Notorious: The Immortal Legend of the Kray Twins

by John Pearson

  The Boothby case had also given them extraordinary prestige within the underworld, not only in Britain but also in America and on the Continent. It was there for the taking. In Britain organised crime was in its infancy but with this boost from the Establishment and effective freedom from interference by the law no other gang in London was remotely like them. Thanks to the threat contained within that one commanding syllable, the name of Kray had suddenly become the most important logo in the underworld.

  It was rather like a franchise, and since they were its undisputed owners the Twins really didn’t need to do a lot themselves. No longer was there any need to court unnecessary risk, either from the law or from other criminals. Their reputation alone was so impressive that others would pay for their support. If they lacked experience they had advisers who could help them.

  The most important of these was still Leslie ‘The Brain’ Payne, the king of the long-firm frauds, who was as anxious as ever to work with them and build his empire based on fraud. In conjunction with his ever-faithful accountant Freddie Gore, he’d recently set up Carston Securities, with smart new offices in Portland Place. Payne was an interesting case on his own account, as part of the new breed of dedicated entrepreneurs that the enterprise culture of the Sixties had thrown up. In different circumstances he could easily have been mixing with equally plausible but outwardly respectable financiers of the day whose own versions of the long-firm fraud, politely known as asset stripping, had given birth to so many of the bloated fortunes of that wonderfully corrupt decade.

  One of the more intriguing aspects of organised crime is the way it mimics global capitalism (and sometimes vice versa) so that a crime in one country can have repercussions in another. At around the time that Reg had been making his marriage vows before Father Foster in St James the Great, an armed gang was staging a successful raid upon the Royal Bank of Canada in Montreal. It was a professional job, and the gang had known exactly what they wanted. Along with over thirty thousand dollars in cash, fifty thousand dollars’ worth of instantly negotiable bearer bonds had also disappeared. Six weeks later the same gang struck again, lifting a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of debentures and bearer bonds from a bank in West Ontario. During that summer further bank raids with a similar trademark followed in other parts of Canada, as a result of which over a million dollars’ worth of securities (worth around ten million dollars today) had vanished. For criminals the joy of these securities lay in the fact that they were easily and instantly negotiable, but although the Canadian police and the FBI had spent a lot of time and effort watching for somebody to cash them somewhere in America no one did.

  It didn’t take much brainpower to work out that the bank raids had been masterminded by the Mafia and that the stolen securities were being held by a Mafia-backed syndicate in New York that specialised in laundering large quantities of hot capital. By now they had several million dollars’ worth of stolen bearer bonds on their hands but knowing that they were under observation, they were wary of marketing them in North America.

  The previous autumn Ron’s visa trouble in New York which stopped him meeting Meyer Lansky had been unfortunate. When Ronnie failed to turn up for his appointment the Mafia’s boss of bosses lost interest in the Krays, which had repercussions on their standing with the Mafia in London. But for the support of their old friend George Raft, the Twins might well have lost their monthly pension ‘minding’ the Colony Sporting Club in Mayfair.

  But now the Twins’ triumphant outcome of the McCowan case had changed all that and none of their Mafia friends had missed the way they fixed their trial and blackmailed Lord Boothby into pleading for them in the House of Lords. Even in America it would have been hard to find two gangsters with such influence in politics. From now on the Twins could do no wrong, as far as London-based members of the Mafia were concerned. There could be no argument over who should deal with those stolen bearer bonds in Europe.

  Not that either Ron or Reg could do this on their own, but they had their ideal character who could, their ‘man with the briefcase’, Leslie Payne. Following the collapse of his big Enugu scam and what he saw as the unnecessary loss of Esmeralda’s Barn, Payne had been unusually pushed for money and, master fraudster that he was, had been using the Twins’ name and reputation as backing for a series of elaborate long-firm frauds. As always seemed to happen with Payne ‘The Brain’ these frauds had worked without a hitch and had brought in badly needed cash when he and the Twins both needed it. But humdrum long-firm frauds, however profitable, were beneath a man of Leslie Payne’s sophistication and he enjoyed the challenge of dealing with stolen international bearer bonds on behalf of the US Mafia.

  Within a day or two of getting clearance from America Payne was on a plane to Montreal, returning with a sample of $80,000 worth of stolen bonds in his famous briefcase for the Twins to process. Such was the magic of the name of Kray, combined with the silver tongue of Leslie Payne, that the representatives from the New York syndicate had been happy to accept a mere $5,000 on account and a few days later Payne cashed the bonds through a friend in a London broking house at their face value – less a discreet discount for the Twins’ services.

  For the Twins all this was easy money, and as further deals followed the Mafia began regarding them as trusted associates. More than ever now, the Twins’ name could guarantee that Mafia-backed clubs and gambling junkets would be free from interference by the law. As for rival competition, no other gang in London would have risked trouble from the Twins.

  More European business with Payne followed, and the Mafia regarded the Krays as the gang they did business with. They could rely on them to ensure there’d be no trouble for their plans to put more money into investments in new clubs and bring more gamblers flying in from all over America.

  Ron had more grandiose ambitions. Together with his paranoia went the instincts of a genuine tycoon – the love of power, the passion to control everyone around him, and above all the monomaniac’s obsession with himself. Like the true psychopath he was, for him reality and fantasy were one and the fact he was working with the Mafia and entering the league of big-time international racketeers was simply an expression of his uncontrolled ambitions, as were the other trappings he was planning – the private plane, the widespread foreign interests, and a house like Billy Hill’s in southern Spain.

  So what went wrong? In the first place Reg was diverted by his guilt and worries over Frances. In the second place, Ron suddenly made up his mind to ditch Les Payne, which proved a serious mistake. Payne knew too much to have around them as an enemy and, more dangerous still, he was not afraid of them. Having survived the battle of Monte Cassino in the infantry he was not particularly concerned by anything the Krays could do to him, and so he retired, lay low, and waited for the wind to change – as he knew it would.

  To compound their error over Leslie Payne there was the man the Twins adopted in his place. What had happened was that after several months of trouble-free profit from the sale of bearer bonds throughout Europe there had been problems with the certification of some of the stolen bonds. Someone had suggested that Alan Bruce Cooper might be able to assist them and they had agreed.

  Instead of rational Reg it was rampant Ron who now began to take control and whose ideas increasingly dictated what would happen. The Twins had London in their grasp. The mob needed them – and in their eyes the Krays had proved themselves the best in London.

  *

  At this time Ron was relying more than ever on his favourite clairvoyant, fat Dot Brown of Walthamstow, wife to the Firm’s strongman, the even more enormous Tommy ‘The Bear’ Brown. According to Dot Ron was Attila the Hun reincarnated. Once a week he’d visit her and she would put curses on any new name on his hate list.

  Dot also reassured him that, with his spirit guide protecting him, he was not only untouchable but unkillable as well. But instead of making him feel more secure this actually increased his chronic insecurity. At the same time his mental state wa
s worsening, with psychotic mood swings alternating with days of black despair and periods of grandiose excitement. It was then that he truly felt invulnerable, as indeed he almost was. In his lucid moments when he was being driven by his voices he could be particularly dangerous. As a homicidal maniac his sense of freedom from the attentions of the police had increased his wilder feelings of omnipotence. But these were matched by those periods of black despair, particularly once he started drinking. To remain stable he should have stayed off alcohol and adhered to his prescribed intake of Stematol. ‘If you take drink and drugs together on the scale you’re doing you’ll either kill yourself – or someone else,’ Doc Blasker warned him.

  Because of the twins’ shared psychology, Ron’s growing schizophrenia increasingly affected Reg. In the past, throughout their constant fights and disagreements, Reg had always managed to control him in the end. But now the strain and worry over Frances were seriously affecting Reg as well and upsetting whatever balance still remained between them. Reg did all he could to stop Ron’s growing madness interfering with their business. The Hideaway Club, renamed El Morocco, continued to make good money, the Mafia connection prospered, fresh rackets were increasing, and no other gang in London cared or dared to tangle with them. So as the new year dawned in 1966 it looked as if everything could still work out. The Twins appeared not just untouchable but immoveable as well, so firmly embedded were they in the London underworld. And there they would have stayed – if Ron’s inner voices hadn’t started telling him that the time had come to kill someone.

  Until now, Ron had practised almost every known form of violence except murder. He had branded Lenny Hamilton on the face, he had shot Teddy Berry and Albert Donoghue in the legs, he had cut more people in more parts of their anatomy than even he could possibly remember. He had smashed opponents on the head with iron bars and disfigured them with broken bottles. The only thing he hadn’t done was kill – until the evening of 9 March 1966 when he decided to repair this ultimate omission.

  For one of the most celebrated murders of the century, which three years later would earn Ron thirty years in prison, it is strange that the killing of the minor East End gangster George Cornell should still be something of a mystery.

  The Twins had first met him in a military detention centre back in 1954 when they were all trying to get out of the army. In those days Cornell was still called Myers and he came from one of the poorest Irish-Jewish families in Watney Street who had always been the chosen enemies of the Krays. Over the years he had become a big, bald, bull-like man who still enjoyed a fight with anyone but a few years earlier, when he had changed his name from Myers to Cornell, he’d made it clear that he’d left Watney Street behind for good. Although he continued in the world of minor villainy he ‘ducked and dived’ to make a living.

  For the last few days Ron had been in the middle of a serious depression and Reg persuaded him to stay at Vallance Road where Violet could look after him. As often happened when he was depressed Ron was soon ignoring Doc Blasker’s warnings about mixing alcohol with medication, and since Reg couldn’t stop him drinking he asked two of their recently recruited young Scots gangsters from the Gorbals, Ian Barrie and ‘Scotch Jack’ Dixon, to look after him. They were doing this in Reg’s absence late one afternoon when somebody turned up with the news that he had just seen George Cornell drinking in The Blind Beggar, a nearby pub on the far side of Whitechapel High Street.

  This was not of any great importance. The Beggar was Cornell’s local and he was probably waiting to meet someone for a drink. But in the desperate state that Ron was in, even this scrap of gossip was enough to fire his suspicions. Had Reg been there he would have told Ron to forget it and not be stupid and that would have been an end to it. But since Reg was not around, Ron saw his chance – and took it.

  He always kept his favourite gun, a 9 mm German army Luger automatic, concealed beneath loose floorboards in his bedroom and he knew that Barrie was also armed. Since Dixon’s car was parked outside in Vallance Road the three of them could be at The Blind Beggar within ten minutes. Then, while Ron and Ian Barrie went inside to do what needed to be done, Scotch Jack could be waiting outside at the wheel to guarantee their getaway. No sooner had Ron worked all this out than he put it into practice.

  When the three of them drive up to The Blind Beggar it is shortly after opening time and the pub is all but empty. The barmaid, who to guard her anonymity will always be referred to as ‘Mrs X’, has just served Cornell his first pint of the evening and stands behind the the bar, polishing glasses, when the street door opens and Barrie enters, firing two warning shots into the ceiling. Mrs X dives for the cellar but her colleague, Patsy Quill the barman, is caught by the open door as Ron Kray pushes past him. Gun in hand, Ron marches in that jerky zombie-like walk of his in a straight line to where Cornell is sitting. All this happens so swiftly that there is nothing that Cornell can do except remark, ‘Well, look who’s ‘ere’ as Ron lifts the gun towards him, his finger on the trigger.

  Either from vanity or haste Ron hasn’t thought to bring his spectacles, and since he is near-sighted he needs to get in close before he fires the single shot at point-blank range into the centre of Cornell’s forehead that kills him. For a moment Ron stands where he is, staring at Cornell who slides slowly off his chair. Then he turns on his heel and, zombie-like as ever, marches back the way he came, leaving Cornell dying on the floor with his final glass of beer untasted.

  Only when she’s sure that Ron has gone does Mrs X emerge from the cellar to see if there is anything she can do to help her former customer. But all that anyone can do for Cornell now is call an ambulance. By the time it arrives Ron is safely back at Vallance Road with his two accomplices, neither of whom, to tell the truth, has the faintest notion why Ron did it.

  As murders go, almost everything about that killing was distinctly odd, even Ron’s choice of weapon. The Luger automatic he had kept beneath the floorboards was not the gun that any self-respecting gangster would have chosen for this sort of operation. A field weapon of the German military in the second world war, the Luger is both cumbersome and difficult to conceal, but it has always been popular with collectors who make a fetish of weaponry and guns, as Ron did himself. (‘I like the feeling of guns, although I am usually happier with fists or a knife,’ he confesses somewhere in his memoirs.) Being essentially a military weapon it also gives a sense of soldierly importance to those who use it, which probably explains why Ronnie, ‘the Colonel’, liked it. It was also the weapon of choice for Nazi execution squads engaged in killing Jews in Eastern Europe, and much about that cool, robotic killing of George Cornell suggests an execution. There had been no preceding fight or disagreement, the victim put up no resistance, and in his role of executioner Ron placed himself at no greater risk than a hangman at a hanging.

  The Oxford Dictionary defines an execution as ‘to put to death in pursuance of a sentence’, which sounds like a fairly accurate description of Ron’s behaviour as he pumped that single risk-free bullet into the brain of George Cornell. And from then on everything he did became increasingly macabre. If what he told his nephew Ronnie Hart is true, while standing watching Cornell’s lifeblood jetting from his forehead he experienced an orgasm, and during the journey back to Vallance Road he was also physically sick. He got back to find that Reggie had returned, and on discovering what had happened Reg was beside himself with fury.

  ‘You silly useless bastard, what the fuck d’you think you’re up to? shouted Reg. It was a question to which, on this occasion, Ron could make no answer.

  But despite his anger Reg was cool enough to know that something needed to be done before Ron’s behaviour brought disaster to everyone concerned. Just how stupid could his idiotic brother be? After all that he and Ron had been through in the last few months, and then to play into the arms of the law with a pointless, idiotic crime like this – and in broad daylight too.

  But Reg also knew that unless he acted quickly he and Ron
would be spending their foreseeable future in prison. Ron would go down for murder and the police would have no problem framing Reg as an accessory. And all this aggravation just to kill George Cornell, who was causing no trouble to anyone.

  One of many useful arts that Reg had learned from all the years he’d been looking after Ron was damage limitation, thanks to which he acted now with great efficiency. Ron is ordered off to have a shower and a change of clothing – ‘and for fuck’s sake make it quick.’ Violet, who has emerged from her kitchen, is told exactly what to say to the police if they come round, as they’re sure to do. (‘You know nothing and have seen nothing.’) Finally a reminder to Ron to not forget his pills.

  One thing Reg knows for certain is that in his present hyperactive state Ron must be kept firmly out of everybody’s way. Luckily Reg knows an understanding publican in Walthamstow with a flat in a run-down house in the Lee Bridge Road where Ron can stay for a few days without anyone knowing.

  The publican promises to look after him, and this is where Ron stays in hiding for the next few days with members of the Firm in constant attendance, drinking heavily and reliving every moment of the killing. To keep his courage up he plays the wartime speeches of his hero, Winston Churchill. This must be one of the weirdest scenes of all Ron’s homicidal fantasies but it can’t seriously explain why on that evening in early March it suddenly became so desperately important for him to murder George Cornell.

  Various motives were subsequently produced, few of which made any sense The explanation from the prosecution at the Twins’ Old Bailey trial in 1969, encouraged by admirers anxious to endow Ron’s action with at least a smattering of glory, was that the killing was Ron’s belated contribution to the gang warfare that had been going on for quite some time between the Kray Firm and the Richardsons. There had been a number of ‘incidents’ between the Twins and the Richardsons’ henchman ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser, including a late-night confrontation at the Astor Club in Mayfair that nearly, but not quite, ended in violence.