Robber Biggs granted prison release

Anyone who can keep pace with a speeding locomotive whilst wearing a mask, brandishing a pistol and carrying a ‘swag’ bag has my utmost respect… 😉

ronnie biggs

amen to that brother, the death of jack mills was the real issue regarding the robbery ,he was told not to retaliate when the gang ordered him to move the loco along to the bridge ,instead he tried to stop them and was injured as a result of this,i accept it may have been a heat of the moment decision on mills part,how many of us would have done the same? i doubt few would as self preservation might spring to mind given the circumstances,Biggs was a small time crook recruited for the heist because he was cheap and could be sacrificed in order that the main protaganists could effect their escape,Biggs wasnt involved in the assault,this was proved,he no threat to society and never was ,the police had egg on their faces after his prison break so had to be seen to come down hard on him when he returned to Britain,i doubt the main man behind the robbery will ever be caught,just leave Biggs to his fate.

I say let the poor old sod die in peace!!!

OK, I know I’m not the only one. Who else here saw the thread title and immediately thought of The Great Rock ‘N Roll Swindle 😀

Freed Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs longs to return to Australia, his son has revealed.

But Biggs’s perilous medical condition will almost certainly ensure the journey never happens.

Hitting out at reports of a miracle recovery, Michael Biggs says his father remains seriously ill.

“He has a lot of love for Australia,” Michael said in an exclusive interview with the Herald Sun this week.

“All through his life, he always mentioned that he’d like to see Australia again.

“He’s got a very serious soft spot in his heart for the four years he spent there and the friends he made there.

“I know that if he was fit to go somewhere he would like to visit before he died, but unfortunately we can’t see that happening.”

Biggs was jailed for 30 years for helping to rob the Glasgow to London mail train of 2.6 million pounds in August 1963.

Escaping from a London prison in 1965 he fled to Paris where he had plastic surgery, then flew to Sydney.

Moving to Adelaide he worked as a carpenter, roofing contractor and furniture maker under the name Terry Cook before being tipped off that police were on to him.

His family had joined him from the UK and together they packed up and moved to Melbourne, where he worked on construction at Channel Nine’s studios.

When authorities closed in again, he fled alone to continue his life on the run in Brazil.

Almost 40 years later, his former wife Charmian Brent and their sons Christopher and Farley remain in Australia and remarkably the lines of communication appear to be open.

Michael, Biggs’s son from a subsequent relationship in Brazil, confirmed his father was in contact with his Australian family.

However, he declined to say if they would visit the UK after Biggs was last week released from his prison sentence on compassionate grounds.

“We’re all in touch. With regards to travelling and visiting him, this is a private family matter and I have to respect them on that, it wouldn’t be fair of me to comment.

“But yes, we are all speaking as a family, we are a family.”

Contacted at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, a two hour drive north east of London, Michael is constantly on the move.

Along with his father’s ill-health he is also juggling the demands of his own young family and business interests in Brazil including work on a football academy.

So he talks briefly outside the hospital and then on his hands-free mobile as he travels back and forth from his London home.

His 80-year old father remains largely bed-ridden at the hospital, he says, and the best case scenario is that he recovers enough to move to a nursing home.

Prison authorities have approved a residence near Michael’s Barnet home if doctors clear him to leave.

“I am quite annoyed at these reports coming out saying he’s doing a miraculous recovery,” Michael, 35, said.

“He can’t do much, he can’t leave the room, he can’t go out for a walk or anything like that.

“My father’s got a continuous and serious case of pneumonia. It’s never going to go away. As the doctors are saying, they’ve got to assess him every day.

“They can’t say that he is getting better at the moment. He’s stable at the moment. Some days are good, some days are bad.

“There is the possibility that my father could be coming out, but my dad is assessed on a day by day basis.”

Biggs has his own room in the hospital and during the day he watches television, listens to music and sleeps.

He is fed through a tube to his stomach and can no longer speak after a series of strokes, epileptic seizures and minor heart attacks.

For years he has been communicating through a spelling board, which he last weekend used to declare he would “live on to spite those who want me dead”.

“I’ve got a bit of living to do yet,” Biggs said defiantly.

Doctors replaced his feeding tube in an operation on Tuesday.

“Because of the sedatives he was very sleepy. He woke up with a heavy chest so they had to put him back on oxygen,” Michael says.

“All I hope is that he gets better. I really don’t know. It depends on how he reacts to drugs and to the treatment he’s receiving.

“He is still on antibiotics, still on painkillers. It’s still a very grim moment for him health-wise.”

While Biggs remains a highly controversial figure, his son has been widely praised for his steadfast devotion to his father.

It was Michael’s existence that had kept Biggs out of jail. When Biggs fled to Brazil, he struck up a relationship with nightclub dancer Raimunda de Castro.

Raimunda was pregnant when London’s Daily Express newspaper tracked Biggs down in Rio de Janeiro and brought police along to arrest him.

As the father of a local child, Biggs could not be deported and so was able to live openly and profit from his notoriety.

Biggs’s first wife, meanwhile, was unaware of the pregnancy when she travelled to reunite with him in Brazil.

She found out only after arriving, agreed to a divorce and returned to Australia to raise their children.

Later Michael was his father’s saviour again as a member of a hugely successful children’s pop group in Brazil that sold 12 million albums.

The band brought temporary riches to the pair and if they had been inseparable in the past, their bond became unbreakable as they lived the high life like two old friends.

“We were best mates and people always said it’s amazing, how you can be such good friends with you dad. But we were,” he once explained.

When London’s Sun newspaper paid for his seriously ill father to return to the UK in 2001, Michael was by his side and has remained so ever since.

He went years without seeing his own family in Brazil including his daughter Ingrid, now nine.

In recent years he has been devoted to lobbying for his father’s release, and is now focused on making the most of their time left together.

“I’ve got my company to run, I’ve got a family to look after, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” he said this week.

“He needs to be looked after by the family. So here I am.”

Source:News.com.au

I think some people romanticise certain criminals because they see them as ordinary people (ie like them) putting one over on the state, Govt, unfairness of society or whatever. And yet these “lovable rogues” seem to think nothing of hurting ordinary people who just happen to be in their way, like Jack Mills the train driver. Ditto the Krays and all that rubbish about them loving the East End and the people there. Funny way of showing it, by demanding dozens of honest business people hand over a percentage of their hard-earned or else have their premises trashed or get beaten up, what their ilk euphemistically called Protection Rackets and what the law more realistically terms Demanding Money With Menaces. I wonder if Barbara Windsor would have been so enamoured if her family had been threatened that way?

Well, I was surprised that he had been in prison since 2001 so he has served more than eight years since returning from Brazil.

There has been speculation I think that the sentences for the Great Train Robbery were quite high at 30 years. Not sure if they were the same for every gang member?

Still I don’t have much sympathy for criminals bitching that life isn’t fair!

* Roger John Cordrey 20 years
* William Gerald Boal 24 years
* Charles Frederick Wilson 30 years
* Brian Arthur Field 25 years
* Roy John James 30 years
* Thomas William Wisbey 30 years
* Robert Alfred Welch 30 years
* James Hussey 30 years
* Douglas Gordon Goody 30 years
* Leonard Dennis Field 25 years
* Ronald Arthur Biggs 30 years

John Wheater, Reynolds solicitor friend who arranged the fake purchase of Leatherslade Farm was also convicted and sentenced to three years in prison.

While most of the accused would later appeal against the severity of their sentences and be refused, Roger Cordrey and Bill Boal were able to have their sentences reduced to fourteen years a piece while Brian Field and Leonard Field (no relation) each had their sentences reduced to just five years.

He was in for a 30yr stretch did a few months before doing a bunk returned to England in 2001 therefore did not even do 50% of his sentence

And how many of the 30years of his sentence did he serve…

Well, I was surprised that he had been in prison since 2001 so he has served more than eight years since returning from Brazil.

There has been speculation I think that the sentences for the Great Train Robbery were quite high at 30 years. Not sure if they were the same for every gang member?

Still I don’t have much sympathy for criminals bitching that life isn’t fair!

Spot on lads!

leave old ronnie alone hes paid his debt to society,

And how many of the 30years of his sentence did he serve before he absconded:mad:

Keep him in till he snuffs it

leave old ronnie alone hes paid his debt to society,

Er, can you run that by me one more time? I was under the impression he was sentenced to 30 years. Let’s not forget that this “lovable rogue” so many people seem to see was in truth a professional criminal (the train robbery was not his first crime) who decided honest work was not for him and he was instead entitled to help himself to other people’s property; an armed robber who stuck two fingers up to the country of his birth until he got sick and needed medical treatment here. Now he’s taking the p1ss all over again and people are falling for it all over again.

So you’re happy for convicted criminals that you approve of to avoid serving their sentence and then profit from their crimes?

I’d respectfully suggest that it is you who should “get real”.

DITTO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

leave old ronnie alone hes paid his debt to society, the press and media have had a field day with biggs over the years and the police have wasted thousands of pounds trying to get him back to serve his time remember the botched kidnapping? for myself i hope he gets better and writes his memoirs so he earns some cash for his family rather like Mad Frankie Fraser and the Krays have done alongside these criminal icons ronnie pales in to insignificance so leave him alone and get real eh, id be more concerned about the plan to release Baby Ps Killers and give these animals new identities to protect them whats that all about

So you’re happy for convicted criminals that you approve of to avoid serving their sentence and then profit from their crimes?

I’d respectfully suggest that it is you who should “get real”.

…the police have wasted thousands of pounds trying to get him back to serve his time…

Let’s imagine that you’re fifty-seven years old and going about your business (say driving a Mail Train) when some of a gang of fifteen ‘professional criminals’ break-in and beat you over the head with a blunt object. They hold you hostage and force you to help them steal millions of pounds and while you’re not actually killed in the attack you never work again and suffer headaches (and probably nightmares) for the rest of your life.

One of the gang is caught but escapes after serving only fifteen months of his sentence.

So, would you want the British Police to ‘waste’ thousands of pound trying to recapture this man or would you hope that he ‘writes his memoirs so he earns some cash for his family’?

ronnie biggs

leave old ronnie alone hes paid his debt to society, the press and media have had a field day with biggs over the years and the police have wasted thousands of pounds trying to get him back to serve his time remember the botched kidnapping? for myself i hope he gets better and writes his memoirs so he earns some cash for his family rather like Mad Frankie Fraser and the Krays have done alongside these criminal icons ronnie pales in to insignificance so leave him alone and get real eh, id be more concerned about the plan to release Baby Ps Killers and give these animals new identities to protect them whats that all about

The sooner he curls his toes the better:diablo:

A225HVY

Next he`ll have his own MTV show “lovable rogue`s with Ronnie Biggs”.
He could do a christmas special with Kerry Katona.

What’s the betting he makes a miraculous recovery, and within a couple of months he’s “Dahn the pab” giving interviews to The Sun?

Told you-

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23730671-details/Ronnie+Biggs+set+for+London+move+after+recovery/article.do

We have strange thing in the country that I never quiet understood, Somehow or another some criminals gain a almost cult status and the myth and legend of them far overtakes the truth. Some literally end up as idols and heroes, This seems to particularly occur with 1960s villain’s for some reason, With the Kray’s and the Great train Robbers all being given such status.

With Ronnie Biggs I do wonder if he would be largely forgotten about had he not escaped justice for so long he was one of 15 who took part and to be honest I can only think of 2 others Buster Edwards and Bruce Reynolds.

I would not expect remorse from him after all he lived the high life on the proceeds of the crime and clearly does not blame himself for the drivers death. Crime very much did pay for Ronnie to be honest and top that he has a foot note in British history forever now.

I don’t expect for a minute he will be leaving hospital alive he seems way to ill for that.
I do wonder if such a crime happened now how long would the prison sentence be would it be much more than the time he has served in the two sessions he has had in jail? Was justice better then? It seems criminals it far shorter sentences lately, Still that’s another debate that probably best not start again on here.

Well anyone else here thinks the old saying “if you cannot do the time don`t do the crime” should now be “if you do the crime, have 40 years in south America then come back go to prison for a couple of years then go to a retirement home”
He only came back to this country because he was broke and needed treatment. So he came back not repentant of his crime, but rather to be a burden on the British tax payer.

Yeah, but ‘es a diamond geezer, innit? :rolleyes:

I couldn’t agree with you more, MM.

Recovered from the shock yet? 😉