Inside Ronnie Biggs' prison escape more daring than audacious £2.4m robbery

Daily Mirror

3 days ago

The Great Train Robbery convict's best friend lifts the lid on Ronnie Biggs' incredible life as the world's most famous fugitive
It was one of the most audacious crimes in British history.
But nearly two years after the Great Train Robbery shocked and fascinated the country, an equally daring escape turned the least significant member of the gang into the world 's most famous fugitive.
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Ronnie Biggs played only a minor part in the 1963 robbery of the Glasgow-to-London mail train.
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Recruited late, he didn't handle any of the loot and only earned a relatively small share of the record £2.4m haul.
Caught three weeks later - after his fingerprints were found on a tomato sauce bottle - the petty criminal seemed destined to be little more than a footnote in the story of an infamous heist.
But 60 years ago on Monday, Ronnie, then 36, pulled off something even more extraordinary than the robbery itself, 15 months after he was jailed for 30 years - by escaping.
By the end of the summer of 1965, and during the ensuing years, as he fled around the world, eventually settling in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, everyone would know his name.
Biggs was sent to Wandsworth Prison, south west London, in April 1964, after losing his appeal, with the judge slamming the robbery as 'an act of organised banditry touching new depths of lawlessness'.
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A high security jail housing some of Britain's most dangerous criminals - that didn't stop Biggs from smuggling in cans of lobster and crab meat, or listening to pop music on a small illegal radio.
Biggs, who died in 2013, later wrote in his autobiography how a hit song by The Seekers became the 'inspiration' for his escape.
He wrote: 'It contained the line, 'There's a new world somewhere, they call it the promised land'.'
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Biggs, helped by two fellow inmates, started to meticulously plan what would become Wandsworth's most brazen escape.
And he later told Chris Pickard, his best friend in Rio, who ghostwrote Biggs' books, how he managed it.
Chris says: 'He and another prisoner, Paul Seabourne, came up with some crazy plans. One idea was a helicopter, which they decided would be too dangerous.
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'Every afternoon they were allowed to walk around the yard for an hour. Ron and Paul worked out that the wall of that courtyard was the outside wall of the prison. Then Ron managed to count the bricks in the wall, which is hard to do as you're walking around. Because he was a builder and knew the size of a brick, he worked out the escape height of the wall, 25ft.
'That was higher than a removal van, but if you put an extension on the top of the van it could reach the top.'
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Seabourne was released in April 1965 and began to coordinate the jail break from the outside. He would get information to Biggs through the bent lawyers of another prisoner, Eric Flower, who was due to be sentenced for armed robbery and planned to escape with him.
Another two inmates agreed to grab the prison officers as soon as Seabourne threw a rope ladder over the wall.
'They knew they'd get into trouble, but they said they'd look after that for the honour of helping Ron,' Chris says.
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Prisoners were normally chosen at random for one of the two walkabouts at different times in the day, so the conspirators devised a plan to get out of being picked for the first one, which included feigning illness or running out of twine for sewing the mail bags.
In the countdown to the planned breakout, Biggs became more anxious. 'He was very nervous, he knew there was so much that could go wrong,' says Chris. 'He also realised that if you're going to climb up a basic rope ladder at that height, you have to be pretty fit. So he was having to be pretty discreet in his prison cell, doing press ups and sit ups without making it obvious.
'He said that several of the guards made comments, like 'good to see you're keeping in shape, Ron,' and he had to joke about why he was doing it, but they didn't catch on.'
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The escape was set for 3.05 on July 7, 1965 - but just before they were due to walk around the yard it started to lightly rain and the session was cancelled.
Chris says: 'Luckily for them, Paul Seabourne, who was driving to Wandsworth in the removals van, also realised they wouldn't be let out in the rain, so turned back. They had agreed that if anything happened the escape would be put back a day.'
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The next day, Seabourne returned - but first went round every red telephone box in the vicinity and unscrewed the mouthpieces, so no-one would be able to call the police.
Biggs' wife, Charmian, who was also in on the plan and who had provided the money to pay for the escape, had gone to Whipsnade Zoo for a day out, so she had an alibi and couldn't be implicated.
This time, everything worked perfectly.
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'Ron said that, as they walked around the yard they could hear the old removal truck pulling up outside. Then a head appeared over the wall with the traditional stockings over the face, and the rope ladders came down. Ron and Eric made a beeline for it, while these two other guys rugby-tackled the guards.
'They went up and over the wall, followed by two other men who decided they wanted to escape too. They jumped onto a mattress in the van, then all piled into the back of a waiting green Ford Zephyr and drove off.
'Ron told me they passed some police cars with their sirens on going in the other direction, but nobody followed them.
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'Paul had assumed they would be chased by the police, so the plan was for them to turn into a cul-de-sac, run down a pathway and get into another waiting car. In fact, they weren't being followed at all, so didn't have to do anything in a rush.'
After dropping off the others at Tube stations, Biggs and Flower went back with Seabourne to his flat in Dulwich, south east London, where they toasted their success with champagne.
The two escapees were later taken to a safe house in Bermondsey, south east London.
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The next day, the front page of the Daily Mirror called Biggs' jail break 'the great escape' and quoted a Scotland Yard spokesman warning that the gang may be armed and that the public should not approach them.
Chris says: 'In fact, Biggs was offered a gun, but he refused to take it. But it was all over the news, and for the next weeks everyone was spotting Ron everywhere.
'On July 14 police swooped on Heathrow airport, believing Ron was hiding in a crate, which caused chaos, but he wasn't there, he was just sitting in the safe house.'
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Even Madame Tussauds created waxwork figures of Biggs, as well as Charlie Wilson, another train robber who had escaped from Birmingham's Winson Green Prison a year earlier.
By August, the two fugitives were getting fed up of staring at the walls of the London flat, so a house was rented for them in Bognor Regis, where they were finally united with their wives.
In October 1965, Biggs and Flower made their way to Paris where their faces were changed by plastic surgery.
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Under the name 'Terence Furminger', Biggs settled in Adelaide in Australia, joined by Charmian and their children.
Eric Flower lived in Sydney until he was captured in 1969 and sent back to Wandsworth to finish his 12-year sentence.
With the police closing in on him, in 1970 Biggs flew to Brazil on a false passport, later divorcing Charmian.
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Under a new name, Michael Haynes, he began to build a new life for himself in Rio. Having a son, Michael, with his Brazilian lover Raimunda de Castro, also won him immunity from extradition under Brazilian law.
Chris, who was working as a journalist in the South American city, became a close friend.
He says: 'We would spend a lot of time together, sometimes at his house or over food at restaurants, just chatting. Eventually, he asked if I could help write his book because he wanted to set the record straight.'
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Chris says that it was always his escape from Wandsworth, and not the train robbery, which Biggs talked about most. 'It was his plan, his work, whereas he had nothing to do with the Great Train Robbery. And it was because of that, and not the actual robbery, that he became infamous.
'Although he'd spent all the money by the time he arrived in Rio, it was his fame that allowed him to have such a good life there.
'I'd go round to his house and you never knew who you'd find, a famous celebrity, a journalist or singer. He even had the Sex Pistols round and ended up writing and recording one of their biggest hits. It was an extraordinary life.'
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Biggs suffered his first stroke in 1998, although he recovered to throw a 70th birthday party. However, second and third strokes followed, permanently ending his days of beaches and parties.
In 2001, after evading capture for 36 years, Biggs was arrested and sent to London's high-security Belmarsh prison, where he once again became Prisoner 002731, the same number he was given in April 1964 when he entered Wandsworth.
In July 2007 he was moved to a unit for elderly inmates at Norwich Prison, and granted compassionate release from his prison sentence on August 6 2009, just two days before his 80th birthday.
Finally free and no longer a fugitive, but imprisoned by his own ailments and unable to eat, speak or walk, he died four years later.