Real Heists

One of the biggest scores in Mafia history, the Lufthansa Airlines heist of 1978 has become the stuff of Mafia legend - and a decades-long investigation that continues to this day. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Anthony DeStefano sheds new light on this legendary unsolved case using recent evidence from the 2015 trial of 80-year-old Mafia don Vincent Asaro, who for the first time speaks out on his role in the fateful Lufthansa heist.

On Saturday, 26 November 1983, an armed gang stole gold bullion worth almost £26 million from the Brink's-Mat security depot near London's Heathrow Airport. It was the largest robbery in world history, and only the start of an extraordinary story. For forty years, myths and legends have grown around the Brink's-Mat heist and the events that followed.

The Great Train Robbery of 1963 is one of those rare events that never truly leaves the public imagination. It wasn’t only the money, though the amount was staggering. It wasn’t only the audacity, though the plan was bold enough to feel unreal. It was the way the crime unfolded like a scene from a film, in the quiet countryside, under the cover of darkness, with a nation waking up to the fact that something extraordinary had happened to something they assumed was untouchable.