True Crime Robberies

MANHUNT details the heart stopping true stories of two of Britain’s most wanted men and the unprecedented police operations to apprehend them... Percy Toplis was a career criminal who emerged from the Great War into the austerity of the peace that followed. In a time when poverty was rife, there were plenty of opportunities to make big money if people were prepared to break the law. Percy Toplis grabbed those opportunities with both hands but his criminal exploits were to lead to murder and the largest manhunt ever seen in British criminal history... Barry Prudom led an unusual life. ...

On Saturday, 26 November 1983, an armed gang stole gold bullion worth almost £26 million from the Brink's-Mat security depot near London's Heathrow Airport. It was the largest robbery in world history, and only the start of an extraordinary story. For forty years, myths and legends have grown around the Brink's-Mat heist and the events that followed.

For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than 200 heists over nearly ten years - in museums and cathedrals all over Europe - Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than 300 objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion. In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world.

On the 8th August 1963 a gang of 15 men stopped a mail train in Buckinghamshire and proceeded to steal sacks of money worth £2.6 million. It was the biggest heist ever carried out in the UK and frontpage news around the world. The mastermind behind this most audacious crime of the twentieth century was Bruce Reynolds. Perhaps the last of the 'gentlemen villains'; Reynolds epitomised that particular breed of sharply dressed post-war criminals who mixed with royalty and movie stars, and never carried a gun. They thrived on adventure and glamour, and the Great Train Robbery was their last ride.

In The Grave Robber, Tim Carpenter, former FBI Lead Investigator on the Art Crime Team, recounts one of the most extraordinary and unsettling cases in the history of art theft. Over the course of five decades, a lone graverobber accumulated an illicit trove of over 42,000 artifacts from cultures across the globe, including Native American, Haitian, Chinese, and others. The stolen items included nearly 500 ancestral remains, carefully looted from sacred burial sites and cultural heritage locations.

From murder and robberies to arson and blackmail, the 20 stories in this book are some of the most fascinating true crime stories ever recorded. Each of these cases is so bizarre that they confounded the police, baffled investigators and captured the attention of the press all over the world. These short and accessible stories include encyclopaedic information on when and how the crimes were committed, the background of each criminal, and their trials and punishments - for those that were caught.

“Bam!” The robber hit my eyes hard with his gun. I am still not sure if it was a real gun or a fake one: All I can say is that it was a very heavy metallic object. As soon as I saw the gun, the first thing I thought of was that my wife was pregnant. She was right next to me at that moment, unfortunately. The robber asked me to open our cash register and dump the cash into his bag. I don’t think he knew that we barely had $160 cash for changes (possibly even less than that). I hesitated for a second and he hit my head. This story is about the true event which happened in a video game ...

In this breathtaking adventure, featuring colorful characters from showbusiness alongside royalty, the IRA and even Pablo Escobar, Clifford Thurlow reveals Keith Cheeseman's incredible true story for the first time.

Armed-encounters expert and police trainer Brian McKenna shares his expertise in a series of gripping stories involving real-life police shootouts. Step into the shoes of police officers who have run toward the sound of gunfire, who have faced attacks by deadly assailants, and who have lived to share the tale. But this book is more than just stories about courageous cops. Each story is followed by McKenna’s expert analysis of its important learning points, especially concerning how and why the officers use force and the legal aspects of self-defense and the defense of others.

They were the first outlaws to rob a moving train. But from 1864 to 1868, the Reno brothers and their gang of counterfeiters, robbers, burglars, and safecrackers also held the town of Seymour, Indiana, hostage, making a large hotel near the train station their headquarters. When the gang robbed the Adams Express car of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad on the outskirts of Seymour on October 6, 1866, it shocked the world - and made other burgeoning outlaws like Jesse James sit up and take notice. The extraordinary efforts to take them out defined the term "frontier justice".

The Deadliest Shootout in St. Louis Police History A daring train robbery. Desperate criminals. The 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. These events collided to create the deadliest shootout in St. Louis Police History. Read this detailed true crime account with more chilling events than anything imagined in crime fiction. The Shootout That Shook a City to It's Core

Growing up, Michael wanted nothing more than to follow in his dad’s footsteps and join the family business. Aged 18, he did just that and entered into the glamourous, dangerous world of organised crime. Michael’s father, a career criminal and contemporary of the infamous Krays, was a wayward role model. Soon, Michael’s criminal activities were funding a reckless lifestyle of drugs, sex, and violence.

Caught between the Mob and the feds in a plot to save the casinos in Havana from Castro's revolution, Wolfe Rabin pulls the biggest money-laundering scheme in history, but his hubris leads to the conspiracy unraveling in a sensational trial. At a time when there was a jukebox in every restaurant, diner, bar, barracks, arcade, and canteen, Rabin's trajectory from inventor to promoter to outlaw is set against the Mob's growing infiltration of the jukebox industry.

In 2001, thieves parked a box truck in front of an aging tycoon’s factory, cut the phone lines, and used an overhead crane to lift out their prize: a 1938 Talbot-Lago T150-C SS Teardrop coupe—“the most beautiful car in the world” and one of only two in existence—then they disappeared into the night. The tycoon died. The trail went cold. End of story. Until it wasn’t.

When it comes to America's most famous and notorious criminals, no legend has been larger than real life than that of the robber duo Bonnie and Clyde. The murderous lovers found each other in the slums of Depression-era Dallas and embarked on a wild crime and killing spree - so why is it their love that sustains their legend? Over a two-year period from 1932-34, during the height of the Great Depression in America, Bonnie & Clyde evolved from petty thieves to nationally known bank robbers and murderers. Their robbery of banks and store owners, in a rural America ravaged by farm foreclosures...

It is heard that a doll opens its mouth when it smells money. A doll may open its mouth in front of money, as it has no brain or judgement power. As a human being, we should not open our mouth or jump in a crime for only money. Every crime has two sides. One, the life risk of the criminals. Second, the crime will obviously hurt someone on the other side. This true story shows an unnecessary bank robbery case where the criminals were not bound to do it.

Am 7. August 1963 überfiel eine sechzehnköpfige Bande einen schlecht gesicherten Postzug der Royal Mail und erbeutete über 2,6 Millionen Pfund, was zu einem aufsehenerregenden Prozess, spektakulären Gefängnisausbrüchen und einer langanhaltenden medialen Faszination führte. Einer der Täter, Ronald Biggs, floh nach dem Überfall ins Ausland, lebte lange Zeit in Brasilien und wurde später durch seine Flucht und sein Leben im Exil zu einer Kultfigur dieses Falles.

Viele berüchtigte Outlaws des Wilden Westens, darunter Sam Bass und Rube Burrow, begannen ihre kriminelle Laufbahn mit Postkutschen- und später Zugüberfällen, nachdem sie an bürgerlichen Existenzen oder persönlichen Schicksalsschlägen gescheitert waren. Ihre Geschichten zeigen eine Eskalation von improvisierten Raubzügen zu gut geplanten Überfällen, die jedoch meist tragisch endeten – sei es durch Verrat, Festnahme oder tödliche Schusswechsel.

Atop the hierarchy of Australian bushrangers sits Ned Kelly–the ultimate outlaw–and just below him, the tragic figure of Ben Hall, who joined a gang led by a man whose name today is less well known, but in his time was much more famous than any other: Frank Gardiner. Mastermind of the largest gold robbery in Australia’s history, Gardiner led an extraordinary life, the full telling of which is long overdue. In a tough country and among a group of tough men, Gardiner was the toughest of them all.

Blekingegadebandens historie handler om meget mere end et millionrøveri mod et postkontor i Købmagergade og drabet på en ung politibetjent i 1988. Historien begynder sidst i 1960'erne, da kommunisterne Gotfred Appel og Ulla Hauton samler en gruppe oprørske unge mennesker under sig og sender dem til Jordan i militær træningslejr hos Folkefronten til Palæstinas Befrielse, PFLP.