Brilliant physics graduate who helped pull off £13.5m Hatton Garden robbery DNA scientist dad died when he was 12 Gang adopted him during drug sentence Loner lived ‘without trace’ for 30 years

years ago with Terry Perkins, 67, Daniel Jones, 61, and John Collins, 75.

One Last Job, a biography of Reader, 80, reveals how he met Seed in the 1990s and realised the “alarm man” and computer expert was what he needed in the modern age.

With his middle-class upbringing, university education and frugal lifestyle, Seed made an unlikely gang member. But the source said: “He is a problem solver. Brian recognised his ability and brought him on board.”

Money was not Seed’s main motivation. The source said every day he wore the same jacket and Dr Martens.

He added: “Of course he wanted the money from the jobs, but he enjoyed the thrill of going into places at night. He didn’t even own his flat.” To get their man, detectives watched Seed for two-and-a-half years. They regularly tailed him walking to his brother’s house in East London, through Stratford to Canary Wharf, where he was filmed by police in April 2016.

Single and childless, Seed went to Cornwall with his mother and brother twice a year for family holidays.

In March 2018, he was finally arrested after the Flying Squad raided his one-bedroom flat and found £140,000 worth of Hatton Garden jewellery and gold ingots.

Passing sentence at Woolwich crown court, Judge Christopher Kinch QC told him: “Your role was a central one. You were at the heart of the core activities that had to be carried out.

“You were not just there to fetch and carry. This must rank among the worst offences of its type.”