BIG GOLD THEFT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23773, 28 September 1940, Page 2 (Supplement)

BIG GOLD THEFT

Secrets of Croydon Revealed After Five Years

IT is now five years since £21,000 gold was "lifted" from a locked and guarded strong-room, at Croydon Aerodrome, London, but not one sovereign of that bullion has yet been traced. Neither have the police been able to discover until to-day how that "almost perfect" crime was carried out.

TT was not perfect because dapper and immaculate Cecil William Swanland, 52-year-old master cracksman, was convicted of the robbery and sentenced to seven years' penal servitude. The police have never relaxed their search for the missing gold, but throughout his trial and all through his long incarceration Swanland preserved a smiling inscrutability. Swanland has now bcon released from Dartmoor, and to a News of the World reporter ho revealed the other day how tho audacious theft was planned and executed. What happened to the gold, however, is still a mj'fitery. Perhaps Swanland's accomplices cheated him of his share.

there, and, moreover, had memorised its number. The cabnlriver was questioned. As a result, Swanland and two other men were arrested, and charged with the crime. At the trial, the taxi-driver was treated by tho prosecution as a hostile witness, but because he was the only evidence against Swanland's ' two companions they were discharged. That, baldly, was , the story told in court. Now Swanland has filled in tie gaps. Months before the coup was accomplished, he explained, certain crooks in the London underworld became aware of the nightly arrival at Croydon of those vast shipments of gold. Ho was. sent to spy out the land. ''Down there they thought mo a harmless idiot who had 'a crazy interest in flying—and drink," he related. Tho aerodrome people became used to Swanland and. his nightly visits. They regarded the "niuzziness" with which he wound up every evening with an amused indulgence. But Swanland, playing a grimmer game, noticed that the empty strongroom was swilled out every evening and that while that operation was in progress the keys were left in the door.

Night of the Crime The robbery took place in the early days of 1935. At that time, vast and regular supplies of gold were taken from the vaults ol: London banks down to Croydon Aerodrome, whence they were "shipped" to the Continent. On the night of tlie crime, a van containing three boxes of sovereigns and golden dollars arrived at the airport at 6.50. Tho boxes were placed Overnight in the strongroom, which was securely locked. At seven o'clock the following morning two clerks went to the strongroom. The wooden outer door was locked, but the inner steel door was unlocked. And to tho horror of tho clerks tho gold had vanished.

"Tho police have wondered how we opened that door," said Swanland, "I can tell you now. One night I wa3 particularly 'mellow,' or so they thought.

"Under Policeman's Eyes" "I swayed across the room and under the very eyes of a policeman took the keys out of the lock, I walked into a telephone booth and there made & 'wax' of them. "Then came the harder job of sticking them back in ;the lock under that policeman's nose. My heart was thumping, but I did the trick. And next day I had perfect reproductions of the keys."

From the outset the police were faced by a blank wall until what the authorities themselves described as "a slice of luck," came their way. A man came forward who had been cycling near the aerodrome on the morning of the robbery. He had seen a taxicab