Great Train Robbery (1963) Head of the Buckinghamshire Crime Investigation Department (CID) was born on 29 September 1909 and died on 28 November 2005, aged 96 years. He retired on the last day of the trial after the verdicts were handed down (at the then compulsory retirement age of 55). This allowed him (with Ronald Payne of "The Sunday Telegraph", who was involved in the paper's coverage of the case) to be the first of the investigators to write a book "The Train Robbers" on the robbery investigation in 1964. In the book he expressed some frustration with the Flying Squad although he mostly
Great Train Robbery (1963) (who died in prison) and Lennie Field, who were later found not guilty of the charges against them. The other men (aside from Wheater) resented what they considered to be the excessive length of the sentences, which were longer than those given to many murderers or armed robbers at the time. At that period, there was no parole system in place and prisoners served the full term of the sentence. Train robbers who were sentenced later, and by different judges, received shorter terms. At the time, the severity of the sentences caused some surprise. When mastermind Bruce Reynolds was arrested