My Story

by Ronald Kray

  So I kept to my word. Even though others didn’t, I still kept to the pact. I went and done Cornell. I got a message that he was involved in the business at Mr Smith’s, I got a message asking if I would keep my word. When I give my word, I keep it. I never thought about the police, I just done it. Cornell deserved it. He was a flash, arrogant bastard. He was a bully.

  People often describe me as a cold-blooded killer and Cornell as the innocent, unarmed victim. That’s a load of rubbish. Cornell was a hard man, a very hard man. And he was nasty with it. But what people don’t realize is that Cornell was also a killer. On his own admission, to me personally, he killed a man called Thomas ‘Ginger’ Marks.

  Marks was a car dealer. Just after midnight, one morning in January 1965, he was shot dead when he was walking with a mate of his called George Evans in Cheshire Street, in Bethnal Green. According to Evans a car drove up alongside them, slowed down, and a voice called out, ‘Ginge’. Marks turned round and a shot rang out. Evans got in a panic and ran round the comer and dived under a parked lorry. He says the car drove off and he went back to the spot where he and Marks had been walking, but there was no sign of Ginger. When the police came they found blood on the pavement, a bullet hole in the wall and a used cartridge, plus the black, horn-rimmed glasses which Marks always wore. But there was no sign of Ginger.

  The police searched everywhere for him and the newspapers called it ‘The Case of the Phantom Shooting’ because no one could find Marks’s body. They reckoned that he had been shot in the stomach, because the bullet hole was only a few feet off the ground. But no one turned up at any London hospital or doctor’s surgery with a shotgun wound in the stomach. One of the newspapers offered a reward of five thousand pounds for information. I could have told them that Marks was dead - and that George Cornell had killed him.

  How do I know? Because George Cornell told me himself before he and I fell out. Some time before Marks got done, he and Cornell had a big row. I acted as the peacemaker and got ’em both together in the Grave Maurice pub in Whitechapel. We had a few drinks and sorted out the bit of business that was causing the problem between them and they shook hands. But when Marks left the pub, Cornell started mouthing off again, as usual, and he said he hated Marks and one day he would ‘blow his head off’. I think, really, that Cornell was a bit scared of Marks and he knew that Marks always carried a gun and he would use it if he had to.

  After Marks was done, and no one knew what had happened to him, Cornell told me that he had ‘pulled the trigger’ on him. He boasted about it quite openly. He never told me what he had done with the body and I never asked him. In our business you mind your own business. But getting rid of a body wasn’t a problem. So when I killed Cornell, later, I was only killing a killer.

  Of course, Leonard ‘Nipper’ Read don’t see it that way. Read, the policeman who claims the credit for doing me and Reg and who’s made money out of doing me and Reg down, tries to blame us for killing Ginger Marks. Or at least a member of our Firm. And in his book about his life, Read says Marks wasn’t the target at all. He claims the real target was the man who was walking with Marks on the night he got shot - George Evans.

  Read says:

  Apparently a friend of the Firm had been shot by a man who discovered his victim had been having an affair with his wife. The victim had sought revenge and a plan had been hatched to kill this attacker. Watch had been kept but, unfortunately, the retribution was handed out to the wrong man. The proposed victim was walking along Cheshire Street together with a man called Ginger Marks, when a car drew up alongside them and someone called out. Marks must have thought he heard his nickname, ‘Ginge’, and stepped forward, only to be shot and killed.

  The body was bundled into the car and driven off. When the mistake was discovered the contract was renewed.

  And what is Read’s evidence to link me and Reg to this murder? A photograph of the intended victim which was given to the killer to help him identify his victim. That photograph, showing the target’s face, had been cut out of a much bigger photograph. And that bigger photograph, Read says, was later found - minus the face which had been cut out of it - amongst the property of me and Reg when we were arrested.

  That evidence is pitiful. If we’d done Ginger Marks I would hold up my hands and say so.

  I never made any secret about doing Cornell. I’d known Cornell since I was a kid. He was from Watney Street in the East End. We knew him but we were never what you’d call friends. That didn’t stop us helping him out when he was a bit older, when he came out of the nick and he never had a bob to his name. We gave him a few quid and got him fixed up with some decent clothes. But that never made any difference. There was always a bit of a problem, he was that kind of feller. Eventually he moved south of the river and joined up with the Richardsons. He was always a vicious bastard but I was never frightened of him or his older brother, Jimmy, who had a badly scarred face after he got slashed.

  Cornell was under six foot tall, but he was a powerful feller with a big, thick neck. When we had our problem he was only in his mid-thirties but he looked a lot older. He had a sort of curled lip which always made it look like he was sneering at you. He liked violence. Like I said, he used to take old tramps down to a cellar and torture them. I don’t know about the Richardsons torturing people. I don’t know about that, but I know that Cornell did. He enjoyed it. He once got three years for slashing a woman’s face. He was a lippy bastard. When me and Reg were in Brixton on a menaces charge, he told a friend of ours, ‘The King is dead.’ This was a deliberate insult to me. It was Cornell saying he hoped they would put me inside. It was not a good thing to say, it was out of order.

  Maybe things would have been okay. But then there was the business at Mr Smith’s, when our friend Richard Hart got shot dead. Richard Hart was a real nice feller, a good friend. He wasn’t a gangster or anything like that, and he had a nice wife and two young kids. He never deserved to get it, and it shouldn’t have happened at a place like Mr Smith’s. It was a nice club, it wasn’t a rough place. After Richard Hart was shot the Richard¬sons were soon arrested, so was Frankie Fraser. That was fair enough, they’d all been involved. But somehow Cornell never got picked up for it, or if he was he must have had a good alibi.

  Anyway, a few days later, Cornell turns up again right out of the blue. I can remember the date as if it was yesterday - 6 March 1966. I’m having a drink in a pub called the Lion in Tapp Street. This pub was also called the Widow’s, or Madge’s, because it was run by a widow called Madge. There was a few of us there drinking, me, Reg, Ian Barrie, John ‘Scotch Jack’ Dickson, and some others. Then I got a phone call. I had already had a message that Cornell had been involved at Mr Smith’s. Like I’said, I had given my word that I would deal with Cornell. This phone call tells me that Cornell is drinking at a pub called the Blind Beggar, which is right in the middle of our manor and less than half a mile away from where we were all sat drinking. I told Ian Barrie to come with me and I told John Dickson to get a car, and to drive us to the Beggar’s.

  It’s funny, really, I read one of them London tourist guides which someone gave me, the other day, and it talks about the Beggar’s in there. It said: ‘The newly renovated Blind Beggar gained notoriety when Ronnie Kray and an accomplice murdered George Cornell as he sat drinking there. The pub’s atmosphere has changed dramatically now and, with a pleasant garden for children, it has become, like so many other East End pubs, a place for the entire family.’

  It must have changed a hell of a lot! In 1966 it was nothing like that. It was a depressing place; it had a flat front and two long bars which curved in a short of U-shape and joined up the back, in the rear snug. That’s all there was to it, the public bar on the right, the saloon bar on the left and the snug at the end. And the landlord’s accommodation was upstairs above the bars. The place wasn’t smartly done out or anything like that, and it always seemed sort of dark in there. It was a depressing pub.

  The only interesting
thing about it was its name, which was based on an East End play, four hundred years old, called The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green.

  It’s part of East End folklore, the story of Bessee, the daughter of a blind beggar, who was being courted by four rich men - a knight, a businessman, an innkeeper’s son and an aristocrat. They all wanted to marry her, until they learned her father was a beggar. Then they lost interest, all except the knight, who went to her father and asked if he could marry her. Then Bessee’s father, who everyone thought was a beggar, surprised everyone by giving her a hundred pounds for her wedding gown, which was like thousands in them days, and a dowry of three thousand pounds, which was like a small fortune. Then, at the end of the story, at the wedding feast, the blind beggar reveals that he is the son of Simon de Montfort, who founded England’s parliament. Everyone thought he had died in the battle of Evesham but, in fact, he had only lost his sight. His life was saved by a lady who later bore him a child who was, of course, the beautiful Bessee of Bethnal Green. And she and the knight, so they say, lived happily ever after.

  Like I said, I intended to kill Cornell that night. I had to. It was as simple as that.

  Dickson drove me and Ian Barrie to the Beggar’s, in one of the Firm’s cars, a Ford Cortina. When we arrived I told him to wait outside while me and Ian Barrie went inside to see if Cornell was there. We went into the saloon bar and he was there all right, talking to two other fellers. He was sat on a stool drinking a glass of light ale. They were the only ones in the bar apart from the barmaid. There was a record on the juke box which was very popular at the time called ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Any¬more’, by an American group called The Walker Brothers.

  As we walked in Cornell looked up and said, in that sneering way he had, ‘Well, look who’s here …’

  I took a 9 mm Mauser pistol out of my pocket and Ian Barrie took out a .32 revolver. I was quite calm. Cornell was still sneering. I shot him. The bullet went into his forehead, just above his right eye. It went straight through his head. He fell off his stool. He just fell forward and I knew he was dead. I see blood come on his forehead and he just fell forward. I knew he was dead and I was pleased. They said in court that Ian Barrie fired a couple of shots into the ceiling. I don’t know about that, I can’t remember. I do remember that the needle on the juke box got stuck on the record and it kept on repeating the words ‘The sun ain’t gonna shine anymore … anymore … anymore …’

  Nothing was said. Cornell’s pals had disappeared, there was no sign of the barmaid. Me and Ian Barrie just walked out of the pub, got in the car and Dickson drove us back to the Lion. I had a chat with Reg. I knew I had to get rid of my clothes and the gun and have a good scrub, so we went to the Chequers at Walthamstow, which was about six miles from the Lion. This was one of the places where we kept a change of clothing.

  We went upstairs to listen to the BBC news on the landlord’s radio. We had a few drinks and eventually it came on. The announcer said something like: ‘A man has been shot in an East End public house. He was later identified as Mr George Cornell of Camberwell Green. After the shooting he was taken to the Maida Vale Hospital, but was found to be dead on arrival.’

  Like I said, I was pleased. He was scum. I have never had one regret about killing Cornell. I was sorry for his family, of course I was, but if it hadn’t been Cornell it would have been me. I had kept my word; I always keep my word.

  I knew there had been witnesses in the Beggar’s. But someone had a word with the people who had been there, including the barmaid and an old feller who’d been in the public bar. See, if we’d really been the bad bastards some people have said we are, then we’d have made sure that barmaid kept her mouth permanently shut. That’s what Cornell would have done. But I can honestly say we were never like that. We never hurt women or children, and the only men we hurt were those stupid enough to get in our way.

  A few days after I killed Cornell we were at a party at a flat in Lea Bridge Road, in Leyton, when the police came barging in and arrested us. We’d been expecting them, of course. In fact, we were surprised it had taken them so long. Chief Inspector Tommy Butler, the head of Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad, was in charge of them. Butler was the man who later tried to track down the Great Train Robbers - and a right balls-up he made of most of that. Me and Reg was put in an identity parade and we saw the blonde barmaid from the Beggar’s walking towards us. But she walked straight by and never picked us out. Tommy Butler was well pissed off.

  Like I say, I always intended to kill George Cornell. But the killing of Jack McVitie was different. Sure, we killed him and we got done for it, but there was never, like, a definite plan to kill McVitie. It just sort of happened. As a matter of fact, Reggie should never have been done for the murder of McVitie, it should have been self-defence, and I’ll tell you why. McVitie’s real name was John, but everyone called him Jack. He was known as Jack the Hat because he always wore a hat to hide his bald head. He was very vain about his appearance and no one ever saw him without his hat. He wore it if he came to the front door to answer it. They say he even wore it in the bath. He wasn’t on our Firm, but he used to do odd jobs for us. He was quite tough, he had very big forearms, and he liked to think he was a hard man. His big problem was he liked to drink a lot, but he couldn’t hold his drink. He got nasty.

  McVitie started to let us down. He went into the 211 club in Balham High Road, which was owned by our friend Freddie Foreman. McVitie was drunk, so Freddie told him to leave. He did, but then he came back again, and he caused a scene and did some damage. It was silly. He upset another friend of ours, Ron Olives, in a club called the Log Cabin, in Wardour Street, which the boxer Billy Walker had an interest in, with his brother George. Then he misbehaved himself in our club, the Regency. He took a gun out and fired a couple of shots at a feller called Tommy Flanagan. Thank Christ he missed. Then he cut a feller with a knife in the basement, walked upstairs and wiped off the blood on his knife on the dress of a woman who was having a drink at the bar.

  We weren’t looking for trouble with McVitie, but he never listened when you gave him advice. He did us out of some money and then he went down the Regency Club and threatened John Barry with a gun. Barry had an interest in the club with us. That was in October 1967.

  McVitie was waving a shotgun around, a sawn-off shotgun, and saying things about me. Making threats. Reggie talked to him about it in a Chinese restaurant, but McVitie never paid any attention. He was silly. That turned out to be his last supper. Me and Reg spoke about it and we decided we would sort McVitie out.

  We set up a little drinks party at a flat in Evering Road, Stoke Newington. It belonged to a friend of ours. Everybody called her Blonde Carol. That was on the night of the 28th. Me and Reg was there, with the Lambrianous, Chris and Tony, and Ron Bender, who was on the Firm. There was a couple of other fellers there, young friends of mine. We’d had a few drinks, gin and tonic, and we got a call telling us that McVitie had turned up again at the Regency. I told Tony Lambrianou to go and fetch him. Tell him there was a party on, there was some drinks and some women. We knew Jack would come.

  I knew Reggie had a gun with him. But you had to have a weapon with you if you were going to get involved with someone like McVitie. Like, no one had said, right, Reg, take a gun and you can shoot McVitie. It wasn’t like that.

  Everyone knew that McVitie was going to get a beating. Reggie wasn’t the only one who was tooled up. Anyway, eventually Tony Lambrianou turns up with McVitie, but there was two other men as well, friends of McVitie. They were two brothers, Ray and Alan Mills. Ronnie Hart, our cousin, had come as well. McVitie was surprised to see us and we told him to sit in a chair.

  We told the Mills brothers to bugger off and forget what they had seen. Reggie said to McVitie: ‘We warned you more than once about causing trouble for us, but you never listened. I told you about the trouble you had at Fred’s club [the 211].’ Then Jack did a silly thing. He said to Reg: ‘Fred’s club has got nothing to do with you
.’

  That made Reggie mad. He took out his gun, a Beretta, and tried to shoot McVitie. He pulled the trigger, there was a click, but the gun never fired. It was jammed. Then McVitie jumped up and attacked Reggie with a knife. He went for him with the knife, but Reg got it off him. Then he done him with the knife. So it should have been self-defence. Reggie did him three times with the knife, twice in his body and once in his face. All that stuff about McVitie running across the room and trying to dive through a window, all that is rubbish. There wasn’t time. It happened too quick. It always does. McVitie was on the floor, there was a lot of blood. Ron Bender bent down, listened to his heart, and said, ‘He’s dead.’

  That’s what happened. He went for Reggie and Reggie done him in self-defence. But all that never came out, all the grasses said that Reg done him and McVitie just sat there and took it.

  Those rats the Mills brothers, they grassed us. And they weren’t even there. McVitie deserved it, he was a bad man. He once broke a woman’s back by throwing her out of a car. We had to deal with him, he’d been telling other people he was going to shoot Reggie.

  They’ve never found Jack the Hat’s body. People like Tony Lambrianou may say they know how we got rid of him. But they don’t. Only me and Reggie know, but we won’t tell. We never grass, we never have.

  But, believe me, just like Cornell, Jack McVitie wasn’t a nice man. Even Lambrianou wrote in a newspaper: ‘He [McVitie] wasn’t the meek little man portrayed in the film, The Krays. He was a known heavy man, an active robber, capable of anything.

  If Jack the Hat was going to die, that is how he would have wanted to go. Reggie didn’t do society such a bad turn.’

  That is right. We only handed out punishment when it was deserved. One feller called me a fat slob, so I had to do him. We were in a pub at the time, so I went to the toilet and told someone to pass a message to him that I wanted a quiet word, in private. As he came into the toilet I slashed him with a knife. He had to have plastic surgery.