My book is coming along fine. I won’t rush it. I have been offered a deal for a film but I must think on it. The book won’t be along the lines of Our Story, it will be an account of my life, the pain, the happiness, trouble, pleasure.
So much has happened in my life and I felt that it should have been written later in my life, but I have been asked to put a book together from many companies, some of whom are dear friends of mine. I will write the text myself but can be put right with my spelling mistakes.
All my fights I have had, which were some pretty violent fights, will be revealed in my book. I was stabbed very bad, through the lung, heart and spleen and seven other small wounds. Pretty bad ones, but that’s life isn’t it? I don’t like bullshit. I am a man of my word. I have been to America several times but not as me, if you know what I mean? I enjoy my own company even though I am here for something I didn’t do.
It’s a lot easier as I have no wife and no commitments to nobody, but who knows, I could meet a lady someday and settle down. If I were to have a firm, the people in the dock against me and Lindsay would be the last people I would have in any so-called firm.
My publisher has given the book a name, which we agree with. It’s called: Guilty by Association: The Fraynes. The book is planned to be published around our appeal date. It seems our solicitors are confident and our barristers.
Despite their solicitors and barristers being confident, the Fraynes lost their appeal against their conviction and the film was never made. No doubt Leighton didn’t want Hollywood distorting the facts or damaging his image. It wasn’t tinsel town that Leighton had to worry about rubbishing him though, it was the British Medical Association – I’m sure they would have questioned his ability to survive being stabbed ‘through the heart, lung and spleen’. Then again, who would dare to ever doubt a man who claims he ‘is a man of his word and hates bullshitters’?
As the Fraynes were being asked by ‘many companies’ to write their memoirs, it would indicate that they had a pretty extraordinary story to tell. When Leighton was asked to describe these ‘extraordinary events’ in his life, he told his prison pen pal:
We have been asked to put our story together as when on remand we smashed a police station up. We have had interest of a production of a film based on that. What triggered me and Lindsay off in the police station was when we were shown disrespect by one of the sergeants. The sergeant also did that to my family. They didn’t hurt me or Lindsay. Lindsay ripped his arm open by punching a cistern. We were just moved to different police stations. I went on a hunger and water strike for four days.
I couldn’t imagine Quentin Tarantino entering into a bidding war for the rights to make the movie and even if he had, however much popcorn I chomped, I don’t think I could sit through a film based on two failed Welsh gangsters attacking a toilet cistern in a police station. I, thankfully, wasn’t thinking like Leighton. In his fertile mind the destruction of a toilet cistern could be no ordinary act of mindless vandalism if he and his brother had carried it out. Their violence, as Leighton loved to tell people, was always extreme and always extraordinary.
I have been convicted for violence but all the convictions, I have felt, were unjust. I have always been set upon by more than one person, but I have always been able to defend myself. One sentence I did, I was given a beating by 14 Territorial Army blokes. I had to play dead, and when it all stopped I got to my feet and broke a few blokes’ noses and broke arms, but I went to prison for it. Lindsay gets carried away. He once bit a bloke’s ear off and ate it. The fight wasn’t his fault.
We were both boxers in our day. Lindsay, the boxer, me, the fighter, but to street fight we have no fears. We both have abnormal strength. We just seem to toy around but people’s bones are getting broke. But they are the ones seeking trouble and because they can’t do what they’re expected to do, they cry police. So that results in us getting a bad name. I was stabbed several years ago. I nearly lost my life. I was stabbed seven times, one which collapsed my lung. I paralysed the bloke that did this stabbing. It was only when I finished sorting him out that I fell to the floor with the wounds. At hospital, they lost me three times but I pulled through pretty quick. Strange things happened that day, but that’s a different story. All will be revealed in my book.
‘Ron the slick one’ thought, unsurprisingly, that like his hero Ronnie Kray, he was misunderstood. He wasn’t the hard man people believed he was, or the fool the press portrayed him as, he was, he said, ‘thoughtful and generous’.
It’s only other people that print the hard image. I never intended to look hard or be hard. If I could change time, I would never have fought back. I would like to consider myself kind, thoughtful and generous. I would give my last if I had it. I don’t like seeing people hurt. I hate bullies. I don’t like seeing children hurt, so as far as being hard, I don’t know. I don’t get messed about. I can be a very good friend, but a terrible enemy. I don’t see that I talk bluntly about violence. I have never been the aggressor, but I don’t have no mercy for my enemies. After all, why should I? They would do to me what I would do to them.
My brother and I are also artists and I would consider myself a master. I write poetry, I am also a great studier of the occult. I would consider me and Lindsay the best in all fields, such as pencil and paints. I have done a lot of work with models. I do the fantasy art side like women with tails and snakes and creatures in their hair. When I draw I feel I have turned out some nice work and have drawn pictures for judges, pop stars, etc.
I was going to get in touch with Pink Floyd to do the soundtrack for their second film, but unfortunately that can’t be now. I have met many celebrities.
I have very good and genuine friends who are in the entertainment business in London, America, Australia and so on, besides underworld celebs . . . I am smiling now! I have met the old-time gangsters but I see them as people and very nice blokes.
I have met law lords, MPs. It makes you think what am I doing in here, doesn’t it? Yes, I have met many stars of today. I am still in touch with many but, I keep my letters personal. That’s the way I think it should be.
Like the Krays in the swinging ’60s, he predictably claimed that he was well connected. Not only did he mingle with stars and celebrities, but announced he was heavily involved with the American Mafia:
Me and Lindsay have been to the core of the underworld, so as you must understand, you see nothing, you hear nothing and you say nothing. My world is fascinating, quite sexy and glamorous. I have been around the glamour, with sexy ladies. You get respect – that’s nice – but I would prefer to earn respect as friends.
I can get on with most people, I speak my mind. If I don’t like something, I say no. Lindsay does most of the talking on business deals. I take it all in. I work out if a person is on the level and not just wasting my time. There is plenty of mystery and tension but that is the case in all business, don’t you think?
There are so many Mafia families, but we have met a man who is currently a Mafia godfather. It was his father that Ronnie met and became very good friends with, and me and Lindsay have met the son of the godfather Ronnie once knew. It is respect for Ronnie that keeps the Mafia out of the UK, but, yet again, there is nothing here to control. They have states bigger than London.
Al Capone passed the knowledge to Sophie Tucker. She passed it to Ronnie Kray and Ronnie Kray passed it to me and Lindsay. We have never told Reg and Ron our great-uncle was number-one advisor to Al Capone, but that’s our secret. People seem to think that Reg and Ron gave us all our contacts abroad, but that isn’t the case. Lindsay and I have been present at a lot of meetings in Wales and elsewhere. It goes deeper than what a lot of people realise, but I have to answer to my elders of which they are the cream. After all, they are never known and never will be known.
It would have been fun to have played a part in the Kray film. We were going to play Reg and Ron in a remake. Reg and Ron weren’t happy with the first film so Ron revised his co
ntacts with the Mafia for a second film to be made. The American actors were Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall. They were going to play the Mafia bosses and some well-known British actors were going to play the British side. We were looking forward to that. Never mind, maybe later.
The reason why me and Lindsay did not attend for the major film parts in the first Kray film was we were doing a prison sentence of two years nine months.
Missing out on starring in the first Kray film because he was in jail must have been very disappointing for Leighton Frayne. I cannot begin to wonder how disappointed Pacino, De Niro and Duvall must have been to have missed out appearing alongside the Fraynes in the remake. However, that particular prison sentence was not all doom and gloom for Leighton.
When the prison officers thought that the dynamic duo were locked securely in their cell, Leighton was venturing out to distant planets, being abducted by aliens and discovering cures for a disease that has to date eluded the world of medicine:
It’s a pity that the homosexuals have been hit with this Aids. I have the cure to Aids and have done so for a few years, and it is so simple. But the time is not right. I will give the cure when the time is right. It is no joke.
I am sincere in what I say. Me and Lindsay have checked, double-checked and treble-checked and it is the case. I have the cure. Freddie Mercury was to have my help, but it seems the people around him were full of shit. But it cost me nothing and I want no cash for it. I don’t ask you to believe me on that; it makes no difference to me if I am believed or not. That’s another story. I am not pulling your leg on the cure for Aids. I will give you a brief background on how, why and what to do. You may think it’s a load of rubbish, but as you say, each to their own. It was on my last sentence and me and Lindsay did an experiment with regards to the occult and painted this circle on the floor. This we carried out. After having a bit of a shock, I went to sleep.
Even though I am quite capable to astral travel, I had this dream that was so much like reality. I was on a modern craft, and there were ladies there with gold heads. Very pretty ladies. I watched them moving around from machine to machine and all was prepared for me. I was called over and asked to look into a microscope, and they explained what it was all about. Aids is a deliberate attempt to re-educate the population but it has got out of hand for the people who have so wrongly brought this disease to the surface.
I was on this craft for what seemed like a few days, being told this: how to give the cure and what was to be done with any money made of it, which would be a tremendous amount. I was briefed on all sorts of things – very interesting. I woke up and told Lindsay of this dream and Lindsay couldn’t get over the biological talk I came out with. Being in prison, I wasn’t in any position to pursue anything on this. When I was released, I made my studies and, believe it or not, I found a book well over 100 years old, and within the book it not only tells the cure, which I was told, but the name of the virus.
I could see why the Jehovah Witnesses were so funny about having people’s blood. It’s just they were about 80 years out. Cures have been given through dreams. Penicillin was given through a dream, so I must wait until the time is right. People have had Aids and have found themselves cured and I know why and how, and, believe me, it is so simple. It upsets me that children suffer with Aids, but I did try a major company and they were very interested, but I wouldn’t give them the cure direct, unless they gave everyone a fair chance of a cure, rich, poor, everyone. But they seemed to decide that how can a bloke from Wales hold the cure, and I left it at that.
With Freddie Mercury, I felt so sorry for the bloke. I wrote a letter offering my help. I didn’t want no payment, no publicity, but the letter was ignored. So much for his concern. It don’t make any difference to me if he died or not. When you hold the key to life after death, life doesn’t mean much. I would stake my life on the cure that I hold. That is how confident I am. People may laugh and scoff, it doesn’t worry me.
So you see, that’s it all in brief. Even with all the money off the cure, I would use it to give a gift of life to children that are hungry. To see a million little faces glowing with bellies full would surely be a gift in itself. Money means nothing to me.
By the time he had begun to babble in biological talk and the ladies with the golden heads had ushered him onto the spaceship, he had lost me.
Like Lambrianou, ‘the gang boss’, Leighton Frayne yearned to be linked to the name Kray. He became so desperate to achieve Kray status that he was prepared to gamble and lose his liberty. What Leighton failed to realise was that, like Lambrianou, his actions are a contradiction of the criminal code he and his heroes preached. Leighton wasn’t behaving like the mythical criminals he yearned to emulate. He was behaving like a petty thug who really had no idea about decency, morals or ethics. Leighton told his pen pal: ‘I don’t believe in swearing in front of women. I will always be polite to women and never raise a hand to a woman. That’s the way I’ve been brought up. I hope it’s for good.’
But his admirable statement about being polite to women and never raising a hand to them had obviously been forgotten on the day he and his gang burst into a building society and threatened two innocent women with a gun. Perhaps the scheming police and vile press got it wrong, perhaps the Fraynes and their gang burst in and politely asked to make a large withdrawal?
As comical as they undoubtedly are, these blundering wannabe gangsters threatened, bullied and intimidated two women who were at their place of work. Like Lambrianou, Leighton Frayne is living a lie he has created, trying to portray himself as a well-mannered, firm-but-fair somebody, when in fact he is a terribly sad, third-rate nobody. When the luvvies in the media think about hyping up this failed gangster, they ought to spare a thought for the two women he terrified so much.
14
I’M A CELEBRITY? GET OUT OF HERE!
After Reggie’s death, the Fraynes were not the only ones trying to salvage something from the wreckage of the fictitious Kray empire. Kate Howard, the housewife from Kent and former Mrs Kray, suddenly became an expert on the underworld and established herself as an author by publishing several books about various gangsters and murderers. Ms Kray then went on to present a television series based on one of her books, Hard Bastards, which purported to showcase Britain’s hardest men. Unfortunately, by the time Ms Kray had got halfway through the series, the subject matter was failing to match up to the billing. In series two she was really scraping the barrel. Every wannabe and never-will-be who had been involved in a scuffle in the school playground was appearing on the show. As soon as the titles started rolling, subjects of the show would dash off to the nearest publishers, video of the programme in hand, insisting their lives as hard bastards were worthy of a book. Unfortunately for the British public, many were successful.
Tucker’s old friend Carlton Leach appeared on the programme and subsequently wrote his autobiography, entitled Muscle (2002). On the cover of the book he boasted: ‘I’m the deadliest bastard you’ll ever meet. If you cross me, I’ll track you to the ends of the earth and destroy you.’
I knew when I picked it up I was in for a good read . . .
In a rather confusing ramble, Leach described trying to remember which ‘events were significant’ concerning the period leading up to the murders of his friends Tucker, Tate and Rolfe at Rettendon.
Leach said that there was one incident that kept coming to his mind, and that was when I had first met him at the Ministry of Sound:
It was a meeting more dramatic than most – he turned up bleeding from a knife wound in his stomach. He was lying on the toilet floor writhing in agony. I suspected right away who might have done it, a mixed-race geezer who I’d banned once.
If such a meeting had taken place it would have been re-created for a comedy sketch rather than included in a true crime book. ‘Hi, pleased to meet you, sorry I can’t get up to shake your hand – it’s the old stab wound, you know. You couldn’t do me a favour and call me an
ambulance?’ I must admit, I laughed when I read it. Despite the fact Leach had never met me before, he claimed he instinctively knew who was responsible for stabbing me. He said that he then proceeded to bash my assailant’s head in with an iron bar, which left the man requiring 56 stitches.
It is true that I was stabbed on a visit to the Ministry of Sound, but the incident took place in a shop doorway up the road from the club. My assailant and his accomplices ran away after the incident. I drove myself home to Essex and did not visit a doctor or a hospital until nearly a week later when the wound became infected.
Leach also claims in his book that whenever he was with Tucker, I would appear with a camera to take his photograph. I can only assume his memory has been damaged by drug abuse because I was only present on two occasions over a six-year period when photographs were taken in his company. The first occasion was at Tucker’s birthday party when a man named Rod took three photos and the second was when boxer Nigel Benn opened the Academy Gym in Southend and photos of Benn, my son and Chris Wheatley’s children were taken.
Chris Wheatley and I did not pose for the photograph because it was the children who had wanted their photo taken with Nigel Benn, not us. Tucker and Leach did stand next to Benn and the children – perhaps they thought they were also famous and the children would be impressed? They were not. When the photographs from Tucker’s birthday party were developed, the only picture which included Leach was given to Tucker to give to him and Tucker and I had one each of the remaining two photos.
Wannabe in My Gang? Page 23
