Travelling Post Office car M30272M under restoration in Wansford - 2 Oct 2012 Photographer unknown.

10 May 2001

Biggs Should Live Out His Life Behind Bars Says Man Who Was on Legendary Train

A retired postal worker is adamant Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs should live out his days behind bars.
 
Willy McCombe has a personal interest in the runaway robbers future.
 
Not only was he friends with the mail sorters Biggs and his 11 accomplices terrorised during the infamous 1.2 million heist, but he got off the Glasgow to London train just an hour before the robbery.
 
Mr. McCombe said:  "I was a sorter on the night mail trains in 1963 and my usual run was the Glasgow to London, although I would get off at Crewe. On that night I left the train at Crewe station at midnight about an hour after Ronnie Biggs and his gang struck. I knew mail sorters on the train that night. They went through a terrifying ordeal facing the axe-wielding, hooded gang. One told me he had never been so frightened in his life and he had been a prisoner of war."
 
Mr. McCombe, of Thackers Way, Market Deeping, is angry at 71-year-old Biggs decision to return to the UK after 35 years on the run so he can have free NHS treatment.
 
The cost to the taxpayer could reach £100,000 in prison, medical, and legal bills, if he lives another year.
 
Mr. McCombe said:  "Biggs is a toe-rag. What he did is still being glorified today when he and his gang were just a bunch of East End thugs. He should serve his time behind bars where he belongs, not having it cushy in a hospital with taxpayers having to foot the bill. I don't care what age he is or how ill. If he hadn't run off to Rio, where by all accounts he has had a great life, then he would have served his jail sentence by now."
 
Biggs broke out of Wandsworth prison in 1965 after serving only 15 months of a 30-year term for his part in the 1963 robbery.
 
The driver, Jack Mills, died a few years after being coshed over the head in the raid.
 
Theoretically Biggs could still face disciplinary action over the escape, but because of his poor health and age it is unlikely this will happen.
 
The carriage that contained the high value parcels stolen in the robbery is being restored at Nene Valley Railway.