Ronald "Ron" and Reginald "Reggie" Kray were born on 25th October 1933 in Haggerston, East London. The brothers were twins, with Reggie born 10 minutes before Ronnie. Their parents already had a 6 year old son, Charles James. A sister, Violet, died in fancy. When the twins were 3 years old, they contracted diphtheria. The twins first attended Wood Close School in Brick Lane, and then Daniel Street School. In 1938, the Kray family moved from Stean Street in Haggerston to 178 Vallance Road in Bethnal Green. The influence of their maternal grandfather, Jimmy "Cannonball" Lee, caused the brothers to take up amateur boxing, then a popular pastime for working class boys in the East End. Sibling rivalry spurred them on, and both achieved some success.
The Krays were called up to do National Service in the British Army in March 1952. Although the pair reported to the depot of the Royal Fusiliers at the Tower of London, they attempted to leave after only a few minutes. When the corporal in charge tried to stop them, he was seriously injured by Ronnie who punched him on the jaw. The Krays walked back to their East End home. They were arrested the next morning by the police and turned over to the army.
In September while absent without leave again, they assaulted a police constable who tried to arrest them. They became among the last prisoners to be held at the Tower of London before being transferred to Shepton Mallet military prison in Somerset for a month to await court martial. After they were convicted, both were sent to the Buffs' Home Counties Brigade Depot jail in Canterbury, Kent. However, when it became clear they were both to be dishonourably discharged from the army, The Krays' behaviour became worse. They dominated the exercise areas outside their one man cells, threw tantrums, emptied a latrine bucket over a sergeant, dumped a canteen full of hot tea on another guard, handcuffed a guard to their prison bars with a pair of stolen cuffs and set their bedding on fire. Eventually they were moved to a communal cell where they assaulted their guard with a vase and escaped. After being quickly recaptured, they spent their last night in military custody in Canterbury drinking cider, eating crisps and smoking cigarillos courtesy of the young national servicemen acting as their guards. The next day The Krays were transferred to a civilian prison to serve sentences for the crimes they committed while AWOL.
Their criminal records and dishonourable discharges from the Royal Fusiliers ended their boxing careers, and the brothers turned to crime full time. They bought a run down snooker club in Mile End where they started several protection rackets. By the end of the 1950s, The Krays were working for Jay Murray from Liverpool and were involved in hijacking, armed robbery and arson, through which they acquired other clubs and properties. In 1960, Ronnie was imprisoned for 18 months for running a protection racket and related threats. While Ronnie was in prison, Peter Rachman, head of a landlord operation, sold Reggie a nightclub called Esmeralda's Barn, to ward off threats of further extortion. The location is where the Berkeley Hotel now stands.
This increased The Krays' influence in the West End by making them celebrities as well as criminals. The Kray twins adopted a norm according to which anyone who failed to show due respect would be severely punished. They were assisted by a banker named Alan Cooper who wanted protection against the Krays' rivals, the Richardsons, based in South London.
In the 1960s, the Kray brothers were widely seen as prosperous and charming celebrity nightclub owners and were part of the Swinging London scene. A large part of their fame was due to their non criminal activities as popular figures on the celebrity circuit, being photographed by David Bailey on more than one occasion and socialising with lords, MPs, socialites and show business characters, including George Raft, Frank Sinatra, Peter Sellers, Judy Garland, Diana Dors, Shirley Bassey, Liza Minnelli, Cliff Richard, Jayne Mansfield, Danny La Rue, and Barbara Windsor.
They were the best years of our lives. They called them the swinging sixties. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were rulers of pop music, Carnaby Street ruled the fashion world... and me and my brother ruled London. We were f*****g untouchable... - Ronnie Kray, in his autobiography My Story.
The Krays also came to public attention in July 1964 when an exposé in the tabloid newspaper Sunday Mirror insinuated that Ronnie had conceived a sexual relationship with Lord Boothby, a Conservative politician, at a time when sex between men was still a criminal offence in the UK. Although no names were printed in the piece, the twins threatened the journalist involved, and Lord Boothby threatened to sue the newspaper with the help of Labour Party leader Harold Wilson's solicitor Arnold Goodman. In the face of this, the newspaper backed down, sacking its editor, printing an apology and paying Lord Boothby £40,000 in an out of court settlement. Because of this, other newspapers were unwilling to expose The Krays' connections and criminal activities. Much later, Channel 4 established the truth of the allegations and released a documentary on the subject called The Gangster and the Pervert Peer.
The police investigated The Krays on several occasions, but the brothers' reputation for violence made witnesses afraid to testify. There was also a problem for both main political parties. The Conservative Party was unwilling to press the police to end The Krays' power for fear that the Boothby contact would again be publicised, and the Labour Party, in power from October 1964, but with a wafer thin majority in the House of Commons and the prospect of another General Election needing to be called in the very near future, did not want Tom Driberg's connections to Ronnie to get into the public realm.
Ronnie shot and killed George Cornell, a member of the Richardson Gang, at the Blind Beggar Pub in Whitechapel on 9th March 1966. The day before, there had been a shoot out at Mr. Smith's , a nightclub in Catford, involving the Richardson Gang and Richard Hart, an associate of The Krays, who was shot dead. This public shoot out led to the arrest of nearly all the Richardson Gang. George, by chance, was not present at the club during the shoot out and was not arrested. After visiting the hospital to check up on his friends, he randomly chose to visit the Blind Beggar pub, only a mile away from where The Krays lived.
Ronnie was drinking in another pub when he learned of George's whereabouts. He went there with his driver "Scotch Jack" John Dickson and his assistant Ian Barrie. Ronnie went into the pub with Ian, walked straight to George and shot him in the head in public view. Ian, confused by what happened, fired 5 shots in the air warning the public not to report what had happened to the police. Just before he was shot, George remarked, "Well, look who's here." He died at 3:00am in hospital.
Ronnie was already suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the killing. According to some sources, Ronnie killed George because George referred to him as a "fat poof" during a confrontation between The Krays and the Richardson Gang at the Astor Club on Christmas Day 1965. Richardson Gang member "Mad" Frankie Fraser was tried for the murder of Richard Hart at Mr. Smith's, but was found not guilty. Richardson Gang member Ray "the Belgian" Cullinane testified that he saw George kicking Richard. Witnesses would not co-operate with the police in the murder case due to intimidation, and the trial ended inconclusively without pointing to any suspect in particular.
On 12th December 1966, The Krays helped Frank Mitchell, "the Max Axeman", to escape the Dartmoor Prison. Ronnie had befriended Frank while they served time together in Wandsworth Prison. Frank felt that the authorities should review his case for parole, so Ronnie thought that he would be doing him a favour by getting him out of Dartmoor, highlighting his case in the media and forcing the authorities to act. Once Frank was out of Dartmoor, The Krays held him at a friend's flat in Barking Road, East Ham. He was a large man with a mental disorder, and he was difficult to control. He disappeared, but The Krays were acquitted of his murder. Freddie Foreman, a friend of The Krays, claimed in his autobiography Respect that he shot Frank dead as a favour to the twins and disposed of his body at sea.
The Krays' criminal activities remained hidden behind both their celebrity status and seemingly legitimate businesses. Reggie was allegedly encouraged by his brother in October 1967, 4 months after the suicide of his wife, Frances, to kill Jack "the Hat" McVitie, a minor member of the Kray gang who had failed to fulfil a £1,000 contract, £500 of which had been paid to him in advance, to kill their financial advisor, Leslie Payne. Jack was lured to a basement flat in Evering Road, Stoke Newington on the pretence of a party. Upon entering the premises, he saw Ronnie seated in the front room. Ronnie approached, letting loose a barrage of verbal abuse and cutting Jack below his eye with a piece of broken glass. It is believed that an argument then broke out between the twins and Jack. As the argument got more heated, Reggie pointed a handgun at Jack's head and pulled the trigger twice, but the gun failed to discharge.
Jack was then held in a bear hug by the twins' cousin, Ronnie Hart, and Reggie was handed a carving knife. He then stabbed Jack in the face and stomach, driving the blade into his neck whilst twisting the knife, not stopping even as Jack lay on the floor dying. Reggie had committed a very public murder, against someone who many members of the Firm felt did not deserve to die. In an interview in 2000, shortly after Reggie's death, Freddie Foreman revealed that Jack had a reputation of leaving carnage behind him due to his habitual consumption of drugs and heavy drinking, and his having threatened to harm the twins and their family.
Tony and Chris Lambrianou and Ronnie Bender helped clear up the evidence of this crime, and attempted to assist in the disposal of the body. With Jack's body being too big to fit in the boot of the car, the body was wrapped in an eiderdown and put in the back seat of a car. Tony drove the car with the body and Chris and Ronnie followed behind. Crossing the Blackwall tunnel, Chris lost Tony's car, and spent up to 15 minutes looking around Rotherhithe area. They eventually found Tony, outside St Mary's Church, where he had run out of fuel with Jack's body still inside the car. With no alternative but to dump the corpse in the churchyard, and attempt to plant a gang south of the River Thames, the body was left in the car and the 3 gangsters returned home. Ronnie then went to phone Charlie Kray informing them that it had been dealt with. However, upon finding out where they had left Jack's corpse, the twins were livid and desperately phoned Freddie, who was then running a pub in Southwark, to see if he could dispose of the body. With dawn breaking, Freddie found the car, broke into it and drove the body to Newhaven where, with the help of a trawlerman, the body was bound with chicken wire and dumped in the English Channel.
This event started turning many people against The Krays, and some were prepared to testify to Scotland Yard as to what had happened, fearing that what happened to Jack could easily happen to them.
Detective Chief Superintendent Leonard "Nipper" Read of Scotland Yard was promoted to the Murder Squad and his first assignment was to bring down the Kray twins. It was not his first involvement with them. During the first half of 1964, Leonard had been investigating their activities, but publicity and official denials of Ronnie's relationship with Lord Boothby made the evidence that he collected useless. Leonard went after the twins with renewed activity in 1967, but frequently came up against the East End "wall of silence" which discouraged anyone from providing information to the police.
Nevertheless, by the end of 1967 Leonard had built up enough evidence against the Krays. Witness statements incriminated them, as did other evidence, but none made a convincing case on any one charge.
Early in 1968, the Krays employed Alan Bruce Cooper who sent Paul Elvey to Glasgow to buy explosives for a car bomb. Paul was the radio engineer who put Radio Sutch on the air in 1964, later renamed Radio City. After police detained him in Scotland, he confessed to being involved in 3 murder attempts. The evidence was weakened by Alan, who claimed that he was an agent for the US Treasury Department investigating links between the American Mafia and the Kray gang. The botched murders were his attempt to put the blame on the Krays. Alan was being employed as a source by one of Leonard's superior officers, and Leonard tried using him as a trap for the Krays, but they avoided him.
Eventually, Scotland Yard decided to arrest the Krays on the evidence already collected, in the hope that other witnesses would be forthcoming once the Krays were in custody. On 8th May 1968, the Krays and 15 other members of the firm were arrested. Exceptional circumstances were put in place so as to stop any possible co-operation between any of the accused. Leonard then secretly interviewed each of the arrested, and offered each member of the firm a deal if they testified against the others. Whilst in prison, the Krays had come up with a plan, which included having Scotch Jack Dickson to confess to the murder of George, Ronnie Hart to take the Jack McVitie murder and Albert Donoghue to stand for Frank Mitchell.
Albert told the twins directly that he wasn't prepared to be cajoled into pleading guilty, to the anger of the twins. He then informed Leonard via his mother that he was ready to cooperate. Leonard set up another secret interview, and Albert was the first to tell the police everything that he knew.
Ronnie Hart had initially not been arrested, and was not a name initially sought after by the police. With Albert's testimony, Ronnie was hunted down, found and arrested. Offering the same terms as the others arrested, Ronnie then told Leonard everything that had happened during Jack's murder, although he did not know anything about what happened to the body. This was the first time that the police knew exactly who was involved, and offered them a solid case to prosecute the twins for Jack's murder.
Although Leonard knew for certain that Ronnie Kray had murdered George Cornell in the Blind Beggar pub no one had been prepared to testify against the twins out of fear. Upon finding out the twins intended to cajole him, 'Scotch Jack' Dickson also turned in everything he knew about George's murder. Although not a witness to the actual murder he was an accessory, having driven Ronnie Kray and Ian Barrie to the pub. The police still needed an actual witness to the murder. They then managed to track down the barmaid who was working in the pub at the time of the murder, gave her a secret identity and she testified to seeing Ronnie kill George.
Frank Mitchell's escape and disappearance were much harder to obtain evidence for, since the majority of those arrested were not involved with his planned escape and disappearance. Leonard decided to proceed with the case and have a separate trial for Frank once the twins had been convicted.
The twins' defence under their counsel John Platts-Mills, QC consisted of flat denials of all charges and discrediting witnesses by pointing out their criminal past. Justice Melford Stevenson said: "In my view, society has earned a rest from your activities." It was the longest murder hearing in history of British criminal justice, during which Justice Melford Stevenson stated of the sentences "which I recommend should not be less than 30 years." In March 1969, both were sentenced to life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 30 years for the murders of George and Jack, the longest sentences ever passed at the Old Bailey for murder. Their brother Charlie was imprisoned for 10 years for his part in the murders.
Ronnie and Reggie Kray were allowed, under heavy police guard, to attend the funeral service of their mother Violet on 11th August 1982 following her death from cancer a week earlier. They were not, however, allowed to attend her burial in the Kray family plot at Chingford Mount Cemetery. The funeral was attended by celebrities including Diana Dors and underworld figures known to the Krays. To avoid the publicity that had surrounded their mother's funeral, the twins did not ask for permission to attend their father's funeral in March 1983.
Ronnie Kray was a Category A prisoner, denied almost all liberties and not allowed to mix with other prisoners. He was eventually certified insane, his paranoid schizophrenia being tempered with constant medication; in 1979 he was committed and lived the remainder of his life in Broadmoor Hospital in Crowthorne, Berkshire. Reggie Kray, constantly being refused parole, was locked up in Maidstone Prison for 8 years. In 1997, he was transferred to the Category C Wayland Prison in Norfolk.
In 1985, officials at Broadmoor Hospital discovered a business card of Ronnie's that led to evidence that the twins, from separate institutions, were operating Krayleigh Enterprises together with their older brother Charlie Kray and an accomplice at large. Among their clients was Frank Sinatra, who hired 18 bodyguards from Krayleigh Enterprises on his visit to the 1985 Wimbledon Championships. Documents released under Freedom of Information laws revealed that although officials were concerned about this operation, they believed that there was no legal basis to shut it down.
Ronnie died on 17th March 1995 at the age of 61 at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, Berkshire. He had suffered a heart attack at Broadmoor Hospital 2 days earlier. Reggie was allowed out of prison in handcuffs to attend the funeral.
During his incarceration, Reggie Kray became a born again Christian. He was freed from Wayland on 26th August 2000 on compassionate grounds, on the direction of Home Secretary Jack Straw, following the diagnosis of cancer. He had been declared as terminal. The final weeks of his life were spent with his wife of 3 years, Roberta, in a suite at the Townhouse Hotel at Norwich, after he left the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital on 22nd September 2000. On 1st October 2000, Reggie died in his sleep. 10 days later, he was buried beside his brother Ronnie in Chingford Mount Cemetery. During the funeral, crowds of thousands lined up to applaud. Some showed signs of relief from his threats, while others wept at the loss of a patron who had protected them from police harassment and prevented social crimes like child abuse and rape. The Kray twins commanded both fear and admiration from the residents.
Ronnie and Reggie's older brother Charlie Kray was released from prison in 1975 after serving 7 years for his role in their gangland crimes, but was sentenced again in 1997 for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine in an undercover drugs sting. He died in prison of natural causes on 4th April 2000, aged 73.