Terry "Lucky Tel" Hogan

Terry "Lucky Tel" Hogan (1931 – 15 January 1995) was a professional criminal and prominent figure in the London underworld in the 1950s and 1960s.

Terry Hogan was born in 1931 and grew up in Fulham. In his teens, he was recruited by notorious gang leader Billy Hill, he took part in the Eastcastle Street mailbag robbery in which £287,000 (worth 7.8 million pounds in 2014) was stolen from a Post Office van on its way across the West End from Paddington station. The crime was regarded so seriously that then prime minister Winston Churchill received daily updates on the investigation and Parliament demanded an explanation from the Postmaster General, Herbrand Sackville, as to how it had been allowed to happen. It was one of the first intensely masterminded robberies that would rock Britain.

Terry Hogan had been responsible for getting into the cab of the mail van during the Eastcastle street robbery and, according to notorious thief George "Taters" Chatham, who had taught him how to cat burgle, he was lucky to escape. Taters had been associated with Peter Scott ('the human fly') - who was reputed to be the thief of Sophia Lauren's hotel suite jewellery. Terry Hogan knew the ramifications of getting caught from the Eastcastle robbery, it would not just be imprisonment but threats from gang leaders. No one was captured for this huge crime.

Lucky Tel had been recruited as a boy, into being a bookmakers runner and later to steal, he was also running from a physically abusive childhood. A punch as a child left him deaf in one ear. His boyhood years haunted him in later life, crime to him as a boy was his only escape from poverty and abuse, he was fast and the only time his family paid him the slightest attention was when he brought stolen money home to them. He became obsessed with timing. Everything was timed and re-timed including crime which made him the perfect criminal, with an OCD attention to minute detail. During the Eastcastle St. robbery he timed the distances and mail delivery vans over many days and when questioned by police while he was watching the street, he said that he was a film producer, locating good areas for a gangster film. In fact, the Eastcastle St. Robbery was mentioned in the Alexander Mackendrick film, 'The Ladykillers'.

In 1962 Hogan was involved in the robbery of an armoured payroll truck at Heathrow Airport, in which £62,000 (approximately £2 million today) was stolen. It was a deeply planned and sophisticated robbery, involving a film company make up artist, wigs, suits and bowler hats.

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