Notorious: The Immortal Legend of the Kray Twins

by John Pearson

  To those who didn’t know the truth it was very much business as usual, with John du Rose still directing operations at Tintagel House and Nipper acting as his loyal deputy. But this was only done to keep up appearances. From now on John du Rose was only nominally in charge and Nipper Read was firmly in command of the battle with the Krays.

  Whatever else this whole strange incident had done, it had broken the stalemate which had been hampering the investigation for far too long. Nipper had also learned a lot from Cooper since arresting him, including the plans for the car bombs and the fact that the Twins had access to a pair of Thompson sub-machine guns which, according to Cooper, Ron was ‘itching to start using’. Clearly there was no time to lose, but the problem remained of getting clear-cut evidence against the Twins that would stand up in court.

  This explains why Nipper now decided on a move that could have brought disaster. Ever since he arrested Cooper, he had had him under his control and had been careful not to let a word of what had happened to him reach the Twins. Instead he ordered Cooper to speak to them on the telephone and make an excuse that he’d been seriously ill with a bleeding stomach ulcer and was having to go into hospital. From now on all his telephone conversations were recorded.

  Things moved fast. Nipper found Cooper a bed in a private London clinic and told him to wear pyjamas and act the part of a patient with a serious illness. The doctors were involved in the deception, the patient’s room was bugged and he was told to keep in close contact with the Twins begging them to visit him.

  The Twins themselves seemed genuinely upset and promised they would come. Nipper, of course, was hoping that by recording the subsequent conversation he would get some damaging confession, or at least some indication of their plans. But instead of the Twins it was little Tom Cowley who turned up. Cooper, although disappointed, kept up the farce, and Tom gave no sign that he suspected anything. But although he stayed a good half hour and they talked about a lot of things nothing incriminating was said. ln fact Tom immediately reported back to the Twins that ‘the fucking hospital is stiff with coppers.’

  Two days later Little Tom took his wife off on a long holiday to Majorca.

  Once Nipper realised his plan had failed he faced a difficult dilemma. After nine months his investigation had almost stalled. He still lacked much of the evidence he needed and he knew that, having failed to trick the Twins, he had actually given them a warning. But he also knew that if he hesitated much longer someone else would almost certainly be killed. Make-your-mind-up-time had come.

  Late in the evening of 7 May, more than sixty specially chosen police officers were summoned to Tintagel House by Nipper Read. To ensure maximum security the doors were locked behind them and shortly after midnight they received their instructions.

  At dawn the Kray Twins were to be arrested along with as many members of the Firm as possible in a carefully coordinated operation. Nipper explained that there were twenty-four separate addresses across London that had to be raided simultaneously. It was typical of Nipper’s attention to detail that each member of the Firm had been covered with a file card bearing an address, a brief description and a photograph.

  *

  Throughout what was to be the Twins’ last night of freedom unbeknownst to them they were under constant observation from the start by plain clothes police reporting back to Nipper Read by two-way radio. It was to be a long drawn-out evening for all concerned. It began at 9 pm with the Twins drinking as usual with their friends at the Old Horns pub in Bethnal Green. Shortly after midnight reports came through that they had just moved on to the Astor Club in Mayfair. Then the serious drinking evidently started, and it was not until after 5 am that they were reported to be back at their parents’ flat in Braithwaite House.

  Watches were synchronised at Tintagel House and the time for action had arrived. The mass arrest was set up for 7 am on the morning of 8 May, and every one of the police knew exactly who to arrests. When one of the raiding party asked Nipper who was going to get the Twins, he replied, ‘that privilege is mine’.

  In spite of their dreams of ending their days like Bonnie and Clyde and going down in a hail of bullets, nothing could have been more unromantic than the actual moment of the Twins’ arrest. Violet and Charlie were away, and when Nipper and his men smashed in the front door of their flat Ron was in bed with a boy and Reg with a girl from Walthamstowe. Both twins were very much the worse for wear after a long night’s heavy drinking and were barely awake when the handcuffs snapped around their wrists and they were dragged unceremoniously from their beds. There was no resistance.

  22

  Remand

  THE TRUTH WAS that the unexpected nature of the accident which led to Elvey’s freak arrest at Edinburgh airport had caught everybody by surprise, not least the Twins themselves, who had shown themselves unprepared for trouble – so unprepared that ten days later they had allowed themselves to be arrested in their beds, and were so hung over that, even if they’d wanted to, they couldn’t have organised the grand finale to their lives that Ron had been dreaming of for years: with Reg beside him and both of them dying in a hail of gunfire, with their own machine guns blazing.

  But Nipper also had his problems as he did his best to put together the prosecution case against the Twins and their followers in the sort of hurry and confusion that he hated. One of his problems was what to do about Commander John du Rose, for it would have been disastrous – particularly for du Rose but also for Nipper’s hopes of dealing with the Twins – if the faintest hint of what had been going on between Cooper and du Rose over the last two years had ever reached the press. One could already see the headlines: ‘Head of Murder Squad involved in Car Bomb Plot’, followed by the sensational story of how the man in charge of Nipper’s very own investigation had been working with Cooper all along without telling his second-in-command anything about it.

  There had been far too much hushed-up scandal round the Twins already without adding to it further, and had the truth of John du Rose’s double-dealing been revealed, along with his relationship not just with Cooper but also with Admiral John H. Hanly, the all-powerful European head of the US Secret Service, it could have been disastrous at this stage in the inquiries. It would have inevitably diverted everyone’s attention from the true crimes of the Twins at a time when Nipper’s real investigation of their crimes had barely started.

  Nipper was not a placid man by nature and was clearly furious at du Rose’s behaviour. But he was also far too shrewd – and too loyal a policeman – to have plunged his own investigation into the chaos that would have followed had he rocked the boat about it now. So outwardly it was still very much business as usual. On the surface nothing had changed in Tintagel House and, in theory at any rate, Commander John du Rose was still in charge. After his retirement, he was still hailed occasionally as ‘the man who caught the Krays’. But the truth was that from the moment when the Edinburgh police discovered the dynamite in Elvey’s holdall Commander John du Rose’s involvement in the case was over, and Nipper Read alone, took charge.

  Similarly, two days later, when the Twins and their accomplices were brought from prison to the committal proceedings at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court it was very much Nipper Read who placed his own inimitable mark on the proceedings and made it clear that this was no ordinary case – any more than the Twins were ordinary criminals.

  One must remember that 1968 was the ‘Year of Revolutions’. In Paris at this very moment students were ripping up paving stones and were building barricades, in Berlin the Red Brigades were forming, and in Italy the state itself was menaced by the double threat of urban terrorism and the Mafia. It was against this background that Nipper organised his own daily demonstration against the potential power of the Krays.

  Until now, what had normally happened was that suspects on remand were transported without much fuss to court from prison in a Black Maria. But with the Twins and their followers things were different and each morning they were
brought from prison to the Bow Street court in an impressive high-speed convoy of police vehicles complete with armed guards, blue lights flashing and a presidential-style motorcycle escort clearing a way for them through the morning traffic. Nipper insisted that this was necessary because of the danger, remote as it might seem, of an ambush on the way; but at times like this the message it conveyed was unmistakable. These were no ordinary criminals but potential urban terrorists.

  Nipper Read clearly hoped that the message would not be lost on Mr Kenneth Barraclough, the Bow Street magistrate, for he was counting on Barraclough to deliver something only he could offer him at the moment: time. Time during which to continue his investigations, organise his witnesses, and above all to persuade them that it was safe to talk. For this to happen Nipper needed to convince the magistrate that the case against the Twins and their accomplices was serious enough to justify keeping them in prison while Nipper and his team got all the evidence they needed for their full-scale trial at the Old Bailey.

  Nipper also knew that, at this delicate point in his investigation, apart from Leslie Payne the only witnesses he could so far count on to support a charge against the Twins for conspiracy to murder were Cooper and his henchman Paul Elvey. In Nipper’s situation few policemen would have thought that this curious couple were reliable enough to have convinced anyone, let alone a cautious Bow Street magistrate. Nipper felt much the same, but he also knew that he had no alternative.

  For at this stage in the game his case against the Twins had barely started. As yet he had no witnesses to the McVitie murder and nothing to connect the Twins with the disappearance of Frank Mitchell. In addition, no bodies had been found in either case. As for the Cornell murder, the all-important witness Mrs X, the barmaid from the Blind Beggar, was sticking grimly by her statement that she couldn’t recognise Ron Kray as Cornell’s killer. Nipper could understood her feelings and her desperate fear of retribution from the Twins if they were ever released from prison, and he knew that it was up to him to make doubly sure they stayed in jail.

  Nipper was not the only one who was hoping that the remand hearings went his way. So were the Twins, and no sooner did they find themselves in court than they did something absolutely unexpected. Three years earlier a total ban had been imposed on media reporting of remand proceedings, on the grounds that premature publicity concerning a defendant, before their innocence or guilt had been established, could prejudice their chances in a higher court. This ban could be lifted only when requested by a defendant. On their first day in court at Bow Street the Twins requested this to happen.

  At the time this seemed so totally against the Twins’ interests that I asked Reg why he did it. ‘Because we wanted everyone to see the diabolical liberties the law was taking when they arrested us,’ he said, but even then I knew there was more to it than that. Looking back on all that followed, I’m certain that they couldn’t bear the thought of sitting there and suffering in silence while their actions were discussed in secret in a court of law – and missing out on the publicity.

  Besides, even when they were desperate for publicity, bad as well as good, and since they were were aware that their celebrity status depended on their fame as criminals they knew that whatever happened in that crowded little Bow Street courtroom over the next two months would be of great importance in the creation of their legend.

  *

  Today the Bow Street Magistrates’ Court has been replaced by a hotel, but in the Twins’ day it was one of the oldest courts in London.

  It was small and old and very business-like, with none of the ritual and theatricality of the Old Bailey. The presiding magistrate, Mr Kenneth Barraclough, was equally down to earth, a bespectacled figure with something of the elderly accountant about him. He was not distracted by a jury, for it was not his job to decide on the innocence or guilt of those before him. All he had to do was to decide whether the accused had a case to answer at the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey and, if they did, whether to keep them in prison or release them on bail.

  For Nipper Read it was vital that the Twins and the members of the Firm were kept in prison on remand as long as possible. But at this early stage of the proceedings Nipper was having to rely on two extremely shaky witnesses – Alan Bruce Cooper and his strange assistant, the would-be assassin Paul Elvey.

  Despite Cooper’s obvious defects as a witness, Nipper had no alternative but to use him. For, like it or not – and Nipper didn’t like it very much – the evidence that he’d recently obtained from interrogating him was exactly what he needed, particularly when backed up by the evidence of Paul Elvey. Here was undeniable evidence against the Twins of intent to murder. No magistrate, and certainly not Mr Barraclough, was going to ignore the presence of twenty sticks of dynamite in Elvey’s luggage as he boarded the plane from Edinburgh to London, still less of evidence of plans to bring car bombs to the streets of the capital.

  As we have seen, Cooper really had been working for the US Secret Service, otherwise he’d never have been able to get Ron and Dickie Morgan to New York and back with valid entry visas just a few weeks earlier. But, in a way, the truth about Cooper and his stooge hardly mattered now. What was undeniable was the effect of their evidence on the court and its impact on the image of the Twins in the world outside.

  Here Nipper Read was fortunate. From the moment they were on the witness stand almost everything about this shady pair appeared a touch ridiculous, so much so that when Cooper, under cross-examination, said quite truthfully that he’d been working for the US Secret Service nobody believed him. But as Cooper’s cross-examination continued, the Twins’ lawyers played into the prosecution’s hands by revealing that they had no idea of what the US Secret Service really was. ‘Did they give you a card to prove who you were?’ one young lawyer asked Cooper brightly; and another lawyer, the bullying but not over-bright baronet Sir Lionel Thompson, thinking to catch the stuttering Cooper out for good, inquired, ‘What branch of the Secret Service do you mean – the CIA, the FBI or the Drugs and Narcotics Bureau?’

  When Cooper stuttered that he worked for the US Secret Service and offered to write down the name of his Secret Service contact for the magistrate it could have caused the prosecution – and Nipper Read – such awkward problems that I wasn’t certain why the defence failed to pursue it. For had it ever been revealed, as it very nearly was, that through Cooper and Elvey the Kray Twins were being targeted by a senior agent from the US Secret Service who was in cahoots with an equally senior officer at Scotland Yard the case against the Twins, at this early stage of the investigation, might well have been in trouble.

  Instead, Sir Lionel, confident that he’d made his point, asked the sort of question that lawyers throw at hostile witnesses when they feel they have them at a disadvantage.

  ‘Mr Cooper, is it true that in the East End of London you’re referred to by those who know you as “Silly Bollocks”?’

  To be fair to Cooper, he took this rather well, smiling wanly at the ensuing laughter, and Reg followed with an interjection that reached the front pages of the evening papers – as, of course, he’d hoped it would.

  ‘When are we going to hear from James Bond?’ he shouted.

  But although, as one reporter wrote, the atmosphere in court was ‘getting like something from a high-grade thriller’ and Cooper and Elvey were beginning to look like a pair of secret agents from a Whitehall farce, Nipper knew what he was doing. For this was the point at which he had arranged for the prosecution to produce two items he had found in Elvey’s garage which were not a joke. From the moment they were put on show in front of the magistrate it was clear from the hush that fell across the court that, whatever happened next, the Twins had had it.

  For Nipper knew that, when produced at the right moment in a trial, an exhibit can be more effective than a human witness. And there can’t have been many previous occasions when a Bow Street magistrate had been confronted with an exhibit as lethal as Paul Elvey’s suitcase, with
its hypodermic ready to be filled with the contents of an accompanying small brown bottle.

  Plump Kenneth Jones QC, the prosecuting counsel asked Elvey to show the court how the murder weapon worked. He did so, showing the court the hypodermic and the bottle of pale brown fluid, followed by a demonstration of how the suitcase operated. After this Jones produced the high-powered crossbow and Elvey once again explained how he had bought it for the Twins at a specialist sports shop, how it was sometimes used for hunting deer, and how the steel-tipped darts could wound or even kill a man at up to twenty-five yards.

  But the most chilling testimony of all came not from Elvey nor from Cooper but from the expert witness who followed them – the Home Office pathologist, Sir Francis Camps, Professor of Forensic Medicine at London University.

  A tall balding man, with horn-rimmed spectacles and a dashing red carnation in his buttonhole, Professor Camps was the doyen of expert witnesses who knew exactly how to play an audience in a case like this, answering the questions of the prosecuting counsel with all the authority of a famous medical consultant delivering an opinion.

  ‘Professor Camps, would you please look at Exhibit One. The suitcase.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve seen it before, and been present when experiments were carried out involving the positioning of the hypodermic in the suitcase.’

  ‘And so you’re also acquainted with the contents of the small brown bottle, labelled here “Exhibit Two”.’

  ‘I am. Exhibit Two consists of a quantity of hydrogen cyanide’

  ‘And what, in your opinion, would be its effect if the contents of the bottle were placed in the hypodermic which was then used to inject the fluid into the body of someone brought in contact with it?’