Inside the Firm - The Untold Story of The Krays' Reign of Terror

by Lambrianou, Tony

  We’re not like that. Chris was released, but told he would be seeing the police again and was to remember about the wheels of justice.

  I said, ‘I think they’ll be back.’

  They dragged us in for questioning again several weeks later when they raided the Harts Hotel in Birmingham. Chris, Nicky and I were staying there at the time they arrived – Mooney, Chief Inspector Frank Cater … the gangbusters. They took Nicky and me to Walsall police station on the pretext of questioning us over the Cannock Chase murder. A little girl called Christine Derby had been killed in the area, and the police used this case as an opportunity to arrest us again. I was told, ‘Don’t worry, Tony, it’s nothing to do with Cannock Chase.’

  They pulled the hotel owner in too, which was amusing, because he had absolutely no connection with us. He thought we were in the Mafia. Again, Chris was taken to London to Tintagel House; and again, we were released.

  The morning of 11 September 1968 started out just like any other day. My wife Pat used to bring me in the papers and ham or cheese rolls from Pellicci’s, and then I’d get my little daughter ready to take to school. Karen was now six. I had enrolled her in a Catholic school in Bollo Road, Bethnal Green, which was due to a little bit of my mother’s religious influence staying with me, and she was doing well there. She was a lovely little girl, and I looked forward to taking her out every day.

  On this particular morning, Pat said to me, ‘There are two men sitting outside in a taxi. The milkman seems to have changed, and there are two dustmen sweeping the road.’

  I looked out the window, but I took no notice…. The next thing I knew, the door was coming in and ten policemen were round my bed telling me not to move my arms otherwise I’d get my head blown off. I was to draw out one arm at a time very slowly and get dressed. Then I was going to be interviewed by Nipper Read.

  I did what they told me. I was taken downstairs and out on to the pavement, where I saw all the policemen milling about, and all the cars. The road was sealed off.

  I was taken to Tintagel House, and brought to an upper floor in a lift. In the foyer of this floor I saw huge, blown-up photographs of all of us, everywhere. Obviously we were a major inquiry.

  I looked round at a side office and saw Nipper Read, Frank Cater and John du Rose, head of the Murder Squad, staring out at me. I was called into the office and told this: ‘We’re going to ask you five questions. If you don’t come up with the right answers, you’ll be taken from here and charged with the murder of Jack The Hat McVitie.’

  When was the last time I saw him alive? Did I take him to a party? Did I see anything happen to him at the party? Did I see the Kray twins do anything with him at the party? Did I help to dispose of anything after the party?

  I answered simply, ‘I would like to see my solicitor.’

  I was told I would be seeing the solicitor Ralph Hyams at West End Central police station.

  Chris and Ronnie Bender were there when I arrived, and Ralph Hyams told me that when any questions were put to me I was to answer, ‘I’ve got nothing to say at this moment in time.’

  Then, with Chris and Ronnie Bender, I was charged with the murder of Jack The Hat. I was taken to Bow Street, where I was held overnight to appear in court in the morning. After a two-minute hearing, I was remanded in custody for a week.

  I thought, ‘Something’s gone badly wrong here.’ Up to this point, I couldn’t see them having a case against us.

  What had gone wrong was that members of the firm, and other witnesses, were talking to the police. I wouldn’t see freedom again for fifteen years.

  I never slagged the police off for that. They were doing a job. They never abused or tried to verbal or heavy-handle me. I never thought Nipper Read was a bad man. He saw the firm as a challenge, and his orders were: ‘Your job is to nick ’em.’ He was leading an investigation, and he said himself he had to go into the gutter to get a case against us. He had to go into some very dirty waters, bargain with some very slimy characters, to produce the grasses. But if the police are out to get convictions, you’ve got to see it from their side. If I was in the same position, perhaps I’d do exactly the same thing. Nipper was a man with a mission. I don’t think he had it in for us personally. Many years later, I sent him a letter from Maidstone prison and he duly replied, saying he would back any parole application I might make.

  Mooney hated the Krays, pure and simple, and he would go in any back door he could find to get something on them. It was Mooney who got to the barmaid in the Blind Beggar and persuaded her to give evidence in the George Cornell case.

  Cater and du Rose were more aloof. Du Rose was called One Day Johnny because of the speed of his murder inquiries. He never said anything, never voiced an opinion, but he was obviously the guv’nor. I think his attitude towards the way they were building the case against us was, ‘It’s not the way I’d want to do it, but it’s the way it’s gotta be.’ Cater was a key officer in many of the sixties’ major trials, including the Richardsons’, and he had very few personal dealings with us. He was up at the top, overseeing.

  As much as I have disliked law and order and what it’s done for me, which is virtually fuck all, I have always realised you have to have it.

  People have suggested that the twins had the police in their pockets. I think our arrests and subsequent convictions put the lie to that. But the concept of the bent copper is not merely a figment of the criminal’s imagination. I’ve seen corruption, and I’ve heard of it happening at every level of the police force. I’m not saying for one moment it’s all bent, but there are some very corrupt elements.

  For instance, in 1967 a friend of mine was arrested in the East End for tying up a lorry driver and stealing his load. Two police officers approached his brother and said that, in return for a certain sum, my friend would not be recognised on the ID parade. The police officers took the money, straightened out the lorry driver, held the ID which went as promised, and told the brother: ‘That just cost you a grand, and if he so much as pisses on the street around here again, we’ll fit him up. Now get him out of here.’

  At the other end of the scale, I don’t like the rotten core within Scotland Yard. That’s a firm within a firm, a law unto itself. There’s no judge and jury there: they judge and jury themselves, although they sometimes come to grief. Jimmy Humphries, in the porn trials of the seventies, brought half of Scotland Yard down with him. And at least one of the police officers who investigated the Luton Post Office robbery was himself convicted and sentenced to imprisonment on corruption charges.

  Other than the cases which are publicly proven, I have heard enough to be sure that a percentage of high-ranking policemen take their cut from major crimes. There was a case involving safety deposit vaults, where the defendants were accused of stealing vast amounts of valuables. Two of the men involved in the robbery said to me: ‘I honestly don’t remember nicking half of that. Where did it go …?’ Who knows what goes missing out of these places and whose pockets it goes into? I know of one top cop who is being investigated at the moment, after being filmed taking bribes.

  It would be impossible to guess at the extent of criminal conspiracy within the police, since much of it remains uncovered, but there are certainly special squads of officers who are above the law. How can the law investigate the law?

  Even worse, how can criminal investigate criminal? Now we’ve entered the era of the supergrass, that’s exactly what’s happening. When they are dealing with professional criminals, some police officers resort to ‘professional tactics’. It doesn’t really matter how they get you as long as you’re gone, off the streets. Say they think a certain firm is active but taking great care to avoid being nicked. The police will seek the help of a grass. They might pull various people in on suss – suspicion – to look for the weak link.

  If the case is not there to begin with, then the police have got to drag the gutters for the evidence to produce one, and I believe that convictions based on the word of a grass
are very, very unsafe. So many people recently have been sentenced to long terms of imprisonment but at a later stage have successfully remade their cases to the appeal courts because of the unreliability of the witnesses. Supergrasses have been responsible for putting large numbers of men away. What makes anybody believe for an instant that their evidence is safe? Grasses are criminals who have been involved to begin with, and can then be persuaded to say anything which will have their former colleagues put away. Their word is no more, and probably less, reliable than that of the men they have condemned, and that’s regarded as enough to convict you.

  In the Luton Post Office case three men were sentenced to life imprisonment on the word of a supergrass, and it took twelve years to prove that they were innocent men. A man called Jimmy Saunders walked free after being convicted as one of the Wembley Bank Robbers through the evidence of the supergrass Bertie Smalls. If society doesn’t trust a gang of criminals, why trust the word of one of them? The law is treading on dangerous ground here.

  The reality now is that, if four men go out on a major crime, it’s not the police you have to worry about, it’s the accomplice who is going to put the other three away! In our case, the very men who were happy to dish out violence, people like Albert Donaghue and Scotch Jack Dickson, were the ones who pointed the finger at us. If our cases had been heard in the correct perspective, perhaps we wouldn’t have received the sentences we did. I’m not beefing about my own conviction, but everybody who gave evidence against us had something to hide. They told blatant lies and they were allowed to get away with it in the name of justice. It smacked me in the face. At the same time we were pleading not guilty and were therefore denying that a crime had ever happened, so we couldn’t say anything to defend ourselves. We even had Ronnie Hart going back on complete parts of his evidence, when he later made a statement to a newspaper that ‘what I told the court was a pack of lies’. But once the book was closed, there was to be no opening it….

  We spent the final months of 1968 sitting it out on remand in Brixton prison, and to add to my worries about the impending trial I was living with the knowledge that Pat was pregnant again. She visited me regularly, and brought dinners in for Reggie, Ronnie and me at weekends, while Violet would bring them during the week.

  On 17 December I was called up into the office and told that a son had been born. I remember telling Freddie Foreman, ‘Hey Fred, I’ve got a boy,’ and he said, ‘That’s good news. That’s a bonus right away.’ He idolised children, and had three of his own.

  I lay down that night and felt chuffed, although the new baby represented another worry. I was concerned about Pat – ‘How can she cope with two children, and me inside? What sort of life is she going to have?’ Within two days of the baby being born she was visiting me again, which takes some loyalty. I first saw my son, David, through the glass which separated the visitor from the prisoner.

  The marriage was still OK at this point. Everybody liked Pat. She always had a smile, she’d always have a word for people and she was getting up to see me as much as possible. Karen would usually be with her, although she often left David with her mother or with Violet. She got on well with Violet, and the twins knew and liked Pat too.

  The baby, for the time being, remained distant. I didn’t really know who he was. The trial seemed distant, too: in prison you tend to live for the day and hope for the best. I busied myself with seeing my brief, Ralph Hyams, and arranging for people on the outside to collect the few quid I still had coming in from various sources.

  But as the Old Bailey loomed closer, I began to think more about my problems. And suddenly I knew the size of the trouble I was in.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  JUDGEMENT DAYS

  I can picture myself looking at that jury. I can still see every single one of their faces. After all, I did look at them for long enough.

  The trial opened in January 1969 in a blaze of publicity and continued for the best part of six weeks. When I recall it now I think of the sirens, the volume of their relentless wailing, which accompanied our twice-daily journey between Brixton prison and the Old Bailey. Everyone complained about the noise, and some of us were on tablets for the headaches and additional pressure it brought on.

  Chris and Ronnie Bender were being held in Wandsworth. The coach used to collect them, pick us up on the way to the court, and drop us off again in the evening. We used to make the distance in around twenty minutes. Every morning we used to pass the funeral parlour on Brixton Hill, and the undertaker and two or three of his workers would be standing there, waving their hats and smiling. My Chris used to shout out, ‘There he is,’ and we’d wave back. There would be a television camera mounted on top of a car which used to try to follow us down Brixton Hill.

  In the A-wing maximum-security block in Brixton, which holds about fifteen men, I was kept next door to Freddie Foreman on the ground floor. The twins, Charlie and Ian Barrie were on the second level. For some reason the prison authorities didn’t want Freddie mixing with the twins, and kept them on different exercise and association periods. It was a waste of time, because messages were easily passed through the rest of us. I think it was believed that there might have been a conspiracy of some kind going on, which was typical of the authorities: they were very suspicious of people. On one occasion we heard about a con called Billy Gentry, who was in Leicester prison’s security block, wanted to send eleven daffodils to his daughter for her eleventh birthday. His order was changed behind his back in case the unusual number of flowers represented a coded message. Also in Leicester prison, the screws used to take the orange peel out of the bins because someone high up had decided the cons could make explosives out of it!

  During our remand weeks in Brixton everything, in a way, ran to a routine – going to court and coming back. By contrast, the things which were being said in the course of the trial were bringing new surprises and shocks every day. With all of this going on, we didn’t pay a lot of attention to what was happening in the prison itself, although we did meet the odd interesting character.

  One day I became curious about this bloke walking around the exercise yard. I’d seen him before on exercise, although he never stayed long and he was kept apart from us. Now and again, I’d seen him in the wing. Later, I saw an opportunity to chat to him and I asked him what he’d done. He said, ‘I shot a black man in America.’

  He turned out to be James Earl Ray, the man who assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King in Memphis, Tennessee. The day after the shooting he’d flown straight over to England and been arrested in Bayswater. He was waiting in Brixton while the authorities went through the formalities of getting him kicked out of the country, back to Memphis.

  Ray was a right Southern Yank, and he couldn’t stand prison food. He kept asking, ‘How do you guys handle this food here?’ Because he was a high-profile case politically he was never allowed to have too many dealings with anyone else, but we always had a chat when the chance arose. Years later, when a film-maker friend of mine called Adrian Penninck was granted access to him for a documentary, he said, ‘Give Tony and the boys my regards.’

  The beginning of the trial was a joke. The jury had to be sworn in, and the Old Bailey had about two hundred people standing by. We objected to about fifty of them as they came up, because we didn’t like the look of them. We didn’t have to give grounds. We were allowed to object to about seven at a time. Added to that, a lot of the potential jurors were trying to get out of it. One said, ‘You don’t think I’m going to stand up and give a verdict on this lot, do you? Do you think I want to end up under a motorway?’ Another bloke who said roughly the same thing was threatened with imprisonment for contempt of court. The judge, Mr Justice Melford Stevenson, was determined that the jury would be sworn in by hook or by crook. And once they were, he decided he wanted numbers put round our necks because there were so many of us in the dock.

  We had a little pow-wow before we went into court. The screws came down and told us
about it. They said, ‘Let us put the numbers on, and what you do after that is your business.’ Can you imagine us sitting in the famous Number One court in the Old Bailey with numbers on pink ribbon round our necks? Stevenson ordered the screws in the dock to put them on us. I was number five in the front row. But we weren’t having it. Chris took off his number, threw it at Nipper Read and said, ‘Let him wear it if he wants it that bad.’ I threw mine in. And Ronnie rightly said, ‘This is not a cattle market.’ The judge was livid – but we won that round, our first clash; he made it up in the other rounds.

  This particular judge was known to be a hard-liner, and he had it in for us from the very first moment; it was a slog. He was an overpowering type of man, and as the days went by, the jury were eating more and more out of his hand. No matter what he said to them, they were going to believe it. Any time anything went well for the prosecution, he was very quick to point it out. When it went badly for the defence, he was double quick to underline that. He would turn round to the jury and, if looks could speak, he said the lot. The jury were going to bring in guilty verdicts according to the judge’s directions. They were being minded twenty-four hours a day by armed detectives. The authorities weren’t doing all this for nothing, to let us go. And the publicity around the trial had already condemned us. There was no possibility of justice for men like my Chris, Charlie Kray and Freddie Foreman. They were innocent of the charges against them, but they had refused to co-operate with the police so they had no chance. They were going down.

  There was a flu epidemic during the trial. The judge, the jury, all the court officials were given these jabs. When it came to our turn, Stevenson complained about the cost of it. That was the type of thing we were up against.