Enduring enigma of ransomed code-breaking machine

Published on Sunday 17 August 2003 01:00

IT READS like the plot of a detective novel, but now the inside story of the infamous theft of the code-breaking Enigma machine is to be disclosed.

In her new book to be published later this month, Hijacking Enigma, The Insider’s Tale, Christine Large - the director of the trust which runs Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire - tells how she was caught up in the cat-and-mouse hunt between the thieves and the police, and how she became a suspect herself at one point.

On April 1, 2000, the rare and valuable code-cracking machine was stolen from Bletchley Park, where, during the Second World War, it had been employed to decipher codes used by the Germans to direct their U-boat attacks on Allied food and supply convoys.

After the theft, a curious train of events culminated in a ransom note for 25,000, death threats to Large, and bizarrely, part of the machine’s eventual return to the BBC presenter Jeremy Paxman.

Large, 48, was sworn not to give details to even her closest friends during the seven-month hunt for the thieves. The operation involved surveillance, phone tracing, the placing of secret messages in the Times, ransom notes, death threats, double crossing, the burying of thousands of pounds in a graveyard and undercover policemen hiding in hollow trees.

Eventually detectives swooped on their man in a public telephone box.

In 2001, Derbyshire antiques dealer Dennis Yates was sentenced to 10 months’ imprisonment after admitting handling stolen goods.

Yates claimed he was simply acting as middleman for the anonymous culprit he referred to as "the master", whose identity has never been discovered.

Large told yesterday

of her "initial euphoria" when the machine was returned to the BBC, only for her to have to wait six "agonising" days for them to find it gathering dust in a corridor, fearing they had blown it up as a suspect package.

But she said she was frustrated the whole story would not come out in court and that Yates’ "master" was never unmasked.

"I have always thought there was much more to it - that there were others involved," she said. "But all that could be discovered in the future, who knows? That’s the abiding enigma."