TO viewers of the hit TV drama The Gold, he comes across as a loveable rogue who helped launder the bullion stolen in one of the UK’s most infamous heists.
And would like the world to believe he is a changed man – but I know otherwise.
centres on the 1983 robbery, near Heathrow, and the network which handled the £26million of gold bullion stolen, led by Noye.
I’ve been asked many times who the real is – especially following the ‘kindly’ portrayal of him by well-spoken public schoolboy actor Jack Lowden in the
Well, I’ve penned three bestselling true crime books about Britain’s most notorious criminal and his associates –and I have little doubt he’s one of the most ruthless villains this country has ever seen.
In fact, I’ve even been on the receiving end of a chilling threat from Noye himself.
Yet today, this convicted killer is flirting with fame and The Gold has become the latest chapter in his alleged rehabilitation programme.
He’s turning into a celebrity criminal, which must be devastating for so many of his victims and their families.
As police hunted down the missing millions, Noye killed undercover cop John Fordham in the garden of his mansion in 1985 – although he was acquitted of murder after claiming he believed the police officer was a hitman.
He was later jailed for the brutal road rage murder of innocent motorist Stephen Cameron, 21, in 1996.
But following Noye’s 2019 release from , he launched his own one-man public relations campaign, which has included a series of carefully orchestrated public appearances.
This once self-styled invisible man of the underworld turned up at a at an Elvis tribute concert with soap star .
Then he attended an art gallery which featured a portrait of him perched atop a pile of gold bars.
And he even ‘unofficially’ co-operated with a well known TV -maker for a crime series, as well as contributing to a biography about him.
Yet only a few years earlier – while serving the life sentence for the murder of Stephen Cameron – Noye had scribbled out a threatening note inside a book I’d written about him, which was passed to me by a concerned prison officer.
In it, Noye had written: “I’m certainly no killer. Wensley Clarkson has published loads of lies about me in his books and caused untold damage. The tables will turn one day.
“All the very best – Ken Noye.”;
Framed claims
Noye was sentenced to life in 2000 for the murder of Stephen Cameron – who he stabbed to death on a motorway slip road in Swanley, .
For more than thirty years, Noye had insisted that ‘the cozzers’ had fitted him up for both the killings he’d committed because of his links to the Brinks-Mat gold.
Yet having threatened me and insisted he’d killed no one, Noye – the convicted murderer – convinced the parole board he was a changed man.
And in 2019, he was released for ‘good behaviour’.
By all accounts, worked as hard to earn that parole as he did turning the gold bullion from the Brinks-Mat robbery into cash – the crime that first catapulted him to underworld infamy.
The real Noye is a workaholic criminal who goes after anyone who crosses him, including the innocent road rage victim.
One old school villain I know recently tried to convince me Noye was a changed man after months of therapy in prison, which had helped convince the parole board to release him after he’d served a 16-year minimum tariff sentence.
The real Noye is a workaholic criminal who goes after anyone who crosses him
Wensley Clarkson
But it seems more likely that slippery Noye used therapy as a passport to freedom because he’s clearly not one to dwell on the past.
It is said that the makers of The Gold were so worried about Noye suing them, it’s alleged they persuaded him to sign off on a sanitised version of himself, which left numerous unanswered questions about that road rage killing and Noye’s time on the run in .
Typical Kenny Noye. Always in control.
Lion ‘guard’ at home
When Noye and gold smelter John “Goldfinger”; Palmer were turning that stolen bullion into cash, following the Brink’s-Mat robbery, he was smart enough to join the Freemasons after being nominated by a friendly police officer.
This enabled him to stay one step ahead of Kent Police, where several officers were believed to be masons.
In the days, weeks and months after the robbery, Noye emerged as the ultimate criminal fixer. He’d even hidden some of the gold in a pit he dug at the end of his garden ‘for a rainy day’.
Later, Noye told one veteran detective I know that he presumed no one would dare come looking for that gold because he kept a lion prowling freely around the grounds of his home.
Noye’s neighbours had heard numerous stories about the lion but none of them were brave (or stupid) enough to tell the police anything about it.
Meanwhile country gent Kenneth Noye donated handfuls of cash to local charities and even held a couple of fetes in the grounds of his immaculate mansion.
And when he finally got nicked for handling the gold, he tried to bribe decent, honest Brink’s-Mat chief investigator Brian Boyce – portrayed so well by Hugh Bonneville in The Gold – with a Freemason handshake and a million pounds.
Noye always claimed back then that he hated the notoriety that came with the Brink’s-Mat gold.
Yet while on the run in Spain – where he fled after the fatal road rage attack –he kept a copy of my first book about him, Public Enemy Number One, on the passenger seat at all time and would show it off to anyone travelling in his car.
When Noye was first released from prison back in 2019, I resisted the temptation to drag his name back into the limelight, despite the public uproar from many who continued to see him as Public Enemy Number One and felt he should never have been let out of jail.
But then one old lag I know told me he’d seen a photo of ‘reformed criminal’ Noye taken in a bar in his beloved Kent a couple of years after his release. Either side of him were two of the region’s most notorious drug lords.
Noye was no different from the ruthless, criminal mastermind who’d been found not guilty of murdering policeman John Fordham in the garden of his Kent mansion, after claiming he acted in self-defence.
I once asked an associate of his if Noye had ever talked about what had happened the night the undercover officer died.
“Kenny just said it was kill or be killed,”; said his associate. “He got away with that one, but it was only going to be a matter of time before he’d lose it again.”;
That happened on the M25 where Noye ended up murdering Stephen Cameron in the heart of the criminal’s home county of Kent.
Stephen’s heartbroken family and 17-year-old Danielle Cable – who saw her fiancé knifed to death on an intersection – have never fully recovered from what Noye did that day.
They suffered so much heartbreak that Stephen’s 75-year-old father Kenneth killed himself in 2022.
The family must have been stunned the following year when Noye issued a public apology to them and Danielle, insisting she was ‘safe’ from any reprisals.
He even denied allegations made by detectives that he’d paid a hitman to kill Danielle when he was on the run in .
And now The Gold has once again obliged them to re-live it all over again.
Whatever the truth of about the current status of Kenneth Noye, no doubt this won’t be the last we will be hearing from him.
- Public Enemy Number One – The Life and Crimes of Kenneth Noye by Wensley Clarkson is published by John Blake
