John Daly’s acquittal was apparently ‘a great blow to the Police and to everyone connected with the prosecution – especially to those who were aware of the true position’.1
The report, written by IB assistant controller R.F. Yates, goes on to say that:
It was felt that Daly’s case should have been allowed to go forward to the jury for consideration of a verdict. It is of interest to note that after his acquittal, a celebration party was arranged for Daly by Mrs Mary Manson and that criminal associates of both Daly and Manson were present.
Immediately on news of Daly’s acquittal, Bill Goodwin and Michael Black went to Endelstowe, the house in Cornwall:
They dug up the cash containers, took them into the house and split the cash content two ways. Half was put into a suitcase and carried off by Black. The remaining cash was counted and amounted to just on £50,000. This was placed into a large briefcase and hidden in the aperture of an old boiler in the kitchen, and the hole cemented in and painted to cover traces of new work.2
Following the party, Daly and his friend Billy Still drove down to Cornwall at top speed to retrieve the £100,000 that had been buried in the back garden of Bill Goodwin’s house near Boscastle. One can imagine how the elation of Daly’s acquittal immediately turned to shock and disbelief when on arrival he was told by Goodwin’s niece, Kathleen Sleep, that shortly after his arrest in December, Michael Black had double-crossed him, dug up the money and disappeared. Black apparently went abroad but returned due to ill health and died in London of a heart attack.
According to police reports: ‘Daly apparently accepted Miss Sleep’s story that Michael Black had collected all of it [the money] following his arrest. The local police knew that Daly and Still were in the area because their car was stopped for a traffic infringement but they were allowed to proceed.’ The IB was told by Scotland Yard that: ‘Chief Superintendent Butler is of the opinion that Daly is not aware of Black’s death and is still looking for him.’3
Back in Aylesbury, the proceedings were now in their twentieth day and the case for the defence was about to begin. The defendants were cautiously optimistic, as were their counsel. Each of them had a well thought out, logical explanation as to why their fingerprints were found at Leatherslade Farm. Had their cases been held separately and in London, some of these defences may well have been viewed as plausible and resulted in not-guilty verdicts. However, put together, they seemed less believable. In the same way that the sum of the prosecution case was greater than its constituent parts, the defence case was the opposite and, in retrospect, suffered for this disadvantage.
In the witness box Bill Boal told the court that he had been beaten up on arrest and denied a number of statements that police alleged he had made, such as, ‘fair enough, it [the money found in his possession] came from the train job’. He also made clear that he didn’t know Leatherslade Farm and had never been there. Neither had he been ‘... anywhere near the train spot. And if you were to offer me my freedom now, I wouldn’t be able to find my way there.’ He claimed he was a dupe of Cordrey who owed him money and that remaining with Cordrey was the best way of ensuring that he got his money back. His story, while uniquely true, lacked corroboration. There appears to have been some consideration given by his counsel to calling Cordrey as a witness to back up Boal’s account. However, it was considered in retrospect that this might do more harm than good; they clearly feared that Arthur James QC would respond by asking Cordrey, who then was guilty, why Boal was not. Cordrey could only respond to this by refusing to answer, which would inevitably lose him the credit he had built up by pleading guilty. Boal was therefore caught between a rock and a hard place.
Welch, Hussey and Wisbey had banded together to concoct a joint defence. According to Hussey’s statement on 10 August, a friend known as ‘Dark Ronnie’ wanted help in delivering some groceries. When ‘Dark Ronnie’ arrived at Hussey’s flat, Wisbey and Welch arrived about the same time to see if Hussey wanted to go for a drink:
Hussey said a friend of his, a Mr Dark, had to take a lorry to somewhere in Oxford and whilst they were discussing as to how he would get back, Hussey, innocently put his hand on the tailboard. At that time, which was lunch time on Saturday 10 August 1963, Welch, who was in his own car and accompanied by Wisbey arrived on the scene. Hussey asked Welch if he would follow Dark in the lorry to where he had to deliver it, and then bring him back. Welch agreed and Wisbey went along for the ride. Hussey himself remained at home in London.
Welch accompanied by Wisbey, then followed Dark into Oxfordshire where they met a Land Rover and the three vehicles continued on to a house in the country which both Welch and Wisbey later identified as Leatherslade Farm. Upon arrival they unloaded the lorry which contained vegetables etc., and the driver of the Land Rover took them into the house where Wisbey washed his hands and innocently left his palm impression on the bath rail. Welch was offered a drink from ‘Pipkin’ can of beer but he refused. He did, however, take hold of the can out of curiosity and examined it and thus his palm impressions, quite innocently, remained upon it. Dark attended Court the following day and gave evidence for Welch, Wisbey and Hussey.4
While Dark fully corroborated this story in the witness box, he did not perform well under cross-examination and was not the type of witness to impress a jury.
On 19 February 1964, the defence of Roy James commenced. One of the witnesses called was Derek Brown, who swore under oath that at 10.30 p.m. on 7 August he had picked up James from his flat at Nell Gwyn House in Chelsea and taken him to the Bagatelle Club. He also claimed to have picked up James from the club at 2.30 a.m. and taken him back to his flat where the two stayed up talking and drinking tea until 4 a.m. He went on to say that he visited James on seven occasions at Aylesbury Prison but that he had not discussed the case with him because of the presence of two warders at each visit. Like Ronnie Dark, Brown did not go down well in the witness box when cross-examined by Niall MacDermot QC for the prosecution. Brown admitted that he was a cab driver employed by the same company as a man who was an associate of James. He also admitted that he paid not seven visits to James in prison but seventeen. James, however, offered no explanation for how his fingerprints came to be on a cat dish, a first aid kit and a tin of salt.5
While it was not disclosed at the time, the DPP had a witness statement from one Arthur Eeles, who had previously made a statement about seeing the lorry used in the robbery on 8 August. According to Eeles, at around 2 p.m. he was driving between Ashendon and Brill when he saw a Vauxhall motor car and a green six-wheel lorry facing each other in the middle of the road. He saw two men and a woman standing by the vehicle. One of the men got into the lorry and the woman got into the car. The second man walked across the field towards Dorton. On 11 September, after photographs of the wanted men had been published in the press, he approached the police and gave the following statement:
I would like to say that I have seen several photographs in the daily newspapers of Roy John James. There is definitely no doubt in my mind that he was one of the two men I saw with the lorry in Westcott Brill Road, on 8 August 1963; in fact he was the man [who] walked away across the fields. I am prepared to give evidence if necessary.6
The DPP, being satisfied that James’s fingerprints constituted a sufficiently strong case on their own to establish his guilt, decided not to use Eeles’s statement as evidence.
On 20 February Mr Sebag Shaw QC presented the defence case for Gordon Goody. His contention that Goody was in Ireland smuggling watches was very much a compromise defence following the downfall of Goody’s Irish alibi. It also involved admitting to dishonesty, which in turn allowed the prosecution to imply that Goody had been fortunate to avoid prosecution for the London Airport robbery the previous year. The following day Goody, who was immaculately dressed and wearing a Royal Artillery tie, was recalled to the witness box. He was cross-examined about the shoes that had been taken by police from The Windmill public house and the evidence given by landlord Charles Alexander. Justice Edmund Davies interjected during the cross-examination:
One of the ugliest issues in this case is the assertion by Mr Alexander that on 23 August 1963, when Dr Holden came, there were no marks on the shoes. Therefore, the suggestion is implicit that after the shoes were collected somebody had applied khaki paint and somebody had applied yellow paint to those shoes after they got into the hands of the police. There is no bucking that issue. The defence are not as I gather withdrawing any suggestion which the jury might like to draw from that evidence of Mr Alexander.7
Mr Sebag Shaw QC, defending Goody, agreed that the judge had represented the position accurately. After the prosecution’s cross-examination, he re-examined Goody at some length, and one of the questions he asked was if he had any idea of how the paint came to be on the shoes. Goody replied that he had no idea. Sebag Shaw then called Raymond Brown, of Lessor & Co., Goody’s solicitor, to the witness box. Brown confirmed that on Goody’s arrest DCS Butler had refused to allow Goody to try on the suede shoes and that he had not disclosed that there was any paint on them. Sebag Shaw then gave notice that expert evidence regarding the paint would be presented to the court on a later date.
On 6 March 1964, the expert evidence on behalf of Goody was presented to the court. Cecil Robbins BSc FRIC, a director of Hehner & Cox Ltd, took the stand to confirm that his company was an established firm of analytical chemists. He summarised his evidence by saying that the paint on the Land Rover and the paint on the shoes were two different paints. The defence then called Douglas Nicholas of the Fulmer Research Institute. He also took the view that there were differences in the compositions of the paint on the shoes and that taken from the Land Rover.
Arthur James QC for the prosecution then asked for permission to call Dr Holden to give evidence of rebuttal. Holden reiterated his previous conclusions made in his statement of 24 October 1963, in which he asserted that the khaki paints came from the same source and that the yellow paints could also have come from the same source. These expert testimonies can be seen in Appendix 4.
On 24 February the defence for Brian Field commenced:
Field’s QC, Lewis Hawser, agreed that two of the four bags found at Dorking Woods, containing £100,900 of stolen money were his but that he did not put the bags there and had indeed lost them sometime before. He admitted that he had lied to Detective Chief Superintendent Butler when he said it was not Leonard Field who went to the farm with him. Another witness, Brenda Field,8 a secretary at TW James and Wheater, gave evidence to show that he had left the two bags in the office at 3 New Quebec Street, W1 and that he discovered them to be missing from that office before the robbery. The remainder of the evidence was an attempt to prove an alibi.9
On 28 February the defence for Leonard Field began, led by Michael Argyle QC. Unlike previous defences, Argyle chose not to make an opening address but immediately called Field into the witness box, where he remained for most of the day:
He immediately told the Court that in certain matters he had lied and that in fact he learnt from Brian Field on 9 August 1963 that Leatherslade Farm had been used by the robbers. He said that on that date Brian Field told him that the farm had been bought in his [Leonard Field’s] name, that it had been used by the robbers and that he [Leonard Field] would get a considerable sum of money if he would just stay away from the office. Brian Field added that Wheater and he would take care of everything and see that he [Leonard Field] was not involved. When he heard Wheater and Brian Field deny his identity he was satisfied that they were keeping to their agreement not to disclose he was the person who bought the farm. He continued by saying that he had not bought the farm, knew nothing of the conspiracy or the robbery and that his only error was in refusing to disclose to police the true position, and that he had entered an agreement with Wheater and Field not to disclose the information.10
According to Leonard Field, Brian Field had told him that he would get £5,000 if he kept his mouth shut about his involvement in the Leatherslade purchase, but as it turned out he was never in fact paid a penny:
I knew I wasn’t doing this for nothing, and that something would be involved. I asked him [Brian Field] there and then what would happen if anything came about the police. I was assured that I couldn’t be implicated. I was told to stay away from the office and that Mr Wheater would take care of everything.11
Brian Field, brought back to the witness box by his QC, denied every word of Field’s new story.
On 3 March 1964 the defence of John Wheater commenced. Mr G.R. Swanwick QC did not address the court himself but called witnesses to testify to Wheater’s good character. These included Paul Bryan MC, vice-chairman of the Conservative Party and MP for Howden. Bryan had been Wheater’s commanding officer in Italy during the Second World War. Wheater was, Bryan told the court, ‘certainly brave, certainly loyal, and liked by the men. His honour and integrity could not be questioned.’ Brigadier Geoffrey Barratt, another of Wheater’s wartime superiors, told the court that he was ‘a real fighting soldier’.12
When it became time for Wheater to again go into battle, this time to fight for his innocence, he was the picture of composure and confidence. He told the court that the first time he had heard about the Leatherslade Farm purchase was when Brian Field had brought Lenny Field into his office:
Brian Field said Leonard Field wished to purchase the property and asked if I would deal with it. Leonard Field produced particulars of the sale. He merely said he was interested in buying the property and that he wanted to try to get it for less than the advertised price. He said he wanted it as quickly as possible.13
Wheater’s case to the court was succinctly cued up by his QC, who asked him, ‘Do you feel that you are a person who is by nature particularly cut out to be a solicitor or not?’ Wheater replied, ‘I decided some time ago that I was not, and I feel that a lot of our clients have suffered through my carelessness.’ By the time Wheater finished his evidence on 6 March, his stance of integrity, naivety and an inability to realise what was going on under his nose had been very succinctly put across to the jury.14
Probably the most damning piece of evidence presented to counter the defence of Wisbey, Welch and Hussey was that of the farmer John Maris, who was called back to the witness box by Arthur James QC:
He was milking in the cow sheds at the bottom of the lane leading to Leatherslade Farm from 3.15 pm to 5 pm on Saturday 10 August 1963 and that if a convoy of vehicles as suggested by the accused Wisbey and Welch, and the defence witness Darke, had entered the lane he would have heard them and been so interested as to have looked through the window of the cowshed and seen them. He did not hear or see such a convoy.15
Three days later on 9 March, the evidence of both the prosecution and the defence came to an end on what was the thirty-sixth day of the trial. Arthur James QC then outlined the points he would put to the jury and announced that the Crown would now drop the charge against Brian Field of aggravated robbery.
With all the closing addresses to the jury having been completed, the court was adjourned until 17 March 1964, when Justice Edmund Davies delivered his summing up. This lasted until Monday 23 March and was over a quarter of a million words long. The jury then retired. On the third day of their deliberations, after sixty-six hours of confinement - the longest in British legal history - they finally reached verdicts on all the charges and returned to court at 10.30 a.m. on Thursday 26 March.
‘Are you agreed on your verdicts?’ asked Judge Edmund Davies.
‘We are,’ replied the foreman of the jury. The foreman then proceeded to tell the clerk to the court that the jury found all the remaining defendants guilty as charged, apart from Brian Field who, although found guilty of conspiracy to rob and obstructing the course of justice, was found not guilty of aggravated robbery or of receiving £100,900. John Wheater was found not guilty of conspiracy to rob.
Judge Edmund Davies told the court that the sentencing would be held over until the remaining trial of Ronald Biggs had been held.16
On Wednesday 8 April 1964 the retrial of Ronald Biggs commenced at the Buckinghamshire Assizes, held this time at the Crown Court at Aylesbury, and not at the RDC building. Before Judge Edmund Davies sat a new jury of twelve, alongside the two legal teams from the previous case (see Appendix 3).
On 9 April 1964 DCI Frank Williams, New Scotland Yard, commenced his evidence. Michael Argyle QC immediately asked Justice Edmund Davies for the jury to be withdrawn to enable him to make a submission. This was granted and Argyle made his submission that:
... once Biggs had been taken from his home by Detective Inspector Williams he was in custody and he should have been cautioned. Anything he said after that to a police officer in reply to questions was inadmissible in evidence being contrary to Judges’ Rules.17
Argyle then asserted that certain police statements put before the court were either ‘mistaken or false’.18 DCI Williams and DCS Butler were then called to the witness box and were cross-examined by Argyle, who put this charge to them directly. Both officers denied this. The prosecution then called DS Moore (who had been present when Williams arrested Biggs and at the interview conducted by Butler) to the witness box. Moore supported the answers and statements given by Williams and Butler. Michael Argyle QC then called upon Biggs to give his account.
Despite rulings to the contrary in the cases of Charles Wilson and Gordon Goody, Judge Edmund Davies declared that whilst he ruled that part of the evidence given by police was contrary to Judges’ Rules, he would, in fact, use his discretion to admit it. This was not only a setback to Biggs’s case but flew in the face of established judicial protocol.
The prosecution relied to a very large extent on the answers Biggs allegedly gave when interviewed by DCS Butler at Scotland Yard, and on the comments he supposedly made to DCI Frank Williams when arrested. Williams’s statement dated 6 September 1963 claims that when he arrested Biggs at his home on 4 September and told him he would be taken to Scotland Yard for further questioning ‘in connection with the train robbery in Buckinghamshire recently’, Biggs had replied, ‘that don’t sound too good. What are my chances of creeping out of this?’19
According to the interview statement signed by Butler on the same day (6 September), he had asked Biggs on the evening of his arrest if he knew Leatherslade Farm, to which Biggs had allegedly replied, ‘No, never heard of it. I’ve got no interest in fucking farms.’ According to Biggs, he had in fact replied, ‘I think everybody in the country must know it. It’s been on television, on the radio and in all the newspapers for weeks.’ When the statement was written up Biggs had refused to sign it on the grounds of these inaccuracies.20
Before the opening of the original trial in January 1964, Butler had deleted the word ‘fucking’ from the statement, but the rest of the account he had written up of his interview with Biggs on 4 September stood. This evidence was clearly highly prejudicial to Biggs’s case when put to the jury by the prosecution, who finally completed their case at 4 p.m. on 10 April.
Michael Argyle QC then made an opening speech for the defence and declared that Biggs’s evidence would be that he went to Leatherslade Farm with a man named Norman Bickers, to caretake the premises in connection with an unlawful purpose that was unknown to them both. They arrived there at about 1.30 p.m. on 6 August 1963 and stayed until 8 a.m. on 7 August 1963. During this time, they prepared and ate meals from foodstuffs stored at the farm, thus accounting for the fingerprints of Biggs on the Heinz tomato ketchup bottle and a Pyrex plate. He also said that Biggs had handled the Monopoly set, which would account for his fingerprints on that.
With regard to the fingerprint evidence, the prosecution had contended throughout the main trial — of all seven defendants on whom fingerprint evidence had been put before the court — that when the Rixon family had moved out of Leatherslade Farm, they had entirely removed all of their possessions. Therefore, the objects on which fingerprints were found were either immovable (such as the window sill or bathroom rail) or had been brought to the farm by the defendants themselves. This meant that none of them could argue that they had been at the farm prior to the robbery and had inadvertently handled or touched an object that had been left at the farm by the Rixons. Indeed, a police statement had been secured from Hilda Rixon who stated:
This summer we all moved from Leatherslade Farm to where we are living now. My son moved a month before me and my husband. We moved on Monday 28 July or 29 July. When my son moved he moved just a few things that he really needed. When the final move took place my son came up to help. The furniture was moved. We took the curtains down. Everything was cleared out because I looked everywhere.21
DS Ray had taken fingerprint samples from all members of the Rixon family for elimination purposes. Not long after he and his team had begun work they discovered a Kilner jar with Pauline Rixon’s fingerprints on. Because of this, all members of the Rixon family were asked to report back to Aylesbury Police Station, where they were all closely questioned again about the possibility that they had, after all, left some objects behind at the farm when they moved out.
As a result of this, Hilda Rixon recanted and made the following statement: ‘I had a Pyrex plate with a blue border which I used to feed the cat. I think I left it behind because when I got to Dunsden,22 and unpacked I found I was one short with a blue border.’23
Furthermore, it soon became apparent that the ketchup bottle was probably not brought to the farm by the robbers either. In a report from DS McArthur to DCS Butler on 11 September 1963, he stated that:
... impressions found by Detective Superintendent Ray on a blue edged pyrex plate and a bottle of ketchup at the farmhouse can be identified as those of Biggs. The pyrex plate is undoubtedly one left behind at the farm by Hilda Hannah Rixon. The bottle of ketchup may be one left behind by Lily Elise Rixon.24
McArthur continued:
Detective Superintendent Ray is forwarding details of the evidence he has in his possession by hand to the Director of Public Prosecutions, and for that reason, at present, his statement and that of his colleague from the Photography Section are not attached to these papers.25
This report about the fact that the Rixons had, after all, left a number of items at the farm (including two on which Biggs’s fingerprints were found) does not appear to have been disclosed to Biggs’s defence. Had such a disclosure been made, it would no doubt have been a key part of Michael Argyle’s defence, and may well have been relevant to other defendants whose prints were also found on these two objects.
Michael Argyle then continued with his defence, submitting that both Bickers and Biggs examined the contents of the farm and Biggs saw a large amount of army uniforms stored in one room. Biggs had commented to Bickers that if the unlawful purpose was to be a raid on an army depot he could ‘count him out’. Bickers agreed but said that he had to meet someone in Oxford when he could find out more details. At 8.30 a.m. on 7 August 1963 they left the farm and went to Oxford. Bickers left Biggs to keep the ‘meet’ and afterwards rejoined him. He then told Biggs that he had ‘counted both of them out’ because the farm was to be used to stop a mail train. Biggs agreed that it was madness and said he was going home. Bickers insisted that Biggs stayed with him to prevent Biggs from communicating with anyone, adding that if anything went wrong on the raid the robbers would put the responsibility for it at their feet. Argyle concluded his speech by saying that whilst Biggs went to Leatherslade Farm originally with the idea of committing an unlawful act, when he found out it was to be robbery of a mail train he immediately withdrew from it and was not guilty of either the conspiracy or the robbery with aggravation. At 10.30 a.m. on Monday 13 April 1964 Biggs was called into the witness box and cross-examined by Arthur James QC. Biggs admitted he had lied to his wife, to a witness called for the prosecution and to the police. He agreed that he lied if he considered it expedient.26
On 14 April Judge Edmund Davies commenced his summing up, which lasted for the remainder of the day and part of the following morning, after which the jury then retired. It took them but ninety minutes to reach a guilty verdict on both the charges against Biggs.
At 10.30 a.m. on 16 April 1964 the court was reconvened and Judge Edmund Davies passed sentence on all prisoners one by one:
ROGER CORDREY
Roger John Cordrey, you are the first to be sentenced out of certainly eleven greedy men whom hope of gain allured. You and your co-accused have been convicted of complicity, in one way or another, of a crime which in its impudence and enormity is the first of its kind in this country. I propose to do all within my power to ensure it will also be the last of its kind; outrageous conduct constitutes an intolerable menace to the wellbeing of society.
Let us clear out of the way any romantic notions of dare-devilry. This is nothing less than a sordid crime of violence inspired by vast greed. The motive of greed is obvious. As to violence, anybody who has seen that nerve-shattered engine driver can have no doubt of the terrifying effect on law-abiding citizens of a concerted assault by masked and armed robbers in lonely darkness. To deal with this case leniently would be a positively evil thing. When grave crime is committed it calls for grave punishment, not for the purpose of mere retribution but so that others similarly tempted shall be brought to the sharp realisation that crime does not pay and that the crime is most certainly not worth even the most alluring candle. As the higher the price the greater the temptation, potential criminals who may be dazzled by the enormity of the price must be taught that the punishment they risk will be proportionately greater.
I therefore find myself faced with the unenviable duty of pronouncing grave sentences. You, Cordrey, and the other accused vary widely in intelligence, strength of personality, in antecedent history, in age and in many other ways. Some convicted on this indictment have absolutely clean characters up to the present. Some have previous convictions of a comparatively minor character and others have previous convictions of gravity which could now lead to sentences of corrective training or even of preventive detention.
To some the degradation to which you have all now sunk will bring consequences vastly more cruel than to the other. I have anxiously sought to bear in mind everything that has been urged on behalf of all the accused by your learned Counsel, to whom I am so greatly indebted, but whatever the past of a particular accused and whatever his position, all else pales into insignificance in the light of his present offences. Furthermore, the evidence, or rather the lack of it, renders it impossible to determine exactly what part was played by each of the eleven accused convicted of the larger conspiracy or the eight convicted of the actual robbery. I therefore propose, after mature deliberation, to treat you all in the same manner with but two exceptions.
You, Cordrey, are the first of the exceptions. On your own confession you stand convicted on the first count of conspiracy to rob the mail and on counts 3, 4 and 5 of receiving in all nearly £141,000 of the stolen money, but when arrested you immediately gave information to the police which enabled them to put their hands on nearly £80,000 and the remainder was eventually recovered. Furthermore, at the outset of this trial you confessed your guilt and I feel I should give recognition to that fact in determining your sentence. I do this because it is greatly in the public interest that the guilty should confess their guilt. This massive trial is the best demonstration of the truth of that proposition. In respect of the four counts you must go to prison for concurrent terms of 20 years.
WILLIAM BOAL
William Gerald Boal, you, who are substantially the oldest of the accused, have been convicted of conspiracy to rob the mail and of armed robbery itself. You have expressed no repentance for your wrong-doing, indeed, you continue to assert your innocence but you beg for mercy. I propose to extend to you some measure of mercy and I do it on two grounds. Firstly, on account of your age, you being a man of 50 and, secondly, because, having seen and heard you, I cannot believe that you were one of the originators of the conspiracy or that you played a very dynamic part in it or in the robbery itself. Detective Superintendent Fewtrell has confirmed me in that view of you which I had already formed, but your participation in any degree nevertheless remains a matter of extreme gravity. In the light of these considerations the concurrent sentences you will serve are, upon the first count, 21 years and upon the second count 24 years.
CHARLES WILSON
Charles Frederick Wilson, you have been convicted of conspiracy to rob the mail and of armed robbery. No one has said less than you throughout this long trial. Indeed, I doubt if you have spoken half a dozen words. Certainly no word of repentance has been expressed by you. I bear in mind those matters which your learned Counsel has urged upon your behalf, but my duty, as I conceive it, is clear. If you or any of the order accused still to be dealt with had assisted justice that would have told strongly in your favour, but you have not. The consequences of this outrageous crime is that the vast booty of something like £2½ million still remains almost entirely unrecovered. It would be an affront to the public weal that any of you should be at liberty in anything like the near future to enjoy any of those ill-gotten gains.
Accordingly, it is no spirit of mere retribution that I propose to secure that such an opportunity will be denied all of you for an extremely long time. Nevertheless, the plea of Mr Wilfred Fordham for a gleam of light at the end of the long dark tunnel to be left for his client, is a plea I intend to heed in respect of all of you. On the first count you will go to prison for 25 years and on the second count you will be sentenced to a concurrent term of 30 years.
RONALD BIGGS
Ronald Arthur Biggs, yesterday you were convicted of both the first and second counts of this indictment. Your learned Counsel has urged that you had no special talent and you were plainly not an originator of the conspiracy. Those and all other submissions I bear in mind, but the truth is that I do not know when you entered the conspiracy or what part you played. What I do know is that you are a specious and facile liar and you have this week, in this court, perjured yourself time and again, but I add not a day to your sentence on that account. Your previous record qualifies you to be sentenced to preventive detention; that I shall not do. Instead, the sentence of the court upon you in respect of the first count is one of 25 years’ imprisonment and in respect of the second count, 30 years’ imprisonment. Those sentences to be served concurrently.
THOMAS WISBEY
Thomas William Wisbey, you stand convicted on the first and second counts. Your previous record qualifies you for corrective training but any such sentence is plainly out of the question in the present circumstances. In your case again I have no evidence upon which I can measure the degree or quality of your participation in the vast criminal enterprise which has given rise to this trial. Your learned Counsel has urged that you are plainly not a dominant character and that the part you played was subsidiary and was perhaps connected with transport matters. You yourself have thrown no light upon that or upon any other topic and you have not sought to mollify the court by any admission of repentance. The sentences upon you are concurrent sentences. In respect of the first count, 25 years’ imprisonment and in respect of the second count, 30 years’ imprisonment.
ROBERT WELCH
Robert Alfred Welch, you have been convicted on the first and second counts of this indictment. Your counsel has urged upon me that there is no evidence of any sudden flowing of money into your pockets or as to when you joined the conspiracy or what you actually did. These and all matters urged in mitigation and your antecedents, I have sought faithfully to bear in mind. The sentence of the court upon you is that on the first count you go to prison for 25 years and upon the second count you go to prison for 30 years. Those sentences will be concurrent.
JAMES HUSSEY
James Hussey, you have been convicted on the first and second counts of this indictment. You have previous convictions of gravity, including two involving substantial violence. On the other hand, I accept that as a son you are warm-hearted and it is obvious you have qualities of personality and intelligence which you might have put to very good stead. I balance these and all other matters to the best of my ability and having done so the concurrent sentences that you will serve are, on the first count, 25 years’ imprisonment and on the second count, 30 years.
ROY JAMES
Roy John James, you have been convicted on both the first and second counts. You are the only one out of the accused in respect of whom it has been proved that you actually received a substantial part of the stolen moneys. On your arrest you still had in your possession over £12,000 which I have no doubt was the result of exchange out of the original stolen moneys received by you. I entertain no doubt that the original sum you received substantially exceeded that figure. Your record in the past is a bad one and corrective training seems to have done you little or no good. Yet you have ability of a kind which would have assured you an honest livelihood of substantial proportion; for in a very short space of time you had, as your learned Counsel has said, brilliant and meteoric success as a racing driver. I strongly suspect that it was your known talent as a driver which enabled you to play an important part in the perpetration of this grave crime. It may be, as you say, that you personally have never resorted to physical violence, but you nevertheless stand convicted of participating with others in armed robbery and for that you must be sentenced. You have told me that you went to Leatherslade Farm knowing you were doing wrong, that you became involved, but not in the robbery, and then ran away. I do not find it possible to differentiate your case from that of most of the other accused. You will accordingly go to prison for concurrent terms of 25 years on the first count and 30 years on the second count.
GORDON GOODY
Douglas Gordon Goody, you have been convicted on the first and second counts of this indictment. You have a bad record, notably with a conviction for grave violence at the early age of 18, and you qualify for preventive detention. Yet, in some respects, you present to this Court one of the saddest problems by which it is confronted in the trial. You have manifest gifts of personality and intelligence which might have carried you far had they been directed to honesty. I have not seen you in Court for the best part of three months without noticing signs that you are a man capable of inspiring the admiration of your fellow accused. In the Army you earned a very good character assessment and it is easy to imagine you becoming, in an entirely honourable role, a leader of your comrades, but you have become a dangerous menace to society.
The Crown have said that they do not consider this criminal enterprise was the product of any criminal master-mind. I do not know that I necessarily agree with the Crown in this respect. I strongly suspect that you played a major role, both in the conspiracy and in the actual robbery. Suspicion, however, is not good enough for me any more than it would be for a jury. It would be, therefore, quite wrong for me to cause my suspicions to lead to imposing upon you any heavier sentence than upon other accused and I shall not do so. You will go to prison for concurrent terms of 25 years on the first count and 30 years on the second.
BRIAN FIELD
Brian Arthur Field, you have been convicted upon count one and count twelve of conspiracy to rob the mail and conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice. Of the righteousness of both verdicts I personally entertain no doubt whatsoever. You had earned an excellent reputation beginning with little original advantages. By a combination of native ability of no mean kind and hard work you had attained a responsible position of a solicitor’s managing clerk. Your strength of personality and superior intelligence enabled you, I strongly suspect, to attain a position of dominance in relation to your employer, John Wheater. I entertain no serious doubt that you are in some measure responsible for the disastrous position in which that wretched man now finds himself, but it is for your own misdeeds and for them alone, that you now have to be sentenced. They are serious enough in all conscience. You are one of the very few convicted persons in this trial of whom it can be said with any degree of certainty what it was that you were able to contribute to the furtherance of criminal ends. Whether it was in your mind or that of Leonard Field or that of some other entirely different person that there originated the idea of acquiring possession of Leatherslade Farm by subterfuge by saying it was wanted for purely honest purposes, I have no satisfactory means of knowing. Whether it was simply a remarkable coincidence that two out of the four bags found in Dorking Woods containing over £100,000 were your property or whether the fact is an indication of your further complicity in the main conspiracy again I have no means of knowing, though naturally I loyally give effect to your vindication by the jury on both the robbery and the receiving charges.
But that you played an essential role in the major conspiracy is clear. Out of that there naturally flowed the later conspiracy to obstruct justice. I have borne in mind your antecedents, as spoken by the police, the contents of the probation officer’s report and all those matters urged upon me by your learned Counsel. You express regret for the position in which you now find yourself and that is understandable. The concurrent sentences of the Court upon you are that on the first count you will go to prison for 25 years and on the twelfth count you will go to prison for 5 years.
LEONARD FIELD
Leonard Dennis Field, you have been convicted on the first and twelfth counts in this indictment. Although you have but one previous conviction, which I ignore, you are a dangerous man. Not only have you perjured yourself repeatedly in this trial to save your own skin but on your own showing at one stage you perjured yourself in an endeavour to ruin the accused, Brian Field. I sentence you not for perjury, but I sentence you solely for conspiracy. How and when you entered the major conspiracy I do not know. Whether you joined it at the instigation of another again I do not know, but an overt act committed by you in pursuance of that conspiracy is established beyond doubt and very important it was.
I cannot agree with your learned Counsel that your part in acquiring possession of Leatherslade Farm may properly be described as a small contribution to the criminal enterprise. On the contrary, it was a vital contribution. Once having joined the major conspiracy, the lesser conspiracy to obstruct justice was a natural outcome. I bear in mind your antecedent history and all those matters urged upon me by your learned Counsel. Having done so I can see no valid grounds for differentiating your case from Brian Field. You will accordingly be sentenced to concurrent terms of 25 years on the first count and 5 years on the twelfth count.
JOHN WHEATER
John Denby Wheater, your case is in many respects the saddest and most difficult of all. You are 42 years old, a married man with heavy family responsibilities and of excellent character up until the present crime. You too served your country gallantly in the war and faithfully in peace. There is no evidence that you have contributed to your present disastrous position by profligate living of any kind. Indeed your standards appear to have been distinctly lower than those of your managing clerk. Yet you, as a solicitor of the Supreme Court, stand convicted under count 12 of conspiring with Leonard Field and your managing clerk to obstruct the course of justice. The jury have acquitted you on the first count and I naturally treat you as having had no knowledge until after the mail train robbery of the criminal purpose for which you had been instructed to secure possession of Leatherslade Farm. Your conviction on the twelfth count establishes, as I interpret the verdict, that at some time after the robbery that criminal purpose became clear to you, as indeed it must have done, and you could then have given the police vital information by identifying Leonard Field as your professional client. A decent citizen would have volunteered to do that very thing whatever his strictly legal obligations must be. Instead, you professed inability to do so. That profession the jury have found was false and I regret to have to say that I have no doubt the verdict of the jury in that regard was right. At that time not a single one of the accused had been identified and, indeed, it was not until some days later that Mrs Rixon picked out Leonard Field. But for that no thanks are due to you. Instead of assisting justice you were obstructing it and that at a time when speed was obviously of vital concern to the forces of law and order. Furthermore, your deliberately obstructive actions clearly sprang from the conspiracy between you and the two Fields. It is in respect of that conspiracy that you must now be sentenced.
Why you participated in it I do not know and you have not told me. You learned Counsel has been able merely to hazard a guess. Whether or not all the facts, if known, would speak in your favour or to your prejudice I have no means of telling and must not speculate, but I am disposed to accept the view that you allowed yourself to be overborne in some manner by your more masterful and able managing clerk. I cannot accept the submission that the fact that the maximum punishment for being an accessory after the fact to felony, with which you were originally charged, is 2 years’ imprisonment, offers a sure guide to the proper sentence for this criminal conspiracy. Such conduct on the part of any citizen is gravely blameworthy. The criminality of it is gravitated when practiced by an officer of the Supreme Court and that fact must weigh heavily against you. On the other hand, I realise that the consequences of your conviction are disastrous both professionally and personally. Bearing in mind all relevant considerations I have come to the conclusion that you must go to prison for 3 years and you will be sentenced accordingly.27
Shocked reactions to these heavy sentences were not only evident in the public gallery but equally among the national and international press representatives who expressed their views the following day.
The Daily Mail editorial was a prime example:
People everywhere are puzzled by one glaring contrast. It is this – an evil doer convicted of conspiracy and robbery as in the Train Case can be sentenced to thirty years which, with normal remission, means serving twenty years in prison. But an evil doer convicted of murder and jailed for life is unlikely to serve more than fifteen years. Does this mean that stealing banknotes is regarded as being more wicked than murdering somebody? What is the real purpose of punishment in both cases? To mete out retribution? To deter others? To reform the criminal?28
For once, the Labour-supporting Daily Herald (which, five months later would be renamed The Sun),29 found itself in full agreement with the right-wing Daily Mail:
Those of the gang sentenced would have got lighter sentences for non-capital murder,30 still lighter for blackmail, infinitely lighter for breaking [a] baby’s legs. Our legal system tends to take a sterner view of crimes against property than crimes against people.31
The Daily Herald also compared the sentences with another headline story on the same day. The Ferranti Company had been exposed for making an unfair profit of more than £4 million from a government missile contract. The irony was given full vent by the paper’s cartoonist Belsky, who showed a father telling his son after reading the newspaper, ‘Well, that shows crime doesn’t pay – Government missiles – that’s what you want to go in for.’32
The Daily Telegraph took a different view of the sentences and focused on the deterrent issue:
Another interpretation is that killers are thought less susceptible to deterrence than thieves – a view maintained by many experts of crime. Certainly the learned judge made it clear that his severity was aimed at striking fear into the heart of the criminal world by making the penalty match the exorbitance of the offence.33
The liberal-leaning Guardian’s editorial declared that: ‘... the sentences are out of proportion with everything except the value of the property involved’.34
Probably the most telling comments were made by DCI Frank Williams, when interviewed by a BBC reporter following the sentencing:
BBC Reporter: What do you think would have happened if Leatherslade Farm had been, as they put it, ‘cleaned up’ - do you think you’d have actually caught anybody?
DCI Frank Williams: The job would have been very, very much more difficult of course because you know by the trial we depended to a very, very great extent on what clues were left at the farm. The mistake they made of course was not getting away straight away and by staying at the farm leaving the clues they did, which led to the eventual arrests.35
Notes
1. POST 120/95 (closed until 2001; opened 2002).
2. POST 120/95 (closed until 2001; opened 2002), MEPO 2/10571 (still closed at time of writing) and MEPO 2/2/10575 (still closed at time of writing).
3. See note 2; Black died on 9 March 1964. Two months later, William Goodwin too died suddenly of a heart attack while staying at Endelstowe.
4. HO 287/1496.
5. Ibid.
6. DPP 2/3719, part 2 (originally closed until 2045; redacted version opened 25/6/10).
7. J 82/420−441 (opened 1994).
8. Brian Field married Brenda Spencer on 1 March 1958 (Entry 117, Register of Marriages, Registration District of Middlesex South), and they were divorced three years later. Field married Karin Klemich on 20 January 1962 at St Marylebone Register Office (Entry 155, Register of Marriages, Registration District of St Marylebone).
9. HO 287/1496.
10. Ibid.
11. J 82/420−441 (opened 1994).
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. HO 287/1496.
18. J 82/420−441 (opened 1994).
19. DPP 2/3718, 1 of 6, part 2 (originally closed until 2045; redacted version opened 25/6/10).
20. Ibid.
21. DPP 2/3718, 3 of 6 (originally closed until 2045; redacted version opened 25/6/10).
22. The Rixon family moved to the Post Office Stores at Dunsden near Reading, where Bernard Rixon became the sub-postmaster.
23. DPP 2/3718/1 (originally closed until 2045; redacted version opened 25/6/10).
24. DPP 2/3717, Report 3 (originally closed until 2045; redacted version opened 25/6/10). Two pages of McArthur’s report on Biggs and the fingerprint evidence regarding him have been redacted under FOI exemption (s) 40 (2) and therefore remain closed until 2045.
25. Ibid.
26. HO 287/1496.
27. J 82/440 (opened 1994).
28. The Daily Mail, 17 April 1964.
29. In 1960 the TUC sold The Daily Herald, which was losing readers and advertising revenue, to the pro-Labour Mirror Group Newspapers. On 15 September 1964 MGN changed the name on the paper to The Sun and relaunched it as ‘a radical, independent newspaper’. It was not until 1969 that Rupert Murdoch purchased the still ailing Sun from MGN.
30. Since the 1957 Homicide Act, there had been two types of murder on the statute book – capital murder punished by the death penalty and non-capital murder punished by a life sentence in jail. The death penalty was suspended in November 1964 for a period of five years before final abolition in 1969.
31. The Daily Herald, 17 April 1964.
32. Ibid.
33. The Daily Telegraph, 17 April 1964.
34. The Guardian, 17 April 1964.
35. BBC Nine O’Clock News, 16 April 1964.