Secrets of the Krays (2021) s01e03 Episode Script
Fall
1
It's quite clear
from several sources that
serious criminal players
were contemplating
assassinating the twins.
It was chaotic.
It wasn't good for business.
The Krays had to go.
Afraid they'd get me,
but I decided to get Reggie first.
We decided to shoot him and
cut his throat and leave him there
as a message
to the rest of his cronies.
Everybody knew about the Kray twins
and the myth and the legend
far outgrew the reality.
They felt they were indestructible
and, you know, they probably
could have been for a lot longer,
but when he shot George Cornell,
I mean, that WAS
the beginning of the end.
This house of cards
is coming crashing down.
CROWD CLAMOURING
The thing that
was important to the Krays
was the name, the legacy.
CHANTING: Let him out! Let him out!
Would they like the way their
legend's made and the film's made?
They would have loved
every minute of it,
because that's what they wanted.
MAN: How are you feeling today,
Reggie?
All right. Yeah?
Yeah, I feel good. I'm relaxed.
In 1965
you and Ronnie,
you had the world at your feet.
Mm. Everything was great.
Mm. Fashion pop art.
David Bailey taking photographs
of you and Ronnie.
Entertainers and criminals
were very closely aligned.
What went wrong?
Ronnie Kray,
he believes he's invincible.
He's walked into The Blind Beggar.
He's shot George Cornell.
He was very proud of his murder.
Ronnie kept on to Reggie,
"Look, I've done one."
In other words,
"I've killed George Cornell."
"You've got to do one."
So, the pressure was on him to do
to do his murder,
and along came Jack the Hat.
'My dad knew Jack the Hat,
'and he said he was a bit
of a practical joker, you know?
'He used to get on people's nerves
a bit, but he was all right.'
He weren't really a gangster,
really. He just dabbled in things.
Jack the Hat McVitie
had been given £1,000
to carry out some sort of
contract killing for them,
which wasn't carried out,
and the money never came back
to the Kray twins.
And when he was reprimanded
for this,
he started to make threats
against the twins.
He turned up at a club one night
with a sawn-off shot gun.
He was gonna kill the Krays.
Which wasn't
a wise thing to do anyway,
but it's worth stressing
that Jack the Hat
was no shrinking violet.
This was a violent man, someone
who could look after himself.
He lived in that violent world.
They knew that
he was a tough guy,
and they didn't like that,
tough guys going around,
saying they're not afraid of 'em.
This is an unpublished manuscript
from Ronnie Hart.
Ronnie Hart
is the cousin of the Krays
and he's then a member of the firm.
"Ronnie decreed that something would
have to be done about McVitie.
"Ronnie called Reggie,
"and when Reggie
was finished talking to Ronnie,
"his mood had changed completely.
"His lips twitched, and he began
drinking one gin after another."
"Ronnie then told us all
what was going to happen."
"He said McVitie was to die
that night."
There was a party at Evering Road
in Stoke Newington
at the flat of a woman
called Blonde Carol's.
McVitie was invited,
and he turned up.
DICK HOBBS: It becomes apparent
that, this party,
this a killing zone.
'My name's Chris Lambrianou.
'My regret is,
I did meet the Krays.
'On that night, I thought
"How can we get out of this?"
'We're going to Evering Road,
Blonde Carol's place.'
Down the stairs we go.
Jack comes dashing by
and goes into the room,
"Where's the party?
Where's the girls?"
And so on and so forth.
Next thing, there's an argument,
altercation.
Reggie pulls a gun out.
Gun don't work.
So, I've gone to walk out.
I said,
"I didn't come down here for this."
You know, "I'm going home."
My brother, Tony, was still there.
When I spoke to my brother
after the event,
Tony said that there was a fight
when Reggie the gun didn't work,
Jack smashed a window
trying to get out.
So, in his manuscript, Ronnie Hart
paints an horrific picture
of the murder and the details.
"Reg punched Jack in the face
"and then stuck the knife
he was holding in his left
"into Jack's face,
an inch or two below his right eye,
"and his face seemed to fall open.
"The blood spurted.
"Ronnie was yelling,
'Don't stop, Reg.
"Kill him, Reg.
Do him in. Kill him.'
"Then Reg started
to stab him in the stomach.
"He must have struck him
five or six times with a knife.
"There was blood everywhere."
"Reggie then stabbed McVitie again
in the chest"
"and Jack slumped slowly
to the floor."
This was Reg proving,
in Ron's words,
that he was "a real man"
and that he could commit violence,
that he could commit murder.
Then they've got to do away
with the body.
By now, the drink is
kind of leaving me a little bit
and I'm getting a bit sober,
and I drive round to Evering Road.
And I'd gone in the front room,
and there's Jack the Hat,
laying full length.
I want him to be alive.
I I don't want to
I want him to jump up.
I want him to be
be the Jack I know, not
not this
person laying there,
not gonna be doing nothing.
The twins had walked out,
and they've given instructions.
We're talking about
very dangerous people here.
They've just killed a man.
Are you gonna turn round and say,
"Oh, excuse me, Mr Kray,
by the way, do you mind"
"You know, you killed him.
You get rid of him. You clean up."
No.
They would turn on anybody.
It could have been us.
We cleaned the blood up, and we
I we
we give it a thorough clean,
as best we can.
Not only that, we went round,
and we spoke to different people
who were there,
told them to keep their mouths shut
and everything else.
And we got Jack out
and we tried to put him in the boot.
You can't put a fully-grown man
in the boot of a car.
A A Ford Consul.
So, what we did, we managed to get
him in and put him on the back seat.
The body is taken
south of the river
..and Fred Foreman is given the task
of getting rid of the body.
Now, Fred was known by this time
as someone who was willing and able
to get rid of bodies.
They thought they were gonna
get away with murder again,
because they had it under control.
They had nothing under control.
They couldn't control themselves.
They were not behaving
like gangsters.
They were completely unpredictable.
They were upsetting a lot
of people for no reason.
They were getting fed up of them.
You know, you start
killing your own, where do you stop?
And it is quite clear
from several sources that
serious criminal players
were contemplating
assassinating the twins
in order to bring
some kind of equilibrium
back to the crime scene in London.
It was chaotic.
It wasn't good for business.
The Krays had to go.
They were evil, dangerous bastards.
EXHALES SLOWLY
'I would have been afraid
they would have had me shot.
'But I decided to get Reggie first.'
And we waited outside the flat
in Stratford.
I get a phone call saying,
"Reggie is on his way."
We decided to shoot him and
cut his throat and leave him there
as a message
to the rest of his cronies.
And, er, he never arrived.
So we
decided to leave it
to another night.
By now, Scotland Yard realised that
people were beginning to laugh
at the ineffectiveness
of the police in arresting them.
They were embarrassing the police.
Protection rackets were still
around, murders had gone unpunished.
People are still writing
about "missing Frank Mitchell".
"Missing Jack the Hat".
"The unsolved murder
of George Cornell".
Journalists are having a field day.
Their notoriety and their fame
became an embarrassment
to Scotland Yard,
and, in the end, the Yard
decided to put a stop to it.
Nipper Read starts to build
a new team to go after the Krays.
He now knows that
he has to be incredibly careful
with the witnesses that he's got
and trying to
give an appearance
that they can look after them,
that the Krays WILL be arrested,
and that these people
can now start talking to him.
But it's hugely important
for Nipper
to get the Krays off the streets.
My name is Maurice Harding,
and in the 1960s,
I was a detective constable
in the Metropolitan Police.
May the 8th, 1968,
I was home in bed here, fast asleep.
About three thirty in the morning
PHONE RINGS
..I got a telephone call
from someone
who told me to go to my office.
SIREN WAILS
When we were there,
we received a telephone call
to go to Tintagel House.
Nipper Read came in, stood on a box.
"Morning, gentlemen."
"We're going to arrest the Krays
today."
I was on the Kray inquiry.
'I was the first woman WDC.'
Even my brother and my father,
who were in the police force,
didn't know what job I was on
at the time.
I wasn't allowed to tell anybody.
I never told anybody.
SIREN WAILS
Nipper Read,
he went into the Krays' flat.
And the milkman
came at the same time.
They had to clear
the milkman out the way,
say, "We're police officers."
When they got there,
Reggie was with a woman,
and Ronnie was in bed
with a 16-year-old boy.
I think somebody said,
"Good morning, Mr Read,"
or something ridiculous.
There was no fighting
or anything like that.
They were told what they were
arrested for and they came quietly.
But then, they were taken
to West End Central Police Station,
and they were just
just in casual clothes.
And as they went into the cell,
they were shouting out,
"You won't keep us here very long."
LOCKS CLICKING
I was very proud to think
that I'd been involved in something
as serious as that.
'We'd done the right thing,
we'd got the right people,
'and all it was now
was going to court and proving it.'
The 34-year-old ex-boxer brothers
Reginald and Ronald
came here with Flying Squad officers
at six o'clock this morning.
Two Murder Squad superintendents
and a number of Fraud Squad officers
have been engaged
in a special hush-hush operation.
It was headlines on the front page
of the paper, "Kray Twins arrested".
In the end,
I think there were about
two dozen people that were picked up
either that morning
or the week after.
INDISTINCT POLICE RADIO CHATTER
The police came up to Birmingham
and they arrested me up there.
And they took me to a place
called Tintagel House.
I observed in the room itself
photographs of all the firm.
There were photographs of the twins,
Ian Barrie, Tony, Ronnie Bender,
Ronnie Hart, Albert Donoghue,
Jack Dickson,
so it was pretty serious business.
And Nipper Read says to me
"About the McVitie murder"
"..as we've got it,
you had nothing to do with it."
"Tell us about it."
I said, "I don't know
what you're talking about."
I said, "I don't know anything."
I came up in a school
..where you didn't rat on
your friends, no matter what it was.
They kept their mouth shut,
and you kept your mouth shut.
And he turned round, and he said,
"I've had enough of you," he said.
"Charge him with murder."
People would never,
ever talk about the Krays,
because they were so frightened
of 'em, until they were in custody.
It was really, really
in Nipper's interest,
before we did anything else,
to arrest them,
and, having arrested them, we could
then go on and get the evidence.
Nipper got a bit tense,
wondering whether anybody
was gonna come forward and stick by
what they'd said they'd say.
I'd have been worried,
I think, myself,
if I'd given evidence against them
and that you were on your own
and somebody'd come up
and try and get rid of you.
SIREN WAILS
The girl that was the barmaid
at The Blind Beggar pub
she witnessed the shooting
of George Cornell in the pub.
And we had to try
and not talk her round,
but just tell her
that she was doing the right thing
by telling the truth.
Very difficult.
Took her kids out for walks.
Persuaded her that
we were the right people.
Once the Krays were inside,
this idea of a solid criminal firm
who were all going to
stand up for the Krays and
it virtually collapsed,
with the exception
of their brother, Charlie
..and the Lambrianou brothers.
I couldn't believe
any of the firm were gonna turn,
to be honest with you.
I thought they were all loyal
to the twins.
It didn't matter
whether it was King Kong
or Little Billy round the corner
you didn't do it.
Albert Donoghue
is Reggie Kray's right-hand man.
He acts as driver, muscle
and collector of protection rackets.
He was a serious criminal,
and I think, of all of the firm,
he probably had more respect.
Pressure was put
on Albert Donoghue to
take the pressure off of the Krays
by admitting to
to crimes that he hadn't committed.
The twins asked him, yeah.
Well, didn't ask him. Told him.
And that's what turned them people.
They thought,
"No, I'm not gonna do that for you."
When I arrested Albert,
he just sat down next to me,
put his shoes on and said,
"OK, let's go."
And once he started
to give evidence, really,
things started to go badly wrong
for the Krays.
We were still investigating
the murder of Jack the Hat McVitie.
Make yourself comfortable.
But Albert Donoghue, when
he admitted what his connection
was that he'd wallpapered
the whole flat again.
We actually went back
to Evering Road.
First thing I did was go
and peel a corner off the wallpaper
and pull it up,
and we found obvious blood there.
There was blood all up the wall.
The police,
they are right on their case.
But I was confident I'd be OK.
They'd beat the police before.
I thought they were quite capable
of covering things up.
They couldn't see themselves
going down.
My name's Ivan Lawrence.
I'm a Queen's Counsel,
and I was junior counsel
in defence of Ronald Kray
in the murder trials.
Didn't get a great deal
of cooperation
from our client, Ronald Kray.
I remember one occasion,
when we were getting close to him
having to give evidence,
I said to him
.."Can we come down afterwards
and go through your statement?
"Prepare you for giving defence?"
And he said, "No, no," he says,
"I don't want you
to come down tonight."
"I've got a nice young boy
coming to see me tonight."
And I said,
"Well, it's very important, Mr Kray,"
"that we go through your evidence."
"' Yes, we'll do it another day.'"
When Ronnie saw me in court,
he wrote a little note,
which he got one of the wardens
to pass to me, saying,
"Dear Miss Lethbridge,
you are more beautiful than ever."
"When I get out of this,
I will take you to the moon."
Ronnie was I would say
he was off with the fairies.
Poor Violet had to go
to the Old Bailey
with the shirts the day before,
for them to put on in the morning.
They had to be dressed better
than anybody else in the court,
the barristers included.
So we sat there
for the longest murder trial,
the most expensive murder trial
ever.
39-day trial has cost about
£150,000 in defence costs alone.
But what they did,
they did a fascinating thing.
They put two murder trials together.
George Cornell
..McVitie murder.
And they linked it by saying
that Ronnie Kray said to Reggie,
"I've done mine. You do yours."
Still, to this day,
I cannot get over it.
Two murder trials
being put together.
A strong team of uniformed
Special Patrol Group officers
has handled the escort duty
of the prisoners
from various prisons to the court.
When the trial started
at the Old Bailey
..and I began to see
Donoghue
..and Ronnie Hart and others,
then it dawned on me
about the pictures.
The pictures was, on one side,
those that were giving evidence
and those that weren't.
When Ronnie Hart got up
and spoke in the box, I was shocked.
He was their flesh and blood.
He was a cousin of the Krays
and well involved with them
in the murder
of Jack the Hat McVitie.
And I took him to the trial
and sat in court with him
while he gave his evidence.
He looked up from the dock,
and Ronnie Kray was looking at him
with his fingers like this, and
BLOWS AIR
He'd done the old gun sign,
as if to say,
"You're dead, young man."
But Ronnie just looked at him
and mouthed, "Poof."
The Cornell murder,
everybody was talking about, well,
"It's the barmaid that will be able
to recognise Ronnie."
Nobody else is going to say
it was Ronnie Kray.
The day that she turned up
she was nice, dressed nice,
good looking,
and I heard her speak.
I remember Chris Lambrianou going
..as much as to say,
"We're finished."
It was the end.
We're going down.
Because she was so believable.
Everything she said.
She convinced me
that she was telling the truth.
But now,
it all rests with the 12 men
locked in a little room back there,
and we all wait for what
they have to say about it.
When the guilty verdicts
were read out
..it was rough justice.
It was the twins they was after,
and if you was with the twins,
you were going down as well.
The judge was Melford Stevenson,
who was notoriously tough.
And you weren't gonna go down
with a sloppy ten
or something else like that.
You were gonna do big bird.
Ronnie Bender did 20 years.
My brother, Tony, did 15.
I did 15.
When he said "Twins, I sentence you
to life imprisonment,"
you heard that gasp, going,
"Oh, God, no, no!"
"But I suggest"
"30 years."
I mean, undoubtedly,
they were guilty.
But it really worried me.
I didn't feel that
they were being given a fair trial.
I was left with
a horrible feeling of class war.
Nobody is particularly worried
when gangsters kill each other.
But they're terribly worried
if they
..go beyond their station.
The sentences that they received
were very high by the standards
of the 1960s.
Life, with a recommendation
of 30 years.
Poor Violet.
She was just in total shock.
She couldn't believe it.
"Why did all those people
come and talk bad about them?"
"Those people have sat at my table.
"They've had tea in my house.
I talk to their mothers.
"I ask 'em about
their wives and children."
"Why Why were
they all saying bad things?"
"They're calling 'em murderers!"
And that's when I thought,
"I can't pretend any more."
I said, "But Violet"
"..they DID commit murder."
ROCK MUSIC PLAYS
Ronnie Kray is sent to Durham.
Reggie Kray is sent
to the Isle of Wight.
And this means that Violet Kray,
their mother,
has two incredibly long journeys
to prisons
north and south of the UK.
That's got to really,
really wear you down.
Now, she's had to ask for lifts,
and not a lot of people
wanted to do that.
It sounds terrible,
because they all wanted
to do everything for her
when the twins were here.
Prison, for a start, in the 1970s,
was an extremely rough place to be.
It was rough.
People do know
how to use knives in jail.
They know how to hurt people
in jail.
REPORTER: And the prison's
so-called Black Museum
contains a terrifying
array of weapons
that the prisoners have constructed
to do violence to themselves,
each other and the staff.
So it's incredibly dangerous
for them.
They are the old guard,
and they are surrounded
by young bucks.
And they fancy their chances
of taking on Ronnie and Reggie.
The famous book
The Profession Of Violence
has come out,
and is selling by the thousand.
The myth of the Krays starts
with The Profession Of Violence.
This was written by a journalist,
John Pearson,
who the Krays allowed access
before they were finally arrested.
Said to be the most-read book
in prison
and said to be the most stolen book
out of book shops.
They were kind of
celebrities in prison.
They had tear-ups.
They had differences of opinion
with people.
My name's Bobby Cummines.
I was in Parkhurst Maximum
Security with Reggie Kray.
'My name's Steve Tully.'
I first met Reg in Parkhurst,
in November '82.
Some very dangerous, dangerous,
dangerous people in them prisons.
Sometimes, it could be quite heavy.
A friend of mine got killed,
stabbed to death over an onion.
You know, when people say,
"Prison is an 'oliday camp,"
I don't know what 'oliday camps
they do,
but there's people slashing,
they was stabbing each other.
Everybody in the wing
used to have a wedge,
which was like a wooden wedge,
so, when you're banged up at night,
you'd put the wedge under the door,
because a lot of people
would come in and attack you
while you're still asleep.
But everyone was tooled up in there.
You know, even I had
half a gardening shear in me coat.
There's a serious bit of work there.
Ronnie is struggling into '77, '78.
He's having to deal,
and Reggie are having to deal,
with regular prison attacks.
His mental health was deteriorating.
And eventually, in 1979,
Ronnie was moved to Broadmoor.
REPORTER: Maximum-security
special hospitals like Broadmoor
are designed to cope with people
of dangerous and violent behaviour.
Paranoid schizophrenia is that
form of schizophrenia which has,
as its main symptoms, delusions -
that is false beliefs -
and hallucinations.
When Ronnie decided
he weren't gonna be let out,
that's when he decided
he wanted to go to Broadmoor.
Cos he said,
"Well, if I'm gonna be in here,"
"I might as well be in
a place like that."
You know,
when we talk about the Krays
and you talk about people
doing long sentences in prison,
it's really hard to explain
to people what it's like.
But their mother
was the greatest woman.
She never missed a visit
with them boys.
Well, I first noticed in about 1981
that she was so tired,
lost weight and very, very drawn.
She'd already been diagnosed then,
but she told nobody.
Not even the old man.
She didn't tell her husband
about the cancer.
And when they was in jail, she'd
visit them non-stop all them years,
you know, until she died, bless her.
REPORTER: Violet Kray died the day
before her 73rd birthday
still fighting to get parole
for her notorious twins,
the gangsters who were sentenced
to 30 years each in 1969 for murder.
Oh, God.
The funeral at Chingford,
the little church
is right opposite the graveyard.
There was a crowd outside.
Lots of Chingford people
that had heard what was happening
and wanted to see the twins.
The kindness, I can't believe.
I mean, I just can't believe it.
It amazed me. The amount of wreaths
and the way people behaved.
In fact, everybody.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Ronnie! Ronnie!
Then came Reggie,
also handcuffed from the
maximum security wing at Parkhurst.
Reggie! PHOTOGRAPHER: Reggie!
Neither of them cried
at their mother's funeral.
They were too concerned
with the day.
They weren't gonna get out of a van
and cry in front of all these
crowds.
Meanwhile, an even bigger crowd
rushed to the graveside service
for Vi.
There were more flowers
from film stars,
underworld figures,
and an ex-Great Train Robber or two.
She called the Kray twins,
Ronnie and Reggie, "my lovely boys"
and faithfully visited them
all over the country.
But the sad part about that was,
they weren't
allowed to go to the grave.
You know, from the church, they were
taken, again, out the back door,
one into a car,
one into a van, and gone.
I wrote the Kray twins'
autobiography, Our Story,
in the mid-1980s, when Reg,
in the main,
was in Parkhurst Prison,
and Ronnie
was at Broadmoor Hospital.
I would go and see them both
at least once a month.
I think Ronnie
was quite happy in Broadmoor.
In his own way,
he sort of ruled Broadmoor.
You know, he was the top man there.
He was much respected there.
He was always incredibly smart,
beautifully turned out.
When he walked in,
it flipped me back
all those years,
because, dress-wise,
he had a beautiful Italian suit,
navy suit, white silk shirt,
an Italian silk tie,
beautiful handkerchief,
the gold cuff links with "RR"
written on them, the gold watch.
Oh, and the cigarettes.
Chain smoked
SOFT EXHALATION
..in that way he did.
You know, like Noel Coward.
I said,
"You're smoking like Noel Coward."
"Why are you holding the cigarette
down there?"
He says, "Ain't you nosy."
Ronnie had a butler.
In fact, a convicted murderer,
double murderer.
He would look after Ronnie
and Ronnie's guests.
When I first went and saw him,
you know, he said,
"What would you like?"
And he had a white coat on,
and I said, "I'd like coffee,"
and he brought me a lovely
silver coffee pot and China cup,
biscuits on a plate.
I'd always enjoy
going to see Ronnie,
because it was always quite
a pleasant, sociable occasion,
to be quite honest.
My name is David Courtney,
and I came to know Ronnie and Reggie
round about the mid-'80s, where
I had a large security company.
I was doing and organising a lot of
things that was happening in London,
and they wanted to know about it.
Worst thing about
being in prison is,
the world's going on without you
and no-one knows I'm here.
So if you can do anything
to get in the paper or something,
that's a that's orgasmic for you.
But it was, like,
romantic to run with the myth.
They became, as the years went by,
complete celebrities,
and with it, in rolled the money.
My name's Steve Wraith,
and I was one of
the Krays' business advisers
in the '90s
when they were in prison.
I came up with a suggestion
by letter to Reg
that we put his image onto a T-shirt
and see
you know,
see whether they would sell.
And he said, "Yes,
I'm more than happy to do that."
"The split will be 70% for us
and 30% for you."
So, this is the
one of the first T-shirt designs
that we did,
"The Profession Of Violence,
The Krays."
The The Krays tea towel,
"the original EastEnders".
Quite the piece de resistance,
the Krays shopping bag.
I can imagine
going down to your local supermarket
and getting your shopping
in one of those.
But cups, pens, mirrors, calendars -
you name it.
You know, everything was embossed
with the Krays. It sold.
The one thing
that was important to the Krays,
given the time that they had
to serve in prison, was the name.
The legacy. And you know,
to keep the name "Kray" alive.
The film did that.
CROWD CLAMOURING
I am incredibly, incredibly proud
and grateful that the opportunity
came my way to make
The Krays film.
I just did the real true legend,
which existed about
the Kray twins in the East End.
GRUNTING AND YELPING
It was designed to
to shock, but also designed
to attract people and, yeah, look,
there's no doubt about it
that putting the Krays
on the big screen glamorised them.
You go back, and you tell them,
no-one fucks with us!
"Glamour is fear", yeah?
That's the quote.
I learned that a long time ago.
If people are afraid of you,
you can just do anything.
Glamour is fear.
And they had the control
of all the people around them.
And it grew into this legend
of the East End.
Would they like the way their
legend's made and the film's made?
They would have loved every minute
of it, cos that's what they wanted.
And it helped the empire behind bars
grow even bigger,
because, suddenly,
the Kray twins' story
was introduced to a new generation
of "fans", if you like.
It basically glamorised crime,
to a degree.
People read about gangsters
because, in their head,
they'd like to rob a bank,
or they'd like to shoot someone
they don't like.
But they don't want
to do the jail for it
and they're not gonna do it,
cos they ain't got it in 'em.
Please believe me
If anyone thinks our life
was glamorous, no.
It's really hard,
cos you know you're gonna die here.
You're dying in a concrete box.
On 17th of March, 1995
..Ronnie dies.
Word goes out everywhere.
Everyone's getting phone calls.
"Do you know he's gone?"
Today, Ronnie Kray
died in hospital
two days after collapsing
in Broadmoor Prison,
where he'd been since 1969.
You know, we were actually losing,
genuinely, a monarch
of the British underworld.
That's what Reggie
said to me on the phone.
"He will be buried like a king."
"I have arranged with Dave Courtney,"
"and he can supply 150 men
for outside."
There was 150 flat-nosed,
bald-headed,
of what I considered
..the tastiest, hardest,
realist men I knew
from all over all four bits
of the country.
REPORTER: Reggie Kray appeared,
handcuffed to a prison officer,
granted compassionate leave
to attend the funeral.
It was important that Ron's funeral
was a big affair,
a big media affair, because keeping
the name "Kray" in the headlines
was important to Ronnie and Reggie.
To have a big show of strength
with a lot of famous faces
meant that the Kray legend
would continue to live on
for many, many years to come.
The procession was to take
Ronnie Kray's body
along the streets
the twins used to rule
with their own brand of terror
and protection rackets.
There were large crowds -
several thousand,
according to police estimates.
You can see hundreds and thousands
screaming at him hysterically,
like he was a pop star.
CROWD CLAMOURING
There was no time in there
to actually grieve,
cos it was all too wow!
He was a good brother,
he was very loyal,
and he was very generous.
He had lots of nice ways about him,
and I must always remember him.
It was good memories, you know?
And erm
..I know he's at peace.
Reggie, for once, when Ron died,
tragic, broke his heart,
but then, he was free.
In his later years, the celebrity
thing was always a big thing,
because it kept them
in the limelight.
In the 1990s, nothing had changed.
CROWD SHOUTING Well, hey, now.
We're gonna play an old song.
I'd like to sing it to
all y'all folks in the house tonight
enjoying yourselves,
and also to my friend, Reg,
hanging in there, baby.
MUSIC: 'King Of New York'
by Fun Lovin' Criminals
'My name is Rob Ferguson.
I'm a music manager.'
I took people who were, you know,
actually celebrities to meet Reg.
Reg was becoming part
of folklore and legend.
There were a number of people
that were really keen to meet and
or talk to Reg, which I achieved.
Save the roach
The King Of New York ♪
I took the Fun Lovin' Criminals
to meet him in prison,
and Huey came in, and later, the
guys came in to meet him afterwards,
and they were playing
Reading Festival that year,
and so they did a version
of their song, King Of New York,
but changed the main lyric to
"Hey, hey, free Reg Kray,"
and there were 70,000 people
at Reading all singing that lyric.
Come on, I said
Hey, hey, free Reg Kray
Come on Hey, hey, free Reg Kray
Come on
Hey, hey, free Reg Kray ♪
I was on the side of the stage
at that point,
and I had Reg on the phone,
and I said,
"Hey, Reg, listen to this."
And he was so made up.
It was really
It was one of the ideas
that came to fruition
that really kept him going.
Cos he was a shell
of what he formerly was.
He was wasting away.
He actually told me one time that
when I was sitting with him, that
he'd had some pain in his stomach,
and he'd been away to Norfolk
and Norwich Hospital, I think it is.
He intimated to me
that he knew he had cancer.
Reggie's diagnosed with cancer.
He's had stomach problems
for the last five years,
so he's probably gone undiagnosed.
They've eventually relented
and let him out
a few weeks before he dies.
The trust has been advised
that Mr Reginald Kray
was today informed
of the Home Secretary's decision
to accept
the parole board recommendation
that he should be released from
prison on compassionate grounds.
Never missing a trick,
Reggie signs a contract with the BBC
and does his final
deathbed interview.
MAN: Not that it matters now,
cos nothing can be done now,
but were there any other killings,
any other crimes, any other murders?
REGGIE BREATHES HEAVILY
There's none that I can speak about.
Mm But were there any others?
Even though you're
not gonna speak about them.
Oh, yeah, but that's it. Yeah.
So there were other murders,
but we'll leave it there. Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: How do you think
we should remember
Ronnie and Reggie Kray?
The Krays are the benchmark
for British organised criminals.
They were more important
for providing
highly-stylised presentation
of British gangsterdom
that we'd never had before.
They were smartly dressed
..violent
and there was two of 'em.
At the end of the day,
they want to be remembered
as the baddest gangsters
that hit London.
And I think they achieved that.
They deserve to be remembered
..but as people
who destroyed everything.
My regret is I DID meet the Krays.
Cost me 15 years of my life.
They were evil, dangerous bastards.
They didn't write
any great poems or
..they didn't write
any great books or anything.
They didn't really
leave anything behind.
Except their myth, like Robin Hood.
I mean, all they are is a myth now.
It's quite clear
from several sources that
serious criminal players
were contemplating
assassinating the twins.
It was chaotic.
It wasn't good for business.
The Krays had to go.
Afraid they'd get me,
but I decided to get Reggie first.
We decided to shoot him and
cut his throat and leave him there
as a message
to the rest of his cronies.
Everybody knew about the Kray twins
and the myth and the legend
far outgrew the reality.
They felt they were indestructible
and, you know, they probably
could have been for a lot longer,
but when he shot George Cornell,
I mean, that WAS
the beginning of the end.
This house of cards
is coming crashing down.
CROWD CLAMOURING
The thing that
was important to the Krays
was the name, the legacy.
CHANTING: Let him out! Let him out!
Would they like the way their
legend's made and the film's made?
They would have loved
every minute of it,
because that's what they wanted.
MAN: How are you feeling today,
Reggie?
All right. Yeah?
Yeah, I feel good. I'm relaxed.
In 1965
you and Ronnie,
you had the world at your feet.
Mm. Everything was great.
Mm. Fashion pop art.
David Bailey taking photographs
of you and Ronnie.
Entertainers and criminals
were very closely aligned.
What went wrong?
Ronnie Kray,
he believes he's invincible.
He's walked into The Blind Beggar.
He's shot George Cornell.
He was very proud of his murder.
Ronnie kept on to Reggie,
"Look, I've done one."
In other words,
"I've killed George Cornell."
"You've got to do one."
So, the pressure was on him to do
to do his murder,
and along came Jack the Hat.
'My dad knew Jack the Hat,
'and he said he was a bit
of a practical joker, you know?
'He used to get on people's nerves
a bit, but he was all right.'
He weren't really a gangster,
really. He just dabbled in things.
Jack the Hat McVitie
had been given £1,000
to carry out some sort of
contract killing for them,
which wasn't carried out,
and the money never came back
to the Kray twins.
And when he was reprimanded
for this,
he started to make threats
against the twins.
He turned up at a club one night
with a sawn-off shot gun.
He was gonna kill the Krays.
Which wasn't
a wise thing to do anyway,
but it's worth stressing
that Jack the Hat
was no shrinking violet.
This was a violent man, someone
who could look after himself.
He lived in that violent world.
They knew that
he was a tough guy,
and they didn't like that,
tough guys going around,
saying they're not afraid of 'em.
This is an unpublished manuscript
from Ronnie Hart.
Ronnie Hart
is the cousin of the Krays
and he's then a member of the firm.
"Ronnie decreed that something would
have to be done about McVitie.
"Ronnie called Reggie,
"and when Reggie
was finished talking to Ronnie,
"his mood had changed completely.
"His lips twitched, and he began
drinking one gin after another."
"Ronnie then told us all
what was going to happen."
"He said McVitie was to die
that night."
There was a party at Evering Road
in Stoke Newington
at the flat of a woman
called Blonde Carol's.
McVitie was invited,
and he turned up.
DICK HOBBS: It becomes apparent
that, this party,
this a killing zone.
'My name's Chris Lambrianou.
'My regret is,
I did meet the Krays.
'On that night, I thought
"How can we get out of this?"
'We're going to Evering Road,
Blonde Carol's place.'
Down the stairs we go.
Jack comes dashing by
and goes into the room,
"Where's the party?
Where's the girls?"
And so on and so forth.
Next thing, there's an argument,
altercation.
Reggie pulls a gun out.
Gun don't work.
So, I've gone to walk out.
I said,
"I didn't come down here for this."
You know, "I'm going home."
My brother, Tony, was still there.
When I spoke to my brother
after the event,
Tony said that there was a fight
when Reggie the gun didn't work,
Jack smashed a window
trying to get out.
So, in his manuscript, Ronnie Hart
paints an horrific picture
of the murder and the details.
"Reg punched Jack in the face
"and then stuck the knife
he was holding in his left
"into Jack's face,
an inch or two below his right eye,
"and his face seemed to fall open.
"The blood spurted.
"Ronnie was yelling,
'Don't stop, Reg.
"Kill him, Reg.
Do him in. Kill him.'
"Then Reg started
to stab him in the stomach.
"He must have struck him
five or six times with a knife.
"There was blood everywhere."
"Reggie then stabbed McVitie again
in the chest"
"and Jack slumped slowly
to the floor."
This was Reg proving,
in Ron's words,
that he was "a real man"
and that he could commit violence,
that he could commit murder.
Then they've got to do away
with the body.
By now, the drink is
kind of leaving me a little bit
and I'm getting a bit sober,
and I drive round to Evering Road.
And I'd gone in the front room,
and there's Jack the Hat,
laying full length.
I want him to be alive.
I I don't want to
I want him to jump up.
I want him to be
be the Jack I know, not
not this
person laying there,
not gonna be doing nothing.
The twins had walked out,
and they've given instructions.
We're talking about
very dangerous people here.
They've just killed a man.
Are you gonna turn round and say,
"Oh, excuse me, Mr Kray,
by the way, do you mind"
"You know, you killed him.
You get rid of him. You clean up."
No.
They would turn on anybody.
It could have been us.
We cleaned the blood up, and we
I we
we give it a thorough clean,
as best we can.
Not only that, we went round,
and we spoke to different people
who were there,
told them to keep their mouths shut
and everything else.
And we got Jack out
and we tried to put him in the boot.
You can't put a fully-grown man
in the boot of a car.
A A Ford Consul.
So, what we did, we managed to get
him in and put him on the back seat.
The body is taken
south of the river
..and Fred Foreman is given the task
of getting rid of the body.
Now, Fred was known by this time
as someone who was willing and able
to get rid of bodies.
They thought they were gonna
get away with murder again,
because they had it under control.
They had nothing under control.
They couldn't control themselves.
They were not behaving
like gangsters.
They were completely unpredictable.
They were upsetting a lot
of people for no reason.
They were getting fed up of them.
You know, you start
killing your own, where do you stop?
And it is quite clear
from several sources that
serious criminal players
were contemplating
assassinating the twins
in order to bring
some kind of equilibrium
back to the crime scene in London.
It was chaotic.
It wasn't good for business.
The Krays had to go.
They were evil, dangerous bastards.
EXHALES SLOWLY
'I would have been afraid
they would have had me shot.
'But I decided to get Reggie first.'
And we waited outside the flat
in Stratford.
I get a phone call saying,
"Reggie is on his way."
We decided to shoot him and
cut his throat and leave him there
as a message
to the rest of his cronies.
And, er, he never arrived.
So we
decided to leave it
to another night.
By now, Scotland Yard realised that
people were beginning to laugh
at the ineffectiveness
of the police in arresting them.
They were embarrassing the police.
Protection rackets were still
around, murders had gone unpunished.
People are still writing
about "missing Frank Mitchell".
"Missing Jack the Hat".
"The unsolved murder
of George Cornell".
Journalists are having a field day.
Their notoriety and their fame
became an embarrassment
to Scotland Yard,
and, in the end, the Yard
decided to put a stop to it.
Nipper Read starts to build
a new team to go after the Krays.
He now knows that
he has to be incredibly careful
with the witnesses that he's got
and trying to
give an appearance
that they can look after them,
that the Krays WILL be arrested,
and that these people
can now start talking to him.
But it's hugely important
for Nipper
to get the Krays off the streets.
My name is Maurice Harding,
and in the 1960s,
I was a detective constable
in the Metropolitan Police.
May the 8th, 1968,
I was home in bed here, fast asleep.
About three thirty in the morning
PHONE RINGS
..I got a telephone call
from someone
who told me to go to my office.
SIREN WAILS
When we were there,
we received a telephone call
to go to Tintagel House.
Nipper Read came in, stood on a box.
"Morning, gentlemen."
"We're going to arrest the Krays
today."
I was on the Kray inquiry.
'I was the first woman WDC.'
Even my brother and my father,
who were in the police force,
didn't know what job I was on
at the time.
I wasn't allowed to tell anybody.
I never told anybody.
SIREN WAILS
Nipper Read,
he went into the Krays' flat.
And the milkman
came at the same time.
They had to clear
the milkman out the way,
say, "We're police officers."
When they got there,
Reggie was with a woman,
and Ronnie was in bed
with a 16-year-old boy.
I think somebody said,
"Good morning, Mr Read,"
or something ridiculous.
There was no fighting
or anything like that.
They were told what they were
arrested for and they came quietly.
But then, they were taken
to West End Central Police Station,
and they were just
just in casual clothes.
And as they went into the cell,
they were shouting out,
"You won't keep us here very long."
LOCKS CLICKING
I was very proud to think
that I'd been involved in something
as serious as that.
'We'd done the right thing,
we'd got the right people,
'and all it was now
was going to court and proving it.'
The 34-year-old ex-boxer brothers
Reginald and Ronald
came here with Flying Squad officers
at six o'clock this morning.
Two Murder Squad superintendents
and a number of Fraud Squad officers
have been engaged
in a special hush-hush operation.
It was headlines on the front page
of the paper, "Kray Twins arrested".
In the end,
I think there were about
two dozen people that were picked up
either that morning
or the week after.
INDISTINCT POLICE RADIO CHATTER
The police came up to Birmingham
and they arrested me up there.
And they took me to a place
called Tintagel House.
I observed in the room itself
photographs of all the firm.
There were photographs of the twins,
Ian Barrie, Tony, Ronnie Bender,
Ronnie Hart, Albert Donoghue,
Jack Dickson,
so it was pretty serious business.
And Nipper Read says to me
"About the McVitie murder"
"..as we've got it,
you had nothing to do with it."
"Tell us about it."
I said, "I don't know
what you're talking about."
I said, "I don't know anything."
I came up in a school
..where you didn't rat on
your friends, no matter what it was.
They kept their mouth shut,
and you kept your mouth shut.
And he turned round, and he said,
"I've had enough of you," he said.
"Charge him with murder."
People would never,
ever talk about the Krays,
because they were so frightened
of 'em, until they were in custody.
It was really, really
in Nipper's interest,
before we did anything else,
to arrest them,
and, having arrested them, we could
then go on and get the evidence.
Nipper got a bit tense,
wondering whether anybody
was gonna come forward and stick by
what they'd said they'd say.
I'd have been worried,
I think, myself,
if I'd given evidence against them
and that you were on your own
and somebody'd come up
and try and get rid of you.
SIREN WAILS
The girl that was the barmaid
at The Blind Beggar pub
she witnessed the shooting
of George Cornell in the pub.
And we had to try
and not talk her round,
but just tell her
that she was doing the right thing
by telling the truth.
Very difficult.
Took her kids out for walks.
Persuaded her that
we were the right people.
Once the Krays were inside,
this idea of a solid criminal firm
who were all going to
stand up for the Krays and
it virtually collapsed,
with the exception
of their brother, Charlie
..and the Lambrianou brothers.
I couldn't believe
any of the firm were gonna turn,
to be honest with you.
I thought they were all loyal
to the twins.
It didn't matter
whether it was King Kong
or Little Billy round the corner
you didn't do it.
Albert Donoghue
is Reggie Kray's right-hand man.
He acts as driver, muscle
and collector of protection rackets.
He was a serious criminal,
and I think, of all of the firm,
he probably had more respect.
Pressure was put
on Albert Donoghue to
take the pressure off of the Krays
by admitting to
to crimes that he hadn't committed.
The twins asked him, yeah.
Well, didn't ask him. Told him.
And that's what turned them people.
They thought,
"No, I'm not gonna do that for you."
When I arrested Albert,
he just sat down next to me,
put his shoes on and said,
"OK, let's go."
And once he started
to give evidence, really,
things started to go badly wrong
for the Krays.
We were still investigating
the murder of Jack the Hat McVitie.
Make yourself comfortable.
But Albert Donoghue, when
he admitted what his connection
was that he'd wallpapered
the whole flat again.
We actually went back
to Evering Road.
First thing I did was go
and peel a corner off the wallpaper
and pull it up,
and we found obvious blood there.
There was blood all up the wall.
The police,
they are right on their case.
But I was confident I'd be OK.
They'd beat the police before.
I thought they were quite capable
of covering things up.
They couldn't see themselves
going down.
My name's Ivan Lawrence.
I'm a Queen's Counsel,
and I was junior counsel
in defence of Ronald Kray
in the murder trials.
Didn't get a great deal
of cooperation
from our client, Ronald Kray.
I remember one occasion,
when we were getting close to him
having to give evidence,
I said to him
.."Can we come down afterwards
and go through your statement?
"Prepare you for giving defence?"
And he said, "No, no," he says,
"I don't want you
to come down tonight."
"I've got a nice young boy
coming to see me tonight."
And I said,
"Well, it's very important, Mr Kray,"
"that we go through your evidence."
"' Yes, we'll do it another day.'"
When Ronnie saw me in court,
he wrote a little note,
which he got one of the wardens
to pass to me, saying,
"Dear Miss Lethbridge,
you are more beautiful than ever."
"When I get out of this,
I will take you to the moon."
Ronnie was I would say
he was off with the fairies.
Poor Violet had to go
to the Old Bailey
with the shirts the day before,
for them to put on in the morning.
They had to be dressed better
than anybody else in the court,
the barristers included.
So we sat there
for the longest murder trial,
the most expensive murder trial
ever.
39-day trial has cost about
£150,000 in defence costs alone.
But what they did,
they did a fascinating thing.
They put two murder trials together.
George Cornell
..McVitie murder.
And they linked it by saying
that Ronnie Kray said to Reggie,
"I've done mine. You do yours."
Still, to this day,
I cannot get over it.
Two murder trials
being put together.
A strong team of uniformed
Special Patrol Group officers
has handled the escort duty
of the prisoners
from various prisons to the court.
When the trial started
at the Old Bailey
..and I began to see
Donoghue
..and Ronnie Hart and others,
then it dawned on me
about the pictures.
The pictures was, on one side,
those that were giving evidence
and those that weren't.
When Ronnie Hart got up
and spoke in the box, I was shocked.
He was their flesh and blood.
He was a cousin of the Krays
and well involved with them
in the murder
of Jack the Hat McVitie.
And I took him to the trial
and sat in court with him
while he gave his evidence.
He looked up from the dock,
and Ronnie Kray was looking at him
with his fingers like this, and
BLOWS AIR
He'd done the old gun sign,
as if to say,
"You're dead, young man."
But Ronnie just looked at him
and mouthed, "Poof."
The Cornell murder,
everybody was talking about, well,
"It's the barmaid that will be able
to recognise Ronnie."
Nobody else is going to say
it was Ronnie Kray.
The day that she turned up
she was nice, dressed nice,
good looking,
and I heard her speak.
I remember Chris Lambrianou going
..as much as to say,
"We're finished."
It was the end.
We're going down.
Because she was so believable.
Everything she said.
She convinced me
that she was telling the truth.
But now,
it all rests with the 12 men
locked in a little room back there,
and we all wait for what
they have to say about it.
When the guilty verdicts
were read out
..it was rough justice.
It was the twins they was after,
and if you was with the twins,
you were going down as well.
The judge was Melford Stevenson,
who was notoriously tough.
And you weren't gonna go down
with a sloppy ten
or something else like that.
You were gonna do big bird.
Ronnie Bender did 20 years.
My brother, Tony, did 15.
I did 15.
When he said "Twins, I sentence you
to life imprisonment,"
you heard that gasp, going,
"Oh, God, no, no!"
"But I suggest"
"30 years."
I mean, undoubtedly,
they were guilty.
But it really worried me.
I didn't feel that
they were being given a fair trial.
I was left with
a horrible feeling of class war.
Nobody is particularly worried
when gangsters kill each other.
But they're terribly worried
if they
..go beyond their station.
The sentences that they received
were very high by the standards
of the 1960s.
Life, with a recommendation
of 30 years.
Poor Violet.
She was just in total shock.
She couldn't believe it.
"Why did all those people
come and talk bad about them?"
"Those people have sat at my table.
"They've had tea in my house.
I talk to their mothers.
"I ask 'em about
their wives and children."
"Why Why were
they all saying bad things?"
"They're calling 'em murderers!"
And that's when I thought,
"I can't pretend any more."
I said, "But Violet"
"..they DID commit murder."
ROCK MUSIC PLAYS
Ronnie Kray is sent to Durham.
Reggie Kray is sent
to the Isle of Wight.
And this means that Violet Kray,
their mother,
has two incredibly long journeys
to prisons
north and south of the UK.
That's got to really,
really wear you down.
Now, she's had to ask for lifts,
and not a lot of people
wanted to do that.
It sounds terrible,
because they all wanted
to do everything for her
when the twins were here.
Prison, for a start, in the 1970s,
was an extremely rough place to be.
It was rough.
People do know
how to use knives in jail.
They know how to hurt people
in jail.
REPORTER: And the prison's
so-called Black Museum
contains a terrifying
array of weapons
that the prisoners have constructed
to do violence to themselves,
each other and the staff.
So it's incredibly dangerous
for them.
They are the old guard,
and they are surrounded
by young bucks.
And they fancy their chances
of taking on Ronnie and Reggie.
The famous book
The Profession Of Violence
has come out,
and is selling by the thousand.
The myth of the Krays starts
with The Profession Of Violence.
This was written by a journalist,
John Pearson,
who the Krays allowed access
before they were finally arrested.
Said to be the most-read book
in prison
and said to be the most stolen book
out of book shops.
They were kind of
celebrities in prison.
They had tear-ups.
They had differences of opinion
with people.
My name's Bobby Cummines.
I was in Parkhurst Maximum
Security with Reggie Kray.
'My name's Steve Tully.'
I first met Reg in Parkhurst,
in November '82.
Some very dangerous, dangerous,
dangerous people in them prisons.
Sometimes, it could be quite heavy.
A friend of mine got killed,
stabbed to death over an onion.
You know, when people say,
"Prison is an 'oliday camp,"
I don't know what 'oliday camps
they do,
but there's people slashing,
they was stabbing each other.
Everybody in the wing
used to have a wedge,
which was like a wooden wedge,
so, when you're banged up at night,
you'd put the wedge under the door,
because a lot of people
would come in and attack you
while you're still asleep.
But everyone was tooled up in there.
You know, even I had
half a gardening shear in me coat.
There's a serious bit of work there.
Ronnie is struggling into '77, '78.
He's having to deal,
and Reggie are having to deal,
with regular prison attacks.
His mental health was deteriorating.
And eventually, in 1979,
Ronnie was moved to Broadmoor.
REPORTER: Maximum-security
special hospitals like Broadmoor
are designed to cope with people
of dangerous and violent behaviour.
Paranoid schizophrenia is that
form of schizophrenia which has,
as its main symptoms, delusions -
that is false beliefs -
and hallucinations.
When Ronnie decided
he weren't gonna be let out,
that's when he decided
he wanted to go to Broadmoor.
Cos he said,
"Well, if I'm gonna be in here,"
"I might as well be in
a place like that."
You know,
when we talk about the Krays
and you talk about people
doing long sentences in prison,
it's really hard to explain
to people what it's like.
But their mother
was the greatest woman.
She never missed a visit
with them boys.
Well, I first noticed in about 1981
that she was so tired,
lost weight and very, very drawn.
She'd already been diagnosed then,
but she told nobody.
Not even the old man.
She didn't tell her husband
about the cancer.
And when they was in jail, she'd
visit them non-stop all them years,
you know, until she died, bless her.
REPORTER: Violet Kray died the day
before her 73rd birthday
still fighting to get parole
for her notorious twins,
the gangsters who were sentenced
to 30 years each in 1969 for murder.
Oh, God.
The funeral at Chingford,
the little church
is right opposite the graveyard.
There was a crowd outside.
Lots of Chingford people
that had heard what was happening
and wanted to see the twins.
The kindness, I can't believe.
I mean, I just can't believe it.
It amazed me. The amount of wreaths
and the way people behaved.
In fact, everybody.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Ronnie! Ronnie!
Then came Reggie,
also handcuffed from the
maximum security wing at Parkhurst.
Reggie! PHOTOGRAPHER: Reggie!
Neither of them cried
at their mother's funeral.
They were too concerned
with the day.
They weren't gonna get out of a van
and cry in front of all these
crowds.
Meanwhile, an even bigger crowd
rushed to the graveside service
for Vi.
There were more flowers
from film stars,
underworld figures,
and an ex-Great Train Robber or two.
She called the Kray twins,
Ronnie and Reggie, "my lovely boys"
and faithfully visited them
all over the country.
But the sad part about that was,
they weren't
allowed to go to the grave.
You know, from the church, they were
taken, again, out the back door,
one into a car,
one into a van, and gone.
I wrote the Kray twins'
autobiography, Our Story,
in the mid-1980s, when Reg,
in the main,
was in Parkhurst Prison,
and Ronnie
was at Broadmoor Hospital.
I would go and see them both
at least once a month.
I think Ronnie
was quite happy in Broadmoor.
In his own way,
he sort of ruled Broadmoor.
You know, he was the top man there.
He was much respected there.
He was always incredibly smart,
beautifully turned out.
When he walked in,
it flipped me back
all those years,
because, dress-wise,
he had a beautiful Italian suit,
navy suit, white silk shirt,
an Italian silk tie,
beautiful handkerchief,
the gold cuff links with "RR"
written on them, the gold watch.
Oh, and the cigarettes.
Chain smoked
SOFT EXHALATION
..in that way he did.
You know, like Noel Coward.
I said,
"You're smoking like Noel Coward."
"Why are you holding the cigarette
down there?"
He says, "Ain't you nosy."
Ronnie had a butler.
In fact, a convicted murderer,
double murderer.
He would look after Ronnie
and Ronnie's guests.
When I first went and saw him,
you know, he said,
"What would you like?"
And he had a white coat on,
and I said, "I'd like coffee,"
and he brought me a lovely
silver coffee pot and China cup,
biscuits on a plate.
I'd always enjoy
going to see Ronnie,
because it was always quite
a pleasant, sociable occasion,
to be quite honest.
My name is David Courtney,
and I came to know Ronnie and Reggie
round about the mid-'80s, where
I had a large security company.
I was doing and organising a lot of
things that was happening in London,
and they wanted to know about it.
Worst thing about
being in prison is,
the world's going on without you
and no-one knows I'm here.
So if you can do anything
to get in the paper or something,
that's a that's orgasmic for you.
But it was, like,
romantic to run with the myth.
They became, as the years went by,
complete celebrities,
and with it, in rolled the money.
My name's Steve Wraith,
and I was one of
the Krays' business advisers
in the '90s
when they were in prison.
I came up with a suggestion
by letter to Reg
that we put his image onto a T-shirt
and see
you know,
see whether they would sell.
And he said, "Yes,
I'm more than happy to do that."
"The split will be 70% for us
and 30% for you."
So, this is the
one of the first T-shirt designs
that we did,
"The Profession Of Violence,
The Krays."
The The Krays tea towel,
"the original EastEnders".
Quite the piece de resistance,
the Krays shopping bag.
I can imagine
going down to your local supermarket
and getting your shopping
in one of those.
But cups, pens, mirrors, calendars -
you name it.
You know, everything was embossed
with the Krays. It sold.
The one thing
that was important to the Krays,
given the time that they had
to serve in prison, was the name.
The legacy. And you know,
to keep the name "Kray" alive.
The film did that.
CROWD CLAMOURING
I am incredibly, incredibly proud
and grateful that the opportunity
came my way to make
The Krays film.
I just did the real true legend,
which existed about
the Kray twins in the East End.
GRUNTING AND YELPING
It was designed to
to shock, but also designed
to attract people and, yeah, look,
there's no doubt about it
that putting the Krays
on the big screen glamorised them.
You go back, and you tell them,
no-one fucks with us!
"Glamour is fear", yeah?
That's the quote.
I learned that a long time ago.
If people are afraid of you,
you can just do anything.
Glamour is fear.
And they had the control
of all the people around them.
And it grew into this legend
of the East End.
Would they like the way their
legend's made and the film's made?
They would have loved every minute
of it, cos that's what they wanted.
And it helped the empire behind bars
grow even bigger,
because, suddenly,
the Kray twins' story
was introduced to a new generation
of "fans", if you like.
It basically glamorised crime,
to a degree.
People read about gangsters
because, in their head,
they'd like to rob a bank,
or they'd like to shoot someone
they don't like.
But they don't want
to do the jail for it
and they're not gonna do it,
cos they ain't got it in 'em.
Please believe me
If anyone thinks our life
was glamorous, no.
It's really hard,
cos you know you're gonna die here.
You're dying in a concrete box.
On 17th of March, 1995
..Ronnie dies.
Word goes out everywhere.
Everyone's getting phone calls.
"Do you know he's gone?"
Today, Ronnie Kray
died in hospital
two days after collapsing
in Broadmoor Prison,
where he'd been since 1969.
You know, we were actually losing,
genuinely, a monarch
of the British underworld.
That's what Reggie
said to me on the phone.
"He will be buried like a king."
"I have arranged with Dave Courtney,"
"and he can supply 150 men
for outside."
There was 150 flat-nosed,
bald-headed,
of what I considered
..the tastiest, hardest,
realist men I knew
from all over all four bits
of the country.
REPORTER: Reggie Kray appeared,
handcuffed to a prison officer,
granted compassionate leave
to attend the funeral.
It was important that Ron's funeral
was a big affair,
a big media affair, because keeping
the name "Kray" in the headlines
was important to Ronnie and Reggie.
To have a big show of strength
with a lot of famous faces
meant that the Kray legend
would continue to live on
for many, many years to come.
The procession was to take
Ronnie Kray's body
along the streets
the twins used to rule
with their own brand of terror
and protection rackets.
There were large crowds -
several thousand,
according to police estimates.
You can see hundreds and thousands
screaming at him hysterically,
like he was a pop star.
CROWD CLAMOURING
There was no time in there
to actually grieve,
cos it was all too wow!
He was a good brother,
he was very loyal,
and he was very generous.
He had lots of nice ways about him,
and I must always remember him.
It was good memories, you know?
And erm
..I know he's at peace.
Reggie, for once, when Ron died,
tragic, broke his heart,
but then, he was free.
In his later years, the celebrity
thing was always a big thing,
because it kept them
in the limelight.
In the 1990s, nothing had changed.
CROWD SHOUTING Well, hey, now.
We're gonna play an old song.
I'd like to sing it to
all y'all folks in the house tonight
enjoying yourselves,
and also to my friend, Reg,
hanging in there, baby.
MUSIC: 'King Of New York'
by Fun Lovin' Criminals
'My name is Rob Ferguson.
I'm a music manager.'
I took people who were, you know,
actually celebrities to meet Reg.
Reg was becoming part
of folklore and legend.
There were a number of people
that were really keen to meet and
or talk to Reg, which I achieved.
Save the roach
The King Of New York ♪
I took the Fun Lovin' Criminals
to meet him in prison,
and Huey came in, and later, the
guys came in to meet him afterwards,
and they were playing
Reading Festival that year,
and so they did a version
of their song, King Of New York,
but changed the main lyric to
"Hey, hey, free Reg Kray,"
and there were 70,000 people
at Reading all singing that lyric.
Come on, I said
Hey, hey, free Reg Kray
Come on Hey, hey, free Reg Kray
Come on
Hey, hey, free Reg Kray ♪
I was on the side of the stage
at that point,
and I had Reg on the phone,
and I said,
"Hey, Reg, listen to this."
And he was so made up.
It was really
It was one of the ideas
that came to fruition
that really kept him going.
Cos he was a shell
of what he formerly was.
He was wasting away.
He actually told me one time that
when I was sitting with him, that
he'd had some pain in his stomach,
and he'd been away to Norfolk
and Norwich Hospital, I think it is.
He intimated to me
that he knew he had cancer.
Reggie's diagnosed with cancer.
He's had stomach problems
for the last five years,
so he's probably gone undiagnosed.
They've eventually relented
and let him out
a few weeks before he dies.
The trust has been advised
that Mr Reginald Kray
was today informed
of the Home Secretary's decision
to accept
the parole board recommendation
that he should be released from
prison on compassionate grounds.
Never missing a trick,
Reggie signs a contract with the BBC
and does his final
deathbed interview.
MAN: Not that it matters now,
cos nothing can be done now,
but were there any other killings,
any other crimes, any other murders?
REGGIE BREATHES HEAVILY
There's none that I can speak about.
Mm But were there any others?
Even though you're
not gonna speak about them.
Oh, yeah, but that's it. Yeah.
So there were other murders,
but we'll leave it there. Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: How do you think
we should remember
Ronnie and Reggie Kray?
The Krays are the benchmark
for British organised criminals.
They were more important
for providing
highly-stylised presentation
of British gangsterdom
that we'd never had before.
They were smartly dressed
..violent
and there was two of 'em.
At the end of the day,
they want to be remembered
as the baddest gangsters
that hit London.
And I think they achieved that.
They deserve to be remembered
..but as people
who destroyed everything.
My regret is I DID meet the Krays.
Cost me 15 years of my life.
They were evil, dangerous bastards.
They didn't write
any great poems or
..they didn't write
any great books or anything.
They didn't really
leave anything behind.
Except their myth, like Robin Hood.
I mean, all they are is a myth now.