British fugitive Ronnie Biggs spent decades on the run from the law in the United Kingdom. The government and the public knew where he was most of that time, as he was openly living in Brazil, exploiting the country’s lack of an extradition agreement with the U.K. It turns out, he was almost tricked into getting arrested by officials when they posed as crew members of the James Bond film, Moonraker, starring Roger Moore. Here’s what happened.
Biggs Had Ducked Arrest For More Than Three Decades
Biggs was part of the crew that pulled off the infamous Great Train Robbery in England in 1963 (not to be confused with the movie based on a Michael Crichton book of the same name). He was caught, along with most of his cohorts, a few weeks after the robbery and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. He escaped after serving 15 months, and first fled to Paris, then Australia, before finally settling in Rio de Janeiro in 1970.
While in Rio, Biggs basically lived out in the open. By the time the press discovered where he was, his Brazilian girlfriend was pregnant, and Brazil wouldn’t allow the father of a Brazilian to be extradited. So, Biggs was pretty much free to do whatever he wanted, and for the next 31 years, he often gave interviews and created publicity.
The Kidnapping Attempt Using The Bond Production
In 1979, a former soldier in the U.K. military named John Miller posed as a stuntman for the Roger Moore-era Bond film Moonraker. The Bond film was being shot in Brazil at the time, and Moore knew Biggs’ quest for attention and used this to his advantage. Miller made contact with Biggs, and reportedly “offered” him £5,000 for a cameo in the movie. Biggs was to be flown to Northern Brazil, then taken by boat to the set.
However, it was all a ruse. Miller had no connection to the movie’s production, and it seems his mouth was as big as Biggs’. Miller supposedly told a reporter what his plan was, and that reporter passed the information on to Biggs. Hip to the deception, Biggs never showed up to the meeting, and he once again dodged an attempted arrest. In 2003, 40 years after the heist, Biggs returned to England and was arrested. He spent the next six years in jail and died in 2013.
This whole charade that was cooked up by John Miller was hardly Argo, the fake movie production created by Canadian and American spies to facilitate the escape of hostages in Iran in 1979, and the story turned into an Academy Award-winning movie of the same name in 2012. Eon Productions, which was making Moonraker, wasn’t in on it, nor was the British government. It was a bit like Dog the Bounty Hunter concocting a scheme to catch a fugitive. It didn’t work, but the story would make for a pretty fun movie, though, probably not the next Bond movie.