Grandad of all raids
Four men with a combined age of 275 admit to £10m Hatton heist
FOUR men – including three pensioners – are facing jail after admitting their role in the Hatton Garden heist which saw more than £10million stolen from safe deposit boxes.
Brian Reader, 76, John Collins, 74, Terry Perkins, 67, and Daniel Jones, 58, admitted conspiracy to burgle a safe deposit box vault in the heart of London’s luxury jewellery district.
The Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company – which has now gone into liquidation – was burgled over the Easter weekend when a group of men tunnelled into the basement and broke into 72 safe deposit boxes containing gems, gold and cash.
Residents living near the deposit company heard an alarm go off in the early hours of Good Friday. Scotland Yard later admitted they had received an alert – but did not respond because they graded the job as ‘low priority’.
Workers returned after the Easter break to discover the vault in the basement of a sixstorey building had been ransacked. A hole measuring 10in by 18in had been cut through a 7ft concrete wall using an industrial drill.
A heavy steel metal cabinet that held scores of deposit boxes had been prised from brackets on the floor and walls.
Empty containers were scattered across the floor, with gems found strewn among the rubble. Detectives from Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad searched a string of properties in North London and Kent in connection with the raid. The Met has confirmed that valuables worth more than £10million were stolen.
One diamond dealer lost half a million pounds worth of jewels. The four men, who have a combined age of 275 and have been branded a ‘Dad’s Army’, pleaded guilty at Woolwich Crown Court yesterday.
They also faced a charge of conspiracy to convert or transfer criminal property. But in light of their guilty pleas in relation to the conspiracy to burgle, prosecutor Philip Evans said the Crown would not be pursuing the charge.
Reader, a car dealer from Dartford, East London, Perkins, a former property dealer from Enfield in North London, and the two other defendants – Collins, of Islington, North London, and Jones, of Enfield, will be sentenced at a later date.
Hugh Doyle, 48, a plumber from Enfield, William Lincoln, 60, from Bethnal Green, and John Harbinson, 42, a taxi driver from Benfleet, Essex, denied conspiracy to burgle yesterday. They also pleaded not guilty to the laundering offence and are due to stand trial later this year.
Reader’s son Paul, 50, of Dartford, and Carl Wood, 58, of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, are yet to enter pleas.
Gems, gold and cash