Great Train Robbery (1963) Valley Police Force (the modern-day successor to Buckinghamshire Constabulary). Fewtrell was assisted and later succeeded in the investigation by John Woolley, who served in the Buckinghamshire Constabulary from 1959 to 1984. George Hatherill (1898–1986) had his service extended by one year because of the need to complete the investigation of the Great Train Robbery. He visited Canada and the USA as a lecturer on police matters. He died on 17 June 1986 at the age of 87. Gerald MacArthur died aged 70 years on 21 July 1996. He was famous for breaking up the Richardson Gang at a time when
The Great Train Robbery (novel) by a horse he had been flogging. The final line of the novel reads, "The money from the Great Train Robbery was never recovered." Crichton became aware of the story when lecturing at Cambridge University. He later read the transcripts of the court trial and started researching the historical period. The story is a fictionalised representation of the historical events that happened, although the setting can be considered quite accurate. The characters' names are changed in the novel; for example, the main protagonist William Pierce is changed to Edward Pierce and Edward Agar to Robert Agar. Crichton stated that he