David Knight

CORRUPT police framed a window cleaner for stealing one of the world’s most valuable diamonds, his nephew told Extra.

Paul Hodgson spoke about his larger-than-life uncle, David Knight, who went to his grave protesting his innocence for the heist of the “Colenso Diamond” at the Natural History Museum in April 1965.

Mr Knight, who died in 2009, spent three years in prison after being convicted by a jury based on a disputed confession.

A special report by World in Action later exposed how the detectives in the case were themselves jailed on charges of corruption and conspiracy to make false allegations.

The full story is being made into a three-part comedy drama, Rough Diamond, written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, the co-creators of classic TV series Porridge and The Likely Lads.

Mr Hodgson said: “The judge basically says to the jury, ‘do you trust a window cleaner or the police?’ David served the time.

“He never got a pardon, an appeal, and the conviction never got quashed. But the conviction essentially was a precedent in law, someone being found guilty on a false confession. The trouble was that at that point, David was a criminal, but our conceit is that he went into prison as a window cleaner who had done some petty crimes, and came out with the skills to do much bigger jobs: crack safes and take down fences etcetera. And so he went on the tear from the moment he got out.”

He added: “I think overall David’s story is about the conspiracy. Someone relatively innocent can have their lives turned upside down. How people from working class backgrounds – or black or disadvantaged in any way – how impossible it was to push back against all of that.”

The 133-carat “Colenso Diamond”, donated to the museum by poet John Ruskin, was never found.

Paul Hodgson and Richard Carroll

Speaking to ITV’s World in Action after his release, Mr Knight had called for a public inquiry. He had said: “I didn’t steal the diamond, and that’s all there is to it.” And on the confession, he said: “Just give me a chance to get up in a court of law and say what really happened.”

Mr Knight went on to admit to many crimes, including the 1974 theft of the “priceless” Johannes Vermeer painting The Guitar Player (c1672) from Kenwood House, a caper at the Penthouse magazine in Soho and also at the Harvey Nichols department store in Knightsbridge.

His almost bittersweet story has been meticulously researched over several years by Mr Hodgson, working with his documentary film-maker friend, Richard Carroll.

Mr Knight, born in Fulham, lived for a while in Uxbridge with Mr Hodgson’s family.

“I was about 10 at the time and he would tell all these funny stories,” he said. “As he got older they got more graphic I guess. You’d think some were lies, and then you’d do a bit of research and you were, like, ‘oh, right, those pistols were stolen there after all…’.”

Mr Carroll said he had enjoyed reading the responses to Mr Knight’s many letters during his research, sent out after his mind started to wobble in later life.

He said: “David Niven wrote back to him – there’s a lovely letter from him – who was in the films obviously on the trail of the diamond thief in The Pink Panther.

“We don’t know what David wrote to him, but we got the letter back that says: ‘Dear David, sounds awful. Must dash. I’ve got one foot on a banana skin, the other on a Concorde. Signed David Niven.”

The first episode has been written and full treatment created for the series, Rough Diamond. The project is still in the process of getting fully financed and a podcast about the story is also coming out soon.

The full details can be found on the Extra’s sister paper, Camden New Journal’s, subscription service: https://newjournal.substack.com/

For more details of the Rough Diamond TV series see: https://colensofilms.com/