Suspect in $92 million heist is talk of English town

STAPLEHURST, England – Here in the soft hills of Kent, people recalled John Fowler as a small-town cliché: an ambitious used-car dealer who wheeled and dealed enough to buy a fancy farmhouse and plenty of gold baubles for his younger wife.

So on Thursday, when Fowler, 60, and two others appeared in an old stone courthouse down the road as the first people charged in the largest theft in British history – last week’s robbery of the equivalent of $92 million in cash – it came as a bit of a stunner down at the pub.

“He’s reasonably outgoing, a well-known face. He was generally liked, certainly not disliked,” said Andrew Hutchison, landlord of the Lord Raglan Inn, a homey little whitewashed place on a country lane near Fowler’s farm. “Everyone is a bit shocked here, to put it mildly.”

Charged with conspiracy to rob, kidnapping and handling stolen property, Fowler was ordered held until a hearing on March 13 along with two other suspects – car dealer Stuart Royle, 47, and his hairdresser girlfriend, Kim Shackleton, 38.

Britain has strict laws against publicly disclosing details of criminal cases once charges have been filed, and police would not comment on British media reports that officers digging on Fowler’s property had found millions – perhaps as much as a third of the money stolen from a private cash-sorting depot just west of here.

But cash in the ground was the talk of this village.

“He buried it in his back garden!” Dave Edwards, 53, a local taxi driver said incredulously. Normally, he said, people here have nothing more interesting to talk about than the weather: “We don’t get a lot of excitement down this way,” he said.

At another local gathering spot, the Railway Tavern, the bartender said that with all the media and police helicopters buzzing overhead, “it’s been like ‘MASH’ around here.” As she served Dave Tinton, a retired advertising executive, and his friends, the men said they believed Fowler’s property was worth $3.6 million – “not counting the buried cash,” as one piped in.

Police continued to search the property Thursday night.

In the Feb. 22 theft at Securitas Cash Management Ltd., police said, at least six armed robbers kidnapped the company’s manager, Colin Dixon, along with his wife and their 9-year-old son, and threatened to kill them unless Dixon cooperated.

Dixon helped the masked thieves into the depot, where they tied up the family and 14 employees and loaded a 7.5-ton truck with enormous stacks of cash.

A fourth person, Jetmir Bucpapa, 24, who is unemployed, was charged Thursday night with conspiracy to commit robbery, the Press Association news service reported.

In all, police have detained 14 people in the case, but only Fowler, Royle, Shackleton and Bucpapa have been charged. One was still being questioned Thursday night, and the other nine have been released.

In a case that has captivated the nation and put intense pressure on police, law enforcement officials said they recovered several vehicles they believe were used in the theft, including a van that contained almost $2.3 million in cash, guns, balaclava masks and body armor.

In Staplehurst, an hour’s train-ride southeast of London, many villagers grow apples, pears and cherries while others commute into London for work.

John Tobin, the manager of Lashings, a Mexican restaurant near the courthouse where Fowler appeared, said that years ago Fowler sold Saab automobiles from a garage across the street from the restaurant. He said Fowler, his wife Linda, and their three children had come into the restaurant “loads of times” and he was always a good customer.

“He’d never hurt a fly,” Tobin said.

At the Lord Raglan, Hutchison said Fowler was “slightly iffy perhaps, but nothing that would suggest he was a master criminal.”