Krays- the Final Word Page 4

  On 1 July 1962 the 19-stone Paul, apparently once a small-time wrestler probably working for independent promotions, was killed by his brother Bernard after he had gone berserk after a party at the remote Creeksea Ferry Inn at Rochford, Essex, which their mother managed. He knocked her to the ground. It was then Bernard went for the shotgun and shot his brother in the stomach. He was charged with manslaughter but the magistrates refused to commit him for trial and he was discharged. Southend Standard, October-November 1962; Reg Kray, Our Story, p. 121.

  Reg Kray, Born Fighter, pp. 67-8.

  Charles Bronson, Steve Richards, Legends, Vol. 1, p. 74.

  John Pearson, The Cult of Violence, pp. 55-57.

  Reg & Ron Kray, Our Story, p. 32; Charlie Kray, Me and My Brothers, p 66.

  Nat. Arch. MEPO 2/10075.

  Charlie Kray, Me and My Brothers, pp. 84-7.

  Nat. Arch. Crim. 1/3142; MEPO 2/10075.

  Chapter 3

  The Firm

  By the middle of the 1960s the Kray Twins, with their elder brother Charlie in a supporting role, had assembled what the press dubbed ‘The Firm’, but what the police called ‘East End Terrors’. They were a gang of thieves’ ponces (i.e. making a living from other men’s work), hardmen, extortionists, fraudsters and general hangers-on. Just who ranked where in the pecking order inside the Firm is a matter of debate, and much depended on who was trying to sell their story to the public. Tales of merely polishing the glasses before parties do not sell books. Much more saleable is that the author threw the soda siphon at the coffee machine in the spieler, or better still prevented Ronnie from slashing some unfortunate individual.

  So while Albert Donoghue was justly described in the blurb for his book as ‘The Krays’ Lieutenant’, the claim by Tony Lambrianou that he was a ‘former Kray boss’ is more open to question. Other associates suggest Lambrianou joined late in the cycle, and they describe him as a wannabee and gofer. In fact Tony Lambrianou had known the Krays through his friendship with Reggie’s brother-in-law Frank Shea, but until shortly before Christmas 1966 he was in prison serving three years for robbing the proprietor of a Wimpey bar. He says that by this time the Krays were looking for new talent and one of his first jobs was to drive Scotch Jack Dickson to visit the escaped Frank Mitchell, who was then being sheltered by the Krays. Chris Lambrianou became involved with the Krays through his friendship with Charlie and the nightclub he ran in partnership in Leicester.

  Donoghue’s position in the hierarchy did not, however, prevent him from having to clear up messes they had created and do the odd painting and decorating job on their behalf. In later years Tony Lambrianou swung hot and cold. Sometimes he was happy to be regarded as one of Britain’s top villains and at others equally happy to say that he had been used by the Krays, such as the time when he was sent to the Regency in Stoke Newington to bring the erring Jack McVitie to the fateful party at nearby Evering Road.

  It is now generally accepted that there were in fact two Firms. The first was in existence up to approximately the time of the Cornell murder in 1966 and members included the 18-stone, white-haired Tommy ‘The Bear’ Brown, who had been heavyweight champion Len Harvey’s sparring partner before the war. It was he who cut Kenny Adams in the Stow club in Walthamstow High Street on 16 September 1966. Adams required 70 stitches, and a John Rigbey who investigated the case told me that there was so much blood the forensic officer scooped it up in a teacup.33 Earlier Brown had received three years for demanding with menaces and was now on the door of the spieler in the Regency basement.

  Others included Sammy Lederman, whose history in the West End stretched back to World War Two and who in 1941 had given evidence in the killing by Tony ‘Babe’ Mancini of Hubby Distleman in the Palm Beach Bridge Club in Wardour Street. Lederman had had a show business agency which the Krays appropriated for Charlie to run. Then there was Connie Whitehead, more a long firm fraudsman than anything else, driven into their arms by the predations of standover man Georgie Cornell; their cousin Ronnie Hart, then on the run; former seaman Ronnie Bender; and the giant Glaswegian Pat Connolly, along with another boxer, Billy Exley. There was also the unfortunate George ‘Ozzie’ Osborne as well as the equally unfortunate Colin ‘Dukey’ Osborne, the mathematically talented Alf ‘Limehouse’ Willey, red-haired Tommy Cowley and Big Bill Donovan, Dickie Morgan from their brief army days and conman Micky Fawcett. There were also non-criminals such as the baths attendant Harry Granshaw, who could be called on to give evidence for members in trouble and have their names placed on the Krays’ charitable committees. Wanabees included Lenny ‘Books’ Dunn, who kept a stall of mildly pornographic books and magazines on Whitechapel Waste and who wanted above all things to be recognised by the Twins, only to find that when he was, he was terrified of them.

  Although for a time they shared a club with Jimmy Woods from West Ham, who had been on the abortive 1948 London Airport Bullion Robbery attributed to Jack Spot, the Krays did not actually inherit any of Spot’s men. But early in their careers they did acquire one of Billy Hill’s right-hand men, and a hard one at that: the dapper ex-welterweight boxer Bobby Ramsey, with a ring record of 26 wins, 33 losses and nine draws. Ramsey, who fancied himself in a black overcoat and pigskin gloves, was a pimp with a predilection for cutting women. He was a pocket-sized version of the ex-world champion Freddie Mills but without his punch, although adroit with a knife.

  Then there was the talented fraudster Leslie Payne, said to have become involved with the Twins through the car dealer Johnny Hutton. It was at Hutton’s showrooms that Ronnie Kray shot a dissatisfied punter in the leg. Later Payne and the equally talented Freddie Gore ran a car showroom in the East End. In a complicated hire purchase scam Payne had become liable for the debts of a purchaser and was threatened with a visit by the Krays to make him pay up. His version of events is suitably vague but, always a glib talker, he seems to have persuaded them he was in the right, and the matter lapsed. They then began to visit him regularly at the site where Ramsey was now working for him. One day Payne and he quarrelled over a parking place and the next day, which Payne dates as being in the early 1960s, the Twins appeared. Ronnie knocked Ramsey to the ground and when he got up Reggie knocked him down again. The pair then gave him a good hiding and said to Payne that they had heard Ramsey had been causing trouble and they were looking after him now. ‘We’re friends now, Les, so I gotta protect you’, assured Ronnie.34 Whether the fight between Kray and Ramsey was a contrived proces d’impressment for Leslie Payne is open to question. Ramsey certainly does not seem to have held a grudge, and for a time stepped out with their cousin Rita Smith. Ramsey could still be found acting as their bookkeeper when the Twins were arrested at the Glenrae Hotel in Finsbury Park in late 1964, but after that he seems sensibly to have drifted away.

  One of their closer friends at the time was George Osborne, who opened Le Monde, a ‘bucket of blood’ drinking club near World’s End. It was there at the end of September 1963 that Ronnie cut the former boxer Johnny Cardew there, for saying he had put on weight. Cardew ran to the nearby St Stephens Hospital for stitching, and at one time it was thought he would need plastic surgery.35

  Later Ronnie smashed up the Le Monde because, when he arrived with a party, Osborne was not there to greet him and showed no signs of appearing that night. He demanded to speak to Osborne on the telephone and according to another Kray affiliate, Eric Mason, shouted, ‘Keep your ear on the phone and you can listen to what’s going to happen to your lovely little club.’ He then told the regulars that they should stay quiet and, if they did, nothing would happen to them. After smashing mirrors with a soda siphon and destroying the rest of the club he yelled, ‘We’re going off to drink with real people,’ and everyone piled into their cars and drove off.

  Mason was summoned to Vallance Road the next day and there he pointed out diplomatically that Osborne was now married, and since his wife had a good deal of influence over him he was no longer his own,
or their, man. He was sure no snub had been intended. A penitent Ronnie then told him to get on the phone and tell Osborne to have the damage repaired, no expense spared.36

  Mason himself had first met the Twins when they all sparred at Kline’s gym. Later they became friends and when he was released from Walton jail in Liverpool after serving a seven-year sentence for a series of robberies, they sent Dukey Osborne to meet him off the train and arranged a coming out party at the Cambridge Rooms on the Kingston bypass.

  Some others, including the gay Irish ex-jockey Bobby Buckley, with whom Ron fell in love, were acquired when in 1961 the Krays took over the Esmeralda’s Barn nightclub in Wilton Place, Knightsbridge.

  Some of the original Firm drifted away. Some would not allow themselves to be part of the post-Cornell scene. Others, such as Buckley, went to prison. And around the Twins a much more unpleasant group was formed.

  The one-time bank robber Albert Donoghue, the soi-disant ‘Krays’ Lieutenant’, arrived in a roundabout way. When Donoghue came out of prison after serving a sentence for robbery in October 1964 he was told by Limehouse Willey that the Krays wanted to see him. He went to the Crown and Anchor by Vallance Road, where Reggie Kray promptly shot him in the leg. ‘It didn’t hurt. The pain was when they twisted my ankle at the hospital. I didn’t hold it against them. I’d been shot and that was it’. True to the underworld code, Donoghue did not go to the police, and when he came out of hospital the Twins sent word through their Bournemouth-based associate Bill Ackerman that they again wanted to see him. This time the meeting was more cordial. Donoghue, leg still in plaster, went to Vallance Road where he was promptly signed up. It turned out that the Twins thought he had been badmouthing them over the burning of jewel-thief Lennie Hamilton at Esmeralda’s Barn. Now Charlie Kray shook his hand and welcomed him to the Firm.

  Later Donoghue would recall one of his first jobs:

  ‘I was houseman at the Green Dragon, a dirty little spieler. One-armed Lou Joseph also worked there. I got £40 a week from George Mizel and he had to pay the Twins as well. There was just old men playing cards and if one of them started shouting I would just go over and give them a tap on the shoulder. It was easy work.’37

  Another almost odd-job man was Jack McVitie, ‘The Hat’ worn indoors and outdoors to cover his incipient baldness after he lost his mop of black hair. In his early days he had run with Joey Pyle, seen by some as the Godfather of London crime over a 20-year span, and bank robber Tony Baldessare, who killed himself in his attic in Streatham after a two-day police siege. He had been wanted in connection with the death of police dog Yerba and a string of robberies.38

  In 1959 then aged 26, McVitie received seven years at Cambridgeshire Quarter Sessions for unlawful possession of explosives and possessing a flick knife. In December that year he was sentenced to 12 strokes of the birch by visiting magistrates at Exeter prison after he, Mad Frank Fraser and Jimmy Andrews had attacked the Governor. Because Fraser had been certified insane, the Home Secretary refused to confirm his birching and, since the rule was ‘birch all, birch none’, McVitie was reprieved, so to speak. This was by no means a popular move. Prisoners sentenced to being flogged could normally expect a remission in their sentence. Defendants would often ask to be flogged, but if one was deemed not to be healthy enough, all were refused.39 McVitie was also said to have thrown a girlfriend out of his car. He claimed they were arguing when she fell against the door, which then opened.

  One former West End club doorman told me how McVitie had cut a man’s throat on behalf of the Twins in a club upstairs from the Log Cabin in Wardour Street:

  ‘The Krays either wanted it or wanted money from it, but the Scotsman who ran it wasn’t having it. I thought it was rather appropriate when I heard Jack got stabbed in the throat by Reggie.’40

  According to John ‘Scotch Jack’ Dickson, he and the much younger Ian Barrie had come to London from Edinburgh to seek their fortunes in 1964. Dickson had fought with the Marines in the Korean War and had later worked for the Scottish Gas Board. Barrie, who had a badly scarred face when a can of petrol had blown up during his time in the army, had worked as a deckhand on a whaling factory ship. In London they lived first in Kings Cross and then Stoke Newington, working as window cleaners and playing cards in local clubs. Playing down in Brick Lane, they met the Krays’ uncle Billy, who was then running a spieler for the Twins; he recognised them as likely lads and introduced them to his nephews.41 Dickson worked principally for Reggie Kray and Barrie for Ronnie.

  There were other fringe members who could be called on for help, such as the handsome, immaculately dressed one-armed ticket tout Lou Joseph, who had a conviction for manslaughter. Despite his disability he was a brilliant snooker player. He was another who minded the Green Dragon Club. Then there were the Clarkes, Nobby and Charlie, who were not related. Until he broke his legs Charlie had been a talented cat burglar known as the Cat Man – not for that, but because he and his wife kept cats in their bungalow. His home was used as a safe house where Ronnie kept a rail of suits, staying there with Teddy Smith from time to time. The balding ex-flyweight Nobby Clarke was used in the long firm frauds and as a general gofer.

  How close the malevolent dwarf Royston Smith was to the Twins is a matter of conjecture. According to his not wholly reliable memoirs, he was an integral part of the Firm and the close confidant of both Twins. A pimp and a burglar, Smith had once been part of the variety act ‘Morton Fraser’s Harmonica Gang’ and could still be seen in the Double R, sitting on a donkey and singing for the punters. Away from the Krays, he wrestled as Fuzzy Kaye and at one time had a club for dwarves in Gerrard Street, Soho. For a time he also ran the Kismet Club, regarded by the Soho community as ‘bilious’. Smith claimed that in the move known as ‘noughts and crosses’ he had once cut the backside of the former boxer and fellow club owner Tony Mella, who had annoyed him. ‘I suppose his bum was all he could reach,’ said Mad Frank Fraser disparagingly. ‘I don’t know if it was true because I never saw it, but that was the story.’42

  ‘Former Kray Boss’ Tony Lambrianou earlier knew the Krays through his friendship with Frances Shea’s brother Frank. However, until shortly before Christmas 1965 he was in prison, serving three years for robbing the proprietor of a Wimpey bar, by which time he says the Krays were looking for new blood. One of his first tasks was to drive Scotch Jack Dickson to visit the escaped Frank Mitchell, then being sheltered by the Krays. His brother Chris Lambrianou became involved with the Krays through his friendship with Charlie, who was then running Raynors, a nightclub in Leicester in which the Krays had an interest. At one time he and Frank Shea had run a short-lived badger game in Paddington.

  Both had worked with Eric Mason in Blackpool and had tried to establish themselves in Birmingham protecting clubs, where it was said they had been run out of town by local interests. Tony Lambrianou also claimed he and his brother had taken over protection in both Blackpool and Liverpool, claims generally regarded with some scepticism by the local cognoscenti.

  In fact the Krays ran a relatively small area, not extending much outside the E3 postal district – Bethnal Green – and Soho, with outposts in Essex. There was no real attempt to move into the Richardson gang’s territory in South London or into West London. Nor was there any suggestion that they might even try to move in on old Millwall families such as the Bennetts. ‘They never crossed Bow Bridge’, remarked Mick Fawcett derisively. Certainly they did not dare to tangle with armed robbers such as Bertie Smalls and his North London team, who held them in contempt.43

  Even in Soho there were some people whom the Krays could not reach. These included the club owners Bernie Silver and Joe Wilkins, whose uncle Bert had been convicted of the 1936 manslaughter of Massimo Montecolombo at Wandsworth dog track in a dispute over bookmakers’ pitches.

  In September 2012, now in an East London care home, Albert Donoghue recalled:

  ‘Joe would have nothing to d
o with them. He wasn’t afraid of them and just before we were all picked up Ronnie asked Connie Whitehead and me how we felt about a kidnapping. Joe Wilkins had been telling us about his daughter doing show jumping at Hickstead, and we thought it might be in an effort to make him come round. It all came to nothing.’44

  In 1968 the Krays intended to have the Maltese club owner George Caruana killed outside a Joe Wilkins-owned nightclub on Curzon Street, just to show him how vulnerable he was.

  Up to the end of their careers the Twins’ income could be roughly divided into four sources: first, the protection racket, leaning on shopkeepers and club owners; second, poncing off other criminals – taking a share of their proceeds; third, the Krays acted as an underworld employment agency, hiring out members for a fee and taking contracts from other criminals to carry out beatings on their behalf; and fourth, there were the Long Firm and related frauds.

  Neither new nor difficult to organise, the Long Firm fraud has been one of the staple and most lucrative diets of the conman. Back in the 1920s it was estimated that as much as £4 million was cleared annually in London alone. In its simplest form, a warehouse or shop is taken by a front man who has no previous convictions. Goods, usually inexpensive items but possibly wine and spirits, are bought on credit and then sold perfectly properly through the shop. The supplier receives his or her money. More business is done with more and more suppliers until there is one big bang. A massive amount of goods are obtained on credit, knocked out at prices often below the purchase price in a great ‘liquidation sale’ – that’s where the local housewives benefited – and the premises are closed. In those days the beauty of a well organised LF was that goods were bought from the wholesalers over the telephone by a ‘blower-man’, so identification of the purchaser was unlikely. Managers of the shops knocking out the stuff were changed weekly or fortnightly, so it was difficult, if not impossible, to find out who was actually running the show. A properly run LF could be expected to realise a profit of between £100,000 and £150,000, which was then enormous money. It was sometimes possible to torch the premises, make a bogus insurance claim and double the profits. The problem with the Krays was that they lacked patience and wanted the money immediately, so the full benefits were never realised.