John 'Goldfinger' Palmer became a household name not just in the West Country, but across the country after his alleged involvement in the Brink's-Mat robbery in 1983, which at the time was the most costly robbery in the world.
The gangland boss was, at one point Britian's richest criminal - even beating the Queen on the Sunday Times Rich List - after building a fortune of around £300 million with a combination of money laundering, fraud, racketeering and legitimate businesses.
The BBC has decided to shed light on Palmer's heinous journey from a small-time criminal to a mastermind with two new productions - a six-part television series called "The Gold," starting tonight (February 12) at 9pm, and a new Gangster podcast that follows his ascent to power and eventual deadly downfall.
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But what were his links to the West Country, and to Bristol? After tying the knot in Bristol in 1975, Goldfinger soon set up residence in a grand mansion near Wick in South Gloucestershire and ran his gold and jewelry business, Scadlynn Ltd, from Bedminster, south of the river.
He was already no stranger to crime - having served six months for fraud already - but it wasn't until the Brink's-Mat robbery that the extent of his ties to the criminal underworld came to light.
Three years after the events at the Brink's-Mat robbery, in which £26 million of gold, diamonds and cash had been stumbled across in a warehouse near Heathrow Airport, and subsequently stolen by a group who had expected only to find a fraction of the trove they uncovered.
Having no idea how to move that amount of gold bullion without arousing suspicion, John Palmer made himself known, and it is believed that a substantial amount was melted down in a garden shed at his residence in Lansdowne, near Bath.
Battlefields, where he lived at the time, was little more than a well-guarded castle, complete with rottweilers; it was "virtually unheard of" that they would be brought inside, such was his paranoia.
Two years after the event, in 1985, the police conducted a raid on Scadlynn's North Street location and found that the firm was melting down the £26 million in stolen Brink's-Mat bullion from the 1983 Heathrow Airport heist and attempting to sell it as legitimate.
Goldfinger's business associates, Garth Chappell and Terence Patch, were promptly arrested, but Goldfinger and his family had fled to Tenerife just days before the business was raided.
While Chappell was tried and jailed for 10 years - Palmer began building his life and his timeshare business on the Island Village in Tenerife - the largest of the Canary Islands - near Playa de las Americas.
It seems that Palmer just could not stay on the right side of the tracks, as although he stayed out of the headlines, he reportedly went on to deceive over 16,000 individuals in a fraudulent timeshare scheme. At the time police said he had "created 16,000 motives for killing him".
All his years of deception and short-changing led to his £300 million fortune and an executive lifestyle that included Learjets stashed with money and Savile Row suits. Although they had to be tailored a size larger to allow for his bulletproof vest to be worn.
In 1987, four years after the infamous robbery, Palmer faced trial at the Old Bailey, yet the jury returned a not-guilty verdict after his continued claim of denying that he knew the gold was stolen. In a remarkable show of audacity, Palmer blew kisses from the dock to the 12 jurors presiding over the trial.
In 2001, the law eventually caught up with him and he was sentenced to eight years in prison. Goldfinger was subsequently incarcerated at Long Lartin maximum security facility in Worcestershire.
During the four years he spent imprisoned there, he allegedly continued to run his various businesses, and served the rest at home in his then location of South Weald, a rural settlement in Brentwood, Essex.
It wasn't until 2015 that he hit the news again when his son James Ketley's girlfriend found Goldfinger dead in the garden.
"I heard no gunshots, it was just very, very quiet", said Mr Ketley in an interview with BBC Newsnight, "I could still feel his heart beating so I thought there might be a chance we could keep him alive. I felt so helpless because I had to watch him die in front of me."
Initially, the investigation was not prioritised correctly due to the fact that the bullet holes had been mistaken for heart surgery scars, resulting in Essex Police inititally believing he had died of "natural causes". They now say the crime had "all the hallmarks" of a contract killing.
At the time of his murder, John Palmer was still due to stand trial in Spain for real estate fraud in Tenerife and it was rumoured that no further action would be taken against him. The killer has never been found, and the case remains open with a six-figure sum on the table for anyone with information leading to the capture of his killer.
You can watch The Gold on BBC One on Sunday, February 12 at 9pm. The full series will then be available for viewing on BBC iPlayer.
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