Even in 1956, the police were aware of the fast-growing empire of the Richardsons. But none of the West End club owners to whom they hired out one-armed bandits – and from whom they exacted ‘protection’ – dared to complain. Charles Richardson made sure of that by terrorising anyone he even suspected of crossing him. The evidence suggests that he was a sadist who enjoyed inflicting physical injury. A childhood friend named Laurence Bradbury described his methods. When Richardson asked him to use his trucks to move stolen goods, Bradbury became nervous and made excuses. One night, Charles and Eddie Richardson came to the club that Bradbury was running for them, and stayed on until it was closed. Then Bradbury was held down on a table and his sleeve rolled up. His forearm was cut from the elbow to the wrist with a razor, which was run up and down in the cut several times. Bradbury abandoned all idea of trying to leave the Richardson gang. In 1966, he was accused of killing a business associate of Richardson’s in South Africa – a man Richardson believed had double-crossed him – and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
At these torture sessions, Charles Richardson dressed himself up in judge’s robes, and conducted a mock trial. Then the victim was stripped naked, and a device known as ‘the box’ was produced. This was an electric generator with clip-on leads. These were attached to various parts of the body, including the genitals, and the handle was turned. Buckets of cold water were thrown over the victim to lower his electrical resistance. Teeth would be pulled out with pliers, and cigarettes would be stubbed out on the bare flesh. An electric fire would be held close to the body, and slowly moved around. One man named Harris was tortured for an hour in an attempt to make him reveal the whereabouts of a man the Richardsons wanted to interview. Finally convinced that he did not know, Richardson allowed him to put his clothes on; then he suddenly plunged a knife through his foot, pinning him to the floor. Then, unexpectedly, Richardson admitted he had made a mistake and said he was sorry; he handed Harris £150. All this suggests that Richardson was deriving pleasure from the torture, and was unable to resist driving the knife through his foot; then, with the urge satisfied, he became conciliatory.
In July 1965, a man named James Taggart was asked to visit the Richardsons to discuss ‘business’. He was, in fact, accused of holding back £1,200 on a business deal. Taggart was stripped, beaten, cut and given electric shock treatment. An associate named Alfred Berman, who walked in while Taggart was being tortured, described being appalled at the sight of a naked man tied to a chair and covered in blood while Richardson screamed at him and kept hitting him with a heavy pair of pliers – the pair used for pulling teeth. After being untied, Taggart was made to clean up his own blood – including splashes on the wall.
He went to the police, who were shocked at his injuries, and even more shocked at his story. Bradbury was at this time under arrest for the murder of the businessman, Thomas Waldeck, in South Africa, and a detective flew out from London to question him. What he heard convinced him that the Richardsons were at least as dangerous as their more notorious rivals, the Kray brothers. But by this time, Charles Richardson was a wealthy businessman with large offices in Park Lane. It was necessary to proceed with caution, and Commander John du Rose – who later trapped the Krays – was appointed to look into the brothers’ business activities. It was suspected that Richardson had police officers in his pay, and every man on the investigation squad was ordered to total secrecy. Even so, the Richardsons heard about the investigation, and they began to make preparations to leave the country. By this time, the enquiry had been under way for a year, and it was necessary to act quickly. The Assistant Chief Constable Gerald McArthur – who was in charge of the investigation – went on holiday to Austria, to allay the suspicion of the gang, and returned secretly a few days later. The police swooped at dawn on July 1966, and arrested the Richardson brothers and another eight men; Charles Richardson’s common-law wife was also arrested. At the trial, victim after victim came forward to describe torture, and it became clear that this was something more than the normal intimidation practised by the underworld; Charles Richardson did it for pleasure.
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.’