Gangland UK: The Inside Story of Britain's Most Evil Gangsters (13 page)

In 1966, it was Dimes, fronting Hill, who helped arrange a conference between the New York
mafiosi
and the Corsican Francisi brothers regarding investing in London casinos. An associate of Charlie Richardson’s, Dimes’ formidable presence in Soho delayed the Kray twins from moving into the area for several years.

If anything, the Richardsons were probably ‘better connected’ to the London underworld than the Krays, and another of their sidekicks was the notorious Frankie Fraser. ‘Mad Frankie’ first met the Richardsons in the early 1960s. Together, they set up the Atlantic Machines fruit machine enterprise.

In 1966, Fraser was charged with the murder of Richard Hart, an associate of the Krays, while others, including Jimmy Moody, were charged with affray. The only witness to this murder who dared give evidence soon changed his mind. Nevertheless, Fraser served five years for affray.

Fraser was also implicated in the 1967 ‘Torture Trial’. Fraser himself was accused of pulling out the teeth of victims with a pair of pliers. He was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment; indeed, he spent a total of 42 years behind bars in over 20 different UK prisons. And these sentences were often tainted by violence. He was involved in riots and frequently fought with prison officers and inmates. When the mood took him, he would
even take a swing at various prison governors. His richly embroidered criminal CV includes being one of the ringleaders of the Parkhurst Prison Riot in 1969, after which he spent the following six weeks recovering from his injuries in hospital.

An ‘old-school’ type of villain, when he was released from prison in 1985, he was met by his son in a
Rolls-Royce
. In 1991, ‘Mad Frankie’ was shot in the head at almost point-blank range in an apparent murder attempt outside Turnmills Club on the Clerkenwell Road, London. He has always maintained that a policeman was responsible.

At the time of writing, Frankie is well into his eighties. He appears frequently on TV shows such as
Operation
Good Guys
and
Brass Eye
. In 1999, he appeared at the Jermyn Street Theatre in a one-man show,
An Evening
with Mad Frankie Fraser
, directed by Patrick Newley, which subsequently toured the UK. More recently, he was giving gangland tours around London, where he points out infamous locations, including The Blind Beggar pub where Ronnie Kray shot dead George Cornell.

For those wishing to explore Frankie’s life and times even further, his website is well worth a visit: www.madfrankiefraser.co.uk.

It would take a task force of 100 Scotland Yard detectives finally to bring the Richardson brothers to justice, and the leading detective said that the hardest part was finding witnesses willing to talk, but the brothers were not prepared to give up without a fight. During their trial at the Old Bailey, every juror was ‘contacted’ and threatened with bodily harm if the gang was convicted. Rather than risk a mis-trial, the Yard set
up a special telephone number for the jurors to use if they were threatened again, but the judge aggravated the situation by foolishly telling them that it had probably only been a crank who had made the calls since all of the Richardson mob had been locked up for months.

Despite the threats, hopes were high for a conviction, and the tone was set by Mr Sebag Shaw QC for the Crown, who said, ‘These men are evil… and I can prove them to be so.’

The weather over central London was changeable for this early April morning. It was rather cloudy with sunny intervals, scattered showers and moderate north-westerly winds. And if the Meteorological Office had decreed that the temperature was a little below normal for the time of year, the police were reaching boiling point until the moment the Richardson gang had finally stepped into the dock… and Charlie Richardson was similarly wound up. For years, he had ensured silence through intimidation and torture, and the criminal empire he had built in the densely-packed tenement and high-rise housing estate areas of London, that stretches south from the Thames, was, he thought, impregnable.

The chubby-faced man, his jet-black hair swept back with Brylcream, had already seen the charge sheet, on which he was described as a ‘company director’. And it smarted, for the evidence would show that his ‘company’ consisted of a motley collection of ‘executives’ who made their profits from shady deals, and whose ‘labour relations’ were based upon the theory that dissident employees, or business associates, were best kept in line by facing kangaroo courts and being punished for the smallest infraction by being stripped naked and given electric shock treatment, or worse.

Charlie Richardson considered himself to be a kind of latter-day Al Capone, as he stepped into the dock wearing a
£
50 suit. He thought of his ‘patch’ as a
scaled-down
version of Chicago during the Prohibition era, and his arrogant demeanour was reinforced by the deliberately careless manner in which he bore his stocky, boxerlike frame. When the charges were put to him, he sneered and snapped out, ‘
Not
guilty!’

Rising to his feet, Sebag Shaw QC – the man who had defended Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK – picked up a document, turned to the jury and, in a measured tone, said, ‘Charles Richardson was the dominant leader of a somewhat disreputable business fraternity who operated through a number of phoney companies.’

Richardson glared at his adversary.

‘But,’ said Sebag Shaw, with a theatrical wave of his arm, ‘this case is not about dishonesty or fraud… it is about violence and threats of violence.’

There was a pause. The court room stilled as counsel pulled a spotlessly white handkerchief from his pocket, sniffed, blew his nose, returned the handkerchief to his pocket, and resumed, this time more darkly. ‘
Not
, let me say, casual acts of violence, committed in sudden anger – but
vicious
and
brutal
violence systematically inflicted, deliberately and cold-bloodedly and with utter and callous ruthlessness.’

It is often said that advocates are born and not made, and good advocacy depends on good preparation and oral skills. Sebag Shaw was a master of his calling. Later to be knighted, he knew that the hallmark of good preparation and presentation was to know exactly where
one is going, what the objective is, and that attention to detail was everything. His preparation for the case had been, as ever, meticulous.

Charlie Richardson was now black with rage. No one had ever insulted him like this upstart wearing a horsehair wig.

Pointing an accusatory finger at the dock, counsel for the Crown continued, ‘Beatings and torture of people who upset Richardson, or who were even suspected of jeopardising his business career, ensured that no one ever complained to the authorities about south London gangsterism. Such methods had succeeded for years until, finally, some of the sufferers had told their disgruntled stories to the police.’

The first of the victims called to give evidence was Jack Duval. Born in Russia in 1919, and a one-time French legionnaire, the 48-year-old acknowledged that he had come to the Old Bailey that day from prison, where he was serving a three-year-sentence for an airline tickets fraud.

Duvall, an inveterate gambler at the Astor Club, off Berkeley Square, where the Richardsons had recruited him, was asked to recall a day in 1960, and he did so nervously and in a manner which suggested that the day in question was the unluckiest day of his life.

Very soon after their first meeting, Duvall was serving his ‘apprenticeship’ as ‘European representative’ for one of the gang’s dodgy companies. The scam was simplicity itself. The well-spoken Duvall would order Italian-made nylon stockings for his London company, have them imported on credit, and not pay the bill. When he failed to perform well, he was summoned back to London and beaten black and blue by his bosses, the Richardsons.

On another occasion, he went to Germany for a few weeks. ‘It was about eight weeks, if I recall,’ said Duvall wistfully. ‘Things did not go as planned and I was recalled… as I entered the Camberwell office, Mr Richardson hit me with his fist, and I still have the mark on the side of my nose from this ring.’

This statement caused everyone in the court to crane their necks to see the scar, but Duval was now so excited he couldn’t keep his head still. ‘When I came to, I found I had been relieved of my watch, ring and wallet containing $200. Mr Richardson was sitting behind his big desk with chairs all around… like a court.’

But Richardson was also interested in another person in the office, a Mr Alfred Blore, manager of Common Market Merchants. He was, in fact, selecting knives from a canteen of cutlery, and throwing them in Blore’s direction – some which were striking him in the arm – with the intention of drawing the terrified man’s attention to his business shortcomings and that he did not want Richardson to take over his company.

According to Duval, Richardson kept repeating to Blore, ‘I’m the fuckin’ boss, and if I tell you what to do, you will do it.’

Blore asked, ‘What have I done, Charlie’? Then he screamed, ‘Don’t do it!’

Other cronies of Richardson’s, minor ‘executives’ of the company, had been lurking on the fringes of the bizarre Camberwell office-cum-court room, and two were ordered to go to Blore’s offices in Cannon Street and ‘collect the stock and books and make it look as if there had been a robbery’. The reason for that, Duvall drily testified, was that by then Mr Blore ‘was covered in
blood’, and if any questions were asked it would be said that he had been attacked during the supposed robbery.

Mr Geoffrey Crispin, defending Richardson, suggested that it had been Duval, and not Charles Richardson, who had been the real gang leader. Duval admitted that he lived a life of fraud, involving large sums of money. But he denied that in the fraudulent companies run by the gang he was, as Mr Crispin put it, ‘the guv’nor’.

Duval sharply turned on the lawyer, saying, ‘I have never been the boss. I have worked for Charles Richardson because I had to.’

But, continued Mr Crispin, Duval was hoping to receive a large sum of money by selling his life story to the newspapers.

Duval had a swift answer to that. ‘I am,’ he said haughtily, ‘but at present I am a guest of Her Majesty and cannot indulge in any business activities while I am in prison.’

The next witness to step into the box was 38-year-old Bernard Wajcenberg, a Polish-born businessman, whose dealings with the Richardsons had not been enjoyable. He, it appeared, had sought business ‘references’ about Charlie Richardson from the police, a move which had met with Charlie’s disapproval. At a meeting in the notorious Camberwell office – at which Wajcenberg was ‘so paralysed with fear I could not speak’ – Richardson told him, ‘You have ratted by making enquiries about me to the police. If you don’t pay
£
5,000, you will not get out of this office alive.’

To add weight to his threat, Richardson showed his terrified victim a cupboard stocked with knives, axes and a shotgun. Hoarsely, the witness told the jury of eleven
men and one woman, ‘Richardson grabbed me by the lapels and said, “When I go berserk, you know what happens.”’ Wajcenberg did know and took swift steps to borrow
£
3,000, which Richardson accepted in payment.

Benjamin Coulston also underwent six hours of torture. He was stripped naked, some of his teeth were ripped out with a pair of pliers, lit cigars were stubbed out on his arms and legs, and he was ‘toasted’ on the face and body by a closely-held electric heater. As an
end-piece
to the session he was bundled into a tarpaulin sheet, along with two 14lb weights and, from inside the shroud, he heard Richardson say, ‘Get rid of him.’

Coulston stared at the jury with sad eyes. ‘I thought I was going to be dumped in the river,’ he said in an almost inaudible voice. ‘And all the time this was happening, Richardson and the others were drinking, laughing, smoking and enjoying the fun.’ But lucky for him, Richardson wearied of the episode once the victim’s terror had been savoured and ordered his release.

‘He gave me a new shirt,’ said Coulston, ‘and his brother, Edward, drove me home.’

Other victims came to the witness box to recount similar experiences in the firm’s office and warehouse. One man, who had been beaten and burned and had his toes broken, heard the screams of another sufferer as he lay in a hole, beneath a trap door, into which he had been thrown when his tormentors had finished with him.

The highlight of the trial came on the morning on which Richardson himself finally entered the witness box to tell his own story. His line was that all of the evidence against him was a pack of lies. Duval’s ‘story’ was an
example, and he blandly told the jury, ‘It is something out of a storybook and never happened at any time. It is a ridiculous allegation that I should beat him up just to do what I told him to.’

‘Have you ever attacked anyone?’ he was asked.

Richardson looked around the courtroom with a smile of a man who would endeavour, patiently, to answer all nonsensical questions. Of course he had never attacked anyone. ‘Never had a cross word,’ he declared. ‘There are a lot of clever fraudsters putting these allegations and getting out of their own frauds by blaming me for these incidents.’

On the table in the well of the court stood the electric generator said to have been the principal torture machine. But Richardson eyed it as though it were some totally mysterious piece of equipment. ‘That’s the only one of those I’ve ever seen,’ he insisted as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. ‘I’ve never owned one, and I don’t know anyone who has.’ He looked at the machine again. ‘It’s a conspiracy,’ he said. ‘It’s a tissue of lies. These people have ganged up against me.’

One moment of humour came when prosecuting counsel, seeking information about a potential witness whom the police were unable to trace, asked Richardson, ‘Is this man alive and well?’

With mock exasperation, the accused man retorted, ‘You keep asking me all the time if people are alive and well, and I object to it. It has a very serious inference.’

Richardson was followed into the stand by his henchman Roy Hall, who was alleged to have operated the electric generator. But, like his boss, he firmly declared that he had never before seen such a machine.
What was more, he added, ‘I have never seen Harris and Coulston in my life before the magistrates’ court. I am an innocent, hard-working man. The prosecution witnesses have tried to frame me.’