The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

episode

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast 8 min 1 speaker 1 chapter transcribed

▲ 0

Transcript

jump: chapters · speakers · find in transcript

Transcript

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Narrator 0:00

This is Biggs and Biggs is about to become famous for a really weird reason. Now Biggs lives in England and he's kind of a turd. He's been to prison a few times for like break-ins and stealing cars and stuff like that. But one day he's out of prison and he's living a clean life and Biggs wants to buy a house for his wife and his three sons. Problem is, Biggs ain't got no money. He's broke. So he calls up an old friend of his, a guy who he met back in prison. This guy, Bruce. And he asks Bruce if he could maybe loan him some money. And Bruce is like, nah, bro. But I'm actually in the middle of organizing a train heist. And he offers to cut him in. And Biggs is like, I... And so the plan is they're going to rob a Royal Mail Train, which is a train that picks up and delivers mail.

Narrator 0:50

Now, one of the cars on that train carries high value cargo, which is just lots and lots of bags of cash. Now, Bruce has a guy on the inside feeding him information about the train schedule and cargo. So he knows exactly when and where to stop this Royal Mail Train carrying all this cash. And along with Bruce and Biggs, there are 13 other guys involved in this heist. So 15 total. But we're just going to focus on Bruce and Biggs. So Bruce and Biggs and 13 other guys, they put on ski masks and gloves and they are ready to go. And they don't have pew-pews because this is England. Instead, they just have some metal bars to beat people with. And so then the big day comes and it's 3 a.m. And all the men go out to the train tracks and they hide.

Narrator 1:37

And when they hear the train approaching, a couple of them go to one of those track signals. It's kind of like a stoplight for trains. And they turn off a green track signal and they use batteries to turn on a red signal. And once the train approaches and it sees the red light, it starts to slow way down. And that's when bam, all 15 men jump out from their hiding spot and they swarm the train and they get on board and then pow, one of them hits the conductor with the bar, nearly knocking him out. And then some of the other men board the car with all the cash in it and they force the train workers to lie down on the ground. And then eventually when the train comes to a full stop, the 15 men, they start loading the bags of money into two Land Rovers they have parked nearby. Now these guys steal 125 bags of cash. 2.6 million pounds. Which today in US dollars would be worth about 35 million dollars.

Narrator 2:32

So then they drive the Land Rovers over to this farmhouse in the country that some of them own so that they can hide out there and divide up the money. And over the next few days they all take their cut of the money and they split and go their separate ways. Now, they have hired some people to come burn down the farmhouse after they leave to hide any evidence. But the people who they hired who were supposed to burn it down, they don't follow through with the plan for whatever reason. And then police end up finding the farmhouse and they get a bunch of the guy's fingerprints and eventually, bam, Biggs gets arrested. Here's his mugshot. And also Bruce and 12 of the other guys get arrested too. So Biggs gets sentenced to 30 years in prison for this, but his story's not over. Because while he's in prison, he decides, eh, this place isn't for me. And so he makes a rope ladder, and one day he uses it to climb over the prison wall, and he escapes. So now he's on the run and he flees from England all the way to Paris. And in Paris, he gets some plastic surgery and he assumes a new identity.

Narrator 3:36

Then he moves his wife and family from Paris all the way to Australia. And from there, he and his family stay on the run and they move like three different times and Biggs changes his identity every time. But unfortunately, it's not enough. Because one night, Biggs sees on the local evening news that law enforcement believes he's living and hiding out in the area. And so then Biggs just like straight up ditches his wife and sons. And he gets on a passenger liner and he takes it from Melbourne all the way to Panama. And then from there, he flies to Brazil. And there for about a year, he lives under the radar, working as a carpenter. Here's the thing about Brazil though. At this time, Brazil has no extradition treaty with the United Kingdom.