Accomplices
William Gerald Boal (22 October 1913 – 26 June 1970), an accomplice after the fact of Roger Cordrey, was convicted as being one of the robbers, despite playing a role no different from the many other accomplices of the various train robbers. Boal died in jail.
Leonard "Lennie" Denis Field (born 1931, date of death unknown) helped with the purchase of the Leatherslade Farm hideout, paying the deposit of £5,000 in return for a 'drink' of £12,000. Lennie Field was allowed to think that the plan was to hijack a lorry load of cigarettes. Despite not being in on the robbery, he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years (20 years for conspiracy to rob and five years for obstructing justice), which was later reduced to five. He was released from jail in 1967 and went to live in north London.
John Denby Wheater (born 17 December 1921, died 18 July 1985) was the employer of Brian Field. He was convicted and sentenced to three years. He died in Harrogate, near Leeds, aged 63.
Aylesbury investigation
At 05:00, Chief Superintendent Malcolm Fewtrell, head of the Buckinghamshire Police Criminal Investigation Department (CID), located at Aylesbury, arrived at the crime scene, where he supervised evidence-gathering. He then went to Cheddington railway station, where the train had been taken, and where statements were taken from the driver and postal workers. A member of the gang had told the postal staff not to move for half an hour and this suggested to the police that their hide-out could not be more than 30 miles (48 km) away. It appeared, from interviews with the witnesses, that about 15 hooded men dressed in blue boiler suits had been involved, but little more could be gleaned.
By lunchtime of the following day, it became obvious to Fewtrell that extra resources were needed to cope with the scale of the investigation and the Buckinghamshire Chief Constable referred the case to Scotland Yard. George Hatherill, Commander of the C Department and Detective Chief Superintendent Earnest (Ernie) Millen, Head of the Flying Squad were initially in charge of the London side of the investigation. They sent Detective Superintendent Gerald McArthur and Detective Sergeant John Pritchard to assist the Buckinghamshire Police.
The police then undertook a major search, fanning out from the crime scene after having failed to find any forensic evidence there. A watch was put on the seaports. The Postmaster General Reginald Bevins offered a £10,000 reward to "the first person giving information leading to the apprehension and conviction of the persons responsible for the robbery".
Discovery of Leatherslade Farm
Following a tip-off from a herdsman who used a field adjacent to Leatherslade Farm, a police sergeant and constable called there on 13 August 1963, five days after the robbery. The farm was deserted but they found the truck used by the robbers, which had been hastily painted yellow, as well as the Land Rovers. They also found a large quantity of food, bedding, sleeping bags, post-office sacks, registered mail packages, banknote wrappers and a Monopoly board game.
It was determined that although the farm had been cleaned for fingerprints, some finger and palm prints (presumably of the robbers) had been overlooked, including those on a ketchup bottle and on the Monopoly set (which had been used after the robbery for a game, but with real money).
London investigation
Despite the big breakthrough of the discovery of Leatherslade Farm, the investigation was not going well. The London side of the investigation then continued under Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Butler, who replaced Millen as head of the Flying Squad shortly after Millen was promoted to Deputy Commander under George Hatherill. On Monday 12 August 1963, Butler was appointed to head the police investigation of the London connection and quickly formed a six-man Train Robbery Squad. With Leatherslade Farm finally found on 13 August 1963, the day after Tommy Butler was appointed to head the London investigation, the Train Robbery Squad descended on the farm.
The key breakthrough was when Detective Chief Superintendent Millen met a distinguished barrister in a smoking room of an exclusive West End club who told him that someone was willing to inform on the gang. The process of talking to the informer was handled by Hatherill and Millen themselves, and they never divulged the identity of the informer to the detectives in their command. The informant had just been jailed in a provincial prison before the train robbery, and was hoping to get parole and other favorable outcomes from talking. He clearly did not know all the names perfectly, and a second informant (a woman) was able to fill in the gaps. Millen said in his book Specialist in Crime, "the break-through with the informer came at a moment when I and my colleagues at the Yard were in a state of frustration almost approaching despair". This process saw them get 18 names to be passed on to detectives to match up with the list being prepared from fingerprints collected at Leatherslade.
Hatherill and Millen decided to publish photos of the wanted suspects, despite strong protests from Tommy Butler and Frank Williams. This resulted in most of the robbers going to ground.
Tommy Butler, the thief-taker
Tommy Butler was a shrewd choice to take over the Flying Squad and in particular the Train Robbery Squad. He became arguably the most renowned head of the Flying Squad in its history. He was known variously as "Mr Flying Squad", as "One-day Tommy" for the speed with which he apprehended criminals and as the "Grey Fox" for his shrewdness. He was Scotland Yard's most formidable thief-taker and, as an unmarried man who still lived with his mother, he had a fanatical dedication to the job. Butler worked long hours and expected all members of the squad to do the same.
The squad later had to work out rotations whereby one member would go home to rest as otherwise they were getting only three hours of sleep per night and had no time to eat healthily or see their families. When the squad tried to get him to ease the working conditions, Butler was enraged and threatened to send them back to their normal duties. Butler was said to be very secretive, with Jack Slipper claiming in his book Slipper of the Yard (1981) that "he wouldn't even tell his own left hand what the right one was doing". This meant that Train Robbery Squad members were often dispatched on specific errands with no knowledge of how their tasks fitted into the overall investigation.
Train Robbery Squad
The six-man Train Robbery Squad consisted of Detective Inspector Frank Williams, Detective Sergeant Steve Moore, Detective Sergeant Jack Slipper, Detective Sergeant Jim Nevill, Detective Sergeant Lou Van Dyck and Detective Constable Tommy Thorburn. The senior officer, Frank Williams, was a quiet man. His speciality was dealing with informants and he had the best working knowledge of the south London criminal fraternity in the force. One of the squad, Jack Slipper, would later become head of the Flying Squad and would still be involved in the case many years later.
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