A French chateau once owned by a gangster who smelted stolen Brink’s-Mat gold has gone on the market despite being ransacked by treasure hunters.
The 126-acre estate, which belonged to John “Goldfinger” Palmer, has been turned over by looters searching for hidden ingots.
Palmer’s nine-bedroom chateau, plus 25 bungalows, an 18-hole golf course, tennis courts and a pool, has lain abandoned since he was gunned down at his Essex home in 2015, aged 64.
The Normandy property is currently on the market for €650,000, or £578,000.
The listing on the website of French estate agent Le Nail says of it: “The story was beautiful for 15 years until the murder of the owner.
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“The property is then abandoned, nature reclaims its rights and the very hypothetical suspicion that treasure has been hidden there gives rise to a ‘gold rush’ with devastating consequences for the place. A veritable plundering took place in the midst of general indifference, leaving a desolate spectacle today.”
The 1983 Brink’s-Mat bullion robbery is one of the biggest heists in British history.
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Palmer – who is played by Tom Cullen in new BBC One drama The Gold – melted down £26million of stolen gold from a warehouse near Heathrow Airport using a smelter in his garden.
It was smuggled out of the UK in lorry drivers’ lunchboxes and private planes. The gold was later reimported with papers that made it appear legitimate.
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Palmer was acquitted at a 1987 trial after convincing jurors he did not know the ingots were from the raid.
He went on to make the Sunday Times Rich List in 1996, with a reported fortune of £300million.
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The gangster purchased the chateau in the early 1990s but was convicted of a Spanish timeshare fraud in 2001 and jailed for eight years.
No one has ever been convicted of his murder, in the garden of his Brentwood mansion.
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The BBC dramatisation of the Brink’s-Mat heist stars Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville, Preacher’s Dominic Cooper and Jack Lowden of Slow Horses fame.
The Gold is on BBC One tomorrow night at 9pm