In May 1971, Reader was almost killed planning a
bank robbery in
Reading, Berkshire. Having broken into the local
telephone exchange—through which banks' burglar alarms to local police stations were routed—he was interrupted by the local constabulary. Attempting to escape out of a window, he slipped, fell, and landed on his head, recovering consciousness under a police guard in hospital. Suffering minor
brain damage, Reader had to learn to walk again due to his
sense of balance having been badly affected. Later in the month, he was convicted of burglary with intent and fined £35 at the
Magistrates' Court.
Baker Street robbery Having only left hospital a few weeks earlier, in September 1971, over two weekends, Reader took part in another robbery. The target was another bank: this time, the
Baker Street branch of
Lloyds Bank. It was Reader's biggest job yet, and for the first time he appears to have led the gang himself. Reader brought in an old friend from his youth, Bobby Mills, though, and this appears to have caused friction with established members of the gang, some of whom thought Mills a liability with no area of expertise. Ultimately Mills proved an embarrassment to Reader, as he refused to enter the bank—supposedly on doctor's orders—and so was made a
look out instead. He continued causing problems in this capacity also. Firstly he claimed that he needed over eight hours sleep a night and later stated that, in any case, that would be impossible on the roof "cos it's freezing cold and everything up here now". The robbery involved tunnelling from two doors down and breaking into the bank vault from below. They successfully emptied hundreds of
safe deposit boxes and escaped with over £8 million. Given their "strikingly similar"
modi operandi—including tunnelling—Lashmar has credited the Baker Street robbery as acting as a blueprint for the Hatton Garden heist over 40 years later. Reader, he says, "was key to both". Reader later claimed to have found several
paedophiliac photos in one of the boxes, which he believed to have been owned by an unnamed but prominent
Conservative Party Member of Parliament and
cabinet member. He left the photos scattered around the floor to ensure they could not be missed by the police. Pettifor and Sommerlad argue that "not for the last time, Reader and his cronies were causing the Met acute embarrassment". Only three members of the gang were ever brought to book for the robbery. Reader escaped to Spain with his wife and two children, although not before discovering that one member had conned him and the rest of the gang out of £150,000. It has been speculated that corrupt police officers enabled Reader's escape abroad, and this probably included Detective Inspector
Alec Eist, who was "by reputation the most corrupt Yard officer of the 1950s to mid-1970s which was no small achievement in such a packed field". In 1974 Reader was offered the chance to take part in the robbery of the
Bank of America in
Mayfair, which he turned down due to his not trusting other gang members. It is likely, although unproven, that Reader bribed police officers when he had to, as the practice was extensive in the 1970s. Reader managed to stay out of jail until 1980, mostly avoiding arrest fleeing abroad whenever he suspected the police were close to him. By the mid-1980s, now living in
Grove Park, Reader fenced some gold with
Kenneth Noye, which brought them both around £200,000. The following year, Reader was tried for complicity in several robberies with John Godwin, which netted them £1.3 million, but the trial collapsed after allegations of
jury tampering. At the later "jury-nobbling trial", as it was dubbed in the media, one witness told how she was visited by two men offered £500, and asked to influence a fellow juror. One of these men was Godwin, and the other "was called Brian and that she had never seen him again". A contemporary "
supergrass",
Michael Gervaise, also stated that police had asked him to implicate Reader in his statements. Although a retrial was ordered, Reader and his wife Lyn went to Spain. This was to become a familiar technique of Reader's and one he employed whenever he felt the police closing in on him; by escaping abroad at short notice, he was able to keep his
criminal record relatively clean. The year after leaving for Spain, Reader surreptitiously returned to England due to a family illness. However his return did not go unnoticed, and he was re-arrested. However, in 1980 he was named in a
supergrass trial, arrested and
bailed for £40,000. On the day he was due to appear in court he escaped by telling the
clerk "I'm off to park my car", and promptly disappeared back to Spain via Dover and France. Reader returned in 1983 by way of an associate's private yacht to
Jersey and on to Britain where he took part in the turning over of another Lloyd's Bank, at
Holborn Circus.
Brink's-Mat and death of DC Fordham In November 1983, the
Brink's-Mat robbery occurred at the
Heathrow International Trading Estate. It was one of the
largest robberies in British history, with approximately
£26 million worth of
gold bullion, diamonds, and cash being stolen. Reader was subsequently convicted of
handling stolen goods and
money laundering. He was jailed for eight years and was also convicted of fraudulently conspiring to
evade VAT. He received a further year in prison after it was discovered he had dishonestly handled another £66,000. Although they had taken no part in the robbery itself, they were involved in what has been called its "bloody aftermath" as the robbers attempted to fence the gold. Author
Wensley Clarkson has suggested that Noye and Reader had, by now "taught themselves everything there was to know about gold". They renewed their acquaintance playing squash at Brenda Noye's club in
Dartford, and here they set the price of the gold and established sale terms. While the terms were not particularly profitable to Reader as a fence, "it was clear a VAT fraud was being carried out" to go towards making up for it. Reader regularly stayed around gangster
Kenneth Noye's house, and was later described by
Justice Lowry as Noye's "vigorous right-hand man"; they had grown up close to one another in
Southeast London. Suspicion had coalesced on Noye over Brink's-Mat, and he was under constant police surveillance, as was his house in
West Kingsdown, Kent. By early January 1985, Reader had personally processed £3.66 million of Brink's-Mat gold. On the night of Saturday, 26 January 1985, around 6.30 PM, Reader was with Noye and his wife.
Chief superintendent Brian Boyce, responsible for the gold hunt, later said it was Reader's arrival—as a "known fugitive from justice"—at Noye's house that forced him to launch a covert search of Noye's grounds that night. Boyce was already uncertain as to the precise number of transactions that Reader had carried out, as in many cases, he had received parcels in return. This confused the case against Reader to some degree. Fordham and a colleague thus entered the property by way of a convenient tree. When the Noyes' two dogs began barking, Reader accompanied Noye into the garden on the night Metropolitan Police
Constable John Fordham was stabbed 12 times to death in Noye's garden. Fordham was part of the investigation into the Brinks-Mat robbery and was carrying out close-quarters surveillance on Noye, possibly looking for signs of bullion in Noye's grounds. By the time Fordham was on the ground, and Noye ran back to the house, his wife had collected a shotgun from the cabinet and was loading it as she came downstairs. Reader took the gun from her. Reader's role was as a
go-between between Noye and
John Palmer who was
smelting and moving the gold bullion. Reader travelled between Noye's house and
Bristol Airport—where transport abroad awaited it—approximately 30 times in 1984. Reader possessed multiple vehicles in which to make the journey. Aware that he was being kept under
police surveillance, Reader regularly drew his tails on a
wild-goose chase; he also went on
dummy runs, swapped cars en route, and performed
u-turns to throw off potential followers. He and other conspirators met in a variety of locations, including
Bexleyheath pub car parks, the
Royal National Hotel in
Bloomsbury,
Farringdon cafes, and a
fish and chip shop in
Swindon. Noye and Reader were tried for Fordham's murder, but both claimed it to have been
self-defence. Further, it was "pitch black" and snowing. Fordham was unarmed and dressed in "
SAS-style"
camouflage,
Gore-Tex suit and
balaclava. Following the confusion when the police turned up, Reader had had it away on his toes, sneaking through private gardens and fields until he reached The Gamecock pub on the
A20 where he was arrested at 7.40 PM trying to
hitchhike to London. Clarkson comments that "for a man who had just witnessed a killing connected to a notorious gold bullion robbery, he chose an extraordinary way to make good his escape—to hitch a lift". Reader accepted a lift which turned out to be two undercover detectives in an unmarked car. He tried to pretend that he had been drinking in the pub and had just left. However he was arrested for
assaulting a police officer, to which he replied, "you must be joking!" He was taken to
Swanley police station, where he expressed concern for Lyn, who by now was diabetic and due a
pancreatic operation the following Monday. The police had found a quantity of money when they raided his house, and as a result, his wife had also been arrested and was being held at
Gravesend. Under questioning, he refused to cooperate without his solicitor being present, although he also stated that "I know a police officer has been murdered, and I was told I was responsible", and although he reiterated that he knew nothing of the circumstances, he appears to have expressed sorrow for the dead man. He was charged early on the evening of 29 January. Exercising his right against
self-incrimination, Reader refused to give evidence at his trial, for which he received
legal aid. Although, with Noye, he was found not guilty of Fordham's murder, he remained in custody over Brink's-Mat bullion. Tried again in May that year, this time he was jailed over a confession he had made while on police bail that he had indeed handled some of the gold. At his sentencing, where Reader received eight years, his son Brian—known as Paul—was arrested for
contempt of court for shouting that his father had been "fucking stitched up", with a scuffle ensuing. Paul appeared later the same day alongside his father and Noye at their sentencing for his own for
contempt of court. Reader shouted at the jury, "You have made one terrible mistake. You have got to live with that for the rest of your life." Five months after the killing, Reader was accused by Fordham's colleague on the night of kicking Fordham "as he was lying on the ground", although he did not see where the kick had landed. Brian Reader and Noye maintained business links, and after Noye was released in 1994, Reader joined him in a
timeshare scheme in
Northern Cyprus. Reader's brother Colin had already invested in it and was employed full-time in the scheme. Reader's association with Noye meant that, come his final job, he was the only member of the gang to have
underworld contacts. Among these were included
Clerkenwell crime syndicate founder Tommy Adams, whom Reader had been spotted in Hatton Garden with, in 1985 discussing the fencing of the Brink's-Mat ingots. Reader was also close associates with
Terry Perkins, with whom he worked on the last job; they had been inside together and shared work.
Hatton Garden Following his wife's death, Reader moved to
Dartford and ran a second-hand car dealership with his son. Although by now Reader had been in effective retirement from his criminal career, he was still in touch with old colleagues. He and Perkins had been discussing the heist for around a year by the time they felt sufficiently confident to bring in others. Hatton Garden had long been on Reader's mental list of potential targets. At 76, Reader was the oldest of the conspirators, who later became known as the "Diamond Wheezers" on account of their ages. He made numerous trips to Hatton Garden in the weeks before the robbery, and is known to have brought the as-yet-undiscovered,
mononymous "Basil" into the gang. On 2 April 2015, travelling on "somebody else's"
Freedom Pass, he took a
96 bus to
Dartford, where he caught a train to
Waterloo East. Reader arrived around 18:30 hours. Each gang member made their way separately to 88–90 Hatton Garden. They managed to drill through the thick concrete foundations but had to stop work when they found their passage blocked by cabinets bolted to the other side of the wall. By the end of the night—the burglary took place over a
bank holiday weekend—relations between several members of the gang and Reader were at breaking point, with serious consideration being given to evicting Reader from the scheme that night. In the event he pulled out of the job, and did not turn up on the night of the 3rd. Further problems arose when it became clear that Reader intended to collect his agreed cut regardless of the degree to which he had participated. By the time of his arrest for the Hatton Garden robbery, he was said to have earned "millions" from his trade and "had a reputation as one of the country's most audacious burglars". He was arrested on 19 May 2015, with a
diamond grader and the scarf he had worn on the night both being found in his house. He had failed to dispose of his mobile phone, although it is uncertain whether this was his or his son Paul's. As a result, Paul was also arrested, and not freed until November. Police also found a book detailing the life and career of a diamond trader and industry magazines. In March of the following year, he pleaded guilty to a charge of
conspiracy at
Woolwich Crown Court. He was sentenced to six years and three months in prison. He was unable to attend the gang's
sentencing hearing following a
stroke; his
counsel suggested that Reader may have had a
life expectancy of only a few months by this time. The journalist Paul Moreton has described Reader as being "now deaf, half blind and at death's door, according to his lawyer". In 2018, under the
Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, he and three Hatton Garden associates were ordered to pay back £27.5 million between them. Sentenced by
video link in March 2016, Reader served it in
Belmarsh Prison, where on one occasion he collapsed and was left without care for two days by authorities,
The Independent newspaper reported. While undergoing treatment at the
Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich, Reader was guarded by a nine-man-strong squad of police officers, six of whom were armed. He was released in March 2019. == Marriage, personality and death ==