A Criminal History of Mankind (92 page)

After a trial of forty-two days, Charles Richardson was sentenced to a total of fifty-eight years in jail; his brother Eddie received a ten-year sentence. Roy Hall, the man in charge of the electric generator, also received ten years. Other gang members received various sentences.

In prison, Charles Richardson showed every sign of being a reformed character, and by 1980, was working with handicapped prisoners and had become a ‘trusty’. Then, angered by eight parole rejections, he absconded from his open prison. An offer to give himself up came to nothing, and at the time of this writing, he is still at large, allegedly living in Paris.

The Richardson gang, like the American Mafia, believed in keeping a low profile. They were not interested in notoriety, only in money and power. The Kray twins, their chief rivals, were as flamboyant as Big Jim Colosimo or Al Capone. Oddly enough, their methods kept them out of jail rather longer than the Richardsons.

Ronald and Reginald Kray were born in the East End of London in October 1933; at school, they acquired a reputation as formidable fighters. In their teens, both became professional boxers; then, after a period in the army - much of it spent in detention - they worked for Jack ‘Spot’ at a night club in Covent Garden. They had soon moved into the ‘protection’ racket, and ‘cut themselves in’ on a billiard hall in the Mile End Road and a club called the Green Dragon in the East End. Business prospered; with their reputation for violence, they were soon known and feared from Woolwich to the City.

In 1956, Ronald Kray landed in serious trouble; with two companions, he strode into the Britannia pub in Stepney, and shouted at a man named Terrence Martin, ‘Come on outside or we’ll kill you in here.’ Outside, without paying attention to many witnesses, they beat Martin and stabbed him with a bayonet. As a result of this affair, Ronald Kray and one of his companions were sentenced to three years; the man who had actually used the bayonet, Robert Ramsey, received seven.

In Winchester jail it became clear that Ronald Kray was mentally unstable, and he was transferred to a mental hospital in Epsom. One day, Reggie came to visit him. It was Ronnie who walked out with the other visitors. Then Reggie established his own identity, and had to be allowed to go. The journalist Norman Lucas finally persuaded the Krays that Ronnie should give himself up. He was sent back to the mental hospital. Freed in the spring of 1959, he went back into partnership with Reggie, and they opened the Double R club - the initials intertwined like those of a Rolls Royce - in Bow. They also opened a West End night club and restaurant called Esmeralda’s Barn, off Knightsbridge, and began to acquire a certain celebrity as they mixed with show business people and politicians. The food was excellent (I once ate there myself), but their hospitality was too lavish, and it collapsed. A venture called the Kentucky Club in the East End was more successful. In 1959, Reggie was sentenced to prison for eighteen months for demanding money with menaces; but he was soon out again, and the life of celebrity - and violence - continued as before.

The twins seemed to be dual personalities. Their cousin Ronald Hart, who had spent some time in prison, went to work for them in the mid-1960s, and described his impressions to Norman Lucas. Socially, the twins were charming; they dressed well, their manners were excellent, and their famous friends found it impossible to believe any ill of them. Yet both were capable of unprovoked violence; Ronald, in particular, was given to fits of hysterics in which he seemed to become half insane. One man who placed a hand on his shoulder and said jokingly that he was getting fat had his face slashed open so that it needed seventy stitches. A customer in a pub who asked for change was beaten up. A man who was suspected of cheating the twins was shot in the leg; Reggie Kray told Hart, ‘You want to try it some time. It’s a nice feeling when you shoot someone.’ Hart told Lucas: ‘I saw beatings that were unnecessary even by underworld standards and witnessed people slashed with a razor just for the hell of it.’

In 1965, Reggie Kray married his childhood sweetheart, Frances Shea, seven years his junior. The marriage was a disaster from the beginning. On their honeymoon, he locked her in the bridal suite in Athens and went to get drunk. She claimed that the marriage was never consummated. Two years later, she left him, and two months after that, killed herself with an overdose. She was twenty-three.

It was also in 1965 that the Krays were arrested and charged with demanding money with menaces; they were refused bail on the grounds that they might ‘seek to interfere with prosecution witnesses’. Lord Boothby - an acquaintance of Ronald Kray’s - caused something of a sensation by asking in the House of Lords how much longer they were to be held without trial. After ninety days and two trials, the twins were acquitted.

The chief rival of the Krays were the Richardson brothers, Eddie and Charles, who dominated crime on the south side of the river. The rival gangleaders had nothing but contempt for one another. The chief lieutenant of the Richardsons, a man named George Cornell, was also hated by Ronald Kray; he had openly taunted Ronald with being a homosexual, and had warned the father of Kray’s nineteen-year-old boyfriend of the nature of the relationship. By March 1966, most of the Richardson gang was in custody. Only one prominent member had escaped arrest - George Cornell. And on the evening of 6 March he walked into a pub called the Blind Beggar, in Bethnal Green - the heart of the Krays’ ‘manor’. Half a mile away, at the ‘Lion’, in Tapp Street, Ronald Kray was informed that Cornell was on his territory. He left immediately, in company with a henchman named John Barrie, a Scot. At 8.30, he walked into the bar of the Blind Beggar. It was a quiet evening and the bar was almost empty. As Barrie fired warning shots at the ceiling, Ronald Kray drew a 9 mm Mauser pistol and shot Cornell above the right eye. Then the two gunmen walked out. When Reggie - back in the ‘Lion’ - was told that Ronald had just shot George Cornell, he remarked: ‘Ronnie does some funny things.’

Questioned at the Commercial Road police station, Ronald Kray denied all knowledge of the shooting; he repeated his denial soon afterwards to a crowd of reporters. Everyone in the East End knew that the ‘colonel’ (as Ronald was known) had killed George Cornell; but there seemed to be no witnesses to the shooting.

The murder of Cornell seems to epitomise what Van Vogt calls ‘the decision to be out of control’. It served no purpose; Cornell was in no way a threat to the Kray gang. But Ronald Kray had become accustomed to being allowed to lose his temper and commit violence. When he heard that Cornell was on his territory, he felt that he ‘deserved’ to die - it was the Nero syndrome. Besides, a killing would confirm his reputation as Britain’s leading gangster.

This is precisely what it did. As the months went by, and the police made no attempt to arrest him, it began to look as though the twins were - as they boasted - above the law. When witnesses failed to pick out Ronald Kray in an identification parade, the brothers threw a party and invited the press. And, incredibly, Ronnie now convinced his brother that it was
his
turn to do a murder. ‘He was very proud that he had murdered,’ Hart told Norman Lucas, ‘and was constantly getting at Reggie and asking him when he was going to do his murder. He used to goad him. Whenever Reggie got drunk he brooded on Ronnie’s remarks... He could not, he pointed out, just kill anyone without a reason, but Ronnie didn’t seem to think of that.’

So in order that Reggie could also boast of being a murderer, a victim was selected. This was a small-time crook called Jack McVitie, known as ‘the Hat’ because he was ashamed of his partially bald head and wore a hat most of the time. McVitie had a cutting sense of humour, and when his remarks were reported back to the Krays, they decided that something had to be done. In fact, McVitie sent them an apology, assuring them that he had not intended any harm. Then more satirical insults were reported. The twins decided that, since a victim was needed, McVitie was the obvious choice.

On 28 October 1967, the Krays and several henchmen arrived at the Regency Jazz Club in Hackney - one of the establishments they ‘protected’ - and informed the proprietor that they intended to kill Jack ‘the Hat’ on his premises; he begged them to do nothing of the sort, and they finally agreed to do it elsewhere. They moved on to a basement in nearby Stoke Newington, leaving two brothers named Lambrianou at the club to escort McVitie to the ‘party’.

As soon as McVitie entered the room, Reggie Kray pushed him against the wall and pulled the trigger of a revolver. It misfired. As McVitie struggled and fought, the others punched him. Reggie pressed the gun to his head and fired again; nothing happened. He threw away the gun in disgust, and another gang member handed him a carving knife. He jabbed it into McVitie’s face, then into his stomach. As Ronald Kray shouted ‘Don’t stop, Reg. Kill him!’ he stood astride McVitie, held the knife with both hands, and plunged it into his throat; the blade came out of the back and went into the floorboards.

The body was wrapped in an eiderdown and driven away in a car. The twins’ elder brother Charles was aroused from his bed, and deputed to get rid of it. He took it along to the house of a man called Fred Foreman, who —, according to later evidence - had already disposed of one body for the twins. Neither the body nor the car has ever been found.

The twins decided that it might be diplomatic to retire from the London scene for a while. They bought a large house in Suffolk, close to Hadleigh, a village to which they had been evacuated during the war, and there began to live the life of country squires. They provided the parish church with a new roof, bought a donkey for the village children, and generally behaved with discretion and good humour.

The Krays were convinced that no one would dare to give the police information about their activities. They were right. Police investigating the murder of Cornell and the disappearance of McVitie - and rumours that the twins had also been responsible for the disappearance of an escaped prisoner known as ‘the Mad Axeman’ - met with terrified silence. But the police had time - and manpower - on their side. Commander John du Rose of Scotland Yard decided to form a special team, whose headquarters would be in Tintagel House, a police office block overlooking the river at Lambeth. It was du Rose who had been chiefly responsible for ending the reign of the Messina brothers. He placed Detective Superintendent ‘Nipper’ Read in charge of the team. They used spies and informers, and even policewomen disguised as charladies. Houses were kept under constant surveillance, and members of the ‘Firm’ (as the gang was known) were shadowed. In May 1968, du Rose decided they had enough evidence to proceed. At dawn on 8 May a squad of sixty-eight men made surprise raids in the East End. They found Reginald Kray in bed with a blonde girl and Ronald in bed with a youth. Others who were arrested were the Lambrianou brothers, John Barrie (who had been with Ronnie when he shot Cornell), Frederick Foreman and Charles Kray. In January 1969, eleven men stood in the dock at the Old Bailey.

The long list of charges included three murders: George Cornell, Jack McVitie and ‘the Mad Axeman’, Frank Mitchell. Mitchell, like McVitie, had simply vanished; but evidence pointed to the Krays, who had arranged his escape from Dartmoor in December 1966.

Frank Mitchell was a simple-minded giant who had started life in a home for sub-normal children, and had been constantly in trouble throughout his life - mostly for burglary. He had escaped several times from prisons and mental institutions; on one occasion, he had tried to attack a magistrate, and although he was manacled, it had taken twelve men to subdue him. After an escape from the Rampton mental hospital, he had stolen two hatchets - hence the nickname. After nine years in Dartmoor, he was a ‘trusty’, and was allowed out with working parties; he used to stroll into pubs and take bottles back into Dartmoor. Because he was easygoing and good tempered when he was not crossed, the prison authorities found it easier to allow him to do as he liked. But when there seemed to be no prospect of release after nine years, Mitchell decided to escape. This was not difficult, since he was often out all day. By the time his absence was noticed, Mitchell was sitting in front of the fire in a flat in Barking Road, east London, watching the news of his escape on television. The flat had been provided by the Krays. They also provided a pretty club hostess named Liza Prescott to share his bed.

The authorities used newspapers to ask Mitchell to give himself up. Members of the Kray ‘firm’ cautiously negotiated with the Home Office, on the understanding that Mitchell would be considered for parole if he surrendered. But when Mitchell was consulted, he announced he had no intention of surrendering. He was sick of jail, and he was enjoying freedom and a normal sex life. The Krays became aware that he was going to be a severe embarrassment.

On 23 December 1966, eleven days after the escape, a Kray henchman called at the flat and asked Mitchell to go with him; Mitchell kissed Liza Prescott - who had become fond of him - and left. A few minutes later she heard muffled bangs from outside. The prosecution alleged that Mitchell had got into a van where he had been shot in the head by Fred Foreman, whose gun was equipped with a silencer. At a party soon afterwards, Reggie Kray burst into tears when Mitchell was mentioned, and said: ‘This is a tough game.’

With the Krays in custody, many witnesses came forward. The barmaid who had been present when Cornell was shot - and had insisted she saw nothing - now described the killing and admitted, ‘I was too afraid to talk.’ And the Krays’ cousin, Ronald Hart, described the murder of Jack McVitie. After a forty-day trial, ten of the eleven men in the dock were found guilty. The Kray twins received thirty years each; their brother Charles received ten. The days when London resembled Prohibition Chicago were over.

The study of organised crime underlines the point made by Yochelson and Samenow in
The Criminal Personality
: that the basic characteristic of the criminal is not so much calculated wickedness as a kind of childish wilfulness. We can see this very clearly in the case of Charles Richardson, holding mock trials in his judge’s robes. This was not uncontrollable rage; it was the
decision
‘to be out of control’. The same is true of Ronald Kray’s shooting of George Cornell. Kray pointed out in court that he had sent fruit to Cornell’s son - who was in hospital - only a few days before the killing. It was not rage; it was a feeling that he ‘owed it to himself to avenge this insult, as deliberately as Astyages arranged for Harpagus to eat his own son. He was a judge delivering a sentence, according to a set of laws he had invented himself. Charles Richardson insisted that he had become a changed man in jail; yet he walked out of an open prison because his request for parole had been denied - the gesture of a child suddenly overcome by self-pity. In the last analysis, the criminal is a Peter Pan, a child who refuses to grow up.