Terry Perkins dead: Hatton Garden jewellery burglar dies in prison aged 69

Ringleader of notorious heist serving seven-year jail term

Smashed safe deposit boxes in the underground vault of the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company. Around £200 million was stolen during the burglary (Getty)

Terry Perkins, one of the ringleaders of the Hatton Garden burglary has died in Belmarsh prison.

The 69-year-old was serving a seven-year jail term for the robbery of a safe deposit facility in central London in 2015, in which he stole £14m in jewels, gold and cash.

His death on Monday came days after he was ordered to pay back more than £6.5m or face seven more years in jail.

Undated Metropolitan Police handout photo of Terry Perkins (PA Archive/PA Images)

Last week Perkins’ barrister Peter Rowlands said his client had been diagnosed with “severe heart failure”.

He told Woolwich Crown Court Perkins would have to sell his £72,000 apartment in Portugal, but would have to serve the extra years as there was “no prospect” of any further funds being recovered.

A prison service spokesman confirmed Perkins died in custody on Monday, adding: “As with all deaths in custody, there will be an independent investigation by the prisons and probation ombudsman.”

Perkins was due to face trial later this year for another high-end raid, in which more than £1m worth of goods was stolen from Chatila jewellers in Old Bond Street on the August bank holiday weekend in 2010.

He was one of the key players behind the Hatton Garden burglary, in which an estimated £13.69m of gold, cash and gems were ransacked from 73 safe deposit boxes after a hole was drilled through the vault wall.

Perkins, of Heene Road, Enfield pleaded guilty to conspiracy to burgle the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit in London’s jewellery quarter. along with fellow ringleaders John “Kenny” Collins, 77, Daniel Jones, 63, and Brian Reader, 78.

He passed his 67^th birthday during the raid over the 2015 Easter weekend.

Exactly 32 years earlier, on April 4 1983, he celebrated his 35^th birthday by carrying out an armed robbery on the headquarters of Security Express, on Curtain Road, in Shoreditch.

He was part of a gang of masked robbers who made off with £6m in what, at the time, was Britain’s biggest cash robbery.

Perkins was jailed for 22 years at the Old Bailey in 1985, along with John Knight, where they were described as “two evil, ruthless men”.

Press Association contributed to this report