London's Gangs at War

by Dick Kirby

  A month prior to McVitie’s murder, Nipper Read had been promoted to the rank of detective superintendent and posted to C1 Department at the Yard – erroneously referred to as the Murder Squad. Within days, he was summoned to Brodie’s office to be told that he would be responsible for catching the Krays.

  Read was not best pleased; he had received a humiliating setback with the Krays’ acquittal in the blackmail case, and any attempt to prosecute them again would be seen in many quarters as victimization. Still, orders were orders, and he commenced work under the direction of Commander John du Rose OBE – with a staff of just two detective sergeants – at Tintagel House.

  First, Read assembled a list of names, people who had been associated with the Krays, from his previous investigation; carefully, he worked his way through the list to determine who might help him, cautiously avoiding those who might report back to the twins.

  Finally, he hit pay dirt in the shape of Leslie Payne. Read had heard that Payne was on ‘Ronnie’s hit list’ – Payne had not. During the next three weeks Payne, with immunity from prosecution granted by the Director of Public Prosecutions, dictated a 137-page statement which became a catalogue of many of the twins’ misdeeds. Names were named, other witnesses came forward and more detectives were added to the team.

  Of course, Read knew about the Cornell shooting – everybody did – and he was aware of Frank Mitchell’s disappearance. ‘Mad Teddy’ Smith had also vanished. Billy ‘Jack’ Frost, Ronnie’s driver, had similarly not been seen for some time. About McVitie he knew only that he was missing – until an informant pointed him in the direction of the murder scene, where to his dismay Carol Skinner denied knowing anything about it.

  But when Read received information regarding a murder plot set up by Kray associate Alan Bruce Cooper (known as ‘ABC’) involving explosives, he had a young man named Paul Elvey arrested in Glasgow. All the evidence was there: three dozen sticks of dynamite, a suitcase concealing a hypodermic needle containing cyanide and, for equally silent killing, a crossbow. When the crossbow was tested, it was found to have a velocity of 130ft per second and to be accurate to a range of at least 50yds. Cooper, too, was arrested; slim, with a stutter and an American accent, he hardly gave the impression of being a contract killer, although the late Detective Sergeant Bill Waite BEM told me, ‘He was the coldest man I ever met.’

  Read was stunned, then furious, when Cooper told him that he had been working as an informant for John du Rose, who duly confirmed that this was true. Read told me, ‘I took him out on the staircase of Tintagel House and let him have it’ – meaning, of course, verbal rather than physical abuse. Du Rose tried to calm the situation by telling Read that he had not used Cooper as an informant ‘as such’ and assured him that if he had received pertinent information he would have immediately passed it on – something that Read had great difficulty accepting. However, it could have been true; Du Rose, fine detective though he was, did not have experience of handling informants, allowing the manipulative Mr Cooper to oversee the situation and use it to his best advantage when he was placed in a precarious position such as being implicated in a murder plot with the brothers Kray.

  Cooper’s assassination plans were the subject of scornful comment later in court, when he was asked if it was true that because of his ‘silly schemes’ he was known as ‘silly bollocks’?

  To this, Cooper replied, ‘This is quite news to me. If I was called “silly bollocks”, the Krays must have been more stupid than I, to have taken me into their confidence.’

  When Joey Kaufman – a member of the US mafia – visited Cooper and told him that the latest batch of stolen bearer bonds were due to be delivered to him, by post, at his London hotel within a few days, Read realized that matters would now have to move very fast. Cooper was not under arrest and it was possible he would get word to the Krays; Read therefore called a pre-arrest meeting at Tintagel House during the early hours of 8 May 1968. His meagre staff was supplemented by officers from the Regional Crime Squads – over a hundred detectives were now assembled to raid twenty-four addresses and arrest twenty-six suspects in an operation synchronized for 6.00 am.

  When Nipper Read forced the door of the twins’ ninth floor flat at Braithwaite House, Reg, Ron and their minders were all arrested. Reg was in bed with a girl and Ron was on a sofa in a state of tender intimacy with the son of a highly placed member of the Firm; the lad’s father was either unaware of the relationship or was exceptionally broad-minded.

  On being arrested, Ron replied, ‘All I can say is, it’s ridiculous. I don’t know anything about murder, do I?’

  But he did.

  Reg replied, ‘We’ve expected another frame-up for a long time. But this time, we’ve got witnesses. There are plenty of people who will want to help us.’

  And there were those who wouldn’t.

  Others were brought into West End Central police station, their premises having been searched. Charlie Kray had been arrested, as had Tommy Cowley, who exclaimed, ‘Murder? Whose murder? What are you talking about? I’m not a gangster or something. I’m not a gangster, Guv’nor.’

  Few questions were answered and no admissions made by the prisoners at West End Central; much of the time was spent typing up the carbon copy charge sheets, and not everybody on Read’s list had been caught – Ronnie Hart and ‘Scotch Ian’ Barrie, for example, escaped. But after fifty hours eighteen men were charged with a variety of offences, including conspiracy to murder, demanding money with menaces, inflicting grievous bodily harm and conspiracy to defraud. The last charge included mafioso Joey Kaufman, dragged protesting from his room at a Mayfair hotel; the stolen bearer bonds which were indeed en route to him through the post arrived within a couple of days, valued at $190,000.

  On 10 May 1968, amidst a noisy motorcycle and marked police car escort, the men appeared at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court. Nine of the prisoners were granted bail by the resident magistrate, Mr Kenneth Barraclough; the Kray brothers were not among them.

  After a much-needed sleep in a proper bed, Read marshalled his troops. Protection for the witnesses was paramount – and so was the need to bring in those who had escaped the initial swoop. Three days after the first court appearance, Lennie ‘Books’ Dunn walked into West Ham police station; in the same way that Payne had drawn up a catalogue of the frauds, Dunn outlined a blueprint for Mitchell’s murder. Billy Exley and Alfred Charles ‘Limehouse’ Willey, both charged with one offence of conspiracy to defraud, had been two of those granted bail at Bow St; now, the day following Dunn’s revelations, they contacted Read and added their own input on Mitchell’s murder. Lisa Prescott was traced and she, too, made a compelling statement.

  Charlie Mitchell had been remanded in custody charged with five offences relating to fraudulent transactions; he asked to see Read and, apart from informing him that he had been told to find the money for a £50,000 contract to murder both him and Leslie Payne, he also made a full confession. When Mitchell appeared in court with the other defendants and the magistrate was informed that no evidence was to be offered against him or Billy Exley and that they were to be used as prosecution witnesses, it was the first indication to the slack-jawed Kray brothers that their defence was not as tight as they might have wished.

  Others were arrested. Cornelius Whitehead asked to speak to Read in prison in order to feel things out – a few days later in court, he complained of being threatened, as did Wally Garelick, both of them charged with being concerned in Mitchell’s escape and also harbouring him. Tommy Cowley and ‘Scotch Jack’ Dickson also nervously saw Read; they made no admissions but they, too, were on a fishing expedition.

  John ‘Scotch Ian’ Barrie turned up drunk in the East End and was arrested; he told Detective Chief Inspector Henry Mooney, ‘I feel sick. I have been like an animal for some days. I knew you would come for me and such a lovely day, too. I didn’t shoot Cornell. I wish I could tell you what happened but I would get shot.’

  He was duly picke
d out by the Blind Beggar barmaid as being the man with Ronnie Kray on the night he had murdered Cornell. And there was more.

  Albert Donoghue had also been arrested, and on 31 May Read charged him and Reg Kray with the murder of Frank Mitchell. But when Donoghue – probably the twins’ most trusted lieutenant – later met the three brothers in the solicitors’ room at Brixton prison he was coolly told that Barrie was going to admit the murder of Cornell, Ronnie Bender would accept responsibility for McVitie’s murder and that he, Donoghue, would take the rap for the murder of Mitchell. They, the brothers, would graciously accept responsibility for the frauds and any miscellaneous violence.

  The following day, during visiting hours, Donoghue passed a note to his mother asking for Read to come and see him. When he did so, Donoghue made a full statement stressing that he had nothing to do with Mitchell’s murder, and Read believed him. His admissions covered forty pages.

  Things were now falling into place. Having previously denied any knowledge of the events surrounding McVitie’s murder, Carol Skinner was seen again; now she told the full story. Harry Hopwood and Percy Merricks also gave their accounts of what had transpired after McVitie’s murder, the misfiring pistol used in his murder was recovered and Ronnie Hart – later used as a prosecution witness – gave himself up over McVitie’s murder and was minded by aid to CID Peter Burgess at a safe house in Harwich.

  The Lambrianou brothers were arrested for McVitie’s murder as was Ronnie Bender; they were all charged as, two weeks later, was Tony Barry. Freddie Foreman, charged with being an accessory after the fact replied, ‘It’s ridiculous.’

  Initially, the Krays asked for reporting restrictions to be lifted, in order to (a) extract the maximum amount of publicity and (b) show the world how cruelly they were being treated. However, when compelling evidence of their duplicity was continually revealed, they tried to put a stop to the newspapers’ reporting, going as far as the High Court to do so; they were unsuccessful.

  Arthur Porter told me, ‘After transporting the Richardson gang to and from Court, by comparison the Krays were perfect gentlemen.’

  However, their civilized demeanour in court broke down as the evidence against them began to unfurl. When Ronnie Hart gave evidence of the McVitie murder, there were shouts from the court of ‘That’s a lie because it never happened’, ‘You’re known as a liar in the East End’ and ‘You fucking rat’.

  Nor was their invective restricted to the witnesses. When Reg Kray complained that detectives had taken away his grandparents’ pension books and Geraint Rees, the magistrate, told him that it would be brought to the attention of the authorities for what it was worth, Reg Kray shouted, ‘It’s worth a lot to us, you old bastard!’

  The number of defendants in the dock had slowly been whittled down, the committals for trials had been in stages, but eventually the most important charges, those of the three murders, had been committed to the Old Bailey, and it was on 7 January 1969 that the trial for the murders of George Cornell and Jack McVitie got underway.

  *

  It is quite likely that the caustic Mr Justice Melford Stevenson was the sternest judge at the Old Bailey since Lord Goddard. He had outraged bookmakers when he collectively described them as ‘a bunch of crooks’, and the fact that he referred to the 1967 reform of the law on homosexuality as ‘a buggers’ charter’ cannot have endeared him to Ronnie Kray; but it was Melford Stevenson who presided over the first of the Kray Firm’s trials.

  Kenneth George Illtyd Jones QC (later Sir Kenneth and a High Court Judge) had served during the Second World War as a staff captain with the Royal Artillery and had been Mentioned in Dispatches; war service had interrupted his law degree, but not for long. Florid and overweight, his powerful delivery and skill as a prosecutor had resulted in the Attorney General’s selecting him to lead the prosecution of the Krays.

  Fifty newspapermen and members of the public were admitted to No. 2 Court by numbered ticket only, issued by Leslie Boyd, the Clerk of the Court. An equal number of police officers were also present. The judge rejected requests for the murders to be tried separately.

  The jury were provided with police protection; one of those involved was Robin Jackson, an aid to CID. He had been briefed at the Yard and shown photos of those likely to attempt nobbling of the jury; at the end of each day, he and his partner would shadow their selected juror home. He told me:

  We never spoke to them; we strictly had no communication with them, whatsoever . . . my colleague and I followed our juror home every evening to East Ham. On one occasion, on a crowded Central Line train, we sussed a few unsavoury characters in the same carriage and duly reported it. So the next evening returning home, we recognized at least half a dozen surveillance officers riding that Tube with us and our unaware juror. This was a magnificently run operation; woe betide you if, as the detective superintendent drove around in the middle of the night, with us parked outside our juror’s home, you were found asleep in your car. That was you out, and off back to uniform.

  Back in court, Ronald Kray and Barrie pleaded not guilty to murdering Cornell; Reg denied harbouring them.

  The twins, the Lambrianou brothers, Ronald Bender and Anthony Barry all pleaded not guilty to murdering McVitie. Charlie Kray, Cornelius Whitehead and Freddie Foreman all pleaded not guilty to being accessories after the fact. Albert Donoghue, however, pleaded guilty.

  Probably recalling his time as a Judge-Advocate during war crimes trials in 1945 – and perhaps unwisely – Melford Stevenson ordered that the defendants wear numbered cards around their necks in the dock. The prisoners were furious, with Ronnie Kray exclaiming, ‘This is not a cattle market!’ and they tore off and ripped up the cards. It could be they had a point. An agreement was finally reached by which numbers were placed in front of them, on the outside of the dock. And after that bit of courtroom drama, there was more as Kenneth Jones described to the jury ‘the horrifying, deadly effrontery’ of the murder of Cornell and that of McVitie as, ‘terrified, bathed in sweat, like a caged animal, he tried to escape by throwing himself through a window.’

  The barmaid from the Blind Beggar took centre stage at the Old Bailey when, asked if she recognized the man who shot Cornell, she pointed dramatically at the dock and replied, ‘It was Number One over there – Ronald Kray.’

  Asked if she could identify the man with him, again there was no hesitation when she pointed to Barrie in the line-up and correctly identified him as being ‘Number Two in the dock’.

  Any doubts regarding Ronnie Kray? ‘Oh no, that was him.’

  Or Barrie? ‘None whatsoever’.

  Asked why she told lies at the inquest, she replied, ‘I was terrified I would get shot like George Cornell if I told the truth. I was scared stiff.’

  Reg Kray would say, much later, that following the murder he had ‘had a word’ with the barmaid and had ‘given her a few quid to keep her happy’ – it’s likely this was sheer invention.

  The Krays had presented a good front for the jury: smart suits, crisp linen, sober ties – and no shouting at a woman witness. This did not apply when John Dickson gave evidence that he had driven Ronnie Kray and Barrie to the Blind Beggar and that afterwards Ron had told Reg that he had shot Cornell. ‘If what he says is true, why isn’t he here on a murder charge?’ shouted Reg Kray.

  Dickson, who had previously served a prison sentence for safebreaking and was currently serving a nine months’ sentence having pleaded guilty to harbouring Mitchell, shouted back, ‘It’s because of you that I’m here!’

  Probably the most telling moment in Dickson’s testimony was when he was asked why he had changed his account of what had happened. His reply was both simple and dramatic: ‘Because the murders had to stop’.

  Another witness told the court that Reg Kray had told him, ‘Ronnie has just shot Cornell. He’s a funny fellow, Ronnie; he never lets on what he’s going to do.’

  Billy Exley told the court that he was present at a flat in Stoke Newington when
Reg Kray, Barrie and Ron Kray were discussing the murder of Cornell, with Ron saying, ‘I’m glad he’s dead.’

  Matters between Exley and Ronnie’s counsel, Mr John Faithful Fortescue Platts-Mills MP, QC, became rather heated when Exley asked, ‘Would you like to know why Ronald Kray killed him? Would you like to know why Ronald Kray told me he killed him?’

  Platts-Mills replied, ‘I am not willing to make myself a party to further abuse and invention.’

  This resulted in the judge rebuking him: ‘That was a wholly improper thing to say.’

  Ronald Hart gave a graphic, eye-witness account of the murder of Jack McVitie; his chilling testimony was interrupted by Reg Kray shouting, ‘If any stabbing was done, it must have been done by you – that’s why you’re telling lies in the case. You’re a bully and a coward.’

  But Hart, who had convictions for assault and fraud, was not easily put off; he told the court what had happened after the murder and admitted, under cross-examination being instructed to shoot a man: ‘When Ronald Kray tells you to do something, you do it, because if you don’t, you get shot yourself.’

  Looking straight at the dock, Hart exclaimed, ‘Reggie Kray murdered McVitie and Ronald helped him and everyone sitting there with him knows it – and everyone in the East End knows it.’

  This provoked a shouting match from the dock, with the judge warning, ‘If this goes on, all the defendants will go back to the cells.’