John 'Goldfinger' Palmer's story gripped the nation after its launch on the BBC. The new drama shows the 1983 Brink's-Mat robbery when burglars got more than they planned for at the security depot near Heathrow Airport.
Although not part of the robbery, Goldfinger's help was soon requested by the gang when they stole gold bullion worth £26m. Goldfinger was at one point Britain's richest criminal - even beating the Queen on the Sunday Times Rich List - after building a fortune of around £300 million with a combination of money laundering, fraud, racketeering and legitimate businesses.
What many people don't know is that Goldfinger has lots of Bristol links, including tying the knot in our city and running his gold and jewellery business, Scadlynn Ltd, from Bedminster. The six-part drama stars Downton Abbey's Hugh Bonneville, Dominic Cooper from Marvel's Captain America and Mamma Mia, Jack Lowden of Slow Horses and Sanditon's Charlotte Spencer.
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What happened at Brink's-Mat?
On November 26 1983, six armed men broke into the Brink’s-Mat security depot near London’s Heathrow Airport, and inadvertently stumbled across gold bullion worth £26m. What started as 'a typical Old Kent Road armed robbery' according to detectives at the time, became a seminal event in British criminal history, remarkable not only for the scale of the theft, at the time the biggest in world history, but for its wider legacy.
The robbery was so huge, that Johnson Matthey Bankers Ltd, the owner of the bullion, collapsed as a result. This was due to the bank making substantial loans to "fraudsters and insolvent companies".
The disposal of the bullion led to a vast international money laundering operation, provided the dirty money that helped fuel the London Docklands property boom, united blue and white-collar criminals and left controversy and murder in its wake.
On that day in 1983, half a dozen armed men surprised staff as they started their early shift at the warehouse. One of the security guards, Anthony Black, was in on the robbery and helped the gang gain entry. Staff were handcuffed and threatened unless the combination to the safe was given.
When they opened it, the shocked gang found gold, cash and diamonds. One of the thieves, Brian Robinson, was caught after his brother-in-law, Anthony Black, gave coppers his name. But four out of the six men were never caught.
Notorious criminal at the time, Kenneth Noye, was called in to help the robbers turn the gold into cash. He was imprisoned for helping to launder some of the cash, and despite killing an undercover detective he escaped a murder conviction for that, pleading self defence. However, he was convicted of murdering a man on the M25 in a road rage incident.
Also, a man known as “Mad” Micky McAvoy was jailed for 25 years for his part in the raid. In 1995 a court ordered him to make a payment of £27,488,299, making him responsible for the entire sum stolen. He and Robinson are the only two robbers convicted for the heist itself. They have both died in the past two years.
How was 'Goldfinger' involved?
John 'Goldfinger' Palmer became a household name not just in the West Country, but across the country after his alleged involvement in the Brink's-Mat robbery in 1983. Two years after the robbery, Palmer’s two partners were arrested for helping to melt down the gold from the robbery and try to pass it off as legitimate.
Police had been investigating the company’s records, which had been falsified, but before Palmer could also be arrested, he fled to Tenerife with his family days before the company was raided. Eventually deported back home, he faced trial, and although he admitted to melting down gold bars from the robbery in his backyard, he successfully argued he wasn’t aware they were stolen and managed to avoid a sentence.
Decades after the robbery, in 2015, Palmer was shot and killed, with his murder still unsolved to this day.
The Gold airs from Sunday at 9pm on BBC One and is available on iPlayer.
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