Did Hove man cosh driver during Great Train Robbery?

The role of two brothers from Hove who were suspected of being involved in the Great Train Robbery has been questioned again today (Thursday 8 August).

George and Terry Sansom, both now dead, were identified as suspects in official papers released last year by the government.

A national newspaper report today suggested that one of the brothers may have been a suspect referred to by police as Mr Three.

And that Mr Three may have been the man who coshed train driver Jack Mills during the robbery which happened exactly 50 years ago today on Thursday 8 August 1963.

Mike Sullivan, crime editor of The Sun, said that the Great Train Robbery was pulled off by a gang of 21 men but that six were never caught.

He said that Mr Three was also part of a gang known as the South Coast Raiders who had robbed trains on the London to Brighton line over the previous two years.

He added that it was possible that Mr Three was one of the Sansom brothers. George Sansom was the father of the former Arsenal and England footballer Kenny Sansom.

Terry Sansom was Kenny’s uncle and lived at Court Farm, at the top of King George VI Avenue, also known as Snaky Hill, in Hove, in the 1980s.

Terry Sansom was acquitted of a £9,400 payroll robbery in the early 1960s. He was also cleared of being part of a drug smuggling conspiracy at Brighton Crown Court in the late 1980s.

The Sansom brothers were included on a list of people suspected of carrying out the Great Train Robbery which was compiled by Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Butler, head of the Flying Squad.

Although they were on his list of 28 suspects, compiled just over a week after the gang stole £2.6 million from a mail train in Buckinghamshire, the Sansoms were not charged.

Eleven men were convicted of the robbery including Ronnie Biggs, Ronald “Buster” Edwards and Bruce Reynolds.

The Sun report said that Buster Edwards originally claimed to have coshed Jack Mills, who never worked again, but retracted his claim shortly before he died, hinting that it was Mr Three.

The newspaper also claimed that there were suggestions that some of those who escaped justice did so after bribing Metropolitan Police detectives.

In February 2000 another Terry Sansom, then 39, of Goldstone Crescent, Hove, was jailed for ten years for conspiring to supply drugs and handle stolen goods. He operated out of premises in Brunswick Road, on the corner of Western Road.