Speaker 1: Ridiculous crime is a production of My Heart Radio Zaren
Speaker 1: you know it's ridiculous. Yes, I do that. Bananas are
Speaker 1: a good source of anti matter. There potassium and anti
Speaker 1: That's where you actually get the anti matter is from
Speaker 1: the potassium. The potassium gives off positrons, and the positrons
Speaker 1: qualify as anti matter. So when you eat a banana,
Speaker 1: you're also eating anti matter. That's totally ridiculous. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: like that one. I knew that you would like that
Speaker 1: one because I heard it coming out of your I
Speaker 1: can tell you another one. Okay, hit me already, Ellen
Speaker 1: Pompeo telling Denza Washington Listen, MF I run this set
Speaker 1: and she's doing her whole bit about him not being
Speaker 1: a good director on her set and she's just you know,
Speaker 1: craze anatomy. That to me was ridiculous. Yeah, that is
Speaker 1: ridiculous anti matter. And it's her name again, Ellen Pompeo.
Speaker 1: It was like twenty seconds ago Anti Pompeo, Anti anti
Speaker 1: matter Pompeo. Okay, so that is You've given me two
Speaker 1: ridiculous things, and I totally concur You're welcome, no rebock reboot.
Speaker 1: So you know what else is ridiculous hit me with it,
Speaker 1: pulling off an enormous heist and then only getting caught
Speaker 1: because you couldn't shut up about it. Did my family
Speaker 1: do this? Maybe? H This is Ridiculous Crime a podcast
Speaker 1: about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It is
Speaker 1: always always murder free and always always always ridiculous. Alright, Saron,
Speaker 1: you like Ocean's eleven movies, right, the series of films,
Speaker 1: both the originals and the reboot original and reboot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like, yeah, I like the original Frank Sinatra Oceans eleven.
Speaker 1: I like the the the George Clooney, Brad Pitt Oceans eleven, twelve,
Speaker 1: and thirteen. Right. I liked also Oceans eight with Rihanna,
Speaker 1: and like, I you know me, I love criminals. I
Speaker 1: love crime. I like Caper's Heist and it was right
Speaker 1: up and there was I love Rihanna. Steven Soderberg is
Speaker 1: a hell of a director. He can make something that
Speaker 1: is stylish fluff like that into something that feels like
Speaker 1: actually meaningful. You cared about those characters, when in most
Speaker 1: cases a lot of filmmakers would not have put in
Speaker 1: the work to make you care about them. And that's
Speaker 1: the films would not have been a hit. He made
Speaker 1: us care about characters that should have been cardboard cutouts. Well,
Speaker 1: in speaking of another director, you like Guy Ritchie movies, right? Oh?
Speaker 1: I love Guy Richie, same thing. He also can take
Speaker 1: characters and turn that our interest into his characters into
Speaker 1: a world you just want to go. I mean like
Speaker 1: brick Top. Come on now, now, how do you feel
Speaker 1: about the movie Cocoon? Oh my god, you're just going
Speaker 1: through my favorites another see this is another crime moving people.
Speaker 1: Don't think about it. They were smuggling aliens. That was
Speaker 1: an alien smuggling ring run by a bunch of gray hairs.
Speaker 1: Love it all right? So now what if I told
Speaker 1: you that there was a real life combo of all three?
Speaker 1: I need to go jack up? Feel right now? How
Speaker 1: how are you feeling right now? In your body? I'm
Speaker 1: all excited, like a thrilliest running through me like I
Speaker 1: just stuck my finger in the socket again exactly. So
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna lay on you as the story of
Speaker 1: the Hatton Garden heist. Oh, I like this at garden hest.
Speaker 1: I want you to imagine this. It's you got four pals,
Speaker 1: four old age pensioners, gathering in a London pub called
Speaker 1: the Castle. And that's like a traditional pub, but it's
Speaker 1: got this really lovely roof terrace. It's in the Angel
Speaker 1: section of Islington Tony neighborhood in London. Yes, that's what.
Speaker 1: And so there's just you know, the four older gentleman
Speaker 1: sitting down together for points on a regular basis, super
Speaker 1: common site all over the UK pub culture. Exactly. These
Speaker 1: guys are different. They're even more your kind of guys.
Speaker 1: You're planning a heist. Oh my god, they sent my guys.
Speaker 1: So let me introduce you to them. First. There's Brian Reader.
Speaker 1: They call him the Governor. Yeah, I love it. This
Speaker 1: is so guy Ritchie. He's seventy three years old. Time.
Speaker 1: Don't laugh at that. I'm not laughing at the age.
Speaker 1: I love. His first arrest was for breaking and entering
Speaker 1: at the age of eleven. He did nine years in
Speaker 1: prison for conspiracy to handle stolen goods after he and
Speaker 1: another guy helped launder stolen gold, bullion and diamonds stolen
Speaker 1: from a warehouse near Heathrow. Oh by the airport. Word.
Speaker 1: So he's got, you know, credentials. He gets out of
Speaker 1: prison and then he moves into this like rundown mansion
Speaker 1: in Dartford, Kent, Dartford. That one word Dartford. It's Dartford
Speaker 1: in in Kent, oh, Dartford in Stratford, and so Dartford
Speaker 1: is the town. And so he runs a used card
Speaker 1: viewership out of his house. You know, do you know
Speaker 1: who else is born in Dartford? No, Liam Gallagher, Keith
Speaker 1: Richards what, Yeah, it's sick Ground. Yeah. So the governor,
Speaker 1: he's a bon vivante because he dresses all flashy and
Speaker 1: he's got this dark criminal past. But he's living in
Speaker 1: like a shabby sheek mansion in Kent, you know, twenty
Speaker 1: seven miles outside of London. He's just like a fabulous character.
Speaker 1: I like the Governor. Then there's Danny Jones. Danny's fifty
Speaker 1: seven at the time. He's like the spring Chicken. He's
Speaker 1: also a lifetime criminal. He specializes in jewelry another stolen goods.
Speaker 1: He's a total oddball. Well, yeah, because like one of
Speaker 1: his little quirks is that he went to bed. He
Speaker 1: went to sleep in his mother's dressing gown and a
Speaker 1: fez at night. I was still hanging on mother's dressing gown. Try,
Speaker 1: what's that picture like, and then he has to find
Speaker 1: his comfort zone is safe space. But he didn't really
Speaker 1: go to bed per se, because he slept right on
Speaker 1: the floor, so he put on his mother's dress to
Speaker 1: sleep on the floor. Danny Man, he he studied crime
Speaker 1: like a kid cramming for a forgotten bio exam. Did research,
Speaker 1: he read books, he watched movies, he studied golden diamond prices,
Speaker 1: and then he was also researching like which tools are
Speaker 1: the best for cutting through which material that happened to
Speaker 1: be used to make a vault. So yeah, Danny, he's
Speaker 1: going he's the young, studious one with a fez on.
Speaker 1: Then we have Kenny Collins. Kenny Kenny is seventy two
Speaker 1: and at the table at the pub seventy two years old.
Speaker 1: He's another career criminal. Yet again he was like your
Speaker 1: classic hard man, British hard man, right, so he goes
Speaker 1: everywhere with his Staffordshire bull Terrier. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: it's not like an American Staffordshire terrier, like a pit bull.
Speaker 1: It's like a cross between an English bulldog and like
Speaker 1: an old English terrier. I'm kind of imagining more like
Speaker 1: a pub dog kind of yeah, but like a little muscleman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly a little square but kind of like a muscle.
Speaker 1: The dog's name is Dempsey, like the fighter. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: but Kenny is also diabetic and he has some memory issues,
Speaker 1: do all Kenny? Yeah? Such is aging? Does Kenny not
Speaker 1: have a nickname? Kenny? Mind is? They like Brian is
Speaker 1: the governor and then Danny is Danny because they love
Speaker 1: the diminutives, Danny Kenny. And that takes us to the
Speaker 1: last in our quartet, Terry Perkins. Terry Terry Terry, Danny Terry.
Speaker 1: He's sixty four. He's another career criminal like it, and
Speaker 1: he's also a one time prison escape. Yeah, go on, Terry,
Speaker 1: he's been on He was on the lamb at one
Speaker 1: point for seventeen years. Yeah, I'm like this for real.
Speaker 1: It's not like he like slips out in the get
Speaker 1: back here and then you him back here. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was like on the lamp. Now, he and the governor
Speaker 1: had like done a bunch of jobs together, so you know,
Speaker 1: they were like professional acquaintances and it grew to a
Speaker 1: deeper friendship. You could say that they were ste beautiful. No,
Speaker 1: that was incredible. So they're they're actually some other dudes
Speaker 1: that they recruited to help out. Yeah. Sure, but they're
Speaker 1: not like our core group. But there is one important
Speaker 1: youngster fifty two years young. His name is Michael Seed.
Speaker 1: Practically a boy, yeah glad, but he's known on the
Speaker 1: streets is Basil Basil. Of course he was British. I'm
Speaker 1: like Basil Basil. It looks like Basil. It's Basil. And
Speaker 1: he's the son of this professor. And he studied physics
Speaker 1: and electronics at Nottingham University. Um. But when he like
Speaker 1: he did twenty one months back because he sold ten
Speaker 1: tabs of acid and some weed to a friend, was
Speaker 1: his friend of cop, I don't know a square sitch.
Speaker 1: And then like, so what he does like since then,
Speaker 1: like he's he's like fixing TVs and electronics and then
Speaker 1: you know, I guess just at home for people who
Speaker 1: are like I tell he's broken with screw driver. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then he gets into the jewelry trade. Like what
Speaker 1: does he do in the jewelry trade? He said he
Speaker 1: quote recycled jewelry because he was good with his hands.
Speaker 1: It's like recycled jewelry. Huh, I remember that he is recycled. Um,
Speaker 1: he didn't have a bank account, he didn't claim benefits,
Speaker 1: didn't pay taxes, and in the words of Steven Stills,
Speaker 1: he didn't do business that don't make him smile. That's
Speaker 1: a good rule, that's basil. Right. So, um, all these
Speaker 1: guys they're meeting up at the pub. Three years go by.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of points, right if something for these
Speaker 1: guys have imagined yet, yeah, spring comes along. They think
Speaker 1: they're ready. They think they're ready. So this whole three
Speaker 1: year period they're basically plotting to do this job, or
Speaker 1: they're just like they're plotting, like the whole time. They're
Speaker 1: sitting there and they're plotting. So they're parked in this
Speaker 1: pub you imagine, like Dempsey's at their feet, there's a
Speaker 1: fire going, or they're up on the roof deck on
Speaker 1: a lovely day, you know, enjoying a pint, and they're
Speaker 1: like drawing like schematics on bar napkins or like totally sure,
Speaker 1: and they had like I imagine they had like a
Speaker 1: chalkboard and would plot it out there and like drop
Speaker 1: it over when people come by, exactly, or they would
Speaker 1: pretend like it was like football as we say, soccer,
Speaker 1: like you know, diagrams of moves or what are set ups,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you'd say, formations. And then yeah,
Speaker 1: so they've got this whole thing. They have their eyes
Speaker 1: set on a place called Hatton Garden and I'm going
Speaker 1: to get to that in a in a while, but
Speaker 1: let's go back to them plotting. So you have these
Speaker 1: four criminal masterminds who've got lifetimes of experience behind them,
Speaker 1: and Basil, Basil, he's not up in there yet, like
Speaker 1: they're kind of keeping him outside of it, giving in
Speaker 1: the information he needs, but he's like they're clutchy young
Speaker 1: guy that they're going to use. But so these guys
Speaker 1: take everything that they've learned about diamonds, about gold, about
Speaker 1: breaking into places. Don't forget the governor had broken into
Speaker 1: a warehouse outside a heathrow um. So they're taking all
Speaker 1: this and they've got their eyes on Hatton Garden. I
Speaker 1: don't think, I don't hear them having is a fence
Speaker 1: and you have to be able to get away with
Speaker 1: your crime. Well they do, yeah, they do. And those
Speaker 1: are the sort of the associated people. So let me
Speaker 1: tell you a little bit about Hatton Garden first. So
Speaker 1: it's this this like seven story building, sixty tenants, most
Speaker 1: of them are jewelers. Um, but the basement is this
Speaker 1: room that's completely full of safe deposit boxes and in
Speaker 1: those boxes gold jewelry. Jem, I don't think you would
Speaker 1: know the answer to this. Why why so many bankers
Speaker 1: all living in the same building or jewelers all living
Speaker 1: in the same building. I think it's like we have.
Speaker 1: I think it's probably akin to like the Diamond District
Speaker 1: somewhere where they're you know, they're all in the same
Speaker 1: location and it's like a little market place. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so interesting. But the safe deposit boxes are
Speaker 1: the key here, and that's what these guys are really
Speaker 1: like focused on, and that's what they're plotting. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna walk you through how this all plays out, but
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break first. Alright, So we got
Speaker 1: our four dudes, the Governor, Terry, Ny and Danny Yes,
Speaker 1: and they're all hanging out at the pub and they've
Speaker 1: come up with this plan. So we jumped forward. It's Thursday,
Speaker 1: April two. It also happens to be Holy Week, and
Speaker 1: that means the next day is both Good Friday and
Speaker 1: it's also the start of Passover. Do it up, double up?
Speaker 1: So they're locking everything up in that building and they're
Speaker 1: heading out for a long Easter passover weekend. Brian Reader
Speaker 1: a k a. The Governor, he's prepping for his own
Speaker 1: kind of religious holiday. At this point. He uses his
Speaker 1: senior free travel pass. It's like a bus pass seniors,
Speaker 1: and he gets on a bus from his place out
Speaker 1: in Kent and goes into London, like an hour and
Speaker 1: a half journey, but you know it's free. Seniors fly free.
Speaker 1: And the Governor meets up with Danny, Kenny, Terry, and
Speaker 1: then this other guy named Carl Wood outside the building.
Speaker 1: Carl is like a part time criminal, not a full
Speaker 1: time pro like the other guys. Yeah, he's got one
Speaker 1: foot in and they're like pulling him in. So the Governor, Danny, Terry, Kenny, Carl, Um,
Speaker 1: they're all ready to go. They get all dressed up
Speaker 1: as workers, hard hats, jumpsuits, reflective vests. They jump into
Speaker 1: a white van that Kenny's driving, Kenny the diabetic, and
Speaker 1: they pull up to the side entrance to the building.
Speaker 1: Now they unload all their tools and stuff like that. Um.
Speaker 1: Kenny goes across the street to an office building and
Speaker 1: they've secured this location where he's going to be the
Speaker 1: lookout and keep an eye on the scene, which is important.
Speaker 1: You know, this is a big, big hei. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: taken it a little easy. The reason why he's the
Speaker 1: lookout and not like down in there is because you know,
Speaker 1: he has the sugar got the sugar diabetes and he's
Speaker 1: got a touch of dementia. Oh this is not sounding
Speaker 1: like a good lookout. Yeah, and so like the problem
Speaker 1: is he gets up to the post and then he
Speaker 1: falls asleep up there's not a good lookout, Kenny. Kenny
Speaker 1: has done hard, like a lot of good work in
Speaker 1: his criminal career, but this is not it. You can
Speaker 1: keep him back in the pad. You haven't count everything
Speaker 1: when they get the roles. Think he could have just
Speaker 1: been like the stenographer at those things and you know,
Speaker 1: just maybe was their paperman. You know, I did a
Speaker 1: counterfeiting so um basil. Remember him, he's already in the building.
Speaker 1: He doesn't meet up with him outside because he's already
Speaker 1: up in there. He has his own costume on, okay,
Speaker 1: and it's not like a workerman costume. He's wearing a
Speaker 1: red wig like Ronald McDonald or like Lucile Ball. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm kind of thinking it's like a chucky
Speaker 1: wig when I closed my eyes in magic and a
Speaker 1: flat cap, like you know, he's seeing for a C
Speaker 1: d C. And then a jumpsuit jumpsuit, like a work jumpsuit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but like we can also pretend that it's like an
Speaker 1: urban outfitters, you know, fashion jumps Can I pretend it's
Speaker 1: an evil can evil jumps with stripes and stars? Yes,
Speaker 1: let's okay, that's our visual image. Hot. So he's disabled
Speaker 1: the alarm system, disabled the cameras, but he forgets about
Speaker 1: two CCTV cameras oops, ones on the fire exit that
Speaker 1: they've been coming in and out of, and the others
Speaker 1: on the second floor. O man, So mean, while he's
Speaker 1: got this chucky wig on, their entrances and exits are
Speaker 1: being filmed the whole time. Yeah, but don't worry, guys,
Speaker 1: I disabled all the cameras exactly. So the other thing
Speaker 1: they disabled is the elevator for a bunch of old
Speaker 1: men to go downstairs. Well no, like it's like, I
Speaker 1: guess they did it because they didn't want people sneaking
Speaker 1: up on him down They accessed the basement vault by
Speaker 1: like going through the shaft the elevator shaft, so they
Speaker 1: got underneath the car and then dropped. I guess they
Speaker 1: all like it's very Ocean's eleven there in like Matt
Speaker 1: damon black jumpsuits and if don Cheedle fell asleep. So
Speaker 1: they want to make sure that no one can sneak
Speaker 1: up on them. They get into the basement and they
Speaker 1: reach the airlock, you know, like kind of think it's
Speaker 1: got like ahip, yeah, and maybe they're I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff basement. So they cut the
Speaker 1: telephone cable and rip out like this GPS antenna and
Speaker 1: then they only but what they did only partially shut
Speaker 1: down the security system, like it would have worked exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: They're like whatever that antenna is for ham radio yankee down.
Speaker 1: They're like, no, I think that's important. So like the
Speaker 1: alarm goes off because they like they cut the telephone wire,
Speaker 1: but like, guys, we use fiber optic cable and then
Speaker 1: everyone's going to call this one in and so like
Speaker 1: the alarm goes off. Head of security shows up, but
Speaker 1: he doesn't see anything off. The four doors forced open,
Speaker 1: there's nobody like huddled around the front sign of fourth entry.
Speaker 1: So when the cops come and they're like, what's all
Speaker 1: this then, and the head of Securities like nas a
Speaker 1: false alarm. Now, one other thing I should mention is
Speaker 1: that like a couple of days before this happened, this
Speaker 1: is on the fourth, on the second, Um, there was
Speaker 1: a gas main break in the street. So it caused
Speaker 1: all this chaos. Reasonable, Yeah, and it was like good
Speaker 1: cover for them, and it was totally unrelated. It's not
Speaker 1: like they sent Kenny down there to bang on it
Speaker 1: with a pipe until it broke and then like stagger out. Um. No,
Speaker 1: they had nothing to do with it. But it was
Speaker 1: just like good timing. And so I think that's why
Speaker 1: the police were just thinking, like man, these alarms are
Speaker 1: going off everything. This was fast and furious. Then Diesel
Speaker 1: would have him break the pipe exactly different, he would
Speaker 1: have chewed right through it underground. So everyone goes home
Speaker 1: and goes to sleep security wise, Um, but the gang
Speaker 1: at this point is still getting closer and closer getting
Speaker 1: into the vault. Um. There's like a foot and half
Speaker 1: of concrete between them and all the boxes in the fault.
Speaker 1: They're going through the concrete, yeah, They're not like going
Speaker 1: through the door. Yeah. And they're not trying to also
Speaker 1: get the door off. The hand is not trying to
Speaker 1: open the lock through the wall essentially, and so the
Speaker 1: half Yeah, and like when you have to do that,
Speaker 1: what do you what do you use? Jack camera? No,
Speaker 1: it's so what you always carry on you that hill
Speaker 1: D D D three circular power drill exactly, Yeah, in
Speaker 1: the holster at all times. And I got the carbon
Speaker 1: to change out and complete my diamonds completely. So that's
Speaker 1: what they get out right, They two and a half
Speaker 1: hours later, they've drilled three overlapping circles. Okay, so they're
Speaker 1: trying to dig, trying to give it the value that is, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that, but the whole was not really well placed.
Speaker 1: They drilled into the back of this bolted down wall
Speaker 1: of safe deposit boxes and that blocked their entry. So
Speaker 1: they thought they were just like going to drill these
Speaker 1: three holes that will make like a larger kind of
Speaker 1: clover shape they can go through. And then yeah, and
Speaker 1: so I'm guessing they didn't have blueprints. Maybe Kenny had
Speaker 1: them right. I Mean, the thing is is like, as
Speaker 1: I'm telling this, it's sounding worse and worse. Trust me.
Speaker 1: These guys are these guys are crack criminals on crack criminals.
Speaker 1: So you know, they're like they've hit this bolted down
Speaker 1: wall and they're like, oh my god, what I need
Speaker 1: to do. Wait a second, blimey, but wait, we had
Speaker 1: we brought our hydraulic ram, you guys. Oh never mind,
Speaker 1: problem solved, Yeah, no big. So they go to set
Speaker 1: it up and the pump on the ram was broken.
Speaker 1: They didn't test their so they took a break, had
Speaker 1: a cuppa. Yeah. So I guess this was like I
Speaker 1: don't know what day it is whatever, on that Friday.
Speaker 1: They left the building at like eight in the morning,
Speaker 1: so this was over all night. Yea. Yeah, they're working
Speaker 1: out it and like they're sweating through their undershirts and
Speaker 1: they're just down to like their topless if they folded
Speaker 1: down the jumpsuits, so they're wearing like their arms like
Speaker 1: long grain nipple hairs. I was right there with you
Speaker 1: till you said longer. They're all wearing chucky wigsture. Never mind.
Speaker 1: I know we're getting further and further away from the truth.
Speaker 1: I need to bring us back in. So Danny woke
Speaker 1: Kenny up and was like, we gotta the pumps. The
Speaker 1: we need a new pump because the ram's broken, so
Speaker 1: they go off to being Q and buy a new
Speaker 1: ram pump um. The governor he's like, all right, so
Speaker 1: we've been in here overnight and it's all screwed up.
Speaker 1: And if we go back in because they left to
Speaker 1: like figure out, Okay, how are we going to do this?
Speaker 1: Governors like, you know what, we go back in there,
Speaker 1: we're caught. I don't want to do that, because he's like,
Speaker 1: we we already successfully got in and out, but we
Speaker 1: didn't get what we wanted. But if we go back
Speaker 1: in and try and do this again, they're going to
Speaker 1: catch us. So he takes off, he gets on the
Speaker 1: train and he goes home. Okay, that's your team leader. Nope,
Speaker 1: Dawn out of there, that's leader the governor. I'm picturing
Speaker 1: George Cline going I'm taking my senior bus ticket and
Speaker 1: going hotly. I was like, yeah, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm getting too old for this. So the rest of
Speaker 1: the game come back the next day, Saturday. It's ten pm.
Speaker 1: You know, they're doing the night shift on it. But
Speaker 1: don't forget, it's this long holiday weekend. Everyone's checked out.
Speaker 1: No one's gonna be coming through except for the security
Speaker 1: team maybe right, and they already think, well, you know,
Speaker 1: there's so Saturday, April four, also Terry's birthday, the Big
Speaker 1: six seven Terry. Congrats Terry. They try to get back
Speaker 1: in the building at this point and the door that
Speaker 1: they've been using is locked. Like they thought it was
Speaker 1: just going to be open. They're like, we don't lock
Speaker 1: it behind you. We're going we gotta run down and
Speaker 1: get a new pump, but don't lock it. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: lot a brick to hold it open. Carl at this
Speaker 1: point Carl would also he's like the roadie. He's like,
Speaker 1: I've had enough, I'm out of here. He takes off,
Speaker 1: so they're down to three plus Basil. That leaves Danny, Kenny,
Speaker 1: Terry and Basil and Ronnie, Bobby, Rickey and Mike urging
Speaker 1: you to cool it down. Basil is able to get
Speaker 1: them in the building again. He's like, I did it before,
Speaker 1: you guys. Give me a moment. I've been watching YouTube
Speaker 1: block picking videos, you know, I like to recycle jewelry
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. He does. Okay, so he gets
Speaker 1: the building open again and they get in there. Kenny,
Speaker 1: what's Kenny do? He goes back across the street to
Speaker 1: act as lookout falls asleep again. Um, but they have
Speaker 1: all these cool new tools. They're ready to go, and
Speaker 1: they're able to pry the boxes out of the way
Speaker 1: and get into the vault. They moved that whole wall.
Speaker 1: Good on them. Um. They originally wanted to spend three
Speaker 1: days in the vault over the week someone else I
Speaker 1: know that weekend rock. There are nine safe deposit boxes
Speaker 1: in that vault, and they thought, Okay, we're going to
Speaker 1: spend three days in here, let's just take them all.
Speaker 1: But now they have one night, and so they figured, okay,
Speaker 1: let's get like seventy three of them. I don't know
Speaker 1: how they come up with that number. I think they
Speaker 1: probably just looked at a section of the wall and
Speaker 1: we're like these, um, maybe the biggest boxes they could find. Interesting.
Speaker 1: That's how I would do it, But I'm not them,
Speaker 1: and I don't have a diminutive name. Tease. So they
Speaker 1: finish up on Monday morning, super early. They wheel everything
Speaker 1: out of the building, tools, the loot everything in large
Speaker 1: garbage cans. It's convenient. You know, people are going to
Speaker 1: look twice as I'm a pushing garbage exactly, and and
Speaker 1: they you see like these, you know, older gentlemen and
Speaker 1: like the work clothes. They're like, yeah, they've never got
Speaker 1: the weekend. So Kenny wakes up decides to drive home
Speaker 1: in the White Key. Now Kenny, by the way, he
Speaker 1: doesn't want to drive alone on this one. And he's
Speaker 1: there with an associate of his name, William Billy the
Speaker 1: Fish Lincoln the Fish. And you know there's a great
Speaker 1: story behind that nickname. Yeah, you know what a great
Speaker 1: story is. This is like you're gonna it'll blow your mind.
Speaker 1: Why they call him Billy the Fish because he hangs
Speaker 1: out at fish markets on Friday. So when I said
Speaker 1: a great story, maybe I should take that back the dumbest.
Speaker 1: So Billy the Fish is also the brother of Kenny's
Speaker 1: girlfriends slash life partner, so he's like, this kind of
Speaker 1: has to get the family involved. He's like, you know
Speaker 1: what you got going on there, Kenny, And he's like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: Billy stink all right, you know, because don't forget what
Speaker 1: are we Monday? Now he's he's been sitting at the
Speaker 1: fish market. Um. Billy the Fish, though, is a career criminal.
Speaker 1: He's not just a guy who frequents fish markets um.
Speaker 1: But he also like the rest of the gang has
Speaker 1: some medical ailments. Um, they include incontinence, and he also
Speaker 1: has had a recent double hip replacement. This is your
Speaker 1: escape team. Okay, Yeah, So they're driving. He's riding with Kenny,
Speaker 1: who's falling asleep. It's riding with the King. They all
Speaker 1: go to their respective places. They divide up the loop
Speaker 1: and um, even the ones who bailed out on the
Speaker 1: second attempt, the Governor Carl, they get They get their
Speaker 1: share because you know, they did some heavy lifting, they
Speaker 1: just didn't finish it out. And if you don't pay
Speaker 1: them to flip on you exactly or worse. And so
Speaker 1: April seventh, Tuesday morning, everyone's finally coming back to work.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, how is your weekend? It was so good?
Speaker 1: And then they're like zolys. They walk into the vaul.
Speaker 1: Jesus just it's just chaos in the vault. They're like, they,
Speaker 1: I think they probably went in continent themselves when I
Speaker 1: was continent and I am no longer. So they called
Speaker 1: the cops, obviously, and the question is will these guys
Speaker 1: get away with it? I'm gonna go, well, it's unlikely
Speaker 1: that they'll get away with it. If we're talking about it,
Speaker 1: so that that's your big my first clue. I know,
Speaker 1: Colombo over here, I put that together. Let's stop for
Speaker 1: a moment, Let's revel in the gray panther power of
Speaker 1: this gang. And when we come back, I'm going to
Speaker 1: fill you in on the aftermath of this ridiculous caper.
Speaker 1: Now we're talking about seventy three empty safe deposit box.
Speaker 1: That is a lot of angry jewelers. Well, and the
Speaker 1: thing is, these guys to the jewelers aren't really eager
Speaker 1: to detail what was in the boxes because they're jewelers
Speaker 1: and they're inherently kind of thinky yeah so like, and
Speaker 1: the thing is, like they could be avoiding like one
Speaker 1: of of three things, right or three of who knows.
Speaker 1: They're avoiding the revenuers, are avoiding paying taxes, they're avoiding
Speaker 1: the cops because some of it, yeah, And they're avoiding
Speaker 1: spouses because what happens. They want to be able to
Speaker 1: have well, and some of them have like some stuff
Speaker 1: that maybe they're giving to boyfriends exactly side pieces. And
Speaker 1: then also you just wanted you don't want your partner
Speaker 1: necessarily if you are a dirty jeweler, to know how dirty.
Speaker 1: So if they do ever like roll on you. They
Speaker 1: can't just go and get it all. You got to
Speaker 1: hide some instead of the thing. They'll roll on you
Speaker 1: if they if they want to protect their spouse from
Speaker 1: knowing too much, maybe they're not so suspicious criminal And
Speaker 1: I like that. That's really nice. I would have never
Speaker 1: thought they wanted to like, no, please give me plausible
Speaker 1: deniability exactly. Well, that's how I think these jewelers are
Speaker 1: like that. But they have like Okay, at first, the
Speaker 1: like initial estimate thrown out there was like three million
Speaker 1: pounds worth of stuff. Whoa right, that's a lot pounds
Speaker 1: sterling not wait what yeah, one of the biggest British Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that was wildly exaggerated. And when they had to
Speaker 1: actually go through and do the general tally, it was
Speaker 1: still fourteen million pounds A. Yeah. Well, because I'm sure
Speaker 1: that some of the some of the jewelers must have
Speaker 1: been like I had yeah, like, can you prove up
Speaker 1: to that? No, no, no, you have to trust me.
Speaker 1: He was there. I've got pictures. So it comes out
Speaker 1: to about fourteen million pounds in cash, jewelry, gold, valuables.
Speaker 1: Now what do you think. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: valuables were, But what would they candle laubras? What do
Speaker 1: they got up in there that would be valuable? I
Speaker 1: don't know. Gold crusted shoehorns, yes, you know, for slipping
Speaker 1: on your your shoes you're satin slippers. I honestly don't
Speaker 1: know what they I don't know when they say valuables,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, like, what do they mean? Silver music stands?
Speaker 1: I get music boxes. They all get really melancholy and
Speaker 1: wistful when they open it up and they stare off
Speaker 1: into space and they do you remember, Amanda, Yeah, what
Speaker 1: do old British people want to play? Like? What are
Speaker 1: their chants? Like? What would they play? Do you remember
Speaker 1: any of the pub songs that they would be like bumping?
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, this reminds me of what I can
Speaker 1: remember when I when I lived in Scotland. Um, I
Speaker 1: would hear people singing a lot on their way home
Speaker 1: from the people saying in pots and stuff like if
Speaker 1: nine to five comes on the jukebox, people lose it.
Speaker 1: I love it the coolest. But I'll tell you what,
Speaker 1: I think that the biggest hit that I ever heard,
Speaker 1: um don't look back in anger by God? I heard
Speaker 1: that drunkenly catterwaled so many times I can hear the
Speaker 1: crousers now. So they have music boxes that played don't
Speaker 1: Look back in gold Encrusted. They've like repurposed Faberge eggs
Speaker 1: that when you open it, but it plays like it
Speaker 1: has like a little chip that plays the MIDI version
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, that's that's basically what the value. Personally,
Speaker 1: I would have a fabric egg played wonder but that's
Speaker 1: just it's just you this there's a little song called
Speaker 1: wonder Wall. The cops, of course, getting back to the heist,
Speaker 1: the cops think it's a total inside job. Does it
Speaker 1: makes sense we would know all these three jewelers, I'm
Speaker 1: telling you the cops now, the cops. Now. The public
Speaker 1: really excited about this, and the public is like, you
Speaker 1: know what International Crime Keeper solved? Done international? And there
Speaker 1: were suggestions that it was work of the Balkans based
Speaker 1: Pink Panther gang. Oh they are awesome right so close
Speaker 1: it was the Great Panthers know only one color. The
Speaker 1: tabloids were kind of stoking the idea that there was
Speaker 1: an Ocean's eleven scenario. They figured that they most certainly
Speaker 1: used a contortionist at some point, A lot of them
Speaker 1: has to be. I've seen how how this plays out
Speaker 1: in the movies Pportionist. They need a Americans and movie
Speaker 1: star was always eating um, and they need possibly a
Speaker 1: bad British actor. Yes, all all of them. They I'm
Speaker 1: sure they had like composites drawn out and it was
Speaker 1: just the cast. It was just the like movie poster,
Speaker 1: not just Scott call and they arrested Scott can back
Speaker 1: point and he's like, I've been in l A this
Speaker 1: whole time. Um. There were a lot of people who
Speaker 1: thought it was like not the Pink Panther gang, but
Speaker 1: like an elite, elite correct team of thieves from either
Speaker 1: stern Europe or Israel. About this often they open throw
Speaker 1: that out there, like, oh, some some oligarch got robbed
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. That was a good theory. Well, so the
Speaker 1: world famous London Metropolitan Police Flying Squad was called in.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that just always sounds like a money python bit, right.
Speaker 1: You know, they handle all the organized crime stuff, the
Speaker 1: big robberies. You know, we're going to meet him a
Speaker 1: lot in this podcast. We probably will. And the flying
Speaker 1: is because they're the catch all. They go everywhere, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they go everywhere. But also it's because they had cars
Speaker 1: I think before other units they like fly down the
Speaker 1: street running over pedestrians, so they're not like flying nuns,
Speaker 1: though they also had the power of flight themselves, as
Speaker 1: God granted them. Um, do you remember those two CCTV
Speaker 1: cameras at Basil, miss? How could I forget them? On
Speaker 1: those where a footage of a Mercedes E two hundred
Speaker 1: driving off as a white Mercedes with a black roof
Speaker 1: and like alloy rims fly flashy number, probably easy to
Speaker 1: pick up. Whose car do you think that was Governor's girlfriend? Kenny?
Speaker 1: Kenny Kenny? Because Kenny his own car and steal a
Speaker 1: car bro if, he like brought his car and parked
Speaker 1: it there and then they did their heist and he
Speaker 1: drove everyone home in the van and then he must
Speaker 1: have like ditched the van and caught a taxi. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: just dropped me over by the by that Mercedes and
Speaker 1: he's like drifting off in the back of a cab. Um.
Speaker 1: You know he drove there and back in his own
Speaker 1: car because he's Kenny. Um. There's footage not only of
Speaker 1: the Mercedes, there's footage of Basil walking away from the
Speaker 1: scene with a large bag over his shoulder. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it had a huge dollar sign or like
Speaker 1: a bound sign on. It was wearing stripes in a burglars.
Speaker 1: He had the burglar mask on and he was tiptoe
Speaker 1: yeah and snickering. That was on the CCTV to it age.
Speaker 1: So the cops are like, all right, these guys, and
Speaker 1: they tail them for days. Um, they gather enough like
Speaker 1: so that they can bug the Mercedes, they bug another car.
Speaker 1: They're tailing these guys. They know exactly where they are.
Speaker 1: They film them going about their business, you know, popping
Speaker 1: out for points, strolls in the park, going to Sainsbury's
Speaker 1: and buying custard Sundry's I don't know, Uh, going to Greg's,
Speaker 1: the baker. Um that they're talking the entire time for
Speaker 1: more batteries for their hearing it exactly exactly every little counts,
Speaker 1: So they're talking the whole time. They won't shut up
Speaker 1: about this. Uh, they're bragging about how they did it
Speaker 1: to like anyone who will listen to the victory lap
Speaker 1: on now like this is if I did it. They're
Speaker 1: talking about what they took, how they're going to move
Speaker 1: this stuff. Who's gonna fence, like how what are they
Speaker 1: going to spend their money on? One? Guys like I'm
Speaker 1: going to put it towards my pension um. Basically, they
Speaker 1: just keep repeatedly incriminating them everyone. Here is my absolute
Speaker 1: favorite part. So they're speaking in like a thick Eastender
Speaker 1: London dialect, like their accent, and they're using Cockney rhyming slang.
Speaker 1: My god, I love Cockney rhyming slang. It is absolutely
Speaker 1: the best, and I think Richie does a pretty good
Speaker 1: job of getting it to the American audience. How how
Speaker 1: fun and how common it is. Like basically they're going
Speaker 1: out of their way to say more in order to
Speaker 1: convey less. So they're rhyming two word phrases, combinations or
Speaker 1: whatever to use you know, standard for something mundane. Like
Speaker 1: an example would be if I say apples and pears,
Speaker 1: I mean stairs because it rhyme. Yeah, so instead of
Speaker 1: saying I walked up the stairs, I walked up the
Speaker 1: apples and pears. What do you um? Or if you
Speaker 1: say barney rubble, it means trouble, trouble one yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: let me give you a couple of these. You tell
Speaker 1: me if you know what they mean. Bees and honey,
Speaker 1: I'm going with money. Yes, lady, good diver over. I
Speaker 1: don't know a good diver. I got to think in
Speaker 1: an accent lady could diver? I can't think of it.
Speaker 1: Fiver forget that Irish pig a cop oh sorry, rhymrish pig,
Speaker 1: a jig, a wig like a chucky fright wig. Sweeney
Speaker 1: todd Um Hot bod close, that's like so eighties and
Speaker 1: anyone says like hot bod. I'm imagining like a lady
Speaker 1: in like one of those bathing suits from the eighties
Speaker 1: where the leg the leg hole goes with it like
Speaker 1: string tops. That's all sort of like lcro, like shimmery
Speaker 1: hot bod. I've been watching old Magna Pas lately and
Speaker 1: I have to say that some of those outfit combinations
Speaker 1: that women would wear in the eighties were like the
Speaker 1: neon or the neaprene, Like it's about the fabric and
Speaker 1: the color. And then I'm like, that's wild. And then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden TC comes by and he's got
Speaker 1: on pants so tight you would think he was pimping.
Speaker 1: And there's short short rightly manu p is like he
Speaker 1: was throwing out the bottom. Yes exactly. He had some plums.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize, like you know, watching them now is
Speaker 1: like a lot of my fashion choices came from this show,
Speaker 1: and I'm really questioning them. I like, how I'm convinced
Speaker 1: you were short shorts and you don't even short. I
Speaker 1: owned one pair of shorts and they aren't short shorts. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe someone will break in and cut cut
Speaker 1: your pants. Yeah, we'll find out, you tell me. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Sweeney Todd does not mean hot bud okay, fair enough.
Speaker 1: It means flying squad. Oh right. I could have probably
Speaker 1: been to get pitched by the Sweeney Todd. So these danglings,
Speaker 1: one of them were an Irish pig to lift some
Speaker 1: tomfoolery at the school jewel. There you go, and you
Speaker 1: got pinched by the Sweeney Todd flying squads. So good,
Speaker 1: the hot bods flying spot. The cops had to translate
Speaker 1: the transcripts. This is what I love. So they're all
Speaker 1: talking in this like you know, gobblede cook. And then
Speaker 1: they have to write out the transcripts because you can't
Speaker 1: just go to court and me like, well, they said,
Speaker 1: they you know we're gonna wear a Irish pig. No,
Speaker 1: so it all has written out and it took them.
Speaker 1: It was a really difficult task to bring it from
Speaker 1: Cockney into the Queen's English. And there are people involved.
Speaker 1: There's a lawyer involved who compared it to work done
Speaker 1: by Shakespearean scholars. It was the time investment you had
Speaker 1: to have specialized. In the middle of all this rhyming slang,
Speaker 1: they mentioned someone named Basil and they're just like that
Speaker 1: is that? Yeah? And they're like, is this reference to
Speaker 1: Basil Towers from Alti Towers or Dazzle from gem and
Speaker 1: the Holograms? Was Gem in on? This is all of
Speaker 1: this animated and not real anything. They're really questioning their
Speaker 1: own existence at this point. So a month and a
Speaker 1: half after you know, all of this, may the police
Speaker 1: raid the homes and the known locations of the gang,
Speaker 1: and you know, they then also couldn't keep their traps
Speaker 1: shut and immediately start talking. Being under police, the cops
Speaker 1: hall of them in they're like, all right, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you everything. What do you want to know? So Danny,
Speaker 1: Kenny and Terry they're caught at Terry's daughter's house just
Speaker 1: you know, hanging out around a smelter in the dining room,
Speaker 1: melting down millions of dollars worth of precious metals in
Speaker 1: a dining room. They haven't on the table smoking. Chemicals
Speaker 1: are releasing, but you know you're just chilling, melting down,
Speaker 1: melting down gold. You have to repaint those walls. The
Speaker 1: governor has busted at home. He wasn't there. Um. They
Speaker 1: found lots of diamond related and eminating items though. At
Speaker 1: the governor's place, a diamond tester was that like a
Speaker 1: person from Calabasas, California. There's a little guy in a
Speaker 1: cage that they make him know it said, like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, you just test it. Like testing it's gonna
Speaker 1: be the hardness kid a diamond gauge, so you can
Speaker 1: get like the size of it. I suppose I don't.
Speaker 1: I know nothing about diamonds. Diamond magazines, Oh yes, of course,
Speaker 1: like Diamond Fancy, the sister publication of Cat Fancy Now,
Speaker 1: and then a book on diamond crime, like the Underworld
Speaker 1: of the Diamond Business. But here's another one of my
Speaker 1: favorite details. At Danny's house, Danny, they find a book
Speaker 1: that's called Forensics for Dummies, which I now, I really
Speaker 1: need a copy of Forensics for Dummies. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: leave laying around, um, lying around, I should say, plus
Speaker 1: they found face masks, a drill in cash. But mainly
Speaker 1: it's the forensics for dummies. I love that there is
Speaker 1: a called forensics for dumn Like is that for dummy
Speaker 1: cops or for people who are like Danny trying to
Speaker 1: get over? Is it like for the slow criminal justice
Speaker 1: students there is? Or why not both? So in twenty September,
Speaker 1: the four original Gangsters um they admit to the charge
Speaker 1: of conspiracy to burgle, which is like, doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: a big charge for what they've done, but you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what what it carries. I don't know either.
Speaker 1: So Danny says he wants to come clean. He's got
Speaker 1: his forensics for dummies. He's like, look, I just gotta
Speaker 1: be honest. I'm gonna tell you where I stashed the loot?
Speaker 1: Does he call it a boot the booty the give
Speaker 1: a hit. He takes him to Edmondson Cemetery and he's
Speaker 1: hidden like his little bag of getty's under a gravestone
Speaker 1: of a family member, you know, thinking like he shows
Speaker 1: them and he takes the cops and he's like, all right,
Speaker 1: here's my here's my cut of it. And the cops though,
Speaker 1: they had a question like why so you led us
Speaker 1: to this and you say this is everything you got,
Speaker 1: because like, did you know that a couple of days
Speaker 1: ago we found a huge bag of similar loot about
Speaker 1: sixty ft away from where we're standing now. So they
Speaker 1: had already tagged him going to the cemetery before, and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, let's check it out, and they find
Speaker 1: like the big bag with a dollar sign on it.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine his face when they told him that
Speaker 1: they found the rest of this, So he's like, I
Speaker 1: don't know anything about that, Okay, whatever. Danny Um. November,
Speaker 1: the cops finally identify Basil Michael Seed and then the
Speaker 1: next year, in March, Danny Kenny Teddy each sentence to
Speaker 1: seven years the governor Brian Reader. He is like, he's
Speaker 1: had two strokes, he's too sick to go to the hearing.
Speaker 1: He gets six years, three months, so they really didn't
Speaker 1: shave much off for leaving the scene and also for
Speaker 1: being ill um. Two years later, Teddy dies in prison
Speaker 1: at the age of sixty nine. Teddy or Terry Terry
Speaker 1: Teddy Perkins is the Atlanta creepy character. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I was wondering, Yeah, it keeps sleeping into my consciousness.
Speaker 1: Terry Terry. There's too many, too many diminutive Teddy Terry
Speaker 1: Kenny Kenny the governor. He's released early obviously because of
Speaker 1: his poor health, and he only served half of his
Speaker 1: term to three years and change, as they say, March.
Speaker 1: So a couple of months later, the police finally find
Speaker 1: Basil's apartment and they rate it and they find just
Speaker 1: under about two hundred thousand American dollars worth. It's like
Speaker 1: dressing gowns. Uh. They find like two k gold gems
Speaker 1: jewelry from the robbery in his flat. Um. They also
Speaker 1: he has a bedroom workbench where he'd been melting down gold.
Speaker 1: They're all inhaling these fumes because they don't care piecing
Speaker 1: out the jewelry. Um. He said he had a jewelry business,
Speaker 1: but there was no this is my business. How's Danny
Speaker 1: Jones doing well? Augusten, He's sentenced to an additional six
Speaker 1: and a half years because he hadn't paid anything back
Speaker 1: yet six million pounds, so he just kept it and
Speaker 1: said I'll do the time. He's like, I'll get it
Speaker 1: to you later. And then they were like, where is it. Okay,
Speaker 1: you have to go back in take another six Kenny Collins,
Speaker 1: same thing. He doesn't pay it seven million pounds that
Speaker 1: he stole, so he gets another six and a half.
Speaker 1: So they get released after six years and have to
Speaker 1: go back and do another y. Yeah, well no it
Speaker 1: wasn't six full years after that, but it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's like half their time. They get it tacked on
Speaker 1: and so Basil he gets convicted of conspiracy to burgle
Speaker 1: and money laundering. Ten years for Basil, I don't know,
Speaker 1: God only anti fez hate. The governor didn't pay his
Speaker 1: money back either, but they didn't give him more time
Speaker 1: because his health was so bad, and they allowed him
Speaker 1: to stay at home in the shabby Sheek mansion instead
Speaker 1: of going back to finish his time. Most of this
Speaker 1: loot has never been recovered. Only okay, so I remember
Speaker 1: it was like a little It was a little over
Speaker 1: thirteen million pounds. Only four and a half million pounds
Speaker 1: has been accounted for. Nice, Yeah, they got away with that,
Speaker 1: but not well, he still got away with it. So
Speaker 1: what's your ridiculous takeaway here? My ridiculous takeaway is Basil
Speaker 1: should have been running the job. It seems like he
Speaker 1: really had it all together. The governor is a quitter.
Speaker 1: Kenny was a terrible choice, but Basil, I trust a
Speaker 1: man who sleeps in a face. Yeah right, um, I agree.
Speaker 1: In my my takeaway, keep your mouth shut, do a dime,
Speaker 1: keep your keep your mouth shut alright. So, uh that
Speaker 1: that's all I have for you to day. I like
Speaker 1: the Old Man Crime Gang. Yeah, it's good. It's good stuff,
Speaker 1: fun time, great panthers. You can find us online at
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. And if you
Speaker 1: have a tip for us about one that you'd like
Speaker 1: for us to discuss, or if you want to tell
Speaker 1: us about something bad you've done in your life it's ridiculous,
Speaker 1: you can email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: I'm Szaren Burnett and I'm Elizabeth Dutton. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for listening. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton
Speaker 1: and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Diamond Dave Kosten.
Speaker 1: Research is by Marissa never Frown Brown. The theme song
Speaker 1: is by Thomas let Me See Lee and Travis Silly Button.
Speaker 1: Dutton Executive producers are Ben Likely Stolen Bolen and Noel
Speaker 1: Goose down Brown. Ridiculous Crime is a production of my
Speaker 1: heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
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