Life, of late, has been undeservedly kind to Kenneth Noye. Despite having a couple of killings under his belt, not to mention a ruthless hand in one of the most lucrative heists in British history, the gangster is a familiar sight on the streets of Sevenoaks, Kent.
He is often seen pottering around his local supermarket, clutching an eco-friendly bag for life, nipping into the gym opposite his top-floor flat or simply whizzing around in his Mercedes 4×4. Noye, 78, has been spotted, too, playing the part of doting grandfather alongside other families during sports day at a nearby £30,000-a-year private school.
If he is bothered by the attention he receives from those who recognise him, then he certainly doesn’t show it.
At the swanky Swan bar and restaurant in the Kent village of West Malling in April, for example, the father of two happily posed for selfies with guests and staff who were apparently dazzled by his criminal notoriety.
Many, no doubt, will also have been charmed by BBC drama The Gold, a lightly fictionalised retelling of the 1983 Brink’s-Mat robbery and the villains – including Noye – behind it, which is now in its second series.
‘Kenny Noye has been turned into a Robin Hood-type figure by that programme,’ someone who moves in the same social circles told the Mail this week. ‘People around here say what a great bloke he is.
‘The Gold makes him out to be some kind of working class hero when the truth is that he stabbed two men to death.’
Meanwhile, a friend of Noye’s has told the Mail that he ‘hopes his new public image will help the cops see he is no longer a threat and is basically an old man trying to catch up with the years he lost while in the slammer’.
Scottish actor Jack Lowden playing Kenneth Noye in the BBC series The Gold. When the first series aired in 2023, Noye told friends he was ‘over the moon’ with his portrayal by the handsome film star
When the first series of The Gold aired in 2023 – much to the outrage of his victims’ families – he told friends he was ‘over the moon’ with his portrayal by handsome Scottish actor Jack Lowden as a Jack the Lad-type figure, rather than a cold-blooded killer.
In recent years, it is an image that he, himself, has tried to cultivate in a bid to capitalise on his criminal past.
Only 18 months ago he was forced to pull out as a guest speaker at a £200-a-head gala dinner in Cambridge – with an additional £30 fee for those who wanted to meet and pose for a photograph with Noye – after parole bosses threatened he could be returned to jail.
Like all life sentence prisoners released by the Parole Board, he will remain on licence for the rest of his years, subject to strict conditions related to ‘contacts, activities, residency and exclusion zones’. The double killer had been warned about breaching the conditions of his release in 2019 after he enjoyed a night out with 83-year-old Hatton Garden diamond thief John ‘Kenny’ Collins at a black-tie James Bond-themed evening in Epsom, Surrey.
Despite two lengthy stretches in prison, it seems unlikely that Noye has money worries.
While he now lives in a flat inside a block owned by a property company belonging to one of his two sons, until recently he owned a £1.7million six-bedroom cliff-top villa in Andalusia, which he bought with part of his stash from the £26million Brink’s-Mat haul.
British police were unable to seize Las Dunas under the Proceeds Of Crime Act because it lay outside of UK jurisdiction. For a time, money-minded Noye even rented it out via Airbnb.
When the next episode of the second series of The Gold airs tomorrow night, the spotlight will fall once again on Noye’s chequered past, with him on the run in Spain in 1996, amid claims that his crimes have been watered down for TV.
Noye pictured in Kent, southeast England. Like all life sentence prisoners released by the Parole Board, he will remain on licence for the rest of his years, subject to strict conditions related to ‘contacts, activities, residency and exclusion zones’
Stephen Cameron and his girlfriend Danielle Cable. Kenneth Noye was found guilty of the murder of Cameron, 21, during a road rage fight on the M25 Swanley interchange in Kent on May 19, 1996
Because, once again, scriptwriters have glossed over the darkest, most disturbing, chapters of his past. Viewers are spared the details of the hideous crime he was fleeing – the brutal 1996 road rage murder of 21-year-old Stephen Cameron on the slip road of a busy M25 junction.
That outrage came just two years after Noye was released from prison after killing undercover police officer John Fordham while the father-of-two was taking part in a surveillance operation on Noye for laundering the Brink’s-Mat gold.
This week, Stephen’s uncle, Gary Cameron, told me of the anguish of seeing Noye’s story being played out on television. His brother – Stephen’s father Ken – took his own life three years ago, unable to come to terms with the loss of his beloved son.
Stephen’s mother, Toni, tragically died in 2016 from sepsis caused by a superbug she contracted after cutting herself while gardening.
His fiancee, Danielle Cable, who was just 17 when she witnessed Noye stab Stephen and gave evidence during his trial at the Old Bailey, is still living under witness protection.
‘Noye took Ken’s boy away and he never got over it,’ says Gary, who found his brother unconscious inside his retirement flat in Ashford, Kent, in March 2022 after he overdosed on whisky and
paracetamol, a day after his dog Dylan died of old age. ‘Ken would have been horrified to see how Noye has been portrayed on television,’ adds Gary. ‘It’s sickening to watch.
‘Noye was a greedy, evil man who didn’t value anyone’s life except his own. Ken couldn’t go on suffering all that grief.
Noye and Michelle Budd, pictured, have concerned her friends who are uncomfortable with his criminal past. However, Michelle denied they were in a relationship when approached this week by MailOnline
‘In the end, he was as much a victim as Stephen was. And now the grief goes on.’
That sentiment is shared by a former police officer who crossed paths with Noye during investigations into the deaths of both the men he killed – 11 years apart. Retired Detective Inspector Dennis McGookin said that the stabbings of Detective Constable Fordham and Stephen Cameron have ‘all but been forgotten’ by the TV series. ‘Using crimes to make entertainment when there are still family members living with the grief of what Noye did is hard to stomach,’ says McGookin, whose book The Many Faces Of Crime includes two chapters on the career criminal.
McGookin and several police colleagues, including two family liaison officers, attended Ken Cameron’s funeral three years ago. He adds: ‘Noye is an evil killer. That shouldn’t be forgotten.’
And as he makes clear, the truth about Noye’s crimes is more horrifying than anything that could ever be portrayed on television in six, hour-long episodes.
McGookin first set eyes on Noye in January 1985 when, as a detective sergeant based at Dartford police station in Kent, he took a call informing him of the stabbing of an undercover surveillance officer at a large detached house in the village of West Kingsdown.
The vast ten-bedroom mock-Tudor home, built on the proceeds of crime, belonged to Noye who had been hired to help launder 6,800 bars of gold bullion stolen from the Brink’s-Mat secure warehouse near Heathrow Airport – something he did by melting down the gold and mixing it with copper coins to try to disguise its origins.
Noye’s two rottweilers alerted him to an intruder in the garden. He would later claim that he stabbed DC Fordham in self-defence. It was McGookin who took the call from a nurse at Queen Mary’s hospital in Sidcup, informing him that married father-of-two DC Fordham had died from his wounds.
Astonishingly, the nurse on the other end of the phone was none other than Toni Cameron, Stephen Cameron’s mother.
In an extraordinary twist of fate more than a decade later, Toni and McGookin would meet face to face in the sitting room of the Camerons’ Kent home under equally tragic circumstances.
The coincidence linking the two horrific crimes was revealed during the conversations they had over the coming days.
McGookin initially clapped eyes on Noye at Dartford police station where, in the aftermath of DC Fordham’s murder, he was instructed to accompany a senior Met police commander into his cell. What followed, he says, was ‘the most uncomfortable prisoner visit I have made throughout my entire career’.
Having unlocked the cell door, McGookin was stunned to see Noye stand up and address the senior officer by his first name.
‘They shook hands using the Masonic handshake,’ says McGookin. ‘It was so sinister. Noye apologised to him and said: ‘I didn’t realise he was a policeman’.’ Noye, whose life of crime began at school in Bexleyheath where he ran a protection racket among pupils, built relationships with corrupt officials throughout his criminal career.
He set up a haulage business as a cover for his shady deals and became a police informant, regularly tipping off the Met Police’s infamous Flying Squad, partly as a way to keep his criminal rivals at bay.
He was made a Freemason in January 1980 after being nominated by two police officers but his membership lapsed after he failed to pay his annual subscription and he was later expelled because of his criminal record.
While Noye was acquitted of murdering DC Fordham on the grounds of self-defence at his trial in 1985, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison for his part in the Brink’s-Mat robbery and fined £500,000. After hearing the verdict, he shouted at the jury: ‘I hope you all die of cancer.’
He spent eight years behind bars before being released in 1994.
He stabbed Stephen Cameron to death with a 9in knife just two years later.
In the aftermath of that killing, he fled using a false passport, crossing the Channel in a helicopter belonging to his criminal associate John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer – played by Tom Cullen in the current BBC series – before flying on to Madrid then Tenerife in a private jet.
It was more than two years before he was caught in the Spanish resort of Barbate in August 1998 and another year before he was extradited.
At his Old Bailey trial in 2000, Noye again tried to claim he had been defending himself. This time the jury were having none of it. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 16 years.
Over the next 20 years he made several attempts to get his sentence reduced and he was eventually released in 2019.
According to Stephen’s uncle Gary, it was a day that Stephen’s parents fought bitterly against.
‘They made it their life’s work to keep him inside. Toni didn’t live to see him come out but Ken did. It broke him to see Noye on the outside, living his best life.’
In 2023, when the first series of The Gold aired, one of Noye’s friends, who has also been in jail, told the Mail that ‘he wants people to accept that he has served his time and lives his life quietly’.
He added: ‘Kenny says people come up to him in the streets and shake his hand.
‘It’s the same hand that he stabbed two people to death with. He says the public have forgiven him and he never wants to risk being in trouble again.’
In 2023, Noye even contributed to a biography written about him by Donal MacIntyre and Karl Howman, saying that he was ‘devastated at Stephen’s death and the circumstances around it’.
Referring to Stephen’s girlfriend Danielle, he said: ‘I am not a danger to her in any respect’ and added that he would be ‘happy to assure her’.
Separated from his wife Brenda Tremain, the mother of his sons Brett and Kevin, Noye has not been short of female attention since his release from prison nearly six years ago.
At first he rekindled a romance with Karen Bricker-Jones, who had kept in touch with him while he was in prison.
He moved into her Surrey home for 18 months after his release, with 64-year-old Karen postingon Facebook that he was her ‘true love’.
More recently he has been linked to 50-year-old mother-of-three and equine expert Michelle Budd, who runs horse hugging therapy sessions from the stables she runs near Dartford.
When they first started dating, Noye is said to have been paranoid about the fact that she was taller – and much younger – than him.
But while Noye moves on, those who loved John Fordham and Stephen Cameron will never forget his past deeds.
John’s family and colleagues pay tribute to the fallen officer on January 26 each year.
And while his parents are no longer here to mourn him, Stephen’s friends – some of whom knew him from school – meet at his grave every May 19 before repairing to the The Bull pub in Swanley.
Stephen had qualified as an electrician just two weeks before he was killed and would have turned 51 this year.
‘He was a good lad,’ says his uncle. ‘He would have done anything for anyone. We lost so much.’
This, of course, is the real story about Noye’s crimes – not the derring-do of a cheeky rogue turned into prime time entertainment, but the legacy of grief left behind by a wicked criminal driven by greed.
