The Detective Jack Slipper, 81, of Great Train Robbery Fame, Dies
NY Times
Jack Slipper, the retired Scotland Yard detective who pursued one of the fugitives from the Great Train Robbery across many years and two continents, died here on Wednesday. He was 81.
His death was announced by the Metropolitan Police.
Known as Slipper of the Yard, he came to public attention for his role in the Great Train Robbery of 1963, one of Britain’s largest and most audacious robberies and a crime that still fascinates the country.
An armed gang held up the Glasgow-to-London mail train, stealing 125 sacks of bank notes worth £2.6 million - $7.3 million at the time, or more than $50 million today.
The train’s driver, Jack Mills, was hit over the head during the robbery. He never returned to work and died of cancer in 1970.
A team of detectives, including Detective Slipper, arrested most of the gang soon after the robbery. But one member, Ronnie Biggs, escaped from prison after 15 months by scaling a wall with a rope ladder and jumping into a waiting furniture van. Mr. Biggs fled to Spain, had plastic surgery to change his appearance, spent several years in Australia and settled in Brazil in 1970.
In 1974, Detective Slipper traveled to Rio de Janeiro to arrest Mr. Biggs. Brazilian authorities refused to hand him over, because Mr. Biggs’s Brazilian girlfriend was pregnant and as the father of a Brazilian dependent, he could not be deported.
Mr. Biggs eventually returned to Britain in 2001, in failing health after a series of strokes, and was jailed in Belmarsh Prison.
Detective Slipper acknowledged a grudging respect for his adversary. In 1994, he called the train robber “a villain and a cunning monkey,” but added, “When it comes to the important things in life, like his son and family, he seems to be an honest man.”
