5

The First Rule of Robbery

Don’t panic. If there’s one motto writ large in the bank robber’s handbook, that must surely be it. For those responsible for what at the time was Scotland’s biggest cash heist, the maxim was taken to a whole new level.

After pulling off an armed raid at a Glasgow branch of the Clydesdale Bank in 1972, the three-man team were the model of composure. They walked to their parked getaway car – no sign of a jog, let alone a sprint – and sat, together with their £65,000 haul, in their stolen Ford Zephyr for a few moments before starting the engine, signalling and making their exit into the flow of traffic in an orderly fashion.

Disappearing into the distance in their rear-view mirror was the Clydesdale’s Hillington branch, part of the fabric of a sprawling industrial estate. Quite importantly for the driver and passenger in the maroon-coloured Ford, it was very well placed for accessing the M8 motorway.

It was around 3 p.m. when they struck – closing time for the bank staff. After a busy Tuesday, the cash drawers and vaults were full of notes and coins collected during the course of the working day and that amount had been bolstered by a large delivery of sterling earlier that day. The employees were subjected to a terrifying ordeal by the masked trio, whose sense of calm was chilling. The first robber, thought to be between 25 and 30 years of age, had fair hair, wore a cream overcoat and spoke with a Scottish accent. The second, said to be around 25 with dark hair, wore denim clothing or a boiler suit with a cream balaclava. The third, who is thought to have remained in the car throughout, was never properly seen by witnesses. Neither of the pair who entered the bank was particularly tall or particularly powerful but they didn’t need to be because of the weaponry which accompanied them as they set about their work. It marked them out as professionals rather than opportunistic amateurs and made it all the more important that they were apprehended sooner rather than later.

Once inside the building, they produced a shotgun and a pistol or revolver, threatening tellers and quickly getting their hands on the huge sum of money which was being held in the branch. The culprits forced two of the tellers and two female customers to stare down the barrel of the shotgun as they demonstrated steely aggression in their quest for a profitable afternoon. The warning barked out was simple: ‘If everyone behaves, no one will get hurt.’ A bag was thrown onto the bank’s counter with instructions for the tellers to fill it. They stuffed the money in bundles of £20, £10, £5 and £1 notes into a brown canvas holdall and handed it over to the robbers who then strolled out into the afternoon sunshine.

The staff quickly called in police and had to go through the incident blow by blow again as they gave the initial statements to set the investigation rolling – a traumatic experience relived as they outlined the fear they felt when faced with the gun-toting raiders. A police guard was put in place at the branch as officers left nothing to chance whilst employees and witnesses were quizzed inside – all of whom were said to have been left badly shaken.

As officers took those statements at Hillington, colleagues in the Renfrewshire and Bute force moved quickly to throw up cordons all around the area as they sought the Ford seen driving away from the bank in the aftermath of the robbery. It was found within hours, abandoned at nearby Glasgow Airport – posing two immediate questions. How had the driver and passengers made it through the police roadblocks? And had the trio continued their getaway by air rather than road? The prospect added an intriguing new dimension as the possibility of an international element to the mystery was considered and assistance from Interpol was put on the agenda. Police poured into the vicinity of the airport. The terminal building was targeted, passengers waiting to board planes were questioned and the surrounding offices and cargo units were also searched in the hope of catching the raiders red-handed.

Of course, in 1972, the airport was nothing like the hub we know today. It had only opened six years previously and handled 1.5 million passengers in its first year. Today, that figure would be surpassed in just three months. By the 1970s, it was a busier place, with airlines such as Laker, Tarom, Britannia, British Midland, Iberia and Channel running flights to popular destinations in Europe, so a far-flung getaway destination was certainly possible.

The bank in question’s location had perhaps been one of the key elements for the raiders. The sprawling 320-acre Hillington site holds the distinction of being Scotland’s first ever industrial estate, officially opened in 1938 after being built in an attempt to get the country’s economy moving again after the downturn of the 30s. Situated just four miles from the city on land between Renfrew Road and Paisley Road, south of the M8, the Renfrewshire site quickly won favour with a number of leading firms, including Rolls Royce, as a manufacturing base, and remained buoyant after its initial success. Infrastructure sprang up – from parks and garden areas for workers to make use of to first-aid facilities and food outlets. The banks also saw an opportunity and the Clydesdale moved in to take advantage of a captive market. Indeed, the firm remained active for decades, moving out of the Queen Elizabeth Avenue branch in 1979 to take occupancy of a new purpose-built building nearby on another Hillington site.

Despite turbulent economic times throughout Hillington’s lifespan, it has remained a constant on the Glasgow business and industrial landscape. Today it is classed as Scotland’s largest industrial estate, with tenants in every industry from bed manufacture to construction and coffee distribution. Diversity has always been at the heart of the commercial park and providing banking facilities was important – particularly in the days before online transactions became commonplace and payroll was also handled in cash rather than through transfers.

As well as location, the timing was also interesting. The raiders had chosen the eve of one of the city’s great sporting occasions to carry out their attack. Rangers and thousands of the club’s supporters were already in Barcelona for the European Cup Winners’ Cup Final appearance against Moscow Dynamo, which was to be played the day after the Hillington raid. Hundreds of Rangers fans were flying out from Glasgow Airport to follow their team on the day of the bank raid and they were inevitably among those stopped and questioned by the police in the terminal. Was it coincidence that the cup final week had been chosen or did the planning extend to picking a time at which attention across Glasgow was focussing on the looming Nou Camp encounter? If they thought the football spectacle would ensure publicity of the raid was kept to a minimum, they were wrong.

Despite the distractions of Rangers’ exploits, the Hillington heist was still front-page news with the Evening Times headline, ‘REWARD OUT FOR RAIDERS’. The story related to the Clydesdale’s offer of a 10 per cent bounty on any cash recovered during the course of the investigation, with bank chiefs clearly hoping their loss could be mitigated with a little bit of financial pressure. The Glasgow Herald hit the newsstands with ‘£63,000 HAUL FROM SHOTGUN RAID ON BANK’ – a reference to the initial estimate of the sum involved. That was later adjusted upwards to exactly £65,704.34 after a thorough audit.

The publicity was designed to encourage further input to the police probe, although well-meaning witnesses had, in fact, hindered the earliest stages of the investigation. Within minutes of the raid, police had been told that two men and two women had been seen leaving in a green car – a vehicle initially sought by officers, then quickly eliminated as more information began to filter through. Vital time was spent following up that line of inquiry, although detectives were at pains to point out that the initial tip-off was well intentioned rather than malicious.

On 25 June 1974, more than two years after the heist, the first sign of a breakthrough was made public when it was revealed that Robert Ross had been arrested in connection with the incident. Aged 40 at the time, he was described as a prisoner in Barlinnie when he made his first court appearance in relation to the Hillington robbery. Ross was jailed for nine years for his part in the crime, as well as for taking part in an even bigger raid on the Whiteinch branch of the Clydesdale in Glasgow in 1974.

Ross was not the main attraction for police – that role fell to a familiar face by the name of James Crosbie. In September 1974, the incredible story was played out in the High Court in Edinburgh as Crosbie, aged 37 at that time, appeared in the dock charged with masterminding three robberies which had netted in excess of £170,000. Hillington was the first of those major crimes. The second was the Whiteinch heist in which £87,000 was stolen – the largest-ever bank robbery in Scotland at that time – and the third was in Edinburgh, again in 1974, when more than £17,000 was grabbed in an attack on the Royal Bank of Scotland branch on Gorgie Road.

Crosbie’s punishment was a 20-year prison sentence, more than double that of his accomplice, although it was clear Ross had a vital role to play. He had been employed as a messenger at the Clydesdale bank’s head office in Glasgow and was able to gain the inside information which aided the carefully considered planning of both the Hillington and Whiteinch operations. He had also accompanied Crosbie when the Hillington raid was carried out, a trusted ally for the more experienced of the two criminals as they plotted their get-rich-quick schemes.

The second of the three Crosbie raids was the most alarming for those on his trail. He had struck at the Clydesdale’s Whiteinch branch, on Dumbarton Road, on 30 April 1974 and arrived armed with a pistol. Two shots rang out inside the building as the team threatened staff and got their hands on £87,000 in cash. That money had been delivered just moments earlier and had not yet been placed in the vault. This led detectives at the time to claim the raiders must have struck lucky. They described the timing as a ‘fluke’ despite admitting there was a possibility of inside information being put to use.

After the burst of shots inside the bank, a further bullet was fired from the getaway car, missing a passer-by, yet the contention from the defendant in court was that those had all been accidental. The threat posed by guns was one thing but, when they began to be fired in anger, it put a completely different complexion on the crime. Not that all of the witnesses felt threatened – far from it, in fact.

Thomas Timms, aged 61 at the time, was standing outside the branch at the time of the mid-morning raid. He told reporters at the time: ‘It was like the Keystone Cops. I heard shots coming from inside the building. Then a tall man carrying a shotgun came running out and got into a car only a few yards from me in Glendore Street. A smaller man backed out of the bank door firing into the building as he came out into the street.

‘He was carrying a case under one arm. The magazine fell out of his gun as he ran towards the car and he had to stop to pick it up. He put it back, then aimed the gun at me and fired in my direction. I wasn’t hit, even though he was only a few yards away. He had to bang on the back of the car as it started to move off. Then he fired a shot at it and his partner let him in. The car swung round into Dumbarton Road and made off. At first I thought they were making a film – it was like Z-Cars or the Keystone Cops.’

Almost exactly five years later, the same branch of the Clydesdale was hit again when three shotgun-wielding robbers burst in and once again threatened staff. That gang made their escape with just £2,500 in a raid in which the proceeds did not match the violent means. They fled in a stolen red Ford Cortina driven by a fourth member of their crew, with the car later found abandoned in Yoker, and disappeared into the busy city streetscape of Glasgow to set another challenge for the local constabulary. Crosbie was not involved in that one.

There was an added twist to the story of the getaway in the 1974 heist. After fleeing in a car, the raiders transferred to bicycles, which had been discreetly parked approximately a mile away at Broomhill Lane, and pedalled off into the distance. In the car, they had left behind a pair of raincoats and a wig, part of the disguise used during the raid. Is it possible they could have been aware of the fact that Whiteinch was a branch equipped with a security camera? After collecting his bike, Crosbie, with a rucksack on his back, was said to have taken with him the lion’s share of the proceeds of that afternoon’s action. The use of bikes was just another nod towards the deep thinking that went into each of the raids, with every avenue explored in the fine tuning of the planning.

It was claimed that Crosbie had used his pilot’s licence during the Hillington episode, although not directly. He had obtained the permit after taking flying lessons and was said to have used it as a badge of respectability, coupled with dapper clothes, to drive through a police cordon near to the airport during his getaway. It was clever, elaborate and had all the hallmarks of the type of confidence which became a trademark for a man who, at one stage, was Scotland’s most wanted. It appeared he thrived on the execution of his blueprints as much as he did on the proceeds.

Some of the money from the £170,000 spree was recovered but the majority was not. Ross had been paid £7,000 for his efforts but Crosbie secured the most. He was said to have spent freely after the initial Hillington heist, and by the time the net closed in around him there was only £48,246 for the authorities to reclaim. Taking into account the payment to Ross, it left a gap of £114,754 which was never filled. Crosbie had been quick to admit his guilt but less speedy to lead police to the missing money.

It was the discovery of some of the cash which led to Crosbie’s arrest in the first instance. Having stashed around £40,000 in a safe house, the notes were discovered by a friend of the householder’s daughter and eventually police were alerted. The tangled web began to unravel and the prime suspect for the two Glasgow bank raids was arrested. But that was not where the story ended. Enlisting the help of renowned Glasgow solicitor Joe Beltrami, Crosbie was incredibly granted bail and allowed to walk from the court pending the next stage of the action against him. It was an invitation he simply could not ignore and the robber promptly disappeared without a trace. It later transpired he had been hiding out in Falkirk and, as funds began to run low, he reverted to type and got hold of a gun to enable him to carry out his next attack. The artful dodger was seeking funds to enable him to skip the country and, having perhaps exhausted opportunities in Glasgow, he turned his attention to Edinburgh and the Royal Bank of Scotland branch at Gorgie. Having scouted out the target, everything went to plan. It was just an error in delaying too long which cost him dear.

Crosbie was apprehended by quick-thinking police in the capital after they recognised him in the street the day after his exploits. He had at his side a holdall packed with £20,000 which he had earmarked to help him start a new life, possibly abroad, away from the prospect of another prison term. The officers in question were, in fact, Glasgow-based but had been through on the east coast on other police business when they ran into their force’s old adversary on unfamiliar territory and struck it lucky on the day in question.

At the High Court in Edinburgh, Lord Robertson was damning during his sentencing address. He said, ‘James Crosbie, you are nothing more than a cold, calculating scoundrel whom I consider to be the most dangerous man in Scotland and, indeed, a threat to the very fabric of our society.’

Crosbie had been no stranger to the boys in blue. A Glaswegian born and bred, he already had 14 convictions by the time the three major bank jobs were added to his record. Those went as far back as 1950 and had led to a spell in borstal when he was a young man growing up in Springburn. Subsequent prison sentences for a range of offences including housebreaking and the reset of stolen property followed. Crosbie first made the news as an 18-year-old when his escape from Glasgow Sheriff Court was reported in The Bulletin, with the teenager exiting through a toilet window as he awaited an appearance on fraud charges. He had been accused of obtaining a car by deception but clearly did not fancy hanging around to discover the court’s view on that particular deed.

His passion for risk taking saw him drift into dubious company. As he admitted himself in an interview in later life, ‘There was all sorts of things going on in London in those days and it was easy to get mixed up in it all. I never really did anything violent though.’

When Crosbie was jailed for three and a half years for conspiracy to rob, his time in Verne Prison in Dorset brought him to the attention of the Kray Twins. He was asked to make counterfeit driving licences for Britain’s most feared gangsters – if nothing else, this was an endorsement of his standing in the league of criminal ‘talents’.

He had also had legitimate employment in his life, first as an electrician in London and then as a businessman in his own right back in Glasgow. He was successful and did not need to rob banks to survive but appeared to be driven by the thrill of it all.

Others appeared ready to follow Crosbie’s lead. Just 18 months after the Clydesdale raid, another bank on the Hillington estate was targeted by thugs. This time, the gang of four came armed with pickaxe handles and lay in wait for a payroll run from the Royal Bank of Scotland branch to the nearby Personna blade factory. A clerk was bundled to the ground and robbed of £7,000 in cash, with the accompanying driver also threatened during the incident in October 1973. The quartet fled the scene in a van before continuing their getaway in a red Volkswagen car which had been parked close by.

In 1989, by which time the branch was located in a new building, the Clydesdale in Hillington was again subjected to unwanted attention when armed robbers ambushed a Securicor delivery and made off with £7,000. One of the robbers fired a gun in the air and the other hit the guard on the legs with a hammer before making their getaway in a red Ford Escort, which was found abandoned near a footbridge over the M8 at Cocklesloan. It was not quite in the same league as Crosbie and his elite crew but definitely following in their footsteps.

The 1980s’ incident was unusual but in the 1970s a spate of bank robberies in Glasgow was to touch the consciousness of the public. Among the suggestions from concerned Glaswegians at the time, aired through the forum of the city’s newspaper letters columns, was that each bank branch could be equipped with a trained marksman to work incognito among its staff and be primed and ready to swing into action in the event of an armed raid. It was an extreme reaction but a measure of how perturbed some were by the alarming number of incidents being recorded across Strathclyde. The deterrent of a prison sentence, it was said, was not enough to prevent repeats.

Certainly, in the case of Crosbie, jail was not enough to keep him on the straight and narrow. In 1996, he was caught attempting to smuggle cannabis worth £250,000 at Birmingham Airport and sentenced to four years. In 2000, back on the outside, he was again caught up in a drugs case when he was captured attempting to board a ship destined for Iceland whilst laden with cannabis. This time he was jailed for eight years but was released in 2005 and vowed to settle down as a family man. That included indulging in his new-found passion for writing – a talent he had explored whilst in prison and one that had won praise from judges of the Koestler Awards, which had been established to celebrate the art of prisoners.

A winner of Koestler Awards, he went on to sit on the Koestler Trust judging panel alongside figures such as poet Douglas Dunn, also a former professor of English at St Andrews University, and Sarah Saunders of the National Galleries of Scotland. It was a mark of how much his life had changed during his time inside and, in many ways, demonstrated how the awards helped to rehabilitate those who embraced the arts world whilst serving sentences in Scotland’s prisons. For Crosbie, it sparked a passion for the keyboard which brought him attention for all the right reasons.

Among the books he has had published are accounts of his own criminal enterprises, including the Glasgow bank raids, as well as a collection of stories about the lighter side of life in Peterhead prison. His early efforts gained positive reviews from those who read them but Crosbie did not restrict himself to autobiographical or factual titles. In 2009, his first attempt at fiction, Ashanti Gold, was published. The novel was set in Ghana and it stemmed from his experiences of life in the African country, where he spent time in the 1960s, as well as from his time in Nigeria whilst working in the cocoa trade. Those were just two more stops on an eventful journey in which the Glaswegian also rubbed shoulders with some of Britain’s most notorious gangsters.

At the time of Ashanti Gold’s launch, Crosbie revealed in an interview: ‘The story is about 80 per cent truth and 20 per cent fiction. I lived in Ghana in the early Sixties and I went to see the diamond fields and gold mines. I always wondered, especially when I was at the gold mines, how they could be robbed. So while the book is based on a lot of my own experiences of Ghana, the one thing that’s not true is all the stuff about hijacking the gold. I suppose it is a story about what I would have liked to do at the time and about how I think it could have been done.’

One of Crosbie’s short stories inspired the film The Chain, which featured at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 – an indication of much his growing body of work appealed to the outside world. His son, a filmmaker in his own right, was responsible for the production and the story mirrored real-life events. Crosbie explained at the time of the film’s launch: ‘As usual the story is based on someone I have known. This time it was a notorious killer who used to carry a dog chain as a weapon because he was too well known to the police to risk carrying anything else. Whenever he saw anyone that might be the police, he would simply stand holding the chain calling for a pretend dog called Rover. The story is about him when he gets older, about how he gets on with his family and about how he handles the youngsters, who love to give him a hard time about being past it.’

His work as an author and screenwriter added an air of respectability to the persona of the black sheep of the Crosbie clan. He revealed in an interview with the Daily Record: ‘None of the rest of my family, including cousins and aunts and uncles, have ever had as much as a parking ticket, so I have been a total disgrace to the family.

‘When I left school I went to the shipyards to be a welder. My father tried to stop me; he was an incredibly principled man, and he worried about where that might lead me. But I had watched my father coming in from work every night filthy and shattered, never taking a day off and I just couldn’t understand it. I wanted more. I got bored quickly of the shipyards and went to join the RAF when I was 17. I thought you got to be a pilot when you joined the RAF, so when I found out that wasn’t the case I left as soon as I could.’

From there he moved on to various less noble enterprises, both in London and on home soil. Once back in Glasgow, he launched a firm making gates and other ironwork, building up the business and branching out into furniture manufacturing. Crosbie added, ‘The business was a great success but, in truth, I was always up to things and the reason was simply that I found it so easy to do. I should have stopped while I had the business, but I just couldn’t because it was just such easy cash.’

In his seventies by the time Ashanti Gold hit the bookshops, Crosbie was asked whether he might revert to his old ways at some stage in the future, despite his advancing years. The reply was certain, loud and very clear: ‘I just couldn’t help myself, but I think I’m too old for it all now. My life is all about writing, cycling, seeing my family and going on holiday these days.’