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dirtydog

Profile: Ronnie Biggs
How the robbery unfolded

The Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs has been refused parole by Justice Secretary Jack Straw.

Mr Straw rejected a recommendation by the Parole Board which backed the release of Biggs, 79.

Mr Straw said Biggs was "wholly unrepentant" about his actions and had "outrageously courted the media".

Biggs' son Michael called for Mr Straw to review the decision. "This is not justice," he said. He said his father was in a "life-threatening" condition.

Biggs is in the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital after breaking his hip in a fall.

He was taken from Norwich Prison to hospital after a fall at the weekend.

Had he complied with his sentence, he would have been a free man many years ago
Justice Secretary Jack Straw

The Parole Board report said the risk Biggs posed was "manageable under the proposed risk management plan and consequently parole is recommended".

But the panel added that "in terms of his attitudes and risk areas" there was little evidence, apart from his increased age, to suggest he would not return to his old criminal lifestyle.

Giving his reasons for the refusal of parole, Mr Straw said it was "unacceptable" that Biggs had chosen not to obey the law and tried to avoid the consequences of his decision.

Mr Straw said Biggs would have been a free man "many years ago" if he had complied with the sentence given to him.

He said: "I have informed Mr Ronald Biggs of my decision regarding his parole.

"Mr Biggs chose to serve only one year of a 30-year sentence before he took the personal decision to commit another offence and escape from prison, avoiding capture by travelling abroad for 35 years whilst outrageously courting the media.

"Had he complied with his sentence, he would have been a free man many years ago.

"I am refusing the Parole Board's recommendation for parole. Biggs chose not to obey the law and respect the punishments given to him - the legal system in this country deserves more respect than this.
HAVE YOUR SAY

Let him go for his pint and live his last months and years as a free man

Julian, Middlewich
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"It was Mr Biggs's own choice to offend and he now appears to want to avoid the consequences of his decision. I do not think this is acceptable.

"Mr Biggs is wholly unrepentant and the Parole Board found his propensity to breach trust a very significant factor. He has not undertaken risk-related work and does not regret his offending."

Biggs' son Michael said his father presented "no threat to society whatsoever", adding "he cannot walk, he cannot talk, he cannot eat and drink".

"This flies in the face of the parole board recommendation. This is not justice," he said.

Michael Biggs called Mr Straw's decision "beyond belief" and "vindictive".

"My father has been made to serve a long sentence because of his surname."

He said he would be visiting his father in hospital on Thursday morning.

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: "It is difficult to see what can be gained, other than tough headlines, by overturning a carefully considered Parole Board decision to grant release and instead condemning a sick, elderly man to spend what seem from reports to be his dying months in prison."

Biggs was a member of a 15-strong gang which attacked a mail train in Ledburn, Buckinghamshire, on 8 August 1963.

The gang made off with £2.6m in used banknotes in the biggest ever raid on a British train.

After being given a 30-year sentence, Biggs escaped from Wandsworth Prison, south London, in a furniture van after spending 15 months in jail.

He was on the run for more than 30 years, living in Spain, Australia and Brazil, before returning to the UK voluntarily in 2001.

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dirtydog

How the Great Train Robbery unfolded




The scale of the robbery captivated the British public

The Great Train Robbery of 1963 was the most famous raid of an era in which some criminals became celebrities.

The gang, taking inspiration from the rail robberies of the Wild West, raided a Glasgow to London mail train and escaped with £2.6m in used bank notes - a record haul at that time.

The mastermind was Bruce Reynolds, a known armed burglar.

Using inside information on mail movements, he assembled a gang to intercept the overnight train in a quiet part of Buckinghamshire.

The robbers struck on 8 August 1963 when the train stopped near Cheddington after the gang had changed a signal to red.

Fifteen men wearing ski masks and helmets swarmed onto the train and grabbed 120 bags of money.

Train driver Jack Mills was struck over the head with an iron bar, although it has never been established who was responsible, and he would never work again.

Police launched an immediate manhunt for the robbers, whose crime had captivated the British public, because of its scale.

Five days after the robbery, a tip-off led police to the gang's hideout at Leatherslade Farm, about 20 miles from the crime scene, near Oakley.
Charlie Wilson was the first Great Train Robber to be charged

The gang had escaped there to share out the proceeds of their robbery, which would amount to more than £40m in 2009.

It is believed the men played Monopoly at the farmhouse using some of the notes stolen from the mail train.

They fled the property before police arrived, but their fingerprints were found all over the house.

The gang contained a number of members who already had criminal records, which provided vital evidence for police.

Nine days after the robbery, Charlie Wilson became the first member of the gang to be arrested and charged.

By January 1964, police had gathered enough evidence for 12 of the 15 to be put on trial in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.

By April all 12 men had been convicted, with only one of them, Roger Cordrey, who gave back his £80,000 share of the money, pleading guilty.

Eleven of the men were each sentenced to between 20 and 30 years in prison.

In passing sentence, Mr Justice Edmund Davies focused on the violence used against Mr Mills.

He said: "Let us clear out of the way any romantic notions of daredevilry. This is nothing less than a sordid crime of violence inspired by vast greed."
Reynolds (r) joined Biggs (c) for his 70th birthday celebrations in Brazil

The 12th convicted man, solicitor John Wheater, was jailed for three years for obtaining the farm as a hideout.

However, it was accepted he had not known about the robbery until after it had happened.

The three Great Train Robbers not put on trial in 1964 had all been jailed within five years.

They included Buster Edwards, later the subject of a film starring Phil Collins, who went on the run to Mexico but gave himself up in 1968, and mastermind Reynolds.

Within two years of the first trial, both Charlie Wilson and Ronnie Biggs had escaped from prison, adding to the notoriety surrounding the robbery.

Wilson was caught in Canada in 1968, but Biggs became the UK's most famous fugitive as he continued to evade recapture until giving himself up by flying back to the UK from Brazil in 2001.

He was immediately arrested and taken to high-security Belmarsh prison to serve out the remainder of his original sentence, before later moving to Norwich prison on compassionate grounds in 2007.

His lawyers say he has suffered two strokes and now cannot speak or eat due to facial paralysis.

His son Michael, whose birth had prevented Biggs's extradition from Brazil, has campaigned for his father's release ever since his return to the UK, but that wish has been denied

dirtydog

Biggs escaped to Brazil, which had no extradition treaty with the UK

The Ronnie Biggs denied parole is a very different man to the one who entered custody shortly after taking part in the Great Train Robbery.

Now 79, Biggs was imprisoned in 1964 for his part in the infamous robbery, but the walls of Wandsworth prison could not contain him for long.

Just 15 months after he began a 30-year jail sentence, he used a rope ladder to clamber over to begin a life on the run.

But the aged Biggs is no longer blessed with such agility. His lawyers say he has recently suffered two strokes and has facial paralysis, which means he cannot speak or eat.

In a statement issued from Norwich prison in 2007, he said he had "been in jail for a long time and I want to die a free man".

He has been behind bars once again ever since the Sun newspaper flew him back to Britain from his sanctuary in Brazil in 2001.

But his life before then, said Biggs, "had not been an easy ride over the years".
"Even in Brazil I was a prisoner of my own making," he said.

Biggs's parole denial is the latest in a long series of events that have marked him out as one of Britain's most famous escapees.

It is more than 45 years since he and his gang stole £2.6m from the Glasgow to London mail train, but Ronnie Biggs has seldom been out of the news.

His escape from prison boosted his profile from a bit-part player in the robbery to a celebrity fugitive.
My last wish is to walk into a Margate pub as an Englishman and buy a pint of bitter
Ronnie Biggs



And his success at evading recapture for so long drew a sort of fascinated admiration from the British press and its readers.

Less publicised was the fate of one of Biggs's victims - train driver Jack Mills who was coshed by an unknown gang member, and who never fully recovered from his injuries.

In April 1965, Biggs scaled the wall at London's Wandsworth prison with a home-made rope ladder and dropped on to a waiting removal van.

Biggs initially fled to Paris, with his wife Charmian and two sons, Farley and Chris.

He had plastic surgery and then moved to Australia. But when Scotland Yard tracked him down he escaped to Brazil, which had no extradition treaty with the UK.

In 1974 Scotland Yard detective Jack Slipper, who spent his career tracking Biggs, managed to arrest him in Rio de Janeiro

But once again Biggs managed to evade British justice.

This time he successfully argued against extradition because he had fathered a son by a Brazilian girlfriend, having started proceedings to divorce his English wife.

Evading the law

Biggs avoided arrest again in 1977 when he attended a drinks party on board a British frigate docked in Rio.

And four years later he was kidnapped by a gang of ex-British soldiers who smuggled him to Barbados by boat.

Yet again, however, he pulled off a Houdini-like escape and used extradition laws to get himself returned to Brazil.

In 1997 the British government tried and failed again to get Biggs extradited.
Ronnie Biggs was in his mid-30s when he went on the run

Biggs's notoriety meant he was able to regularly charge newspapers for the "scoop" that he was coming home.

He even attracted the attention of the Sex Pistols, who used him as a vocalist.
He remained unrepentant about his crime.

"I don't regret the fact that I was involved in the train robbery," he said in 1997.
"As a matter of fact I'm quite pleased with the idea that I was involved in it... because it's given me a little place in history... I've made a mark for myself.

"My poor old dad used to say to me, 'I know you'll make good one day'. Well I made good in a curious way, I suppose. I became infamous."

It was the Sun that finally brought Biggs home in May 2001, when he was very ill.

'Last wish'

A statement issued by his son Michael said his father "fearing that the end of his life is close... has chosen to voluntarily return to this country".

"My father took this decision knowing that he would be arrested and imprisoned," Michael added.
I am an old man and often wonder if I truly deserve the extent of my punishment
Ronnie Biggs

Biggs and his family denied that he had returned to the UK solely to seek free health care.

Through his son he told a newspaper: "My last wish is to walk into a Margate pub as an Englishman and buy a pint of bitter."

On his return Biggs was immediately arrested and taken to high-security Belmarsh Prison to serve the remaining years of his original sentence.

In 2002, he married Raimunda Rothen, the mother of his son Michael.

Biggs's health then worsened but in 2005 the then Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, declined Biggs's appeal for release, because his illnesses were not deemed terminal.

However two years later Biggs was moved from Belmarsh prison to Norwich prison on "compassionate grounds".

In December 2007, Biggs issued a further appeal asking to be released: "I am an old man and often wonder if I truly deserve the extent of my punishment. I have accepted it and only want freedom to die with my family and not in jail."

In February 2009 Biggs fell ill with pneumonia, prompting fresh calls for his release on compassionate grounds.

But his chance of parole has been denied by Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who said the Great Train Robber was "wholly unrepentant" about his actions, and had "outrageously courted the media" during his many years on the run.

nidhogg

Thats why he still is, and should be, in jail. Since when is parole, or time off a right? He got caught, after his gang brutally struck some one with an iron bar, and, as noted the ONLY reason he is still serving his time is that he absconded from jail.

Let the f*cker rot.

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facilis est descensus Averni

crazy dog

Of course we have to remember that this is the same jack Straw, who when general Pinochet was arrested in the UK for crimes against humanity arranged for him to be released and let go. Seems a bit odd that a mass murderer and torturer was let off the hook, then an old man who had a minor role in a robbery almost 50 years ago is made to die in jail. I hope this arsehole of minister feels proud of himself. Just a shame he is not so tough on murderers, rapists and burglars who get away with slapped wrists in the UK.

melvbot

He's being made an example of because of his self made celebrity. The price of fame I guess.

nidhogg

Thats not as I understand it. Medical evaluation determined that Pinochet, who had suffered brain damage was unfit to stand trial.

crazy dog

So a 'medical condition' allowed Straw to let Pinochet go but in the case of Biggs, an infinately less serious criminal, his medical condition does not count. Straw is meant to be the justice minister aint he? As a young socialist Straw spent 4 years in Chile so you might have thought he would have had a bit more sympathy for Pinochet's victims.

peterpan

"They" Police, Bureaucrats, Politicians, aren't going to let him out, as retribution for the decades of embarrassment he caused them.

Jarvis

It's a fokin disgrace. He should be let out. Fokin Pedos are getting out after a few years in the UK............the UK justice system, what a laugh

r1 pet

he mite just rob another train! i say free the east london "one"

crazy dog

Nothing but vindictiveness from a corrupt government, mostly comprising of thieves who should themselves be behind bars for stealing from the public. Biggs has done nine years, about what a murderer gets to do today.

melvbot

Dont do the crime etc. I dont see why someone who was convicted, escaped then gave himself up should now be given any special treatment just because he's old and a bit of a "name"

crazy dog

But he is being given special treatment by being victimized, that's the point. Anyone else would have been free years ago, this is not about punishment but revenge for making the establishment look foolish. In a way they are still making fools of
themselves and by letting him die in custody they will just make a martyr out of him.

melvbot

How is he being victimized? By being made to carry out his sentence?
If you mean anyone else who hadnt made themselves a celebrity and gone on the run for 30 years then I'd agree. He chose to go on the run and not serve his sentence.

A martyr, hmmm maybe only in this context

Martyr
• a person who displays or exaggerates their discomfort or distress in order to obtain sympathy or admiration : she wanted to play the martyr.

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The Geek Shall Inherit The Earth

kmart

He recorded the hit UK single "No One Is Innocent" with the Sex Pistols in '78.
Lyrics:

"God save the sex pistols they're a bunch of wholesome blokes
They just like wearing filthy clothes and swapping filthy jokes
God save television keep the programms pure
God save William Grundy from falling in manure

Ronnie Biggs was doing time until he done a bunk
Now he says he's seen the light and he sold his soul to punk

God save Martin Boorman and nazis on the run
They wasn't being wicked God that was their idea of fun
God save Myra Hindley God save Ian Brady
Even though he's horrible and she ain't what you call a lady

Ronnie Biggs was doing time until he done a bunk
Now he says he's seen the light and he sold his soul to punk
Ronnie Biggs was doing time until he done a bunk
Now he says he's seen the light and he sold his soul to punk

God save politicians God save our friends the pigs
God save Idi Amin and god save Ronald Biggs
God save all us sinners God save your blackest sheep
God save the good samaritan and god save the worthless creep

Ronnie Biggs was doing time until he done a bunk
Now he says he's seen the light and he sold his soul to punk
Ronnie Biggs was doing time until he done a bunk
Now he says he's seen the light and he sold his soul to punk
Sold his soul Sold his soul Sold his soul to punk."

He also coshed the train driver who later died of his injuries..

crazy dog

It is not true nobody, knows who coshed the driver-who later died of cancer and not from his injuries, nobody gets leukemia and dies seven years later from a bang on the head.

flash

if he stole the money from you would you be so keen to see him go free?

melvbot

He took a gamble when he was younger and it paid off for a while. Nice try but tough shit.

Deck Ape

Paid off for quite awhile, I think. Didn't he used to charge tourists money just to eat dinner with him?

Coincidentally there was a young American murderer named Jesse James Hollywood who tried asylum in Brazil a la Ronnie Biggs. Didn't work out as well for him....