The Great Plane Robbery

First there was the Great Train Robbery. Now, Britain seems to have experienced a Great Plane Robbery. Last week Scotland Yard detectives were scurrying after leads in a daring heist of foreign currencies worth some $3.7 million--a robbery second in size, in Britain, only to the famed $7 million Royal Mail coach grab of 1963. The latest theft was carried out in broad daylight at Heathrow Airport, and it was acutely embarrassing to a U.S.-owned security and air-freight firm, Purolator Services Ltd., which frequently ships large quantities of currency.

At 11 a.m. on Saturday, June 26, two men--one dressed in a Purolator security-guard uniform, the other in a business suit--began making the rounds of cargo rooms at Heathrow in a Ford Granada. Their first stop was the overseas division of British Airways. There, they asked for the return of three packages of currency bound for banks abroad. The packages, they said, had been prepared improperly by Purolator. After they presented credentials that police later said were "impeccable," airline officials handed the money over. The pair moved on to the cargo strong room of British Airways' European division, where another packet of francs was collected in the same way.

Finally, the two con artists called on Sabena airline and picked up a fifth bundle of multinational swag. Then they disappeared. Their rented Granada was discovered by police three days later in the parking lot of Heathrow's Terminal No. 3, all-flights boarding point for destinations outside Europe. At week's end it was still unknown whether the men had actually left the country.

One person that Scotland Yard would very much like to talk to about the robbery is Stephen Patrick Raymond, 30, a dapper, self-confident redhead who had worked for several months as a shipping clerk, filling in customs and transit forms, at Purolator's London office--until he failed to show up after the weekend of the theft.

Chronic Nuisance. Purolator had not been exactly thorough in checking his credentials. In 1964, at the age of 18, Raymond was convicted of armed robbery. Paroled early, he was arrested again and returned to prison to finish his sentence. He appealed to Labor M.P. Tom Driberg (now Lord Driberg), who had a long record of espousing libertarian causes. Driberg interested himself in Raymond, his constituent, at one point even writing a letter to the Times arguing that Raymond should be released to marry and attend university, thus preventing him "from being a chronic nuisance to the public and a permanent expense to the taxpayer."

Raymond was released in 1970, but soon afterward charged with murder. His alibi was that on the night of the crime he was dining and discussing "the law in general" at London's Gay Hussar restaurant with none other than Driberg, current Labor Party House Leader Michael Foot, and the latter's brother, Sir Dingle Foot, a former Solicitor General in the Labor government. Raymond was acquitted of the murder, but received three years in prison for impeding the arrest of a criminal. In 1972 he skipped from Dartmoor prison while on a home leave and was later arrested in Australia, posing as an editor of the London Times. After finishing his sentence, he disappeared from sight.

Most London newspapers had thorough files on Raymond, but Purolator's lame explanation was that "we are not infallible, nor do we have the resources of the police at our disposal." Police, in fact, do not allow security firms, or almost anyone else, access to criminal records, on the ground of protecting civil liberties. Purolator had only one other thing to say: "We are working with the police. We are sick."

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