Gotcha!: The Untold Story of Britain's Biggest Cash Robbery

by John Knight (Author), Ronnie Knight (Author), Richard Wilton (Author), Pete Sawyer (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $4.20

  On Easter Monday 1983 armed robbers got into the supposedly impregnable Security Express depot in Shoreditch, neatly capturing the guards and holding them hostage. They hauled away 5 tons of cash, worth GBP6 million then (GBP26 million in today's currency). The gang made no mistakes and left behind not a single clue.

  Det. Supt Peter Wilton was the man in charge of the investigation. He spent years tracking the culprits, playing a ruthless cat and mouse game that led him to some of London's most notorious villains. John Knight and his brother Ronnie were well-known faces, hard men who kept to the East End code. They were riding high when John Knight and his team executed the perfect robbery, and Ronnie helped launder the cash. They almost got away with it...

  As gripping as any thriller, Gotcha! combines the Knights' and Wilton's stories to graphically recreate the robbery, from the adrenaline-fuelled raid to the long police search, from the high life on the Costa del Sol to interrogation, betrayal and arrest.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2002

  $4.20

  An ex-police officer teams up with his two most famous criminals! The brothers John and Ronnie Knight planned their crimes meticulously, calculated the risks and had flair, intelligence, humour and style. John's masterwork was Britain's biggest ever cash haul - from the Security Express depot in Shoreditch, on the fringes of the City of London, on Easter Monday 1983. Months - even years - of planning spectacularly paid off: when the police arrived on the scene of the crime GBP6M (much of it the takings from the Ideal Home Exhibition!) was missing, and not a clue to trace the perpetrators.Detective Superintendent Peter Wilton and his crack 'Dirty Dozen' stumbled on their first breakthrough when investigating another robbery. After several rounds in a battle of wits, of interrogations and betrayals, justice was dispensed: John served a 12 year sentence, and Ronnie, who had escaped to the Costa del Sol, did his time on return from his famous exile. While the police are still relentlessly tracking down the three gang members who have so far evaded capture, Wilton and the Knights remained fascinated by each other's role in the heist and its cracking. In this unprecedented book, they have teamed up to tell the full story - the hunter and the prey.