London's Gangs at War

by Dick Kirby

  Then it appeared that Read had made a breakthrough. Hew Cargill McCowan, the son of a baronet, was the owner of the Hideaway Club in Gerrard Street He complained that the Krays were pressurizing him for protection money, and this claim was substantiated when one of their associates, Edward Richard ‘Mad Teddy’ Smith, arrived at the club and began smashing it up.

  When he was ejected, he shouted to McCowan, ‘You bastard! You know who I am – you know me and my friends! I’ll be back to wreck the fucking joint!’

  When McCowan complained to the twins he was blandly informed that all this could have been avoided by having one of their men on the door – in return for 20 per cent of the weekly profits. McCowan and his manager, Sidney Thomas Vaughan, both made statements to the police and Read decided to wait no longer. The twins and Teddy Smith were arrested and charged with blackmail.

  Whilst they were in the cells at City Road police station, Mike Bucknole met Ronnie Kray for a second time. Kray asked him for a cup of tea and said, ‘Still boxing at Repton?’

  Bucknole told me, ‘I told him no and thought, but you’re still ducking and diving and bugger me, don’t these villains commit faces to memory!’

  Now that the twins were charged and remanded in custody, Read firmly believed that other witnesses would rush forward to give evidence, but he was wrong; not one of them did.

  The twins tried repeatedly for bail, and Boothby campaigned on their behalf, all without success; but as always, strings and strokes were being pulled. Three days prior to committal, Vaughan was seen entering the twins’ house in Vallance Road Immediately thereafter, two of the twins’ gang emerged and set off in a car, only to return shortly afterwards with the local vicar, the Revd Albert Edward John Foster. Read had Vaughan brought into his office, to discover that he had declared in the presence of the priest that his former statement was a pack of lies and that McCowan had been paying him £40 per week to perjure himself at the trial. He repeated this at the Magistrates’ Court but, incredibly, the case was committed for trial.

  A man named Peter Byrne, a friend of Vaughan’s, was attacked and slashed by four men, one of whom said, ‘No – McCowan only wants him frightened.’ He later gave evidence to that effect.

  Manny Fryde, the solicitor who had triumphantly produced Jimmy Nash to the police for the Pen Club Murder five years earlier, now acted for the twins. On the second day of the trial, when McCowan was giving evidence (and giving it well), Fryde approached the judge, Sir Carl Aarvold OBE, TD, and in the absence of the jury stated that a witness had heard one of the jurors discussing the case with a police officer. He then identified the juror, whom the judge told to stand down.

  The juror was flabbergasted. ‘I would like to express an opinion on this’, he told the judge, who replied, ‘Please don’t. Please leave the matter where it is.’

  But the juror would not. ‘As this aspersion has been cast’, he persisted, ‘I would like to know in what manner?’

  However, the judge was adamant, and the trial continued with eleven jurors. This was a pity. He had not identified the witness or the detective and had not questioned the juror. Although Carl Aarvold was a well respected lawyer and judge, with an excellent war record in the Royal Artillery, he had permitted Fryde to thoroughly bamboozle him and had swallowed the accusation hook, line and sinker. The case for the prosecution was going too well and the juror had looked too intelligent; hence the accusation. When the angry juror was questioned by Read afterwards he stated quite unequivocally that he had not discussed the case with a detective or anybody else.

  McCowan, meanwhile, was still giving persuasive evidence in the witness box; however, it emerged that he was homosexual and had given evidence in three other blackmail trials which centred around his sexuality.

  Vaughan repeated that the twins had never threatened McCowan; in fact, he went further and stated that when McCowan wanted a man ‘cut up’ he provided Ronnie Kray with the man’s name and address.

  Next came the Revd Foster, who told the court that he had visited Ronnie Kray in Brixton Prison on the morning of 20 January and had later gone to Vallance Road In a story slightly at variance to that of the watching detectives, he stated that he had gone into a back room, where he saw Vaughan, Charles Kray and a William Noble, a police officer for twenty years and now an enquiry agent.

  The Revd Foster told the jury:

  Mr Noble said, ‘This young man [pointing to Sidney Vaughan] says he has given some evidence to the police about the Kray brothers which was not true.’ There was a long conversation and Sidney was asked whether he had actually heard the Kray brothers actually demanding money and he replied that he had not. Mr Noble asked Sidney whether he was willing to give evidence in court and so perjure himself. Sidney said he was getting £40 a week financial aid and if he did not give this evidence, that financial aid was going to be cut off. He said the money was coming from someone whose name sounded like ‘McGowan’. Sidney added that he had two flats to keep and a wife and child to support. Mr Noble also asked him if he was frightened that the Krays might take reprisals if he did give perjured evidence and Sidney said he was not frightened of the Krays at all.

  In cross-examination, John Mathew QC for the prosecution assumed that the reverend gentleman immediately advised the penitent Mr Vaughan to tell this story to the police, but he did not – nor did he go to the police himself. And neither did the erstwhile copper, Mr Noble, who was called next. He corroborated the vicar’s story and added that Charlie Kray had soothingly told Vaughan, ‘Just tell the truth Sidney, that’s all’, with Vaughan replying, ‘That’s not so easy when you’re dealing with McCowan’, and adding for good measure that McCowan was a pathological liar.

  In a particularly hilarious episode of the case, the judge told the jury, ‘Do not make the mistake of thinking that Vaughan has been got at by the defence; that would be quite improper.’

  After four hours deliberation the jury were unable to agree upon a verdict and a retrial was ordered eleven days later, this time before Mr Justice Lyell. Vaughan was not called, McCowan’s evidence was trashed, great weight being placed on his homosexuality, and the case collapsed when, at the invitation of the judge, the jury found the three men not guilty.

  An application for costs was refused, but the twins still had sufficient spare change to buy the Hideaway Club on the afternoon of their acquittal; they renamed it El Morocco.

  The three brothers must have now assumed that they could walk on water. They arrived back in Bethnal Green to the sort of tumultuous reception that one associates with a returning and victorious premier league football team. They talked about suing the police for wrongful arrest, but never did so. They made all sorts of reckless promises about their immediate future, all untrue save one: Reg said that he and Frances would marry – and they did.

  *

  Having already helped the twins quite considerably, Father Foster officiated at the no-expenses-spared wedding of Reg Kray and Frances Shea on 20 April 1965. The glitterati of the East End turned out in their droves to congratulate the allegedly happy couple. After a joyless honeymoon in Athens they moved into a flat in Cedra Court, one floor below Ronnie’s; they stayed there for just eight weeks before Frances returned to live with her parents. It was claimed that the marriage was unconsummated; Frances would later receive psychiatric treatment and there would be attempts at suicide.

  Pat Pryde knew the twins from her time as the CID typist at Dalston; when she took tea into the interview room, she told me, ‘They always stood up when I came into the room and took the tray off me.’ She occasionally drank at the Regency Club, where, she told me, ‘They treated me with respect.’ She also met Frances Kray, whom she described as being very attractive: ‘She was always like a nervous little mouse and so badly matched with her gangster husband. I always used to think of a lamb led to the slaughter when I saw her.’

  And now we have to leave pretty, unhappy and ultimately doomed Frances Kray, together with her equally unhapp
y husband and her malevolent brother-in-law, (whom she referred to, behind his back, as ‘a pig’) and who had screamed at his sibling to ‘throw that fucking woman out for good’.

  We shall return to them later, but now it’s time to introduce you to the brothers Richardson.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Richardsons

  Throughout the pages of this book there have been tales of utterly sickening brutality and violence, from Billy Hill (‘I’m one of the best chiv merchants in the business’) striping his victims with a razor, to the antics of Ronnie Kray, who delighted in slashing adversaries across his buttocks with a cutlass (‘So they’ll think of me every time they sit down’).

  But those cruelties are put in the shade by the depravity of the Richardson Torture Gang; witnesses told the court how Charlie Richardson presided at mock-trials where they were hit with a variety of what were colloquially referred to as ‘blunt instruments’ before being stripped, whipped with barbed wire, had their teeth pulled out with pliers, had cigarettes stubbed out on their bare flesh and their genitals connected to an electricity generator. Sometimes victims would be immersed in water to make the electric shocks more acute. And eventually, sometimes after a period of hours during which time Richardson would often munch his way through fish and chips, when the bleeding, terrified victim regained consciousness and was finally allowed home, he would be given a joking apology and what became known as ‘a shirt from Charlie’ to cover his partial nakedness.

  Richardson’s brother Eddie, who later – much later – stated that he derived pleasure out of inflicting pain, also admitted, ‘Charlie liked to stretch things out.’

  Mr Justice Lawton put things rather differently. Referring to the victims, he told Charlie Richardson, ‘You terrorized them in a way that was vicious, sadistic and a disgrace to society.’

  This is what happened.

  *

  When Charles William Richardson was fourteen, in 1948, his father abandoned the Camberwell family home, leaving him and his mother to bring up his two younger brothers and a sister. The father’s desertion coincided with Charlie going right off the rails and he took to stealing lead and cars as a duck takes to water. Although he got friends to arrange a false alibi for him (probably not for the first and certainly not the last time) on a charge of stealing a car, it failed, and this ensured Charlie’s admittance to Approved School, one of those institutions where the authorities harboured an often forlorn hope of reform. Forlorn it certainly was in Charlie’s case, since he escaped and committed further offences.

  Charlie and his brother Edward George Richardson – ‘Eddie’ – both boxed at the Fitzroy Club, where Eddie fought, first as a welterweight, later as a middleweight.

  By the time he was seventeen Charlie had acquired a lorry and commenced trading in scrap metal; a year later, he was called up for National Service. Like the Krays (whom he later met in Shepton Mallet), he fought against the system; he was sentenced to six months for assaulting a medical officer and dishonourably discharged.

  Rather than have his brother endure the same rigours of National Service, when Eddie’s call-up papers arrived Charlie carefully instructed him in the art of appearing to be mentally defective to the medical board; it worked.

  Charlie was placed on probation for two years for receiving stolen metal and then, a year after his discharge from the army, he married Margaret Cheyney. The following year, 1956, he founded the Peckford Scrap Metal Company in New Church Road, Camberwell. He also met Roy Hall, a teenager who was stealing metal from his yard. He gave him a job there, and ten years later, a judge at the Old Bailey would tell Hall, ‘Right from school you came under the domination of Charles Richardson and but for his evil influence you would not be here.’ Eddie was initially also an employee at the yard, then a year later became a co-director.

  Charlie was convicted twice more: in 1957 he was fined £80 for receiving stolen metal and in 1959 he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for receiving stolen bacon.

  Seven years after their marriage, and five children later, Charlie’s wife walked out on him. He took custody of the children and moved in with Jean Goodman, with whom he had started an affair. She started work in the office, checking the books and sorting out administrative details. His company, which soon employed thirty men, was actually a front for receiving stolen property, as were many of his other business concerns.

  Newcomers to the area were put straight. When John Barnes arrived on ‘L’ Division as a brand new detective constable, he was seen by a senior officer who told him, ‘You’ve got a good record; you’re going to Camberwell, boy. When you get there, you’re to have no dealings with the Peckford Scrap Metal Company – IS THAT CLEAR?’

  Barnes, who had just arrived from Cannon Row, next door to the Houses of Parliament, and had never heard of the company or its owners, replied, ‘Yes, sir!’ and was dismissed, having first been told, ‘I drink Scotch!’

  Bryan Woolnough told me that Charlie could always be contacted at his mother’s address (she lived in a block of flats in Denmark Hill). ‘When the CID needed to interview him, they just phoned for him, and he always turned up at the station, saying, “CID want to see me”,’ he told me. ‘He was always well-dressed, spoke well and had the appearance of a businessman. He always appeared to co-operate and was always pleasant, a clever person.’

  Woolnough recalled being the duty officer who called at Peckham police station to be told of a car being seen in suspicious circumstances during the hours of darkness; he discovered that the users of the vehicle had entered a branch of Sainsbury’s and were just about to blow the safe. In those days a manual search had to be made for a vehicle’s owner at the London County Council offices, and this took a considerable time. Woolnough told me:

  In those days, professional criminals had a system of maintaining regular phone contact whilst ‘doing a job’, and if a call was missed, their accomplices would know something had gone wrong. The men had no identification on them and said nothing for over twelve hours. Eventually, we were notified of the car ownership details. Surprise, surprise! It belonged to the Richardsons, but during the delay it had, of course, been reported stolen before we could take any action to implicate them in the crime.

  Charlie was lucky on that occasion, but then he was arrested once more for receiving stolen metal; he jumped bail and fled with Jean Goodman to Canada, where he set up another scrap metal business. After eight months he returned to England, was recognized and arrested, but clever lawyers got him out of an embarrassing charge.

  Charlie took Jean Goodman and his youngest brother, Alan, out for a speedboat trip on the Thames. Due to his stupid and reckless handling of the speedboat, it overturned, throwing them all into the water. Charlie and Jean Goodman survived; Alan did not. It was a passing pleasure boat that rescued them. Naturally, Charlie was in no way to blame; it was all the captain of the pleasure boat’s fault.

  His relationship with his brother Eddie was not always an easy one and was not helped by the presence of Jean Goodman. Charlie’s children openly detested her, Roy Hall felt the same, and for a while Charlie and Eddie diversified and opened various businesses, most of which were long firm frauds.

  The term ‘long firm’ (or LF) has been mentioned several times before in this book; it was a crime which was profitable to the Krays as well and the way it worked was this. A wholesale business would be set up, with a front-man as manager. Goods for which there was a ready market – washing machines, refrigerators, televisions etc. – would be ordered from various manufacturers, and as soon as they arrived the invoice was settled, immediately. This would continue for several months, with the manufacturers being paid on delivery of each shipment, giving them the impression that they were dealing with a reputable company. Finally, a huge order would be placed, the goods sold at knock-down prices and the front man would desert the empty warehouse, leaving the manufacturers with a colossal deficit. By the time it was reported to the police and investigated, mont
hs, sometimes years, would have passed; if the front-man was arrested, he would say nothing – and if he was convicted, he alone would go to prison for a couple of years. His silence would have been bought by means of a handsome bursary; or, more probably, by threats made against his family.

  One such LF involved several thousand Olivetti typewriters; over a period of six months it was investigated by two officers from the Fraud Squad, one of whom was Detective Constable (and later Chief Superintendent) Max Vernon. He told me:

  We kept observations at Peckford Metals several times, noting the numbers of cars coming and going. On each occasion, we were followed back by Richardson’s men, to see where we went. Eventually, we interviewed Charlie Richardson at Snow Hill police station, in the City of London. He was smarmy; seemed very much at ease and thought a lot of himself. He didn’t have a brief and didn’t answer many questions, most of which were ‘no comment’ on the contentious stuff. He was arrested and charged and was committed for trial from Bow Street He represented himself; he had no idea of what sort of questions to ask and made himself look ridiculous.

  I asked Vernon his impressions of Charlie Richardson.

  ‘I didn’t like him at all’, he replied. ‘I thought he was a little shit.’

  Since I knew Richardson was five feet ten and a half, I did question the first of these epithets, only to discover that there was some justification for it after Vernon admitted to being six feet four.

  ‘However’, he added, ‘I wouldn’t have liked to have got on the wrong side of him!’