BRIAN THOROGOOD
Brian Thorogood is a robber. By the mid-Eighties he’d carried out 20 robberies, 16 of them using a sawn-off shotgun.
Now he looks like a 1960s gangster out of Get Carter. He’s a really unassuming man – he doesn’t look like an armed robber at all. In fact, he was one of the most fearsome armed robbers in London for many years. For a long time, the main men in the armed robber stakes were Mickey Calvey, Ronnie Cook and Brian Thorogood, and at one time or another they have all had one thing – or rather one love – in common: Linda Calvey.
Linda is the only real female gangster this country has ever had. Even the scriptwriters of Prime Suspect would find it hard to match the real-life drama of this East End girl with an insatiable appetite for excitement, a glamorous platinum blonde whose beauty has intoxicated so many men. The newspapers nicknamed her the Black Widow.
Linda is currently serving life for murder but we are in touch and through her I met Brian. Of course, I knew his name, I’d heard it in certain circles.
To understand Brian you have to understand the Black Widow story, the story of the woman he loved, the woman who accompanied him on his robberies.
The story begins in December 1978 on a busy Saturday afternoon outside a supermarket called Caters in Eltham in South London, where everyone had been busy Christmas shopping. It was just after closing time, dead on 6.00pm, when the armoured security van pulled up outside to collect the day’s takings. It had been a good day and the cash bags were full – £10,000.
Just as the guards came out of the supermarket, a 3.5 Rover saloon screeched to a halt in front of the security van. Three robbers jumped out of the car, all armed with sawn-off shotguns. One of the robbers coshed a guard and grabbed a bag of money.
But the Flying Squad had been tipped off and were lying in wait. DS Michael Banks pulled out his .38 Smith and Wesson and shouted, ‘Stop! We are armed police!’
The three robbers ignored them. Two jumped into the front of the car. DS Banks fired two shots at the car but missed. The third robber, 36-year-old Mickey Calvey, ran to the getaway car and tried to get in the back. With his gun in his hand and his arm outstretched, Banks yelled another warning, ‘Stop, or I’ll shoot!’
Mickey turned to face the policeman, his sawn-off shotgun still in his hands. Banks fired two shots. Mickey Calvey slumped to the ground dead. Mickey was Linda’s husband, the father of her children. She was devastated.
For Mickey Calvey, that was the end. But not for Linda.
After her husband’s shooting, she became friends with another gangster, Ronnie Cook. Later, it was alleged that he had been one of the armed robbers who had got away with the £10,000 from the supermarket.
Cook helped Linda cope with her grief. He spent lavishly and soon the pair became inseparable. But it wasn’t to last. Ronnie Cook was jailed in 1981, sentenced to 16 years for his part in yet another armed robbery.
Cook couldn’t stand the thought of Linda being alone, so he arranged for a friend to help her.
Enter Brian Thorogood.
Brian, a former Royal Fusilier, was the next to fall under the spell of the Black Widow. He and Linda were soon involved in a passionate affair and eventually, after he had left his wife, he set up home with Linda in Hornchurch.
But the robberies continued. Brian was eventually jailed in 1985 for 21 years and this time he took Linda with him. She was found guilty of conspiracy to commit armed robbery and was sentenced to seven years, her first taste of prison.
With Brian in prison, Cook soon learned about his affair with Linda. Cook was furious and vowed to kill Brian if he ever caught up with him again. But Linda was different. Cook loved her and she convinced him that she was faithful, even having a tattoo done on her thigh with the words ‘True love, Ronnie Cook’.
But all the time she was still writing to Brian.
Linda served four years of her seven-year stretch and by 1989 she was out. She continued to visit both Brian and Cook in their different prisons, until Cook became eligible for home leave from Maidstone Jail in November 1990.
Linda was fully aware of how violent Cook could become and when he discovered she had still been visiting Brian … well … together she and Brian hatched a plan.
He introduced her to a man called Danny Reece – 35-year-old Reece was serving 13 years at the Verne Prison in Portland, Dorset for violence. Linda went to meet Reece and it was there, while drinking tea with him in the visitor’s hall under the noses of the prison guards that she asked Reece to shoot Ronnie Cook for a fee of £10,000.
Instantly he fell for her – and agreed to do the job.
Linda made all the arrangements. She would get Cook to the house in the late afternoon. Reece would be lying in wait.
So far – so bad. As Linda and Cook walked into the house, Reece burst in but when he came face to face with Ronnie Cook, he couldn’t do it. He shot him in the elbow.
But Linda could.
She grabbed the gun from him and screamed, ‘Kneel!’ Then she pointed the gun and shot Ronnie Cook in the head.
Both Danny Reece and Linda Calvey were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1990.
Brian is out now.
Danny and Linda married in prison.
You see what I mean. It’s quite a story, isn’t it?
BACKGROUND
I was brought up in the Mile End so I’m a Cockney, you’d better believe it. I come from a big family of six and I’m the youngest. They’re all straight: I’m what you might call the black sheep.
LIFE OF CRIME
Out of the last 30 years, I’ve done about 21 years in prison. All for armed robbery, I’m afraid.
IS PRISON A DETERRENT?
Not for me it isn’t, no. I don’t know about kids today because so much of it all is drug-related but years ago, if you were a young offender, you got sent away and all that happened was you got educated. When you’re younger, you want the money … the older you get the more dangerous you get.
When you’re out on armed robberies, of course, you think about getting shot, not about going to prison.
DO YOU BELIEVE IN CAPITAL PUNISHMENT?
Yes, in certain cases. Bad cases involving women and children. But not for armed robbers!
WHAT WOULD HAVE DETERRED YOU FROM A LIFE OF CRIME?
Winning the pools. It’s all about money. When I was with Linda for that three or four years, everything I touched turned to gold.
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN STABBED/SHOT?
Yes, stabbed and shot. Twice stabbed and once shot – that time I was told later I had about 20 minutes to live but I woke up, thank God.
SCARIEST MOMENT?
Falling in love – with a certain person.
SADDEST MOMENT?
What’s happened to Linda, that makes me sad … she doesn’t deserve it … All those things I’ve done in my life, all the time I’ve spent inside, well, that’s one thing, I’ve got no regrets. But Linda getting life and what happened to her before that … that is so sad. What’s happened to that poor girl is wrong.
WHAT RATTLES YOUR CAGE?
Not much, but one or two really do rattle me. I try to live by a certain set of principles. One is that if I give my word to someone, I keep it, it matters. I hate it when other people break their word. And people being late. That really pisses me off.
HAVE YOU EVER REALLY LOVED ANYONE?
Linda Calvey. I still love her, even though she’s now married to Danny Reece.
WHAT FRIGHTENS YOU?
No comment.
DESCRIBE A HARD BASTARD
A hard bastard is a stupid bastard. I’d rather be a friend. There is a difference between a hard bastard and an evil bastard.
NAME A HARD BASTARD
No comment.
WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN FIVE YEARS?
God knows.
ANY REGRETS?
None I want to talk about.