The Hatton Garden Heist And The Elderly Thieves Who Made It Happen

Sixty-year-old Danny Jones's criminal record dated clear back to 1975, and in 1982 he was convicted of stealing £92,000 from Ratner's jewelers. And as recently as 2014 he had burgled the Chatila jewelry shop, the very place where actor George Clooney's wife, Amal Alamuddin, purchased her pearl and diamond earrings for her wedding. Friends called Jones eccentric, even a madman, who claimed he could tell fortunes, talked to his dog like it was a person, and occasionally went to bed wearing "his mother's dressing gown with a fez on" when he wasn't sleeping on the floor Army-style. So it's really no surprise that Jones's elaborate outfit for the robbery included "striped trousers, a hi-vis waistcoat, red trainers, and a navy baseball cap."

Like Brian Reader, Jones had studied for the Hatton Garden robbery by reading Forensics for Dummies, a book about crime scenes. Afterwards, he could be heard bragging, "The biggest cash robbery in history at the time...that's what they are saying...what a book you could write!" Jones later offered to take the police to where his part of the loot was hidden in a cemetery, but only showed them a meager fraction of the stash. The Independent later revealed the authorities found a second cache with "Cartier watches, loose gems, large quantities of cash, and various items of jewelry." Still, the find amounted to only about £613,000.

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