The Hatton Garden Heist
London, Easter weekend 2015. A small group of British career criminals — average age 62, the eldest of them 76 — drilled their way into a safe-deposit vault below the central London jewellery district over a four-day Bank Holiday closure. They climbed through a lift shaft, assembled a 75-kilogram industrial diamond core drill in the basement, and cut three overlapping circular holes in 50 centimetres of reinforced concrete.
They emptied 73 of the 195 boxes. Walked out the front door with the haul packed into wheelie bins, in daylight, on a London pavement. They returned for a second night. Estimated total take: between £14 million and £20 million in cash, gold and gems.
They were caught because the Met placed audio surveillance on a Pentonville pub called The Castle, where the men met to divide the proceeds. The recordings ran for weeks. Brian Reader, the 76-year-old, had a previous gold-bullion conviction from 1983. Convictions came in March 2016. Most of the haul has never been recovered. The Hatton Garden Safe Deposit, which had operated continuously since the 1950s, never reopened.
Maren and Ellis on the largest successful burglary in English legal history — a last commission, by retired specialists, in central London at Easter.
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