BIGGS IN BRAZIL ‘Express’ denies informing police

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33450, 4 February 1974, Page 18

BIGGS IN BRAZIL ‘Express ’ denies informing police

Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, February 3. The recapture of Ronald Biggs in Brazil and the part played by the "Daily Express” newspaper is causing a flurry of speculation in Fleet Street.

The “Express” was the first paper to have the story of Biggs’ discovery—in the biggest Fleet Street “scoop” in years. Fleet Street is asking: How did the police and the “Express” know where to find Biggs? Had Biggs decided to give himself up? How long did Colin McKenzie and William Lovelace, the “Express” reporter and photographer, spend with Biggs before the police arrived? Did the “Express” tell the police where to find Biggs? The staff of the “Daily Express” were kept in the dark about the report the

.paper would print in its; (Saturday edition, according: Ito the “Sunday Times.” ' “Even at six o’clock on Friday night all we were told was that there was a huge story on the go,” a; (member of the staff of the “Express” was reported as (saying. Rival newspapers did not; know of the Biggs story until the first edition of the “Express” was running and' they were sent into a flurry to get the story in time for their own final editions. The “Sunday Times” said: “Inquiries in Fleet Street yesterday suggested that the photographer and reporter had been with Biggs for some time—enough time, certainly, to have photographed Biggs in a variety of poses: in a restaurant, in shirt and trousers on a hotel terrace, in swimming trunks with a girlfriend, in a different shirt, i and looking ‘grim-faced’ as he is led away by detectives.”; Scotland Yard at first said; on Friday night that detec-; tives had gone to Brazil “following up information given by the “Express” about the whereabouts of Ronald Biggs.” But the Yard later “withdrew” the statement and replaced it with another saying that the detectives had received information from a source that was not being revealed. In a television interview last night the associate edi-l tor of the “Express” (Mr! Robin Esser) denied that the “Express” had tipped off the! police.