The Great Train Robbery (32 page)

John Mathew, counsel for Charles Wilson, also submitted that he objected to the questioning of Wilson by DCS Butler, without caution, on the grounds that Wilson was already in custody. Judge Edmund Davies then ruled that the whole of DCS Butler’s evidence regarding Wilson until the moment he was formally charged and cautioned at Aylesbury Police Station was not to be put to the jury. The jury then returned to the court and the trial continued.

John Mathew then drew to the judge’s attention the implication of his ruling and asked him, as a consequence, to rule that Wilson had no case to answer on either counts 1 or 2, the only ones concerning him in the indictment. He argued that the only evidence against Wilson was that three ‘prints’ of his were found at the farm. The evidence against him of his denial of ever visiting the farm had been ruled as inadmissible and therefore the Crown was put in the unenviable position of having to rely solely upon the evidence of the ‘prints’ at the farm with no explanation as to how or when they got there. He also submitted there could be four possibilities in terms of how the prints had got there, i.e. before the robbery (either innocently or in a guilty manner) or after the robbery (either innocently or in a guilty manner). He submitted that the evidence against Wilson was three to one against him being guilty on either count, and that it was the duty of the prosecution to prove which explanation was true - and they had failed to do so.

On 12 February Joseph Grieves QC submitted that Wisbey had no case to answer as there was no evidence to show the dates that the prints had been left at the farm and, as both the conspiracy and the robbery was complete by the morning of 8 August, if they had been left there after that date, even in a guilty manner, then Wisbey could not be guilty. He also asserted that Wisbey’s denial of having visited the farm might have been an innocent mistake.

Mr Ashe Lincoln QC followed a similar argument on behalf of Robert Welch, but with the additional assertion that ‘there was not one tittle of evidence’ against his client on the second count of robbery.

Ronald Brown QC for James Hussey asked the judge to rule that there was insufficient evidence on either of the counts upon which Hussey was charged. He echoed the submissions already made by other counsel and particularly those put forward by Joseph Grieves QC. He reiterated some of the previous counsel arguments and added that Hussey’s ‘prints’ were found on the lorry at the farm, which had not been proved to have been used in the robbery.

Walter Raeburn QC, counsel for John Daly, also asked Justice Edmund Davies to rule that there was no evidence that amounted to proof on either of the counts upon which Daly was charged. This contention was, according to Raeburn, ‘disarmingly simple’ in that the evidence against Daly fell into two categories: ‘the finding of his fingerprints on a set of Monopoly and the other is that he went underground when the hue and cry had been raised’. Raeburn dismissed the first, asserting:

… there is only a tenuous connection in that the fingerprints are found not on anything remotely connected with the crime, but upon a toy which was introduced into the farm; nobody knows by whom, nobody knows to whom it belonged and it is not at all a matter of inference that the fingerprints came upon the particular parts of that toy at any time subsequent to its having come to the farm. The rest of the evidence is at the highest, mere suspicion. It is consistent with a man who realises that people with whom he has associated are being sort [sic] by the police and while no doubt, being wise after the event, one can see that it would have been very much better in such circumstances for him to have voluntarily assisted the police in their enquiries, that is a very long way from saying that it amounts to any sort of proof that he was a party to a conspiracy.
18

Roy James’s counsel, William Howard, also echoed the same argument, to which he added that the Crown had not proved that the money found in James’s possession was stolen or produced evidence to show that it was the result of the conversion of stolen money. The Crown was in a slight predicament on this point, as only two £5 notes out of the £12,130 found on James at the time of his arrest were among the small minority of notes of which the serial numbers had been recorded by the respective banks. To admit in court that most of the money was untraceable would not only have been somewhat embarrassing but would have potentially made life easier for those still on the run by revealing there was little need to launder their money.
19

Mr Sebag Shaw QC, for Gordon Goody, asserted that there was no case for Goody to answer on counts 1 and 2, the only ones concerning him. He argued that so far as the khaki paint found on Goody’s shoes was concerned it did not connect him physically with Leatherslade Farm, but only with a Land Rover found there after the robbery. The yellow paint did not therefore necessarily connect Goody physically with the farm. He then drew the judge’s attention to the evidence of Charles Alexander, who asserted that Goody’s shoes had been at his public house from the end of July 1963 until 9 August 1963 and that Goody had no access to them during that time. Alexander also said that he had moved them from one room to another during that period and he had seen that they were free from any paint marks of any kind. In those circumstances, he added, the worst that could be said against Goody was that sometime after the robbery his shoes had become contaminated with two types of paints. On this argument alone he submitted that there was no evidence against Goody.
20

Lewis Hawser QC, Brian Field’s counsel, sought to argue that there was not sufficient evidence on which the jury could safely convict on the charge of receiving because the Crown had not established sufficiently that Field was in possession of £100,900, or indeed any of the money found in the bags in the Dorking Woods. The fact that two of Field’s bags were found in Dorking Woods eight days after the robbery was itself, in Hawser’s view, insufficient evidence of Field having been in possession of the bags at the time the money was in them - and when they were dumped there by somebody.

On 14 February 1964 Justice Edmund Davies was to give his judgements on all the submissions. The submissions were made on sound legal grounds and, on past precedent, no one in court that day expected anything other than an across the board rejection by the judge. As Edmund Davies dismissed each submission in turn, there was audible shock throughout the court when he arrived at the one made in respect to John Daly:

I propose to uphold the submission in relation to Mr Daly in respect to both counts, and when the jury returns they will be directed to acquit him.
21

No one in court appeared more startled or shocked than Daly himself, who immediately left the dock with a one man police escort. Outside the court he told waiting journalists:

I was innocent from the start … now that I have been acquitted I hope they will take down all those ‘Wanted’ posters with my photograph on them. I don’t want to get arrested again.
22

Why was John Daly’s the only submission accepted? In many ways, his circumstances were little different from those of Welch, Hussey, James and Biggs. Indeed, Hussey’s palm print on the tailboard of the truck was arguably a more persuasive submission. Was it the eloquence of Walter Raeburn that convinced the judge or was Daly just plain lucky?

Notes

  
1
.  County Quarter Sessions were presided over by two or more Justices of the Peace, one of whom would act as chairman, and sat with a jury. Quarter Sessions in county boroughs were usually presided over by one Recorder Judge.

  
2
.  Courts of Assize were presided over by judges of the King’s/Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court of Justice, who travelled across the seven judicial circuits of England and Wales, summoning juries at the Assize towns within each circuit.

  
3
.  ASSI 13/643 (opened in 1996).

  
4
.  Commons at a 1957 by-election in the Warwick and Leamington constituency, caused by the resignation of Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden after the Suez debacle. The Constituency Association were seeking another rising star to succeed Eden, and Hobson quickly gained promotion to ministerial rank in Harold Macmillan’s government. Sir John was re-elected at three General Elections and tipped for greater things when the Conservatives lost office in October 1964, but was to die an early death at the age of 55 in 1967.

  
5
.  Letter dated 23 April 1964, from Sir John Hobson, Attorney General, Royal Courts of Justice, to The Hon. Mr Justice Edmund Davies (National Library of Wales; Lord Edmund-Davies Papers, files 10/1−10/13, opened following his death in 1992). It is apparent from the letter that Edmund Davies had written to Hobson immediately after the trial ended commending the work of the prosecution team, who seem to have been personally chosen by Hobson.

  
6
.  
Ibid
; A noteworthy example are two letters from King’s College Faculty of Law, dated 2 May 1964 and 4 July 1964.

  
7
.  While the police and the DPP held what they regarded as incontestable evidence against Reynolds (DPP 2/3717, Report 16; originally closed until 2045, redacted version opened 25/6/10) they were understandably unwilling to produce it before Reynolds had been arrested, charged and put before a court. The main consequence of not compromising such evidence was to withdraw the charges against Manson, who the DPP clearly believed was guilty of the charges against her.

  
8
.  HO 287/1496.

  
9
.  Brian Field had asked, when arrested on 15 September 1963, ‘Will this case go to the Old Bailey or Bucks Assize Court?’ (DPP 2/3718 6 of 6, originally closed until 2045, redacted version opened 25/6/10). He knew full well that a country jury would be more likely to convict and that conversely, a London jury would be easier to influence.

10
.  HO 287/1496.

11
.  ASSI 13/643 (opened 1996).

12
.  HO 287/1496.

13
.  
Ibid
.

14
.  
Ibid
.

15
.  
Ibid
.

16
.  
Ibid
.

17
.  ASSI 13/643 (opened 1996).

18
.  J 82/420−441 (opened 1994).

19
.  HO 287/1496 reveals that the banks were extremely remiss in that of all the banknotes totalling £2,631,684, only £1,579 of the notes had their serial numbers recorded by the respective bank branches before transit to the TPO pick-up point.

20
.  HO 287/1496.

21
.  J 82/420−441 (opened 1994).

22
.  
Daily Mirror
, 15 February 1964, p. 1.

J
ohn Daly’s acquittal was apparently ‘a great blow to the Police and to everyone connected with the prosecution – especially to those who were aware of the true position’.
1

The report, written by IB assistant controller R.F. Yates, goes on to say that:

It was felt that Daly’s case should have been allowed to go forward to the jury for consideration of a verdict. It is of interest to note that after his acquittal, a celebration party was arranged for Daly by Mrs Mary Manson and that criminal associates of both Daly and Manson were present.

Immediately on news of Daly’s acquittal, Bill Goodwin and Michael Black went to Endelstowe, the house in Cornwall:

They dug up the cash containers, took them into the house and split the cash content two ways. Half was put into a suitcase and carried off by Black. The remaining cash was counted and amounted to just on £50,000. This was placed into a large briefcase and hidden in the aperture of an old boiler in the kitchen, and the hole cemented in and painted to cover traces of new work.
2

Following the party, Daly and his friend Billy Still drove down to Cornwall at top speed to retrieve the £100,000 that had been buried in the back garden of Bill Goodwin’s house near Boscastle. One can imagine how the elation of Daly’s acquittal immediately turned to shock and disbelief when on arrival he was told by Goodwin’s niece, Kathleen Sleep, that shortly after his arrest in December, Michael Black had double-crossed him, dug up the money and disappeared. Black apparently went abroad but returned due to ill health and died in London of a heart attack.

According to police reports: ‘Daly apparently accepted Miss Sleep’s story that Michael Black had collected all of it [the money] following his arrest. The local police knew that Daly and Still were in the area because their car was stopped for a traffic infringement but they were allowed to proceed.’ The IB was told by Scotland Yard that: ‘Chief Superintendent Butler is of the opinion that Daly is not aware of Black’s death and is still looking for him.’
3

Back in Aylesbury, the proceedings were now in their twentieth day and the case for the defence was about to begin. The defendants were cautiously optimistic, as were their counsel. Each of them had a well thought out, logical explanation as to why their fingerprints were found at Leatherslade Farm. Had their cases been held separately and in London, some of these defences may well have been viewed as plausible and resulted in not-guilty verdicts. However, put together, they seemed less believable. In the same way that the sum of the prosecution case was greater than its constituent parts, the defence case was the opposite and, in retrospect, suffered for this disadvantage.

In the witness box Bill Boal told the court that he had been beaten up on arrest and denied a number of statements that police alleged he had made, such as, ‘fair enough, it [the money found in his possession] came from the train job’. He also made clear that he didn’t know Leatherslade Farm and had never been there. Neither had he been ‘... anywhere near the train spot. And if you were to offer me my freedom now, I wouldn’t be able to find my way there.’ He claimed he was a dupe of Cordrey who owed him money and that remaining with Cordrey was the best way of ensuring that he got his money back. His story, while uniquely true, lacked corroboration. There appears to have been some consideration given by his counsel to calling Cordrey as a witness to back up Boal’s account. However, it was considered in retrospect that this might do more harm than good; they clearly feared that Arthur James QC would respond by asking Cordrey, who then was guilty, why Boal was not. Cordrey could only respond to this by refusing to answer, which would inevitably lose him the credit he had built up by pleading guilty. Boal was therefore caught between a rock and a hard place.