Theft remains an enigma as cypher machine is returned

Published on Tuesday 2 April 2002 01:00

IT WAS a mystery that would have foxed many of the brilliant code-breakers employed at Bletchley Park, otherwise known as Station X, during the Second World War.

A stolen Enigma machine, a ransom note from "the Master" demanding 25,000 for its safe return and its sudden appearance on the desk of the BBC’s Newsnight presenter, Jeremy Paxman.

But yesterday, exactly two years since the Enigma cypher machine was stolen, it was finally restored to its rightful home at Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire.

The presenter said he was still baffled as to why the 100,000 machine had been sent to him.

"I have absolutely no idea why I was sent the Enigma," Paxman told a crowd of 200 people who had gathered to see the machine back on show in a glass and wood stand.

Recalling the day he discovered the Enigma in October 2000, Mr Paxman said: "The first I knew of it was when I arrived in the office and a reporter came over and said, ‘do you know there’s a very big parcel addressed to you? I have been tripping over it for the past five days.’"

Paxman also confessed that he had unwittingly covered the Enigma with his fingerprints, joking: "If you are sent stolen goods, do not handle them. That was damn-all use to the police!"

The journalist added that the work done at Bletchley to break German codes during the war had been the greatest triumph of military intelligence and human ingenuity in the history of modern warfare.

The Enigma encoder, number G312, was taken from Bletchley Park on 1 April, 2000, during an open day by a thief who has yet to be caught.

The criminal managed to open the glass display case and place the encoder, which resembles an old typewriter, into a bag while mingling with the 100 or so visitors.

Detectives believe the theft of the 100,000 machine was originally an April Fool’s Day prank designed to humiliate the director of Bletchley Park, Christine Large, during an internal power struggle.

But the plan is thought to have gone awry once the thief, reckoned to be an insider, realised the true value of the acquisition.

Over the next seven months, Ms Large received a number of communications from a figure who called himself the Master, demanding 25,000 for the safe return of the device.

When no reward was paid, the machine was posted to Paxman in October 2000. However, three vital components, called rotors, were missing and a ransom was demanded for their return.

Some light was shed on the mystery when police arrested Dennis Yates, an antiques dealer, in November 2000 after he was caught telephoning the Sunday Times trying to arrange the return of the missing parts.

Last October, the 58-year-old father of three from Sandiacre, Derbyshire, was jailed for ten months for handling the stolen machine.

He was freed in January after serving less than three months, still protesting his innocence but admitting he had posted the machine to Paxman.

Yates claimed he acted as a broker on behalf of a mystery third party who held high office in India and had innocently purchased the stolen machine and wanted to see its safe return anonymously.

The Abwehr G312 Enigma machine was used by the Nazis to encode secret messages between their armed forces, until it was captured by the Royal Navy.

Codebreakers at Bletchley Park set to work on it and their success is said to have saved thousands of lives and shortened the war by up to two years.

It was loaned to Bletchley Park by GCHQ and remained there until it was stolen.