London's Gangs at War

by Dick Kirby

  Two days later, Nash, in the company of his solicitor’s legal representative, Emmanuel Fryde, walked into City Road police station at nine o’clock in the morning, with Fryde loudly proclaiming, ‘I understand you wish to see this man, James Lawrence Nash, in connection with a shooting affair last Sunday morning at Stepney when a man was shot dead. I want you to understand he denies any kind of a charge at all. He is not guilty and acting on legal advice he is not making any verbal or written statement.’

  Nash, like the other three prisoners, was charged with murder. However, there had already been a great deal of activity behind the scenes.

  *

  Freddie Foreman, ‘The Godfather of British Crime’, would later say that to save all four from going to the gallows, negotiations were started, with him acting for Billy Ambrose and the Kray twins for the Nash family, in order to try and ensure there would be no further ill-feeling. Reggie Kray said that following the shooting, Nash & Co went to the Kray address in Vallance Road asking for help; whether or not they immediately visited ‘Fort Vallance’ is debatable, but in any event they got help, because Ambrose was quickly visited during his month-long stay in hospital by Reggie Kray. He paused only to acknowledge the presence in an adjoining bed of Bernard Schach, alias ‘Sonny the Yank’, who at fifty-eight was over double Reggie Kray’s age and whose jaw he had courageously broken the previous evening, as well as head-butting him, for daring to refer to him as ‘son’. Kray wanted to know from Ambrose the names of the witnesses; Jimmy Nash was visited by the twins whilst he was on remand; and Fay Sadler was just one of the witnesses ‘invited’ to the twins’ Double R Club. One by one, the thirty-six customers in the club who had volunteered their services as witnesses started to change their minds about what they had seen and heard.

  At the preliminary hearing at Thames Magistrates’ Court on 8 March 1960, the magistrate, Leo Joseph Anthony Gradwell DSC, RNVR, cleared the court after he felt that Joan Bending was giving her evidence nervously, believing that she would speak more confidently if the public were absent – a wise move.

  ‘Ambrose was shot first, then Jimmy’, she told the court. ‘Then next thing I remember, I was downstairs in the street.’

  During the following hearing, Ambrose (referring to Cooney as Neill) told the court:

  I was talking to my wife when somebody pulled Neill round. There seemed to be a bit of a scuffle. When I turned round, I saw blood on Neill’s nose and he was staggering. Someone cried out, ‘He’s got a gun.’ I turned round and tried to get the gun from a man. I asked the man to give me the gun and I got pushed at that time. I heard a bang and felt a burning pain in my stomach. I then got a blow on the head and it seemed to be a free-for-all. Five or six were fighting. A man I know as Jerry Callaghan pulled me round to go out. As I was going out, I saw Neill on the floor. I went home and found I had an injury on the head and a bullet wound in the stomach. I tried to patch myself up and went by car to the London Hospital.

  The magistrate asked him, ‘Did you see the people that came into the club?’

  ‘No, Sir,’ replied Ambrose. ‘I wouldn’t say I saw them for sure. It was dimly lit.’

  ‘There must have been a moment when you were able to pick out someone as the probable holder of this gun’, persisted the magistrate. ‘If a number of people came in and suddenly started to row, you would have an idea of what they looked like, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘If I was looking for them’, answered Ambrose disingenuously.

  ‘Look around this court’, said the magistrate, ‘and tell me if there is anyone you can see that was in the club that night.’

  Ambrose obliged, slowly and theatrically surveying the court before returning his gaze to the magistrate and replying, ‘I cannot see anyone. It would be unfair for me to say I can.’

  Someone who would have been able to assist with the identification of the guilty parties was thirty-six-year-old Mrs Frances Sadler, aka Fay Sadler, otherwise Morgan, also Davies, née Richardson, but as the court was told, ‘She had not been seen for the past eleven days’ – hardly surprising, since she was ensconced in Ireland.

  Mr C.G.L. Du Cann, barrister for both Nash and Doreen Masters, was plainly unhappy about the evidence of the conversation overheard by PC Spiers, because if the prisoners were to be charged together, that evidence against Nash would be heard by the jury.

  ‘That evidence is clearly not evidence against your client’, said the magistrate. Du Cann replied, ‘I am not complaining against you, Sir, but the evidence might appear in a place where the jury could read it.’

  ‘A jury would get a strong warning from the judge’, replied Mr Gradwell soothingly, ‘and it’s his last words, I find, that always have an effect.’

  ‘We know how dangerous that could be, despite that warning’, remarked Du Cann unhappily.

  *

  Even though he had deliberately failed to identify Pyle and Read, it was obviously thought that there would be no harm in Johnny Simons being reminded how unwise it would be to engage in any further dealings with the police. Shortly after the non-identification, Simons was attacked by a gang of thugs in a Paddington café; he was ruthlessly slashed with razors in front of a group of terrified women and children and his wounds required twenty-seven stitches.

  The day after the exchange between Du Cann and the magistrate, on 16 March, Simons, who until now had made himself unavailable, suddenly came forward. The reason was this: on that date his girlfriend, a twenty-two-year-old model named Barbara Ibbotson (who was not connected with the case in any way), was walking along Wardour Street when a car pulled up and she was dragged inside; her face was slashed with a razor and she was told that there was more to come unless she revealed Simons’ whereabouts. She went straight to the officer in charge of the case, Detective Superintendent Roly Millington, and after her wounds were treated at St Bartholomew’s Hospital she was joined by Simons at Commercial Street police station; both of them were then smuggled away to a secret address.

  Simons appeared at Thames Magistrates’ Court on 21 March. During his account of the disturbance, he said, ‘I saw Nash open his coat and go for something stuck in the top of his trousers, but Ambrose had his back to me, so I couldn’t see everything. There were words spoken between them and then Ambrose copped it in the guts. I heard the shot. Ambrose sort of fell back to the bar. His old woman screamed her old man had been shot.’

  Asked by Oliver Nugent, counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions, ‘Did you see what had hit him?’

  ‘Yes’, replied Simons. ‘A small gun’.

  ‘Who had it?’ asked Nugent

  ‘Nash’.

  Simons went on to say that Nash went out of the room but then returned, shouting ‘Do you want some, too? Get out of the way!’

  Simons then told the court that he had attended identification parades and had seen Pyle and Read there but failed to pick them out. When Nugent asked why, Simons provided a one-word answer: ‘Scared!’

  After legal submissions, Doreen Masters had the murder charge against her dropped; the magistrate wished to consider a charge of her being an accessory after the fact, but Du Cann stated that whilst she had tried to bind Read’s wounds before taking him to hospital, this could not be construed as ‘comforting, harbouring or relieving’ him.

  ‘It seems that if you drive someone away in your car, you are assisting him’, suggested the magistrate, but Du Cann rather cleverly countered this by saying, ‘If you say that a person who binds up wounds is guilty, you could indict the Good Samaritan.’

  ‘I would never say that!’ gasped Mr Gradwell and, rather unhappily discharging Doreen Masters, nevertheless committed the three men to stand their trial at the Old Bailey.

  The police searched thirty addresses for Fay Sadler and on 2 April her photograph was published in all the national newspapers (although possibly not the Irish ones) asking for the public’s help in tracing her, but without success. This led police to apply to a judge on 4 April for the ea
rliest possible trial date but it also led Miss Ibbotson into a false sense of security. Believing herself safe, she returned to her home address three weeks after the initial attack on her. This was a mistake: three men broke into her flat whilst she was in the bath and slashed her face again, which required twenty-six stitches. She left London the following day.

  Simons was now given round-the-clock protection, as was Joan Bending; the same sort of safeguard was not deemed necessary for Billy Ambrose.

  And that was the end of round one. In the few weeks before their trial commenced, a great deal more dirty work was carried out.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Pen Club Murder – The Trial

  On 21 April 1960 the three men stood in the dock at the Old Bailey charged with murder and various other counts pertaining to violence. Twenty-eight-year-old Jimmy Nash, who despite being a member of a family said to have been involved in violence and extortion, had just two convictions. One was for stealing cash from a vending machine when he was seventeen. The second came two years later when he was undergoing his National Service (he was apparently described as being ‘good non-commissioned officer material’); probably the conviction, for stealing poultry, came after that recommendation.

  Next, Joey Pyle, who at twenty-five had just the one previous conviction, for stealing a car. Like Nash he had boxed, having had, according to his biographer, ‘twenty-four professional fights’. Official records note just six, the last on 10 June 1958 when he was knocked out by Maxie Beech at Wembley Town Hall, so it seems likely that eighteen of his fights were fairground bouts.

  The third defendant, John Read aged twenty-eight, was of good character; his father was a police station sergeant and was said to be ‘heartbroken’ at the situation his son was in. Read had had thirty bouts as a middleweight; he was good enough to have confronted Dick Tiger on two occasions and had won twenty-two fights, fifteen of them by knock-outs. His last fight was on 5 February 1959, and it was a pity that he had started collaborating with Pyle in running the Floral Club instead of pursuing his promising career in the ring.

  Victor Durand QC for Nash unsuccessfully applied for a separate trial for his client, and the trial got underway before Mr Justice Gorman. The first witness was Joan Bending; when asked by Alastair Morton for the Crown who had shot Cooney, she was unequivocal: ‘It was Nash.’

  The following day, Johnny Simons took the stand. Telling the court that he had heard Nash say to his friend Cooney, ‘I want you, you had a go at my brother’, he also stated that Nash had had a gun in his hand.

  Victor Durand suggested, ‘Ambrose must have seen what you say you saw? Simons was just as definite in his answer as Bending had been: ‘Ambrose saw the gun. He saw it all, if he would only open his mouth and tell the truth.’

  But as well as the defendants’ high-powered legal team, there was additional help to bring about an acquittal. The Nash brothers were in the public gallery; so were the Callaghan brothers; representatives from Billy Hill’s gang were present; and so were the Kray twins. Bending and Simons were intimidated as they left court. A juror was seen to nod at the head of the Nash family, Billy Nash; when his background was investigated he was found not only to have a conviction but also to be related by marriage to a gang of violent East End criminals. The Flying Squad was called in, and after the juror left the court, a man who had been seen previously in the company of the Kray twins joined him in his car; the juror subsequently made some incriminating comments to the Squad officers. And one of the women jurors visited her husband who, like the three defendants, was on remand in Brixton prison. Her husband told the prisoners that his wife was on their jury, had decided that Nash was guilty of murder and then, helpfully, provided them with his wife’s address. And as if that were not enough, Reggie Kray in his often unintentionally hilarious memoirs recalled that whilst he ‘watched the jury intently, trying to contemplate their thoughts’ he was rudely made aware that he was being kept under observation by Detective Inspector Peter Vibart, then of the Yard’s newly-formed Criminal Intelligence Branch, who had no doubts whatsoever as to which direction Reggie Kray’s thoughts were moving in.

  After three days, and a weekend of intensive enquiries and observations by the detectives, the trial was dramatically halted. The judge stated that he had been provided with information which ‘makes it impossible for this case to be continued for trial before this jury’. The jury was duly discharged, and on 27 April Alastair Morton told Mr Justice Diplock that in the new trial he would not offer evidence against Pyle or Read on charges of the murder or being accessories after the fact; however, they were still to be tried on charges of causing grievous bodily harm. When the retrial commenced on 2 May 1960, eight jurors were challenged by the Crown; the judge stated that he did not want ‘a weekend to intervene’ and warned jurors not to speak to anyone about the case, ‘not even your wives’.

  When Nash gave evidence, it was essential to make it clear that there was no premeditated reason for he and his three companions to be visiting the Pen Club that night – certainly not to seek a confrontation with Cooney. In fact, it would be sensible to say that he had never heard of him under the name Cooney or Jimmy Neill. So he told that court that he had gone to the North London Penton Club with Doreen Masters where by chance they had met Pyle and Read. Masters suggested they go to Barney’s in Aldgate for supper, but on the way they decided to go to the Pen Club.

  Nash told the jury that in the first-floor bar of the club Cooney had beckoned to him:

  I took no notice at first because I didn’t know him, but he beckoned to me, again. I went over to him and he turned his back on me. I pulled his sleeve, wondering what it was all about and he turned round and before I could say anything, he started to have a go at me. He said, ‘So you’re another of those fucking Nashes?’ I said, ‘What’s it all about?’ and he said, ‘You’re a lot of fucking gaolbirds, you, Ronnie and the rest.’ Then he referred to Doreen Masters. He asked, ‘Who’s the bird with you? A bit of easy money for you, I suppose.’ By that, I took it he was suggesting that I was living on her, so I hit him on the nose with my right hand.

  Under Victor Durand’s expert tutelage, Nash told the court that he had nothing in his hand when he hit Cooney, stating that he had been a pretty good boxer in the army (‘I won the Tripoli welterweight’) and that he had suggested to Cooney that they should go outside and fight, man-to-man. However, he had been surrounded by five or six of Cooney’s associates and although he was blocking a lot of blows, ‘I was really worried about Doreen.’ He did hear someone say ‘He’s got a gun’, but that person was not him, since he had never possessed one. He was going down the stairs when he heard a second shot but he never saw Cooney after he had hit him.

  It was a clever, well-constructed defence and it all depended on whom the jury believed.

  Summing up for the Crown, Senior Treasury Counsel Mervyn Griffith-Jones told the jury:

  It is perfectly true that Read and Pyle and Doreen Masters were all originally charged with the murder of Cooney but they have been acquitted and now have nothing to fear on that charge. All three were in that room at the Pen Club and you may think they must have been only a few feet away from Nash. Who better than they to tell you whether or not Nash was responsible for the shooting? Two of those witnesses are available in this building. Doreen Masters is at her flat, as far as we know. Where are they?

  But as the cunning Victor Durand told the jury, ‘If you take the view that this case remains a mystery, then let it remain so.’

  The following day, the judge, in summing up to the jury, told them this:

  You may have felt as you listened to this story of witnesses disappearing, of what you may feel was surprising lapses of memory on the part of those who have been called, that there are sinister implications here and that you have had a glimpse of an underworld which has its own code of loyalty or its fear. But if you felt that, you must not visit it upon the accused. He is being tried for murder, not for the company
he keeps.

  It took the jury just 100 minutes to acquit Nash of murder at 1.35 pm; he showed no emotion at the verdict, as his brothers cheered and Joan Bending burst into tears; at 2.20 a new jury was sworn in to try the three accused on a fresh indictment in which they were accused of causing Cooney grievous bodily harm.

  It was then that what Joey Pyle would later describe as ‘a surprise witness’ came forward. David Sammons was not really a surprise – he had given evidence at the Magistrates’ Court and at Nash’s murder trial – but his testimony was surprising. His evidence changed dramatically; he said that Simons had remained on the upper floor of the bar at the Pen Club when the three defendants had gone downstairs and therefore could not have witnessed the shooting.

  Mr Justice Diplock tore into him and, referring to Simons, demanded, ‘You knew that he had given evidence that he was in the first-floor bar at the time of the disturbance?’

  ‘Yes’.

  ‘Did you tell anyone that you knew he was not in the downstairs [first-floor] bar?”

  ‘Nobody’.

  ‘You realized, if you were right, that Simons was telling a pack of lies?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And you knew that it was in a murder trial?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And that Simons’ evidence, which you knew to be untrue, might result in a man being hanged?’

  ‘Yes, I realized that.’

  ‘And yet you say you told no one?’

  ‘No one’.

  ‘Why not? If it were true, why not?’

  ‘It is true. When I read it, I was rather shocked, to be quite honest. I also read afterwards that the jury had been dismissed and there would be a retrial and I knew I would have a good opportunity of telling the truth at the retrial.’

  ‘You thought you would be able to volunteer the truth at the retrial, did you?’