A Thief is Just a Thief, A Sigh is Just a Sigh...

Rawson Watson, 37, appeared for his first day of trial this week, for a caper he very nearly pulled off over three years ago.

In January of 2000, police say, Watson was smuggled by friends onto a British Airways 767 at Heathrow, bound for Madrid. He carried masking tape, rubber gloves, a drill, green fingernail polish, and a pair of large boxes. He went into the heated and pressurized section of the cargo hold and hid himself by slitting the cloth lining; he hid between the cloth and the outer skin of the airliner, doing an acceptable job of closing the slit with the masking tape; the slit wasn't discovered.

He rode to Madrid, where cash -- nearly $2 million in Pesetas -- was loaded, and he waited for the return flight to take off. As soon as it was airborne, investigators believe, he went to work: he planned to load the money into one of the boxes, and himself into the other; but he changed the plan when he saw that the nail polish wouldn't adhere to the security tape used to seal the original money boxes.

Watson, who is fighting the charges (grand theft and damaging an aircraft in a way likely to endanger its safety in flight -- he cut fire-insulation material), then put about a quarter-million dollars' worth of the Spanish currency into one of the boxes, climbed in, and sealed himself up, according to what was said in court.

He had friends waiting at Heathrow to pick him up, still in the box; but some weak (or sloppy) baggage-handlers dropped the box, and he popped out. "Don't worry about me, I'm all right," was what the handlers said they were told, as he sauntered off. He was found and eventually arrested in October of 2002.

FMI: www.met.police.uk