Inside the Firm - The Untold Story of The Krays' Reign of Terror (2 page)

It was, nevertheless, a ghastly thing to happen to anybody. It was horrifying. It will live with me for the rest of my life.

It happened on Saturday, 28 October 1967, a day when Chris and I had arranged to meet two brothers called Alan and Ray Mills to introduce them to the twins. The Mills brothers were from a respected family in west London. We had friends all over the city and because of our rivalry with the Richardson gang, who were running a major operation south of the river, it was nice to have allies.

Ray Mills was very friendly with one of the hardest men in London, Pretty Boy Roy Shaw. He was a handful. Frank Warren, who went on to become a well-known boxing promoter, originally made his name through promoting fights with Shawey. At this time Roy was in a maximum-security mental hospital. He and three other men had got fifteen years each for armed robbery on a security van. Roy Shaw did the three guards on his own. A couple of years after being sentenced, he was found insane and sent to Broadmoor. Now Shawey wanted the twins to send something to him there, so he had contacted Ray Mills, who in turn had got in touch with Chris.

We met the Mills brothers at seven o’clock in a pub called the White Bear in Aldgate. I made a phone call to find out where the twins were, and we then went on to the Carpenters Arms, the Krays’ own pub in Bethnal Green.

We arrived to find Ronnie and Reggie with their Mum and Dad, Violet and old man Charlie. There was young Charlie and his wife Dolly, Ronnie Bender, Albert Donaghue, Connie Whitehead, Scotch Jack Dickson, Sammy Lederman, Harry Jew Boy and Ronnie Hart, a cousin of the twins. A few girls were there too – Blonde Vicky, who eventually married Ronnie Hart, Reggie’s girlfriend Carol Thompson, and Bubbles, who was the girlfriend of Frankie Shea, Reggie’s brother-in-law, but who went out with Ronnie Bender in the end.

Everyone was on good form. Ronnie shook hands with the Mills
brothers and then, as usual, left Reggie to do the talking. Ronnie was quite happy standing to one side, looking smart with a gold chain on his waistcoat. The men always wore a three-piece. Everyone was drinking, everyone was happy and Reggie was chattery. Lovely. Come eleven o’clock, Reg said, ‘We’re going for a meal, me and Carol.’ As far as I knew, Ronnie was going home.

Chris and I took the Mills brothers to the Regency Club in Stoke Newington, a place they had heard of and wanted to see. It was run by the Barry brothers, Johnny and Tony, who were paying protection money. The Regency had three clubs in one – the top part, the middle part and our private club downstairs. We stayed in the main, middle bar until midnight and then went for a private drink.

And who was at the bar downstairs? Jack The Hat. He made a beeline for us. He knew Ray Mills from the Moor, for they had both done time at Dartmoor. We all had a drink together, although we knew there was bad feeling between Jack and the twins. It had got to the stage where he was going to get a hiding, but the twins weren’t about that night and there was nothing really to concern me. My brother Nicky was there with a girl, and there must have been about another fifty people.

All of a sudden, there was a tap on my shoulder. It was Tony Barry. He said, ‘Have you got a minute?’

I followed him out into the office and there were Reggie Kray and Ronnie Hart. I had a feeling something wasn’t right here. Hart said, ‘Is Jack down there?’

I said he was.

He asked, ‘How many people are down there?’

Reggie wanted to know if there were any women down there. He was biting his lip, and he’d obviously had a few to drink. This wasn’t the Reggie I had left an hour ago.

He said, ‘Bring Jack round to Blonde Carol’s.’ I’d never been to
Blonde Carol’s; I didn’t even know her. Chris knew her; Jack The Hat knew her. She was an old girlfriend of his. She was a club girl, out for a drink, and she didn’t care who it was with. She lived in Evering Road, not far from the Regency.

I went back downstairs and I said to Chris, ‘They’re having a party at Blonde Carol’s.’

Jack broke in, ‘Party, what party? Come on, let’s all go.’ He was loving it. He didn’t know what was waiting there.

Neither did I. I knew there was a chance of him copping a
right-hander
, but little did I know that Tony Barry had taken a gun round there…

Jack was driving a cream and blue Mark II Zodiac. He was wearing a checked suit, a brown trilby hat with a brown band around it and black shoes. He was drunk on Bacardi and Coke. Chris was in the passenger seat and I was in the back with the Mills brothers, who thought it was going to be a normal party.

Jack The Hat was the first one down the stairs into the basement flat. I was directly behind him. Chris followed me, and then came the Mills brothers. In the room were Ronnie Kray and two boys called Terry and Trevor, who were friends of his, one dark and the other fair. Reggie and Ronnie Hart were there, and I saw Ronnie Bender in the kitchen.

I was very surprised to see Ronnie Kray there because I had thought he was going home. He came over to me, pushed past me and did Jack right underneath the eye with a sherry glass. There was a two-inch cut, and his hat was knocked off.

Ron said, ‘I’ve had enough of you, you fucking cunt. Keep your mouth shut. Now fuck off.’

That’s all Ron said and, having said it, he turned back and walked over to where the record player was.

Jack walked back towards the door, slamming his fist into his palm, saying, ‘Who the fucking hell do they think they are?’ And he
punched a window. It was later said that he broke a window trying to dive through it to escape. That’s not true. He just punched the pane out.

Next thing, Reggie was on him. This was the first time I’d seen the gun. He tried to shoot him in the back of the head, and I jumped back expecting an explosion – which didn’t come. The gun wouldn’t work. The Mills brothers were standing there in total shock.

As soon as Reggie pulled the gun, I realised it had gone too far. It put us in a very dangerous position. Unwittingly, Chris had helped me to set Jack up by taking him to Blonde Carol’s, so now it was our row too. And the moment we got involved like that, there was no way out of it. Jack would come back at us. He was more than capable of doing to us what we ended up doing to him. He’d threatened Reggie more than once, and he was known to be a man who carried, and used, a gun. Whatever way, Jack The Hat was going that night.

When the gun failed to go off, I said to Chris, ‘Go and get one of ours.’ At that point, I knew we might have to do him ourselves.

Chris went home to our father’s house, about half a mile away, to get a Smith & Wesson .38 police special.

By now Reggie had let go of Jack, who was sitting on the sofa and saying: ‘What’s all this? What have I done?’

Reggie said, ‘You know what you’ve fucking done.’ The gun came out again. Again it just clicked. ‘They gave me a fucking duff ’un,’ said Reg.

The two boys, Terry and Trevor, jumped on Jack and started punching into him. Ronnie Hart was thumping him. The next thing I saw was Reggie with a knife. It was happening so fast. There was a carving knife and it was held in Reggie’s hand, Ronnie Hart was getting Jack in a bear hug round his neck, and Hart was shouting, ‘Do him, Reg, go on, Reg, do him,’ words which Ronnie Kray has been falsely accused of yelling.

It has also been stated that Ronnie Kray shouted at Reggie, ‘I’ve done mine, you do yours.’ Ronnie said no such thing. He took no part in it, and never said a word.

Jack The Hat showed no fear throughout. Contrary to other reports he wasn’t dripping with cold sweat, and he never uttered the alleged famous last words: ‘I’ll be a man but I don’t want to die like one.’ That’s a load of crap. Jack said nothing. I doubt if he even saw it coming.

I saw the first one go and I turned away then. I walked out of the room. I don’t think I believed it was really happening. He got it three times with the knife, but he must have been dead with the first one.

The scene went quiet. I walked back into the room. I didn’t want to look, but I had to. I saw the blood. I saw Reggie pointing the knife into his neck as if he was trying to find his jugular vein. The knife was arched. And then it went straight through. His neck opened up from ear to ear. I could see right in there. All I remember is him sliding down. Reggie didn’t pin him to the floor with the knife, as other people have claimed. The ones in the belly had taken the blood out of him. It was absolutely everywhere, soaking all over the place. It was like someone got a bucket of red paint and threw it over the floor. There was a gurgling sound from Jack, and all of a sudden more blood came out of his mouth and ran all down him.

I’ve seen some bad things in my time – I’ve seen men badly stabbed, near death – but this was worse, like nothing I’d ever seen. If you were going to describe a gangland killing, that’s how you’d describe it. It looked like what it was. And I’ll never forget the smell. Death smells like something singeing, like hair and blood burning, but with some different, heavy odour about it, a terrible, terrible smell that never leaves you.

I’m convinced to this day that Reggie didn’t realise what he’d done. That wasn’t the Reggie Kray I’d known for all those years. He
was like a different person. When it was over, he stood there looking, for a second. The knife was twisted to bits. The gun, a brand-new Mauser .32 automatic, was lying there useless.

Jack was on the floor in the middle of the room. His hat was about a foot away from him, all crumpled up. I’ll never forget his eyes. They were staring up at the ceiling. Strangely enough, he looked peaceful lying there. He wasn’t in any shock, from what I saw.

Chris wandered back in towards the end of all this, with the gun that we no longer needed. The deed was done. And then, suddenly, everybody seemed to snap out of it.

Ronnie Bender came in. ‘What’s happened, what’s happened?’

Someone said, ‘Look on the floor and you’ll see what’s happened.’

The two boys and the Mills brothers were running out of the room. Reggie Kray was wiping his hands. He’d cut himself. He turned to me and said, ‘Get rid of that, Tony,’ and with that he, his brother and Ronnie Hart were gone.

I was left in the flat with Chris, Ronnie Bender and Connie Whitehead, who’d just appeared on the scene. We’ve got a body on our hands, we’ve got a flat covered in blood, it’s about one o’clock on a Sunday morning and everything’s got to be taken care of. Where do you begin? We were up to our necks in it now. We went out for a drink and we wound up with this.

We got an eiderdown out of the bedroom and laid it on the floor. As we tried to move Jack, we had to be careful. We were worried about his head falling off because of the huge cut across his neck. We rolled him gently over. Everything was hanging out of his stomach. His liver fell out, and we scooped it up with a little shovel and burned it on the fire which was going in the grate.

We emptied his pockets. He had about £40 on him, all covered
in blood, and a few papers, which we burned along with his watch. The bits of carpet where the heavy blood was were burnt immediately. We took his keys, three of them on a ring.

Finally we got him wrapped up in this eiderdown, and then we had the problem of moving him upstairs. He weighed about 16 stone.

My intention was to burn the house down. As far as I knew there was nobody indoors. We would get a couple of gallons of petrol, soak the lot, let it go and it would be dismissed as just a normal fire. I went out into the passageway, but as I reached the flight of stairs I saw two young children, aged about two and four, leaning over the stairs from the second floor. They immediately put an end to the original plan.

We finally got Jack up into the hallway. I had his legs and the others had the front of him. The idea now was to get him into the boot of his motor, which Ronnie Bender had pulled round from the side of the house. The offside headlight was broken.

We opened the boot, but it was full of junk and we couldn’t get him in there. So we had to put him inside the car, on the floor between the front and back seats. It took fifteen minutes to get him there because people were wandering about: we were once halfway out the door when a copper came along, and we had to shove Jack back into the house. Once he was in the car we threw another cover over him and I went back into the flat to get his hat, which we put in with him.

Inside the flat Connie Whitehead continued cleaning, with another couple of people who had been called in, while we decided what we were going to do with the body. It had to be taken away from the scene, so we agreed to move it to the other side of the water, south of the river.

Nobody wanted to drive it. Whatever made me say it I don’t know, but I agreed. ‘All right, I’ll drive it.’

Chris said: ‘While you’re driving the car, we’re with you all the way.’ Ronnie Bender drove the car which followed me, with Chris as his passenger. They were both armed. If anybody had stopped me that night, they would have had to go with Jack.

We drove down Evering Road into Clapton, along Mare Street, Hackney, into Cambridge Heath Road, through Commercial Road and into the Blackwall Tunnel. It was a quarter to two in the morning.

We came out the other side and about half a mile from there I parked the car up beside an old derelict church down a side turning. My intention was to report it to the twins to let certain people know where it was so that it could be taken away and disposed of. Little did I realise it was on another firm’s manor, the Foreman manor, which could obviously cause problems for them if it were found.

I dropped Jack’s keys into the Regents Canal. If you come up from Hackney Road through Queensbridge Road, Haggerston, to the canal bridge, they are in there on the right. If they sent a diver down there today, he’d recover them.

We went back to Blonde Carol’s flat and carried on cleaning up. We finished at roughly five in the morning. There would be another clean-up the next night when Albert Donaghue went round and the place was completely redecorated and fitted out with new furniture, as though nothing had ever happened.