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The royal family of Britain is a secretive and intensely vindictive group. They have committed murder in the past to cover up indiscretions. With the suspicious death of a nurse recently who released some details of the medical condition of Kate Middleton to the press, I though I would refresh your memory of a recent true story of murder authorized by the current occupant of the throne.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...a-royal-293740
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...a-royal-293740
Bank job that opened the door on a royal sex scandal
16 Feb 2008 00:00
Covered in rubble, the gang later dubbed the "sewer rats" were about to stage one of the most audacious heists in British criminal history.
But as they tunnelled into the vault of the Baker Street branch of Lloyds Bank, they had no idea they were about to spark a secret service cover-up and claims of a royal sex scandal.
Now, on the eve of the premiere of a Hollywood blockbuster about the robbery, one of the gang has broken his 36-year silence.
He gives a fascinating insight into the raid that netted £500,000 from 268 safety deposit boxes - worth about £5million today.
Despite massive interest in the crime, details about the loot and the criminals responsible were immediately suppressed by MI5 and senior government officials.
Speculation quickly arose that compromising sexual photographs of the Queen's sister, the late Princess Margaret, had been uncovered in the bank vault. It was rumoured they had been stashed away by well-known underworld figure Michael X. A drug dealer and Black Power leader, he was convicted of murder and hanged in Trinidad in 1975. A government file on him will remain closed until 2054.
The Mirror can for the first time reveal that Fleet Street editors of the day were approached directly by senior government officials and told to drop the story.
The four men caught, charged and convicted of the raid went to jail without ever having their names mentioned in the press, and to this day their identities and the circumstances of their capture remain secret. Even the lengths of their sentences are still shrouded in mystery.
Now, one of the men, in his 70s, has spoken to the Mirror from his home in Europe. The ex-gang member said he was terrified to discover one box belonged to the-then head of the judiciary.
He said: "It was owned by Quintin Hogg, the Lord Chancellor.
When we opened it we dropped it on the floor like it was a time bomb. We didn't want to take anything that might give us extra trouble so we left it. All we wanted was cash and jewels."
But the gang didn't have time to go through all of the stash and ended up taking some sensitive material.
The ex-raider, who refused to be identified, said last night: "When we got out we realised we had a lot more than we'd bargained for."
At the time of the robbery, in September 1971, Princess Margaret's marriage to the Earl of Snowdon was in its final stages.
In the 60s and 70s she was known to party hard on the Caribbean island of Mustique, where she was famously pictured with lover Roddy Llewellyn, a landscape gardener 17 years her junior.
She is said to have taken snaps of male friends frolicking naked but it is not known if any were ever taken of her. Asked whether he thought pictures might have existed, her cousin Lord Snowdon said recently: "I'd have thought it unlikely."
But when we asked the ex-raider he refused to deny the rumours. He said: "I can't talk about that. But we did find a lot of guns.
And what was most disturbing was the child pornography we found.
We were disgusted and left it in their open boxes so police could trace the owners."
The gang had spent months working on the job, which involved tunnelling 40ft from the basement of Le Sac, a leather goods shop which they had leased two doors up.
He said: "Before we got started, myself and an accomplice dressed up in bowler hats and pinstripes and went into the bank. We were able to measure out the distance from the wall to the vault using an umbrella so we could calculate how far we needed to tunnel and didn't end up popping up in the wrong place.
"The actual tunnelling took three weeks because we could only do it at the weekend so we wouldn't be heard by bank and shop staff. We would go back on Friday night and tunnel until Monday morning."
They tunnelled under the Chicken Inn restaurant next to the bank and then, using an industrial heated lance, tried to bore through the 3ft of reinforced concrete which made up the vault floor.
The ex-gang member told us: "We were using the highest-powered drills and torches we could find at the time but they weren't powerful enough to get through the reinforced concrete. In the end we had to blast our way in with explosives."
The concrete was not wired to the alarm system as it was thought to be impenetrable. Eight tons of rubble were excavated and left behind.
The raider said: "When we finally came up I was unable to fit through the hole and could only stick my head in. But others got in and grabbed the boxes."
The tale has now been made into a film, The Bank Job, with Jason Statham. The movie - which opens at the end of the month - shows how police were alerted to the break-in by ham radio enthusiast Robert Rowlands, who lived in nearby Wimpole Street.
He picked up a conversation between the raiders and their lookout on a nearby rooftop at 11pm on Saturday, September 11. He taped the exchanges while trying to call the police.
At 2am, a senior officer called in radio detector vans in an attempt to trace the transmissions.
Unfortunately, by the time engineers could be brought in from weekend leave, the walkie-talkie conversations had ceased.
Police knew the raid was taking place within a 10-mile radius of Wimpole Street, an area that included 750 banks. On Sunday afternoon, they visited the Lloyds on the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone Road but found no signs of entry as the vault doors were intact.
They were unaware the raiders were still inside. It was not until the bank opened for business after the weekend that the robbery was discovered.
The "walkie-talkie robbery", as it became known, is similar to one solved by Baker Street resident Sherlock Holmes in The Red-Headed League.
In this case, however, countless questions remain unanswered. Only four men were convicted in connection with the crime and most of the loot was never recovered.
The ex-robber chuckles as he remembers the parting message the gang left for police. Spray-painted on the inside of the vault was: "Let Sherlock Holmes try to solve this."
RAIDED!
16 Feb 2008 00:00
Covered in rubble, the gang later dubbed the "sewer rats" were about to stage one of the most audacious heists in British criminal history.
But as they tunnelled into the vault of the Baker Street branch of Lloyds Bank, they had no idea they were about to spark a secret service cover-up and claims of a royal sex scandal.
Now, on the eve of the premiere of a Hollywood blockbuster about the robbery, one of the gang has broken his 36-year silence.
He gives a fascinating insight into the raid that netted £500,000 from 268 safety deposit boxes - worth about £5million today.
Despite massive interest in the crime, details about the loot and the criminals responsible were immediately suppressed by MI5 and senior government officials.
Speculation quickly arose that compromising sexual photographs of the Queen's sister, the late Princess Margaret, had been uncovered in the bank vault. It was rumoured they had been stashed away by well-known underworld figure Michael X. A drug dealer and Black Power leader, he was convicted of murder and hanged in Trinidad in 1975. A government file on him will remain closed until 2054.
The Mirror can for the first time reveal that Fleet Street editors of the day were approached directly by senior government officials and told to drop the story.
The four men caught, charged and convicted of the raid went to jail without ever having their names mentioned in the press, and to this day their identities and the circumstances of their capture remain secret. Even the lengths of their sentences are still shrouded in mystery.
Now, one of the men, in his 70s, has spoken to the Mirror from his home in Europe. The ex-gang member said he was terrified to discover one box belonged to the-then head of the judiciary.
He said: "It was owned by Quintin Hogg, the Lord Chancellor.
When we opened it we dropped it on the floor like it was a time bomb. We didn't want to take anything that might give us extra trouble so we left it. All we wanted was cash and jewels."
But the gang didn't have time to go through all of the stash and ended up taking some sensitive material.
The ex-raider, who refused to be identified, said last night: "When we got out we realised we had a lot more than we'd bargained for."
At the time of the robbery, in September 1971, Princess Margaret's marriage to the Earl of Snowdon was in its final stages.
In the 60s and 70s she was known to party hard on the Caribbean island of Mustique, where she was famously pictured with lover Roddy Llewellyn, a landscape gardener 17 years her junior.
She is said to have taken snaps of male friends frolicking naked but it is not known if any were ever taken of her. Asked whether he thought pictures might have existed, her cousin Lord Snowdon said recently: "I'd have thought it unlikely."
But when we asked the ex-raider he refused to deny the rumours. He said: "I can't talk about that. But we did find a lot of guns.
And what was most disturbing was the child pornography we found.
We were disgusted and left it in their open boxes so police could trace the owners."
The gang had spent months working on the job, which involved tunnelling 40ft from the basement of Le Sac, a leather goods shop which they had leased two doors up.
He said: "Before we got started, myself and an accomplice dressed up in bowler hats and pinstripes and went into the bank. We were able to measure out the distance from the wall to the vault using an umbrella so we could calculate how far we needed to tunnel and didn't end up popping up in the wrong place.
"The actual tunnelling took three weeks because we could only do it at the weekend so we wouldn't be heard by bank and shop staff. We would go back on Friday night and tunnel until Monday morning."
They tunnelled under the Chicken Inn restaurant next to the bank and then, using an industrial heated lance, tried to bore through the 3ft of reinforced concrete which made up the vault floor.
The ex-gang member told us: "We were using the highest-powered drills and torches we could find at the time but they weren't powerful enough to get through the reinforced concrete. In the end we had to blast our way in with explosives."
The concrete was not wired to the alarm system as it was thought to be impenetrable. Eight tons of rubble were excavated and left behind.
The raider said: "When we finally came up I was unable to fit through the hole and could only stick my head in. But others got in and grabbed the boxes."
The tale has now been made into a film, The Bank Job, with Jason Statham. The movie - which opens at the end of the month - shows how police were alerted to the break-in by ham radio enthusiast Robert Rowlands, who lived in nearby Wimpole Street.
He picked up a conversation between the raiders and their lookout on a nearby rooftop at 11pm on Saturday, September 11. He taped the exchanges while trying to call the police.
At 2am, a senior officer called in radio detector vans in an attempt to trace the transmissions.
Unfortunately, by the time engineers could be brought in from weekend leave, the walkie-talkie conversations had ceased.
Police knew the raid was taking place within a 10-mile radius of Wimpole Street, an area that included 750 banks. On Sunday afternoon, they visited the Lloyds on the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone Road but found no signs of entry as the vault doors were intact.
They were unaware the raiders were still inside. It was not until the bank opened for business after the weekend that the robbery was discovered.
The "walkie-talkie robbery", as it became known, is similar to one solved by Baker Street resident Sherlock Holmes in The Red-Headed League.
In this case, however, countless questions remain unanswered. Only four men were convicted in connection with the crime and most of the loot was never recovered.
The ex-robber chuckles as he remembers the parting message the gang left for police. Spray-painted on the inside of the vault was: "Let Sherlock Holmes try to solve this."
RAIDED!
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