Residents living near the scene of the Hatton Garden robbery have told of “peculiar” power cuts in the area a week before the raid.
Police are investigating if the blackouts may have been linked to the gang tampering with security alarms in the run-up to the robbery over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend.
Detectives have released images of three suspects taken from 120 hours of footage taken from two cameras at the scene of what Flying Squad officers describe as a “highly audacious” raid.
The images show the gang carrying out the burglary in two separate visits over the weekend.
Police said that 72 of the 999 safe deposit boxes at the Hatton Garden safe deposit company were opened with reports that the gang escaped with more than £60 million worth of gems and cash.
The raiders, who used wheelie bins to remove the haul, are thought to have escaped abroad before the burglary was discovered.
Scotland Yard has been criticised after admitting officers were told a burglar alarm had gone off at the scene but decided it did not require a response.
One theory is that the gang returned for a second go at the safe deposit boxes after police failed to respond to the alarm on Good Friday.
The Met claimed it was “too early to say” if the handling of the call would have had an impact on the outcome of the burglary.
But according its own timeline of events, the men would still have been inside the safe deposit when the alarm went off.
There were reports at the weekend that some of the boxes may have been owned by the notorious Adams crime family in north London.
Farhana Begum, 19, who lives near-by, said : “About two weeks ago - the weekend before it happened - there was an electrical cut. It was just a bit peculiar.”
A total of 72 boxes were opened of the 999 installed in the vault. A heavy duty drill was used to bore holes into the 6ft (1.82m) thick reinforced concrete walls to access the vault after the thieves had climbed down a lift shaft.
Police inquiries are continuing, although no arrests have been made.
