'Great Train Robber' Ronnie Biggs dies at 84

utsandiego.com ^ | 12/18/2013 | JILL LAWLESS

[massmike]

Ronnie Biggs was a petty criminal who set out to transform his life with the daring heist of a mail train packed with money.

The plan worked in ways he could never have imagined.

Biggs was part of a gang of at least 12 men that robbed the Glasgow-to-London Royal Mail Train in the early hours of Aug. 8, 1963, switching its signals and tricking the driver into stopping in the darkness. The robbery netted 125 sacks of banknotes worth 2.6 million pounds — $7.3 million at the time, or more than $50 million today — and became known as "the heist of the century."

Biggs died Wednesday at 84, daughter-in-law Veronica Biggs said. She did not provide details about the cause of death.

Most of the Great Train Robbery gang was caught and sentenced to long terms in jail. Biggs got 30 years, but 15 months into his sentence he escaped from London's Wandsworth Prison by scaling a wall with a rope ladder and jumping into a waiting furniture van.

It was the start of a life on the run that would hone his image of being a cheeky rascal one step ahead of the law.

[hecticskeptic]

No doubt the media will be romanticizing about the passing on of 'clever and wily old rascal'.... and completely forget the fact that the gang killed one of the rail men working on the train... they clubbed him and he never fully recovered and died a few years later.

[a fool in paradise]

Former member of the Sex Pistols has died.

Is that 3 yet?

[a fool in paradise]

[Revolting cat!]

Yep, that’s numba tres (Horace Silver missed it this time.)

[a fool in paradise]

Ray Price
Ronnie Biggs
and who else?

[Revolting cat!]

Happy camper Harold Camping.

[a fool in paradise]

Did he sing or did he make puppet records? I can't remember.

[Churchillspirit]

Coming home from work on the day of The Great Train Robbery, my traveling companion was reading about it in the evening paper and remarked that he had just read the book.

In answer to my skepticism, he brought it the next day - "The Patriots" by James Barlow. An exact account of what was to happen on August 8th. 1963.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Prayers for a misguided soul.