Rascal robber heads home

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, May 6, 2001

Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Elusive to the last, fugitive train robber Ronnie Biggs dodged a mob of reporters Sunday and boarded a jet to return from his self-imposed exile to England — and possibly to a prison cell.

A 14-seat Dassault jet chartered by Britain’s Sun newspaper took off from Brazil with the man who helped carry out the 1963 "Great Train Robbery." Weakened by a stroke, the 71-year-old Biggs had entered the airport in a wheelchair.

Of all the rogues and ruffians who ever took the money and ran to Rio, none embodied the city’s irreverence or charmed its residents more than Biggs. The fugitive has become a symbol of Rio and its celebrated joie de vivre — the beguiling rascal who tweaked authority’s nose and got away with it.

"He is thoroughly carioca," said a neighbor, using the word Rio’s residents proudly call themselves.

Ever the huckster, Biggs had arranged a deal with the Sun and Sky TV for exclusive rights to the story of his return. The price tag on the deal was not announced.

Biggs was accompanied on the plane by his Brazilian son, Michael. The Sun said one of Biggs’ fellow train robbers, Bruce Reynolds, flew in from England to join him for the flight home.

Biggs’ reasons for returning were a mystery. After 31 years in Brazil, few thought he ever would go back.

Britain wants him to finish serving a 30-year sentence for the 1963 robbery of the Glasgow-to-London Royal Mail Train, which yielded 2.6 million pounds — worth $7.3 million at the time, or nearly $47 million today — and became known as "the heist of the century."

Over the years, Biggs foiled attempts to pry him out by deportation, extradition and even kidnapping. When Brazil’s Supreme Court in 1997 rejected an extradition request on grounds the statute of limitations had run out, Biggs seemed a free man.

But a stroke left him debilitated and barely able to speak. Lately, he rarely left his home in Rio’s traditional Santa Teresa district except for twice-a-week physical therapy sessions.

After he went over the wall of Wandsworth Prison in 1965, Biggs fled to France, then to Australia and Panama. The escape and plastic surgery to change his appearance consumed most of the loot from the train robbery, and in 1970 he arrived in Rio.

Scotland Yard tracked him down in 1974, but the lack of an extradition treaty with Brazil saved him. When Brazil’s military government tried to deport him, Biggs produced a son by a Brazilian woman, and the law again prevented his expulsion.

Denied a work permit and forced to report to police twice a week, Biggs finally found his calling just being himself. Foreign journalists were hot for his story and willing to pay handsomely for it, and Biggs played the part, calling himself "the last of the gentleman crooks."

While the law couldn’t touch him, kidnappers almost did. In 1981, two men posing as journalists grabbed Biggs at a Rio restaurant, gagged him, stuffed him into a duffel bag and flew him to the Amazon River port of Belem. From there they sailed to Barbados, expecting to turn Biggs in and sell their story to the tabloids.

But Barbados also had no extradition treaty with England and sent him back to Rio, where he arrived like a conquering hero.

Back in Brazil, Biggs was a household name — and a tourist attraction. For $60, visitors could enjoy a barbecue at the Biggs home, be regaled by tales of the heist and have a chance to buy T-shirts reading: "I went to Rio and met Ronnie Biggs … honest."

Biggs seemed to be everywhere. He was a devotee of Rio’s Carnival, an ever-present glass of beer in his hand. He recorded with the punk rock group Sex Pistols, wrote a memoir called "Odd Man Out," and even promoted a home alarm system with the slogan: "Call the thief."

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