by Andrew Cook
He was taken to Southwark police station. On arrival I said to him, ‘My information is that you lived at 262 Fieldgate Mansions, Stepney until the 14 August 1963 and then disappeared’. Smith made no reply so I added, ‘Do you recall a police officer answering the telephone that day in your flat and asking you to come home?’ Smith replied, ‘No I don’t’. I said, ‘Do you say you did not ring later on after first promising to come to the flat and telling the officer you had an idea why he wanted to see you?’ Smith replied, ‘I rang but nothing like that was said’. I said to him, ‘What do you say took place?’ He replied, ‘I’ve had advice and told to make no statement even if you charge me with something’.
I said, ‘Perhaps at least you will tell us why you did not go to live with your wife and child at the address at Barking Road that was bought on your behalf’. He replied, ‘No I’m saying nothing except I am innocent of any robbery’.
He was asked whether he had any objection to his finger and palm prints being taken by police. He replied, ‘No, have as many as you want’. Palm prints were taken by Detective Chief Inspector Williams. He [Henry Smith] was later detained at Cannon Row police station where he gave his name as John Smith of no fixed address. His palm prints were compared with those left at Leatherslade Farm but no identification was made. On Wednesday the 6 May 1964 Smith was taken to Aylesbury police station and detained whilst arrangements were made for witnesses to attend an Identification Parade.
On Thursday the 7 May 1964 Smith was placed with a number of other men on an Identification Parade. Ten witnesses who either saw or had dealings with the strangers in the Oakley or Brill districts of Buckinghamshire at the material time were introduced to the Parade but none made an identification. Smith was accordingly released on his personal undertaking to present himself at New Scotland Yard in fourteen days’ time. Smith carried out his undertaking but no further evidence being available he was allowed to leave.’1
Smith’s address at 496 Barking Road, Plaistow was also re-searched:
A pair of boots, some shoes and sandals which were not present at the earlier search were seized. It was thought possible that markings and blemishes on the soles might correspond with impressions found in the soft earth at Leatherslade Farm. An examination carried out at the Forensic Laboratory dashed this hope. The position we reached at this juncture was that there was not the slightest doubt in our minds of police that Smith (whose name had been given to me only a few days after the commission of the offence) was one of the robbers actually at the scene and taking a very active part in the commission of the offence. Because of our failure to trace him earlier, he has received advice from one or more solicitors regarding his demeanour when interrogated by police. We have been defeated on the question of physical identification, whilst any palm and finger impressions he may have left at the Farm were erased before the arrival [of] the officers from the Fingerprint Department.2
At the same time as the Barking Road address was being searched on 6 May, DS Slipper and DS Suter travelled to Gosport in Hampshire where they searched two properties that had recently been purchased by Smith’s friend Daniel Regan. At 32 Palmerston Way, in the wardrobe in Regan’s bedroom, Slipper found two sheets of paper giving details of addresses and figures appertaining to the purchase of property. According to the schedule, Regan, with his associates:
… bought thirty-two houses (including a row of eleven), a drinking club and a hotel in the Portsmouth and Gosport districts. In addition, there is the house in Barking Road in which Smith has been living and which has now been sumptuously furnished.3
DCS Butler informed Commander Hatherill that, ‘It can, however, be said with virtual certainty that the cash expended on all the property is the proceeds of Smith’s share of the proceeds of the Train Robbery.’4
While little hope was held out, the appeals on behalf of all those convicted at the Buckinghamshire Assize trial in April had been lodged and commenced on Monday 6 July 1964. They were held at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Central London before Justice Widgery, Justice Fenton Atkinson and Justice Lawton. Every prisoner, apart from Charles Wilson, who did not wish to attend, was brought under close police escort to the courts.
When deliberating the appeals, the judges held that though none of the robbers were identified at the scene of the crime, the fingerprint evidence against the six was sufficient for the trial jury to infer they were plotters who also took part in the raid.
Mr Justice Atkinson said, ‘Last year’s £2,500,000 raid was warfare against society and an act of organised banditry touching new depths of lawlessness. In our judgement, severe deterrent sentences are necessary to protect the community against these men for a long time.’5
Leave to appeal to the House of Lords was refused to the six. The next appeal against conviction and sentence was that of Gordon Goody. Having reviewed his case, the Court of Criminal Appeal criticised prosecution counsel Niall MacDermot QC for the ‘irrelevant’ questions he asked Goody at the trial concerning the 1962 London Airport robbery. Mr Justice Lawton said:
No questions should have been asked about this matter. Still less should Mr MacDermot have asked questions which had the effects of suggesting, even if he did not intend to do so, that Goody had been lucky to be acquitted.6
However, Lawton went on to conclude that: ‘Even if the Court was satisfied there was such gross impropriety by Mr MacDermot, as to be likely to interfere with the trial, the conviction would not have been set aside.’7
Both of Goody’s appeals were therefore dismissed and leave for him to appeal to the House of Lords was also refused.
Brian Field’s was the next appeal to be heard. He had originally been sentenced to twenty-five years’ imprisonment and five years’ imprisonment to run concurrently for conspiracy to rob and conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice. His conviction and sentence in relation to the conspiracy to rob charge was quashed.
Giving judgement, Mr Justice Fenton Atkinson said the trial jury at the Assize Court had acquitted Field of receiving stolen money, even though two bags belonging to him were found full of banknotes in Dorking. Once dissociated from possession of any stolen money, the remaining facts against him were therefore insufficient to enable the jury to infer he was guilty of conspiring to rob the mail train.
The appeal of Leonard Field, whom Mr Justice Fenton Atkinson described as ‘a ready liar at the trial’, reached the same conclusion as ‘No facts had been established that he knew of the intention to stop and rob the train.’
John Wheater, who was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice, appealed against his conviction and sentence. The appeals against both were dismissed.
The final appeals were those of William Boal and Roger Cordrey. Boal was originally sentenced to twenty-four years’ imprisonment. Arthur James QC for the Crown admitted to the court that the prosecution was now ‘unhappy’ about Boal’s case. Scientific evidence at the trial, he said, had turned out to be inconclusive. This in itself was a major revelation, for surely if the scientific evidence against Boal was not conclusive, how could the same evidence put forward by Dr Holden against Goody at the earlier trial not also be so?
Arthur James QC further went on to say, ‘Looking back on it now, I should have invited the jury not to convict Boal of being one of the actual robbers. If Boal had pleaded not guilty to armed robbery but, like Cordrey, guilty to receiving £151,000, the prosecution would have accepted the pleas.’8
Mr Justice Widgery agreed that ‘Boal’s conviction of armed robbery might result in a miscarriage of justice’ and so quashed the conviction. The court then substituted a fourteen-year sentence of imprisonment for conspiracy to rob for three charges of receiving. Mr Justice Widgery commented that, ‘a significant difference in sentence is justified for those who were not the inner-circle of plotters’. Boal was to die of a brain tumour in prison on 25 June 1970 a broken man.9
Roger Cordrey, who had pleaded guilty at the
Buckinghamshire Assize Court to conspiracy to rob and three charges of receiving, and had been sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment had his sentence reduced to one of fourteen years, the same sentence as Boal, a man who had no involvement at all in the crime and nothing like the same degree of involvement as others who were handed down sentences of no more than three years for receiving.
On Monday 20 July 1964 the Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed the appeals of Brian Field, Leonard Field and John Wheater against their sentences for conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice. Mr Justice Lawton said that the five-year sentences on Brian Field and Leonard Field, and a three-year sentence on Wheater, were not wrong in law.
By the time the appeal process had come to an end, Charlie Wilson was already in the later stages of his escape preparations. Just over two weeks after the appeal, he made headlines all over the world with a daring escape that further fuelled the public’s fascination for the train robbers.
It was just after 3 a.m. on 12 August that Wilson was freed from the maximum security Winson Green Prison in Birmingham by three men who had broken into the jail. In one of two Metropolitan Police files on his escape is a report by Flying Squad officers summarising the facts relating to the jailbreak, written on 12 and 13 August.10
The three men who rescued Wilson were believed to have stolen a ladder from a nearby builders’ yard to break into the grounds of a psychiatric hospital situated next to the prison. They then used a rope-ladder to climb the 20ft prison wall and proceeded to knock out William Nicholls, one of two patrolling prison officers, and tie him up. They next opened the outside door to C Block and unlocked a steel grille door, before making for Landing No 2 where they silently opened Wilson’s cell door before retracing their steps out of the prison.
Winson Green authorities were unable to account for how the master key had been obtained, and a copy made. Only one member of the prison staff held the keys to open cells at night. The police seem to have been of the view that a prison officer or official had more than likely been induced by bribery to provide a copy of the master key well in advance of the escape.
Detectives also unsuccessfully tested the prison keys for any traces of soap. They also interviewed the governor, all of the 120 prison officers, the civilian staff working at the prison and a number of the 180 inmates and former inmates. Peter Marshall of Hyde Road, Ladywood, who had previously served three sentences at Winson Green and was known as an expert locksmith, was among those interviewed. He expressed the view that a copy of the master key could not have been made by wax impression, because ‘if any part of the key was even a thousandth of an inch out it would not work,’ he said in a statement. This was a view that Dr Ian Holden at Scotland Yard also concurred with.
Mrs Rose Gredden, who lived close to the prison, also made a witness statement in which she said she had noticed three men talking on the prison side of the canal towpath at around 2.35 a.m. shortly after she had been awakened by her baby daughter. ‘They were respectably dressed. Two were rather tall,’ she recalled. ‘Some prison officers must have seen them. Their social club is only a few yards from where the men were standing and I heard officers leaving the club around that time.’
At 3.20 a.m., William Nicholls, the guard who had been bound and gagged, came to and immediately reported the incident to the night orderly officer, although it was a further thirty minutes before the police received a call logged at 3.50 a.m. Ten minutes later they arrived at the main gate, but were unable to enter until a senior prison officer appeared with the keys.
When the prison governor Rundle Harris was woken and told of Wilson’s escape, he immediately phoned the Home Office duty officer, who in turn sent a telegram to Home Secretary Henry Brooke, who at the time was on an official trip to the Channel Islands. Brooke cancelled the rest of his engagements and immediately flew back to London.
A special watch was put on all airports and sea ports, including Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports in the Republic of Ireland, where the police thought Wilson might initially head for. Notices to Interpol, requesting the circulation of Wilson’s description and photograph, were also sent out.
However, DCS Butler also thought that Wilson might visit the house near Boscastle, so he ‘arranged for the local police to search the house but there was no trace of Wilson’.11
Wilson was, however, heading for London not Ireland. There, he stayed in a safe house for six months, eventually making arrangements to leave the country and start a new life abroad with his family. In December 1964 he obtained a passport in the name of Ronald Alloway and, in March 1965, disguised as a teacher on a backpacking holiday, took a cross-channel ferry to France.
DCS Butler continued to believe, however, that Wilson was still in Britain:
On 9 June 1965 Chief Supt Butler informed me that he had good reason to suppose that Tracey, aged 7 years, and Cheryl, aged 9 years, two of Wilson’s 3 children, were attending school at Ilford and living with Wilson’s sister and her husband, Charles Edward Woollard at 29 Laurel Close, Hainault, Essex. At Chief Supt Butler’s request, a Home Office Warrant was obtained to intercept the telephone Hainault 3478 at the address and for a check of correspondence delivered to the address since it was considered that Wilson may well be communicating with his sister.12
Interception continued for a month until it became apparent that no one else was living there other than Mr and Mrs Woollard and their young son. No communication of any kind from Wilson was either heard or seen. A year later, in May 1966 (by which time Wilson had settled down in Canada), Butler was still ‘of the opinion that Wilson may now be living in or near London’.13
The police apparently had suspicions as to who might have been behind Wilson’s escape. The identity of the man they investigated, who was ‘suspected of harbouring and assisting’ Wilson to escape, remains in a file that at the time of writing is closed until 2043.14
While prison security had apparently been tightened following Wilson’s jailbreak, further embarrassment for the Home Office, and for the new Labour Home Secretary Sir Frank Soskice, was not long in coming:
On the 8 July 1965 Ronald Biggs, together with Eric Flowers, CRO 2046/50, Robert Anderson, CRO 41542/55 and Patrick Doyle, CRO 36738/57 escaped over the north wall of Wandsworth Prison into a waiting pantechnicon and two private cars. Biggs and Flowers are still at large but Anderson and Doyle have been returned to prison. The following have been prosecuted to conviction for assisting the escapes:
Paul Seabourne, CRO 37440/44
Henry Holsgrove, CRO 36780/54
George Ronald Leslie, CRO 5563/55
George Albert Gibbs, CRO 20253/61
Ronald Brown, CRO 36394/55
Terrence Mintagh, CRO 70184/6215
Biggs and Flowers were initially hidden in a series of safe houses in London and Sussex, before being given new passports and taken out of the country by boat from London to Antwerp. Biggs’s new identity was that of writer Terence Furminger. On arrival in Belgium, he and Flowers were sheltered for some weeks before having plastic surgery at a clinic in Paris. They flew out to Australia at the end of December 1965.16
According to IB officer W.J. Edwards:
Following Biggs’ escape Chief Supt Butler arranged for a further call at the house near Boscastle by the local police. Biggs was not there but Miss Sleep, who was then alone, produced two biscuit tins containing £9,349 in £1 notes which she said her dog had unearthed in the garden besides the garage. She appeared to be distressed because her dog had recently died. The £1 notes and the biscuit tins clearly bore signs of having been buried for some time.
Chief Supt Butler visited Miss Sleep in September, 1965, and in the presence of her solicitor she admitted that she knew that Daly and Black had buried £100,000 in the garden; that Black subsequently took half of it and that Goodwin bricked into a wall in the kitchen the remaining £50,000. She said that following the failure of the hot water system in the house the landlord told her he would install a new oil fired
system and she knew this would involve structural alterations in the kitchen so decided to remove the money from the wall. She admitted that she took a few pounds herself, alleged that she burnt the £5 notes because she thought they could be traced and said she buried the remainder in the garden. Chief Supt Butler is of the opinion that Miss Sleep was living alone, became distressed after the death of her dog and was on the point of reporting the facts concerning the money when the local Police visited her.
The £9,349 is held by the Police and the facts have been reported to the Director of Public Prosecutions suggesting Daly be prosecuted for receiving. The DPP has decided not to prosecute at this stage but the case will doubtless be reopened should any new evidence come to light. This may well materialise when Edwards or Reynolds are arrested.17
W.J. Edwards’s reports also indicate that DSC Butler felt, ‘There is good reason for thinking that Biggs and Flowers, who escaped from prison at the same time, may still be together and in South Africa.’18
According to DI Frank Williams, Butler:
… became so obsessed that as time went on he even spent his holidays on the beaches touring the South of France, parading up and down with binoculars and photographs, scanning the sunbathing crowds through the glasses in the hope of spotting one of the missing robbers (he particularly favoured the view that they were on the Riviera). He spent considerable time talking to English visitors at these resorts, showing them the photographs and asking if they had seen any of the robbers.19