Jack K. Slipper, 81; For Years Pursued Escaped Participant in Britain’s Great Train Robbery

The scale and style of the Aug. 8, 1963, crime captivated Britain: More than a dozen men wearing ski masks and helmets tampered with railroad signals to stop a train, then grabbed about 120 bags of money. They were unarmed, but there was violence -- the train’s driver was hit over the head with an iron bar and never fully recovered.

After holding up the Glasgow-to-London mail train for the equivalent today of more than $50 million, the thieves hid in a farmhouse about 30 miles from the scene of the crime. They passed time with tea and Monopoly, played with real money from an earlier heist.

When Jack Slipper and other Scotland Yard detectives raided the hide-out, the criminals were gone, but fingerprints remained on teacups and the Monopoly set. Most of the gang members were soon arrested.

One of the thieves, Ronnie Biggs, staged a daring escape 15 months after he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. He climbed over a prison wall, dropped into a furniture van with a hole in the roof and fled.

For much of the rest of his life, Slipper played a game of cat and mouse with Biggs, who usually managed to stay one step ahead of the detective. The hunter and the hunted became famous and developed a grudging respect for each other. The ensuing worldwide hunt helped romanticize in Britain what became known as the Great Train Robbery.

Slipper, 81, died Wednesday after a long illness, Scotland Yard announced. In recent years, he had suffered from cancer and a stroke.

He was “one of the finest detectives in the last century,” his friend and former colleague Mike McAdam told the Guardian Unlimited.

When Slipper finally caught his man in 1974 in a hotel on the beach in Rio de Janeiro, he reportedly greeted him with, “Long time no see, Ronnie.”

But he failed to get his prey extradited because Biggs’ samba dancer girlfriend was pregnant, and as the expectant father of a Brazilian dependent, Briggs could not be deported.

The detective became known as “Slipper of the Yard” but was sometimes called “Slip Up of the Yard,” especially after newspapers ran a photo of the detective sleeping next to an empty seat meant for Biggs on the return flight from Brazil.

Bruce Reynolds, the mastermind behind the Great Train Robbery who avoided capture for five years, called the 6-foot-3 police officer a “gentle giant.”

“He was a big man, and that sort of weight carries some force in the underworld,” Reynolds said, according to Reuters. “He was quite a character and very well known by friend and foe.”

Reynolds was sentenced to 10 years in prison and is now free.

Biggs, who became the gang’s most famous member, had plastic surgery in Paris before heading to Spain, Australia and Brazil. Ailing, he finally returned to Britain in 2001 after 36 years on the run and remains in a London jail.

Biggs’ son, Michael, said he was saddened by Slipper’s death.

“Even though my father and Mr. Slipper were on different sides of the fence, there was a very high and mutual respect between them,” he said in a statement.

Jack Kenneth Slipper was born in London’s East End. He worked as an electrician’s apprentice and served in the Royal Air Force during World War II. In the early 1950s, he joined the Metropolitan Police Service, known as Scotland Yard, and within a decade was on the elite “flying squad” that investigates armed robberies in London.

He worked on a number of high-profile cases, including the successful investigation of the murders of three unarmed police officers in 1966. The police said his knowledge of the criminal underworld enabled him to solve the case, and it was his proudest achievement.

After retiring in 1979 as detective chief superintendent, Slipper became a security consultant, played golf in celebrity tournaments and wrote a memoir, “Slipper of the Yard” (1982), that tried to erase his image as the cop who could never truly bring his quarry to justice.

He accepted a settlement from the BBC in 1990 after the broadcasting company aired a television film about his pursuit of Biggs that Slipper claimed made him look incompetent.

The idea that “Biggsy” was living it up chafed Slipper, so he visited the fugitive in Brazil in 1993.

The lawman was glad he went because he discovered that Biggs had blown his share of the loot -- and he got Biggs to admit that crime doesn’t pay because he was forced to leave his family and country behind.

Slipper’s survivors include his wife, two daughters and five grandchildren.