Baker Street 1971: Fiction became reality with heist

On a cold September evening in 1971, while the streets of London were quiet, a bank robbery took place in the basement beneath a leather goods shop on Baker Street – a heist so ambitious it could have been taken straight from a crime novel. For weeks, a group of men had painstakingly dug a 12-metre-long tunnel to reach the Lloyds Bank vault. Behind the daring plan was Anthony Gavin, a 38-year-old former soldier, who drew inspiration from Arthur Conan Doyle's 1891 short story *The Red-Headed League*, in which criminals use a shop as cover to tunnel into a bank's basement. But what began as a clever imitation of fiction evolved into a chaotic real-life drama, where the use of explosives, a fortunate radio chance, and persistent rumours of a royal scandal intertwined in a case that, to this day, remains shrouded in deep secrecy.

Gavin's specialists: From Le Sac to London's underground

For this audacious undertaking, Anthony Gavin assembled a team of specialists. Among them was Benjamin Wolfe, who unknowingly rented the necessary shop, "Le Sac," just two doors down from the bank, under his own name. Reginald Tucker was tasked with measuring the bank's interior from street level using an umbrella, while Thomas Stephens was the team's explosives expert. One of the most crucial members, however, was Micky 'Skinny' Gervais, whose skills could disable the bank's advanced tremor alarm – a system specifically designed to detect the vibrations their tunnelling would cause. The gang was also fortunate, as nearby roadworks had temporarily disabled Lloyds Bank's floor alarm. This provided them with a unique opportunity to use heavy equipment such as an industrial jack, thermal lances, and the powerful explosive gelignite. The plan was to dig and break into the bank each weekend, from Friday after closing until Monday morning, while the "Le Sac" shop operated normally on weekdays. According to one gang member, Gavin stated: "We're going to squeeze through the earth like worms." However, the ground beneath presented unexpected challenges; an old well under the planned tunnel caused a 100-ton jack to sink into the mud, nearly jeopardising the entire operation.

Radio ham Rowlands' call: Police doubt during the heist

On Saturday evening, September 11, 1971, at 11:15 PM, while the gang was working underground, 28-year-old radio ham Robert Rowlands was in his flat on Wimpole Street, not far away. He was practising his Spanish by listening to various frequencies when he accidentally intercepted a conversation between two men with distinct Cockney accents. He heard them discussing large sums of money and planning their exit: "We've got about 400,000. We'll let you know when we're out. Do you copy?" Rowlands immediately realised he had stumbled upon a criminal act and promptly contacted the police. However, his report was met with scepticism; he was told he had likely just overheard drunk tourists. Undeterred, Robert Rowlands decided to record the ongoing conversations on his portable tape recorder, a relatively new technology at the time. The police response, however, remained slow. They checked over 750 banks within a 13-kilometre (approx. 8-mile) radius but didn't arrive at Lloyds Bank on Baker Street until Sunday afternoon at 3:30 PM. The bank's exterior was intact, the main doors were unlocked, and when officers knocked on the steel door to the vault, they heard no response. Unbeknownst to them, the entire gang was lying flat on the floor inside, holding their breath and listening as they heard the police footsteps above. A gang member later described the intense fear in the darkness, surrounded by the loot.

Escape from Baker Street: Multi-million haul and messages

After 30 tense hours in the stuffy bank vault, the gang escaped early Monday morning. They left with bags full of cash, valuable jewels, and, according to persistent rumours, compromising photographs. On a wall in the vault, they had left a taunting message: "Let Sherlock Holmes try to solve this one!" The total haul from this audacious bank robbery was initially estimated at between £1.25 million and £3 million – equivalent to between £50 million and £125 million in today's money – but only about £231,000 was ever recovered. The police breakthrough came when they discovered that Benjamin Wolfe, one of the gang members, had rented the "Le Sac" shop, used as their base, under his real name. Further investigation and surveillance led to Anthony Gavin, whose voice matched the recordings from Robert Rowlands' tape recorder. During the subsequent trial, Gavin and three others were convicted; Gavin was sentenced to 12 years in prison, while the others received 8-year sentences. However, the case quickly became shrouded in mystery when, shortly after the robbery, the government imposed an unofficial media blackout, and all official documents concerning the Baker Street robbery were placed in the National Archives under a 100-year embargo. This means they will not be publicly accessible until the year 2071.

Safe 118: Was MI5 in the heist to hide a scandal?

Among the 268 safe deposit boxes the gang had broken into, one belonged to Lord Hailsham, the then Lord Chancellor of Great Britain. However, it was safe deposit box number 118, belonging to the controversial activist Michael X, that sparked the most persistent conspiracy theories. According to underworld rumours, this box contained compromising Polaroid photographs of a royal figure in embarrassing situations – an alleged reason for intelligence agency MI5's involvement, potentially to ensure these pictures disappeared and thereby avert a major scandal. This theory forms the basis of the 2008 film *The Bank Job*, which portrays the Baker Street robbery as an operation initiated by MI5. For the ordinary victims of the robbery, who lost irreplaceable heirlooms and life savings, the case was far from a royal scandal. Several of them hesitated to disclose exactly what they had lost, leading to speculation about illicit fortunes hidden in the boxes – perhaps even cash and diamonds that the owners could not account for. An anonymous source told the Daily Mail in 1971: "My grandmother's 19th-century gold cross was in there. But how do you prove ownership of something that technically doesn't exist?" This highlighted the real cost for the many anonymous victims who lost valuables that would never be recovered.

Baker Street mystery: Archives in 2071 may reveal secrets

More than half a century after that fateful weekend in September 1971, the Baker Street robbery remains a case full of unanswered questions, cementing its status as a partially unsolved case in British crime history. Why didn't the police react more strongly to Robert Rowlands' urgent call or to the sounds of explosives reportedly heard in the area? How could such an ambitious heist, planned down to the smallest detail, almost be foiled by a single, vigilant radio ham? And what do the British National Archives hold that is so sensitive it must remain secret for over 150 years? Perhaps a fragment of the answer lies in the words Anthony Gavin allegedly whispered to his lawyer during the subsequent trial: "Some secrets are too big to be borne alone – even for a nation." Until the sealed archives are opened in 2071, the Baker Street robbery will continue to stand as a captivating example of both exceptional criminal ingenuity and the potentially dark entanglements between the underworld and the corridors of power in Britain.

Interested in unsolved mysteries and daring heists? Follow KrimiNyt for more in-depth cases about the greatest crimes of the past.