Looking for Ivy author and former New milton resident Laraine Cousins lifts lid on her father’s suspected links to Great Train Robbery

WHEN former New Milton resident Laraine Cousins began investigating her father’s ancestry, she had no idea it would lead to her launching a ground-breaking legal case and revealing his suspected links to one of Britain’s most notorious crimes – the Great Train Robbery.

In 1969, a 19-year-old Laraine learned her father, Leonard “Peter” Cousins, was adopted.

Peter was born in Somerset in 1929 but was adopted by a couple in Weston-super-Mare. Despite Laraine encouraging her dad to find his birth parents, he refused, and died in 2011 without knowing who they were.

Not content with having her questions continue to remain unanswered, Laraine launched what became a lengthy legal campaign to access her father’s birth records.

The former Bournemouth Council’s social services adoption team obtained the records from the courts in Weston-super-Mare - before telling Laraine she had no legal right to view them.

In response, Laraine lodged a case with the family court, which was escalated to the High Court’s Family Division in July 2014.

She said: “I knew people who had taken cases to the High Court and lost a lot of money, so I said, ‘Look, I know it’s ridiculous, but I’m going to represent myself’.

“The barrister I was talking to at the time basically said, ‘Good luck with that’.

“I had been told the only way to access my father’s records would be if I could demonstrate exceptional circumstances.

“I couldn’t really think of anything to say other than, ‘It’s exceptional to me.’”

By September 2014, Laraine learned she had won her case, setting a precedent that a child could view a parent’s birth records after their death.

She said: “Among the records was a letter my great-grandmother wrote to my dad basically saying he was loved but, due to circumstances that weren’t fully spelled out, he had to be adopted. The sad thing is dad never saw that letter.”

Laraine’s investigations have also led her to suspect Peter played a role in the Great Train Robbery.

Her father, a working-class man of limited means, became a qualified pilot after someone paid for him to have flying lessons.

During the week of the Great Train Robbery in August 1963, Peter sent Laraine, her mum and siblings from their New Milton home to Butlins for a week.

“It's long been believed in my family that dad played a small part in that robbery,” Laraine said.

“A few years before we moved to New Milton dad started having flying lessons, which was very odd.

“We had gone from living in his adopted mum’s house to him having flying lessons and eventually buying his own plane. He then bought a small bungalow when he never had his own home before.

“The week of the robbery, he disappeared. He took me and my family from our New Milton home to Butlins and left us there. He said he had a week of night-flying missions.

“In reality, he only flew during the daytime - no later than 6.30pm. He told mum he was going night-flying but he wasn’t.”

Laraine continued: “Dad’s flight logbooks show, during the week of the robbery, he flew from Bournemouth to an airfield not far from Leatherslade Farm in Oxford where the robbers hid out and which also had a disused airstrip.

“Thousands of pounds were unaccounted for after the robbery and I think he moved some of it around by plane.”

Peter’s flight logs show he flew from Christchurch to Scotland the week after the robbery, stopping in various parts of the country along the way.

“Dad was once on the TV news after crash landing his plane in a field.

“He said he was worried about fuel, but every pilot checks that before taking off - I think he was practising landing on uneven terrain.”

Laraine also recalls going on a caravan holiday around Europe with her dad and an unknown man when she was a teenager.

Although it didn’t seem odd at the time, her father and the man spent most of their time going into various banks in every country they visited, including France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The Cousins family later moved to Bournemouth – where one of the train robbers would later be arrested, and where Laraine and her siblings attended a private school and Peter ran car dealerships.

“We seemed to have money when we didn’t before,” Laraine said.

“Years later, talking to my auntie, she said my dad and grandad used to go to London to trade cars and I think that was with some of the train robbers.

“My auntie also said when grandad saw pictures of the robbers on TV, he said he knew one or two of them.

“I think mum was a bit naïve and never really questioned where dad’s money came from.”

Laraine’s story is set out in her book Looking for Ivy.