Notorious: The Immortal Legend of the Kray Twins

by John Pearson

  Violet Kray never forgave the prison authorities for the way they broke the news to her about her Ronnie, so soon after Rose’s death. The local policeman knocked on the door in the middle of the night with a telegram containing a single sentence: ‘Your son Ronald Kray certified insane.’

  Violet collapsed. When she recovered she was beside herself with fear that, if ‘they’ could treat her like that, what were they doing to her Ronnie? The family agreed, especially Reg, and there and then he swore a solemn oath to Violet that he would do everything he could to save him. As events would prove, he kept his word. But in doing so, Ron’s madness, which at first had threatened to destroy the world that the Twins had shared together, became part of their legend and their destiny.

  On 20 February 1958 Ron was admitted as a patient to a locked ward in the Long Grove lunatic asylum under twenty-four-hour supervision by trained nurses and there he stayed for several days in a state of abject terror.

  ‘I wouldn’t move, but sat all day huddled round the radiator. I wasn’t sure of who I was, and because it was so warm I felt the radiator was the only friend I had. Apart from my friend the radiator I was on my own, and I remember daft things coming and going through my mind. There was a man in the bed opposite me and I thought he was a dog. I liked dogs, and I thought that if I could remember his name he’d come and jump into my lap, and then I’d have a friend. But I never got his name right. I couldn’t recognise anybody else, not even Reggie or my mother when they came to see me. All I could think was that I’d better kill myself, before someone else did it first.’

  According to Ron’s medical reports, his delusions persisted for several weeks and he went on thinking that people were plotting against him and censoring his letters for sinister purposes. Then, slowly, the treatment seemed to work and by the end of April his doctor casually summed him up in his report. ‘A simple man of low intelligence, poorly in touch with the outside world.’

  For the Long Grove doctors that was that and the madness of Ronnie Kray was pigeon-holed as a run-of-the-mill mental breakdown of a simple man of low intelligence. It was a sad case, but the doctors saw such cases every day. He was never going to be completely cured but they could help him to recover from his breakdown, then stabilise him on regular doses of the tranquillisers that were beginning to revolutionise the treatment of the mentally sick. They prescribed Stematol, a powerful drug that damps down neurotic symptoms, hopefully without completely doping the patient in the process. And that, it seemed, was that – although, as things turned out, it wasn’t.

  The problem was that Long Grove was essentially a non-specialist National Health Service hospital for the mentally sick, and of its 1,800 patients when Ron was there only eight, including Ron, were criminals. Since the hospital authorities insisted on treating prisoners like Ron as patients, his criminal history was ignored and the doctors went on treating him as a case of fairly mild schizophrenia. Since the doctors had little or no experience of dealing with violent criminals like Ron they failed to recognise the telltale signs which should have warned them what he really was.

  For Ronnie was no ordinary schizophrenic whose problems could be stabilised with Stematol. Schizophrenics form by far the largest single group of patients in Britain’s mental hospitals but there are several different forms of the disease. The sickness usually develops over a long period and is sparked off by a final crisis in which sufferers find themselves unable to reconcile their delusions with the world outside. They are rarely violent, generally have a low sex drive and find it hard to deal with the world.

  But among the various sufferers from schizophrenia there is one small group that is extremely dangerous and often difficult to spot – the paranoid schizophrenics. If a paranoid schizophrenic has a mental breakdown his delusions can persist unchanged for a long period afterwards, for he often has a frightening ability to use all his powers of intelligence to protect his distorted view of the world.

  It is this that accounts for one of the scariest things about paranoid schizophrenics – the way that they can frequently appear quite rational and normal while inwardly their lives are being dominated by some all-powerful obsession. According to Kraeplin, who first described this condition in the 1890s, this condemns the paranoid schizophrenic to ‘a vicious circle of ill-advised aggressiveness, self-protection, misinterpretation, the spread of delusional ideas and increasing watchfulness.’ All of which very much applied to Ron.

  Other symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia can include emotional coldness, absence of remorse and any feeling for others, coupled with delusions of grandeur alternating with periods of deep depression and an all-pervading sense of persecution. Some paranoid schizophrenics suffer from what is known as ‘double orientation’, living in the normal world while simultaneously identifying with Christ, Napoleon or some other great figure from the past. Sometimes they hear voices giving them directions, and this often accompanies a blunting of emotions, leading in extreme cases to ‘callous and apparently motiveless crimes of violence’ if their voices order them to commit them. Paranoid schizophrenics have been known to resort to the most violent crimes, which they see as their sole means of survival. Sometimes a trifling affair can throw them into a wild fury, just as something deeply moving or upsetting can fail to affect them.

  Sometimes these qualities appear in history’s greatest conquerors and religious leaders, and also in some of its most notorious criminals. Jack the Ripper, Al Capone, Charles Manson and the Boston Strangler are all textbook cases of violent paranoid schizophrenics. And, although none of the doctors had spotted it yet, so was Ronnie Kray.

  By early May he seemed to be responding well to treatment and the doctors decided he was safely on the road to recovery. Soon they would recommend that he could return to prison and safely finish off his sentence.

  While the Long Grove doctors were failing to appreciate the danger of Ron’s condition, his family went still further and were claiming there was really nothing wrong with him at all. Violet was firmly, indeed passionately, of this opinion. After all, wasn’t she his mother and wasn’t she proved right that time when he’d had the diphtheria, and she’d saved his life by refusing to believe the doctors? She still knew her Ronnie better than any doctors. ‘My Ronnie barmy? Don’t be daft. He’s just playing up, like he did when he was in the army.’

  The rest of the family agreed with her, even Reg, although knowing Ron as closely as he did he must have had his doubts. But whatever doubts he might have had were quickly overruled when news arrived that one of the Long Grove doctors was advising that Ronnie should be kept in hospital a little longer to make sure that he was absolutely ready to return to prison to complete his sentence.

  By now, really thanks to Violet, the whole family was in denial over Ronnie’s madness and they seem to have persuaded Reg that it was his duty to do something to save his brother, ‘otherwise they’ll keep him in the loonie bin for ever.’

  Reg was smart and had learned to pick the brains of people who were smarter still. After talking to a helpful lawyer he discovered something interesting. According to the law, provided someone who’d been certified insane could remain at liberty for six months or more the authorities would be compelled to accept this as evidence of a presumption of his sanity. If they still had doubts about it, the patient would have to be recertified.

  This was all that Reg needed for the plan that followed. It was very simple. If Ron was to be rescued from spending the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum, there was one way Reg could help him to escape. After that, all they’d have to do was make sure he remained free for long enough to get an independent assessment of his sanity from their own doctors. After which he would give himself up to the police, serve out the remainder of his sentence, and emerge from prison freed from any stigma of insanity.

  *

  By now Ron was no longer restricted to the locked ward where he was placed on his arrival. He was allowed to see visitors on Saturday afternoons, when relatives
could come and spend an hour or so having tea with the patients.

  One must remember that in those days the Twins were still physically identical, and in the past they had often used their uncanny similarity to baffle the police over which of them was which. It was time to pull the same trick once again – and they both knew exactly what to do. On her last visit Violet had told Ron to be sure to wear his dark blue suit and red tie and when Reg arrived, accompanied by the Twins’ old friend Georgie Osborne, he was wearing a raincoat but underneath was dressed the same as Ron. For the first half-hour of the visit the twins and Georgie Osborne sat talking and laughing over some holiday snapshots that Reg had brought along to show his brother. Then one of the nurses announced teatime. Tea was made in a scullery along the corridor, and since patients weren’t allowed beyond the door to the visiting room one of the visitors usually went to fetch it.

  The duty nurse noticed nothing strange when Ron’s brother, who was still wearing his raincoat, went out to fetch the tea. He took his time but this didn’t seem to worry the other two who were perfectly happy talking and laughing together over the photographs. So it was quite a while before the nurse became suspicious.

  ‘Ron,’ he said, ‘where’s your brother gone? He’s taking an awful long time to get the tea.’

  ‘I’m not Ron,’ the twin replied. ‘I’m Reg. You can look at my driving licence if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘Then where’s your brother Ron?’

  ‘How should I know? It’s your job to look after him, not mine.’

  At which point the nurse panicked and sounded the alarm. But by then Ron Kray had been picked up in a car being driven by his brother Charlie, who’d been waiting patiently outside, and was on his way to London.

  The police arrived to question Reg and Georgie Osborne, but there was little they could do once Reg established his identity.

  In fact, springing Ron from Long Grove was the easy part for Reg. After this he had to organise a complex operation to look after him.

  First things first. Somehow Reg had to get reliable medical attention from a doctor they could trust not to turn Ron in to the police. There was one such doctor in the whole of London whom Reg was absolutely sure he could rely on: the villains’ own medico emeritus, Doc Blasker, who operated from his second-floor surgery in a run-down semi on the edge of Dockland. Doc Blasker was as versatile as he was helpful. Over the years he had lost count of how many bullets, shotgun pellets and associated missiles he had extracted from the flesh of uncomplaining criminals without reporting them to the police – not to mention the damaged faces he had sewn up, and the discreet abortions he had carried out on the brown American-cloth-covered medical couch in his scruffy upstairs surgery.

  In spite of which Doc Blasker was almost permanently broke. The more money that he made from ministering to criminals, the more he lost betting on horses. So when Reg brought his brother to his surgery late that February night, the good doctor was hardly likely to have turned the pair of them away.

  There was something even more disturbing about the situation. Thanks to Doc Blasker and the misdiagnosis by the prison psychiatrists, in eleven months’ time a potentially dangerous homicidal schizophrenic in the shape of Ronnie Kray was going to be released upon society when he had served out the rest of his original prison sentence.

  In the meantime, Reg had to find somewhere Ron could live a secret life while keeping clear of the authorities long enough to prove his sanity. Easier said than done. Reg knew Ron well enough to understand that he would not be safe in a flat in town. People would talk about him and he would be suspicious. Once this happened he could well turn dangerous. It was altogether far too risky. Nor could one think of sending him abroad. There was one man and one alone that Reg could think of who would help them.

  Geoff Allen was a man of many parts – con man, car dealer, professional card sharp, dedicated womaniser, property dealer, and Britain’s most successful arsonist. When the need arose, as even for him it sometimes did, he employed the Twins as his enforcers. Ronnie, in return, used Geoff Allen as his private banker, knowing that he could always tap him for almost any sum, from a few hundred pounds to several thousand, if the need arose. Such was Geoff Allen’s optimistic nature, that apparently they never had the faintest disagreement.

  Geoff also owned a farm in Suffolk and when Reg told him of his problem with Ron and how he needed somewhere he could keep him securely hidden for several months, he offered him the use of an empty caravan on his land in Suffolk.

  With Ron safely tucked away in Suffolk, Reg continued to make great gains at the helm of The Double R, revealing what he was really good at: living on the borderline of legality. He looked good in a tuxedo, and had a useful line of patter. Brother Charlie helped too. In this, as in so many things, the Krays were beginning to follow the pattern of New York gangsters, where showbiz and clubland overlapped with organised crime. Again, this was something new in London, as new money coming in from gambling started feeding through to clubland. As owner of The Double R, and its successor, the Kentucky, Reg even got to know a few visiting stars from America, including Judy Garland and her daughter Lisa Minelli. For the first time in his life, Reg was actually becoming famous on his own account. And for the first time in his life Reg was now free, which included being free from Ronnie: the conjoined life of twins who lived their life as one was in abeyance.

  Everybody began to notice the signs of Reggie’s newly found success, which were quite spectacular – the energy with which he started up his new club, the Kentucky, his new persona as its dinner-jacketed proprietor, the money he was making now that he didn’t have to pay for Ron’s crazier extravagances. Even his homosexuality seemed to be forgotten. Without Ron always there to turn him off the very thought of females and ensure that there would always be a boy to keep him happy, he started to enjoy the company of women, and the time was not far off when he would find his way to bed with them.

  At the same time quite a number of fresh criminal activities were beckoning. In contrast there was poor, wretched Ronnie, on the edge of madness and terrified of anyone who passed his caravan.

  He could not have seemed more hopeless, and more desperately in need of help, and as Reggie’s heart went out to him, the contrast between the two of them could not have been more harrowing. Reg enjoying the new life that he had just discovered and Ron in the depths of abject wretchedness, terrified, unshaven, and dependent on his twin for his survival.

  But it was still hard work for Reg, made all the harder by the way he always had to keep an eye on Ron. For Ron had become an even more pathetic figure, frightened of being on his own and terrified that Reg was going to abandon him. Reg was the only one who could reassure him that he hadn’t been forgotten. When Ron forgot his pills he became hyperactive and was dangerous. When he took too many he would sink into a deep depression. Sex was an ever-present problem, and from time to time Reg would bring along a boy to keep Ron quiet. But this was dangerous. Boys could talk and sometimes did. Besides, and understandably, few of them were over-anxious to oblige, however good the money.

  Even with Reg, Ron wasn’t easy. In a manic state he’d be immensely powerful and could turn dangerous, even to friends he’d known since boyhood, and sometimes even to Reg himself. ‘You’re not really my twin brother, you’re just somebody who looks like him,’ he told him once. For Ron the dominant emotion now was fear.

  One of the very few people he never threatened was Geoff Allen, probably because Geoff made a point of visiting him in the caravan every day. In spite of this, Geoff realised how dangerous he was.

  ‘But since he trusted me,’ he said, ‘I once took him up to London to a top Harley Street psychiatrist who told me afterwards that there was no question about it. He was definitely, incurably homicidal. But what was strange was the form it took with Ron. There were periods when he seemed absolutely normal and the only time there was any trouble was once when I was in the caravan with Ron and a chap I knew dropped in
to see me. There was nothing in it and Ron seemed quite untroubled. But when I said, “I wish that wretched fellow wouldn’t bother me like that,” he started brooding.

  ‘Then he said, “Geoff, you’ve been good to me and I’m going to do something for you in return. I’m going to kill that man who’s been pestering you.”

  ‘From the way he said this I realised that he was deadly serious, and I had a dreadful job convincing him that I didn’t want the poor sod killed’.

  ‘And would he have killed him if you hadn’t?’

  ‘Oh, definitely’, Geoff replied. ‘It was only then that I realised that he was permanently suspicious and very dangerous.’ When he saw a local farmer, he brooded over him for days and then told Reg his decision. He’d have to kill him too. It took all Reg’s powers of persuasion to dissuade him and turn his mind to safer lines of thought. Soon the only way to cure his suspicions was to disguise him and drive him up on middle-of-the-night trips to London, to Vallance Road and even to The Double R. It was risky but leaving him in the caravan was riskier.

  Torn both ways, it became an impossible situation for Reg. If he had wanted to survive, he should not have made that promise to Violet to look after Ron in the first place. It was Number One he should have been looking after now, not Ron. Others who were more experienced could have looked after him and he should have left them to it. For Reg would never get a chance like this again and the truth was that he could easily have taken it. He had so much going for him now – his club, his great new life, with his new friends and new celebrities to keep him happy. But it would have meant abandoning Ron, and Reg thought that God only knew what would have become of him. It would have also meant breaking from his mother who would never have forgiven him. Deciding to delegate the care of Ron would have been the most momentous decision of Reg’s life and he must have known that he should take it. So why didn’t he?