Diamond Heist: No Remorse, No Respect
May 15, 25
Lee Wenham - hero or villain? Who on earth is Lee Wenham, you're asking.
Ok, so he's hardly a household name, but he was the brains behind what was very nearly the world's biggest ever jewel robbery.
A gang of raiders bulldozed their way into the Millennium Dome, in London, in the year 2000 and tried to steal the priceless 203.04-carat IF / D Millennium Star, together with other De Beers diamonds on public display.
They got as far as smashing their way through the supposedly "impenetrable" glass cases, using nail guns and sledgehammers. But they had no idea that police had been tracking them during their months of planning and were lying in wait to catch them red-handed.
The Diamond Heist, a three-part Netflix documentary by acclaimed director Guy Ritchie (Madonna's ex-husband), is a deep dive into the background, and the planning of the raid - and how it was foiled after De Beers took the precaution of replacing the actual diamonds with high-quality replicas.
It is stylish and engaging, peppered with twists and moments of dark humor.
But I was seriously troubled by its portrayal of Wenham, the trophy interviewee of the docuseries. He's a hardened criminal, yet he's presented as a charismatic antihero, a lovable rogue who was shaped by circumstance, who followed his father into a life of crime and who simply craved respect from his peers.
He was the gang member who worked out how to override the security sensors and glass cases protecting the Millennium Star.
He stole the JCB excavator they used to break into the Dome, and he mapped out the escape route - using a speedboat on the River Thames.
He shows no remorse. Getting caught and serving four-and-a-half years for his role in the heist was, for him, just an occupational hazard.
He'd failed in two high-stakes raids earlier the same year. Both times gang members had pierced the doors of an armored security van using a truck fitted with a huge metal spike, but both times they'd ended up fleeing empty-handed.
Wenham was determined to redeem his reputation.
The Millennium Dome would have been the highest-value heist in criminal history, had it not been for the Metropolitan Police's famous Flying Squad, which was acting on a tip-off.
"Everyone has a choice, you know," he says in a moment of reflection. "Everyone has a choice in life, but I didn't know anything else. That's all I'd done (ie crime) from a kid. And that was all I was as a kid, I didn't know another path, so I took that path."
We see the family photos on his cell wall, we see him having a heart-to-heart with his daughter Beth. "I'm a good boy now," he says, with a wink to the camera, as they walk off into the sunset.
But looking back, he says he doesn't regret "having a go" at the Dome robbery.
"It was a good plan, and there were very good people doing it. The only thing I would change is that we got the diamonds."
He's been back to the Dome since his release, still craving the respect he thinks he deserves. "I thought there'd be a plaque or something, this is where they tried to nick the Millennium diamond, but there's nothing in there," he laments.
Hero or villain? Ritchie leans toward the myth of a "gentleman thief," but the facts are clear: Wenham orchestrated a major crime, showed no remorse, and sought only the respect of his criminal peers.
Today he says he's left the world of crime behind. He now runs a landscaping business and bears a diamond tattoo on his wrist as a reminder of his past. Yet his legacy is not one of heroism.
Audacity maybe, but most of all failure.
Have a fabulous weekend.