by James Morton
‘There is no problem in saying, “This is Tom, this is Dick, this is Harry” and having a chat, but once Charlie’d started talking serious what he should have said is, “What’s your surname?” “Can’t tell you.” “Who do you know?” Any bona fide villain would ask. Then if the man can’t put up names of people he’s worked with or he won’t tell you his name, you know the score – and it’s “On your bike. Get back to your local police station.”’47
There was some help for Kray during the trial. Sadly the bright lights of the Midlands and London had proved an unhelpful distraction for some of the police on the operation. An undercover officer, using the name ‘Brian’, plunged somewhat too deeply into his role and became very close to a barmaid at a Birmingham party thrown for a Kray friend. In court, hostess Michelle Hamdouchi described a night of passion with Brian, followed by a massive drinking session with another northern undercover officer and a member of a pop group whom they had met at a hotel bar.
Brian admitted going to bed with Hamdouchi, but denied having a sexual relationship. Kray’s counsel Jonathan Goldberg QC seized on this to hammer home to the jury that the police evidence was unreliable and tainted. In fact as more reports of the conduct of undercover officers in other cases have come to light, it seems to have been pretty standard behaviour.
Nevertheless at the time, heads were in hands. One exasperated London detective was reported to have sighed and said, ‘You know the film on now about FBI agent Donny Brasco infiltrating the Mob? Well, we had Johnny Fiasco for our job. What we had in mind was infiltration – he went in for penetration.’48
One of the standard tactics is for a defence barrister to denigrate his own client in an effort to show what a fool he is and so obtain sympathy from a jury. Goldberg shredded Kray, depicting him as a semi-derelict who was trying to make a few pounds out of a small-time scam. His problem, however, was the massive amounts of money at stake.
Unfortunately Charlie was caught lying, or at the very best prevaricating, never a good thing to happen to a defendant. He told the jury that Ronnie Field was not a close friend but someone he had seen three or four times in the past two years. It was then John Kelsey-Fry for the Crown produced the BT bills for Judy Stanley’s number. In six months there had been over 50 calls to and from Field.
Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it, and so incredibly, and once more highlighting the triumph of hope over experience, Frank Fraser was again wheeled out to give evidence on behalf of a Kray. This time Fraser’s function was to explain that he believed that the financially unsophisticated Charlie could never have negotiated himself into such a deal. ‘He is a lovely, lovely man. He is as innocent as you are, my Lord.’ ‘You are probably more into drugs than he is,’ he told John Kelsey-Fry.
In all, 18 character witnesses were called for Charlie, including a former Miss UK, who trod the party line when she described how England was a ‘much nicer, safer place’ when the Kray Twins were around. Efforts were made to persuade Reggie Kray to give evidence on his brother’s behalf but he declined. Goldberg told the jury, ‘He is a very decent loveable and thoroughly charitable man who has brought joy into the lives of many’.
Those who had confidently predicted an acquittal were wrong. Despite a plea that he would be subject to bullying in prison and be the target for every up-and-coming criminal who wanted to make a name for himself, on 23 June 1997 Judge Carroll sentenced Charlie to 12 years’ imprisonment, saying:
‘There was never a real question of entrapment by those officers but, when caught, you cried foul. I am pleased to say this jury saw through that hollow cry.’
Judy Stanley, who always believed in his innocence, said, ‘He wasn’t a drug baron. I kept him. He couldn’t even afford a mobile phone. His Cartier watch was a fake.’ She was certain that he would survive incarceration.
After Charlie was jailed, a £100 a ticket benefit night was held at Mr Big’s nightclub in Maidstone to raise money for an appeal. On 26 January 1999 his appeal against both conviction and sentence was dismissed. Kray had hoped that his sentence might have been halved on the grounds of his age. After the verdict Les Martin, liaison officer for the Charlie Kray Appreciation Society, told the press, ‘He will be gutted. I am very disappointed. Charlie is innocent in all of this and was targeted by police just because he was a Kray. If he wasn’t, he would have his sentence cut. Everyone has just got it in for him.’
Kray did surprisingly well in prison. He was liked by staff and the other prisoners. He was co-operative, cheerful and a calming influence. In October 1997 he tipped off the prison staff that a female officer was at risk from an unstable prisoner. Nevertheless it was not until after his appeal was refused in 1999, and following a letter to the Home Office from Goldberg, that he was downgraded to a Category B prisoner. He was now able to speak with Judy Stanley on a daily basis.
On 4 October 1999 he wrote to his friend Mickey Bailey, ‘I wish I had taken your advice [to change his solicitor] when all this started. I would have been better off.’ He now had a new solicitor in the form of Michael Holmes of Andrew Keenan.
But when it came to it, Judy Stanley had been wrong. An increasingly frail Charlie was not strong enough to see the end of his sentence.
Nat. Arch. MEPO 2/11386; Peter Pringle, ‘The case they had to drop’, Sunday Times, 15 May 1970. On 18 February 1971 Derek Higgins was arrested and charged with burglary and handling stolen property value £20,000 in Harrogate. He had been involved in trying to recover paintings stolen from a Joan Wright. That case was dropped in November that year. The Times, 30 November 1971.
Nat. Arch. MEPO 2/11386.
Nancy is also reported in The People newspaper in June 2004 to have wanted Charlie Kray’s body exhumed so that DNA tests could prove if he really was her father.
Charles Bronson, The Krays and Me, p. 120.
The Times, 29 July 1974.
Conversation with JM, August 2012.
The Sun, 31 October 1989. For a full account of the death of Barbara Gaul and her husband’s activities see James Morton, Gangland.
The Times, 25 November 1981.
Sheron (sic) Boyle, ‘My strange romance with Charlie Kray’, The Express, 11 January 1998; ‘Why did a former girl guide fall for a villain?’, Sunday Express, 1 March 1998. Charlie Kray with Robin McGibbon, Me And My Brothers, pp. 282-283.
Bernard O’Mahoney, Wannabee in my Gang? , p. 157.
Frank Fraser, Mad Frank and Friends, p. 229.
Kim Sengupta and James Mellor, ‘The £39m cocaine scam that gave Kray’s life story a surprise ending’, The Independent, 21 June 1997.
Chapter 17
The Twins in Prison
Back in 1968, the first problem for the Home Office had been what to do with the Twins, then aged 34. There were four categories of prisoner, all based on the risk factor if they escaped. Category A was for those who would be extremely dangerous if they escaped, and the aim was to make escape impossible; Category B was those for whom escape had to be made extremely difficult; Category C for those who could not be trusted in open conditions and Category D those who were a low risk to security. Those on Category D would be tested in the community by being given work release and day and home release.
It was for a Home Office committee to determine whether a prisoner was downgraded from Category A to B. Downgrading Category B to C would be an internal matter for the prison governor, and C to D would again be determined by the Home Office.
For the Twins it had to be Category A status, and naturally their mother Violet was an early campaigner for them to be kept together, writing to the Home Office in May 1969:
‘I am already broken hearted over the terrible sentence they have been given which I think was very unfair. If they are separated it will do more harm than good to them.’49
She received a neutral reply. There could be no undertakings, but consideration would be given to her letter. The Ho
me Office did not want to keep the Krays together and, despite the apparent reconciliation with the Richardsons after Frank Fraser’s appearance on the Krays’ behalf, it was thought that there would be trouble if they were in the same prison. So Ronnie was sent to Durham, Reggie to Parkhurst, and Charlie, the most stable of the three, to Chelmsford. Foreman went to Leicester, and Whitehead, who was said now to be ‘in considerable fear’ of the Krays, to Hull. The Home Office thought he would be the tenth Category A prisoner there.50 Of the others, for the moment the Lambrianou brothers were in separate wings in Wandsworth.
But for every major decision there seemed to have to be a couple of more minor ones which had to be dealt with. In June 1969 a Suffolk shoe repairer wrote to the Home Office saying the Krays had left two pairs of shoes to be repaired. The cost of soles and tips on the heels was 35 shillings and with postage this would come to £2 and 5 shillings. If they did not want them, he would sell them and send any surplus to them. The Home Office officials were worried it might be a hoax. It wasn’t. Letters were sent to all the brothers, and Ron Kray said they were his and advised the repairers to get in touch with his father.
Copies of some of their early correspondence were kept and in late July Ron wrote to Charlie commiserating with him on the loss of his appeal, adding, ‘Bender and the Lambrianous went against us on the appeal but it did not do them much good, did it’.
Some letters were withheld from them. On 7 May a letter had been sent to Ron, then still in Brixton, beginning, ‘My darling Ronnie’ and promising not to go with any other man but to wait for him. The writer wanted permission to visit. ‘The letter looks like the work of a homosexual’, noted a Home Office official, perceptively.
Long or short, a prison sentence can be done the easy way or the hard way. The former involves cooperation with the authorities to ensure that the inmate is released at the first available opportunity. Any sensible criminal will choose it. Some will have their families lobbying on their behalf even before the sentence is passed. The hard way involves fights with the prison staff, a total lack of cooperation and a breach of prison rules whenever possible. Frank Fraser is an example of doing time the hard way and the Krays, possibly because of their notoriety and certainly because of their mental health and temperament, at first chose to follow in his footsteps. In a way it was not wholly their fault. Every up-and-comer might fancy making a reputation by fighting with one of them.
Unsurprisingly Ron did not settle easily and shortly after his arrival in Durham he was in a fight with a fellow lifer Mick Copeland, who had been reprieved after being convicted of what were known as the Bubble Car murders.51 The pair had taken an instant dislike to each other. Kray was fined £3 from his canteen money and Copeland transferred. Another fight took place, this time with another inmate John Richard Jones over a comment he made about Frances Kray. And then Ronnie seems to have settled down.
The Twins were not quite as destitute as Nipper Read had believed at the time of their trial. A broker wrote to Reg Kray advising him he had shares in Southern Rhodesian Copper Ltd, which in 1968 had restored its dividend. There were also shares in Ultramar, Brit/Borneo and AMPOL. The broker thought Reg should make a will.
The month after Reg Kray began his life sentence, Frances Shea’s mother Elsie petitioned the Home Office to permit the reburial of her daughter under her maiden name away from what she called the ‘showcase’ Kray family plot in Chingford Mount cemetery.52
Elsie Shea said that she did not want her daughter’s grave to be linked to that of a notorious murderer. Frances had changed her name and when she died was in the process of getting the marriage annulled. Elsie also complained that flowers placed on the grave by her family were immediately removed.
Since he owned the grave, it could only be done with Reggie Kray’s approval, and Elsie Shea was his bitter enemy. Broaching the subject with Reggie was not something the Home Office officials wanted to do. Separated from his twin, he was already ‘causing control problems’ without this additional aggravation making him worse.
Reggie Kray’s line of thought on Frances, apart from the fact that she had metamorphosed into a robin who sat on her gravestone, was that her separation from him and her change of name by deed poll had been temporary blips on the radar of their mutual happiness.
Finally, the officials approached Manny Fryde and received a terse reply. Kray took ‘the very strongest possible objection that the remains of his late wife be removed from her grave or that any alteration be made to her memorial’. And there, however much Home Office officials may have wished to the contrary, the matter and Frances Shea rested.
One early problem was who could be barred from visiting the Twins. A Home Office note dated 20 March 1970 reads:
‘The problem of visitors to the Krays is a difficult one, the majority are suspect in some way or other but usually there is not a great deal of current intelligence about them.’
And even if there was, security was lax. Tommy Cowley had already visited Ronnie in Durham using the all-purpose name Smith.
A list of 50 people to be refused permission to visit was drawn up. It included possible helpers in any escape attempts, general supporters and others. The last category included the author John Pearson who, it was thought, would lose interest in them once his book was published. Wrong. Supporters included two priests, Father Foster and Father Richard Hetherington, along with ‘one-armed Lou’ Joseph, Auntie May Filler, Reggie’s one-time girlfriend Carole Thompson and Connie Whitehead’s wife, Patricia. However, by 1970 only the cat burglar Charlie Clarke remained on the barred list.
Their mother Violet was still campaigning for the Twins to be in the same prison, but that month Reg was moved from Parkhurst to Leicester and replaced in Parkhurst by his twin. Lobbied by her in October 1970, the National Council for Civil Liberties wrote to the Home Office taking up the Kray case:
‘If there is to be a future for the Kray brothers, then it is important that this affection is not destroyed and that there is some hope of mitigating the inevitable deterioration which is bound to worsen as a result of a lengthy term of imprisonment.’
On 18 November the Home Office said there was no entitlement for the brothers to serve their sentences together. That decision had been made the previous year. There were many factors which had to be taken into consideration.53 In fact the Home Office had no hard and fast rule about separating brothers in prison.
The next month there were threats to kidnap little Viscount Linley, the son of Princess Margaret, with suggestions that he would be held hostage until the Krays were released. In support of royalty, Reggie promptly went on hunger strike. Violet Kray wrote a ‘mother to mother’ letter of support to the Princess. Now Reggie fought with armed robber Pete Hurley in a quarrel over a doughnut and then with John Dudley, who was serving a life sentence for his part in the murder of three police officers near Wormwood Scrubs.
After the Special Wing at Durham had closed down, Ron’s paranoid schizophrenia had recurred, and he was rapidly becoming out of control. Based on the hope they would have a moderating influence on each other, Reggie was transferred in February 1971 back to Parkhurst to join his twin.
Despite this, Ron was becoming increasingly disturbed and further out of control. Being together may have temporarily helped him, but in many ways it did not help Reggie. He attacked a man who was serving a sentence for manslaughter, with a bottle. Ron then tangled with a warder and received 56 days solitary confinement.
More serious were the injuries meted out to Anthony Seaward, then on remand in Brixton on fraud charges, which led to a three-year sentence. In April 1972 he was attacked and blinded after he had refused to leave a cell door open so another prisoner who had given evidence in the Kray case could be attacked. Seaward was jabbed in his eyes by Kray hirelings. He refused to name his attackers, and a year into his sentence he was paroled. No charges were brought and requests for an inquiry were r
ejected.54
The first serious step on the road to the Twins’ beatification came with the initial serialisation in the News of the World followed by the publication of John Pearson’s The Profession of Violence in November 1972. In fact, initially the Krays were not that pleased. Worse, Violet Kray, not realising that advances had to be cleared off, said she hadn’t received any royalties. Over the months, however, when they discovered the status it had conferred upon them, the Twins changed their minds about the book, and in time it became the most read book in prison libraries and one of the most commonly stolen from bookshops.
But then came the problem of the prison reformer and general do-gooder Lord Longford, and Reggie’s poetry. By 1973 Longford was telling the papers he believed the Twins had turned the corner. But in February that year, some of Reggie’s sub-McGonigall poetry came to Longford’s attention. Reggie was particularly fond of ‘The Brooks’, written almost immediately after he had been remanded in custody in 1968. It referred to his mother’s house and he was exceptionally proud of the ending:
‘Catch a glance while you may
Just like the rippling waters always moving
Spring is here but not to stay.’
Longford had not been allowed to take the poems out, but they were given to Violet who then handed them to him. There was confusion all round until Mark Carlisle, the then Home Secretary, explained to Longford that prisoners could have their work critically evaluated but could not publish it while serving sentences.55