Kray twins

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Reginald "Reggie" Kray (second from left) in 1968

The twin brothers Reginald "Reggie" Kray (born October 24, 1933 in Hoxton , London ; † October 1, 2000 in Norwich ) and Ronald "Ronnie" Kray (born October 24, 1933 in Hoxton, London; † March 17, 1995 in Crowthorne , Berkshire ) were British criminals who ruled organized crime in London's East End in the 1950s and 1960s . With their gang The Firm , the Krays were involved in armed robbery , arson and extortion . They were feared in the criminal milieu because they intimidated or murdered competitors and witnesses with threats .

As nightclub owners, the twins cultivated social contacts with politicians and other celebrities such as Diana Dors , Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland . They gained some notoriety themselves in the 1960s as they were portrayed by photographer David Bailey and interviewed on television. Her criminal background has been played down and the police investigation hampered because of her relationships with influential politicians.

On May 9, 1968, Scotland Yard arrested the Kray twins, who were eventually sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in 1969. Ronnie Kray died in Broadmoor Hospital , a closed psychiatric ward , and Reggie Kray was seriously ill eight weeks before his death in August 2000.

Early years

Ronnie and Reggie Kray were born ten minutes apart as identical twin sons of gold buyer and junk dealer Charlie Kray (1907-1983) and his wife Violet Lee (1909-1982). The closest family circle included the older brother Charlie junior (1926-2000) and a sister named Violet, born in 1929, who died at an early age. The Krays were a classic London working class family of so-called " Cockneys ":

The Krays were an old-fashioned East End family: self sufficient, very clannish and devoted to each other. Their ancestors had arrived in Britain from Austria, and the twins had Irish, Jewish and Romany (gypsy) blood in their veins.

“ The Krays were an old-fashioned family from the East End: self-sufficient, very family-oriented and devoted to one another. Their ancestors came to Great Britain from Austria, and the twins had Irish, Jewish, and Roma (Gypsy) blood in their veins. "

- Thomas L. Jones

The two twin brothers grew up mainly in the care of their mother, grandmother and aunts due to the frequent absence of their father. At the age of three, both survived diphtheria , which may have abnormalities later in life. Ronnie nearly died in 1942 from a head injury inflicted by his twin brother in battle, prompting Violet Kray to promise her sons never to fight each other again. The twin brothers have been inseparable since then, but developed different traits. While Reggie Kray liked to be in company, his brother Ronnie was more of a loner. Both were quick-tempered, and their outbursts of anger were as legendary as they were feared. Ronnie, who was also an avid gun collector, later suffered from mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse.

In 1938 the Kray von Hoxton family moved to another London borough, Bethnal Green . When the Second World War broke out , the father of the Kray twins evaded conscription. The maternal grandfather, Jimmy “Cannonball” Lee, introduced both boys to boxing . After a period as successful amateur boxers, they both started professional careers at the age of 19 .

In military service

At the local level, the Kray twins soon became notorious for the criminal activities of a gang they led. Several times they narrowly avoided being arrested. In 1952 they were called up for two years of military service with the Royal Fusiliers . They spent these two years either deserting or in military prison ; so they beat up the training sergeant . They were incarcerated in Cornhill Military Prison in Shepton Mallet for nine months , where they continued to attract attention, such as lighting their beds, scalding a guard with hot tea or handcuffing another guard to the bars. In 1954 they were dishonorably discharged.

Criminal career

The Krays as a nightclub owner

After their release from the army , the Kray twins bought a rundown billiards club in Bethnal Green, from where they began extorting protection money . By the late 1950s, the Krays were involved in numerous crimes such as kidnapping , robbery and arson . The resulting profit was invested in other clubs and real estate.

In 1960 Ronnie Kray, nicknamed The Colonel , was imprisoned for 18 months. During this detention, the doctors first recognized him as having a serious mental disorder. His brother Reggie helped him escape custody by switching roles during a visit. While Ronnie was hiding, he became paranoid that grew so bad that the family contacted the police, who arrested him again and placed him in a hospital.

During this time Reggie Kray came as a result of protection rackets in the possession of the night and game club Esmeralda's Barn in Knightsbridge , in which celebrities frequented, whereby the Krays could increase their influence. Throughout the 1960s, the Krays were widely regarded as wealthy and charming nightclub owners and part of Swinging London . Their reputation was based on their non-criminal activities and relationships with the nobility, members of parliament and famous artists.

They were the best years of our lives. They called them the swinging sixties. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were rulers of pop music, Carnaby Street ruled the fashion world […] and me and my brother ruled London. We were fucking untouchable [...]

“Those were the best years of our life. They were called the Swinging Sixties. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were the rulers of pop music, Carnaby Street ruled the fashion world [...] and me and my brother ruled London. We were damn inviolable [...] "

- Ronnie Kray

Friends and enemies

The Blind Beggar pub , where Ronnie Kray shot and killed the gangster George Cornell on March 9, 1966

In 1964, the tabloid Sunday Mirror published an article reporting Scotland Yard's investigation into a then criminally illegal homosexual relationship between a man from the London underworld and a Conservative MP. Rumor has it that they were Ronnie Kray and Lord Robert Boothby . A week later the article appeared in Stern with the names of those involved.

Although the Sunday Mirror did not publicly name names, the twins threatened the journalists involved, and Boothby threatened legal action. The newspaper then withdrew the story and printed an apology. The newspaper's editor-in-chief was sacked and Boothby received £  40,000 in compensation in an out-of-court settlement. As a result, other newspapers avoided reporting on the Krays' relations and criminal activities. But there were rumors that Ronnie Kray also had a sexual relationship with MP Tom Driberg of the Labor Party .

These relationships and the fear of witnesses to testify against the Krays significantly hampered the police investigation. Sometimes the twins also used their physical resemblance to create alibis for one another .

On December 12, 1966, the Krays helped Frank Mitchell, a convicted murderer and former inmate of Ronnie Kray, escape from Dartmoor prison . Mitchell, who felt innocently convicted, hoped to attract public attention with the escape in order to obtain a renegotiation of his case. The Krays hid the tall and mentally disturbed man in a friend's apartment. He disappeared without a trace. Freddie Foreman, a former member of The Firm, wrote in his autobiography that Mitchell was shot and his body was sunk in the sea. His unpredictability has made him a burden.

On March 9, 1966, Ronnie Kray shot and killed George Cornell, a member of the rival Richardson gang, in The Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel . Cornell had called Ronnie a " fat poof " at the Astor Club at Christmas 1965 . However, according to Kray, the reason for the murder was not this insult. He said Cornell threatened him and his brother. Several deaths had previously occurred in the course of clashes between the two gangs. As all the witnesses had been intimidated, the police investigation did not come to a conclusion this time either.

In October 1967, it was suspected that Ronnie Kray had instigated his brother to murder Jack The Hat McVitie. McVitie was a member of the firm who was supposed to kill another man for a payment of £ 1,500 but failed to do the job. After meeting McVitie at a party, Reggie Kray held a gun to his head and pulled the trigger twice without any shots firing. Ronnie Kray then put the man in a headlock , and Reggie Kray killed McVitie by stabbing him in the face, stomach and neck. McVity's body was never found.

Arrest and conviction

Shortly after McVitie's disappearance, police officer Leonard Read was promoted to the Scotland Yard Homicide Squad. His first assignment was to stop the Krays who were looking at several country estates for a purchase. Read had previously investigated the Krays, but could not break the wall of silence in the East End. In 1967, however, Read had collected ample evidence, testimony and other evidence against the twins, but no charges were brought.

In early 1968 the Kray brothers wanted to get explosives in Glasgow to use to build a car bomb. Their source, Alan Bruce Cooper, hired Paul Elvey to buy it. Elvey was arrested by police in Scotland and admitted that he was involved in three unsuccessful attempts at murder. However, Cooper said he was an employee of the United States Department of the Treasury trying to prove links between the Mafia and the Krays. Read tried to set a trap for the Krays with the help of Cooper, but they stayed away from him.

Eventually, Scotland Yard decided to arrest the Krays on the evidence they had, in the hopes that more witnesses would testify if they were in jail. On May 8, 1968, the Kray brothers and 15 other members of the firm were arrested. Numerous witnesses came forward to testify against them because they were no longer afraid. The Krays and 14 other gang members were convicted; a gang member only spent a short time in prison because the man had given extensive testimony.

The Kray brothers were sentenced to life in prison for the murders of Cornell and McVitie, with a minimum of 30 years, but not for any other offenses they committed. Her brother Charlie was sentenced to ten years in prison for aiding and abetting.

Imprisonment and death

Ronnie Kray was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and spent the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital. In 1995 he died of a heart attack at the age of 61.

Reggie Kray was treated as a Category A prisoner, which meant that he had almost no personal freedoms and was not allowed to meet other prisoners. In his later years, he was downgraded to Category C.

On August 11, 1982, Ronnie and Reggie Kray were allowed under the strictest security precautions to attend their mother's funeral, but not at the funeral service. Celebrities and underworld greats attended the service. To avoid further publicity, the twins decided not to attend their father's funeral seven months later.

In 1985, employees at Broadmoor Hospital , where Ronnie Kray had been admitted, discovered a business card that revealed that the twins - although they were housed in different locations - were a prosperous agency with their brother Charlie and a fourth accomplice who was not incarcerated called Krayleigh Enterprises for the placement of bodyguards . It turned out that Frank Sinatra had hired 18 employees from that agency that same year. There was no legal handle to shut down this company.

While in prison, Reggie became a born again Christian . He was released on August 26, 2000 because he was terminally ill with cancer. He spent the last weeks of his life with his wife Roberta, whom he married while in prison in July 1997.

The funeral procession of both brothers was attended by tens of thousands of people. Their shared grave is in Chingford Mount Cemetery ( 51 ° 37 ′  N , 0 ° 1 ′  E ) in the village of Chingford in the far northeast of the London Borough of Waltham Forest .

The older brother, Charlie Kray, was released from prison in 1975 after seven years in prison. He was arrested again in 1997 after evidence of his involvement in smuggling cocaine worth £ 69 million. He died on April 4, 2000, six months before Reggie.

Personal

Ronnie Kray was bisexual , as evidenced by his own statements in his book My Story and to the writer Robin McGibbon on the Kray Tapes . In the 1960s, he wanted to marry a woman named Monica, with whom he had dated for three years. Before the wedding took place, Ronnie Kray was incarcerated, and while Monica was married to a former lover of Kray, the two of them texted each other while he was in custody.

In an interview with the author John Pearson , Ronnie Kray named Gordon of Khartoum as his role model: Gordon was like me, 'omosexual, and he met his death like a man. When it's time for me to go, I hope I do the same. ("Gordon was like me, homosexual, and he met his death like a man. When it's time for me to go, I hope I do just that.") (Cockneys often don't pronounce the "H" what is called dropped-H , hence '' omosexual ' in the English quote.)

Reggie Kray was married to Frances Shea for eight weeks in 1965, but the marriage was never formally divorced. She is said to have taken her own life in 1967. In 2002, however, a former lover of Reggie Kray stated that Frances was murdered by him out of jealousy. A former cellmate of Reggie, however, reported that the latter had confessed to him that Ronnie Kray had killed Frances out of jealousy without his brother's knowledge and confessed this to him two days later. Ronnie felt that Frances was a threat to the fraternal relationship. She was buried in the Krays family grave. In 1969, Frances Shea's mother asked for her daughter to be transferred to her own grave under her maiden name. Reggie Kray had to give his consent to this reburial, but he refused.

Before 1964, Reggie Kray had a one-night stand with the actress Barbara Windsor , whose character Peggy Mitchell, played from 1994 in the popular BBC series EastEnders, is recognizably based on that of Violet Kray, the mother of the twins.

There have been longstanding campaigns, including with prominent support, that the twins should be released early, something the government always refused to do. One of the main reasons was that the imprisoned brothers continued to attract attention through violence against their fellow inmates. After the broadcast of the feature film The Krays with the brothers Martin and Gary Kemp from Spandau Ballet in the leading roles, the 1990 campaign took off for a while.

In 2009, the UK broadcast the documentary The Gangster and the Pervert Peer , which showed that Ronnie Kray, who had a thing for handsome young men, also raped them. The film also looked at Kray's relationship with Lord Bob Boothby, as did research by the Daily Mirror .

The Krays in film, television and music

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael J. Wood: Ancestry of the Kray twins on wargs.com , accessed February 5, 2012 (English)
  2. ↑ Thomas L. Jones: The Kray Twins: Brothers In Arms , p. 2: Growing Up in the Crime Library , accessed on February 5, 2013 (English)
  3. ↑ Thomas L. Jones: The Kray Twins: Brothers In Arms , p. 2: Growing Up in the Crime Library , accessed on February 5, 2013 (English)
  4. ^ Reggie Kray with his grandfather , 1964, accessed on telegraph.co.uk on February 5, 2013 (English)
  5. ↑ Fashion and portrait photographer Brian Duffy dies aged 76 v. June 5, 2010 from telegraph.co.uk , accessed February 5, 2013
  6. ↑ Thomas L. Jones: The Kray Twins: Brothers In Arms , p. 5: In and Out in the Crime Library , accessed on February 5, 2013 (English)
  7. ↑ Thomas L. Jones: The Kray Twins: Brothers In Arms , p. 6: He's my brother in the Crime Library , accessed on February 5, 2013 (English)
  8. ↑ Metropolitan Police: The Krays , accessed February 5, 2013.
  9. ^ Ronny Kray: My Story . Quoted from: The Krays on gangland.net , accessed February 5, 2013
  10. ↑ David Barrett: Letters shed new light on Kray twins scandal on telegraph.co.uk v. July 26, 2009 , accessed February 5, 2013
  11. ↑ Lord Boothby on spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk
  12. ^ Obituary of Reggie Kray , BBC News. October 1, 2000. Retrieved August 16, 2011. 
  13. ↑ In July 2009, letters between Ronnie Kray and Lord Boothby were auctioned off, from which it emerged that the two men had indeed been more closely related. The Telegraph v. July 26, 2009 (English)
  14. ^ "Lords of The Underground," Channel 4 TV, June 23, 1997 + The Spectator, June 28, 1997
  15. ^ A b Metropolitan Police: The Kray twins - jailed in 1969 ( memento of July 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ); s. a. nationalarchives.gov.uk
  16. ↑ Frank Mitchell on thekrays.co.uk ( Memento of the original from July 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.thekrays.co.uk
  17. ↑ a b [htt: //www.met.police.uk/history/krays.htm Metropolitan Police: The Krays . October 28, 2007. Retrieved August 16, 2011]
  18. ^ Leonard Read: Nipper Read. The Man Who Nicked The Krays . Time Warner Paperbacks 2001. pp. 291-292. ISBN 0-7515-3175-8
  19. ↑ 1968: Krays held on suspicion of murder , BBC News. . May 8, 1968. Retrieved April 4, 2010. 
  20. ^ Fiona Hamilton: The Kray twins . In: The Times . Retrieved April 4, 2010. 
  21. ↑ 1982: Krays let out for mother's funeral. Retrieved October 28, 2007
  22. ↑ Vanessa Allen: How the Krays ran a protection business for Sinatra and Co from behind bars , Daily Mail (online). January 2, 2010. Retrieved August 28, 2010. 
  23. ↑ Can you really predict a prisoner's death? Retrieved August 6, 2010
  24. ^ Ronald "Ronnie" Kray , entry on findagrave.com (accessed February 5, 2013).
  25. ^ Reginald Kray , entry on findagrave.com (accessed February 5, 2013).
  26. ↑ Gangster Charlie Kray this BBC; Retrieved October 28, 2007
  27. ^ Ron Kray: My Story , p. 94.
  28. ^ John Pearson: Psychopaths on parade: How National Service transformed the Krays into gangland thugs , Daily Mail (online). August 24, 2010. Retrieved June 12, 2019. 
  29. ↑ a b Frances Kray (née Shea) (died 1967), Wife of Reginald ('Reggie') Kray . National Portrait Gallery (London) . Retrieved June 12, 2019.
  30. ^ Alan Travis: The disputed resting place of a mobster's unhappy bride - How officialdom was powerless in row over grave of Reggie Kray's wife . In: The Guardian , July 10, 2004. 
  31. ↑ Amelia Hill: Kray's deathbed secrets revealed . In: The Guardian , March 25, 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2019. 
  32. ↑ Kray 'murdered brother's wife' , BBC News . January 12, 2002. Retrieved June 12, 2019. 
  33. ↑ The Gangster & the Pervert Peer on tv.sky.com v. February 16, 2009 ( Memento from February 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive )