Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
ALL THAT GLITTERS
Unknown to Anthony ‘Tony’ Black, when he got a job as a security guard on an industrial estate in Heathrow in 1979, it would start a chain of events that would lead him into a life of infamy.
After serving in the Army, a failed marriage had seen him return to living with his parents in Bromley, but salvation was at hand when he got a job guarding the Brink’s-mat warehouse – a nondescript secure unit used to store vast quantities of cash and valuable metals. Including gold.
Security was tight. There was CCTV, advanced deadlocks and always a team of security guards. Then Black’s sister, Jennifer, revealed her partner, Brian Robinson, had a flat available he could move into. In doing so, he put himself in the debt of the man who would become the criminal mastermind behind the raid. Robinson was aware of the sums of money passing through the Brink’s-mat warehouse – up to £2 million on occasion – and knew his brother-in-law gave him a foot in the door. Known as ‘The Colonel’, Robinson had a long history of armed robberies.
Over time, he cultivated Black, eventually letting him in on the scheme and introducing him to partner Micky Mcavoy. The two seasoned criminals hatched a plan.
Using Black, they forced their way into the warehouse at 6.30am on November 26, 1983. When Black turned up for work, he unlocked a side door and signalled to a group of men waiting in a blue van outside. Within moments, six armed men, wearing balaclavas, entered the warehouse. They were ruthless, knocking out several guards. Using Black’s inside knowledge they identified those who held the keys and codes to the vault. They threatened them – dousing them in petrol and telling them they knew where their families lived. Black was not attacked but ordered by the gang to open the doors. But there was a problem. One of the guards, in his panic, couldn’t remember his code. The gang lit a match, knives were held to the guards’ throats. They wanted the cash in the main safe. But as the guard struggled to remember his access code, they stumbled upon something far more valuable. Gold. In total there was almost three tonnes of gold – almost 7,000 bars stamped with the magic numbers of 9999 – meaning it was 99.99% pure gold.
They had hit a jackpot they didn’t even realise was there. Suddenly, the code to the cash vault didn’t seem so important. The getaway van was visibly weighed down by the weight of, what was then, £26.5 million of bullion. Today the figure would be closer to £100 million.
By the time the guards were able to call the police, the crooks had disappeared.
The gold was owned by Johnson Matthey Bankers and due to
It is said if you have bought gold jewellery in the UK since winter 1983, the chances are you were wearing some of the £26 million bullion stolen during the Brink’s-mat robbery. The crime of the century, set to be dramatised in BBC series The Gold later this month, extended its reach into Kent where key figures lived, ingots and vast quantities of cash were smuggled and lives would be taken. Could the missing bullion – nearly half of that stolen – be hidden here too? Chris Britcher reports...
be escorted to Gatwick Airport for shipment overseas. Such was the impact of the crime on the price of gold, the haul they made off with increased in value by £1 million within 24 hours.
Of course, stealing such a vast quantity of gold is one thing. Turning it into cash, amid a media and public frenzy in the aftermath of such a raid, quite something else. Especially when a £2 million reward was swiftly put up for information leading to its return.
With each gold bar bearing the crest and serial number of Johnson Matthey, to extract the value meant liquifying the gold. It would have to be smelted down and recast to disguise it. The police quickly sensed an inside job. and eight days after the crime, Black was arrested. He blabbed and Robinson and Mcavoy were arrested days later.
Robinson insisted he had an
alibi. He told police he was visiting his mother in Sheppey – stopping off at a Little Chef on the M2 en route. The police didn’t buy it and the three were all charged.
When Black appeared in court in February, he was jailed for six years. Later that year Mcavoy and Robinson all faced trial at the Old Bailey amid tight security. During the hearing one of the security guards attacked during the raid saw threats made to his mother in Sheerness and girlfriend in Gravesend. He was immediately given around-the-clock police protection.
Robinson and Mcavoy were both found guilty and sentenced to 25 years, without parole. Despite the breakthrough, the detectives were still left with the small matter of the missing gold.
Mcavoy had agreed that were they to be caught, an old friend, Brian Perry, was to take control of their share and safeguard it until their release.
Perry, however, had other plans.
With his old mates behind bars, he set about turning some of the gold into cash.
He got in touch with successful businessman and member of the criminal underworld Kenneth Noye, who lived in a plush mock-tudor house in leafy West
Kingsdown. He, in turn, called in old mate Brian Reader to assist. Noye quickly came on the police radar when officers tracked a smelting machine being bought under suspicious circumstances and taken to his home.
He was put under surveillance. On one occasion he was tailed to Jersey where he paid, in cash, for 11 solid gold bars – a gift, he said, for his son. What it gave Noye was a receipt for the legitimate ownership of gold ingots.
Being careful to only ever handle 11 bars at a time, the gang transported the gold from its hiding place – which has never been found – through Noye and smelter John Palmer (they mixed it with copper coins to disguise its purity and, most importantly, source) and up to a gold bullion company in Bristol called Scadlynn. There it was stamped legitimately and sold back on to the market.
Ironically, one of the biggest buyers of the gold (£13 million worth) was Johnson Matthey Bankers – the very company it had been stolen from. People acting for Scadlynn withdrew hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time from its account – the proceeds of the now laundered Brink’s-mat gold – at a high street branch of Barclays nearby.
In fact, the amounts demanded over the counter grew so large that the Bank of England had to make special arrangements to send cash to the bank. All freshly minted notes carried the AE24 prefix on the serial numbers. It would be key to linking money found as police closed in. Meanwhile, back in Kent,
‘Within moments, six armed men, wearing balaclavas, entered the warehouse. They were ruthless, knocking out several guards. Using Black’s inside knowledge they identified those who held the keys and codes to the vault...’
police believed they were closing the net on Noye and Reader’s activities.
On Saturday, January 26, 1985, officers called in two of their best surveillance experts to enter the grounds of Noye’s home when they knew he was meeting Reader. They hoped to catch them in the act and secure the incriminating evidence they needed.
What occurred that night would haunt everyone involved forever more.
One of the two balaclava-clad undercover police officers entering the gardens that night was 45-year-old John Fordham from Essex.
As they edged closer to the property Noye’s pet Rottweilers charged at them, raising the alarm. Fordham’s colleague heard raised voices and surged in to find he’d been stabbed 11 times.
Reader fled onto a main road where he thumbed a ride. Delighted when a car stopped, he was less so when he realised it was police and he was arrested.
Noye was also detained. A search of his property found 11 gold bars, crudely smelted and of the same purity as that of the Brink’s-mat gold. Large quantities of cash – some with the tell-tale AE24 serial numbers – were recovered from both men’s homes. They were charged with Fordham’s murder but found not guilty of murder on the grounds of self-defence. However, a conviction for their part in laundering the Brink’smat gold did stick.
In May 1986, Noye was sentenced to 13 years, Reader nine. In the meantime police had arrested a host of associates, and raided John Palmer’s house in Bath. Smelting gear was found but Palmer was “on holiday” in Tenerife. It was a holiday he would be in no hurry to return from. He was eventually deported but acquitted of handling stolen bullion – although he went on to serve eight years for a time-share scam in Spain. Despite not finding any of the unadulterated gold bars, police were finally following the money made from the sale of the gold as it made its way through various off-shore and anonymous accounts. Brian Perry, who had – much to the anger of mastermind Mcavoy – taken control of his share of the gold, had now moved from Peckham to Biggin Hill. He’d also started a relationship with Mcavoy’s wife who he’d bought a large mansion for in Bickley, near Bromley. Just to make matters more complicated, he’d also bought Mcavoy’s mistress a house in the same village. A property she guarded with two dogs. Named Brinks and Mat.
The cops tracked down the solicitor involved in the purchase of the properties – Michael Relton. He, it transpired, had been informally appointed by Perry to build a financial empire with the gold. But not all of it.
It is estimated about half of the gold remains either still hidden or smuggled out and smelted.
Much of the money laundered went into property in Kent and was invested in land at the redeveloped London’s Docklands. Eventually, Relton would be jailed for 12 years. Perry for nine. But the story does not end there. Kenneth Noye emerged from prison in 1994 and two years later, he became embroiled in another notorious case - the ‘road rage’ murder of Dartford’s Stephen Cameron, 21, on a slip-road of the M25 at Swanley. After serving 16 years for that, Noye was freed in 2019. He is now 75.
John Palmer was shot dead at his Essex home in 2015 at the age of 64. The case remains unsolved.
As for Brian Perry – the man who had assumed control of his old mates’ share of their ill-gotten gains? He was shot dead by two masked men in November 2001 outside his minicab firm in Peckham just months after being released from jail. He was 63.
Mcavoy and Robinson had been released from jail the previous year.
Micky Mcavoy died just a few weeks ago, on New Year’s Eve. He was 70 and never got to profit from the raid which cost him 25 years of freedom.
Brian Robinson, who had lived in Beckenham following his release from jail, died in a nursing home in south London in early 2021. He was 77 and said to be penniless.
Brian Reader would later be the ringleader in the Hatton Garden raid of 2015 which netted £14 million from a vault of safety deposit boxes.
He was released in 2018 after serving three years due to ill health. Now 82, it is believed he still lives in Dartford. He now suffers from dementia.
As for Tony Black – the security guard whose job started the cogs of the crooks’ whirring? He, probably wisely, went into hiding.
As for the money? Who knows...
‘Such was the impact of the crime on the price of gold, the haul they made off with increased in value by £1m within 24 hours...’