The Hatton Garden Safe Deposit robbery was incredibly well-planned: A gang of up to seven men may have made off with £200 million ($300 million) in gold, jewels and diamonds after abseiling down a lift shaft and drilling into the side of a concrete vault.
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Here's a minute-by-minute timeline of the Hatton Garden jewelry heist, Britain's biggest robbery
Although the robbers were professional, they may have left behind clues.
One of the robbers on closed-circuit TV.
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Over Easter weekend — a four-day holiday during which no business is conducted — the men worked with a 77-pound,
The robbers — nicknamed
December 11, 2014
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Two £3,500 Hilti DD350 drills and another £63,000 of equipment are stolen from a construction site on Fetter Lane, London, according to The Mirror. Hilti only sells a few hundred units of that type of drill.
April 1 (Wednesday)
12.00: An underground fire breaks out in the nearby Holborn neighbourhood and burns for several days.
April 2 (Thursday):
21.19: Staff at Hatton Garden lock the doors for the weekend.
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21.23 Mr Ginger appears and descends to the vault. A few minutes later three men get out of a white van and follow him with
April 3 (Good Friday)
01.00 (roughly): Mr Ginger is seen above ground briefly.
07.51: The gang is seen above ground for the first time since the night before. They are bringing up their equipment in stages. It includes a red wrench, bolt cutters, two red tool boxes, a big black bucket, an angle grinder and crowbars.
08:05: First appearance of The Old Man. He has grey hair. Three gang members talk. One is wearing pink trainers.
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8.12: The transit van returns and the gang load it up.
10.00: The Holborn fire is finally brought under control.
April 4 (Easter Saturday)
April 5 (Easter Sunday)
05.46: The gang begin bringing up more stuff to the surface.
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06.01: According to The Mirror, The Old Man makes a mistake as he rests while dragging a bin: "The Old Man leans on the bin, struggling for breath, as he reveals a clear shot of the side of his face."
- The communal lift on the second floor was disabled.
- They climbed down the lift shaft into the basement
- They forced open a set of shutter doors before making their way to the vault.
- At the vault, the gang used a Hilti DD 350 drill to cut into the vault.
- The vault is 2 metres thick, made of concrete.
- The gang left behind numerous power tools.
- The vault is left in disarray, covered in debris and empty deposit boxes.
- There was no sign of forced entry from the outside of the building.
April 11: The BBC reports that police have yet to interview the owner of the building, who is overseas.
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April 13: The Holborn fire was not deliberately set, according to London fire commissioner Ron Dobson.
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