“Befittingly of his life of secrecy,” Brian Reader (pictured), known by some as the “last of the gentleman thieves” and infamous for his role in the Hatton Garden Heist of 2015, “breathed his last quiet breath” at his home in Dartford in September of 2023, aged 84, and his death was kept a secret until now, says Tatler. He was known by his friends as a committed family man who doted on his wife and children and took regular holidays to Spain or the Alps. In “certain crooked circles”, however, he was better known as the “guv’nor”, a gangster believed to have made more than £200m from various raids over the years, including one on Lloyds Bank in Baker Street in 1971.
The Hatton Garden Heist, the subject of numerous dramatic adaptations, netted £14m worth of gems and bullion from deposit boxes, says The Times. He was jailed for six years and three months for the theft, but was released halfway through his time on health grounds and allowed to remain free despite failing to repay the money he’d stolen, handing back only 6% of the raid’s profits. The whereabouts of the rest remains a mystery.
Reader’s “odyssey into thievery” began in his early youth, says Tatler, when he was abandoned by his father and took to stealing food on the docks of south London. He later worked as a butcher’s assistant and a fireman for British Rail, and served in
