Charles Frederick Wilson (30 June 1932 – 23 April 1990) was an English career criminal. A member of the Great Train Robbery gang, of which he was treasurer, he was murdered by gunshots on his Marbella doorstep in 1990.

Early life

Wilson was born on 30 June 1932 to Bill and Mabel Wilson in

Battersea Battersea is a large district in south London, part of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is centred southwest of Charing Cross and extends along the south bank of the River Thames. It includes the Battersea Park. History Batter ...

, London. Of heavy build and handsome appearance, with piercing blue eyes, Wilson was, from an early age, an intimidating presence. His friends from childhood included Jimmy Hussey, Tommy Wisbey, Bruce Reynolds and

Gordon Goody The Great Train Robbery was the robbery of £2.6million from a Royal Mail train heading from Glasgow to London on the West Coast Main Line in the early hours of 8 August 1963 at Bridego Railway Bridge, Ledburn, near Mentmore in Buckinghamshire ...

. Later on, he met Buster Edwards and two car thieves, Mickey Ball and Roy James. From 1948 to 1950 he undertook National Service. In 1955 he married Patricia (Pat) Osbourne, with whom he had three children.

Early career

Wilson turned to crime early in life and spurned his father's legitimate but low-income wage. While he did have legitimate work in his in-laws' grocer's shop, he also was a thief and his criminal proceeds went into buying shares in various gambling enterprises. He went to jail for short spells for numerous offences. In 1960, Wilson began to work with Reynolds and planned to get into the criminal big league. In 1962, a gang led by Reynolds stole £62,000 in a security van robbery at London Heathrow Airport. They then robbed a

Royal Mail , kw, Postya Riel, ga, An Post Ríoga , logo = Royal Mail.svg , logo_size = 250px , type = Public limited company , traded_as = , foundation = , founder = Henry VIII , location = London, England, UK , key_people = * Keith Williams ...

train at

Swindon Swindon () is a town and unitary authority with Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough status in Wiltshire, England. As of the 2021 Census, the population of Swindon was 201,669, making it the largest town in the county. The Swindon un ...

, which netted £700. But Reynolds, looking for his career-criminal defining moment, started planning his next train robbery over a period of three months. Reynolds organised a gang of 17 men to undertake the 1963 Great Train Robbery. Wilson was the gang's treasurer who gave the robbers their cut of the haul: £150,000 each. He was soon captured, and during the trial at

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Assizes in April 1964 he was given the nickname "the silent man" as he refused to say anything at all. Sentenced to 30 years imprisonment, he was held at HMP Winson Green, where after just four months on 12 August 1964, he arranged for a three-man gang to break in and facilitate his escape. Wilson and his family settled in Rigaud, Quebec, Canada, situated west of Montreal and east of

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...

. For Christmas 1964, the family travelled to

Acapulco Acapulco de Juárez (), commonly called Acapulco ( , also , nah, Acapolco), is a city and major seaport in the state of Guerrero on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, south of Mexico City. Acapulco is located on a deep, semicircular bay and has bee ...

to join Reynolds and Edwards, who had not been caught. Reynolds and his family later moved to Montreal, but a proposed theft of

Canadian dollar The Canadian dollar ( symbol: $; code: CAD; french: dollar canadien) is the currency of Canada. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, there is no standard disambiguating form, but the abbreviation Can$ is often suggested by notable style ...

s with Wilson was prevented by Royal Canadian Mounted Police observation. Reynolds moved to Vancouver, before returning that summer to the South of France.

Re-capture

Having successfully evaded re-capture for four years, Wilson was caught on 24 January 1968, after his wife telephoned her parents in England, thus enabling

Scotland Yard Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs, but not the City of London, the square mile that forms London's ...

to track them down. Returning to England, Wilson served 10 more years in the train robbers secure unit at HMP Durham. He was the last train robber to emerge from prison, doing so in 1978.

Later career

A suspect in a £100 million gold fraud, Wilson moved to Marbella, Spain, where he was suspected of involvement in drug smuggling. Engaged to launder some of the proceeds from the Brink's-Mat robbery, he lost the investors £3 million.

Death

On 23 April 1990, Wilson's cousin and his wife, who were staying with the Wilsons in a hacienda north of Marbella, left the house, noticing a young man with badly dyed spiky blond hair sunning himself beside his yellow bicycle on a nearby roundabout. The same man knocked on the front door of Wilson's house, and when Pat Wilson opened the door, he asked (in a London accent) to speak to Wilson, as he had a message from Eamon Evans. A baseball cap pulled down shielded his eyes from view. Pat got him to leave the bike near the front door, and let him go out to the back garden to talk to Wilson who was preparing a barbecue dinner to celebrate his and Pat's wedding anniversary. After five minutes of conversation, the visitor kicked Wilson in the groin, broke his nose, and shot him twice, once in the neck and once in the head. One of Wilson's two guard dogs sustained a broken leg trying to defend him (it later had to be put down). The killer then jumped over the back fence in the one spot where it was possible to do so and to land safely outside, and circled back to the front of the house to retrieve the yellow bike. An accomplice pulled up in a van nearby and the killer put the bike in the back and escaped. The whole hit was expertly designed to kill Wilson alone, and leave his wife alive. Wilson's wife moved back to London to live near her daughters. Wilson was buried in

Streatham Cemetery Streatham Cemetery is a cemetery on Garratt Lane in Tooting, London; it is one of three cemeteries managed by Lambeth London Borough Council, the others being West Norwood Cemetery and Lambeth Cemetery. Both Streatham and Lambeth Cemeteries ar ...

in London. It is likely that Wilson was murdered on the orders of

Roy Francis Adkins Roy Francis Adkins (4 October 1947 – 28 September 1990) was an English gangster. He was a recognised London gangland figure during the 1970s and 80s. Biography Adkins started his career in robbery and, as with many criminal figures during tha ...

, with killers identified by Pat Wilson as Bill "Porky" Edmunds, with Danny "Scarface" Roff as the accomplice. The two men were known to work as a team. Adkins was furious with Wilson, that he had supposedly given 'permission' for smuggler Jimmy Rose to admit to police that a drug shipment he was carrying was owned by Adkins, who was already on the run from police. After a request from Rose, Wilson rang one of Adkins' associates, Eamon Evans, to ask whether Rose could name him. While Rose denied naming Adkins, two days after Wilson's call to Evans, police raided Adkins hideout in Amsterdam, shortly after he had left it. Adkins, a heavy drug user as well as dealer was furious with Wilson, and would not agree to peaceful terms arranged by intermediaries. Whether or not the three men were guilty, they were widely held responsible and Adkins was himself shot dead on 28 September 1990. On 10 February 1996, Danny 'Scarface' Roff, who had recently been released from prison, was shot in the spine when a gunman walked into a club and shot him multiple times. In March 1997, Roff was shot dead in his car when he returned home. Edmunds survived by going on the run.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilson, Charlie 1932 births 1990 deaths 20th-century English criminals Criminals from London Deaths by firearm in Spain English criminals English expatriates in Canada English expatriates in Spain English people murdered abroad English prisoners and detainees Great Train Robbers Great Train Robbery (1963) People from Battersea People murdered in Spain Prisoners and detainees of England and Wales Burials at Streatham Cemetery