Ronnie Kray

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The Krays' criminal records and dishonourable discharges from the Royal Fusiliers ended their boxing careers, and the brothers turned to crime full-time. They bought a run-down snooker club in Mile End where they started several protection rackets. By the end of the 1950s, the Krays were working for Jay Murray from Liverpool and were involved in hijacking, armed robbery, and arson, through which they acquired other clubs and properties. In 1960, Ronnie was imprisoned for 18 months for running a protection racket. While he was in prison, Peter Rachman, head of a landlord operation, sold Reggie a nightclub called Esmeralda's Barn to ward off threats of further extortion. The location is where the Berkeley Hotel now stands.

Ownership of Esmeralda's Barn increased the Krays' influence in the West End by making them celebrities as well as criminals. The twins adopted a norm according to which anyone who failed to show due respect would be severely punished. Both Ronnie and Reggie notoriously laundered money through dog and horse tracks as well as through businesses, which led to several others being investigated during the mid-1960s for their co-operation with the crimes. They were assisted by a banker named Alan Cooper who wanted protection against the Krays' rivals, the Richardson Gang, based in South London. Raban called Ronnie the "dimmer" of the two twins, writing that he was "...a man whose grasp on reality was so slight and pathologically deranged that he was able to live out a crude, primarily colored fiction, twisting the city into the shape of a bad thriller". Ronnie quite consciously modelled the style of "the Firm" after what he read about the Chicago underworld, for an example having his own personal barber visit his flat to work on his hair when he read somewhere that was the normal practice with Chicago gangsters in the 1920s.

In the 1960s, the Kray twins were widely seen as prosperous and charming celebrity nightclub owners and were part of the Swinging London scene. A large part of their fame was due to their non-criminal activities as popular figures on the celebrity circuit, being photographed by David Bailey on more than one occasion and socialising with lords, MPs, socialites and show business characters, including Frank Sinatra, Peter Sellers, Joan Collins, Judy Garland, Diana Dors, George Raft, Sammy Davis Jr., Shirley Bassey, Liza Minnelli, Cliff Richard, Dusty Springfield, Jayne Mansfield, Richard Harris, Danny La Rue and Barbara Windsor.

Part of the Krays celebrity status in the 1960s was due to the widespread perception that the twins were men who had risen out of poverty into positions of great wealth and power due to their own efforts. The Krays were seen as an example, albeit a perverse one, of the "meritocracy" that was to replace the traditional class system. Furthermore, the 1960s were a time when many traditional British values were being questioned, and the Kray twins were widely seen as "rebels" against what were perceived as sanctimonious and hypocritical traditional British values. The "Swinging Sixties" era was a time of intense debates arising about consumerism, social mobility, sexuality, style, and social tolerance, and the Krays were involved in all of them as symbols, either bad or good, about the changes taking place in British society. The Krays made a point of promoting a "gangster chic" image as both dressed in a style that countless films had associated with gangsters, namely wearing "discreet, dark, double-breasted suits with tight-knotted ties and shoulder-padded overcoats. Combined with garish jewelry such as large gold rings, gold bracelet watches, and diamond cuff links, the Krays conveyed a redoubtable image". The British scholar Ruth Penfold-Mounce described the Krays as a classic example of the social bandit, criminals who became folk heroes because of the belief that they were standing up to a corrupt Establishment while also paradoxically being seen as upholding the better part of society's values. The Krays were viewed as "Robin Hood" type criminals whose crimes were seen as acceptable in certain quarters because as Penfold-Mounce noted they combined an air of menace and violence together with an image of "a romanticised air of heroic gentlemanliness, generosity, and the apparent reinforcement of traditional social order parameters of conservatism and restraint". Within this context, the Krays made a point of stressing that there were limits to the values that they were willing to violate while promoting the image of themselves as the benefactors of society. For an example, the Krays made a great point of stressing the image of being respectful towards women as they knew that the British public did not like men who were disrespectful towards women. One former member of "the Firm", Tony Lamrianou stated: "there's a myth that the Krays took care of their own, but I never saw it. The Krays were their own". Penfold-Mounce noted the image of the Krays had little to do with whom the brothers actually were as she described the Krays as considerably more vicious and selfish than the popular image of them would allow. Admirers of the brothers stress their supposed "Robin Hood" characteristics with the brothers alleged to have given away much of their ill-gotten wealth to the deserving poor of the East End; their respect for women; and as a force for order who only engaged in socially acceptable crimes such as theft while punishing those who engaged in socially unacceptable crimes such as rape.

Conversely, the Kray twins were seen in other quarters as symbols of moral decay and evil, with the famous photographs of the two brothers taken by David Bailey being viewed as "the phrenological archetypes of proletarian villainy". The historians Chris Jenks and Justin Lorentzen wrote the Krays became symbols in the public mind of British organised crime itself as the Krays were associated with "tales of excessive and gratuitous violence and to a time when London criminality appeared not only as organised as never before, but also integrated into the Establishment and the vanguard of popular culture". Jenks and Lorentzen futher maintained that the Krays close association with the East End of London, an area viewed as a center of "social disorganisation and moral decay" further contributed to the negative picture of the brothers. Finally, Jenks and Lorentzen argued that the rareness of identical twins made the brothers seem especially malevolent, giving them the "freak show" image as many found viewing two men who looked precisely the same to be disturbing. The "sordid facts" that were presented during the Krays' trial for murder in 1968-1969 led to their "folk hero" image being eclipsed by a "folk villain" image.

The Labour MP, Tom Driberg, who also served as the gossip columnist for The Daily Express newspaper knew the Conservative MP Lord Boothby very well through the dinner parties hosted by Lord Beaverbrook, the proprietor of The Daily Express. Through his friend, the theatre director Joan Littlewood, Driberg had met Reggie. Through their mutual friendship, he introduced Ronnie to Boothby.

In July 1964, an exposé in the tabloid newspaper Sunday Mirror insinuated that Ronnie had begun a homosexual relationship with Lord Boothby, a Conservative politician, at a time when sex between men was still a criminal offence in the UK. Although no names were printed in the piece, the twins threatened the journalists involved and Boothby threatened to sue the newspaper with the help of Labour Party leader Harold Wilson's solicitor, Arnold Goodman. In the face of this, the Sunday Mirror backed down, sacking its editor, printing an apology and paying Boothby £40,000 in an out-of-court settlement. Because of this, other newspapers were unwilling to expose the Krays' connections and criminal activities. Decades later, Channel 4 established the truth of the allegations and released a documentary on the subject called The Gangster and the Pervert Peer (2009). Ronnie was a sexual sadist while Boothby was a masochist who enjoyed the way that he was dominated by Ronnie.

Boothby called the £40,000 pounds (close to a million pounds in 2010) he was awarded from The Sunday Mirror as the "tainted money", and through he professed to have donated the majority of the money to charity, it appears the Krays took the bulk of the £40,000 pounds. One of Boothy's after being awarded the libel suit was to write a cheque for £5, 000 pounds to Ronnie. Ronnie had also launched a libel action of his own against the Sunday Mirror columnist Cecil King for calling him a "homosexual thug" in one of his columns, but the judge dismissed the suit under the grounds that it was a "fair comment". Ronnie was furious about the dismissal, saying at the time: "Proves what I always said. One law for the fucking rich and another for the poor".

Police investigated the Krays on several occasions, but the brothers' reputation for violence made witnesses afraid to testify. There was also a problem for both main political parties. The Conservative Party was unwilling to press the police to end the Krays' power for fear that the Boothby connection would again be publicised, and the Labour Party, in power from October 1964 but with an extremely thin majority in the House of Commons and the prospect of another general election needing to be called in the very near future, did not want connections between Ronnie and Tom Driberg, a relatively openly gay Labour MP, to get into the public realm.

The brothers Kray formed an alliance with "the Commission" of New York that was the governing board of the American Mafia, being in contact with Meyer Lansky and Angelo Bruno, who were looking to invest in London's gambling clubs and nightclubs. The Mafia favored nightclubs and casinos for money laundering, and greatly preferred nightclubs and casinos abroad as a way to avoid hostile audits by the American authorities. The nightclubs and casinos of Havana had long served that purpose, but after the Communist revolution of 1959 led to their closure, the Mafia had been looking for a replacement, leading to interest in London's nightclubs. The belief that the Krays were able to blackmail elite figures such as Boothby and in this way influence the British government made them attractive London business partners for the Mafia. Both Lansky and Bruno were considered to be diplomatic figures by the standards of American organised crime, and were felt to be the best ones to negotiate with the mercurial and irascible Krays.

The conduit between Lansky and the Krays was a faded Hollywood star living in London, the actor George Raft, whom the Krays idolised for his performance as the ice-cold Mafia hitman Guino Rinaldo in the 1932 film Scarface. Lansky had opened the Colony Sports Club in London and installed Raft as the nominal owner, partly to avoid the attention of the British authorities and partly to gain the attention of gamblers, who might be attracted by the lingering stardom of Raft. The Krays were hired to provide "protection" at the Colony Sports Club, being paid £500 pounds per week to provide thugs from "the Firm" to act as security at the Colony Sports Club. Ronnie in particular had a fixture with the Mafia and was overjoyed to meet Mafiosi such as Dino Cellini and Angelo Bruno.

In 1964, Ronnie flew out to New York to meet Lansky and Bruno, but the meeting was aborted when U.S. Customs refused him admission under the grounds that he had a criminal record. In 1965, a branch of the Royal Bank of Canada was robbed in Montreal, and the thieves stole bearer bonds worth $50,000 Canadian dollars. The Montreal underworld is very closely linked to the New York underworld, and as such "the Commission" took an interest in the bonds. As the police in both Canada and the United States were on the look-out for the bearer bonds, it was decided to sell them in Europe and the task was entrusted to the Krays. The Krays sent over a corrupt businessman, Leslie Payne, to Montreal to pick up the stolen bonds to sell them in Europe.

Ronnie shot and killed George Cornell, a member of the Richardson Gang, at the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel on 9 March 1966. The day before, there had been a shoot-out at Mr Smith's, a nightclub in Catford, involving the Richardsons and Richard Hart, an associate of the Krays, who was shot dead. This public shoot-out led to the arrest of nearly all the Richardson Gang. Cornell, by chance, was not present at the club during the shooting and was not arrested. After visiting the hospital to check up on his friends, he randomly chose to visit the Blind Beggar pub, only a mile away from where the Krays lived.

Ronnie was drinking in another pub when he learned of Cornell's whereabouts. He went to the Blind Beggar with his driver, "Scotch Jack" John Dickson, and his assistant Ian Barrie. Ronnie went into the pub with Barrie, walked straight to Cornell and shot him in the head in public view. Barrie, confused by what happened, fired five shots in the air warning onlookers not to report what had happened to the police. Just before he was shot, Cornell remarked, "Well, look who's here." He died at 3:30 a.m. in hospital. Ronnie was already suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the killing.

According to some sources, Ronnie killed Cornell because he referred to him as a "fat poof" (a derogatory term for gay men) during a confrontation between the Krays and the Richardsons at the Astor Club on Christmas Day 1965. Richardson member Frankie Fraser was tried for the murder of Hart at Mr. Smith's, but was found not guilty. Richardson member Ray "the Belgian" Cullinane testified that he saw Cornell kicking Hart. Witnesses would not co-operate with the police in the murder case due to intimidation and the trial ended inconclusively without pointing to any suspect in particular.

On 12 December 1966, the Krays helped Frank Mitchell, "the Mad Axeman", to escape from Dartmoor Prison. Ronnie had befriended Mitchell while they served time together in Wandsworth Prison. Mitchell felt that the authorities should review his case for parole, so Ronnie thought that he would be doing him a favour by getting him out of Dartmoor, highlighting his case in the media and forcing the authorities to act. Once Mitchell had escaped, the Krays held him at a friend's flat in Barking Road, East Ham. He was a large man with a mental disorder, and he was difficult to control. He disappeared, but the Krays were acquitted of his murder. Freddie Foreman, a friend of the Krays, claimed in his autobiography Respect that he shot Mitchell dead as a favour to the twins and disposed of his body at sea.

In October 1967, four months after the suicide of his wife Frances, Reggie was allegedly encouraged by his brother to kill Jack "the Hat" McVitie, a minor member of the Kray gang who had failed to fulfil a £1,000 contract, £500 of which had been paid to him in advance, to kill their financial adviser, Leslie Payne. McVitie was lured to a basement flat in Evering Road, Stoke Newington, on the pretence of a party. Upon entering the premises, he saw Ronnie seated in the front room. Ronnie approached, letting loose a barrage of verbal abuse and cutting McVitie below his eye with a piece of broken glass. It is believed that an argument then broke out between the twins and McVitie. As the argument got more heated, Reggie pointed a handgun at McVitie's head and pulled the trigger twice, but the gun failed to discharge.

McVitie was then held in a bear hug by the twins' cousin, Ronnie Hart, and Reggie was handed a carving knife. He then stabbed McVitie in the face and stomach, driving the blade into his neck while twisting the knife, not stopping even as McVitie lay on the floor dying. Reggie had committed a very public murder, against someone who many members of the Firm felt did not deserve to die. In an interview in 2000, shortly after Reggie's death, Freddie Foreman revealed that McVitie had a reputation for leaving carnage behind him due to his habitual consumption of drugs and heavy drinking, and his having threatened to harm the twins and their family.

Tony and Chris Lambrianou and Ronnie Bender helped clear up the evidence of this crime, and attempted to assist in the disposal of the body. With McVitie's corpse being too big to fit in the boot of the car, it was wrapped in an eiderdown and put in the back seat. Tony Lambrianou drove the car with the body and Chris Lambrianou and Bender followed behind. Crossing the Blackwall tunnel, Chris lost Tony's car and spent up to 15 minutes looking around Rotherhithe area. They found Tony, outside St Mary's Church, where he had run out of fuel, McVitie's body still inside the car. The body was left in the car and the three gangsters returned home. Bender then went on to phone Charlie Kray informing them that it had been dealt with. When the Krays heard where they had left McVitie's corpse, the twins were livid and desperately phoned Foreman, who was then running a pub in Southwark, to see if he could dispose of the body. With dawn breaking, Foreman found the car, broke into it and drove the body to Newhaven where, with the help of a trawlerman, the body was bound with chicken wire and dumped in the English Channel. This event started turning many people against the Krays, and some were prepared to testify to Scotland Yard as to what had happened, fearing that what happened to McVitie could easily happen to them.

Detective Chief Superintendent Leonard "Nipper" Read of Scotland Yard was promoted to the Murder Squad and his first assignment was to bring down the Kray twins. During the first half of 1964, Read had been investigating their activities but publicity and official denials of Ron's relationship with Boothby made the evidence that he collected useless. Read went after the twins again in 1967 but frequently came up against the East End "wall of silence" which discouraged anyone from providing information to the police. They were represented in court by Nemone Lethbridge.

By the end of 1967, Read had built up enough evidence against the Krays. Witness statements incriminated them, as did other evidence, but none made a convincing case on any one charge. Early in 1968, the Krays employed Alan Bruce Cooper who sent Paul Elvey to Glasgow to buy explosives for a car bomb. Elvey was a radio engineer who put Radio Sutch on the air in 1964, later renamed Radio City. After police detained him in Scotland, he confessed to being involved in three murder attempts. The evidence was weakened by Cooper, who claimed that he was an agent for the US Treasury Department investigating links between the American Mafia and the Kray gang. The attempted murders were his attempt to put the blame on the Krays. Cooper was being employed as a source by one of Read's superior officers and Read tried using him as a trap for the Krays, but they avoided him.

Eventually, Scotland Yard decided to arrest the Krays on the evidence already collected, in the hope that other witnesses would be forthcoming once the Krays were in custody. On 8 May 1968, the Krays and 15 other members of the Firm were arrested. Exceptional measures were used to stop collusion between the accused. Nipper Read then secretly interviewed each of the arrested and offered each member of the Firm a deal if they testified against the others. Whilst in prison, the Krays had come up with a plan, which included having Scotch Jack Dickson to confess to the murder of Cornell, Ronnie Hart to take the McVitie murder and Albert Donoghue to stand for Mitchell. Donoghue told the twins directly that he was not prepared to be cajoled into pleading guilty, to the anger of the twins. He then informed Read via his mother that he was ready to cooperate. Read set up another secret interview and Donoghue was the first to tell the police everything that he knew.

Ronnie Hart had initially not been arrested, and was not a name initially sought after by the police. With Donoghue's testimony, Hart was arrested. Offered the same terms as the others, Hart then told Read everything that had happened during McVitie's murder, although he did not know anything about what happened to the body. This was the first time that the police knew exactly who was involved and offered them a solid case to prosecute the twins for McVitie's murder. Although Read knew for certain that Ronnie Kray had murdered George Cornell in the Blind Beggar pub no one had been prepared to testify against the twins out of fear. Upon finding out the twins intended to cajole him, 'Scotch Jack' Dickson also turned in everything he knew about Cornell's murder. Although not a witness to the murder he was an accessory, having driven Ronnie Kray and Ian Barrie to the pub. The police still needed a witness to the murder. They managed to track down the barmaid who was working in the pub at the time of the murder, gave her a secret identity and she testified to seeing Ronnie kill Cornell. Frank Mitchell's escape and disappearance were much harder to obtain evidence for, since the majority of those arrested were not involved with his planned escape and disappearance. Read decided to proceed with the case and have a separate trial for Mitchell once the twins had been convicted.

The twins' defence under their counsel John Platts-Mills, QC, consisted of flat denials of all charges and discrediting witnesses by pointing out their criminal past. Justice Melford Stevenson said "In my view, society has earned a rest from your activities". It was the longest murder hearing in the history of British criminal justice, during which Justice Melford Stevenson stated of the sentences "I recommend [they] should not be less than thirty years". In March 1969, both were sentenced to life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 30 years for the murders of Cornell and McVitie. Their brother Charlie was imprisoned for ten years for his part in the murders.

Ronnie and Reggie Kray were allowed, under a large police guard, to attend the funeral service of their mother Violet on 11 August 1982, following her death from cancer a week earlier. They were not allowed to attend her burial in the Kray family plot at Chingford Mount Cemetery. The funeral was attended by celebrities including Diana Dors and underworld figures known to the Krays. To avoid the publicity that had surrounded their mother's funeral, the twins did not ask for permission to attend their father's funeral in March 1983.

Ronnie Kray was a Category A prisoner, denied almost all liberties and not allowed to mix with other prisoners. He was eventually certified insane, his paranoid schizophrenia being tempered with constant medication; in 1979 he was committed and lived the remainder of his life in Broadmoor Hospital in Crowthorne, Berkshire. Reggie Kray, constantly being refused parole, was locked up in Maidstone Prison for eight years (Category B). In 1997, he was transferred to the Category C Wayland Prison in Norfolk.

In 1985, officials at Broadmoor Hospital discovered a business card of Ronnie's that led to evidence that the twins, from separate institutions, were operating Krayleigh Enterprises (a "lucrative bodyguard and 'protection' business for Hollywood stars") together with their older brother Charlie Kray and an accomplice at large. Among their clients was Frank Sinatra, who hired 18 bodyguards from Krayleigh Enterprises on his visit to the 1985 Wimbledon Championships. Documents released under Freedom of Information laws revealed that although officials were concerned about this operation, they believed that there was no legal basis to shut it down.

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