Original subtitles

This was fantasy money ancl fantasy crime.

Just the sheer bulk of the loads was just astonishing.

'This is a robbery of an unprecedented scam.'

It's a major event for Scotland Yard.

'I didn't know that at the end of it, we would live or die.'

They say time heals,

but it's a day I'll never, ever forget.

Never forget that one.

CHRIS jARMAN: In November 1983,

a gang of armed robbers broke into a security depot

near London's Heathrow Airport

and made off with three tonnes of pure gold worth £26 million.

It's the biggest robbery in the world.

The crime of the century.

NEWSREADER: Men carrying pistols and wearing balaclavas

burst into the warehouse a mile from the airport.

NEWSREADER 2: They handcuffed the six guards on duty

and doused them with petrol.

Nearly 40 years on,

some of the robbers have never been caught,

and much of the gold has never been recovered.

Now officers and key witnesses,

many speaking for the first time,

reveal the inside story of the hunt for the bullion

and the men behind this audacious robbery.

On a cold Saturday morning in late November 1983,

six security guards get ready for their shift

at the Brink's-Mat security depot near Heathrow.

I'd set the alarm,

then I just got up, got ready for work,

normally had a cup of coffee.

But then I drove to work.

I only lived about five miles away.

At around 6:30am, Mike arrives at the depot.

I was a supervisor on duty that clay.

He turns off the alarms and lets the other guards in.

I then re-locked the door, and we went upstairs.

One of the lads was making the teas.

It was a very normal morning for them.

They sat and had a cup of tea.

One man was missing - that was a man called Tony Black.

He was, as usual, late.

BELL RINGS

The doorbell went,

so I went downstairs, and it was Tony Black.

He says he's been up all night. He says he's got an upset stomach.

Ancl after a few minutes, he says he has to go to the toilet,

and he disappears off, apparently, to the lavatory.

Tony Black then returns and joins the other guards in the canteen.

Moments later,

a gang of up to six masked armed men burst through the door.

All of a sudden, I could hear tables and chairs

being really knocked over, a lot of noise.

CLATTERING

Ancl this man came running at me with a balaclava on,

with a pistol in his hands.

They hit one of the guards around the head

because he doesn't respond quickly enough,

and he falls to the ground.

It's an incredibly aggressive attack on these men.

All I was looking at was the pistol a few inches away from my head.

I was ordered on the floor,

and then I was hooded,

handcuffed behind my back, got a bit of a kicking.

Somehow, the robbers know that Mike

and another guard are the only ones with access to the depot's vaults,

where cash and valuable items are usually stored.

I was picked up and dragged out into the manager's office,

and they told me to breathe in deeply,

and with a knife, they cut the belt on my jeans.

And they put a rag under my hood.

They said, "Do you know what that smell is?" I said, "Petrol."

Ancl then they just poured petrol from my chest all the way down.

I was thinking, "Are they gonna put a match to me?"

They've got a threat of either being shot or set on fire.

They must have been absolutely terrified.

The thing is, petrol burns.

You do not have to put a match to it.

You get soaked in petrol,

and you're gonna do whatever they tell you to do.

Mike and the other guard are forced downstairs to the vaults.

They knew too much.

They knew exactly what to do, where they were going,

and that is very, very scary and frightening,

especially when they tell you where you live.

Fearing for their lives, the guards open the main vault door.

And the robbers demand access to the safes within.

Ancl that's when I just said,

"Dear God, what I'd do to stay alive and keep my lads alive."

I'm sorry, but you just rolled over.

Each card has half of the security combination

to open the safes.

Mike enters his,

but the other guard struggles under the pressure.

The real stress that's on him

were these men pointing guns at him, threatening to set him on fire.

He just can't recall it.

He's not prevaricating, but the robbers don't believe him.

I could hear matches being struck.

They were getting really violent with him,

and they'd got petrol on him, same as I had,

and you were just fearing the worst then.

I called out, "Leave him alone!"

Ancl with that, the person who was looking after me

just shoved a firearm straight in my ear and said, "Shut it."

I honestly thought they might get so fed up,

they might just start shooting.

Frustrated, the robbers start looking around the vault.

Ancl lo and behold, there's a pile of large, grey boxes.

Ancl then one of them produces a knife,

whips open the tape on the top,

and it contains gold bars.

They are looking at this thinking,

"Hang on, you know, we weren't expecting this."

Ancl sure enough, every single box contains gold bars,

each weighing a kilo.

They discover £26 million worth of gold.

Well, can you imagine, they've gone from frustration to elation.

It's every robber's dream come true.

I didn't know whether, at the end of it,

we would live or die.

You know, they could've just walked out the door

and said, "Goodbye, lads." Bang, bang.

They've got a fairly battered old Transit van, which was stolen.

That's got to take the weight of three tonnes of gold.

They load it all in, and they're off.

The guards eventually managed to escape.

They raised the alarm,

and that kicked off one of the biggest investigations

in Scotland Yard's history.

NEWSREADER: Britain's biggest-ever robbery.

Gold bars were stolen near Heath row Airport.

NEWSREADER 2: Shortly before seven o'clock this morning,

men carrying guns and wearing balaclava helmets burst in.

They handcuffed the six guards on duty and doused them with petrol.

It was a massive story.

It was being discussed in every household.

When it was seen, it was turning left.

Everybody knew about it.

It was a media circus. Everybody wanted to know the detail.

"How big is this? Is it true?

"Did they really get three tonnes of gold?"

I'm glued to my typewriter.

Gradually, you know, it started to emerge

that this was not just big, it was actually off the scale.

Within the criminal fraternity, if you like,

this was regarded as being something very special.

This was the FA Cup. This was the peak of someone's career.

In the '80s, armed robbery was a weekly event in London -

and not just one, several.

Robbers were hitting banks, building societies, post offices.

The security industry was lagging behind,

and gradually, the organised criminals of the time

tended to look to armed robbers as an elite.

What was very clear from the outset

was that they knew what they were doing.

They had serious weapons. This was a job for the Flying Squad.

The Flying Squad were an elite police unit,

whose main tasks at this time in the '70s and '80s

was dealing with armed robbery.

This was no place for shrinking violets.

This was a place where dedicated police officers

were putting their life on the line every clay.

CHRIS jARMAN: Detectives from the Flying Squad

immediately launch a major investigation.

Scotland Yard was electric.

Everybody was there.

There would have been a lot of pressure from the media

and from their superiors to get results,

to get some bodies in, to nick people.

It had become, you know,

an issue which had gone across the desk

at Number 10 Downing Street.

You could bet your life that the Prime Minister

was leaning on the Home Secretary, saying,

"Get all that gold back."

One of the officers brought in to work on the case

was Detective Sergeant Alan Branch.

He's agreed to speak publicly about the robbery for the first time.

This robbery was extremely big.

It was the most valuable

and the biggest robbery we had dealt with.

They'd got away with a huge haul.

Far more gold than they anticipated.

I went up in a helicopter with another chap

looking for anything that would be suspicious...

...thinking that the gold would be stashed fairly quickly,

rather than risk going halfway across London.

Meanwhile, other officers search the scene for clues.

The first thing is a kind of forensic assault

on the Brink's-Mat warehouse.

This robbery preceded

some of the amazing forensic science tools

the police have these clays, like DNA in particular.

The scene was examined for fingerprints,

but these guys were gloved up.

CCTV was not very useful.

There's one camera, it's pointing away from the door.

Ancl I think the robbers probably knew that.

DICK HOBBS: At that point, detectives were pretty much reliant

on their knowledge of the criminal community.

So they would've been thinking,

"Right, who's been active lately? Who's busy?"

They're listening to telephone intercepts.

They're listening to what's going on out there on the streets.

Ancl they're talking to informers.

"What's the word? Who's involved in this?"

They would've all had their own theories

about who might have clone it,

so these would be busy, smoke-filled rooms,

bits of paper being passed around, telephones ringing.

Officers bring the guards from the depot to the station

to take statements.

The early statements are revealing.

It's quite clear that the robbers knew

the inside of that warehouse almost as well as they did.

And inquiries at the scene do reveal one crucial clue.

There's no forced entry.

These guys have been let in to the building.

It has to be an inside job.

Detectives decide to take a closer look at the guards.

They bring them back to the warehouse

to put their statements to the test.

And, unusually, they film the guards as they describe the raid

in the hope it will reveal clues

or inconsistencies in their statements.

Security guard Mike Scouse has never seen the footage before.

'I said I can't do it in handcuffs.

'Ancl then they released the right handcuff.'

Well, it takes you back to 39 years ago.

Them vaults.

I don't think we were shown this. This is police evidence.

'Lying on the floor down here were all the boxes of the bullion.'

I had to wear jogging bottoms because, my petrol burns,

I couldn't wear trousers.

'I was then dragged back, put in, handcuffed...

'I was sat down here...'

It's a clay I'll never, ever forget.

Never forget that one.

Detectives are satisfied with Mike's account.

They follow the same drill with another guard, Tony Black.

HIGH-PITCHED WHISTLING

MAN: 'That's the noise I was on about.'

Any detective officer that has conducted interviews

watches for the body language.

You don't need to be too expert

to see the discomfort in this individual.

His hands are wringing all the time, pushing away at his thumbs.

Black claims he was forced to open the shutter doors

to allow the robbers to bring in their van,

but that he was unable to see the gang because of his position.

OFFICER: 'From where you were standing,

'could you see the shutters open?'

'No, I was... I was looking in the corner, like...'

He says he's manoeuvred himself into a corner,

and he can't see anything. It's absolute nonsense.

He would've pressed the button

and looked to see if the door's actually opened.

'Are you standing in exactly the same position as you were in?'

'Erm... I think might have even been closer

'cos I was doing it like that, rather than...

'..like that, so I must've been about here.'

I think it was pretty clear to the officers

that were there on the clay that this man was lying.

Detectives now need to establish what Black is hiding

and why he might be hiding it.

The focus was now firmly on Tony Black.

We realised that his sister

was the girlfriend of Brian Robinson,

who'd had a history of planning these large robberies.

Black's sister was never implicated in the crime,

but the connection was of great interest.

Meanwhile, the other guards' statements also reveal

that Black disappeared shortly before the robbers arrived.

Ancl that, obviously, gave us a huge clue

as to who to concentrate on.

As officers begin to build their case,

the robbers are on the run.

And they're facing a major challenge -

how to get rid of the three tonnes of Brink's-Mat gold they've stolen.

They thought they were gonna be getting cash,

which, of course, they would have preferred,

because, you know, cash is instantly movable,

and you can do things with cash.

On the one hand, with that amount of gold,

you are incredibly rich.

But on the other, you can't spend a penny of it.

They have to find out how to transfer this gold into cash.

Moving that much gold, turning that much gold into cash,

would've been a very, very big job.

While the gang devise a plan to sell their gold,

eight days after the robbery,

security guard Tony Black is brought back in for questioning.

He was very nervous,

sweating quite a lot.

But for quite a long time, he denied any knowledge.

You're looking for any little lever you can have against him.

You put it to him that he, alone, goes to the toilet...

...and not long afterwards,

a team of serious armed robbers come in.

Ancl the fact that his sister is living with a major criminal

is too much of a coincidence.

Alan and the team tell Black

that he could end up with a lighter sentence

if he agrees to talk.

He wasn't a villain in the usual sense of it.

He was just another guard, normal sort of person.

So enormous pressure on him.

The fear of going away for an awful long time,

and the magnitude of the robbery,

was too much for him, and he eventually confessed.

When Black realises that the game is up,

he admits to being the inside agent.

But more importantly than that, he becomes an informant.

Tony Black gives us three names

of people he believes were involved in the robbery.

Brian Robinson, Micky McAvoy and Tony White.

Micky McAvoy was a South East London criminal.

Tony White was known by the intelligence branch

to be a close associate of McAvoy and Robinson.

It came as no surprise.

Tony Black also reveals

that he led the robbers into the warehouse

on the morning of the raid,

and that he'd helped them plan it.

He'd given them the layout of the place,

so they knew exactly where to go, and what to do, and what to expect.

Black now needs to be guarded around the clock.

Cos once he'd confessed,

the evidence against the robbers was quite...

well, it was incredibly severe.

If he walks out of that police station

and anybody finds out that he has grassed up the robbers,

his life expectancy is very limited.

So he's held, he's put in police custody,

and he's protected 24/7.

Black is the key witness.

Lose Black, lose the case.

I heard on the news on Monday morning

that Tony Black had been arrested.

And I shook, and I shook, and I shook, and I shook.

Because I didn't think it was him.

On the sixth of December, ten days after the robbery,

police move in on the suspected robbers.

The squad officers go out early in the morning,

bash on the doors,

and bring all three of them into custody.

It's a big moment in the investigation for the officers,

there's no doubt about that.

But it also sends out a message to people who are not in custody

that we're coming.

The men are questioned for several days,

but all deny being involved in the robbery.

The suspects are held in custody,

whilst inside man Tony Black appears at the Old Bailey.

He pleads guilty to his part in the robbery.

He is sentenced to six years by judge Tudor Price,

who says in sentencing him,

"Never again will your life be safe."

And he's right. He will always be a target.

So, Black started life again under a completely new identity.

He would have been given a new name, a new National Insurance number.

Everything about him would have been changed.

My late father went to his grave cursing Tony Black.

Because our families have had to live with

what we've been living with.

By early 1984, just a few months after the robbery,

three suspects await trial.

And the gang's inside man is behind bars.

But that doesn't stop their plan to turn the stolen gold into cash.

The robbers who are on the run turn to others for help.

Including the now notorious Kenneth Noye.

NARRATOR: It's three months on from Britain's biggest ever gold robbery.

And please have had some early success.

Three suspected robbers...

...Brian Robinson, Micky McAvoy and Tony White await trial.

But some of the robbers are still on the run,

and whilst police hunt for them,

they're busy trying to turn their stolen bullion into cash.

Gold bars are heavily marked.

So this makes it very, very difficult

to actually market the gold.

You've got to disguise it.

It's absolutely pure gold, 99.9%. It doesn't get any better.

But that means also, it's incredibly easy to identify.

They're numbered bars,

you can't take that into a jeweller's or goldsmith's.

It has to be melted down and changed.

So, immediately, they're in a world that they know very little about,

and that's why they needed to involve

a far wider group of people than they would have wished to.

At this point,

the people on the outside turn to Kenneth Noye.

He'd become probably best known in the criminal underworld

as being a fence.

That's to say, somebody who could broker deals for stolen property.

He lived in a house called Hollywood Cottage.

It was a fairly substantial house.

Sits in its own grounds, fenced.

He has a very nice lifestyle.

He comes across as kind of a sharp businessman.

He was somebody that they believed could turn the gold into cash.

Noye and his associates orchestrate a plan

to smelt the gold and create new, unidentifiable gold bars

that can later be sold.

They recruit the owner of a company in Bristol called Scadlynn to help.

Scadlynn's was a pretty bog-standard

scrap metal and jewellery dealership in the West Country.

Their normal business is buying scrap gold,

selling it back into the legitimate gold market.

The man tasked with smelting the Brink's gold for Scadlynn

is its former director, john Palmer.

John Palmer is a very confident, cocky kind of self-made businessman,

bit of a jack-the-lad.

He's doing very well for himself.

Using a smelter in his back garden,

Palmer changes the purity of the gold

by melting it down and mixing it with scrap metal and copper coins.

He's contaminating it just to disguise its identity.

It's no longer pure gold when it leaves john Palmer's home.

The new, less pure bars now need to be authenticated

before they can be sold on.

They're driven 200 miles north to Sheffield to an assay office.

One of only four places in the UK

with the authority to test and hallmark gold.

If the assay office discover the bars contain Brink's-Mat gold,

the gang's plan will be ruined.

Ashley Carson worked at the assay office at the time

and is now the CEO.

He's speaking for the first time about what happened.

So, that is 1 kilo of fine gold.

That is as pure as you can get gold.

This is 10 kilos of melted gold.

Round about 40% purity.

Ancl this is very similar to the Brink's-Mat gold bars

that would have come in from Scadlynn.

They're very often not melted very well.

The disguised Brink's-Mat gold bars now start regularly travelling

from Scadlynn in Bristol to the assay office.

It's a pretty audacious thing

to actually then go to an official authority to say,

"Will you authenticate my stolen gold?"

Ancl not just one bar, but many, many bars.

I used to unlock the gates every morning.

The van that had travel led up from Bristol

would be eagerly waiting outside for the office open.

It was Monday to Friday, every clay of the week.

They were driving up and down the motorway.

If they'd just turned up with fine gold,

then it would have certainly rung a lot of alarm bells.

Some of the bars that came in were so poorly melted

that there were still coins that stuck out of the top of the bars.

When we look back now, it's amazing to think

that you wouldn't immediately associate it with Brink's.

But I don't think at the time

that there was any thoughts or any suspicions at all.

The disguised Brink's gold continues to go unnoticed by the assay office.

The new bars are tested and approved

and start to be sold by Scadlynn to legitimate dealers.

But as the money starts rolling in,

three of the suspected robbers are about to go on trial.

I think everybody at Scotland Yard is sitting on their hands

and worrying about whether we've got enough

to get the convictions.

There is a huge degree of apprehension.

This is a very important case.

After five-and-a-half weeks at the Old Bailey,

the jury find Micky McAvoy and Brian Robinson...

...guilty for their part in the robbery.

They were pretty stoic about it because, you know,

people like that don't get emotional.

They don't cry, they just take it on the chin.

You know, it goes with the job.

Sometimes, you get caught.

They're sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Tony White, the third suspect, is acquitted.

Police have still got a massive amount of work on their hands,

because first of all, there are robbers still outstanding

and they haven't got back any of the gold at this stage.

But as detectives work to track down the other robbers and the gold,

the investigation is about to take a devastating turn.

NARRATOR: just over a year after a violent gang made off

with millions of pounds' worth of gold

from a security depot near Heathrow,

two of the robbers are now behind bars.

But officers still need to find the robbers who are on the run.

And the missing bullion.

We are concerned about what it could fund.

It could fund drugs, it could find firearms.

So getting the gold back was as important

as finding the others who were involved in the robbery.

Byjanuary, 1985, 14 months after the robbery,

police have a number of people under surveillance

that they believe could be helping sell the gold.

We were out there now looking for the gold,

looking for other members of the team,

trying to understand how this was being dealt with

in the criminal underworld.

One of those being watched by detectives is Kenneth Noye.

The man brought in by the robbers to help turn the bullion into cash.

Kenneth Noye was known to the police to be a handler of stolen goods.

And they decided

they need to do some really close surveillance on him.

Getting close to Noye's house

is considered to be absolutely essential.

The surveillance techniques available to the police at the time

were really limited compared with now.

So then, they were very much reliant on feet on the ground,

on people watching 24 hours a day.

Now, this was difficult because, not only did he have a big house,

but he had extensive wooded gardens.

On the evening of the 26th ofjanuary, 1985...

...two specialist surveillance officers in camouflage gear

are sent in to observe Noye's home.

They're creeping towards the house.

They are unarmed.

Their object is to look, listen and report.

Nothing more than that.

But Noye's dogs soon notice the officers in the garden

and come running towards them.

One of the officers manages to retreat.

The other officer is not able to do so.

Then Kenny Noye appears in the garden...

...and he stabs the officer ten times.

The alarm is raised.

And the officer is taken to hospital...

...where he's tragically pronounced dead.

The officer that was stabbed to death

was a man called john Fordham.

He was somebody I had known all my policing career.

We were young officers together in East London.

He was as mild-mannered and pleasant and nice a man

as you could ever wish to meet. He was a family man.

He just wanted to do the job.

Ancl he gave his life doing it.

It's very traumatic,

especially for the officers who were there trying to save him.

Horrible feeling.

Now, this was an investigation that was already supercharged.

But with John's death, it moved into another gear.

This had to be solved.

Noye is arrested and charged with john Fordham's murder.

And police extensively search his home.

We find 11 bars of unmarked gold...

...that looks as though it's been smelted.

The search also found a Guinness Book Of Records.

And in it, the world's biggest robbery,

the Brink's-Mat robbery, is circled.

With Noye in custody, detectives must now move in

on others who they suspect are helping sell the gold.

The fear is that others involved in the handling

would see this as a moment

and decide to either destroy evidence or run away.

Officers arrest a number of suspects thought to be involved.

But when they turn up at the home of john Palmer...

...he's not there.

He has flown to Tenerife.

As it turns out,

he had planned this holiday before the raid.

His home was searched.

There was a smelter in the back garden.

It's crucial evidence.

But detectives are unable

to bring Palmer back to the UK for questioning,

as Tenerife is under the jurisdiction of Spain.

If you were a villain and you could get over to Spain,

certainly up to 1985, you were home and free.

You were OK, you couldn't be extradited.

They could commit a crime in the UK,

go to Spain, and not be recalled back.

So it built up its reputation as a Costa del Crime.

With the police stuck in Britain,

the media attempt to drag Palmer down.

The BBC send reporter Kate Adie to try and get the scoop.

She eventually finds him with his family

in a large tourist hotel.

We tramped out into the main swimming pool area,

feeling a bit obvious.

Everybody gets up to have a good look, you know?

Place is rammed with people on their sunbeds.

And the man...

...turns up in front of us and says,

"I'm john Palmer. Lovely to see you, Kate."

I said, "Would it be all right,

"we're coming from the BBC,

"to ask you a few questions?"

"Absolutely."

"Well, it's about the raid on your..."

"Terrible."

He said, "Terrible, wasn't it?"

'I feel that the police have overreacted.

'I understand they carried out, er, SAS-type of raids at my property.'

He was full of indignation about the police raid.

You know, expressing innocent outrage.

'The police have apparently looked at a small smelting works

'which are in the grounds of your house.'

To which he said, "Yes, Kate."

I said, "A gold smelter, Mr Palmer."

'We have a smelting works, which was put there some...

'approximately three years, two-and-a-half, three years ago.

'Er... These works was connected with my former business.'

He was a very cool customer.

Very charming.

Very unfazed.

'And you do claim to be completely innocent,

'and have no connection

'with the matters which the police are investigating?'

'I'm completely innocent.

'Ancl nobody that I'm connected with,

'I believe, knows anything about it, too.'

The whole episode was like a rather weirdly acted drama.

Because this was a very serious criminal investigation.

Palmer stays out in Tenerife.

Whilst back in Britain,

the pressure is on detectives

to not only find the missing robbers, and the gold,

but also the millions of pounds in cash

that the gang have made

from the sale of some of the bullion.

Investigations suggest that, by now,

around half of the gold could have been smelted and sold.

And police need to know what the gang are doing with the money.

A new specialist group of officers are brought in,

including Scotland Yard detective Terry Burke,

who is also speaking about the case for the first time.

The investigation was progressing.

More was being found out about how the gold was being disposed of,

what money was doing, who was involved.

The gold was getting sold,

large amounts of cash were generated.

Ancl at that time, it was easy to pay into banks and businesses

to launder it.

The natural thing was to start looking at the trail of money.

Ancl by following the trail, you would hopefully identify

people that may have been involved in the whole robbery.

And as they work through the intelligence,

one name comes to their attention.

Could this be one of the original robbers?

NARRATOR: By September 1985, the investigation

into the multi-million-pound Brink's-Mat gold heist is widening.

A new specialist team of officers

are working to help track down the robbers,

and what remains of the stolen gold.

As well as the millions of pounds worth of cash

generated from the sale of some of the bullion.

By following that trail, you would hopefully identify

people that may have been involved in the whole robbery.

As they work through intelligence, one name attracts their attention.

A South London criminal called john Fleming.

His wealth and his activities

led to us believing that we should be investigating him

and following the money that he had generated.

Detectives manage to track him down in Spain,

where he becomes the focus of surveillance officer William,

whose years of undercover work mean we need to protect his identity.

He's decided to speak publicly about the case for the first time.

Our job was to go and gather as much evidence as we could

to support the core investigation.

William and the investigation team

launch a surveillance operation on Fleming

and a number of other suspects.

We had teams on the ground following people, looking at their activities,

seeing the associates they were working with.

We had authorised telephone intercepts.

When you're looking at somebody

and you're not quite sure what the association is,

you're just going in there and saying,

"Right, let's get everything we can, and work out the bits."

Ancl those bits aren't always obvious.

People are generally guarded about what they say.

You've got to go through an awful lot of material

in order to get anything that makes sense.

Despite hours of surveillance,

William and the team have insufficient evidence

to link Fleming with the robbery,

and the case against him is dismissed.

But their time is not wasted.

One other name keeps cropping up.

A key name that came to light was Patrick Diamond.

Who seemed to run a pretty dodgy financial services operation

on the Isle of Man.

With Diamond under suspicion,

detectives now make the decision to raid his office.

And they make a startling discovery.

He's been laundering criminal cash through offshore companies.

They need to establish if some of it

could be from the sale of the stolen Brink's-Mat gold.

We arrested Patrick Diamond, we searched his office,

and took all his records.

To see what he has clone, and what these companies are doing.

This is the early form of money-laundering

that criminals were better aware of than we were as the police.

Officers suspect that some of the money being laundered by Diamond

could be from the sale of the stolen Brink's gold.

But it's not clear who he's laundering money for.

Diamond does, however, give the police a major tip off.

So, Patrick, in his interviews,

said that, yes, he was a money launderer,

but he's small fry compared to lots of others.

In an unexpected twist, Diamond points detectives

towards a surprising location...

...the British Virgin Islands.

He suggests that they look into an accountant there,

who we're calling Mr X.

Much to everyone's surprise,

there was a huge money-laundering operation being carried out there

by this accountant.

But we didn't know if it was Brink's-Mat money at that time.

It prompted us to look deeper into what was going on.

Officers find that huge amounts of cash

are being smuggled onto the island via light aircraft.

But they need to establish

if there's any connection to the Brink's-Mat money.

Light planes would fly over, and they would drop suitcases.

The typical pilot's case could hold $1 million.

The accountant would pick 'em up,

pay them into the banks on the island,

and then the process would start of cleaning it.

Detectives painstakingly work through Mr X's records

to try and establish where the money is coming from.

This one individual had been laundering hundreds of millions

for various crime syndicates.

Ancl in today's worth, it could be three or four times that amount.

It was money laundering on a scale that we, certainly in Scotland Yard,

hadn't really been involved in before.

It sort of made us think very, very quick,

"My goodness, what is this? What are we dealing with here?"

I don't think anybody really understood

how the villains were operating

using offshore facilities to launder the proceeds of their crime.

But despite all their efforts and suspicions,

the team can't link the laundering operation

to the sale of the Brink's-Mat gold.

The trouble is with money-laundering,

by its very nature,

is once you put it into that big washing machine,

it's very difficult to match the various proceeds

with the original crime.

They may not have been able to prove

that Brink's money was being laundered

through the Virgin Islands,

but their suspicions remain.

The operation was, however, a major step

in finding out how criminals were hiding their cash.

Brink's-Mat was the platform

by which the Met discovered the depth

of organised crime, money-laundering,

in far-flung territories.

Back in Britain, some of the money from the sale of the stolen gold

is found in other surprising locations.

NARRATOR: Back in Britain,

some of the money from the sale of the stolen gold

is found in other surprising locations.

Millions of pounds from the proceeds

are being laundered through offshore bank accounts

in Switzerland and Lichtenstein.

And coming back to Britain to be invested.

Including in London's Docklands area.

Brink's-Mat coincided with the development of London's Docklands,

and the London property market was starting to go through the roof.

Ancl this was the first time that we'd openly seen

professional criminals having enough capital

to invest in the legitimate economy.

And there were rumours that some of the money

was also funding far more illegitimate projects.

I've had a number of police officers say to me over the years

that a certain amount of Brink's-Mat gold proceeds

would have gone into financing

particularly the cocaine business in this country.

While officers suspect a gang on the outside

are making huge profits from some of the gold,

convicted robbers Micky McAvoy and Brian Robinson

are feeling the pressure of their 25-year sentences.

In September 1985, nearly two years after the robbery,

they reach out to detectives to try and make a deal.

They want to return their half of the gold

in exchange for a mitigation of their very long sentences.

It's really important for us to get this back,

get it out of criminal circulation,

so we're keen to do a deal.

We go to see Michael McAvoy and Brian Robinson

in Leicester Prison.

They don't really want to be talking to coppers.

McAvoy was a Londoner, about the same age as myself.

We were sitting across the table,

he's gone one way, and I've gone another.

It was quite strange. Quite surreal.

McAvoy says the deal will be handled by Tony White,

the man formerly acquitted of the robbery.

Roy and a colleague go to meet him in London's South bank

to organise the handover of the gold.

White says it can't be clone.

He says that Micky McAvoy and Brian Robinson

are out of touch.

I think his words were, "It's been dealt with.

"It's not there any more."

The officers go back to break the news

to McAvoy and Robinson in prison,

and tell them that their share of the gold is gone.

We tell them the deal can't be clone, the gold is gone,

they've lost control.

They didn't speak volumes,

but the look on their faces said everything.

They were angry, and disappointed.

That's their gold.

As they saw it, it was theirs to deal with.

Ancl that option's been taken away from them.

By November 1985, two years after the robbery,

detectives are still no closer

to getting their hands on what's left of the gold.

As their search continues,

Kenneth Noye, the man brought in to help sell the stolen bullion,

goes on trial for the murder of police officer john Fordham,

pleading self defence.

I was leading counsel in the Noye murder trial.

It was going to be the case of the year,

and maybe the case of the decade, or the century,

so it was very, very exciting to get.

Noye was an extremely credible witness.

He had great personal charm,

and he gave his evidence extremely well.

Ancl he believed in his own defence.

During the trial,

the jury are shown a mock-up of what Noye faced

when he confronted john Fordham in his garden.

In this case, Noye was confronted

by someone dressed in a black balaclava,

with only eye holes visible,

without any identification that he was a police officer.

He said he believed that he was under attack,

and he said, in self defence,

he fought with the man, and stabbed him.

As part of Noye's defence,

the jury are also taken to his home.

REPORTER: 'This evening, under heavy guard,

'Noye himself came here to view the house and grounds,

'along with the judge and jury.'

Ancl so everybody decamped one winter's evening

to the garden in West Kings down

for the jury to be able to see the front door of Noye's house,

to stand there, to look down into the woods,

and positioned behind a tree was a man dressed in a balaclava,

who jumped out from behind the tree

and frightened the life out of everybody,

judge, jury, onlookers.

Ancl so it was a very effective defence strategy.

After around 12 hours of deliberation,

the jury returned its verdict.

Not guilty.

I can remember that the shock

when the jury came back

and announced that they found him not guilty of murder

was absolutely palpable.

There was a sharp intake of breath around that court that clay.

He thanked the jury,

and, erm, bowed to them,

and made direct congratulations to them on their good sense.

It was, emotionally, extremely tough,

particularly for the surveillance team

who had been on the ground with him,

for those of us who had known him all our policing lives,

it was horrendous.

Ancl for his family, who we knew.

But it's not long before Noye is back in court.

Seven months later, he goes on trial

for conspiring to handle the stolen Brink's-Mat gold,

and evading VAT.

He is found guilty, and is sent down for 14 years.

I think he was definitely confident that, having beaten a murder rap,

that this was gonna be a piece of cake.

So it must have come as an icy shock to him

when the jury convicted him.

His mask dropped,

and he screamed at the jury

and told them that he hoped they would all die of cancer.

Ancl I think you could see in that moment

that Noye was somebody who could lose control,

you know, very quickly, and in an extreme way.

And as Noye begins his lengthy sentence,

detectives move a step closer

to the man they suspect

smelted large quantities of the stolen Brink's-Mat gold,

john Palmer.

NARRATOR: As the police investigation

into the Brink's-Mat bullion robbery approaches its third year,

the pressure is on officers to arrest those linked to the raid

who are still at large.

One of those suspected of helping sell the stolen gold

is john Palmer.

So far, police have been unable to question him,

because he's been out in Tenerife.

Eventually, his passport expired, ancl he is brought back to the UK.

I arrested him off the plane.

I think he knew it was coming,

because when you do a plane arrest, everybody's told to sit still,

and you go on and ask him to come off.

Ancl he was quite affable, and no problem.

He didn't say very much.

Palmer is charged with conspiracy to handle the stolen gold.

And in 1987, he goes on trial,

claiming that he didn't know it was the stolen bullion

when he smelted it.

Palmer convinces the jury

that he knew nothing of the origins of the gold.

Yes, he was involved in Scadlynn,

but he didn't know where the gold came from.

Ancl the jury believed him.

Ancl Palmer walked free.

In the years that follow,

many of those linked to the robbery would appear in the spotlight again.

After being released from prison,

Kenneth Noye becomes the subject of a police manhunt.

Amazingly, just when you think

you might never hear of Kenneth Noye again,

we then heard that a young man called Stephen Cameron

has been stabbed to death

in what we now call a road rage incident on the M25.

REPORTER: 'Noye got a knife from his car

'and stabbed 21-year-old Stephen, who died soon afterwards.'

Noye then absents himself from the country.

Officers eventually locate and arrest him in Spain,

and in 2000, he's jailed for life for Stephen's murder.

And the law would catch up with john Palmer, too.

In 2001, he's convicted of conspiracy to defraud

after conning thousands of holiday-makers in a timeshare scam.

He gets eight years in prison.

In 2015, he would appear in the headlines again,

this time as the victim of a calculated killing.

Palmer is shot dead at close range in his garden.

His killer has never been found.

There is something now which is generally referred to

as the curse of the Brink's-Mat gold.

A number of people

who have been suspected of involvement in the case,

somewhere along the line, have been killed.

Ancl John Palmer was one of them.

I remember reading this report

saying that the body of john Palmer had been found in his garden.

Dangerous, serious crime.

What a mix.

What a mystery.

As for the £26 million worth of stolen gold,

much of it was never recovered by police,

and there are rumours that not all of it was smelted and sold.

There have been various tipoffs and theories over the years

as to where it might be.

I've heard these stories

about some of the gold being hidden in fields,

hidden under swimming pools.

It went from the sublime to the ridiculous.

"It's all in a vault in Switzerland."

"It's buried under the pitch at Bristol Rovers."

Which was clearly absurd.

It was in Brazil.

It was in Canada.

It was just about everywhere in the world.

It was all wild goose chases.

It's like pirates' treasure. "Where is it buried? Where is it?"

In the 1990s, it was said by somebody in the jewellery trade

that if you bought a piece of jewellery

from a British manufacturer,

it was likely to have Brink's-Mat gold in it.

Cos that's how much gold had been redistributed.

We turned over an awful lot of places.

You never know how close or far you were away from it.

But, er... I hope I live long enough to hear.

In all, at least 33 people were arrested,

and 14 convicted,

in connection with the Brink's-Mat raid.

But despite an extensive police operation,

only two of the original gang of robbers have ever been jailed.

Some have been named, some haven't.

Ancl we'll continue to speculate,

because we are fascinated by this case.

In a sense, it's still an unsolved crime.

You know, part of the Brink's-Mat story is still a mystery.

And the impact of Britain's biggest-ever gold robbery

is still being felt today.

I don't think it's possible

to overestimate the impact of the Brink's-Mat robbery

and the enquiries that flowed from it.

It revealed sides of the underworld which we were unaware of.

It showed the tentacles of money-laundering.

It's changed the way organised crime was viewed in this country.

It was a great investigation.

It was life-changing for many.

We learned a huge amount.

It's something that'll never go away.

So, as you say, something I'll never forget.

Ancl neither will the other lads.

So...

Such is life.

It must be one of the biggest criminal investigations

of all time.

There's never been a crime quite like it.

Ancl there's never been a fallout from a crime,

in terms of additional lines of enquiry,

additional crimes, murders, all of that,

as a result, really, of an accidental crime.

A gang that went out to steal cash end up stealing a mountain of gold.

It's just an extraordinary series of events.

The mystery lives on.