Krays- the Final Word Read online

  Esmeralda’s Barn

  The East London Advertiser of 28 September 1962 was delighted:

  ‘Local businessmen Reggie and Ronnie Kray of the Kentucky Club, Mile End Road seem to have a winner with their latest venture the Barn Twist Club, opened just recently in Wilton Place, Knightsbridge. Attractively decorated, the club is open seven days a week from 8 p.m. until two in the morning.’

  By the time the Krays came to take it over, Esmeralda’s Barn, the once fashionable gaming club in Wilton Place, Knightsbridge, was in decline. Once the haunt of Guards’ officers, it had had a chequered history. Originally it was run by society girl, the glamorous Esmeralda, sometimes Esmé, Noel-Smith but in February 1955 she was found accidentally gassed on her bed in a flat over a Knightsbridge fashion shop, with a 21-year-old hostess from another of her clubs. She never recovered consciousness.

  At one time, under the protection of Billy Hill, the club had also been run by the 57-year-old Horace ‘Hod’ Dibden, sometimes known as Dibbins or Dibdin, an expert on English antiques and furniture. The girl whom the officers next came to see was the new Galatea of the middle-aged Dibden, the nightclub queen Patsy Morgan-Dibden, known as Sweetie.

  After Patsy ran away from her Pygmalion, the club had lost some of its cachet and was taken over by Stefan de Fay, who at various times had managed Oddenino’s Imperial restaurant in Regent Street, was the author of Profitable Bar Management, and who had also appeared on the popular Saturday night television show Café Continental.

  By the beginning of the 1960s there was a lesbian club, the Cellar Club, in the basement, a restaurant on the ground floor and a casino above it. On one of the walls was an Annigoni mural.

  There are various tales relating how the Krays acquired the Barn. Part of Kray mythology is that the property developer and slum landlord Peter Rachman was in thrall to the Krays. As a sideline to his property empire, Rachman built up a chain of gambling clubs and in 1956 opened El Condor nightclub in Wardour Street, Soho, under the management of another of his protégés, Raymond Nash of the Lebanese gangster family. For a time El Condor became the in-place. Princess Margaret was seen there and regulars included both the Duke of Kent and the rogue peer Lord Tony Moynihan.

  One story is that a fight in the Latin Quarter nightclub, also in Wardour Street, where Rachman was holding a party, led to him giving Ronnie Kray a lift back to his home in Vallance Road. It led to Rachman agreeing to pay the Krays £5,000 to avoid trouble in Notting Hill, where he was leaning on recalcitrant tenants.

  Another of the stories is that Rachman had the one-time nightclub hostess, now his girlfriend, Mandy Rice-Davies, with him in the bar of El Condor after it became La Discotheque. One evening Ronnie asked her to get him a drink, and when she said she did not work there, grabbed her wrist. She, not knowing who he was, slapped him. The slap cost Rachman a further £5,000 to avoid the otherwise inevitable trouble.62

  Yet another version is that to get the Twins off his back Rachman set up their takeover of Esmeralda’s Barn. However, it is hard to believe Rachman caved in so easily, as he had three of the most uncompromising men in the business working for him. The senior of these was the former heavyweight wrestling champion Bert Assirati, who came from Islington. Assirati had been part of a music hall balancing act, Mello and Nello, and had close links to the old Italian families. He was a man who liked inflicting pain, and many wrestlers of the period were unwilling to go in the ring with him.

  The second employee was another wrestler, the joker Peter Rann, who practised his falls on the concrete in Hyde Park. On remand in prison, when Rann was asked to break a cellmate’s leg so the man could be moved to the hospital wing, he obliged by jumping on it from the top bunk.

  The third was the half-mad and completely out-of-control Norbert Rondel who, although German, wrestled as the Polish Eagle. Known in the wrestling game as Mad Fred, he had spent long periods in various mental hospitals from which he often escaped. On one occasion, late for a judo class, Rondel apologised and told his sensei he had just killed a man in Tottenham Court Road for staring at him. He had knocked the man’s head off and it had rolled across the pavement. Further inquiries showed he had attacked a tailor’s dummy. Gerry Parker thought it most unlikely the Krays could get at Rachman because they were frightened of his mad minder. ‘Rondel would go down Vallance Road and they would pay to have him go away’.63

  However, Leslie Payne says it was he who introduced them to the club after de Fay had said he wanted £1,000 for his shares in the Hotel Organisation Ltd, the company which owned the Barn. He says that Peter Rachman initially offered to put up the money but backed out when the racketeer realised how closely the Krays were to be involved. Payne claims he put the purchase price up himself. Other versions include Billy Hill encouraging the Twins in order to get them out of the West End, where he had gambling interests. In mythology the club was purchased following a one-hour meeting with de Fay, but according to Payne’s statement to the police there were a number of meetings with a Commander Richard Diamond and Alf Mancini, one of the shrewdest of gaming operators at the time. The first meeting was in the Cellar Club at which Mancini had a major row with Charlie Kray, and the second at Diamond’s flat at 15 Hyde Park Mansions, near Hyde Park Corner. Payne thought the price was about £1,750 and was paid at a third meeting.64

  Yet another version is that the purchase was through Ronnie’s boyfriend, the jockey-sized Bobby Buckley, described by the police as ‘a dangerous man of effeminate appearance… wears his hair long on occasions’ and by writer Min Scala as, ‘A pretty leprechaun of an Irish boy with a slight stammer and hard as nails.’65 Buckley was also a friend of Leslie Payne and had been a croupier at Esmeralda’s Barn.

  According to Payne, Ronnie spent an inordinate amount of time with, and money on, Buckley, and the Twins came to blows after Reggie had had enough, saying ‘He’s only a boy,’ but Ronnie replied, ‘Yes, but he’s my boy’. A fight ensued and they had to be separated. Buckley was also the lover of gambler David Litvinoff, the half-brother of the novelist Emmanuel and the historian Barnet. Litvinoff had been the dialogue coach for James Fox in the 1970 film Performance and was said to have contributed to the script, which was loosely based on the Krays. He had also introduced Buckley to Ronnie Kray.

  Another story is that de Fay sold his shares on the basis he would continue as manager, but he never set foot in the place again.

  It was Litvinoff who was said to have had a sword, or something like it, rammed down his throat by Ronnie over an unpaid gambling debt. Some sort of assault did take place, but there is no evidence Ronnie was directly responsible. The Krays were never averse to having violence attributed to them – for example the shooting of Teddy Berry – particularly when in extremis they could show they were not responsible. When Nipper Read, in his first investigation into the Krays, interviewed Litvinoff, he declined to tell him anything. Later Litvinoff would claim that he was in a café by Earl’s Court tube station when a man walked up, said, ‘Ronnie says hello, and slashed him across the mouth. The writer Min Sala claims the Krays sent some boys round to Litvinoff’s Kensington flat, tied him to a chair and razor cut the corners of his mouth.66

  With the Barn came the sixth Earl of Effingham whom the Twins used as their gofer. It was always desirable for criminals to have an MP or other public figure to ask questions on their behalf and to bring a façade of respectability to operations. For example, Billy Hill had the licence of the Cabinet Club in the name of the Trade Union leader and Labour MP Captain Mark Hewitson, while the Richardsons used Sir Noel Dryden MP in a similar capacity. Effingham fitted that purpose nicely for the Krays.

  Mowbray Howard, Lord Effingham, a direct descendant of the man who commanded the fleet which sank the Armada in 1588 and was ennobled for his efforts, had led a louche life. His family motto was ‘Virtue is worth a thousand shields’, but he rarely lived up to it. He had been engaged for six weeks in 1929 to K
athleen, the daughter of Ma Meyrick, the celebrated nightclub owner, but this had ended when she gave evidence against him following an eighty-man brawl outside the 43 Club in Gerrard Street. On this occasion he was bound over to keep the peace. Two years later a conviction for drunkenness followed and in October 1932 he was extremely lucky to avoid a conviction for manslaughter when lay magistrates refused to commit him for trial after his car had hit a pedestrian. A coroner’s jury had already returned a verdict of unlawful killing. In 1934 he bounced a cheque and left the country to work in Canada as a goose farmer, buffalo tender and garage hand. In his absence he was declared bankrupt to the tune of £195. It was not until 1958 that he was discharged after paying his creditors in full.

  Described in an MI5 file as ‘a weakling and fond of drink’, in 1938 and back in England he married the ‘worst kind of adventuress’, the Hungarian-born Manci Gertler, who was working for her lover, the wealthy arms dealer Eduard Stanislav Weisblatt, thought to be an agent of OGPU, the forerunner of the KGB.

  Weisblatt reportedly paid Effingham £500 (around £20,000 in today’s currency) to marry Gertler, and promised him a retainer of the equivalent of £1,000 a week. During the Second World War she was suspected of spying on behalf of Weisblatt, and in 1941 was interned for three months under the Defence of the Realm Act. Protected from deportation by her marriage to Effingham, on her release she remained in England until she divorced his Lordship on grounds of adultery in 1945.67

  Effingham continued to lead his louche life working intermittently as a barman, running a second-hand bookshop and as a haberdasher’s assistant. Shortly before he met the Krays he was involved in a business importing electric tin openers. He thought the Twins ‘a couple of quiet and rather pleasant chaps. Perhaps a little rough as far as education went.’ They continually referred to him as ‘Effing’ Effingham and, paying him £7 a week to supplement his £4.14.6d-a-day House of Lords attendance allowance, effectively used him as a tea boy when he was not on parade meeting and greeting minor celebrities at the club or at Reggie Kray’s wrestling promotions in the East End.

  Just as it had been fashionable to visit Charlie Brown’s East End pub before the war, so for a time it was now fashionable to mix with these apparently slightly dangerous figures. Gerry Parker recalled:

  ‘I was invited to the opening night. All black ties. Fellow on the door Big Patsy [Connolly], so big his suit didn’t fit. They thought all you had to do was open a club and take the money.’68

  However the Guards officers and their friends soon discovered that their gambling debts were not treated in such a gentlemanly way as under previous management. Late payers and knockers (someone who deliberately refuses to pay) could be dealt with severely.

  After a redecoration – ‘They’ve turned the place into a fucking Maltese restaurant’, said Litvinoff – at first Alf Mancini and Leslie Payne ran the club successfully, making around £800 a week for each of the Twins. Unfortunately Ronnie took more and more interest in being there, sometimes bringing his parents, who did not blend well with the upper class atmosphere. Nor for that matter did Charlie and Reggie, who wore the height of gangster chic light blue mohair suits with white shirts and blue bow ties. At least Ronnie wore a dinner jacket.

  Reggie Kray’s appeal against his conviction for demanding money from Murray Podro dragged on and he was out on bail on the streets for nearly a year before the application for leave to appeal was heard and dismissed on 26 July 1960.69 He was sent back to prison and, disastrously, his twin was left running Esmeralda’s Barn. If Ronnie had stayed away from the day-to-day running of the club, contenting himself with being a meeter and greeter, it would have provided an enormous income that would have greatly added to the profits, but unfortunately he allowed long lines of credit to punters who were incapable of settling their debts. When they failed to pay he began to threaten them.

  One story is that the painter Francis Bacon, whom he admired, and indeed with whom he claimed to have had a short-lived affair – something denied by Bacon – had his gambling debt wiped out.

  Another habitué was the painter and gambler Lucian Freud who, shortly before his death, told the newspapers he had owed the Krays half a million pounds over his gambling habit. He had once cancelled a show because they would demand more money if they saw what he was getting from his paintings. Lord Rothschild remembered the painter telling him one day, ‘I’m in trouble with pressing debts to the Kray brothers. If I don’t give them £1,000, they’ll cut my hand off.’70 Rothschild:

  ‘I said I’d loan him the money on two conditions. First, that he never ask me for a loan again; and, second, that he didn’t pay me back the money. He accepted the conditions, but ten days later a large envelope came through my letter box with £1,000 in cash and a note saying thanks. And he never asked me again.’71

  David Litvinoff treated the club as something of a private bank, using only some of the money he won there to settle his losses. Finally he settled his £3,000 debt by handing over the lease of his flat in Ashburn Gardens, where Ronnie took up residence with him and Bobbie Buckley.

  Alf Mancini began begging Ronnie to stay away from Esmeralda’s, even offering him £1,000, but he refused, so Mancini left to set up his own club in Curzon Street. Now Pauline Wallace, a former club owner herself, was brought in to run the tables along with Joe Dagel. This did not prove satisfactory. They were sacked and Uncle Alfie Kray took over. Stanley Crowther recalled having to get the wages for LF workers from him at the club. On 12 March 1962 Ronnie was fined £50 at Marylebone Magistrates’ Court for unlawful gaming.

  Pauline Wallace nevertheless continued to run Kray-protected chemin de fer parties at her flat in Hertford Street off Park Lane. Always involved in greyhound racing, she owned the winner of the Irish Derby and later went to Miami and became heavily engaged in greyhound racing there. Her involvement with the Krays is a good example of the diametrically opposed versions of events concerning them. In Me and My Brothers Charlie tells a touching story of how the Twins helped to tide her over a rough patch and declined to take any repayments. Nevertheless she insisted, and so kindly Billy Exley went every week to collect the money. However, Tony Lambrianou says that, weary of paying protection, she made a lump sum payment and vanished from the scene.72

  It was at Esmeralda’s that the jewel thief ‘Little’ Lennie Hamilton lost his hair. He had been in the Regal in Mile End with Pat Connolly and a young man and his girlfriend when some people from south London sent over drinks. Hamilton asked the girl, ‘What do you want, love?’ The boyfriend took offence and produced a razor. Connolly told him to put it away and the man then invited Hamilton to meet him in the lavatory. Hamilton agreed, assuming the man would apologise, but when instead he tried to cut him, Hamilton broke his nose, not realizing he was Buller Ward’s son, Bonar.

  Some days later Hamilton’s flatmate Andy Paul, who was then working as a doorman at Esmeralda’s, came back at 1 a.m. with the message that he was to ring Ronnie. Instead, foolishly, Hamilton took a taxi to the club, where he met Ronnie Kray, Bobby Buckley, Leslie Payne and Limehouse Willey. Hamilton remembered:

  ‘All the gambling tables were closed down and there were seven or eight people standing on either side. They told me to go in the kitchen and when I opened the door Ronnie Kray was standing opposite. He said, “Nothing to worry about, Lenny.” He had a big armchair next to the cooker and he invited me to sit down, asking, “What’s going on Lenny? You caused a bit of trouble in the Regal. We get protection money from them.”’

  He was then told he could go, but as he stood to leave Ronnie told two men to get hold of him. Ronnie picked up a piece of steel used for sharpening knives, which he had had pre-heated:

  ‘The first one Ronnie picked up he dropped because it was so hot, so he went and got an oven glove. Then he picked one up and came over to me, to frighten me, I imagined. He singed my black curly hair. I pissed myself. I was terrified. Next he star
ted setting fire to my suit that I only had made two weeks before. Then he went back and got another hot poker and dabbed it on my cheeks and held it across my eyebrows and burnt my eyebrows off. I’m half-blind in this eye because of it. Then he went back and got another poker and, as he came back, he said, “Now I’m going to burn your eyes out,” and he really meant it. As he came towards me, Limehouse Willey called out from the crowd, “No Ron, don’t do that!” Ronnie switched, he turned and walked away.’73

  Hamilton took the cab which had brought him to Esmeralda’s back to his friend Harry Abrahams who, along with Donoghue, went to see the Twins the next day for an explanation. George Cornell dropped £200 over to Abrahams with instructions to look after Hamilton and Charlie Kray gave him £100 with instructions not to tell the Twins. Finally the good Dr Blasker came and patched him up.

  According to one witness, Bobbie Buckley was so sickened he left the room, but Mad Teddy Smith and Leslie Payne were made of sterner stuff. Hamilton, under treatment at Moorfields Eye Hospital for some years, was fortunate not to completely lose the sight in his eye. Nevertheless, despite everything, he remained with the Firm.

  Ron Kray has a rather more romantic version of why Hamilton was burned – unless there were two men to whom he set fire in Esmeralda’s. He claimed that a friend in the East End had come to the Twins asking for vengeance (à la Godfather) because Hamilton (whom he does not name) had broken the nose of the man’s daughter because she wouldn’t have sex with him.74

  According to Leslie Payne, Hamilton did go to the police, who arranged for the Krays to organise a meeting, telling him to be at the same pub at the same time. When Hamilton walked in and found the Krays with the officers, he knew that was that. In the end, Payne says, he was given some money by the Twins and more money went to the police. Whichever is the real version, the Kray family was righteously indignant that Hamilton made a handsome profit after the incident from two books and various television interviews.