The Mysterious Train Heist

“Who is behind it? We demand answers!” writes Pravda on 9 February 1926

Imagine a train heist. What popped in your mind? A scene from a Wild West movie, right? With all the usual accessories, of course. A heavy smoker for a locomotive, old-timey train carts, masked men running through the train swinging guns. There’s not much talking, but an awful lot of barking. By men and by guns. Somebody gets shot, somebody gets blown to the afterlife. Basically, a classic Wild West experience. Now imagine that all of this takes place in real life, just change the Wild West for the Wild East – 1920s Latvia.

While nowadays Latvia may seem pretty tame, in the early 1920s it could get as messed up as a trainwreck. And no wonder. The time was ripe for lawlessness and crime. The two consecutive wars (the Great War and the Latvian War of Independence) had chewed up the budding country pretty bad. Latvia was bandaging up its bleeding crime statistics by trying to reinstate law and order across the land. Easier said than done. This was the time of the most notorious crimes and criminals like the infamous highwaymen Kaupēns, and Adamaitis. And then, when it seemed we had seen it all, the country was struck by the most scandalous attack ever – this time on important men who were carrying a priceless package!

It was 5 am in the morning. Latvian countryside near Ikšķile. Train tracks were rhythmically bending under the weight on the train Moscow-Riga. Passengers were still asleep in their compartments. Only a blaze of an occasional lamp near the tracks ran through the train. That and two men, suspiciously alert for this early hour, slipping from one carriage to the next. Who were they? Impossible to tell – their faces were covered by black masks. But their intentions were not. Both had their handguns drawn. The first person they met was the ticket controller Brīze, who was coming directly at them, with his stare poking the floor, not realizing the trouble ahead. The next moment he was greeted by a gun in the face and a bark: “Hands up! Give me the money!” Brīze could only mumble that he did not have any. The two criminals did not seem to care too much about it. They yanked him around, showed the barrel of the gun in his back and ordered to walk in front of them. The ticket controller meekly obeyed. But after some shaky steps suddenly broke into a sprint like a gazelle screaming “Burglars, thieves, help!” There was no stopping him – he leaped from one carriage to the next wailing like a siren. Some curious heads popped out of their compartments but upon seeing the masked men jolted back in safety locking the doors behind them. There was no time to spare! Now! The burglars rushed to enter whatever compartments were closest. The first door did not budge. The second and third neither. All locked from the inside! There must be one! The bandit's hand grabbed the next handle in its way. What luck! It gave in! He threw open the door only to find the two occupants of the compartment pointing their guns at him. Fire started cracking. Bullets scraped wooden panels, windows, doors, passenger luggage and human flesh. One of the men in the compartment got shot in the head and died immediately. The other received a bullet in the abdomen. But it was not much easier for the criminals either. Both were bleeding profusely and barely able to stand. One was hit in the face, the other – in the chest and the right leg. It was time to withdraw. The battle was over.

The heist of February 5 was the biggest event in Latvia in 1926. Not so much because of its daring nature. Not at all. Latvia had grown accustomed to criminals wreaking havoc in every nook and cranny of the country.  Yes, it’s true that this type of attack was the first of its kind – criminals did not use to shoot up running trains. However, it was not so much about the crime itself but rather who were the victims in this. The two men in the compartment were not some ordinary travelers who came to tour the capital of Latvia. February is really not the best time for sightseeing anyway. Also, ordinary passengers would not carry firearms. Not even in this troubled era. These two were far from ordinary. They were soviet diplomatic couriers – Theodor Nette and Johann Mahmastal. And they were not travelling empty‑handed. Quite the opposite. The Soviet diplomats carried a priceless package. So priceless that the lone survivor of the two, Mahmastal, although having been seriously injured and half-conscious, still refused to let go of the treasured black leather suitcase under his protection. Only after reaching Riga, he let it be taken from him – and only by the representatives of the Soviet embassy who were quick to arrive to the train. This fact immediately burst into countless speculations about what was inside the package, why the couriers took this trip, who were the perpetrators, and eventually was there anyone else behind this attack. A barrage of questions that had not been fully answered to this day. So let’s start picking up the empty shells to find out who fired them.

Nette's body found in the couriers' compartment

That precisely was, of course, the most burning question – who were the attackers? Luckily, it did not require any cinematic chase along the train tracks or chasing bloody footprints into the depths of a forest. The two men did not manage to get off the train. They simply couldn’t.  After the firefight, they were bleeding heavily and retreated to the lavatory where the two blew their brains out. The bodies were examined and identified to be two Polish brothers who had arrived from Lithuania the day before. Their names were Anton and Bronislav Gabrilovitch, both in their 20s. Police found that this was not their first time in Latvia though. They had lived in Riga some time ago staying with their relatives. Back then they had no sinister intentions though – both were learning to drive to get a job as drivers. However, soon after they returned to Lithuania only to get into the life of crime, allegedly selling cocaine and robbing people.

The Gabrilovitch brothers after the attack

I know what you are thinking. Why would two low-level foreign criminals suddenly decide to come to Latvia and board the same train the Soviet diplomats had chosen to move their precious cargo? Pretty suspicious. However, it must be mentioned that the Soviets were not the only foreign diplomats on this train. Quite the opposite. There were several more diplomatic representatives of different countries travelling in the same second class section of the train, including an Italian, German, Latvian, and American one. They were all interrogated afterwards, and they all could have been the target. So the attack on the Soviets could have been just an unfortunate coincidence, right? It might have been. One witness reported having heard one attacker saying to the other “It’s them” at the door of the Soviet’s compartment. This too might have been false, misheard, misinterpreted...

The mystery did not end there. It seemed that the Soviets knew more about the heist than the Latvian authorities. Only about an hour after the attack, the Soviet embassy in Riga issued a statement that the attack had been planned beforehand and was of “political nature”. Without even waiting for any investigation to be completed. So supposedly the attack had nothing to do with the package. It was, of course, directed purely at bringing down the Soviet system. Nothing financially motivated at all. Just hatred towards the power of the people and the friendship between Latvia and the Soviet Union. Yes, the Soviet press pushed the idea that the sinister attack had been a plot by Tsarists living in Latvia and the local Latvian fascists. Their goal? Make the Soviet government accuse the Latvian counterpart of murdering its couriers. This way the good relations (in their opinion) at the time between the two would be over for sure! For the Soviet newspaper Pravda this was not enough. They wrote that the attack had been the result of even a bigger plot by foreign powers that had all the signs of an international scandal!

Latvian authorities carrying Nette's body

It’s clear that the Soviets were quick with their trigger finger. Ironically, at the same time, Soviets accused Latvians of being too hasty. With the investigation. Probably because the police did not share the same scandalous view. They were quite skeptical about the whole international anti-communist plot and kept sticking to their own theory that this crime was of purely economic nature. Back in the Soviet Union, the newspaper Izvestia did not take it very well and attacked the Latvian government in an extremely harsh manner demanding a hunt for the organizers of the attack: “Who needs this extreme haste? Who benefits from hiding the evidence?”

The blood still had not been properly cleaned up from the wooden floorboards of the train, when a new interesting detail emerged. It turned out that the two Polish brothers had other brothers. Not only in Lithuania, and Poland but also one living in the Soviet Union. Vladislav Gabrilovitch allegedly was a political commissar there and kept regular contact with his brothers in Lithuania. Obviously, on the back of this information, a theory grew that Vladislav might have passed some details linked to the priceless package to his brothers in Lithuania.

But it stretched out far beyond that. You see, the Soviet newspapers were not the only ones with their own crazy theory. Latvian press had no intention of remaining in second place. News writers here rumored that Soviets had actually robbed themselves. According to their story, the Soviet embassy in Riga had been informed of the priceless package destined for Berlin. Knowing the Soviets and their extremely suspicious nature, it was reasonable to guess that they would have taken every precaution to avoid losing the package in transit. So the press assumed that the embassy could have been tasked by Moscow to keep an eye on the shipment. Supposedly one of the embassy employees had decided to go rogue and take advantage of this information by snatching the package for himself. He probably knew brothers from before. They could have been his sidekicks in secret contraband operations in the past. Now it was logical and so convenient to use them for this heist too.

The Latvian press rubbed their hands in satisfaction. This theory put all the pieces in the right places. It conveniently explained why Mahmastal was reported to have said to police that there had been three attackers in total, not just two. This placed the embassy employee in the train as the third unknown suspect who must have helped the brothers find the couriers. Now also the allegedly uttered phrase in Russian “It’s them!” neatly slid into the puzzle. And most importantly, this theory explained why the brothers were later found dead with their brains blown out. Seeing that the operation had failed, the third man supposedly had led them to the lavatory and killed them there so that no one could link him to the heist.

Theodor Nette

All this effort, noise and speculation. All this for what? Yeah, what exactly was in the package? What could have shaken up everyone so much? No one knew for sure. But there were guesses. The British newspaper Daily Mail reported that the package allegedly contained diamonds worth 4 million rubles. Others thought they could have been highly sensitive documents with great implications in the arena of the world politics. There was a theory that either diamonds or documents were destined for Berlin with the aim to bribe Germans not to join the League of Nations – the predecessor of the UN. The Soviet embassy and their press claiming that the attack had a political nature indirectly confirmed that this idea did not go completely off the rails.

The case was finally closed in November 1927. No new leads appeared, no international conspiracy was uncovered. Nothing. Even after Soviet representatives arrived in Riga to follow the investigation closely. Apart from Bronislav’s passport smeared with bloody fingerprints, that was found near the train tracks, and two Soviet diplomatic notes to Latvia expressing their dissatisfaction with the progress of the investigation, nothing more of importance happened. Well, nothing regarding the investigation. But a series of big commemorative gestures were made in the Soviet Union. A monument for Nette was erected, a Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote a poem about him, and finally a ship was named in honor of the slain diplomat.