from roof to roof with the
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: police and chase, you know. And finally by August, all
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: these guys are rounded up. Twelve of the fifteen I
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: think were rounded up.
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: And they started to stand trial in January. They were caught.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: They're being quiet. The public is just totally in awe.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: And finally this trial starts and right out of the gate,
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: the judge found out that Biggs had a criminal passed
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: so he shouldn't be tried with the rest of them
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: because it could taint the jury against all these other
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: guys unfairly. So Biggs got spun off to his own trial,
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: and these guys stood trial. The other four or the
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: other elevens, no, ten of them stood trial. One of
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: them managed to have a lawyer. He was there because
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: his prints were on the no, the Monopoly game.
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there were prints on Ketchup and Monopoly and pots
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: and pans, and some of the guys were gloves the
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: entire time, and they smart, smart ones.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but Biggs was the one. Remember, Biggs's one job
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: was to bring the train engineer and he screwed that up. Yeah,
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: his prints were on the Ketchup bottle, so he screwed
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: that up too. But there was another guy whose prints
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: run the Monopoly game, and his lawyers managed to show
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: that those could have gotten there long before the crime, yeah,
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: and that it didn't necessarily mean he had anything to
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: do with it. He got set. He was acquitted during
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: this trial. Yeah, he was the only lucky one. Everybody
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: else had the book thrown at them.
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there was a lot of them were
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: saying that they cooked up a bunch of evidence because
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: they knew it was them, but they just didn't have
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: the evidence. So the big lorry truck they had painted
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: hastily painted yellow, and the Goody, one of the main
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: you know, two guys, was supposedly some of his evidence
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: was that they found yellow paint on a shoe and
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: he was like, I didn't paint in those shoes. And
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: it was funny because years later he's like, oh, I
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: did it, and yeah, I painted that truck yellow, but
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't wearing those shoes they planted. That's evidence, isn't
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: that right? Yeah? And apparently there was false confessions. There
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: was another great British word for that. I can't remember
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: what they called it, but chaverdaba, chaverdving. They false confessions
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: were big at the time in England, and it was
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: a lot of reports from these robbers that they were
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: using false confessions and planning evidence. And again even though
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: they did it, they were like, yeah, but if you
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: don't have evidence, yeah, you can't convict this all right,
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: So I don't think we'll ever know if they cooked
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: up some of this evidence or not.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: Well, there was one guy named Bowl William Bowle.
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: Oh, poor guy.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: He apparently had nothing to do with it. Well, he
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: received money in payment from a debt. Yeah, I think
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: that Goody owed him.
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: Now that it was Bigs, Oh, Big BIG's again. He
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: was a friend of Biggs and when he got out,
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: helped him kind of lay low. But he had nothing
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: to do with the robbery. And he got fourteen years. No,
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry, it was Quadry. It wasn't Bigs. Okay, Cordrey,
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: I know, I feel bad for Bigs. We're just dragging
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: his name through the mud. Yeah, but it was Rob Cordrey.
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: It wasn't Rob Qudrey, but it was his dad. It
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: was his great grandfather of Cordrey, and he was Boll's friend.
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: He helped him lay low and he wented. Uh. Cordory
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: was actually the first one to get to get pinched
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: because he and Bowl helped him rent a garage and
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: they paid in like the same banknote bills for like
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: three months in advance in cash, and the lady said, ah,
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: this is a little suspicious, turned him in. Bowl got
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: wrapped up, and because all these guys were saying we're innocent,
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: they couldn't come out and say, well, he really is innocent, right,
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: So they kind of had to take this guilt with them.
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: To prison.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: So Bowl got fourteen years for doing nothing really, yeah,
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: and for just basically knowing the wrong guys and hanging
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: out with the wrong guys. He died in prison.
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: I'm not laughing because it's just tragic.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: It is tragic. So his family's like trying to mount
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: a campaign now to get a posthumous pardon it least. Yeah,
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: but he and the guy who got hit over the
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: head the conductor are really the two big victims in
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: all of this.
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and one of them, there was only one guy
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: that turned in his cut of the money, and actually
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: we pleaded guilty out of the rest.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: That was Cordry, I think, yeah, that was Cordry. So
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: even he says, yes I did it, here's my eighty
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: grand the guy who he associated with still got fourteen years.
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: And died in jail.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's so sad. So you'll notice that we were
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: talking about twelve of the fifteen bigs by the way,
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: after he stood trial separately, was also found guilty and
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: got things like these guys were getting like twenty years,
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: thirty years sentence, these enormous sentences for this train robbery.
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, generally thirty which was double the harshest penalties for
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: robbery that they've ever seen.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: Right, which is really strange because the judge in the case,
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: he had actually reduced another robber in a completely separate
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: robbery where a man had been shot and killed during
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: the commission of the robbery. Oh wow, someone who was
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: involved in that had his sentence reduced from fifteen years
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: to ten years. Crazy because that judge thought it was excessive.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: That same judge was handing out thirty year sentences to
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: these guys where no one got killed.
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that was justice. Edmund Davies. I think because it
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: was such a high profile case, he felt he could
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: make his name had to be you know.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: So he was making his name though against public sentiment
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: because a lot of people were very much saw these
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: guys as folk heroes, none more though than Biggs. And
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: the reason why Biggs was a folk hero was because
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: he evaded captures so long.
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: And we'll talk about that right after this fish, all right,
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: So some really interesting things happened after they were sentenced.
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: Charlie Wilson escaped prison yeap, which was pretty cool. A
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: couple of them escaped prison in the way that it
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: was very cute how you could escape prison back then. Like,
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: let's put a ladder by the fence and climb up
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: and jump over into a truck and speed away.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: It turns out that Benny Hill's show was basically a
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: docu drama at the time.
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: Another one escaped when he I think he had some
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: guys infiltrate the prison and help him escape.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, in a furniture truck. Yeah, that was a Bigs
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a lot easier to escape prison back then.
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: And some of these were maximum security for what it's worth,
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: you know, Yeah, well.
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, one of them was Britain's version of Alcatraz, they say,
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: Wandsworth Prison and that BIG's escape from there when he
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: escaped and went on the Lamb. He went to Australia
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: and then eventually moved on to Brazil. But first he
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: stopped off at one of the worst human beings to
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: ever walk the planet's office, This very same cosmetic surgeon
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: who redid the faces of Nazis fleeing Europe at the
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: end of World War Two.
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: Really, that's who his plastic surgeon was.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, so Biggs got his face redone a little bit,
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: went to Australia, made it to Brazil, and he had
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: a family in Australia, which he left behind there and
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: then went on to Brazil, got a girlfriend and she
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: was pregnant with their child when the authorities, the British
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: authorities found him in Brazil and he said, oh, turns
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: out under Brazilian law you can't extradite the parent of
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: a Brazilian citizen.
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: Oh crazy.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: So for many, many years Ronald Biggs lived openly as
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: this fellon escapee in Brazil. And there are things that
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: he couldn't do in Brazil. Apparently he couldn't go to bars,
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: It couldn't be out after ten pm. He couldn't associate with,
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: you know, anybody with a criminal record or anything like that.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: But he wasn't imprisoned by the Brazilian authorities, and he
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: couldn't be extradited to Great Britain, which drove Great Britain
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: c oh, I'm sure. And there was this one very
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: famous detective who was on this case who made his
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: own name. His name was Jack Slipper.
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I get the feeling that he and Biggs it
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: was sort of like the Les Meserab, like Jean Valjean.
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: You know, they had this lifelong.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: Pursuit smoking in the band. Sure, Yeah, it's a very
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: old story.
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah it is.
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: And Biggs and Jack Slipper were playing it out in
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: real life, so much so that Jack Slipper in nineteen
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: seventy four showed up on Biggs's doorstep, I guess, just
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: to rattle him, just to say I know where you
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: are and I can get to you. And Biggs said, yeah,
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: but you really can't do anything to me.
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And some of the other guys evaded police for
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: a little while, for a number of years, but I
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: think by nineteen sixty nine they were all caught, except
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: for the three that they couldn't finger with good evidence. Yeah,
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: but even the main mastermind was able to evade the
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: police for four or five years. I think he went
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: down Mexico Buster.
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: He turned himself in after living on the LAMB for
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: three years.
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And Bruce Reynolds, I think he was on the
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: LAMB for a while too.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he got caught in Canada.
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: I think.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: One of the guys, well, I guess it was Bruce
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: Reynolds when he changed his name when he went on
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: the LAMB. He changed his family's last name to Firth.
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: Oh really, and he had a wife and son, Colin.
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: He changed his son Nick's name to Colin Firth, shut up?
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: Is that the guy? No?
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: No, oh, totally coincidental.
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: Okay, I thought you were gonna say.
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: Wouldn't that be amazing if that Colin Firth was the
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: son of Bruce Reynolds and it was all in alias
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: that he turned into his stage name.
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: That would be awesome actually. So one of the fun
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: things that the Prime Minister tried to do, because he
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: was so upset about this, was he tried to at
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: one point, or he didn't try to. He had the
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: idea to reissue every banknote in England so their money
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: would no longer good.
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: So from what I understand, and they were like, yeah,
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: you can't do that. From what I understand, most of
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: the money was never recovered.
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, four hundred grand out of the two point six
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: million was recovered, right.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: So there was a lot of that out there still.
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: But apparently England went to a different type of decimal
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: currency by like nineteen seventy I think, and that means
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: that that money that was out there automatically became worthless.
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: Well apparently they laundered it pretty quickly afterward, so I
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: don't know how much that affected them. Okay, like through bookies,
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: I got stuff like that. They made it new money. However,
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: all of the robbers ended up saying like even if
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: they got their cut, like it was a curse and
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: they didn't live this rich lifestyle in Mexico in Spain,
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: like a bunch of them moved to these places right
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: and served shorter sentences because I think parole was brought
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: in after they were sentenced. It wasn't even like a
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: thing in England until then. But retroactively they were able
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: to get out in like, you know, ten or fourteen
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: years and then you know, supposedly he had some of
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: this money still hidden away. But most of them ended
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: up like one guy committed suicide, one guy died in
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: a medical trial that he signed up for. One guy was.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: Murdered, yeah, by a hitman on a bike in Spain.
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So like most of them have these awful sort
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: of ending stories and they didn't live it out like
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: Sexy Beast, like Ray Winstone on the Spanish era. I
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: think some of that might have been influenced by some
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: of that movie.
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: I think a lot of Great Britain's love of gangsters
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: was yeah, influenced by these guys.
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they were definitely looked up to. And it's pretty interesting.
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: I've got a little more on Biggs the Ballad of
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: Bigs of Bigsy. So he I mean, he really is
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: like a folk hero in against antist or with anti
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: establishment types in the UK, in part because he was,
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: you know, living openly in the face of you know,
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: British authority, and it irked the British enough that a
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: group of ex British military in nineteen eighty one kidnapped
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: him from Brazil and put him on a boat and
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: got as far as Barbados, where they had boat trouble wow,
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: and they were picked up by the Barbadan authorities. And
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: it turns out Barbados doesn't have an extradition treaty with
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: the UK either, so he got sent back to Brazil.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: And supposedly these ex military were saying that they planned
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: on I guess, getting some sort of reward from the
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: British crown for bringing this guy back, right, But it's
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: also been supposed that that was actually a plausible deniability
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: cover that it was actually like the British really tried
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: to have this guynapped.
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: It wouldn't surprise me.
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: He Yeah, he finally turned himself in and died in
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: two thousand and nine. But he turned himself in two
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: thousand he started having like failing health, so he's like,
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: I guess I'll go live out my life in jail
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: for some reason.
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: And I think he went to like an old man's
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: hospital jail back in the UK. And not all of
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: them met, you know, gross untimely demises of you know,
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: several of them just kind of retired or went back
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: to their work as florist's and uh, yeah, Cordry sort
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: of retired with her family in Sussex or London or
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: sort of around England. And but apparently none of them
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: like got rich off this or they're not talking if
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: they did. Yeah.
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: Still, well, good good, Yeah, Goods wrote a book, So
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: there you go.
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: There you have it.
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: Uh. If you want to know more about the Great
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: Train Robbery, a great place to start is the search
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: bar howstuff works dot com. And since I said search bar,
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: it's time for listener mail.
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: Uh, I'm gonna call the horse milk. In our Animal
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: Domestication podcast, we talked about horse milk and I can't
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: remember what I said. I probably said it was gross
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: or something.
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: Well, I think we said like we want to hear
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: from people who've had it, and I figured we'd hear
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: from a couple of people, but I'm blown away by
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: how many people have had a brush with horse milk.
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: A lot of people liked it too, this is not
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: one of them. Hey, guys, just listen to the podcast
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: on animal domestication. I wanted to tell you about the
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: revolting drink called Kumas from Kazakhstan. It's ku miss Mela Kumas.
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: It is similar to the more familiar product Kiefer, which
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: we talked about that and something else, right, yeah or something.
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: It's like Balki's version of sour milk Colgary and I.
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: Think, yeah, he said it's made from horse milk because
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: horse milk has more natural sugars than cow, sheep or
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: goat milk. Kumus ends up being mildly alcoholic after fermentation.
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: Crazy.
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: Imagine the sourness of raw yogurt mixed with the bite
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: of a shot of vodka and round it all out
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: with the disgusting tang of horse milk, and you've got
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: kumas well.
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: I don't understand that last part, Like I don't have
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: anything to equate that with horse milk, vodka, check sour
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: like Forto yogurt.
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: But you don't know that disgusting tang. No, and I
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: want to know now. You know in Toronto when I
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: was there, my friend Chris from Let's Drink About It
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: ate horse meat.
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: They in front of you.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: No.
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: I was supposed to go to dinner with them, but
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: I was sick. And after we recorded, they went out,
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: and the next day he was like, dude, eight horse meat.
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: Yesterday I went they go to Ikea. No, they went
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: to some one of those adventurous restaurants. And I was like,
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: Josh would have been all over that, but not me. No,
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: thank you. Yeah, you'd eat horse meat, right, you try
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: it out, probably, but not horse milk.
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: Only if the horse died of old age.
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: So Greg says, I drank it. Well that's what they said.
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: They supposedly all of them. They're called what do you
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: call them, barbarians something?
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: Horses like old dead horses.
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: No, basically there were horses that died of natural casts.
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: They called them like horses.
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: No, like golden age horses.
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: No, there's a word.
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of words.
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: I can say them all. So Greg drank it in Kazakhstan,
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: and he said it was served in a bowl what
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: he you would describe as a bowl. You get cocktail
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: peanuts like you would get cocktail peanuts, and like, instead
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: of a bowl of peanuts, it's a bowl of this
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: disgusting drink. Wow. I've lived in the Caucasus for four
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: years now, I've had my share of questionable foods, and
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: the only thing I found more disagreeable than a saucer
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: of kumus was a pickled rooster comb. Oh my gosh,
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: he said. It was all skin and cardles. It felt
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: like I was eating an ear. Wow, man, that is
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: from Greg. That's called using every part of the animal. Yeah, Greg,
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: you just blew my mind.
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: Same here, man.
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: I wish I could think of the horses. Uh, not
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: like freedom horses, but it.
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: Was something like freedom is a word the horses that
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: want you to eat them? Yeah, donor horses. Well we'll
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: find out and tell everybody next time. Okay.
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, essential is they're horses that died of natural causes.
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: They weren't killed for their meat. I gotcha. Yeah.
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: If you want to let us know about an experience
• 42:56
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• 43:00
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• 43:03
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• 43:06
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• 43:09
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• 43:12
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• 43:15
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• 43:16
  Speaker 4: Know dot com.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: HowStuffWorks dot com.