7 Of History’s Most Unbelievable Heists, From D.B. Cooper To The Lufthansa Robbery

Published November 13, 2020
Updated February 8, 2021

The Great Train Robbery Of 1963

Royal Mail Train

The Great Train Robbery was Britain’s largest robbery at the time. Only a fraction of the money that was stolen was recovered, and the key informant who tipped off the robbers has never been positively identified.

Train robberies might seem like something that died in the 19th century, but in 1963, a daring group of British criminals revived the concept in one of the world’s most legendary heists.

Career criminals Bruce Reynolds, Gordon Goody, Ronald Edwards, and Charlie Wilson were informed by a senior employee of the Royal Mail, known only as “the Ulsterman” thanks to his Irish accent, that millions of British pounds sterling were being transported from Glasgow to London.

Eager for the opportunity, the four robbers, who called themselves “the South West Gang,” took weeks to plan their heist. Gradually, however, they realized that they’d need much more help to pull it off.

So they joined forces with a dozen experts from another gang known as the “South Coast Raiders,” and they set their plan in motion on the night of Aug. 8, 1963, just outside of the village of Cheddington, about 40 miles north of London.

Suspects Of Great Train Robbery

Central Press/Getty ImagesThree of the suspects arrested in connection with the Great Train Robbery leave the Linslade court with blankets over their heads.

The men had chosen that specific date because the weekend of the fifth would be a three-day holiday, and the train would be carrying a much larger amount of cash than usual for shopping trips and vacations.

The gangsters manipulated the train to halt by tampering a signal and then immediately boarded the train and beat the conductor over the head. As the conductor bled, he was forced to drive the first few cars down the track to a waiting truck where, within 20 minutes, the gang broke into the cash-laden front car and removed £2.6 million — worth over $70 million today.

Great Train Robbery Conductor In Bandages

Keystone/Getty ImagesTrain driver Jack Mills after the robbery.

Police were quick and efficient in their response, and by the end of the year, ten of the 18 robbers were arrested and three more in the five years following. Two escaped prison, and one of these, Ronnie Biggs, spent 36 years in exile in Australia and Brazil before returning to the U.K. in poor health in 2001.

Although police only recovered about £375,000, it hardly mattered: in 1971, the pound was decimalized, and the remaining notes were rendered worthless even to collectors.

Many of these heists were the products of meticulous planning, and it’s incredible just how elaborate they became. One might think that the most successful occurred in a time where fingerprinting and DNA were distant ideas, but the still-unsolved case of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum occurred in the ’90s. Though not all of them ended with a cash cow, they were all successful in scoring a place in history.


After learning about some of history’s biggest heists, learn about the bizarre theft of Winston Churchill’s golden toilet. Then, find out more about the biggest criminal organizations behind some of the most brazen grafts in the world.

author
Morgan Dunn
author
Morgan Dunn is a freelance writer who holds a Bachelor's degree in fine art and art history from Goldsmiths, University of London. His areas of interest include the Soviet Union, China, and the effects of colonialism.
editor
John Kuroski
editor
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.