The Hatton Garden gang stole £14m in jewels… but was the REAL prize a piece of mystery evidence? Mastermind Brian Reader was a close associate of London's last real Mr Big mobster linked to 25 murders who had his eyes on a single deposit box

In September, career criminal Brian ‘The Govnor’ Reader died of colon and prostate cancer. The old-school gangster led the ‘Diamond Wheezers’ mob into Hatton Garden in 2015, stealing £14m of gold bullion and jewels from a safety deposit company.

Authorities only recovered a fraction of the heist, but some members of the gangland fraternity and detectives involved in investigating the raid, believe the record haul was not the main reason for the audacious job.

Reader, who died at the age of 84, and his gang broke into the building at 88-89 Hatton Garden and ransacked 73 out of almost 1,000 strong boxes over Easter in 2015.

Police were unable to identify what was in many of the boxes as the owners refused to come forward.

One of those believed to have had a box in the vault was Terry Adams, head of the Adams crime family.

Sources previously told the Mail that Adams could have been the mastermind behind the entire operation.

One source claimed: ‘‘If there is one man who could fix something like that it is Terry Adams. He and his minders are in Hatton Garden all the time, even at weekends. They don’t hang around here all day for fun. They are here because it is to their advantage.

‘This street is a full of useful tips and information. It is quite possible they (the Adams firm) are the source of the robbery. A burglary of this size cannot happen just like that — out of thin air. And these people are so powerful here that they can do anything.’

There was frenzied speculation at the time of the raid that somewhere in the vault was a piece of evidence which could have seen Adams sent to prison for the rest of his life.

One Scotland Yard source told The Mail: ‘This was never about stealing all that gold and jewellery. It was a job arranged by a Mr Big who only appears to have been interested in one particular box, the number of which he knew.

‘Once that had been identified and removed, he may have told the gang they could have their pick of whatever was there. The message would have been: “When the job’s done, feel free to fill your boots.”’

The notorious criminal was the ringleader of the ‘Diamond Wheezers’ heist which stole £14million worth of gems and bullion in a bank deposit heist in Hatton Garden in 2015.

The famous raid has been the subject of three feature films, including 2018’s King of Thieves starring Michael Caine.

The burglars worked through the four-day weekend of the Easter and Passover Bank Holiday, when many of the nearby businesses were closed.

It was reported that the burglars had entered the premises through a lift shaft, then drilled through the 50cm thick vault walls with a Hilti power drill.

The crook, along with fellow raid ringleaders John ‘Kenny’ Collins, Daniel Jones, and Terry Perkins, who died in prison aged 69, were slapped with one of the biggest confiscation orders in Scotland Yard’s history.

Reader had handed over just 6 per cent of his multi-million pound cut of the £13.7million raid despite a confiscation order.

The robber was jailed for six years and three months after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit burglary.

He was moved from Belmarsh to an intensive care unit at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich due to his increasingly failing health in 2018.

Reader was also involved in the 1983 Brink’s-Matt robbery where armed robbers stole £26million in gold bullion from a warehouse near London’s Heathrow Airport.

He previously led a gang known as the ‘Millionaire Moles’, who stole £3million after tunneling into the Baker Street branch of Lloyds bank in 1971.