Bringing Down the Krays (23 page)

I was in the back of the car just near the Opera House when I peeped out from behind a corner of the blanket, and saw a face I recognised in the crowd – a family friend called Johnny Cracknell, a market porter known as a ‘cart minder’. Johnny was directing the traffic around Bow Street as there was quite a back-up by then. I thought to myself, ‘If only you knew it’s me in the police car!’ We then went through the big gates, into the back of the yard behind the court. The place was packed. It was overrun with police, a lot of uniform but even more in plainclothes.

I was whisked into another crowded room where we waited for about half an hour and they gave me a cup of tea. I glanced round the room. I recognised the barmaid from the Blind Beggar and also Leslie Payne. And then we went in the court. Nipper Read was there and all the other officers who’d interviewed me in Tintagel House. Read said to me before I went in: ‘Just say exactly what you’ve been telling us, and confirm that you are prepared to go the higher court and say the same.’ I would be known as ‘Mr D’.

I didn’t know much about what had been happening with the Krays since their arrest but I soon picked it up. They’d been nicked on holding charges – a lot of guff about stolen bearer bonds, the Mafia, dynamite and assassination plots that Read had cooked up somehow.

Then, much more to the point, Billy Exley had given evidence about the escape of Frank Mitchell. Then after Scotch Ian Barrie was nicked, the Blind Beggar barmaid said she would identify him. So that was it: Ronnie and Scotch Ian were down for the murder of George Cornell. And Reggie was charged with ‘acting to impede their apprehension’. Read’s told me to say what I know about that – and I was prepared to do so.

The witness box itself was surrounded by armed police, and looked like something out of Dickens. The court was so crowded it was hard at first to make out what was going on. I tried to ‘front it up’ the way I always used to, to act tough even if I didn’t feel like it. But inside I was absolutely petrified.

Until I looked at Ron across the court, that is. Suddenly I felt a tremendous anger fill me, for all the damage Ron had done, not only to me but to all my family. I didn’t have the strength to beat Ron physically in a fight, but now I did find I had the courage to tell the truth about him. As I caught his eye, I saw that he was scared too.

I was so nervous as I began to give evidence that the magistrate had to stop me and ask me to ‘speak up and also speak more slowly’, so that the stenographer could get everything written down. And so I made my statement.

I went through the night of the Cornell killing and the drive to Walthamstow. I told how Christine had reacted when we all got to our flat. I told them about what happened there. How, after it was over, my wife had wanted to get away and live in Birmingham where she came from, but instead we’d gone to the caravan in Steeple Bay. After that, we’d left the flat and stayed at Alfie’s place in Holborn.

I remember the magistrate asking me: ‘What guns were in the flat at the time?’ I got some black looks from Ron across the court as I told them about the guns, and he shouted out ‘Lies!’ to try and drown out what I was saying.

Then Scotch Ian’s brief has a go at me. If what I was saying was true, why hadn’t I gone to the police straight away? I was too frightened for myself and my family, I replied. The first time I’d said anything to the police about any of it was two weeks before, on 1 July, when they had offered me and my family protection. And we needed it.

Once I started giving my evidence I tried not to look around the courtroom. It seemed to be over quite quickly. As I was led out of the court again, we passed Bobby on his way in for his turn, also surrounded by police. We were meant to be apart, no contact. I called out to him: ‘Are you all right, Bob?’ and he called back to me, ‘I’m OK, Dave,’ or something like that. That was all the conversation we were allowed. It was a very strange moment.

When I got back into the waiting room, Nipper Read and the others praised me for giving my evidence so well. So I asked: ‘Can I just pop and see the wife and kids for a while?’ They said yes, taking me home and allowing me to spend some time with Christine and my daughters. It was wonderful to be able to hold my wife in my arms again, and to kiss and cuddle the children, even if it was only for a couple of hours. I still love my wife Christine; I’ve never stopped loving her. I dreaded the knock at the door, signalling it was time to take me back to Ford. All I could comfort myself with was the thought that it would not be long now until my release.

Alfie was on next. He told how he had first been approached by the police to give a statement two and half weeks earlier. He gave the magistrates’ court a full reprise of the holing up in Moresby Road. ‘Some time after that I broke my connection with Reginald and Ronald Kray,’ he said. That was an understatement. Then, after David and Alfie, it was my turn.

I’d been woken before dawn and brought in a fast convoy from Maidstone Prison to Bow Street. Nipper Read was there, looking anxious, whispering encouragement. A lot more useful was a guard who told me he was the one who took men to the gallows and showed them how to do a deep breathing exercise to stop them losing control of their bowels. So he gave me the same instructions. Another told me he’d ‘take a bullet for me if necessary’. I wasn’t so sure about that.

I looked down the row of faces in the dock and could see no one was ready for this. Ronnie’s eyes were sending a raging, killing stare at me. Just the way he looked was terrifying. The
public gallery was full of the Kray fan club. I felt my legs shaking beneath me.

My voice was breaking, the adrenaline was pulsing, I just wanted to get away, run for it … but I had to find my courage. It was if all those times I’d been on the brink of discovery as Phillips were replaying in my head at once.

I told the court about the night of the drive from Madge’s to Walthamstow and the arrival at the Chequers pub where Ronnie had washed his hands with Vim sink cleaner, just the way I’d given my statement in the first place. I told them how Sammy Lederman had turned round to Ronnie Kray and said: ‘Ronnie, you’re a cold-blooded murderer.’

I told the story of Moresby Road in a kind of matter-of-fact way without too much detail. And I explained what happened after it was over – my time on the Firm in summer 1966, my trip to Cambridge and Saffron Walden, the flats Reggie and I had shared in Green Lanes and Lea Bridge Road.

After I’d finished, Reggie’s brief lays into me. He says I’m being paid to say all this. ‘That’s lies,’ I replied.

Then Scotch Ian Barrie’s barrister began his cross-examination for the defence. ‘When did the witness’, meaning me, ‘first consider giving evidence?’ That’s a good question. Shall I tell the truth? Shall I tell the court I’d done so the day after Ronnie put a bullet into George Cornell’s forehead in the Blind Beggar? I’m under oath, after all.

Mr Read had made it clear that it would be useful if I told the truth, the whole truth. I wasn’t to worry as reporting restrictions were on for my appearance. Nipper had his own and very
devious game. Well, they certainly weren’t expecting what I was going to say next.

I said: ‘I first considered giving evidence in this matter, just after I realised [Cornell’s] murder had taken place and I did something about it then. I gave it some thought. It was obvious to me that my brothers were terrified, so to speak, so I got in touch with Scotland Yard. I was then put on to another chap, Tommy Butler, and through him a man named Joe Pogue, who is in the Flying Squad. I kept Tommy Butler up to date on everything that happened.’

So that was a bit of a shocker. There was a spy in the Firm, a grass. And what had the police done with the information? Nothing. Nipper Read seemed astounded – in public at least. Tommy Butler wasn’t going to say anything and nobody bothered to ask him.

Then I explained how Butler & Co had not asked me at any stage to make a statement, an official statement that could be used to bring a prosecution, I mean. In fact I had first been asked to make a statement very recently – only two weeks ago. I told the court that I’d been in touch with the police for about six weeks or two months after the shooting, till after I’d left the flat in Green Lanes, at which point I’d stopped all contact. Of course after that time I had my little adventure in Mr X’s Triumph TR3 sports car, followed by the conviction for demanding money with menaces, both of which effectively removed me from the Krays’ reach.

So what the hell had I done now? I’d told the world, or as good as, that I was a grass. On the way out of the court there
was all kinds of praise from Nipper Read and the Old Bill. Their lives were safe enough. I had put my head in a noose. But what mattered to me now was how the Krays and their fan club were going to react.

I was taken back to Maidstone. I could not believe how fast word got back to the nick that I was the grass. A friend who I trusted in told me: ‘Bobby, watch your back, the word is out on you and you are going to be hit.’

Getting on to the cell block, my path was obstructed by a giant of a man known as ‘Goldfinger’ for his resemblance to the Bond villain. Behind was a crowd of other prisoners who, I could see from their stance and their expressions, all clearly knew I’d just been giving evidence against Ronnie Kray. Thank God a couple of screws were accompanying me.

I was put in solitary for my own protection. All kinds of threats were fed to me from crooked screws though the prison-cell door. I would get a banging on my cell door in the middle of the night and someone would call out ‘Bobby, Bobby!’ in a deep voice until I answered.

‘What do you want?’ I’d say, and the person would reply: ‘You are a dead man and all your family are going to be poisoned. You can still stop all this if you say that the Old Bill put you up to it using your mum to make you tell lies about the Krays.’

After a few nights of this, I would block my ears as soon as I heard footsteps coming down the hallway, and I would not respond at all. I could still hear the banging on the cell door and a voice, but it happened less often and finally stopped.

Then I was shipped out of prison in the middle of the night because a gun had been smuggled in to the prison to kill me, or at least that’s what I was told by the governor.

The news I was an informer had reached Maidstone even before I’d arrived back there on the afternoon of 16 July. The news had got to Brixton Prison in south London where the twins and the Firm were on remand even quicker, just as fast as it took a prison van to get back there from the Old Bailey.

It was all working out as Read had planned it, of course. Look what he wrote in his memoirs: ‘Things were moving behind the scenes. On 16 July I had the biggest break of all. While I was at Bow Street dealing with the Cornell committal proceedings I received a note.’

This is what had happened. Albert Donoghue’s mother had come herself to give it to Nipper Read after she had been handed it by her son in Brixton. She’d visited him earlier that afternoon. Mrs Donoghue ‘pleaded with me to see her son, saying it was a matter of life and death’, Read wrote. He had got down there pretty quick to see Donoghue in the prison hospital early that same evening.

The ‘sullen, defiant man’ he had first encountered was now very different, Read said in his memoirs. ‘He came straight out and said: “It’s been put to me to volunteer for the Mitchell business [confess to killing him] and, if I do, my wife and kids will be all right.”’

As I would hear it later, the twins got the word to Donoghue that he should take responsibility for the Mitchell murder and that their cousin Ronnie Hart would put his hand up for the
Cornell killing, thus leaving Ian Barrie free of charges. Reggie would plead self-defence for doing Jack the Hat.

Big Albert was not happy. He wanted to make a deal with the prosecution. If the murder charge against him was dropped, in return he would tell Read the lot. Over the next three days, according to Read, Donoghue did just that. So the next day Big Albert was spirited out of Brixton to Winson Green Prison in Birmingham and his wife and family were put under guard.

It was the same with Scotch Jack Dickson. He’d tell how it happened when it got to the full trial. When they were in Brixton, the twins were leaning on him to cook up an alibi. Then he wants to change his brief, get a new one, not the twins’ brief. Suddenly he gets transferred to Wandsworth and asks to see Mr Read. On 16 July he made a statement about how he’d driven Ronnie to the Blind Beggar.

It was the twins who had screwed it up this time. It seems that the twins’ solicitor had shown Scotch Jack our statements, Alfie, David and mine (they were allowed to do that), and asked him, ‘Why have those three brothers said all the things they must know are not true?’

But their tactic backfired. Clever old Read in turn came down heavy on Scotch Jack and got him to change sides, using our statements as a way of persuading him that the Krays’ influence was crumbling and that he needed to switch sides so as to avoid being dragged down with them.

‘The destabilising game was working well,’ Read said in his book. ‘Without naming names [we] let it be known that some of the defendants in custody were working with me and that
caused something amounting to panic among the others.’ Well, I wasn’t one of the defendants but he’d used me to start the whole thing. I pushed over the first domino.

Nipper needed more. What was going to be a big problem was what I’d said about Butler and Pogue. A defence could rip into that. Read needed more leverage to keep us in line and to bring down the Krays would use anything that came to hand. This was where our mother’s exaggerated charge of housebreaking came in useful for him. While we three brothers had been busy making our statements, our mother’s case had been proceeding through the courts. Gradually we came to learn what had happened to her while we’d been inside
.