South London Gangster in Colombia
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Alternate Title: Old Prison Pal of The Mick Lives Fast, Dies Young
The Mick first heard of John Rowley in his days as a heroin-addicted thief on the streets of London. Both worked among the criminal underworld of petty crime and bank robberies. The Mick had heard of an established gunman named John Rowley but didn’t meet him until their paths crossed in Colombia.
In The Mick’s words, John Rowley was a conman and playboy who’d charm anybody he met while relieving them of value, then would turn around and spend everything he stole with anybody around him on amazing excess. This story of John Rowley is entirely based on what he told The Mick and what The Mick saw with his own eyes.
In the early 80s, the South London underworld included lots of Irish immigrants or local Brits of Irish descent (hence the Irish names), and The Mick was never sure exactly what Rowley was. But he’s sure Rowley was a known gangster who cut his teeth in South London.
After being sent to prison in Bogota for trafficking cocaine, The Mick learned of a John Rowley locked up in Medellin, Colombia. He heard through the prison grapevine that Rowley was a bazucero who’d been in a few knife fights. They became pen pals around 1986 and briefly met in 1990 after The Mick was released. He visited where Rowley was finishing his sentence in Ibague.
In their brief year of friendship, The Mick learned how Rowley came to Colombia. He had been involved in the 1983 Brinks-Mat robbery near London’s Heathrow Airport, the biggest gold heist in England’s history. It was an armed robbery team of six masked gunmen with sawed-off shotguns, plus a few others involved in planning, using inside information from a connection in Brinks’ warehouse security. Rowley was a gunman.
The team had only been aiming for £3 million in cash. In the heat of haphazard madness, they coincidentally stumbled upon three tons of gold bullion worth £26 million ($200 million today). Here’s a National Geographic segment on the robbery, a small episode of the long story that ensued:
Long story short, gang leader Micky McAvoy was quickly arrested and sentenced to 25 years. Also arrested were Brian Robinson and security guard / inside man Anthony Black.
A scramble of double-cross and murder played out over the years as the gold changed hands and was slowly melted down and sold throughout London. Insiders were knocked off while the criminal establishment of South London took murky ownership of the gold.
Kenneth Noye was instrumental in disguising the gold’s origins, and got rich until he was convicted of murder in 1996. City and private resources have been dispatched with the only aim to recover whatever money it can before it’s all invested in global tax havens.
According to this 2000 BBC article recapping Brinks-Mat in all its glory:
Despite dogged police work spanning nearly two decades, it seems most of those involved have simply got away with it – and most of the gold will never be recovered … It is claimed in some quarters that anyone wearing gold jewellery bought in the UK after 1983, is probably wearing Brinks Mat.
Rowley didn’t hang around for the drama that followed the robbery. Three tons of gold and two boxes of diamonds are on the record as part of the loot. Not reported was a bag of Thomas Cook traveler’s checks Rowley claimed to have grabbed and kept. Rowley may have also gotten the diamonds or a relatively small cash payment before fleeing the UK for Spain, and then to the Colombian paradise islands of San Andres in 1984.
Rowley lived his good life (booze, coke, and women at the beach) for a year passing off the traveler’s checks for cash or trade in a country with no extradition treaty. With rudimentary Spanish and the swagger of a playboy, he was changing the checks for cash in Medellin and partying in San Andres. After about a year, the bad checks caught up with him and he was arrested in Medellin.
Rowley was quickly jailed (in paisa prison), where he spent over five years. At this point, the British Embassy would’ve learned about him. Maybe due to whatever extradition situation existed at the time, or perceived slim chances they’d successfully convict him in the UK, or if they knew he didn’t have any Brinks-Mat gold, or for whatever reason, the British Embassy staff ignored him and probably assumed he’d get cut up in Colombian prison. This is when The Mick and Rowley started a correspondence.
The Mick was released from prison in 1989 and, while living with the family of the semi-connected Cali Cartel guys he was arrested with, found a job teaching English. He settled into Bogota and visited Rowley when he was moved to Espinal prison near Ibague. The Mick brought Rowley fresh, nutritious food unavailable in prison for their first face-to-face meeting. Rowley had no interest in the food; he wanted cocaine. The Mick slipped him seven grams, one of which Rowley vacuumed up his nose immediately. That was The Mick’s first impression of John Rowley.
Rowley was released around 1990 and immediately went looking for The Mick in Bogota. He found him having lunch with his boss at the English institute he’d been working for. For their second face-to-face meeting, a surprised Mick went along with the amazing lies Rowley spun to the institute manager. By the end of the lunch Rowley had a job at the same institute and a few days later was temporarily living in his new boss’ house. (Note that, due to the security situation in Colombia, native English speakers were in high demand for teachers’ jobs).
Within a week, Rowley had money for booze and coke and was having sex with the institute manager’s wife. Things quickly soured but Rowley scraped up enough money to leave the institute and started staying at hotels and brothels on credit. The Mick introduced him to his Colombian underworld friends operating out of downtown Bogota. They needed a native English speaker who could use financial terms in phone conversation and in writing. Before introducing Rowley, The Mick refused to vouch for him as trustworthy and even warned them to be careful.
Fax machines were going mainstream and provided ample potential for scams, especially on banks, that Rowley assisted in executing with the Colombians. However, Rowley also started getting over on them – asking for weekend loans he would never pay back or passing off checks and other stolen goods for more than they were worth. According to The Mick, Rowley was an incredibly gifted sweet-talker who could trick and manipulate people in English and Spanish. He once showed up at the dive bar The Mick frequented with other English teachers and introduced himself to the manager as The Mick’s partner, ultimately convincing him to cash a bad check. The Mick learned this the next morning when Rowley came back for more, the manager all too eager to sell him pesos for traveler’s checks at a favorable exchange rate on the dollar. This stunt planted the seeds of The Mick’s distancing himself from Rowley, given he’d been shielding this bar and circle of gringos from Rowley.
The Mick didn’t trust Rowley but got intoxicated on the times they had together. Rowley was also a native English-speaking thief and drunk. He’d steal and blow it all immediately. He often laid his entire pile of money on the table in a discoteca to spend on any indulgence they might have: beer, whisky, coke, marijuana, or drinks for women. Rowley spent weeks at a time living in brothels. One time The Mick saw him being pleasured by six women. The Mick went along with him for these times.
Rowley soon stole from so many people in Bogota, drank so much alcohol, and smoked so much crack that he broke down. Cold and shivery, Rowley met The Mick and a friend for lunch one day. Rowley asked for cocaine as they invited him to beer and aguardiente. The Mick says that with each additional snort or swallow, Rowley transformed into the smooth, manipulative guy he’d known before.
Rowley proposed a scam. He noted the British ambassador was traveling in China, then asked The Mick to call the embassy and, posing as a British tourist, find out the name of the interim ambassador. Once The Mick got the name, Rowley used a posh, uptown-London accent in a call to a first-class hotel just next to the embassy building on Calle 100. He posed as the interim ambassador and explained that an important British diplomat had been robbed and needed immediate accommodation at the Embassy’s expense.
In new clothes from The Mick, Rowley also played the British victim to get a room. The Mick explained that the staff was drooling over Rowley, almost intimidated by how he carried himself with an air of importance and urgency. Plus, they were trying to upsell him as much as possible as he was on the embassy’s tab. They put him into new clothes and a watch. They brought him room service and bottles of booze. Rowley arranged for cash advances and withdrew sizable amounts at each shift change of the hotel cashier. After spending five years in Colombian prison for ripping off hotels in Medellin and San Andres, he started in Bogota.
Around this time, approaching his one-year mark as a free man in Bogota, Rowley invited The Mick to party on his tab at a brothel. Rowley had been there for a few days – drinking, snorting, and banging whores per his usual. The Mick joined him at a round booth with four or five girls. The girls were topless while making out and fondling each others’ breasts for Rowley, each with a glass from the bottle of whisky on the table and each helping themselves to his pile of cocaine.
The Mick joined this rather standard party. The tab grew as beer and whisky were ordered, cocaine disappeared, The Mick drank himself stupid, Rowley snuck off with various girls (on the tab), night turned to dawn, dawn turned to sun, and The Mick woke up in Rowley’s room at the brothel. Rowley had left, explaining to the brothel management that The Mick would stay until he returned to settle the tab.
The Mick called one of his clients (he was teaching English classes independently by that point) and asked for a loan to pay the ~1 million peso tab (only $500 at the current exchange, but this was an astronomical sum in 1990). The next he heard of Rowley was that he was in Bogota prison. He’d been picked up having a beer on a café patio on some Bogota street. A security manager for one of the hotels he defrauded recognized him and called the police. Rowley did six months in Modelo.
The Mick was angry about the brothel tab incident, but he let Rowley stay with him for a few nights after getting out of prison. One night they were drinking late when The Mick went to bed around 3 am. He woke up to find his brand-new stereo and speakers missing, and no sign of Rowley. On his calendar was a note that read something like, “Had to go, see you soon. Don’t worry about the money!”
The Mick swore Rowley off forever. A few months later, The Mick’s then-girlfriend met Rowley on the street where she was selling merchandise. He ran his game and lured her attention away, stealing the Colombian emeralds The Mick had given her to sell.
The Mick was walking downtown with that same girlfriend the next time he saw Rowley, who had joined the indigente / bazucero / crackhead / stumble-bum populace in Bogota. He was wearing shoes too small for his feet with no socks or laces, pants revealing his shins and tied at the waist with a rope, and a suit jacket with no shirt underneath. He begged The Mick for 500 pesos so he could get to the north of the city and rob. The girlfriend mentioned the emeralds and The Mick told him to fuck off.
The last The Mick heard of John Rowley came from a prison friend who was plugged into the crack / crime scene in downtown Bogota and the Cartucho. Rowley had started robbing among that world and was soon wanted dead by different people. He got it with a knife on some unknown night, on some unknown Bogota street, by some unknown indigente.
When asked what his greatest memory of John Rowley was, The Mick told me about the Samantha Fox after-party.
Samantha Fox was a British pop singer on tour in Bogota. Rowley and The Mick went to the after-party and provided mountains of cocaine to everybody and ordered bottles of champagne. They were the center of attention among that gorgeous singer and her entourage, the virtually all-British mix of rich and beautiful, plus whatever Colombian models were there. It was a first for many of them to see so much cocaine being given away – not uncommon in Colombia.
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These watercolor paintings by Chicago painter William K. Moore may resemble what the bogotano who finally killed John Rowley looked like:
Extras:
Low-budget British film about the Brinks-Mat heist, Fool’s Gold starring Sean Bean on IMDb:
Cheesy clip of robbery from Fool’s Gold on YouTube:
Death Warrant by Will Pearson, a book about Kenneth Noye and what happened after the Brinks-Mat robbery
Best article on Brinks-Mat heist, ‘Curse of Brinks-Mat heist claims its latest victim’ (The Guardian)
Shitty song by Samantha Fox:
If you liked this post, see all The Mick’s stories.
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One Response to “South London Gangster in Colombia”
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Suckin awesome, dude. Makes me want to come to Colombia more than ever
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My hope to live for some time in Colombia has been put off for quite some time yet due to financial restraints and other issues that need settling, but it’s still a plan for the future that I look forward to one day carrying out. Keep up the good stories mate! Life never seems to be boring with the company you keep.