Peter Scott (thief)

Peter Scott (born Peter Craig Gulston) (18 February 1931 – 17 March 2013) was an Irish burglar and thief who was variously described as the "King of the Cat Burglars", "Burglar to the Stars" and the "Human Fly". Scott described himself as a "master idiot".

Scott was born Peter Craig Gulston in Belfast, Northern Ireland, into a middle-class military family. Following his father's death, his mother emigrated to the United States. He had spent his father's inheritance by the time that he left the Belfast Royal Academy.

The 1965 film He Who Rides a Tiger, starring Tom Bell and Judi Dench, was made about Scott's exploits. At the time of the film's release Scott was in prison in Dartmoor, and profited little from it. In 1995 Scott published a memoir, Gentleman Thief.

In his last years Scott worked as a tennis coach and tended the gardens of a church in Camden, North London. Scott was a participant on the 2004 Channel 4 programme The Heist, in which staged robberies were carried out. Scott was also the subject of an award-winning short documentary, My Friend the Thief, made by Roland Hutchison.

At the end of his life Scott drove an old Mercedes-Benz, given to him as a present by the son of Billy Hill, the London gangster. Scott was declared bankrupt at the end of his life, owing more than £400,000 to creditors. He was living on state benefits of £60 per week in an Islington council flat at the time of his death. Scott was married four times, and survived by one son.

Scott began his life of crime in his teens, targeting wealthy homes around Belfast's Malone Road. By the time he was caught by the police in 1952 Scott estimated that he had committed 150 burglaries, attributing his early success to his appearance. For these early crimes he served six months in Crumlin Road Gaol, later claiming that the police had only charged him with twelve burglaries because of their embarrassment at the scale of his exploits.

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