The Great Train Robbery Read Online Free Page A

1986).
       5 .   Daily Express , 27/1/62, p. 7.
       6 .  POST 120/95 (originally closed until 2002; opened 2002).
       7 .  POST 68/849.
       8 .  POST 120/102 (originally closed until 1996; opened 1997).
       9 .   The Times , 9/7/62, p. 6.
    10 .   The Times , 31/8/62, p. 8.
    11 .   Daily Express , 31/8/62, p. 1.
    12 .  POST 120/129 (originally closed until 2014; opened 2011).
    13 .   Ibid .
    14 .   Daily Express , 21/2/63, p. 1.
    15 .  POST 120/95 (originally closed until 2001; opened 2002).
    16 .  Among those questioned but released without charge during this three-year period included Roger Cordrey and Robert Welch, who would later be charged and convicted in connection with the Great Train Robbery of 8 August 1963.

6
AN INSIDE JOB
    F or nearly fifty years, one question has remained unanswered: did someone tip off the robbers about the millions on board the train – was there an inside man at the Post Office who provided the intelligence and helped the robbers plan the crime? A team of highly specialised Post Office investigators were tasked by the postmaster general with determining whether or not the robbery had been, as he strongly suspected, an inside job. The Post Office case files on the robbery have remained closed for the best part of fifty years, but are now, in the majority of cases, open for the first time.
    From the outset, the police agreed to share information gleaned from their network of underworld informers with the Post Office Investigation Branch. One of the first informer reports held tantalising clues for the Post Office investigators – the report of a mysterious phone call made to one of the train robbers, Gordon Goody. The background to this major development is given in an internal report by IB Deputy Controller R.F. Yates:

    On the 29 August, 1963, Mr Osmond and I attended a special detective conference held at New Scotland Yard. Commander Hatherill was in the chair and Chief Superintendent Millen (Flying Squad) and Chief Inspector Bradbury were also present. Mr Hatherill said that on the previous Tuesday he had seen an informant who had given him a list of 14 names of the bandits who had formed the robbery team; that he (Hatherill) was satisfied that those 14 criminals were the ‘certain’ offenders and that the money had already been divided into 18 lots – i.e. one each for the 14 offenders quoted; one each for 2 Post Office insiders; one for the organiser and one for the man who had bought the farm (i.e. about £145,000 apiece).
    Mr Hatherill said that, according to the informant, the story of the case was, briefly, that Brian Field had made the first contact with the Post Office insider from whom he had obtained information about HVP mails carried on the Up Special TPO; that this enabled Brian Field to plan the robbery; that Field first put the plan to another London gang who rejected it; that he then put it to Bruce Reynolds who accepted it and carried it out with a team specially recruited for the job; that this team met at Leatherslade Farm at 11.30 pm on the 7 August, 1963; that only one man - Goody – arrived late (said to have been half an hour, which would make it about 11.30 pm) and that Goody’s explanation of his late arrival was that he had been waiting for ‘the message’. The informant apparently said that ‘the message’ contained information about the number of men to be found in the HVP coach at the time of attack and that there were ‘a hundred bags on the train’. Mr Osmond and I put it to Mr Hatherill that the times quoted would be important and he agreed that the alleged information given in ‘the message’ must have been available to Goody by about 11.30 pm on the 7 August and certainly not later than midnight. Mr Hatherill explained that the informant had also said that the information came from a Post Office man ‘on the train’ who, in turn, had passed it to his brother and that it was this brother, an Irishman, who had