RETIRED Flying Squad cop DI Dick Leach nicked hundreds of villains in his time. But today – in a real-life case mirroring the plot of new Hollywood blockbuster American Gangster – he tells Crime Editor Mike Sullivan how he ended up becoming firm FRIENDS with an armed robber behind a £40m raid.

WHEN DI Dick Leach and his Flying Squad team collared Knightsbridge robbery master-mind Valerio Viccei across the bonnet of the villain’s Ferrari, neither of them dreamed they would become firm friends.

The robber and veteran thief-taker were chalk and cheese.

Viccei was an Italian playboy with a taste for guns, cocaine and women who were as fast as his wheels.

West Londoner Leach was an incorruptible married father-of-four with a taste for beer, Fulham Football Club and nicking blaggers.

Respect ... visiting the raider in jail

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After Viccei was sentenced to 22 years for his part in the 1987 £40million raid on the Knightsbridge Safe Deposit Centre, it would have been understandable if he had felt resentment towards his captor.

But Viccei and Leach forged a friendship built on mutual respect mirroring the relationship between the true-life characters in Hollywood blockbuster American Gangster.

In the film, Denzel Washington plays New York’s biggest drug dealer, Frank Lucas, who was brought to justice by an honest cop,

Richie Roberts, portrayed by Russell Crowe. After his arrest Lucas and his nemesis became friends and Roberts persuaded him to help convict a further 150 people.

Likewise, Leach was able to entice Viccei to reveal the whereabouts of some of the Knightsbridge spoils, along with crucial information about a series of gangland executions and the 1982 murder in London of “God’s Banker” Roberto Calvi.

Viccei and Leach regularly wrote to each other while the bandit was serving his sentence in Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight.

In his humorous letters, Viccei always referred to Leach as Fred – after the bloodhound Fred Bassett – and himself as Garfield or The Wolf.

The detective visited Viccei in Parkhurst on numerous occasions and also travelled to see him when he was repatriated to Italy.

But unlike Frank Lucas, there was no happy ending for the Italian gangster, who died aged 44 in 2000 during a gun battle with police.

“Viccei just couldn’t leave it alone,” Leach told The Sun this week from his retirement home in Cyprus. The 61-year-old former Sweeney detective went on: “Crime was a power trip for him and nothing to do with money.

“He thought he really was ‘The Wolf’ and I wasn’t surprised that he died like that.

“But I was still saddened by his death. He was a one-off character.”

Lawyer’s son Viccei came to London in 1986 from Italy, where he was wanted for 50 armed robberies.

Within weeks he had obtained a Beretta semi-automatic pistol and started holding up banks.

Letter ... Sweeney man got mail
from his unlikely friend

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“I was as addicted to robbery as I was to cocaine,” he later wrote in a book penned from his prison cell.

“The rush from pulling off a job was better than anything in the world, including sex.”

Viccei stashed his loot and gun in the Knightsbridge Safe Deposit Centre. When he discovered the owner, Parvez Latif, had a weakness for cocaine and his business was losing money, he moved in on him – and also, behind his back, on Latif’s girlfriend Pamela Seamarks.

Viccei wrote in his book: “I told him that if he had the right insurance, a robbery at the Knightsbridge Centre was the best thing that could happen to him. He didn’t take a lot of persuading.” The self-styled Italian Stallion assembled a team of crooks and robbed the safe deposit box centre on Sunday July 12 1987. Today it remains Britain’s biggest-ever robbery.

Posing as normal customers, the gang took control of the vault and chained the guards to a pillar after threatening them with guns.

Tracked

Three days later, police forensics officers found a fingerprint in blood on one of the boxes where Viccei had cut himself breaking the lock.

Leach said: “We eventually found it was a match to a set the Italians had sent over a few weeks before.

Card ... friends exchanged seasons greetings

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We got the names of two of his associates and tracked them down and kept them under surveillance.

“One of them, Agostina Vallorani, was twice seen driving past White’s Hotel in Bayswater Road looking at a black Ferrari.

“Then we found the other guy, Israel Pinkas, had been given a parking ticket outside White’s.

“I went down to the Yard while the surveillance team followed Pinkas and a short while later I got a call to say Viccei had just turned up at the hotel. The surveillance team screamed back to the hotel as he was leaving but we caught up with him near Marble Arch and boxed him in.” In the boot of the Ferrari, police found £2million of valuables stolen from the Knightsbridge vaults.

Leach said: “Viccei’s family and girlfriend, Helle Skoubon, were very important to him and I treated them courteously so he would open up to me. He also wanted visits from his family, which we allowed.

“Helle was convicted of handling stolen property and got a suspended sentence. But we did it sensitively and made sure she was OK. In exchange for that he owned up to five robberies, although he never dropped anybody else in it. We also ended up recovering five diamonds worth $1million and more information from him about other serious crimes.

“He was a man of his word and didn’t want to lose respect.

Kidnap

Cell mate ... Viccei sent cheeky
snap to Leach after a visit by his
girlfriend to Parkhurst

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“I hope there’s a young cop out there reading this who’ll learn that to get information you have to engage with people.”

In 1992, Viccei exercised his right to serve his sentence in his home country.

But in April 2000 he was on day release and supposed to be working at a publisher’s office when he was spotted by police in a stolen Lancia car with a Mafia informant he had met in jail.

The pair are thought to have been planning either a stick-up or a kidnap.

Viccei is said to have opened fire first, shooting a cop in the leg, before being riddled with bullets from a police machine gun.

As the former tec recalled his friendship with Viccei over lunch on a sunny terrace overlooking the Mediterranean, it was not difficult to see who came out on top.

Leach said: “He needed the buzz and excitement of robbing – and look how he ended up. There’s no place in the sun for him. It goes to show that crime’s a mug’s game.”