I wrote to a man called David Atkinson at the Home Office, telling him my problems with the old man. He had taken over from Major James as the head of P3, the lifers’ division.
Eventually I received a very nice letter which said, ‘After considering your case we have decided to move you to Featherstone, just outside Wolverhampton, on the grounds of your father’s ill health.’ It was a lot nearer.
Featherstone was one of the most modern prisons in Europe. Each cell had its own toilet, and the facilities were out of this world, but because I was so used to the rough conditions I’d been in for years I found it hard at first to adapt. Also, I was in with short-termers, people who were constantly talking about the outside world. I’d always been around people who never even spoke about getting out. Ian Barrie was transferred there later, and Les Long, another old friend, turned up too. The three of us more or less kept ourselves to ourselves.
I looked for the easy option regarding work, and was given a job as a cleaner which keeps you out of the way of the other cons. I grew very bored with it, though, and went on to hotplate duty as a red-band (a prisoner wearing a red band to show that he was entitled to walk about without an escort), serving the food and keeping the dining rooms clean and tidy. To qualify for this job, you had to impress the authorities with your cleanliness, attitude and appearance. They also looked for leadership – the ability to influence without causing problems.
I made a good job of that, but I wanted to work in the open air. Eventually I was given a job with the works department, helping to build this little road around the prison grounds. I was working with a Hell’s Angel called John McDonna, who was serving life for killing someone in his chapter in Brighton. He had very long hair, a beard and a moustache, and he never used to wear anything more than a tee-shirt and trousers, even in the freezing cold. I got on well with him. When we finished the road, one of its bends was named Lambrianou Way and the other one McDonna’s Corner.
I stayed on in the gardens as a dumper driver. One Sunday afternoon, Jim the gardener asked if I wanted to do some overtime. It was a lovely day in April 1982, and our job was to do the football pitch – grassing it, seeding it and turfing it. All of a sudden, the dumper turned over. I thought it was going to fall on top of me, but I managed to dive out of the way and broke my wrist in three places. The medical screw took one look at me and said I had to go to a public hospital. It was the first time I’d been out in the real world for fourteen years.
I don’t think I took in what was happening. I’d always been in a prison van with an armed guard when I was being moved about. Now, there I was in the back of a taxi with an escort of just a PO and one screw. In the hospital there were people running about, nurses flying everywhere. I came to realise that there were still children in this world.
I came out with a plaster on my wrist, and as we drove back to the prison I saw a bit of Wolverhampton. Back at the nick, I was telling Ian and Barrie all about my couple of hours out of prison, about what it felt like to walk in somewhere a free man, without handcuffs. In the end, they were telling me to shut up about it.
I think that was the first sign that my release was not too far away: they trusted me to go out. Nobody but the Home Office had the authority to let a lifer out of the gates, and it was greatly encouraging that some unknown person there had said yes to me.
My wrist began to get better, and five or six weeks later I was on light labour, just sweeping down landings and mopping out rooms. One Sunday afternoon after four o’clock, I was sitting watching a game of football on television when a PO came in and said to me, ‘Can I see you in the office?’
He said, ‘You’ve just had a phone call. Your father is very ill, and if you’d like to get yourself ready, we’ll take you to see him tonight.’
I knew he had a hernia; I didn’t know he had cancer until that day. Within an hour I was down in reception; and they lent me a jacket. We left Featherstone at 5.30 and travelled to St Leonard’s Hospital in Hoxton in a taxi – me, a PO and a screw called Ted.
Suddenly, after all those years, I found myself back in the East End, standing outside the hospital. Chris hadn’t been allowed out because the authorities felt he would play up. I went inside, and saw my Jimmy, Leon and his wife June, my son and daughter and a couple of neighbours. I was allowed two hours with the old man. I had a chat to him, and he knew I was there, but I think he was too ill to really comprehend it. He was on morphine. One thing you never forget is that smell.
For the second time I was in freedom with no handcuffs on, and I was allowed to have a chat with my brothers before leaving for Featherstone at 9.30 in the evening. But by the time I left, I knew it wasn’t going to be long with my Dad.
The following week, on 28 June, he fell so dangerously ill that he wasn’t expected to see the night through. They decided to take me to see him again that day. This time, they knew it was bad. They arranged to get Chris down there in the afternoon and me in the evening. The hospital was told, ‘Any further problems, get in touch with the prison.’
Everything was happening so fast. I could see my freedom on the horizon because I was being tested, admittedly in a compassionate way, by the authorities through these hospital visits. But I was gutted about my father.
When I got to the hospital the whole family was there – my brothers, their wives and kids. They had a room at their disposal. I was told that what I was going to see was not a pretty sight. I walked into the wards, and I could see that my father had lost a lot of weight. He must have weighed no more than four and a half stone. I was told he’d been asking for me: ‘I wanna see Tonys’ – a Greek way of saying Tony.
I grabbed hold of him, and I saw that his eyes had gone. I wanted to say, ‘Listen, give him an injection, end it.’
We all went into the side room, and the screws stayed away. They were genuinely trying to be considerate. I walked out of the hospital with Jimmy, and I stood in Kingsland Road on my own. I didn’t know what to do. I could have walked away, but I went upstairs, back to the ward.
My Dad said, ‘Lillie,’ his pet name for my mother, and then he died.
We went back into the side room. Nobody had anything to say. I went back and kissed my Dad, and we left.
I felt numb, and for the next couple of days I spent a lot of time in the prison chapel, sitting on my own. I was totally lost. It’s bad enough when one parent dies, but when two have gone, you’re on your own. And you feel it even more when you’re in prison. I kept asking, ‘Why him? Why them? Why me?’
I blamed myself: ‘If I hadn’t had this sentence, I would’ve spent more time with him.’ I felt that we let him down, because we should have been there towards the end of his life. From the day we went into prison, the old man used to say, ‘I’m not going to die until my sons are out.’ In our hearts we knew that he might not survive our sentence, but at least he did see us again in freedom, albeit a very limited freedom.
The biggest regret of my life is that I wasn’t a free man when my parents died. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of my mother and father. Had they been alive today, we could have given them back a little bit of what they gave us. My mother did her best for us; she couldn’t have done any more. But she never lived to see any of the boys making something of their lives.
At least my father lived to see his other sons making some success of themselves while Chris and I were away. They put him on a pension of their own. Every week he used to go and collect it, and if one of them didn’t have the money for him, he’d go and complain to the other one! He was totally honest, a good man; and he just loved his sons – he loved the boys around him. We’re forever on about him today. We never talk about our mother – somehow it still hurts too much – but we’re always saying things like, ‘If the old man was here….’ His death came as a devastating blow to all of us, and Chris saw it as the end of the family. He was in a tragic state for a long time after that.
I always worried throughout my sentence that if my fathe
r died the authorities would refuse me permission to attend the funeral, as they had after my mother’s death. I could never have handled that again. But in the event they were very understanding. They promised that the police and screws would keep a low profile so long as the funeral was kept within the family and there were no press involved. The same applied to Chris.
It took place at the Greek Orthodox church in Camden Town. But first the family got together at my parents’ home in Belford House, Queensbridge Road. When my car pulled up at the door, the first people I noticed were Leon and Chris. I was pleased to see Chris standing there: I hadn’t set eyes on him in three years. All the relatives had arrived, and everyone was putting wreaths outside the door. We went into the house, and I didn’t want to believe the old man was dead.
It was the first time we’d all stood together in our old home in eighteen years. Everything was in the same place – the table in the middle of the living room with the chairs round it – but nothing looked the same as I remembered it. It seemed a lot smaller.
We five brothers went and sat in our parents’ bedroom. Jimmy went out and got a bottle of vodka, and we toasted the old man. I knew, looking round the room, that it was the last time the five of us would be together in that house. It turned out to be the last time the five of us would be together at all. I’d like to think we could rectify that in the future. We had our picture taken that day; the only one there is of us together. My uncle John broke down and cried to see the five boys reunited.
There were about twenty cars in the funeral, and the prison authorities did their best for us. They allowed us our dignity and a limited freedom, and no great presence was seen around us. (This is in direct contrast to what happened when the twins attended Violet’s funeral. What became of that was a shambles and a circus, with police, screws, newspaper reporters, television cameras and crowds of people milling around them.)
We went to the church in Camden Town. Lady Sainsbury was there with other members of her family, and we saw a lot of people going back many years, all assorted friends from our past. The service was all done in Greek, as the old man would have wanted it, and everyone went up and kissed his coffin. The proudest moment of my life was when the five brothers, with our eldest nephew Paul, carried our father to his grave.
Back at Featherstone I was broken up for a long time, but gradually life began to pick up. I was given what is called an F75, which was the first step towards my parole: it’s an internal assessment of your circumstances in prison and your suitability to be released. Every lifer, after the first couple of years of his sentence, is given an annual F75. In dispersal prisons it is a purely routine matter, because none of the cons are likely to qualify for parole. Once, in Gartree, the landing officer who was asking me questions for my F75 had the audacity to write my answers down on the back of a cigarette packet. He said, ‘Where are you going to live when you get released?’ A bleeding joke. I was in Category A at the time!
In Featherstone, a Cat. C prison, they obviously took the F75 more seriously. They considered the inmate’s situation very thoroughly, and I was asked to appear in front of a board to put my case for parole. I had to stand up and say, ‘I’m fit to be released’, and give them some very solid evidence. By this time I had acquired some support. Ian Mikardo, my MP, was very good to me, and my probation officer, Mrs Jean Heath, was a tower of strength and encouragement.
I duly appeared before the board, which comprised the Governor, a psychiatrist, a doctor, an education officer, a welfare officer, my probation officer, the works instructor and a PO. I sat in the middle while they fired questions at me, and I talked about Jack The Hat. By this time Reggie had admitted the murder, so I no longer had to protect him – there was no point in me continuing to say I had nothing to do with it.
I said, ‘Yes, I felt sorry for McVitie. Yes, it was a terrible thing to happen. Yes, if I could turn the clock back I would. Of course I felt about his family, and of course I regretted that a man’s life had been taken. I didn’t actually commit the crime, but I was there when something happened and, yes, I do feel responsible.’ I also told them, ‘The sentence I’m doing, whether it carries on for a short time or a long time, will never alter what I feel inside about what happened that night. I’ve lived with it, and I’ll go on living with it for the rest of my life, whether I’m in prison or not.’
They asked about my attitude to release, my views on the outside world, how I would take to someone shoving me in a bus queue. Would I throw violence or would I turn the other cheek?
My answer was: ‘I think I would value freedom enough to want to keep it, not throw it away by having an argument with someone getting on a bus.’
I was asked about my plans. Did I have a home to go to? Would I stay in the area I went out to?
I said, ‘I can’t plan the future until I get a date of release. I’ll take the steps one at a time.’
And that was more or less it.
It was now up to the board to decide whether or not they would recommend me to the Local Review Committee, which consisted of the same people plus a magistrate, a judge, a high-ranking police officer and a Home Office official. The Review Committee would consider my case to see if it was worthy of recommendation to the Joint Committee. And if the Joint Committee ruled in my favour the whole thing had to be assessed again by the Parole Board, which would make the final recommendation to the Home Secretary.
It would take the best part of a year for my case to go through all these channels, and the more I thought about it, the more worrying it became. It was like a tree, and to reach the top, you had to climb up every branch without falling. Would I make it?
I tried to put myself in the Home Secretary’s shoes: ‘If I was the Home Secretary and I had Tony Lambrianou, a member of the Kray firm, would I want the responsibility of signing that bit of paper?’ And I started to have my doubts.
For the next ten months I was living on my nerves. I’ve seen men driven potty by this. One Thursday lunchtime, I walked into the PO’s office to get an application form for batteries. There were two POs in there with the welfare officer and about five screws. No one said a word. I looked up and they were all smiling at me. I heard the welfare officer say, ‘Shall we tell him?’, and I instantly knew they had my answer.
I said, ‘Don’t tell me anything bad.’
He handed me a piece of paper and said, ‘Just read that bit there.’ It was my date of release: 29 September 1983.
I didn’t know what to do – laugh, cry…. It just seemed like one hell of a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. My first reaction was to ask about Chris – if he’d been given a date too. But nobody knew. Then I went back and told the others. Ian Barrie was overjoyed for me, Les Long was smiling, everybody was coming over and shaking my hand. I couldn’t believe it. I went to work that afternoon, and all the security was off me. I was allowed to wander out into the yard. No one cared any more.
I had a year to go until my full release. First, I had to serve six months in Leyhill open prison and six months in a prison hostel. Leyhill was one of only two open prisons in the country which would accept lifers. There, what restrictions they had were as flexible as possible. We were trusted not to escape, given a great deal of freedom within the prison compound and allowed out of the grounds on working parties.
Those six months flew by. So did the next six at Maidstone prison hostel. The rules gave me the freedom to go out on my own during the daytime so long as I signed in and out, returned at a certain time in the evenings and reported to the screws on a daily basis. I was allowed to spend weekends with my wife and kids. Yet, for all this privilege, I still felt very much tied to the apron strings of the prison system.
And then, suddenly, my last week arrived. The authorities had to reclothe me, and I was given a grant of about £600. A screw took me into town to do my own shopping. I had to see the doctor and the Governor. I had to draw out money from a special bank account where my hostel wages had been deposited
for me, pending my release. It worked out at about £760, and I was given an extra sum of £150.
More than fifteen years had passed, and I was about to go back into society. But my head was still back in 1968. That was the difference, as I was to find out.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A DOMESTIC DISASTER
The night before my release, I couldn’t sleep. The whole of the past week had been sheer murder. For years, I’d had the security of the prison wall around me. Now I was in a prison hostel, and although I’d been able to go out into the world at large, I was still under supervision; I still had that security. During my weekdays at the hostel I would never, ever leave the vicinity of the prison. It was like a home to me.
Now my thoughts went, ‘You’re on your own, how do you feel about that?’ Everything I’d looked forward to was beginning to collapse around me. How would I react to being at home for good? To my family? I knew I couldn’t afford to make an error, couldn’t break the rules of the life licence I was going to be living under, or I’d be inside again. The pressure was back on, every bit as much as it had been in prison. My excitement had given way to a great anxiety: I was gripped by worries about the outside.
I climbed sleeplessly out of bed at six in the morning on 29 September, and realised that my links with everything familiar were about to break. I was frightened, unsure. I was called down to the office and told to sign for my bank book and all the possessions I’d had when I was arrested – a ring, some clothes. Later that day I ripped the clothes up. They were part of history.
I didn’t have any breakfast. I kept drinking tea. I must have had about nine cups in two hours.
Inside the Firm - The Untold Story of The Krays' Reign of Terror Page 25