Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs died early today.
The Great Train Robbers stormed a Glasgow to London mail train in 1963, making off with £2.6 million in used bank notes.
The masked gang of 20, including Biggs, had tampered with signals and badly injured the driver to make sure their plan came off.
The robbers were eventually caught at a farmhouse hideout by Scotland Yard detectives and received sentences totalling 300 years.
Biggs won worldwide notoriety after escaping and living the high life in Rio de Janeiro.
The 84-year-old was being cared for at the Carlton Court Care Home in East Barnet, North London, but died early on Wednesday.
He had become increasingly frail in recent years after suffering several strokes.
He was last seen in public at the funeral of fellow Great Train Robber Bruce Reynolds in March.
Ronald Arthur “Ronnie” Biggs played a minor role in the robbery, in which the gang stole the equivalent of over £40 million today.
Anthony Delano, who wrote a book about the robbery, told Sky News Biggs was an “idiot”.
“He was a small-time south London crook who nobody wanted on the team because he was a weak link.”
But his life as a fugitive after escaping from prison gained him notoriety.
He was given a 30-year sentence in 1964, but he escaped after 15 months by fleeing over the walls of London’s Wandsworth prison in April 1965.
After having plastic surgery, he lived as a fugitive for 36 years first in Australia then Brazil, where he fathered a son Michael, who became the key to him being allowed to stay in the country and not face extradition.
Biggs’s money ran out and he traded on his notoriety to scrape a living.
His health deteriorated in 2001 and he returned to the UK voluntarily mainly to get the better care available in prison and on the NHS.
He was freed in 2009 on “compassionate grounds” by then Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who said he was not expected to recover.