The Bad Grandpas: Unmasking the Elderly Crew Behind the Hatton Garden Heist
On Easter weekend in 2015, millions of pounds in jewels, gold, and cash vanished from a vault in London's famous jewelry district. It quickly became the biggest burglary in British history, and the suspects were unlike any criminal crew police had ever encountered.
Not Ocean's 11, But Better: The crew consisted of a group of men in their late 50s, 60s, and 70s—a surprising band of "retirees" who were later dubbed The Bad Grandpas by the press.
The Heist: We detail the bold, sophisticated, and frankly amazing operation where the gang, disguised in high-visibility jackets and hard hats, entered the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company. Over the course of four days, they used heavy-duty industrial equipment to drill through thick concrete and steel walls to access 73 safety deposit boxes.
The Loot: The robbers made off with an estimated £14 million (over $18 million USD) in cash, gold, and priceless jewels, hitting regular citizens who relied on the vault to protect their most valuable and often irreplaceable assets.
The Downfall: Despite the slick planning, the suspects were caught just 18 days later. We explore the mistakes the highly-visible, yet amateurish, criminals made, including the use of their own easily-traceable cars and the sheer difficulty of trying to liquidate such a massive, unique haul of jewels.
Join us as we explore the hilarious planning, the shocking execution, and the inevitable downfall of this infamous elderly crew who should have been planning their retirement, not a record-breaking robbery.
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TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] On Easter weekend, 2015 in London, millions of pounds in jewels, gold, and cash disappeared in what quickly became the biggest burglary in British history, the suspects were not what you'd expect. They weren't some slick Oceans 11 crew. It was actually a bunch of men in tracksuits who should have been planning their retirements, not a robbery.
The press would later dub them the bad grandpas, and what they pulled off was bold and clever. But of course, didn't go quite the way they hoped.
Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a True Crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi Mandy. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I was gonna say it feels like a manic Monday, but it's actually not Monday at all. It's Friday the, the complete opposite of a Yes.
Monday. Yeah, I mean, it's still sort of manic. So we're recording this on Friday, going into Labor Day weekend, which yeah, is. It's not that [00:01:00] Labor Day weekend is really hectic, it's just that it's a three day weekend. So in my brain it feels hectic for some reason. Mm, mm-hmm. Even though it should feel like more of a break, but Right.
It never ends up being that way. So yeah. We don't have too much planned for this weekend. Um, I. What about you guys? Melissa, you doing anything for Labor Day weekend? No. No. Um, it, it, well this weekend it's like anywhere you go, anything you do, there's gonna be crowds. So right there, like my husband and I both don't love crowds.
So like you said, you went to Costco this morning. I will not be going to Costco the next three days, um, because I know people. It's like a freaking holiday weekend and people just lose their minds. I, I can't do it. I'll, I'll be home for sure. Yeah. Um, yeah, I did go to Costco this morning, but I actually got in, I get to go at nine instead of 10 when they open, because I have an executive membership.
I do too. I didn't know I could do that. Yes, girl. Yes. You can go at 9:00 AM. Only executive members go at 9:00 AM So I went this morning, I [00:02:00] was in and out. I was able to get in and I got everything I needed. I was outta there within like 15 minutes. It was amazing. Okay. Yeah. Well then maybe I will be going there for this weekend.
Oh, I didn't know that. Or maybe I did and I just forgot, but yeah. My gosh, Melissa. Yes. Okay. Well thank you for teaching me. You're so welcome. That is definitely one of those things that, um, you want to know, bat in the hot dog and drink. I'm, I'm, I'm a fan. All right, so today we're heading across the pond to London for a story that is part comedy, part tragedy, and of course, all true, true crime.
This is the story of the Hatton Garden Heist, and this case captured worldwide attention when it happened, not just because of the actual scale of the theft itself, which is quite large, but because of who was behind it. When police finally revealed the burglars were men in their sixties and seventies, people were absolutely stunned.
These guys were nicknamed everything from the Diamond Wheezers to the dad's army, and these guys actually ate it all up. They loved it. They thought they were legends [00:03:00] pulling off one last job. And the place that they targeted was really no small operation either. This was hat and garden. It's the very heart of the UK jewelry trade since medieval times.
Really, hat and garden has been the place for diamonds and gold. By the 1870s, DeBeers had even set up headquarters nearby, and by 2015 the neighborhood was still home to about 300 jewelry businesses. So basically, if you wanted to steal jewels in London, this was pretty much the spot that you would go, but it also had a darker history.
For decades, hat and garden wasn't just for legitimate jewelers, it was also a hub for thieves and all kinds of shady deals. Crooks would actually hang out in the local pubs. They would swap intel and they would move stolen goods right under everyone's noses. So it wasn't really shocking that criminals would have their eye on this area.
But what was shocking was that the target this time was the actual hat and garden safe deposit vault. And we're not talking some rinky dink [00:04:00] little vault either. This is. A vault that was built in the 1940s and it was packed with nearly a thousand safety deposit boxes, and at the time it was marketed as being a cutting edge, high security safe room.
Spoiler alert. It wasn't actually that secure, the gang figured out several vulnerabilities with the vault. First of all, it was left completely unmanned outside of business hours, and secondly, there was an old abandoned lift shaft that basically gave you a shortcut right to the basement. Third. The security system was laughably outdated and the codes actually hadn't even been changed in decades, which is wild when you're talking decades about like safety deposit boxes, right?
I feel like, you know, even annually would probably be good for this, but, um, anytime anyone's ever given me a code to get into like their neighborhood, and the next time I get the same code, I'm like, oh girl, this is not good. Google won't even it or something. Keep your password that long. They make you change it.
I know. Well, I've, I got like a while ago, I've [00:05:00] changed things, but I kept getting these alerts that were like, this has been used in a compromised whatever. I'm like, I know, right? I don't wanna think of a new password. Gimme a minute. I know. And so I'm working on those slowly, well, some of those ones when it says, oh, your password on such and such was compromised, I'm like, eh, I don't really care about that one.
I think we really should care, or we're gonna end up in a situation like this probably. Yeah, probably. So. So instead of going through this massive seal vault door, the crew of grandpas realized that they could just drill through the reinforced concrete wall. And the timing for this heist really could not have been any better.
It was Easter weekend, and so that meant four full days where there would be nobody around. Plus a big fire had actually broken out nearby in Hogan just before the heist, and that pulled a lot of emergency resources away. The fire wasn't connected to the burglary at all, but the timing worked out really like divine intervention for the guys that were trying to pull off this heist.
So the stage was set. [00:06:00] The world's unlikeliest gang of grandpas had found their opportunity and the story about how they pulled it off and how it all unraveled is truly wild. So before we get into the how to of the heist, let's talk about the who just a bit more because the cast of characters here is really what makes this story so unforgettable.
The man at the top or the so-called governor of the group was Brian Reeder, and Brian was 76 years old at the time making him the. Oldest member of the group, and of course Brian didn't wake up one day as an elderly man and decide I'm gonna commit a robbery. He actually had a criminal resume that went back decades, including his role in the infamous Brinks mat robbery of 1983.
So in that case, armed men stole millions in gold from Heathrow Airport. Brian was caught handling some of the stolen gold, and he served eight years for it. So Brian was also once charged with the murder of a police officer with an accomplice, but they were acquitted after claiming [00:07:00] self-defense. So when police later raided his home, they found a diamond tester magazines about diamonds and a book on the diamond underworld.
So his interests were pretty, pretty clear. Investigators learned that he'd been thinking about robbing hat and garden since as early as 2012, and he was just waiting until the time felt right. Then there was another guy named John or Kenny Collins, and he's 74, and his role was to be the lookout person and getaway driver.
Imagine in a group of older men, it would have to be kind of a flex to be like, you think I have the best vision out of everybody in this room? I know. It's so funny to me how they went about picking like, who's gonna do what jobs? I'm like. How are any of you capable of any of these things? I don't know that they were, so he also scoped the area out ahead of time, and Kenny also had his own history with armed robbery, but yet his partners in the Hat and Garden Scheme actually didn't think of him as [00:08:00] being a criminal genius at all.
Really. The police leader heard the others calling Kenny, this is terrible, wombat thick, which. I feel like is a very British word, but definitely I think we know what you mean. It's a wonderful British insult. It really is. But if your partners are obviously roasting you and we're roasting you here right now, when you're planning the biggest heist in British history, you might not actually be the brains of the operation.
And there may have been something to that because Kenny actually ended up falling asleep. During the robbery, which is like number one rule of lookout guy is stay awake, keep your eyes open, stay awake. We just need, get some caffeine, something. But like, I can't imagine being so tired that a whole like heist is depending on me and I'm like, you know what?
Just close my eyes for eyes for two seconds. Just two seconds, seconds. Just resting my eyes. I'm just resting my eyes. Yeah, it's, it's absolutely wild. Next up is Danny Jones and he is 60 years old. He was sort of [00:09:00] the muscle of the crew. He was a younger fitter and his role was right in the heart of the planning and execution of the heist.
He'd been robbing places since he was a teen and he even stole a hundred thousand pounds worth of jewelry back in the eighties. He had a reputation for being eccentric, which we'll definitely see proof of later in the story. Then there was Terrance or Terry Perkins. He's 67 years old. His job was to handle the drilling part of the break-in.
He'd actually spent 22 years in prison for an armed robbery that netted around 7 million pounds. Interesting, fun fact here. He did this on his birthday. Well, there you go. Finally, there was this mystery man, and he was only known as basil. Other than being certain that Basil had red hair, nobody actually knew who he was.
Not even the press. He's like a ghost in this story, but. Basil was the alarm expert. He was their electronics guy. He had connections to the jewelry trade and the criminal world. [00:10:00] Basil is the one who literally opened the door to the whole crime, but he wasn't actually identified until years later. Outside of that main five.
There were some other side characters too. There was William or Billy, the Fish Lincoln, who was around 60 and helped with transport. He got his nickname because he visited the Billingsgate fish market so much, which I'm like, I feel like, my God, that is both a very British thing and a very 60-year-old man thing like that.
He's just visiting the fish market and constantly getting fresh fish. I don't know, it just seems. So odd that they named him Billy the Fish, because I love it. He loves his fish. I would be Melissa mcd. Yeah. Melly mcd. Melly mcd. Thank you. Thank you. That's it. There you go. But Billy, the fish also had a prior assault conviction.
He claimed he didn't know what was in the bags that he carried and you know Sure. No one ever does. Right. Sure. Um, but Billy also had health issues, including severe osteoarthritis and [00:11:00] even had a double hip replacement. Then there was Hugh Doyle. He was a plumbing engineer who let them use his workshop parking area for one of their, uh, handoffs of some of the stolen goods.
And there was Carl Wood who was in debt and struggling with Crohn's disease and actually dropped outta the highest halfway through when things started to get tough. So yeah, this wasn't really a gang of just young adrenaline junkies looking for fast money. These truly were career criminals. Senior citizens, even with bad knees and long wrap sheets trying to secure what they saw maybe as their pension plans.
It was kind of their last big hurrah. It was gonna be their masterpiece. They're robbing like this huge place, and at least that's how they thought it was gonna go down, right? They thought they, they truly thought they were gonna go down in history and I guess not be caught. What's kind of amazing is this really was not very like an impulsive type of robbery.
It wasn't like, let's grab a crowbar and see what happens. They spent years planning this out. Their Friday night Hangout was at a pub called [00:12:00] The Castle in Islington. They would meet, they would have drinks, and they would pretty much just run through strategies together. They weren't just winging this, they were serious about the fine details.
They scoped out hat and garden constantly. They were always watching the guards. They were studying the building. They were testing equipment. And at one point, jewelers in the area noticed some suspicious activity and someone even saw a man in overalls with tools just days before the burglary. They now think that was likely Terry Perkins pretending to just be someone who belonged there.
And of course, Danny Jones was out there googling drills as early as 2012. He eventually zeroed in on a specific drill model, and he even watched YouTube tutorials on how to use it. Here's the thing. I would think part of being in this like old man gang is like you have the knowledge of doing things like using a drill, right?
I would think this would be the last thing you would need as an internet connection to this whole thing, so, right. Yeah. I'm a little disappointed in Danny. Me too. [00:13:00] So their actual plan was very technical. Basil would use a key to get into the building and then open the fire escape for the others to get inside.
They would then take over the lift shaft, climb down to the basement, cut the alarm wires, force open gates and doors, and finally they would drill through half a meter of reinforced concrete with a diamond tipped coring drill. The hole would only be big enough for someone small to crawl through. So Jones and Basil were the ones who squeezed inside.
I would be putting on mass before this. No way would I let somebody, let me push through a little hole. That would be terrifying. I know, I know. And then why can't you make it bigger? That's my, I mean, I guess 'cause it takes longer, but like Yeah. I mean, I guess this is like a time thing. Yeah, I get it. Yeah.
But like. No. No. Mm. Yeah. So once they pulled off this robbery, they already had plans for moving and selling everything. They had lined up a fence, which is a person who buys stolen goods from the thieves and then sells them off. And this person that they had got [00:14:00] connected with was specialized in smuggling, stolen jewels, disguised as costume jewelry during cheap flights like to Europe.
So imagine if you're like going, you're smuggling like real. Diamonds and jewels and gems and you just have it in with a bunch of like Halloween jewelry and you're like, oh yeah, this is just for my Halloween store or whatever, and like they let you go on through. Sounds like that's exactly what he was doing.
Crazy. Yeah. Terry Perkins also happened to have connections in the scrap metal business as well. We have so much more to get into after a quick break to hear a word from this week's sponsors. And now back to the episode. So before the break, we introduced this unlikely crew behind the Hat and Garden Heist.
It's a group of aging criminals in their sixties and seventies who really saw this job as their final hurrah. They had the experience, the long wrap sheets, and really the arrogance to match. So after years of planning, Easter weekend of 2015 finally arrived and the bad grandpas were ready to make history.
On Thursday, April [00:15:00] 2nd, the last security guard locked up hat and garden safe deposit at 6:00 PM set the alarm, and then walked away for the long holiday weekend. He actually wouldn't be back until Tuesday morning, which meant the crew had four uninterrupted days to pull this off. So around 9:20 PM Basil went in first.
No one actually knows how he managed to slip inside, but once he was in, he opened the fire escape and let the rest of the gang in with their gear, and they weren't subtle about this. These guys just show up in high visibility, jackets, masks, and hauled in heavy drills, hydraulic rams and even trash cans to carry the loot.
The building wasn't staffed and it was a holiday, so no one thought twice about seeing workmen going inside. They immediately got to work. They sent the lift up to the second floor, disabled the sensor, so the door stayed open and used that elevator shaft as their pathway down to the basement. Jones and [00:16:00] Basil were actually the first to climb down, and then Basil moved on to the alarm system.
Remember, he's like their alarm guy, but this is where the cracks in their perfect plan started to show. So Basil did cut a telephone cable. He snapped off the transmitter aerial and thought he had disabled it, but he had not. So just after midnight, the alarm triggered anyway, sending out a text alert to the security company.
So if you're picturing flashing lights and sirens blaring, you would be wrong. That's not really how this system worked. And it makes sense, right? Like you don't want to. To startle the people, not startle the people inside. You don't want them to know that, you know? Right, right. You don't want them to escape.
Right, exactly. So they have, they're none the wiser, but it just pings like a message. So the person that needs to get it, this guard that's on call, Kelvin Stockwell, he, he gets this message so. He goes by to check it out. He looks at the door peeks through the little mailbox thing and decides everything [00:17:00] looks fine.
So he leaves. And unbelievably, this really, I can't even imagine how much trouble they got in, but the police were also notified. But they downgraded the call because the building had a history of false alarms. Oh, no, imagine so between the security guard shrugging it off and the police deciding not to investigate the burglars had really just been given the luckiest break imaginable.
Crazy. Yeah, and the gang pressed on blissfully unaware though of how close they actually came to being caught. They cut through doors, they disabled locks, and finally they reached the reinforced concrete wall of the vault. And this part was the real challenge. They hauled out their diamond tipped coring drill something again that Danny Jones literally watched YouTube tutorials on and started boring into the wall.
All I could think of is like. I don't know Mr. Beast for some reason, and how he would probably have a video, [00:18:00] like we have seven elderly men we're holding in a vault. Whoever gets out gets $50 billion. You know that sort of thing. Well, and that's. Basically what they're doing. Yeah. Well I feel like what I, what came to my mind, I don't know, was like, 'cause I'm having a hard time picturing this drill, like it surely is not like a handheld drill, like what I have in my garage, right?
Like, not what I have my, and like fancy with a little diamond on, right? Like, I'm like, because, or. Because what I'm thinking or what I pictured in my head was like a cartoon almost of like a giant drill with like a giant, giant. The one they stand on and they chisel. Yeah, that's what I thought. So I can't imagine like what this whole scene must have like actually looked like if you were watching it unfold from like a, you know, from a different vantage point.
Yeah. It's gotta be so freaking loud too. That's the crazy thing to me, that the security guard, I don't know that he even came by. I don't know that I believe that he came by, or he's older than these men. I don't know. The drill could spin at 667 RPMs, which would mean [00:19:00] something to my husband, but means nothing to me.
And slowly but surely, they cut a hole about 10 inches by 18 inches. Just big enough for someone to squeeze through. Absolutely not. No 10 inches. Couldn't be me. Could not be be my forehead's bigger than that. No, I can't. No. Mm-hmm. I don't get it. No, not worth it. So when they finally got through to the other side, there was yet another obstacle.
The deposit boxes themselves were bolted to the floor and ceiling, and that was kind of blocking their whole way of taking them out. So they brought out their 10 ton hydraulic ram to force the boxes out of the way, but unfortunately it broke. So after 11. Hours of drilling, sweating, hauling. They were stuck and they could not get into the vault.
So by 1:00 AM on Good Friday morning, this whole entire team was just exhausted. [00:20:00] They were frustrated and they were also empty ended. So they abandoned everything, but they left the fire escape door propped open, probably hoping that they would be able to regroup, maybe get a little rest, maybe go eat a little snack and come back.
So Carl Wood, though, was so upset that he reportedly was squealing like a pig, not my words. And even Brian Reeder, who was the so-called Mastermind, just completely walked away from this whole job. He decided he was done. This was too much. He wasn't gonna have any part of it anymore. For a man who literally spent years dreaming about this heist, he can you imagine mapped out as soon as things.
Turned sour, and at that point it looked like the heist of the century was really over before it even began, and it was a complete failure. But here's the thing, as we know, greed and ego are a very powerful combination, and walking away was never really going to be the end of it for these guys. They had spent three years planning this, and they were [00:21:00] so close, they weren't just gonna let a broken hydraulic ram stop them.
I love that a broken hydraulic ranch just sounds like something you'd have in your pocket. Right? Carrying it around. Like it's just like they weren't gonna let this very small thing even stop them. They're like, it's like, no, this is heavy machinery. Yeah. They're like, we just need to go make a trip to Home Depot.
We're good. We're good. So while the rest of the world was going about their Easter weekend, the bad grandpa's regrouped Jones and Collins went shopping the next day for new equipment and they got a pump and a hose to make their hydraulics set up stronger. But. In a move that would later haunt them.
Jones actually gave his real home address when signing for the purchase. The next night, Saturday, April 4th, they rolled back up to the hat and garden and Collins drove ahead in his white Mercedes to scout out the area while the others followed in. A van reader was out for good this time, as we said.
He'd had enough and Carl Wood bailed soon after they arrived, so that kind of left a much smaller crew. The ones who were left were a lot more determined, so they [00:22:00] got back inside, they fixed their hydraulic system, and this time it worked. They forced the boxes away from the wall and they widened their drill hole, and finally they had access and they were inside.
Yay. Yay. So Jones and Basil are able to squeeze through the hole they created, and they cracked open 73 safety deposit boxes containing golds, diamonds, precious stones, and of course cold hard cash. They stuffed everything into their trash cans and hauled it out through the fire escape and when it was over.
They had pulled off the biggest burglary in British history with about 14 million pounds worth of loot, and for the moment it looked like they had actually gotten away with it. There were no alarms blaring. No cops swarming, just a group of old men dragging bags of treasure through the quiet London night.
What they didn't realize though, was that their old school habits of sloppy surveillance. IE, the guy that fell asleep using their own cars and [00:23:00] bragging at the pub were already sealing their fate. On Tuesday morning, April 7th, the security staff returned to hat and Garden, and of course they discovered the gaping hole in the vault wall.
The scene really looked like something out of a movie. There's concrete dust everywhere. 73 safety deposit boxes just ripped open, and millions in JUULs gone. So of course, they immediately call the police. Who's gotta be like, new number? Who's this? Because they don't wanna talk about how they did not bother to even go check on this thing.
And within hours, London's Elite Flying Squad was on the case. Now the flying Squad is new to me, but apparently it has a bit of a legendary status in London. So the Flying Squad was formed back in 1919, and they specialize in high value robberies and organized crime. Basically, if you're planning a major heist in London, these are the guys you want to avoid.
From the start, though, detectives knew they were dealing with something massive. Victims were small jewelers and traitors. Some of [00:24:00] them with their entire livelihoods, even their pensions tied up in these boxes. A lot of the goods weren't insured, which meant real people were about to lose everything. The pressure on the police to solve this was huge.
At first, speculation went wild. People thought that maybe an Eastern European gang had done the heist or maybe international organized crime. I bet the police are like it. It can't be old men. It just can't be. How would that ever cross your mind? No it wouldn't. But like how embarrassing for them again, so the thieves had ripped out the building's CCTV, hard drive thinking it contained all the video footage.
But of course that was their first big mistake because not all the cameras were connected to that system and their second mistake. Kenny Collins' car. He drove his very own very distinctive white Mercedes with a black roof and wheels right up to hat and garden during the second night of the heist.
There weren't many like it on the road, and even in grainy [00:25:00] CCTV footage, detectives were able to zero in on it. That car became the breadcrumb trail that cracked everything open. Once they traced the car back to Collins, things started falling into place rather quickly. Detectives put him under surveillance and sure enough he led them straight to the others.
They caught him meeting up with Brian Reeder and Terry Perkins and basically that just connected all the dots for them. Within weeks, police got authorization to bug Collins, Mercedes, and Perkins vehicle as well. And this is where the bad grandpas really did themselves in. These guys actually thought they were safe inside their cars, so they were in there bragging nonstop about what they had done.
And these recordings were a goldmine for the investigators. They talked about every detail of the heist, every person that was involved. And there were even arguments about how to split up everything that they stole. They laughed about reader and wood bolting it and not showing up the second night, and they openly talked about hauling away the bags of golden jewels.[00:26:00]
And if bragging in their cars wasn't bad enough, they also couldn't resist hanging out at their old planning spot. That was the Castle Pub, just weeks later. The police planted a hidden camera in the pub, and with the help of a lip reader, they were able to catch the men reminiscing about busting through the vault wall.
And it was basically a confession tape, like with pints of beer included. Oh gosh. And that is so wild to me that they were able to use a lip reader. To determine what they were talking about in a bar. Well, I will say there is a girl on TikTok, of course that does like lip reading. So anytime there's something like a celebrity's like whispering to somebody, they're like, where is she?
And they'll have her analyze the video. It's amazing Wow. That people can do that. But I didn't know that was a thing you could actually do legally. Yeah. Or to use as evidence anyway. Yeah, yeah, exactly. On top of all that, the men made one of the biggest rookie mistakes in modern crime, and that was that they used their own personal cell phones, not burner phones, not [00:27:00] pay-as-you-go phones, their own regular phones.
Investigators pulled phone records, they did location tracking, and they matched them with the CCTV and car movements to build really an airtight case against the guys. One Scotland Yard Detective summed it up perfectly. He said, these were analog criminals in a.
That's gotta hurt to hear that about yourself. It's like calling somebody a thick womac. It's not nice. But they had the old school skills, you know, for drilling walls and cracking safes. They just didn't have any clue how to evade modern surveillance By mid-May 2015, investigators had everything they needed.
They had the CCTV footage, the car surveillance, the phone records, and the bragging tapes, and it was really just an open and shut case. All that was left to do was round all these guys up and bring 'em into the courtroom. On May 19th, just 18 days after the Heist Police launched a massive operation. Over 200 officers carried out raids across [00:28:00] London and Kent, and they hit 12 different addresses all at the same time.
They had actually learned about a planned transfer of stolen goods, and they watched as bags worth, millions were loaded into Kelly Collins' Mercedes, and that was the final straw. As soon as that handoff happened, the flying squad swooped in. The group members were arrested in their cars, in their homes, and in general.
Were just caught completely off guard by the fact that the police had finally caught up to them. We're get into the end of the story after one last break to hear a word from this sponsors before we following. Bad grandpas and their long planned heist that finally got underway and police began piecing the puzzle together through the CCTV cars, phones, and of course, even the gang's own bragging, which soon led to a series of dramatic raids and arrests.
The searches that followed turned up a treasure trove of evidence at Daniel Jones's place, they found drills, face masks, cash, and. This is my favorite part. A [00:29:00] copy of Forensics for Dummies. Well, there you go. He must be a thick wombat too. They also found a receipt for a tool used to bypass locked doors at Brian reader's house.
Detectives discovered diamond testing equipment, a book about a famous diamond agent and magazines about gyms. Oh, and also the scarf that he was seen wearing on CCTV during the heist. He still had it. It was in his closet. At Terry Perkins home, they turned up jewelry, cash, a pair of blue overalls like the ones witnesses had seen him wearing as well as white gloves.
And at Collins House they found piles of cash, watches, jewelry, coins, even a money counter in. Total police recovered about 4 million pounds worth of items, but that still left a huge chunk missing. We're talking about. Close to 10 million pounds worth of jewelry and gold that were never immediately found.
And of course we still have that one. The infamous basil. Where is he? Who is he? And again, basil is the [00:30:00] red-haired phantom who had opened the doors and disabled the alarms, but was nowhere to be found. The rest of the gang either couldn't or wouldn't give him up. And for years, he remained at the most intriguing, loose end of the whole story.
But even without Basil, the arrest shook the men during questioning. When Daniel Jones heard the recordings of himself bragging in his car, he realized pretty quickly the game is up. And he even tried to play ball with investigators later, telling them he'd reveal where his share of the loot was hidden.
That led police to a bizarre scavenger hunt through a cemetery. Jones had actually stashed bags of jewels under memorial stones connected to his partner's family. Wow. Which is not the craziest place. I mean, like, I actually thought that was, it is the craziest place, but like not the worst idea, I guess is what I mean.
Yeah. Clever. You know, I mean, one of these guys probably just put it under his pillow. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I just don't trust this group. Yeah. And when [00:31:00] officers dug around there, they found millions worth of gems tucked under graves and Jones even walked them to a second hiding place later on. Still though, even with that recovery, the majority of the loot was gone.
As of today, only about 4 million pounds out of the 14 million pounds has ever been recovered. The rest just vanished, probably laundered or sold off or buried in someone else's secret stash. Meanwhile, police were piecing together just how much arrogance and sloppiness had undone this crew. They were bragging in pubs carrying loot in their personal cars and leaving behind digital trails like amateur criminals.
They had managed to pull off the heist of the century, but they couldn't resist their own undoing, and it was about to get worse because the trials and sentences were just around the corner. Once the dust settled from the raids, it was time for the bad grandpas to face the music, and it was one of the most anticipated trials.
In years. These guys had gone from being [00:32:00] anonymous burglars to really folk anti-heroes in the press. But when it came to court, the reality was a lot less charming. The first group to go down were the ringleaders. That was Brian Reer, John Kenny Collins, uh, Daniel Jones, and Terry Perkins. On September 4th, 2015, they all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit burglary with the mountain of evidence against them.
Fighting it in court really just wasn't even an option, and pleading guilty was their only chance at shaving off a little prison time. Then came the trials for the others, Carl Wood, Billy the Fish, John Harbeson, and Hugh Doyle. That started in November, 2015 at Woolwich Crown Court. The prosecution leaned heavily on circumstantial evidence, including the CCTV clips, the intercepted phone calls, and those audio recordings where the men were bragging.
One of the more interesting side notes was how this crime had ripple effects on families, though. Perkins own daughter and [00:33:00] son-in-law ended up pleading guilty to helping conceal stolen property. So while some people you know, joked about the Grandpa gang, they really put their loved ones in a bad spot and there were real consequences for them as well.
The trial wasn't without its lighter moments though, because of course there has to be lighter moments in a, in a case like this. Mm-hmm. Billy, the fish's nickname, got tossed around a lot. And the jury also heard about Jones's quirks, like wearing a fez, which I'm not sure if you know what that is. It's a Turkish hat.
It's like a felt hat. Mm-hmm. Um, it's very distinct looking. You'd know it if you saw it. Um, right. And they also made fun of him because he liked to talk to his dog rocket. But in the end. The humor, of course, can't overshadow the seriousness of what these men have done. On February 9th, 2016, the verdicts came in.
Carl Wood and William Lincoln were both found guilty of conspiracy to commit, burglary and conspiracy to conceal stolen goods. Hugh Doyle, who had initially had his charges dropped, was convicted of helping conceal criminal property. John Harbeson was [00:34:00] acquitted after convincing the jury, he didn't realize what was even in the bags that he transported.
As for sentencing, when it came to reader Collins, Jones and Perkins, they each got seven years. Carl Wood got six years, and William Lincoln got seven. Hugh Doyle, who was considered more of the small player, as we just said, received a suspended sentence of 21 months, and then there was Basil the ghost in the story.
And for years nobody knew who he was. His name never came up in open court because the others refused to turn him in, but the police never stopped looking. Finally in March, 2018, they arrested a man named Michael Seed after matching his unusual walk on CCTV footage. Uh, basically they're like, that's definitely the same guide.
And that's literally the plot of unu, uh, the usual suspects. Yeah. After Basil was arrested, they found in his home gold gems and jewelry. He denied that he was basil, but the jury wasn't buying it. In 2019, he was sentenced to 10 [00:35:00] years, and when he refused to pay his confiscation order, another six and a half years were added to his sentence.
Michael had evaded capture for three years by hiding his identity and disguising himself, and he lived in entirely off grid. Only used cash and avoided leaving any forensic or digital footprints. I guess he didn't like tell the other guys like, Hey, if you wanna have a chance at like getting away with this even for a few years, don't use your cell phones.
But he didn't pay any taxes either. He received no benefits and he rarely used his bank account. Of course sentencing wasn't just about prison time. The courts also issued confiscation orders demanding that the main players pay back 27.5 million pounds or else serve even more time. And this wasn't really just about punishing them.
They're trying to claw back some of the money that was lost. But surprise, surprise, most of them either couldn't or wouldn't pay. Jones, Collins and Seed all ended up serving extra sentences because of those unpaid orders. [00:36:00] And despite all of it, most of the loot has never been recovered. There's still so much of the jewels and gold that are missing to this day, and it's also important to say that this wasn't a victimless crime.
The men might have thought of it as last hurrah, but for the jewelers and the small traders whose boxes were cleaned out, it was devastating. As we said before, many were uninsured. Some lost not just their businesses, but their homes and their retirement savings. The hat and Garden Safe Deposit company itself folded and went into liquidation because of course, no one's gonna trust them with their valuables after this.
So while the newspapers loved calling these guys the Diamond Weezer and painting them as really silly old men, the real story was that dozens of ordinary people had their lives turned upside down by a group of arrogant men who thought they'd found a shortcut to Golden Retirement. As for what ended up happening to the bad grandpas, sentencing wasn't the end of the story.[00:37:00]
Terry Perkins actually didn't even make it through his sentence. He died in Belmar Prison in February, 2018. Just three years into serving his time. His daughter later said he had been denied urgent medical care in prison, which added another twist to his story. Brian Reeder, or the governor, was released in 2018 because of his declining health, and he lived quietly in Dartford until he passed away in 2023 at the age of 84.
Daniel Jones finished his sentence back in early 2022, but not before serving extra time for failing to pay back his confiscation order, and he's technically a free man. Now, Kenny Collins got out in 2019 after serving half of his sentence, but just like Jones, he went straight back in when he couldn't or wouldn't pay his confiscation order.
And then there's Michael Seed, AKA Basil. He is still in prison today serving that 10 year sentence, plus the extra six and a half years tacked on for unpaid [00:38:00] confiscations. But while the men behind the heist faded into prison or old age, the case itself has lived on in British culture. There have been movies like The Hat and Garden Job and King of Thieves.
There's TV dramas, documentaries, and even radio plays. The story of all this group of grandpas drilling into a vault and making off with millions was really just irresistible to people who wanted to retell the story. And now the vault itself has actually become part of history. So the Museum of London is, I thought this was kind of interesting and cool and actually something that I would like to see like.
Yeah, I would, I can see why they would want to do this, 'cause I think they'll get a lot of people that wanna come see it. But they're actually relocating the entire strong room, complete with the giant iron door, hundreds of deposit boxes. And even the same, the very same hole that the bad grandpas drilled.
They're moving all this to a new site. Whoa. To be viewed in like a museum setting. And, uh, yeah, you'll be able to stand there and see exactly how they pulled this off. [00:39:00] So out of the 72 boxes that the men broke open, 56 of them were emptied and many victims were, as we said before, left uninsured and some lost everything.
Of course the biggest lingering question is where is the rest of the loot that was stolen? We, as we were saying before, out of estimated 14 million pounds, there has only been 4 million pounds that have been recovered, and so that leaves a lot that has not been recovered, uh, in US money. They're still missing about $13 million worth of.
Things. And of course maybe it's buried under more gravestones. Maybe it's sitting in someone's attic, or maybe it was quietly smuggled outta the country or melted down into liquid gold a long time ago. But either way, the hat and garden heist remains one of the boldest and strangest burglaries in modern history.
Super interesting story though, 'cause it is, there is like a comedic kind of thing just to these thing, the picture of these old grandpas, you know, getting together, talking about their arthritis and then talking about, you know, breaking into, steal this stuff. But it's so, [00:40:00] so sad for these poor people who are like, I'm doing the right thing.
They're going about their lives as they should. Putting these things, you know, where it should be safe and everything. And then for it to be stolen from them, for these jerks to be basically. Out for 18 days before they figured them out and it's just gone forever. Yeah. It just ruins their life. No. Yeah, it, I mean, it really is, stories like this, you know, it's easy to say like, oh, what, you know, what did the rich people really lose?
But like, that's actually not the case. Yeah. You know, a lot of times, like sure, in some cases there are very wealthy people who use safe deposit boxes to put, you know, Toto store. Very expensive valuables and items, but there's also a lot of just regular, maybe not loaded, filthy rich people who use safety deposit boxes because it literally protects like the only things that they have, and that's all right.
You know, that's the only thing they have worth value, and that's why they want to put it in a safe place. So yeah, it's really sad to think about. You know, people's parents or grandparents losing everything that they had or everything that they were saving, you know, for, for their future or for the future of their family.
[00:41:00] Yeah. But just wild to think about these old men showing up with all this equipment, wearing like high visibility clothing and everything, and literally breaking into. A vault. Like that's wild. The fact that they had like four days basically. Of course they had to have extra time, but four full days.
That's just crazy. Wild. All right guys. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. We will be back next week. Same time, same place. New story. Have a great week. Bye.
