0:00 Deep beneath Baker Street, inside a vault of reinforced concrete, two men stood knee-deep in paper, velvet bags, and stacks of crisp banknotes.0:10 Around them lay over two hundred and sixty pried-open safe-deposit boxes.0:16 It was the second weekend of September, 1971, and the Lloyds Bank branch above their heads was utterly, beautifully silent.0:25 In our last episode, we watched a front-end loader smash into the Millennium Dome, only for the gang to walk straight into armed police waiting by the diamond glass.0:38 That crew rushed in through the front door.0:41 The Baker Street crew, you have to admit, possessed genuine patience.0:46 They didn't break down the bank's front doors.0:49 Instead, they leased a leather goods shop just two doors down.0:54 From its basement, over several weeks, they dug a forty-foot tunnel directly beneath the street, bypassing the bank's outer alarms entirely, until they were positioned squarely beneath the vault's floor.1:09 When you breach a fortress from the dirt below, the heavy reinforced door on the ground floor becomes an expensive piece of theater.1:19 It was locked tight from the outside.1:22 As far as the street was concerned, Lloyds Bank was untouched.1:27 Inside, the haul was staggering: one point five million pounds in untraceable cash, plus jewelry and valuables that pushed the total near three million pounds — roughly thirty-eight million in modern money.1:42 To coordinate with their rooftop lookout who kept an eye on police patrols, the team used simple handheld walkie-talkies.1:52 That was the fatal flaw.1:53 Just a few streets away, on the fifth floor of a flat on Wimpole Street, thirty-five-year-old Robert Rowlands sat turning the dial on his ham radio.2:05 At eleven-fifteen that Saturday night, he didn't pick up overseas broadcasts or coastal chatter.2:12 He heard two voices on an open channel.2:15 One was grumbling about the biting cold on an exposed rooftop.2:19 The other, muffled by masonry, answered from somewhere subterranean.2:25 Rowlands listened as they discussed pry bars and full sacks.2:29 He picked up his telephone and called the local police.2:33 They told him it was likely a prank and suggested, half-heartedly, that he record it on cassette.2:41 Rowlands did.2:42 By one in the morning, he had Scotland Yard's attention.2:46 Detectives raced to his Wimpole Street flat, listening in disbelief to voices emptying a vault in real time.2:54 But Rowlands gave them a crucial piece of technical advice: short-range walkie-talkies only traveled a short distance.3:03 The thieves had to be right under their noses.3:06 Instead, the police cast a net across ten miles, checking seven hundred and fifty banks.3:13 Squads actually arrived at the Baker Street Lloyds branch, peered through the dark windows, saw the vault's massive outer security door bolted shut, and drove away.3:25 The gang was beneath their boots at that very moment, packing three million pounds into bags.3:32 By Monday morning, the thieves were gone.3:36 It came so close to legendary perfection.3:39 They beat the alarms.3:40 They beat the earth.3:42 They even slipped past the patrol cars idling outside.3:46 But a scheme this immaculate demands discipline on every single detail, and the unraveling didn't stop with an eavesdropping radio hobbyist.3:56 When detectives examined the leather shop where the tunnel began, they checked the commercial lease.4:04 Benjamin Wolfe, a man in his sixties who handled logistics for the crew, had rented the property under his own real name.4:13 Within weeks, police picked up Wolfe, Anthony Gavin, Thomas Stephen, and Reginald Tucker.4:20 In January 1973, all four stood in court and received long prison sentences.4:25 Government files on the heist remain sealed for a century, locked away until 2071, preserving an impenetrable silence over whatever else was in those two hundred and sixty private boxes.4:40 But the bank's floor stayed open, leaving only a dark, jagged hole where thirty-eight million pounds vanished into the London night.
