[Anca] I had a problem
watching movies
with the same uniform,
with g*ns.
My mind just went to
that moment, that night.
For the first two years,
I was out of work,
I was sick from the event,
so, really, really bad stage.
[Alun] I had nightmares
about the incident
for months afterwards.
People picking me up
in a van with masks on.
It leaves- it leaves an
impression in you,
definitely.
tense music
[Tony] Before the robbery,
I was happy-go-lucky,
up for anything.
I was always laughing, joking,
socializing with friends.
The fun- the fun side of me
has been sort of taken away.
It's, for an hour-hour and 15
minutes in-in February, 2006,
that's years of my-my-my life.
soft dramatic music
gentle rhythmic music
dramatic rhythmic music
[Sir John] A robbery
occurred in Kent.
A substantial amount
of money was stolen.
It was all in cash.
This theft
represented the largest
amount ever stolen.
The robbers used hostages
as the means to enter
the depot.
There are few things
more terrifying
than the invasion
of home or workplace
at the dead of night
by men dressed
entirely in black,
whose faces and heads
are covered by masks,
brandishing deadly weapons,
and shouting that you will die
if you do not do
as you are told.
And the motive for this crime?
Pure and simple.
Greed.
dramatic rhythmic music
[Andy] So the morning of
Wednesday, the 22nd of February,
just after the robbery,
on my arrival,
I could feel
that I really needed
to get this right.
I'd never seen a
million pounds before.
Who's seen a million pounds?
Who's seen a million dollars?
You know, who's seen
that amount of money?
So let's get in and
evaluate the scene
and see what we've got.
Got a quick briefing
about what's happened
and very quickly learned that
the manager had been kidnapped
as has his wife and child,
but also that 14 members
of staff were taken hostage
and they are all
still in the building.
Get officers with them,
get detectives with them.
I said, "No one is to leave,
no one is going anywhere.
Get all your witness accounts,
get them back into that moment,
what they saw,
what they could tell you."
And they were just
taking statements,
interviewing us all.
Took all our clothes
off us for forensics.
All our clothes taken,
our shoes taken,
trousers, shirts.
So we are all day
sitting in the depot
interviewing.
We stayed there for at
least 10 hours more.
[Andy] And you start to get
a feel about the robbers,
who they were.
We identify seven robbers.
There was a policeman,
he was the guy that went in
with Mr. Dixon first of all.
He looked as though he
may be Black or Asian,
but we couldn't see
much of his face at all.
Then you had one they
said was short, Shorty.
He was the shortest
member of the g*ng
and he was carrying a
Skorpion machine p*stol.
One was wearing a hoodie,
so he became Hoodie,
pump-action shotgun.
Then Mr. Average is the guy that
cable ties all the hostages up,
but nothing quite
distinct about him.
Hi-Vis was the person
that was with Lynn Dixon
and their child in
the back of the lorry--
big man, very athletic,
wore a high-visibility vest.
The driver of the lorry,
just known as Driver,
appears older by his gait,
by the way he moves,
clearly eaten a fair bit
more food than the others,
a little tummy on him.
Stopwatch is a tall
athletic male.
He's carrying an AK-47.
It's clearly apparent that
Stopwatch is in control.
tense music
I then walked through the scene
and I could immediately
see the vault
is still full of cash.
And it was, whoa [laughs]
how did they get
away with all that?
How much would they
have got away with
if they'd turned up
with a bigger lorry?
This particular cash depot
at that time is managed
by a company called Securitas.
Although it's a private company,
it's the Bank of England's
money.
[Andy] There was a
legitimate concern
about the English banking system
because this cash house
was a major supplier
of retail businesses and banks
in the Southeast of England
and London.
That dried up immediately,
so there was a
cash flow problem.
[Adrian] What was more
of a concern was
the damage to reputation
of the security of the
Bank of England.
It's the equivalent of
Fort Knox in the U.S. have--
had been breached.
We needed to prove to people
that this cannot happen
and people will get caught.
[newsman] The Bank of England
confirmed that at least
25 million pounds was taken,
and it could be much more.
British police are hunting
for a g*ng that pulled off
one of the biggest
armed robberies
in the country's history.
Robbers dressed as police
tied up workers and escaped
with 25 million pounds.
[newsman] The true figure
could be as high as
40 million, making it
the biggest robbery
the country's ever seen.
[newswoman] There was so
much cash the bandits needed
a full hour to load
it into their truck.
And they say it could
take several more days
till we know the total figure.
[Chris] Woke up in the morning
and it was all over the news.
Being able to pull off
that sort of heist
and appear to get away with
it immediately sort of,
you know, got the
attention of people.
A g*ng had got away with,
it might have been a record.
It wasn't clear how much.
And I thought, oh, this is
gonna be quite a big story.
By 8:00 a.m. of the morning
after the, uh, uh, robbery,
this was already the
talk of the office.
An absolute fortress,
14 feet of razor wire,
security cameras
absolutely everywhere,
criminals highly armed
and terrified victims,
it was the stuff that
dreams are made of.
You could see front
pages and spreads
opening up before your eyes.
I read about it, uh, when
the robbery was committed
because there was a
great deal of publicity.
The g*ng behind the raid
were armed and dangerous.
They say the manager of the
cash storage depot in Kent
was held hostage for
more than six hours.
It was a big story and we all
wanted to be involved in it.
Obviously, what attracted
attention was the
kidnapping of-of Dixon
and-and wife and child.
[newswoman] And a
few moments ago,
we received this picture
of the family involved,
Colin and Lynn Dixon.
This photograph was taken
on their wedding day.
[newsman] We now know
that the manager
of the Securitas Depot was told
his family would be shot dead
unless he cooperated.
I don't think any
of us anticipated
the scale of media
interest in this.
Within hours, we'd had
the first media attention.
And it literally snowballed
from that point onwards.
Every hour it got
busier and busier.
Dealing with the media was
gonna be my responsibility.
This is a, a serious
organized crime g*ng.
And, and they're callous.
These people have taken
hostages, frankly.
They've taken a, a young woman
and her eight-year-old son
and held 'em at gunpoint.
They've terrorized
14 members of staff.
These are callous criminals,
they're professional criminals.
They're an organized g*ng.
What we tried to do with
the media is give messages
to the offenders, the robbers,
that we're gonna catch them,
uh, because that puts
them on the back foot,
puts them on the run.
And we very cleverly use
information to try and gain
more intelligence
from the public,
and most importantly,
with this case, the reward.
Someone around the
edge of this will know
directly who's committed this,
but may not have done the
actual crime themselves.
Those people are the people who
may be able to earn a reward
of up to two million pounds.
That is significant.
It's the largest reward
I'm certainly aware of.
And we played that heavily
in terms of the media.
[Andy] Imagine if you're out
there and you've not been
part of that robbery
but you are a criminal
who knows these people,
somebody will say,
"They've got that,
I want a bit of that."
Two million quid just
for snitching on them,
just for grassing them up
is easy money, isn't it?
So the phones started to ring.
[phone rings]
[newsman] The inquiry team
believes fresh leads
could yet come from
within the g*ng itself.
[Andy] We were inundated,
we were absolutely
inundated with calls.
We've got hundreds
of names coming in,
I mean, hundreds of names,
of quality robbers
that we know are robbers.
[newsman] Senior officers
have pledged protection
to any individual that leads
them to the g*ng members.
[Nicola] Everybody was
talking about it
in our area.
It was all over Sky News,
it was everywhere.
[Adrian] The person was actually
dressed wearing what we think,
or-or was described as having
a fairly scruffy ginger beard.
Now, talking to Mr. Dixon,
we think that may
be a false beard.
[newsman] Kent Police
have issued E-FITs
of the bogus officers
who abducted Mr. Dixon
and his family.
I remember, there was
two E-FITs side by side.
And everyone was like,
"That one is Lee."
The first time I heard
the name Lee Murray
would have been when
the intelligence, uh,
was given to us
by the Met Police.
suspenseful music
The Metropolitan Police
are-are the police
that police London.
The piece of intelligence
comes in,
they had been sat
on someone's desk,
hadn't come to us at all.
And of course the-the job
happens and then it's,
"Oh, dear, we'd better
tell Kent about this."
That piece of intelligence says
that Lee Murray was planning
to commit a crime in Kent
disguised as a police officer
and, uh, he was gonna use
the skills of a hairdresser
named Michelle Hogg.
We go to the
Metropolitan Police,
"What have you
got on Lee Murray?
Because he is now a
person of interest to us."
dramatic music
Lee Lightning Murray,
as he likes to be introduced
in the ring, was a,
uh, a dangerous figure.
His career in the ring
projected him up to a status
in which he was able to paint
a picture as a-a champion,
a dangerous man in the ring...
shielding him from
intrusions into what, uh,
he was getting up
to outside the ring.
My understanding
was that Lee Murray
was just starting to make a
living out of cage fighting
and I think had great ambitions.
I think the main feeling was
that he made money out of
either selling drugs
or assisting people
who were selling
drugs by giving them
the necessary protection.
He was a,
a criminal in the Southeast
London, North Kent area,
graduated, you know,
in-in his criminality,
drugs, uh, violence.
There was a mixture, it was
a mixed bag of all sorts
of someone growing up in a
tough part of South London.
He would have run the drugs
traffic i-in that area.
He was a career criminal,
so he was well known.
The Met Police had concerns
about Lee Murray's role in the
importation or certainly
the distribution
of Class A drugs,
cocaine in particular.
[Fryklund] Like, I can look at
Lee for longer than
three seconds and go,
"What you got going on, dude?"
You're wearing a f*cking Rolex
and you're wearing Gucci shoes,
and we're in Iowa.
And then he can say, "Ah,
I'm also a bit of a gangster
and I'm-I'm able
to be a fighter
because I do this on the side.
But my side hustle is
really my real gig.
Don't tell anyone."
[Fryklund] So when we
got to London,
when he said,
"I'm going to do some errands,
you want to go to do some sh*t?"
100%.
Just like go pick something up,
drop something off,
or whatever.
Like one, a couple of
times during the day
and then a couple of
times in the night.
soft dramatic music
[Fryklund] He'll stop right in
front of the building.
People will come get his car.
He will go past everyone,
go in the clubs.
Dude, I'm seeing
all this and like,
okay, your guys are peeling
sh*t off and he's going,
"Thanks for letting
us in the door."
I'm like, "Dude, you just
f*cking gave the guy like what?
What was that?" Like, pshh.
And everyone's like,
f*cking Lee, f*cking what's up?
[Nicola] Everybody knew Lee,
he was like the mayor.
He would walk in somewhere
and it would just dead silent.
Everybody turns to look
and everyone's like,
"It's Lee Murray, it's
Lee Murray, it's Lee Murray."
[Frykland] Love it, like,
this is like,
this is how the cool kids roll,
I love being the cool kid.
I'm f*cking all over that.
Their whole crew,
the-the Barney Boys,
that's who they are,
that's who these guys are.
That was, that's his gig.
It was one from when
he was a teenager.
He already had not even
one foot in MMA,
one foot in,
in a life of crime.
One, you know, both feet
were in the life of crime.
He was, he was already all that.
I do remember Lee gave my
wife and I a-a wedding gift.
And it was china, a china set.
My wife came from an affluent
background in Montreal.
She recognizes that this china
is not your average china.
This is thousands of dollars,
and she goes,
"What job does Lee
have besides fighting?"
And I said, "I don't know,
I don't think he has a job."
And she goes, "This is the
best china you can find."
So then I went, "Hmm." [laughs]
[Dave] We were doing a
PlayStation, uh, sh**t.
You have to wear
these, these suits
and all, all these sensors
on you and go round
kicking in doors
and fighting people.
We got Lee Murray to do this.
And he's turned up in
this yellow Ferrari.
"What are you doing?"
He said, "I want to
make a good impression,
I want to make a good
impression, you like the car?"
And he's all like jumping around
and we had to calm him down.
God knows how he got
this yellow Ferrari.
I just remember him pulling up
at this PlayStation thing,
oh, my God, look at this kid
in his yellow Ferrari [laughs].
[Fryklund] We were
driving through London
in a black Mercedes,
having a good old time,
going way too fast, flying.
And he f*cking clipped his
mirror on-on another car
that went by, ripped
it right off, cshhh.
And we got pulled over
and he f*cking gets out,
"Stay here."
"Do you know who the f*ck I am?
Get the f*ck out of here."
And the f*cking two cops
get back in the car
and-and piss off.
f*cking blew me away,
I've never seen
anything like it.
slow rumbling music
[Nicola] It's fair to say he got
into his fair share of run-ins
with the police.
We were friends, I think
I was about 24 or 25.
He'd given me and my friend a
lift and we got stopped about
two or three times.
They would just search him,
then see that he's
got nothing on him,
and then let him go.
You could tell he was getting
quite frustrated with it.
I think they were trying to
catch him with something on him.
When you get into
trouble with the police
when you're younger and then
you're trying to break away
from that and make
something of yourself,
it's like it-it-it--
you've left a mark
that they're not gonna
let you rub out.
[Andy] The trouble is when you,
you lift the lid on
things like that,
so the, the old adage, a can
of worms, that is what it is.
And you say, "Oh."
And you look and say,
"Where does that go?
Where does that go?"
So what do you do?
Where do you start?
You're not gonna
go for Lee Murray,
"You're under
arrest for robbery."
What evidence have you got?
If you go straight for
the hardened criminal,
they're just gonna
tell you to f*ck off.
So what do you do?
You, you go for the weak link.
What else have we got to lose?
Nothing.
Get a team together,
go up to London.
In February 2006, I was a
detective constable with
the Kent Police Serious and
Organized Crime Unit.
So we got a phone call, um,
from my boss, uh, at the time.
He said, "We need you to go
and help colleagues up at
the Serious Crime Unit,
there's been a robbery
and you might be there
a week, or maybe two."
A decision had been made that
I was going to pursue
a Michelle Hogg.
She wasn't answering the door.
We forced the outside door
and then we made
our way to her flat.
And she met us,
she was in tears.
My initial reaction was
clearly something is linked.
I just have no idea at this
particular moment how or why.
They arrest Michelle Hogg
and they start to search
her flat in Plumstead.
"What do you want?" I said,
"Okay, search the dustbin."
"Well, we, we haven't
had time to do that."
Truck was coming
down the street.
"Is it clearly
identifiable as hers?"
"Yeah, it's got number 14."
"Just seal the bin up
and take it."
I said, "Do that
before they empty it."
In less than five minutes,
that would have been,
would have been emptied
out into the garbage truck.
[Andy] They take it, they put
it in the back of the van.
It's this stinky,
horrible trash can.
They take Michelle Hogg back
to a police station in Kent.
[Dave E.] In the interviews
with her on that first day,
she clearly was scared.
And it was quite difficult for
me to sort of really fathom
exactly what role
she had played.
[Andy] She works at
a hairdresser's
called Hair Hectik.
It's run by Michael Demetris.
He knew Lee Murray because
he did his hair all the time,
on almost a weekly basis.
I said I've never seen a
man have so many haircuts.
Michael Demetris, the
hairdresser of Hair Hectik,
had actually employed
Michelle Hogg and knew that
she did theatrical makeup and
that she was trained in it.
[Dave E] Michael Demetris had
identified certain skill sets
that Michelle Hogg had,
particularly around the
use of prosthetic makeup.
She could literally
make you look like
somebody completely different.
[Andy] Michael Demetris
is arrested.
Both of them exercise
their right to silence,
and they're being advised.
[William] I'm afraid the
attractions of, um,
the Michelle Hogg case was, um,
its notoriety and-and-and
the publicity, which made it
an attractive case,
um, to be involved in.
Secondly, I thought she was
a very interesting person
to act for.
My first impression was
that she was completely
and utterly out of her depth.
She was the most unlikely
person to be involved
in a professional armed robbery.
She was a young woman
of hitherto perfectly
good character
and rather frightened.
[Andy] The interviews progress
throughout the day.
Michelle Hogg then says,
"I'd like to make a
prepared statement."
She basically says, "I made
up these people like
with prosthetics.
I was told it was
for a video game.
I did not know it was
anything to do with any crime.
I'm too frightened to name them.
If I name them, I'm frightened
for my family and myself.
I can't do it."
She says, "I'm not
gonna speak to you."
So she has to be bailed.
Nothing really changes
with Michael Demetris.
He's subsequently
bailed as well.
[Adrian] We'd already thought
maybe they were wearing
sort of prosthetic masks or
something like that.
I'll be honest and say
we didn't really think
they would have done it because
we'd never experienced that.
This is sort of Hollywood
Mission Impossible stuff.
We'd never seen that,
for real, in a robbery.
[Dave E] Myself and another
colleague spent the weekend
in a basement at our
police headquarters,
sorting Michelle Hogg's
wheely bin.
So of course this poor
officer has got this
disgusting mixture of waste
food and God knows what else
in the bottom of this bin.
But at the very bottom
are two black bin liners
and they're, they're sealed.
Opens them up,
Aladdin's cave.
Bingo, bingo, bingo.
Theatrical makeup, latex,
false hair to make beards.
And there are cigarette butts...
false caps, you know, head caps.
[Dave E.] Significant evidence
was recovered from there
A lot of evidence that was
going to give us some DNA leads.
[Andy] So we separate it,
photograph it.
Th-th-there were a number of
parts with different skin tone.
One of the skin tone parts
just had the words Lee M.
written on the back of it.
So I'm thinking,
this is Lee Murray.
This is starting to look
like evidence, but we can't,
we still can't pinpoint
anything, it's just got Lee M.
Sent it off for DNA work.
DNA work does not
happen overnight.
It takes a few days to
see what they can get off.
Whilst this is going on,
another phone rings,
they found the red van,
the ParcelForce van.
And we know now that
Lynn and her child
had been taken in
a ParcelForce van.
So we said, "Right,
let's have it.
Just take it and
we'll forensicate it."
Someone has gone and
bought an identical van,
put false plates on it, and
had it livred up ParcelForce.
We got some information that
a chap called Keith Borer
had done some work.
[Keith] It was there, the
ParcelForce van that I had done.
It was on the television.
I thought, my God, what
have I got involved in here?
Basically, he had
made the signs up
because Stuart Royle
had asked him to.
Keith Borer said immediately
after the robbery
Stuart Royle came to see him
and he gave him an envelope
and said, "Thanks
for doing that."
There was 6,000 pounds in it,
in 50-pound notes.
We start to
identify Stuart Royle.
This person ran a car
business, you know,
some would use the description
of being a con man.
He would sell his
own grandmother.
He was just someone
that would lie and cheat
his way through,
through anything.
[Adrian] We'd already
identified Stuart Royle
as a key player very early on.
gentle music
[Andy] Later that night,
around 11 o'clock in the evening,
we get a phone call,
fire brigade reporting two
cars on fire, where's that?
Burberry Lane, Langley.
Right, they're our cars.
They're cars from that robbery.
There's a Volvo and a Vectra.
In the boot of the Volvo
is Colin Dixon's briefcase.
We find, melted in the
dashboard, a magazine
and a load of rounds from
a Skorpion machine p*stol
and a stopwatch melted
into the dashboard.
In the Vectra, we find
that it's got blue lights
and a siren fitted.
[Adrian] Now, clearly, a lot
of activity was taking place
in Burberry Lane
on Thursday night.
And we're keen to
speak to anyone
who may have seen
anything suspicious.
[Andy] What's the relevance
of Burberry Lane?
The most obvious and apparent
relevance of Burberry Lane
is if you walked over the fields
from where the cars
were burnt out,
you'd get to Stuart
Royle's house.
That didn't go over
our heads at all.
soft dramatic music
The Vectra,
the person that
bought that wrote
Stuart Royle's
business address,
115 Tunbridge Road, Wateringbury.
We had the red LDV van
and one of the vehicles
had both been bought by somebody
whose name they
gave as Mark Scott.
But they gave the
address of that person
for Wateringbury Car Sales,
the business premises
of Stuart Royle.
Things are starting
to stack up.
But it just seemed
very convenient that
everything initially
points to Stuart Royle.
soft dramatic music
The Friday comes,
this is Friday the 24th.
We get another call
saying that there is
a load of money in a van
at Ashford International.
It's got two suitcases in it
and it's got a bag in it.
In the bag is clearly a
Skorpion machine p*stol,
bulletproof vest
and a balaclava.
I open up the suitcases
and it's got
1,370,000 pounds in it.
And it's still in the
Securitas wrappers.
It took nine hours to count,
and we were using machines.
I can confirm also
that a 49-year-old man
has been arrested in
relation to that van.
The van was owned by
Chris Bowles,
judo instructor,
locally, for years.
He'd named Lea Rusha as
putting the bags in his car.
What he told us was that he
had been found by Lea Rusha,
asked a-a favor.
He was splitting up
with his partner
and he was having to move out
and can he just store
a couple of bags
for him for a while.
So he said, "Yes, yeah, yeah,
yeah, that's not a problem."
And they arranged to meet
at a petrol station.
Chris Bowles goes to
the petrol station
and Jetmir Bucpapa jumps
in his van and says,
"Oh, he's around the corner."
Jetmir Bucpapa is an
Albanian national.
He is a big man.
He likes the gym, pumping
iron and stuff like that.
He's a very, very light record,
but definitely was
involved in criminality.
So they drive around the corner.
Rusha puts some bags
in the back of his van.
Chris Bowles goes off
to teach some kids.
When he's in there,
he sees another bag.
And he unzips it and
sees straightaway
a balaclava and a firearm.
He'd obviously panicked
and driven it around,
left it in this car park
at Ashford International.
Two of the robbers have
clearly gone to him
with some of their money.
Why that was split from
their stash, I don't know.
We never got to
the bottom of that.
This is, uh, the, the first
large sum of money that,
that was found during
the investigation.
And it was very exciting,
it was, it meant
to us that we had
a positive lead.
And also, um, the forensic
opportunities are massive.
We knew that the, uh,
robbers in the depot
were wearing balaclavas.
There's one of the balaclavas.
DNA is there, you know,
we've got to find
some-something on it.
So they were sent very quickly.
And they came back
with a name,
DNA around the mouth of the
balaclava was that of Lea Rusha.
I've known Lea Rusha since he
was about 13 or 14 years old.
Lea Rusha was very well known
in Tonbridge, Tundbridge Wells.
He was committing
criminal damage,
disorderly behavior
in public places.
There was allegations
that he'd stabbed someone.
And there was also suggestions
that he was involved
in the distribution of drugs,
and becoming a
bit of an enforcer
because he was getting
stronger and fitter
and honing his
martial arts skills.
But he's quite small,
he's about 5'6".
He was definitely getting
into the mixed martial arts,
of which Lee Murray
was part of this.
Good evening.
Detectives investigating
the Tonbridge depot robbery
say that they've carried
out armed raids across Kent.
[Andy] We'd ex*cuted a warrant
at Lea Rusha's house
in Southborough.
Rusha is not there.
We don't know where he's gone,
he has fled.
We can't find
Jetmir Bucpapa either.
[newswoman] All day,
forensic teams have been
systematically removing
bags full of material
from this house
in this quiet residential
part of Tunbridge Wells.
We had a call, he said,
"You-you're just not gonna
believe this."
I said, "What?"
He said, "We found a map
of the depot."
"Pardon?"
gentle music
You've got to be kidding me.
And you can't be...
Wh-what's the first
thing you'd do with that?
You-you'd burn it,
wouldn't you?
It appears he had a habit of
throwing his jeans over a chair
that was in the bedroom,
and it slipped out
of the back pocket
and went behind the chair.
And it resembled the
map that Colin Dixon
stated that he'd been
interrogated about.
Unbelievable.
To make it even better,
we also found an mp4 player.
It's got footage on it.
[woman] I'll take my phone.
[Andy] And we recognize a
water tower in the background.
It, it looks like
a-a flying saucer.
Herne Bay.
We said, "It can't
be Herne Bay."
It can't, cannot be Herne Bay.
It's the road where Colin
and Lynn Dixon live.
[footsteps]
The video is of Lea Rusha
and another woman,
Jetmir Bucpapa's girlfriend.
They were going up,
knocking on a door,
trying to see if the woman
behind it is Colin Dixon's wife.
tense music
[knocking]
[knocking]
[knocking]
[knocking]
When she was
arrested she said,
"Oh, I-I thought it was
about collecting a debt
from a man."
Well, you're clearly looking
for a lady, aren't you?
You wouldn't say
f*cking b*tch otherwise.
It's a chilling video,
isn't it?
The lengths they were
prepared to go to.
The thought, preparation
and planning,
every second of the
night had to be plotted,
left as little to
chance as possible,
a fiendishly clever plan,
which, to the, up to the moment
in which they drove away
with all the money,
had worked flawlessly.
As a military operation,
it was incredibly successful.
It was, you know, very well
planned and very well ex*cuted.
But as a criminal
enterprise, it wasn't.
No one with experience of crime
would leave a forensic
footprint like this.
[Andy] Lea Rusha was
sunk there and then.
[Sir John] The sheer volume of
the individual pieces
of this extraordinary jigsaw
which the defendants,
by their incompetence
and stupidity,
allowed the police to assemble,
that was what was so
extraordinary about the case.
You know, there were all sorts
of fascinating little sort of
quirks and alleyways
associated with it.
[Andy] In a case like this,
you have to follow the web.
You follow every
strand until it breaks.
Once it's broken,
then you can go back
and look at another one.
You have to keep following them,
otherwise, you've not
covered the whole web.
[newswoman] Kent Police
have now had more than
1,000 calls from the public,
but they are still appealing
for more information
as they try to keep the
pressure on the g*ng
in a bid to catch them out.
[newswoman 2] Police
investigating the
Tonbridge depot robbery
say that they've found
14 cages used to
move the stolen cash.
[newswoman 3] They were
found in fields
after police were
alerted by a farmer.
Those cages were dumped from
the back of a white box van
at about 9:30 a.m. on
Wednesday morning.
A lady had seen a white truck
backing up to some wasteland
and a man and a woman
dumping some cages.
It transpired that that person
when we did the investigation
was John Fowler and
the woman was actually
Stuart Royle's girlfriend.
[Andy] Stuart Royle's
name is coming up again.
Stuart Royle has a business
partner at that time
and there's a lot of
shady dealings going on
with a bloke called John Fowler.
And they basically have
run a business together.
They've been in trouble
together previously.
[Chris] John Fowler was quite
a successful car dealer.
He owned a farm and
an amount of land.
And, uh, he had a lot of
connections in London and Kent
on the fringes of the
underworld, put it that way.
Everything is-is pointing
at-at Stuart Royle
and-and John Fowler.
So what we do is we get
a-a-a team behind Royle.
We moved in and we arrested him.
He was in a blue BMW at the
time, driving on the M2.
[newsman] Officers shot
out the wheels of the car
before pulling a man from the
vehicle and arresting him.
Stuart Royle, he said, "I
didn't think you'd get this far
whilst I was still alive."
Either he was gonna get
k*lled or he-he didn't know,
he didn't think we'd find him.
We charged him and his
associate, John Fowler,
with the conspiracy to rob,
conspiracy to kidnap,
and conspiracy to
carry firearms.
We're moving in the
right direction.
Monday, the 27th
of February, 2006.
We had found Lea Rusha
and Jetmir Bucpapa.
They were in a vehicle
traveling through South London.
Firearms fires what's
called a Hatton round.
And we can stop an engine
with a Hatton round.
Bucpapa and Rusha,
they are arrested
and brought into custody.
[newswoman] At Maidstone
Magistrate's Court today
two more people were
remanded in custody,
Lea John Rusha, a 33-year-old
roofer from Tunbridge Wells,
and earlier today
Jetmir Bucpapa,
a 24-year-old unemployed
man from Tonbridge.
Both are charged with
conspiracy to commit robbery.
[Adrian] We're gaining valuable
forensic evidence,
and I remain confident
that we'll both catch
and convict the people
responsible for this.
[Andy] After their arrest,
we move into John Fowler's
premises,
a place called Elderden Farm,
very lovely rural farmhouse.
What was powerful was that the,
the compound right
next door to the house
fit the descriptions
given by Lynn Dixon.
That could, this could be the
place, the-the stronghold,
the villain stronghold,
as we called it.
The workshop smelled of
paint when you went in there.
Colin Dixon smelled paint.
And there was a green
tarpaulin over a car.
Colin Dixon described
a green tarpaulin
with a map stuck to it.
Yeah, we're getting
more and more excited
about this, this place.
dramatic music
[Chris] There was media,
helicopters flying over it
and it was just
all over the news.
They were basically saying we
found the-the robbers' lair.
[Andy] Again, the
pressure's on, isn't it?
You know, you've got
the media saying,
"What are you doing there?
What are you searching for?"
[newswoman] Officers
have been searching
the sprawling grounds
of the remote farm,
sealing off areas and
examining vehicles.
They searched through
bins and files,
no doubt hoping this
farmland investigation
would give them more clues
about who stole this money
and where they've put it.
[Andy] We found the
hire agreement
in John Fowler's office.
Fowler has hired a lorry.
And on a woodpile in a field,
we found a black plastic bag.
It's got 120,000 pounds
from Securitas in it.
John Fowler said he
found the money in a car.
And he thinks, "Oh, for
safekeeping, I'll go and hide it
in a log pile in my
back garden."
Not something I'd do, you know.
I don't think I'd
do that, really.
[newsman] Tonight, arc lights
were brought in
so the search of the
farmhouse could continue
through the hours of darkness
while police officers
staged road checks,
confident the last 24 hours
have brought them closer
to tracing the robbers.
[newswoman] Detectives say
there could well
be more dramatic
developments to come.
They have now, however, finished
their forensic examination
of the Tonbridge depot.
Workers will be allowed
back in tomorrow.
[newswoman 2] After an audit,
the owners of Securitas
revealed the final figure.
Securitas have
finished the final audit.
And that figure now stands
at 53 million pounds.
That is the total amount
stolen in this robbery.
dramatic music
[Andy] Everyone says 53 million,
but in fact it was
52,990,760 pounds.
$92.2 million.
Amazing, this was the
biggest cash robbery
in the world's history,
ever.
At six o'clock, the
depot robbery is bigger
than we thought.
I have to say that when he
announced that final figure
of 53 million pounds,
everyone's jaws just dropped.
This anonymous warehouse
on the edge of Tonbridge
will now go down in history.
[Duncan] We now live in a cyber
world where that level of money
that you need a lorry
to take away,
a lorry, not a van or
a satchel, a lorry,
you're never gonna
get that kind of money
in that quantity again.
[Adrian] The robbers had
only taken a quarter
of what was in that depot.
They left nearly a quarter
of a billion dollars
still in the depot.
And the only reason
they left it behind
was they couldn't get
any more on the lorry.
If they'd only hired
[laughs] a 20 or 30-ton lorry,
they could have taken the lot.
dramatic music
[Andy] At this stage now,
that we're five days into this.
We have arrested
Michael Demetris,
Michelle Hogg,
Stuart Royle,
John Fowler,
Lea Rusha,
Jetmir Bucpapa.
There's six people.
We're still missing money.
And we're still missing a lot
of money, over 50 million.
A tip, some information that
went into the Met Police,
"We think you'll want to
come have a look at this."
So we then go up
to a repair shop,
which belongs to a man
called Roger Coutts.
Roger Coutts was a, a
lifelong friend, really,
of Lee Murray's
and Paul Allen's,
lived in Buttmarsh Road when
Lee Murray lived down there.
They'd known each other
since school days.
They were close mates.
Inside one of these containers
is 9.5 million pounds.
So imagine counting out
nine and a half million,
it takes days.
tense music
The lab rang us and said,
"The cable ties used to
tie up all the hostages,
eight of them have got
Roger Coutts's DNA on them."
In the footage, the man
described as Mr. Average
is bent over, cable-tying
all of the hostages.
And he can't possibly have
held all the cable ties
in his hand and
tied everybody up.
He probably put
them in his mouth.
[newsman] Roger Coutts,
a 29-year-old garage owner
from Welling is to be
charged in connection with
the 53 million pounds
Securitas robbery in Tonbridge.
[Andy] There was clearly
different plans
for different stashes of cash
that came from that robbery.
We use the word,
it's a slaughter.
It's an old police-y word,
they split up all
the cash, basically.
And they put it into lumps
with various little bits
going off in other directions.
Some people had decided what
they were going to do with it
and had been organized,
others hadn't.
[Chris] I don't think the police
would ever have solved it
without informants.
Ninety percent or more
of the, uh, the breaks
that the police got
were from tip-offs,
tip-offs were what blew
the case wide open.
[newsman] Another day,
another leap forward
for the investigators.
[Andy] After Rusha and Bucpapa
have been charged,
a guy started to get a bit
jittery and scared
because he rented his garage
to Lea Rusha's cousin.
And he knew that
Lea Rusha used it.
[newsman] Police were so
surprised by how much cash
they found in the garage,
that they called in Securitas
to remove the money
under armed escort.
[Andy] There was about
8.7 million pounds.
And one of the houses
had CCTV on it,
and we see two vehicles
going to the lockup
just after the robbery,
Rusha and Bucpapa,
emptying the money from the
back of a van into that locker.
If you put them all together,
we've retrieved approximately
20 million pounds back
of the 53 that were stolen.
Obviously, a lot's
still outstanding.
But to be so successful
so early was
good for the investigation.
The biggest concern probably
was recovering the money.
So, I think that was
their biggest task,
and I think maybe they didn't
have all the evidence yet
to point to Lee, I don't know.
Lee Murray and-and
Paul Allen were clearly
in the investigation early on.
And by the 24th of February,
we were raiding their houses.
But they weren't there.
We don't know where he is.
We were looking for
them around South London.
I don't know if they
were looking for him,
I don't know.
They obviously weren't looking
in-in the right place.
dramatic music
[Andy] That night a
crossing was booked.
The following day, Murray
and Allen crossed into France
via a ferry from
Dover in a Mercedes.
[Adrian] It's easy to look
back on hindsight and say,
"Why didn't you
close the borders?"
You've got to be very
clear about the person
before you start putting
out a closure to a port.
You've got to have
almost the evidence
to convict someone for that.
We've got intelligence
saying Lee Murray did it.
That's all we've got.
You'd think they'd maybe
follow him for a few days.
But, no [chuckles]
he slips through the net.
We're doing some
inquiries into him.
And someone says, "Well,
he got nicked recently."
And we find out that
he's been arrested
on the 16th of February.
This is like five or six days
before the robbery.
He's been out,
he's had a few beers.
He's in his yellow Ferrari
and he's crashed it.
And he tries to leave the scene.
So they try to arrest him
and he basically kicks off.
[Adrian] He gets arrested
for drink driving.
The car gets seized
and impounded,
and he's released,
but without his car.
"Where's the, um, the Ferrari?"
"It's at Charlton Pound."
"We need it searched, is
there anything in there
that might be of use to us?"
We found a photograph,
Lee Murray, Paul Allen,
a man called Kane Patterson,
taken the night of the crash,
and a couple of mobile phones.
So we're very interested.
The DS is listening to
one of the phones,
what's that?
Murray had pressed
the recording button
and they were discussing
who was going to go
with Colin Dixon,
the manager of the
Securitas Depot,
to the gate and gain
access to the depot itself
on the night of the robbery.
There was evidence
planning the robbery.
I-I mean, it's
almost unbelievable.
It was just gold dust.
We've got the London g*ng head,
the Kent g*ng head,
Lea Rusha and Lee Murray,
the two Lees,
the two pivotal players
in, in the, the whole g*ng,
talking about this
robbery together.
dramatic music
It then tells you,
very importantly,
who two of the other
robbers are,
Paul and Kane.
[Rusha] Paul or Kane, someone,
anyone, I don't care.
[Sir John] And also,
discussing reconnaissance
within the depot,
secretly recorded of what
the depot looked inside.
And it also tells us they've
got someone inside the depot
as an inside man.
[Paul] One of the key elements
here was to get somebody
inside the depot in a position
where he could film it
so they knew exactly
where the money was kept
and these are the-the
routes that we have to take.
[Adrian] We were
pretty convinced
there was an inside man.
The question is, who was it?
We had officers looking
at the CCTV, all of it.
And there were 84
cameras in this place.
That's a lot of
footage to look at.
And they were looking at it
and they were looking at it,
and then one of the
DCs comes up and said,
"You just need to look at this
and tell me what you think."
Ermir Hysenaj is
a person of habit.
So what he would generally
do is he would turn up
within a microsecond
of his shift starting
and go straight into, to where
he was supposed to be working
sitting down at a desk,
counting money.
He'd never been early.
It's the 16th of January
and Ermir Hysenaj
is 20 minutes early.
He walks up the stairs.
He walks into the staff room
and he comes out and he
walks down the corridor,
he goes to the very end
to the top of the stairs
and he turned.
Clearly see a belt, his
shirt is tucked down.
He would generally walk around
and his shirt was untucked,
virtually all the time.
He goes through the air lock
into the main part
of the building.
He gets rid of his coat
in the changing rooms,
comes back out,
and then he-he stands
and looks at the
control room door,
he's square onto it,
then goes out to the
back where he works
and he stands right in
front of the window
in the loading bay.
He's filming,
he is filming.
He then stands right in
front of the air lock
on the loading bay.
tense music
Go back later on and look
at the phone records,
two minutes after he
leaves that depot,
he's on the phone
to Jetmir Bucpapa.
Lee Murray's phone pings
in Southborough at
the same location.
Lea Rusha's as well and
they then start to move
down to Tonbridge,
obviously going to
watch the footage.
And he returns and
his shirt's untucked,
completely untucked,
from his trousers.
But it's absolutely
certain what he was doing.
There's no doubt about it.
The g*ng decided they
needed someone inside that,
that depot to see
what it looked like.
They put him into that depot.
The g*ng orchestrated
him being employed there.
[Paul] Hysenaj, an Albanian
who'd been in this country
since the age of 10,
a person who had no overt
criminal past
and so he was perfect in terms
of if Securitas were going to
have to pass him to
the police for vetting,
that he would not
arouse suspicion,
and that worked perfectly.
[Alun] I did a lot of
the interviews.
All I remember of him is
he just seemed a normal,
like quiet, quiet guy.
Ermir Hysenaj,
a critical component part
of the conspiracy,
became employed in
December, 2005,
so two months
before the robbery.
The last block of evidence
that was significant
was the DNA evidence
with the prosthetics
found from Miss Hogg's bin.
soft dramatic music
[Adrian] Forensics takes some
time to come back,
particularly DNA evidence.
But most importantly,
we find DNA linked
to Lee Murray.
[Andy] Lea Rusha's DNA
is on some of the latex.
And we find DNA from Paul Allen
on the cigarette butt.
soft dramatic music
There was so much in there.
Thank goodness we didn't
let the trash man take it.
It would have been lost.
We know that Lee Murray
was one of the robbers.
We know from the phone call.
[Paul] That was a
horrendous blunder,
which absolutely
[laughs] pins him
to the center of the conspiracy.
We know he was
one of the robbers.
So then line your robbers up,
is he the driver of the lorry?
I don't think so, not unless
he's eaten his sofa.
The driver was Stuart Royle,
Hoodie is Paul Allen,
Mr. Average is Roger Coutts,
Shorty is Lea Rusha,
Hi-Vis is Jetmir Bucpapa.
Kane was the man going into
the depot with Colin Dixon.
He's actually got
the correct uniform.
He's got a Kent Police hat,
Kent Police badge on it,
a fluorescent jacket,
and he's got a Motorola radio
pinned to his lapel,
which is something that we had.
Kane Patterson, um,
we're, we're still
looking for him.
And who's got the nastiest,
biggest g*n in the g*ng?
Stopwatch, he's got an AK-47.
That's the worst
weapon you can have.
And he's orchestrating it.
Lee Murray is Stopwatch.
I am certain that who I've said
played each part is that person.
[Adrian] The links were coming
together and we could not just
have intelligence, but actually
have the evidence
to prove it at court.
We know that we are very
interested in Lee Murray now.
He's gone,
we can't stop that.
All the evidence that we
gleaned about him
was secured after he'd-he'd
fled the country,
so he's gone.
gentle suspenseful music
[Fryklund] England,
Cage Rage, Fight Day,
I was the main event
with Anderson Silva.
So I warm up,
doo, doo, doo, doo,
a little knock on the door and
the door cracks real slowly,
and there's this dude in
a f*cking little burgundy
f*cking three-piece suit and
he's got a f*cking cell phone
that's already flipped open.
And he goes like this, he goes,
I go, "Shut the f*ck up."
He goes, "Yeah" he goes,
"Take it, take it."
And I go, "Are you there?"
He goes, "Hey."
I go, "Oh, my God, what the f-?"
It was Lee, it was Lee's voice.
"You getting ready to go on?"
I go, "I'm the next fight."
He goes, "Oh, watch out
for his f*cking left side.
Stay away from his left side."
He's going on and on, I go,
"Dude, get off the phone.
What are you doing?"
"Ah, it's f*cking fine,
it's f*cking fine, I'm good.
It's f*cking hidden."
I go, "Wh- get off the phone."
And he goes, "Ah, it's fine,
they're not gonna find me.
D-don't worry, don't worry."
"f*cking go, bro,
you're gonna go.
Is this being, are
they tracing this one?"
He goes, "Nah, it's
f*cking fine.
We're gonna get rid of it,
we're gonna get rid of it."
I go, "Okay, okay, I, okay,
I love you, brother, okay.
f*cking bye, bye, bye, bye."
He goes, "Okay, I love you,
mate, f*cking smash him."
And I, and I'll,
I-I think I said,
"Don't f*cking call me again."
Because I don't w- I-I
honestly, that sh*t, f*cking ah.
[stammers] I think I said,
yeah, I said, "Don't
call me again"
because I didn't want, I didn't
want him to get caught.
That's why, f*ck, yeah.
I didn't want him to get caught,
I remember that.
I blocked that out, I said,
"Don't f*cking call
me again, dude."
Dang it,
f*cking dang it.
[Andy] Sit down and
think about it.
Let's work out,
what do you need?
We know that he's absolutely
glued to Paul Allen.
They have families
in this country.
So let's keep an eye
on the families.
This is Siobhan, Lee Murray's
wife at the time.
And it soon became apparent
that both Siobhan and Stacey,
formerly Paul Allen's
other half,
had booked the same flight
from London to Spain.
They went to Malaga and
they got in a cab and, uh,
two of our operatives
went with them,
we followed them.
There's no, no way to kind of,
uh, get around it.
That's wh- that's what we did.
And they kept going
further and further.
Where are they going?
You know, where are they going?
And then we're getting excited.
We think we might actually
find Paul Allen and Lee Murray.
They keep going and they come
to the town of Algeciras.
And it has a ferry service.
They can't be,
they-they can't be.
You don't think they're
in Morocco, do you?
He has got a Moroccan
father, Lee Murray.
They were going to Morocco.
The two operatives jump
on the ferry as well.
But we have no
extradition treaty.
We have no treaties in place
with the Moroccan
authorities at all.
They can't make an incursion
onto Moroccan soil,
not in an official capacity.
You just do not do that.
So there are a series
of hurried calls
from embassy to embassy,
the British government,
to Morocco and the embassy.
They got permission to
continue on their journey.
They landed in Tangier.
Our officers are met by people
from the intelligence
service in-in Morocco.
So they're just waiting
for the protocols.
There are certain things
you can and can't do
in different cultures.
The two officers, they have
to leave it to the Moroccans
at that point.
And they were taken down to
Rabat, the capital of Morocco.
They were booked into a hotel.
You cannot go out and
make your own inquiries.
It's warm, it's sunny,
so there's a pool,
so, what to do?
Well, they go and
sit down, have a-a
glass and just caught
some rays at the pool.
They become aware of other
people clearly English-speaking
coming towards the pool.
To their incredulity,
they look up and they see
that it is Siobhan and Stacey.
And they are with
Paul Allen and Lee Murray.
You couldn't have bet on that.
I know there was a big gulp
by the two British
officers thinking,
"Oh, sh*t," [laughs]
"in the same hotel!"
Luck.
dramatic music
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01x03 - Part 3
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The story of MMA fighter, 'Lightning' Lee Murray, who brawled his way from the mean streets of South London all the way to the UFC - and then took part one of the largest bank heists of all-time.
The story of MMA fighter, 'Lightning' Lee Murray, who brawled his way from the mean streets of South London all the way to the UFC - and then took part one of the largest bank heists of all-time.