The Baker Street Heist: Tunneling Into a Bank With an Umbrella

It is midnight in London, September 1971, and an amateur ham radio operator accidentally tunes into a live, multi-million-pound bank heist, with thieves arguing over walkie-talkies as they burrow beneath the city. Welcome to the legendary Baker Street robbery.This episode digs into how a crew of mostly working-class men, inspired by a Sherlock Holmes story, dug a 40-foot tunnel to empty 268 safety deposit boxes. We cover the meticulous analog engineering, the catastrophic mistakes, the radio enthusiast who nearly stopped them, and the rumors of royal scandal that turned a gritty burglary into a Hollywood legend.How a car salesman with no record mapped the vault using his own arm span, an umbrella, and counting nine-inch floor tilesThe 40-foot tunnel dug only on weekends, generating eight tons of waste hidden inside a rented leather goods shopWhy a 100-ton hydraulic jack failed against a hidden ancient well, forcing a switch to a thermal lance and geligniteHow ham radio operator Robert Rollins recorded the gang and sent police searching 750 banks across LondonThe lease signed in a real name that unraveled the crew, and the 800 pages of records embargoed until 2071