Krays- the Final Word

by James Morton

  None of this stopped Frank Fraser from coming onto the Twins’ patch to meet one or other of them. Usually he would come on his own but Albert Donoghue recalled that there was often a car outside the meeting place with men in it who would, he believed, have taken action if Fraser had not emerged by a certain time.

  The early hours of the morning of 8 March 1966 saw the end of the Richardsons as a force to be reckoned with in South London. Although their demise took much longer, the day after also saw the beginning of the end of the Krays. Quite how it started depends, like all good gangland stories, on who is telling the tale. The most likely version is that it was a dispute over who should protect the Savoy Social Club, known as Mr Smith’s Room or Mr Smith and the Witchdoctor’s, in Catford. The club was owned by Well Read Ltd with Patrick McKiernan as the managing director. William McLeish was the manager, while the gaming concession was in the hands of the Manchester club owner Owen Ratcliffe, who had once put a bullet in the ceiling of wrestler Jack Pye’s Backpool club.

  Mr Smith’s, with a full licence until 2 a.m., had been opened in the autumn of 1965 and at first was well regarded. There were nearly 1,900 members; food and drink were available at reasonable prices; there was gambling for relatively small stakes and there was a cabaret with the dancers from the Astor in Berkeley Square bussed over to do a midnight stint. And then it went downhill. Two local faces, Billy and ‘Flash’ Harry Hayward, indicated they were looking after the place in return for free drinks, and after the influx of local criminals, genuine members began to desert the club. Visitors failed to sign the entrance book and fees went unpaid. The police had already contacted McLeish about possible protection approaches and he had promised to report any.

  In February 1966 Eddie Richardson had approached McLeish and promised to keep the club trouble free. As he had promised, McLeish reported the approach to Detective Supt. Cummings. But there were, said a police report, subsequent troubles:

  ‘sufficiently harassing the club manager to induce him to clutch at any chance of suppressing by any means the disagreeable troubles then polluting the atmosphere in the club.’112

  For Eddie Richardson and Fraser – whose ‘mere reputation has silenced more witnesses than any other man in the country’, thought Detective Superintendent Tommy Butler – one of the benefits of protecting a club was that they could put their own gaming machines, effectively a licence to print money, on the premises. It was an early if less sophisticated version of today’s rule of thumb that anyone who controls a club’s doors can control who deals what drugs inside.

  There are, of course, many versions of exactly what happened that night. For example, sometimes Frank Fraser somewhat disingenuously suggested that it was all a domestic matter because Billy Hayward had been involved with the wife of one of the Richardson firm. Other times he thought that Owen Ratcliffe, whatever experience he had in the north of England, was simply out of his depth in London. What is certain is that on 7 March managing director Patrick McKiernan and Ratcliffe travelled to the club to meet Richardson and Fraser at around 5 p.m. The pair promised to find them security staff to be approved by the manager McLeish, and they would be paid £75 per week for this service. McKiernan does not appear to have thought this to be outrageous. Fraser and Richardson left the club around 8.30 p.m. and returned about 11 p.m. One gambler had already been warned there was likely to be trouble later. Ratcliffe and McKiernan left around 1 a.m. but by then there was a more general feeling among the staff that there would be trouble that night. The doorman Robert Mansfield took his wife and the cloakroom girl home early.

  By about 3 a.m. the club had emptied of customers. Billy and Harry Hayward were still there, along with Peter and Mickey Hennessey,113 their friend Henry Botton, and Dickie Hart, a fringe member of the Firm described by Reggie as ‘a nice feller, a good friend. He wasn’t a gangster or anything like that’. However, Hart was no shrinking violet, with a conviction for grievous bodily harm when he stabbed a man in the lung, for which he had received five years at the Old Bailey on 7 October 1957. Hart had brought a gun into the club earlier in the evening when an ex-boxer who was on the door at the time, took it from him and hid it in a girl’s handbag. On the Richardson side were Fraser, Jimmy Moody, Billy Stayton, Harry Rawlings and George Porritt, who in 1961 had been reprieved after accidentally shooting and killing his stepfather in a quarrel between the Porritts and the Copelands, another south London family.

  Around 3:30 a.m. Eddie Richardson said he had been asked to close the club but there would be one more round of drinks which he would pour. It was, said Tommy Butler, ‘a classic movement in which one mob will inform another that they are interested in the future of the club and its operation’. Now Dickie Hart told the one remaining croupier to go into the kitchen. Billy Hayward told her to stay but Hart repeated the order. Now, while Eddie Richardson fought Peter Hennessey in a ‘straightener’, general fighting broke out and the croupier thought that Richardson had been hit from behind with a bottle. In the fracas Hart somehow retrieved his gun. When the fight spilled out of the club and into Farley Street, Hart shot Fraser in the thigh and residents heard cries of ‘Shoot him’ and ‘Kill the bastard’ before a wiser man called out, ‘Don’t, it’ll be bloody murder’. Dickie Hart was then shot dead. His coat had been pulled down over his arms so he was effectively powerless. The forensic evidence was that he had been shot in the back, probably by someone on the ground. There was no bullet mark on the jacket, only his shirt, and the police believed it was Fraser, now lying on the ground, who had shot him.114

  The locals called the police and, it was alleged, Billy Stayton carried Fraser away before dumping him in a front garden, where he was found with the murder weapon under his body. As for Eddie Richardson, he had been shot in the buttocks.

  With his death Dickie Hart achieved iconic status.115 Fraser was later acquitted of his murder, but the police had been quick to round up the Richardsons’ team. As of that night, they ceased to be an effective force and were certainly no longer a threat to the Twins. Although there are no other accounts of Cornell being there, over the years the Krays exploited the incident, circulating stories that George Cornell, now given the soubriquet ‘The Executioner’, had been in the club that night and was actually Hart’s killer. It has been used as yet another excuse for his subsequent death.

  This should have ended any thought of trouble between the Krays and the Richardsons and according to Micky Fawcett, Reggie was ecstatic when he heard the news, almost literally dancing in the street.116 He had some reason to celebrate. Charlie Richardson was out of the country; Fraser and Eddie Richardson were in hospital, with Richardson charged with affray and Fraser about to be charged with murder, for which there was no likelihood of bail; and the rest of the team who had been in the club had been charged with affray. Others such as Jimmy Moody were on their toes. It was surely highly unlikely the remainder of the Richardsons would be able to mount any sort of punitive raid, but the Twins put it about that Eddie Richardson and Fraser, the latter with his broken thigh, were planning an attack outside The Lion in Tapp Street on the following Saturday.

  On the next evening, Wednesday 9 March, George Cornell died from a bullet in the head while sitting in the saloon bar of the Blind Beggar public house.

  The reason for his death is usually given that some months earlier he had publicly insulted Ronnie Kray, sensitive about both his weight and sexuality in either Al Burnett’s nightclub The Stork Room or the Astor Club. Worse, this had been both in the presence of other members of the Richardsons and also in front of some visiting American Mafiosi with whom both the Krays and the Richardsons were doing, or hoping to do, business. Now, according to Ronnie Kray in Our Story, Cornell remarked in front of the Americans, ‘Take no notice of Kray. He’s just a big, fat poof.’ He had just about signed his death warrant.

  A variation on this theme is told by Billy Frost, the one-time driver of the Twins:

  �
�The argument was over a fellow named Nicky [Mickey] Morris. Georgie Cornell told Nicky’s mum, May, that Ronnie was after Nicky and “You know he’s a fat pouf,” and this got back to Ronnie and Ronnie was furious. He had words with Georgie about it, but then Georgie started telling other people, ignoring Ronnie.’

  According to Frost, Reggie later stabbed Morris in the arm.117

  However, in My Story Ronnie, rewriting history, gave his version:

  ‘I had a pact with some people. Influential people, that if Cornell and the gang he was with – the Richardsons, south of the river – if they started a war, I would do something about it.

  Well they did start a war. There was a battle at Mr Smith’s Club which was started by the Richardsons and Cornell. A very good friend of ours called Richard Hart got killed in the fight, yet he was just an innocent bystander.

  So I kept my word. Even though others didn’t, I still kept to the pact. I went and done Cornell. I got a message that he was involved in the business at Mr Smith’s. I got a message asking if I would keep my word. When I give my word, I keep it. I never thought about the police, I just done it. Cornell deserved it. He was a flash, arrogant bastard. He was a bully.’

  According to Micky Fawcett, Ron – ‘He thought he was Churchill’ – wanted the Richardsons eliminated, and to this end he had proposed an alliance between the Firm, Freddie Foreman, the Hennesseys and others from South London. The Nashes were also approached but were simply not interested.118 The message which came back to the Hennesseys however was that if things went off, the Krays would be backed to the hilt.

  The real reasons are more complex. In fact the principal suggestion is that it was because Cornell had been deputed to find out who had knee-capped his friend Jimmy Andrews from Clerkenwell, shot as he walked in Rotherfield Street, Islington on 4 March. Andrews – described by Ronnie Diamond as ‘a spiteful little man. Little and deadly. He specialised in cutting people, especially their Achilles tendons’ – had refused to split the proceeds of a swindle with the Krays and now Ronnie was the name in the frame. At a south London wedding that weekend Cornell had been asked to go north of the river and kill Kray. Ironically, he had argued that things should be left until they were absolutely sure.

  At the wedding reception it was finally decided that Cornell and a younger man, John Daly, should go to see Andrews in hospital to get his version of the shooting. On 9 March after seeing Andrews, Cornell, Daly and Albert ‘Albie’ Woods, a small-time thief with convictions going back to 1941 when he was fined £5 at the Mansion House for looting, stopped at the Blind Beggar for a drink.119

  There is yet another version of why Cornell was shot, this time offered by Micky Fawcett, who almost fulfilled the role of the Twins’ consigliere until the killings started, that is. Fawcett claimed that immediately after the Mr Smith’s club fight, a drunken Billy Stayton told an Astor Club hostess he was going to petrol bomb Freddie Foreman’s pub the Prince of Wales in Lant Street. In Fawcett’s absence the Firm member Nobby Clarke was dispatched to confirm this story and he returned to say it was true. By this time Cornell was in the Blind Beggar and an incensed Ronnie set off to kill him.

  Later the Twins, somewhat curiously, decided that Cornell’s death was really the fault of Billy Stayton and as a result in turn he should be shot. At a meeting in Walthamstow it was arranged that Stayton would be driven to Hackney Marshes, where Fawcett would shoot him. Eventually sense prevailed. Fawcett declined to take the job and broke off his association with the Twins. ‘Ronnie made a couple of attempts to entice me onto the manor but I stayed away,’ he recalled.120

  The most attractive explanation so far as the Krays were concerned was that Cornell was reconnoitering for that rumoured attack on the Lion in Tapp Street the following weekend.

  A final explanation, and one dismissed by Tommy Butler, was that the killing had been arranged by Charlie Richardson. The story came from the lorry thief Derek Armstrong. He maintained that Cornell had failed to account to Richardson for the proceeds of one lorry and that he had paid the Krays to have him put away. Asked by Butler why he believed this, Armstrong said that ‘firstly Charlie wouldn’t have the guts to do it’ and that after Richardson had read the newspapers he had told Armstrong, ‘I’ll have to settle up the cost, the Krays did a nice clean job’.121

  According to Patricia Kelly (a pseudonym), the barmaid of the Blind Beggar and the single mother of two young children, Cornell used the pub regularly with his wife and brother Jimmy. It was however perhaps reckless to drink on Kray territory the day after Hart’s death. It was also rumoured Cornell and been pursued and slashed earlier by the Glasgow hard man Tarzan Wilson, employed by the Krays. Another story, that he had been shot at earlier outside the Blind Beggar, was discounted by the police.

  It is certain that Ronnie was drinking in The Lion when he heard that Cornell was in the Blind Beggar about ninety seconds away by car. He ordered Scotch Jack Dickson to drive him and Ian Barrie to Vallance Road, where he collected a Mauser pistol, and then on to the Beggars. Dickson was told to wait outside with the car engine running.

  There were about half a dozen people in the bar that evening, including two who knew both Ronnie Kray and George Cornell. At 8.30 p.m. the barmaid put on her favourite record, The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore by the Walker Brothers, and was talking to Cornell when Ronnie Kray and Ian Barrie walked in. They went over to Cornell, who said, ‘Look who’s here. Let’s get a drink.’ Kray then shot him at point blank range. The bullet exited the rear of Cornell’s head and then hit a wall in the bar. As a distraction Barrie fired shots into the ceiling. The terror-stricken Patricia Kelly ran to hide in the cellar until all she could hear was the needle stuck in the groove of the record and she realised she was safe.122

  The bar was now empty except for Cornell and an old man still sitting at his table. The barmaid loosened Cornell’s tie and was trying to stop the blood from his head with tea towels when ambulance staff arrived. He was taken to the London Hospital and then to the Maida Vale hospital, where he died.

  The police had little to go on. Albie Woods, who was later convicted of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice over the Richardson Torture Trial, had very sensibly removed glasses from the bar so there were no fingerprints left.

  Dickson first drove Ronnie back to The Lion and then there was a general exodus first to the Stow Club, the spieler in Walthamstow High Street. From there it was on to the nearby Chequers where Reggie bought his brother a clean suit. He also took the two guns and gave them to Charlie Clarke to throw in the canal. The Firm had a contact, a nurse at the London Hospital, and received regular bulletins throughout the evening. When the news of Cornell’s death came through, Ronnie gave a cheer and the team, fearing they would be regarded as traitors if they did not, sycophantically joined in. At least Sammy Lederman said, ‘Ronnie, you’re a cold-blooded murderer’.

  Later Ronnie Kray wrote in Our Story:

  ‘I felt fucking marvellous. I have never felt so good, so bloody alive, before or since. Twenty years on and I can recall every second of the killing of George Cornell. I have replayed it in my mind millions of times.’

  Nevertheless, when he was in the lavatory in The Chequers cleaning himself with Vim, he was sick.

  Fringe Firm members the Teale brothers were then press-ganged into putting Ronnie up at David Teale’s flat in Moresby Road, Hackney. In a statement made to the police, David’s wife Christine said she was in bed when ‘Ronnie and Reggie, Ian and Jack (Scotsmen) and a few others (including the other Teale brothers) came to the house’. As she got out of bed Ronnie said, ‘Isn’t she lovely?’ and asked if he could stay the night. The Krays said they would sleep on the floor. Barrie and Ronnie Hart slept on camp beds in the lounge.

  They seem to have treated the place as their own. Next morning Ronnie woke Christine and asked her to make tea. Alfie wanted to go home, but the Krays wouldn’t allow it and for a time
insisted on a member of the Firm accompanying the Teales wherever they went.

  In the following days there were a number of visitors including some of the Nash brothers, Billy Exley, Pat Connolly, Albert Donoghue, Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie, Sammy Lederman, and Nobby Clarke. The kindly Dr Blasker came round to give Ronnie his medication. Exley was sent out to collect two shotguns. Parties were held and there was so much noise that neighbours called the police to complain.123

  Then all of a sudden Ronnie and Reggie left. The police had visited the previous night on the pretext that a burglar was being sheltered in the flat, and now Reggie took a flat in a block near Manor House.

  In the second week of April, along with Bobby Teale, Albert Donoghue and John Dickson, the Twins left for Saffron Walden and stayed under the name of Lee at the Saffron Hotel with various other members of the Firm. They met up with Geoff Allen and the hotelier Arthur Bray. They took over the bar and wanted to be served after-hours drinks. After a full-scale row, Bray told Geoff Allen they would have to leave and they moved to the University Arms and then on to the Garden House Hotel. At the time it was thought, wrongly, they were planning a raid on a local Westminster Bank, but robbery was never a part of the Kray make-up.

  After the shooting, and using the name Davidson, Ian Barrie lived in Kilburn for a while. He later left for Ireland with John Dickson.

  Back in the East End it was an open secret who had shot Cornell. Three days after the killing the barmaid Patricia Kelly told the pipe-smoking Detective Inspector Edward Tebbett that she knew the killer was Ronnie Kray. Indeed she had mentioned this to the landlord Patsy Quill, who had told her, ‘Well, you might just as well be six foot under’. Reggie claims in Born Fighter that he spoke to her and offered her money. She denies this story and is backed up by Albert Donoghue: ‘She was contacted and told to meet me in a neutral pub. I was to pump her about what she told the police but thankfully she never came’. In Our Story Ron Kray claims she should have been threatened not to identify them, but she was left alone.