THE COUPON, FOUND in a coat used by armed robbers, was used by Detective Superintendent Robert Fabian to trace the killers of Alec de Antiquis, who had tried to stop their escape from the scene of the burglary. It formed part of the evidence that convicted Charles Jenkins (23), Christopher Geraghty (21) and Terence Rolt (17) of robbery and murder.
When three masked gunmen entered a jeweller’s shop in Charlotte Street, near Tottenham Court Road, on 29 April 1947, the director of the company managed to slam the safe door shut, but was fired at by one of the gang. The shot went wide and hit a wall, and the director was pistol-whipped, but the robbers realised that their raid had gone wrong, threw away the gun that had misfired and ran from the shop, only to find that their stolen Vauxhall 14 getaway car had been blocked in by a lorry. They were running down Charlotte Street, wearing masks and waving their guns, when 34-year-old Alec de Antiquis, a father of six children, drove his motorcycle into the path of one of the raiders. He was shot dead. Soon afterwards Detective Superintendent Robert Fabian arrived at the scene and his team started to piece together the evidence of the stolen car, the bullet and the abandoned revolver. Twenty-seven witnesses were interviewed, but their testimonies varied and the police found no finger marks.
Two days later, a taxi driver reported that he had seen men with white face masks going into a building in Tottenham Court Road, and it was there, in an empty top-floor office, that the police found a discarded raincoat which had some gloves, a piece of white cloth and a cap in its pockets. Inside the lining of the coat was a ‘utility label’ that enabled the police to trace the garment to a tailor in Deptford High Street. Because rationing after the Second World War was still in force at that point, the shop had kept records of its customers, and this led the police to Bermondsey. The customer’s wife had lent the coat, now in the museum, to her brother, Charles Henry Jenkins. Jenkins was arrested, but was not picked out at an identification parade. Two revolvers were found on the foreshore of the River Thames, near to where Jenkins’ parents lived. One of them had fired the fatal bullet; the other had fired the bullet that been found embedded in the wall of the shop. The guns and bullet now form part of the display in the Crime Museum. Two of Jenkins’ known associates, Christopher Geraghty and Terence Rolt, were detained. Geraghty had been the one who fired the fatal shot that killed the heroic Alec de Antiquis, and was the first to confess. Then Rolt implicated Jenkins.
All three were tried at the Old Bailey in July 1947. It took the jury only fifteen minutes to return a verdict of guilty. Jenkins and Geraghty were both sentenced to death and were executed at Pentonville prison on 19 September 1947, amidst demands for the abolition of the death penalty. Rolt had been only 17 years old and was sentenced to serve at His Majesty’s Pleasure.
Alec de Antiquis was posthumously awarded the Binney Medal for bravery in trying to stop the crime. (The medal is named after Captain Ralph Binney who, in 1944, was knocked down and killed whilst trying to stop a smash-and-grab raider’s car near London Bridge. Coincidentally, one of the criminals involved in that case was Jenkins’ brother.)