Charlie Wilson

Charles Frederick Wilson (30 June 1932 – 23 April 1990)

In 1960, Wilson began to work with Reynolds and planned to get into the criminal big league.

Reynolds organised a gang of 17 men to undertake the 1963 Great Train Robbery. Wilson was the gang's treasurer who gave the robbers their cut of the haul: £150,000 each. He was soon captured, and during the trial at Aylesbury Assizes in April 1964 he was given the nickname "the silent man" as he refused to say anything at all. Sentenced to 30 years imprisonment, he was held at HMP Winson Green, where after just four months on 12 August 1964, he arranged for a three-man gang to break in and facilitate his escape.

Wilson and his family settled in Rigaud, Quebec, Canada, situated west of Montreal and east of Ottawa.

Later career A suspect in a £100 million gold fraud, Wilson moved to Marbella, Spain, where he was suspected of involvement in drug smuggling. Engaged to launder some of the proceeds from the Brink's-Mat robbery, he lost the investors £3 million.

Death On 23 April 1990,

It is likely that Wilson was murdered on the orders of Roy Francis Adkins, with killers identified by Pat Wilson as Bill "Skins" Edmunds, with Danny "Scarface" Roff as the accomplice. The two men were known to work as a team. Adkins was angry with Wilson because he had supposedly given permission for smuggler Jimmy Rose to admit to police that a drug shipment he was carrying was owned by Adkins, who was already a wanted man. After a request from Rose, Wilson rang one of Adkins' associates, Eamon Evans, to ask whether Rose could name him. While Rose denied naming Adkins, two days after Wilson's call to Evans, police raided Adkins hideout in Amsterdam shortly after he had left it. Adkins, a heavy drug user as well as dealer, was furious with Wilson, and would not agree to peaceful terms arranged by intermediaries. Whether or not the three men were guilty, they were widely held responsible, and Adkins was himself shot dead on 28 September 1990. On 10 February 1996, Danny 'Scarface' Roff, who had recently been released from prison, was wounded in the spine when a gunman walked into a club he was visiting and shot him multiple times. In March 1997, Roff was shot dead in his car as he returned home. Edmunds survived by going on the run.