by Ronald Kray
I first knew when I was fifteen that I felt attracted to other boys. That was when I first had sex with one. I can’t remember much about it now. I did tell my mum and dad, though, and they said it made no difference to them. My first real love was a young Jewish boy, Willy, who lived over the road from us. I fancied him and he knew it. He was beautiful, really handsome, but I never got in there, though I’d like to have done. I was in love with two boys when I was at Parkhurst prison, Peter and Lou. I had a tattoo done with Pete’s name on it. When I was younger, in London, I had lots of relationships. I didn’t go to gay bars, though, and places like that. In any case, there weren’t many of them then. I enjoyed going to parties and hotel dos instead. London in the sixties was good, lots of nice, beautiful boys. The boys in Tangiers were also particularly beautiful. I’ve mixed with people from all walks of life and I have told them about my sexuality. If they don’t like it, that’s tough on them. If they are phoney friends, they won’t want to know. Some people didn’t like it, but I took no notice. If you hide it, it makes you feel bad. It makes you ill.
A young gay, from Germany, wrote to me about his sexuality and asked me how he should adapt, and what his friends would think. I told him not to worry about his friends; if they are true friends it will make no difference, if they are not, well, he doesn’t need them anyway. Many great men have been either homosexual or bisexual. Gordon of Khartoum, Lawrence of Arabia. People in all walks of life are gay, boxers, sportsmen, politicians, actors, artists, some of the most talented people in the world. People can be more open about it now. They didn’t dare so much in the fifties and sixties. I have slept with a lot of men, both famous and not famous, but I would never name any of them. Of course, in prisons and special hospitals like Broadmoor there is a lot of homosexual things going on. These days you have to be careful because of Aids, but before I married Kate I got them to test me for HIV because I thought it was only fair to her. I am pleased to say the test was negative.
Like I said, the early to middle sixties was good for me and Reg. In 1964 we moved into two luxury flats at Cedra Court, Cazenove Road, in Clapton. We did them up nicely. Mine had a big tank full of tropical fish in the lounge and I slept in a four- poster bed. Our clothes came from Woods, in East London, and we always wore the most expensive suits, shirts and shoes that you could buy. We both drove Mercedes cars and we ate and drank like lords. But, as I’ve said, we also gave a lot of money away. I’m not boasting about it, it’s just a fact.
We always knew the police were watching us, trying to spot what we were up to, and we got into a bit of bother in 1965. The police did us for demanding money with menaces from a feller called Hew McCowan, who was the son of a Scottish baronet. McCowan ran a club called the Hideaway, in Gerrard Street, and he claimed we had demanded protection money from him. He said we had threatened to hurt him and damage his club if he didn’t pay us. The truth was, he owed us money and we were trying to get it back. They also did me for possession of a knife. They sent us to Brixton prison to await the trial and they kept us waiting there for weeks. It was outrageous. So Lord Boothby, a friend of ours, stood up in the House of Lords and asked Her Majesty’s Government ‘whether it is their intention to keep the Kray brothers in prison for an indefinite period without trial’.
His remarks caused a sensation in the Press, but we were very grateful to him for his help. Lord Boothby was a friend, nothing more than that. We met him socially and there was nothing sexual between him and me. Soon after his comments we were released and, on 15 April 1965, we were cleared of all charges. We went straight home to Vallance Road and had one of the biggest parties the East End has ever seen. Twenty-five days later we got our revenge. Through a third party we bought the Hideaway off McCowan - and changed its name to the El Morocco. He was upset when he found out, but we thought it served him and the police right for trying to stitch us. By this time everybody knew about the Krays. We were getting more publicity than the Beatles. After we were cleared we had many letters and telegrams, including one from Judy Garland. The police wouldn’t let it rest, though, and they even claimed the jury in the McCowan trial had been ‘got at’ by us. Was it true? No, but I agree with Reg, who spoke about this in his book, Born Fighter. If a man finds himself in the dock when totally innocent, then discovers that perjured evidence was being used against him by the police, and realizes that the only way out is for him to corrupt a jury, what would he do? Would he do so through friends? Or would he just sit there and suffer the consequences of a long jail sentence, passed on him because of fabricated evidence? As Reg says, on more than one occasion when we have found ourselves faced with this moral dilemma we have acted in accordance with the will to survive, and we have corrupted some members of a particular jury. We have known this to happen in many criminal trials over the years, where friends of ours have been fitted up by the police. If you think this is bad, ask yourself what you would do if you found yourself wrongly in the dock, and if you had the means to corrupt and sway the jury and walk to freedom. As Reg says, and it is true, crooked police officers - and there are a few, namely detectives - are treacherous. Most uniformed police are all right; they are basically straight and do a difficult job for poor pay. In the sixties, of course, jury-fixing was much easier. Nowadays, verdicts are decided by a majority of jurors whereas then if one member of a jury disagreed with the others there would have to be a retrial. So it was obviously much easier then to get at one member of the jury, or maybe two to be on the safe side. Jury- fixing, though, could be a very expensive business. It cost us a lot of money.
Four days after our acquittal on the McCowan charge Reg got married. His bride was a beautiful twenty-one-year-old East End girl called Frances Shea, who’d been a childhood sweetheart. They married on 19 April 1965, at St James the Great church in Bethnal Green, and the service was conducted by the Reverend Albert Foster, who had been a character witness for us in the McCowan trial at the Old Bailey. I was the best man, David Bailey took the wedding photos and many famous names in sport and show-business were there. So were hundreds of well-wishers. It was a fantastic day. Tragically, only two years later Frances was dead. She had been quite ill and suffered a nervous break-down. Her death was a terrible blow to us all, especially Reg, of course, and it was many months before he was able to come to terms with it. He loved Frances very much and there has never been another woman in his life.
Meanwhile, my friendship with Lord Boothby was making headlines again. The Sunday Mirror wrote a story about ‘a top- level Scotland Yard investigation into the alleged homosexual relationship between a prominent peer and a leading thug in the London underworld’. Boothby sued them and won forty thou¬sand pounds. The newspaper claimed that an investigation had been ordered by the Metropolitan Police Chief Commissioner, Sir Joseph Simpson. The article also spoke of ‘parties in Mayfair attended by the peer and the thug’, of visits to Brighton with ‘other prominent public men’, and of ‘a relationship’ between the peer, an East End gangster and some clergymen. There were also allegations of blackmail. There was such a stink in the press that the Home Secretary, Henry Brooke, made a statement about it.
Eventually IPC Ltd, the owners of the Sunday Mirror, apologized to Lord Boothby and paid him damages, and their chairman, Cecil King, issued a statement in which he said: ‘I am satisfied that any imputation of an improper nature against Lord Boothby is completely unjustified.’ There was no apology or damages for me, despite all the publicity which we could have done without. The only good thing about it, as far as I was concerned was that people now knew about my bisexuality. I didn’t have to try and hide my leanings any more. But I still say there was nothing sexual between me and Lord Boothby. Apart from anything else, he wasn’t my type.
After all that, things weren’t going too bad for me and Reg until one night in March 1966, and a tragedy which had nothing to do with us. Up until that time we’d sort of shared control of London’s underworld with the Richardson gang, south of the river. Charlie R
ichardson and his brother Eddie controlled south London. They were scrap-metal dealers who had other interests on the side. Their two top men were Frankie Fraser, who was known as Mad Frankie, and George Cornell. The Richardson gang was respected by some people and feared by others. We got on with them okay until Cornell started to mix it, stirring up trouble between us. No one liked George Cornell. He was a trouble-maker and a drunk and he liked to hurt people, especially people who couldn’t defend themselves. He liked to torture old tramps and people like that. He was a bully, and enjoyed cruelty and pain. The Richardsons and Frankie Fraser eventually carried the can for much of what he did. We got on okay with Frankie Fraser and he later became a very good friend to us. But on this night in ’sixty-six, the Richardson gang went to a club called Mr Smith’s, at Rushey Green, on the main road from London to Eastbourne at Catford. Later it was said that they expected to find us there as well, but we knew nothing about it. We did know the club, though. It was a drinking club, a nice place. But one member of our Firm was there, a close friend of ours called Richard Hart. A nice feller, about thirty, who had a lovely wife and young kids. A big fight started in the club and Richard Hart was shot to death. Everyone knew it was Cornell who shot him. Cornell had only gone there because he wanted a fight. But he was the one who got away, the others didn’t. There was a big police hunt and a long trial and, at the end of it, Charlie Richardson got twenty-five years on various charges, Eddie Richardson got fifteen years, and Frankie Fraser got ten years.
The papers called it ‘The Torture Trial’, because a lot of evidence was given by men who claimed they’d been tortured by the gang. Two other members of the gang, Roy Hall and Thomas Clark, also went down.
I don’t know about the Richardsons being involved in torture trials and things like that, but I know that Cornell did that sort of thing. Charlie Richardson called me and Reg ‘mugs’ in his book, published in 1991, but if we were mugs, what does that make him? We kept going a lot longer than he did, and we would have been okay if we hadn’t made a couple of mistakes. The problem with the Richardson business, and all the publicity, was that it put even more police pressure on us and, of course, Cornell was still free. He was always going to be a problem for us.
But me and Reg weren’t thinking about that too much at the time. We were in the process of trying to set up some links with the Mafia in America. We were always looking to the future, and we thought that was the way to go. But getting into America was difficult because of our criminal records. They were a bit choosy about who they let in. Then I met an American feller by the name of Peter Wyant. He was known as a wheeler-dealer, a Mr Fix-it, and he seemed to have plenty of contacts.
He said to me one day: ‘I hear you can’t get a visa to go to the States. Well, I can get you there.’ It was going to cost, of course. He took me to the American embassy in Paris and he seemed to know people there. He had a long talk with a woman, and eventually she said to me: ‘I know you have got convictions, but you will be allowed to go to America for a few days on holiday. Everything will be fixed.’ And it was. Eventually I flew to America with a friend of mine called Dickie Morgan. But when we landed at Kennedy Airport in New York a reception committee was waiting for us.
The FBI were there and they searched us. They found nothing but we were then taken to the embassy in New York.
After a lot of talking and questions we were told we could stay in America for just seven days. But we were told if we stepped out of line we would be thrown out immediately. Wyant took us to meet Joe Kaufman, an Italian-American Jew, who was to be our middle man, our contact with the Mafia. Kaufman was friendly and said he would set up a meet with Frank Ileano, one of the top men with the famous New York Mafia family, the Gallos. They were three brothers, Joe Gallo, also known as Crazy Joe, Larry, and Al, who was known as Kid Blast, because he would ‘blow’ people away as soon as look at them. I was excited by this. Kaufman took me to a house in President Street, in Brooklyn. We were told that Ileano was waiting for us in a private bar nearby.
When we finally met, Frank Ileano told me to sit down. But while I was sitting down his brother Armando, who was a tiny man known as the Dwarf, stood behind me with a weapon in his hand. I thought of the old saying, ‘Mark well the man whom God has marked.’ Frank Ileano asked me a lot of questions about our operation in London. Kaufman told him he could check me out with a gangster called Angelo Bruno, from Philadelphia, who had been to London and knew our set-up. Ileano said: ‘Don’t worry, I will.’ He then left the room to go to a phone. When he came back he said: ‘I’ve checked you out and Bruno says you’re okay.’ I was relieved. After that we had some coffee and spoke about doing a deal. The Americans were mainly interested in getting involved in gambling in London and other big cities like Birmingham and Manchester. They do that sort of thing in a big way. We were happy for them to do it, provided they counted us in. Ileano arranged for us to meet again that evening. He said he would show me round New York and I would meet some important people.
That night he took us to a club called the Mousetrap. Later, in another club, he gave me a note from Al Gallo. He said he was sorry he couldn’t meet me in person, but I was ‘hot’. He said the FBI had a tail on me and were watching where I went and who I met. He also said he thought we could do business. I was pleased because I thought I had made a good contact.
Frank Beano then said to me: ‘Come on now, relax, enjoy your time in the Big Apple.’ And that’s what I did. I saw it all, the Bowery, Chinatown and Little Italy. The only place I didn’t go was Harlem because Martin Luther King had just been assassinated and it was considered too dangerous for a white man to go there. I was pleased as well to meet some of my boxing heroes. I met Lee Oma, who had fought Britain’s Tony Wood¬cock, Tony Zale, a former world middleweight champion, and the great Rocky Graziano, another former world middleweight champion. Graziano was a big hero of mine. I was surprised to discover that he was a chain-smoker and drank a lot of Scotch. He was a very nice feller, though, and I spent a very pleasant evening with him in a steak bar called Gallaghers. The week passed quickly. I had a good time and I felt it had been useful for the future. In the end we never got things going with the Americans like we wanted, because of our own problems with the law, but we did do some business with them. It was a pity, it would have made us very powerful. But I did make some good contacts and some good friends, like Frank and Armando Ileano. I later gave Frank a diamond ring worth a thousand pounds.
Another good contact I made was a Sicilian-American called Eddie Pucci, who was a close friend of Frank Sinatra. Later I used to meet with Pucci at the Hilton Hotel in London, and when we were talking in his room he always played the radio really loud, in case the room was bugged. Once he told me he liked Old English bull terriers, so I sent him one to America. Eddie was our contact with a Chicago gangster called Sam Giancano. Both of them were later gunned to death. Another good friend was Joe Pacano, claimed by the American press to be the top Mafia boss, who died from a massive stroke. He became one of my best friends and he sent me a gold cat’s-eye ring with two big diamonds in it. I treasure this ring. I once made up a poem about Joe Pacano. I called it ‘My Best Friend Joe’.
I returned to England quite happy and pleased. Soon after I got back some of our American friends put our loyalty to the test. They asked us if we would help Joe Louis, the great American boxer, who had fallen on hard times. Joe wanted to come to England for a holiday. We fixed it up and gave him a great time. I rang some good friends of ours, the Levy brothers who ran the Dolce Vita nightclub in Newcastle, and they agreed to pay Joe a thousand pounds to appear at their club. I met Joe at Gatwick airport and, with a friend called Mickey Morris, drove him up to Newcastle. While we were there me and Mickey and a good friend called Sammy Lederman went with Joe on board an American aircraft carrier which was in the port. The Yank sailors were as excited as we were to meet him. I liked Joe Louis, and me and Reg have warm feelings for the Levy brothers who later sent someone down with
five thousand pounds to help with the costs of our court case. They were good friends at a time when good friends were hard to find.
By 1967 things were still going fine, though we knew about Scotland Yard’s interest in us and, in particular, a detective called Leonard ‘Nipper’ Read. Our business interests were still doing okay, but we never learned one good lesson from the Americans, and that was this. In America, a Mafia boss doesn’t kill his enemies himself, he gets someone else to do it. Me and Reg always did our own dirty business. And that was why, less than two years later, we were both locked away. The impossible had happened: the Krays had been got by the police. And all because we killed two men, Jack McVitie and George Cornell. And because we didn’t realize how corrupt the legal system could be. And because we didn’t realize we were surrounded by many traitors. Sir Joseph Simpson, the Home Office pathologist, said that McVitie and Cornell were such bad men that they wouldn’t be missed. Maybe. But they’ve still cost us half of our lives.
CHAPTER THREE: The Killings
I never killed George Cornell because he called me a fat poof. That’s all lies, rubbish. No, if Cornell had called me a fat poof I would have killed him there and then. No messing. I killed Cornell in the Blind Beggar public house because I had a pact, an agreement, with some other people, influential people, that if Cornell and the gang he was with - the Richardsons, south of the river - if they started a war, I would do something about it.
Well, they did start a war. There was a battle at Mr Smith’s club, which was started by the Richardsons and Cornell. A very good friend of ours called Richard Hart got killed in the fight, yet he was just an innocent bystander. The Richardsons got done for that, but Cornell got away.