Bruce Reynolds

Bruce Richard Reynolds (7 September 1931 – 28 February 2013) was an English former thief, who masterminded the Great Train Robbery in 1963. At the time it was Britain's largest robbery, netting £2,631,684. Reynolds spent five years on the run before being jailed for 25 years in 1969. He was released in 1978. He wrote three books and performed with the band Alabama 3, for whom his son, Nick, plays. 

 

Early life

Bruce Richard Reynolds was born at Charing Cross Hospital, Strand, London, to Thomas Richard and Dorothy Margaret (née Keen). Initially raised in Putney, his mother, a nurse, died in 1935 when he was aged four. His father, a trade-union activist at the Ford Dagenham assembly plant who remarried, moved the family to Gants Hill. Bruce had trouble living with his dad and stepmother, so he often stayed with one or other of his grandmothers. Bruce was evacuated to Suffolk and Warwickshire during World War II, and on return home enjoyed cycing with the De Laune cycling club in south London.

Having failed the eye sight test to enter the Royal Navy on leaving school at 14½, he decided that he wanted to be a foreign correspondent, and so applied in person at Northcliffe House. Employed as a messenger boy, he then worked in the accounts department of the Daily Mail. Getting bored of the routine, aged 17 he worked in the Bland/Sutton Institute of Pathology at Middlesex Hospital, before joining Claud Butler as a bicycle messenger and a member of their semi-professional racing team, where he first met criminals and fell into a life of crime.

 

 

Career

After undertaking some petty crime and spending time in HMP Wormwood Scrubs and Borstal, he then served some of his National Service in the British Army, before running away and resultantly spending time in HMP Wandsworth. He then graduated to jewellery theft from large country houses.

In 1957 Reynolds was arrested, together with Terry Hogan, for assault and robbery of a bookmaker returning from White City Greyhounds with £500. The police stated their belief that the intent of the cosh attack was grievous bodily harm and not robbery. Hogan was sentenced to 2½ years and Reynolds received a year longer. After spending time in HMP Wandsworth and HMP Durham, on release in 1960 he then became an antiques dealer and thief.

He joined a gang with future best friend Harry Booth and future brother-in-law John Daly. Later on, he did some work with Jimmy White and met Buster Edwards at Charlie Richardson's club. Richardson in turn introduced him to Gordon Goody. Having gained the monicker Napolean, in 1962 his gang stole £62,000 in a security van robbery at London Heathrow Airport. They then attempted to rob a Royal Mail train at Swindon, which netted only £700. But Reynolds, now looking for his career-criminal defining moment, started planning his next train robbery over a period of three months.

Reynolds organised a gang of 17 men to undertake the 1963 Great Train Robbery. After the theft, Reynolds spent six months in a mews house in South Kensington waiting for a false passport. He then travelled via Elstree Airfield to Ostend, was then driven to Brussels Airport, before flying with Sabena airlines to Mexico City via Toronto. Assuming the name Keith Clement Miller, he was joined by his wife Frances, who changed her name to Angela, and son Nick.

For Christmas 1964, the family were joined in Acapulco by fellow train robbers Buster Edwards, who had not yet been caught, and treasurer Charlie Wilson, who had escaped from HMP Winson Green. Reynolds and his family later moved to Montreal, Canada, where Wilson had settled with his family, but a proposed theft of Canadian dollars was stopped due to Royal Canadian Mounted Policeobservation. Reynolds then moved to Vancouver, before returning that summer to the South of France.

By now running low on cash, he heard a similarly sized large robbery was being planned. The family returned to London, before then moving to Torquay, Devon. Assuming the name Keith Hiller, the family began a life of settling into Reynolds former childhood holiday town, before he had the urge to make contact with his old friends back in London. The Metropolitan Police whilst watching the London criminal scene realised that Reynolds was Hiller, and arrested him in Torquay on 9 November 1968. Offered a deal by the Director of Public Prosecutions (England and Wales) to plead guilty and avoid them pursuing his son, wife and family on further criminal charges, Reynolds agreed to plead guilty and was sentenced to 25 years. All of the Great Train robbers were held in maximum security in a specially built unit at HMP Durham. After making friends with both Charlie and Eddie Richardson whilst in prison, Reynolds was released from HMP Maidstone in 1978.

Now divorced and looking to make a living, after a failed attempt in the textile trade, he began trafficking and money laundering for many South London drugs gangs. Arrested for dealing amphetamines, he was jailed in the 1980s for three years.

 

 

Later life

On release he gained a profile as a media "former criminal" figure, and acted as a consultant on the film Buster, with Larry Lambportraying Reynolds. Reynods then published his autobiography The Autobiography of a Thief (1995). In the book, Reynolds commented that the Great Train Robbery had proved a curse that followed him around, as after it, no-one wanted to employ him either legally or illegally:

“ I became an old crook living on handouts from other old crooks. ”

Having either spent or had removed by courts the monies that he gained through crime, by the 1990s Reynolds was living on income support in a flat in Croydon, South London, supplied by a charitable trust. Reynolds died on 28 February 2013 at the age of 81.

 

 

In popular culture

To date there have been three films based on the Great Train Robbery, The Gentleman Prefers Payment featuring Horst Tappert as Reynolds, Robbery with Stanley Baker as a character based upon Reynolds and Buster with Larry Lamb as Reynolds.

He was portrayed in the 2012 television series Mrs Biggs by Jay Simpson.

He was also the subject of the song 'Have You Seen Bruce Richard Reynolds', originally by Nigel Denver and later covered by the UK band Alabama 3. Reynolds himself appears on the Alabama 3 version