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In August 1963, a group of 15 robbers boarded a Royal Mail train travelling from Glasgow to London and stole about £2.6m.
It was an audacious heist to say the least – and one that still captures the public imagination 60 years later.
The money taken in what became known as the Great Train Robbery is estimated to be worth as much as £60m today – and the robbers would use some of the bank notes to play Monopoly as they laid low on a Buckinghamshire farm.
Many people who have paid for a UK train journey in 2023 will tell you they felt significantly out of pocket afterwards.
These newly rich fugitives had pulled off the complete opposite – but when they stepped off the train in Buckinghamshire carrying 120 bags of cash, their journey was far from over.
‘I thought dad was a spy’
Bruce Reynolds, the mastermind of the robbery, was one of those who fled the country as police began a game of cat and mouse that would captivate the British public for years.
The London criminal fled to Mexico City and was joined by his wife Frances and their baby son Nick Reynolds.
“I was 18 months old before I spent five years on the run with my father.
“As far as I was concerned, my dad was a wealthy businessman and we were on a very big extended holiday,” Mr Reynolds told the Sky News Daily podcast in an episode marking the 60th anniversary of the heist.
“I had a luxurious upbringing and I went to school with the children of the American diplomats that were based in the US embassy.
“I never picked up any anxiety or stress from my mother or my father, so I had no reason to believe anything was wrong.”
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Mr Reynolds began to suspect his father might not be all he seemed when they suddenly had to leave Mexico for Canada, before heading to the south of France and then back to England.
“I had about five different identities and passports myself, let alone my mum and dad.
“My father was always so well dressed, he kind of based himself on Cary Grant in the film To Catch A Thief.
“I thought he had to be a spy or something.”
Reynolds tries to cut a deal
In 1968, five years after the robbery, the family heard a knock on the door at their home in Torquay, Devon.
Bruce Reynolds had by this stage changed his name to Keith Hiller, but Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Butler, the legendary Metropolitan Police officer who led the team hunting the robbers, knew he finally had his man.
“When Tommy Butler arrested my dad, he burst in the door and said ‘hello Bruce, it’s been a long time. I’ve got you now’.
“To which my dad turned and said ‘c’est la vie Tom’. It was like a scene from a film.”
Bruce Reynolds tried and failed to cut a deal with police before being sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Mr Reynolds says his father pleaded guilty and agreed to hand over what he had left of the £150,000 he gained from the robbery – but he is not clear how much that remaining amount was.
Bruce Reynolds was released early in 1978 and later told Sky News’ crime correspondent Martin Brunt the first thing he thought of when he was arrested was his “poor little boy and the effect 20 years in prison was going to have on him”.
Mr Reynolds says: “When my dad was jailed I was catapulted into a new world and sent to boarding school. It was like we were living parallel lives.
“I was allowed to visit and he would write these beautiful letters to me to keep that bond going. He did a terrific job there.”
Mr Reynolds says his father largely kept a low profile after leaving prison – unlike fellow robbers Ronnie Biggs and Buster Edwards who gained more public attention.
Bruce Reynolds said in his 1995 book Autobiography Of A Thief that his criminal past was a curse that meant nobody wanted to employ him for either legal or illegal work.
He died peacefully in his sleep aged 81 at his home in Croydon, London, in February 2013.
Speaking about his life as the son of one of the Great Train Robbers, Mr Reynolds said: “It’s been a bit of an albatross around my neck in some ways, but I can’t complain about it. It’s part of my life and I’ve accepted it.”
Mr Reynolds, now in is his early 60s, is a sculptor and plays harmonica in the London-based band Alabama 3, which wrote the theme tune for the TV series The Sopranos.
Read more:
Great Train Robber Bruce Reynolds dies aged 81
The legacy of the Great Train Robbery
The robbery became known as “the heist of the century” and continued to make headlines for decades after the money was stolen – largely thanks to gang member Ronnie Biggs, who escaped from Wandsworth Prison in 1965.
Biggs, who had only had a minor role in the robbery, fled to Brazil where he lived as a fugitive for 36 years. The South American country didn’t have an extradition treaty with the UK – and tourists and journalists would often meet Biggs to hear tales of the heist.
The money that was stolen was on its way to the Royal Mint to be destroyed, with the robbery now largely remembered as a victimless crime.
However, train driver Jack Mills was hit over the head with a metal bar during the raid and suffered severe brain damage which he never recovered from.
The 17 people known to have been involved in the robbery spent a total of 307 years behind bars.
As for the money… most of it was quickly laundered and never recovered.
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