by Neil Storey
Reggie Kray followed his brother’s path to murder with the killing of troubled gangland character Jack ‘the Hat’ McVitie – named after the pork-pie hat he always wore to cover his baldness. McVitie had been hired to carry out an assassination on behalf of the Krays but had failed to do so and had not paid back the money. He compounded his troubles by making offensive and derisory comments about the Krays which got back to the ears of the brothers. In November 1966 McVitie was brought from the Regency Club in Stoke Newington to what he thought was another party at a flat on Evering Road, Hackney. Ron and Reg were waiting for Jack, and Reggie wasted no time pointing a pistol at point-blank range at McVitie. He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Reg attempted to fire again and again, only to be met with ‘click’ after ‘click.’ McVitie thought he was the butt of some sick joke, but he laughed no more as Ron held him and Reg stabbed him in the face, stomach and finally impaled him through the throat on the floor. Wrapped in a bedspread, the dead body of McVitie was bundled into a car and was never seen again.
The third killing attributed to the Krays was that of Frank ‘Mad Axeman’ Mitchell – a body-builder and giant of a man who was 6ft 4in and weighed 17 stone. A real East End hard man, he was a daring criminal but the problem was that he was mentally ‘backward’, prone to childish tantrums and kept getting caught. When in custody and brought before the courts he had been assessed and declared ‘mentally defective’ with ‘the mind of a 10-year-old child’ by the authorities and had served sentences at Rampton and Broadmoor. Ron and Reg had met Mitchell when they were in Wandsworth and he had kept in touch with Ron and was frustrated that he was constantly denied a review date for his case. He was already a trusted prisoner at the Dartmoor open prison; security was low and with a little planning his escape on 12 December 1966 was made possible by the Krays. The escape was headline news. Once out, Mitchell had to lie low and was put up in a flat on Barking Road, East Ham, guarded by Scotch Jack Dickson and Billy Exley and entertained by night-club hostess Lisa Prescott. But Mitchell became impatient and within days had sent letters in his childish scrawl to The Times and Daily Mirror asking the Home Secretary for a release date. He was also demanding to see the Krays – saying if they did not come to him he would go to them. Frankly, for the Krays, Mitchell had become a liability. Reg paid him a visit and said they would move him to the country. He was removed in a van on Christmas Eve and was never seen again: he is still classified as a wanted man on the run by the police. However, former Kray firm member Freddie Foreman, in his autobiography Respect, claimed that Mitchell was shot and the body disposed of in the sea. When firm member ‘Scotch Jack’ Dickson asked Ronnie what had happened to Mitchell, Ronnie flew into a rage shouting, ‘He’s fucking dead! We had to get rid of him, he would have got us all nicked. We made a mistake getting the bastard out in the first place.’
It must be remembered that the police had made great efforts to bring the Krays to justice and Inspector Leonard ‘Nipper’ Read of Scotland Yard was the man determined to bring them down. He had been investigating their activities since 1964, but was often hindered by the wall of silence from the people too afraid of what may happen to them if they gave up the twins. By the end of 1967 Read had built up evidence against the Krays. There were witness statements incriminating them, as well as other evidence, but they did not add up to a convincing case on any one charge. Most of the statements were given on the condition that they were not used until the Krays were in detention, making a warrant almost impossible to obtain.
But slowly and surely, Inspector Read and his team assembled a case against the Krays. They were finally were arrested on 9 May 1968. Once they were detained in police custody, witnesses slowly started to develop the confidence to give evidence and twenty-eight criminals were promised freedom from prosecution if they were to turn Queen’s Evidence against the Krays – the criminals involved had much to lose and could face a life behind bars, the temptation was great and even close Kray gang members such as Scotch Jack Dickson and Ronnie Hart gave their testimony. Witnesses such as the barmaid at The Blind Beggar recovered their memories.
The Kray trial was a sensation; held at the Old Bailey before Mr Justice Melford Stevenson, it commenced on 8 January 1969 and saw the Kray brothers tried together, with a further eight members of their firm. The trial lasted thirty-nine days (then the longest and most expensive trial held at the London court).
Ronnie arrogantly denied everything, called the prosecutor ‘a fat slob’, said the police had plotted against him and his brother and directly accused the judge of bias. On the final day of the trial, 4 March 1969, the jury deliberated for six hours and fifty-five minutes before unanimously returning a verdict of guilty against Ronnie Kray and John Barrie for the murder of George Cornell. Reg Kray was found guilty of the murder of Jack McVitie. The Kray’s elder brother, Charlie, got ten years for helping with the disposal of McVitie’s body Frederick Foreman and Cornelius Whitehead were also found guilty of being accessories to the murder of McVitie.
Christopher and Anthony Lambrianou and Ronald Bender were also found guilty of murder and received life. Frederick Foreman was jailed for ten years. Cornelius Whitehead was sentenced to seven years. Albert Donaghue was jailed for two years. The Kray twins were both sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation they should be detained for a minimum of thirty years.
On 15 April 1969, all three Krays were back in court facing charges of murdering Frank ‘Mad Axeman’ Mitchell. All pleaded not guilty, and despite evidence given against them by hostess Lisa Prescott and firm member Albert Donaghue, who claimed to have been in the van which took away Mitchell with Freddie Foreman and Alfie Gerrard – he recalled it took twelve shots to finally kill Mitchell – it remained impossible to prove who killed the Mad Axeman. The Krays were cleared of the murder, but Reg was convicted of plotting Mitchell’s escape from Dartmoor Prison and got another five years.
Ronnie was eventually committed to Broadmoor Hospital, Crowthorne and died there on 17 March 1995. Charles Kray died in prison in April 2000 while serving time for masterminding a £69m cocaine smuggling plot. Reg was imprisoned for a total of thirty-two years before he was released from custody on compassionate grounds as a result of cancer, which claimed his life a few weeks after his release on 1 October 2000 at the Town House Hotel in Thorpe St Andrew, Norwich, Norfolk. On the day of his funeral the streets of the East End were filled with thousands of mourners, six deep along the Bethnal Green Road. Many shops closed as a mark of respect as his horse-drawn hearse, bedecked with floral tributes, passed by, closely followed by Kray’s widow Roberta, close family members, former gangland ‘enforcer’, ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser and many mourners. The cortege moved along the route via Valance Road to St Matthew’s church where his funeral service was held and finally to Chingford Mount Cemetery where around 200 people accompanied the coffin to the grave where the last of the Kray brothers was finally laid to rest.
SELECT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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NEWSPAPERS & PERIODICALS
Cassell’s Saturday Journal
Daily Chronicle
East London Advertiser
East London Observer
Eastern Argus & Borough of Hackney Times
Evening Standard
Illustrated Police News
Pall Mall Gazette
Penny Illustrated Paper
The Eastern Post & City Chronicle
The Daily Mirror
The Illustrated London News
The Lancet
The Stage
The Star
The Strand Magazine
The Sun
The Times