Final Years and Lasting Legacy

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Ready to see how easy and fun shopping for car insurance can be? progressive. com and give the name Your prrice tool a try Take the stress out of shopping and find coverage that fits your life on your terms Progressive casualty insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law It's six thirty in the morning on november twenty sixth, nineteen eighty three on a trading estate near Heathrow airport in West London. thirty seven year old security guard Michael Skus arrives in his car outside an unprepossessing warehouse. Unit seven is a two story building occupied by Brinks Matt, a leading security firm It's a storage place for precious metals and currency in transit to or from the airport Getting out of his car, Skouse walks past the big shutter door that allows vehicles access to the building and heads around the side to the pedestrian entrance There, he finds four other security guards fidgeting to keep warm, though he notes that one of them, Tony Black, is missing As the supervisor and keyholder, Skus is in charge of the complicated security protocols that start the shift, letting himself in first to disarm the night alarm, then returning to admit the others Once everyone is safely inside, Souse heads past the vehicle loading bay and vault to the first floor He's just getting started in the control room, looking at today's tasks when he's summoned back downstairs by the doorbell Waiting by the side door is Tony Black, looking pale and unkept He disappears immediately to use the toilet, then joins Skouse upstairs Just then, a commotion erupts in the staff room As Skus gets to his feet, a masked figure appears in the doorway holding a semi automatic pistol He barks at him and Black to get on the floor. The pistol is pressed into Souse his neck, and a bag is pulled roughly over his head. After his wrists are wrenched behind him and secured with handcuffs, he is kicked a few times and cold liquid is sloshed on his crotch It strong, familiar stench reaches his nostrils instantly Petel While his colleagues are handcuffed to radiators in the staff room, Skus is forced to hand over the keys to the building then haul downstairs towards the main safe with his colleague, Robin Risley, who has the other half of the combination From beneath his hood, Skouse hears the gang pass through the series of doors and alarm systems until they're inside the caged vault Temporarily relieved of his hood, Skouse punches his combination swiftly into the safe's keypad. And when it's Risley's turn, the panic seems to have wiped the numbers from his mind He tries again and again, but even the threatening rattle of a matchbox doesn't jog his memory The robbers are sounding increasingly agitated, and now one of them comes over and tears off Skouse's hood again. He wants to know what's in some barrels on the floor But then his attention is drawn by a stack of gray cardboard boxes on two pallets The masked man opens one up and calls the others over, astonished when he sees what it contains twwelve bars of pure gold He opens another with the same result and then another A buzz of excitement passes through the vault It's clear to Skus that even though the robbers were expecting a big score, this is way more than they'd hoped for What will become known as the Brinks Mat Gang have come across perhaps twenty seven million pounds worth of pure gold. The question is What would they do with it now Brink's Matt Robbery was one of the largest thefts in British history. The discovery of the record breaking hall in a West London warehouse in nineteen eighty three set off a chain of events that would echo through Britain's criminal underworld for decades It helped shape the property boom of the nineteen eighties, the drugs trade of the nineteen nineties, and left an enduring mark on UK crime and policing. But who were the men behind the so called Robbery of the century Why did the tentacles of a theft reach so far And what is the curse of Brink's Mat I'm John Hopkins fromr the Noiser Podcast Network. This is a short history of the Brinks Matt Robbery Around the world, cities have always had their criminal underclass, and London in the post war decades is no exception. Though the majority, rich and poor, make ends meet through honest means For those young people brought up among the city's rogues and scoundrels Crime can seem to be the rule rather than the exception. True crime writer Wesley Clarkson is the author of The Curse of Brinks Mat. twentyenty five years of murder and mayhem South London in the sixties, seventies and eighties was a hotbed of professional criminals. These were people who were brought up in a criminal atmosphere were brought up just after the war. There wasn't a lot of money around. Everyone ducked and dived. Your father would steal something off a ship in the docks in the Thames. Another relative might be a printer at the big newspapers who's fraudulently putting in claims for all sorts of extra time he's earned and ending up earning a fortune as a result. It was all about ducking and diving and this mentality moved as the decades progressed into out and out professional criminal behaviour One of the boys growing up in South London at this time is named Mici Mcabboy. his Irish family settles in Camberwell And he grows up working as a porter at Covent Garden's fruit and vegetable markarket at the weekend He boxes in local clubs, frequents South London nightspots, and places bets on races between stolen cars. Before long, he and his friends are stealing the vehicles themselves As crime rises, so too does the profile of the Flying squad, Scotland Yard's elite unit that tackles armed robbery, known as the Sweeney. But the police are not beyond corruption themselves, pocketing reward money meant for informants and fraternizing with criminals. By the early nineteen eighties, McABoy is living with his wife, Jacqueline and children in South London. and looks much like a normal family man to his neighbors but while he works occasionally as a painter and decorator, as well as running a grocery shop for a time, He hass been climbing the criminal ladder too. Moving from stealing cars to joining a team of robbers who work a patch covering much of Southeast England leading a double life in more ways than one He's also got a girlfriend, Kathleen Meekop whom we calls Kathy To keep himself fit for his nefarious line of business, he works out obsessively with weights and a punch bag at home. Like many South London criminals, he is known to the police. They have yet to pin anything substantial on him E natured most of the time The occasional flare up of McAVoy's temper earns him the nickname Mad, Mickey Now approaching his thirties, he is restless in search of a big job somethingomething that might mean you'll never have to work again pererhaps through his alleged involvement in a drugs hall near Heathrow He learns that there are warehouses in the vicinity which are used to store valuable items scheduled for flights out of the airport The boy mentions this to an old friend of his, Brian Robinson As luck would have it, Robinson's brother in law, Tony Black happens to be employed as a security guard at the Brinks Matt warehouse near the airport Managed by one of the best known security companies in the world, the Brinks Mat warehouse is relatively lightly guarded have huge amounts of cash and gold stored overnight A McAvoy promising Promising, indeed McAvoy assembles the rest of his crew Six men in total. They start to watch the Brinks Mat warehouse closely. learearning the exact movements of the security staff Eventually, through Robinson, they approach Tony Black and make him an offer Though not an experienced criminal, Black, who's struggling with debt, leaps at the chance to help the gang for a share of the proceeds Tony Black was a civilian in criminal terms. He wasn't a criminal, but he happened to be the brother in law of Brian Robinson, one of the robbers shares his knowledge about the alarm and security system at the warehouse and draws detailed diagrams of the layout November twenty fifth, nineteen eighty three He calls his brother in law from a phone box to let him know a big shipment has been delivered. Two tons of what he calls yellow they have to act fast It'll only be therentil following lunchtime. The big job McAvoy has been waiting for is finally underway. At six forty in the morning the following day, Black arrives at work ten minutes late The rest of the team of security guards at the Brinksmutt warehouse already there Once he's in, Black doubles back to let in Mcaboy and his gang, who are waiting outside in a blue van An alarm sounds as they enter, but no one can hear it upstairs. Masked and armed, they go straight for the two security guards they have been told will provide the combination of the safe. But what surprises them is the size of the hole they find there They'd expected rich pickings But nothing on this scale Three tons of gold rather than two A total of sixty boxes containing six thousand eight hundred gold bars worth over twenty six million pounds They also take over one hundred thousand pounds in used banknotes, a pouch containing travelers's checks worth two hundred thousand pounds, and another containing diamonds The vast hall which could be worth as much as half a billion today property of the London based Johnson Mathy Bankers Limited Bear in mind, this was almost comical that when they left in the van from the warehouse, their van was scraping the pavement. They had so much gold in the back of it They couldn't believe their lied. The leader of the gang, Mickey Mclvoy ordered them not to disappear, not to go on the run, not to go abroad, but to continue to hang out in their haunts They knew the police would hear about it, but the police would presume that meant they weren't involved When the news breaks, the scale of the theft shocks the nation tabloids call it the robbery of the centur And the police waste no time in launching an investigation Scotland Yard's elite flying squad who had become partly thanks to TV series and partly thanks to their extraordinary record of breaking down doors and breaking up gangs of robbers were immediately put in charge of this case and at the top of them The guy in charge was Scotland Yod's Chief commander, Frank Catater. He had an amazing background. He'd been involved with a great train robbery. and he gave the day to day duties to Detective Chief Superintendent Brian Boyce, who was a very tenacious ex army officer and probably I say this now One of the most honest policemen at Scotland Yard at the time. Within a day the insurer for the whole Lloyds of London offers a two million pound reward for information leading to the return of the stolen gold And though the insurance claim is settled swiftly devastating for Lloyds, who promptly launched their own investigation Letrace stolen property McAvooy decides the robbers will have to sit on the loot for a while from the beginning Gld proves to be almost as much trouble for the finders as it is for the insurers guys, we're heading into the dog days of summer, which means longer, hotter more relaxed days, and I find myself reaching for the most comfortable and versatile go anywhere options in my closet That's why I keep coming back to Quinces. 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Go to quQinces dot com slash short history for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Now available in Canada too That's QuI NCE dot com slash short history for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns That's quQinince d. com slash short history. It doesn't take the police long to suss out the connection. the security guard, Tony Black and his brother in law Brian Robinson, a known criminal and the other security guards are called back to the warehouse to make a video reconstruction of the theft to aid the investigation during the process. The guilty man struggles to hide his nerves. when he is interrogated police quickly wear him down and he identifies three of the gang members. brother in law McAvoy and a man called Tony White He cracked very quickly when the police rounded him up because he wasn't a criminal and it was obvious that this would happen He was terrified though, he had to change his identity, he went into hiding The Police carefully watch the three named men in the hope that they will lead them to the gold Despite the advice he's given to the others McAVoy starts to be less cautious. even leaving his Dullwich council house and moving into a mansion on the border of the County of Kent Soon, his girlfriend Kathy, for whom he has by now left his wife, also benefits from a big new house. McAvoy even buys two Rottwilers and names them Brinks. Nevertheless, the police delay the arrest of the three men named by Black Not only because they have no evidence beyond his confession, but also because they are holding ono the hope that they'll be led to the treasure Finally, eleven days after the robbery, McAvoy, White, and Robinson are taken in for questioning at separate police stations Despite providing alibis and keeping to the criminal code of silence, a few weeks later, they are brought to Felton Magistrates's Ct. There, though the hall is nowhere to be found, they are remanded on the charge of stealing the gold and other valuables from the Brinksmat warehouse While the rest of the gang sits tight, the wheels are already in motion to turn six thousand eight hundred bars of gold into cold hard cash Though they're still free. The remaining members of the gang have a problem Heavy gold bars are more or less impossible to offload unnoticed Gold ingots tend to carry their own individually designed hallmarks and serial numbers, which need to be removed. and the high quality of the haul presents its own challenge Failure to disguise it will arouse the suspicion of legitimate traders who might question the sudden appearance of a huge quantity of pure gold especially with the newspapers filled with reports of the robbery of the century So having stolen almost by accident twenty seven million pounds worth of gold, which back in nineteen eighty three was a lot of gold. And today, by the way, would be worth at least half a billion pounds, probably more because gold has gone up so much in prior But the problem for the robbers, not only did they have the police on their tail within days But what the hell do they do with all this gold? They've got to turn it into money. And they need professionals to do that. Gold needs to be melted down and mixed with other metals, such as copper. disguise its purity before being recast and fed back into the market without drawing attention Once it's sold proroceeds themselves must be laundered to disguise the origin of the prophets The entire process will create a vast chain of work for smelters, middlemen, known as fences, money lauunderers, and other criminals. But first things first The gang needs someone who knows his way around gold and how to smelt it Enter Kenneth Noise a professional criminal based in Kent who has taught himself everything there is to know about the precious metal Eenneth Nooy was a professional criminal down to his toenails. He made a reputation for himself before this as someone who could make money out of just about anything. And more importantly, he knew the people to dispose of the gold with and he brought in a gold smelter called John Palmer, who was also a criminal from the West of England These two ended up being the pivotal characters in the Brinksmack job, even though they never went anywhere near that warehouse Bed in Bristol. John Palmer has a reputation as a major fence His skill at handling precious metals has even earned him the nickname Goldfinger. A Noi, he protects his interests by cultivating relationships with contacts on the local police force. partnership with a man named Garth Chapppel Parmer has a number of legitimate looking businesses to cover up his criminal activities including a precious metals and jewelry business Since nineteen seventy nine, Palmer has been regularly using a private smelter installed in his own garden r There he smelts scrap and stolen jewelry to sell it back into the legitimate gold market or through one of his three jewelry shops He and Noi now strike a deal with a gang they'll take a twenty five percent fee on everything they smelt Soon, divided up between trusted associates Brink smat gold begins to be gradually dispersed little by little These six thousand eight hundred gold bars are moved around, smelted, mixed with copper, recast, and sold to dealers Neighbors of Kenneth Nooy's elderly parents start to notice the regularity with which Nooy unloads what he calls heavy batteries from his Ford pickup into his parents' garage Th the police start pulling at other threads, including a tip off from Hatton Garden, London's jewelry district A man in a gold rolls Royce, they're told has been making inquiries about buying an industrial smelter When the man, Mickey Lawson, returns to pick up the smelter The flying squad follow him all the way to Kent spepecifically to the door of his best friend Kenneth Nooy incredible. you couldn't make it up. And so as a result Scotland Yard, partly with the assistance of the Kent police, mounted what they call sophisticated surveillance operation. It included cameras in boxes by trees at the entrance to Kenneth Nooy's isolated house in the Kent countountryside. P police can't prove anything immediately And in the months after the robbery, in spite of the surveillance, Noi, Palmer and their associates are making money from their smelting operation After being blended and recast, the gold is taken in small consignments to the Asay office in Sheffield One of the few places with the power to hallmark gold, silver, and platinum Once the gold's purity levels have been determined The Sheffield offffice gives it a hamark. meaning it can be sold on the legitimate market As a cover story for this sudden influx of gold Chapppel takes out an advertisement in a local paper call to buy unwanted jewelry One of the biggest buyers of this new influx of the precious metal is Johnson Maththy the original owners of the Brinks Matt Lot The money starts to pour in In just four months after the robbery, one bank handles transactions of more than ten million pounds in grubby plastic bags, no questions asked But then, the money has to be carefully laundered and made to appear as if it comes from a legitimate source such as property investments There's absolly no doubt that some of the money raised in the first year, I would say, after the robbery was invested in what then became Canary Wolf and certain other areas on the side of the Thames near to Canary Wolf. And the reason that that happened is actually some of these very astute criminals and their associates already owned rund down warehouses, some of them. And they actually sold them on to other criminals who then sold them to developers. It was a great way of laundering the money and making a big profit at the same time. And actually if you walk through Canary Wholf now, you're really looking at something that was built partly without doubt on the proceeds of the gold from a Bankmack robbery Meanwhile, Brink's Mat insside Man, the security guard, Tony Black, is sentenced to six years imprisonment for his role in the robbery But the sentence is accompanied by a grim warning from the judge who tells him neverever again Life be safe I believe he's still in hiding to this day. and He was seen as they used to say in Southeast London, theyd probably still do A grass He'd grrossed up his family member and that was Sachelsing within a year of the robbery McAvoy, White and Robinson are brought before the same judge at London's Old Bailey The charges of conspiring to commit robbery and of robbery itself is cleared McAvoy and Robinson are found guilty and sentenced to twenty five years of imprisonment. But although two of the gang are behind bars P police have yet to locate what's left of the stolen goods. Now, in january nineteen eighty five, surveillance suggests that some of the gold is being moved in and out of No's property. What the police need to know is how It is january the twenty sixth, nineteen eighty five aroundround six fifteen in the evening and already bitterly cold in the dark Kent countryside. DC, Jon Fordham and his partner DC Neil Murphy, have just started the overnight surveillance shift of Kenneth Nooy's Hollywood Cottage A large mock tudor house set in twenty acres of grounds and woodland They're still settling into their usual positions when a pair of headlights slices through the gloom, coming up the quiet country lane and turning towards the property This check confirms that the car is that of Noise associate, Brian Reeder, a person of interest in the Brinks Matt robbery The two detectives are on their feet in seconds. This could be it, the key piece of evidence they've been looking for. Quickly, they leave the hideout and head through the bushes towards the road. Both are wearing camouflage clothing and balaclavvers, but though they are carrying yeast tablets to pacify noise Rottweilers, they are unarmed, as is standard procedure for operations of this kind They are, however, equipped with discrete radio sets with which they can communicate with a backup team nearby thirirty seven year old Murphy follows his senior partner, Fordham Known as Gentleman John for his old fashioned good manners, Fordham is an impressive mentor, with four commendations for bravery under his belt With Rada's car by now out of sight up the driveway, the two officers pass over the low wall and along the perimeter fence, making for the cover of the trees and shrubbery outside the barn. But just as Forddam drops to his knee beside a tree, waiting for Murphy to move ahead, one of Noise's Rottweilers appears out of nowhere Startled, Murphy's hand flies to his pocket for the yeast tablets, But the dog, now joined by a friend, isn't interested Although neither animal attacks for now, the alarm has been well and truly raised As their barking intensifies, Murphy hears the crackle of his colleagues's radio as he reports this latest development of the officers waiting nearby Gesturing to Ford him, Murphy begins to withdraw carefully from the dogs, presuming his partner will follow But when he reaches the shrubbery, he finds he is alone He quickly climbs a tree to help him locate his partner And once he's up there, he sees something that makes his heart sink, a figure of a man in the garden, flanked by the dogs and holding a torch. It's Kenneth Nooy Suddenly, the beam of light swings towards Murphy in his tree He drops from the branches to the other side of the boundary fence and runs out of sight. But now he can hear raised voices and the sounds of a tussle. A woman starts to scream. M Murphy pushes through some bushes for a clear re view, and for a moment, what he sees doesn't make sense Two men and a woman are standing over something on the grass. somethingomet one of the men is viciously kicking But when Murphy realizes the shape on the ground isn't moving. He understands it completely. Police team and paramedics are swift to arrive on the scene at Hollywood Cottage where it transpires that Fordom has been stabbed by Noi Along with his wife, Noi is arrested And while their associate Brian Reida makes off into the night please soon catch up with him too Fordham is rushed to hospital But at eight twenty PM he is pronounced dead The police search of Hollywood Cottage unearths eleven gold bars worth at least one hundred thousand pounds. Other finds at the house include copper coins of the kind used in the resmelting of gold A child's drawing pad with a sketch of a gold bar and a nineteen eighty five edition of the Guinness Book of Records with a circle drawn around the entry, naming Brinks Matt as Britain's largest robbery Noi, however has no intention of rolling over And at one stage, Noi after he'd been arrested even tried to attempt to bribe Brian Boyce, the chief investigator. He refused it Point blank he even didn't even react to a masonic handshaake that Noi tried because Nooy had infiltrated the Masons because they had a lot of police members and he was such a good mover and shaker. he'd actually become a member of the Masons Despite Nooy's best efforts, he and Brian Reeder are soon charged with Fordham's murder At the request of the defense, charges relating to the handling of the gold and associated tax fraud are deferred to a later date Noise arrest, along with that of others linked to the smelting enncourage the insurers in their decision to sue anyone involved in the crime in the civil courts for compensation The murder trial at the Old Bay takes place in november nineteen eighty five But Noi has splashed out on one of the best defense councs in the country He argues that the appearance of a masked man on the defendant's property had struck terror in his client, who acted in self defense It is an argument that ultimately The jury accepts I think killing John Fordham, the undercover policeman by Kenneth Nooy made the police even more determined But in some ways, now looking back at it, even some of the policeemen involved admitted, they sort of lost focus with what they were really doing because they were so emotionally involved now because they were so upset by the death of a fellow officer And not only did they fail to win a prosecution against Noray for supposedly murdering John Fallden. But the inquiry itself went off in many tangents Nooy returned to the Old Bailey in may nineteen eighty six, alongside Brian Reeder and Garth Chapel who are charged with handling the stolen gold bullion and conspiracy to evade VAT In this second trial, Noi is found guilty Lashing out to the jury as he is led away He is later sentenced to fourteen years of imprisonment Even without noi, the smelting and distribution of the gold continues Palmer, whose house is raided at the same time as noise, evades arrest timely trip to Tenerif He uses his jewelry business to explain the smelter that's discovered on his property When the L arm of the Lw finally catches up with him a couple of years later, he admits to smelting gold bars, but denies that he knew they were stolen He is acquitted in court his game of cat and mouse with the flying squad is far from over Despite the police searches at the homes of Noi and Palmer A huge amount of the loot is still unaccounted for And then by this stage, it's impossible for either the law or Mickey McAvoy himself keep track of what is going on Gold created an industry within the underworld. There were dozens of people trying to get a piece of the action. And McaWo was trying to control it from prison getting more and more angry When he heard about people getting chunks of his gold because that's how he looked at it. It was his gold And all these other characters were getting involved and they were starting to fall out. And meanwhile, a lot of the gold was being buried in different places around southern England because they didn't want it all in one place McAavoy knows that the first man out of jail and back to the remaining gold will have the advantage In nineteen eighty seven, having by now officially divorced his first wife, he marries his former mistress, Kathy while still incarcerated sending a clear message that he is still looking ahead and planning for his future on the outside Also keeping an eye on his assets from behind bars is Noi who sells Hollywood Cottage more than one million pounds and encourages his wife, Brenda to buy a three hundred thousand pounds house in her name nearby Although the bank accounts of many of the Brinksmat criminals have been frozen They're given some free reign in the hope that their activities might lead the police to the remaining gold The insurance agents keep a close eye on the family and friends of the gang They' even start negotiating with the criminals's accountants and lawyers about making a deal In prrison, Noi befriends one of the jail's most feared inmates A bodybuilder called Pat Tate. as well as becoming Noise's personal minder convinces him to consider investing some of his Brinks Mat profits in a new designer drug. called ecstasy. thenen we get to the end of the eighties and ecstasy comes on the scene. Now Ecstasy was a dream drug for criminals because it was in pill form You could mass produce the pills in Holland, bring them over and sell them really quick. and they were so easy to deal with at clubs and everything By the late nineteen eighties, with security vans increasingly monitored with radar by the police Organized crime starts to shift away from armed robbery and into the lucrative drugs market. And it is Brinks Mat Cash helps to flood Britain with ecstasy Meanwhile, tensions within the gang persist With McAvoy and Nooy still behind bars, control of the remaining proceeds falls to intermediaries on the outside These tentacles from the Bringssmack robbery was going so wide and far. They even involved the most notorious crime family in Britain, the Adams family. who were also connected to Noi and Palmer and sort of trying to run the smelting operation They were a notorious law from North London. they'd never had anything to do with these other robbers Once they go involved, it got even more complicated. and people started dying The whole thing was out of control And the police were quite bemused by it because they got the three main robbers. they put them away, they put Noi away finally, but they knew they weren't in control There were too many deaths. In the nineteen nineties, a number of people involved in the smelting, laundering, and other offshoots of the robbery start to lose their lives. These include one man who was also once involved in the greatreat train robbery. who was murdered by his pool in Spain patking garden jeweler shot on his doorstep. property investor gunned down in broad daylight on a busy London street. In reference to the chain of violence, betrayals and deaths that seem to follow in the robbery's wake journalists and police begin to talk of the curse of Brink Matt And in the decades after the robbery, the so called curse will claim many more lives. In nineteen ninety four Kenneth Nooy is released from prison. after serving eight years of his fourteen year sentence Soon after, he spends some time in Cyprus, where he considers investing in a multiple owner holiday property system called Timeshare somethingomet already exploited by his old pal, John Palmer Donn Palmer the Smelter, who was Kenath no's partner in crime His story is fascinating because what he did with the money he made from it is, he did what every criminal wants to do. He put it into a legit business and made trillions. That legit business, if you called it was Teshare on an island of Tnery And he ended up making more money than anyone else involved in this crime by far Time show itself was a pretty dodgy business, but a lot of criminals were very jealous of him Palmer presents himself as a legitimate businessman Tying with the quQueen on the Sundayimes rich list Much of his wealth comes from swindling holidaymakers All the while, the insurers continue to press the recovery of the rest of the goal One person of whom they are particularly dogged in their pursuit is Mcaboy In january nineteen ninety five, the High Court orders him to make a payment of more than twenty seven million pounds to the insurer McAvoy, who iss still in prison, claims he no longer knows where the gold is and doesn't have the cash six months later Pressure mountain The insurers have more success with NoI. Striking a deal to recover around three million pounds of the proceeds. He agrees to the settlement on the condition that the new house in Brenda's name is left untouched after all Noi has other investments By now, his former cellmate, Pat Tate, has been released from prison and is running the main ecstasy supply route to Essex. with financial backing from Noi and other Brinkxmat gang members By the mid nineteen nineties The ecstasy business in the UK is worth more than five hundred million pounds a year But for many It comes at an unimaginable cost In november nineteen ninety five, an eighteen year old called Leia Betz takes an ecstasy tablet which has been acquired through Pat Tates's supply chain Conscious of the risks of dehydration, she also consumes seven liters of water in ninety minutes four hours after taking the bill. Betz collapses in her bathroom. at his rushed to hospital Her parents A nurse and a retired metropolitan police officer release a photograph of their teenage daughter on a life support machine. Four days after taking the pill, she dies The toxicologist at the subsequent inquest attributes the tragic outcome to a combination of the water and the drug But her story becomes a powerful warning of the dangers of ecstasy But it's not only innocent victims who lose their lives in the trade of the drug On an icy day in deecember nineteen ninety five Two men on their way to a fishing lake in Essex discover a parked range rover. containing three bodies including that of Pat Tate believe the victims were lured by other criminals with brinks matte connections under the pretext of scouting a landing site for a plane smuggling a consignment of drugs Rumors that Tate had been cooperating with the police remain unconfirmed But his violent death fuels further talk The cururse of Brinks Mat By now, around half of the gold has been smelted and recast Much of it has found its way back into the legitimate gold market including the reserves of its original owners Johnson Maththy Kenneth Nooy has been out of prison for just two years In may nineteen ninety six, he loses his temper in a road rage incident on the M twenty five motorway and stabs twenty one year old Stephven Cameron to death in front of his young fiance Nooy flees the country soon after escaping Spain on John Palmer's private jet. But he's arrested in nineteen ninety eight after the grieving witness is flown out to identify him The trial takes place in two thousand and he is found guilty by the jury of murder given a sentence of life imprisonment in April that year Stories related to Brink Mats never seem to truly go away So all the time, people likeni keep coming back into the news So it sort of means it's still reverberating. it's still there In prison, Mickey McAvoy is relieved to hear of Noise's arrest They the way McAvoy sees it, Nooy was a middleman who went nowhere near the Brinksmat warehouse and has caused more than enough trouble and publicity And now after almost two decades behind bars McAvoy himself can start to look forward to life on the outside Cool day in spring two thousand forty eight year old Nickki Mcavoy wakes in his prison cell early before the bell For a while he just lies there listening. There is the rattle of keys along the corridor and the footsteps of the guards. The familiar sounds of another day beginning. much like all the others But for McAvoy, this one is different. It is his release day. It's time to rejoin the world outside. When the bell finally sounds, he sits up, the mattress dipping beneath his weight With his belongings in a small holdle, he reaches for his breakfast pack and opens the small box of cereal, pouring on milk and starting to eat. Outside his cell, the prison grows busier as the morning settles into its usual rhythm. After finishing his breakfast, he dresses, and by the time the officer comes for him, he is ready. He has already said his goodbyes Bicaking up his holdold, he takes one final glance at his cell and follows the guard through door after door until they reach a quieter part of the prison The discharge office is a low, functional room with fluorescent lighting and a counter where a tired looking woman sits typing something on a screen At last, she reaches beneath the counter and slides a clear plastic bag towards McAaboy. Inside he finds his wallet and watch, objects that feel as if they've come from another lifetime McAvoy signs where is told to After a final check of the paperwork is shown to a small holding area where there is nothing to do but wait it out But after sixteen years inside he's become good at waiting Eventually, another officer appears, and McAvoyid picks up his holdle. They pass through more doors, more locks, until they come to the gate leading outside. It swings open and he steps into the fresh air Finally, seventeen years after he set in motion the chain of events that put him here He's free He exhales when he sees there's no crowd, no press. Just a car with its engine idling ready to take him away He raises a hand in greeting thirteen years is a long time to wait for a honeymoon Kathy is waiting for him, and so is the rest of his life after his release from prison, Mickei McAvoy lives quietly splitting his time between luxurious properties in Spain and Kent with his wife The crime for which he was convicted continues to claim victims In October, two thousand, a man called Alan Deckbrro is gunned down in Ashford, Kent, just months after giving evidence against Kenneth Nooy at the Old Bailey Noi, still behind bars, is suspected of being involved, but Decker Brill's death remains one of the unsolved Brink smmA cases The following year, another Brinkxmet associate is killed Brian Perry, who spent nine years in jail for handling the gold, is shot at close range by a professional hitman near his miniab office after a stint in prison Timeshare fraud John Palmer is living out his days quietly in Brentwood, Essex when he meets a similar fate while gardening at home in twenty fifteen He is shot six times in the chest H killer remains unidentified to this day Though around thirty people lose their lives to the curse of Brinks Matt Kenneth Nooy is released from prison in twenty nineteen and heads back to Kent Mickey McABoy continues to keep a low profile Her dies in twenty twenty three from an overdose of sleeping pills at the age of seventy one heart brok after the death of his wife, Kathy More than forty years have now passed since that cold morning at a nond descript warehouse in West London. Despite the arrests and some recoveries of the gold Much of what was stolen has never been found Brinks mat robbery remains legendary, not just for the stolen wealth. for its long, bloody ripple effects an epic story driven by violence, greed, and betrayal the moral sting in its tail The past will almost always I think every single criminal involved in that crime except for possibly Kenneth Nooy. wishes they'd never gone anywhere near it In terms of it literally being a curse, I can't tell you, but as far as what has happened is They touched that gold. they got involved with that robbery twenty eight at least of them die. That's not a curse, I anyone is Next time on Short History, we willll bring you a short history of the Space Shuttle Challenger disisaster Space exploration kindindles in us the kind of sense of wonder and curiosity and creativity that I think is generally good for a society Human beings are curious animals. It's one of the best qualities that we have. We want to know And when I used to look in the telescope as a small boy and see the vastness of space and the rings of Saturn, I was almost in awe, frightened almost at just the incredible vastness and bigness and how much was left to be discovered. I think we should keep on doing that. It's one priority of many And it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to engage in a series of stunts That's next time You can listen to the next two episodes of Short History of R right Now withithout waiting and without adverts by subscribing to Noiser Plus Just hit the link in the episode description or head to www. noiser. com forward slash subscriptions Its one lot more episodes today