Original subtitles

It's quite clear from several sources that...

serious criminal players were contemplating

assassinating the twins.

It was chaotic. It wasn't good for business.

The Krays had to go.

Afraid they'd get me, so I decided to get ready first.

We decided to shoot him and cut his throat and leave him there

as a message to the rest of his cronies.

Everybody knew about the Kray twins

and the myth and the legend far outgrew the reality.

They felt they were indestructible

and, you know, they probably could have been for a lot longer,

but when he shot George Cornell,

I mean, that was the beginning of the end.

This house of cards is coming crashing down.

CROWD CLAMOURING

The thing that was important to the Krays

was the name, the legacy.

CHANTING: Let him out! Let him out!

Would they like the way their legend's made and the film's made?

They would have loved every minute of it,

because that's what they wanted.

MAN: How are you feeling today, Reggie?

All right. Yeah?

Yeah, I feel good. I'm relaxed.

In 1965...

you and Ronnie, you had the world at your feet.

Mm. Everything was great.

Mm. Fashion... pop art.

David Bailey taking photographs of you and Ronnie.

Entertainers and criminals were very closely... aligned.

What went wrong?

Ronnie Kray, he believes he's invincible.

He's walked into The Blind Beggar.

He's shot George Cornell.

He was very proud of his murder.

Ronnie kept on to Reggie, "Look, I've done one."

In other words, "I've killed George Cornell.

"You've got to do one."

So, the pressure was on him to do...

to do his murder, and along came Jack the Hat.

'My dad knew Jack the Hat,

'and he said he was a bit of a practical joker, you know?

'He used to get on people's nerves a bit, but he was all right.'

He weren't really a gangster, really. He just dabbled in things.

Jack the Hat McVitie had been given £1,000

to carry out some sort of contract killing for them,

which wasn't carried out,

and the money never came back to the Kray twins.

And when he was reprimanded for this,

he started to make threats against the twins.

He turned up at a club one night with a sawn-off shot gun.

He was gonna kill the Krays.

Which wasn't a wise thing to do anyway,

but it's worth stressing that Jack the Hat

was no shrinking violet.

This was a violent man, someone who could look after himself.

He lived in that violent world.

They knew that he was a tough guy,

and they didn't like that, tough guys going around,

saying they're not afraid of 'em.

This is an unpublished manuscript from Ronnie Hart.

Ronnie Hart is the cousin of the Krays

and he's then a member of the firm.

"Ronnie decreed that something would have to be done about McVitie.

"Ronnie called Reggie,

"and when Reggie was finished talking to Ronnie,

"his mood had changed completely.

"His lips twitched, and he began drinking one gin after another.

"Ronnie then told us all what was going to happen.

"He said McVitie was to die that night."

There was a party at Evering Road in Stoke Newington

at a flat of a woman called Blonde Carol's.

McVitie was invited, and he turned up.

DICK HOBBS: It becomes apparent that, this party,

this a killing zone.

'My name's Chris Lambrianou.

'My regret is, I did meet the Krays.

'On that night, I thought... "How can we get out of this?"

'We're going to Evering Road, Blonde Carol's place.'

Down the stairs we go.

Jack comes dashing by and goes into the room,

"Where's the party? Where's the girls?"

And so on and so forth.

Next thing, there's an argument, altercation.

Reggie pulls a gun out.

Gun don't work.

So, I've gone to walk out.

I said, "I didn't come down here for this."

You know, "I'm going home."

My brother, Tony, was still there.

When I spoke to my brother after the event,

Tony said that there was a fight when Reggie... the gun didn't work.

Jack smashed a window trying to get out.

So, in his manuscript, Ronnie Hart paints an horrific picture

of the murder and the details.

"Reg punched Jack in the face

"and then stuck the knife he was holding in his left

"into Jack's face, an inch or two below his right eye,

"and his face seemed to fall open.

"The blood spurted.

"Ronnie was yelling, 'Don't stop, Reg.

" 'Kill him, Reg. Do him in. Kill him.'

"Then Reg started to stab him in the stomach.

"He must have struck him five or six times with a knife.

"There was blood everywhere.

"Reggie then stabbed McVitie again in the chest

"and Jack slumped slowly to the floor."

This was Reg proving, in Ron's words,

that he was "a real man" and that he could commit violence,

that he could commit murder.

Then they've got to do away with the body.

By now, the drink is kind of leaving me a little bit

and I'm getting a bit sober, and I drive round to Evering Road.

And I'd gone in the front room, and there's Jack the Hat,

laying... full length.

I want him to be alive.

I... I don't want to...

I want him to jump up. I want him to be...

be the Jack I know, not... not this...

person laying there, not gonna be doing nothing.

The twins had walked out, and they've given instructions.

We're talking about very dangerous people here.

They've just killed a man. Are you gonna turn round and say,

"Oh, excuse me, Mr Kray, by the way, do you mind...

"You know, you killed him. You get rid of him. You clean up."

No.

They would turn on anybody. It could have been us.

We cleaned the blood up, and we...

I... we...

we give it a thorough clean, as best we can.

Not only that, we went round,

and we spoke to different people who were there,

told them to keep their mouths shut and everything else.

And we got Jack out and we tried to put him in the boot.

You can't put a fully grown man in the boot of a car.

A... A Ford Consul.

So, what we did, we managed to get him in and put him on the back seat.

The body is taken south...

..and Fred Foreman is given the task of getting rid of the body.

Now, Fred was known by this time as someone who was willing and able

to get rid of bodies.

They thought they were gonna get away with murder again,

because they had it under control.

They had nothing under control.

They couldn't control themselves.

They were not behaving like gangsters.

They were completely unpredictable.

They were upsetting a lot of people... for no reason.

They were getting fed up of them.

You know, you start killing your own, where do you stop?

And it is quite clear from several sources that

serious criminal players

were contemplating assassinating the twins

in order to bring some kind of equilibrium

back to the crime scene in London.

It was chaotic. It wasn't good for business.

The Krays had to go.

Nobody could trust them any more.

You understand why? It could be anybody.

They were evil, dangerous bastards.

EXHALES SLOWLY

'I would have been afraid they would have had me shot.

'But I decided to get ready first.'

And we waited outside the flat in Stratford.

I get a phone call saying, "Reggie is on his way."

We decided to shoot him and cut his throat and leave him there

as a message to the rest of his cronies.

And, er, he never arrived.

So we... decided to leave it to another night.

By now, Scotland Yard realised that

people were beginning to laugh

at the ineffectiveness of the police in arresting them.

They were embarrassing the police.

Protection rackets were still around, murders had gone unpunished.

People are still writing about "missing Frank Mitchell".

"Missing Jack the Hat".

"The unsolved murder of George Cornell".

Journalists are having a field day.

Their notoriety and their fame

became an embarrassment to Scotland Yard,

and, in the end, the Yard decided to put a stop to it.

Nipper Read starts to build a new team to go after the Krays.

He now knows that he has to be incredibly careful

with the witnesses that he's got and trying to...

give an appearance that they can look after them,

that the Krays will be arrested,

and that these people can now start talking to him.

But... it's hugely important for Nipper

to get the Krays off the streets.

My name is Maurice Harding, and, in the 1960s,

I was a detective constable in the Metropolitan Police.

May the 8th, 1968, I was home in bed here, fast asleep.

About three thirty in the morning...

PHONE RINGS

..I got a telephone call from someone

who told me to go to my office.

SIREN WAILS

When we were there, we received a telephone call

to go to Tintagel House.

Nipper Read came in, stood on a box. "Morning, gentlemen.

"We're going to arrest the Krays today."

I was on the Kray enquiry.

'I was the first woman WDC.'

Even my brother and my father, who were in the police force,

didn't know what job I was on at the time.

I wasn't allowed to tell anybody. I never told anybody.

SIREN WAILS

Nipper Read, he went into the Krays' flat.

And the milkman came at the same time.

They had to clear the milkman out the way,

say, "We're police officers."

When they got there, Reggie was with a woman,

and Ronnie was in bed with a 16-year-old boy.

I think somebody said,

"Good morning, Mr Read," or something ridiculous.

There was no fighting or anything like that.

They were told what they were arrested for and they came quietly.

But then, they were taken to West End Central Police Station,

and they were just... just in casual clothes.

And, as they went into the cell, they were shouting out,

"You won't keep us here very long."

LOCKS CLICKING

I was very proud to think that I'd been involved in something

as serious as that.

'We'd done the right thing, we'd got the right people,

'and all it was now was going to court and proving it.'

The 34-year-old ex-boxer brothers Reginald and Ronald

came here with Flying Squad officers at six o'clock this morning.

Two Murder Squad superintendents and a number of Fraud Squad officers

have been engaged in a special hush-hush operation.

It was headlines on the front page of the paper, "Kray twins arrested".

In the end, I think there were about two dozen people

that were picked up either that morning or the week after.

INDISTINCT POLICE RADIO CHATTER

The police came up to Birmingham and they arrested me up there.

And they took me to a place called Tintagel House.

I observed in the room itself photographs of all the firm.

There were photographs of the twins,

Ian Barrie, Tony, Ronnie Bender,

Ronnie Hart, Albert Donoghue, Jack Dickson,

so it was pretty serious business.

And Nipper Read says to me...

"About the McVitie murder...

"..as we've got it, you had nothing to do with it.

"Tell us about it."

I said, "I don't know what you're talking about."

I said, "I don't know anything."

I came up in a school...

..where you didn't rat on your friends, no matter what it was.

They kept their mouth shut, and you kept your mouth shut.

And he turned round, and he said, "I've had enough of you," he said.

"Charge him with murder."

People would never, ever talk about the Krays,

because they were so frightened of 'em, until they were in custody.

It was really, really in Nipper's interest,

before we did anything else, to arrest them,

and, having arrested them, we could then go on and get the evidence.

Nipper got a bit tense, wondering whether anybody

was gonna come forward and stick by what they'd said they'd say.

I'd have been worried, I think, myself,

if I'd given evidence against them

and that you were on your own and somebody'd come up

and try and get rid of you.

SIREN WAILS

The girl that was the barmaid at The Blind Beggar pub...

she witnessed the shooting of George Cornell in the pub.

And we had to try and... not talk her round,

but just tell her that she was doing the right thing

by telling the truth.

Very difficult. Took her kids out for walks.

Persuaded her that we were the right people.

Once the Krays were inside, this idea of a solid criminal firm

who were all going to stand up for the Krays and...

it virtually collapsed,

with the exception of their brother, Charlie...

..and the Lambrianou brothers.

I couldn't believe any of the firm were gonna turn,

to be honest with you.

I thought they were all loyal to the twins.

It didn't matter whether it was King Kong

or Little Billy round the corner... you didn't do it.

Albert Donoghue is Reggie Kray's right-hand man.

He acts as driver, muscle, and collector of protection rackets.

He was a serious criminal, and, I think, of all of the firm,

he probably had more respect.

Pressure was put on Albert... Donoghue to

take the pressure off of the Krays by admitting to...

to crimes that he hadn't committed.

The twins asked him, yeah.

Well, didn't ask him. Told him.

And that's what turned them people.

They thought, "No, I'm not gonna do that for you."

When I arrested Albert, he just sat down next to me,

put his shoes on and said, "OK, let's go."

And once he started to give evidence, really,

things started to go badly wrong for the Krays.

We were still investigating the murder of Jack the Hat McVitie.

Make yourself comfortable.

But Albert Donoghue, when he admitted what his connection...

was that he'd wallpapered the whole flat again.

We actually went back to Evering Road.

First thing I did was go and peel a corner off the wallpaper

and pull it up, and we found all this blood.

There was blood all up the wall.

The police, they are right on their case.

But... I was confident I'd be OK.

They'd beat the police before.

I thought they were quite capable of covering things up.

They couldn't see themselves going down.

My name's Ivan Lawrence.

I'm a Queen's Counsel, and I was junior counsel

in defence of Ronald Kray in the murder trials.

Didn't get a great deal of cooperation

from our client, Ronald Kray.

I remember... one occasion, when we were getting close to him

having to give evidence, I said to him...

.."Can we come down afterwards and go through your statement?

"Prepare you for giving defence?"

And he said, "No, no," he says, "I don't want you to come down tonight.

"I've got a nice young boy coming to see me tonight."

And I said, "Well, it's very important, Mr Kray,

"that we go through your evidence."

"Yes, we'll do it another day."

When Ronnie saw me in court, he wrote a little note,

which... he got one of the wardens to pass to me, saying,

"Dear Miss Lethbridge, you are more beautiful than ever.

"When I get out of this, I will take you to the moon."

Ronnie was... I would say he was off with the fairies.

Poor Violet had to go to the Old Bailey

with the shirts... the day before, for them to put on in the morning.

They had to be dressed better than anybody else in the court,

the barristers included.

So we sat there for the longest murder trial,

the most expensive murder trial ever.

39-day trial has cost about £150,000 in defence costs alone.

But what they did, they did a fascinating thing.

They put two murder trials together.

George Cornell...

..McVitie murder.

And they linked it by saying that Ronnie Kray said to Reggie,

"I've done mine. You do yours."

Still, to this day, I cannot get over it.

Two murder trials being put together.

A strong team of uniformed Special Patrol Group officers

has handled the escort duty of the prisoners

from various prisons to the court.

When the trial started at the Old Bailey...

..and I began to see...

Donoghue...

..and Ronnie Hart and others,

then it dawned on me... about the pictures.

The pictures was, on one side, those that were giving evidence

and those that weren't.

When Ronnie Hart got up and spoke in the box, I was shocked.

He was their flesh and blood.

He was a cousin of the Krays and well involved with them

in the murder of Jack the Hat McVitie.

And I took him to the trial

and sat in court with him while he gave his evidence.

He looked up from the dock, and Ronnie Kray was looking at him

with his fingers like this, and... BLOWS AIR

He'd done the old gun sign, as if to say,

"You're dead, young man."

But Ronnie just looked at him and mouthed, "Poof."

The Cornell murder, everybody was talking about, well,

it's the barmaid that will be able to recognise Ronnie.

Nobody else is going to say it was Ronnie Kray.

The day that she turned up...

she was nice, dressed nice, good looking,

and I heard her speak.

I remember Chris Lambrianou going...

..as much as to say, "We're finished."

It was the end.

We're going down.

Because she was so believable.

Everything she said.

She convinced me that she was telling the truth.

But now, it all rests with the 12 men

locked in a little room back there,

and we all wait for what they have to say about it.

When the guilty verdicts were read out...

..it was rough justice.

It was the twins they was after, and if you was with the twins,

you were going down, as well.

The judge was Melford Stevenson, who was notoriously tough.

And you weren't gonna go down with a sloppy ten

or something else like that. You were gonna do big bird.

Ronnie Bender did 20 years.

My brother, Tony, did 15.

I did 15.

When he said "Twins, I sentence you to life imprisonment,"

you heard that gasp, going, "Oh, God, no, no!"

"But... I suggest...

"30 years."

I mean, undoubtedly, they were guilty.

But it really worried me.

I didn't feel that they were being given a fair trial.

I was left with a horrible feeling of class war.

Nobody is particularly worried when gangsters kill each other.

But they're terribly worried if they...

..go beyond their station.

The sentences that they received

were very high by the standards of the 1960s.

Life, with a recommendation of 30 years.

Poor Violet.

She was just in total shock. She couldn't believe it.

"Why did all those people come and talk bad about them?

"Those people have sat at my table.

"They've had tea in my house. I talk to their mothers.

"I ask 'em about their wives and children.

"Why... Why were they all saying bad things?

"They're calling 'em murderers!"

And that's when I thought, "I can't pretend any more."

I said, "But, Violet...

"..they did commit murder."

ROCK MUSIC PLAYS

Ronnie Kray is sent to Durham.

Reggie Kray is sent to the Isle of Wight.

And this means that Violet Kray, their mother,

has two incredibly long journeys to prisons

north and south of the UK.

That's got to really, really wear you down.

Now, she's had to ask for lifts,

and not a lot of people wanted to do that.

It sounds terrible,

because they all wanted to do everything for her

when the twins were here.

I went to Parkhurst with her... once.

And she took the apple pie.

I said, "You can't give that to Reggie!"

"No, no," she said. "That's for the guards.

"Everybody likes my apple pie."

I said, "How do you know you can give it to the guards?"

"Well, I'll give it to them as they go in.

" 'That's for your tea.' " Because, in her mind,

anything she gave the guards,

they would be nicer to her son.

Prison, for a start, in the 1970s,

was an extremely rough place to be.

It was rough.

People do know how to use knives in jail.

They know how to hurt people in jail.

REPORTER: And the prison's so-called Black Museum

contains a terrifying array of weapons

that the prisoners have constructed to do violence to themselves,

each other and the staff.

So it's incredibly dangerous for them.

They are the old guard,

and they are surrounded by young bucks.

And they fancy their chances of taking on Ronnie and Reggie.

The famous book

The Profession Of Violence has come out,

and it's selling by the thousands.

The myth of the Krays starts with The Profession Of Violence.

This was written by a journalist, John Pearson,

who the Krays allowed access before they were finally arrested.

Said to be the most read book in prison

and said to be the most stolen book out of book shops.

They were kind of... celebrities in prison.

They had tear-ups.

They had differences of opinion with people.

My name's Bobby Cummines.

I was in Parkhurst Maximum Security with Reggie Kray.

'My name's Steve Tully.'

I first met Reg in Parkhurst, in November '82.

Some very dangerous, dangerous, dangerous people in them prisons.

Sometimes, it could be quite heavy.

A friend of mine got killed, stabbed to death over an onion.

You know, when people say, "Prison is an holiday camp,"

I don't know what holiday camps they do,

but there's people slashing, they was stabbing each other.

Everybody in the wing used to have a wedge,

which was like a wooden wedge, so, when you're banged up at night,

you'd put the wedge under the door, because a lot of people

would come in and attack you while you're still asleep.

But everyone was tooled up in there.

You know, even I had half a gardening shear in my coat.

There's a serious bit of work there.

Ronnie is struggling into '77, '78.

He's having to deal, and Reggie are having to deal,

with regular prison attacks.

They themselves have been on a charge

for beating somebody up in a cell

who'd come to attack them.

Ronnie is struggling with all of this.

And, in 1979...

..it's evidenced that his letter writing is now deteriorating.

It's rambling. There's a load of gobbledygook.

We can see inside this letter

that Ronnie is slowly believing that evil forces are against him,

and this shows a man that is struggling with reality.

"There are evil forces at work to try and break us up

"from our friends and family.

"Someone has put a curse on our family.

"There are evil people at work to turn our friends

"and other people against us.

"Evil forces are at work to split us all up."

His mental health was deteriorating.

And, eventually, in 1979, Ronnie was moved to Broadmoor.

REPORTER: Maximum-security special hospitals like Broadmoor

are designed to cope with people of dangerous and violent behaviour.

Paranoid schizophrenia is that form of schizophrenia which has,

as its main symptoms, delusions - that is false beliefs -

and hallucinations.

When Ronnie decided he weren't gonna...

that's when he decided he wanted to go to Broadmoor.

Cos he said, "Well, if I'm gonna be in here,

"I might as well be in a place like that."

You know, when we talk about the Krays

and you talk about people doing long sentences in prison,

it's really hard to explain to people what it's like.

But their mother was the greatest woman.

She never missed a visit with them boys.

Well, I first noticed in about 1981

that she was so tired,

lost weight and very, very drawn.

She'd already been diagnosed then, but she told nobody.

Not even the old man.

She didn't tell her husband about the cancer.

And when they was in jail, she'd visit them non-stop all them years,

you know, until she died, bless her.

REPORTER: Violet Kray died the day before her 73rd birthday

still fighting to get parole for her notorious twins,

the gangsters who were sentenced to 30 years each in 1969 for murder.

Oh, God.

The funeral at Chingford,

the little church is right opposite the graveyard.

There was a crowd outside.

Lots of Chingford people that had heard what was happening

and wanted to see the twins.

The kindness, I can't believe. I mean, I just can't believe it.

It amazed me. The amount of wreaths and the way people behaved.

In fact, everybody.

PHOTOGRAPHER: Ronnie! Ronnie!

Then came Reggie,

also handcuffed from the maximum security wing at Parkhurst.

Reggie! PHOTOGRAPHER: Reggie!

Neither of them cried at their mother's funeral.

They were too concerned with the day.

They weren't gonna get out of a van

and cry in front of all these crowds.

Meanwhile, an even bigger crowd

rushed to the graveside service for Vi.

There were more flowers from film stars,

underworld figures, and an ex-Great Train Robber or two.

She called the Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie, "my lovely boys"

and faithfully visited them all over the country.

But the sad part about that was,

they weren't allowed to go to the grave.

You know, from the church, they were taken, again, out the back door,

one into a car, one into a van, and gone.

I wrote the Kray twins' autobiography, Our Story,

in the mid-1980s, when Reg,

in the main, was in Parkhurst Prison,

and Ronnie was at Broadmoor Hospital.

I would go and see them both at least once a month.

I think Ronnie was quite happy in Broadmoor.

In his own way, he sort of ruled Broadmoor.

You know, he was the top man there. He was much respected there.

He was always incredibly smart, beautifully turned out.

When he walked in, it flipped me back...

all those years, because, dress-wise,

he had a beautiful Italian suit, navy suit, white silk shirt,

an Italian silk tie, beautiful handkerchief,

the gold cuff links with "RR" written on them, the gold watch.

Oh, and the cigarettes. Chain smoked...

SOFT EXHALATION

..in that way he did. You know, like Noel Coward.

I said, "You're smoking like Noel Coward.

"Why are you holding the cigarette down there?"

He says, "Oh, you're nosy."

Ronnie had a butler.

In fact, a convicted murderer, double murderer.

He would look after Ronnie and Ronnie's guests.

When I first went and saw him,

you know, he said, "What would you like?"

And he had a white coat on, and I said, "I'd like coffee,"

and he brought me a lovely silver coffee pot and China cup,

biscuits on a plate.

I'd always enjoy going to see Ronnie,

because it was always quite a pleasant, sociable occasion,

to be quite honest.

Ronnie seemed happy. He had his...

..his acolytes round,

and he probably had a couple of boyfriends, too.

MUSIC: 'Go, Johnny, Go!' by Jess Conrad

Say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah!"

# I said go

# Go, Johnny, go, I said go

# Go, Johnny, go, Johnny, go... #

'I became very friendly with Diana Dors.'

So, she rang me one day and said,

"Ronnie wants to see you."

MUSIC CLIMAXES

I said, "Yeah, but what does he want to talk to me about?"

"Well," she said, "you know he's always fancied you, you know?"

I remember going to Broadmoor and walking into this...

this room... to see Ronnie Kray, and he went...

"I'd like you to come in and do a show for me."

And I'm thinking... CHUCKLES

I'm thinking, "How can I go into Broadmoor and do my show?"

My show was for teenage girls.

And I had a catsuit made. Everybody wore catsuits then.

It was very tight, and he said to me,

"Money's no option."

But I didn't really want to go into prison,

because I knew it was the wrong gig for me!

Fellas with broken noses and slash marks, you know?

They don't want to see a good-looking kid in a white catsuit

with his lunch on offer.

So I got the band together...

I mean, my bum was going half a crown and sixpence.

I thought, "My God, this is gonna be dreadful."

So, out I go...

# Johnny B Goode, da-da-da-da-da Johnny B Goode... #

# Johnny B Goode! #

MUSIC CLIMAXES

HE SCATS

# Ba! Ba! # Hips going forward.

# Ba, ba, baaaaa! # Finish.

Nothing. Nothing! Not a titter.

And then, Ronnie goes, "Yeah!"

And they all go, "Ooh! Yeah! Yeah!"

Like that, you know, "Wow! Oh! Yay!"

Everybody stood up, I got a standing ovation.

Went back to the cell, stripped my catsuit off and thought...

"Thank ... God that's all over."

My name is David Courtney, and I came to know Ronnie and Reggie

roundabout the mid-'80s, where I had a large security company.

I was doing and organising a lot of things that was happening in London,

and they wanted to know about it.

Worst thing about being in prison is,

the world's going on without you and no-one knows I'm here.

So if you can do anything to get in the paper or something,

that's a... that's orgasmic for you.

But it was, like, romantic to run with the myth.

They became, as the years went by, complete celebrities,

and with it, in rolled the money.

They earned more money in prison

than they ever earned on the pavement.

So, the way they was making their money was through self-promotion.

My name's Steve Wraith,

and I was one of the Krays' business advisers

in the '90s when they were in prison.

I came up with a suggestion by letter to Reg

that we put his image onto a T-shirt and see...

you know, see whether they would sell.

And he said, "Yes, I'm more than happy to do that.

"The split will be 70% for us and 30% for you."

So, this is the... one of the first T-shirt designs that we did,

"The Profession Of Violence, The Krays."

The... The Krays tea towel, "the original EastEnders".

Quite the piece de resistance, the Krays shopping bag.

I can imagine going down to your local supermarket

and getting your shopping in one of those.

But cups, pens, mirrors, calendars - you name it.

You know, everything was embossed with the Krays. It sold.

And when it came to the book rights, you know, the serialisation,

there were three newspapers bidding for the serialisation.

Now, at the time, the twins were desperate for a bit of,

if you like, respectability, you know, to appeal to a wider audience,

if you like, so I said to them,

"Get your serialisation in The Times."

But, of course, The Times bid far less than the News Of The World.

On the Sunday morning, my phone rang.

It was Ronnie Kray, from Broadmoor.

"Have you seen the effing News Of The World?"

I said, "No, I haven't seen it, Ron."

He said, "Go and get one and ring me back."

So I went to the local shop, got the paper,

and the headline said,

"Ronnie Kray says, 'I'm gay and mad.' "

Ronnie Kray was very mad.

The one thing that was important to the Krays,

given the time that they had to serve in prison, was the name.

The legacy. And, you know, to keep the name "Kray" alive.

The film did that.

CROWD CLAMOURING

I am incredibly, incredibly proud

and grateful that the opportunity came my way to make...

The Krays film.

I just did the real... true legend

which existed about the Kray twins in the East End.

GRUNTING AND YELPING

It was designed to...

to shock, but also designed to attract people and, yeah, look,

there's no doubt about it that putting the Krays

on the big screen glamorised them.

You go back, and you tell them, no-one fucks with us!

"Glamour is fear," yeah? That's the quote.

I learned that a long time ago.

If people are afraid of you, you can just do anything.

Glamour is fear.

And they had the control

of all the people around them.

And it grew into this legend of the East End.

Would they like the way their legend's made and the film's made?

They would have loved every minute of it, cos that's what they wanted.

And it helped the empire behind bars grow even bigger,

because, suddenly, the Kray twins' story

was introduced to a new generation of fans, if you like.

It basically glamorised crime, to a degree.

People read about gangsters because, in their head,

they'd like to rob a bank,

or they'd like to shoot someone they don't like.

But they don't want to do the jail

and they're not gonna do it, cos they ain't got it in 'em.

Please believe me...

If anyone thinks our life was glamorous, no.

It's really hard, cos you know you're gonna die here.

You're dying in a concrete box.

On 17th of March, 1995...

..Ronnie dies.

Word goes out everywhere.

Everyone's getting phone calls. "Do you know he's gone?"

Today, Ronnie Kray died in hospital

two days after collapsing in Broadmoor Prison,

where he'd been since 1969.

You know, we were actually losing,

genuinely, a monarch of the British underworld.

That's what Reggie said to me on the phone.

"He will be buried like a king.

"I have arranged with Dave Courtney,

"and he can supply 150 men for outside."

There was 150 flat-nosed, bald-headed,

of what I considered...

..the... tastiest, hardest, realist men I knew

from all over all four bits of the country.

REPORTER: Reggie Kray appeared handcuffed to a prison officer,

granted compassionate leave to attend the funeral.

It was important that Ron's funeral was a big affair,

a big media affair, because keeping the name "Kray" in the headlines

was important to Ronnie and Reggie.

To have a big show of strength with a lot of famous faces

meant that the Kray legend would continue to live on

for many, many years to come.

The procession was to take Ronnie Kray's body along the streets

the twins used to rule with their own brand of terror

and protection rackets.

There were large crowds -

several thousand, according to police estimates.

You can see hundreds and thousands screaming at him hysterically,

you know, like he was a pop star.

CROWD CLAMOURING

There was no time in there to actually grieve,

cos it was all too... wow!

He was a good brother, he was very loyal,

and he was very generous.

Yeah, lots of nice ways about him, and I shall always remember him.

It was good memories, you know? And, erm...

..I know he's at peace.

CROWD CLAMOURING

Nobody... had any idea of the volume of people

that that was gonna attract.

CHANTING: Let him out! Let him out!

From Bethnal Green, a journey across East London to Chingford,

and the cemetery where members of the Kray family are buried.

Reggie watched his brother buried alongside his mother and father,

before being taken back to Maidstone Jail to continue his life sentence.

He got the attention in death as he had always wanted in life.

Reggie, for once, when Ron died, tragic, broke his heart,

but then, he was free.

In his later years, the celebrity thing was always a big thing,

because it kept them in the limelight.

In the 1990s, nothing had changed.

CROWD SHOUTING Well, hey, now.

We're gonna play an old song. I'd like to sing it to

all y'all folks in the house tonight enjoying yourselves,

and also to my friend, Reg, hanging in there, baby.

MUSIC: 'King Of New York' by Fun Lovin' Criminals

'My name is Rob Ferguson. I'm a music manager.'

I'd send people who were, you know, actually celebrities to meet Reg.

Reg was becoming part of folklore and legend.

There were a number of people that were really keen to meet and...

or talk to Reg, which I achieved.

# Save the roach The King of New York... #

I took the Fun Lovin' Criminals to meet him in prison,

and Huey came in, and, later, the guys came in to meet him afterwards,

and they were playing Reading Festival that year,

and so they did a version of their song, King Of New York,

but changed the main lyric to "Hey, hey, free Reg Kray,"

and there were 70,000 people at Reading all singing that lyric.

# Come on, I said Hey, hey, free Reg Kray

# Come on Hey, hey, free Reg Kray

# Come on Hey, hey, free Reg Kray

# Come on Hey, hey, free Reg Kray... #

I was on the side of the stage at that point,

and I had Reg on the phone,

and I said, "Hey, Reg, listen to this."

And he was so made up. It was really...

It was one of the ideas that came to fruition

that really kept him going.

Cos he was a shell of what he formally was.

He was wasting away.

He actually told me one time that...

when I was sitting with him, that he'd had some pain in his stomach,

and he'd been away to Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, I think it is.

He intimated to me that he knew he had cancer.

Reggie's diagnosed with cancer.

He's had stomach problems for the last five years,

so he's probably gone undiagnosed.

They've eventually relented and let him out

a few weeks... before he dies.

The trust has been advised that Mr Reginald Kray

was today informed of the Home Secretary's decision

to accept the parole board recommendation

that he should be released from prison on compassionate grounds.

Never missing a trick,

Reggie signs a contract with the BBC

and does his final deathbed interview.

MAN: Not that it matters now, cos nothing can be done now,

but were there any other killings, any other crimes, any other murders?

REGGIE BREATHES HEAVILY

There's none that I can speak about.

Mm... But were there any others?

Even though you're not gonna speak about them.

Oh, yeah, but that's it. Yeah.

So there were other murders, but we'll leave it there. Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: How do you think we should remember

Ronnie and Reggie Kray?

The Krays are the benchmark for British organised criminals.

They were more important for providing

highly stylised presentation

of British gangsterdom that we'd never had before.

They were smartly dressed...

..violent... and there was two of 'em.

At the end of the day, they want to be remembered

as the baddest gangsters that hit London.

And I think they achieved that.

They deserve to be remembered...

..but as people who destroyed everything.

My regret is, I did meet the Krays.

It cost me 15 years of my life.

They were evil, dangerous bastards.

They didn't write any great poems or...

..they didn't write any great books or anything.

They didn't really leave anything behind.

Except their myth, like Robin Hood.

I mean, all they are is a myth now.

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