Return To Cult Football Index

The theft of the Jules Rimet World Cup Trophy in March 1966 remains to this day one of the more memorable embarrassments for the FA who were based at Lancaster Gate in London at the the time of the débâcle. The trophy is named after a French lawyer who was president of FIFA when the World Cup Trophy was initiated and was insured for £30,000. The cup had been safely on display in Brazil for the previous eight years with no mishap, and the Brazilian Football Authority was scathing in its comments of the theft of the trophy they had won in 1958 and 1962. They said: “It was a sacrilege that would never have been committed in Brazil where even the its thieves loved football too much.” Words which would come back to haunt them years later 1983.

The FA took custody of the trophy in January 1966 as hosts of the World Cup Tournament being staged in July of that year and was kept securely at Lancaster Gate apart from a few publicity events. One such event was the Stanley Gibbon's “Stampex” exhibition being held in Westminster Central Hall in March where the cup was a major attraction generating huge interest among the visitors. Uniformed officers were in attendance around the clock, but were only at the display cabinet during exhibition opening hours.

On Sundays, the exhibition was closed to the public, but Central Hall was used for Methodist Church Services which the thieve used to their advantage. The dastardly deed was discovered when the guards commenced their noon patrol of the exhibition area. The perpetrators had forced open a rear wooden door to the building to gain access to the room, and quietly and quickly broke into the display cabinet and stole the cup leaving the same way as they came. Scotland Yard were informed and officers from the Flying Squad were soon at the scene of the crime.

 The following day, Monday 21 March, the chairman of the FA received an anonymous phone call to inform him that a parcel would be delivered to the Chelsea Football Club the following day for him to collect. The parcel contained a ransom demand for £15,000 in £1 and £5 notes and the removable lining from the cup itself. Further instructions demanded the FA to place a coded advertisement in the personal column of The Evening News indicating complicity to the ransom demands. Mr Mears then received a second phone call from a man called “Jackson” changing the payment instructions to £5 and £10 notes.

Against warnings from the thieves, Mears contacted the police and fully informed Detective Inspector Charles Buggy of the Flying Squad of the latest developments. The advertisement was duly placed on 24 March, and a bank produced the ransom money, the majority of which was just useless paper. The money and two police officers, posing as FA employees, waited at Mears' home for the next phone call. When the call came, Mears was having an asthma attack so his wife answered and persuaded the caller to speak to her husband's assistant (DI Buggy).

The meeting went ahead at Battersea Park which resulted in “Jackson” being arrested after attempting to flee and was subsequently taken to Kennington police station where he was later identified as Edward Betchley, a used car dealer and petty thief. He claimed he was acting as a middleman and did not know the whereabouts of the stolen property.

Three days later on the 27th, David Corbett and his dog pickles were walking in Beulah Hill in South east London when the inquisitive canine began sniffing a parcel hidden under a hedgerow wrapped in old newspaper. The police kept the cup as evidence returning it to the FA in time for the opening of the World Cup Tournament. Mr Corbett was later to receive rewards amounting to around £6,000 after briefly being considered as a suspect by the police. Edward Betchley received a two year prison sentence and died of emphysema in 1969.

The Jules Rimet Trophy was eventually given to Brazil in perpetuity in 1970 when the country won the World Cup for the third time, but their harsh words of criticism towards the FA over its theft paled into insignificance when the cup was stolen again in 1983. The cup resided in a bullet proof case and, the thieves overpowered the guard and simply unscrewed the case from the wall. At the time of writing, the original World Cup Trophy is still missing and is believed to have been melted down into gold bars.

Return To Cult Football Index