Gangland UK: The Inside Story of Britain's Most Evil Gangsters (11 page)

They had barely time to fall asleep when the front door was crashed off its hinges with a sledgehammer. It was 6.00am on Thursday, 9 May 1968, when a specially recruited team of detectives, led by Nipper Read, raided the homes of 24 members of the Firm. Read personally arrested the twins.

But, there is something decidedly odd about the
generally agreed date of their arrest – 9 May – for
The
Evening News
and Star
ran the following headline on Wednesday, 8 May, a good few hours
before
the Krays were arrested: ‘
YARD ARREST KRAY TWINS AND BROTHER
… 18 men held for questioning after 100 police swoop on London homes.’

The whereabouts of the remains of Frank Mitchell and Jack McVitie have never been established. Theories circulated, some based on court evidence and others on gossip which had worked its way along the grapevine in the East End. No one was found guilty of Mitchell’s murder and he remains officially on the run from Dartmoor Prison. But Albert Donaghue, a member of the Firm who turned Queen’s evidence, claimed in court that he knew how his body had been disposed of.

He alleged that Freddie Foreman and others had taken it into the country where it had been cut up and burned. He also claimed that Foreman had described Mitchell’s brain as tiny and that, when they removed his heart, there were three bullets lodged inside. McVitie’s body was variously rumoured to have been buried in the concrete foundations of a City tower block, burned in the furnaces of Bankside power station, and turned into pig food. Another, more likely, theory was that the body was given to an undertaker for secret disposal.

George Cornell is buried at the Camberwell New Cemetery. The grave is situated at the end of the main drive, on the left kerbside, facing the left-hand chapel.

Once behind bars, the twins had time to reflect on what had happened. Reggie said, ‘Everyone in London was talking about us. It was getting to the point when either the police had to break us up or we would have
broken them. But the party was over, it had been great while it lasted.’

Even locked up in Brixton Prison, the twins were confident they could still escape justice. Every day, their mother brought them lunch, usually cold chicken and a bottle of wine, while friends would drop by with news from the outside world. With their cousin, Ronnie Hart, and Ronnie’s minder, Ian Barrie, still at large, most people who knew them thought they could continue to ensure that no one would talk. Even when these two failed to escape Nipper Read’s net, the Krays still believed the wall of silence would hold strong – how wrong they were.

Slowly, the first seeds of doubt crept into their minds as the messages reaching them grew more pessimistic. Their fears were confirmed at the preliminary hearings held at Old Street Magistrates Court on 6 July 1968. To generate as much publicity as possible, the twins asked for all press restrictions to be lifted. ‘We want the world to see the diabolical liberties the law has been taking,’ Reggie said.

Journalists were delighted – the trial would be the biggest they had witnessed for years. The twins were less happy when into the witness box stepped Billy Exley, a former bodyguard of Ronnie’s who had been on watch the day of Cornell’s killing.

For the first time, Reggie and Ronnie began to look vulnerable. Exley was followed by the Blind Beggar’s barmaid, who had suddenly regained her memory for faces.

With the completion of the preliminary hearings, the twins were held in Brixton Prison for another five months. This gave Read the breathing space he needed to convince more members of the Firm to take the witness stand and testify for the Crown.

The trial proper opened at the Old Bailey on Tuesday, 7 January 1969. Reggie and Ronnie were both charged with murder and being an accessory to murder. Public interest was intense. Seats in the public gallery were sold on the black market for
£
5.00, and celebrities such as Charlton Heston were in attendance. Ronnie recalled, ‘Both of us, given the choice, would have preferred to hang.’

The twins’ old girlfriend Judy Garland sent them a good-luck telegram, prompting Ronnie to remark to the judge, ‘If I wasn’t here now, I’d probably be having a drink with Judy Garland.’

It soon became clear that almost all of the twins’ Firm had, like rats, deserted them. Ronnie Hart was the principal prosecution witness, proving that there is no honour amongst thieves. Along with John Dickson, the man who had driven Ronnie and Ian Barrie to The Blind Beggar, he turned Queen’s evidence in return for freedom from prosecution. Altogether, 28 criminals gave evidence against the Krays.

With the odds weighing so heavily against them, the twins had no chance of escape. They elected, however, to go down fighting. When Ronnie stepped into the witness box, he embarked on a spectacular course of denial. Not only were he and George Cornell friends, but he had never even been to The Blind Beggar on the evening in question.

Reggie, likewise, refused to concede a thing. In their own eyes, they behaved with dignity and integrity throughout the trial, while their former accomplices and friends had betrayed their loyalty.

On only two occasions did the twins lose their composure. Ronnie called the prosecuting counsel, ‘You fat slob!’ after hearing how the police had confiscated his
grandparents’ pension books. And when the court was hearing about the circumstances surrounding Frances’s death and funeral, Reggie screamed, ‘The police are scum.’

In one respect, however, they disappointed the press and public. Many people hoped that there were secrets to reveal about the celebrities and politicians who knew them. But again, according to the twins, this was a matter of honour. Members of the Firm may have grassed them up, but they were not going to stoop to their level. ‘We never informed on anyone,’ said Ronnie, somewhat hypocritically, adding, ‘We believe that two wrongs do not make a right. We believe we are better off than the rats who deserted our ship.’

Only three men remained loyal throughout the trial – Ian Barrie, who received 20 years for his role in the murder of Cornell; the twins’ elder brother, Charlie; and a friend of his, Charlie Foreman, who were both sentenced to 10 years for disposing of McVitie’s corpse.

After the longest criminal trial in legal history – 61 days in all – the jury retired. They took 6 hours and 54 minutes to find the twins guilty. Just after 7.00pm on 8 March 1969, the judge, Mr Justice Melford Stevenson, finally pronounced sentence, and addressed the twins, saying, ‘I am not going to waste words on you. In my view, society has earned a rest from your activities. I sentence you to life imprisonment, which I recommend should not be less than 30 years.’

The Krays had finally been broken. They were both 34. By the time they left jail, they would be almost ready to draw their pensions.

A few other matters remained to be cleared up. The twins were tried for the murder of Frank Mitchell.
Although they pleaded guilty to harbouring him, there was insufficient evidence to convict them of his death. The charges concerning their criminal business activities were left on file – meaning they could be reinstated at any time.

They had lived by the law of the jungle, on the principle that only the fittest had the right to survive. Now the Krays were behind bars, fit only for historical study as one of nature’s oddities.

By 1990, Ronnie and Reggie Kray had been in prison more than two decades. Reggie was sent to Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight; Ronnie went to Durham. Their separation lasted three years until 1972 when Ronnie was transferred to Parkhurst, largely due to a sustained campaign by their mother, Violet. Despite their crimes, she continued to adore her twins, and every week without fail would travel up and down the country to visit them both.

Ronnie believed the strain this put her under contributed to her death in 1982. As a tribute to her love for them, the twins were allowed to attend her funeral at Chingford in Essex. But the event was seriously marred for them by journalists who descended en masse to cover the twins’ first public appearance in 14 years and because the prison authorities selected two of their tallest warders to mind them – making them look like dwarves, according to Reggie.

Ronnie’s reunion with his brother in Parkhurst did not last long. After a series of fights, culminating in him severely beating up another prisoner, he was certified insane for a second time and transferred to Broadmoor where he was heavily sedated for the rest of his life.

Despite his mental problems, Ronnie married a woman
called Elaine who became one of his regular penfriends. As might have been expected, the marriage did not last and, in 1988, she asked for a divorce. A year later, in November 1989, he married again – Kate Howard – in a ceremony at Broadmoor Hospital. On 17 March 1995, Ronnie Kray died of a massive heart-attack in Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, Berkshire. He was 61, and his death was due in no small way to a very bad tobacco habit. He smoked 100 cigarettes a day through most of his adult life. His dying words were supposedly, ‘Oh God, mother, help me!’

During his time as a Category A prisoner, Reggie had also been moved several times from jail to jail. In 1968, he was transferred to Wandsworth, then back to Parkhurst, before being taken to Gartree in Leicestershire in 1987. Aged 66, he passed away on 1 October 2000, dying peacefully in his sleep after losing a long battle against bladder cancer in the honeymoon suite at the Beefeater Town House Hotel in Norwich, Norfolk. He had been moved to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital from Wayland Prison near Watton, Norfolk, ten days earlier. Kray chose the Town House because he wanted to look out over a river. Kray’s wife Roberta, 41, who had maintained a bedside vigil since his release, and former gangland friends Freddie Foreman and Jerry Powell, were at his side when he died.

So ended the lives of two of the most notorious – some say iconic – mobsters in British history. Their key to success was an appetite for violence that silenced rivals and bred loyalty through fear. Taken to the extreme of murder, however, their keys to success became the catalysts of their undoing, and eventual downfall.

In judging their ‘success’, we might ask what net worth the Krays might have had. Although it is impossible to put a precise figure on the twins’ earnings – both legal and illegal – there is good reason to suspect that they were not spectacularly successful. They certainly outshone the Gunn brothers, who, by comparison, were as poor as church mice, but the Krays would never be able to match the accumulated wealth that has placed Kenneth Noye in a class of his own.

During their peak in the early 1960s, with Esmeralda’s Barn in full swing, protection money from other clubs, the ‘long-firm’ frauds and their regular East End income, they may have been earning more than
£
200,000 annually. But the speed with which they had to close the Barn down, faced with Inland Revenue tax demands, the cost of opening their other clubs, and the general unreliability of racketeering as a profession, suggests the actual amounts of cash passing through their hands may have been much lower than that.

On top of this, their outgoings were quite high. Apart from expenditure on the outward trappings of success – cars, clothes and the occasional holiday abroad – they tried to pay members of their Firm around
£
40 a week and look after the families of anyone who had been locked away.

The fact that Charlie Kray, the twins’ elder brother, had to borrow
£
50 from their mother after leaving jail in 1975, also implies they never salted much away. However, Ronnie has claimed that their remaining business interests, combined with royalties from the Kray Twin merchandise, should have been enough to have supported them had they ever been released from prison.

It is also said by some that they were ‘Robin Hoodesque’. They were charitable, and many worthwhile institutions across the East End benefited from their generosity, including Mile End Hospital for Children and various boys’ clubs, such as the Bethnal Green Youth Club, which Ronnie Kray visited with the West Indian popular pianist Winifred Atwell and the Mayor of Bethnal Green.

Although there is no reason for thinking that their motives were anything but genuine, this could certainly be seen as a useful PR exercise; undoubtedly, the twins milked their benevolence for publicity purposes. Cameras would be on hand to record donations, followed more often than not by local newspaper reports of their generosity, always identifying Reggie and Ronnie as ‘local businessmen’. Indeed, while Reggie was in prison, he carried on this charitable work, donating pictures he had painted to auctions held to raise funds for organisations such as the Addenham Children’s Liver Transplant Fund.

While, for a very short period, they enjoyed all the trappings of wealth – the flashy cars, fancy jewellery, smart suits, the patronage of the smart, rich and famous who visited their clubs – they were, at heart, from the lower, uneducated class. Their façade was glitzy, yet underneath both were vicious thugs, and it was perhaps inevitable that they would return to their true selves when the chips were down.

Of course, the twins were inseparable, and that proved to form part of their downfall, too. Of the two men, it was Ronnie – the megalomaniac psychopathic type, the schizophrenic, the eventual madman – who brought
about the destruction of his more stable brother, Reggie. Had Ronnie not blasted to death George Cornell, and had he not taunted Reggie into killing Jack McVitie, the Firm may have survived, with Reggie going on to become a truly successful businessman. That was not to be. It was these two murders that ruined them.

Many reasons have been put forward to explain why the Kray twins became violent criminals – the environment they grew up in, the long absences of their father, their rivalry, and so on. But there could have been another factor.

A German study of the 1920s made the startling discovery that if one identical twin had a criminal record, there was more than 75 per cent likelihood that the other twin would also have one. Still more surprising was the fact that this held true whether the twins lived together or not – in some circumstances, brothers separated for years had remarkably similar criminal histories.