While male mourners sporting chunky gold jewellery and ill-fitting suits tried to look hard, for the women it was clearly no effort. Many boasted bottle-blonde hair, perma-tans and tight tops. Miniskirts and high heels completed the look. It was a kind of pantomime of people too old, fat or brassy to make it as extras in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
The minders, probably fancying themselves as the new rulers of the East End streets, told the public where they could or could not stand. Bradley Allardyce, who had been Reggie’s best man at his wedding to Roberta, told the congregation: ‘I look for the words, but there are none.’
Reggie’s coffin was carried out of church to the predictable strains of ‘My Way’, and then he was off to Chingford Cemetery to be buried alongside his first wife, Frances, his brothers, his father and his mother Violet.
Before Reggie’s grave had been filled, his friends began to betray him. Bradley Allardyce decided to share some of his memories of Reg, in a BBC radio interview. He admitted to having a sexual relationship with Reg but added, ‘It was against my will and he knew it was against my will.’ Allardyce, who had written to me saying ‘Reg was like a father, I love him very much’, was claiming that Reggie Kray had raped him. I couldn’t help thinking of what he had said at the funeral. He was certainly not stuck for words now.
If the rape allegation wasn’t enough to rubbish the name of the man Allardyce had claimed ‘nobody would cross’, then Allardyce had prepared a second, equally heinous allegation. He went on to claim that one night, Reggie revealed the crime that haunted him the most: the apparent suicide of his first wife, Frances. Allardyce told Radio Four listeners that, ‘He put his head on my shoulder and told me Ron killed Frances. He told Reg what he had done two days after he had murdered her. He claimed Ronnie had forced Frances to take the pills that had killed her.’ The Kray gravy train had been derailed and the passengers who had lived off it for so long were clambering to salvage a bit of it to enhance their miserable lives.
Kray family ‘friend’, Maureen Flannagan, the page-three girl who took the bids at James Fallon’s fundraising evening, also cashed in by auctioning off her personal letters via a Kray website. I have no doubt they were of great sentimental value to her.
The Kray family are all better off in Chingford Cemetery; amongst the living, they really had nobody. At least in death, they have each other.
As the crowds drifted away from Reggie’s funeral, a teenager ran up to his friends and cried, ‘I’ve just shaken Frankie Fraser’s hand. I’m never going to wash this hand again.’ It was a sad day in Bethnal Green when they buried the last of the Krays. A very, very sad day indeed.
13
PINKY AND PERKY
I believed that when Reg Kray was laid to rest, the gangster-chic industry that he and his twin had made flourish would be buried with him. Unfortunately, Kray fans saw it as an opportunity to promote themselves as heirs to their hero’s vacant underworld throne by telling stories in ‘true crime’ books they thought would never be challenged. I was more than surprised when I heard that Leighton Frayne had published a book in 2003 called The Frayne Brothers with the subheading: ‘Welcome to the terrifying world of the notorious Frayne brothers’.
I laughed so much when I saw the book, I was almost tempted to read it. However, the brief description of the terrifying world of the Frayne brothers on the cover proved too much for me. It described how the Fraynes had ‘ruled their patch with a fair but firm hand’. It also claimed that the Fraynes were ‘the brains and brawn behind one of the most ruthless and organised firms in the UK’. ‘Violence and honour,’ the cover blurb went on to say, ‘are their watchwords’ and ‘they are more than ready to make sure that justice is maintained in the underworld’. Picking myself up off the bookshop floor, I wiped the tears from my eyes, caught my breath and stifled my laughter. Only three sentences I had read seemed to have a ring of truth about them and they had been saved until last: ‘Much has been written about them. Little of it is based on fact. Now they tell their story.’
Like Lambrianou, the Fraynes have undoubtedly told ‘their story’ to anybody gullible enough not to question it. They will hope people will believe them and they can fulfil their dream and become gangland legends. As in Lambrianou’s case, their story will have little to do with the truth.
The real Fraynes are a far cry from the gangland heavies they would like people to believe they are and I am quite certain that, like Lambrianou, the Fraynes will be bitterly disappointed that the truth is now being revealed. Not long after I had been banned from seeing Ronnie Kray at Broadmoor, brothers Lindsay and Leighton Frayne stepped into my vacant visiting shoes. The Fraynes were the Hale and Pace lookalikes from south Wales who had turned up at the boxing show in full Kray twin fancy dress. Meeting Ronnie sent their egos into overdrive and they began to really believe that they were the new Krays.
Everyone I spoke to was telling me about these two Kray wannabes who were trying to impress nobodies in the hope that they would be treated as somebodies. They began to make regular trips from their native Wales to London in order to try to form a gang based on the Kray model. They didn’t immerse themselves in the underworld or associate with active criminals; instead, the Frayne gang lived a ridiculous copy-cat Kray lifestyle, intimidating people in their own circle, talking about ‘big jobs’ they were going to pull off, laying flowers on the Kray parents’ graves, visiting their heroes’ old haunts and propping up the bar in The Blind Beggar where Ron Kray had shot George Cornell through the head. In the evening they would head for the safety of the suburbs, drinking in pubs around Epping Forest where few, if any, of the wealthy residents had come into contact with the real Krays. The East End after dark was, after all, a dangerous place to be for two Welsh boyos from the valleys. Everybody was laughing at their antics. They would walk into pubs surrounded by as many as 15 minders all dressed in suits. Mark Bullen, one of the boys who used to fetch and carry for the DJ at Raquels, even managed to get into their gang.
In a desperate effort to be recognised and acknowledged, the Fraynes sought out publicity. They thought they had finally hit the big time when the People contacted them for an interview, but the subsequent article only poked fun at them.
MEET THE KRAY TWINS’ TWINS
East End Mobsters Recruit Lookalike Boyos From The Valleys
Jailed gangland killers the Krays have recruited clone twins as their right-hand men on the outside. Twins Ronnie and Reggie have formed an amazing bond with 30-year-old lookalike brothers Lindsay and Leighton Frayne.
Hard man Leighton, like Broadmoor inmate Ronnie, is the quieter of the two and likes to be known as ‘the thinker’. Lindsay, like Reggie, looks younger, smoother and has the patter.
The Frayne twins dress like the Krays complete with slicked-back hair, Crombie coats, double-breasted designer suits and tie pins. They are inseparable and shared a prison cell after nearly killing a man over a family feud.
They were amateur boxers who learned to fight their way out of trouble as vicious street brawlers. Locals couldn’t believe their eyes when they spotted the twins outside The Blind Beggar in Bethnal Green, where Ronnie Kray had blown away George Cornell.
The bizarre similarities only end when the Frayne twins open their mouths, for they are Welsh boyos from the Welsh valleys, and both insist they aren’t involved in any villainy. ‘We’re no gangsters,’ stressed 14-stone Leighton, ‘we’re businessmen. The Krays trust us to handle their merchandising affairs, we make money for them the legit way.’
I knew it wouldn’t be long before Lindsay and Leighton were back in the news. I didn’t expect it to be as contestants on Mastermind either. They were clearly desperate to follow in the Krays’ footsteps and I was fairly confident that the way they were putting themselves about, they would succeed. It was not, after all, that difficult to get locked up in prison if you put your mind to it.
The curtain finally came down on the Fraynes’ East End stage performance of pantomi
me gangsters when they were arrested for a £10,000 armed raid on a building society in their hometown of Newbridge, Gwent. They had planned to use their ill-gotten gains to finance their new crime empire in London, but the raid on the Halifax was badly bungled. An accomplice, Steve Cook, was apprehended trying to make his getaway on a bus after the getaway car had broken down. The two women cashiers who were behind the counter that day were so badly traumatised by their ordeal that neither has worked since. It’s a pity they didn’t realise they were being confronted by fools. When the police began to look into the activities of the Frayne gang, they learned that they had also planned to kidnap soccer star Paul Gascoigne.
Paul Edwards was recruited as a minder by the Fraynes and he had been told that his job was to ‘look mean’ when they were out in public together. Seventeen-stone Edwards, a former SAS soldier, had been working as a chauffeur and bodyguard for Gascoigne when he had been playing for Tottenham Hotspur. It was claimed that the gang had suggested Edwards use his position to abduct the star, who was then playing for Lazio in Rome, and they would hold him for ransom. The kidnap plot was part of the fantasy world the Frayne gang had immersed itself in and so it never did happen.
Another witness told police that he was present when Edwards and the Fraynes discussed a plot to kidnap a Morecambe businessman until an underworld debt of £132,000 had been paid.
Leighton Frayne had been so desperate to be known as the new Ronnie Kray, he had even tried to copy Ronnie’s schizophrenia-induced outbursts, exploding into theatrical violence without any obvious reason or warning. The Frayne entourage would embroider the facts when telling others about these tantrums. This boosted the Fraynes’ egos and satisfied their craving for a reputation as violent gangsters.
One former associate told how a replica gun was rammed into his mouth during a row. What harm a replica gun could to do to him, only the replica Krays could know. A pub landlord almost laughed as he described how they had tried to start a protection racket in Newbridge. He told police that when the Fraynes approached him he said, ‘Where do you think you are, Chicago? I told them to get out.’
The brothers even tried to silence witnesses as their heroes had done prior to their trial in 1969. Three ex-associates complained of menacing phone calls and letters warning them not to testify, and one potential witness beaten up by the Fraynes sold his home and vanished. He has still not been traced. One suspects that fleeing from the Fraynes has proven to be acutely embarrassing.
At their bungled-robbery trial, the Fraynes pleaded not guilty. After hearing the evidence, which often brought howls of laughter from the public gallery, and deliberating for 13 hours the jurors found them guilty of armed robbery, possession of an illegal weapon and conspiracy to deal in firearms. As they stood stony-faced in the dock at Newport Crown Court, Judge Michael Gibbon told the pair, ‘You have to be deterred from committing armed robbery.’ He then jailed them for a total of eight years.
Before their first bowl of prison porridge had gone cold, Tony Lambrianou was giving an interview to a tabloid newspaper about his meetings with the Kray clones. As I began to read the article, I was not surprised to learn that ‘boxing promoter’ James Campbell had been one of the Frayne brothers’ entourage. The article described how he had introduced Lambrianou to the brothers whilst ‘surrounded by seven burly minders’. From what I had seen of their minders, it was more likely their pantomime counterparts, the seven dwarfs, that had surrounded them.
Lambrianou told the reporter:
The Fraynes didn’t just want to know or be associated with the Krays, they wanted to be them. They told me they had a business in Wales and were hoping to make a film about the Krays in which they would play the twins.
They said how much they admired the twins and said that Lindsay, the quiet one, was the Reg and Leighton, the slick one, was the Ron.
As the evening wore on I realised they were obsessed, they even drank the same drinks. The ‘Ron’ drank light ale and the ‘Reg’ drank gin and tonic. It was unnerving. Those boys seemed to want to get inside the skin of Reg and Ron.
They wanted to know every detail, where they bought their clothes, where they had their hair cut, who manicured their nails, what underwear they wore. I realised there was something warped about them. After 15 years in prison you have that sixth sense. Film research or not, they sent shivers up my spine. I sniffed that something wasn’t right. It was like a Fatal Attraction-type thing, it really disturbed me.
Lambrianou’s ability to sniff out a fake cannot be questioned, as he himself is in the top half of the counterfeit champions league.
When the cell door slammed shut on the Fraynes, I really believed they would wake up and realise just how foolish their fascination with two failed gangsters had been. I thought they would stop their ridiculous charade and get on with living their lives in the here and now. I was of course totally wrong. The Fraynes revelled in their new-found notoriety. It didn’t matter that the tabloid press had poked fun at them after their trial.
One headline read, ‘They thought they were the Krays but we called them “Pinky and Perky”’. The Fraynes told themselves that the press always had it in for Ron and Reg and so it was to be expected that they would be subjected to negative publicity too. Locking the Krays up had been the only way the government had been able to stop them from taking over London, or so the East End myth goes. So it was no surprise that the Fraynes began to claim they had been fitted up because the authorities were concerned about their activities.
In letters from prison, ‘Ron the slick one’ (or Leighton as his mother christened him) told a pen pal that despite the humiliating press reports they had endured following the trial, the Krays had not only stood by them, but supported them. Nothing, it seemed, was going to stop the Fraynes from living out their fantasy.
Prison had not only removed Leighton from society. It had distanced him even further from reality. One letter read:
There is no rift with Reg and Ron. Some of the prosecution witnesses have asked Reg and Ron to print bad of us in return for money, but those people don’t understand the close friendship and bond that Reg and Ron have with me and Lindsay. Reg and Ron are both fine. I received a letter off Reg yesterday as I do every week. Ron writes me when he’s in the mood. Just like my brother, he doesn’t like writing. I am like Reg, I write, for it pleases me and pleases the friends I write to.
As for looking like Reggie and Ronnie, I have a difference of opinion. I see my brother looking like Reg and he says that he doesn’t look like Reg but he sees me like Ron. But, yes, I do agree, it is uncanny. Even Reg and Ron see the likeness. It has been said that me and Lindsay have the deeds to Reggie and Ronnie’s prime. I suppose that is true, but I wouldn’t call it a firm.
That’s old fashioned. I would remould it on a machine; every little cog counts. All our minders had been sent by our elders. Our personal friends seemed to take the roles of minders. There are four teams of minders, only two at one time are aware that they are active. The other two teams remain in the background. It all depends where we go. On some occasions in London there have to be 12 to 14 people at one time that you would be aware of. Some may get our drinks, watch the toilets. Sometimes the attention can get you down but I got used to it after a while. Yes, we have all the doors flung open for us. Never paid for drinks, yet offered all sorts of deals. What can you do when it is put in your lap?
When in London I feel it goes over the top, but people have jobs to do, they are classed as our minders. I am prepared to have my people way in the background as it can offend.
I was at Browns nightclub. Me and Lindsay had friends with us and some chap was making rude comments, and the older element didn’t say nothing. I thought the doormen were very good, but they too had a stand-back approach, so I brought my people in. They had a word with the person in question and the night ended happily from my point of view. So, yes, the attention can get you down. I lose myself in the mountains and enjoy listening to the birds an
d the fresh air. I don’t need minders when I’m in the mountains. It’s where I grew up.
I sometimes think I am glad to be back in Wales, just to be myself. I don’t think my life is like something out of James Bond. It can become very sexy if I so desired, but it’s how you look at it. I like meeting new friends and believe there are good and bad in all walks of life; the police are more corrupt and more active than villains. That’s my personal view. Please remember that I am not Ronnie, I am who I am. I really don’t think I will end up like the Krays.
Rarely have I been known to praise the police but I must thank them for halting the rise of the Frayne gang, as we may have had to endure more of ‘Ron the slick one’s’ ramblings had the robbery been a success. Stating that he didn’t think he would end up like the Krays in a letter penned from his prison cell, just about sums up his grasp on reality. Leighton must have sat in his cell wondering what he could do next to enhance the Frayne brothers’ rather dismal criminal reputation.
Few in prison would bother listening to him and so he decided he would turn to the public in the hope of gaining a fix of much-needed attention. Leighton decided that he would write the Frayne brothers’ life story, which he believed would be turned into a film. Leighton assured his pen pal that this was not them writing a book just to copy the Krays, as the press would undoubtedly insinuate:
Wannabe in My Gang? Page 22
