by John Pearson
Cooper was thirty-six and rich. He owned a private bank off Wigmore Street, several insurance companies, two Rollses and a Yorkshire terrier called Sam. Jewish, he had been brought up in England, served with the American army, been imprisoned for a while in Germany and travelled on an American passport. He was a mystery man. Some said he was a spy. It is known that at one time he ran a gold-smuggling ring to the Far East, and later dabbled in arms deals; there are still endless rumours about him. One top detective from the Yard has taken a long interest in his career and says that ‘he will almost certainly end with a bullet in his back’. What has saved him so far has been his canniness and the unlikeliness of his appearance. He stands 5 feet 7 inches tall and has a sad moustache, sparse hair and a faint stutter which gives his conversation a melancholy air. He never boasts, always appears defensive about his passion for good living, and says nothing of his flats in Brussels and Geneva and his big house on Campden Hill – nor of the many women in his life.
Cooper was always on the move and used his bank as cover for his deals. He readily agreed to help the twins, and forged certificates for the stolen shares were soon concocted at the bank; as an extra service Cooper even offered to help the twins market them in Germany. He was quite sure it could be done and the proceedings be credited to London quite legitimately via the Hamburg branch of the Deutsche Bank. Within ten days the twins would have their money. All Cooper wanted in return was their help as allies. Charles Richardson, the twins’ old fellow-prisoner from Shepton Mallet, was expanding his South London gang and starting to move into the West End. For some time he had fixed his eye on Cooper and his shady businesses and was becoming threatening. Cooper required protection; the twins were delighted to assist.
And so, through Cooper and their Mafia connections in America, the twins were launched upon the path of international adventure. Backed by their name, the traffic in stolen North American securities flourished, with Cooper soon supplanting Leslie Payne as organizer and go-between for the major deals; through Cooper, too, the twins began to meet a whole new clientele ready to profit by their services.
Centred on Brussels was Europe’s most elaborate forged-currency syndicate. In northern Germany and Amsterdam there was the ring that had virtually cornered the international market in stolen jewellery. Peace-loving Zurich was the centre for international arms deals, Paris and the South of France for stolen major works of art, London and Geneva for gold-smuggling. Then there were the drug-runners and the spies. Each of these criminal trades had its acknowledged virtuosi and leaders, who formed a sort of international underground of crime. These were the men Cooper knew, and here was a rich field for the twins: international crime is different from national crime only in quantity. There are the same feuds and jealousies, and every specialist in crime is vulnerable to one super-specialist – the specialist in violence.
That autumn Frances showed her first signs of a breakdown. A change would probably have cured her, but she had nowhere she could go. Sometimes she was with Reggie, imagining that everything could still work out, sometimes with her parents, saying the twins scared her.
Most days she still saw Reggie; when she did he tried to get her back. Sometimes she spent a day with him. In September they drove to Dartmoor to visit Ronnie’s friend, the ‘Mad Axe Man’, Frank Mitchell. She remembered him as ‘a huge man with the biggest hands I ever saw, yet he was gentle, like a child’. Reggie gave him a transistor radio; Mitchell had made Frances a present in the prison workshop – a small wooden jewel-box lined with velvet.
On days like these it was easy to be happy. Back in London it was different. One night at Vallance Road she had a row with Reggie which brought Ronnie down in his pyjamas, bellowing at his brother to ‘throw the fucking woman out for good.’ Frances began to sob hysterically; her brother had to come and take her home. A few days later she was back with Reggie, but by now she was heavily on tranquillizers and pep-pills. She suffered headaches and severe depressions. Like Ronnie she began to fear the dark.
Then in October she decided there was no hope for her marriage and told her mother that she wanted it annulled. Her mother swears that she was still a virgin. That same month a Cypriot waitress called Anna Zambodini brought a paternity suit against Reggie. It was dismissed, but the publicity helped counteract the slur of the threatened annulment. A few weeks later Frances entered the clinic of the Harley Street psychiatrist who was treating Ronnie. She had been married just six months by now.
That autumn Ronnie started to compile his list again. Fame, money, foreign deals all had their uses, but he still felt threatened. The twins still had enemies. One was ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser. It was a good nine years since this aggressive little man had taken sides with Billy Hill against the twins and gone to prison for his attack on Jack Spot. Now he was out, and Ronnie had heard rumours that he was friendly with another of the twins’ old enemies – a fair-haired tearaway from Watney Street called Myers. There was resentment over a long-firm of his the twins had destroyed. Since meeting Fraser he had changed his name to Cornell and moved south of the river, where they had both joined forces with the Richardsons. By October Cornell, Fraser and both the Richardsons were down on Ronnie’s list.
Even today there are criminals in London who puzzle over why the Krays and Richardsons ever had to clash: the criminal activities of the Richardsons seemed to begin at the opposite pole from those of the Krays. The twins were traditional cockney villains, dangerous men who soon became the most powerful criminals in London. Charlie and Eddie Richardson were different. They were not cockney villains, violent outsiders like the Krays. They were straightforward, middle-class businessmen. Charlie Richardson ran scrap-metal yards and long-firms south of the river, dabbled in government surplus, floated dubious companies. Eddie Richardson had a legitimate wholesale chemist’s business bringing in at least £4,000 a year, Charlie had his office in Park Lane and his family house at Bromley. A year before the twins would have dismissed the Richardsons as straight men. But there is a natural tendency for large-scale fraud to need the threat of violence in the background. By 1964 the Richardsons had started to enjoy it. After their arrest it was the details of their gang brutality that caught the headlines – the mock courts in the Park Lane offices before the Richardsons, the pliers on the teeth and finger-nails and the electrode treatment for those who let them down.
This did not worry Ronnie very much. What did disturb him was the threat of competition. He also heard that Cornell – himself one of the Richardson torturers – had called him ‘that fat poof’. Reggie urged caution. Ronnie wanted blood and was soon finding reasons of his own to shed it. Fraser had taken over a chain of fruit machines the twins had owned. Cornell had moved in on the West End pornography business. Just before Christmas 1965 Ronnie and the Richardsons met late one night at the Astor Club off Berkeley Square. Both sides were armed. Insults were exchanged and at one point it looked as if shooting was just about to start.
A few weeks later the twins were summoned to a meeting with two important visitors from the American Mafia. They spent two days together, talking as equals, and reached an understanding. The Americans were anxious to increase their stake in London gambling. ‘Junkets’ – big organized gambling parties – would soon be flying in on a regular basis from California and New York. This meant big money, on which the Americans were anxious to take their cut. In readiness they were investing heavily in several new London gambling clubs and hotels. Millions of dollars were at stake; nothing must go wrong. Provided the twins were ready to guarantee the new clubs freedom from trouble they would have their percentage.
It was a nice nest-egg to look forward to, but not if the Richardsons began throwing their weight about.
From then on all that counted was war against the Richardsons. No further business was accepted, no risks were taken. The Firm was mobilized and the information service stepped up. Fresh arms were purchased; caches of arms and ammunition were established in different parts of London. Ever
ybody in the Firm was issued with an automatic. Ronnie wanted something more impressive for himself and Reggie; through Alan Cooper he bought two brand new Browning machine-guns for £75 each. He also asked for Mills bombs and limpet mines; Cooper reported these were not available.
Ronnie enjoyed the Brownings, spending hours oiling them and studying the instruction manual. But weapons didn’t make a war; he wanted allies, too, and in January held a meeting at Fort Vallance with the two other gangs who had most to lose from the rise of the Richardsons. From Clapham came two brothers who led a gang of thieves who had been closely involved in the Great Train Robbery and had clashed with the Richardsons. From North London came three more brothers whose gang had long operated by courtesy of the twins.
Ronnie was eloquent about the menace of the Richardsons; after everyone had drunk a lot he began talking of his old dream of a federation of gangs. They should form a defensive alliance, a firm treaty that if one gang were attacked the others would come to its aid.
‘And if someone’s killed?’
‘It’d be up to the rest of us to do something about it.’
This seemed a good idea and they shook hands on it.
The war broke out that February after a shouting match in the Stork Club between Ronnie and Fraser; the twins left Cedra Court, the Colonel took command. The following few weeks were probably the happiest of his life. He was the guerrilla leader, armed to the teeth and ready for anything. Messages passed back and forth in code, meetings were summoned beneath forgotten bridges and in the backs of lorries, spies brought in a flow of tidings of the enemy. Obscure East End pubs became the Colonel’s overnight headquarters. Raids were planned and ambushes prepared; Reggie was with him, as he always was in time of trouble, the worries about Frances now forgotten, the humdrum business of the Firm irrelevant.
For once the twins appeared to have an enemy worth fighting. One night a raiding-party shot up The Widow’s Pub in Tapp Street from a car, five minutes after the twins had left. A few days later a car mounted the pavement in Vallance Road, knocking down a man who looked like Ronnie. The twins put on bullet-proof vests and started making preparations to use the machine-guns against the Richardsons. Fate robbed them of the pleasure.
An early morning fight broke out on 8 March 1966 between two rival gangs at Mr Smith’s Club on the London–Eastbourne Road at Catford; a thirty-year-old gangster called Richard Hart was killed. For once the twins were uninvolved: this was a Richardson job. For some time they had been infiltrating this drab segment of South London suburb; the night Hart was shot, Eddie Richardson and Frankie Fraser had arrived at the club soon after midnight, armed and ready for a showdown with the local gang protecting the place.
It should have been a routine takeover, but surprisingly the local gang fought back, shooting it out over the blackjack tables. When the police arrived Hart was already dead, Fraser was badly wounded and Eddie Richardson was having his gunshot wounds treated at Lewisham Hospital. Most of the top Richardson gangsters were involved; the police had clear evidence against them and it was obvious the Richardsons were finished. In one night at the ‘Battle of Mr Smith’s Club’ the only gang that had tried challenging the twins for control of London had stupidly destroyed itself.
The twins had had their war won for them. All their competitors had vanished and at this moment they could have made themselves the richest criminals in Britain. Instead Ronnie slipped a 9-mm Mauser automatic into his shoulder holster and asked Scotch Jack Dickson to drive him to The Blind Beggar.
It was a very casual death. Cornell was perched on a stool at the far end of the bar, drinking light ales with a couple of friends that night after Hart was killed. The pub was almost empty; it was 8.30 p.m. and the evening trade had barely started – a couple in the saloon bar near the door, an old man sipping Guinness in the public bar on the far side of the partition. The barmaid had just put a record on the juke-box to liven things up when Ronnie’s arrival made this unnecessary. Ian Barrie was with him. Both had guns.
‘Well, just look who’s here,’ said Cornell, and smiled. He had an unattractive smile. Instead of answering Barrie fired two warning shots into the ceiling to send the barmaid scurrying for safety in the cellar. Then Ronnie shot Cornell through the head and walked back to the street where his car was waiting. When he had gone, the barmaid went to the wounded man, but there was little she could do. By the time Cornell reached hospital he was dead. When the police arrived at The Blind Beggar nobody had seen a thing.
‘I never like hurting anybody unless I feel it personally,’ Ronnie had always said: when he shot George Cornell he was repaying him for several ancient insults as well as for calling him a ‘fat poof’ behind his back. But there was more to it than that. Ronnie believed his honour as a leader was involved, for Hart had been an ally. As one of the Firm put it, ‘One of ours had gone so it was up to Ronnie to do one of theirs.’
It had to be Cornell: there was no one else left from the Richardsons’ gang worth killing. Fraser was in hospital with a police guard by his bed. The Richardson brothers were in custody, along with everyone who had been at Mr Smith’s. Cornell was the one important member of their gang who was not involved and so was the ideal victim. Thanks to his information service, Ronnie had known exactly where to find him; he had been trailing him for weeks.
Ronnie Kray’s shooting of George Cornell was soon the worst-kept secret in the East End. Ronnie had done what he had always dreamed of: he had killed openly as a gangster should. As he lay hiding in a small room over a barber’s in the Lea Bridge Road he lovingly recounted how it felt – the noise and the recoil of the gun, the look of blank surprise on Cornell’s face, and how his head ‘burst open’ as the bullet entered. Ronnie felt no remorse, no fear, only exhilaration. Reggie was taking care of things.
Superintendent Butler, Scotland Yard’s greatest detective, came down to Whitechapel to nail the murderer, but could not touch him. He knew who was guilty. The whole of Bethnal Green knew, but nobody would talk. Butler was putting all his hopes on the barmaid from The Blind Beggar, who must certainly have seen the killer if not the killing. He was too late: someone had spoken to her. When Butler put Ronnie into an identity parade at Commercial Street Police Station, the woman nervously insisted that her memory was weak.
So the great Butler of the Yard departed, leaving the Cornell killing as one of the few ‘unsolved’ murders of his career. He must have known that he was also leaving an entire area of London ruled by gang law.
THIRTEEN
Axe Man
In 1966 one of the potentially most dangerous prisoners in Britain was Frank Mitchell, the so-called ‘Mad Axe Man’. Gaoled originally for robbery with violence, he had spent eighteen of his thirty-two years in detention. He was immensely strong, but prison and the punishment he had received for violence had numbed what scant intelligence he had. His body bore the scars of birchings for attacks on prison officers. He earned his nickname when he threatened an elderly couple with a felling axe while on the run from a hospital for the criminally insane, and was detained at Dartmoor during Her Majesty’s pleasure, i.e. indefinitely.
By now he seemed to have accepted life in prison. Handled with understanding he was easy to control, and during the four years he had spent in Dartmoor, warders had come to like him. The prison governor, Mr Denis Malone, took a particular interest in him and always called him by his Christian name. He saw that it was useless to impose too strict a discipline on Mitchell – warders would get hurt and Mitchell was strong enough to take any amount of punishment. He would just end up more rebellious and brutalized than ever.
Instead of this the governor allowed Mitchell a loose rein. He was given the blue arm-band of a trusted prisoner and promised that if he behaved himself the governor would do everything he could to get him a release date from the Home Office. Mitchell seemed happy with the arrangement, and Dartmoor became something of a home for him. He spent hours in the gymnasium improving his extraordinary physique an
d during the day seems to have had more freedom than anyone in Dartmoor. Most days were spent on the moors in working parties guarded by a single warder, who often let big Mitchell wander away on his own. Mitchell liked this. He had a way with animals, taming the wild moorland ponies and riding them for miles. Wearing his shirt and denim trousers he was quite free to visit isolated Dartmoor pubs and often brought a bottle of Scotch back for the evening. He bought a budgerigar for his cell, and even had a mistress for a while, a village school-mistress he used to make love to in a deserted barn. Each night, when he was locked up in his cell, he did his press-ups and his weight-lifting and went to sleep dreaming of the release date the governor would get him.
Another reason for Frank Mitchell’s peace of mind came from knowing he had friends outside and was not forgotten. It was ten years now since he first met Ronnie Kray in Wandsworth, but the Krays still kept in contact with him. They visited him and wrote quite regularly. The radio which Reggie brought him allowed him to listen in to the police and the prison authorities’ short-wave conversations and he was well supplied for money. Kindness apart, Mitchell was a legend among long-serving prisoners, and the life he led in Dartmoor was a good advertisement for the twins’ ‘Away Society’. This was one reason why they had taken such care of him when he was charged with the attempted murder of another prisoner during his period at Wandsworth. Word was passed round the prison that Frank was a friend of the Krays and that anyone giving evidence against him did so at his peril. Nemone Lethbridge, the attractive female barrister who appeared for Ronnie in his car-stealing case in 1961, was briefed to defend him. And Ronnie even paid his West End tailor to make Frank a suit so that he would look his best at the trial. After Mitchell was acquitted, he always spoke of the twins as ‘the two best friends a man could hope for’.
