Prison Break - True Stories of the World's Greatest Escapes. Paul Buck
if the Great Train Robbery had not already gained its place in the annals of criminal history, usually with ‘crime of the century’ attached as an exhibit tag, the events that occurred after judicial proceedings finished lifted the offence onto a new level of notoriety.
One of these events is fitting to open these accounts, because it’s not the norm for an inmate to escape prison via outsiders breaking in to swing open the cell door and indicate it’s time to go. But that is what happened on 12 August 1964, when Charlie Wilson, one of the leaders of the Great Train Robbery, was freed from Winson Green Prison, a high-security jail near Birmingham. Wilson was barely four months into his thirty-year sentence.
Let us recapitulate and give context to this, the first of two audacious, high-profile escapes that would strike at the jugular of the penal system and reveal its laxity. Escapes which would elevate two of the robbers, Wilson and Ronnie Biggs, despite their opposing status within the robbery team, to a level that would reinforce the everlasting notoriety of the crime.
The Great Train Robbery occurred on the night of 8 August 1963. It netted £2,631,684 (equivalent to something in the region of £50 million or more, in today’s terms) in used bank notes. The great British public, always on the lookout for entertaining newspaper stories through the summer holiday period, took to the escapade like a duck to water. Comedy films, in the manner of the Carry On series or The Lavender Hill Mob, were conjured up. These rascals had won the lottery, in today’s terms, or the football pools in the vernacular of the day. Lucky blighters! But, as we all know, because the authorities made it abundantly clear, the train driver, Jack Mills, was coshed (though the robbers say punched) on the head. No one had suggested that violence should be treated lightly, but, as it seemed that the balance of public sympathy was tipping towards clemency for the villains, everyone had to pay. The public needed its wrists slapped, the criminals needed theirs cuffed. And to remain cuffed for a long time.
Whilst the accused were on remand awaiting trial, they knew that escape had to be urgently contemplated. For, though they were unaware of the hefty thirty-year sentences they would be receiving, they realised it would be easier to escape from the custody of their current residence than from any top-security prison they were to be carted off to after sentencing. The trial was not held in London, but in the area where the robbery occurred: Aylesbury, a market town in the county of Buckinghamshire. Thus the defendants were housed together in the hospital wing at Aylesbury Prison, which had been prepared especially for the occasion.
The initial plan of escape was to drug the two night guards, with Wilson doing the honours as it was his job each evening to prepare snacks and hot drinks in the small kitchen of the hospital wing. Once the guards were drugged, friends of the robbers would come over the wall and lead them out. Note that the inverse approach to escape was already under discussion. That possibility, however, was laid quickly to rest, once they discovered that drugging an officer was punishable by fourteen years’ imprisonment.
Gordon Goody, another part of the robbery team’s main force, had the job of cleaning the officers’ quarters. He discovered that it was possible to enter the loft of the prison via a cupboard in one of their rooms, and from there to walk under the roof, right along to the end of the building, where one could remove some tiles and find a way down to the street below.
Their cells were locked at night from the outside, with one officer on guard in the corridor whilst another slept on the floor below. Goody set about making a key. He studied those hanging on the warder’s chain, even asking if he could draw the guard – and his keys – whilst he was seated, playing chess with Biggs.
Overnight, he filed the necessary key from the appropriate blank with the needle files that had been brought in. The fit was successful. But, as the cell doors could only be opened from the outside, they needed help. Billy Boal had less secure confinement in a dormitory on the first floor, with a lock that could be easily removed with a chisel (also smuggled in). Boal was responsible for releasing Wilson and Goody. Then the pair of them would go down to the basement and take Biggs out of his cell. Only those three were determined to go at that point; the others had decided to remain, as they thought there was a reasonable chance that the charges wouldn’t stick.
Wilson had arranged for his boys to have transport readied outside, behind the hospital. They had chosen a Saturday night as the traffic on the roads would be busier, making it easier to disappear.
However, on the scheduled evening Boal never showed. He appeared to have taken fright, worried that any appeal he might make sooner or later would have less chance of success, and his sentence might be increased when it was discovered he’d aided their breakout. This was relevant in his particular case, because Boal was not a train robber, or even a career criminal, but simply a friend of one of the robbers, Roger Cordrey, who’d unfortunately found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The escape never happened, though the next morning the guards went straight to the crevices beneath the sinks in the washroom to find the key and the other equipment. They would likewise find further items in a ransacking of the cells. As always, this underlines how professionals throw a dice when they involve amateurs, no matter which métier we are talking about.
Charlie Wilson’s next move back into the public eye occurred not long after, once he had received his thirty years. He had refused to attend his appeal against sentence, as he expected it would entail moving from Winson Green to a prison closer to the Appeals Court in London, where he would perhaps remain or be transferred to another prison altogether. He didn’t want to move, for his escape plans were already underway. (Not that he told his lawyers; as far as they were concerned, his reason was that he didn’t think he stood a chance on appeal.)
Nobody twigged that something was afoot. Even after it happened, there was a double-take on the fact that he had paid upfront for his daily newspaper to be delivered to his cell, right up to the end of that week. As if the cost of a few days’ papers was important, when freedom was imminent.
Though many others shared three to a cell, Wilson merited a cell to himself. On maximum-security, he had to endure his light being kept on day and night, which meant he had to lessen its glare with black grease brought from the workshop. His prison employment entailed sewing mailbags which, given that he was incarcerated for robbing the Royal Mail, was a subject of some hilarity.
Wilson had been planning his escape right from the off. He’d sprinkled sugar on the floor outside his cell so that he could hear the warders patrolling at night, working out that it was at fifteen-minute intervals that they checked him through the spyhole in the door. He also noted that younger, tougher guards tended to be on duty at weekends. Given his high-risk status, he always had a warder with him, or close at hand, at all times of the day. As with so many of the people in this book, his chances of escape were limited, given the number of eyes watching over him – at least in theory.
Various accounts have been given as to how the escape was made. In essence, they all have the same modus operandi; only the perpetrators and what occurred beyond the prison walls seem to change.
It was just after 3am on Wednesday 12 August 1964 when Wilson’s cell door in C-block was unlocked and three men in black stocking masks entered. Wilson was in his vest, his clothes being removed from the cell each night to hinder any escape attempt. He was tossed a bundle of clothes and hurriedly dressed in a black roll-neck sweater, dark trousers, plimsolls and a balaclava. They all walked down the corridor, passing the elderly guard who lay unconscious, having been coshed, bound and gagged, towards the centre of the prison and then through A-wing, passing the bathhouse before going down some stairs.
The intruder who had opened the locks of the various doors on the inward journey with duplicated keys systematically closed everything behind them. Indications of their entry and flight were thrown into disarray. Once outside, they kept to the shadows as the moon was bright, making for the twenty-foot walls. The three men who had entered to liberate Wilson were taking him back the same way as they came. They went up a rope ladder, dropping it, and then themselves, into a builder’s yard next door, crossed another wall to a towpath beside a canal, and left in two cars that were waiting for them.