Notorious MMA fighter finally admits he was part of £53m Securitas heist in 2006
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A former UFC fighter who was part of a massive £53million heist on a security company has detailed his role in the notorious crime gang.
Lee “Lightning” Murray has broken his 17-year silence from behind bars in Morocco where he is serving a 25-year sentence for the heist launched late on February 21, 2006.
Murray and a group of men ransacked Securitas and walked away with £53 million, making history as the largest ever robbery in Britain.
READ MORE: 'It didn't hurt when I was shot six times' – the harrowing story of Securitas robber
That huge heist, which took place in Tonbridge, Kent, is also the second largest in the entire world.
Years later, several suspects are still at large and the whereabouts of £32million remains a mystery.
Five of the gang were captured quickly, but Murray, now 45, and childhood pal and fellow UFC fighter, Paul Allen, fled the UK and travelled through Europe before starting new lives in Morocco.
In a new four-part Showtime documentary called Catching Lightning, Murray speaks for the first time about his role – and shoots down claims he was the gang’s Mr Big, the Mirror reports.
From his cell in Sale jail, near Rabat, he insists: “I didn’t have control over it. I weren’t the one to come up with the idea, I weren’t the one who knew where the depot manager lived.
"I weren’t the one who knew what car he drove. I wasn’t the one who had someone who worked on the inside. You know?
“How can I be the mastermind? It was never my idea.”
The heist began with the kidnapping of depot manager Colin Dixon, his wife and young son.
“This robbery was happening whether I was involved or not. It was going down. My role was no more than anybody else’s," Murray added.
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In the documentary, Murray tells in chilling detail how they duped Dixon, then 52, by dressing as police officers and tricking him into pulling over his car and cuffing him.
He was clearly suspicious, Murray said: “Then we said to him ‘Listen, we’re not real police. Just do as you’re told, do as we say’. Obviously, we showed him we had a gun with us.”
The gang drove Dixon to Elderden Farm near Staplehurst, Kent. As they begin interrogating him, other gang members also dressed as police arrived at his home and bundled Dixon’s wife and eight-year-old son into a van.
Murray said they didn't know Dixon had a young child, but "we'd gone too far to turn back".
The thugs, armed with AK-47s, threatened to harm Dixon’s wife and son unless he returned to the depot in Tonbridge and opened the vault. In the early hours, its 14 staff were trussed up while Dixon watched the gang empty carts filled with cash.
Meticulous planning had gone into the 66-minute raid, but their haul was so big they left behind £154m because their 7.5-ton lorry was too small.
Murray fled to Morocco but finally in 2010, a judge sentenced him to 10 years’ jail, which was later upped to 25 after an appeal.
Allen was arrested in 2007 and extradited in 2009. He got 18 years after pleading guilty to the robbery.
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