Bringing Down the Krays

by Bobby Teale

  I went through the story of the night of the Cornell murder and the Firm coming back to the flat. When I said that Reginald Kray had passed a gun to Cornelius Whitehead, Ronnie shouted out, ‘You fucking liar!’ and had to be restrained. I just answered: ‘Ron, the truth hurts…’

  It wasn’t over. I had to go back in the afternoon. During the lunch-break I started to worry more and more, feeling I was betraying my family as well as the code I’d always lived by, never to grass. Even with police protection I wondered whether my wife and children would ever be safe. Christine’s up after me being grilled by the defence about dancing and drinking in her flat and complaining neighbours – how could this possibly be gangsters lying low?

  Platts-Mills went on and on about the Steeple Bay caravan where our family seaside parties showed how little she, we or anyone else had to fear from the twins. He seemed to know a lot. My Christine kept her dignity and answered bravely to everything.

  I didn’t know if I was doing the right, or the wrong thing. We had the police on one side of us, and the Krays on the other. There was no way out. We knew we were already on the Krays’ death-list whether or not we gave evidence, whether or not we were on the streets, at home, in Southend or on the moon.

  If I was charged and convicted by the police for aiding and abetting the murder of Cornell, I was looking at twelve to fifteen years in prison – while my wife got three for harbouring a murderer. In the meantime, on a totally separate charge, our mum had only just escaped the prospect of doing five in the company of Myra Hindley.

  Alfie and David had done their stuff in the witness box. Then it was my turn. I gave most of my testimony on Thursday 16 January. First I got asked by the prosecution some simple stuff about the night Cornell got shot and what happened afterwards, the stuff I’d already given at the committal. I was asked about how Reggie and I had lived together in Green Lanes, about Charlie Clark’s place in Walthamstow and about the flat in Lea Bridge Road. Nobody asked me how it came to be raided.

  Then it was the defence’s turn. Platts-Mills tried on me what he’d done on Alfie. Why was I hiding my identity as ‘Mr B?’ I wasn’t hiding, not any more. I gave it right at the start as clear as day. ‘My name is Robert Frank Teale.’

  Was it true I’d been under constant police surveillance since release from prison? It was. And why might that be?

  ‘For my personal security,’ I replied. Then I get the same treatment as my brothers, with the full CRO given to the court. It’s the usual list of youthful crimes and misdemeanours, and he’s luxuriating in the blackmail conviction. How can I say I’m not lying under oath when I pleaded not guilty under oath to that fit-up at the Bailey and got convicted by a jury? I had to bite my tongue not to let it all come out.

  Then there’s a lot of stuff about the drive from Madge’s, what really happened in the Chequers, what Sammy Lederman had said, whether I could tell Nobby Clark from Ronnie Clark, whether we’d been to any other pub or flats before going to David’s. The defence was trying to trip me up. The judge got cross with Platts-Mills’ pantomime.

  Then I get cross-examined about what I’d said about how Reggie and I had lived together in Green Lanes, the trip to Saffron Walden and Cambridge, with the implication that I’m making it all up. That I couldn’t remember the details, I was confusing one thing with another.

  Then came something that the defence brief was not going to sneer quite so much about.

  ‘Do you not agree that if by any chance you had applied your mind to this question three years ago just after it happened, made some statement, written it down, thought about it carefully, then it would have been much easier for you to work out the details?’ Platts-Mills asked me.

  ‘I did do something about it three years ago,’ I said coolly.

  ‘What do you suggest you did?’

  ‘I got in touch with Scotland Yard and I assisted them in their enquiries.’

  ‘You got in touch with Scotland Yard?’

  ‘Yes – just after the Cornell murder.’

  ‘Was that in March 1966?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With whom did you get in touch?’

  ‘I think it was Tommy Butler.’

  ‘Tommy Butler was then chief of the CID, was he not, at Scotland Yard? How did you contact him?’

  ‘By phone.’

  ‘You actually met him?’

  ‘I met him on one occasion, yes.’

  ‘This is Mr Tommy Butler, a man of enormous distinction, who has just retired from a leading position at Scotland Yard?’

  ‘This is true, yes.’

  ‘And it is your story that he did not take any statement from you whatsoever?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So as far as you know he made no investigations whatsoever?’

  The judge intervened at that point: ‘How can he possibly answer what he does not know?’ The defence replied: ‘I was going to suggest to him that he had not really met Tommy Butler.’

  ‘Did you meet some other distinguished police officers?’ the defence continued.

  ‘I met one man who I used to explain one or two things to.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Look. A murder had taken place,’ I said. ‘I found myself in a position where I was in possession of a certain amount of information which I felt could help bring these men to justice. I got in touch with Scotland Yard. I met one or two other people who I was in contact with most of the time.’

  ‘Did you get money for that?’

  ‘Not a penny. I didn’t expect any.’

  ‘What were you doing it for?

  ‘Because it was obvious to me that these people were then running around like animals and because I happen to know that they were going to kill a number of people in the area, someone had to do something.’

  ‘Is it not the fact that you did not make a statement to anyone about the supposed knowledge of yours until July 1968, two years after the event? Why was that?’

  ‘It would have put my family in jeopardy. Yes. Well, isn’t it obvious, a man walks into a pub and shoots a man in cold-blooded murder, am I going to make a statement and wind up dead myself, or my family?’

  ‘Why would your family be in jeopardy?’

  ‘I knew a murder had taken place. I knew they had a list of people they were going to do.’

  ‘Going back to the time after the shooting, you have told us that you communicated with Scotland Yard, and spoke to Tommy Butler. Did you speak to any other officers?’

  ‘Yes, Joe Pogue.’

  ‘Did you tell him about the Cornell shooting?’

  ‘I explained what position I was in. I explained there were going to be some killings.’

  ‘This was about the Cornell killing which had already taken place?’

  ‘Well, I just briefed him on the details that occurred as far as we were concerned. I said my brothers are terrified, they have wives and children. If I am fool enough to get trapped by these animals, then it is my fault.’

  ‘What did you call yourself speaking to this police officer?’

  ‘I called myself Phillips.’

  And that was the end of my testimony. There was plenty more I could have said.

  There were no reporting restrictions this time. The press picked it up. ‘Robert Teale caused a stir when he revealed himself to have been a police spy. He was asked how many times he had seen the police and what information he had given them,’ so one paper reported. Well, there was quite a stir. The paper went on to recount everything I had said in court.

  There it was, this time, for the whole world to see. ‘Police Spy in the Firm’ was the headline. I was described as a ‘brownhaired youth in a suede jacket’. But what the journalists were not asking was why Butler had given up on the Krays and left them free to kill again. Not that the Yard was going to tell them or anyone else – and still do not want to say after fifty years.

  Billy Exley was in the witness box next, the old boxer who’d been with
me at Steeple Bay. He was very ill with heart trouble. He talked about staying at Moresby Road and how Ronnie had said about Cornell: ‘Fuck him. I’m glad he’s dead.’

  He’d been ordered to get ‘underclothes and suits’, he said, when we were all in David’s flat and then take the twins’ washing backwards and forwards to their mum in Vallance Road. Somebody had to do it. Christine wasn’t going to wash the Krays’ shirts. So old Violet Kray did it, with Billy as the delivery boy.

  Detective Chief Inspector Henry Mooney was on after that. He got it hard from the defence. They were doing the old trick of discrediting the police evidence (and I wish some of my briefs had been as good, I’ll admit), with me and Butler as the weakest links.

  ‘Have you any knowledge of the communication between Robert Teale and Chief Superintendent Butler?’ Platts-Mills asked him.

  ‘I have,’ said Mooney. But he had never asked anything of Mr Butler directly about the matter during his own investigation, he further admitted. And just why was that? The defence didn’t press him further, but I would have liked to.

  What about there being guns in the flat in, where was it, Moresby Road? Wouldn’t this have provided vital forensic evidence if the police had acted – if indeed there was any truth in the story? Platt-Mills asked Mooney.

  We were all liars, was the implication, especially me with my absurd story about meeting the famous Tommy Butler. We were just making it all up. Mooney did not really know what to say. The police looked like either fools or liars or both, the way they’d reacted to the information that half the Firm were holed up in a flat in Clapton. But the police and prosecution could always produce Pogue to prove that I had been telling the truth.

  So Detective Sergeant Pogue was called. It wasn’t part of Read’s big plan. His appearance in court could aid the prosecution in confirming what I said. Or it might do the very opposite by making the whole investigation look like a shambles from the beginning. On the stand Pogue gave the briefest confirmation of the existence of ‘Bob Phillips’ – me.

  Under cross-examination he confirmed the meeting of ‘Phillips’ with Tommy Butler at Hackney greyhound stadium – but of our meets after that he said he had only made rough notes without dates.

  ‘Robert Teale had never volunteered a written statement,’ he said. And I hadn’t. I had never trusted Butler enough to be sure that he could get the Krays and put them behind bars. And I had been right.

  Nobody pressed Pogue further. Maybe it suited both defence and prosecution that the story of Phillips the informer should just go away. I was like the man who never was.

  Nipper Read himself would be on the stand the following day. He was going to be in trouble. This is what he said in his memoirs: ‘On day eight of the trial, Platts-Mills questioned me directly about [the informer]. I was at a distinct disadvantage. Now the gaping hole in the Yard’s file was exposed. He put to me the names of a number of people who had been seen after Cornell’s murder and long before I took over the inquiry. I was obliged to answer that there were no notes of [such meetings] or interviews.’

  So what the hell had it been all about? The trial transcript doesn’t help much.

  Platts-Mills asked questions about the surveillance of the twins and the story about Violet Kray bringing tea on trays to the police watching outside Vallance Road, making it all sound ridiculous. Read couldn’t comment. He had not been involved. That was Butler’s or the local police’s operation. It was all before his time.

  Much more to the point was the matter of somebody actually coming forward to tell the police that there were guns in some flat in March 1966, as the defence put it. ‘Is it really conceivable that the police did not act? Isn’t that because the informer and the information [he allegedly gave] was utterly worthless?’ so Platts-Mills asked Nipper Read.

  He meant me, of course. Read didn’t have an answer. He hadn’t been involved back then, he kept saying.

  Did Inspector Butler ever go to David Teale’s flat? ‘Not to my knowledge,’ said Read. ‘I wasn’t concerned with the case.’

  Ronnie’s brief reeled off a list of members of the Firm whose names this ‘Bobby Teale’ might have revealed – Sammy Lederman, Nobby Clark, Billy Exley, Harry ‘Jew Boy’ Cope, Big Pat Connolly, John Dickson. Was there any record of them?

  ‘No,’ said Read.

  ‘Of course that means, doesn’t it,’ said Platts-Mills, ‘that Mr Bobby Teale did not mention any of their names?’

  ‘He certainly did not speak to me about it in 1966,’ said Read.

  The defence were very well informed. I could tell they’d spent a lot of time working out lots of things about me and my brothers: ‘The Teales at one time shared lodging with Mr McCowan?’ asked Platts-Mills. ‘Not to my knowledge,’ said Read. ‘Mr Hew McCowan [who was] the principle witness in the 1965 case of my client…?’ It was all going round and round in circles. Read clearly wanted as little said about me and Butler as possible. Having used me to get the other Firm members to come over, he now wanted to keep me right out of the way. Everybody did.

  After Cornell, the court got on to Jack the Hat, in which we Teale brothers had not played any part. We’d all been inside, although I’d given Read my accounts of how Ronnie kept urging Reggie to kill, just as I’d been telling Pogue and Butler fifteen months before Jack got it.

  Then Ronnie made his own speech from the dock. There was no gang – all that stuff about the ‘Firm’ was an invention by the prosecution. ‘All we have is our drinking friends we go out with in the evening,’ Ron said. Mr Read had had it in for him since the McCowan case, he said. The police had bought all their evidence – including ours.

  Ronnie had never spent any night at David’s flat. It was all lies by the Teales about any murders. Our mum was on a £25,000 jewel robbery conviction, said Ronnie. ‘She got a suspended sentence. The tale goes round that they [the Teales] are giving evidence against us so that their mother would get off that charge,’ he said.

  We’d have done anything to keep our mum out of prison, of course we would. But that was not why we were doing this. The Krays had to be stopped. And we’d stopped them. But at what cost to ourselves?

  This time the jury had not been nobbled. History knows the rest. The twins got life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of thirty years for the murders of Cornell and McVitie, the longest sentences ever passed at the Central Criminal Court for murder. Charlie got ten years. Ian Barrie got twenty.

  The Mitchell trial followed just over a month later. There was a different judge and a different jury. Albert Donoghue gave evidence for the prosecution. And Alfie gave evidence about his day out to Dartmoor. Platts-Mills could not resist reminding him of the evidence he had given in the previous trial, telling everyone that he’d told the court in the Cornell case that Ronnie Kray had gone into hiding at David’s flat on 10 March 1966. Alfie had told the police in his statement that the Dartmoor episode was in May. But the prison visitors book showed the visit of a ‘Mr Walker’ on 21 March.

  Was Alfie Teale – Mr Walker?

  Alfie had to admit that he was.

  And was it March when he had made this visit, or was it May as he had told the police? Did the witness lie like this about everything?

  ‘Are you now telling the jury that when he [Ronnie] was in deep hiding with you and your brother because of the killing … in the Blind Beggar, he was drinking with his brother and lots of other friends in the Grave Maurice within ten days?’ Platts-Mills asked Alfie.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘It is just stuff and nonsense, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it is not nonsense,’ Alfie told him.

  I suppose it was beyond Alfie – it might be beyond anyone – to explain what had really happened in those two weeks. How could you explain the madness of that fortnight, the sense of invincibility that the twins had at that time? It was as if they could do anything they liked. And then Alfie said it out loud: ‘I didn’t get Ronnie Kray out of deep hiding. You couldn’t tell
Ronnie Kray what to do.’

  Alfie was right, of course. That is what it was all about. The rule of fear. But we had, each one of us, found our courage. We had faced the Krays and told the truth.

  CHAPTER 23

  THE DEAL

  AT THE END of the Mitchell trial, on 16 May 1969, everyone was acquitted except Reggie, who got five years to run concurrently with the McVitie sentence for aiding the Axe-Man’s escape.

  It was over. But it was certainly not over for us. I dropped out of sight again. I was good at that. I didn’t go back to the Isle of Wight or anything like that. My marriage was long over – Reggie Kray had made sure it was. David and Alfie still had families, though. They weren’t going to do a runner. The Krays lodged an appeal. Nothing was over till it was really over. David recalled what it was like for him:

  After the trial, Alfie, Christine and I were all given police protection, two men for us, and a woman to protect my wife. Bobby had two to himself, as he was considered to be at higher risk. I knew why after what he’d said in court. I knew he’d been a grass since that day in the committal proceedings the summer before when Scotch Ian’s brief asked him when he’d ‘first considered giving evidence’. And he’d told them. What I didn’t know was that it was Bobby who’d triggered the raid on Lea Bridge Road and how we’d walked into the trap with that Wallace geezer.

  We didn’t see him more than once or twice following the trial. But at this stage, we weren’t too worried. Bobby had always done his own thing, and it wasn’t at all unusual for him to disappear for several weeks at a time without saying anything. We were used to him vanishing. And I could see why he’d want to.

  It was a strange time for us. We knew we’d done what no one in the underworld ever does – break the code never to grass up our friends. We’d done so under the utmost pressure but that made no difference.