by John Pearson
One must remember that freeing Frank Mitchell was essentially Ron’s idea, and that he had often been reminded of the similarities between Mitchell’s plight and his own in the Long Grove mental hospital ten years earlier. The similarities were indeed quite striking. Like Ronnie, Mitchell had been certified insane and was having to endure the fate that Ronnie had always dreaded while in prison – imprisonment without a release date. And what struck me over Ron’s plan to release him was that it turned out to be a virtual carbon copy of what happened after Ron’s own escape from Long Grove which Reg had organised back in 1958.
Ron had convinced himself that all Frank had to do was to copy his example. Since Frank was working on the moors it would be easier to spring him than it had been when Ron and Reg had swapped places to escape from Long Grove. And as soon as Frank was free there’d be no problem.
Ron and Reg could easily arrange for members of the Firm to look after him once he was safely tucked away somewhere in the country, as they had when Ron himself had been hiding up in Geoff Allen’s caravan. If Ron could do it so could Frank – lie low, take things easy, and cause no trouble to anyone. Then after several months in hiding, when he’d proved his sanity by keeping out of trouble, Frank could peacefully surrender to the authorities and get a release date, just as Ron had done. If it worked for Ron, why not for Frank?
Knowing that Reg was sure to disagree with his idea, as he often did these days, Ron talked it over first with Teddy Smith who, as usual, eagerly supported him. Since Teddy saw himself as the Firm’s self-appointed writer in residence he also promised to organise a media campaign and help Frank write letters to the press to ask for a release date. Teddy had an even brighter notion. He was still very much in touch with his old lover Tom Driberg. With his Labour government in power, Tom was more influential now than ever and he owed the Twins a considerable favour for their discretion in the Boothby business. With the support of the media and a helping hand from the influential Driberg, Frank’s troubles could be over sooner than anyone expected.
The more Ron thought about it, the more convinced he was that the time had come for him and Reg to do all they could to get their old friend out of prison. When finally he told his brother, Reg, as he’d expected, disagreed strongly. But one can see how weak Reg’s position had become and how difficult he was finding it to stand up against Ron’s inescapable obsessions. Not for the first time, for the sake of peace Reg ended up agreeing. In essence the plan was based entirely on what Ronnie had done when faced with the authorities over his mental problems – help Mitchell to escape, keep him at liberty long enough to get him decertified, and finally, at some future date, persuade him to surrender. Who knew, people might even praise the Twins, and Ronnie in particular, for acting so public-spiritedly to right a wrong inflicted on a badly treated friend.
What nobody seems to have pointed out to Ron was one important difference between the two cases. Ron had been virtually unknown when Reg got him out of Long Grove, and six months later he was able to surrender and return to prison with minimal publicity. With Mitchell this would clearly be impossible. By christening him the ‘Mad Axeman’ the media had made him one of the most notorious prisoners in the country. Once he had escaped he would terrify anyone who came in contact with him and when he surrendered there would be vast publicity. Those involved would find themselves charged with a serious offence and would almost certainly end up in prison. Far from helping Mitchell this would leave him further than ever from release and might well ensure that he stayed inside for ever. For what Ron failed to understand was that the outside world – and in particular the world of judges and policemen – did not think and feel as he did, and that what he saw as a good turn to a badly treated comrade others would regard as a serious criminal offence, releasing a dangerous psychopath upon the public.
Reg did tell me some years later that he tried his best to dissuade Ron but, as was happening more than ever now, he found it hard to get through to him and soon gave up. When their brother Charlie learned about the plan, he was even more emphatic in his opposition. When Ron asked for his assistance, he refused to get involved.
‘You don’t care about your friends like I do,’ muttered Ron. ‘You don’t believe in loyalty to your own. Frank is one of us, and you won’t risk anything to save him.’
During these arguments Ron often brought Mad Teddy in to back him up. ‘I’ll help him write the sort of letters that will get results. What Frank needs is publicity. Make everyone understand what the poor guy’s suffered. He’s been birched. He’s had the cat-o’-nine-tails. He’s been inside for eighteen years, and they treat him like an animal.’
Against arguments like these Reg didn’t stand a chance. He could only go along with them, particularly now, for he had too much on his mind with the way his personal life was going. He was becoming deeply worried about Frances, and rather than argue he left Ron and Teddy Smith to worry over Frank Mitchell.
Early that November, Teddy Smith paid one last visit to Dartmoor, with a message from Ronnie. Frank was not to to worry about his release date any more. His escape was fixed for 12 December. Which meant that two madmen, Ronnie Kray and Teddy Smith, had finally decided on a half-baked plan to save another madman, Frank Mitchell.
With Ron effectively in charge, arrangements were chaotic. Ron had originally hoped to hide Mitchell after his release in a flat belonging to a friend in Shoreditch but at the last minute the friend backed out and they were forced to make do with Lennie ‘Books’ Dunn, purveyor of second-hand books, blue films and cheap pornography, whose wife had had enough and had left him to his own devices in their dreary ground-floor flat in suburban Barking.
Ron then chose Albert Donoghue and middle-aged Billy Exley to drive down to Dartmoor to collect Mitchell, but at the last minute it was discovered that neither Donoghue nor Exley had a valid driving licence and they had to borrow driving licences from two other members of the Firm so they could rent a clapped-out green Vauxhall for the journey. Then Reg pointed out that Mitchell would need a change of clothing from his prison garb, and since the ex-wrestler Tommy Brown, ‘The Bear’, was the only member of the Firm as big as him they persuaded him to lend them a set of cast-offs that would fit Frank. With such problems it was clear that far too much was getting rushed, but everyone now went in fear of Ron and what he’d do if anyone dared to disappoint his old friend Frank. Frank was depending on them all. How could anybody let him down?
And then, to complicate yet further an already over-complicated situation, Ronnie, changeable as ever, switched all his erratic energy into chasing yet another of his favourite will-o’-the-wisps – the police. And this at a time when, following the Boothby cover-up, the Twins were effectively invulnerable, and nobody at Scotland Yard wanted any fresh involvement with the Krays unless absolutely necessary.
But Ron had been informed that a police detective called Townsend was offering the Twins immunity from arrest for unlicensed gambling in one of their pubs for a mere twenty pounds a week. Had Ronnie not been so obsessional about the police he’d have known that the last thing he or Reg needed was to pay a corrupt police detective for anything. But Ron never was completely sane about the police and could not resist an opportunity like this to score off any member of the hated force. So once again he turned to George Devlin the private eye he and Reg had employed in the McCowan case, to fix him up with a miniature recorder. A few days later Ron met Detective Inspector Townsend at the pub, listened to his proposition and, having secretly recorded it, said he’d think it over.
Instead, he sent a copy of the recording to the Director of Public Prosecutions. So far, so good; Inspector Townsend was suspended pending investigations, and largely on the strength of Ron’s recorded evidence he was sent for trial. Then something happened that Ronnie might have possibly foreseen – he was summoned to appear as a prosecution witness in court. Ron had always refused on principle to act as a witness in a court of law, and when he did so now the judge subpoenaed hi
m to appear. When Ron still refused he was threatened with imprisonment for contempt of court. Which left Ron no alternative but to act exactly as he had after murdering Cornell – go into hiding. Since all this happened just a few days before the Twins were planning to spring Frank Mitchell it made everything more complicated still. Reg argued strongly that this meant the whole attempt should be postponed but still Ron wouldn’t listen. Unlike the rest of them, he knew how Frank would feel. He knew how disappointed Frank would be. You couldn’t disappoint a friend like Frank.
This meant that as the day of Mitchell’s great escape approached, Ron had barricaded himself in a flat in the Finchley Road which he filled with weapons, medication, alcohol and his precious recordings of the wartime speeches of Winston Churchill. The curtains were kept permanently pulled, while favoured members of the Firm brought him food and drink and a regular supply of teenage boys. But as Ron slipped into one of his depressions his plan to free Frank Mitchell lost all hope it ever had of succeeding. And there was still much worse to come.
On 10 December, with only two days left before Frank Mitchell’s dash for freedom, Frances who had taken an overdose of sleeping pills a few months earlier, made a second serious attempt to kill herself. Her father found her just in time. ‘Dad, you should have let me go,’ she murmured. But Frank Shea called an ambulance instead, and got his daughter into hospital. When Reg heard the news and tried to visit her he was told she was too weak to see anyone.
With Reg unable to think of anything except seeing Frances, this provided yet another argument to postpone the freeing of Frank Mitchell. But still Ron wouldn’t hear of it. Postponement now would have devastated Frank and had this happened Ron would have gone berserk as well. Which meant that out of fear of Ron, the Axeman’s grand escape was set to go ahead, with Ron in a state of drug-induced depression in a flat in the Finchley Road, Reg distraught with worry over Frances, and a plan that hadn’t got a hope in hell of ever working. Apart from which, everything was going swimmingly.
The twelfth of December dawned. The only hope for Mitchell now was that with everything going wrong, something was bound to happen which would stop the plan proceeding. There were, God knew, enough potential hiccups in it all for something untoward to happen. Mitchell could have got lost in the December mist. The green Vauxhall could have broken down. But since Sod’s Law was now in operation, poor Mitchell couldn’t even count on a disaster which might just have saved him.
Instead, for just this one key moment, everything went like clockwork. The green Vauxhall made it to Dartmoor. Donoghue and Exley didn’t lose their way. And at the prearranged moment the morning mist lifted off the moors and, slap on time, there was Mitchell standing at the rendezvous on the Princetown Road, looking like a very large schoolboy on a holiday adventure and wearing a mask he’d made from his schoolmistress’s black silk underwear. When Donoghue told him to take the damned thing off he sulked for a while but soon recovered his high spirits which lasted for the rest of the four-hour trip to London. Not until they reached their destination did the first cold douche of irredeemable disaster which would henceforth blight this whole appalling escapade wash over them.
Mitchell had been picturing this moment for years and expected a hero’s welcome from enthusiastic members of the underworld, followed by a party with champagne and pretty girls and famous faces about whom he had heard so much but never met. The least that he expected was that the Twins would obviously be there to welcome him in person. But when the car pulled up outside Dunn’s wretched flat in Barking there was no sign of a party, no sign of the Twins, no sign of anything that even moved until Donoghue, by dint of hammering on the front door, finally dragged out the miserable pornographer with the hangdog face and nervous twitch to greet the big escaping hero.
Whatever Frank had been dreaming of for all those years it was emphatically not this. But for him all that really mattered now was Ron – or rather Ron’s non-appearance. Had Ron been there he would have reassured him. As soon as he saw his old friend again, he’d know that everything was fine. But with no sign of Ron, the big excited schoolboy had suddenly become a sadly disappointed schoolboy. ‘Where’s Ron?’ he asked pathetically. Donoghue did his best to dispel Frank’s disappointment but the reasons for Ron’s absence weren’t easy to explain. Try as they might, they couldn’t make Frank understand why Ron couldn’t be there to look after him in person as he’d always said he would.
‘He’ll soon be here,’ Donoghue told him. ‘Be patient. Ron will come. You have my word for it. He’ll come.’ But Ron never did.
*
In the meantime Donoghue and Exley did their best – which clearly wasn’t much – to look after Frank and keep him happy. Exley cooked him steak and chips, but they didn’t like to give him alcohol in case it made the situation worse.
It was a situation that would have driven any sane man crazy, and Mitchell wasn’t very sane. He had passed within half a mile of where his parents lived and suddenly felt homesick. ‘If Ron’s not here, I’m going home,’ he abruptly announced.
‘Frank, be sensible. You can’t go home. Your mum’s house will be the first place the Old Bill will think of searching for you.’ So to divert him they spent the afternoon teaching him simple card games like snap and pontoon. When he started getting bored they humoured him as best they could. ‘Show us how you can pick up two men, Frank,’ said Exley, which he did. ‘Tell us about that bird you had on the moor,’ said Donoghue,
But Frank was prudish and he didn’t want to talk about his schoolmistress, and as darkness fell and the hours ticked by he was already starting to get suspicious.
‘If Ron can’t come, why can’t I see Reg?’
‘You will, Frank, but Reg is a very busy man. He’ll come later.’
At last nine o’clock arrived and they watched the news on television. That cheered Frank Mitchell up at once and he rocked with laughter when he saw Royal Marine commandos on the moor, trying to find him. What the announcer did not say was that the marines were armed and under orders to shoot on sight.
‘They’ll never catch me alive,’ he said.
‘No, Frank. They never will,’ said Exley.
It was nearly midnight before Reg came at last, but he was clearly jumpy. What was really on his mind was not Frank Mitchell or his problems. He’d been trying all that evening to see Frances in hospital but when the doctors said it was too early he blamed this bitterly on her family.
‘I’ll kill the lot of them,’ Reg muttered. ‘Killing’s too good for scum like that.’
Soon the hours were turning into days, and nothing happened. Everyone was running short of conversation. Shifts were arranged and ‘Scotch Jack’ Dixon was brought in to change places with Exley. But there was still no sign of Ron – nor, for that matter, any sign of the police or even any indication that they had an inkling of Mitchell’s whereabouts. Which meant that at this moment, had they wanted to, the Twins still had a chance to organise something that would have saved Frank Mitchell’s life. Somehow they might still have sent him abroad. Failing this, they could have got him to a safe house in the country. They might just have found someone more suitable to look after him. But nobody thought of anything like this.
Ron was still drugged out of his mind in a drunken stupor in the flat in the Finchley Road, and Reg was trying to control his fury over his in-laws. The only member of the Firm who was still trying to work out what to do with Mitchell was Teddy Smith and on arrival at the flat next morning he had the unenviable task of organising Mitchell to write the allimportant letters to the press, which was now their one slender hope of a happy outcome to the situation.
It was heavy going. Mitchell had been taught to write in prison but was desperately slow, and lacked what Smith considered the proper style for a letter to the press. So after some disagreement they ended up with Smith dictating and Mitchell laboriously penning two letters on which his future – and his life – depended. One was to the editor of the Daily Mirror, a
nd the other to the home secretary, care of the editor of The Times.
The home secretary’s letter went went as follows:
Sir,
The reason for my absence from Dartmoor was to bring to your Notice my unhappy plight. To be truthful, I am asking for a possible Date of release. From the age of 9 I have not been completely free, always under some act or other.
Sir, I ask you, where is the fairness of this. I am not a murderer or a sex maniac, nor do I think I am a danger to the public. I think I have been more than punished for the wrongs I have done.
Yours sincerely,
Frank Mitchell
There was no reply and two more days passed with nothing happening. It was now a week since Frank’s escape and it was Donoghue who had the sense to realise that something must be done or Mitchell would go berserk. Donoghue had heard him groaning in his sleep and he was threatening to leave the flat and go out and find himself a woman. After this, Donoghue sent Reg a message saying that if Mitchell didn’t have a girl as soon as possible they’d all be in for trouble.
This time Reg did come, and since there was no point any more in telling him that Ron was just about to come, he promised him a girl instead. At last this seemed to cheer him up.
‘What sort d’you like, Frank? Blonde or brunette?’
‘I don’t care as long as she’s nice. And very sexy.’
‘Fine, Frank. I’ll remember.’