The Great Train Robbery (16 page)

From the outset, the police agreed to share information gleaned from their network of underworld informers with the Post Office Investigation Branch. One of the first informer reports held tantalising clues for the Post Office investigators – the report of a mysterious phone call made to one of the train robbers, Gordon Goody. The background to this major development is given in an internal report by IB Deputy Controller R.F. Yates:

On the 29 August, 1963, Mr Osmond and I attended a special detective conference held at New Scotland Yard. Commander Hatherill was in the chair and Chief Superintendent Millen (Flying Squad) and Chief Inspector Bradbury were also present. Mr Hatherill said that on the previous Tuesday he had seen an informant who had given him a list of 14 names of the bandits who had formed the robbery team; that he (Hatherill) was satisfied that those 14 criminals were the ‘certain’ offenders and that the money had already been divided into 18 lots – i.e. one each for the 14 offenders quoted; one each for 2 Post Office insiders; one for the organiser and one for the man who had bought the farm (i.e. about £145,000 apiece).

Mr Hatherill said that, according to the informant, the story of the case was, briefly, that Brian Field had made the first contact with the Post Office insider from whom he had obtained information about HVP mails carried on the Up Special TPO; that this enabled Brian Field to plan the robbery; that Field first put the plan to another London gang who rejected it; that he then put it to Bruce Reynolds who accepted it and carried it out with a team specially recruited for the job; that this team met at Leatherslade Farm at 11.30 pm on the 7 August, 1963; that only one man - Goody – arrived late (said to have been half an hour, which would make it about 11.30 pm) and that Goody’s explanation of his late arrival was that he had been waiting for ‘the message’. The informant apparently said that ‘the message’ contained information about the number of men to be found in the HVP coach at the time of attack and that there were ‘a hundred bags on the train’. Mr Osmond and I put it to Mr Hatherill that the times quoted would be important and he agreed that the alleged information given in ‘the message’ must have been available to Goody by about 11.30 pm on the 7 August and certainly not later than midnight. Mr Hatherill explained that the informant had also said that the information came from a Post Office man ‘on the train’ who, in turn, had passed it to his brother and that it was this brother, an Irishman, who had passed on ‘the message’. Discussion did not further clarify the informant’s story – i.e. whether ‘the brother’ was also a Post Office employee in view of the two shares of money; whether the message was passed direct to Goody or to Brian Field; whether, if ‘the brother’ was an Irishman, the man on the train was also Irish or a step brother. It was suggested to Mr Hatherill that ‘the brother’ might have been a railwayman who had assisted with the possible sabotage of the HVP van and Mr Millen – who was, apparently, also present when the informant was seen – said that although there was no information about a railwayman, he would not entirely discount such a possibility. It was generally assumed by Police that the information from the ‘man on the train’ had been passed on by telephone but I explained at once that on the 9 August I had taken steps to trace and check every ticketed call made to the London area from stations and towns at which the Up Special TPO had stopped and that the only suspicious call traced was one from Rugby to Wicken, Bucks (pub to pub). There is, however, an STD service from some places on the route. Mr Millen asked us to get out the personnel papers of all 70 odd TPO staff who were on the train that night and then to discuss the problem of concentrating inquiries on any Irishman or officers with Irish names. Mr Millen further said that another clue was the identity of the ‘man on the train’ was that he would be known to Brian Field – i.e. he might have been represented in Court by Messrs Wheater or Field might have been concerned in a house purchase for the Post Office man.

The build up of HVP sacks did not reach the total of 100 until the Up Special TPO reached Tamworth at 1.23 am and that if any information about loads were given out by a member of the train crew in time to reach Goody by 11.30 pm it must have been at Preston where the TPO stopped at 10.50 pm – or, if given some time latitude - at the next stop, i.e. Warrington 11.36 pm. Even at Warrington, however, there were only 46 HVP bags on board. The train reached Crewe well after midnight and by this time Goody had, apparently, reached the farm. There were only 91 mail bags on board at Crewe. It was clear, therefore, that there was something radically wrong with this information, and it became a question for consideration, as in all ‘informant’ cases, whether when some information can be disproved, other parts of the story could be relied on. One further part of the story did not ring true – i.e. that which deals with the number of officers to be found in the HVP coach by the time the train reached Cheddington. It is, of course, impossible for any man on the TPO to say hours ahead how many officers could be found in the HVP coach. The Inspector on the train has full authority to switch staff to that point and indeed on this very night he sent two additional officers to assist with the heavy load. Mr Osmond and I felt somewhat sceptical about the accuracy of this information but I pushed ahead with IB inquiries on the basis that some latitude might, perhaps, have to be allowed. There were 16 officers on the train that night who could be regarded as Irishmen, particulars of whom have been supplied to New Scotland Yard. Of those, only 10 have one or more brothers, and of the 10 only two would have had normal and free access to the HVP coach – i.e. Mr M R Lyttle, PHG London, who travelled from Carlisle to London and Mr T McCarthy, PHG Glasgow, who travelled from Glasgow to Crewe. IB and Police inquiries have so far failed to direct suspicion to either man but observation is being maintained on their movements from time to time for signs of any lavish spending.
1

Having had the Friday and the weekend to work on the ‘matters arising’ from the conference, Osmond and Yates returned to Scotland Yard on Monday 2 September where they put to Hatherill the results of their own interim investigation. In particular they expressed their scepticism about the reliability of certain aspects of his informant’s information about the ‘Goody message’. Significantly Hatherill responded by telling them that, ‘Some of the information concerned had reached him second-hand and it could well have lost some of its accuracy on the way.
2

Commander Hatherill’s list of fourteen suspects was a particularly significant development, as it provided a list of names, the majority of which were already linked by previous offences and relationships. Unlike DCS Butler’s 16 August suspect list, which was very much a patchwork of names flagged up by a variety of informants whose information varied in terms of quality and past reliability, Hatherill’s list came from one source regarded as knowledgeable and reliable. It is therefore unsurprising, as previously noted, that a good many of the names on Butler’s earlier list were eliminated from the enquiry within days of its compilation.

Hatherill’s list comprised the following names:
3

The tip about the two post office insiders and the specific information they allegedly gave Goody was, as conceded by Hatherill, second-hand and possibly distorted to some extent by the passage of its journey. Despite the IB’s reservations concerning the specific nature of the information given by the alleged insiders, they certainly seem to have been convinced by the proposition that there were at least one or more insiders, as R.F. Yates’s report makes clear:

Inside Information

General
: One of the important aspects of this case has been the possible leakage of information to the bandits from a member of the staff concerning HVP traffic. This possibility was envisaged from the outset and the result of the detailed inquiries made about 35 officers,
5
but no evidence has come to light that any detailed inside information, or any general knowledge of the movement of HVP money has been passed on.

Scope
: Information regarding the general treatment of HVPs and their transit on the Up Special Travelling Post Office is known to a wide section of Post Office staff and to some professional criminals. It is also widely known in the Post Office that, after a Bank Holiday, a large sum of money would be in transit and therefore, the number of HVPs would be greater than normal. Whilst such general information would be sufficient to stimulate interest amongst criminals to plan a robbery, it would be totally inadequate for a gang to be able to launch a successful attack of the nature of that under review. I hold the view that meticulous planning would be undertaken by criminals of this calibre, that the arrangements would be precise and that, consequently, detailed information would be essential before embarking on such a venture. Furthermore, I think that provision would be made for any changes in procedure to be notified to the gang. Post Office employees in general would not, of course, be in a position to keep abreast of daily changes in TPO working, and the only officers apart from some of high rank or those employed in special security postal work who would be able to furnish impeccable information, are those actually employed on the Up and Down Special TPOs; those attached to the HQ of the TPO Section itself or those employed at railway stations in the loading and unloading of HVP mails from the Up Special TPO.

Administrative Staff
: Discreet but general inquiries have been made without success concerning the supervising and administrative staff at GPO HQ and in LPR but this was cut short when the information mentioned in the below paragraph came to hand, although all the known facts have been passed to police.

TPO Staff
: At the start of this inquiry the IB arranged for all officers who were on the attacked TPO to be questioned and finger printed and for a CRO check to be carried out. Some TPO officers were questioned again by police but no evidence of collusion came to light. It was found, however, that three officers who travelled on the Up Special on the night of the 7/8 August have criminal records, but the Police discovered no evidence to connect them with the known members of the gang.
6

Significantly, Deputy Controller Yates identifies four groups of post office employees from whom the leak or leaks might have emanated:

GPO officers of ‘high rank’ at GPO HQ;

GPO officers employed in special security postal work;

postal workers on board the TPO;

GPO officers attached to the HQ of the TPO section.

The thirty-five officers on whom detailed enquiries were to be made are listed in an IB investigation file:
7