The thing is, Lee's one of my lifelong friends
and, um, just happens to be involved in
the largest cash robbery in the world.
We-we have talked a lot, a hell of a lot.
I've recorded multiple conversations with Lee.
Pre-2017, I would say I spoke to Lee
weeks on the phone.
Everything, really, like just the normal conversation
you'd have with your mate.
I wanted to document this
so we had an accurate record of what really happened.
dramatic rhythmic music
[Sir John] A robbery occurred in Kent.
A substantial amount of money was stolen.
It was all in cash.
This theft
represented the largest amount ever stolen in this country.
The robbers used hostages
as the means to enter the depot.
There are few things more terrifying
than the invasion of home or workplace
at the dead of night
by men dressed entirely in black,
whose faces and heads are covered by masks,
brandishing deadly weapons,
and shouting that you will die
if you do not do as you are told.
And the motive for this crime?
Pure and simple.
Greed.
dramatic rhythmic music
gentle music
[commentator 1] This is a bad spot!
[commentator 12] And it's all over!
It's all over!
Lee Murray by submission!
Whoa!
[Lee Murray] I'll fight anybody.
I don't care who they are, what they've done
and how many men they've knocked out.
I couldn't give a shit.
Well, his debut in the UFC, the after-fight,
getting out of the Octagon after being interviewed,
the buzz in the camp was unbelievable.
The buzz in the dressing room was unbelievable.
The-the-the celebration was brilliant.
He's got to his dream, his pinnacle.
He was all on cloud nine.
Wow, just amazing to be here.
This is a dream for me.
Waited all my life for this.
Since I started training five years ago,
this is my goal to get here.
The next goal is the belt.
And whoever gets in my way with that,
for me to get to that belt
are gonna get knocked out. [laughter]
Cold. Cold. Hard.
I know that the UFC, because of that, you know,
emerging European market for them,
that Lee was, you know,
I'm sure that they were thinking that
we've got a superstar.
Now we can take this thing really global.
You know, this guy's- this guy's really good.
UFC, I believe, did offer him a three-fight contract, yeah.
But he couldn't get that green card to get back out there.
That was the problem.
One thing that completely
altered the course of his life was the road rage incident.
ominous music
[Terry] He was going to his mum's on Christmas Day
with his family.
Siobhan, his first wife, was pregnant with little Lee.
And Lee had his daughter in the car, Lilly.
We were going to my nan's house.
She lived in Abbey Wood.
My dad was driving a Range Rover
and my mum was in the passenger seat
and I was in the back.
The guy chased him into his mum's road.
Lee pulled over.
Then all I remember is my dad kind of,
I think someone, they were just kind of shouting
at another car.
And all of a sudden,
the car had gone back,
reversed.
And then I remember my mum,
so she's opened the door
and there's like a step.
So when she's took the step,
the car's hit back into our car.
So she's just gone flying onto her stomach.
And then that's when my dad just kind of lost it,
because he'd seen my mum on the floor hurt,
and she's screaming.
And then my dad just said to me,
"Lil, stay in the car.
Don't come out for anything."
And I believe they had to get the air ambulance down
because the guy apparently died on the street.
But he did-- they brought him back.
But Lee just was defending his family.
[Lilly] It was Christmas day
and we were literally just going to be with our family.
Yeah, it's just crazy that so quickly,
it was my mum's in hospital
and my dad's in the police station.
[Nicola] The man that was ramming into his car,
like, had been in prison for road rage before.
The guy was a bit of a, you know, one of these,
get in his car and he thought he owned the road.
But obviously he done it with Lee and come unstuck.
[Nicola] The police knew that he was defending himself
and he was defending his family.
He was not the aggressor.
But again, painted a picture to the public
and the court when they tried to prosecute him
that he was a complete maniac,
a psychopath.
They used that to try and take him down then.
And they took it all the way to court,
hiding the fact that this man
had previously been in prison for road rage.
And then the case collapsed.
[Terry] When it went to court, he got a hung jury.
They couldn't decide.
Then the prosecution went away
and come back about five minutes later and said,
"Oh, we're gonna go again."
And even the judge looked down and he said,
"You're really gonna go with this again?"
You know, and then three days later he got-- it got dropped.
But what they then did was,
Lee was applying for a visa to go to America
and they canceled his visa.
They contacted the American authorities
and said that Lee was on bail for attempted murder.
He got his visa yanked
and that was the end of fighting for the UFC.
[Nicola] They took away his dream.
That was his dream.
He said like, "That was my one dream,
to get a title shot and to, you know,
prove myself
and do the thing that I loved
and the thing that I felt like I was born to do."
[announcer] Representing London Shootfighters,
he's from Woolwich:
Lightning
Lee
Murray!
[Dave] Cage Rage, without a doubt,
was the biggest UK promotion.
We tried to put on events
that no one had seen in this country.
Lee Murray agreed to fight for Cage Rage,
Cage Rage 8.
And he was like, "I will not fight
unless you get me the best.
I will give you names.
I want the best.
I want to get to the UFC."
He had his plan, you know, and that was it.
Bang: "Give me Anderson Silva."
We're like, "Mate, Lee, listen,
why don't you take a little..."
He went, "No easy fight, I want this guy."
[announcer] Anderson
"The Spider"
Silva!
[audience cheers]
[commentator] No way.
He's out. He's out!
He's out! He's out!
[bell ringing]
It was hard.
It wasn't easy to get Anderson Silva
over to agree to fight someone
who'd only had like four or five fights.
So we kept saying, "Lee, can't you fight an English guy?
We'll get you the biggest name."
"No. I'm not having none of it,
I want a big name Brazilian."
Big Brazilian back in them days you were,
you know, you were looked at.
And that's what got Anderson to go, "You know what?
I've trained with Pelé.
Right, okay, I'll agree to fight him."
And the build-up to that,
like, tickets were sold out so quick.
Unbelievable.
To me, Lee Murray was the early Conor McGregor.
Everything to him was like,
"Yeah, Dave, let me get it on.
I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do it."
He had it all planned in-in his head.
You know, if you look at Anderson Silva weigh-ins...
[photographer] Hold it down, both of you.
[press chatter]
Hold it down!
[press chatter]
[man] All right guys, guys, guys.
[indistinct chatter]
[people applauding]
[Dave] He was crazy, going mad.
"I'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna do this."
He gets me outside, he goes,
"David, was that good promotion?
Was that good promotion?"
You know, if we had Instagram and Facebook back then,
mate, he would have been a sensation.
If Lee Murray was fighting in any show in the UK,
it was a sell-out.
I mean I begged him that day with Anderson Silva,
I said, "Lee, I'm telling you, please, all these people,
I know three of your boys, just back 'em off
because this is a fight you could lose."
"I'm not gonna lose."
I said, "But it's a fight you could lose.
I can't have 500 people jumping in the cage going mental."
Listen, you've always got to be concerned.
If Lee Murray's boys are there
and something goes wrong, of course I'm concerned.
[announcer] Ladies and Gentlemen, are you ready?
[crowd cheering]
[commentator 1] Anderson Silva, very focused.
[commentator 2] Yeah, he seems to be pretty aware
of what Murray's capable of.
The distance he's keeping says to me he knows.
He knows.
[commentator 1] Oh, a good kick by Silva.
He's rocked Lee Murray and follows it out
with a good strike.
The fact that Anderson Silva
was trying to take down Lee Murray
and taking him down in a fight
when Anderson Silva was quite possibly
the greatest striker in the history of-of the UFC,
I mean that says a lot.
And it basically tells you how dangerous
Lee Murray's punches were.
Extremely, extremely dangerous guy.
soft dramatic music
[Terry] Lee trained hard for that fight.
But unfortunately Lee, in my opinion, over-trained.
On the fight night,
he was flat.
[commentator 1] Anderson Silva's bouncing around well.
[commentator 2] That's what-- I agree with you there, Rob--
[Rob] And then a good kick by Silva and a good knee!
[Terry] Lee just didn't get a shot off, really, on him.
They are hard, hard enough.
Anderson kept him at range with his leg kicks.
[crowd roaring]
[Rob] Anderson Silva with a good take-down.
Both men to the ground,
three rounds later.
It went to a decision and Anderson got the-
got the nod.
Lee went all the rounds.
Didn't get knocked out,
went to points.
And like,
look what Anderson Silva's got him to do.
[Dave] Lee Murray went toe-to-toe with him
for three rounds and most of the other fighters,
they just didn't last.
So he showed you his worth just by that fight anyway.
He wasn't just a flash in the pan.
And if you look at Anderson Silva,
I think after that, he may have lost one.
But he went 16 fights undefeated
and became the UFC champion.
So where did that put Lee Murray?
I think Lee would have very likely
won a world title had things not gone wrong for him.
Yeah, Lee Murray's last professional fight,
the Cage Rage versus Anderson Silva,
that was it.
Yeah, that was his last fight.
dramatic music
That weekend, it was my 50th birthday.
Lee wanted to take me to the casino in London
and treat me, give me some money.
That was his treat to me for my 50th,
which was really nice of him.
upbeat music
We was going for the night to a club called Funky Buddha.
And there'd been a little bit of trouble
in there the week before.
There were six rude boys, he called them rude boys,
that was trying to rob a couple outside.
And then he come out.
I think the guy asked for his help,
when they turn on Lee and they try to stab Lee.
And he had a couple of pierce marks in him
and he dealt with it.
And he put them to sleep.
He banged 'em out.
[Carly] I didn't realize we was going
straight back to the same place the following week.
Spent the night in there, had a great night,
came out of there and there was,
they pulled the car up outside of the club.
[Carly] There was another friend that we was out with that night.
You could see he was having a bit of an altercation
with a load of blokes and they were surrounding him.
Paul, he got back out to try and sort it out for him.
And Lee was saying, "No, no, we're not fighting.
No, no, no. Get in the car.
I don't want this."
Like, "Leave it, leave it.
It's not our fight."
And Paul didn't.
This geezer run up Paul and Paul hit him.
And I remember there's bodies going everywhere
and Lee went, "Oh, have I got to deal with this?"
I said, "Lee, walk away, mate.
Don't keep stepping in for these guys, walk away.
Please walk."
And I've got his arm and we started to walk away.
Lee would fight everybody's battles for them.
Somebody else would start something
and then he would see his friend in a fight
and he would go in and save his friend.
[Terry] The next thing he pulled away from me.
Then he went in.
There was absolute carnage.
There was bodies everywhere.
Well, if you've seen a mass brawl, it's like a swarm.
And it goes like that.
And the bigger it got, the further out it got.
There was a man standing behind Lee.
I stood in front of him and he punched me
straight in the face, knocking me clean out.
Someone with a hood on went behind Lee
and just stabbed him up through...
I remember Lee, I'm actually seeing him.
And he was quite a bit away from me
and he said," I'm gonna, Paul, I'm gonna die."
And blood was pumping,
pumping out of his side
like spurting.
Not bleeding, pumping out.
And when I came 'round, there was like,
it looked like a bowl of washing up,
that's all I can describe,
of blood in the middle of the road.
And my friend was screaming:
"It's Lee, it's Lee, it's Lee's blood."
When I found him, they was all surrounding him.
I was just like, "He needs a familiar voice.
He needs to be with someone that he knows."
So I managed to duck through and get in the car.
So I sat in the car with him
while he was bleeding to death, basically.
There was blood pumping from everywhere,
you couldn't see where it was coming from.
There was so much blood.
The ceiling was dripping with blood.
I've never seen blood like it.
The ceiling was dripping with blood.
They'd cut him right through here.
And he was like in and out of consciousness
while I held his scar together
because I knew he hated scars, yeah.
It was really scary.
eerie music
I sat with him until the ambulance finally
could come over.
And then I got in the ambulance and we went to the hospital.
And I do believe,
I think he may have passed in the ambulance.
And then we got to the hospital and they took him off.
And I could see him through the glass.
They cut all his clothes off and they were working on him.
And then a doctor came, it makes me shake now.
A doctor came out and said,
"Do you know his wife's number,
like his family number?
Because he's died and we've just resuscitated him."
And I'm sure they said it was three times
that they had to resuscitate him.
somber music
[Dave] They said he'd never fight again.
That was it. Lee's over.
It was all in the press.
Lee Murray's fighting career's over.
Within the six months, he was sending us videos
of him punching the bag, going,
"I'm coming back."
Bang, bang.
And I couldn't believe the power he had again.
I didn't know how his stamina would last
because it's like one lung was severely damaged.
Lee healed like Wolverine from that stabbing.
He was coming back for another fight,
"This time I want a belt.
I'm gonna fight someone big."
"What about you come back with a warm-up fight?"
"No, I wanna fight someone bigger.
I want to fight..."
So again, it was in his,
he's one of them guys, as you say, hard to kill.
[laughs]
The robbery, yeah.
Uh.
That, to me, is a bit of a hard pill to swallow,
because I know Lee wouldn't hurt a woman or a child.
I know that for a fact.
I know that.
Understand it? No.
I don't, because he had what he wanted.
A great life:
money, cars, houses.
Don't get it.
But you can take the man off the street
but you can't take the street out of the man.
soft dramatic music
[Nicola] I think people could have changed his mind.
I think...
I just think at that time people were,
not egging him on but
people were enjoying the show.
Everything seems funny until it all comes on top.
And I think it might have seemed like fun and games and...
[exhales sharply]
But it got real really quickly.
soft dramatic music
[Andy] What do you do while you're recuperating?
If you've got this ear worm in your head.
I'm gonna rob this place.
I'm gonna do this
whilst you're recuperating,
you sit and you think about it.
And you think about many, many things, don't you?
So you've got time to do that.
And that's what they did. I'm certain.
soft dramatic music
The series of offenses had actually started
on Tuesday, the 21st.
soft dramatic music
Colin Dixon leaves work
approximately half past five in the afternoon.
Colin Dixon was the-the general manager of Medway House,
of the Securitas Depot, in Tonbridge.
He leaves his office, locks it up and gets in his car
and heads towards home.
He had managed the depot for some time at Tonbridge.
But he lived the other side of Kent.
Colin Dixon lived in Herne Bay,
which is a fair journey through the middle of Kent
and specifically towards the north downs,
north of Maidstsone called Detling Hill.
Herne Bay in Kent is a sleepy residential area,
a nice-class area.
Suburbia if you like, but on the coast.
And that's where Colin and Lynn lived
with their eight-year-old son Craig.
Now, Colin generally came home sort of 7:00 in the evening.
You know, you've got a fifty-mile drive.
What was interesting to us straight away
was the fact that he'd been targeted
in his own car on the way home.
[Andy] Colin Dixon suddenly becomes aware
of some blue flashing lights behind him.
He assumes it's an unmarked police vehicle
and it's trying to pull him over,
so he pulls over.
He pulls up just shy of what we call a layby.
Basically on British roads you have your main carriage way
and you have pull-in places.
We call them laybys.
But he pulled in just short of that.
Police officer, who was the passenger
of the vehicle got out.
ominous music
He suddenly thinks,
"Hmm, there's something not quite right here,
a bit suspicious.
Where's your ID?"
And I think he had handcuffs placed on him then
because he made a comment about he thought
that was a bit much for speeding,
being put in handcuffs.
[Andy] The passenger produces a pistol, said,
"This is a 9mm.
We're not fucking about."
Then all his worst feelings and suspicions
had been confirmed that he is being kidnapped.
[Adrian] Colin Dixon's taken from there to another location.
He's moved into another vehicle, a van.
[Andy] His glasses were taken off him.
His eyes were taped shut.
They took his shoes off him.
And he was tied, wrists and feet, with rope.
And he then went on a journey for about half an hour.
He couldn't tell you where.
Ended up on bumpy roads and he was then taken to
a compound of some sort.
[Adrian] And all he knows there is
he's in some form of farm with many buildings.
soft ominous music
[Andy] He's left there for a couple of hours.
Obviously everything's going through his mind.
What's going on? What's going on?
And then someone comes to the van
and they tell him that they've got his wife and his child.
tense music
Yeah, Lynn Dixon was at home in Herne Bay
with her young child.
And the norm of their life,
the normality of Colin and Lynn Dixon's life
would be that he was in the habit of ringing her
when he left or texting her to say, "I'm leaving work now."
And then about 20 minutes from home,
he'd send her another text.
She would know he would be home.
They would sit down, eat and discuss their day.
What happened on this particular day
is she got the "I'm leaving work now" text
and then it went silent,
radio silence.
Couldn't get much, thinking a bit strange.
You know, you get towards seven o'clock.
That's unusual.
So she tries to ring him.
And it goes to answer phone.
The phone goes to answer phone.
ominous music
What she does is she carries on dealing with the child,
makes sure the child has got ready for bed,
has a bath.
Lynn puts him in bed.
ominous music
She starts to watch something on television
which distracts her.
And I think it's around half past eight,
she believes she started watching this program.
And shortly after, there's a knock at her front door.
So she goes to the door
and sees two policemen stood there.
They tell her that it's nothing to worry about,
that Colin's been involved in an accident
and he's in hospital.
He's okay but they've come to take her to the hospital.
So they say, you know, "Get your stuff and we'll take you."
And she said, "Right, I'll just get one of my neighbors
to look after my child."
tense music
At that point, I'm pretty certain
they didn't know there was a young child.
So they told her, "Don't worry about that.
Bring the child with you."
So she obviously roused the child,
got some bits and pieces to keep them busy
when they were at the hospital.
Wherever she went in the house,
one of them was always with her,
never let her move out of their sight.
So they went out of the house having locked up
and she noticed straight away
that it was an unmarked police car,
which was a bit unusual.
But she didn't think anything of it.
Opened the car door, the child got in first.
[Andy] Lynn Dixon's getting in.
She looked at the dashboard
and she could see the radio was on.
And it had Magic FM on or something like that,
which you don't have with the police
because there's no radio in them.
She realized something was wrong and she screamed.
It's too late.
She's shoved in and the door is closed.
And it actually closed on her leg.
But they shut the door on her leg and then produced a gun.
"Do as you're told and you won't get hurt."
They told her to keep her head down
and they go out of Herne Bay.
ominous music
And she's driven from there about twenty minutes
to another rural location in Kent.
[Andy] Lynn sees a red van
and a man in a balaclava
stood in back of it.
She and her child were then put into that red van.
[Andy] The robbers bring Lynn and the child to Colin.
His eyes are still taped down.
Lynn and her child can clearly see Colin
but he can't see them.
It's the threat.
That's why they've done it.
It's, "We're not messing around.
You know now that we're not playing.
We have got your wife and child."
Tiger kidnapping is very strange.
It's very unusual.
So tiger kidnapping is an expression we use.
It actually originated from the IRA in Ireland
that used to kidnap members of the family
in order to coerce another person to place a bomb.
But that moved into criminal circles.
They realized if you kidnap someone's family
you can coerce them to do something.
And clearly that became of interest in bank robberies,
where people who had access to keys, to vaults,
could then gain access to the cash.
They weren't after the manager of the depot.
They were after the money that he controlled.
He's been in the van for over two hours.
He's then taken out and he's taken into
another building.
This other building smells of paint,
like a paint workshop.
His eyes are untaped.
His glasses are given back to him.
He's told to look straight ahead.
He is aware of at least five men in that workshop with him
and they've got balaclavas on.
They've all got balaclavas.
And they've all got guns.
He describes a machine gun.
He can clearly see a machine gun.
And he can clearly see a hand-drawn map of the depot,
of his workplace in front of him.
It is clearly his place of work.
I think it even depicts his office,
the toilets, the vault
and what's called the counting rooms.
So he knows that these guys
definitely know what they're talking about.
They've not just made this up.
They're not winging it.
And they start to ask him questions about it;
how many staff will be there during the night?
Who are the supervisors?
What will they have in their possession?
What are the security protocols there?
He's trying to answer and at one point
he's struggling to find an answer.
They tell him to stop fucking about
and they stick the gun to his head
and say they're gonna-- they'll kill him.
He complies as I think anyone would do
under duress and being threatened by a gun.
He's in the fear of his life
and he's genuinely frightened like any one of us would be.
Then they moved Colin to another vehicle
and told him to keep his eyes closed
and pretend that he's asleep.
ominous music
Lynn and her child were put onto the back
of a large white lorry,
which is a truck basically.
And the shutters were closed.
There was another robber on the back of the lorry
with her and her child to make sure that they didn't escape.
They then start moving.
Colin is clearly aware that they're moving towards
the direction of Tonbridge,
to his place of work.
I got in my normal time
to take over from the outgoing manager
and it was just a quiet, you know, uneventful evening.
I started my shift at 10 in the evening.
Really, really a normal day.
A normal, normal working day.
[Andy] About 1:20 in the morning, 1:21,
Colin Dixon gets out of the passenger side of the Volvo
and a robber dressed as a policeman
gets out of the driver's side.
The side gate is opened by Colin Dixon using his pass.
They walk up the side steps of the main front door.
Colin Dixon makes the control room operator
aware that he's there.
[Andy] They go into the control room.
The robber threatens the control room operator with a gun.
Colin walked straight over
and then you can see him just push the first camera down.
[Andy] Colin Dixon opens the gates.
All the other robbers,
they then approached the front door
and are also let into the building.
ominous music
[Anca] I was having my first break at half-one.
We have ladies rotating, so while I have my break,
once I finish, I come back,
then the next lady will have hers.
I went into the ladies toilet.
I heard a bang after me.
"Who is that?"
I actually spoke and I haven't heard a voice back.
I just called twice and just, I left it there,
so I didn't pay much attention.
[Alun] Sitting at my desk.
It was just a quiet evening
until I saw Colin coming in
with what I thought were a couple of policemen.
I thought it might have been some kind of security exercise.
But then Colin looked at me and he said,
"Oh, I'm sorry, Alun."
And this what I thought was a policeman
put a gun in my face.
You know, I looked at him and I saw
the guy was wearing a balaclava.
He said, "Get down."
Got on the floor and he cable-tied
my hands behind my back.
And then I could hear them going into the main room
where they had the note-sorting machine.
[Tony] I'm sitting at the desk.
I see one fellow walk through the door
and stand over to the left
with a shotgun.
He was in a defensive stance ready for someone to attack.
I was away from the panic button.
There was a panic button on the wall.
Colin come in, stood in the doorway of the room
and said, "Don't do anything stupid.
They've got my wife and kids.
Get on the floor. Do this.
Do that and don't move.
You know, do as I say."
And they're not shouting
but they're being forceful, you know?
They didn't look agitated, pretty calm.
He started jumping on me,
saying, "Get down. Get down."
He actually used his force to push me to the ground.
I tried to lift my head up so he would not let me.
Then he pushed me again, so hard I hit my face to the ground.
He lifted me up and he turned me around.
He said, "You hurt?"
Because I was actually bleeding from my mouth.
I was too scared at the moment to respond
so I wasn't responding.
He started like rolling me on the floor.
He was searching my pocket and he said
that if I have any scissors,
I have no idea why he said scissors
and if I have a mobile phone,
which I haven't had it on me.
He lifted me up.
He was still quite forceful and he pulled me up.
I was really, really scared that moment.
[Tony] We've got up,
laid down in front of the note sorting machine.
One by one they've tied us up with cable ties.
All I remember then was just laying there
for a few minutes before we were taken out.
[Anca] So they brought everyone from that room
into this hallway room.
dramatic music
I remember walking towards where the safe area was,
where a lot of the staff
were laying down on their fronts.
Just carried on, laid me down on my belly
in front the safe door.
When I saw my colleagues all on the floor,
scared and I saw the chaos inside,
that moment I was really started crying.
I really started crying.
You feel helpless, really.
You just absolutely,
that's the main feeling.
You just feel helpless.
[Alun] When we used to go into work, we used to sign in.
And they went through that, called everybody's name.
I suppose they wanted to make sure that
there was nobody else in the building.
Colin, I heard his voice saying
we should not do anything stupid.
Do as we're told.
Our life is not worth it.
Let them take whatever.
There was a discussion I think about,
there's two sets of keys to the safe.
You need two people at the same time to open the safe.
And Colin said that he would open the safe
so they can gain access.
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Then I think they realized what was in the safe.
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[Alun] Taller guy, quite a fit guy, do you know what I mean?
You might have thought that he was
an ex-soldier or something.
Everything went through him.
He seemed to be the leader of the operation.
[Tony] We could hear them moving around
and saying to each other, "Get this.
Grab that."
You can hear all the trolleys moving around.
One of the guys started to move the forklift around,
but where we were laying we was in more danger
of getting run over by the forklift than being shot.
So I volunteered, if you like
and said, "I'll do it"
because you're gonna have, just running over people.
Now, I honestly thought with all these cameras everywhere
we're all being watched.
So all I've got to do is do something out of the ordinary,
draw attention to myself.
So this comes my five minutes of madness,
banging the forklift against the walls of the safe,
just stupidly thinking that
they've got sensors in the walls,
we've got a control center looking at us.
[Alun] You could hear him banging around, hitting walls,
not coming out of the vaults as he normally would.
[Tony] Done that bit, okay.
Don't wanna keep doing it
because they're gonna realize I'm just playing around.
They ordered me to take the money to the van
through the loading bay.
I knew the lorry was lower.
We'd have to lower the loading bay to meet it.
But I wasn't gonna tell them that.
There was no way that forklift
was coming back into the building.
I put the first case onto the lorry.
That's when I noticed his wife and his child
to the side of the van.
Their faces is an imprint that'll never go.
That's when I knew this was serious.
If this goes wrong,
this is gonna go bad for them.
So I put the money on.
But I knew the forklift wouldn't come back up.
That moment there, they
told me to stand on the loading bay.
And one of them put a Skorpion machine gun
literally two foot in front of me on the ground
to go and help try and get the forklift
onto the loading bay.
I thought, I'm gonna bend down, pick this gun up,
I'm gonna go into the building.
I know everyone that I know
is laying face down on the ground.
Spray the whole building about waist-high.
Anyone standing waist-high is gonna cop it.
And then I sort of realized, don't be stupid.
And I think I've been watching too many
Arnold Schwarzenegger films, you know,
so I decided to keep calm and do as they say.
They march me back into the building,
handcuff me kneeling down with my head against a pillar.
We're kneeling with our face against the wall.
One of them was walking behind us,
walking up and down.
And at one point he just stopped behind my back.
He was touching with the gun from the head
and moved all the way to the back.
I didn't move.
I didn't move a second from that moment.
I did feel that I was gonna be killed.
[Tony] This is it.
This is where I thought
this is where the bullet comes.
This is where I get shot.
I'm just kneeling there, waiting.
But I'm listening to what's going on.
They're moving money around.
They're filling up other bits and bobs,
now the forklift is out of action.
They're just, wheelbarrows, cages, anything.
They're just filling up with money.
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[Anca] We are there for a good half an hour in that position.
And it was really, really painful.
My legs were numb.
I lost the circulation in my hands.
They were totally numb.
There was no flexibility whatsoever.
Do you know what I mean?
You couldn't get any movement out of your wrist at all.
It was like a tourniquet on your hands.
I thought they were gonna drop off.
My hands were hurting so much I called the guy and I said,
"You cannot leave my hands in this condition."
And one of the guys came over
and had a look at them and said,
"Oh, yeah, this is too tight."
And then the leader said to him,
"Well, just cut it off and loosen his hands up."
He said, you know, "Cut it?
I'm gonna cut him."
And the other guy says, "Well, use my blade and
cut down on his watch strap."
I was shocked.
You know what I mean?
He had some compassion about that he might actually hurt me.
You know what I mean?
You know, he'd come in with guns
and scared the hell out of us
but he was worried that he might actually
cut me with a knife.
He got me back on my feet,
let me shake my arms out.
I get some circulation back in myself.
And he just put me into a money cage
and cable tied my hand to one side of the cage.
[Anca] They grabbed me and just put me in the cage.
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[Tony] Lynn Dixon and their son was put into one.
Colin was put into another.
We were just basically,
we were just like animals at the zoo
in a cage.
[Alun] You know it's over because once they leave
one of them shouted out to us,
you know, quite sarcastically really, you know,
"Thank you for your cooperation."
And he wound me up. [laughs]
It did, you know what I mean?
That's the most annoying thing
that they could have said, you know what I mean?
It just, they'd humiliated us, really,
and it was just kind of rubbing some salt into the wounds.
We sat there then, just to make sure that they had left
before anybody tried to get out of the cages.
[Tony] The vehicle gate has a certain squeak to it
when it opens and closes.
So when we heard the second squeak,
we all actually know that they had gone
and the gate had closed behind them.
Lynn and the boy's cage had a hole in it
which I think the boy managed to get out from.
[Alun] Colin's son, the cage they put him in was broken
and he'd managed to pull some
of the netting back and squeeze out.
And then Colin was able to direct him
to where there were keys
to let everybody out of their cages.
I remember Colin saying like, "We should stick together.
Let's stick together.
Stay in one place."
They were talking,
all talking like what to do.
They didn't call police right away.
I think I heard something like,
"Let's not do it right now."
As soon as we got out,
I was gonna hit the panic alarm.
Colin, said no.
Let's make sure to give them time to get away,
give them time to get away.
He said, they know who we all are.
He said they'd been following us and our families.
So I was quite concerned about my family.
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And I thought, "Well, I'm gonna hit the panic alarm,"
and then I rang the police.
999 call.
A woman took the call and she said, "It's an emergency?"
I said, "Yeah."
I said, "Our work's been robbed."
And she said, "Okay."
She said, "Do you how much has been taken?"
I said--
I said, "Millions."
And I don't- I don't think she believed me.
I really don't think she believed me.
A little while later, one-
one patrol car turned up,
a policeman and a policewoman.
[Tony] So we're trying to explain to him
what this place is.
He doesn't know until I took him to look through the safe
where the money had been scattered all over the place.
That's when I think he started to realize
that this-this is more-more serious than he first thought.
And then he just came back in
and he looked at his colleague and he said,
"They're gonna have to get everybody out of bed for this."
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