by James Morton
In 2002 the old Soho figure Bert ‘Battles’ Rossi, then in his 80s, who had served four years with Frank Fraser for the attack on Jack Spot, may have provided the solution. He knew Ronnie during a period in prison and he claimed that, after his release, over a period of time he acted as their unofficial adviser. Then, in July 1965, Ronnie told him that Andy Ho wanted Mills out of the club and that there was money in it for them if they got him out. Rossi told Ronnie he didn’t think it was a good idea. Freddie wasn’t going to take any nonsense from them and he’d have hit them. ‘Then they’d have had to up the ante so to speak and maybe it would have got out of hand.’
He agreed however to see Freddie, whom he knew. ‘I said that his partner had gone to people in the East End and I said, ‘Your back’s to the wall. Give a little or there’ll be trouble.’ I left him in an uncertain state of mind’.
Rossi told Ronnie Kray to leave things alone for four or five days. Then if Mills said he was prepared to go, Kray could tell the Chinese it was down to him and he would get the credit. Rossi remembered saying to Kray, ‘If need be, do what you have to do’:
‘But I didn’t want any part of it. Five, six, seven days later, all of a sudden he’s dead in the car. I went to Ronnie and asked what he’d done. Ronnie said it was nothing to do with them and I said, ‘Are you sure?’ And I believed him when he said he hadn’t.’
But why, given all their protestations of devotion to boxing in general and Mills in particular, would the Krays even entertain going against him? Rossi’s answer was simply that it was business. There was money in it.125
After Nipper Read arrested the Krays he began to inquire into Mills’ death, touring the West End and speaking to the usual characters. All he could get was, ‘Oh guv, you know better than that.’ One man said, ‘We don’t make examples of other people. If somebody don’t pay we break his legs, not somebody else’s.’
Read later wrote:
‘Nothing would have given me more pleasure than being able to show that Freddie had not committed suicide. In those days there was much more of a stigma attached to the act than there is today. Moreover, if I could link the Krays to it, my investigation would have a major boost. It would have been beautiful to have tagged this murder to them.’126
But the most sensational claim of all came from Bradley Allardyce, when he was released after serving his nine-year sentence for armed robbery. He told the News of the World that Reggie’s first wife Frances had not committed suicide and in fact Ronnie Kray had killed her, forcing her to take an overdose.127 Reggie, burdened by this information, had told Allardyce when they were in the cell reminiscing.
‘I was sitting in my cell with Reg and it was one of those nights where we turned the lights down low and put some nice music on and sometimes he would reminisce. He would get really deep and open up to me. He suddenly broke down and said “I’m going to tell you something I’ve only ever told two people and something I’ve carried around with me” – something that had been a black hole since the day he found out. He put his head on my shoulder and told me Ronnie killed Frances. He told Reggie what he had done two days after.’128
Scotland Yard was said to have been investigating the allegation which, in one form or another, had been floating around the East End for a number of years. Given that everyone concerned was dead, it would seem to have been an interesting if less than profitable exercise.
Then in 2015, at the time of the release of the film Legend, in which Tom Hardy appeared as both Twins, an even more outrageous allegation was made in a new documentary Krays –Kill Order. It claimed that Violet Kray had a hand in Frances’ death because she was pregnant and she did not think her daughter-in-law would have been a suitable mother.129
Sarah Arnold, ‘Krays killed 30’, News of the World, 1 April 2001.
John Pearson, The Profession of Violence, p 249.
the gentle author, ‘Billy Frost, the Krays’ driver’ in Spitalfields Life, 24 February 2010; Conversation between Lennie Hamilton and Billy Frost, YouTube.com.
John Pearson, Notorious, pp. 224-5.
Henry Ward, Buller, p. 205.
Mick Brown, ‘The Mystery of David Jacobs The Liberace Lawyer’, Daily Telegraph, 2 June 2013.
Nat. Arch. MEPO 2/10937.
Douglas Thompson, Shadowland, pp. 197-201.
James Morton, Fighters, pp. 285-287.
Nipper Read, The Man who Nicked the Krays, p. 187. For a full analysis of Mills’ death see James Morton, Fighters, Ch. 21.
News of the World, 13 January 2002.
‘Kray “murdered brother’s wife”’, BBC News. 12 January 2002.
Stefan Kyriazis, ‘Legend shocker – BOTH Krays were bisexual and their MUM had Reggie’s wife killed’, Express, 10 September 2015.
Chapter 22
Where Have They All Gone?
What happened to them all? Many disappeared into anonymity and what Mandy Rice-Davies called the ‘one slow descent into respectability’. Others only gave up crime when their legs ran out of steam.
As for those on the side of the angels, beginning at the top, Judge Melford Stevenson would tell fellow members of the Garrick Club that Ronnie Kray had said only two truthful things during the trial. The first was that he, Melford, was biased and the second was that prosecutor Kenneth Jones was indeed ‘a fat slob’. Stevenson went blind and died in November 1994. Ronnie was pleased with the blindness, attributing it to a curse put on the judge by Dot Brown and commissioned by him.
After Stevenson’s death, the ever-generous-spirited defence lawyer John Platts-Mills wrote to The Times:
‘Contrary to general belief, I had a most friendly relationship with Melford. The only unkindness that I can lay at his door, and this was a gross injustice, was trying the Kray twins for the murders of Cornell and McVitie together when there was no common feature except that the victims had both died. My judgment of the case was that if Melford had tried the murders fairly, both Twins might well have got off but for Stevenson’s bias.’
He also wrote:
‘While defending Ronnie Kray at the Old Bailey in 1969 I found him to be a most kindly and thoughtful client. I told Melford out of court that Ronnie was probably a nicer chap than I was. I am not surprised to learn that Melford cribbed this remark and made it his own.’130
Of the prosecutors, in 1974 Kenneth Jones was appointed a High Court judge. On the bench he generally displayed a kindness to defendants, particularly women who had met with family difficulties. In October that year, he discharged a woman who had killed her totally blind and practically deaf daughter, who had no real hope of life, saying, ‘I regard this as an extreme case even amongst exceptional cases…’ Professional criminals, child molesters and terrorists received no such help.
Junior prosecution counsel in the first Kray trial John Leonard also went to the High Court bench. A most amiable man, he was pilloried in the press when, in what was called the Ealing Vicarage case, he passed a lenient sentence for the rape of the vicar’s daughter. He later described it as a ‘blemish – I make no bones about it’. He retired as his eyesight began to fail, and died in 2002.
Fellow prosecution counsel James Crespi ruined his chances of a seat on the High Court Bench by marrying a much younger nightclub hostess, a union which lasted only a few weeks. He was later injured in the IRA bombing of the Old Bailey and joked he believed that had he not been in the way, much of the building would have been destroyed. At least he had the distinction of having his own chair at El Vino’s, the barristers’ evening watering hole in Fleet Street. He died in 1991.
Some of the defence lawyers including Desmond Vowden were appointed to the bench. Platts-Mills would certainly not have wanted an appointment, but some of the others might. He went on to have repeated clashes with Stevenson, notably in the so-called Angry Brigade trial – a group of anarchists convicted of a series of bomb attacks between 1970 and 1972 – when he alleged the police
had planted his client’s fingerprints on a compromising exhibit. Stevenson became so angry he ordered Platts-Mills to forfeit a portion of his fees, a decision smartly overturned by the Court of Appeal, which ruled he had no authority to make such a ruling.131
Platts-Mills’ junior in the case, Ivan Lawrence, went on to have a successful career both at the bar and in politics as the Conservative MP for Burton. Among his more famous defences, after that of Ronnie Kray, was of the serial killer Dennis Nilsen. In his political career he was chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee and an influential figure on the Eurosceptic wing of the party, also instigating the National Lottery with a Private Member’s bill. In retirement he wrote his memoir My Life of Crime.
Sir Lionel Thompson continued to live a louche life, sueing, in something of a role reversal, a woman to whom he had given £15,000 to invest. He was disbarred after receiving a six-month suspended sentence at Lewes Crown Court for fraud. Upon his death in 1999, his baronetcy died with him.
As for the Krays’ solicitors in the trial, Manny Fryde suddenly left the country on an evening flight after receiving advice from a leading QC. He lived in Majorca for several years. Ralph Haeems qualified in 1973 and went on to run the largest criminal practice in London. He employed both former police officer Sid Rae and George Stanley as his managing clerks, and they worked for him until they were well into their 80s. Stanley, who for a time had been the brains behind the East End firm of Lesser & Co, was reputed to have been a paymaster to wives of members of the Great Train Robbery.132 A heavy smoker all his life, Haeems died in March 2005 after heart surgery.
The pill provider, stitcher-upper and much-loved Dr Morris Blasker died on 28 December 1974, aged 70, after being taken ill suddenly in his surgery on the Isle of Dogs. In 2010 a new riverside road was named ‘Blasker Walk’. A campaign in his name to raise funds for kidney machines for the Royal London Hospital was established. Fund raiser Daisy Woodward said at the time, ‘I did not have to ask for money. It just came in from people who lived on the Island or had moved away. Word had got around and that was enough’.
Perhaps because of his earlier refusal to join the Flying Squad, Nipper Read never quite received the recognition due to him. Instead of rising to the top of the Metropolitan Police he became Assistant Commissioner of the Regional Crime Squad. After his retirement he advised on security for the National Gallery and became chairman of the British Boxing Board of Control as well as Vice President of both the World Boxing Council and the World Boxing Association. He received the Queen’s Police Medal.
John Du Rose later wrote his memoirs Murder was My Business, in which he claimed to have solved the Jack the Stripper murders. In his chapter on the Krays he does not mention informer and prosecution witness Alan Bruce Cooper. In his memoir The Sharp End, Frank Cater told how he traced Lisa the nightclub hostess.
After retiring from the Met, Read’s principal aide Henry Mooney, who worked so hard to convince the barmaid at the Blind Beggar that it would be safe for her to give evidence, qualified as a solicitor and set up a small practice in West London.
Trevor Lloyd-Hughes, Nipper Read’s DC, who died in 1986 aged 52, fell from grace after his death. He had been the note-taker on behalf of Commander Bert Wickstead in the so-called 1977 Epping Forest Murder Trial, in which North London faces Bobby Maynard and Reggie Dudley were sentenced for the murders of two other North Londoners, Billy Moseley and Mickey Cornwall, for reasons which were never explained. Their convictions were quashed in 2002 when Lloyd-Hughes’s written statements were deemed to be unreliable. The principal evidence against them had been that during a series of interviews they and other defendants had made ambiguous comments which led to their convictions. After a long-running campaign for their release, in July 2002 the Court of Appeal quashed the convictions on the grounds that Lloyd-Hughes could not possibly have written down the statements at the speed he was said to have done. Wickstead was also dead by this time.
Of the women who brought the Twins down, Carol Skinner died from cancer. ‘She never recovered from that night,’ said her friend Jenny King. Patricia Kelly the barmaid remained in constant fear of the Twins and their followers until the time of Ronnie’s funeral. As for Lisa Prescott, the nightclub hostess, she headed for Australia with her boyfriend after the police bought them a van and put them on the Cross-Channel ferry. Trevor Lloyd-Hughes received a postcard from Turkey, but Read never heard from them again. In fact she returned to England, married and had a family. In 2014 a play by Camilla Whitehill, Where Do Little Birds Go, based on her role in the case, was performed at the Camden People’s Theatre. The title was taken from the song sung by Barbara Windsor in Lionel Bart’s first musical Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be!
Frankie Shea bitterly regretted his sister’s marriage to Reg Kray. In 2002 he gave an interview to the East London Advertiser headed, ‘I spurned gay Reg so he wed my sister in revenge’. He committed suicide on 5 August 2011. He was in the last stages of cancer of the larynx. In Freddie Foreman’s Running with the Krays, Frank Kurylo claims that Ronnie tried to rape Frank Shea and that he should have told his sister. There are also unverifiable stories that Frank Shea slept with both the Twins.133
Just in time for the release in 2015 of the film Legend, Frances Kray’s niece, also Frances, put in her pennyworth. Her recollection is that, far from the image of the retiring girl we have been led to believe, her aunt was indeed a wild child, who was well capable of dealing with Reggie and outshone Barbara Windsor. Pre-echoing Jack McVitie’s words at the fatal party – ‘Where’s the birds?’ she said Frances, on a trip to Africa, had more or less leaped off the plane, calling out, ‘Where’s the hashish?’ Her niece had read diaries to back up her claims but thought it better they remain private. She and her daughter had been so annoyed at the film that to prevent them leaving early, they had taken off their shoes. As the niece was only four at the time of her aunt’s death, her recollections may not be wholly reliable.134
Those who had helped the police in their inquiries could expect a helping hand in return. In October 1972 Leslie Payne, defended by Platts-Mills, was convicted at the Old Bailey for conspiracy to pervert the trial of five defendants charged with handling stolen cars. Read, called to give evidence, said that Payne had played a substantial part in breaking the Krays, but nevertheless he was jailed for five years.135
As for the defendants, Albert Donoghue fared well for a time:
‘Nipper came to see me in Maidstone and said three months had been taken off my sentence and he was there to take me home. I went first to Peckham and then to Edenbridge in Kent.’136
There he lived incognito, listening to stories from men who claimed to have been in the Blind Beggar the night Cornell was shot. ‘I asked if they knew Albert Donoghue and if he’d been there that night. “Oh yes,” they’d say.’ Then he heard someone was making inquiries about him in Peckham and thought it would be only a matter of time before he was traced. Although none of the immediate Kray team were left, Donoghue feared the hangers-on might try and make a name for themselves. He and his family then went to live near High Wycombe.
On 8 September 1970 Donoghue, together with his friend Tommy Herbert, was joined in the Railway Tavern, Rotherhithe by two men, one of whom was the killer and eventual supergrass Billy Amies. Later, while they were in a car together, Donoghue noticed Amies was about to draw a knife on him and in the ensuing struggle, Amies was cut in the face. Donoghue went straight to the police and appeared in court the next morning. Since it would seem he had a perfectly good argument of self-defence, Donoghue rather curiously pleaded guilty, telling the court, ‘I know there is someone after me. I know they are trying to get me and I am scared that if it is the Krays there is going to be one bang.’ Read again appeared in mitigation and Donoghue was fined £20.137
He then changed professions from house-painting to housebreaking, burgling middle class homes. It was an occupation he explained as, ‘I
’m sorry to say, I went astray again.’ Donoghue claimed he burgled houses at the rate of one a fortnight for two years until he was caught. Nipper Read sent Frank Cater to his trial to provide much-needed mitigation. And Donoghue received a sentence of 30 months’ imprisonment. He was released in 12 and took up industrial painting for a living. He also wrote two books about his time with the Twins.138 In 2004 he suffered a major stroke and was confined to a wheelchair. He died aged 80 in April 2016.
The fraudster Charlie Mitchell, who told Read there was a contract on him, did not fare so well. The story in the underworld is that he had had his head trapped in the door of a car and was dragged along the road but the prosecution’s case was, more prosaically, that he had been shot at near his home in Ellerby Street, Fulham.139 Mitchell reportedly died in Spain after being attacked in a bar near Marbella. A notice was put by his grave, ‘Do not walk on the grass’.140
George Osborne, who had been kind enough to shield Ronnie in the Podro trial and helped get him out of the mental hospital, died in Brighton in 1968. He had a heart attack while swimming but the underworld story was that he had been poisoned. Another to die in Brighton was the reputed killer of Frank Mitchell, Alf Gerard, allegedly after eating a lobster, but more prosaically from cirrhosis of the liver. In 1980 he died in the flat of his great friend Jerry Callaghan, who also died in Brighton in 2013.