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Crímenes y atracos
26 de noviembre de 1983 · Heathrow International Trading Estate, Londres
Atracos y robosEstado: Resuelto en parte
El expediente detallado solo está disponible en inglés.
Imagen: Stevebidmead · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
3 tonnes of gold6,800 bars, most of them never recovered
The Brink's-Mat depot on a trading estate near Heathrow was a staging post for shipments of valuables to and from the airport. The guard Anthony Black gave his brother-in-law Brian Robinson, a well-known London robber, information about the locks, the alarm and the routine, and supplied him with a key to the outer door. The gang counted on about three million pounds in cash.
On the morning of Saturday 26 November 1983 Black let the six men in. They tied up the guards, doused two of them with petrol and threatened to set them alight unless they gave up the combinations of the vault. Inside the vault were boxes of gold bars due to leave for the Far East that day. It took almost two hours to load the more than three tonnes of gold into a van.
The police soon discovered that Black had arrived late for work and was related to Robinson; he confessed. In 1984 Robinson and Micky McAvoy were each sentenced to 25 years and Black to six. The other robbers have never been convicted of the raid. The investigation then shifted to the gold itself, which had been melted down and mixed with copper to disguise its origin.
In 1985 Kenneth Noye, who handled part of the gold, killed an undercover detective in his garden; he was acquitted of murder but convicted in 1986 of handling stolen goods. The proceeds were laundered through banks and property, and several people involved were murdered in later years. After years of litigation the insurers recovered part of the value.