Real Crime Stories/Paranormal Hauntings/Conspiracy Theories Book II

The Great Train Robbery (Part V)

Accomplices

John Wheater was released from prison on 11 February 1966 and managed his family's laundry business in Harrogate. He later wrote two articles in the Sunday Telegraph, which published the first one on 6 March 1966. He died in July 1985.

Lenny Field was released in 1967 and went to live in North London. He disappeared from the public eye.

Mary Manson, an associate of Bruce Reynolds and John Daly, was charged with receiving £820 from the robbery; she was held for six weeks but was released. Mary took care of the wives and children of some of the robbers while they were on the run or in jail.

The fate of the victims

Jack Mills

Mills had constant trauma headaches for the rest of his life. He died in 1970 from leukemia. Mills's assailant was one of three members of the gang, who was never identified by the others. However, in November 2012, Hussey made a death-bed confession that it was him, although there were suspicions that this was repayment of a debt, to divert attention from the real perpetrator.

Frank Williams (at the time a detective inspector) claimed that at least three men who were directly involved are still at liberty and enjoying their full share of the money stolen and the profits from the way they invested it, one of them being the man responsible for the attack on the train driver. Williams said that the train driver's assailant was not some phantom figure lurking in the criminal underworld and that he traced him, identified him, and took him to Scotland Yard where, with Tommy Butler, Williams questioned him. He could not be charged because of a lack of evidence; there were no fingerprints or identifiable marks anywhere. None of those arrested informed on this person, although it was claimed that he had completely disobeyed instructions and used violence during the robbery.

David Whitby

David Whitby (24 January 1937 – 6 January 1972)[97] was also from Crewe. He was traumatized by his track-side assault and subsequent rough treatment and never recovered from his ordeal. He was 26 years old at the time of the robbery. He was able to resume his job as a second man but died from a heart attack on 6 January 1972 at the age of 34 in Crewe, Cheshire.

Bill Boal

Engineer William Gerald "Bill" Boal (22 October 1913 – 26 June 1970), an accomplice after the fact of Roger Cordrey. He was considered so at the time because he knew Cordrey and moreover was found in Cordrey's car where a large stash of the stolen money was hidden. He died in jail of cancer. His family is now trying to have his name cleared, as they believe, based on evidence not used in the original trial, that Boal was at best an accomplice after the fact with no knowledge of the robbery, and that it was likely that Cordrey told him nothing about the provenance of the cash. Furthermore, both Ronnie Biggs and Gordon Goody, two surviving gang members at the time, gave sworn affidavits asserting that Boal was innocent. Both gang members stated that they believed Boal was "stitched up" by the police.

Aftermath

The audacity and scale of the robbery was yet another controversy with which the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan had to cope. Macmillan resigned in October 1963, claiming poor health—he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and believed he did not have long to live, but the diagnosis turned out to be incorrect. He did not contest his seat at the next election in September 1964, which the Labor Party won under Harold Wilson.

After his success in securing White and Edwards, Tommy Butler got the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Joseph Simpson, to suspend his retirement on his 55th birthday so he could continue to hunt the robbers. This paid off with the arrests of first Wilson, then Reynolds. When asked by a reporter after the sentencing of Reynolds whether that was the end of it, Butler replied that it was not over until Biggs was caught. In 1969 he was finally forced to accept compulsory retirement and later died in 1970, aged 57. That same day, Biggs' memoirs were published in The Sun newspaper.