Me and My Brothers

by Kray, Charlie

  The journey to that judge was a nightmare. The solicitor and another black guy drove me off into the jungle, along a narrow road that looked as if it didn’t lead anywhere. The solicitor assured me we were going to the judge’s house but the way Payne had behaved made me fear for my life. As we drove deeper into the jungle I had visions of being bumped off and dumped – just another mysterious disappearance. But after the longest fifteen minutes of my life, the jungle opened up and there was the judge’s bungalow, set in beautiful gardens. I showed the relevant documents, signed some forms, tingling with relief, then went back to get Payne and Gore out of the nick.

  They were filthy, thirsty, hungry and exhausted. Gore was demoralized; Payne on the brink of a breakdown. I didn’t give either of them any time to say much: I spelled out the seriousness of our predicament and told them we were leaving – right then. It was not until the plane had left the runway at Lagos Airport that I was able to relax for the first time in three days.

  The GAS had blown up in our faces and, once back in England, the twins and I gave Leslie Payne the elbow.

  Towards the end of the Nigerian affair, the Boothby Photograph ‘Scandal’ hit the headlines. What a storm in a teacup that was! The whole nation, it seemed, was led to believe that Ronnie and the charming, multi-talented peer were having a homosexual affair. But nothing was further from the truth.

  Ronnie went to Lord Boothby’s home in Eaton Square just twice – on business. Boothby seemed keen to invest some money in the Nigerian project, but ultimately wrote to Ronnie saying he did not have the time to devote to it. That’s where the matter should have ended. But Ronnie’s passion for having his photograph taken with famous people set off a dramatic chain of events that ended with Boothby being paid £40,000 libel damages by the Sunday Mirror.

  The photograph in question – one of twenty or so taken during Ronnie’s second visit to Boothby’s flat – was an innocuous one, showing the two men sitting side by side on a settee. They were both dressed in suits and, since they had been discussing a multi-million pound business proposition, they looked fairly serious. Keen to make a few bob, the photographer showed a print to the Sunday Mirror and on 12 July the paper ran a sensational frontpage story – under the headline PEER AND A GANGSTER: YARD PROBE – alleging ‘a homosexual relationship between a prominent peer and a leading thug in the London underworld’.

  The story did not name Boothby or Ronnie, but claimed that a peer and a thug had attended Mayfair parties, that the peer and prominent public men had indulged in questionable activities during weekends in Brighton, that the peer was involved in relationships with clergymen, and that people who could give evidence on these matters had been threatened.

  Not surprisingly, the Sunday Mirror story – based on little fact – blew up into a major scandal. The questions on the lips of the nation, it seemed, were: Who is the peer? And who is the gangster?

  Well, the satirical magazine Private Eye did its best to put people out of their misery by naming Ronnie as the thug. And then Boothby himself brought the whole thing into the open in a frank letter to The Times, in which he referred to the Sunday Mirror story as ‘a tissue of atrocious lies’.

  On 4 August, both Ronnie and Boothby agreed for The Photograph to appear in the Daily Express, and the next day the International Publishing Corporation, which owned the Sunday Mirror, paid Boothby £40,000 compensation for the paper’s unfounded and libellous story. IPC chairman, Cecil King, also made an unqualified apology. Ronnie was given no cash compensation but on 19 and 20 September the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror did allow four column inches to apologize to him.

  To celebrate the end of the affair, Ronnie threw a party at a Bethnal Green pub. Boothby didn’t come; nor did Reginald Payne, who was fired as editor of the Sunday Mirror on 14 August. But many celebrities were there. And among those who showed no fear at being photographed with the so-called thug, Ronnie Kray, was someone who was to become a dear, dear friend: Judy Garland, the Hollywood moviestar.

  The spider spinning a web to trap the twins made his first move in January 1965. Detective Inspector Leonard Read – known as ‘Nipper’ in criminal circles – walked into the basement bar of the Glenrae Hotel and charged Ronnie and Reggie with demanding money with menaces from a Soho club owner. They were said to have threatened Hew Cargill McCowan with violence unless he gave them a percentage of the takings of the Hideaway Club in Ger-rard Street. When McCowan refused the twins’ offer, the prosecution alleged, a drunken writer called Teddy Smith smashed some bottles and glasses at the club, causing twenty pounds’ worth of damage.

  The evidence was wafer-thin and, thankfully, Ronnie and Reggie were acquitted. But they were subjected to two Old Bailey trials and three months on remand in Brixton before being cleared. Police objected to bail four times because they feared Ronnie and Reggie would not turn up to stand trial. But the twins offered to give up their passports, report to the police twice a day and undertake not to interfere with witnesses – all this in addition to sureties of a staggering £18,000. The court’s refusal to allow bail caused widespread controversy and Lord Boothby was so incensed he asked the Government in the House of Lords whether ‘it is their intention to imprison the Kray brothers indefinitely without trial’.

  The trial took place at the Old Bailey in March 1965, but after a nine-day hearing the jury failed to agree. The retrial started on 30 March, and I was spending money and time trying to find witnesses who could help the twins. I went to the solicitors’ at 9 A.M. every morning to tell them what I was doing. I had a private detective running around all over the place. And I had a tape on my phone, to cover every call.

  The police had the hump with me for trying to help the twins and tried to fit me up one night.

  I arrived home and Dolly told me a man had just phoned from Finchley saying he had some information that would interest me; he was going to ring back. About fifteen minutes later, the phone went. The guy was at Aldgate; could I meet him there? And would I be in my white Mini? I smelled a rat. How did he know what car I drove? And if he had rung from Finchley the first time, how had he got to Aldgate in fifteen minutes? I pulled him on this and he gave me some story, but I wasn’t fooled. I told him I knew he was a copper and if he thought he was going to fit me up he had another thought coming. Both conversations had been taped, I said, then I put the phone down. I did not keep the appointment. And I never heard from the guy again.

  I was spending so much time on the case – chasing witnesses, helping the private detective or attending court – that I had no time for my work as a theatrical agent. No work meant no bookings. And no bookings meant no money. But money was what was needed if the twins were to get off; for lawyers want paying, no matter which way the verdict goes.

  I had been dipping into my savings and was absolutely boracic when I got a call from the solicitor representing the twins. The legal costs had been paid up front, but they had run out, the solicitor said. He wanted £1,500 for the next day’s hearing, or he and the barrister were pulling out of the case.

  I was owed money that would have more than covered the required amount, but I would not get it until the end of the week. I needed the £1,500 urgently and racked my brains for someone who had that sort of money at the drop of a hat.

  I could think of only one person: Lord Boothby.

  I rang his Eaton Square house and Boothby’s charming butler arranged for me to see the noble lord that afternoon. Boothby was very pleasant: he offered me a drink and allowed me to say my piece. I explained why I needed the money so quickly and stressed that I wasn’t broke, just in a tight financial corner.

  I honestly felt Boothby would agree to a loan: he’d just been awarded £40,000, and he knew the ‘menaces’ charge against the twins was nonsense. So I was shell-shocked when he said, ‘I’m sorry, my dear boy. The forty thousand’s all gone. I owed so much.’

  I was choked. I didn’t know what to say; there wasn’t anything I could say. I’d blown out. I needed to g
et out of there quickly and try someone else, or else the twins would find themselves with no legal brief the next day – which would almost certainly mean a verdict of guilty and a prison sentence.

  I left Eaton Square a very worried man, and not a little disappointed in Lord Boothby who, I’m sure, could have found £1,500 if he had really wanted to.

  Of course, I got the money in the end; you always find a way when it’s critical, don’t you? And then I got on with the business of tracking down witnesses willing to tell the truth and get the case against the twins kicked out once and for all.

  They did get off. But, sadly, I wasn’t there to hear the Not Guilty verdicts.

  On the sixth day of the retrial I went to see a possible witness instead of going to the solicitor’s office first. When I finally turned up an hour or so later to tell them I’d found someone willing to give evidence, one of the clerks said, ‘That was good, wasn’t it, Charlie?’ I didn’t know what he meant. A minute later, in an upstairs office, a solicitor said, ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘What for?’ I asked.

  ‘Your case,’ he said. ‘It was thrown out this morning. Your brothers have been cleared.’

  I was pleased, of course. But also cheesed off. It was the first day of the case I hadn’t been in court, and I’d missed the best moment. By the time I got home to Vallance Road, the Fleet Street hounds were outside the house and the twins were having cups of tea – free men for the first time since their arrest three months to the day before.

  That homecoming made even bigger headlines than the trial itself and when all the reporters and photographers and well-wishers had left Vallance Road, I took the twins in the front room and gave them some strong advice that, had they heeded it, could have changed the tragic course their lives were to take. They had proved their point, I said. Once again, the police had tried to put them away on trumped-up charges – and failed. But Nipper Read and his men would not give up; if anything, they would take the latest setback to heart and try even harder next time. Whatever the twins had in mind, I said, they should stop and think and be very careful. If they stopped now we could go on for ever and be looked on as respectable businessmen; we could have everything we ever wanted, with no villainy, no worries, no police harassment. Having won a few battles, we could go on and win the war.

  Ronnie and Reggie nodded. What I said was right, they agreed. They had indeed proved their point to the police. It was time to quieten down and become respectable businessmen. Reggie even admitted that he and Frances were getting married.

  But already it was too late. Reggie’s marriage was tragically doomed. And in Westminster’s corridors of power, one of the top men in the country was preparing a Top Secret document that was to lure the twins into the spider’s web and trap them for ever.

  Chapter Eight

  Reggie could have married Judy Garland. She truly loved him, fawned all over him and was always trying to persuade him to stay at her house in Hawaii. But Reggie only had eyes for Frances Shea. She was all he had ever wanted in his life and could ever hope to want: the beginning and the end of everything. Reggie was very old-fashioned in his attitude to women and he courted Frances in an old-fashioned way. He took her to the top clubs and restaurants, always making sure she had the best of everything, but he liked the less flamboyant touches, too. If they were walking down a street together, Reggie would think nothing of stopping at a florist’s to buy her a bunch of roses. It was a beautiful love affair, and the flower of their love grew and grew until it blossomed into marriage on 19 April 1965.

  The wedding took place at St James the Great in Bethnal Green Road, and photographs of the happy event were taken – as a wedding present – by David Bailey, himself an Eastender, and the most famous photographer on the scene at the time. Hundreds of Cockneys turned out that sunny spring afternoon to wish the newlyweds good luck. But good luck, it seemed, was a luxury Reggie and Frances did not need. Fate had dealt them a kind hand. Although Reggie was eleven years older than his bride they were well-matched, joyously in love, and looking forward to spending their lives together. Reggie was already confiding his excitement at the prospect of becoming a father.

  On the business side, too, he and Ronnie had fallen on their feet after the nightmare of the two Old Bailey trials. Gilbert France, who had rented the Hideaway club to McCowan, had told the jury the twins did not need to demand from anyone; because they were so successful with clubs he would have been happy to give them a share. And when the twins were acquitted this is precisely what he did.

  While solicitors prepared the paperwork for the partnership, Reggie and Frances flew off to the Greek sunshine. Their new-found good fortune quickly brought them into contact with high-ranking officers from the Saratoga, the renowned US aircraft carrier, who took a liking to the honeymooners and invited them on board. For two impressionable Cockneys it was a rare honour, and for years afterwards Reggie treasured a specially engraved lighter, given to them as a memento of their visit.

  Back in London, it was decided to give the Hideaway a new name – El Morocco. When a star-studded party was arranged to mark its opening on 29 April Reggie and Frances cut short their honeymoon to be there, with a host of current celebrities–and ‘Nipper’ Read who, for some reason, popped in for a glass of champagne. One of the celebrities was Edmund Purdom, a very well-known film star who was living in Italy. Like most of the celebrities we encountered, Edmund took to the twins, particularly Ronnie, and he would always make sure he spent some time at El Morocco when he was in London.

  One night Edmund came up to Ronnie and said he desperately needed to borrow two hundred pounds. Ronnie agreed to lend it to him, but said he would have to go to Vallance Road in the morning to collect it. Ronnie always preferred the house as a meeting place, feeling that if it was not grand enough for anyone they probably were not worth knowing anyway. It was perfectly acceptable to Edmund and he arrived on time the next morning, much to Mum’s delight.

  Always ready for a giggle, she asked me not to mention Edmund’s presence to a neighbour, Rosie Looker, who came in every morning to help Mum around the house. When Rosie arrived she went into the kitchen at the back of the house while the twins and I talked to Edmund in the front room. After a while I went out there and asked Rosie if she would take some tea in to the twins and their guest. I stayed in the kitchen with Mum, waiting for Rosie’s reaction. She did not disappoint us: she came running out, her face flushed with embarrassment, saying, ‘Oh, Charlie, you should have told me. I’d have put something different on.’ Mum and I laughed. It was the equivalent of coming face to face with Paul Newman today.

  On 19 June that year Dolly had a baby. It was a posh affair in the exclusive London Clinic and the baby girl was wheeled into her ward in a cot fringed with lace. She was blonde and beautiful, and as I held her in my arms I knew what love was. She had marvellous laughing eyes and we called her Nancy, after the famous Sinatra song.

  Ronnie, thankfully, was anxious for violence to play no part in the new operation. One night, for instance, he took care of two massively built bodybuilders – one black, the other white – with little more than a tug of the sleeve. I wasn’t in the club at the time, but I gather the two blokes started shouting and swearing and generally making a nuisance of themselves shortly after coming into the club late one night. Ronnie, who was sitting at a nearby table quietly talking with a friend, did not like their behaviour at all. After tolerating it for a few minutes he got up and walked over to the musclemen who were standing at the bar.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said softly and pleasantly. ‘Could you be quiet, please? There are ladies present. They don’t like your language. Nor do I.’

  Ronnie never gave anyone the chance to argue with him. He always said what he had to say and that was it. So, having said his piece, he turned and walked back to his table. His request did not cut any ice with the two unwanted customers: no sooner had Ronnie sat down than they started mouthing off again. Ronnie’s face, I was told la
ter, was a picture: it tensed in irritation then, as the swearing got louder, it tightened and went white with anger. I had seen that look many times and, to strangers, it must have been quite frightening. Finally, unable to stand it any longer, Ronnie got up again and walked over to the two hulking giants. Grabbing each by the arm, he said quietly but convincingly, ‘You’re leaving.’ And he started walking them to the door. As he bundled them into the street he said, ‘Don’t come back. You’re not welcome here.’ Then he returned to his seat and calmly carried on talking to his friend as though nothing had happened.

  For Ronnie to restrain himself when so angry was remarkable. I would not have been surprised to have been told he’d laid them both out at the bar. I was pleased when I heard the story. Maybe for once he was heeding my advice.

  From the early days of their club life the twins had always liked to rub shoulders with famous people and now, in 1965, they were given an opportunity to meet more big American stars, not only from the showbusiness world, but boxing, too. The chance came when they were introduced to a genial, nineteen-stone former American football star named Eddie Pucci, while he was in England as bodyguard to Frank Sinatra’s son.

  Eddie, who had been connected with Sinatra for five years, was getting involved in arranging for American showbusiness stars to perform in England. As the twins knew the club scene backwards, he asked them if they would entertain the stars and generally make them feel at home. It was through Eddie we met the actor, George Raft, singers Tony Bennett and Billy Daniels, and goodness knows how many other celebrities who were household names in Britain then. The twins persuaded several to come to meet Mum at Vallance Road but none made more impact than the unforgettable Judy Garland. She was very warm and friendly and Mum adored making her feel at home. Once, we amazed the regulars at the Crown pub – just around the corner from the house – by taking Judy to a party there. The pub was packed and people were standing on chairs trying to get a glimpse of her. We were besieged by people wanting us to ask her to sing, but we told them we had brought her as a friend, not as a star. We said Judy just wanted to relax and be herself and, thankfully, everyone understood and respected her wishes. All our relatives and friends were there, and for several hours Judy sat in an armchair, drinking and chatting away about life in general and the East End in particular. We had records on all the time and some of them were Judy’s but no one asked her to sing. When we left she said it was one of the most pleasant nights she had spent anywhere because she had been allowed to be herself. I like to think she meant it.