London's Gangs at War

by Dick Kirby

  Roy Hall was found guilty of inflicting grievous bodily harm on Harris, Bridges and Green and of causing actual bodily harm to Bickers.

  Frankie Fraser and Thomas Clark were both found guilty of demanding £1,200 with menaces from Taggart as well as inflicting grievous bodily harm on him. Fraser was also found guilty of inflicting grievous bodily harm on Coulston.

  The following day, 8 June, the sentences were passed. Telling Charlie Richardson, ‘It must be clear to all those who set themselves up as gang leaders that they will be struck down by the law, as you will be struck down’, the judge sentenced him to concurrent terms totalling twenty-five years and ordered him to pay two-thirds of the prosecution costs, not exceeding £20,000; he also ordered an investigation into how, with assets of £250,000 in mining interests in South Africa, it had been possible for Richardson to obtain legal aid.

  According to his biographer, Richardson took his sentence ‘like a man’, half-bowed to the jury and quietly said, ‘Thank you very much’.

  Not, however, according to the 9 June edition of The Times, which reported, ‘As Richardson turned to leave the dock, he stopped suddenly, glared at the jury . . . and snarled, “Thank you very much”.’

  It was a slight, but subtle difference.

  Next in the dock was Eddie Richardson, described by McArthur as ‘one of his brother’s first lieutenants’; he was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, to run consecutively to the five-year sentence in respect of the Mr Smith’s Club charge.

  Roy Hall, who the judge said had ‘behaved in a callous, sadistic and vicious way, a willing party to the degradation of these men’, was also sentenced to ten years.

  Thomas Clark, described by the judge as being ‘yet another victim of Charles Richardson’, was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment. Sentence was deferred on Fraser.

  Mr Justice Lawton praised the work of McArthur and his team, telling them:

  I want to thank all of you on behalf of the court – and I think I am speaking on behalf of every law-abiding citizen in this country – for the work you have done in breaking up one of the most dangerous gangs I have ever heard of.

  The jury was handsomely thanked by the judge, and upon leaving court one of them told the waiting pressmen, ‘No comment and that is the verdict of us all. We have agreed among ourselves not to say anything to the press or anyone.’

  This turned out to be the case. John Barnes, who had guarded one of the jurors, told me that afterwards the juror and his wife became lifelong friends of Barnes and his wife. The couple have since died, but Barnes told me, ‘It’s interesting, over the years that we knew them, the trial never, ever got a mention and neither of us ever raised the issue!’

  Meanwhile, the prisoners, under massive security, were shipped off to ‘E’ wing at the top security Durham Prison; but the proceedings were not yet over, not by any manner of means.

  CHAPTER 18

  Monkey Business

  Frankie Fraser would later say that whilst Taggart was giving evidence ‘the trial wasn’t going well for us. By the seventeenth day of the trial, I thought Lawton’s attitude was vindictive.’ He wanted a change of judge and gave fresh instructions to his barrister, Charles Lawson, who told Mr Justice Lawton:

  He [Fraser] tells me that about the end of 1964, the beginning of 1965, he had arrived at Victoria Station for the purpose of catching a train. He was then apparently travelling to Brighton. He saw your Lordship on the railway station, he thinks between platforms 14 and 15, approached your Lordship and asked whether your Lordship was Sir Frederick Lawton. Your Lordship replied, ‘Yes’. I gather that he then made derogatory, defamatory remarks about your father and that your Lordship walked away up the platform, I think pursued by my client, who was continuing to make these remarks.

  This came right out of the blue, and Mr Justice Lawton was furious, angrily denying it had ever happened.

  Fraser bellowed, ‘Yes it did!’

  And in fact, something of the kind had occurred, because the judge’s father, William Lawton, had been a prison governor whom Fraser detested and had attacked more than once. Mr Justice Lawton later returned to the court and when he addressed Fraser’s barrister, it is worth recording word for word what he said:

  There is a matter I want on place on record with regard to your application. You did not do me the courtesy of giving me any warning of the application you were going to make, or of the basis upon which you were going to make it, and as a result I had to put my mind directly on to the problem there and then, and I want to say as emphatically as I can that I have no recollection whatsoever of having spoken to your client. During the hour or so which has transpired since you spoke to me I have been running through my mind the occasions in my life when strangers have come and spoken to me, and I can just – but only just – recollect one occasion on a London station on a winter’s evening when somebody spoke to me and was abusive. I have no recollection of any abuse relating to my father. I feel if there had been any abuse relating to my father, I should have remembered it. I have no recollection whatsoever if it was your client, none whatsoever, and I am quite certain if it had been your client I would have remembered . . . in the circumstances it would be no grounds whatsoever for my not going on with this trial.

  But Fraser’s attempt to change the judge did not occur, as he claimed, on the seventeenth day of the trial, i.e. 26 April, or when Taggart was giving evidence. In fact, it did not happen when anybody was giving evidence because it was on 12 June 1967, five days after Fraser and other defendants had been found guilty. The judge had been expecting to try the case of Fraser, his nephew James and Johnnie Longman for assaulting and demanding £350 with menaces from Christopher Glinski and to sentence Fraser for the other offences of which he had been found guilty. The reason Fraser had tried to disrupt proceedings was that he did not want this judge to sentence him, especially since he had heard that, two days prior to his outburst, the latest conspiracy to nobble the jury in the torture trial had been thwarted. This was his first opportunity since hearing the news to air his spurious grievances in court.

  On 15 June James Fraser and Johnnie Longman both pleaded guilty to assaulting Christopher Glinski. Their plea of not guilty to demanding money with menaces was accepted, and because they had spent so long in custody they were given sentences of imprisonment which would permit their immediate release – in Longman’s case only as far as that indictment was concerned, since there was more to come.

  No evidence was offered against Frankie Fraser on that indictment, and on the charges of which he had been found guilty he was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, to run consecutively to the five-year sentence which had been imposed for the Mr Smith’s Club affray. So what of the frustrated conspiracy? Read on . . .

  *

  From the time that the jury in the Torture Case had been sworn until 31 May, two men – Albert John Stayton (the brother of the defendant William Stayton, who had been discharged in respect of the attack on Coulston) and Leslie George McCarthy (who had worked at Atlantic Machines) – had conspired with others to pervert the course of justice. They had approached the brother of a jury member and told him that they ‘would like to do business’. The juror’s brother refused the offer and contacted the police. Fraser stated in his memoirs that he had refused because ‘the police slept in his brother’s house’ – hence the disinformation to the newspaper which was thoroughly aired in court at the time. The men were not caught until much later, and when they appeared at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court on 10 June, Detective Inspector John Morrison (later Commander Morrison OBE, QPM) told the court he feared intimidation of witnesses. Although McCarthy had stated that he was of no fixed address, his solicitor, one Norman Beach, heroically stepped in, offering to supply his address in writing and claiming that McCarthy’s brother (‘a man of substance’) would stand surety in the sum of £10,000 – all to no avail.

  When the men were committed in custody to stand their trial at the Old Bail
ey, DI Morrison told the court, ‘I have evidence that people are still trying to get at these witnesses. Twice in the past week, attempts have been made to approach witnesses in this case’ – this despite the fact that the witnesses had been permitted to write down their names and addresses.

  On 25 October 1967 both men were found guilty at the Old Bailey and sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment; a third man was acquitted. And that was just one of the conspiracies.

  *

  The first one – at least the first that was known about – had happened between 2 & 5 August 1966; in other words, within three days of Charlie Richardson’s arrest. Christopher Glinski was approached on 4 August by two men, Arthur Robert Baron (who had known Charlie Richardson for years and had worked for him part-time in his metal yard) and Alfred Joseph Fraser (who, it will be remembered, had been arrested by Ted Greeno in 1955 and sent down for ten years’ for his part in the Martin’s Bank raid and who worked at Atlantic Machines); both men were aged fifty. Glinski had been told that with regard to the alleged attack on him by Charlie Richardson and others he would ‘get plenty of girls and drink if he went away to the country’ for the duration of the forthcoming trial. Moreover, he was told that he would be ‘allowed to join the Richardson gang and become one of the boys’, that Richardson was sorry about what had happened and that he would be ‘recompensed’; and all this would happen if he were to swear an affidavit exonerating Richardson and James Fraser from taking part on the attack on him in Vauxhall Bridge Road Glinski appeared to accept the offer: on the first occasion, he met the men in the Globe public house in Baker Street and accepted £100, promising to swear the affidavit. But in the meantime he had informed the police, and on the following day, 5 August, the handover of the second £100 was witnessed by them. The pub’s doors were locked, handcuffs claimed the wrists of the two men and Glinski’s hand-written notes were found in Baron’s pocket.

  At the committal proceedings at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, Baron shouted, ‘This man Glinski is telling lies, surely you can see that?’

  But the magistrate, Mr Geraint Rees, obviously could not see it, told Baron to ‘Keep quiet’ and committed them in custody at the Old Bailey.

  On 7 December 1966 Judge Graham Rogers told a jury at the Old Bailey that they would be under surveillance by plain clothes police officers to ensure no improper approach was made to them. And so they were: seventy-two officers were split into teams of six, one team for each juror, and two at a time they performed eight hour tours of duty. After a trial lasting seven days both men were found guilty and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment; the jury sent the judge a note expressing their appreciation of the tactful and helpful manner in which the police had discharged their duties.

  With hindsight, it was all a waste of time; six days later, the charges of causing actual bodily harm and demanding money with menaces from Glinski in respect of Charlie Richardson and Roy Hall were thrown out at their committal proceedings at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court; and six months after that, those charges were dropped against Frankie Fraser, whilst Jimmy Fraser and Johnnie Longman pleaded guilty.

  *

  The next conspiracy was hatched between 1 December 1966 and 11 January 1967. Benjamin Coulston had already given compelling evidence at Clerkenwell Magistrates’ Court in September 1966 of the torture meted out to him by Charlie and Eddie Richardson and Frank Fraser. Now, Coulston was approached by Evelyn Brindle, Frank Fraser’s sister, who according to Fraser’s memoirs had been eager to assist her brother in the past. When he was on trial in 1949, she had sat with his children in an ABC restaurant used by the jury, saying in a loud voice as they entered the restaurant, ‘Don’t you worry, your Dad’ll be home soon, he’s innocent’ – although he actually got six months. In 1952 she tried the same trick at Bedford Quarter Sessions, this time with even less success, because on that occasion Fraser went down for three years.

  Still, practice makes perfect, and in a pub in Brixton on 17 December Brindle told Coulston that he would receive £500 to swear a false affidavit exonerating her brother, another £500 afterwards and a further £1,000 when the trial was over. To assist her she employed the services of Albert Edward Wood (who had known Fraser for years and had invested in Atlantic Machines) and Charlie Richardson’s secretary, Josephine Louise Shaer. A five-page handwritten affidavit was prepared, but although they approached various Commissioners for Oaths on 2 January 1967, they were unable to get it signed. Coulston then notified the police, Evelyn Brindle’s address at Denmark Road, Camberwell was searched and Detective Superintendent Vic Evans found, wrapped in brown paper, five pages of hand-written notes completely contradicting Coulston’s previous testimony, together with £596. ‘Give me that statement!’ shouted Brindle. ‘You can’t take it; it’s all I’ve got to prove my brother is innocent.’

  There was a great deal more shouting at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court from two girls in the public gallery when the trio were remanded in custody; and at a later hearing, when Superintendent Evans was giving evidence, Evelyn Brindle shouted to her husband, ‘You know that is lies, Jim. I hope you’ll bring my two daughters to prove it’ and to Evans, ‘Do you want me to get fifteen months or two years like poor Jimmy Fraser?’5

  Some of the case was heard in camera before it was committed to the Old Bailey, where once more Judge Rogers had no hesitation in providing police protection for the jury.

  Giving evidence, Evelyn Brindle told the jury that she had heard, via Wood, that Coulston was now saying he had made a false identification at Clerkenwell Court when he stated an attempt was made to pull out his teeth with pliers. ‘I got in touch with Jose Shaer, who was Charles Richardson’s secretary, as I wanted the matter put right’, she said. She said that she would prepare a draft of what Coulston had to say, which he would have to sign in front of a solicitor. No one, she assured the jury, had ever suggested that Coulston should receive £2,000, adding that the only reason he had given false evidence in court was because he was afraid that the police would prefer further charges against him if he did not. She admitted lying to the police when she initially denied being in possession of an unsigned document, because she feared the police might destroy it: ‘It was the only evidence I had that he had told lies.’

  Not bad, but not good enough. When she and her two codefendants were found guilty on 21 March 1967, four young women made such a disturbance in the public gallery – they were a bellicose family – that they had to be forcibly ejected.

  The following day, Gerald McArthur told the court that there were still a number of ‘in-between’ persons operating in London who might attempt to interfere with witnesses in the forthcoming Torture Trial (he was right), and Evelyn Brindle and Albert Wood were each sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, while Miss Shaer received a six-month sentence.

  Three conspiracies to pervert the course of justice, all of which suggested the involvement of Frankie Fraser. They were, of course, fit-ups. Eddie Richardson made that quite clear when he later said, ‘Anyone who was around us was fitted up.’

  This had been a bad conspiracy, no doubt about that, but the final conspiracy case, which featured Charlie Richardson and Johnnie Longman, put it in the shade.

  *

  This was in connection with the trial of Eddie Richardson and others in the Mr Smith’s Club affray case. One of the witnesses had allegedly already been paid off and sent on a train to Manchester. Another, a doorman at the club, had received threatening telephone calls, as had his wife and children, telling them that their milk delivery would be poisoned; the doorman later suffered a nervous breakdown.

  As for the jury, well, that was relatively easy. The names of the jurors were read out in court as they came to the jury box to be sworn. Charlie Richardson was in the public gallery, as was his associate, Johnnie Longman. When the names were read out, so they were jotted down; as the jurors left the court at the end of the day, they were identified to other members of the Richardson gang, who followed the
m to their home addresses. Several of the jurors were contacted, including one named Charles North, who was confronted on two occasions by two different people; he immediately reported the matter to the judge. It was on the second occasion that North had a milk bottle thrown through the front room window of his home address. Inside was a note, which read: ‘Charlie bring them in guilty or else. A lot more where this came from. You’re not alone amongst the twelve.’

  The bottle-thrower was Charlie Richardson. The anomalous message, according to Richardson’s twisted psyche, was aimed at confusing Mr North, in the same way that the victims in the torture sessions were unnerved and confused. Who could be responsible? Certainly not associates of anybody in the dock; they would hardly tell a juror to find them guilty, would they? No, it was almost certainly the police – probably Tommy Butler himself, whom Richardson hated with a passion. Soon he would have every reason to dislike him even more.

  It was Tommy Butler who investigated this matter and he had a lot of help from Longman’s former paramour, Mrs Daphne Clements. By the time she came to give evidence at the Old Bailey on 12 July 1967, Charlie Richardson was already one month into his twenty-five-year sentence. She told the court that the previous July she had gone with Longman to Richardson’s address, where Longman was making telephone calls to jurors whose names had been jotted down on Richardson’s list. She added that Richardson had appeared annoyed at the way one of the witnesses had given his evidence and had said, ‘He would have to be punished.’

  On another occasion, Mrs Clements told the jury, while she waited outside Richardson’s address alone, in Longman’s car, Richardson and Alf Fraser came out of the house in a great hurry. Longman then emerged briefly from the house telling her that he had to wait, in case there was a phone call; but when he came out again and told her he was going to take her for a drink he warned her, ‘If anybody asks you, you’ve seen nobody leave this house tonight. Don’t dare mention my friends’ names to anybody or I’ll punch you in the mouth, shoot you up the arse and arrange a convenient accident for you.’ When they returned to Richardson’s house, Richardson also came back and Longman went inside, only to emerge jubilant shortly afterwards. He then told her that they had thrown a bottle through North’s window and said, ‘I hope the bottle went through the television screen or hit his old woman on the head.’