Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking that they earn the label crime of the century.

But the stories that made headlines in decades past are necessarily remembered today.

I'm Amber Hunt, a journalist and author.

In each episode of this show, I'll examine a case that's maybe less known today, but

was huge when it happened.

This is crimes of the centuries.

If ever a crime sounded more like a movie script than a real-life thing that actually happened,

this is the one.

More than a dozen middle-class men who favored horn-rimmed glasses and get-rich, quick schemes

over a life of hard work banded together in August 1963 to pull off the biggest train

heist in international history, and a few of them got away with it.

It's known as the Great Train robbery.

Depending on who's telling the story, it's either a master-fleet planned and executed

enterprise only unraveled things to cutting-edge detective work in state-of-the-art forensic

science, or, it's a heavily romanticized tale about the intersection of bungling robbers

and crooked cops.

But no matter which version you believe, there's no denying that the case was a really big deal,

or as it's worded in one documentary.

It's one of those water-shed moments that kind of hinge my way if you like, where the

momentum of life just shifts.

In other words, it's a perfect case for crimes of the centuries.

As long as trains have existed to haul valuables across the land, robbers have plotted to relieve

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