Page 177 - Once a copper 10 03 2020

The key breakthrough was when Detective Chief Superintendent Millen met a
distinguished barrister in a smoking room of an exclusive West End club who
stated that someone was willing to inform on the gang. The process of talking
to the informer was handled by Hatherill and Millen themselves, and they
never divulged the identity of the informer to the detectives in their
command. The informant had just been jailed in a provincial jail before the
train robbery and was hoping to get parole from talking. He clearly did not
know all the names perfectly, and a second informant (a woman) was able
to fill in the gaps. Millen stated in his book "Specialist in Crime", 'the break-
through with the informer came at a moment when I and my colleagues at
the Yard were in a state of frustration almost approaching despair'. This
process saw them get 18 names to be passed on to detectives to match up
with the list being prepared from fingerprints collected at Leatherslade.

Unfortunately, the decision to publish photos of the wanted suspects had
already been made by Hatherill and Millen, despite strong protests from
Tommy Butler and Frank Williams. This resulted in most of the robbers going to
ground.

Tommy Butler, the thief-taker

Tommy Butler was a shrewd choice to take over the
Flying Squad and in particular the Train Robbery Squad.
He became arguably the most renowned head of the
Flying Squad in its history. He was known variously as "Mr
Flying Squad", as "One-day Tommy" for the speed with
which he apprehended criminals and as the "Grey Fox"
for his shrewdness. He was Scotland Yard's most
formidable thief-taker and, as an unmarried man who
Figure 81 Tommy Butler - the still lived with his mother, he had a fanatical dedication
Thief Catcher to the job. Butler worked long hours and expected all

members of the squad to do the same.
The squad later had to work out rotations whereby one member would go
home to rest as otherwise they were getting only three hours of sleep per
night and had no time to eat healthily or see their families. When the squad
tried to get him to ease the working conditions, Butler was enraged and
threatened to send them back to their normal duties. Butler was said to be
very secretive, with Jack Slipper claiming in his book Slipper of the Yard (1981)
that "he wouldn't even tell his own left hand what the right one was doing".
This meant that Train Robbery Squad members were often dispatched on
specific errands with no knowledge of how their tasks fitted into the overall
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investigation.