The Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary
London, England, 2015
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
Hatton Garden is London's jewellery quarter. Over the Easter weekend of 2015, a gang entered a safe deposit building in the area through the lift shaft, went down to the basement and drilled through about 50 centimetres of concrete with an industrial diamond-core drill, bypassing the armoured door. The alarm went off in the early hours of 3 April, the police were notified and sent no one. The hydraulic equipment failed on the first night, and the group came back on Saturday night to finish the job.
Up to 14 million pounds in jewellery, stones and cash were taken, in what the press called the biggest burglary in English legal history; only part of it was recovered. The police analysed footage from dozens of cameras, found a white Mercedes with a black roof that kept returning to the street and traced the owner through London's congestion charge records. They then bugged the group's cars and filmed their meetings in an Islington pub, where the thieves, almost all over 60, boasted about the job.
Sources
In the game
Bank Holiday Vault
A safe deposit building in London's jewellery quarter, Tuesday after Easter, 8 am. The manager went down to the basement to open up and found three round holes in the vault wall.
In 2016, the leaders were sentenced to between six and seven years in prison, and an accomplice who switched off the alarm was only arrested in 2018. The game borrows the Easter weekend, the entry through the lift shaft, the holes in the vault wall, the ignored alarm, the return on the second night and the black-roofed car. Characters, investigation details and outcome are fiction.
