The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Brian Reader
Career criminal who was jailed for his part in the Brink’s-Mat and Hatton Garden robberies
BRIAN READER, who has died aged 84, appeared to defy the adage that “crime does not pay”, making an estimated £200 million from robberies including the 2015 Hatton Garden safe-deposit heist and the 1983 Brink’s-Mat bullion theft; known as “the guvnor”, he cultivated an air of middleclass respectability and was described by one police officer as “a good, old-style villain [who] had a job to do and knew I did too”.
Reader’s first big job was a £2 million raid on Lloyds Bank, Baker Street, in September 1971 that involved tunnelling from the basement of a shop two doors away. He claimed that in one safety deposit box he found child pornography belonging to a Conservative cabinet member (one of several lurid rumours linked to the crime).
He escaped prosecution, possibly by paying off police officers, and fled to Spain, which then had no extradition treaty with Britain. From there he continued operating in the background. Despite having no passport, in 1983 he hitched a lift on a private yacht to Jersey, and from there to Britain, to take part in a £3 million raid on Lloyds Bank in Holborn Circus. Again he escaped prosecution.
The Brink’s-Mat robbery, at a Heathrow trading estate in November that year, was one of the largest in British history, with a loose collection of associates making off with £26 million in gold bullion, diamonds and cash. Reader would later be convicted for his role in handling the stolen goods. Kenneth Noye, another career criminal, was recruited to dispose of the gold, but Noye later discovered Detective Constable John Fordham in the grounds of his home and stabbed the officer to death.
Noye claimed self-defence and was cleared of murder, as was Reader, who had been present at the time.
When the jury at the 1986 Brink’s-Mat robbery trial returned their guilty verdict, however, Reader was furious. The following day he was jailed for eight years.
Reader had spirited away enough of his ill-gotten gains to retire peacefully, but he was unable to resist one final audacious heist. Over the 2015 Easter weekend the 76-year-old used a Freedom Pass to travel by bus to Hatton Garden and lead a gang of elderly thieves known as the “Diamond Wheezers” in a £25 million raid on more than 70 deposit boxes that involved drilling a hole in a thick concrete wall.
On the second night, however, Reader failed to return. Terry Perkins, one of the gang, was furious, describing Reader as an “old ponce” who spent his days sitting in a south-east London café “talking about all our yesterdays. He bottled out at the last minute… He’s not going to work again.” He was played by Michael Caine in King of Thieves (2018), one of the three films and a miniseries based on the Hatton Garden raid.
Brian Henry Reader was born into “harsh poverty” in Lewisham, south London, on February 28 1939, the eldest of four children of Harry Reader and his wife Doris, née Atkins. His criminal education came at the knee of his father, a lorry driver who pilfered from the London docks. Reader attended St Peter’s School, Greenwich, and South East London Technical College.
His first court appearance was at 11 when he received a conditional discharge for stealing tinned fruit.
Reader worked as a butcher’s boy and became a fireman for British Rail but soon returned to his former ways, receiving a conditional discharge for stealing £4, 15 shillings and sixpence from a Brighton tea hut. A judge at the Old Bailey also spared him jail, despite a more serious grievous bodily harm charge. He then did National Service with the Royal Engineers. On discharge, his character was assessed as “good”.
He bought a tipper truck and described himself as a haulage contractor, but in April 1960 he was fined for possessing an offensive weapon and two years later fined again, this time for handling stolen goods. By then he was part of what the journalist Paul Lashmar called “a flexible group of Britain’s top robbers and burglars” and was so busy that he complained that he “never got a day off ”.
Reader’s career almost came to a dramatic end in May 1971 when he fell from a window of Reading telephone exchange while trying to silence bank alarms; he suffered a fractured skull and a broken wrist. Reading magistrates were unsympathetic and fined him £35.
After the Hatton Garden raid he was jailed for six years and three months. He was released in 2018 on health grounds and retired to south-east London, using the name McCarthy. His death has only recently come to light.
In 1963 Reader married Lyn Kidd, a bookmaker’s assistant. She died in 2009. They had a son and a daughter.
Brian Reader, born February 28 1939, died September 2023