London's Gangs at War

by Dick Kirby

  ‘You also say Donoghue has given false evidence about you?’ asked Wrightson.

  Reg replied, ‘I shouldn’t think there’s any doubt about it.’

  High time for a few more outbursts. Charlie Kray was cross-examined by Kenneth Jones, who asked him if his family was a close one – a good enough reason for Ronnie Kray to shout out, ‘Families usually are, aren’t they, you big slob?’

  Charlie Kray broke down after stating that three witnesses had given false evidence, saying, ‘My name is Kray, remember. I’m doing ten years for nothing, for all their lies.’

  Cue Reg Kray, who still had it in for Trevor Lloyd-Hughes. Jumping to his feet, he told the judge, ‘Could I say something? I have a lot of respect for you and the way you’ve run this trial – the other was like a circus – and for Mr Wrightson. I don’t like being provoked by these officers in front. Mr Hughes provoked me and if he continues I can’t be responsible for my actions. If he likes to come round the back with me or down the cells . . .’

  At this point, Ron chimed in with ‘He keeps sneering.’

  This was typical gangster manipulation: offer false praise on one hand and damning condemnation with the other.

  Pat Connelly stated that he did nothing to help Mitchell escape, and Freddie Foreman said that he had never met Donoghue until after Mitchell’s disappearance, when he saw him with two other men at his pub demanding protection money from him – which he gave them.

  He remembered the night of 23 December because he had been visiting his wife in a Harley Street nursing home; Nipper Read told the court that this was being ‘thoroughly investigated’. Terry Spinks MBE, the 1956 Olympic flyweight boxing champion (and friend of the Krays, having attended Reg’s wedding), gave evidence that on the night of the murder he had been drinking with Ronald and Danny Olliffe at the notorious Log Cabin Club in Wardour Street and had been in their company for over four hours until 9.30 pm. Danny Olliffe confirmed this and added that on another occasion he had been attacked by Donoghue, who threatened to burn Foreman’s pub down. Why, asked the judge, had he not reported this alibi to the police? There was no point, replied Olliffe. He knew his brother could not possibly have been involved in the murder of Mitchell, because at the material time he had been with him – and with Terry Spinks, of course. Far better to inform Freddie’s solicitors.

  Summing up for the Crown, Kenneth Jones stated that seventeen witnesses had been called by Foreman’s defence to establish bias against Donoghue, as well as four alibi witnesses. But Foreman’s alibi that he had been visiting his wife at the nursing home was ‘dishonest and false’ – the nursing home’s staff party had been held on 22 December but for the purposes of the alibi it had been transferred to the night of the murder.

  In summing up the evidence for the murder charge, Mr Justice Lawton told the jury:

  This is a case of murder or nothing. I am not going to ask you to consider manslaughter. If Donoghue is telling the truth, then it is as simple as that and they are guilty. If not, they should be acquitted. I am going to put it as bluntly as that . . . It has been put to you that Donoghue was the murderer of Mitchell. You have to ask yourselves if that is so. If it is, you cannot believe a word he says and he is the biggest rogue ever to pass through this witness box. Do not take an over-simplified view of this point. There is a lot more in confessions than meets the eye. If he is telling the truth, he may have come to the state where he felt he must tell someone about it.

  After twenty-three days of listening to evidence the jury retired; but after six hours of deliberations on 16 May 1969 they returned to tell the judge that they were unable to agree on the murder charge. This prompted Freddie Foreman to leap to his feet and bellow, ‘I’m innocent! I never murdered anyone in my life – I’m a publican, not a murderer!’ He was told to ‘sit down and stay sitting down’.

  Another hour and forty minutes went by. Eventually, everybody was acquitted of all the charges, with the exception of Reggie Kray. He was found guilty of conspiring to effect the escape of Mitchell and was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment; for the same offence Wally Garelick received eighteen months’ imprisonment. For harbouring Mitchell, to which he had pleaded guilty, Reg received nine months, concurrent. Since these terms were also concurrent to his life sentence, it meant that he would serve not one extra day.

  *

  Three days later, the Krays were back in court to face further charges: that they conspired to possess stolen bonds, that they and eight other men conspired on four separate charges to cheat and defraud and that they had demanded money with menaces. The twins were charged that they and others had conspired to murder, and Ronnie Kray was charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm. All of those charges were effectively dropped, not because of a lack of evidence, of which there was a sufficiency, but because of the cost of the trials and the certainty that in the event of a conviction nothing would be added to their existing sentences.

  This was not to the liking of Alfred Charles Willey, one of six men remanded on bail in respect of one of the conspiracy charges on which the Krays had been acquitted. He was led from the dock shouting, ‘You pigs! I’ll go to the ends of the earth to see you dead – you can shoot me in the back of the head, as well!’ He received a judicial bollocking for this intemperate outburst.

  Naturally, everybody who received lengthy prison sentences appealed, but at the High Court on 22 July 1969, dismissing the appeals, Lord Justice Widgery said:

  When such cases are brought to justice, it is not sufficient to pass exemplary sentences on the leaders alone. It is equally necessary for the court to show that a grave view will be taken of the activities of the lesser fry. The more responsible the part played by the accessory, the heavier the sentence which he can expect.

  Perhaps the last word should go to Mr Justice Melford Stevenson – a strong advocate of the death penalty – who retired to his house (‘Truncheons’ in Surrey) ten years after the Kray trial. He remarked that the twins only told the truth twice during their trial: first when one brother referred to the prosecution counsel as ‘a fat slob’ and secondly when the other stated that the judge was biased!

  CHAPTER 23

  Time to Leave the Stage

  It had been strongly hinted that Nipper Read’s enormous contribution to the dismantling of the East End’s most destructive crime family would be recognized in the Honours List, possibly even with a knighthood, and that he would certainly be the next Met Commander. But when two far less qualified officers were promoted ahead of him, a disgruntled Read applied for the job of Assistant Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire and got it; he later served for five years as the National Co-ordinator of the Regional Crime Squads and was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal for distinguished service when he retired in 1976.

  Why was he overlooked? The Kray enquiry had bestowed a great deal of favourable publicity on Nipper Read – quite rightly, too. But public approbation had missed Brodie, and jealousy set in. In addition, Robert Mark (later Sir Robert Mark GBE, QPM) was now deputy commissioner; what was more, he had the backing of the Home Secretary. He had made it quite clear that he wished to break the power of the CID and to introduce interchange between the departments (that included assistant commissioners), all of which was in total opposition to Brodie’s views on the management of ‘his chaps’.

  It was clear that Brodie would never become Commissioner; Mark did, and the day before his appointment, Brodie resigned. His place was taken by an officer who had spent most of his career in the Traffic Department.

  When coupled with the Police and Criminal Act 1984 and the introduction of the Crown Prosecution Service, this sounded the death knell for the Criminal Investigation Department.

  *

  The Krays passed into East End folklore; they became far more famous after they were incarcerated than they ever were when at large. In the same way that after the Second World War a number of shifty French citizens untruthfully claimed that they had been members of the Resistance
, huge numbers of Bethnal Green residents professed close kinship with the Krays. Books were and still are being written about their exploits by the unlikeliest of people, and practically every person who was convicted with the Krays had their own story to tell. Some sought the assistance of professional writers in an effort to provide some semblance of plausibility; others did not, with predictably hilarious results.

  Not only did the twins now admit the murders which they had previously strenuously denied, they positively gloated about them in print; it appeared they had more interest in their royalties than a favourable hearing from the parole board.

  Freddie Foreman went one step further; in his book The Godfather of British Crime he admitted Mitchell’s murder, as he did when he was interviewed by Carlton Television. In fact, in the same book he admitted involvement with Alf Gerrard in the murder of ‘Ginger’ Marks, whose body, like those of Mitchell and McVitie, has never been found. He and Gerrard were charged with Marks’ murder; they were acquitted. Then he was interviewed by police, since when he has not only given no further details about the murders but has refused to talk about them at all.

  By 1971, Charlie Mitchell, who had provided evidence against the Firm, no longer had the protection of Detective Constable Hugh Parker, who was armed when he minded him at his house in Fulham (‘The six month period was an education you could not buy’, Parker told me), so he was lucky to evade a blast from a sawnoff shotgun fired from a passing car outside his address in Ellerby Street His luck finally ran out when he was murdered in Spain a few years later.

  *

  Violet Kray died in 1982; the Twins attended her funeral under tight security. Also present was Detective Constable Alick Morrison, who was an authorized shot. He told me:

  At the church I spent twenty minutes in the vestry with Reggie as we waited for the arrival of Ronnie. Reggie was very chatty and we temporarily swapped watches. He jokingly offered to sell me his but commented that it would cost me at least a year’s wages. When Ronnie eventually arrived, it was fascinating to see them greet each other and listen to the conversation. People say to me that it’s a pity I didn’t have the forethought to record or video the events. For a start, we didn’t have today’s modern gadgets but more importantly, I had a job to do and after all, it was a funeral, not a circus. Pity the press and the public didn’t feel the same.

  These were sentiments shared by Charlie Kray. When their father died, seven months later, Charlie mentioned that he had wanted his funeral to be a quiet affair, unlike his late wife’s; but in any event, the twins did not attend.

  Ronnie Kray never was released; certified insane in 1979, he was transferred to Broadmoor and after a couple of rather odd marriages died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-one in 1995.

  Reg followed him to the grave five years later; he was released from prison on compassionate grounds, suffering from inoperable bladder cancer. He had remarried in 1997 and after leaving hospital on 22 September 2000 he had just eight days of freedom before he died in his sleep.

  Charlie was released in 1975; I was immediately on his tail with a team from the Serious Crime Squad to see if he would resurrect the Kray empire; but he didn’t. He led us to a Kray associate who was far more interesting and who was jailed for seven years for conspiracy to cheat and defraud.

  Richard ‘Dickie’ Bird was a former police constable employed as Charlie’s chauffeur following his release. He told me, ‘Everyone he met was in awe of him’, and added that an element of philosophy had crept into his persona: ‘Although Charlie felt wrongly convicted with the murder trials, he also felt the ten years he received were due to him, for the things he got away with.’

  They finally caught up with Charlie in 1997, when he was convicted of conspiracy to import cocaine with a street value of £39m plus supplying two kilos of the drug, valued at £63,500, to undercover officers. Not even an eloquent character reference from Frankie Fraser could save him from being sent down for twelve years, claiming, naturally, that the police had set him up; he died of natural causes aged seventy-three, six months before Reg.

  And that was the shabby story of the Kray Firm. There are still ill-advised people who will claim that they were ‘the salt of the earth’, ‘staunch’ but above all, ‘diamond geezers’. Were they really?

  Endnotes

  1 And that was a correct assumption. See the author’s Scotland Yard’s Ghost Squad (Wharncliffe Books, 2011).

  2 For a full account of this exciting encounter, see The Sweeney – The First Sixty Years of Scotland Yard’s Crimebusting Flying Squad 1919-1978 (Wharncliffe Books, 2011).

  3 ‘Basta’ is Italian for ‘Enough!’ Spot was undoubtedly referring to Sebastian Buonacore, whose nickname was ‘Vesta’.

  4 Or, more likely, re-used. This was common practice when tapes were used to record intercepted telephone conversations and there was no reason why not; they were never intended to be used for evidential purposes.

  5 This was probably a reference to James Fraser, who had been sentenced to fifteen months’ imprisonment after he fell foul of Detective Sergeant Harry Challenor MM. Fraser’s conviction was later quashed.

  6 Mottram had been certified too ill to stand trial on any of the charges, the court having been told that ‘he could die at any moment’. Nevertheless, he bravely soldiered on until he expired fourteen years later.

  Epilogue

  Throughout these pages, you have read of some of the worst examples of bloody gang warfare, which spilled over to affect the lives of decent men and women who, through no fault of their own, were swept up, as witnesses and jurors, into this maelstrom of carnage.

  And yet, these gangsters created their own images for public consumption, as though they were role models for succeeding generations. In some cases, their ill deeds were minimized – a favourite criminal trait – so when, for example, a victim had his face slashed open, this would be dismissively referred to as ‘I give ’im a couple of slaps’. Others were more forthcoming, gloating and glorying in the violence that they inflicted but always being careful to provide some justification, no matter how fatuous, for their actions.

  Because justification is a necessity to a gangster – even if it is difficult to rationalize something like the case of Jack Spot and his wife, when anything up to a dozen of them attacked the defenceless couple like a pack of wild animals, kicking, slashing and beating, armed with lethal weapons, before scuttling away into the darkness.

  And is it possible to defend the actions of those who participated in the Richardson Torture Trials, where the terrified victims, surrounded by a bunch of jeering henchmen, were stripped, beaten, electrocuted and degraded and where, in the midst of these depredations, one of the onlookers described the look on Charlie Richardson’s face as being like ‘someone having sex’?

  The Kray Twins are invariably described as being ‘proper gents’; as one person (who had never even met the brothers) wrote, with almost supernatural imbecility, ‘I loved the Krays’. We’re talking about the same Kray brothers who would walk into a pub and smash the living daylights out of somebody completely unknown to them, for no other reason than that he happened to have the impertinence to be in the same bar as them.

  Let me leave you with one particular matter which sticks in my memory.

  It’s an account of a conversation – which as far as I’m aware has never been denied – between Roy Hall and John McVicar whilst they were serving their respective sentences. Hall – who had operated the electric generator on some of the Richardson victims – apparently stated that people had to tell the truth when they were undergoing torture; then, chillingly, he said this:

  When you put people under the electrodes, they go. They tell you everything . . . They turn into little kids and ask for their mummy. It’s something that you have to see to know.

  Proper gents? Diamond geezers?

  You decide.

  Bibliography

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