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Hatton Garden Trial: jewels stashed in cemetery
Four men are on trial for their role in the heist.
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Among the identified alleged co-conspirators are Brian Reader, 76, John Collins, 74, Daniel Jones, 60, and Terrence Perkins, 67.
The gang stashed the jewellery, money and gold behind skirting boards, at houses and in several bags hidden under memorial stones at Edmonton Cemetery in north London, Woolwich Crown Court heard.
Reader apparently got discouraged on April 2 after the gang managed to drill through the exterior wall but hit a metal cabinet on the other side.
Four others, Carl Wood, 58, William Lincoln, 60, Jon Harbinson, 42, and Hugh Doyle, 48, deny the same charge.
He also faces an alternative charge of concealing, converting or transferring criminal property between 1 April and 19 May this year.
A redhead man named Basil who was also allegedly involved has not been caught.
Two of the men accused of the Hatton Garden heist got cold feet and abandoned the burglary after failing to gain entry to the vault on the first night, a court has heard.
Mr Evans said: “It appears from the CCTV as if Mr Wood then exits the area to the left of Leather Lane”.
Admitting defeat, the gang left Hatton Garden empty handed, but after purchasing new equipment – including an industrial pump – from a shop in Twickenham, they returned the following night. Wood was allegedly at the raid but lost his nerve and walked away on the second night.
Once inside the vault, the thieves ransacked 73 of the 999 safe deposit boxes within it, with Jones emerging from the building around 5.45am on April 5.
They used wheelie bins to cart the haul away but the bins were so weighed down that they struggled to get them out.
The men decided they needed to wait until publicity surrounding the raid died down before they could launder the goods, Woolwich Crown Court heard.
Mr Evans said: “When they were confident that had happened they could split it up, melt it down, sell it or hide for a rainy day”.
But unknown to them, after detectives became suspicious about their involvement in the raid, expert lip readers had been deployed to the pub.
Prosecutor Philip Evans told the court, “This offense was to be the largest in English legal history”.
A recording device placed in Perkins’s vehicle, had recorded Jones boasting about the raid. Jones’s real address is on Park Avenue in Enfield.
Soon after they arrived with the bags of jewellery, police swooped on them, jurors were told.
It is believed that around £14million worth of gemstones, precious metals, bullion, cash and jewellery was taken from the vault, though it is thought that as much as two thirds of that is still missing – and could now be anywhere in the world.
They dug up the memorial site of Sidney James Hart, the grandfather of Jones’s children, and discovered two bags of which one contained a large quantity of jewellery.
Almost £9m of the stolen valuables had not been recovered, the court was told.
Danny Jones later took detectives to the cemetery where he showed them a second smaller bag of stolen gear he had buried at another plot.
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When his property was later searched, the police seized a book on the diamond underworld, a diamond tester, a diamond gauge, diamond magazines, and the distinctive scarf, the court has heard.