The Brink’s-Mat Robbery

The Brink’s-Mat robbery was one of the largest thefts in British history. The discovery of the record-breaking haul in a west London warehouse in 1983 set off a chain of events that would echo through Britain’s criminal underworld for decades. It helped shape the property boom of the 1980s, the drugs trade of the 1990s and left an enduring mark on UK crime and policing. But who were the men behind the so-called robbery of the century? Why did the tentacles of the theft reach so far? And what is the “curse of Brink’s-Mat”? This is a Short History Of the Brink’s-Mat Robbery. A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Wensley Clarkson, author of The Curse of Brink’s-Mat: 25 years of Murder and Mayhem. Written by Nicola Rayner | Produced by Kate Simants | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Pascal Wyse | Assembly edit by Dorry Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw | Fact check: Sean Coleman Unlock the next two episodes of Short History Of… right now by subscribing to Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network, including Real Survival Stories and Sherlock Holmes Short Stories. Just click the subscription banner at the top of the feed, or head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions to get started. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:02Speaker 05

  It's 6:30 in the morning on November the 26th, 1983, on a trading estate near Heathrow Airport in West London. Thirty-seven-year-old security guard Michael Scouse arrives in his car outside an unprepossessing warehouse.

• 1:19Speaker 05

  Unit 7 is a two-story building occupied by Brink's Mat, a leading security firm. It's a storage place for precious metals and currency in transit to or from the airport.

• 1:33Speaker 05

  Getting out of his car, Scouse walks past the big shutter door that allows vehicles access to the building, and heads around the side to the pedestrian entrance. There, he finds four other security guards fidgeting to keep warm, though he notes that one of them, Tony Black, is missing.

• 1:52Speaker 05

  As the supervisor and key holder, Scouse is in charge of the complicated security protocols that start the shift, letting himself in first to disarm the night alarm, then returning to admit the others.

• 2:05Speaker 05

  Once everyone is safely inside, Scouse heads past the vehicle loading bay and vault to the first floor.

• 2:13Speaker 05

  He's just getting started in the control room, looking at today's tasks, when he's summoned back downstairs by the doorbell.

• 2:21Speaker 05

  Waiting by the side door is Tony Black, looking pale and unkempt. He disappears immediately to use the toilet, then joins Scouse upstairs. But just then, a commotion erupts in the staff room.

• 2:37Speaker 05

  As Scouse gets to his feet, a masked figure appears in the doorway, holding a semi-automatic pistol.

• 2:44Speaker 05

  He barks at him and Black to get on the floor. The pistol is pressed into Scouse's neck, and a bag is pulled roughly over his head. After his wrists are wrenched behind him and secured with handcuffs, he is kicked a few times, and cold liquid is sloshed on his crotch. Its strong, familiar stench reaches his nostrils instantly. It's petrol.

• 3:08Speaker 05

  While his colleagues are handcuffed to radiators in the staff room, Scouse is forced to hand over the keys to the building, then haul downstairs towards the main safe with his colleague, Robin Risley, who has the other half of the combination. From beneath his hood, Scouse hears the gang pass through the series of doors and alarm systems until they're inside the caged vault.

• 3:29Speaker 05

  Temporarily relieved of his hood, Scouse punches his combination swiftly into the safe's keypad.

• 3:37Speaker 05

  But when it's Risley's turn, the panic seems to have wiped the numbers from his mind.

• 3:45Speaker 05

  He tries again and again, but even the threatening rattle of a matchbox doesn't jog his memory. The robbers are sounding increasingly agitated, and now one of them comes over and tears off Scouse's hood again. He wants to know what's in some barrels on the floor. But then, his attention is drawn by a stack of gray cardboard boxes on two pallets. The masked man opens one up and calls the others over, astonished, when he sees what it contains: twelve bars of pure gold.

• 4:20Speaker 05

  He opens another with the same result, and then another.

• 4:25Speaker 05

  A buzz of excitement passes through the vault. It's clear to Scouse that even though the robbers were expecting a big score, this is way more than they'd hoped for. What will become known as the Brink's Mat gang have come across perhaps 27 million pounds worth of pure gold.

• 4:44Speaker 05

  But the question is, what will they do with it now?

• 4:55Speaker 05

  The Brink's Mat robbery was one of the largest thefts in British history. The discovery of the record-breaking haul in a West London warehouse in 1983 set off a chain of events that would echo through Britain's criminal underworld for decades. It helped shape the property boom of the 1980s, the drugs trade of the 1990s, and left an enduring mark on UK crime and policing.

• 5:19Speaker 05

  But who were the men behind the so-called robbery of the century? Why did the tentacles of the theft reach so far? And what is the curse of Brink's Mat?

• 5:31Speaker 05

  I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is A Short History of the Brink's Mat Robbery.

• 5:46Speaker 05

  Around the world, cities have always had their criminal underclass. And London, in the post-war decades, is no exception. Though the majority, rich and poor, make ends meet through honest means, for those young people brought up among the city's rogues and scoundrels, crime can seem to be the rule, rather than the exception. True crime writer Wensley Clarkson is the author of The Curse of Brink's Mat: 25 Years of Murder and Mayhem.

• 6:15Speaker 06

  South London in the 60s, 70s and 80s was a hotbed of professional criminals. These were people who were brought up in a criminal atmosphere, who were brought up just after the war, there wasn't a lot of money around, everyone ducked and dived. Your father would steal something off a ship in the docks in the Thames. Another relative might be a printer at the big newspapers who's fraudulently putting in claims for all sorts of extra time he's earned and ending up earning a fortune as a result. It was all about ducking and diving and this mentality moved as the decades progressed into out and out professional criminal behaviour.

• 6:57Speaker 05

  One of the boys growing up in South London at this time is named Mickey McAvoy. His Irish family settles in Camberwell and he grows up working as a porter at Covent Garden's fruit and vegetable market at the weekend. He boxes in local clubs, frequents South London nightspots and places bets on races between stolen cars. Before long, he and his friends are stealing the vehicles themselves. As crime rises, so too does the profile of the Flying Squad, Scotland Yard's elite unit that tackles armed robbery, known as the Sweeney. But the police are not beyond corruption themselves, pocketing reward money meant for informants and fraternising with criminals.

• 7:41Speaker 05

  By the early 1980s, McAvoy is living with his wife Jacqueline and children in South London and looks much like a normal family man to his neighbours. But while he works occasionally as a painter and decorator, as well as running a grocery shop for a time, he has been climbing the criminal ladder too, moving from stealing cars to joining a team of robbers who work a patch covering much of South East England. Leading a double life in more ways than one, he's also got a girlfriend, Kathleen Meecock, whom he calls Cathy. To keep himself fit for his nefarious line of business, he works out obsessively with weights and a punchbag at home. Like many South London criminals, he is known to the police, though they have yet to pin anything substantial on him.

• 8:26Speaker 05

  Even natured most of the time, the occasional flare-up of McAvoy's temper earns him the nickname Mad Mickey. Now approaching his 30s, he is restless, in search of a big job, something that might mean he'll never have to work again.

• 8:43Speaker 05

  Perhaps through his alleged involvement in a drugs hall near Heathrow, he learns that there are warehouses in the vicinity which are used to store valuable items scheduled for flights out of the airport. McAvoy mentions this to an old friend of his, Brian Robinson. As luck would have it, Robinson's brother-in-law, Tony Black, happens to be employed as a security guard at the Brink's Mat Warehouse near the airport. Managed by one of the best-known security companies in the world, the Brink's Mat Warehouse is relatively lightly guarded, with huge amounts of cash and gold stored overnight. To McAvoy, it sounds promising. Very promising, indeed.

• 9:28Speaker 05

  McAvoy assembles the rest of his crew, six men in total. They start to watch the Brink's Mat Warehouse closely, learning the exact movements of the security staff.

• 9:39Speaker 05

  Eventually, through Robinson, they approach Tony Black and make him an offer. Though not an experienced criminal, Black, who's struggling with debt, leaps at the chance to help the gang for a share of the proceeds.

• 9:52Speaker 06

  Tony Black was a civilian in criminal terms. He wasn't a criminal, but he happened to be the brother-in-law of Brian Robinson, one of the robbers.

• 10:02Speaker 05

  Black shares his knowledge about the alarm and security system at the warehouse and draws detailed diagrams of the layout. On November 25, 1983, he calls his brother-in-law from a phone box to let him know a big shipment has been delivered. Two tons of what he calls "yellow." Gold. But they have to act fast. It'll only be there until the following lunchtime. The big job McAvoy has been waiting for is finally underway.

• 10:32Speaker 05

  At 6:40 in the morning the following day, Black arrives at work 10 minutes late. The rest of the team of security guards at the Brink's Mat Warehouse are already there. Once he's in, Black doubles back to let in McAvoy and his gang, who are waiting outside in a blue van.

• 10:49Speaker 05

  An alarm sounds as they enter, but no one can hear it upstairs. Masked and armed, they go straight for the two security guards they had been told will provide the combination to the safe.

• 11:02Speaker 05

  But what surprises them is the size of the haul they find there. They'd expected rich pickings, but nothing on this scale. Three tonnes of gold, rather than two. A total of sixty boxes containing six thousand eight hundred gold bars, worth over twenty-six million pounds.

• 11:22Speaker 05

  They also take over a hundred thousand pounds in used banknotes, a pouch containing traveller's cheques worth two hundred thousand pounds, and another containing diamonds. The vast haul, which could be worth as much as half a billion today, is the property of the London-based Johnson Mathi Bankers Limited.

• 11:41Speaker 06

  Bear in mind, this was almost comical, that when they left in the van from the warehouse, their van was scraping the pavement, they had so much gold in the back of it. They couldn't believe their luck. The leader of the gang, Mickey McEvoy, ordered them not to disappear, not to go on the run, not to go abroad, but to continue to hang out in their haunts. They knew the police would hear about it, but the police would presume that meant they weren't involved.

• 12:07Speaker 05

  When the news breaks, the scale of the theft shocks the nation.

• 12:13Speaker 05

  The tabloids call it "the robbery of the century", and the police waste no time in launching an investigation.

• 12:19Speaker 06

  Scotland Yard's elite flying squad, who had become partly thanks to TV series and partly thanks to their extraordinary record of breaking down doors and breaking up gangs and robbers, were immediately put in charge of this case. And at the top of them, the guy in charge was Scotland Yard's Chief Commander Frank Hater. He had an amazing background, he'd been involved with a great train robbery, and he gave the day-to-day duties to Detective Chief Superintendent Brian Boyce, who was a very tenacious ex-army officer, and probably, I say this now, one of the most honest policemen at Scotland Yard at the time.

• 13:00Speaker 05

  Within a day, the insurers for the haul, Lloyds of London, offers a two-million-pound reward for information leading to the return of the stolen gold. And though the insurance claim is settled swiftly, it is devastating for Lloyds, who promptly launch their own investigation to trace the stolen property. McAvoy decides the robbers will have to sit on the loot for a while. But from the beginning, the gold proves to be almost as much trouble for the finders as it is for the insurers.

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• 15:28Speaker 05

  It doesn't take the police long to suss out the connection between the security guard, Tony Black, and his brother-in-law, Brian Robinson, a known criminal.

• 15:37Speaker 05

  Black and the other security guards are called back to the warehouse to make a video reconstruction of the theft to aid the investigation. During the process, the guilty man struggles to hide his nerves. When he is interrogated, the police quickly wear him down and he identifies three of the gang members: his brother-in-law, McAvoy, and a man called Tony White.

• 16:00Speaker 06

  He cracked very quickly when the police rounded him up because he wasn't a criminal, and it was obvious that this would happen. He was terrified, though. He had to change his identity. He went into hiding.

• 16:12Speaker 05

  The police carefully watch the three named men in the hope that they will lead them to the gold. Despite the advice he has given to the others, McAvoy starts to be less cautious, even leaving his Dulwich Council House and moving into a mansion on the border of the county of Kent. Soon, his girlfriend Kathy, for whom he has by now left his wife, also benefits from a big new house. McAvoy even buys two rottweilers and names them Brinks and Matt.

• 16:40Speaker 05

  Nevertheless, the police delay the arrest of the three men named by Black, not only because they have no evidence beyond his confession, but also because they are holding on to the hope that they'll be led to the treasure.

• 16:52Speaker 05

  Finally, 11 days after the robbery, McAvoy, White, and Robinson are taken in for questioning at separate police stations. Despite providing alibis and keeping to the criminal code of silence, a few weeks later, they are brought to Feltham Magistrates Court. There, though the haul is nowhere to be found, they are remanded on the charge of stealing the gold and other valuables from the Brinks-Matt warehouse.

• 17:17Speaker 05

  While the rest of the gang sits tight, the wheels are already in motion to turn 6,800 bars of gold into cold, hard cash.

• 17:29Speaker 05

  Though they're still free, the remaining members of the gang have a problem. Heavy gold bars are more or less impossible to offload unnoticed. Gold ingots tend to carry their own individually designed hallmarks and serial numbers which need to be removed. And the high quality of the haul presents its own challenge. Failure to disguise it will arouse the suspicion of legitimate traders who might question the sudden appearance of a huge quantity of pure gold. Especially with the newspapers filled with reports of the robbery of the century.

• 18:03Speaker 06

  So having stolen, almost by accident, 27 million pounds worth of gold, which back in 1983 was a lot of gold. And today, by the way, would be worth at least half a billion pounds. Probably more, because gold has gone up so much in price. But the problem for the robbers, not only did they have the police on their tail within days, but what the hell do they do with all this gold? They've got to turn it into money. And they need professionals to do that.

• 18:31Speaker 05

  The gold needs to be melted down and mixed with other metals, such as copper, to disguise its purity before being recast and fed back into the market without drawing attention.

• 18:43Speaker 05

  Once it's sold, the proceeds themselves must be laundered to disguise the origin of the profits. The entire process will create a vast chain of work for smelters, middlemen known as fences, money launderers, and other criminals.

• 19:00Speaker 05

  But first things first. The gang needs someone who knows his way around gold and how to smelt it. Enter Kenneth Noe, a professional criminal based in Kent who has taught himself everything there is to know about the precious metal.

• 19:15Speaker 06

  Kenneth Noe was a professional criminal down to his toenails. He made a reputation for himself before this as someone who could make money out of just about anything. And more importantly, he knew the people to dispose of the gold with and he brought in a gold smelter called John Palmer, who was also a criminal from the west of England. These two ended up being the pivotal characters in the Brinksmack job, even though they never went anywhere near that warehouse.

• 19:46Speaker 05

  Based in Bristol, John Palmer has a reputation as a major fence. His skill at handling precious metals has even earned him the nickname Goldfinger. Like Noi, he protects his interests by cultivating relationships with contacts on the local police force.

• 20:05Speaker 05

  In partnership with a man named Garth Chapel, Palmer has a number of legitimate-looking businesses to cover up his criminal activities, including a precious metals and jewellery business.

• 20:16Speaker 05

  Since 1979, Palmer has been regularly using a private smelter installed in his own garden. There, he smelts scrap and stolen jewellery to sell it back into the legitimate gold market, or through one of his three jewellery shops. He and Noi now strike a deal with the gang that they'll take a 25% fee on everything they smelt.

• 20:40Speaker 05

  Soon, divided up between trusted associates, the Brink's matte gold begins to be gradually dispersed. Little by little, the 6,800 gold bars are moved around, smelted, mixed with copper, recast, and sold to dealers. Neighbours of Kenneth Noi's elderly parents start to notice the regularity with which Noi unloads what he calls "heavy batteries" from his Ford pickup into his parents' garage. Then the police start pulling at other threads, including a tip-off from Hatton Garden, London's jewellery district. A man in a gold Rolls Royce, they're told, has been making inquiries about buying an industrial smelter.

• 21:25Speaker 05

  When the man, Mickey Lawson, returns to pick up the smelter, the flying squad follow him all the way to Kent, and specifically to the door of his best friend, Kenneth Noi.

• 21:38Speaker 06

  It's incredible, you couldn't make it up. And so as a result, Scotland Yard, partly with the assistance of the Kent Police, mounted what they call sophisticated surveillance operation. It included cameras in boxes by trees at the entrance to Kenneth Noi's isolated house in the Kent countryside.

• 22:00Speaker 05

  But the police can't prove anything immediately. And in the months after the robbery, in spite of the surveillance, Noe, Palmer and their associates are making money from their smelting operation.

• 22:12Speaker 05

  After being blended and recast, the gold is taken in small consignments to the Assay Office in Sheffield, one of the few places with the power to hallmark gold, silver and platinum. Once the gold's purity levels have been determined, the Sheffield office gives it a hallmark, meaning it can be sold on the legitimate market. As a cover story for this sudden influx of gold, Chapel takes out an advertisement in a local paper, a call to buy unwanted jewellery.

• 22:44Speaker 05

  One of the biggest buyers of this new influx of the precious metal is Johnson Mathi, the original owners of the Brink's Mat loot.

• 22:54Speaker 05

  The money starts to pour in. In just four months after the robbery, one bank handles transactions of more than £10 million, in grubby plastic bags, no questions asked. But then, the money has to be carefully laundered and made to appear as if it comes from a legitimate source, such as property investments.

• 23:14Speaker 06

  There's absolutely no doubt that some of the money raised in the first year, I would say, after the robbery, was invested in what then became Canary Wharf and certain other areas on the side of the Thames, near to Canary Wharf. And the reason that that happened is actually some of these very astute criminals and their associates already owned rundown warehouses, some of them. And they actually sold them on to other criminals, who then sold them to developers. It was a great way of laundering the money and making a big profit at the same time. And actually, if you walk through Canary Wharf now, you're really looking at something that was built partly, without doubt, on the proceeds of the gold from the Brink's Mat robbery.

• 23:55Speaker 05

  Meanwhile, Brinksmatt inside man, the security guard, Tony Black, is sentenced to six years imprisonment for his role in the robbery. But the sentence is accompanied by a grim warning from the judge who tells him, "Never again will your life be safe."

• 24:11Speaker 06

  I believe he's still in hiding to this day, and he was seen as, they used to say in southeast London, and they probably still do, a grass. He'd grassed up his family member, and that was sacrilegious.

• 24:26Speaker 05

  Within a year of the robbery, McAvoy, White, and Robinson are brought before the same judge at London's Old Bailey to charges of conspiring to commit robbery and of robbery itself.

• 24:38Speaker 05

  White is cleared, but McAvoy and Robinson are found guilty and sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment.

• 24:48Speaker 05

  But although two of the gang are behind bars, the police have yet to locate what's left of the stolen goods. Now, in January 1985, surveillance suggests that some of the gold is being moved in and out of Noe's property. What the police need to know is how.

• 25:08Speaker 05

  It is January the 26th, 1985, around 6:15 in the evening, and already bitterly cold in the dark Kent countryside.

• 25:18Speaker 05

  D.C. John Fordham and his partner, D.C. Neil Murphy, have just started the overnight surveillance shift of Kenneth Noe's Hollywood cottage, a large mock Tudor house set in 20 acres of grounds and woodland. They're still settling into their usual positions when a pair of headlights slices through the gloom, coming up the quiet country lane and turning towards the property.

• 25:41Speaker 05

  A quick check confirms that the car is that of Noe's associate, Brian Reader, a person of interest in the Brinksmatt robbery. The two detectives are on their feet in seconds. This could be it, the key piece of evidence they've been looking for. Quickly, they leave the hideout and head through the bushes towards the road. Both are wearing camouflage clothing and balaclavas, but though they are carrying yeast tablets to pacify Noe's rottweilers, they are unarmed, as is standard procedure for operations of this kind. They are, however, equipped with discreet radio sets with which they can communicate with a backup team nearby.

• 26:21Speaker 05

  Thirty-seven-year-old Murphy follows his senior partner Fordham. Known as Gentleman John for his old-fashioned good manners, Fordham is an impressive mentor, with four commendations for bravery under his belt. With Reader's Car by now out of sight up the driveway, the two officers pass over the low wall and along the perimeter fence, making for the cover of the trees and shrubbery outside the barn. But just as Fordham drops to his knee beside a tree, waiting for Murphy to move ahead, one of Noe's rottweilers appears out of nowhere. Startled, Murphy's hand flies to his pocket for the yeast tablets. But the dog, now joined by a friend, isn't interested.

• 27:04Speaker 05

  Though neither animal attacks for now, the alarm has been well and truly raised.

• 27:11Speaker 05

  As their barking intensifies, Murphy hears the crackle of his colleague's radio as he reports this latest development of the officers waiting nearby.

• 27:20Speaker 05

  Gesturing to Fordham, Murphy begins to withdraw carefully from the dogs, presuming his partner will follow.

• 27:28Speaker 05

  But when he reaches the shrubbery, he finds he is alone. He quickly climbs a tree to help him locate his partner. And once he's up there, he sees something that makes his heart sink. A figure of a man in the garden, flanked by the dogs and holding a torch. It's Kenneth Noe.

• 27:48Speaker 05

  Suddenly, the beam of light swings towards Murphy in his tree. He drops from the branches to the other side of the boundary fence and runs out of sight. But now he can hear raised voices and the sounds of a tussle. A woman starts to scream.

• 28:04Speaker 05

  Murphy pushes through some bushes for a clearer view, and for a moment, what he sees doesn't make sense. Two men and a woman are standing over something on the grass, something one of the men is viciously kicking.

• 28:17Speaker 05

  But when Murphy realizes the shape on the ground isn't moving, he understands it completely.

• 28:28Speaker 05

  The backup police team and paramedics are swift to arrive on the scene at Hollywood Cottage, where it transpires that Fordham has been stabbed by Noe. Along with his wife, Noe is arrested, and while their associate Brian Reader makes off into the night, the police soon catch up with him too.

• 28:47Speaker 05

  Fordham is rushed to hospital, but at 8:20pm he is pronounced dead. A police search of Hollywood Cottage unearths 11 gold bars, worth at least £100,000. Other finds at the house include copper coins of the kind used in the re-smelting of gold, a child's drawing pad with a sketch of a gold bar, and a 1985 edition of the Guinness Book of Records with a circle drawn around the entry naming Brink's Mat as Britain's largest robbery.

• 29:19Speaker 05

  Noe, however, has no intention of rolling over.

• 29:25Speaker 06

  At one stage, Noe, after he'd been arrested, even tried to attempt to bribe Brian Boyce, the chief investigator. He refused it, point-blank. He even didn't even react to a Masonic handshake that Noe tried because Noe had infiltrated the Masons because they had a lot of police members and he was such a good mover and shaker, he'd actually become a member of the Masons.

• 29:51Speaker 05

  Despite Noe's best efforts, he and Brian Reader are soon charged with Fordham's murder. At the request of the defence, charges relating to the handling of the gold and associated tax fraud are deferred to a later date. Noe's arrest, along with that of others linked to the smelting, encouraged the insurers in their decision to sue anyone involved in the crime in the civil courts for compensation.

• 30:17Speaker 05

  The murder trial at the Old Bailey takes place in November 1985. But Noe has splashed out on one of the best defence counsels in the country. He argues that the appearance of a masked man on the defendant's property had struck terror in his client, who acted in self-defence. It is an argument that ultimately, the jury accepts.

• 30:39Speaker 06

  The killing of John Fordham, the undercover policeman, by Kenneth Noe made the police even more determined. But in some ways, now looking back at it, and even some of the policemen involved admitted, they sort of lost focus in what they were really doing because they were so emotionally involved now, because they were so upset by the death of a fellow officer. And not only did they fail to win a prosecution against Noe for supposedly murdering John Fordham, but the inquiry itself went off in many tangents.

• 31:11Speaker 05

  Noe returns to the Old Bailey in May 1986, alongside Brian Reader and Garth Chappell, who are charged with handling the stolen gold bullion and conspiracy to evade VAT. In this second trial, Noe is found guilty, lashing out at the jury as he is led away. He is later sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment.

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  You just have to know where to look.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.

• 32:38Speaker 05

  Even without Noi, the smelting and distribution of the gold continues. John Palmer, whose house is raided at the same time as Noi's, evades arrest with a timely-tripped tanneriff. He uses his jewelry business to explain the smelter that's discovered on his property. When the long arm of the law finally catches up with him a couple of years later, he admits to smelting gold bars, but denies that he knew they were stolen. He is acquitted in court, but his game of cat and mouse with the Flying Squad is far from over. Despite the police searches at the homes of Noi and Palmer, a huge amount of the loot is still unaccounted for.

• 33:21Speaker 05

  And by this stage, it's impossible for either the law or Mickey McAvoy himself to keep track of what is going on.

• 33:29Speaker 06

  That gold created an industry within the underworld. There were dozens of people trying to get a piece of the action, and McAvoy was trying to control it from prison, getting more and more angry when he heard about people getting chunks of his gold, because that's how he looked at it. It was his gold, and all these other characters were getting involved, and they were starting to fall out. And meanwhile, a lot of the gold was being buried in different places around southern England, because they didn't want it all in one place.

• 34:00Speaker 05

  McAvoy knows that the first man out of jail and back to the remaining gold will have the advantage. In 1987, having by now officially divorced his first wife, he marries his former mistress, Cathy, while still incarcerated, sending a clear message that he is still looking ahead and planning for his future on the outside. Also keeping an eye on his assets from behind bars is Noi, who sells Hollywood Cottage for more than one million pounds and encourages his wife Brenda to buy a three-hundred-thousand pounds house in her name nearby.

• 34:35Speaker 05

  Though the bank accounts of many of the Brinksmatt criminals have been frozen, they are given some free rein in the hope that their activities might lead the police to the remaining gold. The insurance agents keep a close eye on the family and friends of the gang, and even start negotiating with the criminals' accountants and lawyers about making a deal. In prison, Noe befriends one of the jail's most feared inmates, a bodybuilder called Pat Tate. As well as becoming Noe's personal minder, Tate convinces him to consider investing some of his Brinksmatt profits in a new designer drug called ecstasy.

• 35:14Speaker 06

  Then we get to the end of the 80s and ecstasy comes on scene. Now ecstasy was a dream drug for criminals because it was in pill form. You could mass produce the pills in Holland, bring them over, and sell them really quick. And they were so easy to deal with at clubs and everything.

• 35:32Speaker 05

  By the late 1980s, with security vans increasingly monitored with radar by the police, organised crime starts to shift away from armed robbery and into the lucrative drugs market. And it is Brinksmatt cash that helps to flood Britain with ecstasy. Meanwhile, tensions within the gang persist. With McAvoy and Noe still behind bars, control of the remaining proceeds falls to intermediaries on the outside.

• 36:04Speaker 06

  These tentacles from the Brinksmatt robbery were going so wide and far. They even involved the most notorious crime family in Britain, the Addams Family, who were also connected to Noe and Palmer and sort of trying to run the smelting operation. They were a notorious lot from North London. They'd never had anything to do with these other robbers. But once they got involved, it got even more complicated. And people started dying. The whole thing was out of control. And the police were quite bemused by it because they got the three main robbers. They put them away. They put Noe away finally. But they knew they weren't in control. There were too many deaths.

• 36:47Speaker 05

  In the 1990s, a number of people involved in the smelting, laundering, and other offshoots of the robbery start to lose their lives. These include one man who was also once involved in the Great Train Robbery, who was murdered by his pool in Spain, a hat-and-garden jeweler shot on his doorstep, and a property investor gunned down in broad daylight on a busy London street.

• 37:11Speaker 05

  In reference to the chain of violence, betrayals, and deaths that seem to follow in the robbery's wake, journalists and police begin to talk of "The Curse of Brinksmatt."

• 37:22Speaker 05

  And in the decades after the robbery, the so-called curse will claim many more lives.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  It's me, the

• 37:38Speaker 03

  We don't need the jingle twice.

• 37:41Speaker 03

  Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights, and rental cars.

• 37:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app.

• 37:56Speaker 03

  Fine. No one deals more deals than Please stop. Touche. Priceline.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  In this life, you can't win. When the world gets you down, Escape to Pluto TV.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free. Even our news is uplifting. You stay classy, San Diego. Watch School of Rock, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The Ex-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  The best things on TV really are free.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  You just have to know where to look.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.

• 38:34Speaker 05

  In 1994, Kenneth Noe is released from prison after serving eight years of his 14-year sentence. Soon after, he spends some time in Cyprus, where he considers investing in a multiple-owner holiday property system called Timeshare, something already exploited by his old pal John Palmer.

• 38:55Speaker 06

  John Palmer, the smelter, who was Kenneth Noe's partner in crime, his story is fascinating because what he did with the money he made from it is, he did what every criminal wants to do. He put it into a legit business and made trillions. That legit business, if you call it, was Timeshare on the island of Tenerife. And he ended up making more money than anyone else involved in this crime, by far. Timeshare itself is a pretty dodgy business, but a lot of criminals were very jealous of him.

• 39:25Speaker 05

  Though Palmer presents himself as a legitimate businessman, tying with the Queen on the Sunday Times rich list, much of his wealth comes from swindling holidaymakers. All the while, the insurers continue to press for the recovery of the rest of the gold.

• 39:42Speaker 05

  One person of whom they are particularly dogged in their pursuit is McAvoy. In January 1995, the High Court orders him to make a payment of more than £27 million to the insurers. But McAvoy, who is still in prison, claims he no longer knows where the gold is and doesn't have the cash.

• 40:02Speaker 05

  Six months later, with pressure mounting, the insurers have more success with Noe, striking a deal to recover around £3 million of the proceeds. He agrees to the settlement on the condition that the new house, in Brenda's name, is left untouched.

• 40:20Speaker 05

  Because after all, Noe has other investments. By now, his former cellmate, Pat Tate, has been released from prison and is running the main ecstasy supply route to Essex, with financial backing from Noe and other Brinksmat gang members. By the mid 1990s, the ecstasy business in the UK is worth more than £500 million a year.

• 40:43Speaker 05

  But for many, it comes at an unimaginable cost.

• 40:50Speaker 05

  In November 1995, an eighteen-year-old called Leia Betts takes an ecstasy tablet, which has been acquired through Pat Tate's supply chain. Conscious of the risks of dehydration, she also consumes seven litres of water in ninety minutes. Four hours after taking the pill, Betts collapses in her bathroom and is rushed to hospital. Her parents, a nurse and a retired Metropolitan Police Officer, release a photograph of their teenage daughter on a life-support machine.

• 41:22Speaker 05

  Four days after taking the pill, she dies. A toxicologist at the subsequent inquest attributes the tragic outcome to a combination of the water and the drug. But her story becomes a powerful warning of the dangers of ecstasy.

• 41:39Speaker 05

  But it's not only innocent victims who lose their lives in the trade of the drug. On an icy day in December 1995, two men on their way to a fishing lake in Essex discover a parked Range Rover containing three bodies, including that of Pat Tate. It's believed the victims were lured by other criminals with Brink's Mat connections under the pretext of scouting a landing site for a plane smuggling a consignment of drugs. Rumours that Tate had been cooperating with the police remain unconfirmed, but his violent death fuels further talk of the curse of Brink's Mat.

• 42:16Speaker 05

  By now, around half of the gold has been smelted and recast. Much of it has found its way back into the legitimate gold market, including the reserves of its original owners, Johnson Mathie.

• 42:28Speaker 05

  Though Kenneth Noe has been out of prison for just two years, in May 1996, he loses his temper in a road rage incident on the M25 motorway and stabs twenty-one-year-old Stephen Cameron to death in front of his young fiancee.

• 42:44Speaker 05

  Noe flees the country soon after, escaping to Spain on John Palmer's private jet. But he's arrested in 1998 after the grieving witness is flown out to identify him. His trial takes place in 2000, and he is found guilty by the jury of murder and given a sentence of life imprisonment in April that year.

• 43:05Speaker 05

  Stories related to Brinksmatt's never seem to truly go away.

• 43:10Speaker 06

  So all the time, people like Noe keep coming back into the news. So it sort of means it's still reverberating, it's still there.

• 43:23Speaker 05

  In prison, Mickey McAvoy is relieved to hear of Noe's arrest. The way McAvoy sees it, Noe was a middleman who went nowhere near the Brinksmatt warehouse and has caused more than enough trouble and publicity. And now, after almost two decades behind bars, McAvoy himself can start to look forward to life on the outside.

• 43:47Speaker 05

  It is a cool day in spring 2000. Forty-eight-year-old Mickey McAvoy wakes in his prison cell early, before the bell. For a while, he just lies there, listening. There is the rattle of keys along the corridor and the footsteps of the guards, the familiar sounds of another day beginning, much like all the others.

• 44:08Speaker 05

  But for McAvoy, this one is different. It is his "release day", his time to rejoin the world outside. But when the bell finally sounds, he sits up, the mattress dipping beneath his weight.

• 44:22Speaker 05

  With his belongings in a small hold-all, he reaches for his breakfast pack and opens the small box of cereal, pouring on milk and starting to eat.

• 44:32Speaker 05

  Outside his cell, the prison grows busier as the morning settles into its usual rhythm. After finishing his breakfast, he dresses, and by the time the officer comes for him, he is ready. He's already said his goodbyes.

• 44:46Speaker 05

  Picking up his hold-all, he takes one final glance at his cell and follows the guard through door after door until they reach a quieter part of the prison.

• 44:57Speaker 05

  The discharge office is a low, functional room with fluorescent lighting and a counter where a tired-looking woman sits typing something on a screen.

• 45:06Speaker 05

  At last, she reaches beneath the counter and slides a clear, plastic bag towards McAvoy. Inside, he finds his wallet and watch, objects that feel as if they've come from another lifetime.

• 45:19Speaker 05

  McAvoy signs where he is told to. After a final check of the paperwork, he's shown to a small holding area where there is nothing to do but wait it out. But after sixteen years inside, he's become good at waiting.

• 45:33Speaker 05

  Eventually, another officer appears, and McAvoy picks up his hold-all. They pass through more doors, more locks, until they come to the gate leading outside. It swims open, and he steps into the fresh air.

• 45:48Speaker 05

  Finally, seventeen years after he's set in motion the chain of events that put him here, he is free. He exhales when he sees there's no crowd, no press, just a car with its engine idling, ready to take him away. He raises a hand in greeting. Thirteen years is a long time to wait for a honeymoon, but Cathy is waiting for him, and so is the rest of his life.

• 46:22Speaker 05

  After his release from prison, Mickey McAvoy lives quietly, splitting his time between luxurious properties in Spain and Kent with his wife. But the crime for which he was convicted continues to claim victims.

• 46:37Speaker 05

  In October 2000, a man called Alan Deckerbro is gunned down in Ashford, Kent, just months after giving evidence against Kenneth Noe at the Old Bailey. Noe, still behind bars, is suspected of being involved, but Deckerbro's death remains one of the unsolved Brinksmatt cases.

• 46:56Speaker 05

  The following year, another Brinksmatt associate is killed. Brian Perry, who spent nine years in jail for handling the gold, is shot at close range by a professional hitman near his minicab office.

• 47:10Speaker 05

  After a stint in prison for timeshare fraud, John Palmer is living out his days quietly in Brentwood, Essex, when he meets a similar fate. While gardening at home in 2015, he is shot six times in the chest. His killer remains unidentified to this day.

• 47:29Speaker 05

  Though around 30 people lose their lives to the curse of Brinksmatt, Kenneth Noe is released from prison in 2019 and heads back to Kent. Mickey McAvoy continues to keep a low profile, but dies in 2023 from an overdose of sleeping pills at the age of 71, heartbroken after the death of his wife Cathy.

• 47:52Speaker 05

  More than 40 years have now passed since that cold morning at a nondescript warehouse in West London.

• 47:59Speaker 05

  But despite the arrests and some recoveries of the gold, much of what was stolen has never been found. The Brinksmatt robbery remains legendary, not just for the stolen wealth, but for its long, bloody ripple effects. An epic story driven by violence, greed and betrayal, with a moral sting in its tale. That the past will almost always catch up with you.

• 48:26Speaker 06

  I think every single criminal involved in that crime, except for possibly Kenneth Noe, wishes they'd never gone anywhere near it. In terms of it literally being a curse, I can't tell you. But as far as what has happened is, they touched that gold, they got involved with that robbery, and 28, at least of them, died. If that's not a curse, I don't know what is.

• 48:55Speaker 05

  Next time on Short History, we'll bring you a short history of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

• 49:04Speaker 05

  Space exploration kindles in us the kind of sense of wonder and curiosity.

• 49:08Speaker 07

  Creativity that I think is generally good for a society. Human beings are curious animals. It's one of the best qualities that we have. We want to know. And when I used to look at the telescope as a small boy and see the vastness of space and the rings of Saturn, I was almost in awe, frightened almost at just the incredible vastness and bigness and how much was left to be discovered. I think we should keep on doing that. It's one priority of many, and it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to engage in a series of stunts.

• 49:39Speaker 05

  That's next time.

• 49:42Speaker 05

  You can listen to the next two episodes of Short History of right now, without waiting and without adverts, by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Just hit the link in the episode description or head to www-noiser.com/subscriptions to unlock more episodes today.

• 49:59Speaker 03

  It's me, the

• 50:02Speaker 03

  We don't need the jingle twice. Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights, and rental cars.

• 50:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app.

• 50:20Speaker 03

  Fine. No one deals more deals than Please stop. Touche.

• 50:27Speaker 03

  Priceline.

• 50:27Speaker 00

  In this life, you can't win.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  When the world gets you down.

• 50:30Speaker 00

  No!

• 50:31Speaker 01

  Escape to Pluto TV.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free. Swing! Even our news is uplifting. You stay classy, San Diego. Watch School of Rock, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more. We're not worthy! The best things on TV really are free.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  You just have to know where to look.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.