Four men went on trial in London Monday for the audacious heist of £14 million ($21.2 million) worth of gems, jewelry and cash from a safe deposit company in the city's diamond district, described by a prosecutor as "the largest burglary in English legal history."
Thieves struck the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd. over the four-day Easter holiday in April, gaining access through an elevator shaft before using a drill to bore through a 6-foot-thick wall and enter the basement vault, investigators said at the time.
Three of the accused -- William Lincoln, 60; John Harbinson, 42; and Carl Wood, 60 -- are charged with conspiracy to burgle.
Along with Hugh Doyle, 48, they are also charged with conspiracy to conceal, convert or transfer criminal property, while Doyle faces an additional charge of actually concealing, converting or transferring criminal property.
The men deny all the charges.
'Ringleaders' already pleaded guilty
On the opening day of the trial at Woolwich Crown Court, prosecutor Philip Evans told the jury that four other men -- John Collins, 74; Daniel Jones, 58; Terrence Perkins, 67; and Brian Reader, 76 -- had already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to burgle in relation to the case.
The guilty pleas of those men, whom he described as "ringleaders and organizers" of the crime, was "evidence that there was in fact a conspiracy to burgle," he said.
The prosecution would attempt to persuade the jury of six men and six women that Lincoln, Harbinson and Wood were also party to the conspiracy, he said.
"These four ringleaders and organizers, although senior in years, brought with them a great deal of experience in planning and executing sophisticated and serious acquisitive crime not dissimilar to this," he said.
"Two of these men had also been involved in some of the biggest acquisitive crimes of the last century, and the other two had for many years in their earlier lives been involved in serious theft."
Their level of experience, and the magnitude of the crime, meant that they would only have involved others "who could be fully trusted," he said.
