Krays- the Final Word Read online

  Not all criminals dislike conscription. The old pre-First World War gang leader Darby Sabini and at least one of his brothers had good war records, and so did the cracksmen Eddie Chapman and Johnny Ramensky. One of Darby’s sons was killed during the Second World War and another joined up. On the other hand, London’s ‘Boss of the Underworld’ Billy Hill managed to evade the RAF totally and his friend and later rival Jack Spot obtained an early discharge by complaining that his sergeant was anti-Semitic and that he had been placed in too lowly a position. The Krays fell into the Hill and Spot category.

  Had they been separated, things might have been different. Reggie was happy with the discipline of a boxing gymnasium. He might have adapted to army life, but for Ronnie it was impossible.

  The pair did not take kindly to the Royal Fusiliers from the moment on 20 March 1952 when, wearing identical blue suits, they walked into the regiment’s base at the Tower of London to begin their National Service. After being shown their quarters and equipment, they promptly started to walk out of the room. When the sergeant challenged them they told him they were going to tea with their mother. One of them hit him on the jaw and they headed off to spend the evening at a dance hall in Tottenham.

  They were arrested, still in bed, at Vallance Road the next morning. Back at the Tower of London, they were charged with being absent without leave and for the next seven days were confined to the guardroom. For the next few months the army endeavoured unsuccessfully to teach them to be soldiers. At this time the Twins first met Dickie Morgan, who was to become a lifelong friend – until offering evidence against them to the police, that is. He had been sent to the Fusiliers after serving a four-year stretch at Portland Borstal. Morgan’s first serious conviction was for robbing Jewish shopkeepers: ironic for a man who worked as a Shabbos goy, a non-Jew who for a few pence fulfilled basic household duties for Orthodox Jews on the Sabbath. Reggie claimed that in their twenties, the Twins and the lantern-jawed Morgan began to steal from lorries, before selling the produce to a farmer. If this story is true, it is one of the few times they actually stole anything themselves.

  Five months later on 5 August 1952 Ronnie deserted again, and claimed later he’d boxed at some unlicensed shows while on the run. But Reggie stayed with the regiment until he absconded on 2 October that year.7 According to Martin Fido, Reggie also boxed on the unlicensed circuit run by their later employee Bobby Ramsey, whom he describes as a Jack Spot man. Ronnie’s last bout in a hall in Tottenham earned him £5.8 9

  On 2 May 1953 along with Morgan they absconded yet again, were arrested the following day and hauled off to Shepton Mallet to await their court martial. While there they created as much trouble as they could and Ronnie smeared his cell wall with excrement. On 11 June the Krays received nine months for assault and desertion. They were finally dishonourably discharged from the army on 13 November that year but they claimed they weren’t to blame for any of this trouble. After all, as Charlie pointed out, things might have been so different had the NCO not rubbed them up the wrong way the day they enlisted. He thought his brothers would have fared far better in wartime and would ‘so easily have distinguished themselves with courage in the face of extreme danger’.10

  Before the end of the year they were involved in a fight in a drinking club in Tottenham Court Road. As with most of their accounts, they claimed they were merely defending themselves against an unprovoked aggressor. This time it was an ‘African’ who had been pushing and shoving their young friend Harry Abrahams, a man quite capable of taking care of himself. Reggie Kray hit the man over the head with the truncheon he happened to be carrying before Ronnie stabbed him. When Ronnie, but not Reggie, was picked out at an identification parade masterminded by a lawyer, the flamboyantly gay Stanley Crowther, no charges were brought. Being one of identical twins had many benefits.

  Given the enthusiasm with which Ronnie Kray used a knife when the death penalty was still in force, he was fortunate not to end up on a murder charge earlier than he did. One early victim who survived was the amateur boxer Billy Roode. Years later Stan Davis recalled:

  ‘In 1954 or 55 Ronnie stabbed a boxer Billy Roode in what was then a poofter pub, the Hospital Tavern in the Mile End Road in Dalston. I knew Billy because we was both members of the boxing club Eton Manor and I tried to straighten it up but Billy wasn’t having it. He said Ronnie had taken a right liberty. And so Charlie asked if I would take Ronnie down to my campsite at Boulouris two miles south of St Raphael in the south of France, and he stayed with me for about five weeks until it went away. I thought I might have trouble with him but he was as good as gold. He offered to pay but I said no.’

  While Ronnie was away, it was arranged for the Krays to compensate Roode and buy him a new suit. A fight was also arranged between the old boxer Buller Ward and Roode’s brother Joe, but the pair shook hands when they realised they were merely doing the Krays’ bidding.11

  It was at the Epsom Spring race meeting in 1955 that the Twins made their first appearance in what, for them, passed as polite society. The story is that the old gang leader Jack Spot, fearing an attack on his control of the free course bookmaking pitches by the formidable ‘Mad’ Frank Fraser on behalf of Italian interests, recruited the Twins as his minders for the afternoon. It was easy money. Reggie said:

  ‘It wasn’t that we liked him [Spot]. We despised him really. We just turned out with Spotty to show everyone that we was the up-and-coming firm and didn’t give a fuck for anyone. Old Spotty understood. Whatever else he may have been, he wasn’t stupid. He knew quite well that though we were there in theory as his friends, we meant to end up taking over from him.’

  In an improved version of the story, a few nights later they heard that Fraser and another Billy Hill henchman, Billy Blythe, were wanting to fight it out in an Islington public house. Armed to the teeth and ‘with a dozen of their best fighters’, the Twins went looking for them only to find the pub empty.12

  The fact that Fraser was in a secure mental hospital all that month has never been allowed to get in the way of a good tale. Nor should it. Print the legend.

  On the other hand Reggie, at least, was a great admirer of Spot’s one-time friend Billy Hill, with whom they went to stay in Tangier and whom they called Crutchie because on one occasion he had broken his ankle and had to use crutches. Reggie looked on him as his mentor and wrote in Villains We Have Known:

  ‘When I was in my early twenties, the man I wanted to emulate most of all was the former gang boss of London’s underworld, Billy Hill. The prime reason for my admiration was that, apart from Billy being very physical and violent when necessary, he had a good, quick thinking brain and this trait appealed to me most of all.’

  And:

  ‘I like to think that, in some ways, I have come close to emulating him; to be honest, I acknowledge that he stands alone and there will never be another Billy Hill.’

  In his declining years, Hill was said to be terrified of the pair.

  James Morton, Gangland 2; Dennis Stafford had a long criminal career, mainly as a long-firm fraudster and later in the celebrated Stafford-Luvaglio case of January 1967 in which Angus Sibbett, the manager of a gambling club in Newcastle, was killed. Both Stafford and Michael Luvaglio were convicted and a long campaign began to clear their names. Eventually after they were paroled Stafford told the News of the World that, in fact, he but not Luvaglio had killed Sibbett. He later retracted this, saying he had confessed only for the money. He resumed his life as a conman. Dennis Stafford, Fun-loving criminal: the autobiography of a gentleman gangster; David Lewis and Peter Hughman, Most Unnatural.

  Nat. Arch. Crim 1/2064

  Ronald Hart, unpublished manuscript; John Pearson, Infamous Twins; Anthony Nutting, Gordon: Martyr and Misfit.

  William Hugo Kline was born in 1866 in Bochum, Prussia. He came to England some time before 1911, working as a strongman and wrestler on the Music Halls. He died in 1957 in Kensingto
n. Reg Kray, Born Fighter, pp. 22-23.

  Charlie Kray, Me and My Brothers, pp. 32-34.

  Reg & Ron Kray, Our Story, p. 24.

  Martin Fido, The Krays Unfinished Business, p. 104.

  Back in 1952 they managed to stay out for a few months, sometimes staying at Dickie Morgan’s home, sometimes with David Levy, one of a large family from Mile End, sometimes under the protection of Tommy Smithson in billiard halls in Soho, until they were arrested for desertion and assault back in Hackney on 19 January 1953 when they claimed they had merely pushed a police officer out of their way. On 26 February, again at Thames Magistrates’ court, they each received a month for assaulting the officer. In fact the assault on PC Roy Fisher, who was off sick for three days, had occurred back on 29 October when he had tried to arrest them then. Inside the Kray Family, p 114.

  Charlie Kray, Me and My Brothers, p.41.

  Conversations with SD, 29 October 2009, 24 October 2013; Henry Ward with Tony Gray, Buller.

  John Pearson, The Profession of Violence, p. 87.

  Chapter 2

  The Making of the ‘Twins’

  The incident which some think ‘made’ the Twins was a fight they and Charlie had in the Coach and Horses on the Mile End Road with ‘Big’ Bill Donovan and a man named Cooper. Apparently Cooper and Donovan had been saying they were going to see to the Twins, who then slipped out of the door and returned through another entrance tooled up. Donovan, who nearly lost an eye in the fight, refused to press charges and later became one of the doormen at the Twins’ Double R club.

  The Twins took over Jack Spot’s run-down old billiard hall in Eric Street off the Mile End Road. Charlie Kray says they made the manager a proposition. They would take it over, smarten it up and give the manager a weekly slice of the takings. It was an offer he, and many others after him, could not refuse.

  Smarten up the billiard hall they may have done, but it soon became a home from home for East End villains and wannabees. The Krays seemed quite happy with this state of affairs, but I once asked Mickey Bailey about it and still recall his words:

  ‘I was spending my time down the snooker hall and mixing with villains. I didn’t play, but it was a sort of apprenticeship of its own. It was a meeting place for older villains to talk about crime and pass their skills on to the youngsters.

  My mother got wind of what I was up to, and since she’d known the Twins since they were boys she decided to go and speak to them. Apparently it was Ronnie she saw. Whether it was the same day or a couple of days later I don’t know, but as me and a couple of friends walked across the waste ground in front of the hall Ronnie was on the steps. He says, “Where are you going?” and I said, “in for a cup of tea and a pie.” He just said, “It’ll be a long time before you’re allowed back here. You’re all barred. Your mother’s been down.” There was no malice from Ronnie. He was just doing what my mother wanted. Even at that relatively early age I knew you didn’t argue with the Twins.’13

  However, the hall was also used as a slaughter, a place to cache stolen goods before they could be sold on. The Krays are said to have fought for control of the hall with a group of Maltese and Ron is credited with chasing his attackers away waving a samurai sword.

  The Twins were right when they thought that Spot’s empire was there for the taking. On 11 August 1955 he became involved in a knife fight in Old Compton Street, Soho with Albert Dimeo, better known as Dimes, Billy Hill’s right-hand man and one of the leaders of the reborn Italian gangs. Both were very seriously wounded and at the subsequent trial at the Old Bailey both were acquitted; Dimes because a Jewish lady who broke up the fight by hitting Spot with a weighing scale pan said Spot was the attacker, and Spot because the bent vicar Claude Andrews and Christopher Glinski, a Polish war hero turned dishonest man about Soho, said Dimes was the aggressor. As a result the incident became known as ‘The Fight That Never Was’.

  In May 1956 Spot was badly slashed in the street by Frankie Fraser and accomplices. The next month he was set up by Billy Hill and stood trial over a knifing in which he was never involved. Spot was acquitted but he was finished. He set up a small drinking club, the Highball in Lancaster Gate, which was later fired. Reggie would claim personal responsibility, but he was probably acting on behalf of Billy Hill.

  The first real sign that the Twins were moving into the West End came in 1956 when they became involved in a drinking club, The Stragglers in Cambridge Circus. Run by docker Billy Jones, before the Twins’ involvement the clientele were prone to fighting among themselves, something which reduced the profits. Jones’ friend, the ex-boxer Bobby Ramsey, mentioned the problem to the Twins. In a matter of days the club was running smoothly and profitably and they had a share. The Twins’ cousin Ronnie Hart claimed they simply moved in and took over the club.

  Then came a hiatus. It came about, so the story goes, because one of the Watney Streeters who controlled the Docks at the time, Charlie Martin, had a small scam going with local post office drivers who would re-address parcels to places where he could collect them. Ronnie Kray wanted 50% of the profits. Martin was a slow payer and Ronnie realised he would soon have to deal with him severely. The opportunity came when Martin had a fight with Billy Jones. In return, the next night, Jones’ partner, Bobby Ramsey, sought out Martin and beat him up. Two nights later Martin, this time with help from the Watney Street gang, beat Ramsey unconscious outside The Artichoke pub in Shadwell.

  Now Ronnie apparently wanted to make an example of Charlie Martin and to shoot him, but both Ramsey and Jones argued against this. Instead it was agreed that a severe beating would be handed out to the Watney Street connection in The Britannia, another Shadwell pub. Buller Ward claims that the matter could have been resolved with a straightener between Ramsey and Charlie Martin or their respective appointees. Martin nominated one of the bosses of the docks, Jimmy Fullerton, but the Krays decided this was not sufficient and it was time they put their stamp on the Streeters.14

  Around 9.45 p.m. on 28 August 1956, the Twins, the revived Bobby Ramsey and Billy Jones, headed to The Britannia. The Twins were certainly not brave or foolish enough to go into Watney Street territory with only Ramsey and Jones as back up. The Scotland Yard officer Nipper Read believed that at the height of their powers the Twins could call on up to 200 followers, but on this occasion they looked to Ronnie Diamond and his Diamond Gang for help. Suitably tooled up, they arrived to find only Terry Martin, Charlie’s cousin, playing cards. The cowardly, if sensible, Streeters had escaped through a back door. Martin was told to ‘come outside or we’ll kill you here’ and was asked where his cousin was. He was then knocked to the floor, given a kicking and stabbed under the right arm and shoulder with a bayonet. After the Krays and Ramsey left, Martin staggered back into the pub and was driven to the London Hospital.

  Ronnie – other pro-Kray accounts put the blame on Ramsey – decided he must now go after the Streeters and he and the others drove off in two or three cars. Around midnight the police stopped his Buick at the junction of Grove Road and Morgan Street in Stepney. He was armed with a gun. Also in the car, which was driven by Ramsey, was Billy Jones along with a machete and a crowbar. At the police station Ronnie handed a loaded six-chamber revolver to DS Walter Cooper, warning him to be careful. It contained four live rounds and the bullets had been filed into expanding dum-dums. Efforts to buy off Terry Martin failed. All were charged with Grievous Bodily Harm. Reggie was defended by the ex-policeman turned barrister William Hemming, who modelled his speech patterns on his hero Winston Churchill, arguing that the witnesses disagreed on whether one or both of the twins had entered the Britannia. The magistrate, Leo Gradwell, replied wittily, ‘The difficulty is to know which one to give bail to,’ and remanded them both in custody.15

  Pre-DNA testing, it was easy to argue that the bloodstains on Reggie’s jacket might have come from boxers in the gym where he trained, and he was acquitted.

  On 5 November 1956 Ronnie
was sentenced to three years at the Old Bailey for wounding with intent; Ramsey received five years, and Jones three. Charles Kray Snr then wrote to the Court of Appeal, omitting to mention that the Twins regularly gave him a beating:

  ‘It is my firm belief that he [Ronnie] was intimidated into this brawl; more out of curiosity than any intentions of committing any violence of which he was innocent. If you will at least believe me, sir, they are the most respectful and good-natured lads anybody could wish to meet, so kind to my wife and I and everybody in their thoughts and actions and only do good to everybody, and with my guidance and my wife and son Charles (their eldest brother) they will make good.’