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In 1983, London, England was abuzz with life as one of the largest metropolitan cities in Europe. More than 6.7 million people walked the streets, basking in the bright lights and the rippling activity about them. It had the telltale signs of an expanding urban area riding the wave of rapid change seen across the world in the late 20th century.
Like many other major hubs, London had become a location of experimentation and diversity as well as one of tradition, where new and old conjoined, and the modern collided with the classic to create an entirely new brand of city. Newly constructed high-rises climbed into the sky beside tightly packed Victorian-style homes that reminisced of older generations of the city.
Its grand baroque period landmarks and palaces stood out among the rest as they still do today, attracting tourists seeking a glimpse into Great Britain's past. London's signature red double-decker buses crowded the streets alongside classic London taxis and square sedans, bordered by tall buildings and quaint townhomes.
However, that year, six soon-to-be thieves hid among those 6.7 million people working and living in the fast-paced environment of the city. They had set their sights on a warehouse near Heathrow International Airport, where they expected to find and steal a collection of Spanish pesetas. The coins were predicted to be worth about 1 million pounds, which at the time would have totaled almost 1.5 million dollars.
In today's money, their haul would have been worth more than 4.4 million dollars. On November 26th, 1983, the gang of six thieves entered the warehouse. What they did not expect was that they would find much more than they ever imagined on the other side. A couple hours later, the robbers had escaped in their van with a haul much greater than the one million pounds of Spanish coins they had hoped to find.
they had 26 million pounds, around 38 million dollars worth of precious metals in tow. Today, the stolen goods would total more than 100 million pounds. By a stroke of luck for the thieves, what had started out as an ambitious but much smaller heist had transformed into a monstrous operation and what would later be dubbed the crime of the century, the largest gold heist Great Britain had ever seen.
Part 1: The Colonel, the Nutter, and the Inside Man To the outside world, Bryan Robinson appeared to be an average-looking, middle-aged family man just trying to scrape by. He had two young children and a long-time partner, and he lived with them in a modest council flat, which is public low-rent housing in Britain. However, hidden behind the cloak of an ordinary life, this 40-year-old father of two had a dark past.
He was a career criminal who had already served multiple prison sentences for various past operations he had been involved in. He made a name for himself in both the London underworld and the London police force. Making it onto the London police's flying squad list, a list of known thieves kept on hand by the city's law enforcement. On that list, he ranked among the top 20 criminals known for armed robbery.
It was Robinson who, in 1983, would become known as the Colonel in the world of crime. Given the nickname because of his leadership role in the warehouse gold heist that would quickly gain national and international notoriety. Robinson teamed up with Mickey McAvoy, later dubbed "The Nutter", to get the gang together. Like Robinson, McAvoy was not new to criminality as a profession.
By the time he and Robinson joined forces to execute their big heist, McAvoy had already established his own reputation despite his young age. Even though he was only 30 years old, McAvoy had become known for his aggression and violence as a thief. He and Robinson were both viewed as two of the most dangerous and experienced armed robbers in Great Britain. As he continued his seemingly normal life in 1983,
Robinson was searching for his next big score. Strangely enough, it struck not through his connections to the criminal world, but instead in the form of family connections. His partner's brother, Anthony Black, happened to work as a security guard at a warehouse owned by companies Brinks and Matt, where a large volume of valuable metals and coins would pass through on a regular basis to be shipped around the world. Robinson saw his opening and grasped it.
He convinced Black to take part in his scheme and recruited him for the heist. As a trusted guard, Black had access to privileged information about shipments and security measures. And he had the clearance to enter and exit the warehouse without turning any heads. Now that Robinson had an inside man, it became more feasible for him and a team of robbers to infiltrate the guarded warehouse.
Robinson and the young, violent McAvoy gathered a group of experienced thieves together to prepare for the heist. Later that year, with Black as their inside man, Robinson and his gang set their aim on the Brinksmatt Warehouse. Part 2: The Mark: The Brinksmatt Warehouse The Heathrow International Trading Estate is a sprawling collection of industrial warehouse compounds located in West London, close to the Heathrow International Airport.
one of the largest gateways for transportation into and out of Western Europe. It features 18 large warehouse units, managed and maintained for businesses in need of warehouse space. The estate is a popular storage facility for companies that often transport and ship items because of its ideal location, in close proximity both to major London metropolitan areas and to the city's major international airport.
Another major perk that companies depend upon is the 24-hour security regimen used to monitor the warehouses. In theory, there is never a moment when the warehouses were not under the watchful eyes of trusted security guards. The Heathrow International Trading Estate built its brand largely on the security of its compounds. It was designed with safety and protection of the shipped goods in mind.
It would be extremely difficult for anyone to break into the property, bypass security protocols, and navigate around the security guards on duty. Brinks Mat was the ideal client for the Heathrow International Trading Estate. Brinks is an American company focused on the transportation of cash, vault and safe services, and the international movement of valuable goods.
In 1983, it was involved in a venture with a British company headquartered in London called Matt Transport. Like Brinks, Matt Transport dealt in the transportation of valuable items and currency. During their joint venture, Brinks and Matt Transport operated the warehouse Unit 7 of the Heathrow International Trading Estate.
Given the company's business ventures, valuable goods and cash passed through the warehouse on a regular basis, on their way to various international locations. Because of the value of the items Brinksmatt transported, security was of the utmost importance. In addition to being housed in a secure facility at the trading estate, Brinksmatt took multiple security precautions.
Their merchandise and assets were constantly monitored by on-site security guards, such as Anthony Black. Valuables stored in the warehouse while awaiting shipment also remained behind the doors of locked vaults. Brinksmat had placed an intricate series of electronic security systems in their warehouse to make it even more difficult for thieves to break into the compound and successfully escape with their goods.
Brinksmatt had created a challenge for any criminal looking to rob the warehouse. It was almost impenetrable. Only, Robinson had an ace in the hole. His brother-in-law, Black, worked for Brinksmatt and could help them enter the compound and navigate the series of security measures to pull off a heist. On November 24th, a shipment of particular importance arrived quietly at the Brinksmatt warehouse.
76 cases holding a hefty total of 6,800 gold bars, along with some other valuable gems, had come into the compound for overnight storage, set to be shipped off to Hong Kong the following day. The gold belonged to Johnson Matthey Bankers, the banking arm of a British company involved in the precious metals business. It was nothing out of the ordinary for Brinks Matt, accustomed to shipping large quantities of valuables across the world.
The employees at the warehouse went through the usual procedures, moving the boxes of gold into the vault and securing it for the night. Only, unbeknownst to Brink's Matt, a gang of six seasoned thieves were only hours away from executing a heist that would shock the country.
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Part 3: The Heist Goes Down It was before dawn on November 25th when Robinson, McAvoy, and four other seasoned robbers climbed into a van bound for the Heathrow International Trading Estate.
It was a run-of-the-mill, sleepy, late autumn Saturday morning for the rest of the city. At the Brinksmatt warehouse, security guards were just starting their early morning Saturday shift, expecting a smooth, quiet weekend at the compound.
However, while others were enjoying their days off from their 9-5 jobs, Robinson and his crew were raring to go. The vision of their target: 1 million pounds worth of Spanish pesetas floating before their mind's eyes. It would be a quick smash-and-grab job with a decent payout, or at least that was the plan.
As they sat in the van bound for the trading estate, the gang pulled down their masks and some of them, armed with guns, prepped their weapons for the robbery. Black, the inside man, had provided the gang of six with information on how to easily access Unit 7 of the Heathrow International Trading Estate. At 6:40 that morning, using Black's key, the crew burst into the Brinksmat warehouse, startling the security guards who were there for their shift.
The armed robbers immediately set to work to subdue and intimidate the security guards with their weapons, handcuffing all the guards and knocking one in the head with a pistol. With the help of Black, the gang had all the information they needed to bypass the security measures in place in the warehouse. But one obstacle still stood between them and their cache. It was locked in a vault, and neither they nor Black knew the combination.
Robinson, McAvoy, and their team needed the combination quickly so that they could get into the vault, grab the cash, and escape before the police caught wind of the crime. To get the correct combination as rapidly as possible, the gang poured petrol on some of the employees, threatening to light them on fire if they did not provide them with the combination. Shocked and afraid, the guards caved and revealed the digits.
When Robinson and the others broke into the safe, ready to grab their cash, it was their turn to be surprised. Before them lay a multitude of cases filled with pure gold bars. A much larger score than they had ever imagined would lie in the vault at the Brinksmatt warehouse. For the criminals, the unexpected discovery of the gold shipment was a happy accident, boosting their visions of grandeur far beyond where they had begun.
there was no way they could leave such a haul behind. This was not just a simple smash and grab robbery anymore. It was a much larger operation with a much larger payout. The gold, which weighed about three tons, presented an unanticipated issue for the robbers as they had to grapple for a new way to move the heavy boxes to their van. Harnessing the tools they found around them in the warehouse, the robbers used a forklift on hand to move the boxes to their van.
It took them almost two hours to transport all the treasures that the vault contained to their getaway vehicle. Finally, at 8:15, leaving the handcuffed guards behind, the six thieves made their escape.
riding high on their unexpected fortune. They took off in their van, now weighed down with 6,800 gold bars and some other valuables as well, including diamonds, platinum, and traveler's checks. A robbery 26 times larger than what they had planned. 15 minutes later, one of the employees at the Brinksmatt warehouse managed to slip out of his handcuffs and inform the authorities about the robbery. But it was too late.
The thieves and the gold they had stolen had disappeared. Part 4: The Art of Getting Rid of Dirty Gold The thieves were excited about their unexpected fortune. The gold meant more money, which translated to a larger cut for each of the gang members.
However, it made the operation much trickier. It was one thing to find a fence for 1 million pounds worth of Spanish coins, but it was an entirely different venture to find someone capable of fencing thousands of pure gold bars, especially with the police sniffing around.
After the robbery, the police were eager to track down any sign of the missing gold, throwing themselves into hunting down leads and trying to trace the missing valuables. With law enforcement panting at their heels, how would the gang hide the stash from the authorities? More importantly, how would they liquidate the gold into usable cash, while still staying far out of the line of sight of the police?
Now that they had tons of gold bars on their hands, the operation had grown beyond Robinson and McAvoy's skill levels. They could not sell or distribute the gold as it would raise red flags and lead the police directly to their doorsteps. There were too many people searching for it, and the pure gold was too easy to trace.
The gang had no choice but to call in an expert with a far greater network and access to resources to assist them in getting rid of the stolen gold and transforming it into cold hard cash. Through McAvoy's network of underworld associates, including fellow criminals Brian Perry and George Francis, the gang recruited a notorious British criminal, Kenneth Noy, to make the gold less traceable and help them convert it into cash.
With his vast network of connections and resources, Neu orchestrated an intricate plan to melt the gold down and mix it with copper to make the gold more impure. It was exactly the innovative technique the gang needed to conceal the gold's source. The impurity was designed to disguise the gold, making it much more difficult for law enforcement to trace.
With the help of other criminals, Noy began to dispose of the gold, selling it through British jewelers who fenced stolen goods. He then deposited the vast sums of money methodically in multiple banks around Bristol, United Kingdom. It was also suspected that the gang of thieves turned to the Addams Family, an infamous British crime syndicate, for help in disposing of and laundering the gold.
Meanwhile, the police were desperately searching for both the gold and the thieves who took it. The gang was difficult to track down, but the police investigators realized that the way in which the robbers carried out the heist required insider information. The detectives turned their gaze inward on the Brinksmatt employees, and they finally focused in on Anthony Black as their prime suspect for the heist's inside man.
Since they already had Robinson flagged on their flying squad list, it was not difficult for law enforcement to identify the family connection between the known armed robber and the security guard. In December, Black caved under police questioning. He admitted to being complicit in the robbery and to providing the gang with information about how to enter the premises and bypass security measures.
He flipped on his brother-in-law, admitting to detectives that Robinson was indeed one of the gang members involved in the heist. It wasn't only Black's confession that drew attention to Robinson and McAvoy as major suspects in the case. The flair with which Robinson and McAvoy carried out the robbery, and the sudden riches they seemed to acquire out of thin air in the months following the heist,
helped the police zero in on the two as suspects. In the end, it was the two criminals' inability to resist the seductions of their sudden wealth that drove police to pursue them. Rather than going underground to wait for the heat to blow over from the robbery, both Robinson and McAvoy moved from modest flats to large estates, paid for in full with cash. This raised red flags and made police suspicious of their involvement.
Not one to be subtle, McAvoy even allegedly named two Rottweilers he purchased to guard his estate, Brinks and Matt, as a nod to the robbery. Soon, with both Black's confession and the evidence of Robinson and McAvoy suddenly undergoing a dramatic change in their financial situations, the two ringleaders were arrested
By the end of 1984, they had gone to trial and each been sentenced to 25 years in prison for their involvement and leadership in the heist. Even though he had not carried out the actual heist, Black received six years of jail time as a sentence for his involvement. Before his arrest, McAvoy left his loot in the hands of his criminal associates, Brian Perry and George Francis, for safekeeping.
But once McAvoy received his conviction, he concocted a plan to try to reduce his sentence. He would return his portion of the gold and money in exchange for a deal to shorten his time in prison. But when McAvoy tried to access his share of the money, his associates would not hand over the cash. In an unsurprising betrayal, the thieves whom he entrusted with his treasure, in a sense, stole the stolen goods from him once again.
For McAvoy, the extreme wealth had disappeared. Even with Robinson, McAvoy, and Black behind bars, the police were still hunting for the other four thieves involved in the heist, as well as the gold and valuables they made off with. Yet as the months since the crime flew by with few definitive leads, the gold continued to swap hands, and more and more criminals were dragged into the growing web surrounding the gold.
As time went on, especially with Noy's crafty method of transforming the pure gold into an untraceable alloy, it became less and less likely that the police would track down the treasure and those involved in the crime. Part 5: The Police Push to Chase Down the Criminals The sale and distribution of such a large amount of gold was quite the undertaking. But with Noy at the helm, the gold was smelted and systematically distributed to jewelers for sale.
However, as most criminals eventually do, Noy made a fatal error. He withdrew 3 million pounds at one time from one of the banks into which he had deposited money in Bristol. A withdrawal too large to go unnoticed by authorities. The bank tipped off the police and the police began to take an interest in Noy in association with the Brinksmatt case, placing him under surveillance.
At the same time, the police were investigating others suspected to be involved who were spread across various regions of Great Britain. Only a couple days after the heist initially occurred, a couple in Bath, England, spotted an unusual sight unfolding on their neighbor's property. A white-hot crucible, a tool characteristic of a smelting operation, was operating in a garden shed.
Like most people in Great Britain at the time, the couple had heard about the heist in the news and thought the crucible might be associated with the robbery. They notified the police, but the police failed to act on the tip. The residence belonged to John Palmer, a jeweler and conman who dealt in gold and precious metals. It was not until January of 1985 that police raided the residence, while Palmer was out of the country on vacation.
As a result of the raid, the police later arrested Palmer, but he claimed that he possessed no knowledge that the gold was stolen. In the end, none of the charges linking him to the Brinksmat heist or its aftermath held up in court. The same month that Palmer's home was raided, Noy had his own run-in with law enforcement. Since Noy was under police surveillance, John Fordham, a detective constable, had begun to work undercover on the case.
Dressed in camouflage, Fordham was hiding on the grounds of Noy's Kent estate to spy on Noy. As Noy walked through the garden of his estate, he came upon Fordham. A fight ensued, leaving Fordham lying on the ground with ten stab wounds, injuries that would leave the detective dead. The encounter launched Noy into a whole new realm of charges. He was now on trial, but not for any alleged involvement in the gold heist. He was on trial for the murder of a detective.
Any concern over his connection to the Brinks Mattheist faded in significance in comparison to this new, much more serious charge. Noy stood trial for the murder charges that year, pleading not guilty. He alleged that he had been attacked and, in the confusion that followed, had killed Detective Constable Fordham in an act of self-defense.
After a tense trial, the jury returned with the verdict. Noy was declared not guilty for the murder. He was off the hook, at least for now. The gold was now scattered, tucked away in various parts of the underworld of Britain. Money from the gold had found its way to various foreign bank accounts, divided into smaller amounts to make it difficult to trace. The police continued to hunt for it, and, in 1986, they finally discovered a small chunk of the treasure.
Yet again, it was Noy who was running into trouble with the law. Police detectives discovered 11 of the missing gold bars stowed in a drainage trench at Noy's estate in Kent, directly linking Noy to the Brinksmat scheme. The gold, paired with other trails of evidence leading back to Noy, were enough to force him back into the courtroom in 1986, this time in relation to the Brinksmat heist.
The police accused him of serving as the mastermind behind the money laundering scheme that followed the initial heist. He was found guilty. He was required to pay fines totaling £700,000 and sentenced to 14 years in prison for conspiracy to handle the Brinks' Matt Gold. Fittingly, Noy concluded his trial with a thoughtful wish upon the jurors who found him guilty, commenting that he hoped they would all die from cancer.
Noy was not the only criminal placed on trial that year because of suspected involvement in the Brinksmatt money laundering scandal. Garth Chappell and Terence Patch, both past partners of the jeweler and gold dealer John Palmer, were placed on trial, alongside a burglar and associate of Noy's named Brian Reeder. Chappell and Reeder each went down for conspiracy to handle stolen goods and conspiracy to commit tax evasion.
Chappell was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and Reeder was sentenced to eight. As the investigation inched along through the 1980s, the arrests continued to stack up. Two years later, in 1988, nine more people were arrested and placed on trial, yanking suspects back from around the world. The police captured Brian Perry, the criminal who McAvoy entrusted his share of the gold to for safekeeping during his prison sentence.
He was arrested for his possession and laundering of the dirty money associated with the heist and received a sentence of nine years for his crimes. In the years 1988 and 1989, new names emerged in conjunction with the fallout of the heist.
During the late 1980s, London experienced a boom in properties along the waterfront in an area of the city known as the Docklands. This boom attracted investors with deep pockets, so, naturally, several people who'd made off with profits from the heist leaped at the opportunity to take advantage of the boom. The property boom acted like a magnet for the money to flow back to Great Britain.
Michael Relton was one of the unfortunate souls to fall into the trap of the property boom with dirty money, tainted by the Brinksmat heist in his pockets. The police arrested him for allegedly trying to bring £7.5 million of laundered heist money back to Great Britain, a large chunk of cash that had been smuggled out of the nation to Switzerland and Liechtenstein during the money laundering scheme.
Relton intended to invest in the property boom, but the transport of the money raised flags for the police, leading to Relton's arrest. Suspicion also swiveled to family members of the known members of the gang, including McAvoy's wife Kathleen and his ex-wife, Jacqueline, who had received a house purchased by McAvoy with money he gained from the heist.
Another co-conspirator, a property developer by the name of Gordon Perry, who had eluded authorities, was finally arrested in Spain in 1989. He was transported back to Great Britain to await trial on the charges of laundering a significant £16 million of the heist money. By 1992, the many trials for co-conspirators had come to an end.
Relton, the lawyer, was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison, and Kathleen McAvoy received an 18-month sentence for her limited involvement. Gordon Perry received a 10-year sentence for his participation in the money laundering, and several other criminals who contributed to laundering different portions of the cash were convicted and received jail sentences.
Although many people involved in liquidating the gold and moving the cash into different accounts across the globe had been arrested and placed behind bars, four of the original thieves remained unaccounted for. Beyond that, the police suspected that many more individuals were tied up in the heist from the start, with law enforcement estimates suggesting that 15 people might have assisted in planning the heist.
Robinson and McAvoy never revealed their team and, to this day, their identities remain unknown. They disappeared, along with their shares of the profits. Part 6: But where did all the gold go? Even though the police had dissected at least a portion of the tangled web of criminals caught up in various aspects of the heist within the decade following the infamous event, questions regarding what actually happened to the gold loomed, haunting investigators.
As time passed, they knew it would become more challenging to track down the valuable goods. They were racing the clock. A reward of 2 million pounds was issued in an effort to flesh out the gold, but it turned up no solid leads. 1 million pounds worth of gold turned up in the Bank of England, and it was estimated that about half of the gold from the robbery was hidden and buried by the thieves.
The other half was melted down using Noy's innovative approach and recirculated into the gold market, finding its way back into honest hands. In fact, it inspired a joke in Great Britain as people began to say that gold items manufactured in Great Britain after the mid-1980s were likely from the Brinksmat heist, and there is a good chance that the saying holds some truth.
Some of the cash from the liquidation of the gold was recovered from Noy upon his arrest. But in the years after the robbery, the cash was too scattered to track. The money launderers had placed it into offshore accounts and invested it in property as far away as Kansas and Florida and as close to Great Britain as the London Docklands themselves. Still, some were not ready to give up.
The most interested party in recovering the gold was not law enforcement, who were much more interested in finding and convicting the criminals involved in the heist. It was the insurance company, Lloyd's of London, which insured the Johnson Mouthy Banker's gold shipment that prioritized the recovery of the property.
After the theft, they had to make a gargantuan insurance payout of £26 million for the stolen gold and other valuables. Of course, the insurance company wanted their money back. In the mid-1980s, after little headway had been made by law enforcement in recovering the stolen goods, Lloyds of London hired the legal firms Shaw and Croft to find and recover as much of the goods or assets derived from them as possible.
Bob McCunn, an employee for Shaw and Croft, was placed on the case. The knots and tangles of the financial trails presented a major headache for both insurance investigators and law enforcement, leading to discouragement. But McCunn, a man not easily deterred, spent the next two decades relentlessly working into the 21st century, with the goal of tracking down the cash that stemmed from the Brinksmatt heist.
McCunn's quest took him to property records of the London Docklands, the Costa del Sol in Spain, and even a Kansas oil well. By 2004, he had recovered 25 million pounds. But there was no telling how much of the cash from the stolen goods he had actually found. Even though the thieves' haul was worth 26 million pounds at the time it occurred, much had changed in the global economy by 2004.
Inflation had occurred, property prices had fluctuated. During the process of laundering the money, the cash had been divided into so many properties and investments that had risen in value since the heist that it became infeasible to calculate how much of the original loot McCunn had recovered, even as he dug up new information on where the money ended up. The process was not an easy one, and it sometimes placed insurance investigators in danger.
McCunn and his associates working across multiple countries investigated the case, sometimes running into trouble and threats. One of his investigators in the United States had allegedly faced a contract on his life, and someone attempted to frame a Shaw and Croft insurance investigator in Spain by planting heroin in his hotel room. Yet a determined McCunn kept chasing down leads. McCunn was not interested in convictions, he was interested in the money.
In the 1990s, he and Shaw and Croft began to take civil action against 54 people who they suspected had come into possession of money or property that originally came from the robbery. Most of the people involved in the civil cases had no idea that dirty money had come into their possession, but because they had benefited from it, they unfortunately became liable for their share of the money.
Shaw and Croft settled most of the cases quietly and cleanly outside of the courtroom, with only two of the 54 advancing to a civil trial. As of 2004, despite his years of effort, McCunn was certain that much more of the heist money remained out in the wild, thoroughly submerged in the international markets and difficult to trace.
By then, much of the money had likely crossed into honest hands, cutting ties with its underworld roots and camouflaging itself in legitimate property deals and business ventures. Part 7: The Curse of Handling Dirty Gold For decades after the robbery, the heist became a thing of legend in the British criminal world.
For law enforcement and companies like Brinksmat and Lloyds of London, it was a cautionary tale of how horribly out of hand a heist can escalate. For criminals, it was an inspirational story of a band of thieves who managed to make off with a monstrous haul of treasure, dodging the spotlight and yet still making it into the history books. But it was not all whimsy and good fortune for every individual involved. Even those who managed to evade incarceration
Beginning in the 1990s, strange happenings began to unfold for many who allegedly had ties to the Brinksmatt heist. Though not all of the occurrences have been directly linked to the robbery itself, the commonality that the victims all share, some form of connection to the Brinksmatt incident, crafts a chilling coincidence among a string of crimes over the years.
In early 1990, Charlie Wilson, a known drug smuggler and robber who had assisted in an infamous train robbery in Great Britain in 1963, was living in Spain. He was recruited to launder some of the Brink's mad heist profits, but he ended up losing the £3 million entrusted to him. That year, in April, he was shot and killed.
The same year, an old friend of Noyes named Nick Whiting was found dead from multiple gunshot and stab wounds. During the police investigation into the Brinksmat robbery, Whiting had been questioned about the money laundering scheme. Now, like Wilson, he was dead. Another money launderer involved in the scheme, Donald Urquhart, was a well-off British businessman.
In 1993, he went out on a dinner date with his girlfriend in London and, while out, he was shot three times in the head. The killing was a professional contract killing, and both hitmen involved were arrested and convicted. Little is known as to the details of or reasoning behind the hit, but law enforcement suspected it had to do with a disagreement over a deal. Speculation swirled around this supposed deal and if it might have ties to the Brinksmatt money.
the bodies continued to stack up. In 1996, a suspected money launderer named Keith Headley, whose residence had been searched during the Brinksmatt investigation, was murdered while he was out on his yacht in the Mediterranean Sea.
Two years later, Sali Nahom, a jeweler associated with Noy and the Brinksmat money laundering scheme, was shot and killed outside his house, only months after the disappearance of his acquaintance and fellow jeweler, Gilbert Winter. Then, in 2001, Brian Perry was gunned down with three shots to the head on the streets of London as he arrived for work at the office for his cab firm.
Speculation abounded about whether or not the murder was linked to his role in the Brinksmat heist, especially since he had betrayed McAvoy after McAvoy entrusted Perry with his share of the treasure upon his arrest. McAvoy never saw the money again, leaving his relationship with Perry fractured. Interestingly enough, McAvoy had been released early from jail only the year before. This timing stoked the flames of conjecture.
Only a year and a half later, McAvoy's other associate who had supposedly betrayed him, George Francis, pulled up to his own London office, where he ran a courier business. As he stepped out of his car, a shooter fired four shots into his head and chest at close range, leaving him dead on the street. The murder followed the same pattern of the hit on Perry. The gunman was caught by police, claiming that he was contracted to kill Francis to settle an old debt.
This reasoning fueled the idea that it could be linked to the Brinksmat robbery, as Francis was rumored to have received £5 million of the heist money to launder but had never repaid it all. Many years later, in 2015, one more body dropped. John Palmer, the precious metals dealer who had evaded authorities and conviction but had long been informally associated with the Brinksmat smelting process, was found dead in his home in England.
The police discovered six days later that he had been shot in the chest, fanning the embers of the rumors surrounding the Brinksmat murders. Many of those involved in the heist and the subsequent money laundering were deeply embedded in the fabric of the underworld. Most of them participated in other illicit activities, ranging from other large-scale offshore money laundering schemes to drug smuggling.
The criminals could have had targets on their backs from other deals gone awry, and from various dangerous acquaintances and illegal activities. However, it was impossible to deny the common thread linking the chain of murders. With money still unaccounted for from the decades-old heist, rumors swirl about whether or not the killings could be associated with disagreements over large sums of heist money still in the wind.
many of the murders remain unsolved, adding another eerie layer to the legacy of the Brinksmat Heist. Regardless of the reasons for the killings, the string of murders has become known as the Curse of the Brinksmat Millions. Part 8: The Legacy of the Brinksmat Heist For many of the individuals involved in the Brinksmat robbery, crime was a way of life.
Their lawless deeds did not stop at the famous heist, and many of them, even those who eluded jail time for the Brinksmat heist, found their way into new schemes and often into jail for one reason or another. John Palmer, who had avoided conviction for his alleged role in melting down and distributing the gold, later served time for timeshare fraud.
Even Noy, who was released from prison in 1990 after serving only several years of his sentence for his part in the Brinksmat aftermath, could not give up old habits. Noy, ever the career criminal, could not keep his hands clean even after his run-in with law enforcement. In 1996, Noy was driving along the M25 motorway, a well-known road that circles most of the Greater London area.
during his drive. Noy had a minor traffic accident with a 21-year-old man named Stephen Cameron. The damage was minimal, and Noy could have dealt with the collision with Cameron amicably, walked away from the incident, and moved on with his life. But Noy reacted much differently.
In an explosive and shocking turn of events for such a minor traffic accident, Noy attacked Cameron and stabbed him several times before taking off and leaving the bleeding and gasping Cameron on the side of the M25 motorway to die. The road rage incident, a relatively uncommon crime at the time, took the United Kingdom by storm.
Both headlines drew readers into the tragic story with the nature of the unusual crime and the legacy that the perpetrator had in the United Kingdom given his connection to the Brinksmat robbery. After killing Cameron, Noy lived on the run. Amid the flurry of press and law enforcement searching for him, he quickly fled the country, heading south to Spain, where he lived under an alias as an international manhunt ensued.
His name change threw the police off his trail for years. Law enforcement finally tracked him down in Spain two years after the stabbing and brought him back to the United Kingdom to stand trial for the road rage crime. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2001, but he was released from prison on parole in 2019. For Robinson and McAvoy, the Brinksmatt robbery was a short-lived high that they could ride only in the several months following the heist.
They lived large in the immediate aftermath, each buying mansions and enjoying their sudden burst of wealth. It was surreal, but it was too good to be true, and soon came to an end. Robinson and McAvoy each served a long 16 years of their 25-year sentences. Finally, they were released from prison in 2000, but by then, little was left for them to return to.
By then, the glorious wealth of the heist was nothing but a distant memory, no longer real and no longer relevant to their lives. The gold and the money derived from the robbery had exchanged many hands, and had been tucked away into various dark corners of the international financial web, and had been smuggled out of and back into Great Britain in various deals and investments.
As new criminals had entered into the mix to launder the money, the operation had left Robinson and McAvoy far behind as they spent long days rotting away in prison. When Robinson and McAvoy finally stepped out into the sunlight as free men, these once rich men had nothing to their names. Their glory days as young criminals were behind them,
These leaders, the ones who had crafted the entire plot that resulted in the theft of 26 million pounds of valuables, were left without the profits of the very crime they planned, while it lined other pockets across the criminal underworld. Yet, unlike Noy and the others involved in the heist, Robinson and McAvoy seemed to have learned their lessons. The remainder of their lives were relatively quiet, with both managing to stay out of prison for the rest of their years.
Police did investigate and question McAvoy for the still unsolved murder of Brian Perry, given McAvoy's widely known bitterness at what he viewed as betrayal on Perry's part, when Perry and other associates failed to hold onto McAvoy's cut of the heist money while he was in prison. But the police failed to produce conclusive evidence drawing a connection between McAvoy and Perry's death.
McAvoy lived out the remainder of his days with his wife Kathleen and died quietly in 2022 at his home in Kent, England. In the end, he had only £150,000 to his name, a far cry from the riches he once clutched in his hands. Robinson died shortly before, in 2021 at a nursing home in London. Like McAvoy, he had none of the wealth he had once dreamed he would hold. He died penniless.
Now, four decades later, the Brinksmat heist still fascinates the world. It has been adapted into film and television series several times, even as recently as 2023, when BBC One aired a series titled "The Gold", which was based on the true events of the Brinksmat heist. The Brinksmat robbery rocked the United Kingdom, inevitably leaving its mark on how the nation and its law enforcement functions, and how the international underworld operates.
After the Brinksmatt robbery, the intricacies of the London underworld were laid bare through the complex practices used to launder the heist money. The crime fueled a whole new level of international money laundering, altering the nature of crime in the United Kingdom and beyond. On the other hand, the robbery was a hard lesson learned by the police in the United Kingdom, giving them insight into how quickly a robbery can escalate and consume a large swath of the British underworld.
It inspired new approaches and a better understanding of the politics of crime that existed deep in the shadows of Great Britain. For better or for worse, the crime also played a huge role in fueling parts of the British economy. Launderers funneled dirty money into property investments and the blossoming British drug trade, funding property booms and underworld trading alike.
the money made its way back into the legitimate market, embedding itself in the fabric of the British economy. Yet the greatest legacy of all left by the Brinksmatt case lies in the intrigue and prolific scale of the heist. It remains one of the largest in British history and, as McCann and other investigators have pointed out, it still remains largely shrouded in mystery.
The money trails have gone cold, and little hope of untangling the knotted strings of cash and goods rooted in the robbery remains. Most of the original gang, all except Robinson and McAvoy, managed to lay low and carefully steer clear of the law enforcement investigations following the robbery. They made off with their share of the loot, running free and able to live off their wealth.
To this day, most of the money is still out there, and in the decades since, some of the robbers, still of unknown identities, were left living off the profits. Quite a few of the criminals caught up in the web of the Brink's Mad Aftermath were captured, but a number of them still lurk in the shadows of the story. Sometimes, it seems, the thieves do get away after all.
