‘Great Train Robber’ may soon be free

£2.5mn Royal Mail heist was made into a film

LONDON: Great train robber Ronnie Biggs is likely to be freed on Valentine’s Day next year, according to friends and family. Biggs, 79, who has been in poor health since suffering a stroke, has said he wants to die “a free man”.

“He is very happy and very excited about it,” said Mike Gray, a friend. “His case is now with the parole board and we are very hopeful that he will be a free man on Valentine’s Day, which will be, coincidentally, the day that he will have served a third of his sentence, including time in custody in Brazil and Barbados.”

Plans are under way to find a private nursing home for Biggs in north London, to be near his son, Michael, whose birth in Brazil entitled Biggs to residence in that country during lengthy attempts by the British authorities to extradite him.

It is more than 45 years since £2.5mn was stolen from the Glasgow-to-London Royal Mail train and Biggs is the only robber still behind bars. Jailed for 30 years in 1964, he escaped from Wandsworth prison the following year and spent 35 years on the run, mainly in Brazil. With declining health, he returned voluntarily to Britain in 2001.

“He has to be fed via a tube and can only communicate by pointing at letters on a laminated sheet,” said Gray who, with Tel Currie, is the author of a new book, Ronnie Biggs: The Inside Story.

Michael Biggs moved to London at the time of his father’s return, became a British citizen and now works as a football agent, bringing young Brazilian players to Britain. Many of Biggs’s fellow train robbers are dead: Charlie Wilson was murdered, Buster Edwards killed himself and others died of natural causes.