Crime: Biggs Bagged

"It's a crying shame "

Nearly two decades after he and some chums relieved the Glasgow-to-London mail train of $7.3 million in 1963, Great Train Robber Ronald Biggs, 51, left his Rio de Janeiro beach-front apartment for a local barbecue-and-beer hall. Before he had time to finish his first drink, two men wrestled him out the front door and into the back of a waiting Volkswagen bus. It took less than a minute.

In the back of the van, Biggs was drugged, thrown into a canvas sack and driven to Rio's Santos Dumont Airport,...