BBC investigates true crime gold heist doc from Bohemia Films

The Gold: The Inside Story

UK pubcaster the BBC has commissioned one-off true crime documentary The Gold: The Inside Story.

Produced by by Bohemia Films for BBC One and BBC iPlayer, the 1 x 60-minute doc hears from the detectives who investigated Britain’s biggest bullion heist and led the hunt for three tonnes of gold.

In November 1983, armed robbers stole £26m ($31m) worth of gold from the Brink’s-Mat security depot near London’s Heathrow airport. They escaped with 6,800 bars of gold with an equivalent value in today’s money of nearly £100m ($120m). It was a race against time before the gold was smelted, disguised and sold back on the open market, fuelling criminal enterprise on an unprecedented scale.

Speaking on film for the first time since the robbery almost 40 years ago, Detective Chief Superintendent Brian Boyce, head of the investigation and DC Tony Yeoman, disclose the challenges they faced and the strategy they used in the hunt for the gold. They reveal how tragedy unfolded with the death of DC John Fordham as they staked out Kenneth Noye, one of the men at the epicentre of the gang transforming the gold into cash.

Archive footage and eyewitness testimony detail the cat-and-mouse chase across borders and continents and the tracking of a corrupt network of professionals, lawyers and accountants who helped to launder the money through a network of foreign bank accounts and companies.

BBC head of Hhstory, Simon Young, said: “Few robberies are as iconic as Brink’s-Mat or have had such a profound effect on the country. That’s why it’s so fascinating to hear Brian Boyce and his colleagues give such a frank and unvarnished account of the challenges the police faced in attempting to solve such a colossal crime.”