Krays- the Final Word Read online

  Boothby had thought about bringing an action for libel against the Sunday Mirror over the article of 12 July but, on the advice of Lord Gardiner, for the moment he had dropped the idea. Well, not quite. When the newspaper stories appeared, Boothby approached the fashionable, devious, gay, extremely powerful, morbidly obese and ultimately exposed as dishonest solicitor Arnold Goodman to act on his behalf.

  The upshot was that Boothby received a groveling apology from the Mirror and £40,000 plus his legal costs. In fact, when interviewed for The Times on 5 August, Boothby was rather more concerned about his dog than his reputation. His boxer bitch, Gigi Felicity Boothby, had disappeared and had ‘pushed the other matter right into the background’, he told a reporter. Boothby claimed he donated much of his payment to charity, but one of the ‘charities’ benefitting from his kindness was Ronnie Kray, who received £5,000.

  As for damages for Ronnie from the paper, there were none. He was advised by barrister Eric Crowther (no relation of Stanley) that he was not in the same skiff as Lord Bobby. After all, there was that five-year sentence for GBH to consider. Crowther recorded that the Twins listened politely to his advice and thanked him. A month later Ronnie Kray received an unqualified apology but no money.

  The incident did, however, ensure that newspapers were even more reticent about adversely reporting the Krays’ activities.

  Boothby had been less than frank, if not downright dishonest. Ronnie Kray used to bring him boys on a regular basis whom he would openly kiss and undress in front of him and his friends.

  One other problem, so far as the Government was concerned, was that on 17 July 1963 Lord Boothby had reported there had been a clumsy attempt to forge a cheque of his drawn on the National Commercial Bank of Scotland on the Brompton Road. The perpetrator was 17-year-old James Buckley, brother of Bobby. Buckley, who was said to have been working at a licensed club in Knightsbridge, had claimed to be his Lordship’s secretary, but the bank manager became suspicious. Three years earlier in June 1960 in the Isle of Man, James Buckley had been sentenced to one month and six strokes of the birch for housebreaking, wilful damage and demanding money with menaces. This time he received a sentence of Borstal training to go with the one he was presently serving for receiving stolen clothing. How Buckley managed to get hold of the cheque was never explained. And indeed few inquiries were made.

  Nor was it the first time Boothby had experienced trouble with boys and his possessions. He had had a lucky escape when in 1959 an unemployed 17-year-old Scottish waiter was arrested in possession of half a bottle of champagne, a gold watch and chain and a gold coin given to him, he said initially, after he had spent a weekend at Boothby’s flat. He pleaded guilty to theft and was placed on probation. Boothby had been in court to tell the magistrate that because his butler, George Goodfellow, had been away for the weekend, the boy had been doing some cooking and cleaning for him. He had left just before Sunday lunch and had taken the champagne, coins and watch with him. Boothby said:

  ‘He is one of several hundred people I have tried to help and he is only the second one to let me down. I was very reluctant to bring the charge. I would like to say in mitigation that he is very young and I think probably the temptation was too great.’

  The magistrate agreed with him, complaining that thieving young boys, who thought they could get away with anything they wanted, were the bane of his professional life. Later the boy would tell Sir John Junor, then editor of the Sunday Express, that Boothby had indeed given him the items and had also taken him to the fashionable Dean Street restaurant, Leoni’s Quo Vadis.86

  Nor were the Twins being wholly frank with Los Angeles lawyer Harrison W. Hertzberg when they told him they had received £100,000 in libel damages over the affair. Hertzberg had been duly impressed.

  The Twins were now being pursued by Francis Wyndham of the Sunday Times, who wanted their story. An article by Chester Lewis had already appeared in the newspaper entitled ‘The Charitable World of the Brothers Kray’, mocking the Twins and including a photograph of their car, a Ford Galaxy, outside their ‘ancestral home’:

  ‘In the clannish milieu of the East End there are many others who have felt the advantage of being friendly with the Krays. As philanthropic fund-raisers their background may not be entirely conventional, but no one can deny their remarkable persuasive powers.’

  Lewis also quoted the then Mayor of Bethnal Green, Robert Hare, who said of them, ‘They were – and are – nice, able local boys,’ adding that local old people such as the Good Companions Club had received a van load of gifts from them.87

  Others ungraciously point out that the only presents and money received from the Krays were the proceeds of Long Firm frauds or money they had ponced off other criminals.

  Wyndham wanted to write an article about their careers and background, but hardly endeared himself to them when he spelled their name ‘Cray’ in correspondence.88

  Another immediate result of the Boothby problem was that when on 16 October 1964 Ronnie Kray flew to New York, he was refused admission to the United States and his visa was stamped ‘Invalidated’. He was not pleased. He had intended to go to the Joey Giardello vs. Reuben Carter fight for the Middleweight title in December. Ronnie was furious and blamed Boothby. The peer’s manservant Goodfellow, wrote to him from the Miramar Beach Hotel, Barbados, saying that he had ‘spoken to LB and he says no man could have done more for you than he could have done’. According to Goodfellow, Boothby had also made a statement to Area Chief Superintendent Fred Gerrard:

  ‘… in the course of which he said he found you [Ronnie Kray] perfectly straightforward in any dealings he had had with you and that he firmly believed you were now successfully engaged in business which was absolutely legitimate.’

  He also pointed out that Boothby had obtained an apology from the editor of the Daily Express.

  But, whether he liked it or not, Boothby was still there to be leaned on when necessary and he would try to prove his worth to the Twins the following year. One reason for this was that a small suitcase of documents which showed Boothby had been far closer to Ronnie than he cared to admit publicly had been left with Violet Kray. This was used as a stick and carrot with which to goad his Lordship into actions which he must have lived to regret.89

  The questions put by the Labour MP Marcus Lipton resulted in the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Joseph Simpson deciding that the Krays should not go unchecked. Within a fortnight his instructions became quite specific and on 27 July, Gerrard went to see Nipper Read at the Commercial Road police station and ordered him to put a team together to ‘have a go at the Krays’, with explicit instructions to investigate allegations of extortion from club owners. Was this a problem? asked Gerrard, meaning quite specifically, did the Krays have anything on him. Read angrily replied, ‘No, of course not’.

  And so began a frustrating three months which would end in humiliation for the police.

  First, Read found that since the abortive prosecutions of Charlie and Ronnie for loitering and Reggie for housebreaking, no one in the CID had seriously tried to tackle the Krays. Read began to realise that the Krays always seemed to be forewarned:

  ‘If ever there was a shooting and the overwhelming level of opinion amongst detectives was that this was down to the Krays, the attitude had been that you went along to see them first and they said, “No, we’ve got an alibi.” Then you would go out and look for the evidence. It should have been the other way round.’90

  Criminals can normally sniff out a policeman at twenty yards, but Read had two advantages. First, he did not look like a police officer, and second, he was not known in the East End. So he went unnoticed in the bar of the Grave Maurice reading the Evening News and wearing a cap and raincoat when Ronnie went there to meet the television journalist Michael Barrett. Colin ‘Dukey’ Osborne, whose hand was in his pocket as if he was carrying a gun, had preceded Ron, checking out the lavato
ries in the pub before giving him the nod. Read recalled:

  ‘For a moment I could not believe what I saw. His [Ronnie’s] hair was smartly cut and gleaming and his gold-rimmed spectacles firmly in place. He was wearing a light camel coat which almost reached his ankles, the belt tied in a casual knot at the waist. For all the world he looked like something out of the Capone era.’91

  Even though Barrett was wearing a neck brace at the time, Osborne and Ronnie’s other minder did everything but frisk him. At the end of the interview Osborne again ‘swept the street’ and Ronnie hurried to the waiting car.

  So began a disappointing time for Read and his superiors. He was given a squad with ten Aides to CID. He was also allowed to pick a Detective Constable for himself, Trevor Lloyd-Hughes. A visit to Jack Spot, now down on his luck and away from the West End, produced nothing. Nor did a story that an Italian restaurant near the British Museum was paying protection. There were repeated stories that people had been brought before a court presided over by Ronnie and sentenced to a buttock-slashing – Ronnie commenting, ‘Every time he sits down he’ll remember us’ – but a trawl of local hospitals produced nothing. At the time Read, a stranger to the area, did not know of the good Dr Blasker and no one thought to tell him.

  There was one unexpected bonus. ‘Dukey’ Osborne may indeed have been carrying a gun the evening that Read visited in the Grave Maurice. His subsequent arrest and conviction for possessing firearms came about in an odd way. A man had been brought to Bethnal Green police station after his son had been found in possession of a stolen radio. He told the boy he had to tell the officers where he’d found it. He did so, but when his father left the room the boy said, ‘Well, he can have a go at me over a poxy wireless but he don’t say nothing about that lodger in our house and all the guns under his bed’. The lodger in question was Osborne, who received seven years in February 1965.

  Meanwhile the Twins showed their contempt for the whole investigation by visiting Harrods Zoo and purchasing two pythons, which they named Gerrard and Read. They were proudly photographed with their new pets and told reporters:

  ‘[They] don’t give us no trouble; most of the time they’re asleep. They’re deaf and their sight’s not too good either. They just sense vibrations with their tongues.’92

  BW Conversation with JM, 14 April 1995.

  Nat. Arch. MEPO 2/10937 [Closed].

  Kate Kray says she was told on good authority that in fact it was Ronnie who had shot Teddy Berry. The Twins: Free at Last, p.8.

  Nat. Arch. PREM11/4698; The Times, 1 August 1964.

  Conversation with JM 25 January 2019.

  John Pearson, Notorious; D.R.Thorpe, Supermac, The Life of Harold Macmillan.

  Nat. Arch. LO 2/708.

  Rees-Davies had been involved in an attempt to buy off the exceptionally beautiful club hostess Christine Keeler to stop her giving details of her affair with MP John Profumo. He offered £500 and thought he had been successful but unfortunately wires were crossed and she had wanted £5,000. As a result Rees-Davies was adversely named in the subsequent Denning Inquiry into the affair. His ‘punishment’ was that his application to become a Queen’s Counsel, something normally immediately granted to a barrister MP, was delayed for several years.

  PREM 11/4689

  Conversation with JM, 26 January 2009.

  The Times, 28 July 1959.

  ‘The Charitable Life of the Brothers Kray’, Sunday Times, 9 August 1964.

  Nat. Arch. MEPO 2/10763.

  Nat. Arch. MEPO 2/10763.

  Leonard Read, Nipper, p. 89.

  ibid pp. 92-3.

  Sunday Times, 28 December 1969.

  Chapter 7

  A Brief Look at the

  Twins’ Lawyers

  Criminals are not always the most loyal of clients. They can flit from solicitor to solicitor on a whim. Similarly, for a time, the Krays chopped and changed their briefs.

  When the Twins found themselves in trouble they went first to the highly respected, silver haired Welshman T.V. ‘Tommy’ Edwards who effectively ruled Thames Magistrates’ court. Mickey Bailey remembered him:

  ‘Old Tommy Edwards was a right old gentleman who got me out of trouble more times than I care to remember and I stuck with him for a few years and then I went to Ellis Lincoln, who everybody used in those days. I think old Tommy Edwards must have been too straight for the Twins.’93

  Later, in the early 1960s, they moved their criminal business to Bernie Perkoff. Perkoff was another East End solicitor whose father’s pub The Windmill had once been wrecked by Italian gangsters looking for Jack Spot. After Perkoff, the Twins graduated to Ellis Lincoln and his offices in Holborn.

  Lincoln was the doyen of the solicitors of the 1950s and early 1960s who specialised in crime. Many of the highest class of criminal, including some of the Great Train Robbers, passed through his hands, as did their cash. Reputed to launder money on their behalf, he cultivated a not wholly unjustified reputation for being able to bribe the police, and a wholly unjustified one of also being able to do the same with magistrates and judges.

  The Krays turned to Lincoln in 1960. By the spring of that year the Twins, and to a lesser extent Charlie, were so much in the local police’s sights that Lincoln wrote to the Metropolitan Commissioner on 28 April complaining of undue surveillance and denying that they were involved in any criminal activities. The letter brought an angry internal memo on 6 May from the detective Tommy Butler saying the Twins were directing protection to:

  ‘Club owners, café proprietors, billiard hall operators, publicans and motor car dealers. That they will spread their operations to other districts in due course may be taken for granted.’

  Butler also observed that the Lincoln letter was a common tactic employed by what he considered to be the less reputable solicitors of the time, and he compiled a list of those who made use of it. Apart from Lincoln, the list included a man who Butler described as ‘the oily Manny Fryde’.

  Lincoln, who had had troubles early in his career when he was suspended for five years in 1940, was finally struck off in 1966 over a failure to keep proper accounts and to supervise a clerk adequately. He sold his practice for which he received, he said, £122 to settle an electricity bill, and became a managing clerk before opening a ‘law consultancy’ in Holborn, passing a good deal of work to a local solicitor. In May 1971 he failed in an application to have his name restored to the Rolls.94

  In the summer of 1961 the Twins were boating on the lake at Victoria Park when they noticed they were being watched by the police. Somehow they managed to telephone Robert Hare (the ex-Mayor of Hackney) and Father David Evans, who came down, cassock flying, to be with the lads until the police dispersed. Rumours had been rife that the police were ‘gunning’ for the Krays, and intended to charge Ronnie with ‘indecency or some homosexual offence so as to humiliate him’. However it was not until 1963 that the Mayfair firm of T.J. James & Wheater were instructed to write on the Twins’ behalf. Their letter concluded, ‘We hope you will investigate this complaint and cause this victimisation to cease’. It was supported by letters from Evans and Hare. Both were full of praise for the family. The priest wrote:

  ‘From what I know of the family they are carrying on a legitimate business and from what I have seen and heard it is my opinion that the police are victimising them.’

  And from Hare:

  ‘I have known the Kray brothers for the past three years and to the best of my knowledge and belief they are carrying on respectable occupations and I know they do a good deal for charity.’

  An inquiry resulted. As for the boating incident, there was nothing in any police pocket books or diaries to suggest officers had been keeping observation in Victoria Park, and so much time had passed that it was now impossible to confirm this story.

  As for respectability, the police pointed out that Ronnie had been fined £50 for running gambling at Esmeralda’s Barn, where
croupiers at chemin de fer parties were said to be paid £٥٠٠ a week. The local police believed the Krays’ empire was spreading. They were thought to have a financial interest in or ran protection rackets not only at East End venues but also further afield in places like Earl’s Court.

  As for their charity work, on 9 November 1961, the Twins had donated a couple of prizes for a boxing tournament run by ex-Mayor Hare. They first dipped their toes in the charitable waters when in the summer of 1961 they had purchased £200 worth of tickets for a Repton Amateur boxing show in aid of the British Empire Cancer Campaign Appeal. Ronnie donated four trophies. Their absence at a later show resulted in much lower takings.

  Local shopkeepers had been obliged to buy advertising space in a programme for a show at the Kentucky for the Mile End Hospital. The charity committee was a mixed affair. There was the Reverend John Foster of St James, Bethnal Green; Dr Morris Blasker; Daniel Farson, who, the police noted, was a suspected homosexual and had convictions for drunkenness. The secretary was the disbarred Stanley Crowther and the treasurer Benjamin Lipner, the decorator of the Regency.

  Meanwhile Detective Chief Inspector Bob Halliday, of City Road Police Station, ordered that although this was probably nothing more than an attempt to provide a defence in the event of any future arrest. ‘renewed attention and closer surveillance will be maintained.’

  T.J. James and Wheater, the firm of solicitors who wrote the letter after the Victoria Park incident, were considered suspect by the police. Managing clerk Brian Field and sole partner John D. Wheater were later arrested and imprisoned for their roles in the Great Train Robbery.95