Inside the Firm - The Untold Story of The Krays' Reign of Terror (17 page)

I never saw Blonde Carol during that part of the night. And I’m sure if she had been there, somewhere, Chris and Ronnie Bender would have let me know, given the serious situation we were in. I can honestly say that neither of them mentioned her to me. I didn’t even know Blonde Carol. I’d seen her at the Regency a couple of times, but I’d never met her and I’d never been to her flat before.

After we’d driven the body away on the night of the murder we
came back to Evering Road and Blonde Carol was there, helping to clear up with Connie Whitehead and a bloke she used to go out with called George Plummer. She didn’t know who I was, and she didn’t seem to notice I was there. In court, she was asked to identify the people she insisted she’d seen that night. She picked out Chris, the twins and Ronnie Bender, because she knew them. Then it came to me, and she couldn’t put my face to my name, which she’d given. They kept giving her a cue in court – ‘Who else did you see there that night?’ – and she looked up and down the dock, over and over again in response to the same question, and failed to identify me. This went on for about half an hour.

The judge, realizing what was happening, called an adjournment for lunch. My brief jumped up and said, ‘It’s important that this woman finishes giving her evidence’, but the break went ahead. Blonde Carol came back into court after lunch and ‘identified’ me immediately.

This is how I believe Nicky was dragged into the picture when we were first questioned about Jack The Hat. In my opinion, Blonde Carol was aware that someone had come back to the flat with Chris, after the driving away of the body. Without looking too closely, she assumed it was Nicky because she knew him and had seen him around with Chris.

Even the judge told the jury: ‘I want you to think very, very carefully about this woman and ask yourselves, if she’s lying, why?’ None of us have ever discovered the answer to that.

Blonde Carol also claimed as part of her evidence that she’d seen me six weeks after the murder and that I’d told her to shut her mouth if she knew what was good for her. That was a bloody lie. I didn’t say it. If I had, I’m sure she might have remembered my face in court. Anyway, she would have been the last person I wanted to talk to. I don’t like to slag women off, but from what I’d seen of her around the Regency she certainly wasn’t my cup of tea.

The twist to Albert Donaghue, who had pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the murder of Jack The Hat, was that he made himself a grass when he didn’t have to. He said he tidied up and redecorated Blonde Carol’s flat after the murder. Yet, if he had stood up with us and kept his mouth shut, what would he have got for cleaning up a flat? No more than what he received anyway, which was two years.

It was an education finding out whom we could and couldn’t count on in the end. Frankie Fraser spoke up for us in court. He was one of the first ones to offer, regardless of what was being said at the time about animosity between the Krays and Fraser and the Richardsons. He was brought from Wandsworth prison to stand in the witness box for us, and it did him no favours in the eyes of the authorities regarding his future, but he was a man of honour.

Not so Tony Barry, one of the brothers who ran the Regency. They had always been well liked, so to hear the two of them telling blatant lies about us took a bit of stomaching. Tony brought the gun round on the night of Jack The Hat and was charged with murder, same as us. But he’d gone the police’s way by admitting his part of it. He was terrified of the twins and the rest of us, and he claimed that I’d approached him in Brixton prison and told him what would happen if he gave evidence against us. It wasn’t true, but he got his way. They put him on Rule 43 protection, which meant that he was kept away from us in prison for his own safety, and during the trial he stood apart from us in the dock with three prison officers around him.

I’ll always remember the evening there was a mix-up when we came back from court. We were being put into cells opposite reception, waiting to be escorted over to the special wing. They always used to take Barry off first and lock him in. On this day a screw who didn’t know the situation opened the door to his cell and Fred and I walked in, smiling at each other. As the screw went to
shut the door, Tony Barry shouted, ‘You can’t do this’, with a look of terror on his face. Ten screws came running up, and Fred and I had to leave. If we’d been able to stay in there … well, we wouldn’t have been too happy with Tony Barry, would we?

He told the court he’d been living in fear of the twins. Yet, if it hadn’t been for the twins, his club would never have survived. The Kray name alone carried weight, and the Regency needed that. Like a lot of people who put Reggie and Ronnie down at the end, the Barrys forgot the times they went round to the twins for a bit of help.

Tony wasn’t involved in the murder; I know that. But if he hadn’t called me into the office that night, maybe I wouldn’t have been involved in it either. John Barry came to court to save his brother’s skin by giving evidence against us. I can understand how he felt about Tony being charged with murder, but then again my brother too was standing in the dock charged with murder – yet it didn’t mean that I had to get up and lie about other people.

He told one story concerning a flat called the Dungeon in Vallance Road, claiming that we held meetings of some sort of protection committee in there. Our connections with the Dungeon began when the writer John Pearson said he wanted to absorb the atmosphere of the East End. Ronnie said, ‘I’ll show him the fucking East End’, and put him into this bare flat with a bed, a payphone and a second-hand telly. John Barry came down there one night, purely on a bit of business, when we were all having a drink together. But in court he claimed that he had walked into the Dungeon and found the twins, Ian Barrie, Ronnie Hart, Albert Donaghue, Scotch Jack Dickson, Ronnie Bender, Chris and me sitting there as a tribunal. He said he was brought there to appear before this committee which decided how protection was to be paid, and at what percentage. Rubbish. It never happened.

Johnny Barry was no angel. He was a well-known fence, and he’d
had a lot of dealings with my Nicky. Anything Nicky had to sell, he’d buy. One day, shortly before we got arrested, Johnny said to me, ‘It’s right in your interests to come and see me in the office at the club on Saturday morning.’ I had to ring the side bell because the Regency was closed during the day, and when I reached the office it was like walking into the Bank of England. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

Johnny Barry had £l million worth of forged £5 notes in there – cartons and boxes full of them. He said, ‘These have just been printed, and none of them have gone out yet. We’re going to flood the country with them, all in one hit.’ He gave me £100,000 worth. They had to be sorted out – some were good, some were bad. Our idea was to take them to Birmingham, and in the end the notes did go there – but there was no return on them.

Johnny Barry did lots of things. How he could stand in the witness box, knowing what he’d done, and say the things he was saying made no sense to any of us unless he’d made a deal with the police to get himself out of a charge of forging banknotes. While Barry was giving evidence, Reggie drew a £5 note on a piece of paper and kept holding it up. And when I was in the witness box I said, ‘I’ll tell you what Barry’s got to hide, £1 million worth of problems.’

In later years, Johnny Barry went to prison. Other cons bashed him up and one, Dave Martin, did him with boiling water. That’s the life he chose for himself the minute he made himself a grass.

In the end, the trial got out of hand. We never knew what was coming next. Anyone could get up and say anything about us and it was believed. Plots in Africa, dictatorships in foreign countries, poisoned darts in briefcases…. It got too preposterous to be true. No wonder Ronnie Kray asked, ‘Who’s on trial here – Ronnie Kray or James Bond?’

Newspapers reported that we sat in the dock yawning and
treated the whole thing as a joke. We never saw it as a joke. How could we? When you’re sitting in a dock and allegation after allegation is being made against you and there’s nothing you can do about it, you simply tend to lose hope. ‘Should we go along with this charade?’ is more your feeling.

The things that were going on affected all of the people around us. Families were going to be wrecked. Throughout that trial, my father and Charlie Kray were there every day without fail. My father-in-law, Flip, took it personally, because he saw that justice wasn’t being done. It hurt him greatly, and he worried for his daughter and our two kids. Pat’s side of the family were decent people.

There was a three-day summing up, and then the interminable wait in a cell while the jury were out deciding on the verdicts. Reggie was trying to relax himself, Ronnie was saying nothing, Connie Whitehead was saying nothing, Charlie was trying to be chirpy, and Ronnie Bender kept saying, ‘Come on, we’re going to get “Not guiltys” here.’ I was taking in the picture before me – nine very smartly dressed men who looked as though they could have been at a party. It was almost as though nothing had changed…..

After what seemed like an eternity, I was called out for my verdict. It was like standing in a chapel. Rays of light were coming in through the big, top windows, and one fell directly on me. I’ll never forget the jury foreman, a stocky man of about fifty, with greying hair, horn-rimmed glasses and a brown suit. He didn’t look me in the eye when he spoke the word: ‘Guilty.’ No one spoke, no one smiled, in the court, but there was a sound, just like a sigh. What was going to happen now?

All of a sudden, I snapped out of it and went back down to the cells. The first thing Ronnie Kray said after he was found guilty was, ‘I’m glad it’s all over, I can get into my bird now.’ He kept talking about going on a world cruise when he came out.

Ronnie Bender was cracking jokes. No one complained. I think we were all trying to show a brave side to ourselves. Yet it all still seemed a million miles away. The next day, the day of the sentencing, would say it all.

I woke up in the morning, put on a clean shirt and polished my shoes. I knew it was the last time I was going to wear a civilian suit, and I wanted to look my best. Everything about this day felt different, even though the routine was more or less the same. The cell doors were opened for us; and there were the usual ‘Good morning’s’ all round. There was a very friendly atmosphere, and the screws were going out of their way to keep things low-key. I came out to get breakfast. Ronnie Kray shouted out: ‘Morning all’ as usual, very chirpy, and then he said, ‘Well, today’s the day.’

We were put out in the exercise yard to wait for the coach. As we looked round the cage, all the cons were at their windows shouting, ‘Good luck, boys.’ There were a hell of a lot more screws on duty. All of a sudden, this big police motorcade arrived and we got into the coach. Again, there were ‘Morning’s’ all round. Not a word was said about what was about to happen. Sid, the driver of the wagon, came round and asked us to sign a card he’d brought with him, for posterity. We all did. I often wonder if he kept it.

The crowds were out, all along the route. We went to the Bailey cells and there was tea ready for us, the usual smiles all round. We did look smart in the dock, all suited and booted. It was said that we looked better than the jury.

Between us, we were sentenced to a total of 159 years in prison.

The twins went away with a lot of honour and a lot of dignity. They could have brought many other people down with them, but they chose not to. I took my punishment, whether I deserved it or not. I was there at the end, and hopefully I took it like a man. It wasn’t a question of my killing anybody. It was a question of ‘I was there’,
and I knew there was going to be trouble of some sort. I saw what happened. Perhaps I didn’t like what I saw, but I kept my mouth shut and that’s why I got the sentence I did.

That’s why Chris got fifteen years too, although Chris was never aware that the party was going to be anything other than a party. I’m not saying he was an innocent man – eventually, I think, Chris and I would have gone to prison for other crimes – but on this occasion he really wasn’t guilty, and there was no excuse for what happened to him at the Old Bailey. If there was any charge, it should have been as an accessory, and to keep him for five years would have been a liberty. Every one of us felt sorry for Chris. He had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now he was going to spend a lot of years in prison because of that. It was unbearable, tragic. I felt guilty about him. But he didn’t complain at the time, and he has never complained since. We both live with the things we’ve done in the past, but at the same time we can hold our heads up, knowing that we never betrayed another person.

And so we all went off to start our sentences, thinking our different thoughts, and that day brought with it the end of an era in British crime. The things we did, the power we had, could never happen to the same extent again, because the authorities wouldn’t allow it. For the first time in criminal history, this country came up against organised crime.

The authorities hadn’t known how to handle organised crime. It was a way of life that had to be public: the twins didn’t sneakily challenge authority, they did it openly. They never, ever denied what they were into. People underestimate what they did. It was an achievement on its own – something which, in straight business, would have put them on a par with anyone. But they did it in crime, and they were very good. Their reign, in some ways, became acceptable to the public and the establishment for a while, but it was a one-off. That sort of thing can never be acceptable again.

The turning point came when the authorities decided to suppress it and learned how. Things have been a lot quieter since the day we were sentenced. One or two gangs did try to come through, but the police now knew what to do in the face of any new challenge.

But if the law learned lessons from the Kray case, so too did other criminals. They learned to work alone or very quietly, because any other way they couldn’t win.