Thought he’d gone for good? Think again. Jack Lowden’s character Kenneth Noye has made a reappearance in The Gold, turning up as an expat in the Canary Islands of all places.
Fans, of course, will remember Noye from The Gold’s first season, masterminding the Brinks-mat Robbery of 1983, which saw £111m worth of gold, diamonds and cash stolen from a warehouse outside Heathrow.
But despite making a clean getaway, The Gold shows that life on the run isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. When Noye bumps into fellow conspirator John Palmer, it’s not exactly a happy reunion – the episode ends with the police closing in on both of them, as well as corrupt lawyer Logan Campbell – for their various crimes, including murder, money laundering and fraud.
But who is Noye? We unpack.
M25 murderer Kenneth Noye
PA
Noye was born in Bexleyheath in 1947. His father ran a post office and his mother ran a dog racing track, but the young Noye showed signs early on of veering into criminality. He was a bully at his local secondary school, and ran a protection racket among the other pupils, before leaving at 15.
He spent a year in borstal for selling stolen bikes, and then went onto establish a complicated double life. He set up a haulage business as cover for various criminal enterprises, including fencing stolen goods, and became a prolific police informant.
By the time he was 20, he’d built up strong relationships with various corrupt officials (who in turn, got him off on things like dodging customs officers); he regularly tipped off the Met Police’s infamous Flying Squad about rival activity, apparently as a means of bumping off his competition.
Things went so well that in January 1980 he was made a Freemason, after being nominated by two police officers. He gave his occupation as a “builder”.
Noye actually remained a Freemason for seven years, until (according to former Scotland Yard DCI Mike Neville) his membership ceased after he failed to pay his subscriptions on time. Eventually, he was expelled after it was discovered he had a criminal record.
BBC/Tannadice Pictures/Sally Mais
Working as a fence eventually brought Noye into contact with Brian Perry, one of the Brinks-Mat robbers. It was Perry who hired him and John Palmer to help launder the 6,800 bars of gold bullion stolen in the robbery.
Noye did this by melting down the gold and mixing it with copper coins to try and disguise where it had come from. Despite this, the police soon came sniffing around, with tragic consequences: Detective Constable John Fordham, who was part of the surveillance team around Noye, was spotted on the grounds of his house.
Noye fatally stabbed him – and although he was acquitted on the grounds of self defence, he was found guilty of conspiracy to handle the gold (police found 11 gold bars at his house) and conspiracy to evade VAT. He’d even hidden some bars in a hole in his garden, “for a rainy day.”
He was sentenced to 14 year in prison, and fined £500,000. After he was sentenced, the Guardian reported that Noye shouted, “I hope you all die of cancer!” at the jury.
What happened to Noye after the Brinks-Mat Robbery?
Stephen Cameron was killed by Kenneth Noye in a road rage incident
After eight years in prison, Noye was released in 1994. A lawsuit brought on behalf of Brinks-Mat had recovered £3m from him during his sentence, and even after that, trouble soon came knocking.
On May 19, 1996, he was involved in a road rage incident, which culminated in him stabbing 21-year-old Stephen Cameron to death in Kent with a nine-inch knife.
Noye quickly fled the country, with help from John Palmer, and wound up in Spain. Initially, police said they were hunting for Anthony Francis – but that soon transpired to be a false identity. A vehicle registered to ‘Francis’ was discovered in Cyprus later that year, but Noye was nowhere to be seen.
He was found in Spain in August 1998, arrested in the resort town of Barbate, and extradited in May 1999. At his trial, Noye attempted to plead self defence, and said he fled because he feared not getting a fair trial.
The jury found him guilty, and he was given a life sentence by Lord Justice Latham.
Over the following 20 years, Noye made several attempts to get his sentence reduced, including appealing his sentence and meeting with the parole board. In 2019, at the age of 72, he was finally released from prison.
At the time, Cameron’s father told the BBC, “I’m totally devastated. I hoped this day would never come. Life should mean life.”
Since then, Noye has started a rehabilitation campaign of sorts. He’s attended several public events, contributed to a biography about his life and lives with his wife in the town of Looe, Cornwall.
“He is at least two people,” Noye’s biographer, Wensley Clarkson, said in 2023. “There’s a fun bloke who loves partying, who’s very good with – in his parlance – ‘the birds’ – and he’s a good neighbour.”
“But the other side of him was the cold-blooded criminal, who we know all about, who’s killed two people separately…. now, we’re supposed to accept he’s rehabilitated. I’ll leave that for others to decide if he has and he also wants to be a bit of a celebrity – that surprised me enormously.”
The Gold Season 2 is streaming now on BBC One
