Ronnie Biggs

Ronnie Biggs was a British criminal who helped rob a Royal Mail train in 1963, escaped from prison in 1965, and returned to the United Kingdom in 2001.

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Great Train Robbery: The 1963 robbery of a Royal Mail train carrying cash between Glasgow and London. Biggs joined the gang that stopped and robbed the train near Bridego Bridge.
Prison escape: An unauthorized departure from a prison or other detention facility by a person held there. Biggs escaped from Wandsworth Prison by climbing over a wall during a work detail.
Bruce Reynolds: British criminal who planned and led the gang behind the 1963 Great Train Robbery. Reynolds recruited Biggs and organized the robbery’s overall plan.
Fugitive: A person who evades arrest, prosecution, or imprisonment by fleeing or hiding. Biggs’s decades abroad made fugitive status central to his public identity.
Bridego Bridge: A railway bridge near Ledburn, Buckinghamshire, beside the site where the Great Train Robbery gang stopped the mail train. The gang halted the train here, making the bridge central to the robbery’s location.
Extradition: The formal transfer of a person from one jurisdiction to another for prosecution or punishment. Brazil’s limits on extraditing its nationals helped Biggs avoid return to Britain.
Buster Edwards: British criminal who took part in the Great Train Robbery and later became a market trader. Edwards was another prominent gang member whose fugitive life paralleled Biggs’s.
Celebrity criminal: A criminal whose notoriety becomes a form of public celebrity through sustained media attention. Biggs’s interviews and songs turned his evasion into a lasting media spectacle.
Wandsworth Prison: A prison in southwest London that opened in 1851 and remains one of Britain’s largest prisons. Biggs escaped from its custody in 1965 while serving his sentence.
Statute of limitations: A law setting a deadline for bringing legal proceedings after an alleged offense. Public debate over time limits shaped discussion of Biggs’s eventual return and imprisonment.