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.
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