'My cousins the Krays had a certain charm - but they were violent, nasty people'
It was the height of the Swinging Sixties – a pairfect time to be alive and famous.
Bands like The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were topping the charts, fashion models Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy were queens of the catwalk. Comics Morecambe and Wise were making the nation laugh on TV. And in London, another duo were becoming the toast of trendy West End society.
But they were far from funny. Gangland twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray – who would have been 90 this week – ran an empire fuelled by extortion, violence and murder. Yet the rich and famous couldn’t get enough of them. They rubbed shoulders with Hollywood stars like Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland who graced the bars and clubs they ran.
Top fashion photographer David Bailey regularly snapped them while the suited and booted brothers were courted by peers, politicians, actors and sportsmen who happily quaffed champagne in their Kensington haunt Esmerelda’s Barn. Yet in their gangland world on the other side of town, the controlling Krays were better known for a bloody reign of terror fuelled by violence, protection rackets – and eventually murder.
Carry On star Barbara Windsor even visited Reg, right, in prison (Getty Images)Today it remains a mystery why so many respectable, famous people were drawn towards monsters renowned for cutting up anyone who crossed them. But it would be the twins’ own obsession with the world of celebrities and the rich and powerful that would send their egos spinning out of control, finally helping to bring them down.
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Their second cousin Kim Peat witnessed the lure they had as a young child living two doors from their home on Vallance Road in Bethnal Green. Kim, now 63, recalls one of Hollywood’s biggest stars turning up for tea with Ronnie and Reggie’s mum. “My nan came round and said, ‘You’ll never guess who has just been in our Violet’s house – Judy Garland’.
She was sat at the kitchen table singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow. She’d been in one of Ronnie and Reggie’s clubs and they’d befriended her and invited her round. “My mum went to one of their clubs when Judy was there. They chatted all night and met up afterwards. Reggie loved that Judy liked my mum.”
While Kim is under no illusion about the twins’ crimes, she says: “They had a sort of charm. But their crimes were really bad.” She recalls the Krays – who both boxed in their youth – helping out hard-up American fighters hanging out in their clubs, including Sonny Liston, who lost his world heavyweight title to the up-and-coming Cassius Clay.
Kim with Violet Kray“They’d put money in their pocket and take them out to all the dos,” she says. The prestige of rubbing shoulders with celebrities only helped boost the twins’ fame. Kim says: “Ronnie, in particular, loved being famous. He liked to go into a pub or club and for everyone to turn and look. Reggie was more laid back.”
And David Meikle, author of The Krays: The Prison Years, believes celebrities got kudos in turn from being seen out with the twins. The attraction was the power they wielded. “They controlled everything – clubs, pubs. So that attracted boxers, film stars, lots of celebs at the time. They moved in very glamorous circles.
“The Krays may have been thugs but they had respectability, with their suits and ties and that stern look commanding respect,” he says. TV presenter Fred Dinenage – chosen by the Krays to write their autobiography – frequently visited the pair in prison. He says stage and screen stars competed to be seen with them. And they even helped launch one pop singer on the road to fame.
Ronnie spotted him while visiting a random small club. Fred writes: “Ron gasped, in awe of the attractive young singer. A voice from his entourage confirmed it was David Essex. Ron said he could sing in the Krays’ club El Morocco in Soho the next weekend. And so the twins gave David Essex his first break.”
David Essex in his heyday (Hull Daily Mail / Hull Live)Fred adds that the grateful Hold Me Close star sent the twins his personal thanks. The Krays’ downfall came in 1969 when both got life for murder after Ronnie shot dead rival gangster George Cornell in the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel, and Reggie stabbed another villain Jack “the hat” McVitie to death at a party. But still celebrities could not stay away from them. Barbara Windsor visited Reggie in Parkhurst, while Debbie Harry visited Ron in Broadmoor – as did Richard Burton, researching a film role.
Kate Beal Blythe, who made documentary The Krays: The Prison Years in 2016, says: “At Parkhurst, all around Reg’s cell were photos of Barbara Windsor, Shirley Bassey, Judy Garland, Al Capone and George Raft.” And the pair took every opportunity to keep their names in the public eye, from behind bars.
When 15-year-old Geordie Steve Wraith wrote to Reggie with an idea to sell Kray Twins T-shirts they both agreed – as long as they got 70% of the profits. “They sold like hot cakes,” says Steve who visited both twins inside. “The first time I met Ron he was in Broadmoor. Because it was a hospital he didn’t have a prison uniform. He was in a dark blue pinstripe suit, a white shirt with RK embossed on his pocket, a silk tie, gold tie-pin, gold horn-rimmed glasses and Gucci shoes.”
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Now an actor, and admitting his teenage naïvety, Steve believes their narcissism was their downfall. “They courted publicity. To get away with murder, putting themselves in the spotlight was the wrong move.” The one person they loved the most never turned her back on them. Kim tells how their mum Violet used to take her to see them behind bars during holidays on the Isle of Wight where they were first held in prison together.
Krays helped boxers like world champ Sonny Liston (Getty Images)Kim says: “Violet would take me or my brother. I always wrote to them. But my brother wanted nothing to do with them. He said it wasn’t right to take money off ordinary people running pubs and shops, threatening them. Looking back on it all as an adult now, I just think ‘oh my god’. They were violent, nasty people.”
Killers long gone but fame lives on
Ronnie Kray died in a prison hospital in 1995 and Reggie followed five years later after being released with terminal cancer – yet their infamy lives on in its own tourism industry. At the former Littledean Jail in the Forest of Dean, a “crime through time” museum includes Ronnie’s wedding suit, the suit Reggie wore to mum Violet’s funeral, and sawn-off shotguns, knuckledusters and a crossbow said to have belonged to the Krays’ gang.
Tom Hardy as the Kray twins in Legend (PA)There are East End walking tours of Kray twins’ haunts, including the Blind Beggar murder pub and Vallance Road where they grew up. Films, books and documentaries have kept their evil reign alive. In 1990 film The Krays, Spandau Ballet brothers Martin and Gary Kemp played the twins. And when Tom Hardy played both in 2015 film Legend, it took £35m at the box office.
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