Brinks Mat

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On November 26th 1983, six robbers broke into the Brinks Mat warehouse at Heathrow Airport. It was supposed to be a relatively easy job, stealing £3 million in cash with the help of an inside man, but this all changed when, instead of the cash, they found gold bullion worth £26 million.

It appeared at first that the robbery was a huge scale operation that had been extraordinarily well planned. And in reality, the operation was extremely detailed in it's planning, but the robbers were expecting to find money, not ten tonnes of gold bullion, waiting to be transported to the Far East.

The £26 million in gold wasn't just lying in a warehouse waiting to be stolen. It was locked in a safe, deep inside a secure airport building surrounded by guards, but that didn't deter the robbers.

Clearly having some insight into the layout of the building, the gang burst into the secure area, disabled the guards and tied them up. But to make matters worse, in order to force the guards to reveal the combination to the safe, the robbers poured petrol over them and threatened them with lighted matches until they gave in.

When the safe was finally opened, they looked in disbelief on a haul of gold bullion that was far beyond any previous 'cash-only' heists they had ever been involved in. What should have been a five minute "smash 'n' grab" robbery, ended up becoming a lengthy operation that involved several members of the gang leaving the airport to get some different transport because the booty was too big and heavy for their getaway vehicle.

Nearly two hours after they had entered the building, the gang finally made their getaway.

The usual suspects
The Brinks Mat robbery was a bold and highly skilled operation, so it didn't take the police very long to trace the core element of the gang from the usual suspects. The word on the street was that Mickey McAvoy and Brian Robinson had been scouting for trustworthy recruits, weeks before the robbery, rumoured to be a mammoth inside job.

Robinson was already quite well known to the police, and was nicknamed "the Colonel". His partner in crime, Mickey McAvoy, also had a notorious reputation and was considered to be one of South London's most prolific armed robbers.

The first problem McAvoy and Robinson faced was what to do with £26 million worth of gold bullion - not the easiest thing in the world to hide. And to have any chance of getting away with the job, they would have to arrange for it to be carefully laundered and discreetly transferred into their own pockets. This kind of operation requires a large degree of care - and an element of subtlety - both of which Robinson and McAvoy lacked.

Before the robbery, they were both living in modest council houses in South London, but only a few weeks after the heist they were living in a very large house in Kent, paid for in cash. And to make things worse, it was rumoured that McAvoy had bought two Rottweiler dogs to protect his mansion and named them 'Brinks' and 'Mat'.


Deciding what to do with such a large physical amount of gold would have been extremely difficult for the two main robbers, and there would not have been many people in their immediate circle who could have known what to do with it, or who might be interested in such vast amounts of gold. Some bigger fish from the London end of the criminal pond had to be called in.

The Brinks Mat gang called upon the services of a criminal figure known only as the Fox. The Fox was a well-known figure in the criminal underworld, and had risen to become one of the senior figures around the country due to associations with many London gangs, and particularly the infamous Adams family.

Using his contacts, the Fox arranged for the Brinks Mat gold to be delivered to a variety of different people so it could be smelted down into more manageable forms. The Adams family were happy to oblige, for a small cut of the proceeds. They involved the services of a jeweller named Solly Nahome, who was willing to sell on the smelted down goods.

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The trail of guilt
The first job for the police was to find out the identity of the gang's insider who worked for Heathrow, and it turned out to be a lot easier than they expected. One of the security guards at Heathrow was called Anthony Black, and on the morning of the robbery, he had been late into work, and missed the entire heist - a fact that was duly noted by the police in their preliminary investigations.

It didn't take much investigative work to discover that Black was at that time living with Brian Robinson's sister. And with a little pressure from the authorities he confessed to his role in the robbery, and began pointing the finger at the rest of the gang who were now living a life of luxury. It seemed like the game was up, but there were still a few more twists in this tale.

Honour among thieves?
After realising the game was up, McAvoy wanted to use his substantial wealth as a get out clause from a long-term prison sentence. He figured that he could willingly give the money up to the authorities and hopefully not have to spend his entire middle age in a cell. So after he was arrested, McAvoy entrusted his share of the gold with a variety of trusted friends including Brian Perry.

It seemed that McAvoy believed in the much fabled 'honour amongst thieves' code, but when he came to claim his temporarily loaned wealth, both the money and gold was nowhere to be found.

As a personal friend and business associate, McAvoy didn't question the motives of the Fox when he told him that it was Perry who had the money and was refusing to part with it. To confound things further, Perry denied this accusation and, despite the fact that the Fox was living in even greater wealth than before, McAvoy still believed it was Perry who had betrayed him.

Perry was arrested for handling the gold, and during his trial he received a letter threatening his life if he didn't give the money back to its rightful owner. The letter pointed out in no uncertain terms that the robbers would not be in prison forever, and that Perry ought to hand over the money now.

Whatever Perry felt about this threat, after spending nine years at Her Majesty's Pleasure, it appeared that he had managed to convince those with grievances against him that he had done nothing wrong to them. On his release from prison, he didn't even request any protection, preferring to make no complaint and begin living a quiet life.

And that's exactly what he did. Perry rebuilt his legitimate taxi business, and followed a daily routine that suggested he believed he was now living in safety. His enemies eventually caught up with him on November 16th 2001 when he was shot dead.

The gang unravels
A final piece in the Brinks Mat puzzle came to light when it was discovered that Perry had introduced Kenneth Noye into ever-growing circle of Brinks Mat associates. Noye appeared to have some expertise in the gold smelting trade, and had connections with John Palmer, the owners of a Bristol-based gold dealership.

Noye's expertise was used to introduce copper to much of the Brinks Mat gold during the smelting process, which changed the carat of the metal and made it impossible to trace back to the Heathrow robbery. But despite this apparently foolproof way to distributing the wealth, a lack of subtlety and stupid indiscretion raised suspicion from the authorities.

The first mistake the gang made was withdrawing large amounts of their laundered money from a single branch of a bank in Bristol. Not an unusual problem you would think, but the sheer amount of cash that was continually withdrawn from that particular branch, meant that bank had to request additional funds from the Bank of England. This earned the robbers the attention of the Treasury, and unsurprisingly, the police. All of which meant that Noye was placed under heavy police surveillance.


Despite the unwanted attention of the law, the desire to keep hold of his newly acquired wealth became too much for Kenneth Noye (pictured right), and in January 1985, he discovered DC John Fordham, an undercover detective, in his garden, and in the row that ensued, the officer was stabbed to death. Noye was subsequently arrested for murder and although it may have seemed that he would finally go to prison, the jury believed the defence case that he acted in self-defence and was acquitted by a majority decision.

But that wasn't the end of his troubles. In 1986, Noye was back in court to endure a lengthy eleven-week trial, with his co-defendant Thomas Adams (a member of the Adam's gang) after eleven bars of gold were discovered in his home.

This second arrest eventually led to his conviction of conspiracy to handle the Brinks Mat gold, as well as other VAT evasion charges. He was fined a total of £700,000 and given 14 years in prison. Noye left the jury with the final words: "I hope you all die of cancer."

That was not to be the last we would hear of Kenneth Noye. The incident occurred on an ordinary stretch of road in 1996, when Stephen Cameron made a late change into a slip road in front of Kenneth Noye's Land Rover.

Noye reacted angrily and a fight broke out between him and Mr Cameron. In clear view of Danielle Cable, Mr Cameron's fiancée, Noye pulled out a large knife and fatally stabbed Stephen Cameron in the liver and heart. After seeing his victim fall to the ground, Kenneth Noye got back in his car and drove off, beginning one of the biggest vehicle hunts in recent history.

Following many police hours of intense investigations, Noye was eventually found in Spain, trying to arrange to take a private helicopter to France. He was extradited, tried and received a life sentence.

Missing gold
Although the gold that Noye had hidden was eventually recovered, the Brinks Mat story is still far from over. Three tonnes of gold is still missing from the original robbery and this is one element of the case that remains open.