Armed and Dangerous--This is the True Story of How I Carried Out Scotland's Biggest Bank Robbery

by James Crosbie

  ‘Oh, aye. And what did you do that for, Hadgey?’

  ‘Caught the wee bastard shagging my bird.’

  ‘Oh, did you? So, what happened then?’ Meantime, we are stitching and sewing away at our prison task.

  ‘I told you! I caught him at it with her and strangled him.’

  ‘He was dead?’

  ‘Aye, he was dead all right. I told you. I strangled the wee bastard.’

  ‘Aye, well, so that was him dead. Then what did you do?’

  At this, Hadgey stopped work to explain how he coped with this unusual inconvenience. ‘Well, he was dead, so I decided I had to get rid of the body.’ I nodded encouragingly, showing keen interest. ‘I decided to cut him up.’

  ‘Aye, right enough,’ I said, trying to keep things conversational. ‘You would need to do that, all right.’ Hadgey leaned towards me and spoke earnestly, as if sharing a secret.

  ‘But I knew if I cut him up, he would bleed all over the place.’

  ‘Yes.’ I could only sympathise with his predicament. ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I got hold of a Black and Decker electric drill and bored a hole right on the top of his head. Right through his skull I went. But see, when I went to pour his blood down the sink …’

  ‘Aye?’ I admit I was a little puzzled at this, but I tried to look serious as he continued his lurid tale.

  ‘See, when I tipped him over the sink and tried to empty out the blood, you know something?’

  ‘What?’ I dared to ask.

  ‘It never came out. The blood just stayed there, stuck in his body.’

  ‘Did it?’ I didn’t really have to feign surprise. Obviously the workings of the human body were a complete mystery to the intellectually challenged Hadgey.

  ‘Nothing,’ he explained with a mystified shake of his head. ‘Not a drop.’

  ‘So what did you do then?’ I asked. This was better than fiction.

  ‘I had an old hacksaw in the house, so I got him on to the kitchen table and cut his head off. Then I got his hands and arms off, but the blade broke when I was cutting through his thigh.’

  ‘Did it now!’ I tut-tutted in disapproval at the failing quality of the British hacksaw blade.

  ‘So that was me fucked.’ Hadgey nodded regretfully at the memory.

  ‘How?’ I queried. ‘You could always have got another blade.’

  ‘No,’ he replied, tapping the side of his nose in a knowing way. ‘I’m too wide for that. Right out of character that would have been. A dead giveaway.’

  ‘Aye, well, right enough.’ Hadgey’s logic was definitely giving me problems. ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I got a big fire going in the grate and decided to burn him.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘I stuck the feet in first and they were burning away fine, but there was a helluva smell and I had to stop.’

  I looked at him and nodded sympathetically. ‘So?’

  ‘So I phoned up my lawyer and asked him to come round to the house. I told him it was a big case.’

  ‘Did he come?’ I asked

  ‘Aye, he came all right,’ the bold Hadgey told me. ‘When he saw the head on the sideboard and a couple of hands lying about, he took a right flaky: ran out the house and got the police. And he was supposed to be my fucking lawyer!’

  ‘The bastard!’ I loudly condemned the treachery of the man. ‘He got you jailed!’

  ‘Ah well,’ Hadgey waxed philosophical. ‘I would have been done anyway. You see, my bird had run away and told her pal about me strangling the fucking midget and the word was out. When the police came I just admitted it and got a lifer.’

  He looked over at me and accepted my sympathetic mutterings as his due and without a pause continued speaking. ‘Here, pass me over the quick pick a minute, pal, I’ve just got a couple of extra stitches here.’ He snipped away delicately for a few seconds. ‘And by the way, do you know what my psychiatrist said to me?’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head and waited for his next revelation.

  ‘He said,’ Hadgey began, nodding knowingly. ‘He said that I was one of the cleverest murderers he had ever met. And do you know why he said that?’

  ‘No I don’t,’ I told him. ‘Why did he say that, Hadgey?’

  ‘Because I tried to get rid of the body.’

  And that was just one of the guys in the tailor’s shop.

  As time passed I settled into life in Peterhead, becoming part of the place and getting on with my sentence. All in all I fitted in quite well with my criminal contemporaries.

  I’ve always liked words and phrases and especially like collective nouns. My favourite word is ‘serendipity’ (look it up yourself!) and my favourite collective noun is ‘a murder of crows’. But I hadn’t ever heard of a good collective noun for convicts, so I made one up: ‘a conglomeration of convicts’. I think that description is apt because that’s exactly what they are: a mixed bunch of humanity struggling to survive in the hostile society of a prison. There are leaders and followers, the weak and the strong, extrovert and introvert and, even in Peterhead, guys and dolls. The only group of society missing from the population of Peterhead was intellectuals, probably because anyone with more than half a brain knew how to avoid the place. With such a diverse conglomeration of humanity, it is no wonder there are many stories to tell. But where to begin? Nicknames: that’s as good a start as anything.

  It always surprised me how aptly nicknames fitted individuals in Peterhead and this went for both screws and cons alike. I’ve already mentioned Gibbering Gibby, and you don’t need much of an imagination to picture the screw Jellybuttocks waddling along the landing, fat face red with exertion and neck squeezed tight in his collar. His claim to fame was that he stuck Jimmy Boyle’s head in a bucket of water and tried to drown him down in the punishment block.

  Then there was Cement Head, a product of an inbred fishing village community. He had earned his name on two separate counts. Firstly, he originally appeared in Peterhead making regular deliveries as the driver of a cement-delivery lorry. After making deliveries for some weeks, he realised that the uniformed prison officers he saw there did not appear to do very much in the way of actual physical exertion. The second reason Cement Head acquired his sobriquet was blindingly obvious: the idiot was as thick as two short planks. One of his more memorable blunders was when he approached a fellow officer and reported that he had got rid of a certain prisoner’s pigeons.

  Now pigeons were a big thing with some of the men in PH and with so little else to do they often became an obsession. Men would spend hours letting them fly from their cell windows and catering for their every need. Some of the men had even nurtured their pigeons up from eggs laid in their cupboards by birds they already owned. The authorities turned a blind eye to the practice of keeping pigeons; it was a harmless pastime and it did keep the men out of mischief. But somehow or other one of the men had fallen foul of Cement Head, leaving himself open to attack and revenge was swift and brutal.

  ‘Aye, that’s that,’ Cement Head announced one day to his shift partner, the Fairy Queen. ‘I soon got rid of his pigeons,’

  ‘Aye, man.’ The Fairy Queen nodded approval. ‘And how did you do that?’

  ‘I put them out the window. They flew away.’

  ‘Och, don’t be daft, man,’ the Fairy Queen retorted. ‘That’s no good. They’re bloody homing pigeons. They’ll be back by now.’ Not wanting his colleague to be cheated out of his revenge, he unselfishly offered to help out. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you what to do with them.’ And with that they both marched back to the prisoner’s cell.

  The pigeons, as the Fairy Queen had rightly predicted, had already returned and were cooing away on their perches on the window ledge. Quite calmly, the Fairy Queen took one of them down and callously wrung its neck. ‘There, that’s the way to get rid of them, man,’ he informed his appreciative audience. ‘Just wring their bloody necks. They’ll do no more flying then.’ Nodding enthusi
astic agreement, Cement Head followed the Fairy Queen’s example, a few quick twists of his wrists promptly dispatching the rest of the innocent birds off to that great pigeon coop in the sky. Both officers were seen leaving the cell looking pleased with themselves, four dead pigeons on the prisoner’s table clear evidence of their foul deed.

  Talk about a furore! The con went ballistic and even some of the screws temporarily shelved their usual solidarity to voice objections at their colleagues’ barbaric behaviour. However, and you had to give him credit for this, although the con knew who was responsible for killing his pigeons, he remained sensible enough to keep his hands to himself as he ranted and raved at the assassin. He did, however, decide to take what we all thought was the sensible course, hoping that Cement Head would at least suffer some penalty for his crime. A letter reporting the incident was despatched to the RSPB and we all sat back waiting for retribution to descend on the ignorant, pigeon-killing Cement Head. He received the following letter in reply:

  The Society regrets the incident regarding the killing of your pigeons. However, we can only act if the behaviour of the individual concerned led to the birds suffering cruelty or undue pain and suffering. Furthermore, as pigeons are regarded as vermin, such a method of dispatch is considered to be humane and in this case we can take no action against the individual concerned. End of story.

  The pigeons were the man’s pets, his friends and companions during the lonely hours in his cell. We were all disgusted and Cement Head continued to stand guard on the landing with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

  Red Alert was a screw who got his name from a sudden, ill-advised action he undertook one day in the tailor’s shop. New to the service he had yet to make his mark and up until the day of his official christening he was known, for obvious reasons, as Baby Face. His introduction to guard duty in the tailor’s shop, just a few short weeks after joining the service, was well out of order. He was thrown in at the deep end by his fellow officers who resented the senior status he enjoyed, which had been carried forward from his previous job in the local taxation office.

  To say he was a bundle of nerves would be an understatement. Primed by exaggerated reports from his fellow screws of the dangers from the unpredictable top-security prisoners, Baby Face stood nervously against the rear wall of the shop anxiously counting and recounting his charges. Resplendent in his shiny new peaked cap, he braced himself against a radiator, careful not to catch anyone’s eye and so avoid a confrontation with any of these dangerous prisoners.

  Two men, Billy Mac and Tony T, both lifers, sat directly in front of him in the back row of machines and recognised immediately that Baby Face was a total nervous wreck. It so happened that outside, within sight of the window, a con was working away at the prison incinerator and was at that very moment digging a small pit. Billy Mac gave Tony a wink and nodded out of the window.

  ‘How’s the tunnel getting on?’ he asked in a hoarse stage whisper.

  Tony pretended to look surreptitiously out towards the incinerator where he could clearly see the con digging lustily with his spade. ‘It’s going well,’ he answered in a low voice that just carried to Baby Face. ‘Must have dug a good bit out by now.’

  Baby Face nearly keeled over as, leaning at an angle of almost forty-five degrees, he eavesdropped on the ‘escape plot’ unfolding before him.

  ‘Has he got the rope and the hook organised yet?’ Mac whispered.

  ‘No problem. It’s all been well stashed. We’ll be ready to go any day now.’

  Obviously not even stopping to consider what use a rope and hook would be in a tunnel, Baby Face launched himself into action and, in doing so, earned himself the sobriquet that would henceforth follow him throughout his service life. ‘Red alert! Red alert!’ He screamed the words at the top of his voice as he raced down the shop to expose the infamy. ‘Red alert, Mr Noble!’ He burst into the office and yelled at the senior officer. ‘They’re digging a tunnel and … and …’ He stuttered to a halt as Noble looked at him and slowly shook his head.

  ‘And how do you know about this?’ Noble asked, totally unperturbed at the alarming news.

  ‘I heard them,’ Red Alert blurted out. ‘Those two at the back, they were talking about it and if you look out of the window you’ll see they’ve got someone digging a tunnel!’

  ‘Oh, a tunnel, is it?’ Noble dragged Red Alert back up to his station to confront the grinning Billy Mac and Tony T. ‘You two stop fucking about now,’ he told them. ‘And as for you, you fucking idiot,’ he said and cuffed the red-faced rookie on the back of his head in time with his words. ‘Don’t you be so fucking stupid. Red alert?’ He shook his head. ‘You fucking idiot!’

  For a prison work party, it has to be said that the tailor’s shop in PH was never a dull place. As well as the usual subversive activities of sabotaging the machines, destroying material and setting elaborate incendiary devices, there were always games to be played and stories to be told. And even some of the screws got into the story-telling action.

  Hank the Yank was a screw who had apparently spent some time in the USA. No one really knew if he had ever actually been to America, but Hank the Yank continuously boasted of his life there in an obviously desperate attempt to impress the cons. The thing is, we never ever got the stories at first hand from Hank. It wasn’t the done thing for an officer to converse with prisoners and give out information about his private life, past or present, so Hank developed a technique that allowed him to impart his information at second hand.

  Hank would stand against his radiator at the head of the stairs and engage his opposite number in conversation across the width of the workshop floor, loudly relating stories of his past life in Vegas. He made constant references to Frank, Dino, Sammy, Gina and other well-known names, as if they were familiar boozing buddies of his. According to Hank, he practically ran Vegas. Eventually the PO in charge of the party got sick of him and his tales and one day, in front of everyone, took Hank to task.

  ‘So you know all the famous people in Las Vegas?’ he challenged.

  But Hank did not even seem disturbed at the disbelieving tone adopted by the PO. ‘They were all my pals,’ he boldly confirmed.

  ‘Well you tell me,’ the PO demanded. ‘If you were doing so well in Las Vegas and were pals with Frank, Dino and all those others you talk about, what the fuck are you doing working here as a screw in Peterhead?’

  Not a bit nonplussed by the PO’s scathing attack, Hank looked him straight in the eye. ‘Ah, well, that’s for me to know and for you to wonder about,’ he said, leaning against the wall, looking confidently back at his interrogator.

  ‘No, I don’t need to wonder,’ the PO replied, poking Hank in the chest with his finger. ‘You see, I know. I know what you’re doing here.’

  Hank’s eyes narrowed at this. ‘What then?’ he said. ‘What do you think I’m doing here?’

  ‘You’re on the run from the Mafia,’ the PO triumphantly announced, obviously enjoying the pantomime as much as the cons. ‘You’re hiding from the Mob.’ He looked at Hank and shook his head. ‘Well, you’re fucked now, because I’m going to phone them up and tell them where you are!’ And with that he turned round and headed determinedly for his office.

  But Hank the Yank, a diehard to the end, still kept his end up. ‘Aye,’ he shouted. ‘That’s just the sort of dirty trick you would pull. You’re nothing but a fucking grass!’

  You couldn’t make it up, could you?

  There were some serious assaults and stabbings that took place during my time in the tailor’s shop, but to my knowledge there was only one occasion when anyone ever got charged. This was when a serious escape attempt was made from the shop and an officer was stabbed in the back with a large pair of cutting shears.

  The escape bid failed when the cutting-room screw managed to press the alarm bell to summon the riot squad. I can still remember having to take an extra long step to jump the huge pool of blood on the shop floor when we were all mar
ched away. Larry L, along with three others, was charged with attempted murder, but he was the only one found guilty and was sentenced to another fifteen years on top of his lifer. The other guys got off because as soon as Larry struck the first blow, the other screws dived for cover and didn’t see anything after that. It’s maybe worth noting here that another screw was christened that day with a nickname: Shitty Breeks. I’ll leave the reader to guess why.

  Extra searches were all part and parcel of being in the security party and we could expect snap searches at any time. Most of the screws kept things at a reasonable level – a daily cell search and a once-a-week strip search. After all, we were also searched twice every day on return from work and, apart from pieces of cloth and home-made denims, there was little opportunity to build up a tool kit or arsenal.

  But there was one screw who took his job more seriously than the others – Andy Bunnet, so called because his uniform cap was several sizes too big. The Bunnet took his job really seriously. A narrow-minded Highland bumpkin, it seemed his sole mission in life was to torment and irritate prisoners. No one got away with anything when he was on duty and you could expect him at your door at any time, ready to annoy you with a strip search.

  Eventually one of the guys, Walter E, got so fed up with Andy Bunnet’s constant strip searches that he penned an official letter of complaint – a petition – to the Secretary of State for Scotland.

  Dear Sir

  I would like to complain about the constant strip searches I have to undergo here in Peterhead Prison. Most of the time they are pretty normal and do not give me any cause for concern. However, there is one particular turnkey [Walter insisted on calling all screws turnkeys] who is disturbing me with his zeal when carrying out these searches. At least once or twice a week this turnkey, Andy Bunnet, insists on coming to my cell and giving me a strip search. Now I realise that he is allowed to do this and I am not complaining about his seemingly insatiable desire to see me in the nude. But this Andy Bunnet always makes me strip down to my vest, then gets me to pirouette around my cell like a demented ballerina so he can freely inspect my bare buttocks and my other dangly bits.