The World's Most Evil Gangs

by Nigel Blundell

  As the Richardsons’ empire grew, their swaggering subordinates often came into contact with their rivals in the Kray gang. At a Christmas party in a club in 1965, fighting broke out after Richardson gang member George Cornell called Ronnie Kray a ‘fat poof’. Three months later the feud worsened when the two sides fought with guns and bayonets at a Catford nightclub for which the Richardsons were providing security. An associate of the Krays was shot dead and Frankie Fraser was wounded in the thigh. The following evening, Cornell wandered off his ‘manor’ and was shot dead in the Blind Beggar pub, Whitechapel, by Ronnie Kray.

  The Richardson gang was now in trouble, with Cornell dead and two other leading members behind bars. ‘Mad’ Frankie had been cleared of the Catford club murder but he and Eddie Richardson were both jailed for five years for affray. The end came when two people talked – one in England, the other at a murder trial 5,600 miles away in South Africa.

  In Britain, businessman James Taggart went to police to reveal that he had been tortured by Charlie Richardson and Frankie Fraser because his company owed a gang member £1,200. Taggart said his two torturers had used fists, boots and a metal pole to beat him for nearly nine hours, only pausing to order themselves some light refreshment of beer and sandwiches. Afterwards the victim, who had been stripped naked and trussed to a chair, was made to clean up the bloodspattered room with his own underpants.

  Also in 1965, mineral prospector Thomas Waldeck was shot dead on the doorstep of his home in Johannesburg. Lawrence ‘Johnny’ Bradbury, a former barrow boy who lived in Peckham, South London, was arrested and confessed to being the getaway driver. But what was Bradbury doing in South Africa and why would he want Waldeck dead? It transpired that Bradbury had known Charlie Richardson since their schooldays together and that he had been leaned on by the gangster to take part in the ‘hit’. The murdered man had been Richardson’s business partner in a mining company but they had fallen out.

  Facing the death sentence at his trial for murder, Bradbury cracked and told the court that Richardson was a major gangland boss, who had made him take part in the murder through fear – at one time holding him over a bar counter while someone slashed his arm with a broken bottle. Bradbury was sentenced to death, later commuted to life. Back in London, Richardson responded with hurt bewilderment: ‘I was amazed at what happened at the trial,’ he said. ‘There is no reason on earth why I should want him killed.’

  British detectives flew out to speak to Bradbury in May 1966 and discovered that the murdered man had owed the Richardsons a considerable sum of money. Two months later, in a series of dawn raids, most of the gang’s key members were seized in one of the most carefully planned operations in police history – significantly led not by the Scotland Yard chiefs but by a force from outside the city.

  The following year, in the first major ‘supergrass’ trial of its kind, several witnesses came forward on the promise of immunity and new identities. The court heard from so many of Richardson’s victims that the trial became known as the ‘Torture Case’. The evidence was horrific, plentiful and persuasive. One man told how he had been attacked outside a pub then driven to Camberwell, where Charlie had placed a gun on a table and ordered him to be stripped. Then Frankie Fraser appeared with a pair of pliers. ‘He put them into my mouth and started to try to pull out my teeth,’ said the witness, ‘but he slipped and pulled a lump of my gum out instead.’ He was then beaten before Richardson held an electric fire against his genitals. Cigarettes were applied to his arms and chest. He was then wrapped in tarpaulin, ‘taken for a ride’ and dumped. After all that, Eddie Richardson apologised to him – saying they’d made a mistake and had got the wrong man.

  Another victim described how he was invited to Camberwell for a chat about the whereabouts of someone Charlie was hunting. ‘He came up and stuck a thumb in each of my eyes and ordered me to take my shoes and socks off,’ the winess told the court. ‘Leads were attached to my toes and I got some violent shocks.’ Richardson then plunged a knife through his foot and into the floor beneath.

  Yet another witness told the court that he had had his toes broken with pliers. Afterwards he could hear the screams of another man being tortured. One businessman said when he heard that Richardson wanted to speak to him he fled to Heathrow but was so terrified that he was unable to form the words to buy an air ticket.

  The Old Bailey trial began in April 1967. Despite an attempt to bribe a juror, Charlie was found guilty of grievous bodily harm, demanding money with menaces and robbery with violence. He was jailed for 25 years, while Eddie had another ten years added to his existing sentence. Six other gang members were also jailed. The judge, Mr Justice Lawton, told the Richardsons: ‘You terrorised those who crossed your path in a way that was vicious, sadistic and a disgrace to society. One is ashamed to think one lives in a society that contains men like you. You must be prevented from committing further crime. It must be made clear that all those who set themselves up as gang leaders will be struck down, as you have been struck down.’

  Like the Kray brothers, Charles Richardson was later to issue an apologia for his crimes. He said: ‘The men I was involved with were professional swindlers. I was only trying to get my own money back. I feel sick about the way I have been portrayed. I’m a scapegoat. I got 25 years for grievous bodily harm and not one of them needed an aspirin.’

  He was also at pains to deny stories that had emerged about his links with the South African secret service, BOSS – and there was even talk of an attempt to bug the telephone of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Richardson told the Sunday Times in 1983 that his links with South Africa and the shadowy BOSS had been an embarrassment to the British government. ‘I was a pawn,’ he said. ‘The bigger a criminal the British made me out to be, the more leverage they could apply on the South Africans for having used me. Most business is pressure and blackmail, isn’t it? I never tapped Harold Wilson’s phone. It could have been done but it wasn’t. But people here got very upset about that. They wanted to get rid of me for as long as possible.’

  A vociferous campaign for his early release was launched by Charlie Richardson’s family and friends, backed by parole board reports stating that he was no longer a danger to society. They fell on deaf ears. In 1980 he walked out of an open prison and went on the run for almost a year, supposedly to campaign for his early release as a ‘reformed citizen’. He even dressed up as Father Christmas and handed out presents at a children’s party. When he finally gave himself up and returned to prison, he was allowed out on a day-release scheme to work with the disabled.

  In 1983, anticipating his early release within a year or two, he was allowed home for a long, quiet weekend to prepare himself for life again on the outside. A preview of the lifestyle befitting one of the biggest ex-crooks in London was revealed when he was collected at the gates of Coldingley open prison, Berkshire, by a Rolls-Royce. He was driven home for a family reunion, then treated his relatives, including his freed brother Eddie, to a champagne lunch. Over the following days, the festivities continued at pubs and clubs in Southeast London, where members of the public thronged the bars to pay their respects to the villain. ‘Look around you,’ he told reporters. ‘I love these people and they love me. I get 200 Christmas cards a year in jail – that’s what a bad man I am.’

  Charles Richardson was finally freed from prison in July 1984. It was Eddie’s turn to go back inside when in 1990 he was given another long stretch for his involvement in a £70 million cocaine and cannabis heist. He was sentenced to 35 years but released after 12. In later years, the brothers who once ruled half a city fell out. They became estranged after Eddie accused Charlie of ‘ripping him off’ over business deals during Eddie’s time in prison.

  Charlie Richardson, 78, died in a Kent hospital in September 2012 with his wife and five children at his bedside. He contracted blood poisoning following a gall bladder complaint. His brother Eddie said: ‘I haven’t spoken to him in years. I can’t say he was a good fath
er, but he was a father. He leaves a big family behind him.’

  CHAPTER 13

  ‘ONE DARE TOUCH US – WE’VE MORE GUNS THAN THE POLICE’

  When the crime empires of the Krays and the Richardsons began to crumble, a power vacuum existed – but not for long. South of the Thames, in old Richardson territory, the Arif family, of Turkish-Cypriot origin, came to prominence. Meanwhile, in North London, the Krays’ ‘manor’ became the stamping ground of the now notorious Adams family.

  The Arifs were considered the leading crime family in the capital throughout the late 1980s. Although Dennis, Mehmet, and Dogan Arif – three of seven brothers – had been feared names in the London underworld since the Sixties, the clan first hit the headlines in 1983 when Dogan was acquitted of taking part in a bogus arms deal to swindle the Iranian regime of Ayatollah Khomeini out of £34 million. As author James Morton says in his book, Gangland International: ‘The British criminal had now seriously entered the international market.’

  The Arifs are known to have been involved in racketeering, drug smuggling, armed robbery and murders. In the Nineties, they launched a decade-long gang war with the rival Brindle family, which resulted in at least eight deaths. In September 1990 a Brindle associate, Stephen Dalligan, was wounded after being shot seven times by Ahmet ‘Abbi’ Abdullah, a Turkish gunmen working for the Arifs. The following March, Abdullah was shot in a South London betting shop by two men. Brothers Anthony and Patrick Brindle were charged with the murder but later acquitted at the Old Bailey. In August 1991 David Brindle was shot in a Walworth pub by two men who burst in and sprayed the bar with bullets, yelling: ‘This is for Abbi.’ One of the assassins was said to have been hired hitman James Moody, a former Richardson minder who had been on the run since escaping from jail 12 years earlier. In revenge for David Brindle’s death, in June 1993 a gunman walked into a Hackney pub, coolly ordered a drink, then turned to Moody and shot him four times.

  While they were waging their turf war with the Brindles, the police mounted a huge undercover operation against the Arifs, leading to the conviction and imprisonment of most of the leadership, including various family members.

  In 1990 Dennis and Mehmet Arif tried to steal £1 million from a security van near Reigate, Surrey – but the Flying Squad had been tipped off and were waiting for them. The gang were armed with two revolvers, a 12-bore Browning shotgun, a self-loading Colt and a Browning pistol. In the gun battle that followed, Arif henchman Kenny Baker was shot dead as he tried to open fire on officers. Mehmet was shot by police but survived. The two brothers were jailed for a total of 40 years. In 1999 Bekir Arif, known as ‘The Duke’, was convicted of conspiracy to supply 100 kilograms of heroin worth £12.5 million and was given a 23-year prison sentence.

  The family’s ‘godfather’, Dogan Arif, was jailed for seven years in 1990 for conspiring to supply £8 million worth of marijuana. He continued to control the family’s operations from inside prison – and on his release, from his £2 million villa in Northern Cyprus, which has no extradition treaty with Britain. Police are certain that, even from abroad or behind bars, it was business as usual for the family. A senior cop who has worked on the Arifs case was reported as saying: ‘They are one of the most awesome gangs of villains ever seen in London. You write them off at your peril.’

  While the Arifs continued to exert a malign influence from their Southeast London power base, once the domain of the Richardsons, across the Thames in former Kray territory lurked the silently sinister Adams family. Unlike the violent twins, their modern-day successors in the London underworld never sought notoriety. But they got it anyway.

  The story of their amazing power emerged when the gang’s leader Terence ‘Terry’ Adams was jailed for seven years in 2007 for the relatively minor offence of money laundering. It emerged then that the charge was the tip of a monstrous iceberg, for the gang was reportedly the most powerful criminal organisation in the UK. The Adams family, or the ‘A-Team’ as they liked to be known, have been linked to more than 25 murders as well as a string of rackets including armed robbery, fraud, drug trafficking and extortion – racking up estimated profits of £200 million.

  The gang was formed around 1980 by Terry, with his brothers Sean ‘Tommy’ Adams as a brutal enforcer and Patrick ‘Patsy’ Adams as the finance expert. Of Irish parentage and initially based in London’s Clerkenwell, the family (there were 11 siblings in all) expanded from petty extortion of market traders into a vast racketeering and drug trafficking empire throughout the capital and beyond, with links to Spain and South America. By 1990 they were so feared they could ‘franchise’ the Adams name so lesser criminals could say they were working for them.

  When police raided Terry Adams’ home near Barnet, North London, in 2003, they found antiques worth £500,000 and tens of thousands of pounds hidden in a shoebox. More money was salted away in secret bank accounts to go with the cars, yachts and a home in Cyprus. Bugs later placed in the house in a unique MI5 operation caught the gangster sounding like Marlon Brando in The Godfather.

  In one tape, recorded in 1997, Adams was heard discussing a dispute over a missing £50,000. He told a ‘financial adviser’, jeweller Saul ‘Solly’ Nahome: ‘Let Simon give the geezer a good hiding … tell him to use the family name.’ In another conversation, Adams said: ‘When I hit someone with something I do them damage.’ In a third, he told how he dealt with a row over cash. He said: ‘A hundred grand it was, Dan, or 80 grand, and I went “crack”. On my baby’s life, Dan, his kneecap came right out there – all white, Dan, all bone and white.’

  He wasn’t boasting. The Adams family made it to the top of the criminal hierarchy by ruthless brutality against anyone who stood in their way, and although the brothers were never charged with any killings, the culture of violence that developed on the periphery of the gang was frightening, with numerous associates and rivals said to have met brutal ends. At the height of their power in the early Nineties, the Adams family were in charge of most of the cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine coming into the capital. They recruited Afro-Caribbean members to add manpower and used them to murder rivals and informants. They also built up links with Jamaican crack cocaine Yardie groups and with the Colombian cocaine cartels. The money made was laundered through various corrupt financiers, accountants, lawyers and other professionals, and subsequently invested in property and other legitimate businesses.

  Terry’s favoured laundering method was to set up sham companies, for which he claimed to work as a ‘business consultant’. Some of his illicit income was spent on his £2 million home, furnished with antiques and paintings. He spent £78,000 remodelling the garden. He and his wife Ruth bought a series of top-of the-range cars. Their daughter, Skye, was privately educated and they also bought her a Mercedes sports car. Adams himself had a luxury yacht.

  But it was not all plain sailing. Patrick Adams had been jailed for seven years for armed robbery in the 1970s. And in 1998 brother Tommy, who had previously been acquitted of handling the proceeds of a bullion robbery, was jailed for seven-and-a-half years for masterminding an £8 million hashish smuggling operation. When a judge ordered that he surrender some of his profits or face a further five years, his wife turned up twice to the court, carrying £500,000 in cash inside a briefcase on each occasion.

  Terry Adams himself was finally caged in 2007. He had been arrested four years earlier and charged with money laundering, tax evasion and handling stolen goods but was released on £1 million bail. At the Old Bailey in February 2007 he pleaded guilty to a sample charge of conspiracy to launder £1.1 million – an offence reminiscent of Al Capone’s arrest for tax evasion in the 1930s. Prosecuting barrister Andrew Mitchell QC described him as ‘one of the country’s most feared and revered organised criminals’ and added: ‘He comes with a pedigree, as one of a family whose name had a currency all of its own in the underworld. A hallmark of his career was his ability to keep his evidential distance from any of the violence and other crimes from which he undou
btedly profited.’ Sentencing Adams to seven years’ imprisonment, Judge Timothy Pontius told him: ‘Your plea demonstrates that you have a fertile, cunning and imaginative mind capable of sophisticated, complex and dishonest financial manipulation.’

  His wife Ruth was also subject to the money-laundering charges but these were ‘left on the file’. Ordered to repay £750,000 of legal fees from the trial, the marital home was sold but Ruth was allowed to keep part of the value. When Terry, then aged 56, was released from prison on parole halfway through his sentence in June 2010, he went on a spending spree – in defiance of a court order (known as a Financial Reporting Order) aimed at preventing criminals profiting from hidden riches.

  In August 2011 City of Westminster Magistrates heard that Adams had enjoyed, among other treats, a £2,200 gold Cartier watch, a £2,000 gym membership, £7,000 cosmetic dentistry and a £7,500 Harley Street facelift. A scowling Terry was sent straight back to jail to serve the rest of his sentence, completed in 2013.

  Despite the frightening reputations of the Arif family and the Adams brothers, Britain today has no single crime czar, godfather, or ‘Mr Big’. There is, for instance, no single national organisation that controls the distribution of narcotics, which nowadays are key to the funding of almost every major crime.

  In the Northwest and Northeast of England, the supply of drugs is often through bouncers who operate in pubs and clubs. The doormen allow only their own dealers into the premises or are paid a percentage from freelance traffickers. In Newcastle the fierce rivalry between different groups of bouncers has led to a number of shootings. Every city has its own gangs, although none has occupied such a powerful position as, for instance, the legendary Krays. Instead there is a proliferation of outfits across the country controlling small patches of the UK with specialist interests.