The Last Real Gangster Read online

  I was in the nick when it happened, doing a ten for Jack the Hat.

  FRANK: Freddie was a schtummer. Even Nipper Read, who nicked the Krays, didn’t know who Freddie Foreman was – that was how deep he was. And if he had a big tickle, say, for fifty grand or a hundred grand of gold bars, he’d keep the same old car, wouldn’t look flash, do his own thing.

  He had his pubs and mansion houses, he’d stick money into them, but everyone who didn’t know him just thought he was a good bussinessman. He never let on; he kept a low profile.

  In his book, Gangsters, Guns and Me, Jamie Foreman blames Reggie and Ronnie for getting him nicked with The Hat. It was all a fit-up, but he got away with a lot of other things.

  PART TWO

  THE LEGEND OF THE KRAYS BY FRANK AND NOELLE KURYLO

  I went in the Army on 7 May 1957. I used to come down to London from Leeds a lot because my Auntie Frances lived in Kensington – when I was a kid she wanted to adopt me. So, I used to wander round London when I was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen … I would buy my shoes and shirts in good shops; my parents were tailors, so I was always suited and booted, always smart.

  I did my National Service from 1957–59. I first used to go into the Krays’ Double R club in ’57. I went in there with a couple of younger lads, who were stationed with me. That was the first time I saw Reg and Ron. When I went to the toilet and one of them was there, I couldn’t work out how he beat me back so quickly; he just seemed to appear. That was the first time I set eyes on both of them.

  And I kept going down to London – I used to go to my auntie’s if we had a forty-eight-hour leave pass. I’d go down to the club where Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies worked.

  When I came out of the Army, I went back to training a little bit, played a bit of rugby. But I got out of that as I was coming to London too much. I found a mentor called Joe Freeman – ‘Cockney Joe’ – who used to be a very good card sharp. He used to work card games in clubs all over Britain; he’d put a ‘combination’ in a shoe – in a baccarat shoe or a chemy shoe there are about eight packs, but he used to do combinations so he knew what was coming out and he’d always win.

  That’s what I used to do for years and years – Jack Spot was his minder before me, during the war. So, I’m staying down in London with Joe. He’d tell me, ‘See me later, see me sparingly.’ He never wanted me to get too pally with the Krays: ‘Keep them at arm’s length ’cos they’ll turn on you.’

  ‘I’m not bumming myself up, but I can take care of them!’ I said.

  I didn’t see the strength of them, but I said if they were street fighters I could bang ’em both. But I used to listen to him and, when I’d see them, after ten minutes I’d have to step away from them. I always had a few quid on me, but they could never get into me. I’d never get involved because I could always make my own money. Even then, when they were in their twenties, I could see the way they were going; the only thing the Krays did was use. They used you and abused you, and that was all they ever did.

  When the Krays started the firm, they all said that they demanded the first billiard hall and blagged that fellow. But I’ve got the contract at home where the Krays signed for the billiard hall on a proper deal. It was never blagged, they never fannied him, they paid him so much a week – but that was the only time they ever did.

  In the other club they had, The Hideaway, they were like squatters. They were taken to court over Hew McCowan (the twins were remanded on a charge of demanding money with menaces in 1965). They had cards printed – ‘Ronnie & Reg Kray’ – but they never put any money in. I want to put this over so you can get the size of them: they were just thugs. People talk about the Regency Club, where they lured Jack the Hat from, but that wasn’t theirs: it was run by two brothers called Barry. The Krays blagged them, they were frightened to death. The twins just used to move in and take over. The only club where they put anything in – it was a grand, God knows how – was Esmeralda’s Barn. Freddie can tell you: he got them that club, not their financial adviser Leslie Payne.

  I met a chap who was their godfather, name of Geoff Allan. He was a builder in Surrey, Essex, all over the place. His buildings were all grand but occasionally he’d set fire to one and burn it down. He was their mentor and any time there were any murders – McVitie or any of the others – they’d go to see Geoff at his mansion.

  Geoff died in ’98. I got most of the photos in this section of the book from him.

  When Ronnie escaped from Long Grove mental hospital in Epsom in 1958, he stopped at Geoff Allan’s. They had a photo of them in a big farm kitchen. In those days Ronnie had his hair cut short at the sides and so did Reggie, so that they could swap places (Ronnie’s escape from mental hospital was effected by Reggie pretending to be him).

  Geoff was the man who told them what to do. The morning they got nicked in ’68, Mrs Kray phoned him up because she was staying at his big mansion in Hadleigh, Suffolk, in a cottage in the grounds. The twins were at her London flat – that was where they got nicked. She said, ‘Can you get down here, Geoff? There’s loads of stuff of Reggie and Ron’s, all photos.’ If the police had got hold of them, it’d be like having a birthday.

  So he sent Terry Stace down, who was his right-hand man. They kept the photos and eventually Geoff bestowed all 300 to me. Most of them have never been seen.

  Geoff Allan bought Gedding Hall, a big mansion in Suffolk. Bill Wyman, the Rolling Stones’ bassist, lives there now. In his book, A Rolling Stone GathersNo Moss, he says that when he went to buy the house he looked on the mantelpiece and there was a photo of the Kray twins. Geoff said, ‘I’m their godfather.’

  He bought the house for £42,000 in 1969, and it’s worth about £8 million now. But this is the strangest thing: when The Hat was killed in the basement where they were having a party, there were about twenty other people there, including Geoff Allan and his wife, Annie. They left the party about an hour before the murder.

  But, when he found out what Reggie had done, Allan went berserk: ‘You fucking clowns! What are you doing?’

  There were two ‘Kray firms’, as the papers called them. The first was from 1960–65, and then there was a second, from 1965–68. But I must say many of the stories were smoke and mirrors; a lot of it didn’t happen. They wanted to put out that they knew John Bindon, but they never did. I knew John well – coming out of borstal, getting nicked for this and that. He’d just got into films in ’65 when they started murdering and Bindon didn’t want to know them.

  (Bindon was a thug, convicted killer and sometime lover of Princess Margaret. But he was also a character actor, taking supporting roles in the classic Brit-gangster movies Performance and Get Carter, and also appeared in The Sweeney TV series.)

  The original Kray firm at the Double R club was the two Osbournes: George ‘Ozzy’ Osbourne and Colin ‘Duke’ Osbourne, who was known as Pasha. He was Freddie Foreman’s pal but they almost got nicked together over a consignment of puff (Freddie later found out in the newspaper that he’d killed himself). Then there were John H. Squibby, Dicky Moughton, Billy Donovan (who was at the billiard hall when they went there to fight with some dockers – he was one of them and some were badly hurt), Fat Pat Connolly, Tommy Brown, Dickie Morgan and Mickey Fawcett. Fawcett wrote a book (Krayzy Days, 2014) that’s really thin, but tells a lot of stories. He was close to them, as was Teddy Smith, but pulled away after the first murder when he realised he didn’t want to know. They tried to kill him after that.

  The second Kray firm was from 1965–68: Chrissie and Tony Lambrianou, Ian Barrie, ‘Scotch Jack’ Dickson, Cornelius Whitehead, Ronnie Bender, Albert Donoghue and Ronnie Hart (who used to work together) and the three Teale brothers: Bobby, David and Alfie.

  Then there were ‘floaters’, who weren’t on the firm but did their own thing: Harry ‘Jew Boy’ Cope, Bobby Clark, Billy Exley, Eric Mason (who was a pal of mine), the two brothers Teddy Berry (the boxer, who had his leg shot off) and ‘Checker’ Berry, whose proper
name was Henry – he used to go checking the merchandise on boats on the Thames.

  Bobby Teale wrote a good book (Bringing Down the Krays, 2013), but he said Frosty, Ronnie’s driver, was killed – Frosty was still alive a fucking year ago! I’ve got the trial papers here and I can see what’s happened: on the day after Ronnie killed George Cornell, the oldest Teale brother went secretly to the law and grassed ’em. He got hold of Chief Superintendent Tommy Butler, who did the Train Robbers. All they kept saying to him was, ‘Don’t mention homosexuals in your statement’ because of what happened with Lord Boothby and Tom Driberg (respectively, Conservative and Labour MPs, both part of Ronnie Kray’s gay underworld – Boothby notoriously so, as he was brazen enough to win a £40,000 libel payout from the Sunday Mirror for associating him with the Krays in 1964).

  There was a big fear the Boothby story could bring the Government down. There was a news editor, Derek Jameson, who said, ‘We’ve got the Krays, we’ve got ’em now!’ And his editor said, ‘Don’t do anything, leave ’em alone’ – and the police backed off for two years. But Tommy Butler was into it; he got a load of information and all of a sudden, after a year, it went missing. It rattled him; it shocked him. Nobody mentioned it in court in ’69, but they should have asked Nipper Read, ‘Why didn’t you have a statement from the man who was dealing with the inquiry before you?’

  I was minder for Danny La Rue (he was a popular English variety artiste and drag queen) for seven years, and I took the job off the gangster Billy Howard. But I used to nip off to see the twins and sorted one or two people out for them, ‘straight’ people. One was a really big titled man, who was having it off with a bloke called Clive Peterson, who Ronnie Kray was also having it with. He didn’t get a slap, just a really nice warning.

  Danny used to say, ‘Frank, I don’t mind you mixing with ’em, but you do realise …’

  When Danny got his own club – from 1964–72 – they moved in to get protection money. It’s in Nipper Read’s book that an actor and his manager were about to open up to him, but, the next time he went, their solicitor was there and they wouldn’t say anything. That was Danny, and that was when I pulled away from him because I didn’t want to get in the middle of Reggie and Ronnie and him. I got pally with ’em all, but I stepped away from that.

  Danny got chinned one night by Charlie Mitchell, who would turn Queen’s evidence against the Krays (for the rest of his life Danny would have a big scar on his chin). Mitchell was the one who stood up in court and laughed at the twins. He was a very wealthy man, who went to Nipper Read when he nicked ’em – ‘I’ve gotta tell you this, I’ve gotta get out of this: they’ve given me £5,000 so they can get a hitman to kill you.’

  Mitchell later got killed in Spain.

  I earned plenty of money with the twins, both when they were free and in prison. For the film The Krays they got a big lump, but they should have got more. They went through a couple of businessmen and me in Yorkshire; Lloyd Hume and I even had property with them in Puerto Banús.

  I would go to see Mrs Kray with Cockney Joe. I used to go with him to stay at nice hotels, stop at the racecourse, and one day he said, ‘Do you want to come and see Violet?’ He used to help her out with money. He told Reggie to write to me but I couldn’t go to see him when he was in Parkhurst. He couldn’t have visitors unless they were relatives.

  I started doing business with the twins again after their first book Our Story was published. It wasn’t a success, and Noelle and I had to sell a van full to market traders and second-hand book shops. But then he did others: Reg Kray’s Book of Slang (1989), Born Fighter (1991), Thoughts of Reg Kray (1991) and then, in 1993, Villains We Have Known, with me. When they were in the nick, I used to help them out left, right and centre – but you had to keep on top of ’em.

  ‘[Frank Kurylo] was one of the best knuckle fighters from the fifties to the seventies, and his attire was immaculate. Frank came from Leeds, so in a way it was quite unique how the London crowd took to him … Frank was a good and loyal friend to Ron and I, and still is to the present day.’ Reg Kray in Villains We Have Known (N.K. Publications, 1993)

  These pictures of the twins as babies are all from the family collection. They were born on 24 October 1933, in Stean Street, Hoxton. In the previous year, their mother, Violet, had given birth to a beautiful little girl with thick black hair, who died very soon afterwards. They named her baby Violet, too. The story is told in a book by the twins’ cousin, Rita Smith (Inside the Kray Family, 2008), but I first heard it from Laurie O’Leary, who’d written a book, A Man Among Men (2002), about his friend Ronnie. It’s believed the baby died because Charlie Kray Senior was knocking his wife around. He used to batter her, which was why Reggie and Ronnie didn’t like him. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t kill their dad – if somebody did that to my mother, I know what I’d have done to him.

  The twins had healthy childhoods until they contracted diphtheria, from which Ronnie nearly died. One year later, the family moved to 178 Vallance Road, Bethnal Green.

  This picture shows Ronnie and Reggie, aged eleven, on the boxing team at Daniel Street School in 1944. They’re sitting either side of the trophy holder; Reggie has a straight back.

  Above left Ron and Reg are fighting each other, three years before Reggie became Great Britain Schoolboy finalist. Above right records their first public bout in Stewart’s Boxing Booth at Victoria Park in the East End, an all-comers prize-fighting contest.

  One of Reg’s favourite punches was the cigarette punch. He would offer the person a cigarette and as they leaned forward for a light he would throw a left hook. But, if he looked like he was going to try it with me, I’d have a vein in my head standing out at the side when I used to tense my jaw. I knew all about boxing, inside and out.

  The Krays’ pro boxing careers lasted less than six months. They turned professional on 3 July 1951 and their last fight was at the Albert Hall on 11 December 1951. About six months after that they went in the Army.

  Reggie had seven fights; Ronnie had six and lost two. Later in the fifties our paths kept crossing – I couldn’t understand why they never kept training. I think Reggie would have been British champion; I don’t think he’d have been a European champion. Charlie never trained and that’s why he lost more fights than he won.

  Ronnie was just wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am aggressive, didn’t put any thought into anything. Reggie was a classy boxer – he could move, slip punches, turn you round on the ropes. He had a right good trick as well: as he bounced off the ropes he would use the momentum from the ropes and meet his opponent halfway with serious force. I used to see them at the fights at York Hall and various places.

  Reg and Ron with their mum, Violet, in the backyard of Vallance Road in 1950. And overleaf is the twins shortly after turning pro (1951). That’s Teddy Berry on the right, a good boxer himself, who later had his leg shot off.

  Ronnie (right) aged twenty-one at the Regal Billiard Hall in 1954, with young friends. Laurie O’Leary grew up with him and he used to say to me that he could never understand the young boxing lads that he bedded, who were straight.

  Reggie was fighting it. Geoff Allan said he used to take his boyfriends to whatever house he was staying at, whether Gedding Hall or in Walthamstow. They were both homosexuals, but Reggie was trying to fight it all his life. Ronnie didn’t give a shit. He once made a pass at me.

  ‘I’m not like that, leave me alone or we’ll end up falling out,’ I told him.

  ‘I was only kidding.’

  ‘Yeah, like fuck you were kidding!’

  When I was with Danny La Rue I used to see all sorts of things – Ronnie had an affair with Danny too.

  When I was managing a cabaret club in Leeds I had a singer in called Clive Peterson. He was one of Ronnie’s paramores and Ronnie was looking for him; he’d come up noth to get away from them. Clive asked me if I could straighten things up between them.

  So I paled them up for a while and they had an affair for
a bit. Ronnie was very jealous: if he met someone, he wanted to be with them 24/7, but he loved them to death. He was very domineering, strong, but he could never get to the next stage. In the 1973 book The Brotherhood by Leslie Payne, he says that, if they left Ronnie, he went to pieces.

  He was an enigma: will the real Ronnie Kray please stand up, which is it? He was perplexing. If Ronnie made an arrangement to meet you in London in two years’ time at the cathedral, he’d be there.

  With Reggie, if he made a plan, forget it! Reggie would let you down. If Ronnie made an arrangement, if he wasn’t in that state of paranoia he’d be there. Even the lads, all the villains, liked Ronnie better than Reggie.

  Reg was sneaky. He always looked quizzical, always looked as if he was up to something. Ronnie was potty as heck. But Freddie Foreman said this: when Reggie hit someone on the jaw he’d always get the first punch in. Someone who could hit him back wouldn’t dare because the whole gang would jump on him. They were only 5 foot 8, 5 foot 9; they weren’t big fellas, but the two of them together were lethal.

  It wouldn’t be a fair fight – I’ve seen them do all sorts.

  This is Ron (overleaf, second from left) and Reg (right) when they’ve gone AWOL from National Service, on Brighton seafront. Second from right is Dickie Morgan, who turned grass on them. He laughed like a hyena, a right funny man. I didn’t see him after they went to the nick – he just disappeared. They met him in the Army and when they deserted they went to his house in the East End.