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THE grandson of a postman wrongly implicated in the Great Train Robbery has told of his relief that another person has now been identified as the shadowy figure known as “the Ulsterman”.
Mark McKenna said the descendants of Patrick McKenna never believed claims the unassuming Royal Mail worker could have been involved in the most notorious robbery in British history.
Mark, 46, of Manchester, told the Mirror that he and other relatives were angry when suspected mastermind Gordon Goody fingered Patrick, who died in 1992, as having a key role in the robbery five years ago.
They fear that Goody simply plucked a stereotype Irish name out of thin air to promote his book, which resulted in Patrick – who lived in north London before relocating to Manchester – being incorrectly linked to the crime long after his death.
Now a retired detective has unmasked “the Ulsterman” as Sammy Osterman, a close friend of convicted train robber Tommy Wisbey.
In a new Channel 4 documentary on the 1963 robbery, former transport officer Graham Satchwell, 70, said he could prove Patrick’s innocence.
Mr Satchwell instead identified underworld fixer Osterman as the mystery gang member, but believes his role in the robbery has been exaggerated.
“I am convinced that it was confusion over the name Osterman that led to the sobriquet Ulsterman,” he told the programme.
It was long been believed that planning for the robbery began when a Post Office insider tipped off criminal associates about the movement of cash on the railways in the early Sixties.
However Mark explained that it could not have been his grandfather, who was a hard-working postman doing his round in Manchester by the time the robbery took place.
Patrick would have had no privileged access to information about cash being transported on the mail train.
Goody’s claim that Patrick’s name was on a glasses case inscribed with its Belfast manufacturer which he later found can also be rubbished, as Mark’s Irish-born grandfather was no longer visiting the Northern Ireland capital city by that stage.
“It was very upsetting for us all when my grandfather was linked to the Great Train Robbery,” Mark said. “He wasn’t that kind of person; he had no criminal ties whatsoever. He was as honest as it gets.
“My mother was absolutely mortified because she had always looked up to her dad as a completely honest person.
“I tried to contact Gordon Goody to explain this all to him but he would not meet me. I could have told him that my granddad had lived in Islington in London, but by the late-50s he had moved to Manchester.
He was a postman. The idea of him going down to meetings in London with the criminals was just ridiculous.”
Only one of the Great Train Robbers, Bob Welch, is still alive. He served 13 years for his crime. The gang, whose members included Ronnie Biggs and Buster Edwards, have given widely different accounts of the background to the crime since it happened.
