It has been called one of the great art heists of the 20th century. For more than 50 years, the identity of the master art thief who stole Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London has been a mystery.
But a confidential director of public prosecutions (DPP) file released at the National Archives last week finally identifies the "thief" as the 20-year-old son of a retired Newcastle bus driver, who had told the police he had done it to "draw attention to my father's campaign" against pensioners having to pay the BBC licence fee.
The theft of the Goya portrait in 1961, which had been valued at £140,000 (more than £2m at today's prices), was the first time a painting had been stolen from the National Gallery. Its director offered his resignation and it led to an official inquiry into security at Britain's national galleries and museums.
But the Scotland Yard reports and his statements to the police in the newly released DPP file suggest that the culprit was far from being a sophisticated balaclava-clad master thief.
Just before dawn on Monday 21 August 1961, John Bunton – a temporary van driver living not far away in digs off Tottenham Court Road – stood on a parking meter to get over the gallery's back wall. He then used a six-metre ladder left by builders to climb through the unlocked window of a men's toilet to get into the main building of the gallery.
The painting was standing on an easel in a roped-off enclosure at the top of the main stairs. "I went up to it, took hold of it, and carried it back to the gents toilet," he told the police. He climbed back out of the window, down the ladder, and retraced his steps to the back wall by St Martin's Street. "I climbed over the wall, still holding the picture in one hand ... I put the picture on the back seat of the car and drove back to [his furnished room in] Grafton Street. I then put the picture under my bed."
Bunton said that he hadn't carried a jemmy and if the toilet window had been shut he would have had to give up. He had to push-start the small black Wolseley that he used as a getaway car.
Not only has Bunton never been prosecuted for the theft of the Goya, his identity would never have been known had he not panicked when he was arrested and fingerprinted in Leeds in July 1969 for a minor offence.
He was worried that he had left his prints at the National Gallery or on the stolen painting and told officers that he wanted to tell them about something that had been bothering him for some time. As it happened, his fingerprints were not identical to the marks that the police had on file in the Goya case.
But Detective Inspector George Chandler, who had led the investigation into the art theft, was inclined to believe John Bunton's confession. Four years earlier, in 1965, John's father, Kempton, a then 61-year-old unemployed Newcastle bus driver living on £8 a week national assistance, had stood trial for the theft of the painting after walking into West End Central police station.
Six weeks before his confession, a left luggage label had been sent to the Daily Mirror and the painting recovered from the left luggage office at Birmingham New Street station.
Although he was cleared of stealing the Goya, Kempton Bunton was imprisoned for three months for the offence of larceny of the picture frame.
The theft had sparked a national sensation because, before confessing, Bunton Sr had sent a series of anonymous notes to the press. "The act is an attempt to pick the pockets of those who love art more than charity, the picture is not and will not be for sale – it is for ransom - £140,000 – to be given for charity," said one note. The case became so famous that a copy of the picture appeared in a 1962 Bond film, with Sean Connery remarking: "So there it is," when he sees it in Dr No's Jamaican lair. It was actually in a cupboard in Kempton Bunton's council flat in Newcastle.
Although he told the police he had stolen the artwork, they had always found it hard to believe. As Chandler put it in his 1969 report to the DPP: "At the time of the offence, Kempton was 57 years old. He is a tall heavily built man, who now weighs somewhere in the region of 18 stones, and it is extremely unlikely that he would have had the agility to scale the outer wall and make his way unaided to the toilet window. He would also in my view been incapable of returning to the wall and climbing over it, without causing some damage to the painting, whereas his son, John, who at that time was only 20 years of age, is still of good physique and would have been quite capable of taking the painting in the manner in which he describes."
John Bunton said it had not entered his head to destroy or sell the picture instead of giving it to his father. "He intended to use it as a tool in his campaign and that it should ultimately be returned to the National Gallery." When the police asked why he or his brother, Kenneth, who knew the secret, hadn't come forward when his father faced an Old Bailey trial, he replied: "He told us not to. Ordered us. It was his wish."
Sir Norman Skelhorn, the DPP, told the police that John Bunton's admission alone wasn't sufficient to prosecute him. As for his father, the DPP ruled it would be difficult to prosecute him for perjuring himself at the Old Bailey as they would have to rely on the evidence of the son, who was clearly an unreliable witness. So no further action was taken.
It appears that John Bunton may have got away with one of the 20th-century's great art thefts .