Hatton Garden gang member
dubbed 'The Ghost' cheated out of millions by greedy fellow burglars,
underworld insider claims
The computer genius, given the name Basil in court
and who disabled the vault’s alarm systems, is now one of Scotland Yard’s most
wanted fugitives
One of
the Hatton Garden gang has been dubbed The Ghost
after vanishing without a trace following the heist.
The
computer genius, who disabled the vault’s high-tech alarm systems, is now one
of Scotland Yard’s most wanted fugitives.
Police on
Thursday repeated their offer of a £20,000 reward for information about the
mystery thief.
But a
gang insider believes the “proper professional”, who only got £180,000 and was
cheated out of his fair share by his greedy co-conspirators, will never be
found.
The
underworld source said: “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.”
He
luckily kept his distance as the gang reassembled the loot to smelt it down and
share it back out.
Police
raided the meet but have failed to trace The Ghost.
The
expert crook, given the name Basil in court, was headhunted by heist mastermind
Brian Reader after the elderly burglar witnessed his nerves of steel when
overcoming the most sophisticated security systems.
After
planning the raid meticulously for years with Reader, he coolly and calmly
executed it without hesitation before disappearing. Even today, most of the
gang still have no idea of his true identity.
Details
about him and the audacious crime itself can be now exclusively
revealed for the first time after interviews with an insider.
A trained
engineer, The Ghost, who lived less than a mile from Hatton Garden, was
described as the “brains” of the outfit.
Only
Reader knew his true identity and even he did not have his phone number.
The Ghost
is single, originally comes from the South East, is around 6ft and of slight
build.
He has no
children and is in his mid-50s, making him the youngest of the ringleaders.
Basil is
not believed to be his real name and he carefully hid his greying brown hair
under a ginger wig during the raid.
He is
believed to have pulled off a number of burglaries in the last 20 years but has
never been caught.
The
source added: “He got into crime in his mid-30s and he didn’t need much
coaching.
“Brian
recognised his ability and brought him on board.”
His
father has passed away but The Ghost’s mother is still alive and he has
brothers and sisters living in the UK.
The
gang’s hierarchy was split between The Ghost and Reader, the only true
specialist burglars on the team, and the rest – who the source described as
“labourers”.
The two
master thieves have known each other about 20 years but do not have records for
using violence in the past.
By
contrast Terry Perkins and Danny Jones have convictions for armed robberies and
the Mirror can reveal they swindled The Ghost and Reader out of their £3million
share when it came to the “cut up”.
The
source, who spoke to The Ghost soon after the
raid , said: “It’s poetic justice in the end for those two but I
feel sorry for Brian and The Ghost.”
The
insider described what happened when the gang got to Kenny Collins’ house with
the loot after driving from Hatton Garden.
Collins,
Perkins, Jones and The Ghost separated around £300,000, which was the total
cash haul.
He said:
“They all thought they’d get fortunes in cash but they didn’t.
“The
Ghost had bits of gold but didn’t even get a
diamond . Afterwards he asked me, ‘Do you think I’ll get anything
more?’
“I said,
‘You won’t get a dollar more from them’. Those three must be kicking themselves
in the nick now for being so greedy and stupid.”
As well
as £80,000 in cash, The Ghost got away with a small lunch box sized stash of
gold bullion, worth around £100,000.
The
source said: “He had around £1,000 in out-of-date money and some foreign cash.
He didn’t know where to find Jones or Perkins, but he knew where Collins walked
his dog and said he was going to wait for him there and confront him about it.
"I
haven’t seen him since.”
The
gang’s meticulous preparations began to come unstuck on the first night of drilling when Reader decided not to
return .
The
source said: “Brian would have made them cut it up immediately and if they’d
done that they probably would have got away with it.
“Collins,
Perkins and Jones were just labourers. Those three would never have been able
to get through the front the door in the first place without Brian and The
Ghost.”
Police
appealed for information leading to the capture and conviction of The Ghost.
Det Supt
Craig Turner said: “The investigation is still ongoing. We will seek to
identify the individual known as Basil and
I will refresh my appeal and offer a £20,000 reward for any information that leads to his identification.”
I will refresh my appeal and offer a £20,000 reward for any information that leads to his identification.”
Revealed: Mob lover
'grassed up' £14m Hatton Garden jewellery heist gang in revenge for being jilted
EXCLUSIVE: Jilted lover 'grassed up elderly raiders
to police in a bid for revenge'
DETECTIVES
were on to the Hatton Garden “Diamond Wheezers” within 48 hours after a tip-off
from one of their molls.
She is
said to have had a relationship with a member of the £14million heist gang and
“bubbled him up” in revenge for jilting her.
Officially,
police got on the trail of the elderly mob, including three pensioners, through
CCTV footage of one of their cars.
But
well-informed sources say gang members are convinced they were betrayed by a
woman.
One said:
“There is a lot of head-scratching going on because they know there is always
an informant on a job of this kind and the police were on to them too quickly.
“The
strong suspicion is that a woman known to one of the team was upset with him
for some reason and bubbled him up.”
Guide ...
found at Jones' home
The
moll’s revenge can be revealed today after three men — Carl Wood, 58, Billy
Lincoln, 60, and Hugh Doyle, 48 — were found guilty at Woolwich crown court,
South East London, for their part in the record-breaking raid last Easter
weekend.
They will
be sentenced on March 7 with ringleaders Brian “The Master” Reader, 76, John
“Kenny” Collins, 74, Terry Perkins, 67, and Dan Jones, 60, who all admitted
conspiracy to burgle in September.
A book
entitled Forensics for Dummies was found at Jones’ home in Enfield, North
London.
A fellow
raider, known as Basil, is still being hunted by police.
Another
source said: “The Flying Squad were on to the gang within a day or two.
“Information
was supposedly given by a woman upset with one of the team. It is a jealously
guarded secret for good reasons.”
It
enabled cops to put listening bugs in Collins’ Mercedes and a Citroen owned by
Perkins — and link other gang members through phone records.
READ
MORE:
During
the trial there was speculation about the identity of a woman nicknamed “Randy
Mandy,” mentioned by Perkins while his car was bugged.
He told
Jones: “See that bird there, Randy Mandy is a bit better than her, but like
her.”
There is
no suggestion that “Randy Mandy” grassed up the gang.
Reader,
of Dartford, Kent, has a heart condition. Perkins, of Enfield and Collins. of
Islington, both North London, have serious diabetes. They have all been
detained at top-security Belmarsh Prison since their arrests last May.
The
ringleaders’ guilty pleas will earn them a third off the maximum ten-year
tariff for non-residential burglary — of which they will then have to serve
only half.
But
because two thirds of the loot is still missing, the men face further action
under the Proceeds of Crime Act, punishable with a maximum of ten years without
remission.
One
underworld associate said: “They are looking at a death sentence behind bars and
are genuinely worried they will never get out alive.”
Yesterday
Wood, of Cheshunt, Herts, and Lincoln, of Bethnal Green, East London, were
convicted of conspiracy to burgle — and with Doyle, of Enfield, North London,
of plotting to launder stolen goods.
Lincoln’s
nephew, London taxi driver Jon Harbinson, 42, of Benfleet, Essex, was acquitted
of both charges.
He denied
knowing that three holdalls he looked after in his garage next to paint pots
and bric-a-brac contained gems.
As
verdicts were returned after six hours following a seven-week trial, Lincoln
turned to Harbinson and said: “Well done.”
Harbinson
admitted collecting the bags from his uncle, nicknamed Billy The Fish, and
later dropping them off in plumber Doyle’s yard.
The bags,
said to contain “lower level” items from the raid, were then taken to the nearby
home of one of Perkins’ daughters for a “divvy up” after she was sent away on
holiday by her father.
Police
swooped on the semi-detached home on May 19 last year and caught Perkins,
Collins and Jones red-handed with loot worth millions.
Detectives
suspect the ringleaders had earlier divided up the cream of the spoils and put
them in hiding.
It can
today be revealed how Perkins’ daughter Terri Robinson, 35, along with Brenn
Walters, 43, the partner of his other daughter Laura Perkins, have pleaded guilty
to laundering the stolen loot.
They will
be sentenced with the others.
Three guilty over £14m Hatton Garden jewellery heist
Three men have found guilty of their involvement in the "largest burglary in English legal history".
Carl
Wood, William Lincoln and Hugh Doyle were were found guilty of their
involvement in the £14m Hatton Garden jewellery raid at Woolwich Crown.Jon Harbinson - Lincoln's nephew - was found not guilty of involvement in the Easter weekend heist. He has been set free after eight months in prison.
Four men previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit burglary.
Daniel Jones, 60, of Park Avenue, Enfield, John Collins, 75, of Bletsoe Walk, Islington, Terry Perkins, 67, of Heene Road, Enfield, and Brian Reader, 76, of Dartford Road, Dartford all previously admitted conspiracy to commit burglary at the London business.
Wood and Lincoln will be sentenced on 7 March while legal discussions are due to take place later regarding the sentencing of Hugh Doyle.
Hatton Garden raid 'was doomed to fail'
When detectives
first arrived at the scene of the audacious Hatton Garden heist it
looked like the raiders might have pulled off the perfect crime - there
were no fingerprints and CCTV hard drives were missing. The thieves were
careful, but their meticulous planning was undone by their old school
tactics.
Britain's biggest burglary was carried out under the feet of Hatton Garden's diamond dealers.The ageing gang got hold of a key to the multiple-occupancy building, enabling one of them to simply walk in through the front door. Once inside, the man - known only as "Basil" - let the others in through a fire escape.
Dressed as workmen in high-visibility jackets and face masks, they went unnoticed as they lugged in the gear they needed for the job.
An estimated £14m of gold bullion, diamonds, jewellery and cash was stolen from a concrete-encased vault with a massive combination-locked safe door.
Few clues were left for police - just a gaping hole in the wall, and the heavy equipment the burglars had used to break into the vault.
The Hatton Garden gang's plan was ingenious. They had identified key vulnerabilities in the safe deposit's defences.
It was unmanned outside office hours and there was a disused lift shaft inside the outer ring of security. Crucially, the huge safe door could be bypassed by boring through the thick concrete wall with a specialist diamond-tipped drill.
But the old-school thieves were tracked down with modern policing techniques - high-quality CCTV, mobile phone cell site analysis, and a network of ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) cameras.
They also made a series of errors.
It was not enough to remove the CCTV from within the building. To completely cover their tracks they would have had to collect all the CCTV footage from all the streets around the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit, and they needed to use vehicles with changeable number plates.
The gang got away with their first mistake.
They failed to disable the alarm completely and the damaged unit managed to get a signal out.
Kelvin Stockwell, one of the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit security guards was scrambled from home. He checked the external doors to the building but had been told not to enter unless police turned up, which they did not. So he went home, unaware of the drilling beneath his feet.
"You don't know what you're going to walk into," he said. "You can't take that chance. Because I could have walked in, I don't know what would have happened to me.
"I could have been clumped across the head or got tied up, whatever. That's why the policy was you don't go in on your own. You wait and hopefully if the police turn up you can go in with them."
The gang also got away with their second mistake. On that first night - Maundy Thursday into Good Friday - they did not manage to get into the vault.
They drilled through the wall but encountered the back of the safe deposit box cabinets, which they could not push over. They returned on the Saturday with a new ram and this time managed to force their way into the vault and make off with around £14m of gold and jewellery hidden in holdalls and wheelie bins.
It was their third error that proved to be their downfall.
One of the gang had used his own car - a distinctive white Mercedes - to visit the Hatton Garden area. Detectives spotted it on CCTV footage and traced it to Kenny Collins, a thief with a criminal record dating back to 1961.
Two weeks after the burglary, the Flying Squad started a massive surveillance operation. Following Collins led them to Brian Reader and Terry Perkins, a pair of thieves who had been involved in two of Britain biggest robberies in 1983.
The Flying Squad was subsequently given permission to put listening devices into two of the gang members' cars, which enabled detectives to hear the men planning to move some of their loot.
On the day of the handover, detectives watched as £4m worth of stolen goods was delivered to Kenny Collins' Mercedes. Minutes later they caught most of the gang red-handed and then proceeded to round the rest of them up. Except for "Basil", who is still missing, along with £10m worth of Hatton Garden loot.
To show that the thieves were communicating with each other, and meeting up in London pubs to plan "one last job", police scoured through their mobile phone records, proving that they had been in contact with each other and producing a map of their movements.
If the gang had not used their own phones, and had instead used throwaway "burner" phones, they would have been much harder to trace.
The gaps in their movements were filled in using records from the network of ANPR cameras around London. It was relatively easy to show where the men had been travelling in the weeks before and after the burglary.
The burglars were too out-of-date to implement their plan without being caught - it was doomed to fail.
This was not a victimless crime. The burglars smashed their way into 73 safe deposit boxes. Of the 40 owners to be identified, many were jewellery traders like Sammy Akiva, who was uninsured and lost hundreds of thousands of pounds.
He said: "The police told me 'Your box has been broken' and honestly I didn't know where I was, I was screaming. I took it terrible."
Mr Akiva said he continued to suffer ill health from the shock of the burglary, felt "dizzy all the time", and was still taking medication.
Baljit Ubhey, the chief crown prosecutor for London, said that although £4 million had been recovered, every effort would be made to find the missing £10 million.
"There absolutely will be ongoing investigations to uncover more of the property and so I don't think the defendants should think they've got away with the other two thirds."
If prosecutors can show the burglars tried to convert their property, the CPS can go after their assets, she said.
"We can apply for restraint, we can apply for confiscation and that doesn't matter if that happens years later," she added.
Hatton Garden Heist Jury Considers Verdict
Four men went on trial in November charged with conspiracy to commit burglary after four other suspects pleaded guilty.
15:09, UK,
Wednesday 13
January 2016
Met Police photo showing the aftermath of the raid
The jury in the trial of four men accused
of involvement in the Hatton Garden raid, in which an estimated £14m
worth of jewellery and valuables were stolen, have retired to consider
their verdicts.
The heist, believed to be the largest burglary in British
legal history, saw a gang of thieves carry out the "sophisticated" and
meticulously planned break-in over the Easter weekend last year.The group used a drill to bore a hole through the metre-wide wall of a vault in London's jewellery quarter, before ransacking 73 safety deposit boxes.
The scene of the raid
Another four defendants went on trial in November at Woolwich Crown Court.
All are charged with conspiracy to commit burglary between 17 May 2014 and 7.30am on 5 April 2015.
A fourth man, Hugh Doyle, 48, of Riverside Gardens, Enfield, north London, is jointly charged with them of conspiracy to conceal, convert or transfer criminal property between 1 January and 19 May 2015.
Doyle also faces an alternative charge of concealing, converting or transferring criminal property between 1 April and 19 May 2015.
During the trial the jury heard that the oldest man involved in the raid was convicted over the Brink's Mat gold bullion armed robbery in 1983.
Brian Reader, 76, was jailed for eight years for conspiracy to handle stolen goods after the £26m raid on a warehouse at Heathrow Airport.
Reader, of Dartford Road, Dartford, Kent is one of the four accused who earlier pleaded guilty.
The others are John "Kenny" Collins, 75, of Bletsoe Walk, Islington, north London, Terry Perkins, 67, of Heene Road, Enfield, and Danny Jones, 58, of Park Avenue, Enfield.
In October, Jones took police to Edmonton cemetery in North London to show them where he had buried his share of the proceeds beneath a bank of plaques marking buried ashes.
A large part of the haul has been recovered but the prosecution said "many millions" were still missing.
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