by John Pearson
During these ten years there was one thing the twins never did – encourage Mitchell to escape. It would have been no problem for him to get away from Dartmoor, but they agreed that much his best hope was to rely on the governor’s ability to get him a release. They also knew that if he escaped he could never stay at liberty alone; his size made him conspicuous, his simple-mindedness a liability.
Then suddenly they changed their minds. A few months after George Cornell was shot they told Mitchell they were going to get him out. Mitchell was thrilled. If the twins told him to escape it must be right. From that August on he thought of nothing else and began planning on his own account.
This strange decision of the twins has never been properly explained. In court the only explanation offered was that the twins required Mitchell on the Firm as a strong-arm man. This is absurd. They had all the strong arms they needed and Mitchell’s would have been superfluous. But the twins’ own account, that they were ‘simply feeling sorry for Frank’, is equally implausible. They had been feeling sorry for him for years. The truth is that the whole idea of helping Mitchell to escape began as a simple exercise in underworld public relations, a gesture of the sort the twins could not resist – especially that summer when it was clear that something needed to be done about their reputation.
For, contrary to Ronnie’s arguments, the Cornell murder had backfired, scaring their friends more than their enemies. Business was suffering. Payne and Gore had both left town. Even the protection business seemed to be suffering. London’s top gambling club, which the twins had ‘minded’ for three years, decided they were far too dangerous to have around and offered a £10,000 lump sum to end the arrangement. Something was needed to convince the underworld that the twins were more than trigger-happy murderers. The idea of using Mitchell for this purpose seems to have come from one of Ronnie’s friends, ‘Mad’ Teddy Smith. Smith was an unusual gangster. The BBC had recently accepted a play he had written about a bank robbery and he was tending to see life in dramatic, televisual terms. He had been interested in Mitchell’s story for some while and asked the twins to let him visit the Axe Man. He found him starting to get worried about his release date and formed the idea of helping him to win some public sympathy.
Smith put his plan to the twins. Mitchell should be helped to escape, then kept in hiding. While in hiding he could write letters to the press, pointing out the hardship and injustice of his case and promising to surrender if his sentence were reviewed. There was a new Labour Home Secretary and a current mood of sympathy for the underdog. Mitchell would be sure to get his case looked into, and most of the credit would belong to the twins.
The twins were easily convinced. This seemed the sort of coup they needed, something to restore their image as benevolent, responsible public figures. Ronnie began to think of several journalists and politicians he could put pressure on to back up the campaign, including the inevitable Tom Driberg. And Mitchell was informed that he would definitely be home for Christmas.
But this remained an awkward period for the twins; reactions to the Cornell murder were making life uncomfortable for both of them. Ronnie saw potential traitors all round him and wondered whom to shoot next. Reggie was drinking heavily. Most nights they slept at Vallance Road and one night Cornell’s widow came and smashed the windows, screaming that the twins were bloody murderers. Violet was most upset that anyone could say such things about her boys.
In fact nobody was talking to the police, but the twins had grown so jittery that when they heard rumours of fresh police evidence about Cornell they fled the country. They had had an escape route ready for some time and a private aircraft was waiting for them in a field near Bognor. This flew them to a landing-strip near Calais, where they were picked up by a car and driven to Paris as dawn was breaking. Tickets were waiting for them both at Orly under assumed names and they flew on without incident to Morocco.
Here they spent three untroubled weeks and for the first time since his marriage Reggie enjoyed himself. Billy Hill was there, a respected figure with his big white car, to show them round. They spent most of their time in Tangier, drinking and swimming and lazing on the beach; Ronnie enjoyed the Arab boys, Reggie invited out a blonde hostess from the Latin Quarter Club in London. During her fortnight with him he never once referred to Frances or the East End. Instead he spoke of settling in Tangier and buying a small club. The girl agreed to join him. Reggie was wondering how to break the news to Ronnie when the police saved him the embarrassment. The chief of the Moroccan police arrived in person at their hotel to inform them they were undesirable aliens. Two seats were booked for them on the next plane back to London – this time in their right names.
They returned expecting Butler to be waiting for them to charge them with the death of George Cornell. Instead the Yard had got no further with the murder and they walked through the airport free men. Their departure had naturally caused something of a panic in gangland. Their safe return meant they now had work to do, repairing the damage. Members of the Firm who had prudently made themselves scarce resurfaced and were greeted as if nothing had happened. Fresh warnings were put out against talking to the police about Cornell. Arrears of protection money were collected, fresh deals for marketing a new batch of stolen American securities arranged. When someone in the Firm asked Ronnie if they were still proceeding with the Mitchell escape he replied, ‘Of course’ – Frank was his friend.
That same week in October 1966 Frances Kray made her first attempt to kill herself, locking herself in the front room of her parents’ house in Ormsby Street, putting a rug against the door and lying on a cushion by the gas fire with the taps turned on. Her father, who came home at midday, found her just alive. When she revived in Bethnal Green Hospital she was murmuring, ‘Leave me in peace. Why can’t you let me sleep?’
That night Reggie visited the hospital but was refused admission to his wife. Later he finished off a bottle and a half of gin and dropped off, muttering that he would have to kill his in-laws.
Mitchell was counting off the days to his escape and had made a mask from a piece of his girl-friend’s black nylon nightdress in readiness. Various members of the Firm visited him to discuss the final plans. He would escape from a working party. Two of the Firm would pick him up in a car and drive him to London; 12 December was fixed as a provisional date, but at the crucial moment Ronnie involved himself in a curious case with a senior policeman.
According to the twins a police inspector had offered Ronnie the use of an East End pub with guaranteed police immunity for a regular £20 a week. The last thing the twins needed was fresh involvement with the police, but Ronnie was unable to resist a chance of scoring off the Law. He laid his preparations cunningly and hired a private detective to bug the pub and wire Ronnie up with a tie-pin microphone and shoulder-holster tape recorder. Prepared for anything, Ronnie invited the inspector for a discussion. A few days later Ronnie lodged a formal complaint against the police and tapes from the recorders found their way to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. For some weeks nothing happened; then Ronnie was informed that the inspector would be prosecuted. Ronnie was required as prime witness for the Crown. The trial would start on 28 November.
Ronnie insists that all he could do was disappear. It was a matter of principle. ‘I’d do most things, but I’d never go in no witness-box for the Law to get someone put away – not even a copper.’
The squeeze was put on a Mayfair property man to find the twins a suitably discreet flat; within a few hours Ronnie had exactly what he needed – a five-room furnished flat in a quiet road in Finchley. The day before he was due in court he moved in and for the next eight months remained officially on the run.
Ronnie was quite sincere about refusing to appear in court, but he could hardly have found a worse moment to disappear. He went to ground completely and had soon turned his flat into a fortress. It was crammed with guns and he kept one of the machine-guns under the floorboards. The curtains were kept
drawn and he never ventured out. Instead he got the Firm to bring in stocks of food and gin and bottled beer so he could stay hidden there for weeks on end. Codes were invented for the telephone and letters. He played Italian opera on the gramophone and had a fresh boy every night. During the day he would be busy working out who needed murdering.
As usual in the twins’ crises, everything fell on Reggie – running the Firm, coping with Ronnie, worrying about Frances. On top of this 12 December was approaching. His brother Charlie said that he was mad to think of springing Mitchell at a time like this. Reggie agreed, but Ronnie wouldn’t hear of letting Mitchell down. As usual Ronnie got his way. But nothing was properly planned now. Reggie was forced to improvise as best he could and he asked several members of the Firm if they had relations prepared to put up Mitchell for a week or two. Predictably, none had. Someone suggested a man called Lennie Dunn, who kept a bookstall in the East End.
Lennie had trouble – with his nerves, his business and his wife. He lived alone in a ground-floor flat in Barking and was sufficiently scared of the twins to do as he was told and keep his mouth shut. Reggie ordered him to expect a visitor.
Then came a further problem. Mad Teddy Smith and Albert Donaghue, another member of the Firm, had both agreed to collect Mitchell in a car; neither possessed a valid driving licence. Reggie had to borrow one so they could hire a car. Someone else produced clothes for an extremely large man. 12 December arrived.
Mitchell was wearing his black nylon mask as he came lumbering through the moorland mist towards the green Vauxhall parked on the Princetown road. Donaghue told him to change his clothes and take the mask off to avoid attracting attention. Nobody was interested in the car as it sped to London. It was to be another four hours before Mitchell was missed. By the time the police were checking the roads from the moors Mitchell was eating steak and chips in Lennie’s flat in Barking and feeling faintly disappointed. He had expected something grander, a hero’s welcome from the twins, a great party with champagne and girls and the congratulations of the underworld. Instead Smith had to explain as best he could that the twins were unable to see him that night and that Scotch Jack Dickson and Lennie Dunn would be taking care of him. Just for a few days he would be the most wanted man in Britain and must make no attempt to see anyone or contact his family. He must be patient, lie low, trust the twins.
Mitchell was reassured. The twins were his best friends and they were very smart. Now that they had freed him he had nothing to worry about. They gave him more to drink; he brightened up. When they turned on the television news at 10.00 P.M. and watched marine commandos combing the moors for him he laughed until the tears came.
‘If they try coming for me now, I’ll kill the lot of them.’
‘You won’t have to, Frank,’ said Dickson. ‘Now that the twins are looking after you, no one will ever find you.’
‘But I’d kill anyone rather than go back to prison. Anyone at all. Even you.’
They gave Mitchell the back bedroom with the double bed; Dickson took the front bedroom; Lennie swallowed two sleeping pills and stretched out on the living-room sofa. At 3.00 Dickson was woken up by Mitchell, who was standing by his bed with a knife. He said he was restless and couldn’t sleep. Dickson made him tea and they talked – about his family, about his friends and the animals on the moor, and about the twins. He hero-worshipped them, Ronnie especially. Ronnie had told him that when everything was sorted out they’d live together, just the two of them, in a beautiful rich house in the country. He could keep all his animals there. He loved animals, particularly little ones – birds, mice and kittens – anything he could be gentle with. Ronnie had promised him all the animals he wanted; Ronnie was an animal-lover too.
He waited all next morning for him, but no Ronnie – Reggie came instead. Rather than say that Ronnie too was in hiding, he told him he was away on business and would soon be coming. In the meantime Teddy Smith would help him write his letters to the press and the twins would see that he had Christmas with his family.
Mitchell was reassured by this. Soon he was suggesting one of his favourite games, a trial of strength. To humour him, Reggie took off his jacket, sat down at the kitchen table and gripped Mitchell’s enormous hand with his own. Reggie was exceptionally strong in the arms and shoulders, but Mitchell smiled and pushed and slowly Reggie’s arm went back until his knuckles touched the table. Mitchell was delighted.
‘See what I used to do in Dartmoor,’ he said, and picking up both Dickson and Lennie Dunn by their belts, lifted them, one in each hand, until their heads touched the ceiling.
‘That’s what I’d do with anyone who tried to catch me.’
That afternoon Mad Teddy and the Axe Man worked on the letters to the press and the Home Secretary. Mitchell had learned to write in prison but was slow and lacked the literary touch which, as a writer, Mad Teddy thought the letters should possess. After some false starts they agreed on a rough outline and, with Smith dictating, Mitchell laboriously penned his letter to the Mirror editor and to the Home Secretary, care of the editor of The Times.
‘Sir, the reason for my absence from Dartmoor was to bring to the Notice of my unhappy plight, to be truthful, I am asking for a possible Date of release, from the age of 9 I have not been completely free, always under some act or other.
Sir, I ask you, where is the fairness of this. I am not a murderer or a sex maniac, nor do I think I am a danger to the public. I think that I have been more than punished for the wrongs I have done.
Yours sincerely,
Frank Mitchell.’
While Mitchell waited patiently for Ronnie, Ronnie was having troubles of his own. His depressions had begun and he was spending most of the day behind drawn curtains, armed and watching the road for the police. One of the Firm had brought his favourite records of Churchill’s wartime speeches; he played them endlessly and drank a lot.
Sometimes he ordered a full meeting of the Firm and talked about the future – further link-ups with the Mafia, control of a London-centred narcotics network, a Kray representative running the rackets in every major British city, an international strike force ready for villainy anywhere in the world. Ronnie was thinking big. At other times he was obsessed with private grievances and wanted someone hurt. A boxing manager had been impolite about a young boxer he fancied; a villain they occasionally employed called Jack McVitie was becoming unreliable; Payne was suspiciously silent. What was he up to?
Sometimes the strain of hiding seemed unbearable and even Churchill’s wartime speeches were no help. All he could do was drink himself insensible or lie in bed taking more Stematol until the depression lifted.
Time passed slowly for both prisoners. While Ronnie had his nightmares in Finchley, Mitchell in the basement flat in Barking talked obsessively about him and the life they’d lead together. He would be Ronnie’s right-hand man; they would become inseparable, the greatest criminals of the century. He would willingly die for Ronnie – that was the one way he would like to go. But when could he see him?
For more than a week Dickson and Lennie made excuses; then Mitchell seemed to understand that Ronnie would never come and stopped talking about him. Two men were always with him; Donaghue and the ex-boxer Billy Exley took turns with Dickson and Lennie. All they could do was make the time pass. For hours on end they played cards with Mitchell; he was no card-player but they always let him win to keep his spirits up. He ate hugely, cleaned his teeth a dozen times a day and constantly combed his hair, examining his appearance in the mirror. He was inordinately vain.
There was a day’s excitement when The Times and the Mirror published his letters, both of them in full. The Mirror included an appeal from its editor for Mitchell to give himself up. Then nothing happened. Reggie called in next day, but he had no news, only fresh promises that Frank would see his family for Christmas. Mitchell became restless. This was worse than prison. A few nights later he threatened to go out and find himself a woman. He was beginning to groan in his sl
eep. Dickson told Reggie that if he didn’t get a woman soon, there would be trouble.
They brought a girl for Mitchell in a taxi at 2 A.M. With Reggie was Tommy Cowley, a little gambler with pale eyes and short red hair who always seemed a cut above most members of the Firm. The girl was thirtyish; Cowley said they could count on her discretion. He and Reggie picked her up at Winston’s Club in New Bond Street, where she was a hostess. In the taxi they had informed her of her duties. Reggie said that if she did as she was told she would have the gratitude of the East End. She replied that gratitude was all very well: she preferred cash. Reggie agreed with her.
She had a lot of blonde hair and a good figure. Her name was Lisa. She was expensive. When she entered Lennie’s flat in a long black dress and heavy make-up Mitchell was all for having her at once. He appeared almost childish in his enthusiasm, but Lisa was no child; since Reggie had gone on to Vallance Road without paying the £100 she wanted, she told the Axe Man he would have to wait.
Mitchell could have forced her. Nobody would have stopped him. Most girls in her position would have done as they were told. But Lisa had her professional pride, and Mitchell wanted someone he could love, not rape. She kept her dignity and her black lace dress, and both of them sat in the kitchen, drinking tea, while Scotch Jack Dickson drove round to Vallance Road to collect her fee. Reggie grumbled but paid – a hundred used notes in a carrier bag; Dickson gave them to her, less twenty for expenses. Reggie had promised that if she kept Frank happy there would be more to come. And on this tender note Lisa and her Axe Man went to bed.
They stayed there for the next two days, curtains drawn, the glow of the electric fire providing the only light, and Mitchell sometimes leaping out of bed for fifty press-ups. Mitchell was an enthusiastic lover – ‘His virility was greater than that of any man I have known,’ the girl wrote later. But even sex was no real answer to the twins’ dilemma. It was soon obvious to everyone that he would not remain cooped up in the flat much longer. He was becoming moodier; only the girl could quieten him. On 20 December he gave Lennie £5 and asked him to buy enough drink for a small party as he was going to ask his family over before Christmas. The twins had promised he could see them.