My Story

by Ronald Kray

  There have been so many accusations against us over the years, most of them just bloody lies. For instance, let’s take Freddie Mills. He was the former light heavyweight champion of the world and a very popular man. But he was found shot dead in his car in an alley at the back of a nightclub he owned in the Charing Cross Road. He was shot in the right eye and the coroner’s verdict was suicide. Two accusations have been made about us and Freddie Mills. First, his wife, Chrissie, never accepted it was suicide, that Freddie shot himself. She believed he was murdered and that me and Reg killed him. Second, a correspondent wrote in a Sunday newspaper that me and Freddie Mills had been lovers. Both of those things are lies.

  Me and Reg knew Freddie Mills a bit when we were kids. He was a big star, then, and he used to train at Ted Broadribb’s gym, where we used to go. We used to get the bandages for Freddie’s hands, when he was sparring, and we would help him put them on. But we were just kids to him. We never knew him much when we got older. We had a meal once in a Chinese restaurant he owned, but we never went to his club and we never had any business dealings with him. We certainly never killed him or had anything to do with his death. You have my word on that. And I certainly wasn’t involved with him in any sexual way. You have my word on that, too.

  And I am pleased to say that Nipper Read, of all people, backs us up in his book. He tells how Mrs Mills went to him and claimed Freddie had been killed by someone - and that the killers could have been me and Reg.

  Read says in his book he was happy to investigate the death of Freddie Mills. Like us - and like most people in the country - he admired Freddie. Mills was like us: he’d come from nothing. He was an ex-fairground fighter who, in 150 fights, got to the top of his profession. We admired him like we admired all fighters. Read says:

  In essence the murder theory ran as follows. The Krays had been known to take over clubs. The Krays frequented Mills’s club. There was money missing from Freddie’s estate — something like twelve thousand pounds, which was big money then. There had been an unsuccessful arson attack on his club. There was the story that some weeks before Freddie’s death small club owners who were a bit lax in paying protection were told something big was going to happen, and this would be an example to them. Freddie had obtained a gun to protect himself, and he left the club saying he was going to an appointment.

  Read says he spoke to members of our Firm, who told him, ‘No way. When the twins went to Freddie’s place they paid, they’d never nip him. They were boxers, too. He was their hero.’ He also managed to establish that Freddie’s club was never on our protection list.

  Leonard Read agreed with the verdict of the coroner. He wrote: ‘I have to look at it on the evidence and, based on that, I am sadly forced to the inescapable conclusion that he did, in fact, take his own life.’ And that’s the truth of it. We never did Freddie Mills in. And, even though I have admitted I am bisexual, there was never anything going on between me and Freddie. And I want that to be the end of it.

  Funnily enough, it was a student, a young girl called Susan Gilchrist, who seemed to understand the harm that has been done to me and Reg, particularly to him because he should be out by now. And would be were it not for others. In March 1991, Ms Gilchrist wrote a dissertation for Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic called: ‘The Kray Twins: Some observations on the power of sub-culture and aspects of tabloid journalism’. I think it is fair to say that, by the end of her research, Ms Gilchrist - whom I have never met - was very disturbed at the way Reg and I have been treated by many newspapers, many journalists and some writers. And she believes their words have added to our misery. She says: ‘The lack of serious interest in the Krays is disturbing. Irresponsible journalists take them both further and further away from freedom. A closer look at the Kray twins reveals very different men from those “leading thugs of the underworld” who regularly appear menacingly from the pages of the tabloid newspapers.’

  That, I think, says it all. I hope, for my brother’s sake, someone will listen. Honestly, he’s not the bad man many people make him out to be. Ask a little lad from Nottingham called Paul Stapleton who suffers from multiple sclerosis. It was Reg’s fund¬raising that sent that little boy to Disneyland in America. Ask the many other children and adults he’s raised money for. A lot of people say he shouldn’t be let out, but they are wrong. Reg has paid his dues. It’s time now for a little compassion. For us both.

  CHAPTER NINE: Broadmoor Legends

  Legend Unreliable story, based on oral tradition but popularly thought to have some factual basis.

  Penguin English Dictionary

  Every business has its characters, its special people. Sport does, so does show business. And so does Broadmoor. Here in Broadmoor there have been some special people, fellers who stand out from the crowd. Some of them are famous, others will have been heard of by no one outside the walls of the hospital.

  But they are all what I call the Broadmoor Legends. In sort of alphabetical order, they are …

  A - for the Axeman. Frank Mitchell, the so-called Mad Axeman. One of the biggest, strongest and yet gentlest men I’ve ever met. Six foot two, eighteen stone, Frank is one of the greatest of the Broadmoor Legends, because there has never been anyone quite like him. No prison or mental hospital could ever hold him if he didn’t want to stay there. Frank could escape from anywhere. He could do press-ups till the cows came home, often using only one hand, and he could carry a full-size billiard table on his back. Yet he was also a gentle man who used to make beautiful wooden toys for children.

  Frank wasn’t mad. The papers just called him the Mad Axeman because once, when he was on the run, he threatened someone with an axe. He had a good sense of humour. He once tied a towel round a nurse’s neck and made out that he was going to throttle him. The nurse was in a blind panic, and all he could think of to say, was: ‘Leave off, Frank. Tomorrow’s me day off!’ Frank laughed - and let him go. They said we killed Frank Mitchell, but we never did. He was one of our best friends.

  B - for Birnnie, Bob. Known as the Joker because he is always telling jokes. He makes people laugh, even in Broadmoor. He is a very good friend of mine. Bob was in the 1979 riot at the Scrubs (Wormwood Scrubs) where the screws split his head open with batons. Bob has always been a rebel but is a nice man who has always been respected in prison and Broadmoor.

  B - for the Bed-spring Swallower. A very famous con when he was at Parkhurst, and Reg knew him when he was there. He was eventually certified and sent to Broadmoor. I never knew his proper name, he was just known as the Bed-spring Swallower. This was because he was always swallowing the springs from his bed! The doctors were always having to cut him open to get them out.

  Reg tells the story of how this feller once got upset with his brother, who was on the outside. His brother had a beautiful garden, which was his pride and joy. So, to get his own back on his brother, the Bed-spring Swallower - who was in for murder, by the way - contacted the police and told them he had buried a body in his brother’s garden. It wasn’t true, of course, but the police had to check it out - and that meant digging up the entire plot! The brother was upset by this, but when the Bed-spring Swallower heard the news of the ruined garden he was pleased and he decided that all policemen were wonderful fellers!

  C - for Costello, Jimmy. Although he’s only five feet four inches tall, Jimmy is a tough little feller from Glasgow, who made headlines when he attacked Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, when they were both in Parkhurst prison. Jimmy cut him with a piece of glass from a broken coffee jar, and the wound needed eighty-four stitches. That was in 1983 and in a newspaper article in 1991, Jimmy wrote that it had made him a public hero overnight. He said: ‘I even got fan mail from America and Australia. But it also cost me the love of my fianc6e, Rae, the love of my life, because I got extra time for attacking Sutcliffe and she said she couldn’t face waiting for me any longer.’ In the same newspaper article Jimmy wrote: ‘Groups like MIND and Mencap helped me inside, but the only other people w
ho helped me were Reg and Ron Kray. They were good friends to me.’

  Jimmy is now a free man and looking after his little son, Jamie. He also tries to raise money for the mental health groups who helped him when he was inside.

  C - for Clark, Nobby. Not a well-known name on the outside, but another London feller who’s done his time in Broadmoor. He’s been a good friend to me, he’s shown loyalty and gameness. These are things which have always been import¬ant to me.

  D -for the Doctor. A pleasant feller who was in Broadmoor, who used to call himself Dr Swan. He wasn’t really a qualified doctor, but he had such an amazing knowledge of medical matters he even used to tell the doctors here what to do. It’s said that sometimes they even took his advice! A lot of the patients here are articulate and intelligent, despite what people on the outside might think. They are not savages, they are personalities in their own right.

  E - for Ernie. That’s how he was known. He did twenty- two years in Broadmoor and he’s now out. He was a good friend. When a young screw kept on having a go at him, Ernie said to the flash bastard: ‘If you keep on having a go at me I will get a bucket of scalding water and pour it over you.’ Ernie was a man of his word and would have done so. The screw knew this and got shifted to another ward.

  F - for Fraser, Frank. Better known as Mad Frankie. I never thought he was mad, not even when he was giving us a few problems when he was with the Richardson gang, south of the river. One of the most feared villains in London, Frank is a very powerfully built man who was admired because of his gameness. He is a good friend of ours and has been to see me in Broadmoor. He is one of the old school and would not grass on anyone. He was recently shot in the face, but survived, and when the police asked him who did it, he said, ‘Tutankhamun’ … and wouldn’t give any more information. Frank has spent more than half his life in prison and has attacked more screws than anyone else in the history of prisons. He did three years in Broadmoor and was then freed. To show there was never personal animosity between the Krays and Mad Frankie, Frank offered to give evidence for us during our trial. We appreciated that.

  F - for Fryer, Mad Ronnie. A good friend of mine here, when he was released from Broadmoor he had a row with his best friend and knifed him to death. He was charged with murder and sent to Brixton prison on remand, where sadly he committed suicide. He’s still spoken of well at Broadmoor.

  G - for Gibbons, Julie and Jennifer. Known as the Silent Twins. They are in the female block at Broadmoor. Two attrac¬tive girls who were sent here for arson. When they came here they spoke to no one except each other for two years, and no one could understand what they said to each other. Nowadays they do talk to some other people.

  H- for Hume, Donald. Like others here, Donald was found guilty of murder. He got a lot of publicity in the fifties after he murdered a man in Germany. He was sent to prison there and he had a tough time. After many appeals, the Germans finally agreed to him being sent to Broadmoor. I remember him saying to me once: ‘Compared to prison in Germany, this place is like Buckingham Palace.’

  J - for Joseph, Father Joseph, as he is known here. A lovely old character. He’s not really a priest, but he goes around giving everyone his blessing. He used to be a violent man but now he is very religious. He prays a lot and he listens to the problems of some of the patients here and tries to help them in his own way. He does more good than most of the padres and so-called men of God I’ve ever met inside.

  K-for Knight, ‘Bogie’. An ex-Chindit who won medals for bravery in the war. He was tortured by the Japanese and it turned his mind. He became violent and they sent him here. He’s always been well liked. He’s an old man now and in the infirmary at Broadmoor. But the nurses treat him well. They respect him. They know he was a brave man who did his duty. If it hadn’t been for those Jap bastards he would probably have been okay.

  L -for Lingford Gardiner. One of the strongest men I have ever met.“He is black; a giant of a man who became a Broadmoor legend because of his power. I once saw him lift a chair with a feller called Gus sitting on it. And Gus weighed sixteen stone!

  They say that when Lingford was arrested before they brought him here four policemen broke their truncheons on his head. I don’t know what his crime was, patients in Broadmoor don’t often discuss with each other what their crimes have been, but I do know that he was a good friend of mine for the ten years he was here. When my mother died he went to her funeral. How he found his way to Chingford cemetery I do not know, because he could not read or write. Yet when I arrived at the cemetery on that day in August 1982, in all the fuss and commotion I heard someone call out my name. I turned, and it was Lingford. That day was the last time I left the hospital until ten years later, in 1992, when I had an operation at a local hospital. It was also the last time I saw this particular Broadmoor legend.

  O - for Oberdine. The only name he was known by. A black feller, short and thick-set and built like a tank. He was terribly strong. When the police first arrested him he was in a flat in Notting Hill Gate, in London. It was only a minor charge but they knew he was a danger, so they sent a police Alsatian dog into the flat first. Oberdine got hold of the dog - and bit its throat out. The police overpowered him eventually and he was sent to Dartmoor prison. While in prison he was stabbed in the back by another con during a service in the chapel. Oberdine pulled the knife out of his back - and slashed five other cons with it. He was then sent to Broadmoor where the screws were very wary of him and did not bother him much. Finally, after three years here, he was released. He went back to West Africa, where he came from, and was later shot dead by the police.

  P - for Peterson, Mick, alias Charles Bronson. I was in Parkhurst prison with him and I saw him split open a screw’s eye with a punch. He then came to Broadmoor where he climbed up on the roof of Somerset House, smashed it up, and caused a million pounds’ worth of damage. All of the patients in the block had to be moved while the damage was repaired. Another time he picked up the governor on his shoulders and carried him to his room, where he held him hostage. Finally, they moved him back to prison and the last I heard of him some cons had done him with a knife. But Mick refused to name the men who had done him. He was always a man with a lot of principles. But Mick, like a lot of patients and prisoners, does need help. My brother remembers a time when he was walking with him at Parkhurst, just chatting, when he noticed Mick go white around his nostrils. Mick then walked away, marched straight up to a toilet door and butted the windows in. He then sat down as though greatly relieved. His moment of madness had passed. But of such moments legends are made.

  R - for Reeves, Alan. A good friend and one of the lucky ones who got away from Broadmoor. But, like a lot of patients, the Broadmoor curse seemed to follow him. Later he killed a policeman in Holland and he was in prison there.

  R - for Roza, Jack. Another one who got out of Broadmoor but never escaped the curse of the place. We knew Jack and his brother Ray who used to be a minder for Billy Hill. Jack was serving a sentence in Wandsworth, where a screw kept on having a go at him. Jack was game and would not stand for this, so he stole a thick needle from the mail bag shop where he worked. He then waited by the spyhole in his cell door, knowing that the screw would come along to check on him. Jack waited till the screw put his eye up to the spyhole - and then stabbed him right in the eye. The screw was blinded, and Jack was sent to Broadmoor. He was here three years before they let him out, but shortly after he was in a car crash. Even then he showed his bravery by crawling away from the wreckage for four miles to get help. But he finally died. A nice man and a friend of ours.

  S - for Shaw, Roy. He did three years in Broadmoor. He is a very strong, powerful fighter. While he was here he had a fight with a feller called Freddie Mills - no relation to the boxer - who, like Roy, was a very game man. The fight lasted an hour and a half before the screws broke it up. They were both badly cut and bleeding, but ended up good friends. While he was here Roy broke a screw’s jaw. After he was released he came back t
o Broadmoor to visit me a few times. A good friend.

  S - for Silvers, John. Another giant - six feet eight inches tall - and very, very strong. I first met him when I was on remand in Brixton and he was in for murder. For a while we were on the same ward at Broadmoor and I found him good company. He spent fourteen years in the punishment block, something of a record, because he kept punching screws on the chin. It was like a sport to him and he was later transferred to Park Lane hospital, to see if that would help. It is doubtful that it did.

  5 - Smith, Charlie. Fearless Charlie Smith they call him, and he is. My best friend in Broadmoor who, with luck, will be out by the time you read this. A great musician who has released a cassette of his own songs, all recorded inside his room in the hospital on his own simple recorder, and he’s raised a lot of money for charity. He’s a fighter, is Charlie, a fighter for justice. He even took the authorities to the High Court in a bid to make them release details of the whereabouts of his mother. He lost the case, but it shows the determination of the little feller. The friendship of Charlie is one of the best things that has happened in my years at Broadmoor.

  S -for Smithers, Mike. One of the bravest men in Broadmoor. An ex-boxer who attacked a screw in the punishment block - a place where the screws are God - and tried to bite his ear off.

  S - Sutcliffe, Peter. The so-called Yorkshire Ripper who will become a Broadmoor legend, sadly, because of his terrible crimes against women. I bear him no malice because he is a sick man. But I could never condone what he did; I could never accept him as a friend. In fact, we laugh at him. One morning a screw opened the door to his room and shouted out, ‘Hallo, Jack!’ You have to have a sense of humour here, though I don’t think Sutcliffe found that very funny.

  T-is for Trevor. That’s the only name he’s known by. Tall and slim with big, long, bony hands. He once strangled a man to death with his bare hands. He now takes care of the sick patients. No one is without a cigarette when Trevor is around. He has been with me for fifteen years and every week he gives my neck a massage. I can feel the strength in his hands, but somehow I know that he won’t try and hurt me. He is a kind and caring man! We all know him as Gentleman Trevor.