Gangland UK

by Christopher Berry-Dee

  For the first time, Reggie and Ronnie began to look vulnerable. Exley was followed by the Blind Beggar’s barmaid, who had suddenly regained her memory for faces.

  With the completion of the preliminary hearings, the twins were held in Brixton Prison for another five months. This gave Read the breathing space he needed to convince more members of the Firm to take the witness stand and testify for the Crown.

  The trial proper opened at the Old Bailey on Tuesday, 7 January 1969. Reggie and Ronnie were both charged with murder and being an accessory to murder. Public interest was intense. Seats in the public gallery were sold on the black market for £5.00, and celebrities such as Charlton Heston were in attendance. Ronnie recalled, ‘Both of us, given the choice, would have preferred to hang.’

  The twins’ old girlfriend Judy Garland sent them a good-luck telegram, prompting Ronnie to remark to the judge, ‘If I wasn’t here now, I’d probably be having a drink with Judy Garland.’

  It soon became clear that almost all of the twins’ Firm had, like rats, deserted them. Ronnie Hart was the principal prosecution witness, proving that there is no honour amongst thieves. Along with John Dickson, the man who had driven Ronnie and Ian Barrie to The Blind Beggar, he turned Queen’s evidence in return for freedom from prosecution. Altogether, 28 criminals gave evidence against the Krays.

  With the odds weighing so heavily against them, the twins had no chance of escape. They elected, however, to go down fighting. When Ronnie stepped into the witness box, he embarked on a spectacular course of denial. Not only were he and George Cornell friends, but he had never even been to The Blind Beggar on the evening in question.

  Reggie, likewise, refused to concede a thing. In their own eyes, they behaved with dignity and integrity throughout the trial, while their former accomplices and friends had betrayed their loyalty.

  On only two occasions did the twins lose their composure. Ronnie called the prosecuting counsel, ‘You fat slob!’ after hearing how the police had confiscated his grandparents’ pension books. And when the court was hearing about the circumstances surrounding Frances’s death and funeral, Reggie screamed, ‘The police are scum.’

  In one respect, however, they disappointed the press and public. Many people hoped that there were secrets to reveal about the celebrities and politicians who knew them. But again, according to the twins, this was a matter of honour. Members of the Firm may have grassed them up, but they were not going to stoop to their level. ‘We never informed on anyone,’ said Ronnie, somewhat hypocritically, adding, ‘We believe that two wrongs do not make a right. We believe we are better off than the rats who deserted our ship.’

  Only three men remained loyal throughout the trial – Ian Barrie, who received 20 years for his role in the murder of Cornell; the twins’ elder brother, Charlie; and a friend of his, Charlie Foreman, who were both sentenced to 10 years for disposing of McVitie’s corpse.

  After the longest criminal trial in legal history – 61 days in all – the jury retired. They took 6 hours and 54 minutes to find the twins guilty. Just after 7.00pm on 8 March 1969, the judge, Mr Justice Melford Stevenson, finally pronounced sentence, and addressed the twins, saying, ‘I am not going to waste words on you. In my view, society has earned a rest from your activities. I sentence you to life imprisonment, which I recommend should not be less than 30 years.’

  The Krays had finally been broken. They were both 34. By the time they left jail, they would be almost ready to draw their pensions.

  A few other matters remained to be cleared up. The twins were tried for the murder of Frank Mitchell. Although they pleaded guilty to harbouring him, there was insufficient evidence to convict them of his death. The charges concerning their criminal business activities were left on file – meaning they could be reinstated at any time.

  They had lived by the law of the jungle, on the principle that only the fittest had the right to survive. Now the Krays were behind bars, fit only for historical study as one of nature’s oddities.

  By 1990, Ronnie and Reggie Kray had been in prison more than two decades. Reggie was sent to Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight; Ronnie went to Durham. Their separation lasted three years until 1972 when Ronnie was transferred to Parkhurst, largely due to a sustained campaign by their mother, Violet. Despite their crimes, she continued to adore her twins, and every week without fail would travel up and down the country to visit them both.

  Ronnie believed the strain this put her under contributed to her death in 1982. As a tribute to her love for them, the twins were allowed to attend her funeral at Chingford in Essex. But the event was seriously marred for them by journalists who descended en masse to cover the twins’ first public appearance in 14 years and because the prison authorities selected two of their tallest warders to mind them – making them look like dwarves, according to Reggie.

  Ronnie’s reunion with his brother in Parkhurst did not last long. After a series of fights, culminating in him severely beating up another prisoner, he was certified insane for a second time and transferred to Broadmoor where he was heavily sedated for the rest of his life.

  Despite his mental problems, Ronnie married a woman called Elaine who became one of his regular penfriends. As might have been expected, the marriage did not last and, in 1988, she asked for a divorce. A year later, in November 1989, he married again – Kate Howard – in a ceremony at Broadmoor Hospital. On 17 March 1995, Ronnie Kray died of a massive heart-attack in Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, Berkshire. He was 61, and his death was due in no small way to a very bad tobacco habit. He smoked 100 cigarettes a day through most of his adult life. His dying words were supposedly, ‘Oh God, mother, help me!’

  During his time as a Category A prisoner, Reggie had also been moved several times from jail to jail. In 1968, he was transferred to Wandsworth, then back to Parkhurst, before being taken to Gartree in Leicestershire in 1987. Aged 66, he passed away on 1 October 2000, dying peacefully in his sleep after losing a long battle against bladder cancer in the honeymoon suite at the Beefeater Town House Hotel in Norwich, Norfolk. He had been moved to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital from Wayland Prison near Watton, Norfolk, ten days earlier. Kray chose the Town House because he wanted to look out over a river. Kray’s wife Roberta, 41, who had maintained a bedside vigil since his release, and former gangland friends Freddie Foreman and Jerry Powell, were at his side when he died.

  So ended the lives of two of the most notorious – some say iconic – mobsters in British history. Their key to success was an appetite for violence that silenced rivals and bred loyalty through fear. Taken to the extreme of murder, however, their keys to success became the catalysts of their undoing, and eventual downfall.

  In judging their ‘success’, we might ask what net worth the Krays might have had. Although it is impossible to put a precise figure on the twins’ earnings – both legal and illegal – there is good reason to suspect that they were not spectacularly successful. They certainly outshone the Gunn brothers, who, by comparison, were as poor as church mice, but the Krays would never be able to match the accumulated wealth that has placed Kenneth Noye in a class of his own.

  During their peak in the early 1960s, with Esmeralda’s Barn in full swing, protection money from other clubs, the ‘long-firm’ frauds and their regular East End income, they may have been earning more than £200,000 annually. But the speed with which they had to close the Barn down, faced with Inland Revenue tax demands, the cost of opening their other clubs, and the general unreliability of racketeering as a profession, suggests the actual amounts of cash passing through their hands may have been much lower than that.

  On top of this, their outgoings were quite high. Apart from expenditure on the outward trappings of success – cars, clothes and the occasional holiday abroad – they tried to pay members of their Firm around £40 a week and look after the families of anyone who had been locked away.

  The fact that Charlie Kray, the twins’ elder brother, had to borrow £50 from their mother af
ter leaving jail in 1975, also implies they never salted much away. However, Ronnie has claimed that their remaining business interests, combined with royalties from the Kray Twin merchandise, should have been enough to have supported them had they ever been released from prison.

  It is also said by some that they were ‘Robin Hoodesque’. They were charitable, and many worthwhile institutions across the East End benefited from their generosity, including Mile End Hospital for Children and various boys’ clubs, such as the Bethnal Green Youth Club, which Ronnie Kray visited with the West Indian popular pianist Winifred Atwell and the Mayor of Bethnal Green.

  Although there is no reason for thinking that their motives were anything but genuine, this could certainly be seen as a useful PR exercise; undoubtedly, the twins milked their benevolence for publicity purposes. Cameras would be on hand to record donations, followed more often than not by local newspaper reports of their generosity, always identifying Reggie and Ronnie as ‘local businessmen’. Indeed, while Reggie was in prison, he carried on this charitable work, donating pictures he had painted to auctions held to raise funds for organisations such as the Addenham Children’s Liver Transplant Fund.

  While, for a very short period, they enjoyed all the trappings of wealth – the flashy cars, fancy jewellery, smart suits, the patronage of the smart, rich and famous who visited their clubs – they were, at heart, from the lower, uneducated class. Their façade was glitzy, yet underneath both were vicious thugs, and it was perhaps inevitable that they would return to their true selves when the chips were down.

  Of course, the twins were inseparable, and that proved to form part of their downfall, too. Of the two men, it was Ronnie – the megalomaniac psychopathic type, the schizophrenic, the eventual madman – who brought about the destruction of his more stable brother, Reggie. Had Ronnie not blasted to death George Cornell, and had he not taunted Reggie into killing Jack McVitie, the Firm may have survived, with Reggie going on to become a truly successful businessman. That was not to be. It was these two murders that ruined them.

  Many reasons have been put forward to explain why the Kray twins became violent criminals – the environment they grew up in, the long absences of their father, their rivalry, and so on. But there could have been another factor.

  A German study of the 1920s made the startling discovery that if one identical twin had a criminal record, there was more than 75 per cent likelihood that the other twin would also have one. Still more surprising was the fact that this held true whether the twins lived together or not – in some circumstances, brothers separated for years had remarkably similar criminal histories.

  The implications of such findings are significant. They suggest that the criminality of the Krays could possibly have had more to do with genetic programming than the poverty and villainy of the East End or the manner in which they were raised. Perhaps a combination of nurture and nature lies at the heart of the twins’ rise and fall – what’s almost certain is that we’re unlikely ever to see again such an iconic and powerful pairing of underworld gang leaders. As brothers, they shared blood; and they shared the blood of their victims, too.

  5

  The Richardsons

  ‘It’s a conspiracy… It’s a tissue of lies. These people have all ganged up against me.’

  CHARLIE RICHARDSON AT HIS 1967 TRIAL

  Public fascination with the Krays has lasted long after the demise of their underworld empire and their deaths, but they were not the only villains of their generation whose names have gone down in criminal legend, for the 1960s produced a large number of characters whose defiance of law and order earned them a recognition that has sometimes bordered on respect and admiration.

  Perhaps the single most famous crime of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ – the era of Carnaby Street, the mini-skirt and the 1961 Morris Mini – was The Great Train Robbery. On 8 August 1963, 15 hooded men stopped the Glasgow-to-London ‘Up-Special’ overnight mail train at Bridego Bridge, at Ledburn, Buckinghamshire, robbing it of £2.6 million. Up to that time, Britain’s most spectacular robberies had yielded only a fraction of that sum and the scale and audacity of the operation appalled the authorities. During the raid, the train driver, Jack Mills, was coshed over the head. Mills never fully recovered and died seven years later. The £2.3 million haul has never been recovered.

  John McVicar was once described as ‘the most dangerous man in Britain’. His criminal career stretched from the late 1950s through to his final arrest and renunciation of crime in 1970. He was involved in armed robberies, assaults on the police and two escapes. He remained on the run for over two years.

  What was most remarkable about McVicar, however, was his transformation from violent crime to study and authorship. In 1974, he published his autobiography and three years later was awarded an Honours degree. After his parole in 1978, he became a journalist and also gave lectures on the subject of crime. In 1980, Roger Daltrey starred in the film McVicar, which was based on John’s career.

  Most people, when they think of English strong-arm rackets, think, often with fondness, of the Kray twins, Reggie and Ronnie, who dominated the British underworld for much of the 1950s and 1960s. There is, however, another lesser known band of brothers who also built a gang to work the protection/extortion racket, and the Richardsons were even more depraved than their more famous counterparts. Compared to the Krays, Charles and Eddie Richardson were almost amateur in their criminal endeavours, but in cruelty and violence they were every bit the Krays’ equals.

  Alike only in their shared passion for brutal aggression, Charlie and Eddie Richardson were in all other respects very different from the Krays. Whereas Reggie and Ronnie began from nothing, the Richardsons were primarily dubious businessmen, from a middle-class background, who found brutality a useful supplement to their legitimate activities.

  The gang was most famously involved in a mid-1960s turf war with the Krays, which ultimately led to their downfall. Incidents like the murder of Kray associate Richard Hart and the arrest of Richardson gang member Johnny Bradbury in connection with the murder of a businessman in South Africa enabled the police to follow the gang’s trail, and a CID squad arrested most of the gang members in 1966.

  The trial, which began in April 1967, resulted in the sentencing of Charlie for 25 years, and his brother Eddie for 10 years. Charlie, after escaping from prison in 1980, gave himself up voluntarily and was then released in 1984, while Eddie was sentenced in 1990 for trading in drugs, although he was later released.

  Among the accused arraigned for what was dubbed ‘The Torture Trial’ were Charles William Richardson, aged 32, company director, of Acland Crescent, Denmark Hill; his wife, Mrs Jean Richardson; Roy Hall, aged 25, metal sorter of Rangefield Road, Balham; Derek Brian Mottram, aged 32, caterer, of Somers Road, Balham; Thomas Clarke, aged 33, unemployed, of Fulham Road, Fulham; James Henry Kensitt, aged 51, salesman, of Homer Road, Fulham; James Thomas Fraser, aged 24, porter, of Midwell Street, Walworth; Robert Geoffrey St Leger, aged 44, dealer, of Broomhill Road, Middlesex; and Eddie Richardson, company director, also of Denmark Hill.

  The Richardsons’ lingering notoriety stems from their treatment of those who fell foul of them, which included beatings, extracting teeth with pliers, and electric shocks from a converted army field telephone placed inside a specially designed brown box, which generated a current when the handle on its side was cranked. They also bought a machine called a ‘Spitmatic’, a building tool designed to fire nails into concrete. On one occasion, this was used on a victim to pin his foot to the floor, and they often used bolt-cutters to remove toes.

  Afterwards, if the victims were too badly injured, they would be sent to an ex-doctor who had been struck off the medical register. This process of trial and torture was known as ‘taking a shirt from Charlie’, because of Charlie Richardson’s habit of giving each victim a clean shirt in which to return home.

  The notorious Richardson gang was active during the 1960s. Operating from south London, i
t was led by Charles ‘Charlie’ Richardson, his younger brother Edward ‘Eddie’, and Frances Davidson Fraser, aka ‘Mad Frankie’, born 13 December 1923. Charlie had turned to a life of crime when the departure of their father left their family penniless, and he invested in scrap metal, while Eddie operated fruit machines. These businesses were, however, merely fronts for underworld activities which included fraud, theft and dealing in stolen goods.

  The Richardsons’ big scam was buying foreign items like nylon stockings on credit and failing to pay the bill. Charlie was the ‘brains’ of the outfit that operated on London’s south side, in a nightclub they dubbed ‘Club Astor’.

  In addition to the credit ploy, the Richardsons liked to threaten their way into partnerships with legitimate businessmen who would be intimidated into co-operation by threats of terrible violence.

  In the basement of the club, the Richardsons had a torture chamber that rivalled anything from the Inquisition. On one occasion, in 1964, as they sat down to a dinner of scampi, the rest of the gang worked over a businessman who came into the club to collect money Charlie owed him. Derek John Lucien Harris was negotiating the sale of a company, and wanted payment for his services. Richardson greeted him with, ‘I like you, Lucien, and I don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘On Richardson’s order, they removed my shoes and my toes were wired to the generator,’ Harris said during the Torture Trial in 1967. ‘Roy Hall turned the handle and the shock caused me to jump out of my chair and I fell to the floor. Afterwards, Richardson screwed his thumbs into my eyes. It was very painful, and I could not see for a few minutes.’

  Harris testified that the shock was repeated on other parts of his body. ‘After that, I was stripped, except for my shirt, and the shock treatment was repeated. As I rolled on the floor, Richardson said the generator wasn’t working very well and orange squash was poured over my feet. Then I was bound and gagged and given further electric shocks to various parts of my body. Finally, Richardson said I was to be taken to the marshes where I gathered I would be killed and dumped under a pile of refuse.’