THE RETURN OF THE REDHEADED LEAGUE. Peter Evans had an article in the Wall Street Journal about English burglars who tunnel into convenience stores and other buildings. (Here is the Journal front page for October 4/5 with the article). Evans describes several similar tunneling efforts and points out that the returns on the burglaries seem small considering their complexity, which requires a gang of several burglars. The burglars need to know about soil types and how to support the tunnel. There are risks with power cables and gas lines which did not exist in the days of the Redheaded League. More successful were the burglars in Berlin, Germany described in this Daily Mail article by Allan Hall and Alex Ward (January 18, 2013). They made off with ten million euros in valuables from safety deposit boxes in a bank in Berlin Germany. There are photos accompanying the article which show the tunnel, which was 100 feet long and went through concrete walls that were three feet thick.
Neither article mentions Arthur Conan Doyle or the Redheaded League.