Seven facts you didn't know about criminal mastermind John 'Goldfinger' Palmer
On November 26th, 1983, a gang of armed robbers stole £26 million in gold bars, diamonds and cash from the Brinks-Mat warehouse in the Heathrow International Trading Estate. Their unexpected gold haul proved hard to move in the robbers’ van, and would have been even harder to sell if it wasn’t for the involvement of expert launderer Kenneth Noye and gold dealer John Palmer.
Marking the 40th anniversary of the heist, 91热爆 One drama The Gold portrayed the efforts of the police to follow the money trail left by the bullion and catch the ringleaders. A number of them, including Noye and two of the robbers, were brought to justice. But the drama didn’t stop there - as John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer went on to mastermind the biggest time share fraud in history.
Here are seven surprising things you might not know about him, that we learned from the 91热爆 Sounds podcast, Gangster: The Story of John Palmer:
Listen to Gangster: The Story of John Palmer on 91热爆 Sounds now
1. He was known as 鈥楽tinky Palmer鈥� at school
Born in 1950, John Palmer grew up in a single-parent household of seven children in the Solihull. Although not a deprived area, John’s family was poor. He was only properly clothed because of teachers kept items by for him at school. John’s scruffy appearance was mocked by his classmates who used to call him ‘Stinky Palmer’.
Find out more about Palmer’s early years by listening to episode one here.
2. He made his first 拢100,000 aged 20
Determined to leave the ‘Stinky Palmer’ days behind, John moved to Bedminster in Bristol. He became something of a man about town, building up a wide social circle. Despite being unable to read, write or count when he left school, by the age of 20 he made his first £100,000 (equivalent to over £1m now) from a jewellery business he started. New ventures followed, including his company ‘Scadlyn’ in Bedminster that traded scrap precious metal and attracted a criminal element keen to ‘recycle’ their stolen goods…
Hear more about how Palmer’s life started to move into the fast lane by listening to episode one here.
3. Palmer stashed his ill-gotten cash in bin bags
Palmer’s biggest act of recycling was, of course, the Brink’s-Mat stolen gold. To help sell it on, he smelted it with inferior metals in an outbuilding of his country house near Bath.
Palmer’s business associate Garth Chappell would withdraw payments made for their services at a rate as high as £120,000 a day at one point. Chappell would enter the local Barclays “with sports bags and bin bags and just bring back loads and loads of cash,” says author and journalist Will Pearson.
4. An interview mistake kept him safe
During an interview with renowned war reporter Kate Adie, Palmer said: “I’m completely innocent of anything to do with this so-called Mats-Brink bullion raid”. Saying the name the wrong way round – either deliberately or mistakenly - paid off when he later faced trial in the UK. Palmer’s lawyer Henry Milner recalls: “We used it at his trial to show that unless he was giving an Oscar performance, it would show that he really did not know anything about the robbery itself.”
Hear how Palmer reacted to the verdict by listening to episode three here.
5. He was as rich as the Queen
John Palmer headed to Tenerife with the profits from the robbery and began building a timeshare empire. His lifestyle had all the trapping of movie star status – a yacht, helicopters, classic cars, a private jet and his own chateau in France. At the end of the 1990s, he was worth over £300m, rated in the Sunday Times Rich List as level with the Queen.
By 2005, however, Palmer was broke. His timeshare empire had overreached itself, gangsters from outside Tenerife were muscling in and the scene was becoming extremely violent, a situation not helped by Palmer’s worsening cocaine habit. Palmer’s scams had earned him an estimated £30 million from 16,000 victims, but, in 2001, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for fraud. Palmer only served four years but he left prison bankrupt, in debt and with his prized possessions sold.
Find out about Palmer’s impossibly expensive taste in wine by listening to episode three here.
6. Palmer had a network of corrupt police at his service
In 1999, officers from SOCA, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, set up a classified unit dedicated to the pursuit of John Palmer – a testimony to his status as one of the highest profile criminals in the UK. The unit was set up 300 miles away from London at an RAF base in Cumbria, a location deemed necessary to avoid corrupt police.
SOCA’s caution was vindicated years later when shocking details from an internal investigation by the Metropolitan Police were leaked, revealing that Palmer had help from within the force. Half a dozen senior officers in the Met who were assisting him and possibly even giving him a heads up on profitable robberies.
Hear more about Palmer’s influence over the police by listening to episode five here.
7. His death remains unexplained
At the peak of his criminal activities, Palmer was said to wear a bulletproof vest at all times. It wasn’t a habit he continued when he returned to England. If his calculation was that he was no longer in any danger, he was gravely wrong. In June 2015, he was fatally shot six times in the garden of his house in Essex by a hitman.
Just a month before, the Spanish authorities had charged John with fraud, firearms possession and money laundering. Facing the prospect of a 15-year sentence, there was speculation that Palmer wanted to do a deal with prosecutors.
No one had been arrested for his murder.
Hear the theories about Palmer’s death by listening to episode six here.
Gangster: The Story of John Palmer is now available on 91热爆 Sounds. And you can watch the drama ‘The Gold’, about the Brinks-Mat robbery, on 91热爆 One.
