Krays- the Final Word Read online

  It did not help Ronnie. His mental health deteriorated in Wandsworth prison and believing that that Ramsey was calling him a grass, he gave the boxer a beating. Ramsey sensibly declined to lodge a complaint.16

  A year later, around 8.50 p.m. on 14 August 1957, Terry Martin’s father Stephen left his unlicensed drinker, the Anglo-Pakistan Social Club at 1A Campbell Road, Bow, in the care of ‘Ginger’, whose real name he did not know, and another man who had come to work for him the day before and whose name and address he did not know either. Forty minutes later, while in the nearby Bow Bells public house Martin was told eight or nine men had smashed up the club, breaking chairs and causing around £35 of damage. In today’s terms, nearly £2,300.

  Initially Martin suggested that Reggie Kray had been the instigator as a reprisal for Ronnie’s sentence, but on 16 August he went to Bow Police Station and said he wanted to drop the matter. Unsurprisingly neither Reggie nor Charlie Kray’s fingerprints were found in the club. In his book Born Fighter Reggie claims that he later had Martin’s club firebombed and that when the Martins left, he eventually took over.17

  According to Reggie the bad behaviour of Terry Martin caused resentment in the East End and one man, John Hall, offered to shoot members of the Martin family on Ronnie’s behalf. Kray told him it did not suit his purpose. Four years later, on 3 June 1961, Hall, an avid gun collector and member of a rifle club, shot and killed two officers outside West Ham police station before shooting himself in a telephone kiosk in Wanstead.

  Another story of the fall-out from the incident is that Reggie wanted Terry Martin up on a false rape charge and paid £300 to his friend, fellow Eastender Billy Webb, who was to find a girl strong enough to stand up to police questioning. Later, when Webb realised Martin was an innocent victim, he refused to go ahead with the plan but courageously kept the money.18

  Meanwhile the more entrepreneurial Reggie, along with Charlie, had opened the Double R club in Bow Road, some two hundred yards from the police station, naming it after himself and the imprisoned Ronnie. Using money obtained from poncing off local thieves – i.e. demanding a share of their proceeds – Reggie had purchased the lease of an empty shop and transformed it into a smart nightclub with a stage and dance area, a real contrast to the usual East End clubs. Kray claimed he ‘borrowed’ the money from the car dealer John Hutton, of whom it was said ‘Put all dealers together and their worst attributes and then you’ve got John Hutton’. Borrowed may well be a euphemism.19 If anyone rang, someone would answer the phone with a terse ‘Club’.

  The 20 stone Glaswegian ‘Big’ Pat Connolly, with whom Ronnie later enjoyed farting contests, was on the door and troublemakers could expect a beating from Reggie, if necessary aided by Charlie. Later, Reggie opened a gymnasium over the club launched by the great British heavyweight Henry Cooper.

  The Double R became enormously popular and a major source of income. It was there that Charlie’s wife, Dolly, met George Ince and may have begun an affair with him. She could hardly be blamed, as she was always an outsider so far as the family was concerned. Reggie and Ronnie unkindly called her ‘Snotty Nose’ and ‘Skinny’. Reggie described her:

  ‘I have met some really terrible people in my time but the one with the poorest personality and looks to match is Dolly Kray.’20

  Ince paid heavily for his devotion. In 1969 he was shot in the leg and two years later a shotgun was pushed down his trousers. This time he received 93 pellets in his left calf.21

  However, Reggie was not satisfied with just a legitimate income. At the time gaming was not permitted but spielers (illegal gaming houses) flourished throughout the country. First he opened one at the back of the Double R, and then others throughout East London. Rival premises were vandalised if the owners failed to pay over a percentage of the profits.

  Some spielers, such as the Green Dragon in Aldgate, were simply commandeered. Gerry Parker, once a Jack Spot man, told me it was owned by another Spot man, the now ageing Moishe Goldstein, known as Blueball because of an errantly coloured testicle:

  ‘Eventually the Twins turned up and said they were taking over. Reggie hit Moishe and broke his jaw. He shouldn’t have done that. That was a liberty. Moishe was an old man.’22

  Reggie claims he hit another Spot man, Bernard ‘Sonny the Yank’ Schack, because he called him ‘son’ in a disrespectful manner. In his unpublished manuscript, Ronnie Hart claims that Kray had used an axe.23

  Like so many underworld clubs, the Green Dragon and its sister club the Little Dragon changed owners on a regular basis. Moosa Patel, who had a club at 126 Brick Lane, claimed he had been paying £50 a week protection, and a further £25 for a barman, to Salim Dawood, also known as Angelico, who would in turn pay the money over to Kray men Billy Exley, Duke Osborne or Freddie Bezzina. Patel then became a partner with George Mizel and Matty Constantino in the Green Dragon and he had to pay a third of the £50 they were paying. This time money was collected by Ronnie Bender. Dawood told the police that Bezzina and another man had stolen his fruit machines, but yet another Kray man Cornelius ‘Connie’ Whitehead had advised him to drop the Krays’ name out of things.24

  The protection racket spread, but the Krays would say people regularly came to them rather than their going looking for things to protect. Charlie also tells the rather touching story of how a tearful club owner Danny Green came to the Twins to ask them to help protect his club in the Kingsland Road, Stoke Newington. Again it is a tale of two stories. In Charlie’s version Reggie regretfully declined because it was out of his manor, but in Villains We Have Known Reggie says that in return for a half share in Green’s profits he put the ex-wrestler Andy Paul in to mind it.25

  As always with the Krays, there were bends in the road to be negotiated, some of which they created for themselves. The next one was the case of the police killer Ronnie Marwood, a man described by Reggie Kray:

  ‘I owed Marwood nothing and I knew he was going to cause me nothing but trouble. But, despite what they say, there is some kind of honour among thieves, a sort of code of conduct. Right or wrong, I took Marwood in and hid him in a safe place until he was ready to make a run for it.’26

  When the Double R was closed down in 1963, Reggie claimed it was because he had sheltered Marwood, who was wanted for the killing of PC Raymond Summers. Accounts of the murder vary, with Marwood’s supporters saying that on 14 December 1958 he was walking home when he saw a friend being pushed by a police officer and went to help. It is more likely that he got involved in a gang fight between the Essex Road and the Angel gangs outside Grays Dance Hall in the Seven Sisters Road. When Summers tried to break up the fight, Marwood, who had been out drinking heavily with his friend Mickey Bloom on his first wedding anniversary, fatally stabbed him with a 10-inch. When Marwood was questioned and released without charge, he went on the run.

  According to Reggie, the police visited him and told him that if he gave Marwood up he could have a free rein over his clubs. He declined. Later he expanded the story, telling how he had been to see Marwood in West London where he was holed up in true gangster fashion with a gun and a club hostess. Kray said that on seeing the gun he had, in newspaper terms, ‘made his excuses and left’. In an alternative version Johnny Nash claimed it was he who had ‘Big Ronnie’ stashed away. ‘I had him in a flat in Holloway. He never left the place except after dark and even then he did not go far.’27

  With the net closing in, Marwood did not stay on the run for long and on the evening of 27 January 1959 he went to Caledonian Road police station with his father and, under caution, confessed to the murder.

  Marwood’s defence was that as he had been drinking he did not realise he had a knife in his hand when he pushed Summers. He claimed his confession had been written by the police and he had signed it without reading it. He was hanged on 8 May 1959, less than five months after the stabbing.

  Underworld legend has it that Marwood gave himself up beca
use he did not want to cause trouble for his protectors, and that later the Nashs tried to engineer an escape from Pentonville prison. Certainly they sent wreaths on the anniversary of his death.

  The Krays were always keen to claim they had sheltered this or that criminal, but suggestions that they hid the French gangster and killer Jacques Mesrine when he was on the run seem wide of the mark. ‘They wouldn’t have known how to spell his name,’ said one East Ender disparagingly. In fact the French murderer, bank robber and kidnapper probably did not come to London until 1972, by which time the Krays had been in prison for four years.

  Meanwhile, Ronnie Kray serving his three years at first did well in prison and, apart from his fight with Ramsey, his twelve months in Wandsworth passed without incident. He was then transferred to Camp Hill, a lower category prison on the Isle of Wight. Perhaps because he felt he was isolated from London, his mental health began to deteriorate. There had long been a streak of insanity in the family. His great-great grandfather ‘Critcha’ Lee had died in Claybury mental hospital and his grandfather’s brother Jewy died there as well. When, two days after Christmas, Ronnie learned of the death on Christmas Day 1957 of his Aunt Rose, he went berserk and after a fight with a warder had to be placed in a straightjacket for his own safety.

  He was moved to Winchester Prison, where on 20 February 1958 he was certified insane and transferred to Long Grove Mental Hospital near Epsom in Surrey, one of a group of hospitals known as the Epsom Cluster, built in 1906 to deal with the overcrowding of inner London hospitals. By this time he thought a man in the bed opposite was a dog who would jump onto his lap if he guessed his name right.

  But given proper medication including Stematil, Ronnie’s mental health improved and now he began to fret. Time in a mental hospital did not count against a prison sentence and he wanted out. He was, he considered, serving two days for every one he should. If he could stay out for six weeks he could then claim he was no longer mentally ill and could be returned to prison to complete his sentence.

  An ingenious rescue plan was then put into operation. As with many Kray stories the details vary – for example, Ronnie says he was in his pyjamas while other accounts have him in a dark blue suit identical to the one Reggie was wearing. Whichever is correct, on Sunday 26 May 1958 Charlie and Reggie, along with their faithful but ill-fated friend George Arthur Osborne, went to visit him in the hospital. Their cousin Joe Lee had already declined the job. Reggie claims the Twins, both wearing navy blue suits and grey shirts, entered the lavatory together and Ronnie then came out first. Charlie Kray said that Reggie merely put on Ronnie’s glasses. Ronnie walked out with Charlie and Osborne and, after giving his twin sufficient time to get well clear, Reggie asked to be let out as well, saying he thought Ronnie had gone to get him tea. He was fortunate not to be prosecuted. It was another example of the Twins relying on their almost identical appearances to confuse witnesses.

  That night Ronnie was taken to a flat in St John’s Wood, which he did not like, and he demanded to be housed elsewhere. According to Charlie, the next day the Hospital Superintendent telephoned Reggie, requesting he bring his brother back with no questions asked, but for the next six months Ronnie remained in and around North London (according to Charlie Kray) or went to Suffolk, where he stayed in a caravan belonging to another Kray associate Geoff Allen while another friend, ‘Mad’ Teddy Smith, ferried boys up to him (according to Ron and Reg). But despite all this he was lonely, and once again his mental condition deteriorated.

  What neither Ronnie and Charlie Kray nor their mother Violet had understood was that Ronnie was a seriously mentally ill man whose health would always relapse without his proper medication. Their doctor Morris Blasker had to come galloping to the rescue or, in practice, Reggie or Teddy Smith had to drive Ronnie down to Millwall to see him. Blasker said that he obtained Stematil tablets at 27/6d a time and charged the Krays a hardly exorbitant 30 shillings. Once Ronnie was stabilised, using the name John Lee he went to see a Harley Street psychiatrist to try to find a cure. Of course there was none; stabilisation was the best that he could hope for.28

  After nearly five months on the run Ronnie was drinking heavily and beginning to deteriorate mentally once more. He maintained he gave himself up, but Charlie claimed the police arrested him when he paid a visit to Vallance Road.29 His medication was resumed and on 18 November he was declared sane and returned to Wandsworth Prison. He was released five months later.

  However, once out of prison Ronnie was a changed man. He declined to go to a coming-out party at the Double R. He sat drinking endless cups of tea in Vallance Road and because he again failed to take his medication regularly, his mental condition deteriorated once more. Now he began to believe Reggie and Charlie were only pretending to be his brothers. Finally he had a breakdown in the Eric Street billiard hall and was admitted to St Clement’s Hospital in Mile End.

  On 2 February 1959 Daniel Schai, better known as Daniel Shay and sometimes incorrectly named in police files as Frances Shea’s brother, had apparently ordered a leather briefcase from Swiss Travel Goods, run by Morris Podro. Two days later he returned with at least one of the Twins. The prosecution’s case was that Shay told Podro he had been overcharged. When Podro protested that he hadn’t even been paid, Shay said he would now have to pay £100 or ‘he would cut me to pieces’. Reggie and Shay hit him and he agreed to give them the money the next day.

  Instead Podro went to the police, and this time officers were hiding in the back room of Podro’s shop on Shay and Reggie’s return. They were arrested, followed shortly by Ronnie. Reggie said at once that his twin had not been there the day before.

  On 12 February their then lawyer Bernie Perkoff produced George Osborne at Marylebone Magistrates’ Court, where he did the decent and expected thing and told the police it was he and not Ronnie who had been in the shop:

  ‘I can describe the shop and everything about it to convince you it was me. I wouldn’t do this for anyone else, but Ronnie is my mate and I’m not letting him get bird for something he didn’t do and I did.’

  Ronnie told the police he had been at the Regal Billiard Hall in Eric Street, which was now being run for him by Freddie and Vic Bird. Later that day Podro picked Osborne out on an identification parade. Privately paid, the solicitor Ellis Lincoln now acted for Shay and Reggie Kray. They and Osborne were all found guilty of demanding money with menaces. On 10 April 1959 Kray and Osborne, who had received 21 months at the County of London sessions ten years earlier for office breaking, now went down for 18 months. Shay received three years. Cognoscenti in the underworld suggest that in fact the matter had been over an unpaid gambling debt. Reggie appealed, and because of the delay in obtaining a transcript of the trial, unusually, on 22 September, he was given bail pending the hearing. He was out for nearly a year before his application for leave to appeal was heard and dismissed on 26 July 1960.30

  At the beginning of June that year two Kray clubs were raided: first the Wellington Way and then the Double R where Harry Abrahams, who, it was said, could have taken over Jack Spot’s minding of the Jewish community had he wanted, was now the barman. Ostensibly the police were there over breaches of the licensing laws, but they took the opportunity to search for any stolen property. None was found but prosecutions of both clubs followed and the Double R lost its licence in September that year.

  In 1961 the brothers brought off a hat-trick of wins. All were accused of offences of dishonesty, and all were acquitted. The first was in February when Charlie and Ron were charged along with their pickpocket friend Jimmy ‘The Dip’ Kensit, father of the actress Patsy, with being suspected persons trying car door handles in the Queensbridge Road.

  Then in April Reggie was charged with housebreaking. He was apparently seen by a Lilian Hertzberg coming out of her mother’s flat in Stepney with another man. She saw him a week later in the street and, she said, recognised him. With the police saying they feared that witne
sses would be interfered with, Reggie, again defended by Ellis Lincoln, was remanded in custody until May, when Lilian Hertzberg told the Inner London Sessions that the man she had seen was not Kray. Reggie would have claimed he was actually at an appointment with a Dr Ronchetti, and he was awarded £92 costs.

  Charlie Kray says that Mrs Hertzberg was offered the then huge sum of £500 to change her evidence, payable when she failed to make the identification. He justified the Krays welshing on the deal by claiming that her husband was a police informer.31

  In early May the suspected person charges were dismissed by the stipendiary magistrate John Aubrey Fletcher. They had run an alibi defence and had called a string of witnesses. The Krays represented it as an out and out triumph but Fletcher had thought:

  ‘I don’t think it would be safe to convict. I don’t know where the truth lies. There is too much evidence that these men were elsewhere.’

  But by now the Twins and Charlie had assembled a nucleus of loyal and dangerous supporters. They had also acquired Esmeralda’s Barn, a gambling club in Knightsbridge.32

  Conversation with JM.

  Henry Ward, Buller, pp. 150-151.

  The Times, 6 September 1956.

  Nat Arch. MEPO 2/9753; Laurie O’Leary, Ron Kray: A Man among Men, p. 117.

  Nat. Arch. MEPO 2/9753; Reg Kray, Born Fighter, p. 57.

  Billy Webb, Running with the Krays, pp. 101-2.

  Reg Kray, Born Fighter, p. 56.

  Reg Kray, Born Fighter, p. 58.

  Dick Hebdige, The Kray Twins: a Study of a System of Closure.

  Conversation with JM, 4 November 2014.

  Reggie Kray, Born Fighter, p. 139.

  MEPO 2/11410. Dawood received three years on 7 February 1969. For some years afterwards he claimed he had been the victim of a police trap.