People who have never been in trouble with the police will find it difficult, if not impossible, to understand why I didn’t go into court and tell the truth about that terrible October night in 1967. That way, I could have thwarted every attempt by police and prosecution witnesses to convict me for something I did not do. But, quite simply, that was not the way we did things in the East End. Nobody – me included – thought for a moment that the twins would plead anything but not guilty to everything, which meant that I would have to deny all knowledge of Jack McVitie’s murder and take my chances along with everyone else.
Lying, I appreciated, would make things difficult for me, because I had received a phone call in the middle of that Saturday night and had gone to Harry Hopwood’s house, and both Hopwood and Ronnie Hart were going to say so. I wasn’t unduly worried, however. Hart, the star prosecution witness, had traded his conscience for freedom, and had proved at the Bow Street committal hearing that he didn’t give a toss for the truth. But my counsel had reserved my defence, and not one of Hart’s damning false allegations had been challenged yet. Now, before an Old Bailey jury, the gloves would be off: Vowden would be the aggressor and every one of Hart’s lies, every careless slip of the tongue – not only by him, but by all the prosecution witnesses – would be seized on and torn apart.
I honestly didn’t think Hart’s evidence would affect me too much. He had a grudge against the twins, may have hated them even, but I’d never done anything to make him want to frame me. He’d lied in the lower court but surely under fierce cross-examination he would crack and admit I wasn’t involved in disposing of McVitie’s body.
Standing in the famous No 1 Court at the Old Bailey that first morning with the nine other accused I felt supremely confident. For at the end of the day the charge against me was unfounded. That night in 1967 I had not even seen McVitie’s body, let alone got rid of it. And anyway, as Mr Vowden had explained, if the impossible happened, if the preposterous lies were believed, the onus was still on the prosecution to prove I was guilty, not on me to prove I was innocent.
I looked confidently at the jury. They all appeared to be intelligent human beings, capable of distinguishing between fact and fiction, simple truth and barefaced lie. I looked at the judge – Melford Stevenson, the epitome of justice. Experienced, knowledgeable, wise. He, too, looked as if he would be eager to protect an innocent man from the falsehoods of his corruptible accusers.
The cases against the twins, their so-called Firm and me went on for thirty-nine days. The popular papers labelled it the Trial of the Century and the financial cost of the whole affair – over £150,000 – earned it a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the most expensive criminal hearing ever. If you want a strictly accurate, blow-by-blow account of all that went on, the statements of claim, the pleadings and submissions, wrapped up in colourful and complicated legal mumbo-jumbo, plus all the heated exchanges between accusers and accused that made the headlines, your local library will probably be able to provide you with details. Certainly I’m not going to attempt to do so here. The whole business, from the moment of my early-morning arrest on 8 May 1968 to my sentencing on 5 March 1969, was the most nerve-racking, nightmarish experience of my life, and at the end of it all I was in no position to remember much about the proceedings except what had directly or indirectly affected me. Everyone there, from the judge and jurors to the men in the dock, the barristers in their wigs and gowns and the spectators in the gallery, saw the trial differently. For me it was a mixture of highs and lows, from times when I was amused, hopeful or quietly elated, to others when I was worried, acutely disappointed or hurled into dark despair. Since this is my story, these are the moments I shall concentrate on.
The basis of Ronnie Hart’s evidence against me was that I had driven with him in his mini to Freddie Foreman’s pub, the Prince of Wales in Lant Street, Southwark, in the early hours of Sunday 28 October. The purpose of the visit, said Hart, was to tell Foreman to get rid of McVitie’s body. This was, of course, a blatant lie, which I thought was made clear when Harry Hopwood, another prosecution witness, told the truth, which conflicted with Hart’s claim. Hopwood told the jury, quite rightly, that I had indeed gone to his house but had set off home alone about half an hour later. Moreover, he added that Hart himself had not left the house. Men have been acquitted on less corroboration and my hopes were high. But I did not realize then that this was more of a political trial than a criminal one. In case the jury were having thoughts of believing Hopwood, Mr Justice Stevenson pooh-poohed his evidence. ‘In things like this, people do get mixed up,’ he told them. ‘It must have been a bit of a shock for him; he must have forgotten. But at least he is telling the truth, or so he thinks. He’s just mixed up. We have the proof from Ronald Hart.’
It was at that moment, I think, that I glanced up at Mum in the gallery. Throughout my life she had drummed into me how important it was to tell the truth. How I wished right then that I could have done just that, backing up Hopwood’s accurate statement and redressing the balance in my favour after the judge’s appallingly biased comment. My fears that my fate was in the judge’s hands rather than the jury’s grew when he unexpectedly called an adjournment thirty minutes early – at a crucial moment in Hart’s evidence.
Hart had been telling the court about a visit he allegedly made with me to Foreman’s pub a week after McVitie’s murder. He said he remembered Foreman leaning over to me and saying, ‘When I found that body it was all glistening, like he had Vaseline on him.’ The pub was noisy and Hart said he couldn’t hear anything else. Just that sentence! It was all too pat and I was sure the jury would not believe it. Then, during Vowden’s cross-examination, Hart made a slip that sent my pulse racing with excitement. Having just stated that I was with him that day he then said in a loud voice that I wasn’t. As Hart was about to get himself deeper into trouble, however, Mr Justice Stevenson interrupted the cross-examination and said the court would adjourn for lunch. It was 12.30. The court normally rose at 1 P.M.
During the break I was very worried, sensing trouble. The judge had been so biased against all the defendants that I felt sure he had called for an adjournment early to protect Hart. Vowden told me I was being over-sensitive. The slip was significant, he said, and the judge, realizing this, had called for an early lunch because the case against me would be thrown out that afternoon.
I was not convinced, and no sooner had Hart got back on the stand than the judge reminded him, ‘You said earlier that you weren’t with Mr Kray that day.’
And, of course, dear old Ronnie had had a change of heart!
He had been thinking about it over lunch and was now sure that I had, indeed, been with him. Vowden couldn’t believe it, but I could. I may not be as eloquent or as academically brilliant as a university-educated barrister but I am sharp-witted, and astute enough to know when the dice are loaded. No one will ever convince me that Stevenson didn’t save the prosecution that day, or that its star witness was not given a gentle prod in the right direction over lunch.
Even with Hart giving an Oscar-winning performance to try to convict me, there was so much doubt clouding my case that I should have got off. One of the twins’ Firm, Scotch Jack Dickson, for example, was hopelessly trapped by Vowden, only to be saved by the judge who excused his mistake.
Dickson was adamant that he had been with me in a Mile End café owned by Terry Pellicci the morning after McVitie’s murder. He claimed I had told him the twins had killed McVitie, and that I knew all about it. Something bothered me about his testimony. Apart from the fact that it was all a load of cobblers designed, like Hart’s, to plunge me deeper into the prosecution net, there was something else, something not right. I thought long and hard about it that night in my Brixton cell and finally it hit me.
It was impossible for me to have been in the cafe with Dickson. It was impossible for anyone to have been in the cafe at all that day…because it wasn’t open on Sundays!
Again, my heart beat a little faster. Surely this was important. Surely a prosecution witness lying on oath was good for my case. Surely all that Dickson had said, whatever it was meant to imply, would have to be struck from the record, or the jury told to disregard it.
In his cross-examination, Vowden let Dickson go on and on about his café conversation with me. Was it Sunday? Yes. Are you quite sure about that? Absolutely. Is there just a chance, a mere possibility, that you’re mistaken; that it was another day, the Monday morning, perhaps? Not a chance, sir, it was a Sunday. I remember it clearly. Thank you. Mr Dickson. That is all.
Enter Terry Pellicci for the defence. Now, Mr Pellicci, did Mr Dickson and Mr Kray come to your cafe? Yes, sir, I saw them together several times. Was one of those times Sunday 28 October? No, sir. Are you quite certain of that, Mr Pellicci? Yes, sir. How can you be so certain? The café isn’t open on Sundays, sir, I haven’t opened on a Sunday for seventeen years. Thank you, Mr Pellicci. That is all.
Dickson’s jaw dropped. There was a flurry of activity among the prosecution barristers, much hurried whispering and looks of surprise and consternation. Vowden sat down, the faintest look of satisfaction on his face. I fought to stop myself grinning. It was a bombshell for the prosecution all right.
And then Mr Justice Stevenson stepped in to save their blushes again. ‘It is clear Mr Dickson has made a mistake with the day of the meeting,’ he said. ‘As it couldn’t have been the Sunday, it must have been the Monday.’
And that was that. For although Vowden made the point over and over again, it was what the judge said that in the end made all the difference.
Naturally I was gutted. But although the lies were making the case against me look very black and the judge, for some reason, seemed to have it in for me, I still clung to my strong belief in British justice. I had not disposed of a murdered man’s body, so come what may I was not going to be found guilty of doing so.
I consoled myself that it was still early days; there would be other ways in which the prosecution’s liars could be exposed. One of these came in the shape of two honest men who ran a garage off Vallance Road. Hart’s version of events during the early hours of that Sunday morning could not be right, they told Vowden, because the mini Hart said we drove in was parked in their garage all Saturday night and Sunday morning. They were not mistaken, they stressed, because the mini had blocked some taxis and efforts had been made to trace the owner. To me the men’s joint evidence seemed manna from heaven, but apparently the police got wind of it and told them not to interfere. Despite the garage men’s protests, they were not even allowed to appear in court.
Even so, there were other holes in Hart’s testimony that should have made the jury suspicious of his motives. On his own admission he had been a witness to murder, yet I was supposed to have suddenly appeared on the scene and taken over. He said I made him stand by the mini outside the Prince of Wales at 3 A.M. while I rang the bell and woke Foreman up. On one hand he said he was too far away to hear all that was said but on the other he had no doubt that he heard me telling Foreman to get rid of the body. It did not add up.
Hart claimed the Lambrianou brothers had taken McVitie’s body from the house in Stoke Newington ‘over the water’ to South London, but he and Hopwood said the brothers were not in Hopwood’s house when I arrived. So how was I supposed to tell Foreman where the body was? Unless I’d driven around South London, found the Lambrianous and asked them, I would not have known. If I didn’t know where the body was, how could I have disposed of it?
It was a dream-like experience, sitting there listening to people relating in sincere tones, as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, what I was supposed to have done. There seemed to be so many conflicting statements that I got totally confused and lost track of the plot, as it were. Most of the time I found myself thinking: if only the twins hadn’t told Harry Hopwood to ring me. If there hadn’t been that phone call, none of this would have happened and I wouldn’t have been in the frame. But the fact that I had gone to the house gave the police and their witnesses the foundation on which to build their lies.
In court there was so much happening, so much to take in and concentrate on that I had little time to feel angry. But at night, alone in my cell in Brixton, my feelings would boil up and my insides would ache with fury, not only at the twins for roping me in so unnecessarily and thoughtlessly but also at their short-sightedness and naivety so far as their damned blasted Firm was concerned. Ronnie and Reggie had always attracted people and been surrounded by large groups who enjoyed their charisma. And they loved it, probably needing it to boost their own ideas of themselves as powerful leaders of men. But with one or two exceptions, the idiots who went around with them hanging on their every word were not worth two bob. The Firm were physically tough but not very bright characters with overblown ideas of their own importance. Having little ability themselves to make anything worthwhile of their lives they settled for a grubby twilight existence basking in the dubious reflected glory of the twins’ reputation as fearless hard men, and grabbing the easy money that came from being their henchmen. Despite what Ronnie and Reggie believed then, or now, the Firm revelled in the violence and wallowed in their roles as self-styled gangsters.
In my lonely cell I often conjured up pictures of that fateful evening in Evering Road. I knew enough of the Firm’s mentality to realize what had probably happened to prompt Ronnie to have McVitie brought to the flat from The Regency, and I would play the imagined scene over and over in my mind, a worthless exercise in masochism that served no purpose except to make me even angrier and more frustrated.
‘’Ere, Ron.’ I could hear one of them saying. ‘McVitie’s in The Regency mouthing off again. Says he’s going to blow you and Reg away.’
If that had got no reaction some bright spark – maybe even Ronnie Hart himself – would have stoked him up. ‘You’re not going to stand for that, Ron. You’re not going to let him get away with that, are you?’
Such was the mood at that gathering that Ronnie bit on the bait, telling Tony Lambrianou to fetch McVitie – which they did, not from fear of Ronnie, as was suggested at the trial, but from a sadistic pleasure at witnessing a hated man’s humiliation at the hands of a more powerful individual.
No one will convince me that the Firm that night didn’t egg on the twins to sort out McVitie once and for all. If it was all Ronnie’s idea, if they were worried for McVitie and wanted to spare him his ordeal, why didn’t they just go to The Regency and tell him to make himself scarce? No one would have been the wiser if Chris or Tony Lambrianou had said, ‘Do us a favour and go, so we can say we didn’t see you.’ As it was, they loved it all so much that they raced off to The Regency and gleefully brought McVitie back to meet a violent death.
In the early hours, when my fury had cooled, the irony of my own situation would hit me. I had received a phone call after the event, which had implicated me, but if someone had rung me beforehand it would never have happened, because I wouldn’t have let it. Just as I had told Scotch Jack in The Starlight Club that he wasn’t going to shoot Connie Whitehead, so I would have told the twins and the idiots around them that it was madness to wipe out McVitie.
This is why no one even tried to suggest at the trial that I was at the party. If I had been, there would have been no murder. As it was, McVitie was lured to the flat and confronted with men in no mood for mercy. Reggie, out of his mind on drink and Valium, taunted him that he wasn’t much of a man because he had thrown his wife out of a car, and that although he had had plenty to say about him and Ronnie he wasn’t so big now. Reggie pulled out a gun. He fired, but it didn’t go off. McVitie tried to dive out of a window but was pulled back in by the Firm. Then there was a struggle and Ronnie was holding McVitie, supposedly urging Reggie to kill him, and suddenly Reggie had a knife in his hand and was plunging it into McVitie’s throat, the drink and drugs transforming him into a mindless killer with no regard for his victim or for himself.
Over the years, I’ve thought deeply about that terrible event and could never take in that Reggie did it. Yes, he could be violent, but, unlike Ronnie, he had always held back. Much was made at the trial of Ronnie’s alleged comment, ‘I’ve done mine. Now you do yours.’ I do not know whether he did say it because neither twin will discuss it with me. They did not volunteer information at the time and when I’ve brought it up since then, they can’t understand why I’m interested in something that happened so long ago. They say, ‘What difference will it make if we tell you?’ To me, it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing Ronnie would have said; he’d always been more inclined to do things himself.
One thing is certain: if Frances had not died, Reggie would not have committed that crime, spurred on by a death-wish. If Frances had been alive and they were living a happy married life, with children perhaps, he would have been a different person. When guns had come on the scene he would have thought it through and seen the sense in getting out. As it was, Frances met a tragic end and Reggie lost all interest in life, becoming just like all the others. When those idiots who called themselves friends egged Ronnie on that Saturday night, the lethal cocktail of drinks and drugs helped Reggie enjoy it all as much as everyone else, and he was to pay the price.
Despite all the prosecution lies, all the inadmissible evidence, and my own barrister’s reluctance to put me on the witness stand, I still believe I would have been cleared – or at least received a far lighter sentence – had it not been for Melford Stevenson. Before the case police and lawyers alike were saying that he was the worst possible choice for the men on trial, and I was to find this hard to dispute as the hearing went on and on. It was not just the words he used, it was his tone and mannerisms, his tut-tutting and sarcastic comments that were quite obviously designed to leave the jury in no doubt what he felt about a particular witness’s evidence.
The transcript of the hearing does not tell the full story. If it had been taped and filmed, one would be able to see how Stevenson swayed the evidence in the prosecution’s favour and then meted out the unbelievably harsh sentences that appeased his pals in high places but shocked nearly everyone else.
The small things drove me and the twins mad: the way Stevenson treated our Aunt May, for instance. May had never been in a court in her life, and was married to a man who had worked in the same company for fifty years and was so straight that he’d never even been given a parking ticket. She was a religious woman who went to church regularly, but Stevenson treated her abominably with a total lack of respect just because she was speaking on behalf of the twins. In contrast, Ronnie Hart’s girlfriend was treated like a lady by Stevenson. It really wound us up, but there was nothing we could do except sit there and take it.
We took it for thirty-nine days; days in which the smooth, efficient, well-rehearsed case against the twins, their Firm and me rolled on and on to its inevitable conclusion. Many days were filled with legal mumbo-jumbo which I found hard to follow; others were filled with stories of the twins’ reign of terror, which I found equally hard to swallow. But there were moments of humour, too, like Ronnie’s comment when he was charged with being involved in the McVitie murder. Warned by Nipper Read that anything he said would be taken down and might be used in evidence against him, Ronnie replied, ‘I presume that your presumptions are precisely incorrect and that your sarcastic insinuations are too obnoxious to be appreciated.’ As he watched a fellow detective write it on the charge sheet, Ronnie added, ‘Bit hard to spell, that one, isn’t it?’ I’m not sure what the elaborately worded sentence meant, but Ronnie liked the sound of it as a child and had learned it parrot fashion. He said it to the police because he didn’t give a damn. He was obviously philosophical; he always thought he’d get thirty years. His cheeky answer to the charge had to be read out at the Old Bailey, of course, and provided welcome light relief to the heaviness of the proceedings. I think the laughter in court even woke Ronnie up.
If there was going to be any humour, even black humour, it was bound to come from Ronnie. And he made me smile one day when he more or less ordered the judge to let him give evidence after making it clear to defence and prosecution counsels that he would not. Ian Barrie, charged as an accessory in the Blind Beggar killing, had just stepped down from the witness box and Ronnie suddenly said loudly, ‘I’m going to give evidence now.’ Some bigwig – probably the judge – told him it was most irregular: Ronnie had chosen not to testify and had instructed his counsel, Paul Wrightson, accordingly. That cut no ice whatsoever with Ronnie. ‘I can change my mind if I like,’ he said. ‘I want to give evidence. And I’m going to. It’s my right.’
I couldn’t help smiling at the turmoil he caused. Courts, naturally, have set rules of procedure and officials don’t like the protocol being upset. But Ronnie couldn’t have cared less; once he decided to do something he usually did it. He got his way that day, and the court buzzed with expectancy as he took the stand.
Prosecution counsel, Kenneth Jones, a little Welshman with a resounding Richard Burton-type voice that seemed too big for his body, couldn’t believe his luck. He tore into Ronnie with relish, determined to goad him into losing his temper and, perhaps, betray signs of the violence that was an integral part of the prosecution case. Much to the eloquent Mr Jones’s chagrin, Ronnie was far from intimidated by his cultured tones and cunning approach. He was in the mood to antagonize everyone and he matched Jones’s skill with a cheeky arrogance.
‘Among your Firm, you are known as the Colonel?’ asked Mr Jones.
‘I was a deserter from the Army, so how could I be a Colonel?’ Ronnie replied.
‘You gave money to charity,’ Mr Jones said later.
‘Is that a terrible thing?’ Ronnie asked.
‘There are stories that it might have been £10,000. Where did you get that money from?’
‘I don’t think that matters,’ Ronnie countered. ‘I had it. That’s all that matters.’ When that didn’t seem to satisfy his interrogator, Ronnie shouted, ‘If you want to know, my father gambles for me. He’s up there in the gallery, so ask him. I know nothing about gambling, so there’s no point in asking me. I may have clubs, but I know nothing about gambling.’
The judge broke in to tell Ronnie not to shout. But Ronnie just said ‘Why? I’m here to speak. And I’m answering.’
Jones went on and on and finally Ronnie had had enough. ‘Listen, you fat slob,’ he said, making me cringe. ‘You’ve been going on enough. You’re Welsh, aren’t you? Down the mines would have been a more fitting profession for you than being a prosecutor, I promise you that.’
Naturally, this attitude did not endear him to the judge or jury, but Ronnie was convinced, as ever, that he was going to get thirty years, innocent or guilty, and he didn’t care: it had just come into his head that he wanted to say something, so he said it.
Something Ronnie did not say, however, despite my encouragement to do so, was what his so-called pals, particularly Hart and Albert Donaghue, had got up to during the twins’ so-called reign of terror. These two supposedly tough individuals loved the villainy. Late one night they got drunk, forced their way into the Regency Club and demanded £50 a week from the owner Johnny Barrie. The next day, having sobered up, they were worried and went to Ronnie to own up. He went spare, wanting to know why they had done that when the Firm had a share in the club anyway. Hart and Donaghue admitted they had made a mistake but begged Ronnie to say he’d sent them round because Barrie might get the police involved. Typically, Ronnie helped them. He told Barrie he’d had the hump the previous night and had sent Hart and Donaghue round. He said he was sorry and asked Barrie to forget it.
To my disappointment, Ronnie didn’t tell that story in court. Nor did he tell how Hart and Donaghue went to Freddie Foreman’s pub and tried to ‘nip’ him for £25. When I asked him why he hadn’t seized the chance to redress the balance that was swinging ever more heavily against us all he said that nothing would ever make him sink as low as those ‘rats’. He had his principles and he would stick to them.
But I know he was sick to the stomach over a blatant lie Donaghue told the police when he was trying to get himself off the hook in the McVitie case. During the meeting with Donaghue and our solicitors, shortly after the arrests. Ronnie asked for the address of Donaghue’s mother, saying he wanted to send someone round with some money for her. It was a genuine offer of help but when Donaghue turned Queen’s Evidence he twisted the story to put Ronnie in a bad light, claiming that Ronnie wanted the address because he was going to arrange for the old lady to be murdered. In those days, Ronnie seldom worried about anything, but that allegation hurt him. Set up an old woman to be wiped out! Ronnie used to get the hump if anyone even swore in front of women. But when his chance came to hit back against Donaghue he still chose not to.
I never found out whether that lie was Donaghue’s idea or the police’s. Certainly Nipper Read and his team weren’t fussy about the tactics they used to blacken our names and reputations. The disgraceful lie about Reggie and Connie Whitehead’s son, for example, takes some beating.
Reggie idolized Connie Whitehead’s little boy – also named Connie – and used to take him to a boys’ club to see Father Hetherington. When the balloon went up, Whitehead tried to get himself out of trouble by writing a letter to the police saying that Reggie had threatened his wife and son. Our solicitor heard of the allegations and told the twins, but made them promise not to touch Whitehead. It was very hard for them because Reggie had stayed with the Whiteheads and had done nothing but try to help them. Ronnie seemed even more wound up about the lie than Reggie, and when he saw Whitehead in jail he said, ‘I see. You wrote to Old Bill and said Reggie threatened your wife and kid.’ Connie had no idea the twins knew and he went white, fearing the worst. Ronnie would have broken Connie in half if he hadn’t promised to tell the truth.
Connie did admit in court that the police had made him say it, but as far as the twins and myself were concerned that did not make things right. What sort of man agrees to utter such a lie to make things easier for himself?
Most of the courtroom battles were, of course, won by the prosecution, but Reggie did score a couple of victories which, although they did not affect the outcome of the cases, did give him some satisfaction.
One was when Kenneth Jones brought up Frances. Reggie immediately got to his feet, his face white with fury. He was gripping the rail round the dock so tightly I thought he was going to break it. ‘What has Frances to do with this case?’ he demanded to know.
Jones made an attempt to justify bringing up her name, but Reggie interrupted him. ‘This has nothing to do with her,’ he said. Then he added, quietly but menacingly, ‘If you continue involving her name, I’ll be over this dock to you. I know all the police here are armed, but no gun will stop me.’
Reggie thought Jones was going to bring up Frances’ suicide to make him look bad. So did the rest of us in the dock, and we all stood up to support Reggie’s objection. It was like a scene from a film.
For several tense seconds Jones and Reggie glared at each other. Then the barrister gulped and said to the judge, who was also shaken by Reggie’s fury, ‘In view of the circumstances, my lord, I think we’ll move on to another subject.’
It proved the point, I think, that Jones was out of order in mentioning Frances. If he had been right, surely he would have insisted on carrying on, despite Reggie’s threat.
The longer the trial went on, and the more the jury were swayed by Stevenson’s interjections, the less confident I became that I would be found not guilty: all the signs pointed to the lies triumphing over the truth. My fears proved well-founded on Tuesday 4 March when the jury returned after seven hours’ deliberation to find myself and everyone else in the dock guilty of their respective crimes. Sentencing was put off until the next day, probably to prolong the agony, and the twins, their Firm and I were taken back to Brixton to think about what sentences we would get.
Ronnie was still philosophical about it: thirty years was what he expected. Reggie was now thinking the same. And me? Well, all I prayed was that Stevenson, despite his biased performance throughout the whole thirty-nine days and particularly in his summing up, would see my position for what it was and treat me leniently. Many of the Brixton prison staff who believed in my innocence kept telling me I’d get no more than two years and, much as I hated the idea of doing any time at all for something I didn’t do, I hoped they were right. With remission for good behaviour, that would be down to about eighteen months and since I’d been in custody for a year that would mean I’d be out in six months or so.
I was far from happy at the prospect of spending more time behind bars, but I wasn’t in the depths of despair. I finally dropped off to sleep, having convinced myself that even if Stevenson did his worst I could reasonably expect nothing more than three years. I’d take it on the chin, make sure I kept my nose clean in prison, then pick up my life where I’d left off.
When we arrived at the Old Bailey the next morning, one of the officers in the cells offered me a bottle with some liquid in it. It was a tranquillizer to calm me down and he wanted me to take it before I went into the dock.
‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m quite capable of accepting anything Stevenson dishes out.’
Other officers pressed me to take some, but I still couldn’t see the point. Then Ronnie urged me to take it to keep everyone happy, so I did. I can’t say for certain what that odd-smelling mixture did to me. I did feel a bit strange, but then the whole experience had been strange, like a disturbing dream where all sorts of people pop up in the unlikeliest places, saying and doing the craziest things; where one minute everything is clear and certainly happening and the next, it’s fuzzy like your imagination, and then you finally awake, not knowing where you are, and you can’t tell the things that happened from the things that didn’t.
I was sitting in my cell in a sort of trance when one of the officers came by. ‘Charlie,’ he called quietly, ‘they’ve got thirty years.’
I stared at him, the dream focusing sharply into reality. Thirty years! It was what they had expected, what they had prepared themselves for. But it was still dreadful to hear. My twin brothers were to be caged until they were old-age pensioners, banished from the outside world until just one year from the end of the twentieth century.
It was hard to take in, and the officer’s face and words began to fade behind a cloud of unreality, then I was floating and the next thing I knew I was standing in the dock looking at Mr Justice Melford Stevenson, feeling the heavy silence of the crowded court but not sure whether I was really there.
Then the judge was speaking, not so much to me but at me, relating incidents about my past that I’d long forgotten. I listened, trying to take in what he was saying, but it was as though he was talking about someone else, someone I’d known very well but hadn’t seen for years; perhaps someone from another life.
He spoke for only a minute or so but it seemed like forever, and then he got to the point of his monologue, the denouement of my personal tragedy that had been played out on the greatest criminal stage in the land.
‘Charles James Kray,’ he said slowly, ‘you have been found guilty of being an accessory to murder. It may well be that you were not a member of what, in this case, has been called the Firm, but I am satisfied that you were an active and willing helper in the dreadful enterprise of concealing traces of the murder committed by your brother…’ Stevenson paused. He looked down at Kenneth Jones. ‘For accessory after the fact the maximum sentence, I believe, is…’
My breath caught in my throat. I could see the word forming in his mouth, grotesquely enlarged like some surrealistic painting. Was this all happening, or was it a dream? Was I here? Or was someone pretending to be me?
And then he said it and I swear my heart stopped…‘life.’
Jones sprang to his feet. ‘No, m’lud’ he corrected. ‘The law has been changed. The maximum sentence for accessory after the fact is ten years. And I don’t wish…’
Then my heart pounded. Don’t wish what, Mr Jones? Say it. Go on, tell him you don’t wish to press for the maximum sentence. Tell him you don’t believe all the lies nor do you wish for a man to get ten years for something he didn’t do. Go on, Mr Jones, tell him…
But the judge was motioning to him to sit down. ‘That’s enough, Mr Jones,’ he snapped. And he turned to me. ‘I sentence you to ten years’ imprisonment.’
I stared at him, suddenly understanding, even in my dreamlike state, the meaning of the phrase ‘absolute power’.
‘Take that man down.’ The words seemed to come from a long way off and I was floating again and the next thing I heard was Ronnie banging on the door of the first cell, asking what had happened.
‘I got ten years,’ I said.
Ronnie went mad. He started kicking the door, then he began shouting. ‘Ten years! The rats gave you ten years!’
There wasn’t much else I could say. I was taken to my cell, where I sat, saying over and over in my mind, ‘Ten years. Ten years. Ten fucking years!’
Then Freddie Foreman and Connie Whitehead were put in the cell with me. Freddie had got ten years for disposing of McVitie’s body. Connie had got nine; two for having a gun and seven for complicity in the McVitie murder.
I could hear Ronnie still creating in his cell. An officer passed by and motioned towards the first cell. ‘He’s making more fuss over your ten than his thirty,’ he said.
Shortly afterwards the officer came back. ‘Charlie,’ he said. ‘Ian Barrie’s got twenty years. He’s in a state. I can’t pull him out of it. Can you have a word and try to calm him down?’
I did my best. I told him I was sorry but he had to calm down. There was an appeal coming up; his sentence was bound to be reduced. I didn’t really believe it, but it was all I could think of to quieten him down. Hope was all I could offer.
When I went back to my cell Connie was sobbing. ‘Nine years,’ he kept saying.
Connie,’ I said as gently as I could, trying to hide my irritation, ‘Freddie and me have got ten years for doing nothing. How do you think we feel?’ I sat down on the cell bed and put my head in my hands. Reality was forcing through the numbness as the effects of the tranquillizer began to wear off and I found myself trying to get to grips with what ten years meant. I was coming up to forty-three years old. Even with full remission I was going to be more or less fifty when I came out. Fifty!
I looked at Freddie. What had happened to bring us here? What hand of fate had decided to make us the fall guys? Why us? With the daunting prospect of spending vital middle-aged years incarcerated behind bars hitting home to me now, I was at my lowest ebb, frail and weak from nearly a year in custody, drained dry from hearing my reputation blackened in thirty-nine dizzy days of courtroom drama. And then the cell door opened and my solicitor Ralph Haeems walked in. Detectives Read and Cator were upstairs and they wanted to see me, he said.
My heart leapt. Maybe, I thought, they were shocked at the severity of my sentence; maybe they were going to make a submission for it to be reduced. Crazy thoughts, I know, but I was so low I was ready to clutch at any straw. I looked at Ralph hopefully, but his face was grim. ‘What do they want to see me for?’
Ralph looked down, shamefaced, embarrassed. ‘They’re going to charge you again with the murder of Frank Mitchell.’
I froze.
Ten years for something I hadn’t done was terrible enough. But to face a life sentence for a murder I had nothing to do with…
The previous summer the murder charge against me had been dropped through lack of evidence without the case going to trial. But since then a law known as a Voluntary Bill of Indictment had been passed, which meant that I could be charged again. The new legislation made it possible for the prosecution to put the accused straight before a judge and jury without bothering with committal proceedings in a lower court.
I looked at Read and Cator with contempt, but they couldn’t bring themselves to look at me. They knew full well I had had nothing to do with Mitchell’s murder. They charged me and asked if I had anything to say but I said nothing. What was there to say?
That night in Brixton, I learned from prison staff that it was common knowledge in the nick that the police were determined to stitch me up on the Mitchell case. They had not liked the charge against me being dropped at Bow Street the previous July. I ached with despair. Was there no end to the police vendetta? Wasn’t ten years enough? Did they really want me to go away for a lifetime too?
I was standing on a chair in the security wing looking out of a window when Tommy Cowley called up from the remand block below. ‘Charlie, I know how bad you feel. But there’s no way you can be found guilty on this Mitchell thing.’
I grunted sarcastically. ‘You all said they wouldn’t be able to get me in the McVitie trial, but I ended up with ten years so please don’t say anything now.’
Tommy simply repeated that I couldn’t possibly be found guilty. I thanked him for trying to make me feel better, and I hoped he was right, but I felt it was a useless, stupid thing to say. If the police wanted to get someone they had plenty of ways of doing it.
I had learned my lesson from the Bow Street hearing and I was going into the witness box, come what may, to say my piece. I had nothing to lose. At the committal proceedings I’d listened to Vowden’s advice and it had rebounded on me: by not going into the witness box I’d left myself open to all sorts of allegations which, because of my silence, must have been believed. The most outrageous of these, which would have been funny in less dire circumstances, concerned Leslie Payne’s accountant friend, Freddie Gore, whom the twins and I had had some dealings with during the Great African Safari.
The only harsh encounter I’d had with Gore had been when he walked into an office I shared with Payne in Great Portland Street and interrupted a conversation we were having. I didn’t approve of his manners, but let it pass. About ten minutes later, however, he came back and did the same thing.
‘Mr Gore,’ I said angrily, ‘don’t do that to me again. It’s an insult. Remember, you work here and can be sacked. If you must say something privately, do it outside.’
After our arrests, when they were holding us on all sorts of weird and wonderful charges, Gore walked into the witness box at Bow Street and was asked by the prosecution, ‘Have you ever been threatened by anyone?’
‘Yes – one person.’ Gore replied.
‘Do you see that person anywhere in this court?’
Gore looked at the twins and me and the others in dock and pointed. I looked around to see who he was pointing at, but Ronnie nudged me and whispered, ‘He means you.’
Shocked, I stood up. ‘I threatened you?’ I said. ‘I’ve never threatened you in my life.’
During the lunchtime adjournment I told Vowden about the incident in the office – the only time I’d said anything remotely harsh to Gore – and said I wanted to go into the witness box to set the record straight.
Vowden would not hear of it. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Wait till we get to the Old Bailey. We’ll get him there.’
‘But at least ask him how I was supposed to have threatened him,’ I pleaded.
Vowden would not budge. He did not want to commit himself, he said, in case we gave something away that might be useful to the prosecution.
I argued with him. Since there were no reporting restrictions Gore’s allegation was going to be all over the papers, with no response at all from me. To people who didn’t know me, it would look as though I was admitting the threat, and I was sure that would be bad for my case. But Vowden told me I must be guided by him in matters of law, so I swallowed it. The next day, the papers made a meal of it: GANG BOSS THREATENS WITNESS!’ screamed the headlines.
Nice! I was choked, and I couldn’t resist asking Vowden if he’d seen the papers. ‘Unfortunately, I have,’ he replied, embarrassed.
When I appeared at the Old Bailey on the McVitie charge Vowden was again against my going into the box, repeating that if I didn’t say anything, nothing could be used against me. My gut reaction said he was wrong, but I went along with him because he was the legal expert.
As it was, the decision not to give evidence was disastrous for me. In his summing up, Melford Stevenson made an issue of it, saying, ‘If Charles Kray was innocent, would he not have gone into the witness box?’ He made it look as if I had made the decision not to give evidence!
Afterwards I told Vowden I’d been made to look an idiot. He tried to console me by saying that it did not matter and that Stevenson should not have said what he did. Sadly, that didn’t do much for me.
Barristers are very highly trained but they are not very worldly. I don’t think Vowden was ‘got at’, either at Bow Street or at the Old Bailey, but I do think he gave me bad advice (albeit in good faith) in a case that was to ruin my life. So when the Mitchell trial opened at the Old Bailey in April 1969, I made the point strongly to Vowden: I was not going to be set up twice; I was going into the box, come what may. And I did.
I’m sure that giving evidence helped me, particularly since the judge Mr Justice Lawton was fair-minded, totally aware of what was going on and, unlike Stevenson, eager to see that justice was done. For example, when the prosecution counsel – Kenneth Jones again – tried to belittle me over my earnings as a theatrical agent Lawton stepped in to let everyone know what was right.
Jones, who obviously knew nothing about the theatrical agency business, implied that I was trying to cover something up concerning a bank statement, which the judge then asked to see. Within seconds he said the statement was in order and he understood it perfectly. Jones was angry at being put in his place and tried to take it out on me. He quoted five people who had given a different version of events from the one I had sworn, and said, ‘Come, come, Mr Kray. What reason do you give for their telling lies? All five of them?’
‘That’s quite simple,’ I said.
‘Oh, is it?’ Jones replied. ‘Why is that?’
‘Because they are sitting there and I am standing here,’ I said.
He did not have an answer to that. I sensed the judge nodding in agreement. He seemed to be aware of who was telling the truth – unlike Stevenson whose preoccupation, it seemed, was to find people guilty. Lawton appreciated very early in the trial that the case against me was extremely slim. One particular piece of evidence, concerning where I had been on two days in December 1966, was vital, and thankfully I was able to prove that I was not where the police said I was because I was at home in bed with quinsy. Fortunately, a Dr Morris, a child psychiatrist with a practice in Wimpole Street, came to my home to visit my son Gary, who he was treating for suspected rheumatic fever, and he wrote to the court confirming I had been in bed. Lawton told the jury that a letter from such a professional gentleman should be accepted, and from then on I was home and dry.
It was the judge who actually led the prosecution into dropping its case against me. After hearing all the evidence he ordered the jury to leave the court while he had a discussion with Kenneth Jones.
‘Regarding Mr Charles Kray,’ said the judge. ‘Four people have testified that he was at a meeting to kill Frank Mitchell. A lot of things have been said at this trial, but let us say they were right: he was there and they all discussed it. He could have said, ‘No, thank you, I want nothing to do with it.’ Because we don’t hear very much about Charles Kray afterwards, do we? Whatever they say, it is not very safe at all, is it?’
Mr Jones agreed it wasn’t.
‘Do you want to carry on with the case against him?’ asked the judge.
‘No, m’lud.’
‘Then I am stopping the case against Mr Kray,’ said the judge.
And in the dock I found myself weeping with relief. I was too caught up in the emotion of the moment to be embarrassed or ashamed of my tears. Anyone who has been in a major court, fighting to prove their innocence will appreciate my feelings. The relief was indescribable, and at last I felt that the nightmare of the Axeman was over.
The police, not satisfied with my ten-year sentence in the McVitie case; had another card up their sleeves: if I didn’t actually help to murder poor Frank Mitchell, they argued, then I had helped plot his escape from Dartmoor and had harboured him in London. More rubbish, of course. But more agony, too. I was beginning to feel that their persecution was endless.
Thankfully, this case was eventually thrown out too, but not before I’d been reduced to tears again in the witness box.
Fuelled by more and more lies from Albert Donaghue, Billy Exley and Harry Hopwood, the persistent prosecutor hammered away at me, insisting that I must have known about the arrangements for springing Mitchell. I took it for what seemed an age, and then the terrible injustice of having to defend myself against lying idiots finally got to me, overwhelming me, and I cracked. Trembling with emotion, I said: ‘I didn’t have anything to do with it. They did. You have to remember, my name is Kray and if anyone makes a statement and puts the name Kray on it, they are believed by the police.’ I gripped the frame of the witness box tightly as I felt my voice going. I fought in vain to control it. ‘I’m doing ten years for nothing because of all these lies,’ I choked.
And as I wept again with the frustration and injustice of it all, Mr Justice Lawton adjourned the court.
The high tension of the Old Bailey saps one’s energy; adrenalin starts to flow as soon as the building comes into sight. I had had more than 300 tortuous hours which had done my brain in, leaving me mentally drained and ragged, my nerves in tatters.
When they finally took me back to Brixton and opened my cell, I walked in with my shoulders hunched in dejection, what little pride I’d clung to in court all gone. I fell on the bed and curled myself into a tight ball, enjoying the silence and the solitude.
I think then I knew how a fox feels when he finally shakes off the hounds.