Kelsey-Fry was due to begin his closing speech on Thursday 12 June, but was ill. I wasn’t happy about him doing a demolition job on me on such a notorious day as Friday the thirteenth, but I saw the positive side: the nearer Mr Goldberg’s closing speech was to the judge’s summing up the better. If Kelsey-Fry finished his on Friday, that would leave the weekend for the jury to forget a lot of what he said, leaving Mr Goldberg to close only one day before the judge’s summing up.
As it was, Kelsey-Fry managed only the morning session on Friday before he was taken ill again. So, it was all scheduled to happen the following week: both counsels’ closing speeches, the judge’s summing up, the jury’s deliberation and, hopefully, a Not Guilty verdict on the second charge of supplying cocaine, if not the first of offering it. After a marathon eight weeks of voire dire and trial proper, we were approaching the finishing line. I was exhausted. I wanted it sorted. One way or the other.
Not surprisingly, Kelsey-Fry made light of fat Brian’s indiscretion, telling the jury that his credibility was less important than mine; that if they felt he had been discredited, they should ignore his evidence, unless it was corroborated by someone else. The defence said the police were cunning and devious and should be ashamed of themselves, but it was my behaviour that was shameful, he said. If I suspected that Jack’s overture in The Elbow Room was all about drugs, all I had to say was: ‘That’s not my game – I’m going off to have a drink with my mates.’ But I didn’t. I saw my chance, he said.
He poured scorn on my plan to con money out of Jack, saying I had many friends who could have helped me out, but I assumed the role of a despicable drug dealer, even though one of my witnesses said I was ‘a coward who would not say boo to a goose’.
But it was all the drug-related statements I’d made on tape that he asked the jury to consider. And, in case they did not know the ones he meant, he read some of them out:
‘I know someone’s who’s got five hundred and the paperwork…I put people together and do this and running about…that won’t be for another three or four weeks, then it will be regular, fucking hundred a week…we’re at standby…it’s going to happen next week…we’re on the verge.’
And, even more damaging for me: ‘I’ll get him to ring you, I don’t think it will be this weekend…you had a word with Ron, I’ve been told it could be Monday or Tuesday.’
Kelsey-Fry paused, letting the heavy silence hang in the air. He turned towards the dock and motioned to a detective sitting in the back row of the court in front of me. The detective handed an evidence bag to the prosecution’s junior counsel, who, in turn, passed it on. Kelsey-Fry placed it on a chair, then, dramatically, pulled on a pair of flesh-coloured surgical gloves and opened the package.
Inside was a black rubber container covered in tape, stuck to a plastic bag – the same packaging Ronnie Field had described to Jack and Ken at The Linden Hall Hotel on 27 June.
Kelsey-Fry reminded the jury of what Field had said in the transcript: ‘…they will give this to you. It’ll be wrapped. Come in like a, erm, rubber wrapping, like a bag…vacuum sealed. Then it’s wrapped up in tape and it’s got another bag around the outside of it.’
I needed no reminding that I’d chimed in with a comment of my own about that wrapping.
And then, lastly, he left the jury with the impression that my pal Steve Grant was a significant figure in the whole scenario. I had denied that Steve knew Ronnie Field, but Steve had gone to The Selsdon on 25 July for a meeting with Field and Gould and the undercover police.
I had intended to introduce Steve to Jack at The Blue Orchid and was on tape referring to this. I was also on tape at The Linden Hall Hotel, saying: ‘We don’t know when we’ll see Steve, it may be held up.’
And Kelsey-Fry made a big point about me ringing Steve on 26 July after Jack told me about the ‘clowns on the plot’.
If I believed Field was going to confess all to Jack that night, the first person I would have rung the next morning, having learnt he hadn’t, surely would have been Field to ask: ‘What are you playing at?’
Kelsey-Fry closed his speech, telling the jury Steve Grant had been arrested in January of this year and was serving six years for laundering drug money.
I knew Steve was in prison on a charge involving money, but I had no idea it had anything to do with drugs. I had no time to dwell on that, however, because my mind was now on how my defence was going to counter what Kelsey-Fry said was overwhelming evidence against me.
Mr Goldberg told the jury that my trial ‘was one of the great cases of the decade’, then, reminding them of my autobiography, said: ‘You are writing the last chapter…it’s a mind-blowing decision you have to make.’
I wanted him to stress the appalling way the police had behaved since slipping George into my Gary’s funeral, and he did not let me down.
An elaborate and expensive operation had been launched ‘by career-hungry police who saw feathers in their caps by arresting this old man’, he said. The undercover officers who carried it out lived the life of Riley for two and a half months at the taxpayer’s expense: bottle after bottle of champagne, £2,000 on booze from Fethi Torki’s cash and carry, £1,000 on air tickets and a loan to me, rooms for five at a five-star hotel, birthday presents for me and Patsy.
‘They were spending money like crazy, because they were Kray-fishing,’ said Mr Goldberg. ‘Other police officers might say, “If this is undercover work, give us some any day of the week.”’ And he added: ‘Jack and his pals started to behave like the people they want to put away. The protective screen they have hidden behind is a cloak for their accountability.’
Just twenty per cent of their tape recordings were decipherable; the rest were useless, said Mr Goldberg. The only other evidence was in their notebooks, but who was to say when they had written in them? One had only their word that what they had written was true – and the prosecution had chosen to accept it.
That Jack had breached his instructions was blatantly clear. His superior officer, Detective Inspector Michael Allen, had specifically told him not to indulge in talk about criminality, but, Mr Goldberg argued, that is precisely what Jack did in The Elbow Room on 9 May, by telling me someone he knew had been ‘topped’ in Amsterdam.
Jack denied he gave the impression he was a drug dealer, because he knew he had breached those instructions, said Mr Goldberg. Jack stepped over the line again by telling me at The Wake Green Lodge Hotel: ‘I do “charlie” and I do the smoke.’
He was acting as agent provocateur by inciting me to commit a more serious offence.
‘What’s the point in having instructions if no one pays any attention to them and shrugs their shoulders,’ said Mr Goldberg, adding: ‘Poor Charlie.’
I was on tape talking of ‘tons of drugs’, but where was it? Mr Goldberg wanted to know. No one had gone looking for it. If the police genuinely believed me and Field were into drugs in a big way, why didn’t the police put us under surveillance and catch the big fish in their net, too? As it was, we’ll never know where Field got those two kilos of cocaine, because the little fish got all the attention, while bigger fish went swimming by.
The reason, said Mr Goldberg, was that there were big forces at work within the police to get Charlie Kray convicted. There was no surveillance because they knew he was bluffing. They could have gone for a high target and brought a charge of conspiracy to supply drugs. But they didn’t want a negative result.
Why I was targeted for this elaborate set-up was not known, because the undercover police were not obliged to say, said Mr Goldberg. And he reminded the jury of twenty questions Jack had been allowed to duck, even the significant one of why George and Deano had been allowed to spend £2,000 on booze without accounting for it.
Rightly, not too much time was spent on the love life of Brian, the undercovers’ officer. At the voire dire he said he could not recall Michelle. Yet, at the trial, she produced a telephone bill listing seventy calls between them.
‘Mr Kelsey-Fry referred to Brian as a plonker, but I’d go further than that,’ said Mr Goldberg.
That said it all about fat Brian.
Kelsey-Fry emphasized the point that if Field was not bluffing in being able to supply drugs, then I was not either. But, Mr Goldberg told the jury, Field became serious in his intentions without my knowledge or consent. When we were invited to Newcastle, we went along separate roads. On those incriminating tapes, Field was heard singing the song, while I provided the chorus. ‘Go and ask Field yourselves,’ Mr Goldberg urged the jury.
And then he advised them on a point of law which I was convinced would help me get off the charge of supplying cocaine. It was not enough for me merely to have known about the plan to supply the drugs, he said. For the jury to find me guilty, the prosecution had to have proved that I aided and abetted it.
I was in the dock, said Mr Goldberg, only because I was a broken, shambolic figure, desperate for cash, who had had to invent stories to keep up a front. If all the stories I’d told the police on tape – losing £1.25 million on a deal, contacts with Israeli secret service and the rest – were accepted as rubbish, why weren’t my statements about enormous quantities of drugs?
Just when I was wondering what he would say about my notorious surname, Mr Goldberg once again told the jury that they could be forgiven for thinking, during the trial, that they were in danger of being murdered in their beds. There was only one reason why they had been under surveillance twenty-four hours a day throughout the past five weeks: the defendant’s surname was Kray.
‘The police claim the jury protection was the court’s decision, not theirs,’ he said. ‘But it is the police who have created the atmosphere you feel in this court. It suits their case for the hype surrounding the name Kray to stay in place.’
It was indeed a remarkable and unique case, the like of which we would not see again, he said. ‘A sad old-timer has been badly set up.’
I did not care for the first bit, but I could not agree more with the second.
I just hoped the jury did, too.
That night, thinking over Goldberg’s statement that the undercover police knew I was bluffing, my mind went back to 1968 when I was arrested with the twins and all the other idiots. The police knew then that I was straight and had nothing to do with any of the murders or violence.
I wouldn’t class any copper as a bosom pal, someone I’d invite home to dinner, but I’d always enjoyed a friendly relationship with men of various ranks over the years and, while most of the Old Bill were suspicious of the twins and their friends, they accepted I was not part of the so-called Firm. If I was around when they pulled the twins in for questioning, they would say: ‘Stay out of it, Charlie – this has nothing to do with you.’ This was one of the reasons I felt confident then, that whatever the police had on the twins it could not have anything to do with me. I honestly thought it would be only a matter of time before I was released. But the police had been ordered to nail all the Krays – and no matter how much they believed I was innocent, that is precisely what they set out to do.
My name was written on a long prison sentence and the law made sure I got it – even though, a year after I was jailed, Ronald Hart swore an affidavit that his evidence was false: that neither me, nor Freddie Foreman, was involved in the killing of McVitie. You would have thought that such a turnabout would have been viewed as vital new evidence, but the legal brains pooh-poohed it and although a copy of Hart’s affidavit was supposedly sent to the Home Secretary, calling for the case to be reopened, nothing happened. Later, Chris and Tony Lambrianou also made statements, confessing that they had disposed of McVitie’s body. But, again, nothing happened.
I was disappointed and very bitter at the injustice of it all. And now it looked like my name was written on a long prison sentence once again.
I was sure Judge Carroll would put the boot in. He had been against me from the start and, when he summed up the case, I expected him to direct the jury towards guilty verdicts on both counts. Surprisingly, he did not. He read out what he felt were the crucial, important issues and left the jury to it. Maybe he felt I was clearly guilty and did not see the need to steer the jury. Certainly I was relieved; so was Mr Goldberg and his team. They felt it was a point in my favour.
As the jury left the court, at 12.04 P.M. on Wednesday, I looked up at the gallery. Now the trial was nearing its end, friends had turned up to give me support. I gave them a smile I did not feel, then walked out of the dock into the little room, where I’d spent so many days hanging about, waiting for one thing and another over the past nine weeks. It was out of everyone’s hands now; all we could do was wait and find out who those seven women and four men believed.
A few minutes before four o’clock I was told they were on their way back. My pulse quickened. If a jury returned in anything under a couple of hours it usually meant a guilty verdict, but this one had been out four. I sat down in the dock, expectant, hopeful. But it was an anti-climax: the judge had called them back merely to ask if they had reached a verdict on either count. When they said they had not, he dismissed them until the next day.
The waiting went on all day Thursday until just gone half-past three when I was told they were coming back. I did not get my hopes up. Throughout the trial, the judge had shown a desire to pack up around four, and I felt he might be thinking of dismissing the jury until the next day again.
But when the foreman of the jury was asked if they had agreed a verdict on Count One – offering to supply cocaine – he replied: ‘Yes.’
I had not felt so tense since that day in March twenty-eight years earlier when I stood in the Old Bailey, waiting for the McVitie verdict.
Everyone was looking at the foreman, but I could not bring myself to. I stared straight ahead.
‘And what is your verdict?’
My throat was dry. I gulped. I clenched both hands.
‘Guilty.’
To be truthful, I was not really surprised. My voice was there on tape, offering to get cocaine for Jack. Whether the jury believed I was bluffing or not did not matter. In law, simply making the offer is an offence.
The jury were not agreed on Count Two – supplying two kilos of cocaine. Good! It was the more serious charge and I wanted them to take their time on that one. If they considered the evidence carefully, I was sure they would believe me, not the police. I was sure they would believe I knew nothing of what went on at the Selsdon Park and Swallow hotels. I was sure they would believe I played no part in Field’s supply of those two kilos.
I was sure I’d be acquitted.
I looked up at the gallery. Judy had got time off work and was there, with a couple of friends of ours. I shrugged and forced a half-smile, then heard my solicitor telling me not to worry: if I was acquitted on the second charge, I could get a light sentence – possibly as little as eighteen months – which would mean I would be released immediately, because of the time I’d spent in prison on remand.
I clung to that thought overnight.
I spent most of the next day, locked in a cell beneath No. 1 Court with Field and Gould, but would have preferred to be alone. We’d been locked up together since our arrests and there was little we had to say to each other now. With the most important day of my life ahead, I didn’t want to be bothered with trivial conversation: I just wanted to lose myself in my own thoughts, and they, as usual, centred on Judy and her kids, Nina, Glenn and Sean. How I missed them; how much I wanted to get back to them, get back to normal. Thinking of Judy and her family brought Gary into focus once more. When he was dying, early last year, Judy had turned her front room into a hospital ward and the family had nursed him through his final weeks. He was so appreciative: he kept telling me what lovely people they were. And he was right.
Poor Gary. What would he have made of all this? It was a blessing, perhaps, that he was not here to go through it. He was such an innocent, he would have been bewildered by all the guns and metal detector security checks, and me all over the papers and the telly, branded an evil drug baron. Once, I was with Gary at Robin McGibbon’s house, having just spent five hours being questioned about a murder I knew nothing about, simply because my name was Kray. I was going on and on about the injustice of it all, and suddenly Robin and Sue and I looked at Gary, and he was crying. To him I was not the person the papers made me out to be. To him I was just his dad, and he couldn’t bear to see me upset.
Now, waiting for the jury to return, I felt I’d done enough to convince them I was innocent. But, deep down, there was a terrible nagging fear that history might repeat itself. In March 1969 I was sentenced to ten years for a crime the police knew – and maybe the jury suspected – I had not committed.
Would it – could it – happen again?
We got the call just after three. No one knew if they were any nearer reaching a verdict, even though, earlier in the day, the judge had said he was prepared to accept a 10-1 majority. For all anyone knew, they were split 7-4, or 6-5, which meant a hung jury and a retrial.
My heart started racing: it was like being in the dressing room, waiting to go into the ring. I was all keyed up, knowing that where I was going there was nowhere to hide. Field and Gould were taken up with me, because they would be sentenced if the jury had reached a verdict on me. They already knew they were facing several years in prison, but I was clinging to the hope that I’d be acquitted and released that day.
I walked into the dock, leaving my co-defendants behind the locked door of an adjacent room. I was told to stand as the clerk of the court addressed the foreman of the jury.
‘Have you reached a verdict on Count Two?’ the clerk asked. ‘Answer Yes or No.’
The court was silent.
‘Yes.’
My face felt on fire. I was fidgeting with my shirt cuffs.
‘What is your verdict?’
I sensed all eyes from the public gallery on me. I was too tense to do anything but stare ahead, seeing nothing, just thinking that, in the next second, I’d hear the two words that would end my nightmare; two words that would spell freedom. And then, breaking the deathly quiet:
‘Guilty.’
Barristers started moving about and the judge was telling the jury something, but I just stood where I was, in a sort of trance. I was so sure I’d be acquitted I felt the jury had, for some reason, been asked to give their verdict on Count One again. I motioned to Helen Guest, one of Mr Goldberg’s team, a warm, friendly lady in her thirties, with a legal brain as sharp as her wit. ‘Could I have a word with Mr Goldberg, please?’ I asked her.
Goldberg came to the dock. ‘Was that guilty on the first charge?’ I wanted to know.
‘No, Charlie,’ he said, his face creased with disappointment. ‘It’s the second. I’m sick, totally sick. But try not to be too depressed. There are grounds for an appeal.’
I was so confused that I just stood there, not taking it in, and then I was aware of Field and Gould moving into the dock alongside me, and the judge telling the court that everyone had had a long day and that he would not pass sentence on the three of us that day; he would do it on Monday.
Saturday and Sunday were the longest, most worrying days of my life. It took a long time for the jury’s verdict to sink in and, to be truthful, I did not understand how they had reached it. While giving evidence, I’d sworn on oath that I’d never handled drugs, and I meant it: I would never dream of doing anything that would jeopardize me going to Chingford Cemetery to tend my Gary’s grave. That is everything to me.
For comfort that terrible weekend I looked at his photo more than ever and talked to him as though he were with me. God knows what the judge was going to do on Monday; throw the book at me, I shouldn’t wonder.
Whatever the sentence was going to be, I was relieved Gary would not be around to suffer it. He’d been such a soft, sensitive, innocent young man and, seeing his dad behind bars in the winter of his life would have destroyed him. I was pleased, in a strange, sad way, that my dear mum was not alive either. She had gone through enough with all that happened in the sixties, and I would not have wanted her to witness my humiliation. She was such a wonderful woman, and that Sunday I tried to keep my mind off what lay ahead by thinking about her and her lovely ways.
The next day, the public gallery was packed for the sentencing. There were the familiar faces of friends I’d seen over the final days of the trial, but there were people there for the first time. Funny, isn’t it, how certain people like to be in at the kill?
I had resigned myself to a long sentence. No matter how ludicrous it was to me, and everyone who knew me, I’d been set up as the linchpin of a deal that was, supposedly, going to swamp the streets with millions of pounds’ worth of cocaine. So, no doubt, I would get a sentence that would reflect that.
For an hour and a half Mr Kelsey-Fry went through the entire case again, then there were mitigations on behalf of the three of us.
Then the judge retired for twenty minutes.
When he came back, he wasted little time. Reading from typewritten statements, he said he was sentencing the three of us in ascending order of importance of our crime.
He gave Bobby Gould five years and Ronnie Field nine.
Then, turning to me, he said: ‘Charles Kray, you have been found guilty on both counts by the jury on overwhelming evidence. You showed yourself ready, willing and able to lend yourself to any criminal enterprise which became known to you. There was never a real question of entrapment of you by these officers, but, when caught, you cried foul. I’m pleased the jury saw through that hollow cry: infiltration by officers is an important tool in society’s fight against crime. Throughout this case, you professed your abhorrence against drugs, but the jury’s verdict has shown your oft-repeated protestations to be hypocrisy. Those who deal in Class A drugs can expect justice from the courts, but little mercy. Eight years on Count One, twelve years on Count Two, to run concurrently.’
I was shocked by the sentence; but, after listening to the judge for nine weeks, I knew it was going to be severe. What did hurt, though, was being accused of hypocrisy. It’s one of my pet hates; I can’t bear double standards.
When asked if I had anything to say, again I failed to do myself justice. Don’t ask me why, but all I could think to say was:
‘All my life I have advised people, particularly young people, never to be involved in drugs. I went along with the stories, as the officers did. But they are all untrue. It was only to get money.
‘I swear on my son’s grave that I have never handled drugs in my life. The jury have got it wrong for me before and the jury have got it wrong again.’
And then I was led out of court and back along the tunnel to the High Security Block and to my cell and to a life of God knows what.