by Dan Bilefsky
Stockwell slowly nodded his head and said he agreed that the gang must have been informed by someone on the inside about the layout of the vault and how to infiltrate it. But he was adamant that that person had not been him.
“I don’t know if it was a false alarm. I turned up, the building was secure and that’s it,”21 he replied.
John Harbinson, the Clueless Taxi Driver
Lincoln’s case probably wasn’t helped when his nephew John Harbinson, a forty-two-year-old taxi driver, whom Lincoln had asked to store three bags of jewels in his garage, told the court that his uncle had told him that the bags containing millions of dollars’ worth of stolen diamonds, emeralds, and rubies were “a load of old shit.” Harbinson said he had no reason to suspect that the bags contained the jewels from the Hatton Garden heist.22
Asked what his reaction was when he saw the three bags stuffed with jewels in a hallway in Lincoln’s terraced house, Harbinson said he didn’t think twice. “I assumed it was his luggage he was taking on holiday,” he said. “I asked how long he was going for because there were a couple of bags in the hallway. He said he had to put them upstairs, could I help him.”
When his lawyer asked him how the stolen jewels had found their way into his taxi, a silver Mercedes, Harbinson earnestly replied, “It is a question I have been asking for the past seven months,” he said, adding that his suspicions were finally aroused on the day of the transfer when the bags were taken out of his taxi and put into the trunk of Perkins’s car.
“What did you think was going on?” his lawyer asked.
“I didn’t have a clue to be honest, but it wasn’t right.”
Harbinson’s professed cluelessness about the crime would soon suffer a blow after prosecutors told the jury that a copy of Killer by Charlie Seiga, the biography of a notorious gangster, had been found at Harbinson’s house, with a bookmark on a page outlining a heist using high-powered drills that sounded eerily like the Hatton Garden burglary. But Harbinson insisted that he knew nothing about the book, nor about the raid at Hatton Garden. Police also found jewelry, including a necklace and a sovereign ring, at his home, but Harbinson testified that they had been given to him by his grandmother and parents.23
Looking back on the case, his defense lawyer, John Luckhurst, said Harbinson had been naïve but he was not guilty of any crime. “The only thing my client was guilty of on that occasion was of being stupid,”24 he said.
The Verdict
The accessories to the crime, on the whole, did not fare well, as the evidence stacked up against them. On March 9, 2016, Lincoln was sentenced to seven years in jail, and Wood to six years, while Doyle, having already served several months in prison, received a suspended sentence. Only Harbinson was not convicted of being an accessory to the crime.
Ahead of his sentence, Doyle, the irrepressible salesman who was out on bail and fitted with an electronic leg tag, had turned to Twitter to tell his followers that he hoped that he would be released. “Forget A rated prison—have you got a G rated boiler? £400 cash back for new boiler,” he wrote. He also posted a photograph of one of his plumbing cars, along with a note of optimism: “On Woolwich ferry on way to court, last day of 37 days in court, hope let’s hope I don’t have to walk the plank!!”
The four ringleaders, meanwhile, were sentenced in March 2016 to seven years each in prison.
During the sentencing, three of the ringleaders, several using electronic hearing aids, sat in the back of the court, behind a glass enclosure. Many looked bemused. As usual, Carl Wood was reading the Daily Mail. Brian Reader was not present after suffering a stroke while in prison; he would be sentenced a few weeks later. Lincoln, a bulldog of a man, shuffled frequently to the bathroom. Doyle jovially chatted with reporters.
When their sentences were read out, the men listened stoically and betrayed little emotion. “Thank you, judge,” said Jones. He then blew a kiss to his family in the gallery, before being led away in handcuffs.
Doyle, ever the amiable plumber, addressed reporters outside the courthouse. Not one to miss a marketing opportunity, he wore a sweatshirt emblazoned with the name of his plumbing firm, Associated Response. “I just want to spend some time with my family now and I’ve got boilers to fit in north London,” he said. “I feel sorry for the victims for what’s happened because peoples’ lives have been devastated here,” he continued. He added, “I’m sorry for any inconvenience.”
Months after the trial, the safe deposit’s website was still active. “We are currently one of London’s most successful and leading safe deposit company [sic],” it read, promising to “protect important and irreplaceable personal belongings.”
Chapter 15
Who Is Basil?
IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE HATTON GARDEN HEIST, one pervasive mystery gnawed at the able men and women of Scotland Yard: Who is Basil?
Following the burglary, after police went through hours of CCTV footage of Hatton Garden and the surrounding area, they spotted a man with red hair wearing a cap, earmuffs, and a surgical mask, whom the other members of the Hatton Garden gang of thieves had dubbed “Basil.” It was an apparent reference to the children’s television glove puppet Basil Brush. Or was it? The red hair might have been a wig.
Before they were caught, the ringleaders were secretly recorded by police expressing their concerns that they could be found if police traced the crime to Basil. “The only one who could get nicked was poor old Basil on the key but, you know what I mean,”1 Collins said, while driving around in his bugged car.
Daniel Jones suggested Basil was a novice, albeit a quick study, who had rapidly learned the criminal trade under the tutelage of Brian Reader: “Well Basil learnt in two months what he had to learn in 40 years.” But Collins wasn’t quite as taken with Basil’s skills as Jones was. “I still don’t know why Basil let that fucking alarm go off,” he remarked.2
Skilled or clumsy, Basil eluded capture, long after the other members of the gang were arrested. The British tabloid media dubbed him “the Ghost.” Toward the end of 2015, Detective Superintendent Craig Turner of the Flying Squad said Scotland Yard knew nothing about Basil, and police professed ignorance of who he is. None of the other men divulged a single detail about the mystery villain, apparently either in the dark about his true identity, or trying to protect him.
“The investigation will be still ongoing. We will seek to identify the individual known as Basil. I refresh our appeal and offer a £20,000 [$28,400] reward,” Turner said. “We don’t know anything about Basil, that is why we are putting out the appeal.” Police feared he had fled with as much as £10 million worth of jewelry, gems, and gold. Asked about him two years after the burglary, Turner sported his best poker face. “We don’t know. There is an ongoing investigation. The Hatton Garden investigation has not been shut.”3
There was no sign of forced entry during the heist and police say that Basil may have been the “inside man” in the operation. But who is he? While the gang disabled several CCTV systems at the safe deposit box, they missed one near the fire exit: Basil can be seen from Greville Street walking toward 88–90 Hatton Garden, his face purposely covered by a bag he was holding. In another frame, he is seen walking toward the white escape van, a phantom of a man, again holding a bag over his shoulder to cover his face. The fact that he covered his face suggests that he had staked out the building and knew its layout.
After entering the building on the evening of April 2, apparently with a key, he likely made his way upstairs to survey the building and make sure no one else was there. The jeweler Lionel Wiffen, whose office shared a courtyard with the safe deposit box at the back of the building near the fire escape, told police that in the months leading up to the heist, he had an eerie and distinct feeling he was being watched. Was the person watching him Basil?
After confirming that Wiffen was not in his office, Basil can be seen on the CCTV cameras in the courtyard of 88–90 Hatton Garden. It seems that he walked into the front of the building
while it was still open during office hours, hid for a few hours, before going down a staircase from the main lobby of the building through a door that is not locked. Basil then opened the fire escape door and let the others in.
In the video footage, Basil appears to tower over some of the others, suggesting he is at least six feet tall. But the images are murky. He is wearing a cap, earmuffs, a surgeon’s mask, white forensic gloves, a dark blue jacket, dark trousers, and shoes. His face is obscured.
After the men loaded the escape van with the plastic wheelie containers stuffed with gold and jewels on April 5, Basil is seen coming out of the main entrance, the last to leave the building, before their getaway.
Basil’s share of the booty was later alluded to by the rest of the gang. Jones said, “Tell you what, I wonder what he would do now, Basil.” Perkins replied, “Think of what he’s got at the moment, right he’s got that gold, some of that gold.” He then appears to suggest that while he took the cheapest jewelry, he got the largest stash of cash—£82,000, or about $123,000. “That will last him right through,” Jones said. But maybe that wasn’t all the cash he made off with, because Perkins added, “That foreign money he fucking won will probably last him ten years.”4 The two men then also suggested that he lived abroad and would have to come back to England to discuss how to divvy up the goods.
The British media speculated that Basil, who disabled the safe deposit company’s alarm system, is a computer expert who was talent hunted by Reader and the older members of the gang who were out of touch with modern alarm system technology. While Jones and Perkins appeared to suggest in the surveillance recording that he may have absconded with heaps of foreign cash, the other theory was that he only got a measly £180,000 ($270,000) in total from the heist, was double crossed by his greedy coconspirators, and would come back to wreak revenge. Or was it he who duped them and escaped with the bulk of the booty?
The British tabloid press, drunk on rumors, reported that the gang, except for Reader, did not know Basil’s identity. The Mirror, a tabloid newspaper known for its blaring headlines and reports on lurid crimes, reported that the Ghost was a single man from the southeast of London in his mid-fifties and appeared to be much taller than Jones, who was five feet nine inches. CCTV footage suggested that he had hidden his real hair under a ginger wig. The British media claimed that he lived around the Hatton Garden area, and had been involved in several high-profile burglaries over the past two decades, always disappearing without a trace. While his father had passed away, the Ghost’s mother was still alive and he had brothers and sisters living in Britain.5 But Scotland Yard had not confirmed any of these details, at least publicly.
Citing an unnamed source from the criminal underworld, the Mirror reported that Basil was canny and intelligent. “He’s a clever kid and the police won’t have much on him, he’s too good for that. He will have hidden his whack somewhere secure in the UK and gone on his toes. I don’t know where he is now. On every job you need a good alarm man and The Ghost is the best.”6
The mystery of Basil’s identity took a new twist in February 2016. Jones wrote another letter to Sky News—apparently his favorite way of communicating with the world—saying that Basil was a former police officer who was involved in private security. “Basil was the brains, as I was recruited by him,” Jones wrote in the letter, published from Belmarsh prison in southeast London ahead of his sentencing. “He let me in on the night of the burglary, he hid keys and codes throughout the building.” The confession—viewed by police as a ruse—contradicted the evidence and police surveillance that Reader had been the chief recruiter and brains behind the operation.
Jones said he had come to Basil’s attention through a fellow police officer after being arrested in connection with a similar theft on Bond Street in central London in 2010. He did not know Basil’s true identity, and he would not reveal it if he did. “It’s not a done thing where I come from as fear for family members,” he wrote in his letter.7 Whatever his identity, police were skeptical of the claims made by Jones, who has a history of burglaries and has not always proven to be the most reliable narrator.
Jones told Sky News that he had seen Basil about four times. “He came and went,” he wrote. “I don’t know nothing about him, where he lives.” He added, “I wasn’t interested.”
Another theory was that Basil is a cleaner who worked at the safe deposit, is Eastern European, and had absconded to Bulgaria or Romania with $10 million in stolen gold and gems.
As the conspiracy theories continued to swirl, the mystery of Basil’s identity appeared to have finally been solved in late March 2018, when police arrested a fifty-seven-year-old jeweler called Michael Seed, bringing a three-year manhunt to an end. Or so it seemed.
A taciturn man with gray hair, Seed was arrested at a run-down and boxy housing estate in Islington, about two miles from where the Hatton Garden theft took place, after police raided his home. Scotland Yard refused to confirm whether Seed was, in fact, Basil. But investigators familiar with the case said Seed was the shadowy and enigmatic figure known as “Basil the Ghost.” Police said he had been arrested following a search warrant and after several items were seized from the premises, including jewelry, precious gems, and gold ingots.
When Seed appeared at Woolwich Crown Court in May 2018, to enter a plea via a video link from prison ahead of his trial on September 24, he appeared pensive. Wearing a red T-shirt and glasses and hunched over an orange folder, he pleaded not guilty to conspiring to commit burglary at Hatton Garden or conspiring to convert or conceal stolen property. He said he was a jeweler and confirmed his name, date of birth, and nationality. He spoke in a British accent that hinted at a background more refined than the rest of the gang. The British media reported that in contrast to the working-class credentials of the other members of the firm, Seed is the son of a renowned University of Cambridge scientist, John Seed, who was self-taught until he studied for a doctorate in biophysics. John Seed died several years ago but Seed has a ninety-year-old mother who lives in Cambridge, as well as three siblings.
Seed’s aunt Kathleen Seed told the Times of London that the notion of her nephew participating in the Hatton Garden heist was absurd. “The idea of him being a safebreaker is outlandish,” she said.8
A person close to the gang believes that the Flying Squad, despite their protestations, knew who Basil was all along and have had him under surveillance, in London, where he has been the entire time. As he was so careful at avoiding police surveillance and was so discreet during the planning and aftermath of the heist, it took years to gather enough evidence in order to prosecute him. He appears to have been adept at remaining under the radar and neighbors said he was friendly but quiet and seldom spoke to them. He wore the same clothes every day so they assumed he was impoverished.
Chapter 16
The Chatila Heist
Hatton Garden Redux?
IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE HATTON GARDEN HEIST, Scotland Yard once again focused on the Chatila caper of late August 2010, when four men wearing high-visibility jackets and masks targeted the jewelry store to the stars on Bond Street in Mayfair, stealing £1 million ($1.5 million) in jewelry and precious stones from a showroom.
As in Hatton Garden, they had chosen a holiday weekend, targeted a jeweler in the heart of London, traveled to the crime in a white van, wielded a diamond-tipped drill, disabled and climbed down an elevator shaft, and then badly bungled by being unable to get into the vault. Eventually, they gave up on penetrating the vault’s wall and instead ransacked the showroom, spiriting away the booty in white containers and bags, before finally vanishing.
Sound familiar?
Scotland Yard thought so, too, and the Flying Squad decided to reexamine the earlier burglary. The similarities with the raid at 88–90 Hatton Garden were eerily familiar. Could it be that the Bad Grandpas had struck before?
In the summer of 2016, Scotland Yard raided London City Metals, the east London scrap metal yard where Perkins
had indicated to Jones he hoped to fence the Hatton Garden gold and gems. He had told Jones of his plans while driving in his blue Citroën Saxo, and Scotland Yard, which had overheard the conversation from the bug in Perkins’s car, had every reason to believe that some of the booty from the heist could still be there. After an exhaustive search of the vast warehouse, they discovered two large emerald stones, a gold bangle, and a £90,000 ($117,000) watch hidden in a false ceiling in Matthews’s office.
Initially police thought the items were stolen during the Hatton Garden break-in. But further investigation revealed that the goods had come from the 2010 raid on Chatila.
In July 2016, with the evidence pointing squarely at Reader, Jones, and Perkins, police questioned the trio at Belmarsh prison about the Chatila burglary. Most damningly, DNA found on a glove at the Chatila boutique in April 2015 was linked to Danny Jones. He claimed that the DNA was there prior to the 2010 heist and initially denied any wrongdoing. But Jones had a habit of sagging under aggressive questioning and incontrovertible evidence and he eventually admitted the crime and pleaded guilty to conspiring to raid the flagship store. Perkins and Reader, meanwhile, strenuously denied any involvement.
Matthews, who has been charged with receiving stolen goods, told prosecutors he was tricked into storing the purloined gems, while police suspect that Basil may have played a role in disabling the alarm during the Chatila break-in.
The parallels between the Hatton Garden and Chatila raids are uncanny. In the 2010 burglary in Mayfair, the thieves used scaffolding outside the store to climb to the roof. From there, they broke into the building and deactivated the alarm. As in Hatton Garden, staff discovered the break-in on the Tuesday after a holiday weekend. As in Hatton Garden, the thieves also stole gems, watches, and cash.
“All the evidence suggests that at least some of the same men were involved,” said Jamie Day, when the Chatila trial began in late 2016.