That’s what I was doing myself. I claimed the money was from my business and that Margaret Ann had stolen it – well, she had, irrespective of where the money had originally come from. But the cops weren’t buying it. They had found receipts for deposits in several building societies and then they turned up my gun. All this, along with Bob Ross’s confession, gave them enough to charge me with the Whiteinch bank job, attempted murder and possession of a loaded firearm. I was remanded in custody and carted off to Barlinnie.
Needless to say, the first person I made a point of seeing was Bob Ross. He was in a terrible state, weeping and feeling depressed and almost suicidal. I felt really sorry for him. ‘Come on, Bob,’ I said. ‘What happened? How did you end up in here?’
‘It was you,’ he sobbed. ‘You told the police all about me. You even said that I was the leader, that the whole idea was mine.’
‘Bob, Bob,’ I pointed out. ‘I’m pleading not guilty.’
He looked at me, not really understanding the implication of my words. ‘You’re blaming me,’ he said. ‘That’s what the police told me.’
I spoke slowly. ‘Bob, think about it. If I’m pleading not guilty, I’m saying I never done it. So why would I tell them you gave me the information? That would be sticking myself in.’ I could see the realisation dawning on his face.
‘But … but … the police told me you were blaming me.’
‘I told you all about that, Bob. I warned you they would say things like that. There is not one bit of evidence against you. They’ve only got what you’ve told them yourself.’
I was still very upset about Bob being nicked, but it was his own fault. It was too late now. The deed was done and he had put himself inside. I settled down to my remand, desperately trying to conjure up some kind of defence.
Three days later, I was astonished to see a familiar face on the exercise yard: young Kenny, the soldier boy I had taken to Italy for the gun. ‘What the fuck are you doing in here? What are you in for?’
‘Same as you,’ he replied. ‘Armed robbery, attempted murder and possession of a gun.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ I was shocked. ‘When did you get into that?’
‘I didn’t,’ he told me. ‘I’ve been charged with exactly the same as you. The police think I am the other guy that was on the robbery.’
I was stunned by this information. Kenny had nothing to with the robbery and both he and I knew that.
‘So what happened?’ I asked. ‘How come they charged you?’
It was the police backtracking again. They had sifted my bank accounts and come across the cheque that I had paid to buy Kenny out of the army. An identity parade was promptly set up and you can imagine their delight when Kenny was picked out by several of the witnesses both inside and outside the bank. He was in deep trouble and promptly got himself charged with the offences.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘But you weren’t there, so why don’t you tell them where you really were and get yourself out of this?’
‘Plenty of time,’ he said. ‘I’ll give it another couple of days, then tell them. The cops have left word with the governor that I can send for them any time and they’ll come up right away to see me. I should be out by the end of the week.’
Yeah, I smiled to myself, knowing exactly what he was up to.
Two days later, Kenny spoke to the governor and said he had evidence for the police. Within the hour they had rushed up to the Bar L and were speaking to him, but the interview didn’t go the way they were hoping.
‘Right. What have you got to tell us, Kenny?’ They were all smiles, no doubt thinking he was going to produce vital evidence against me, maybe even turn Queen’s. But their smiles soon faded when Kenny told them that he was completely innocent of the bank robbery. In fact, he had actually been at his job of work driving an Edinburgh city bus all that day.
Wow! What an alibi. What’s more, it was true and there were literally hundreds of witnesses to prove it. The police were snookered. After rushing through their checks, there was no gainsaying the evidence. No matter how desperate they were and despite the fact that he had been positively identified at the ID parade, Kenny was not their man.
However, instead of being man enough to apologise for their mistake and immediately releasing him, the police in their infinite convoluted wisdom took Kenny down to the Sheriff Court and released him on bail. And that was when Joe Beltrami, Glasgow’s top criminal lawyer and acting for me, stepped in.
Joe had heard that my co-defendant was appearing in court and as soon as Kenny had been granted bail, he made application to the same sheriff for bail on my behalf. The procurator fiscal almost laughed out loud at the idea. But Joe Beltrami knew his sheriff and explained to him that he had already granted bail to my co-defendant, who was charged with exactly the same as his client and argued that I should be treated no differently. He was chancing his arm, but Joe Beltrami could argue better than most. To the PF’s confusion, the sheriff agreed with Mr Beltrami and I was granted bail.
I was lying on my cell bed when I heard the shout from the desk. ‘On the threes. Three twenty-eight, Crosbie.’ There was a definite pause, then the magic word rang out: ‘Bail.’ I was up, pillowcase packed and standing by the door, before the landing screw unlocked my door. Fifteen minutes later, Joe Beltrami himself was driving me away from the prison.
Apparently the cops missed me by the skin of their teeth. We must have passed them as they were arriving at the prison to charge me with the Hillington robbery. ‘Crosbie,’ the inspector said to gate control. ‘We’re here to see Crosbie.’
‘You’ve just missed him,’ he was told. ‘Crosbie was released on bail a couple of minutes ago.’
‘Aye, right!’ The inspector laughed at him. ‘Pull the other one. Come on. Open up. We haven’t got all day.’
The gatekeeper had to show the inspector the book before the truth finally sank in. I was gone! By six o’clock it was on the television news and I was a wanted man. The police were raging about my release, questioning the sanity of the sheriff who had granted me bail on such serious charges as armed robbery, attempted murder and possession of an automatic pistol. But it was all their own fault. Once the cops realised that Kenny was a honest, hard-working man with an airtight alibi, clearly in no way involved in the robbery, they should have apologised and released him immediately. Instead of that, they gave him bail and opened the door for me.
But what about the much-vaunted Glasgow CID? You’d think that even a rookie cop might just have wondered why a young guy would choose to spend a week in the dire conditions of Bar L? Obviously no one did. Ah well, that’s the highly trained CID for you.
Anyway, I was out and I was off. Mr Beltrami had warned me not to go home; he knew the score. The police would be out in droves looking for me. So I made a few phone calls from a friend’s house to arrange some clothes and money and, as the papers said at the time, vanished. Gone! Disappeared in a cloud of exhaust fumes! The facts are much more mundane: I actually took a bus to Falkirk and checked into a small boarding house in Orchard Street.
First of all, I had to be able to get about. With only a few hundred pounds in cash, I had to do something. Every cop in the country was looking out for me, so how could I get away without wearing a mask? Then I spotted a motorcyclist zipping past wearing a helmet and I twigged. Bikers wore masks – masks that you could wear up and down any old road without anyone batting an eyelid. That would do for me. I searched through the Falkirk local paper small ads and I bought a wee Honda motorbike, along with a full-face, dark-glass helmet and got myself mobile. It was time to go to work again, but first I needed some equipment.
There was one pal I wanted to look up: Tam Carrick, whom I guessed would be able to help me. Tam wasn’t one of my really close friends, so I felt safe in approaching him. I knew he had recently moved from Springburn to Kirkintilloch, a small country town five miles north of Glasgow and just over ten miles from my temporary base in Falkirk. It took me fifteen minute
s to get to Kirky on my motorbike and just ten more minutes to locate my pal. Tam was good. He was pleased to see me and offered to do anything he could to help. My request was simple: ‘Get me a gun, Tam.’
Tam came through for me. I couldn’t even afford to pay full price for it, but Tam got hold of one of his country friends and came up with an old .410. Not ideal, but needs must when the devil drives. It would have to do. But there was a bonus from Tam as well: a driving licence along with some pieces of matching ID material that would enable me to hire a car. My only problem now was sorting out a bank and this was where my wee Honda and helmet came in handy. I liked the idea of scooting past right under the noses of the cops.
My favourite place for a bank was Glasgow and I travelled through there from Falkirk for a good look round. There were one or two banks I fancied, but I felt a little more vulnerable riding about than I had anticipated. This vulnerability was emphasised when I spotted one of my neighbours at a bus stop. Traffic was slow and he definitely did a double take as I rode past. I kept my eye on my mirror and saw him step out a little and stare after me. It made me cringe and I imagined him phoning the police. I decided that Glasgow was out.
Edinburgh seemed the next logical choice. I spent a couple of days nipping in and out from Falkirk trying to sort out a suitable bank to rob. I ended up with a choice of two, both on the west side of the city. One was on an industrial estate on the outskirts, the other in Gorgie Road, not too far from the city centre.
Having narrowed the field, I now had to make some vital preparations, the first being to find a place to hide immediately afterwards and not too far away from it either. During my scouting around, I had already spotted plenty of empty shop premises with estate agents’ boards hanging outside. One of them in particular suited me and the easily obtained ‘keys to view’ were quickly re-cut before being handed back to the estate agent, solving my bolthole problem.
All I really needed now was transport. I didn’t fancy the motorbike for a getaway. The Honda was the first motorbike I had ever ridden and I knew I wouldn’t have felt comfortable trying to ride it hard if I got involved in a chase, especially if I was balancing a big bag of cash and a shotgun across my chest. I preferred a car and Tam’s welcome gift of a driving licence and ID were all I needed for a hire company to supply that. Everything was turning out fine. There was just one little extra touch I threw in to give the cops a bit of misdirection and leave them something to think about.
A day or two before the robbery, I shot through to the city of Dundee and took a ride on a local city bus, carefully tucking the ticket into my hip pocket. I had a special use for it later on. The next morning back in Falkirk, I packed my bag, paid my bill and gave my Honda to the teenage son of the boarding-house owner; mind you, he did wonder why I kept the helmet. An hour or so later, I picked up a car at Waverly station, Edinburgh, deposited my gear in the shop and got ready to go to work.
In those days, banks closed at 3.30 pm. At exactly 3.25 pm, I parked the car on the other side of a pedestrian underpass that led to Sighthill Industrial Estate. I had decided on this bank because of the quiet pavements – just like Hillington. At bang on 3.28 pm, I put on my helmet and turned into the short footpath leading up to the door of the single-storey bank, the .410 hidden under the folds of a sack I had picked up from outside a fruit shop.
Two paces to go and I braced myself for my entrance. Then a bank clerk suddenly appeared, flicked the Yale lock open and pushed the door closed in my face. I had my eyes on him, but he never looked up at me, avoiding eye contact by keeping his head down as he slammed the door so he wouldn’t have to admit a late customer.
Shit! I was really wound up: confusion, frustration and disappointment all at once. I got into the car and drove off in a worse state than if I had actually done the job. But I’ve always been philosophical about things and once I had cooled down I reminded myself that tomorrow was another day – and another bank!
I spent an uncomfortable night in the shop. The next morning I had changed my target to the Gorgie Road branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland; it was nearer my bolthole anyway and just after ten o’clock I was parked up in a side street from where I could monitor its entrance. Things were quiet. In twenty minutes or so, I counted just four customers enter and leave the bank. It certainly looked good to me and I got myself ready. No last-minute appearances this time.
There were three elderly housewives huddled outside the doorway, so engrossed in gossip that I was totally ignored when I squeezed by them and entered the bank. It was a long bank inside, almost twenty feet to the counter and I could see three tellers, an elderly woman, a guy in a leather jacket and a young girl staring at me as I approached. The woman was first in line and I threw my sack over the counter at her.
‘Fill it up!’ I demanded – a trifle optimistic, right enough, considering the size of the sack. But the woman froze and just stared blankly at me like a dummy in shock. I grabbed back my sack and moved to the middle teller, the guy in the leather jacket. My sack sailed over the counter again, followed by the same instructions to fill it up. I could see the sneer on his face as the teller chipped a small wad of notes into the wide mouth of the sack and lobbed it contemptuously back at my head.
Fuck it! I wasn’t here for that. I leaped up on the counter to persuade him to be more co-operative, spotting, as I did so, that the young girl in the last position had a box full of blue fivers in front of her. ‘Here,’ I threw the sack down to her. ‘Put that money in there,’ I instructed, before turning my attention back to the guy in the leather jacket. But he had capitulated and backed into a corner, offering no resistance. Then I spotted a staircase behind him that obviously led to a basement of some kind.
‘Right! Everyone downstairs,’ I yelled. ‘Come on, down the stairs right now!’
While I was giving my orders, I noticed a door off to my right marked ‘Manager’. Jesus! For all I knew he was already on the phone to the coppers. I burst into the office and caught him behind his desk, apparently having heard absolutely nothing.
‘On your feet,’ I roared, pointing the .410 at him. ‘Come on, up!’
He looked at me with a half-grin on his face, definitely thinking I was kidding. ‘Up!’ I yelled. I could see realisation dawn on his face as he slowly got up from behind his desk. And up and up. He was a fucking giant! With his shiny bald head and wearing a hairy orange sports jacket with huge leather elbow pads, he looked like an ogre rising up from his den to eat me.
Wow, I thought. I hope he doesn’t take this gun off me and beat me to death with the wooden end. ‘Come on! Down the stairs!’
I had to keep it up; after all, I was a bank robber, not a mouse.
Thank God he was sensible and did what he was told, getting up and following the others down into the basement. I checked the young girl’s position, saw half the money was still in the box and quickly transferred it into my bag.
The main safe was lying open and I looked across at it, but I had already been in the place too long – someone could enter at any time. I knew that I was beginning to chance my arm and that discretion was called for. Caution overcame greed and I put my helmet into the sack along with the money and left, squeezing past the still-chattering housewives. They would have something to gossip about now, all right.
Two minutes later and less than half a mile from the bank, I was stashing the money in the shop before driving on into the city centre to dump the car. The five-minute drive to get rid of the car was pretty hair-raising. I was driving straight into the face of responding police vehicles. At one point I thought I had run into a roadblock and almost jumped ship, but it was only a snarl-up where two police cars had shot the traffic lights and collided with one another.
It was a full nerve-wracking minute before I got across the junction and found a parking slot right in the centre of town. The last thing I did was drop my Dundee bus ticket into the car’s footwell before locking up and abandoning the vehicle.
After le
aving the car, I crossed the road to a large department store on the corner of Princess Street and bought myself a backpack and a kind of Australian bush hat. I had the idea that the backpack and hat, along with my sunglasses, would provide the perfect cover for me to mingle with the hordes of festival fans and make my way safely out of Edinburgh.
I felt really relieved when I finally locked the shop door behind me and collapsed into a chair. The adrenaline rush of the robbery, sustained by the getaway and the need to get rid of the car, then the hurried walk back to the shop, knowing I was heading in the direction of the bank again, had all taken their toll and I was utterly frazzled.
I must have sat in that chair for over an hour just watching the scene outside, smiling every time a police car raced past on its way to or from the bank. And I had something else to smile about: when I finally got the energy to count the cash, I discovered I had netted almost £20,000 – a lot of money in 1974 and the most money taken by anyone on a single-handed hold-up in Scotland.
By mid-afternoon I was fully relaxed and I planned on slipping out of town the following day using local buses, leapfrogging south until I felt safe enough or far away enough to catch a train. My idea was to get myself to Southend Airport, where I knew I could obtain a 72-hour, single-use passport on production of a driving licence as identification. This would at least get me out of the country and remove the danger of being recognised on the streets and I didn’t foresee any difficulty in travelling through France into Spain and onwards to the Costa del Sol. I already knew some people there and with the money I had I would have no problem settling down. I spent another uncomfortable night trying to sleep in the shop, although thinking about my prospects certainly made it easier to bear. I was pleased to see daylight coming through the window the following morning.
Armed and Dangerous--This is the True Story of How I Carried Out Scotland's Biggest Bank Robbery Page 25