True Heist

On 22 February 2006, GBP53 million was stolen from a cash warehouse belonging to the Securitas company in Tonbridge, Kent. In terms of value, the robbery puts previous British capers, such as the Great Train Robbery, in the shade. This was a crime notable for its audacity, carried out by an unlikely crew of players that included a used car salesman, two Albanian casual workers and a roofer. Five men were convicted at the Old Bailey in January 2008, which attracted nationwide media coverage.

From murder and robberies to arson and blackmail, the 20 stories in this book are some of the most fascinating true crime stories ever recorded. Each of these cases is so bizarre that they confounded the police, baffled investigators and captured the attention of the press all over the world. These short and accessible stories include encyclopaedic information on when and how the crimes were committed, the background of each criminal, and their trials and punishments - for those that were caught.

One night, in a small North Carolina town, a down-on-his-luck guard at Loomis Fargo manages to steal $17 million - literally more than one ton of cash. Despite being caught on camera wheeling the money from the vault to the getaway van, David Ghantt makes off to Mexico before the FBI can blink. There's just one hitch: Ghantt has entrusted the money to an oddball crew of accomplices who had wooed him into committing this massive theft in the first place - and who, he soon learns, are trying to take him out.

One of the biggest scores in Mafia history, the Lufthansa Airlines heist of 1978 has become the stuff of Mafia legend - and a decades-long investigation that continues to this day. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Anthony DeStefano sheds new light on this legendary unsolved case using recent evidence from the 2015 trial of 80-year-old Mafia don Vincent Asaro, who for the first time speaks out on his role in the fateful Lufthansa heist.

Joan Hannington was the most notorious female figure in London's criminal underworld during the 80s, earning her the nickname 'The Godmother'. With her stunning looks and glamorous wardrobe, Joan was constantly underestimated, but she used this to her advantage and became an undetected mastermind in high-stakes jewellery theft. Often transforming herself into different characters, Joan seamlessly got away with millions of pounds in diamonds. Joan is the true story of her meteoric rise from petty offender to one of Britain's most accomplished diamond thieves

It’s the $10 million heist you’ve never heard of. In a matter of months, dozens of truckloads disappeared from American highways. But what were they carrying? Nuts. Marc Fennell takes you into a rabbit hole of crime syndicates, stolen identities and private investigators that will change the way you think about food forever. Eighty per cent of the world’s almonds are grown in the heart of California, but this journey will take you to Italy, the Spanish coast, deep under the earth and even into space.

Here is a glittering true-crime tale unlike any you have ever encountered. Glittering because the take involved rubies, emeralds, diamonds, sapphires. The thieves were two men from Yonkers, Dominick Latella and Pete Salerno, who hit the East Coast mansions of the wealthy enclaves of Westchester and Palm Beach. Over 20 years they became known as the most successful jewel thieves in American history...until one bleak night when they got careless.

No criminal sparked as much fear and loathing among the public and law enforcement as underworld crime boss, Kenny Noye. A man with a central role in some of the most high-profile crimes of a generation. From the £125 million (current value) Brink's Mat gold bullion raid to the death of Covert Police Operative John Fordham, and road rage victim Stephen Cameron, the multimillionaire villain became universally known as ‘Public Enemy: No 1'.

On the 8th August 1963 a gang of 15 men stopped a mail train in Buckinghamshire and proceeded to steal sacks of money worth £2.6 million. It was the biggest heist ever carried out in the UK and frontpage news around the world. The mastermind behind this most audacious crime of the twentieth century was Bruce Reynolds. Perhaps the last of the 'gentlemen villains'; Reynolds epitomised that particular breed of sharply dressed post-war criminals who mixed with royalty and movie stars, and never carried a gun. They thrived on adventure and glamour, and the Great Train Robbery was their last ride.

This is the story of how Securicor guard Eddie Maher managed to pull off a £1.2 million heist, fled the country despite every port being closed, spawned an international manhunt and managed to evade capture for 20 years. As Britain's most wanted man, he led 30 detectives, FBI and Interpol on a wild goose chase across the USA. Dubbed 'Fast Eddie' by the press, he was always one step ahead.

Killing Goldfinger charts the extraordinary rise and spectacular bullet-riddled fall of John Palmer, the richest, most powerful criminal ever to have emerged from the modern British underworld. Palmer earned his nickname Goldfinger after smelting (in his back garden) tens of millions of pounds worth of stolen gold bullion from the 20th century's most lucrative heist; the Brink's-Mat robbery. Palmer then used his share of the millions to become the vicious overlord of a vast illegal timeshare property empire in Tenerife.

On Saturday, 26 November 1983, an armed gang stole gold bullion worth almost £26 million from the Brink's-Mat security depot near London's Heathrow Airport. It was the largest robbery in world history, and only the start of an extraordinary story. For forty years, myths and legends have grown around the Brink's-Mat heist and the events that followed.

Whether in Truman Capote’s detailed murder of the Clutter family or Ted Bundy’s small-town charm, criminals have always roamed rural America and towns worldwide. Featuring murder stories, criminal case studies, and more, The Best New True Crime Stories: Small Towns contains all-new accounts from writers of true crime, crime journalism, and crime fiction. And these entries are not based on a true story - they are true stories. Edited by acclaimed author and anthologist Mitzi Szereto, the stories in this volume span the globe.

What is it that fascinates so many people about Ronnie Biggs and makes him a household name sixty years on from the crime that made his name? Is it the man or the myth that makes Ron a latter-day Robin Hood, and the odd man out who is best remembered from a gang of sixteen who held up a mail train in August 1963? This book covers Ron's entire life including the Great Train Robbery, his conviction and subsequent escape from HMP Wandsworth. Ron tells how he managed to outrun and outthink the posse of law enforcement officers and the media that chased him around the world.

Unlock the cultural obsession with high-stakes robberies in Heist, a collection of the world's greatest real-life break-ins. From the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's famous art heist to the disappearance of the Marie Antoinette watch, these 100% true stories will have you on the edge of your seat--and double checking the locks on your doors!

In this breathtaking adventure, featuring colorful characters from showbusiness alongside royalty, the IRA and even Pablo Escobar, Clifford Thurlow reveals Keith Cheeseman's incredible true story for the first time.

In the summer of 1913, under the cover of London’s perpetual smoggy dusk, two brilliant minds are pitted against each other - a celebrated gentleman thief and a talented Scotland Yard detective - in the greatest jewel heist of the new century. An exquisite strand of pale pink pearls, worth more than the Hope Diamond, has been bought by a Hatton Garden broker. Word of the “Mona Lisa of Pearls” spreads around the world, captivating jewelers as well as thieves.

In 2016, on stage at Wembley Arena in front of thousands of adoring fans, Dr Ruja Ignatova promised her followers a financial revolution. The future, she said, belonged to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. And the Oxford-educated, self-styled cryptoqueen vowed that she had invented the Bitcoin killer. OneCoin would not only earn its investors untold fortunes, it would change the world.

The Hatton Garden Heist captured the public's imagination more than any other crime since The Great Train Robbery. It was supposed to make a fortune for a team of old-time professional criminals. Their last hurrah. A final lucrative job that would send the old codgers off on happy retirements to the badlands of Spain and beyond. It seemed to be the stuff of legends.

For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than 200 heists over nearly ten years - in museums and cathedrals all over Europe - Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than 300 objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion. In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world.