The Men Who Got Away with the Great Train Robbery” a book by Andrew Cook reveals the identity of the 1963 Great Train Robbery Culprits

It is one of the most well-known crimes in the history of the United Kingdom.

Some of the individuals involved in the £2.6 million theft, notably the notorious Ronnie Biggs, became household figures as a result of the Great Train Robbery of 1963.

However, while 12 men were arrested or escaped, three people managed to elude the authorities. The identities of two of them, Harry Smith and Danny Pembroke, were later revealed, while the third remained unknown.

Now, a new book by author Andrew Cook exposes previously unpublished police data that show the so-called ‘Third Man’ may be an East End criminal.

A 1976 cold case investigation into the Great Train Robbery looked at club owner Billy Ambrose, who had previously served time in prison for fraud and robbery.

An identifiable photograph showing significant similarities to Ambrose was generated with the cooperation of witnesses following the heist, according to one file from the review.

Along with other criminals Ronald ‘Buster’ Edwards and Jimmy White, Ambrose was an associate of the robbery’s mastermind Bruce Reynolds.

The cold case review was withdrawn in 1978 after Ambrose was acquitted in a related fraud case, and no charges were filed.

The offender was living in sheltered housing until he died in 2009.

Mr Cook’s book No Case to Answer: The Men Who Got Away with the Great Train Robbery reveals Ambrose’s likely role in the Great Train Robbery.

Mr Cook was given access to material from Scotland Yard’s secretive cold case investigation.

A 15-member gang carried out the 1963 raid on a Royal Mail train traveling from Glasgow to London. The gang made off with about £55 million in today’s money.

Biggs was one of the nine people imprisoned the next year, however he only stayed in Wandsworth for 15 months before escaping.

He went on the run for the next 36 years, residing in places such as France, Australia, and Brazil.

After being penalized for receiving stolen goods, former boxer Ambrose’s legitimate fighting career came to an end in 1952.
He was later found guilty of a violent robbery and sentenced to five years in prison. He escaped from prison for a short time but was apprehended.

He started the Pen Club, a drinking establishment in London’s East End, after being released.

In 1960, he made headlines when he was shot in the stomach inside a nightclub. Selwyn Cooney, another man who was shot, died.

Ambrose was arrested for a different fraud in Paris a year after the Great Train Robbery. He was imprisoned for 18 months.

Ambrose was suspected by the Met when he was arrested with 13 others in 1976 for a bankers’ draft fraud.

He had been on a suspect list compiled the week after the 1963 raid, but has since been removed from the list.

Details of his past conviction were initially lacking when the police’s 1976 cold case team – which was part of the newly formed anti-corruption unit A10 – began investigating him for any possible involvement he may have played in the crime.

Ambrose was a wealthy man living in a beautiful mansion in Surrey at the time.

Ambrose bought the house from fellow rail robbery suspect Harry Smith, and his prison record mentioned convicted thieves Edwards, Reynolds, and Jimmy White as close acquaintances.

‘I’ve heard Harry and his buddies Jimmy and Billy were involved,’ Smith’s father said authorities, adding to the evidence linking Ambrose to the 1963 crime.

After two witnesses saw a similar figure near the Great Train Robbers’ Leatherslade Farm hideout, the identikit image matching Ambrose’s appearance was compiled.

This evidence matched the description of a round-faced robber seen uncoupling the locomotive from the rest of the train supplied by mail sorter Stanley Hall.

Edwards, the gang’s only other round-faced member, had been elsewhere during the raid.

In intelligence assessments, it was also suggested that Ambrose had purchased property through Otto Skorzeny, a former Nazi SS officer.

Skorzeny was suspected of helping the train thieves launder money.

Despite evidence that Ambrose was engaged in the Great Train Robbery, the Met’s cold-case investigation was terminated in 1978 when the club owner was cleared of bankers’ draft fraud at the Old Bailey.

The convicted felon was severely harmed by legal bills, and he lost his riches. In 2009, he died in a sheltered housing facility.

When Biggs returned to the UK in 2001, he was re-incarcerated and served the remainder of his 30-year term until being freed in 2009. At the age of 84, he passed away in 2013.

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