Stop and Think

Supercrooks do brisk business

Amid the bustle of shoppers and late-arriving office workers, it seemed like a typical Monday morning in London's West End. But in Conduit Street, a smart thoroughfare filled with fashionable shops just off New Bond Street, a daring crime was in progress. As the crowds streamed past the armored glass windows of Bonds jewelers' as yet unopened store, the staff inside was being held at gunpoint by five men, three disguised in monkey masks. After forcing the employees to open the vault, the robbers rifled trays of uncut gems and antique Indian jewelry, strewing less valuable items on the floor. Thirty minutes later they escaped with a haul valued at $15.7 million.

For Scotland Yard, the Conduit Street caper was more than Britain's biggest gemstone robbery ever. It was the latest in a series of carefully planned and superbly executed thefts that have netted criminals more than $30 million in less than three months. The professionalism displayed in the capers and the fact that, increasingly, guns are involved suggest that a more sophisticated and more daring class of thief is at work. "Criminals are stopping and thinking," says a London detective. "These jobs indicate planning. They are not just a matter of grabbing a wig and a sawed-off shotgun."

On Easter Monday, more than a dozen men carrying shotguns and pistols climbed the 12-ft. wall of a Security Express compound in East London, eventually making off with about $10.5 million in bank notes. A month later, a lone cat burglar stole into Waddesdon Manor, a National Trust estate in Buckinghamshire, and carried away about $1.5 million worth of antiques, jewel-encrusted gold snuff boxes, figurines and rings from the famous Rothschild collection. In South London, a burglar climbed to the roof of Dulwich College, smashed a skylight, descended into the art gallery and used a crowbar to wrench from the wall Rembrandt's painting of Jacob de Gheyn III, worth $5 million. Police roared up within three minutes to find both thief and painting gone.

In London last month, two men set up a phony business firm, then hired security guards to present forged letters and forged drafts to collect gold coins from bullion dealers. At the same time, one accomplice sawed through local telephone lines, while another intercepted the bullion dealers' calls to check on the letter and draft. The four men thus hauled in 2,400 gold coins valued at $1.2 million. Three days later, thieves broke into the projection room of the Classic Cinema in Hastings and spirited away a 50-lb. reel of Return of the Jedi. Police assumed that within hours the jealously guarded first complete print would be on a video transfer machine.

The police are tackling each of the robberies as an isolated job, but some common characteristics are evident. Referring to the two art thefts, Giles Waterfield, director of the Dulwich Gallery, notes that "they relied on the same techniques, ignoring the alarm and calculating that they could get in and out within three to four minutes." In both the Conduit Street and the Security Express robberies, the criminals brandished guns and threatened the staff with violence; the thieves may also have had inside information or help. Says Frank Cater, commander of Scotland Yard's Flying Squad, which concentrates on armed robbery in London: "Crime is as much a business as any other. Criminals have progressed over the years, using more sophisticated techniques and going in for a greater degree of planning."

The thieves' professionalism and the use of guns are explained partly by the change at the top of Britain's crime hierarchy. "In the past three years a completely new way of thinking has entered the criminal fraternity's activities," explains a former convict. "The fellows who are involved in these armed robberies are not basically criminal--they have not graduated through the various criminal classes as the usual criminal has. They have not knocked off a corner grocery store and then held up vans and so on working up to the big jobs. What we are seeing now is different. Somebody has come up with an angle on how to pull job, a special way of robbing a place. Then they go out and hire specialists." The gangs work together in regular "firms,' headed by a few "Mr. Bigs," who plan, organize and mastermind many of the robberies. Even if the police know who these crime brains are, proving it in a court of law appears to be quite another matter. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.